Chapters 19-21

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit
LibriVox dot org. Alarms and Discoursions by g K Chestertown,
Section seven, chapters nineteen through twenty one, The Anarchist. I

(00:34):
have now lived for about two months in the country
and have gathered the last rich autumnal fruit of a
rural life, which is a strong desire to see. London.
Artists living in my neighborhood talk ractiously of the ruling
liberty of the landscape, the living piece of woods. But

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I say to them, with a slight Buckinghamshire accent, ah,
that is how Cocknes feel. For us, real old country people.
The country is reality. It is the town that is romance.
Nature is as plain as one of her pigs, as commonplace,
as comic, and as healthy. But civilization is full of poetry,

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even if it be sometimes an evil poetry. The streets
of London are paved with gold, that is, with the
very poetry of avarice. With these typically Bucolic words, I
touch my hat and go ambling away on a stick,
with the stiffness of gait proper to the oldest inhabitants,

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while in my more animated moments, I am taken for
the village idiot, exchanging heavy but courteous salutations with other gaffers,
I reach the station where I ask for a ticket
for London, where the King lives. Such a journey, mingled
of provincial fascination and fear, did I successfully perform. Only

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a few days ago, and alone and helpless in the Capitol,
found myself in the tangle of roads around the Marble Arch.
A faint prejudice may possess the mind that I have
slightly exaggerated my rusticity and remoteness. And yet it is true,
as I came to that corner of the park, that

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for some unreasonable reason of mood, I saw all London
as a strange city, and the civilization itself as one
enormous whim. The Marble Arch itself, in its new insular position,
with traffic turning dizzily all about it, struck me as
a placid monstrosity. What could be wilder than to have

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a huge arched gateway with people going everywhere except under it.
If I took down my front door and stood it
up all by itself in the middle of my back garden.
My village neighbors, in their simplicity, would probably stare. Yet
the marble arch is now precisely that, an elaborate entrance,

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and the only place by which no one can enter.
By the new arrangement, its last weak pretense to be
a gate has been taken away. The cabman still cannot
drive through it, but he can have the delights of
riding round it, and even on foggy nights, the rapture
of running into it. It has been raised from the

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rank of a fiction to the dignity of an obstacle.
As I began to walk across a corner of the park,
this sense of what is strange in cities began to
mingle with some sense of what is stern as well
as strange. It was one of those queer colored winter days,
when a watery sky changes to pink and gray and

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green like an enormous opal. The trees that up gray
and angular, as if in attitudes of agony, And here
and there on benches under the trees sat men as
gray and angular as they. It was cold, even for me,
who had eaten a large breakfast and purposed to eat

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a perfectly gargantuan lunch. It was colder for the men
under the trees, and to the eastward, to the opalescent haze,
the warmer whites and yellows of the houses in park
Lane shone as unsubstantially as if the clouds themselves had
taken on the shape of mansions to mock the men
who sat there in the cold. But the mansions were real,

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like the mockery, no one worth calling a man allows
his moods to change his convictions. But it is by
moods that we understand other men's convictions. The bigot is
not he who knows he is right. Every sane man
knows he is right. The bigotus he whose emotions and

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imagination are too cold and too weak to feel how
it is that other men go wrong. At that moment,
I felt vividly how men might go wrong, even unto dynamite.
If one of those huddled men under the trees had
stood up and asked for rivers of blood, it would
have been erroneous, but not irrelevant. It would have been appropriate.

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And in the picture, that lurid, gray picture of insolence
on one side and impotence on the other, it may
be true on the whole. It is that this social
machine which we have made is better than anarchy. Still,
it is a machine, and we have made it. It
does hold those poor men helpless, and it does lift

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those rich men high, and such men, Good Lord. By
the time I have flung myself on a bench beside
another man, I was half inclined to try an for
a change. The other was of more prosperous appearance than
most of the men on such seats. Still, he was
not what one calls a gentleman, and he had probably

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worked at some time like a human being. He was
a small, sharp faced man, with grave, staring eyes and
a beard somewhat foreign. His clothes were black, respectable and
yet casual, those of a man who dresses conventionally. Because
it was a bore to dress unconventionally, as it is

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attracted by this and other things, and wanting an outburst
for my bitter social feelings, I tempted him into speech,
first about the cold and then about the general election.
To this, the respectable man replied, well, I don't belong
to any party myself. I am an anarchist. I looked

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up and almost six acted fire from heaven. This coincidence
was like the end of the world. I had sat down,
feeling that somehow or other, park lane must be pulled down,
and I had sat down beside the man who wanted
to pull it down. I bowed in silence for an instant,
under the approaching apocalypse. And in that instant the man

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turned sharply and started talking like a torrent Understand me,
he said, ordinary people think an anarchist means a man
with a bomb in his pocket. Herbert Spencer was an anarchist,
but for that fatal admission of his on page seven
ninety three, he would be a complete anarchist. Otherwise he

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agrees wholly with Pig. This was uttered with such blinding
rapidity of syllabification as to be a better test of
teetotalism than the Scotch one of saying biblical criticism. Six times.
I attempted to speak, but he he began again with
the same rippling rapidity. You will say that Pidge also

(08:04):
admits governments in that tenth chapter, so easily misunderstood. Bulger
has attacked Pidge on those lines. But Bolger has no
scientific training. Bulger is a psychometrist, but no sociologist. To
any one who has combined a study of pige with
the earlier and better discoveries of proxy, the fallacy is

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quite clear. Bolger confounds social coercion with corrucional social action.
His rabid rattling mouth shut quite tight suddenly, and he
looked steadily and triumphantly at me, with his head on
one side. I opened my mouth, and the mere motion
seems to sting him to fresh verbal leaps. Yes, he said,

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that's all very well. The Finland group has accepted Bulger,
but he said, suddenly, lifting a long finger as if
to stop me. But Pidge has replied. His pamphlet is published.
He has proved that potential social rebuke is not a
weapon of the true anarchist. He has shown that just
as religious authority and political authority have gone, so must

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emotional authority and psychological authority. He has shown I stood
up in sort of days, I think you, remarked, I
said feebly that the mere common populists do not quite
understand anarchism. Quite so, he said, with a burning swiftness,

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as I said, they think any anarchist is a man
with a bomb, whereas but great heavens man, I said,
it's the man with the bomb that I understand. I
wish you had half his sense. What do I care
about how many German dons tie themselves in knots about
how this society began? My only interest is about how

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soon it will end. Do you see those fat white
houses over in Park Lane where your masters live? He assented,
and muttered something about concentrations of capital. Well, I said,
if the time ever comes when we all storm those houses,
will you tell me one thing. Tell me how we

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shall do it without authority. Tell me how you will
have an army of rebolt without discipline. For the first
instant he was doubtful, and I had bidden him farewell,
and crossed the street again. When I saw him open
his mouth and begin to run after me. He had

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remembered something out of pitch. I escaped, however, and as
I leapt on an omnibus, I saw again the enormous
emblem of the marble arch. I saw that massive symbol
of the modern mind, a door with no house to it,
the gigantic gait of nowhere. How I found the Superman.

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Readers of mister Bernard Shaw and other modern writers may
be interested to know that the Superman has been found.
I found him he lives in South Croydon. My success
will be a great blow to mister Shaw, who has
been following quite a false scent and is now looking
for the creature in Blackpool. And as for mister Wells's

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notion of generating him out of gases in a private laboratory,
I always thought it doomed to failure. I assure mister
Wells that the superman at Croydon was born in the
ordinary way, though he himself, of course, is anything but ordinary.
Nor are his parents unworthy of the wonderful being whom

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they have given to the world. The name of Lady
Hypatia Smith Browne, now Lady Hypatia Hagg will never be
forgotten in the East End, where she did so much
splendid social work. Her constant cry of save the children
referred to the cruel neglect of children's eyesight involved in

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allowing them to play with crudely painted toys. She quoted
unanswerable statistics to prove that children allowed to look at
violet and vermilion often suffered from failing eyesight in their
extreme old age. And it was owing to her ceaseless
crusade that the pestilence of monkey on the stick was

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almost swept from Hoxton. The devoted worker would tramp the
streets untiringly to taking away the toys from all the
poor children, who were often moved to tears by her kindness.
Her good work was interrupted partly by a new interest
in the creed of Zoroaster, and partly by a savage
blow from an umbrella. It was inflicted by a dissolute

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Irish apple woman, who, on returning from some orgy to
her ill kept apartment, found Lady Hypatia in the bedroom
taking down an oleograph, which, to say the least of
it could not really elevate the mind. At this the
ignorant and partly intoxicated celt dealt the social reformer a
severe blow, adding to it an absurd accusation of theft.

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The lady's exquisitely balanced mind received a shock, and it
was during a short mental illness that she married Doctor Hagg.
Of doctor Hagg himself, I hope there is no need
to speak. Any One even slightly acquainted with those daring
experiments in neo individualist eugenics which are now the one

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absorbing interest of the English democracy, must know his name
and often commend it. To the personal protection of an
impersonal power. Early in life he brought to bear that
ruthless insight into the history of religion which he had
gained in boyhood as an electrical engineer. Later he became

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one of our greatest geologists and achieved that bold and
bright outlook upon the future of socialism which only geology
can give. At first, there seemed something like a rift,
a faint but perceptible fissure between his views and those
of his aristocratic wife, for she was in favor to

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use her own powerful epigram of protecting the poor against themselves,
while he declared piteously in a new and striking metaphor,
that the weakest must go to the wall. Eventually, however,
the married pair perceived an essential union in the unmistakable
modern character of both their views, and in this enlightening

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and intelligible formula their souls found peace. The result is
that this union of the two highest types of our civilization,
the fashionable lady and the all but vulgar medical man,
has been blessed by the birth of the superman, that
being whom all the labourers and battersy are so eagerly

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expecting night and day I found the house of doctor
and Lady Hypatia Hag without much difficulty. It is situated
in one of the last straggling streets of Croydon and
overlooked by a line of poplars. I reached the door
towards the twilight, and it was natural that I should
fancifully see something dark and monstrous in the dim bulk

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of that house, which contained the creature who was more
marvelous than the children of men. When I entered the house,
I was received with exquisite courtesy by Lady Hypatia and
her husband, but I found much greater difficulty in actually
seeing the superman, who is now about fifteen years old
and is kept by himself in a quiet room. Even

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my conversation with the father and mother did not quite
clear up the character of this mysterious being. Lady Hypatia,
who has a pale and poignant face and is clad
in those impalpable and pathetic grays and greens with which
she has brightened so many homes in Hoxton, did not
appear to talk to her offspring with any of the
vulgar vanity of an ordinary human mother. I took a

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bold step and asked if the superman was nice looking,
he creates his own standard, you see, she replied, with
a slight sigh. Upon that plane, he is more than
Apollo seen from our lower plane, of course, and she
sighed again. I had a horrible impulse and said, suddenly,

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has he got any hair? It was a long and
painful silence, and then doctor Hagg said, smoothly, everything upon
that plane is different. What he has got is not well, not,
of course, what we call hair. But don't you think,
said his wife, very softly. Don't you think that? Really?

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For the sake of argument, when talking to the mere public,
one might call it hair. Perhaps you are right, said
the doctor, after a few moments reflection. In connection with
hair like that, one must speak in parables. Well, what
on earth is it? I asked, in some irritation. If
it isn't hair, is it feathers? Not feathers as we

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understand feathers, answered Hag in an awful voice. I got
up some irritation. Can I see him at any rate?
I asked. I am a journalist and have no earthly
motives except curiosity and personal vanity. I should like to
say that I had shaken hands with the superman a

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husband and wife had both got heavily to their feet
and stood embarrassed. Well, of course, you know, said Lady Hypatia,
with the really charming smile of the aristocratic hostess. You
know he can't exactly shake hands, not hands, you know
the structure. Of course. I broke out of all social

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bounds and rushed at the door of the room which
I thought to contain the incredible creature. I burst it open.
The room was pitch dark, but from the front of
me came a small, sad yell, and from behind me
a double shriek. You have done it, now, cried doctor Hagg,
bearing his bald brow in his hands. You have let

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in a draft on him, and he is dead. As
I walked away from Croydon that night, I saw men
in black carrying out a coffin that was not of
any human shape. The wind wailed above me, whirling the
poplars so that they drooped and nodded like the plumes
of some cosmic funeral. It is, indeed, said doctor Hagg,

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the whole universe weeping over the frustration of its most
magnificent birth. But I thought that there was a hoot
of laughter in the high wail of the wind. The
new house within a stone's throw of my house. They

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are building another house. I'm glad they are building it,
and I am glad it is within a stone's throw,
quite well within it with a good catapult. Nevertheless, I
have not yet cast the first stone at the new house,
not being strictly speaking guiltless myself in the matter of
new houses. And indeed in such cases there is a

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strong protest to be made. The whole curse of the
last century has been what is called the swing of
the pendulum. That is, the idea that man must go
alternately from one extreme to the other. It is a
shameful and even shocking fancy. It is the denial of
the whole dignity of mankind. When man is alive, he

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stands still. It is only when he is dead that
he swings. But whenever one meets modern thinkers, as one
often does progressing toward a madhouse, one always find minds
on inquiry that they have just had a splendid escape
from another madhouse. Thus, hundreds of people become socialists, not

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because they have tried socialism and found it nice, but
because they have tried individualism and found it particularly nasty.
Thus many embrace Christian science solely because they are quite
sick of Heathen science. They are so tired of believing
that everything is matter that they will even take refuge
in the revolting fable that everything is mind. Man ought

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to march somewhere, but modern man, in his sick reaction,
is ready to march nowhere, so long as it is
the other end of nowhere. The case of building houses
is the strong instance of this. Early in the nineteenth century,
our civilization chose to abandon the Greek and Medieval idea

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of a town with walls limited and defined, with a
temple for faith and a market place for politics, and
it chose to let the city grow like a jungle,
with blind cruelty and beastial unconsciousness, so that London and
Liverpool are the greatest cities we now see. Well. People
have reacted against that. They have grown tired of living

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in a city which is as dark and barbaric as
a forest, only not as beautiful. And there has been
an exodus into the country of those who could afford it,
and some I could name who can't. Now. As soon
as this quite rational recoil occurred, it flew at once.
To the opposite extreme, people went about with beaming faces,
boasting that they were twenty three miles from a station.

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Rubbing their hands, they exclaimed and rollicking a size, that
their butchers only called once a month, and that their
bakers started out with fresh hot loaves, which were quite
stale before they reached the table. A man would praise
his little house in a quiet valley, but gloomily admit,
with a slight shake of the head, that a human
habitation on the distant horizon was faintly discernible on it

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clear day. Rival ruralists would quarrel about which had the
most completely inconvenient postal service, and there were many jealous
heartburnings if one friend found out any uncomfortable situation which
the other friend had thoughtlessly overlooked. In the fevery summer

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of this fanaticism, there arose the phrase that this or
that part of England is being built over. Now, there
is not the slightest objection in itself to England being
built over by men, any more than there is to
it being as it already is, built over by birds,
or by squirrels, or by spiders. But if birds nests

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were so thick on a tree that one could see
nothing but nests and no leaves at all. I should
say that the bird's civilization was becoming a bit decadent.
If whenever I tried to walk down the road, I
found the whole thoroughfare one crawling carpet of spiders closely interlocked,
I should feel it is stress verging on distaste. If

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one were at every turn crowded, elbowed, overlooked, overcharged, sweated, racked, rented,
swindled and sold up by avaricious and arrogant squirrels, one
might at last remonstrate. But the great towns have grown
intolerable solely because of such suffocating, vulgarities and tyrannies. It

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is not humanity that discuss us in the huge cities.
It is inhumanity. It is not that there are human beings,
but that they are not treated as such. We do not,
i hope, dislike men and women. We only dislike their
being made into a sort of jam, crushed together, so
that they are not merely powerless but shapeless. It is

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not the presence of people that makes London appalling. It
is merely the absence of the people. Therefore, I dance
with joy to think that my part of England is
being built over, so long as it is being built
over in a huge human way, at human intervals, and
in a human proportion, so long and short as I

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am not myself built over like a Pagan slave buried
in the foundations of a temple, or an American clerk
in a star striking pagoda of flats. I am delighted
to see the faces and the homes of a race
of bypits to which I am not only attracted by
strange affection, but to which also, by a touching coincidence,

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I actually happened to belong. I am not one desiring deserts.
I'm not Timin of Athens. If my town were Athens,
I would stay in it. I am not Simian Stiliites,
except in the mournful sense that every Saturday I find
myself on the top of a newspaper column. I'm not
in the desert repenting of some monstrous sins. At least

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I am repenting of them all right, but not in
the desert. I do not want the nearest human house
to be too distant to see. That is my objection
to the wilderness. But neither do I want the nearest
human house to be too close to see. That is
my objection to the modern city. I love my fellow man.
I do not want him so far off that I

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can only observe anything of him through a telescope. Nor
do I want him so close that I can examine
parts of him with a microscope. I want him within
a stone's throw of me, so that whenever it is
really necessary, I may throw the stone. Perhaps, after all,
it may not be a stone. Perhaps, after all, it

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may be a bouquet, or a snowball, or a firework,
or a free trade loaf. Perhaps they will ask for
a stone, and I shall give them bread. But it
is essential that they should be within reach. How can
I love my neighbor as myself if he gets out
of range for snowballs. There should be no institution out

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of the reach of an indignant or admiring humanity. I
could hit the nearest house quite well with the catapult,
But the truth is that the catapult belongs to a
little boy I know, and with characteristic youthful selfishness, he
has taken it away. The end of chapters nineteen through
twenty one