THE NEW MACHIAVELLI

CHAPTER THE FOURTH
THE HOUSE IN WESTMINSTER
1

Margaret had already taken a little house in Radnor Square,

Westminster, before our marriage, a house that seemed particularly

adaptable to our needs as public-spirited efficients; it had been

very pleasantly painted and papered under Margaret's instructions,

white paint and clean open purples and green predominating, and now

we set to work at once upon the interesting business of arranging

and-with our Venetian glass as a beginning-furnishing it. We had

been fairly fortunate with our wedding presents, and for the most

part it was open to us to choose just exactly what we would have and

just precisely where we would put it.

Margaret had a sense of form and colour altogether superior to mine,

and so quite apart from the fact that it was her money equipped us,

I stood aside from all these matters and obeyed her summons to a

consultation only to endorse her judgment very readily. Until

everything was settled I went every day to my old rooms in Vincent

Square and worked at a series of papers that were originally

intended for the FORTNIGHTLY REVIEW, the papers that afterwards

became my fourth book, "New Aspects of Liberalism."

I still remember as delightful most of the circumstances of getting

into 79, Radnor Square. The thin flavour of indecision about

Margaret disappeared altogether in a shop; she had the precisest

ideas of what she wanted, and the devices of the salesman did not

sway her. It was very pleasant to find her taking things out of my

hands with a certain masterfulness, and showing the distinctest

determination to make a house in which I should be able to work in

that great project of "doing something for the world."

"And I do want to make things pretty about us," she said. "You

don't think it wrong to have things pretty?"

"I want them so."

"Altiora has things hard."

"Altiora," I answered, "takes a pride in standing ugly and

uncomfortable things. But I don't see that they help her. Anyhow

they won't help me."

So Margaret went to the best shops and got everything very simple

and very good. She bought some pictures very well indeed; there was

a little Sussex landscape, full of wind and sunshine, by Nicholson,

for my study, that hit my taste far better than if I had gone out to

get some such expression for myself.

"We will buy a picture just now and then," she said, "sometimes-

when we see one."

I would come back through the January mire or fog from Vincent

Square to the door of 79, and reach it at last with a quite childish

appreciation of the fact that its solid Georgian proportions and its

fine brass furnishings belonged to MY home; I would use my latchkey

and discover Margaret in the warm-lit, spacious hall with a

partially opened packing-case, fatigued but happy, or go up to have

tea with her out of the right tea things, "come at last," or be told

to notice what was fresh there. It wasn't simply that I had never

had a house before, but I had really never been, except in the most

transitory way, in any house that was nearly so delightful as mine

promised to be. Everything was fresh and bright, and softly and

harmoniously toned. Downstairs we had a green dining-room with

gleaming silver, dark oak, and English colour-prints; above was a

large drawing-room that could be made still larger by throwing open

folding doors, and it was all carefully done in greys and blues, for

the most part with real Sheraton supplemented by Sheraton so

skilfully imitated by an expert Margaret had discovered as to be

indistinguishable except to a minute scrutiny. And for me, above

this and next to my bedroom, there was a roomy study, with specially

thick stair-carpet outside and thick carpets in the bedroom overhead

and a big old desk for me to sit at and work between fire and

window, and another desk specially made for me by that expert if I

chose to stand and write, and open bookshelves and bookcases and

every sort of convenient fitting. There were electric heaters

beside the open fire, and everything was put for me to make tea at

any time-electric kettle, infuser, biscuits and fresh butter, so

that I could get up and work at any hour of the day or night. I

could do no work in this apartment for a long time, I was so

interested in the perfection of its arrangements. And when I

brought in my books and papers from Vincent Square, Margaret seized

upon all the really shabby volumes and had them re-bound in a fine

official-looking leather.

I can remember sitting down at that desk and looking round me and

feeling with a queer effect of surprise that after all even a place

in the Cabinet, though infinitely remote, was nevertheless in the

same large world with these fine and quietly expensive things.

On the same floor Margaret had a "den," a very neat and pretty den

with good colour-prints of Botticellis and Carpaccios, and there was

a third apartment for sectarial purposes should the necessity for

them arise, with a severe-looking desk equipped with patent files.

And Margaret would come flitting into the room to me, or appear

noiselessly standing, a tall gracefully drooping form, in the wide

open doorway. "Is everything right, dear?" she would ask.

"Come in," I would say, "I'm sorting out papers."

She would come to the hearthrug.

"I mustn't disturb you," she would remark.

"I'm not busy yet."

"Things are getting into order. Then we must make out a time-table

as the Baileys do, and BEGIN!"

Altiora came in to see us once or twice, and a number of serious

young wives known to Altiora called and were shown over the house,

and discussed its arrangements with Margaret. They were all

tremendously keen on efficient arrangements.

"A little pretty," said Altiora, with the faintest disapproval,

"still-"

It was clear she thought we should grow out of that. From the day

of our return we found other people's houses open to us and eager

for us. We went out of London for week-ends and dined out, and

began discussing our projects for reciprocating these hospitalities.

As a single man unattached, I had had a wide and miscellaneous

social range, but now I found myself falling into place in a set.

For a time I acquiesced in this. I went very little to my clubs,

the Climax and the National Liberal, and participated in no bachelor

dinners at all. For a time, too, I dropped out of the garrulous

literary and journalistic circles I had frequented. I put up for

the Reform, not so much for the use of the club as a sign of serious

and substantial political standing. I didn't go up to Cambridge, I

remember, for nearly a year, so occupied was I with my new

adjustments.

The people we found ourselves among at this time were people, to put

it roughly, of the Parliamentary candidate class, or people already

actually placed in the political world. They ranged between very

considerable wealth and such a hard, bare independence as old

Willersley and the sister who kept house for him possessed. There

were quite a number of young couples like ourselves, a little

younger and more artless, or a little older and more established.

Among the younger men I had a sort of distinction because of my

Cambridge reputation and my writing, and because, unlike them, I was

an adventurer and had won and married my way into their circles

instead of being naturally there. They couldn't quite reckon upon

what I should do; they felt I had reserves of experience and

incalculable traditions. Close to us were the Cramptons, Willie

Crampton, who has since been Postmaster-General, rich and very

important in Rockshire, and his younger brother Edward, who has

specialised in history and become one of those unimaginative men of

letters who are the glory of latter-day England. Then there was

Lewis, further towards Kensington, where his cousins the Solomons

and the Hartsteins lived, a brilliant representative of his race,

able, industrious and invariably uninspired, with a wife a little in

revolt against the racial tradition of feminine servitude and

inclined to the suffragette point of view, and Bunting Harblow, an

old blue, and with an erratic disposition well under the control of

the able little cousin he had married. I had known all these men,

but now (with Altiora floating angelically in benediction) they

opened their hearts to me and took me into their order. They were

all like myself, prospective Liberal candidates, with a feeling that

the period of wandering in the wilderness of opposition was drawing

near its close. They were all tremendously keen upon social and

political service, and all greatly under the sway of the ideal of a

simple, strenuous life, a life finding its satisfactions in

political achievements and distinctions. The young wives were as

keen about it as the young husbands, Margaret most of all, and I-

whatever elements in me didn't march with the attitudes and habits

of this set were very much in the background during that time.

We would give little dinners and have evening gatherings at which

everything was very simple and very good, with a slight but

perceptible austerity, and there was more good fruit and flowers and

less perhaps in the way of savouries, patties and entrees than was

customary. Sherry we banished, and Marsala and liqueurs, and there

was always good home-made lemonade available. No men waited, but

very expert parlourmaids. Our meat was usually Welsh mutton-I

don't know why, unless that mountains have ever been the last refuge

of the severer virtues. And we talked politics and books and ideas

and Bernard Shaw (who was a department by himself and supposed in

those days to be ethically sound at bottom), and mingled with the

intellectuals-I myself was, as it were, a promoted intellectual.

The Cramptons had a tendency to read good things aloud on their less

frequented receptions, but I have never been able to participate

submissively in this hyper-digestion of written matter, and

generally managed to provoke a disruptive debate. We were all very

earnest to make the most of ourselves and to be and do, and I wonder

still at times, with an unassuaged perplexity, how it is that in

that phase of utmost earnestness I have always seemed to myself to

be most remote from reality.