THE NEW MACHIAVELLI

7

For a time I turned towards the Socialists. They at least had an

air of coherent intentions. At that time Socialism had come into

politics again after a period of depression and obscurity, with a

tremendous ECLAT. There was visibly a following of Socialist

members to Chris Robinson; mysteriously uncommunicative gentlemen in

soft felt hats and short coats and square-toed boots who replied to

casual advances a little surprisingly in rich North Country

dialects. Members became aware of a "seagreen incorruptible," as

Colonel Marlow put it to me, speaking on the Address, a slender

twisted figure supporting itself on a stick and speaking with a fire

that was altogether revolutionary. This was Philip Snowden, the

member for Blackburn. They had come in nearly forty strong

altogether, and with an air of presently meaning to come in much

stronger. They were only one aspect of what seemed at that time a

big national movement. Socialist societies, we gathered, were

springing up all over the country, and every one was inquiring about

Socialism and discussing Socialism. It had taken the Universities

with particular force, and any youngster with the slightest

intellectual pretension was either actively for or brilliantly

against. For a time our Young Liberal group was ostentatiously

sympathetic…

When I think of the Socialists there comes a vivid memory of certain

evening gatherings at our house…

These gatherings had been organised by Margaret as the outcome of a

discussion at the Baileys'. Altiora had been very emphatic and

uncharitable upon the futility of the Socialist movement. It seemed

that even the leaders fought shy of dinner-parties.

"They never meet each other," said Altiora, "much less people on the

other side. How can they begin to understand politics until they do

that?"

"Most of them have totally unpresentable wives," said Altiora,

"totally!" and quoted instances, "and they WILL bring them. Or they

won't come! Some of the poor creatures have scarcely learnt their

table manners. They just make holes in the talk…"

I thought there was a great deal of truth beneath Altiora's

outburst. The presentation of the Socialist case seemed very

greatly crippled by the want of a common intimacy in its leaders;

the want of intimacy didn't at first appear to be more than an

accident, and our talk led to Margaret's attempt to get acquaintance

and easy intercourse afoot among them and between them and the Young

Liberals of our group. She gave a series of weekly dinners,

planned, I think, a little too accurately upon Altiora's model, and

after each we had as catholic a reception as we could contrive.

Our receptions were indeed, I should think, about as catholic as

receptions could be. Margaret found herself with a weekly houseful

of insoluble problems in intercourse. One did one's best, but one

got a nightmare feeling as the evening wore on.

It was one of the few unanimities of these parties that every one

should be a little odd in appearance, funny about the hair or the

tie or the shoes or more generally, and that bursts of violent

aggression should alternate with an attitude entirely defensive. A

number of our guests had an air of waiting for a clue that never

came, and stood and sat about silently, mildly amused but not a bit

surprised that we did not discover their distinctive Open-Sesames.

There was a sprinkling of manifest seers and prophetesses in

shapeless garments, far too many, I thought, for really easy social

intercourse, and any conversation at any moment was liable to become

oracular. One was in a state of tension from first to last; the

most innocent remark seemed capable of exploding resentment, and

replies came out at the most unexpected angles. We Young Liberals

went about puzzled but polite to the gathering we had evoked. The

Young Liberals' tradition is on the whole wonderfully discreet,

superfluous steam is let out far away from home in the Balkans or

Africa, and the neat, stiff figures of the Cramptons, Bunting

Harblow, and Lewis, either in extremely well-cut morning coats

indicative of the House, or in what is sometimes written of as

"faultless evening dress," stood about on those evenings, they and

their very quietly and simply and expensively dressed little wives,

like a datum line amidst lakes and mountains.

I didn't at first see the connection between systematic social

reorganisation and arbitrary novelties in dietary and costume, just

as I didn't realise why the most comprehensive constructive projects

should appear to be supported solely by odd and exceptional

personalities. On one of these evenings a little group of rather

jolly-looking pretty young people seated themselves for no

particular reason in a large circle on the floor of my study, and

engaged, so far as I could judge, in the game of Hunt the Meaning,

the intellectual equivalent of Hunt the Slipper. It must have been

that same evening I came upon an unbleached young gentleman before

the oval mirror on the landing engaged in removing the remains of an

anchovy sandwich from his protruded tongue-visible ends of cress

having misled him into the belief that he was dealing with

doctrinally permissible food. It was not unusual to be given hand-

bills and printed matter by our guests, but there I had the

advantage over Lewis, who was too tactful to refuse the stuff, too

neatly dressed to pocket it, and had no writing-desk available upon

which he could relieve himself in a manner flattering to the giver.

So that his hands got fuller and fuller. A relentless, compact

little woman in what Margaret declared to be an extremely expensive

black dress has also printed herself on my memory; she had set her

heart upon my contributing to a weekly periodical in the lentil

interest with which she was associated, and I spent much time and

care in evading her.

Mingling with the more hygienic types were a number of Anti-Puritan

Socialists, bulging with bias against temperance, and breaking out

against austere methods of living all over their faces. Their

manner was packed with heartiness. They were apt to choke the

approaches to the little buffet Margaret had set up downstairs, and

there engage in discussions of Determinism-it always seemed to be

Determinism-which became heartier and noisier, but never

acrimonious even in the small hours. It seemed impossible to settle

about this Determinism of theirs-ever. And there were worldly

Socialists also. I particularly recall a large, active, buoyant,

lady-killing individual with an eyeglass borne upon a broad black

ribbon, who swam about us one evening. He might have been a

slightly frayed actor, in his large frock-coat, his white waistcoat,

and the sort of black and white check trousers that twinkle. He had

a high-pitched voice with aristocratic intonations, and he seemed to

be in a perpetual state of interrogation. "What are we all he-a

for?" he would ask only too audibly. "What are we doing he-a?

What's the connection?"

What WAS the connection?

We made a special effort with our last assembly in June, 1907. We

tried to get something like a representative collection of the

parliamentary leaders of Socialism, the various exponents of

Socialist thought and a number of Young Liberal thinkers into one

room. Dorvil came, and Horatio Bulch; Featherstonehaugh appeared

for ten minutes and talked charmingly to Margaret and then vanished

again; there was Wilkins the novelist and Toomer and Dr. Tumpany.

Chris Robinson stood about for a time in a new comforter, and

Magdeberg and Will Pipes and five or six Labour members. And on our

side we had our particular little group, Bunting Harblow, Crampton,

Lewis, all looking as broad-minded and open to conviction as they

possibly could, and even occasionally talking out from their bushes

almost boldly. But the gathering as a whole refused either to

mingle or dispute, and as an experiment in intercourse the evening

was a failure. Unexpected dissociations appeared between Socialists

one had supposed friendly. I could not have imagined it was

possible for half so many people to turn their backs on everybody

else in such small rooms as ours. But the unsaid things those backs

expressed broke out, I remarked, with refreshed virulence in the

various organs of the various sections of the party next week.

I talked, I rememher, with Dr. Tumpany, a large young man in a still

larger professional frock-coat, and with a great shock of very fair

hair, who was candidate for some North Country constituency. We

discussed the political outlook, and, like so many Socialists at

that time, he was full of vague threatenings against the Liberal

party. I was struck by a thing in him that I had already observed

less vividly in many others of these Socialist leaders, and which

gave me at last a clue to the whole business. He behaved exactly

like a man in possession of valuable patent rights, who wants to be

dealt with. He had an air of having a corner in ideas. Then it

flashed into my head that the whole Socialist movement was an

attempted corner in ideas…