THE NEW MACHIAVELLI

6

I sit writing in this little loggia to the sound of dripping water-

this morning we had rain, and the roof of our little casa is still

not dry, there are pools in the rocks under the sweet chestnuts, and

the torrent that crosses the salita is full and boastful,-and I try

to recall the order of my impressions during that watching, dubious

time, before I went over to the Conservative Party. I was trying-

chaotic task-to gauge the possibilities inherent in the quality of

the British aristocracy. There comes a broad spectacular effect of

wide parks, diversified by woods and bracken valleys, and dappled

with deer; of great smooth lawns shaded by ancient trees; of big

facades of sunlit buildings dominating the country side; of large

fine rooms full of handsome, easy-mannered people. As a sort of

representative picture to set off against those other pictures of

Liberals and of Socialists I have given, I recall one of those huge

assemblies the Duchess of Clynes inaugurated at Stamford House. The

place itself is one of the vastest private houses in London, a huge

clustering mass of white and gold saloons with polished floors and

wonderful pictures, and staircases and galleries on a Gargantuan

scale. And there she sought to gather all that was most

representative of English activities, and did, in fact, in those

brilliant nocturnal crowds, get samples of nearly every section of

our social and intellectual life, with a marked predominance upon

the political and social side.

I remember sitting in one of the recesses at the end of the big

saloon with Mrs. Redmondson, one of those sharp-minded, beautiful

rich women one meets so often in London, who seem to have done

nothing and to be capable of everything, and we watched the crowd-

uniforms and splendours were streaming in from a State ball-and

exchanged information. I told her about the politicians and

intellectuals, and she told me about the aristocrats, and we

sharpened our wit on them and counted the percentage of beautiful

people among the latter, and wondered if the general effect of

tallness was or was not an illusion.

They were, we agreed, for the most part bigger than the average of

people in London, and a handsome lot, even when they were not subtly

individualised. "They look so well nurtured," I said, "well cared

for. I like their quiet, well-trained movements, their pleasant

consideration for each other."

"Kindly, good tempered, and at bottom utterly selfish," she said,

"like big, rather carefully trained, rather pampered children. What

else can you expect from them?"

"They are good tempered, anyhow," I witnessed, "and that's an

achievement. I don't think I could ever be content under a bad-

tempered, sentimentalism, strenuous Government. That's why I

couldn't stand the Roosevelt REGIME in America. One's chief

surprise when one comes across these big people for the first time

is their admirable easiness and a real personal modesty. I confess

I admire them. Oh! I like them. I wouldn't at all mind, I believe,

giving over the country to this aristocracy-given SOMETHING-"

"Which they haven't got."

"Which they haven't got-or they'd be the finest sort of people in

the world."

"That something?" she inquired.

"I don't know. I've been puzzling my wits to know. They've done

all sorts of things-"

"That's Lord Wrassleton," she interrupted, "whose leg was broken-

you remember?-at Spion Kop."

"It's healed very well. I like the gold lace and the white glove

resting, with quite a nice awkwardness, on the sword. When I was a

little boy I wanted to wear clothes like that. And the stars! He's

got the V. C. Most of these people here have at any rate shown

pluck, you know-brought something off."

"Not quite enough," she suggested.

"I think that's it," I said. "Not quite enough-not quite hard

enough," I added.

She laughed and looked at me. "You'd like to make us," she said.

"What?"

"Hard."

"I don't think you'll go on if you don't get hard."

"We shan't be so pleasant if we do."

"Well, there my puzzled wits come in again. I don't see why an

aristocracy shouldn't be rather hard trained, and yet kindly. I'm

not convinced that the resources of education are exhausted. I want

to better this, because it already looks so good."

"How are we to do it?" asked Mrs. Redmondson.

"Oh, there you have me! I've been spending my time lately in trying

to answer that! It makes me quarrel with"-I held up my fingers and

ticked the items off-"the public schools, the private tutors, the

army exams, the Universities, the Church, the general attitude of

the country towards science and literature-"

"We all do," said Mrs. Redmondson. "We can't begin again at the

beginning," she added.

"Couldn't one," I nodded at the assembly in general, start a

movement?

"There's the Confederates," she said, with a faint smile that masked

a gleam of curiosity… "You want," she said, "to say to the

aristocracy, 'Be aristocrats. NOBLESSE OBLIGE.' Do you remember

what happened to the monarch who was told to 'Be a King'?"

"Well," I said, "I want an aristocracy."

"This," she said, smiling, "is the pick of them. The backwoodsmen

are off the stage. These are the brilliant ones-the smart and the

blues… They cost a lot of money, you know."

So far Mrs. Redmondson, but the picture remained full of things not

stated in our speech. They were on the whole handsome people,

charitable minded, happy, and easy. They led spacious lives, and

there was something free and fearless about their bearing that I

liked extremely. The women particularly were wide-reading, fine-

thinking. Mrs. Redmondson talked as fully and widely and boldly as

a man, and with those flashes of intuition, those startling, sudden

delicacies of perception few men display. I liked, too, the

relations that held between women and men, their general tolerance,

their antagonism to the harsh jealousies that are the essence of the

middle-class order…

After all, if one's aim resolved itself into the development of a

type and culture of men, why shouldn't one begin at this end?

It is very easy indeed to generalise about a class or human beings,

but much harder to produce a sample. Was old Lady Forthundred, for

instance, fairly a sample? I remember her as a smiling, magnificent

presence, a towering accumulation of figure and wonderful shimmering

blue silk and black lace and black hair, and small fine features and

chins and chins and chins, disposed in a big cane chair with wraps

and cushions upon the great terrace of Champneys. Her eye was blue

and hard, and her accent and intonation were exactly what you would

expect from a rather commonplace dressmaker pretending to be

aristocratic. I was, Iam afraid, posing a little as the

intelligent but respectful inquirer from below investigating the

great world, and she was certainly posing as my informant. She

affected a cynical coarseness. She developed a theory on the

governance of England, beautifully frank and simple. "Give 'um all

a peerage when they get twenty thousand a year," she maintained.

"That's my remedy."

In my new role of theoretical aristocrat I felt a little abashed.

"Twenty thousand," she repeated with conviction.

It occurred to me that I was in the presence of the aristocratic

theory currently working as distinguished from my as yet

unformulated intentions.

"You'll get a lot of loafers and scamps among 'um," said Lady

Forthundred. "You get loafers and scamps everywhere, but you'll get

a lot of men who'll work hard to keep things together, and that's

what we're all after, isn't ut?

"It's not an ideal arrangement."

"Tell me anything better," said Lady Forthundred.

On the whole, and because she refused emphatically to believe in

education, Lady Forthundred scored.

We had been discussing Cossington's recent peerage, for Cossington,

my old schoolfellow at City Merchants', and my victor in the affair

of the magazine, had clambered to an amazing wealth up a piled heap

of energetically pushed penny and halfpenny magazines, and a group

of daily newspapers. I had expected to find the great lady hostile

to the new-comer, but she accepted him, she gloried in him.

"We're a peerage," she said, "but none of us have ever had any

nonsense about nobility."

She turned and smiled down on me. "We English," she said, "are a

practical people. We assimilate 'um."

"Then, I suppose, they don't give trouble?"

"Then they don't give trouble."

"They learn to shoot?"

"And all that," said Lady Forthundred. "Yes. And things go on.

Sometimes better than others, but they go on-somehow. It depends

very much on the sort of butler who pokes 'um about."

I suggested that it might be possible to get a secure twenty

thousand a year by at least detrimental methods-socially speaking.

"We must take the bad and the good of 'um," said Lady Forthundred,

courageously…

Now, was she a sample? It happened she talked. What was there in

the brains of the multitude of her first, second, third, fourth, and

fifth cousins, who didn't talk, who shone tall, and bearing

themselves finely, against a background of deft, attentive maids and

valets, on every spacious social scene? How did things look to

them?