THE NEW MACHIAVELLI

5

Our office was at the very top of a big building near the end of

Adelphi Terrace; the main window beside my desk, a big undivided

window of plate glass, looked out upon Cleopatra's Needle, the

corner of the Hotel Cecil, the fine arches of Waterloo Bridge, and

the long sweep of south bank with its shot towers and chimneys, past

Bankside to the dimly seen piers of the great bridge below the

Tower. The dome of St. Paul's just floated into view on the left

against the hotel facade. By night and day, in every light and

atmosphere, it was a beautiful and various view, alive as a

throbbing heart; a perpetual flow of traffic ploughed and splashed

the streaming silver of the river, and by night the shapes of things

became velvet black and grey, and the water a shining mirror of

steel, wearing coruscating gems of light. In the foreground the

Embankment trams sailed glowing by, across the water advertisements

flashed and flickered, trains went and came and a rolling drift of

smoke reflected unseen fires. By day that spectacle was sometimes a

marvel of shining wet and wind-cleared atmosphere, sometimes a

mystery of drifting fog, sometimes a miracle of crowded details,

minutely fine.

As I think of that view, so variously spacious in effect, Iam back

there, and this sunlit paper might be lamp-lit and lying on my old

desk. I see it all again, feel it all again. In the foreground is

a green shaded lamp and crumpled galley slips and paged proofs and

letters, two or three papers in manuscript, and so forth. In the

shadows are chairs and another table bearing papers and books, a

rotating bookcase dimly seen, a long window seat black in the

darkness, and then the cool unbroken spectacle of the window. How

often I would watch some tram-car, some string of barges go from me

slowly out of sight. The people were black animalculae by day,

clustering, collecting, dispersing, by night, they were phantom

face-specks coming, vanishing, stirring obscurely between light and

shade.

I recall many hours at my desk in that room before the crisis came,

hours full of the peculiar happiness of effective strenuous work.

Once some piece of writing went on, holding me intent and forgetful

of time until I looked up from the warm circle of my electric lamp

to see the eastward sky above the pale silhouette of the Tower

Bridge, flushed and banded brightly with the dawn.