Chapter XI.

by Aldous Huxley

　　Mr. Barbecue-Smith was gone. The motor had whirled him away tothe station; a faint smell of burning oil commemorated his recentdeparture. A considerable detachment had come into the courtyardto speed him on his way; and now they were walking back, roundthe side of the house, towards the terrace and the garden. Theywalked in silence; nobody had yet ventured to comment on thedeparted guest."Well?" said Anne at last, turning with raised inquiring eyebrowsto Denis."Well?" It was time for someone to begin.Denis declined the invitation; he passed it on to Mr Scogan."Well?" he said.Mr. Scogan did not respond; he only repeated the question,"Well?"It was left for Henry Wimbush to make a pronouncement. "A veryagreeable adjunct to the week-end," he said. His tone wasobituary.They had descended, without paying much attention where they weregoing, the steep yew-walk that went down, under the flank of theterrace, to the pool. The house towered above them, immenselytall, with the whole height of the built-up terrace added to itsown seventy feet of brick facade. The perpendicular lines of thethree towers soared up, uninterrupted, enhancing the impressionof height until it became overwhelming. They paused at the edgeof the pool to look back."The man who built this house knew his business," said Denis."He was an architect.""Was he?" said Henry Wimbush reflectively. "I doubt it. Thebuilder of this house was Sir Ferdinando Lapith, who flourishedduring the reign of Elizabeth. He inherited the estate from hisfather, to whom it had been granted at the time of thedissolution of the monasteries; for Crome was originally acloister of monks and this swimming-pool their fish-pond. SirFerdinando was not content merely to adapt the old monasticbuildings to his own purposes; but using them as a stone quarryfor his barns and byres and outhouses, he built for himself agrand new house of brick--the house you see now."He waved his hand in the direction of the house and was silent.severe, imposing, almost menacing, Crome loomed down on them."The great thing about Crome," said Mr. Scogan, seizing theopportunity to speak, "is the fact that it's so unmistakably andaggressively a work of art. It makes no compromise with nature,but affronts it and rebels against it. It has no likeness toShelley's tower, in the 'Epipsychidion,' which, if I rememberrightly--"'Seems not now a work of human art,But as it were titanic, in the heartOf earth having assumed its form and grownOut of the mountain, from the living stone,Lifting itself in caverns light and high.'No, no, there isn't any nonsense of that sort about Crome. Thatthe hovels of the peasantry should look as though they had grownout of the earth, to which their inmates are attached, is right,no doubt, and suitable. But the house of an intelligent,civilised, and sophisticated man should never seem to havesprouted from the clods. It should rather be an expression ofhis grand unnatural remoteness from the cloddish life. Since thedays of William Morris that's a fact which we in England havebeen unable to comprehend. Civilised and sophisticated men havesolemnly played at being peasants. Hence quaintness, arts andcrafts, cottage architecture, and all the rest of it. In thesuburbs of our cities you may see, reduplicated in endless rows,studiedly quaint imitations and adaptations of the village hovel.Poverty, ignorance, and a limited range of materials produced thehovel, which possesses undoubtedly, in suitable surroundings, itsown 'as it were titanic' charm. We now employ our wealth, ourtechnical knowledge, our rich variety of materials for thepurpose of building millions of imitation hovels in totallyunsuitable surroundings. Could imbecility go further?"Henry Wimbush took up the thread of his interrupted discourse."All that you say, my dear Scogan," he began, "is certainly veryjust, very true. But whether Sir Ferdinando shared your viewsabout architecture or if, indeed, he had any views aboutarchitecture at all, I very much doubt. In building this house,Sir Ferdinando was, as a matter of fact, preoccupied by only onethought--the proper placing of his privies. Sanitation was theone great interest of his life. In 1573 he even published, onthis subject, a little book--now extremely scarce--called,'Certaine Priuy Counsels' by 'One of Her Maiestie's MostHonourable Priuy Counsels, F.L. Knight', in which the wholematter is treated with great learning and elegance. His guidingprinciple in arranging the sanitation of a house was to securethat the greatest possible distance should separate the privyfrom the sewage arrangements. Hence it followed inevitably thatthe privies were to be placed at the top of the house, beingconnected by vertical shafts with pits or channels in the ground.It must not be thought that Sir Ferdinando was moved only bymaterial and merely sanitary considerations; for the placing ofhis privies in an exalted position he had also certain excellentspiritual reasons. For, he argues in the third chapter of his'Priuy Counsels', the necessities of nature are so base andbrutish that in obeying them we are apt to forget that we are thenoblest creatures of the universe. To counteract these degradingeffects he advised that the privy should be in every house theroom nearest to heaven, that it should be well provided withwindows commanding an extensive and noble prospect, and that thewalls of the chamber should be lined with bookshelves containingall the ripest products of human wisdom, such as the Proverbs ofSolomon, Boethius's 'Consolations of Philosophy', the apophthegmsof Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, the 'Enchiridion' of Erasmus,and all other works, ancient or modern, which testify to thenobility of the human soul. In Crome he was able to put histheories into practice. At the top of each of the threeprojecting towers he placed a privy. From these a shaft wentdown the whole height of the house, that is to say, more thanseventy feet, through the cellars, and into a series of conduitsprovided with flowing water tunnelled in the ground on a levelwith the base of the raised terrace. These conduits emptiedthemselves into the stream several hundred yards below the fish-pond. The total depth of the shafts from the top of the towersto their subterranean conduits was a hundred and two feet. Theeighteenth century, with its passion for modernisation, sweptaway these monuments of sanitary ingenuity. Were it not fortradition and the explicit account of them left by SirFerdinando, we should be unaware that these noble privies hadever existed. We should even suppose that Sir Ferdinando builthis house after this strange and splendid model for merelyaesthetic reasons."The contemplation of the glories of the past always evoked inHenry Wimbush a certain enthusiasm. Under the grey bowler hisface worked and glowed as he spoke. The thought of thesevanished privies moved him profoundly. He ceased to speak; thelight gradually died out of his face, and it became once more thereplica of the grave, polite hat which shaded it. There was along silence; the same gently melancholy thoughts seemed topossess the mind of each of them. Permanence, transience--SirFerdinando and his privies were gone, Crome still stood. Howbrightly the sun shone and how inevitable was death! The ways ofGod were strange; the ways of man were stranger still..."It does one's heart good," exclaimed Mr. Scogan at last, "tohear of these fantastic English aristocrats. To have a theoryabout privies and to build an immense and splendid house in orderto put it into practise--it's magnificent, beautiful! I like tothink of them all: the eccentric milords rolling across Europein ponderous carriages, bound on extraordinary errands. One isgoing to Venice to buy La Bianchi's larynx; he won't get it tillshe's dead, of course, but no matter; he's prepared to wait; hehas a collection, pickled in glass bottles, of the throats offamous opera singers. And the instruments of renowned virtuosi--he goes in for them too; he will try to bribe Paganini to partwith his little Guarnerio, but he has small hope of success.Paganini won't sell his fiddle; but perhaps he might sacrificeone of his guitars. Others are bound on crusades--one to diemiserably among the savage Greeks, another, in his white top hat,to lead Italians against their oppressors. Others have nobusiness at all; they are just giving their oddity a continentalairing. At home they cultivate themselves at leisure and withgreater elaboration. Beckford builds towers, Portland digs holesin the ground, Cavendish, the millionaire, lives in a stable,eats nothing but mutton, and amuses himself--oh, solely for hisprivate delectation--by anticipating the electrical discoveriesof half a century. Glorious eccentrics! Every age is enlivenedby their presence. Some day, my dear Denis," said Mr Scogan,turning a beady bright regard in his direction--"some day youmust become their biographer--'The Lives of Queer Men.' What asubject! I should like to undertake it myself."Mr. Scogan paused, looked up once more at the towering house,then murmured the word "Eccentricity," two or three times."Eccentricity...It's the justification of all aristocracies. Itjustifies leisured classes and inherited wealth and privilege andendowments and all the other injustices of that sort. If you'reto do anything reasonable in this world, you must have a class ofpeople who are secure, safe from public opinion, safe frompoverty, leisured, not compelled to waste their time in theimbecile routines that go by the name of Honest Work. You musthave a class of which the members can think and, within theobvious limits, do what they please. You must have a class inwhich people who have eccentricities can indulge them and inwhich eccentricity in general will be tolerated and understood.That's the important thing about an aristocracy. Not only is iteccentric itself--often grandiosely so; it also tolerates andeven encourages eccentricity in others. The eccentricities ofthe artist and the new-fangled thinker don't inspire it with thatfear, loathing, and disgust which the burgesses instinctivelyfeel towards them. It is a sort of Red Indian Reservationplanted in the midst of a vast horde of Poor Whites--colonials atthat. Within its boundaries wild men disport themselves--often,it must be admitted, a little grossly, a little too flamboyantly;and when kindred spirits are born outside the pale it offers themsome sort of refuge from the hatred which the Poor Whites, enbons bourgeois, lavish on anything that is wild or out of theordinary. After the social revolution there will be noReservations; the Redskins will be drowned in the great sea ofPoor Whites. What then? Will they suffer you to go on writingvillanelles, my good Denis? Will you, unhappy Henry, be allowedto live in this house of the splendid privies, to continue yourquiet delving in the mines of futile knowledge? Will Anne...""And you," said Anne, interrupting him, "will you be allowed togo on talking?""You may rest assured," Mr. Scogan replied, "that I shall not. Ishall have some Honest Work to do."