Chapter: WE are not concerned with the very poor. They are unthinkable and only
to be approached by the statistician or the poet. This story deals
with gentlefolk, or with those who are obliged to pretend that they are
gentlefolk.

The boy, Leonard Bast, stood at the extreme verge of gentility. He was
not in the abyss, but he could see it, and at times people whom he knew
had dropped in, and counted no more. He knew that he was poor, and would
admit it; he would have died sooner than confess any inferiority to
the rich. This may be splendid of him. But he was inferior to most rich
people, there is not the least doubt of it. He was not as courteous
as the average rich man, nor as intelligent, nor as healthy, nor as
lovable. His mind and his body had been alike underfed, because he was
poor, and because he was modern they were always craving better food.
Had he lived some centuries ago, in the brightly coloured civilisations
of the past, he would have had a definite status, his rank and his
income would have corresponded. But in his day the angel of Democracy
had arisen, enshadowing the classes with leathern wings, and
proclaiming, "All men are equal--all men, that is to say, who possess
umbrellas," and so he was obliged to assert gentility, lest he slip
into the abyss where nothing counts, and the statements of Democracy are
inaudible.

As he walked away from Wickham Place, his first care was to prove that
he was as good as the Miss Schlegels. Obscurely wounded in his pride, he
tried to wound them in return. They were probably not ladies. Would real
ladies have asked him to tea? They were certainly ill-natured and cold.
At each step his feeling of superiority increased. Would a real lady
have talked about stealing an umbrella? Perhaps they were thieves
after all, and if he had gone into the house they would have clapped a
chloroformed handkerchief over his face. He walked on complacently as
far as the Houses of Parliament. There an empty stomach asserted itself,
and told him that he was a fool.

"Evening, Mr. Bast."

"Evening, Mr. Dealtry."

"Nice evening."

"Evening."

Mr. Dealtry, a fellow clerk, passed on, and Leonard stood wondering
whether he would take the tram as far as a penny would take him, or
whether he would walk. He decided to walk--it is no good giving in,
and he had spent money enough at Queen's Hall--and he walked over
Westminster Bridge, in front of St. Thomas's Hospital, and through
the immense tunnel that passes under the South-Western main line at
Vauxhall. In the tunnel he paused and listened to the roar of the
trains. A sharp pain darted through his head, and he was conscious of
the exact form of his eye sockets. He pushed on for another mile, and
did not slacken speed until he stood at the entrance of a road called
Camelia Road which was at present his home.

Here he stopped again, and glanced suspiciously to right and left,
like a rabbit that is going to bolt into its hole. A block of flats,
constructed with extreme cheapness, towered on either hand. Farther down
the road two more blocks were being built, and beyond these an old house
was being demolished to accommodate another pair. It was the kind
of scene that may be observed all over London, whatever the
locality--bricks and mortar rising and falling with the restlessness of
the water in a fountain as the city receives more and more men upon her
soil. Camelia Road would soon stand out like a fortress, and command,
for a little, an extensive view. Only for a little. Plans were out for
the erection of flats in Magnolia Road also. And again a few years, and
all the flats in either road might be pulled down, and new buildings, of
a vastness at present unimaginable, might arise where they had fallen.

"Evening, Mr. Bast."

"Evening, Mr. Cunningham."

"Very serious thing this decline of the birth-rate in Manchester."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Very serious thing this decline of the birth-rate in Manchester,"
repeated Mr. Cunningham, tapping the Sunday paper, in which the calamity
in question had just been announced to him.

"Ah, yes," said Leonard, who was not going to let on that he had not
bought a Sunday paper.

"If this kind of thing goes on the population of England will be
stationary in 1960."

"You don't say so."

"I call it a very serious thing, eh?"

"Good-evening, Mr. Cunningham."

"Good-evening, Mr. Bast."

Then Leonard entered Block B of the flats, and turned, not upstairs,
but down, into what is known to house agents as a semi-basement, and to
other men as a cellar. He opened the door, and cried, "Hullo!" with
the pseudo geniality of the Cockney. There was no reply. "Hullo!" he
repeated. The sitting-room was empty, though the electric light had been
left burning. A look of relief came over his face, and he flung himself
into the armchair.

The sitting-room contained, besides the armchair, two other chairs, a
piano, a three-legged table, and a cosy corner. Of the walls, one was
occupied by the window, the other by a draped mantelshelf bristling
with Cupids. Opposite the window was the door, and beside the door a
bookcase, while over the piano there extended one of the masterpieces of
Maud Goodman. It was an amorous and not unpleasant little hole when the
curtains were drawn, and the lights turned on, and the gas-stove unlit.
But it struck that shallow makeshift note that is so often heard in the
dwelling-place. It had been too easily gained, and could be relinquished
too easily.

As Leonard was kicking off his boots he jarred the three-legged table,
and a photograph frame, honourably poised upon it, slid sideways, fell
off into the fireplace, and smashed. He swore in a colourless sort of
way, and picked the photograph up. It represented a young lady called
Jacky, and had been taken at the time when young ladies called Jacky
were often photographed with their mouths open. Teeth of dazzling
whiteness extended along either of Jacky's jaw's, and positively weighed
her head sideways, so large were they and so numerous. Take my word for
it, that smile was simply stunning, and it is only you and I who will be
fastidious, and complain that true joy begins in the eyes, and that
the eyes of Jacky did not accord with her smile, but were anxious and
hungry.

Leonard tried to pull out the fragments of glass, and cut his fingers
and swore again. A drop of blood fell on the frame, another followed,
spilling over on to the exposed photograph. He swore more vigorously,
and dashed into the kitchen, where he bathed his hands. The kitchen
was the same size as the sitting-room; beyond it was a bedroom. This
completed his home. He was renting the flat furnished; of all the
objects that encumbered it none were his own except the photograph
frame, the Cupids, and the books.

"Damn, damn, damnation!" he murmured, together with such other words as
he had learnt from older men. Then he raised his hand to his forehead
and said, "Oh, damn it all--" which meant something different. He pulled
himself together. He drank a little tea, black and silent, that still
survived upon an upper shelf. He swallowed some dusty crumbs of a cake.
Then he went back to the sitting-room, settled himself anew, and began
to read a volume of Ruskin.

"Seven miles to the north of Venice--"

How perfectly the famous chapter opens! How supreme its command of
admonition and of poetry! The rich man is speaking to us from his
gondola.

"Seven miles to the north of Venice the banks of sand which nearer the
city rise little above low-water mark attain by degrees a higher level,
and knit themselves at last into fields of salt morass, raised here and
there into shapeless mounds, and intercepted by narrow creeks of sea."

Leonard was trying to form his style on Ruskin; he understood him to
be the greatest master of English Prose. He read forward steadily,
occasionally making a few notes.

"Let us consider a little each of these characters in succession, and
first (for of the shafts enough has been said already), what is very
peculiar to this church--its luminousness."

Was there anything to be learnt from this fine sentence? Could he
adapt it to the needs of daily life? Could he introduce it, with
modifications, when he next wrote a letter to his brother, the
lay-reader? For example:

"Let us consider a little each of these characters in succession, and
first (for of the absence of ventilation enough has been said already),
what is very peculiar to this flat--its obscurity."

Something told him that the modifications would not do; and that
something, had he known it, was the spirit of English Prose. "My flat is
dark as well as stuffy." Those were the words for him.

And the voice in the gondola rolled on, piping melodiously of Effort
and Self-Sacrifice, full of high purpose, full of beauty, full even of
sympathy and the love of men, yet somehow eluding all that was actual
and insistent in Leonard's life. For it was the voice of one who had
never been dirty or hungry, and had not guessed successfully what dirt
and hunger are.

Leonard listened to it with reverence. He felt that he was being done
good to, and that if he kept on with Ruskin, and the Queen's Hall
Concerts, and some pictures by Watts, he would one day push his head
out of the grey waters and see the universe. He believed in sudden
conversion, a belief which may be right, but which is peculiarly
attractive to a half-baked mind. It is the basis of much popular
religion; in the domain of business it dominates the Stock Exchange,
and becomes that "bit of luck" by which all successes and failures are
explained. "If only I had a bit of luck, the whole thing would come
straight... He's got a most magnificent place down at Streatham and a 20
h.p. Fiat, but then, mind you, he's had luck... I 'm sorry the wife's
so late, but she never has any luck over catching trains." Leonard
was superior to these people; he did believe in effort and in a steady
preparation for the change that he desired. But of a heritage that may
expand gradually, he had no conception; he hoped to come to Culture
suddenly, much as the Revivalist hopes to come to Jesus. Those Miss
Schlegels had come to it; they had done the trick; their hands were upon
the ropes, once and for all. And meanwhile, his flat was dark, as well
as stuffy.

Presently there was a noise on the staircase. He shut up Margaret's card
in the pages of Ruskin, and opened the door. A woman entered, of whom
it is simplest to say that she was not respectable. Her appearance was
awesome. She seemed all strings and bell-pulls--ribbons, chains, bead
necklaces that clinked and caught and a boa of azure feathers hung round
her neck, with the ends uneven. Her throat was bare, wound with a double
row of pearls, her arms were bare to the elbows, and might again
be detected at the shoulder, through cheap lace. Her hat, which was
flowery, resembled those punnets, covered with flannel, which we sowed
with mustard and cress in our childhood, and which germinated here yes,
and there no. She wore it on the back of her head. As for her hair, or
rather hairs, they are too complicated to describe, but one system went
down her back, lying in a thick pad there, while another, created for
a lighter destiny, rippled around her forehead. The face--the face does
not signify. It was the face of the photograph, but older, and the teeth
were not so numerous as the photographer had suggested, and certainly
not so white. Yes, Jacky was past her prime, whatever that prime
may have been. She was descending quicker than most women into the
colourless years, and the look in her eyes confessed it.

"What ho!" said Leonard, greeting the apparition with much spirit, and
helping it off with its boa.

Jacky, in husky tones, replied, "What ho!"

"Been out?" he asked. The question sounds superfluous, but it cannot
have been really, for the lady answered, "No," adding, "Oh, I am so
tired."

"You tired?"

"Eh?"

"I'm tired," said he, hanging the boa up.

"Oh, Len, I am so tired."

"I've been to that classical concert I told you about," said Leonard.

"What's that?"

"I came back as soon as it was over."

"Any one been round to our place?" asked Jacky.

"Not that I've seen. I met Mr. Cunningham outside, and we passed a few
remarks."

"What, not Mr. Cunningham?"

"Yes."

"Oh, you mean Mr. Cunningham."

"Yes. Mr. Cunningham."

"I've been out to tea at a lady friend's."

Her secret being at last given--to the world, and the name of the lady
friend being even adumbrated, Jacky made no further experiments in the
difficult and tiring art of conversation. She never had been a great
talker. Even in her photographic days she had relied upon her smile and
her figure to attract, and now that she was

      "On the shelf,
       On the shelf,
       Boys, boys, I'm on the shelf,"

she was not likely to find her tongue. Occasional bursts of song (of
which the above is an example) still issued from her lips, but the
spoken word was rare.

She sat down on Leonard's knee, and began to fondle him. She was now a
massive woman of thirty-three, and her weight hurt him, but he could not
very well say anything. Then she said, "Is that a book you're reading?"
and he said, "That's a book," and drew it from her unreluctant grasp.
Margaret's card fell out of it. It fell face downwards, and he murmured,
"Bookmarker."

"Len--"

"What is it?" he asked, a little wearily, for she only had one topic of
conversation when she sat upon his knee.

"You do love me?"

"Jacky, you know that I do. How can you ask such questions!"

"But you do love me, Len, don't you?"

"Of course I do."

A pause. The other remark was still due.

"Len--"

"Well? What is it?"

"Len, you will make it all right?"

"I can't have you ask me that again," said the boy, flaring up into a
sudden passion. "I've promised to marry you when I'm of age, and that's
enough. My word's my word. I've promised to marry you as soon as ever
I'm twenty-one, and I can't keep on being worried. I've worries enough.
It isn't likely I'd throw you over, let alone my word, when I've spent
all this money. Besides, I'm an Englishman, and I never go back on my
word. Jacky, do be reasonable. Of course I'll marry you. Only do stop
badgering me."

"When's your birthday, Len?"

"I've told you again and again, the eleventh of November next. Now get
off my knee a bit; some one must get supper, I suppose."

Jacky went through to the bedroom, and began to see to her hat. This
meant blowing at it with short sharp puffs. Leonard tidied up the
sitting-room, and began to prepare their evening meal. He put a penny
into the slot of the gas-meter, and soon the flat was reeking with
metallic fumes. Somehow he could not recover his temper, and all the
time he was cooking he continued to complain bitterly.

"It really is too bad when a fellow isn't trusted. It makes one feel so
wild, when I've pretended to the people here that you're my wife--all
right, all right, you SHALL be my wife--and I've bought you the ring to
wear, and I've taken this flat furnished, and it's far more than I can
afford, and yet you aren't content, and I've also not told the truth
when I've written home." He lowered his voice. "He'd stop it." In a tone
of horror, that was a little luxurious, he repeated: "My brother'd stop
it. I'm going against the whole world, Jacky.

"That's what I am, Jacky. I don't take any heed of what any one says. I
just go straight forward, I do. That's always been my way. I'm not one
of your weak knock-kneed chaps. If a woman's in trouble, I don't leave
her in the lurch. That's not my street. No, thank you.

"I'll tell you another thing too. I care a good deal about improving
myself by means of Literature and Art, and so getting a wider outlook.
For instance, when you came in I was reading Ruskin's Stones of Venice.
I don't say this to boast, but just to show you the kind of man I am. I
can tell you, I enjoyed that classical concert this afternoon."

To all his moods Jacky remained equally indifferent. When supper was
ready--and not before--she emerged from the bedroom, saying: "But you do
love me, don't you?"

They began with a soup square, which Leonard had just dissolved in some
hot water. It was followed by the tongue--a freckled cylinder of meat,
with a little jelly at the top, and a great deal of yellow fat at
the bottom--ending with another square dissolved in water (jelly:
pineapple), which Leonard had prepared earlier in the day. Jacky ate
contentedly enough, occasionally looking at her man with those anxious
eyes, to which nothing else in her appearance corresponded, and which
yet seemed to mirror her soul. And Leonard managed to convince his
stomach that it was having a nourishing meal.

After supper they smoked cigarettes and exchanged a few statements.
She observed that her "likeness" had been broken. He found occasion to
remark, for the second time, that he had come straight back home after
the concert at Queen's Hall. Presently she sat upon his knee. The
inhabitants of Camelia Road tramped to and fro outside the window,
just on a level with their heads, and the family in the flat on the
ground-floor began to sing, "Hark, my soul, it is the Lord."

"That tune fairly gives me the hump," said Leonard.

Jacky followed this, and said that, for her part, she thought it a
lovely tune.

"No; I'll play you something lovely. Get up, dear, for a minute."

He went to the piano and jingled out a little Grieg. He played badly and
vulgarly, but the performance was not without its effect, for Jacky
said she thought she'd be going to bed. As she receded, a new set of
interests possessed the boy, and he began to think of what had been said
about music by that odd Miss Schlegel--the one that twisted her face
about so when she spoke. Then the thoughts grew sad and envious. There
was the girl named Helen, who had pinched his umbrella, and the German
girl who had smiled at him pleasantly, and Herr some one, and Aunt some
one, and the brother--all, all with their hands on the ropes. They had
all passed up that narrow, rich staircase at Wickham Place to some ample
room, whither he could never follow them, not if he read for ten hours
a day. Oh, it was no good, this continual aspiration. Some are born
cultured; the rest had better go in for whatever comes easy. To see life
steadily and to see it whole was not for the likes of him.

From the darkness beyond the kitchen a voice called, "Len?"

"You in bed?" he asked, his forehead twitching.

"All right."

Presently she called him again.

"I must clean my boots ready for the morning," he answered.

Presently she called him again.

"I rather want to get this chapter done."

"What?"

He closed his ears against her.

"What's that?"

"All right, Jacky, nothing; I'm reading a book."

"What?"

"What?" he answered, catching her degraded deafness.

Presently she called him again.

Ruskin had visited Torcello by this time, and was ordering his
gondoliers to take him to Murano. It occurred to him, as he glided over
the whispering lagoons, that the power of Nature could not be shortened
by the folly, nor her beauty altogether saddened by the misery of such
as Leonard.

 We learn immediately that the young man with the umbrella's name is Leonard Bast. He's not exactly poverty-stricken yet, but he's also certainly not in the same class as the Schlegels. He's undernourished in every possible way - physically, intellectually, emotionally. Leonard feels like his pride is a little bruised as he walks away from the Schlegel's house; he decides that they're not real ladies after all. Leonard runs into a colleague from his job , and walks home to the rather miserable-sounding street where he lives. He runs into another acquaintance, then arrives in his apartment. The place really doesn't sound too appealing, even though Forster tells us that it's "amorous" and "not unpleasant." Still, it has a seedy feel to it. Leonard knocks over a framed photo when he takes off his boots, and the glass breaks. The picture is of a girl called Jacky - in it, her smile is dazzling, but the narrator notes a certain anxiety in her eyes. Leonard cuts his finger and blunders about the flat . He settles down to read The Stones of Venice by John Ruskin. Leonard tries to imitate Ruskin's style, and tries to truly understand Culture, just as he was in the concert. His reverie is interrupted by the arrival of a tackily dressed woman - a floozy, one might even say. It's Jacky, the woman from the photograph . Leonard and Jacky talk half-heartedly - obviously, their relationship is not an intellectual one. Jacky forces Leonard to tell her he loves her; he responds that he can't marry her until he's 21 in November , but promises to keep his word. Leonard goes off on a tirade about how he's not one to leave a girl in the lurch, and about how he's on a campaign of self-improvement through Art and Literature. Jacky doesn't care about this. She just wants to know that he loves her. The couple sits down to a depressing dinner of basically artificial food. After supper, they chill awkwardly in the sitting room - it sounds horrifying. Leonard plays the piano badly and Jacky flees to bed. It doesn't take a genius to see that this is not a couple in love. Alone, Leonard ponders the Miss Schlegels. He's fascinated by them and jealous that he'll never be like them. Leonard continues with Ruskin, ignoring Jacky's calls for him to come to bed.

