Section twenty eight. Indeed, Clarissa felt the Prime Minister had been good to
come, and walking down the room with him, with Sally there, and
Peter there, and Richard very pleased with all those people, rather inclined,
perhaps to envy. She had felt that intoxication of the moment, that dilation
of the nerves of the heart itself, till it seemed to quiver, steeped
upright. Yes, But after all it was what other people felt. That
for though she loved it and felt it tingle and sting. Still, these
semblances, these triumphs, dear old Peter, for example, thinking her so
brilliant, had a hollowness at arm's length. They were not in the heart,
and it might be that she was growing old. But they satisfied her
no longer as they used. And suddenly, as she saw the Prime Minister
go down the stairs, the gilt rim of the Sir Joshua, picture of
the little girl with a muff brought back Kilman with a rush, Kilman her
enemy. That was satisfying, That was real. Ah, how she hated
her hot critical corrupt with all that power. Elizabeth's seducer, the woman who
had crept into steel, and defile. Richard would say, what nonsense.
She hated her, she loved her. It was enemies one wanted, not
friends, Not missus Durant and Clara, Sir William and Lady Bradshaw, Miss
Trulock and Eleanor Gibson, whom she saw coming upstairs. They must find her
if they wanted her. She was for the party. There was her dear
old friend, Sir Harry. Dear Sir Harry, she said, going up
to the fine old fellow, who had produced more bad pictures than any other
two academicians in the whole of Saint John's Wood. They were always of cattle
standing in sunset pools, absorbing moisture or signifying, For he had a certain
range of gesture by the raising of one foreleg and the toss of the antlers,
the approach of the stranger. All his activities, dining out racing were
founded on cattle standing absorbing moisture in sunset pools. What are you laughing at?
She asked him. For Willie Titcomb and Sir Harry and Herbert Einstey were
all laughing. But no, Sir Harry could not tell Clarissa Dallaway much though
he liked her of her type, He thought her perfect, and threatened to
paint her his stories of the music hall stage. He chaffed her about her
party. He missed his brandy, These circles, he said, were above
him. But he liked her, respected her in spite of her damnable,
difficult upper class refinement, which made it impossible to ask Clarissa Dallowoy to sit
on his knee. And up came that wandering will O, the wisp,
that vagulous phosphorescence. Old missus Hilbury, stretching her hands to the blaze of
his laughter about the Duke and the lady, which, as she heard it
across the room, seemed to reassure her on a point which sometimes bothered her
if she woke early in the morning and did not like to call her maid
for a cup of tea. How it is certain we must die. They
won't tell us their stories, said Clarissa. Dear Claressa, exclaimed Missus Hilbury.
She looked to night, she said, so like her mother as she
first saw her, walking in a garden and gray hat. And really Clarissa's
eyes filled with tears. Her mother walking in a garden, but alas she
must go. For there was Professor Brierly, who lectured on Milton, talking
to little Jim Hutton, who was unable even for a party like this,
to compass both tie and waistcoat, or make his hair life flat. And
even at this distance they were quarreling, she could see, for Professor Brierly
was a very queer fish, with all those degrees, honors, lectureships.
Between him and the scribblers, he suspected instantly an atmosphere not favorable to his
queer compound his prodigious learning and timidity, his wintry charm without cordiality, his
innocence blent with snobbery. He quivered, if made conscious by a lady's unkempt
hair, a youth's boots of an underworld, very creditable, doubtless of rebels
of ardent young people of would be geniuses, and intimated, with a little
toss of the head with a sniff humph, the value of moderation of some
slight training in the classics, in order to appreciate Milton. Professor Brierly,
Clarissa could see, wasn't hitting it off with little Jim Hutton, who wore
red socks, his black being at the laundry. About Milton, she interrupted.
She said she loved Bach, so did Hutton. That was the bond
between them. And Hutton, a very bad poet, always felt that Missus
Dollaway was far the best of the great ladies who took an interest in art.
It was odd how strict she was about music. She was purely impersonal.
She was rather a prig, But how charming to look at. She
made her house so nice. If it weren't for her professors, Clarissa had
half a mind to snatch him off and set him down at the piano in
the back room, for he played divinely. But the noise, she said,
the noise the sign of a successful party. Nodding urbanely. The professor
stepped delicately off. He knows everything in the whole world about Milton, said
Clarissa, does he, indeed, said Hutton, who would imitate the professor
throughout Hampstead, the professor on Milton, the professor on moderation, the professor
stepping delicately off. But she must speak to that couple, said Clarissa.
Lord Gayton and Lancey Blow. Not that they added perceptibly to the noise of
the party. They were not talking perceptibly as they stood side by side by
the yellow curtains. They would soon be off elsewhere together, and never had
very much to say in any circumstances. They looked. That was all,
that was enough. They looked so clean, so sound. She with an
apricot bloom of powder and paint. But he scrubbed, rinsed with the eyes
of a bird, so that no ball could pass him or stroke surprise him.
He struck, He leapt accurately on the spot. Pony's mouths quivered at
the end of his reins. He had his honors, ancestral monuments, banners
hanging in the church. At home, he had his duties, his tenants,
a mother and sisters, had been all day at Lord's and that was
what they were talking about, cricket, cousins, the movies. When Missus
Dollaway came up, Lord Gayton liked her most awfully, So did miss Blow.
She had such charming manners. It is angelic. It is delicious of
you to have come, she said. She loved lords, she loved youth.
And Nancy, dressed an enormous expense by the greatest artists in Paris,
stood there, looking as if her body had merely put forth of its own
accord, a green frill. I had meant to have dancing, said Clarissa,
For the young people could not talk, and why should they shout?
Embrace, swing, be up at dawn, carry sugar to ponies, kiss
and caress the snouts of adorable chowls, and then all tingling and streaming,
plunge and swim. But the enormous resources of the English language, the power
it bestows after all of communicating feelings. At their age, she and Peter
would have been arguing all the evening was not for them. They would solidify
young, They would be good beyond measure to the people on the estate.
But alone, perhaps rather dull. What a pity, she said, I
had hoped to have dancing. It was so extraordinarily nice of them to have
come, But talk of dancing. The rooms were packed. There was old
Aunt Helena in her shawl, alas she must leave them, Lord Gayton and
Nancy Blow. There was old miss Parry, her aunt. For Miss Helena
Parry was not dead. Miss Parry was alive. She was past eighty.
She ascended staircases slowly with a stick. She was placed in a chair.
Richard had seen to it. People who had known Burma in the seventies were
always led up to her. Where had Peter got to There? Used to
be such friends, For at the mention of India or even Ceylon. Her
eyes only one was glass, slowly deepened became blue, beheld not human beings.
She had no tender memories, no proud allusions about viceroys, generals,
mutinies. It was orchids she saw, and mountain passes, and her self
carried on the backs of coolies in the sixties over solitary peaks or descending to
uproot orchids, startling blossoms never beheld before, which she painted in watercolor,
an indomitable englishwoman, fretful if disturbed by the war, say which dropped a
bomb at her very door, from her deep meditation over orchids and her own
figure journeying in the sixties in India. But here was Peter come and talk
to Aunt Helena about Burma, said Clarissa, And yet he had not had
a word with her all the evening. We will talk later, said Clarissa,
leading him up to Aunt Helena in her white shawl with her stick.
Peter Walsh, said Clarissa, that meant nothing. Clarissa had asked her.
It was tiring, it was noisy, but Clarissa had asked her, so
she had come. It was a pity that they lived in London, Richard
and Clarissa. If only for Clarissa's health, it would have been better to
live in the country. But Clarissa had always been fond of society. He
has been in Burma, said Clarissa. Ah. She could not resist recalling
what Charles Darwin had said about her little book on the orchards of Burma.
Clarissa must speak to Lady Bruton. No doubt it was forgotten now, her
book on the Orchids of Burma, but it went into three editions before eighteen
seventy. She told Peter she remembered him now. He had been at Burton
and he had left her. Peter Walsh remembered, without a word, in
the drawing room that night, when Clarissa had asked him to come boating.
Richard so much enjoyed his lunch party, said Clarissa to Lady Bruton. Richard
was the greatest possible help. Lady Bruton replied, he helped me to write
a letter. And how are you, oh, perfectly well, said Clarissa.
Lady Bruton detested illness in the wives of politicians. And there's Peter Walsh,
said Lady Bruton, for she could never think of anything to say to
Clarissa, though she liked her. She had lots of fine qualities, but
they had nothing in common, she and Clarissa. It might have been better
if Richard had married a woman with less charm, who would have helped him
more in his wa He had lost his chance of the cabinet. There's Peter
Walsh, she said, shaking hands with that agreeable sinner, that very able
fellow, who should have made a name for himself, but hadn't, always
in difficulties with women. And of course old miss Parry, wonderful old Lady
Lady Bruton stood by Miss Parry's chair, a spectral grenadier draped in black,
inviting Peter Walsh to lunch, cordial but without small talk, remembering nothing whatever
about the flora or fauna of India. She had been there, of course,
had stayed with three viceroys. Thought some of the Indian civilians uncommonly fine
fellows. But what a tragedy it was the state of India. The Prime
Minister had just been telling her. Old Miss Parry, huddled up in her
shawl, did not care what the Prime Minister had just been telling her.
And Lady Bruton would like to have Peter Walsh's opinion, he being fresh from
the center, and she would get Sir Samson to meet him, for really
it prevented her from sleeping at night. The folly of it, the wickedness,
she might say, being a soldier's daughter. She was an old woman
now, not good for much. But her house, her servants, her
good friend Millie Brush did he remember her? Were all there, only asking
to be used, if they could be of help. In short, for
she never spoke of England, but this isle of men, this dear,
dear Land, was in her blood. Without reading Shakespeare. And if ever
a woman could have worn the helmet and shot the arrow could have led troops
to attack, ruled with indomitable justice, barbarian hordes, and lain under a
shield, noiseless in a church, or made a green grass mound on some
primeval hillside. That woman was Melicent Bruton, debarred by her sex and some
truancy too. Of the logical faculty, she found it impossible to write a
letter to the Times. She had the thought of empire always at hand,
and had acquired from her association with that armored goddess her Ramrod, bearing her
robustness of demeanor, so that one could not figure her even in death,
parted from the earth or roaming territories over which, in some spiritual shit shape
the Union Jack had ceased to fly, To be not English even among the
dead. No, no impossible. End of section twenty eight, read by
Hannadorma, London, twenty fourth of October twenty twenty one.