No More Learning

And Julia, he knew, felt
his failure far more than she felt the loss of her savings. She had had such hopes of
Gordon. He alone of all the Comstocks had had it in him to ‘succeed’. Even now she
believed that somehow, some day, he was going to retrieve the family fortunes. He was
so ‘clever’ — surely he could make money if he tried! For two whole months Gordon
stayed with Aunt Angela in her little house at Highgate — poor, faded, mummified Aunt



Angela, who even for herself had barely enough to eat. All this time he searched
desperately for work. Uncle Walter could not help him. His influence in the business
world, never large, was now practically nil. At last, however, in a quite unexpected way,
the luck turned. A friend of a friend of Julia’s employer’s brother managed to get Gordon
a job in the accounts department of the New Albion Publicity Company.

The New Albion was one of those publicity firms which have sprung up everywhere
since the War — the fungi, as you might say, that sprout from a decaying capitalism. It
was a smallish rising firm and took every class of publicity it could get. It designed a
certain number of large-scale posters for oatmeal stout, self-raising flour, and so forth,
but its main line was millinery and cosmetic advertisements in the women’s illustrated
papers, besides minor ads in twopenny weeklies, such as Whiterose Pills for Female
Disorders, Your Horoscope Cast by Professor Raratongo, The Seven Secrets of Venus,
New Hope for the Ruptured, Earn Five Pounds a Week in your Spare Time, and Cyprolax
Hair Lotion Banishes all Unpleasant Intruders. There was a large staff of commercial
artists, of course. It was here that Gordon first made the acquaintance of Rosemary. She
was in the ‘studio’ and helped to design fashion plates. It was a long time before he
actually spoke to her. At first he knew her merely as a remote personage, small, dark,
with swift movements, distinctly attractive but rather intimidating. When they passed one
another in the corridors she eyed him ironically, as though she knew all about him and
considered him a bit of a joke; nevertheless she seemed to look at him a little oftener than
was necessary. He had nothing to do with her side of the business. He was in the accounts
department, a mere clerk on three quid a week.

The interesting thing about the New Albion was that it was so completely modern in
spirit. There was hardly a soul in the firm who was not perfectly well aware that
publicity — advertising — is the dirtiest ramp that capitalism has yet produced. In the red
lead firm there had still lingered certain notions of commercial honour and usefulness.
But such things would have been laughed at in the New Albion. Most of the employees
were the hard-boiled, Americanized, go-getting type to whom nothing in the world is
sacred, except money. They had their cynical code worked out. The public are swine;
advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill-bucket. And yet beneath their cynicism
there was the final naivete, the blind worship of the money-god. Gordon studied them
unobtrusively. As before, he did his work passably well and his fellow-employees looked



down on him. Nothing had changed in his inner mind. He still despised and repudiated
the money-code. Somehow, sooner or later, he was going to escape from it; even now,
after his first fiasco, he still plotted to escape. He was IN the money world, but not OF it.
As for the types about him, the little bowler-hatted worms who never turned, and the go-
getters, the American business-college gutter-crawlers, they rather amused him than not.
He liked studying their slavish keep-your-job mentality. He was the chiel amang them
takin’ notes.

One day a curious thing happened. Somebody chanced to see a poem of Gordon’s in a
magazine, and put it about that they ‘had a poet in the office’. Of course Gordon was
laughed at, not ill-naturedly, by the other clerks. They nicknamed him ‘the bard’ from
that day forth. But though amused, they were also faintly contemptuous. It confirmed all
their ideas about Gordon. A fellow who wrote poetry wasn’t exactly the type to Make
Good. But the thing had an unexpected sequel. About the time when the clerks grew tired
of chaffing Gordon, Mr Erskine, the managing director, who had hitherto taken only the
minimum notice of him, sent for him and interviewed him.

Mr Erskine was a large, slow-moving man with a broad, healthy, expressionless face.
From his appearance and the slowness of his speech you would have guessed with
confidence that he had something to do with either agriculture or cattle-breeding. His wits
were as slow as his movements, and he was the kind of man who never hears of anything
until everybody else has stopped talking about it. How such a man came to be in charge
of an advertising agency, only the strange gods of capitalism know. But he was quite a
likeable person. He had not that sniffish, buttoned-up spirit that usually goes with an
ability to make money. And in a way his fat-wittedness stood him in good stead. Being
insensible to popular prejudice, he could assess people on their merits; consequently, he
was rather good at choosing talented employees. The news that Gordon had written
poems, so far from shocking him, vaguely impressed him. They wanted literary talents in
the New Albion. Having sent for Gordon, he studied him in a somnolent, sidelong way
and asked him a number of inconclusive questions. He never listened to Gordon’s
answers, but punctuated his questions with a noise that sounded like ‘Hm, hm, hm. ’
Wrote poetry, did he? Oh yes? Hm. And had it printed in the papers? Hm, hm. Suppose
they paid you for that kind of thing? Not much, eh? No, suppose not. Hm, hm. Poetry?



Hm. A bit difficult, that must be. Getting the lines the same length, and all that. Hm, hm.
Write anything else? Stories, and so forth? Hm. Oh yes? Very interesting. Hm!

Then, without further questions, he promoted Gordon to a special post as secretary — in
effect, apprentice — to Mr Clew, the New Albion’s head copywriter. Like every other
advertising agency, the New Albion was constantly in search of copywriters with a touch
of imagination. It is a curious fact, but it is much easier to find competent draughtsmen
than to find people who can think of slogans like ‘Q. T. Sauce keeps Hubby Smiling’ and
‘Kiddies clamour for their Breakfast Crisps’. Gordon’s wages were not raised for the
moment, but the firm had their eye on him. With luck he might be a full-fledged
copywriter in a year’s time. It was an unmistakable chance to Make Good.

For six months he was working with Mr Clew. Mr Clew was a harassed man of about
forty, with wiry hair into which he often plunged his fingers. He worked in a stuffy little
office whose walls were entirely papered with his past triumphs in the form of posters.
He took Gordon under his wing in a friendly way, showed him the ropes, and was even
ready to listen to his suggestions. At that time they were working on a line of magazine
ads for April Dew, the great new deodorant which the Queen of Sheba Toilet Requisites
Co. (this was Flaxman’s firm, curiously enough) were putting on the market. Gordon
started on the job with secret loathing. But now there was a quite unexpected
development. It was that Gordon showed, almost from the start, a remarkable talent for
copywriting. He could compose an ad as though he had been born to it. The vivid phrase
that sticks and rankles, the neat little para, that packs a world of lies into a hundred
words — they came to him almost unsought. He had always had a gift for words, but this
was the first time he had used it successfully. Mr Clew thought him very promising.
Gordon watched his own development, first with surprise, then with amusement, and
finally with a kind of horror. THIS, then, was what he was coming to! Writing lies to
tickle the money out of fools’ pockets! There was a beastly irony, too, in the fact that he,
who wanted to be a ‘writer’, should score his sole success in writing ads for deodorants.
However, that was less unusual than he imagined. Most copywriters, they say, are
novelists manques; or is it the other way about?

The Queen of Sheba were very pleased with their ads. Mr Erskine also was pleased.
Gordon’s wages were raised by ten shillings a week. And it was now that Gordon grew



frightened. Money was getting him after all. He was sliding down, down, into the money-
sty. A little more and he would be stuck in it for life. It is queer how these things happen.
You set your face against success, you swear never to Make Good — you honestly believe
that you couldn’t Make Good even if you wanted to; and then something happens along,
some mere chance, and you find yourself Making Good almost automatically. He saw
that now or never was the time to escape. He had got to get out of it — out of the money-
world, irrevocably, before he was too far involved.

But this time he wasn’t going to be starved into submission. He went to Ravelston and
asked his help. He told him that he wanted some kind of job; not a ‘good’ job, but a job
that would keep his body without wholly buying his soul. Ravelston understood perfectly.
The distinction between a job and a ‘good’ job did not have to be explained to him; nor
did he point out to Gordon the folly of what he was doing. That was the great thing about
Ravelston. He could always see another person’s point of view. It was having money that
did it, no doubt; for the rich can afford to be intelligent. Moreover, being rich himself, he
could find jobs for other people. After only a fortnight he told Gordon of something that
might suit him. A Mr McKechnie, a rather dilapidated second-hand bookseller with
whom Ravelston dealt occasionally, was looking for an assistant. He did not want a
trained assistant who would expect full wages; he wanted somebody who looked like a
gentleman and could talk about books — somebody to impress the more bookish
customers. It was the very reverse of a ‘good’ job. The hours were long, the pay was
wretched — two pounds a week — and there was no chance of advancement. It was a blind-
alley job. And, of course, a blind-alley job was the very thing Gordon was looking for.
He went and saw Mr McKechnie, a sleepy, benign old Scotchman with a red nose and a
white beard stained by snuff, and was taken on without demur. At this time, too, his
volume of poems, Mice, was going to press. The seventh publisher to whom he had sent
it had accepted it. Gordon did not know that this was Ravelston’ s doing. Ravelston was a
personal friend of the publisher. He was always arranging this kind of thing, stealthily,
for obscure poets. Gordon thought the future was opening before him. He was a made
man — or, by Smilesian, aspidistral standards, UNmade.

He gave a month’s notice at the office. It was a painful business altogether. Julia, of
course, was more distressed than ever at this second abandonment of a ‘good’ job. By
this time Gordon had got to know Rosemary. She did not try to prevent him from



throwing up his job. It was against her code to interfere — ‘You’ve got to live your own
life,’ was always her attitude. But she did not in the least understand why he was doing it.
The thing that most upset him, curiously enough, was his interview with Mr Erskine. Mr
Erskine was genuinely kind. He did not want Gordon to leave the firm, and said so
frankly. With a sort of elephantine politeness he refrained from calling Gordon a young
fool. He did, however, ask him why he was leaving. Somehow, Gordon could not bring
himself to avoid answering or to say — the only thing Mr Erskine would have
understood — that he was going after a better-paid job. He blurted out shamefacedly that
he ‘didn’t think business suited him’ and that he ‘wanted to go in for writing’. Mr Erskine
was noncommittal. Writing, eh? Hm. Much money in that sort of thing nowadays? Not
much, eh? Hm. No, suppose not. Hm. Gordon, feeling and looking ridiculous, mumbled
that he had ‘got a book just coming out’. A book of poems, he added with difficulty in
pronouncing the word. Mr Erskine regarded him sidelong before remarking:

‘Poetry, eh? Hm. Poetry? Make a living out of that sort of thing, do you think? ’

‘Well — not a living, exactly. But it would help. ’

‘Hm — well! You know best, I expect. If you want a job any time, come back to us. I dare
say we could find room for you. We can do with your sort here. Don’t forget. ’

Gordon left with a hateful feeling of having behaved perversely and ungratefully. But he
had got to do it; he had got to get out of the money- world. It was queer. All over England
young men were eating their hearts out for lack of jobs, and here was he, Gordon, to
whom the very word ‘job’ was faintly nauseous, having jobs thrust unwanted upon him.
It was an example of the fact that you can get anything in this world if you genuinely
don’t want it. Moreover, Mr Erskine’s words stuck in his mind. Probably he had meant
what he said. Probably there WOULD be a job waiting for Gordon if he chose to go back.
So his boats were only half burned. The New Albion was a doom before him as well as
behind.

But how happy had he been, just at first, in Mr McKechnie’s bookshop! For a little
while — a very little while — he had the illusion of being really out of the money- world. Of
course the book-trade was a swindle, like all other trades; but how different a swindle!
Here was no hustling and Making Good, no gutter-crawling. No go-getter could put up



for ten minutes with the stagnant air of the book-trade. As for the work, it was very
simple. It was mainly a question of being in the shop ten hours a day. Mr McKechnie
wasn’t a bad old stick. He was a Scotchman, of course, but Scottish is as Scottish does.
At any rate he was reasonably free from avarice — his most distinctive trait seemed to be
laziness. He was also a teetotaller and belonged to some Nonconformist sect or other, but
this did not affect Gordon. Gordon had been at the shop about a month when Mice was
published.
No less than thirteen papers reviewed it! And The Times Lit. Supp. said that it
showed ‘exceptional promise’. It was not till months later that he realized what a
hopeless failure Mice had really been.

And it was only now, when he was down to two quid a week and had practically cut
himself off from the prospect of earning more, that he grasped the real nature of the battle
he was fighting. The devil of it is that the glow of renunciation never lasts. Life on two
quid a week ceases to be a heroic gesture and becomes a dingy habit. Failure is as great a
swindle as success. He had thrown up his ‘good’ job and renounced ‘good’ jobs for ever.
Well, that was necessary. He did not want to go back on it. But it was no use pretending
that because his poverty was self-imposed he had escaped the ills that poverty drags in its
train. It was not a question of hardship. You don’t suffer real physical hardship on two
quid a week, and if you did it wouldn’t matter. It is in the brain and the soul that lack of
money damages you. Mental deadness, spiritual squalor — they seem to descend upon you
inescapably when your income drops below a certain point. Faith, hope, money — only a
saint could have the first two without having the third.

He was growing more mature. Twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine. He had reached
the age when the future ceases to be a rosy blur and becomes actual and menacing. The
spectacle of his surviving relatives depressed him more and more. As he grew older he
felt himself more akin to them. That was the way he was going! A few years more, and
he would be like that, just like that! He felt this even with Julia, whom he saw oftener
than his uncle and aunt. In spite of various resolves never to do it again, he still borrowed
money off Julia periodically. Julia’s hair was greying fast; there was a deep line scored
down each of her thin red cheeks. She had settled her life into a routine in which she was
not unhappy. There was her work at the shop, her ‘sewing’ at nights in her Earl’s Court
bed-sitting-room (second floor, back, nine bob a week unfurnished), her occasional
forgatherings with spinster friends as lonely as herself. It was the typical submerged life



of the penniless unmarried woman; she accepted it, hardly realizing that her destiny could
ever have been different. Yet in her way she suffered, more for Gordon than for herself.
The gradual decay of the family, the way they had died off and died off and left nothing
behind, was a sort of tragedy in her mind. Money, money! ‘None of us ever seems to
make any money! ’ was her perpetual lament. And of them all, Gordon alone had had the
chance to make money; and Gordon had chosen not to. He was sinking effortless into the
same rut of poverty as the others. After the first row was over, she was too decent to ‘go
for’ him again because he had thrown up his job at the New Albion. But his motives were
quite meaningless to her. In her wordless feminine way she knew that the sin against
money is the ultimate sin.

And as for Aunt Angela and Uncle Walter — oh dear, oh dear! What a couple! It made
Gordon feel ten years older every time he looked at them.

Uncle Walter, for example. Uncle Walter was very depressing. He was sixty-seven, and
what with his various ‘agencies’ and the dwindling remnants of his patrimony his income
might have been nearly three pounds a week. He had a tiny little cabin of an office off
Cursitor Street, and he lived in a very cheap boarding-house in Holland Park. That was
quite according to precedent; all the Comstock men drifted naturally into boarding-
houses. When you looked at poor old uncle, with his large tremulous belly, his bronchitic
voice, his broad, pale, timidly pompous face, rather like Sargent’ s portrait of Henry
James, his entirely hairless head, his pale, pouchy eyes, and his ever-drooping moustache,
to which he tried vainly to give an upward twirl — when you looked at him, you found it
totally impossible to believe that he had ever been young. Was it conceivable that such a
being had ever felt life tingle in his veins? Had he ever climbed a tree, taken a header off
a springboard, or been in love? Had he ever had a brain in working order? Even back in
the early nineties, when he was arithmetically young, had he ever made any kind of stab
at life? A few furtive half-hearted frolics, perhaps. A few whiskies in dull bars, a visit or
two to the Empire promenade, a little whoring on the Q. T. ; the sort of dingy, drabby
fornications that you can imagine happening between Egyptian mummies after the
museum is closed for the night. And after that the long, long quiet years of business
failure, loneliness, and stagnation in godless boarding-houses.



And yet uncle in his old age was probably not unhappy. He had one hobby of never-
failing interest, and that was his diseases. He suffered, by his own account, from every
disease in the medical dictionary, and was never weary of talking about them. Indeed, it
seemed to Gordon that none of the people in his uncle’s boarding-house — he had been
there occasionally — ever did talk about anything except their diseases. All over the
darkish drawing-room, ageing, discoloured people sat about in couples, discussing
symptoms. Their conversation was like the dripping of stalactite to stalagmite. Drip, drip.
‘How is your lumbago? ’ says stalactite to stalagmite. ‘I find my Kruschen Salts are doing
me good,’ says stalagmite to stalactite. Drip, drip, drip.

And then there was Aunt Angela, aged sixty-nine. Gordon tried not even to think of Aunt
Angela oftener than he could help.

Poor, dear, good, kind, depressing Aunt Angela!

Poor, shrivelled, parchment-yellow, skin-and-bone Aunt Angela! There in her miserable
little semi-detached house in Highgate — Briarbrae, its name was — there in her palace in
the northern mountains, there dwelleth she, Angela the Ever-virgin, of whom no man
either living or among the shades can say truly that upon her lips he hath pressed the dear
caresses of a lover. All alone she dwelleth, and all day long she fareth to and fro, and in
her hand is the feather-mop fashioned from the tail feathers of the contumacious turkey,
and with it she polisheth the dark-leaved aspidistras and flicketh the hated dust from the
resplendent never-to-be-used Crown Derby china tea-service. And ever and anon she
comforteth her dear heart with draughts of the dark brown tea, both Flowery Orange and
Pekoe Points, which the small-bearded sons of Coromandel have ferried to her across the
wine-dark sea. Poor, dear, good, kind, but on the whole unloveable Aunt Angela! Her
annuity was ninety-eight pounds a year (thirty-eight bob a week, but she retained a
middle-class habit of thinking of her income as a yearly and not weekly thing), and out of
that, twelve and sixpence a week went on house rates. She would probably have starved
occasionally if Julia had not smuggled her packets of cakes and bread and butter from the
shop — always, of course, presented as ‘Just a few little things that it seemed a pity to
throw away’, with the solemn pretence that Aunt Angela didn’t really need them.



Yet she too had her pleasures, poor old aunty. She had become a great novel-reader in her
old age, the public library being only ten minutes’ walk from Briarbrae. During his
lifetime, on some whim or other, Gran’pa Comstock had forbidden his daughters to read
novels. Consequently, having only begun to read novels in 1902, Aunt Angela was
always a couple of decades behind the current mode in fiction. But she plodded along in
the rear, faint yet pursuing. In the nineteen-hundreds she was still reading Rhoda
Broughton and Mrs Henry Wood. In the War years she discovered Hall Caine and Mrs
Humphry Ward. In the nineteen-twenties she was reading Silas Hocking and H. Seton
Merriman, and by the nineteen-thirties she had almost, but not quite, caught up with W.
B. Maxwell and William J. Locke. Further she would never get. As for the post-War
novelists, she had heard of them afar off, with their immorality and their blasphemies and
their devastating ‘cleverness’. But she would never live to read them. Walpole we know,
and Hichens we read, but Hemingway, who are you?

Well, this was 1934, and that was what was left of the Comstock family. Uncle Walter,
with his ‘agencies’ and his diseases. Aunt Angela, dusting the Crown Derby china tea-
service in Briarbrae. Aunt Charlotte, still preserving a vague vegetable existence in the
Mental Home. Julia, working a seventy-two-hour week and doing her ‘sewing’ at nights
by the tiny gas-fire in her bedsitting-room. Gordon, nearly thirty, earning two quid a
week in a fool’s job, and struggling, as the sole demonstrable object of his existence, with
a dreadful book that never got any further.

Possibly there were some other, more distantly related Comstocks, for Gran’pa Comstock
had been one of a family of twelve. But if any survived they had grown rich and lost
touch with their poor relations; for money is thicker than blood. As for Gordon’s branch
of the family, the combined income of the five of them, allowing for the lump sum that
had been paid down when Aunt Charlotte entered the Mental Home, might have been six
hundred a year. Their combined ages were two hundred and sixty-three years. None of
them had ever been out of England, fought in a war, been in prison, ridden a horse,
travelled in an aeroplane, got married, or given birth to a child. There seemed no reason
why they should not continue in the same style until they died. Year in, year out,
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED in the Comstock family.



Chapter 4


Sharply the menacing wind sweeps over The bending poplars, newly bare.

As a matter of fact, though, there was not a breath of wind that afternoon. It was almost
as mild as spring. Gordon repeated to himself the poem he had begun yesterday, in a
cadenced whisper, simply for the pleasure of the sound of it. He was pleased with the
poem at this moment. It was a good poem — or would be when it was finished, anyway.
He had forgotten that last night it had almost made him sick.

The plane trees brooded motionless, dimmed by faint wreaths of mist. A tram boomed in
the valley far below. Gordon walked up Malkin Hill, rustling instep-deep through the dry,
drifted leaves. All down the pavement they were strewn, crinkly and golden, like the
rustling flakes of some American breakfast cereal; as though the queen of Brobdingnag
had upset her packet of Truweet Breakfast Crisps down the hillside.

Jolly, the windless winter days! Best time of all the year — or so Gordon thought at this
moment. He was as happy as you can be when you haven’t smoked all day and have only
three-halfpence and a Joey in the world. This was Thursday, early-closing day and
Gordon’s afternoon off. He was going to the house of Paul Doring, the critic, who lived
in Coleridge Grove and gave literary tea-parties.

It had taken him an hour or more to get himself ready. Social life is so complicated when
your income is two quid a week. He had had a painful shave in cold water immediately
after dinner. He had put on his best suit — three years old but just passable when he
remembered to press the trousers under his mattress. He had turned his collar inside out
and tied his tie so that the tom place didn’t show. With the point of a match he had
scraped enough blacking from the tin to polish his shoes. He had even borrowed a needle
from Lorenheim and darned his socks — a tedious job, but better than inking the places
where your ankle shows through. Also he had procured an empty Gold Flake packet and
put into it a single cigarette extracted from the penny-in- the-slot-machine. That was just
for the look of the thing. You can’t, of course, go to other people’s houses with NO



cigarettes. But if you have even one it’s all right, because when people see one cigarette
in a packet they assume that the packet has been full. It is fairly easy to pass the thing off
as an accident.

‘Have a cigarette? ’ you say casually to someone.

‘Oh— thanks. ’

You push the packet open and then register surprise. ‘Hell! I’m down to my last. And I
could have sworn I had a full packet. ’

‘Oh, I won’t take your last. Have one of MINE,’ says the other.

‘Oh — thanks. ’

And after that, of course, your host and hostess press cigarettes upon you. But you must
have ONE cigarette, just for honour’s sake.

Sharply the menacing wind sweeps over. He would finish that poem presently. He could
finish it whenever he chose. It was queer, how the mere prospect of going to a literary
tea-party bucked him up. When your income is two quid a week you at least aren’t jaded
by too much human contact. Even to see the inside of somebody else’s house is a kind of
treat. A padded armchair under your bum, and tea and cigarettes and the smell of
women — you leam to appreciate such things when you are starved of them. In practice,
though, Doring’s parties never in the least resembled what Gordon looked forward to.
Those wonderful, witty, erudite conversations that he imagined beforehand — they never
happened or began to happen. Indeed there was never anything that could properly be
called conversation at all; only the stupid clacking that goes on at parties everywhere, in
Hampstead or Hong Kong. No one really worth meeting ever came to Doring’s parties.
Doring was such a very mangy lion himself that his followers were hardly even worthy to
be called jackals. Quite half of them were those hen-witted middle-aged women who
have lately escaped from good Christian homes and are trying to be literary. The star
exhibits were troops of bright young things who dropped in for half an hour, fonned
circles of their own, and talked sniggeringly about the other bright young things to whom
they referred by nicknames. For the most part Gordon found himself hanging about on



the edges of conversations. Doring was kind in a slapdash way and introduced him to
everybody as ‘Gordon Comstock — YOU know; the poet. He wrote that dashed clever
book of poems called Mice. YOU know. ’ But Gordon had never yet encountered
anybody who DID know. The bright young things summed him up at a glance and
ignored him. He was thirtyish, moth-eaten, and obviously penniless. And yet, in spite of
the invariable disappointment, how eagerly he looked forward to those literary tea-
parties! They were a break in his loneliness, anyway. That is the devilish thing about
poverty, the ever-recurrent thing — loneliness. Day after day with never an intelligent
person to talk to; night after night back to your godless room, always alone. Perhaps it
sounds rather fun if you are rich and sought-after; but how different it is when you do it
from necessity!

Sharply the menacing wind sweeps over. A stream of cars hummed easily up the hill.
Gordon eyed them without envy. Who wants a car, anyway? The pink doll-faces of
upper-class women gazed at him through the car window. Bloody nit-witted lapdogs.
Pampered bitches dozing on their chains. Better the lone wolf than the cringing dogs. He
thought of the Tube stations at early morning. The black hordes of clerks scurrying
underground like ants into a hole; swarms of little ant-like men, each with dispatch-case
in right hand, newspaper in left hand, and the fear of the sack like a maggot in his heart.
How it eats at them, that secret fear! Especially on winter days, when they hear the
menace of the wind. Winter, the sack, the workhouse, the Embankment benches! Ah!

Sharply the menacing wind sweeps over The bending poplars, newly bare, And the dark
ribbons of the chimneys Veer downward; flicked by whips of air, Tom posters flutter;
Coldly sound The boom of trains and the rattle of hooves, And the clerks who hurry to
the station Look, shuddering, over the eastern rooves, Thinking —

What do they think? Winter’s coming. Is my job safe? The sack means the workhouse.
Circumcise ye your foreskins, saith the Lord. Suck the blacking off the boss’s boots. Yes!

Thinking each one, ‘Here comes the winter! Please God I keep my job this year! ’ And
bleakly, as the cold strikes through Their entrails like an icy spear, They think —

‘Think’ again. No matter. What do they think?