No More Learning

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? Money, money! Rent, rates, taxes, school
bills, season tickets, boots for the children. And the life insurance policy and the skivvy’s



wages. And, my God, suppose the wife gets in the family way again! And did I laugh
loud enough when the boss made that joke yesterday? And the next instalment on the
vacuum cleaner.

Neatly, taking a pleasure in his neatness, with the sensation of dropping piece after piece
of a jigsaw puzzle into place, he fashioned another stanza:

They think of rent, rates, season tickets, Insurance, coal, the skivvy’s wages, Boots,
school bills, and the next instalment Upon the two twin beds from Drage’s.

Not bad, not bad at all. Finish it presently. Four or five more stanzas. Ravelston would
print it.

A starling sat in the naked boughs of a plane tree, crooning self-pitifully as starlings do
on wann winter days when they believe spring is in the air. At the foot of the tree a huge
sandy cat sat motionless, mouth open, gazing upwards with rapt desire, plainly expecting
that the starling would drop into its mouth. Gordon repeated to himself the four finished
stanzas of his poem. It was GOOD. Why had he thought last night that it was mechanical,
weak, and empty? He was a poet. He walked more upright, arrogantly almost, with the
pride of a poet. Gordon Comstock, author of Mice. ‘Of exceptional promise,’ The Times
Lit. Supp. had said. Author also of London Pleasures. For that too would be finished
quite soon. He knew now that he could finish it when he chose. Why had he ever
despaired of it? Three months it might take; soon enough to come out in the summer. In
his mind’s eye he saw the ‘slim’ white buckram shape of London Pleasures; the excellent
paper, the wide margins, the good Caslon type, the refined dust-jacket, and the reviews in
all the best papers. ‘An outstanding achievement’ — The Times Lit. Supp. ‘A welcome
relief from the Sitwell school’ — Scrutiny.

Coleridge Grove was a damp, shadowy, secluded road, a blind alley and therefore void of
traffic. Literary associations of the wrong kind (Coleridge was rumoured to have lived
there for six weeks in the summer of 1821) hung heavy upon it. You could not look at its
antique decaying houses, standing back from the road in dank gardens under heavy trees,
without feeling an atmosphere of outmoded ‘culture’ envelop you. In some of those
houses, undoubtedly, Browning Societies still flourished, and ladies in art serge sat at the
feet of extinct poets talking about Swinburne and Walter Pater. In spring the gardens



were sprinkled with purple and yellow crocuses, and later with harebells, springing up in
little Wendy rings among the anaemic grass; and even the trees, it seemed to Gordon,
played up to their environment and twisted themselves into whimsy Rackhamesque
attitudes. It was queer that a prosperous hack critic like Paul Doring should live in such a
place. For Doring was an astonishingly bad critic. He reviewed novels for the Sunday
Post and discovered the great English novel with Walpolean regularity once a fortnight.
You would have expected him to live in a flat on Hyde Park Corner. Perhaps it was a
kind of penance that he had imposed upon himself, as though by living in the refined
discomfort of Coleridge Grove he propitiated the injured gods of literature.

Gordon came round the corner, turning over in his mind a line from London Pleasures.
And then suddenly he stopped short. There was something wrong about the look of the
Dorings’ gate. What was it? Ah, of course! There were no cars waiting outside.

He paused, walked on a step or two, and stopped again, like a dog that smells danger. It
was all wrong. There OUGHT to be some cars. There were always quite a lot of people at
the Dorings’ parties, and half of them came in cars. Why had nobody else arrived? Could
he be too early? But no! They had said half past three and it was at least twenty to four.

He hastened towards the gate. Already he felt practically sure that the party HAD been
put off. A chill like the shadow of a cloud had fallen across him. Suppose the Dorings
weren’t at home! Suppose the party had been put off! And this thought, though it
dismayed him, did not strike him as in the least improbable. It was his special bugbear,
the especial childish dread he carried about with him, to be invited to people’s houses and
then find them not at home. Even when there was no doubt about the invitation he always
half expected that there would be some hitch or other. He was never quite certain of his
welcome. He took it for granted that people would snub him and forget about him. Why
not, indeed? He had no money. When you have no money your life is one long series of
snubs.

He swung the iron gate open. It creaked with a lonely sound. The dank mossy path was
bordered with chu nk s of some Rackhamesque pinkish stone. Gordon inspected the house-
front narrowly. He was so used to this kind of thing. He had developed a sort of Sherlock
Holmes technique for finding out whether a house was inhabited or not. Ah! Not much



doubt about it this time. The house had a deserted look. No smoke coming from the
chimneys, no windows lighted. It must be getting darkish indoors — surely they would
have lighted the lamps?
And there was not a single footmark on the steps; that settled it.
Nevertheless with a sort of desperate hope he tugged at the bell. An old-fashioned wire
bell, of course. In Coleridge Grove it would have been considered low and unliterary to
have an electric bell.

Clang, clang, clang! went the bell.

Gordon’s last hope vanished. No mistaking the hollow clangour of a bell echoing through
an empty house. He seized the handle again and gave it a wrench that almost broke the
wire. A frightful, clamorous peal answered him. But it was useless, quite useless. Not a
foot stirred within. Even the servants were out. At this moment he became aware of a lace
cap, some dark hair, and a pair of youthful eyes regarding him furtively from the
basement of the house next door. It was a servant-girl who had come out to see what all
the noise was about. She caught his eye and gazed into the middle distance. He looked a
fool and knew it. One always does look a fool when one rings the bell of an empty house.
And suddenly it came to him that that girl knew all about him — knew that the party had
been put off and that everyone except Gordon had been told of it — knew that it was
because he had no money that he wasn’t worth the trouble of telling. SHE knew. Servants
always know.

He turned and made for the gate. Under the servant’s eye he had to stroll casually away,
as though this were a small disappointment that scarcely mattered. But he was trembling
so with anger that it was difficult to control his movements. The sods! The bloody sods!
To have played a trick like that on him! To have invited him, and then changed the day
and not even bothered to tell him! There might be other explanations — he just refused to
think of them. The sods, the bloody sods! His eye fell upon one of the Rackhamesque
chu nk s of stone. How he’d love to pick that thing up and bash it through the window! He
grasped the rusty gate-bar so hard that he hurt his hand and almost tore it. The physical
pain did him good. It counteracted the agony at his heart. It was not merely that he had
been cheated of an evening spent in human company, though that was much. It was the
feeling of helplessness, of insignificance, of being set aside, ignored — a creature not
worth worrying about. They’d changed the day and hadn’t even bothered to tell him. Told



everybody else, but not him. That’s how people treat you when you’ve no money! Just
wantonly, cold-bloodedly insult you. It was likely enough, indeed, that the Dorings’ had
honestly forgotten, meaning no harm; it was even possible that he himself had mistaken
the date. But no! He wouldn’t think of it. The Dorings’ had done it on purpose. Of
COURSE they had done it on purpose! Just hadn’t troubled to tell him, because he had no
money and consequently didn’t matter. The sods!

He walked rapidly away. There was a sharp pain in his breast. Human contact, human
voices! But what was the good of wishing? He’d have to spend the evening alone, as
usual. His friends were so few and lived so far away. Rosemary would still be at work;
besides, she lived at the back of beyond, in West Kensington, in a women’s hostel
guarded by female dragons. Ravelston lived nearer, in the Regent’s Park district. But
Ravelston was a rich man and had many engagements; the chances were always against
his being at home. Gordon could not even ring him up, because he hadn’t the necessary
two pennies; only three halfpence and the Joey. Besides, how could he go and see
Ravelston when he had no money? Ravelston would be sure to say ‘Let’s go to a pub,’ or
something! He couldn’t let Ravelston pay for his drinks. His friendship with Ravelston
was only possible on the understanding that he paid his share of everything.

He took out his single cigarette and lighted it. It gave him no pleasure to smoke, walking
fast; it was a mere reckless gesture. He did not take much notice of where he was going.
All he wanted was to tire himself, to walk and walk till the stupid physical fatigue had
obliterated the Dorings’ snub. He moved roughly southward — through the wastes of
Camden Town, down Tottenham Court Road. It had been dark for some time now. He
crossed Oxford Street, threaded through Covent Garden, found himself in the Strand, and
crossed the river by Waterloo Bridge. With night the cold had descended. As he walked
his anger grew less violent, but his mood could not fundamentally improve. There was a
thought that kept haunting him — a thought from which he fled, but which was not to be
escaped. It was the thought of his poems. His empty, silly, futile poems! How could he
ever have believed in them? To think that actually he had imagined, so short a time ago,
that even London Pleasures might one day come to something! It made him sick to think
of his poems now. It was like remembering last night’s debauch. He knew in his bones
that he was no good and his poems were no good. London Pleasures would never be
finished. If he lived to be a thousand he would never write a line worth reading. Over and



over, in self-hatred, he repeated those four stanzas of the poem he had been making up.
Christ, what tripe! Rhyme to rhyme — tinkle, tinkle, tinkle! Hollow as an empty biscuit
tin. THAT was the kind of muck he had wasted his life on.

He had walked a long way, five or seven miles perhaps. His feet were hot and swollen
from the pavements. He was somewhere in Lambeth, in a slummy quarter where the
narrow, puddled street plunged into blackness at fifty yards’ distance. The few lamps,
mist-ringed, hung like isolated stars, illumining nothing save themselves. He was getting
devilishly hungry. The coffee-shops tempted him with their steamy windows and their
chalked signs: ‘Good Cup of Tea, 2d. No Urns Used. ’ But it was no use, he couldn’t
spend his Joey. He went under some echoing railway arches and up the alley on to
Hungerford Bridge. On the miry water, lit by the glare of skysigns, the muck of East
London was racing inland. Corks, lemons, barrel-staves, a dead dog, hunks of bread.
Gordon walked along the Embankment to Westminster. The wind made the plane trees
rattle. Sharply the menacing wind sweeps over. He winced. That tripe again! Even now,
though it was December, a few poor draggled old wrecks were settling down on the
benches, tucking themselves up in sort of parcels of newspaper. Gordon looked at them
callously. On the bum, they called it. He would come to it himself some day. Better so,
perhaps? He never felt any pity for the genuine poor. It is the black-coated poor, the
middle-middle class, who need pitying.

He walked up to Trafalgar Square. Hours and hours to kill. The National Gallery? Ah,
shut long ago, of course. It would be. It was a quarter past seven. Three, four, five hours
before he could sleep. He walked seven times round the square, slowly. Four times
clockwise, three times widdershins. His feet were sore and most of the benches were
empty, but he would not sit down. If he halted for an instant the longing for tobacco
would come upon him. In the Charing Cross Road the teashops called like sirens. Once
the glass door of a Lyons swung open, letting out a wave of hot cake-scented air. It
almost overcame him. After all, why NOT go in? You could sit there for nearly an hour.
A cup of tea twopence, two buns a penny each. He had fourpence halfpenny, counting the
Joey. But no! That bloody Joey! The girl at the cash desk would titter. In a vivid vision he
saw the girl at the cash desk, as she handled his threepenny-bit, grin sidelong at the girl
behind the cake-counter. They’d KNOW it was your last threepence. No use. Shove on.
Keep moving.



In the deadly glare of the Neon lights the pavements were densely crowded. Gordon
threaded his way, a small shabby figure, with pale face and unkempt hair. The crowd slid
past him; he avoided and was avoided. There is something horrible about London at
night; the coldness, the anonymity, the aloofness. Seven million people, sliding to and
fro, avoiding contact, barely aware of one another’s existence, like fish in an aquarium
tank. The street swarmed with pretty girls. By scores they streamed past him, their faces
averted or unseeing; cold nymph-creatures, dreading the eyes of the male. It was queer
how many of them seemed to be alone, or with another girl. Far more women alone than
women with men, he noted. That too was money. How many girls alive wouldn’t be
manless sooner than take a man who’s moneyless?

The pubs were open, oozing sour whiffs of beer. People were trickling by ones and twos
into the picture -houses. Gordon halted outside a great garish picture-house, under the
weary eye of the commissionaire, to examine the photographs. Greta Garbo in The
Painted Veil. He yearned to go inside, not for Greta’s sake, but just for the warmth and
the softness of the velvet seat. He hated the pictures, of course, seldom went there even
when he could afford it. Why encourage the art that is destined to replace literature? But
still, there is a kind of soggy attraction about it. To sit on the padded seat in the warm
smoke-scented darkness, letting the flickering drivel on the screen gradually overwhelm
you — feeling the waves of its silliness lap you round till you seem to drown, intoxicated,
in a viscous sea — after all, it’s the kind of drug we need. The right drug for friendless
people. As he approached the Palace Theatre a tart on sentry-go under the porch marked
him down, stepped forward, and stood in his path. A short, stocky Italian girl, very
young, with big black eyes. She looked agreeable, and, what tarts so seldom are, merry.
For a moment he checked his step, even allowing himself to catch her eye. She looked up
at him, ready to break out into a broad-lipped smile. Why not stop and talk to her? She
looked as though she might understand him. But no! No money! He looked away and
side-stepped her with the cold haste of a man whom poverty makes virtuous. How furious
she’d be if he stopped and then she found he had no money! He pressed on. Even to talk
costs money.

Up Tottenham Court Road and Camden Road it was a dreary drudge. He walked slower,
dragging his feet a little. He had done ten miles over pavements. More girls streamed
past, unseeing. Girls alone, girls with youths, girls with other girls, girls alone. Their



cruel youthful eyes went over him and through him as though he had not existed. He was
too tired to resent it. His shoulders surrendered to their weariness; he slouched, not trying
any longer to preserve his upright carriage and his you-be-damned air. They flee from me
that someone did me seek. How could you blame them? He was thirty, moth-eaten, and
without charm. Why should any girl ever look at him again?

He reflected that he must go home at once if he wanted any food — for Ma Wisbeach
refused to serve meals after nine o’clock. But the thought of his cold womanless bedroom
sickened him. To climb the stairs, light the gas, flop down at the table with hours to kill
and nothing to do, nothing to read, nothing to smoke — no, NOT endurable. In Camden
Town the pubs were full and noisy, though this was only Thursday. Three women, red-
armed, squat as the beer mugs in their hands, stood outside a pub door, talking. From
within came hoarse voices, fag-smoke, the fume of beer. Gordon thought of the Crichton
Arms. Flaxman might be there. Why not risk it? A half of bitter, threepence halfpenny.
He had fourpence halfpenny counting the Joey. After all, a Joey IS legal tender.

He felt dreadfully thirsty already. It had been a mistake to let himself think of beer. As he
approached the Crichton, he heard voices singing. The great garish pub seemed to be
more brightly lighted than usual. There was a concert of something going on inside.
Twenty ripe male voices were chanting in unison:

‘Fo — or REE’S a jorrigoo’ fellow, For REE’S a jorrigoo’ fellow, For REE’S a jorrigoo’
fe — ELL — OW — And toori oori us! ’

At least, that was what it sounded like. Gordon drew nearer, pierced by a ravishing thirst.