No More Learning

Nothing has
ever been devised that puts less strain on the intelligence; even a film, by comparison,
demands a certain effort. And so when a customer demanded a book of this category or
that, whether it was ‘Sex’ or ‘Crime’ or ‘Wild West’ or ‘ROmance’ (always with the
accent on the O). Gordon was ready with expert advice.

Mr Cheeseman was not a bad person to work for, so long as you understood that if you
worked till the Day of Judgement you would never get a rise of wages. Needless to say,
he suspected Gordon of pinching the till-money. After a week or two he devised a new
system of booking, by which he could tell how many books had been taken out and check
this with the day’s takings. But it was still (he reflected) in Gordon’s power to issue
books and make no record of them; and so the possibility that Gordon might be cheating
him of sixpence or even a shilling a day continued to trouble him, like the pea under the
princess’s mattress. Yet he was not absolutely unlikeable, in his sinister, dwarfish way. In
the evenings, after he had shut the shop, when he came along to the library to collect the
day’s takings, he would stay talking to Gordon for a while and recounting with nosy
chuckles any particularly astute swindles that he had worked lately. From these
conversations Gordon pieced together Mr Cheeseman’ s history. He had been brought up
in the old-clothes trade, which was his spiritual vocation, so to speak, and had inherited
the bookshop from an uncle three years ago. At that time it was one of those dreadful
bookshops in which there are not even any shelves, in which the books lie about in
monstrous dusty piles with no attempt at classification. It was frequented to some extent
by book-collectors, because there was occasionally a valuable book among the piles of
rubbish, but mainly it kept going by selling secondhand paper-covered thrillers at
twopence each. Over this dustheap Mr Cheeseman had presided, at first, with intense
disgust. He loathed books and had not yet grasped that there was money to be made out
of them. He was still keeping his old-clothes shop going by means of a deputy, and
intended to return to it as soon as he could get a good offer for the bookshop. But
presently it was borne in upon him that books, properly handled, are worth money. As
soon as he had made this discovery he developed as astonishing flair for bookdealing.



Within two years he had worked his shop up till it was one of the best ‘rare’ bookshops of
its size in London. To him a book was as purely an article of merchandise as a pair of
second-hand trousers. He had never in his life READ a book himself, nor could he
conceive why anyone should want to do so. His attitude towards the collectors who pored
so lovingly over his rare editions was that of a sexually cold prostitute towards her
clientele. Yet he seemed to know by the mere feel of a book whether it was valuable or
not. His head was a perfect mine of auction-records and first-edition dates, and he had a
marvellous nose for a bargain. His favourite way of acquiring stock was to buy up the
libraries of people who had just died, especially clergymen. Whenever a clergyman died
Mr Cheeseman was on the spot with the promptness of a vulture. Clergymen, he
explained to Gordon, so often have good libraries and ignorant widows. He lived over the
shop, was unmarried, of course, and had no amusements and seemingly no friends.
Gordon used sometimes to wonder what Mr Cheeseman did with himself in the evenings,
when he was not out snooping after bargains. He had a mental picture of Mr Cheeseman
sitting in a double-locked room with the shutters over the windows, counting piles of
half-crowns and bundles of pound notes which he stowed carefully away in cigarette-tins.

Mr Cheeseman bullied Gordon and was on the look-out for an excuse to dock his wages;
yet he did not bear him any particular ill-will. Sometimes in the evening when he came to
the library he would produce a greasy packet of Smith’s Potato Crisps from his pocket,
and, holding it out, say in his clipped style:

‘Hassome chips? ’

The packet was always grasped so firmly in his large hand that it was impossible to
extract more than two or three chips. But he meant it as a friendly gesture.

As for the place where Gordon lived, in Brewer’s Yard, parallel to Lambeth Cut on the
south side, it was a filthy kip. His bed-sitting room was eight shillings a week and was
just under the roof. With its sloping ceiling — it was a room shaped like a wedge of
cheese — and its skylight window, it was the nearest thing to the proverbial poet’s garret
that he had ever lived in. There was a large, low, broken-backed bed with a ragged
patchwork quilt and sheets that were changed once fortnightly; a deal table ringed by
dynasties of teapots; a rickety kitchen chair; a tin basin for washing in; a gas-ring in the



fender. The bare floorboards had never been stained but were dark with dirt. In the cracks
in the pink wallpaper dwelt multitudes of bugs; however, this was winter and they were
torpid unless you over- warmed the room. You were expected to make your own bed. Mrs
Meakin, the landlady, theoretically ‘did out’ the rooms daily, but four days out of five she
found the stairs too much for her. Nearly all the lodgers cooked their own squalid meals
in their bedrooms. There was no gas-stove, of course; just the gas-ring in the fender, and,
down two flights of stairs, a large evil-smelling sink which was common to the whole
house.

In the garret adjoining Gordon’s there lived a tall handsome old woman who was not
quite right in the head and whose face was often as black as a Negro’s from dirt. Gordon
could never make out where the dirt came from. It looked like coal dust. The children of
the neighbourhood used to shout ‘Blackie! ’ after her as she stalked along the pavement
like a tragedy queen, talking to herself. On the floor below there was a woman with a
baby which cried, cried everlastingly; also a young couple who used to have frightful
quarrels and frightful reconciliations which you could hear all over the house. On the
ground floor a house-painter, his wife, and five children existed on the dole and an
occasional odd job. Mrs Meakin, the landlady, inhabited some burrow or other in the
basement. Gordon liked this house. It was all so different from Mrs Wisbeach’s. There
was no mingy lower-middle-class decency here, no feeling of being spied upon and
disapproved of. So long as you paid your rent you could do almost exactly as you liked;
come home drunk and crawl up the stairs, bring women in at all hours, lie in bed all day
if you wanted to. Mother Meakin was not the type to interfere. She was a dishevelled,
jelly-soft old creature with a figure like a cottage loaf. People said that in her youth she
had been no better than she ought, and probably it was true. She had a loving manner
towards anything in trousers. Yet it seemed that traces of respectability lingered in her
breast. On the day when Gordon installed himself he heard her puffing and struggling up
the stairs, evidently bearing some burden. She knocked softly on the door with her knee,
or the place where her knee ought to have been, and he let her in.

“Ere y’are, then,’ she wheezed kindly as she came in with her arms full. ‘I knew as ‘ow
you’d like this. I likes all my lodgers to feel comfortable-like. Lemine put it on the table
for you. There! That makes the room like a bit more ‘ome-like, don’t it now? ’



It was an aspidistra. It gave him a bit of a twinge to see it. Even here, in this final refuge!
Hast thou found me, O mine enemy? But it was a poor weedy specimen — indeed, it was
obviously dying.

In this place he could have been happy if only people would let him alone. It was a place
where you COULD be happy, in a sluttish way. To spend your days in meaningless
mechanical work, work that could be slovened through in a sort of coma; to come home
and light the fire when you had any coal (there were sixpenny bags at the grocer’s) and
get the stuffy little attic warm; to sit over a squalid meal of bacon, bread-and-marg and
tea, cooked over the gas-ring; to lie on the frowzy bed, reading a thriller or doing the
Brain Brighteners in Tit Bits until the small hours; it was the kind of life he wanted. All
his habits had deteriorated rapidly. He never shaved more than three times a week
nowadays, and only washed the parts that showed. There were good public baths near by,
but he hardly went to them as often as once in a month. He never made his bed properly,
but just turned back the sheets, and never washed his few crocks till all of them had been
used twice over. There was a film of dust on everything. In the fender there was always a
greasy frying-pan and a couple of plates coated with the remnants of fried eggs. One
night the bugs came out of one of the cracks and marched across the ceiling two by two.
He lay on his bed, his hands under his head, watching them with interest. Without regret,
almost intentionally, he was letting himself go to pieces. At the bottom of all his feelings
there was sulkiness a je m’en fous in the face of the world. Life had beaten him; but you
can still beat life by turning your face away. Better to sink than rise. Down, down into the
ghost-kingdom, the shadowy world where shame, effort, decency do not exist!

To sink! How easy it ought to be, since there are so few competitors! But the strange
thing is that often it is harder to sink than to rise. There is always something that drags
one upwards. After all, one is never quite alone; there are always friends, lovers,
relatives. Everyone Gordon knew seemed to be writing him letters, pitying him or
bullying him. Aunt Angela had written, Uncle Walter had written, Rosemary had written
over and over again, Ravelston had written, Julia had written. Even Flaxman had sent a
line to wish him luck. Flaxman’ s wife had forgiven him, and he was back at Peckham, in
aspidistral bliss. Gordon hated getting letters nowadays. They were a link with that other
world from which he was trying to escape.



Even Ravelston had turned against him. That was after he had been to see Gordon in his
new lodgings. Until this visit he had not realized what kind of neighbourhood Gordon
was living in. As his taxi drew up at the corner, in the Waterloo Road, a horde of ragged
shock-haired boys came swooping from nowhere, to fight round the taxi door like fish at
a bait. Three of them clung to the handle and hauled the door open simultaneously. Their
servile, dirty little faces, wild with hope, made him feel sick. He flung some pennies
among them and fled up the alley without looking at them again. The narrow pavements
were smeared with a quantity of dogs’ excrement that was surprising, seeing that there
were no dogs in sight. Down in the basement Mother Meakin was boiling a haddock, and
you could smell it half-way up the stairs. In the attic Ravelston sat on the rickety chair,
with the ceiling sloping just behind his head. The fire was out and there was no light in
the room except four candles guttering in a saucer beside the aspidistra. Gordon lay on
the ragged bed, fully dressed but with no shoes on. He had scarcely stirred when
Ravelston came in. He just lay there, flat on his back, sometimes smiling a little, as
though there were some private joke between himself and the ceiling. The room had
already the stuffy sweetish smell of rooms that have been lived in a long time and never
cleaned. There were dirty crocks lying about in the fender.

‘Would you like a cup of tea? ’ Gordon said, without stirring.

‘No thanks awfully — no,’ said Ravelston, a little too hastily.

He had seen the brown-stained cups in the fender and the repulsive common si nk
downstairs. Gordon knew quite well why Ravelston refused the tea. The whole
atmosphere of this place had given Ravelston a kind of shock. That awful mixed smell of
slops and haddock on the stairs! He looked at Gordon, supine on the ragged bed. And,
dash it, Gordon was a gentleman! At another time he would have repudiated that thought;
but in this atmosphere pious humbug was impossible. All the class-instincts which he
believed himself not to possess rose in revolt. It was dreadful to think of anyone with
brains and refinement living in a place like this. He wanted to tell Gordon to get out of it,
pull himself together, earn a decent income, and live like a gentleman. But of course he
didn’t say so. You can’t say things like that. Gordon was aware of what was going on
inside Ravelston’s head. It amused him, rather. He felt no gratitude towards Ravelston for



coming here and seeing him; on the other hand, he was not ashamed of his surroundings
as he would once have been. There was a faint, amused malice in the way he spoke.

‘You think I’m a B. F. , of course,’ he remarked to the ceiling.

‘No, I don’t. Why should I? ’

‘Yes, you do. You think I’m a B. F. to stay in this filthy place instead of getting a proper
job. You think I ought to try for that job at the New Albion. ’

‘No, dash it! I never thought that. I see your point absolutely. I told you that before. I
think you’re perfectly right in principle. ’

‘And you think principles are all right so long as one doesn’t go putting them into
practice. ’

‘No. But the question always is, when IS one putting them into practice? ’

‘It’s quite simple. I’ve made war on money. This is where it’s led me. ’

Ravelston rubbed his nose, then shifted uneasily on his chair.

‘The mistake you make, don’t you see, is in thinking one can live in a corrupt society
without being corrupt oneself. After all, what do you achieve by refusing to make
money? You’re trying to behave as though one could stand right outside our economic
system. But one can’t. One’s got to change the system, or one changes nothing. One can’t
put things right in a hole-and-comer way, if you take my meaning. ’

Gordon waved a foot at the buggy ceiling.

‘Of course this IS a hole-and-comer, I admit. ’

‘I didn’t mean that,’ said Ravelston, pained.


‘But let’s face facts. You think I ought to be looking about for a GOOD job, don’t you? ’



‘It depends on the job. I think you’re quite right not to sell yourself to that advertising
agency. But it does seem rather a pity that you should stay in that wretched job you’re in
at present. After all, you HAVE got talents. You ought to be using them somehow. ’

‘There are my poems,’ said Gordon, smiling at his private joke.

Ravelston looked abashed. This remark silenced him. Of course, there WERE Gordon’s
poems. There was London Pleasures, for instance. Ravelston knew, and Gordon knew,
and each knew that the other knew, that London Pleasures would never be finished.
Never again, probably, would Gordon write a line of poetry; never, at least, while he
remained in this vile place, this blind-alley job and this defeated mood. He had finished
with all that. But this could not be said, as yet. The pretence was still kept up that Gordon
was a struggling poet — the conventional poet-in-garret.

It was not long before Ravelston rose to go. This smelly place oppressed him, and it was
increasingly obvious that Gordon did not want him here. He moved hesitantly towards
the door, pulling on his gloves, then came back again, pulling off his left glove and
flicking it against his leg.

‘Look here, Gordon, you won’t mind my saying it — this is a filthy place, you know. This
house, this street — everything. ’

‘I know. It’s a pigsty. It suits me. ’

‘But do you HAVE to live in a place like this? ’

‘My dear chap, you know what my wages are. Thirty bob a week. ’

‘Yes, but — ! Surely there ARE better places? What rent are you paying? ’

‘Eight bob. ’

‘Eight bob?
You could get a fairly decent unfurnished room for that. Something a bit
better than this, anyway. Look here, why don’t you take an unfurnished place and let me
lend you ten quid for furniture? ’



‘“Lend” me ten quid! After all you’ve “lent” me already? GIVE me ten quid, you mean. ’


Ravelston gazed unhappily at the wall. Dash it, what a thing to say! He said flatly:

‘All right, if you like to put it like that. GIVE you ten quid. ’

‘But as it happens, you see, I don’t want it. ’

‘But dash it all! You might as well have a decent place to live in. ’

‘But I don’t want a decent place. I want an indecent place. This one, for instance. ’

‘But why? Why? ’

‘It’s suited to my station,’ said Gordon, turning his face to the wall.

A few days later Ravelston wrote him a long, diffident sort of letter. It reiterated most of
what he had said in their conversation. Its general effect was that Ravelston saw
Gordon’s point entirely, that there was a lot of truth in what Gordon said, that Gordon
was absolutely right in principle, but — ! It was the obvious, the inevitable ‘but’. Gordon
did not answer. It was several months before he saw Ravelston again. Ravelston made
various attempts to get in touch with him. It was a curious fact — rather a shameful fact
from a Socialist’s point of view — that the thought of Gordon, who had brains and was of
gentle birth, lurking in that vile place and that almost menial job, worried him more than
the thought of ten thousand unemployed in Middlesbrough. Several times, in hope of
cheering Gordon up, he wrote asking him to send contributions to Antichrist. Gordon
never answered. The friendship was at an end, it seemed to him. The evil time when he
had lived on Ravelston had spoiled everything. Charity kills friendship.

And then there were Julia and Rosemary. They differed from Ravelston in this, that they
had no shyness about speaking their minds. They did not say euphemistically that Gordon
was ‘right in principle’; they knew that to refuse a ‘good’ job can never be right. Over
and over again they besought him to go back to the New Albion. The worst was that he
had both of them in pursuit of him together. Before this business they had never met, but
now Rosemary had got to know Julia somehow. They were in feminine league against
him. They used to get together and talk about the ‘maddening’ way in which Gordon was



behaving. It was the only thing they had in common, their feminine rage against his
‘maddening’ behaviour. Simultaneously and one after the other, by letter and by word of
mouth, they harried him. It was unbearable.

Thank God, neither of them had seen his room at Mother Meakin’s yet. Rosemary might
have endured it, but the sight of that filthy attic would have been almost the death of
Julia. They had been round to see him at the library, Rosemary a number of times, Julia
once, when she could make a pretext to get away from the teashop. Even that was bad
enough. It dismayed them to see what a mean, dreary little place the library was. The job
at McKechnie’s, though wretchedly paid, had not been the kind of job that you need
actually be ashamed of. It brought Gordon into touch with cultivated people; seeing that
he was a ‘writer’ himself, it might conceivably ‘lead to something’. But here, in a street
that was almost a slum, serving out yellow-jacketed trash at thirty bob a week — what
hope was there in a job like that? It was just a derelict’s job, a blind-alley job. Evening
after evening, walking up and down the dreary misty street after the library was shut,
Gordon and Rosemary argued about it. She kept on and on at him. WOULD he go back
to the New Albion? WHY wouldn’t he go back to the New Albion? He always told her
that the New Albion wouldn’t take him back. After all, he hadn’t applied for the job and
there was no knowing whether he could get it; he preferred to keep it uncertain. There
was something about him now that dismayed and frightened her. He seemed to have
changed and deteriorated so suddenly. She divined, though he did not speak to her about
it, that desire of his to escape from all effort and all decency, to sink down, down into the
ultimate mud. It was not only from money but from life itself that he was turning away.
They did not argue now as they had argued in the old days before Gordon had lost his
job. In those days she had not paid much attention to his preposterous theories. His
tirades against the money-morality had been a kind of joke between them. And it had
hardly seemed to matter that time was passing and that Gordon’s chance of earning a
decent living was infinitely remote. She had still thought of herself as a young girl and of
the future as limitless. She had watched him fling away two years of his life — two years
of HER life, for that matter; and she would have felt it ungenerous to protest.

But now she was growing frightened. Time’s winged chariot was hurrying near. When
Gordon lost his job she had suddenly realized, with the sense of making a startling
discovery, that after all she was no longer very young. Gordon’s thirtieth birthday was



past; her own was not far distant. And what lay ahead of them? Gordon was sinking
effortless into grey, deadly failure. He seemed to WANT to sink. What hope was there
that they could ever get married now? Gordon knew that she was right. The situation was
impossible. And so the thought, unspoken as yet, grew gradually in both their minds that
they would have to part — for good.

One night they were to meet under the railway arches. It was a horrible January night; no
mist, for once, only a vile wind that screeched round comers and flung dust and tom
paper into your face. He waited for her, a small slouching figure, shabby almost to
raggedness, his hair blown about by the wind. She was punctual, as usual. She ran
towards him, pulled his face down, and kissed his cold cheek.

‘Gordon, dear, how cold you are! Why did you come out without an overcoat? ’

‘My overcoat’s up the spout. I thought you knew. ’

‘Oh, dear! Yes. ’

She looked up at him, a small frown between her black brows. He looked so haggard, so
despondent, there in the ill-lit archway, his face full of shadows. She wound her arm
through his and pulled him out into the light.

‘Let’s keep walking. It’s too cold to stand about. I’ve got something serious I want to say
to you. ’

‘What? ’

‘I expect you’ll be very angry with me. ’


‘What is it? ’


‘This afternoon I went and saw Mr Erskine. I asked leave to speak to him for a few
minutes. ’

He knew what was coming. He tried to free his arm from hers, but she held on to it.


‘Well? ’ he said sulkily.



‘I spoke to him about you. I asked him if he’d take you back. Of course he said trade was
bad and they couldn’t afford to take on new staff and all that. But I reminded him of what
he’d said to you, and he said, Yes, he’d always thought you were very promising. And in
the end he said he’d be quite ready to find a job for you if you’d come back. So you see I
WAS right. They WILL give you the job. ’

He did not answer. She squeezed his arm. ‘So NOW what do you think about it? ’ she
said.

‘You know what I think,’ he said coldly.

Secretly he was alarmed and angry. This was what he had been fearing. He had known all
along that she would do it sooner or later. It made the issue more definite and his own
blame clearer. He slouched on, his hands still in his coat pockets, letting her cling to his
ann but not looking towards her.

‘You’re angry with me? ’ she said.

‘No, I’m not. But I don’t see why you had to do it — behind my back. ’

That wounded her. She had had to plead very hard before she had managed to extort that
promise from Mr Erskine. And it had needed all her courage to beard the managing
director in his den. She had been in deadly fear that she might be sacked for doing it. But
she wasn’t going to tell Gordon anything of that.

‘I don’t think you ought to say BEHIND YOUR BACK. After all, I was only trying to
help you. ’

‘How does it help me to get the offer of a job I wouldn’t touch with a stick? ’

‘You mean you won’t go back, even now? ’

‘Never. ’

‘Why? ’


‘MUST we go into it again? ’ he said wearily.



She squeezed his arm with all her strength and pulled him round, making him face her.
There was a kind of desperation in the way she clung to him. She had made her last effort
and it had failed. It was as though she could feel him receding, fading away from her like
a ghost.

‘You’ll break my heart if you go on like this,’ she said.

‘I wish you wouldn’t trouble about me. It would be so much simpler if you didn’t. ’

‘But why do you have to throw your life away? ’

‘I tell you I can’t help it. I’ve got to stick to my guns. ’

‘You know what this will mean? ’

With a chill at his heart, and yet with a feeling of resignation, even of relief, he said:
‘You mean we shall have to part — not see each other again? ’

They had walked on, and now they emerged into the Westminster Bridge Road. The wind
met them with a scream, whirling at them a cloud of dust that made both of them duck
their heads. They halted again. Her small face was full of lines, and the cold wind and the
cold lamplight did not improve it.

‘You want to get rid of me,’ he said.

‘No. No. It’s not exactly that. ’

‘But you feel we ought to part. ’

‘How can we go on like this? ’ she said desolately.

‘It’s difficult, I admit. ’

‘It’s all so miserable, so hopeless! What can it ever lead to? ’


‘So you don’t love me after all? ’ he said.



‘I do, I do! You know I do. ’


‘In a way, perhaps. But not enough to go on loving me when it’s certain I’ll never have
the money to keep you. You’ll have me as a husband, but not as a lover. It’s still a
question of money, you see. ’

‘It is NOT money, Gordon! It’s NOT that. ’

‘Yes, it’s just money. There’s been money between us from the start. Money, always
money! ’

The scene continued, but not for very much longer. Both of them were shivering with
cold. There is no emotion that matters greatly when one is standing at a street corner in a
biting wind. When finally they parted it was with no irrevocable farewell. She simply
said, ‘I must get back,’ kissed him, and ran across the road to the tram-stop. Mainly with
relief he watched her go. He could not stop now to ask himself whether he loved her.
Simply he wanted to get away — away from the windy street, away from scenes and
emotional demands, back in the frowzy solitude of his attic. If there were tears in his eyes
it was only from the cold of the wind.

With Julia it was almost worse. She asked him to go and see her one evening. This was
after she had heard, from Rosemary, of Mr Erksine’s offer of a job. The dreadful thing
with Julia was that she understood nothing, absolutely nothing, of his motives. All she
understood was that a ‘good’ job had been offered him and that he had refused it. She
implored him almost on her knees not to throw this chance away. And when he told her
that his mind was made up, she wept, actually wept. That was dreadful. The poor goose-
like girl, with streaks of grey in her hair, weeping without grace or dignity in her little
Drage-furnished bed-sitting room! This was the death of all her hopes. She had watched
the family go down and down, moneyless and childless, into grey obscurity. Gordon
alone had had it in him to succeed; and he, from mad perverseness, would not. He knew
what she was thinking; he had to induce in himself a kind of brutality to stand firm. It
was only because of Rosemary and Julia that he cared.