No More Learning

KEEP THE ASPIDISTRA FLYING
BY: GEORGE ORWELL
CATEGORY: FICTION - NOVEL


Keep the Aspidistra Flying

by


George Orwell


Chapter 1

The clock struck half past two. In the little office at the back of Mr McKechnie’s
bookshop, Gordon — Gordon Comstock, last member of the Comstock family, aged
twenty-nine and rather moth-eaten already — lounged across the table, pushing a four-
penny packet of Player’s Weights open and shut with his thumb.

The ding-dong of another, remoter clock — from the Prince of Wales, the other side of the
street — rippled the stagnant air. Gordon made an effort, sat upright, and stowed his
packet of cigarettes away in his inside pocket. He was perishing for a smoke. However,
there were only four cigarettes left. Today was Wednesday and he had no money coming
to him till Friday. It would be too bloody to be without tobacco tonight as well as all
tomorrow.


Bored in advance by tomorrow’s tobaccoless hours, he got up and moved towards the
door — a small frail figure, with delicate bones and fretful movements. His coat was out at
elbow in the right sleeve and its middle button was missing; his ready-made flannel



trousers were stained and shapeless. Even from above you could see that his shoes
needed resoling.


The money clinked in his trouser pocket as he got up. He knew the precise sum that was
there. Fivepence halfpenny — twopence halfpenny and a Joey. He paused, took out the
miserable little threepenny-bit, and looked at it. Beastly, useless thing! And bloody fool
to have taken it! It had happened yesterday, when he was buying cigarettes. ‘Don’t mind
a threepenny-bit, do you, sir? ’ the little bitch of a shop-girl had chirped. And of course he
had let her give it him. ‘Oh no, not at all! ’ he had said — fool, bloody fool!

His heart sickened to think that he had only fivepence halfpenny in the world, threepence
of which couldn’t even be spent. Because how can you buy anything with a threepenny-
bit? It isn’t a coin, it’s the answer to a riddle. You look such a fool when you take it out
of your pocket, unless it’s in among a whole handful of other coins. ‘How much? ’ you
say. ‘Threepence,’ the shop-girl says. And then you feel all round your pocket and fish
out that absurd little thing, all by itself, sticking on the end of your finger like a tiddley-
wink. The shop-girl sniffs. She spots immediately that it’s your last threepence in the
world. You see her glance quickly at it — she’s wondering whether there’s a piece of
Christmas pudding still sticking to it. And you stalk out with your nose in the air, and
can’t ever go to that shop again. No! We won’t spend our Joey. Twopence halfpenny
left — twopence halfpenny to last till Friday.

This was the lonely after-dinner hour, when few or no customers were to be expected. He
was alone with seven thousand books. The small dark room, smelling of dust and
decayed paper, that gave on the office, was filled to the brim with books, mostly aged and
unsaleable. On the top shelves near the ceiling the quarto volumes of extinct
encyclopedias slumbered on their sides in piles like the tiered coffins in common graves.
Gordon pushed aside the blue, dust-sodden curtains that served as a doorway to the next
room. This, better lighted than the other, contained the lending library. It was one of
those ‘twopenny no-deposit’ libraries beloved of book-pinchers. No books in it except
novels, of course. And WHAT novels! But that too was a matter of course.

Eight hundred strong, the novels lined the room on three sides ceiling-high, row upon
row of gaudy oblong backs, as though the walls had been built of many-coloured bricks



laid upright. They were arranged alphabetically. Arlen, Burroughs, Deeping, Dell,
Frankau, Galsworthy, Gibbs, Priestley, Sapper, Walpole. Gordon eyed them with inert
hatred. At this moment he hated all books, and novels most of all. Horrible to think of all
that soggy, half-baked trash massed together in one place. Pudding, suet pudding. Eight
hundred slabs of pudding, walling him in — a vault of puddingstone. The thought was
oppressive. He moved on through the open doorway into the front part of the shop. In
doing so, he smoothed his hair. It was an habitual movement. After all, there might be
girls outside the glass door. Gordon was not impressive to look at. He was just five feet
seven inches high, and because his hair was usually too long he gave the impression that
his head was a little too big for his body. He was never quite unconscious of his small
stature. When he knew that anyone was looking at him he carried himself very upright,
throwing a chest, with a you-be-damned air which occasionally deceived simple people.

However, there was nobody outside. The front room, unlike the rest of the shop, was
smart and expensive-looking, and it contained about two thousand books, exclusive of
those in the window. On the right there was a glass showcase in which children’s books
were kept. Gordon averted his eyes from a beastly Rackhamesque dust-jacket; elvish
children tripping Wendily through a bluebell glade. He gazed out through the glass door.
A foul day, and the wind rising. The sky was leaden, the cobbles of the street were slimy.
It was St Andrew’s day, the thirtieth of November. McKechnie’s stood on a corner, on a
sort of shapeless square where four streets converged. To the left, just within sight from
the door, stood a great elm-tree, leafless now, its multitudinous twigs making sepia-
coloured lace against the sky. Opposite, next to the Prince of Wales, were tall hoardings
covered with ads for patent foods and patent medicines. A gallery of monstrous doll-
faces — pink vacuous faces, full of goofy optimism. Q. T. Sauce, Truweet Breakfast Crisps
(‘Kiddies clamour for their Breakfast Crisps’), Kangaroo Burgundy, Vitamalt Chocolate,
Bovex. Of them all, the Bovex one oppressed Gordon the most. A spectacled rat-faced
clerk, with patent-leather hair, sitting at a cafe table grinning over a white mug of Bovex.
‘Comer Table enjoys his meal with Bovex’, the legend ran.

Gordon shortened the focus of his eyes. From the dust-dulled pane the reflection of his
own face looked back at him. Not a good face. Not thirty yet, but moth-eaten already.
Very pale, with bitter, ineradicable lines. What people call a ‘good’ forehead — high, that
is — but a small pointed chin, so that the face as a whole was pear-shaped rather than oval.



Hair mouse-coloured and unkempt, mouth unamiable, eyes hazel inclining to green. He
lengthened the focus of his eyes again. He hated mirrors nowadays. Outside, all was
bleak and wintry. A tram, like a raucous swan of steel, glided groaning over the cobbles,
and in its wake the wind swept a debris of trampled leaves. The twigs of the elm-tree
were swirling, straining eastward. The poster that advertised Q. T. Sauce was torn at the
edge; a ribbon of paper fluttered fitfully like a tiny pennant. In the side street too, to the
right, the naked poplars that lined the pavement bowed sharply as the wind caught them.
A nasty raw wind. There was a threatening note in it as it swept over; the first growl of
winter’s anger. Two lines of a poem struggled for birth in Gordon’s mind:

Sharply the something wind — for instance, threatening wind? No, better, menacing wind.
The menacing wind blows over — no, sweeps over, say.

The something poplars — yielding poplars? No, better, bending poplars. Assonance
between bending and menacing? No matter. The bending poplars, newly bare. Good.

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

Good. ‘Bare’ is a sod to rhyme; however, there’s always ‘air’, which every poet since
Chaucer has been struggling to find rhymes for. But the impulse died away in Gordon’s
mind. He turned the money over in his pocket. Twopence halfpenny and a Joey —
twopence halfpenny. His mind was sticky with boredom. He couldn’t cope with rhymes
and adjectives. You can’t, with only twopence halfpenny in your pocket.

His eyes refocused themselves upon the posters opposite. He had his private reasons for
hating them. Mechanically he re-read their slogans. ‘Kangaroo Burgundy — the wine for
Britons. ’ ‘Asthma was choking her! ’ ‘Q. T. Sauce Keeps Hubby Smiling. ’ ‘Hike all day
on a Slab of Vitamalt! ’ ‘Curve Cut — the Smoke for Outdoor Men. ’ ‘Kiddies clamour for
their Breakfast Crisps. ’ ‘Comer Table enjoys his meal with Bovex. ’

Ha! A customer — potential, at any rate. Gordon stiffened himself. Standing by the door,
you could get an oblique view out of the front window without being seen yourself. He
looked the potential customer over.



A decentish middle-aged man, black suit, bowler hat, umbrella, and dispatch-case —
provincial solicitor or Town Clerk — keeking at the window with large pale-coloured
eyes. He wore a guilty look. Gordon followed the direction of his eyes. Ah! So that was
it! He had nosed out those D. H. Lawrence first editions in the far corner. Pining for a bit
of smut, of course. He had heard of Lady Chatterley afar off. A bad face he had, Gordon
thought. Pale, heavy, downy, with bad contours. Welsh, by the look of him —
Nonconformist, anyway. He had the regular Dissenting pouches round the comers of his
mouth. At home, president of the local Purity League or Seaside Vigilance Committee
(rubber-soled slippers and electric torch, spotting kissing couples along the beach
parade), and now up in town on the razzle. Gordon wished he would come in. Sell him a
copy of Women in Love. How it would disappoint him!

But no! The Welsh solicitor had funked it. He tucked his umbrella under his ann and
moved off with righteously turned backside. But doubtless tonight, when darkness hid his
blushes, he’d slink into one of the rubber-shops and buy High Jinks in a Parisian
Convent, by Sadie Blackeyes.

Gordon turned away from the door and back to the book-shelves. In the shelves to your
left as you came out of the library the new and nearly-new books were kept — a patch of
bright colour that was meant to catch the eye of anyone glancing through the glass door.
Their sleek unspotted backs seemed to yearn at you from the shelves. ‘Buy me, buy me! ’
they seemed to be saying. Novels fresh from the press — still unravished brides, pining for
the paperknife to deflower them — and review copies, like youthful widows, blooming
still though virgin no longer, and here and there, in sets of half a dozen, those pathetic
spinster-things, ‘remainders’, still guarding hopefully their long preserv’d virginity.
Gordon turned his eyes away from the ‘remainders’. They called up evil memories. The
single wretched little book that he himself had published, two years ago, had sold exactly
a hundred and fifty-three copies and then been ‘remaindered’; and even as a ‘remainder’
it hadn’t sold. He passed the new books by and paused in front of the shelves which ran
at right angles to them and which contained more second-hand books.

Over to the right were shelves of poetry. Those in front of him were prose, a
miscellaneous lot. Upwards and downwards they were graded, from clean and expensive
at eye-level to cheap and dingy at top and bottom. In all book-shops there goes on a



savage Darwinian struggle in which the works of living men gravitate to eye-level and
the works of dead men go up or down — down to Gehenna or up to the throne, but always
away from any position where they will be noticed. Down in the bottom shelves the
‘classics’, the extinct monsters of the Victorian age, were quietly rotting. Scott, Carlyle,
Meredith, Ruskin, Pater, Stevenson — you could hardly read the names upon their broad
dowdy backs. In the top shelves, almost out of sight, slept the pudgy biographies of
dukes. Below those, saleable still and therefore placed within reach, was ‘religious’
literature — all sects and all creeds, lumped indiscriminately together. The World Beyond,
by the author of Spirit Hands Have Touched me. Dean Farrar’s Life of Christ. Jesus the
First Rotarian. Father Hilaire Chestnut’s latest book of R. C. propaganda. Religion
always sells provided it is soppy enough. Below, exactly at eye-level, was the
contemporary stuff. Priestley’s latest. Dinky little books of reprinted ‘middles’. Cheer-up
‘humour’ from Herbert and Knox and Milne. Some highbrow stuff as well. A novel or
two by Hemingway and Virginia Woolf. Smart pseudo-Strachey predigested biographies.
Snooty, refined books on safe painters and safe poets by those moneyed young beasts
who glide so gracefully from Eton to Cambridge and from Cambridge to the literary
reviews.

Dull-eyed, he gazed at the wall of books. He hated the whole lot of them, old and new,
highbrow and lowbrow, snooty and chirpy. The mere sight of them brought home to him
his own sterility. For here was he, supposedly a ‘writer’, and he couldn’t even ‘write’! It
wasn’t merely a question of not getting published; it was that he produced nothing, or
next to nothing. And all that tripe cluttering the shelves — well, at any rate it existed; it
was an achievement of sorts. Even the Dells and Deepings do at least turn out their yearly
acre of print. But it was the snooty ‘cultured’ kind of books that he hated the worst.
Books of criticism and belles-lettres.
For here was he, supposedly a ‘writer’, and he couldn’t even ‘write’! It
wasn’t merely a question of not getting published; it was that he produced nothing, or
next to nothing. And all that tripe cluttering the shelves — well, at any rate it existed; it
was an achievement of sorts. Even the Dells and Deepings do at least turn out their yearly
acre of print. But it was the snooty ‘cultured’ kind of books that he hated the worst.
Books of criticism and belles-lettres. The kind of thing that those moneyed young beasts
from Cambridge write almost in their sleep — and that Gordon himself might have written
if he had had a little more money. Money and culture! In a country like England you can
no more be cultured without money than you can join the Cavalry Club. With the same
instinct that makes a child waggle a loose tooth, he took out a snooty-looking volume —
Some Aspects of the Italian Baroque — opened it, read a paragraph, and shoved it back
with mingled loathing and envy. That devastating omniscience! That noxious, horn-
spectacled refinement! And the money that such refinement means! For after all, what is
there behind it, except money? Money for the right kind of education, money for



influential friends, money for leisure and peace of mind, money for trips to Italy. Money
writes books, money sells them. Give me not righteousness, O Lord, give me money,
only money.

He jingled the coins in his pocket. He was nearly thirty and had accomplished nothing;
only his miserable book of poems that had fallen flatter than any pancake. And ever
since, for two whole years, he had been struggling in the labyrinth of a dreadful book that
never got any further, and which, as he knew in his moments of clarity, never would get
any further. It was the lack of money, simply the lack of money, that robbed him of the
power to ‘write’. He clung to that as to an article of faith. Money, money, all is money!
Could you write even a penny novelette without money to put heart in you? Invention,
energy, wit, style, charm — they’ve all got to be paid for in hard cash.

Nevertheless, as he looked along the shelves he felt himself a little comforted. So many
of the books were faded and unreadable. After all, we’re all in the same boat. Memento
mori. For you and for me and for the snooty young men from Cambridge, the same
oblivion waits — though doubtless it’ll wait rather longer for those snooty young men
from Cambridge. He looked at the time-dulled ‘classics’ near his feet. Dead, all dead.
Carlyle and Ruskin and Meredith and Stevenson — all are dead, God rot them. He glanced
over their faded titles. Collected Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson. Ha, ha! That’s good.
Collected Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson! Its top edge was black with dust. Dust thou
art, to dust returnest. Gordon kicked Stevenson’s buckram backside. Art there, old false-
penny? You’re cold meat, if ever Scotchman was.

Ping! The shop bell. Gordon turned round. Two customers, for the library.

A dejected, round-shouldered, lower-class woman, looking like a draggled duck nosing
among garbage, seeped in, fumbling with a rush basket. In her wake hopped a plump
little sparrow of a woman, red-cheeked, middle-middle class, carrying under her arm a
copy of The Forsyte Saga — title outwards, so that passers-by could spot her for a high-
brow.

Gordon had taken off his sour expression. He greeted them with the homey, family-
doctor geniality reserved for library-subscribers.



‘Good afternoon, Mrs Weaver. Good afternoon, Mrs Penn. What terrible weather! ’


‘Shocking! ’ said Mrs Penn.

He stood aside to let them pass. Mrs Weaver upset her rush basket and spilled on to the
floor a much-thumbed copy of Ethel M. Dell’s Silver Wedding. Mrs Penn’s bright bird-
eye lighted upon it. Behind Mrs Weaver’s back she smiled up to Gordon, archly, as
highbrow to highbrow. Dell! The lowness of it! The books these lower classes read!
Understandingly, he smiled back. They passed into the library, highbrow to highbrow
smiling.

Mrs Penn laid The Forsyte Saga on the table and turned her sparrow-bosom upon
Gordon. She was always very affable to Gordon. She addressed him as Mister Comstock,
shopwalker though he was, and held literary conversations with him. There was the free-
masonry of highbrows between them.

‘I hope you enjoyed The Forsyte Saga, Mrs Penn? ’

‘What a perfectly MARVEFFOUS achievement that book is, Mr Comstock! Do you
know that that makes the fourth time I’ve read it? An epic, a real epic! ’

Mrs Weaver nosed among the books, too dim-witted to grasp that they were in
alphabetical order.

‘I don’t know what to ‘ave this week, that I don’t,’ she mumbled through untidy lips. ‘My
daughter she keeps on at me to ‘ave a try at Deeping. She’s great on Deeping, my
daughter is. But my son-in-law, now, ‘e’s more for Burroughs. I don’t know, I’m sure. ’

A spasm passed over Mrs Penn’s face at the mention of Burroughs. She turned her back
markedly on Mrs Weaver.

‘What I feel, Mr Comstock, is that there’s something so BIG about Galsworthy. He’s so
broad, so universal, and yet at the same time so thoroughly English in spirit, so HUMAN.
His books are real HUMAN documents. ’



‘And Priestley, too,’ said Gordon. ‘I think Priestley’s such an awfully fine writer, don’t
you? ’

‘Oh, he is! So big, so broad, so human! And so essentially English! ’

Mrs Weaver pursed her lips. Behind them were three isolated yellow teeth.

‘I think p’raps I can do better’n ‘ave another Dell,’ she said. ‘You ‘ave got some more
Dells, ‘aven’t you? I DO enjoy a good read of Dell, I must say. I says to my daughter, I
says, “You can keep your Deepings and your Burroughses. Give me Dell,” I says. ’

Ding Dong Dell! Dukes and dogwhips! Mrs Penn’s eye signalled highbrow irony.
Gordon returned her signal. Keep in with Mrs Penn! A good, steady customer.

‘Oh, certainly, Mrs Weaver. We’ve got a whole shelf by Ethel M. Dell. Would you like
The Desire of his Life? Or perhaps you’ve read that. Then what about The Alter of
Honour? ’

‘I wonder whether you have Hugh Walpole’s latest book? ’ said Mrs Penn. ‘I feel in the
mood this week for something epic, something BIG. Now Walpole, you know, I consider
a really GREAT writer, I put him second only to Galsworthy. There’s something so BIG
about him. And yet he’s so human with it. ’

‘And so essentially English,’ said Gordon.

‘Oh, of course! So essentially English! ’

‘I b’lieve I’ll jest ‘ave The Way of an Eagle over again,’ said Mrs Weaver finally. ‘You
don’t never seem to get tired of The Way of an Eagle, do you, now? ’

‘It’s certainly astonishingly popular,’ said Gordon, diplomatically, his eye on Mrs Penn.

‘Oh, asTONishingly! ’ echoed Mrs Penn, ironically, her eye on Gordon.

He took their twopences and sent them happy away, Mrs Penn with Walpole’s Rogue
Herries and Mrs Weaver with The Way of an Eagle.



Soon he had wandered back to the other room and towards the shelves of poetry. A
melancholy fascination, those shelves had for him. His own wretched book was there —
skied, of course, high up among the unsaleable. Mice, by Gordon Comstock; a sneaky
little foolscap octavo, price three and sixpence but now reduced to a bob. Of the thirteen
B. F. s who had reviewed it (and The Times Lit. Supp. had declared that it showed
‘exceptional promise’) not one had seen the none too subtle joke of that title. And in the
two years he had been at McKechnie’s bookshop, not a single customer, not a single one,
had ever taken Mice out of its shelf.

There were fifteen or twenty shelves of poetry. Gordon regarded them sourly. Dud stuff,
for the most part. A little above eye-level, already on their way to heaven and oblivion,
were the poets of yesteryear, the stars of his earlier youth. Yeats, Davies, Housman,
Thomas, De la Mare, Hardy. Dead stars. Below them, exactly at eye-level, were the
squibs of the passing minute. Eliot, Pound, Auden, Campbell, Day Lewis, Spender. Very
damp squibs, that lot. Dead stars above, damp squibs below. Shall we ever again get a
writer worth reading? But Lawrence was all right, and Joyce even better before he went
off his coconut. And if we did get a writer worth reading, should we know him when we
saw him, so choked as we are with trash?

Ping! Shop bell. Gordon turned. Another customer.

A youth of twenty, cherry-lipped, with gilded hair, tripped Nancifully in. Moneyed,
obviously. He had the golden aura of money. He had been in the shop before. Gordon
assumed the gentlemanly-servile mien reserved for new customers. He repeated the usual
formula:

‘Good afternoon. Can I do anything for you? Are you looking for any particular book? ’

‘Oh, no, not weally. ’ An R-less Nancy voice. ‘May I just BWOWSE? I simply couldn’t
wesist your fwont window. I have such a tewwible weakness for bookshops! So I just
floated in — tee-hee! ’


Float out again, then, Nancy. Gordon smiled a cultured smile, as booklover to booklover.



‘Oh, please do. We like people to look round. Are you interested in poetry, by any
chance? ’

‘Oh, of course! I ADORE poetwy! ’

Of course! Mangy little snob. There was a sub-artistic look about his clothes. Gordon slid
a ‘slim’ red volume from the poetry shelves.

‘These are just out. They might interest you, perhaps. They’re translations — something
rather out of the common. Translations from the Bulgarian. ’

Very subtle, that. Now leave him to himself. That’s the proper way with customers. Don’t
hustle them; let them browse for twenty minutes or so; then they get ashamed and buy
something. Gordon moved to the door, discreetly, keeping out of Nancy’s way; yet
casually, one hand in his pocket, with the insouciant air proper to a gentleman.

Outside, the slimy street looked grey and drear. From somewhere round the corner came
the clatter of hooves, a cold hollow sound. Caught by the wind, the dark columns of
smoke from the chimneys veered over and rolled flatly down the sloping roofs. Ah!

Sharply the menacing wind sweeps over The bending poplars, newly bare, And the dark
ribbons of the chimneys Veer downward tumty tumty (something like ‘murky’) air.

Good. But the impulse faded. His eye fell again upon the ad-posters across the street.

He almost wanted to laugh at them, they were so feeble, so dead-alive, so unappetizing.
As though anybody could be tempted by THOSE! Like succubi with pimply backsides.
But they depressed him all the same. The money-stink, everywhere the money-stink. He
stole a glance at the Nancy, who had drifted away from the poetry shelves and taken out a
large expensive book on the Russian ballet. He was holding it delicately between his pink
non-prehensile paws, as a squirrel holds a nut, studying the photographs. Gordon knew
his type.