Told by an Idiot Read Online Free PDF

name, do with all this white man’s burden, as the responsibilities of Empire were so soon, so horribly soon, to be called? Had grandpapa thought of it, he would certainly have called them that. His grandson, Maurice, called them, on the other hand, “all those damned little Tory wars,” a difference in nomenclature which indicated a real difference in political attitude.
    Grandpapa entered with the
Observer
, which regrettedas he did the way the elections had gone, and with the
Guardian
, which did not. He sat down and patted Vicky on the shoulder, and said that Dean Liddon had preached at St. Paul’s, where he had attended morning service.
    “A capital defence of the faith,” said grandpapa. “Bones to it, and substance. None of your sentimental slop. You’ve all been running after ethics, or ritual, or this, that and the other, but I’ve had the pure Word. Liddon’s too High, but he’s sound. I remember in ’55 . . .”
    One of grandpapa’s familiar stories, told as old people told their stories, with loving rounding of detail.
    Vicky’s mind reached vainly back towards ’55, and could not get there. Crinolines and sweeping whiskers, the Pre-Raphaelites and the Crimea, Bible orthodoxy and the Tractarians, all the great Victorians. A dim, entrancing period, when papa and mamma were getting married, and people were too old-fashioned to see life straight as it was. And to grandpapa, ’55 was quite lately, just the other day, and ’80 was like an engine got loose from its train and dashing madly in advance, heading precipitately for a crash.
    “I remember,” said grandpapa, “I remember . . .”
    Papa said, “That was the year King’s College asked Maurice to retire because of
Theological Essays
.
    What dull things elderly people remembered!
    “Next Sunday,” said Vicky, “I shall take Charles to South Place, papa. I hear Mr. Pater is preaching there. Too sweet and quaint; he preaches everywhere. And often the divine Oscar sits under him.”

6
Stanley and Rome
     
    Maurice and Stanley were back from Cambridge and Oxford for the Easter vacation, talking, talking, talking. Stanley, in a crimson stockinette jersey, tight like an eel’s skin, and a tight little brown skirt caught in at the knees, her chubby face pink with excitement and health, talked of Oxford, of the river, of lectures, of Mr. Pater, and of friendship. Friendship was like dancing flames to Stanley in this her first Oxford year; a radiant, painful apocalypse of joy.
    “Are they so splendid?” Rome speculated of these glorious girls. “
Is
any one so splendid, ever?” She sat idly, her hands clasped behind her short, silky curls, Mallock’s
New Republic
open at her side. Stanley sat on the edge of a table, and swung her legs. How romantic Stanley was! What were girls, what, indeed, were boys either, that such a halo should encircle their foolish heads?
    There was proceeding at this time a now long-forgotten campaign called the Woman’s Movement, and on to the gay youthful fringe of this Stanley and her friends were catching. Women, long suppressed, were emerging; women were to be doctors, lawyers, human beings, everything; women were to have their share of the earth, their share of adventure, to flourish in all the arts, ride perched in handsom cabs, even on monstrous bicycles, find the North Pole. . . .
    “Too energetic for me,” Rome commented.
    “Oh, but you’ll be a great writer, perhaps.”
    “No. Why? There’s nothing I want to write. What’s the use of writing? Too much of that already. . . . Oh, well, go on about Oxford, Stan. You don’tconvince me that it’s anything but a very ordinary place full of quite ordinary people, but I rather like to hear you being absurd.”
    Rome’s faint, delicately thin voice expressed acquiescent but not scornful irony. Stanley was a bore sometimes, but an intelligent bore.
    She went on about Oxford, and Mr. Pater, and some lectures on art by William Morris that she had been to.