PART ONE

_VIVACE_

_VIVACE_

[ I ]

A very different England, that of 1890, and yet curiously the same. In some ways so fabulous, so remote from us; in others so near, terrifyingly near and like us. An England morally buried in great foggy wrappings of hypocrisy and prosperity and cheapness. The wealth of that England, the maritime power of that England, its worse than R. L. S. optimism, its righteous cant! Victoria, broad-bottomed on her people’s will; the possessing class, heavy-bottomed on the people’s neck. The working class beginning to heave restively, but still Moody and Sankeyish, still under the Golden Rule of “ever remember, my dear Bert, you may one day be manager of that concern.” The middle classes, especially the traders, making money hand over fist, and still “praying that our unexampled prosperity may last.” The aristocracy still pretty flip, keeping its tail up. Still lots of respect for Rank and Property—Dizzy not long dead, and his novels not yet grotesques, not yet wholly a fossil parody. The intellectuals æsthetic and Oscarish, or æsthetic and Burne-Morrisy, or Utilitarian and Huxley-Darwinish.

Come where the booze is cheaper.

Where I could live on a pound a week in lux-u-ry.

The world is so full of a number of things, I am _sure_ we should ALL be as Happy as KINGS.

Consols over par.

Lord Claud Hamilton and White at the Admiralty, building, building, building.

Building a majestic ruin.

George Moore, an elegant scandal in a hansom; Hardy a rural atheistic scandal, not yet discovered to be an intolerable bore; Oscar prancing negligently, O so clever, O so lah-di-dah.

Rummy old England. Pox on you, you old bitch, you’ve made worms’ meat of us. (We’ve made worms’ meat of ourselves.) But still, let me look back upon thee. Timon knew thee.

* * * * *

The Winterbournes were not gentry, but nourished vague and unfounded traditions of past genteel splendours. They were, however, fairly comfortable middle class. Worcestershire, migrated to Sheffield. Methodist on female side; C. of E. on the Winterbourne side. Young George Augustus—father of our George—was pretty comfortable. His mother was a dominating old bitch who destroyed his initiative and courage, but in the eighties hardly any one had the sense to tell dominating bitch-mothers to go to hell. George Augustus didn’t. At fifteen he wrote a Non-Conformist tract (which was published) expressing nothing but his dear Mamma’s views. He became top of his school, in conformity with dear Mamma’s views also. He did not go to Oxford, as he wanted, because dear Mamma thought it unpractical. And he did pass his examinations as a lawyer, because dear Mamma thought it so eminently right that he should have a profession and that there should be a lawyer in the family. George Augustus was a third son. The eldest son became a Non-Conformist parson, because dear Mamma had prayed for guidance on her marriage night and during her first pregnancy (only she never mentioned such horrid occurrences, even to her husband, but—she had “prayed for guidance”) and it had been revealed to her that her first-born must take up The Ministry. And take it up, poor devil, he