For the rest these five years were a period of definition.My political conceptions were perfectly plain and honest.I had one constant desire ruling my thoughts.I meant to leave England and the empire better ordered than I found it, to organise and discipline, to build up a constructive and controlling State out of my world's confusions.We had, I saw, to suffuse education with public intention, to develop a new better-living generation with a collectivist habit of thought, to link now chaotic activities in every human affair, and particularly to catch that escaped, world-making, world-ruining, dangerous thing, industrial and financial enterprise, and bring it back to the service of the general good.Ihad then the precise image that still serves me as a symbol for all I wish to bring about, the image of an engineer building a lock in a swelling torrent--with water pressure as his only source of power.
My thoughts and acts were habitually turned to that enterprise; it gave shape and direction to all my life.The problem that most engaged my mind during those years was the practical and personal problem of just where to apply myself to serve this almost innate purpose.How was I, a child of this confusion, struggling upward through the confusion, to take hold of things?Somewhere between politics and literature my grip must needs be found, but where?
Always I seem to have been looking for that in those opening years, and disregarding everything else to discover it.
2
The Baileys, under whose auspices I met Margaret again, were in the sharpest contrast with the narrow industrialism of the Staffordshire world.They were indeed at the other extreme of the scale, two active self-centred people, excessively devoted to the public service.It was natural I should gravitate to them, for they seemed to stand for the maturer, more disciplined, better informed expression of all I was then urgent to attempt to do.The bulk of their friends were politicians or public officials, they described themselves as publicists--a vague yet sufficiently significant term.
They lived and worked in a hard little house in Chambers Street, Westminster, and made a centre for quite an astonishing amount of political and social activity.
Willersley took me there one evening.The place was almostpretentiously matter-of-fact and unassuming.The narrow passage-hall, papered with some ancient yellowish paper, grained to imitate wood, was choked with hats and cloaks and an occasional feminine wrap.Motioned rather than announced by a tall Scotch servant woman, the only domestic I ever remember seeing there, we made our way up a narrow staircase past the open door of a small study packed with blue-books, to discover Altiora Bailey receiving before the fireplace in her drawing-room. She was a tall commanding figure, splendid but a little untidy in black silk and red beads, with dark eyes that had no depths, with a clear hard voice that had an almost visible prominence, aquiline features and straight black hair that was apt to get astray, that was now astray like the head feathers of an eagle in a gale.She stood with her hands behind her back, and talked in a high tenor of a projected Town Planning Bill with Blupp, who was practically in those days the secretary of the local Government Board.A very short broad man with thick ears and fat white hands writhing intertwined behind him, stood with his back to us, eager to bark interruptions into Altiora's discourse.A slender girl in pale blue, manifestly a young political wife, stood with one foot on the fender listening with an expression of entirely puzzled propitiation.A tall sandy-bearded bishop with the expression of a man in a trance completed this central group.
The room was one of those long apartments once divided by folding doors, and reaching from back to front, that are common upon the first floors of London houses.Its walls were hung with two or three indifferent water colours, there was scarcely any furniture but a sofa or so and a chair, and the floor, severely carpeted with matting, was crowded with a curious medley of people, men predominating.Several were in evening dress, but most had the morning garb of the politician; the women were either severely rational or radiantly magnificent.Willersley pointed out to me the wife of the Secretary of State for War, and I recognised the Duchess of Clynes, who at that time cultivated intellectuality.I looked round, identifying a face here or there, and stepping back trod on some one's toe, and turned to find it belonged to the Right Hon.G.
B.Mottisham, dear to the PUNCH caricaturists.He received my apology with that intentional charm that is one of his most delightful traits, and resumed his discussion.Beside him was Esmeer of Trinity, whom I had not seen since my Cambridge days....
Willersley found an ex-member of the School Board for whom he had affinities, and left me to exchange experiences and comments upon the company with Esmeer.Esmeer was still a don; but he was nibbling, he said, at certain negotiations with the TIMES that might bring him down to London.He wanted to come to London."We peep at things from Cambridge," he said.
"This sort of thing," I said, "makes London necessary.It's the oddest gathering.""Every one comes here," said Esmeer."Mostly we hate them like poison--jealousy--and little irritations--Altiora can be a horror at times--but we HAVE to come.""Things are being done?"
"Oh!--no doubt of it.It's one of the parts of the British machinery--that doesn't show....But nobody else could do it.
