Point Counter Point - Aldous Huxley [160]
‘Which is a tribute to art,’ said Philip. ‘As I’ve so often pointed out.’ He smiled at Walter, who blushed, remembering what his brother-in-law had said about the dangers of trying to make love after high poetic models. ‘We’re brought up topsy-turvy,’ Philip went on. ‘Art before life; Romeo and Juliet and filthy stories before marriage or its equivalents. Hence all young modern literature is disillusioned. Inevitably. In the good old days poets began by losing their virginity; and then, with a complete knowledge of the real thing and just where and how it was unpoetical, deliberately set to work to idealize and beautify it. We start with the poetical and proceed to the unpoetical. If boys and girls lost their virginities as early as they did in Shakespeare’s day, there’d be a revival of the Elizabethan love lyric.’
‘You may be right,’ said Spandrell. ‘All I know is that, when I discovered the reality, I found it disappointing—but attractive, all the same. Perhaps so attractive just because it was so disappointing. The heart’s a curious sort of manure—heap; dung calls to dung, and the great charm of vice consists in its stupidity and sordidness. It attracts because it’s so repellent. But repellent it always remains. And I remember when the War came, how exultantly glad I was to have a chance of getting out of the muck and doing something decent, for a change.’
‘For King and Country!’ mocked Illidge.
‘Poor Rupert Brooke! One smiles now at that thing of his about honour having come back into the world again. Events have made it seem a bit comical.’
‘It was a bad joke even when it was written,’ said Illidge.
‘No, no. At the time it was exactly what I felt myself.’
‘Of course you did. Because you were what Brooke was—a spoilt and blase member of the leisured class. You needed a new thrill, that was all. The War and that famous “honour” of yours provided it.’
Spandrell shrugged his shoulders. ‘Explain it like that if you want. All I say is that in August 1914 I wanted to do something noble. I’d even have been quite pleased to get killed.’
‘“Rather death than dishonour,” what?’
‘Yes, quite literally,’ said Spandrell. ‘For I can assure you that all the melodramas are perfectly realistic. There are certain occasions when people do say that sort of thing. The only defect of melodrama is that it leads you to believe that they say it all the time. They don’t, unfortunately. But “rather death than dishonour” was exactly what I was thinking in August 1914. If the alternative to death was the stupid kind of life I’d been leading. I wanted to get killed.’
‘There speaks the gentleman of leisure again,’ said Illidge.
‘And then, just because I’d been brought up a good deal abroad and knew three foreign languages, because I had a mother who was too fond of me and a stepfather with military influence, I was transferred willynilly into the Intelligence. God was really bent on damning me.’
‘He was very kindly trying to save your life,’ said Philip.
‘But I didn’t want it saved. Not unless I could do something decent with it, something heroic for preference, or at least difficult and risky. Instead of which they put me on to liaison work and then to hunting spies. Of all the sordid and ignoble businesses…’
‘But after all the trenches weren’t so very romantic.’
‘No, but they were dangerous. Sitting in a trench, you needed courage and endurance. A spy catcher was perfectly safe and didn’t have to display any of the nobler virtues; while as to his opportunities for vice… Those towns behind the lines, and Paris, and the ports-whores and alcohol were their chief products.’
‘But after all,’ said Philip, ‘those are avoidable evils.’ Naturally cold, he found it easy to be reasonable.
‘Not avoidable by me,’ Spandrell answered. ‘Particularly in those circumstances. I’d wanted to do something decent, and I’d been prevented. So it became a kind of point of honour to do the opposite