The Children's Book - A. S. Byatt [262]
In the case of poverty the compilation of figures touched the imagination in a way individual cases could not. The hero of this study was Charles Booth who had interviewed everybody—registrars, school attendance officers, School Board visitors, census-takers—and had produced, beginning in 1892, seventeen volumes of reports on the nature and extent of poverty in London. He had mapped it street by street, colouring the streets according to the data, and had come to the conclusion that a million people, over 30 per cent of the population of London, had not the wherewithal to subsist or continue living. This figure revealed an unjust society as individual descriptions alone could not. It was a prerequisite for putting forward constitutional and legal changes—the introduction of a pension for the aged in place of the foul and degrading Workhouse, the suggestion of minimum legal wages, and maximum hours of work, of help for the unemployed that was rationally administered and not a function of charitable impulses amongst the better-off.
Charles/Karl listened dubiously. He had been moving amongst those who believed that only a revolution of the underdogs would bring about any change in the gruesome system. Everyone bothered about the poor. His parents’ friends truly held the belief that the undeserving poor should be sequestered in concentration camps and reformed, reconstructed or even—in the case of imbeciles and madmen—charitably put to death. In his college in Cambridge lunches were given for working-men, some of whom were crusty, some of whom were boys with sidelong glances under long lashes, some of whom were auto-didacts, socialists, or would-be poets. He did not feel he had got to know any of these selected and collected examples. He did not know what to say to them. He did not speak their language though he could communicate with intense small groups of German anarchists. He thought he might discuss the LSE with Humphry. The glamour of statistics had touched him.
Gerald kept making remarks to Julian over the top of Florence’s hat, as though she was not there. He said once, with a sardonic smile,
“He who would do good must do it in minute particulars.”
Julian drawled back “Not clear, my dear chap. Are you referring to particular people, or minute particular figures?”
Florence said “William Blake was mad, you know,” but neither of them appeared to have heard her, and perhaps it was not a clever remark.
They gathered after the lecture, the three Kingsmen easy in each other’s company, analysing good points, dismissing bad ones. Personal relationships, said Gerald, were the root of every virtue, couldn’t be done without, a man could not spend his life on reducing other men to figures without damage. Florence said we are not all monads, and nobody answered. Charles/Karl said society did exist, it was not only a mass of individuals. Classes existed. And male and female said Florence, crossly. Indeed, said Julian politely. Geraint, who had joined them, said that new women’s groups for agitating were very interesting. Gerald took the conversation back to human friendship.
He was embarrassing Julian, not because he was insulting Julian’s sister, but because Julian no longer loved him, and was not ready to admit that, precisely because of the intensity of the Apostolic faith in friendship as a supreme value. Julian no longer wanted to kiss, or indeed even to touch, Gerald, who had—as often happens—become much more eager to touch, to hold, to grasp Julian as Julian withdrew. Julian had begun to think Gerald was clever and silly, and did not want to know he thought that, it was inconvenient, their group was so comfortable, their walks so companionable, Cambridge and the English countryside so lovely.
Geraint moved round the group to Florence’s side. He said “I wish you had been able to persuade Imogen to go back home for a few days.” So did she, said Florence, repressively.
Geraint said she was looking beautiful. She broke off her intent frown to smile weakly at him, which encouraged him. He