The Children's Book - A. S. Byatt [71]
Miss Dace said she was interested more in change. She wanted lectures on new things, the New Life, the New Woman, new forms of art and democracy. And religion, she said, looking bravely at Frank.
Frank sipped his tea and said thoughtfully that in fact there was only an apparent contradiction. For many of the new things looked back to very old things for their strength. The Theosophists looked back to the wisdom of Tibetan masters, for instance. William Morris’s socialism looked back to mediaeval guilds and communities. Edward Carpenter’s ideas about shedding the stultifying respectability of Victorian family life looked back also, to human beings living in harmony with nature, as natural creatures. And the same was true of the vegetarians and the anti-vivisectionists, they required a wholesome respect for natural animal life, as it was before technical civilisation. In the arts too, Benedict Fludd, for instance, wanted to return to the ancient craft of the single potter, and to find the lost red glazes, the Turkish Iznik, the Chinese sang de boeuf. The Society for Psychical Research had rediscovered an old spirit world, and lost primitive powers of human communication. Old superstitions might furnish new spiritual understanding. Even the New Woman, he said, venturing a half-joke, sought freedom from whalebone and laces in Rational Dress but also in free-flowing mediaeval gowns. Women’s work in the world appeared to be new, but in the old times abbesses had wielded power and governed communities, as principals of colleges now did. Maybe all steps into the future drew strength from a searching gaze into the deep past. He would almost dare to propose himself as a lecturer on this theme.
There is a peculiar aesthetic pleasure in constructing the form of a syllabus, or a book of essays, or a course of lectures. Visions and shadows of people and ideas can be arranged and rearranged like stained-glass pieces in a window, or chessmen on a board. The committee considered what it would like to hear, and how the contributions should be balanced. Dobbin proposed that August Steyning be asked to expound his ideas about the new theatre, which would go beyond realism into the ancient skills of marionettes and puppets. It was agreed that Toby Youlgreave should be asked to speak on the relations between modern folklore and the ancient fairy faiths of our ancestors. They decided to invite Edward Carpenter to speak on his hopes for men, women, and his “in-between sex,” newly described. Names were brought up: Bernard Shaw, Graham Wallas, Beatrice Webb. Annie Besant, who had spoken persuasively, intensely and successively for secularism, birth control and Fabian socialism, had taken on the disputed leadership of the Theosophists since Madame Blavatsky had, in 1891, “abandoned a physical instrument that could no longer be used,” the “worn-out garment that she had worn for one incarnation.” For two or three visionary moments the three made models of what Mrs. Besant might have to say. But Patty Dace said, reluctantly, that she felt that Mrs. Besant would be too implicated in the current problems of the society to want to come and talk in Romney Marsh.
Miss Dace proposed a lecture on prostitution and the injustice in the differing ways in which women and men were treated. It was not, on reflection, a good idea to give such a lecture to an audience including so many military men. Maybe Mrs. Wellwood could talk about modern children,