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the new machiavelli-第10章

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with impassable fences and forbiddingly expensive turnstiles; but it 

added to the ordinary spectacle of meteorology a great variety of 

gratuitous fireworks which banged and flared away of a night after 

supper and drew me abroad to see them better。  Such walks as I took; 

to Croydon; Wembledon; West Wickham and Greenwich; impressed upon me 

the interminable extent of London's residential suburbs; mile after 

mile one went; between houses; villas; rows of cottages; streets of 

shops; under railway arches; over railway bridges。  I have forgotten 

the detailed local characteristicsif there were anyof much of 

that region altogether。  I was only there two years; and half my 

perambulations occurred at dusk or after dark。  But with Penge I 

associate my first realisations of the wonder and beauty of twilight 

and night; the effect of dark walls reflecting lamplight; and the 

mystery of blue haze…veiled hillsides of houses; the glare of shops 

by night; the glowing steam and streaming sparks of railway trains 

and railway signals lit up in the darkness。  My first rambles in the 

evening occurred at PengeI was becoming a big and independent…

spirited boyand I began my experience of smoking during these 

twilight prowls with the threepenny packets of American cigarettes 

then just appearing in the world。



My life centred upon the City Merchants School。  Usually I caught 

the eight…eighteen for Victoria; I had a midday meal and tea; four 

nights a week I stayed for preparation; and often I was not back 

home again until within an hour of my bedtime。  I spent my half 

holidays at school in order to play cricket and football。  This; and 

a pretty voracious appetite for miscellaneous reading which was 

fostered by the Penge Middleton Library; did not leave me much 

leisure for local topography。  On Sundays also I sang in the choir 

at St。 Martin's Church; and my mother did not like me to walk out 

alone on the Sabbath afternoon; she herself slumbered; so that I 

wrote or read at home。  I must confess I was at home as little as I 

could contrive。



Home; after my father's death; had become a very quiet and 

uneventful place indeed。  My mother had either an unimaginative 

temperament or her mind was greatly occupied with private religious 

solicitudes; and I remember her talking to me but little; and that 

usually upon topics I was anxious to evade。  I had developed my own 

view about low…Church theology long before my father's death; and my 

meditation upon that event had finished my secret estrangement from 

my mother's faith。  My reason would not permit even a remote chance 

of his being in hell; he was so manifestly not evil; and this 

religion would not permit him a remote chance of being out yet。  

When I was a little boy my mother had taught me to read and write 

and pray and had done many things for me; indeed she persisted in 

washing me and even in making my clothes until I rebelled against 

these things as indignities。  But our minds parted very soon。  She 

never began to understand the mental processes of my play; she never 

interested herself in my school life and work; she could not 

understand things I said; and she came; I think; quite insensibly to 

regard me with something of the same hopeless perplexity she had 

felt towards my father。



Him she must have wedded under considerable delusions。  I do not 

think he deceived her; indeed; nor do I suspect him of mercenariness 

in their union; but no doubt he played up to her requirements in the 

half ingenuous way that was and still is the quality of most wooing; 

and presented himself as a very brisk and orthodox young man。  I 

wonder why nearly all lovemaking has to be fraudulent。  Afterwards 

he must have disappointed her cruelly by letting one aspect after 

another of his careless; sceptical; experimental temperament appear。  

Her mind was fixed and definite; she embodied all that confidence in 

church and decorum and the assurances of the pulpit which was 

characteristic of the large mass of the English peoplefor after 

all; the rather low…Church section WAS the largest single massin 

early Victorian times。  She had dreams; I suspect; of going to 

church with him side by side; she in a little poke bonnet and a 

large flounced crinoline; all mauve and magenta and starched under a 

little lace…trimmed parasol; and he in a tall silk hat and peg…top 

trousers and a roll…collar coat; and looking rather like the Prince 

Consort;white angels almost visibly raining benedictions on their 

amiable progress。  Perhaps she dreamt gently of much…belaced babies 

and an interestingly pious (but not too dissenting or fanatical) 

little girl or boy or so; also angel…haunted。  And I think; too; she 

must have seen herself ruling a seemly 〃home of taste;〃 with a 

vivarium in the conservatory that opened out of the drawing…room; or 

again; making preserves in the kitchen。  My father's science…

teaching; his diagrams of disembowelled humanity; his pictures of 

prehistoric beasts that contradicted the Flood; his disposition 

towards soft shirts and loose tweed suits; his inability to use a 

clothes brush; his spasmodic reading fits and his bulldog pipes; 

must have jarred cruelly with her rather unintelligent 

anticipations。  His wild moments of violent temper when he would 

swear and smash things; absurd almost lovable storms that passed 

like summer thunder; must have been starkly dreadful to her。  She 

was constitutionally inadaptable; and certainly made no attempt to 

understand or tolerate these outbreaks。  She tried them by her 

standards; and by her standards they were wrong。  Her standards hid 

him from her。  The blazing things he said rankled in her mind 

unforgettably。



As I remember them together they chafed constantly。  Her attitude to 

nearly all his moods and all his enterprises was a sceptical 

disapproval。  She treated him as something that belonged to me and 

not to her。  〃YOUR father;〃 she used to call him; as though I had 

got him for her。



She had married late and she had; I think; become mentally self…

subsisting before her marriage。  Even in those Herne Hill days I 

used to wonder what was going on in her mind; and I find that old 

speculative curiosity return as I write this。  She took a 

considerable interest in the housework that our generally 

servantless condition put upon hershe used to have a charwoman in 

two or three times a weekbut she did not do it with any great 

skill。  She covered most of our furniture with flouncey ill…fitting 

covers; and she cooked plainly and without very much judgment。  The 

Penge house; as it contained nearly all our Bromstead things; was 

crowded with furniture; and is chiefly associated in my mind with 

the smell of turpentine; a condiment she used very freely upon the 

veneered mahogany pieces。  My mother had an equal dread of 〃blacks〃 

by day and the 〃night air;〃 so that our brightly clean windows were 

rarely open。



She took a morning paper; and she would open it and glance at the 

headlines; but she did not read it until the afternoon and then; I 

think; she was interested only in the more violent crimes; and in 

railway and mine disasters and in the minutest domesticities of the 

Royal Family。  Most of the books at home were my father's; and I do 

not think she opened any of them。  She had one or two volumes that 

dated from her own youth; and she tried in vain to interest me in 

them; there was Miss Strickland's QUEENS OF ENGLAND; a book I 

remember with particular animosity; and QUEECHY and the WIDE WIDE 

WORLD。  She made these books of hers into a class apart by sewing 

outer covers upon them of calico and figured muslin。  To me in these 

habiliments they seemed not so much books as confederated old 

ladies。



My mother was also very punctual with her religious duties; and 

rejoiced to watch me in the choir。



On winter evenings she occupied an armchair on the other side of the 

table at which I sat; head on hand reading; and she would be darning 

stockings or socks or the like。  We achieved an effect of rather 

stuffy comfortableness that was soporific; and in a passive way I 

think she found these among her happy times。  On such occasions she 

was wont to put her work down on her knees and fall into a sort of 

thoughtless musing that would last for long intervals and rouse my 

curiosity。  For like most young people I could not imagine mental 

states without definite forms。



She carried on a correspondence with a number of cousins and 

friends; writing letters in a slanting Italian hand and dealing 

mainly with births; marriages and deaths; business starts (in the 

vaguest terms) and the distresses of bankruptcy。



And yet; you know; she did have a curious intimate life of her own 

that I suspected nothing of at the time; that only now becomes 

credible to me。  She kept a diary that is still in my posses
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