Free Tarr (Oxford World's Classics) by Wyndham Lewis

sneak and a spy.’
    ‘That seems to me to be a case of pot calling the kettle black: I should not have said that you were conspicuous—.’
    ‘No. You know you have joined yourself to those who hush their voices to hear what other people are saying! Everyone who does not contend openly and take his share of the common burden of ignominy of life is a sneak, unless it is for a solid motive. The exemption you claim is not to work in, there is no personal rationale for your privileges, you make no claim to deserve your state, only to be lucky. But against what have you exchanged your temper, your freedom, andyour fine baritone voice? You have exchanged them for an old hat that does not belong to you and a shabbiness you have not merited by suffering neediness. Your untidiness is a sentimental indulgence: we should insist upon every man dressing up to his income, it should be understood that he make willy-nilly a smart
fresh
appearance. Patching the seat of your trousers, instead of—!’
    ‘Wait a minute’ Hobson said, with a cracked laugh. ‘I don’t admit I am shabby, of course, but when you say I am sentimental because I am not fashionably dressed, I wonder if you mean that you are peculiarly free of sentimentality—?’
    ‘As to that I don’t care a fig, perbacco, put that away, I’m talking about
you
: let me proceed. With your training you are decked in the plumes of very fine birds indeed: but what does it amount to, your plumes are not meant to fly with but merely to slouch and skip along the surface of the earth. You wear the livery of a ridiculous set, you are a cunning and sleek domestic: no thought can come out of your head before it has slipped on its uniform: all your instincts are drugged with a malicious languor—an arm, a respectability, invented by a group of giggling invert-spinsters * who supply you with a fraudulent patent of superiority.’
    Hobson opened his mouth, had a movement of the body to speak; but he relapsed.
    ‘You reply “What are the grounds of all this censure? I know I am not morally defensible, I am lazy and second-rate, that’s not my fault, I have done the best for myself. I was not suited for any heroic station, like yours: I live sensibly and quietly, cultivating my vegetable ideas, * and also my roses and Victorian lilies: * I do no harm to anybody.” ’
    Hobson had a vague gesture of assent and puzzled enquiry.
    ‘That is not quite the case. That is a little inexact. Your proceedings possess a herdesque astuteness; in the scale against the individual weighing less than the Yellow Press * yet being a closer and meaner attack. Also you are essentially
spies
, in a lousy safe and well-paid service, as I told you before: you are disguised to look like the thing it is your function to betray—What is your position? you have bought have you not for eight hundred pounds at an aristocratic educational establishment a complete mental outfit, a programme of manners: for four years you trained with other recruits: you are now a perfectly disciplined social unit, with a profound
esprit de corps
. The Cambridgeset that you represent is, as observed in an average specimen, a hybrid of the Quaker, the homosexual and the Chelsea artist. * Your Oxford brothers, dating from the Wilde * decade, are a more muscular body: the Chelsea artists have at least no pretensions to be anything but philistine: the Quakers are powerful ruffians. You represent, my good Hobson, the
dregs
of anglo-saxon civilization: there is absolutely nothing softer upon the earth. Your flabby potion is a mixture of the lees of Liberalism, * the poor froth blown off the decadent Nineties, the wardrobe-leavings of a vulgar bohemianism with its headquarters in the suburb of Carlyle and Whistler. * You are concentrated, highly-organized barley-water: * there is nothing in the universe to be said for you: any efficient state would confiscate your property, burn your wardrobe—that old hat and the rest—as infectious