“That’s what makes them lay eggs,” said the little girl, swinging her long golden hair and laughing, as the cock leaped on a hen.
O dreadful, O wicked little girl, you’re talking smut to me. You’ll go mad, I shall go mad, our noses will drop off. Oh, please don’t talk like that, please, please!
From fornication and all other deadly sins… What is fornication? Have I committed fornication? Is that the holy word for smut? Why don’t they tell me what it means? why is it the foulest thing a decent man can commit? When that thing happened in the night it must have been fornication; I shall go mad and my nose will drop off.
Hymn Number… A few more years shall roll.
How wicked I must be!
Are there two religions? A few more years shall roll, in ten years half of you boys will be dead, Smut, nose dropping off, fornication and all other deadly sins. Oh, wash me in Thy Precious Blood, and take my sins away. Blood, Smut.
And then the other – a draught of vintage that has been cooled a long age in the deep-delved earth, tasting of Flora and the country green, dance and Proven~al song, and sunburned mirth? Listening to the sound of the wind as you fell asleep; watching the blue butterflies and the Small Coppers hovering and settling on the great scented lavender bush; taking off your clothes and letting your body slide into a cool, deep, clear rock-pool, while the grey kittiwakes clamoured round the sun-white cliffs and the scent of seaweeds and salt water filled you; watching the sun go down and trying to write something of what it made you feel, like Keats; getting up very early in the morning and riding out along the white empty lanes on your bicycle; wanting to be alone and think about things and feeling strange and happy and ecstatic – was that another religion? Or was that all Smut and Sin? Best not speak of it, best keep it all hidden. I can’t help it if it is Smut and Sin. Is Romeo and Juliet smut? It’s in the same book where you do parsing and analysis out of King John. Seize on the white wonder of dear Juliet’s hand and steal immortal blessing from her lips…
But more than words about things were things themselves. You looked and looked at them, and then you wanted to put down what they looked like, rearrange them in patterns. In the drawing-class they made you look at a dirty whitish cube, cylinder, and cone, and you drew and re-drew hard outlines which weren’t there. But for yourself you wanted to get the colours of things and how they faded into each other and how they formed themselves – or did you form them? – into exciting patterns. It was so much more fun to paint things than even to read what Keats and Shakespeare thought about them. George spent all his pocket-money on paints and drawingpencils and sketch-books and oil-sketching paper and water-colour blocks. For a long time he hadn’t much to look at, even in reproductions. He had Cruikshank and Qmz illustrations which he didn’t much care for; and a reproduction of a Bouguereau which he hated; and two Rossetti pictures which he rather liked; and a catalogue of the Tate Collection which gave him photographs of a great many horrible Watts and Frank Dicksees. Best of all, he liked an album of coloured reproductions of Turner’s watercolours. Then, one spring, George Augustus took him to Paris for a few days. They did an “educative” visit to the Louvre, and George simply leaped at the Italians and became very Pre-Raphaelite and adored the Primitives. He was quite feverish for weeks after he got back, unable to talk of anything else. Isabel was worried about him: it was so unboyish, so – well, really, quite unhealthy, all this silly craze for pictures, and spending hours and hours crouching over paint-blocks, instead of being in the fresh air. So much nicer for the boy to be manly. Wasn’t he old enough to have a gun licence and learn to kill things?
So George had a gun licence, and went out shooting every morning in the autumn. He killed several plovers and a wood-pigeon. Then one frosty November morning he fired into a flock of plovers, killed one, and wounded another, which fell down on the crisp grass with such a wail of despair. “If you wing a bird, pick it up and wring its neck”, he had been told. He picked up the struggling, heaving little mass of feathers, and with infinite repugnance and shut eyes tried to wring its neck. The bird struggled and squawked. George wrung harder and convulsively – and the whole head came off in his hand. The shock was unspeakable. He left the wretched body, and hurried home shuddering. Never again, never, never again would he kill things. He oiled his gun dutifully, as he had been told to do, put it away, and never touched it again. At nights he was haunted by the plover’s wail and by the ghastly sight of the headless, bleeding bird’s body. In the daytime he thought of them. He could forget them when he went out and sketched the calm trees and fields, or tried to desigu in his tranquil room. He plunged more deeply into painting than ever, and thus ended one of the many attempts to “make a man” of George Winterbourne.
The business of “making a man” of him was pursued at School, but with little more success, even with the aid of compulsion.
“The type of boy we aim at turning out,” the Head used to say to impressed parents, “is a thoroughly manly fellow. We prepare for the Universities, of course, but our pride is in our excellent Sports Record. There is an O.T.C., organized by Sergeant-Major Brown (who served throughout the South African War) and officered by the masters who have been trained in the Militia. Every boy must undergo six months’ training, and is then competent to take up arms for his Country in an emergency.”
The parents murmured polite approval, though rather tender mothers hoped the discipline was not too strict and “the guns not too heavy for young arms.” The head was contemptuously and urbanely reassuring. On such occasions he invariably quoted those stirring and indeed immortal lines of Rudyard Kipling which end up, “You’ll be a man, my son.” It is so important to know how to kill. Indeed, unless you know how to kill you cannot possibly be a Man, still less a Gentleman.
“The O.T.C. will parade in the Gymnasium for drill and instruction at twelve. Those who are excused will take Geography under Mr. Hobbs in Room 14.”
George hated the idea of the O.T.C. – he didn’t quite know why, but he somehow didn’t want to learn to kill and be a thoroughly manly fellow. Also, he resented being ordered about. Why should one be ordered about by thoroughly manly fellows whom one hates and despises? But then, as a very worthy and thoroughly manly fellow (who spent the War years in the Intelligence Department of the War Office, censoring letters) said of George many years later: “What Winterbourne needs is discipline, Discipline. He is far too self-willed and independent. The Army will make a Man of him.” Alas! it made a corpse of him. But then, as we all know, there is no Price too high to pay for the privilege of being made a thoroughly manly fellow.
So George, feeling immeasurably guilty, but immeasurably repelled, sneaked into the Geography class, instead of parading like a thoroughly manly fellow in embryo. In ten minutes a virtuous-looking but rather pimply prefect appeared:
“Captain James’s compliments, sir, and is Winterbourne here?”
As George was walked over to the Gymnasium by the innocent-looking, rather pimply, but thoroughly manly prefect, the latter said:
“Why couldn’t you do what you’re told, you filthy little sneak, instead of having to be ignominiously fetched?”
George made no answer. He just went hard and obstinate, hate-obstinate, inside. He was so clumsy and so bored – in spite of infinite manly bullyings – that the O.T.C. was very glad indeed to send him back to the Geography class after a few drills. He just went hate-obstinate, and obeyed with sullen, hate-obstinate docility. He didn’t disobey, but he didn’t really obey, not with anything inside him. He was just passive, and they could do nothing with him.
He wrote a great many impositions that term and lost a number of his precious half-holidays, the hours when he could sketch and paint and think about things. But they didn’t get at the inside vitality, it retreated behind another wall or two, threw up more sullen, hate-obstinate walls, but it was there all right, it might be all Smut and Sin; but if it was, well, Smutty and Sinful he would be. Only, he wouldn’t say “turd” and “talk smut” with the others, and he kicked out fiercely when any of the innocent-looking, rather pimply prefects tried to put their arms