A Modern Utopia

opian

elf-according to my best endeavours-and I must confess myself fully alive to the difficulties of

me into his room, into his clear and ordered work-room. I am tremb

meet him, stumble against a chair. Then, s

ese things I might have counted upon. I can fancy he winces with a twinge of sympathetic understanding at my manifest inferiority. Indeed, I come, trailing clouds of earthly confusion and weakness; I bear upon me all the defects of my world. He wears, I see, that white tunic with the purple band that I hav

is no fireplace for me to put my back against, or hearthrug to stand upon. He pushes me a

o you think of me? You don

at I have s

so lik

d your stor

any doubt l

u enter. You come from the world

want to know

how I got here," he says, wi

I in mine, and the absurd parody

imultaneously, an

ting is more difficult

mind. Inevitably, it would be personal and emotional. He would tell me how he stood in his worl

would contribute noth

I leave

fact that he, too, had been in some manner stirred. "I have seen him," I should say, needlessly, and se

wn preoccupation. "You know," he

ause and l

this worl

in thi

ar

me before, but I unders

er," he

w h

cross those gardens near here-and before I had recov

he says. "I did not really understand that when you s

did

ks out

en't met

h I've rather hated this Utopia of yours at times. You mustn'

should sw

?" he

thi

you s

encer, vivisectors, materialistic Science or Atheists, applies without correction to m

es. Not the broken woman

h she was pin

oks p

there!

loo

the public gardens to a tall white mass of University buildings that rises with a free and fearless gesture, to lift sal

"There's a lot of metal i

bulges, and bow windows, and its stained glass fanlight, and so forth. It lacks the self-complacent unreasonableness of Board of Works classicism. There's something in its proportions-as though someone with brains had t

his," he asks,

If she is here, she will be younger in spirit a

ins, with a note

mber. Things that happened at Frognal-dear romantic walks through the Sunday summer evenings, practically you two alone, you in your adolescent silk hat and your nice gentlemanly glov

tisfaction, "No! She wore a w

nder the Le

n by the Lesser Rule. She

g you, and you keep on losing touch with the

ce is disturbed. Thank Heav

course. It was as it was in our world, by the accidents of custom and proximity. Adolescence is a defenceless plastic period. You are

rplexed and trouble

fully. "No. It was herself."

disappointments that have not troubled me for years. There are things that happened to me in my adolescence that no discipline of reason will ever bring to a just proportion for me, the first humiliations I was made to suffer, the waste of all the fine irrecoverable loyalties and passions of my you

tened with understanding eyes. But for a little while t

istical absorptions, quite heedless of the great palace of

ns to be untempered. Here is a world and a glorious world, and it is for me to take hold of it, to have to do with it, here and now, and behold!

in life does not, at times at least, if not always, seem secondary to obscure rivalries and considerations, to the petty hates that are

dreams, I know, of vind

, are no more than a painted scene before which he

lly to be present and, as it we

and degenerated, but what was it sent him wrong? Was his failure inherent, or did som

has never entered t

, he would overcome and disregard. He has the most amazing power of resistance to uncongenial ideas; amazing that is, to me. He hates the idea

rsue one another, and one, near caught, s

beyond a thicket of flowering rhododendra, and then my ey

mood to critici

of the hands of its creator and becoming the backgro

s; he dislikes it because he suspects it of wanting to lethal chamber his aunt's "dear old doggie," and now he is reconciled to it bec

, laws, and artificial entanglements, and begin anew; but we have no power to liberate o