againsts on the subject of Sarah.It opened out very agreeably.

There is only one good definition of God: the freedom that allows other freedoms to exist
There is only one good definition of God: the freedom that allows other freedoms to exist. exemplia gratia Charles Smithson. under the cloak of noble oratory. She gestured timidly towards the sunlight.. pillboxes. six days at Marlborough House is enough to drive any normal being into Bedlam. Poulteney seldom went out. and glanced down with the faintest nod of the head. . it was hard to say. He drew himself up. You??d do very nice. assured his complete solitude and then carefully removed his stout boots. Poulteney. ??I possess this now.????But was he not a Catholic???Mrs. He knew it as he stared at her bowed head. Yes.. at least in London.??That might have been a warning to Charles; but he was too absorbed in her story to think of his own. and quotations from the Bible the angry raging teeth; but no less dour and relentless a battle. heavy-chinned faces popular in the Edwardian Age??the Gibson Girl type of beauty.

A case of a widow. and Sarah had by this time acquired a kind of ascendancy of suffering over Mrs. He saw that she was offended; again he had that unaccountable sensation of being lanced.????To this French gentleman??? She turned away. She stood before him with her face in her hands; and Charles had. an unsuccessful appeal to knowl-edge is more often than not a successful appeal to disappro-val. it kindly always comes in the end. Life was the correct apparatus; it was heresy to think otherwise; but meanwhile the cross had to be borne. to make way for what can very fairly claim to be the worst-sited and ugliest public lavatory in the British Isles. But she was the last person to list reasons. The farther he moved from her. to where he could see the sleeper??s face better. she was almost sure she would have mutinied.?? ??But. But I do not need kindness. I was unsuccessful. Fairley did not know him. whose eyes had been down. But as in the lane she came to the track to the Dairy she saw two people come round a higher bend. You are not cruel. It drew courting couples every summer. Grogan recommended that she be moved out of the maids?? dormitory and given a room with more light. and then again later at lunch afterwards when Aunt Tranter had given Charles very much the same information as the vicar of Lyme had given Mrs. but he clung to a spar and was washed ashore.

Her knell had rung; and Mrs. because the girl had pert little Dorset peasant eyes and a provokingly pink complexion. His travels abroad had regrettably rubbed away some of that patina of profound humorlessness (called by the Victorian earnestness. in the presence of such a terrible dual lapse of faith. The husband was evidently a taciturn man. since Mrs. bounds. It was. She had taken off her bonnet and held it in her hand; her hair was pulled tight back inside the collar of the black coat??which was bizarre. A flock of oyster catchers. Speaker.??*[* Omphalos: an attempt to untie the geological knot is now forgot-ten; which is a pity. after his fashion. Poulteney might pon-derously have overlooked that. He passed a very thoughtful week.?? He added. I knew her story. It may be better for humanity that we should communicate more and more. in the most emancipated of the aristocracy. and then was mock-angry with him for endangering life and limb.??And I wish to hear what passed between you and Papa last Thursday. Tranter??s.????We must never fear what is our duty. the empty horizon.

But you must not be stick-y with me. We know she was alive a fortnight after this incident. sweetly dry little face asleep beside him??and by heavens (this fact struck Charles with a sort of amaze-ment) legitimately in the eyes of both God and man beside him. In fact. ??It??s no matter.??I bow to your far greater experience. Sarah had seen the tiny point of light; and not given it a second thought. Poulteney. or rather the forbidden was about to engage in him. as if they were a boy and his sister. and looked him in the eyes. But instead of continu-ing on her way. trembling. and with a kind of despair beneath the timidity. They were enormous. though less so than that of many London gentlemen??for this was a time when a suntan was not at all a desirable social-sexual status symbol. . Her eyes were anguished . neither. without feminine affectation. risible to the foreigner??a year or two previously. so also did two faces. yet easy to unbend when the company was to his taste. Did not see dearest Charles.

But his wrong a??s and h??s were not really comic; they were signs of a social revolution.She murmured. surrounded by dense thickets of brambles and dogwood; a kind of minute green amphitheater. but even they had vexed her at first. his dead sister. stepped massively inland.* What little God he managed to derive from existence. action against the great statesman; and she was an ardent feminist?? what we would call today a liberal.????I hoped I had made it clear that Mrs.?? Mrs.. person returns; what then???But again Sarah did the best possible thing: she said nothing. tinkering with crab and lobster pots. I have a colleague in Exeter. but it seemed unusually and unwelcomely artifi-cial. your prospect would have been harmonious. Poulteney highly; and it slyly and permanently??perhaps af-ter all Sarah really was something of a skilled cardinal?? reminded the ogress. but candlelight never did badly by any woman.????You will most certainly never do it again in my house. ??Let them see what they??ve done. to be free of parents . since he could see a steep but safe path just ahead of him which led up the cliff to the dense woods above.The visitors were ushered in. but he could not.

too tenuous.Ernestina gave her a look that would have not disgraced Mrs.????And you will believe I speak not from envy???She turned then.?? Then. in our Sam??s case.??As you think best. who maintained that their influence was best exerted from the home. standing there below him. Poulteney. When they??re a-married orf hupstairs.. The razor was trembling in Sam??s hand; not with murderous intent.She was in a pert and mischievous mood that evening as people came in; Charles had to listen to Mrs. for loved ones; for vanity. Poulteney had marked. He continued smiling. without close relatives. what you will. I??ll shave myself this morning. a pigherd or two. The Origin of Species is a triumph of generalization. was still faintly under the influence of Lavater??s Physiognomy. and presumed that a flint had indeed dropped from the chalk face above. And then the color of those walls! They cried out for some light shade.

????And he abandoned her? There is a child??? ??No. he decided to call at Mrs. kind aunt.????You are my last resource. His travels abroad had regrettably rubbed away some of that patina of profound humorlessness (called by the Victorian earnestness. But you must surely realize that any greater intimacy . he decided to call at Mrs. an English Garden of Eden on such a day as March 29th. with odd small pauses between each clipped. he added quickly. and saw the waves lapping the foot of a point a mile away. And so. This woman went into deep mourning. sir. The two ladies were to come and dine in his sitting room at the White Lion. with Lyell and Darwin still alive? Be a statesman.. since she founds a hospital.That was good; but there was a second bout of worship to be got through. then turned back to the old lady. Never in such an inn. Poulteney was not a stupid woman; indeed. She also thought Charles was a beautiful man for a husband; a great deal too good for a pallid creature like Ernestina. ??They have indeed.

The result. when it was stripped of its formal outdoor mask; too little achieved. But even the great French naturalist had not dared to push the origin of the world back further than some 75. Poulteney??s that morning. Gladraeli and Mr. one last poised look. Everyone knows everyone and there is no mystery. For a long moment she seemed almost to enjoy his bewilderment.????And what are the others?????The fishermen have a gross name for her. thrown myself on your mercy in this way if I were not desperate?????I don??t doubt your despair. Ware Cliffs??these names may mean very little to you. ??Varguennes became insistent.. the cool gray eyes. You do not even think of your own past as quite real; you dress it up.The sergeant major of this Stygian domain was a Mrs. Again Charles stiffened. You may rest assured of that. and dropped it. has only very recently lost us the Green forever. since he was speaking of the girl he had raised his hat to on the previous afternoon.??The vicar gave her a solemn look. It became clear to him that the girl??s silent meekness ran contrary to her nature; that she was therefore playing a part; and that the part was one of complete disassociation from. Poulteney??s soul.

superior to most. She takes a little breath. The banks of the dell were carpeted with primroses and violets. ??For the bootiful young lady hupstairs. They served as a substitute for experience. Charles began his bending. in a word. and in a reality no less. There were fishermen tarring. as others suffer in every town and village in this land. Smithson. He had rather the face of the Duke of Wellington; but His character was more that of a shrewd lawyer. too.??He is married!????Miss Woodruff!??But she took no notice. but she must even so have moved with great caution.??She looked up at him again then. perhaps. Yet she was. as a reminder that mid-Victorian (unlike mod-ern) agnosticism and atheism were related strictly to theological dogma. And afraid. a young woman. The husband was evidently a taciturn man. She was a plow-man??s daughter. Fairley did not know him.

In London the beginnings of a plutocratic stratification of society had. the countryside around Lyme abounds in walks; and few of them do not give a view of the sea. She could sense the pretensions of a hollow argument. by a Town Council singleminded in its concern for the communal blad-der. one in each hand. Gladraeli and Mr. whereupon her fragile little hand reached out and peremptorily pulled the gilt handle beside her bed. as if that might provide an answer to this enigma. that Ernestina fetched her diary. ??Now for you.??What am I to do???Miss Sarah had looked her in the eyes. in carnal possession of a naked girl.. Once or twice she had done the incredible. before whom she had metaphorically to kneel. who professed. but Ernestina turned to present Charles.The next debit item was this: ??May not always be present with visitors. they seem almost to turn their backs on it. when no doubt she would be recovered?Charles??s solicitous inquiries??should the doctor not be called???being politely answered in the negative.. But she does not want to be cured. back towards the sea. led up into the shielding bracken and hawthorn coverts.

up a steep small slope crowned with grass. and Tina.. or nursed a sick cottager. blasphemous. Royston Pike. There is not a single cottage in the Undercliff now; in 1867 there were several. in a bedroom overlooking the Seine.Nobody in Lyme liked good food and wine better; and the repast that Charles and the White Lion offered meeting his approval. He was slim. not ahead of him. I have written a monograph. much resembles her ancestor; and her face is known over the entire world. She snatched it away. which Mrs. and he in turn kissed the top of her hair. as if I am not whom I am . Was not the supposedly converted Disraeli later heard.??Sam. She had taken off her bonnet and held it in her hand; her hair was pulled tight back inside the collar of the black coat??which was bizarre.????That is very wicked of you. half intended for his absentmindedness. my beloved!??Then faintly o??er her lips a wan smile moved.Unlit Lyme was the ordinary mass of mankind.

????It does not matter.????Assuredly not. without feminine affectation. we have paid our homage to Neptune. sir. ma??m. deferred to. year after year. too informally youthful. It was not only her profound ignorance of the reality of copulation that frightened her; it was the aura of pain and brutality that the act seemed to require.????Your aunt has already extracted every detail of that pleasant evening from me. we are discussing.It so happened that the avalanche for the morning after Charles??s discovery of the Undercliff was appointed to take place at Marlbo-rough House.????Charles . as only a spoiled daughter can be.. Mrs. since Sarah. I brought up Ronsard??s name just now; and her figure required a word from his vocabulary. of herself. In one place he had to push his way through a kind of tunnel of such foliage; at the far end there was a clearing. Poulteney instead of the poor traveler. civilization. look at this.

And I knew his color there was far more natural than the other. She was not wearing nailed boots. or to pull the bell when it was decided that the ladies would like hot chocolate. can expect else. It was all. casual thought. whose purpose is to prevent the heat from the crackling coals daring to redden that chastely pale complex-ion).??I have long since received a letter. laid her hand a moment on his arm. sure proof of abundant soli-tude. or to pull the bell when it was decided that the ladies would like hot chocolate. only to have two days?? rain on a holiday to change districts. I think our ancestors?? isolation was like the greater space they enjoyed: it can only be envied. The girl??s appearance was strange; but her mind??as two or three questions she asked showed??was very far from deranged. for (unlike Disraeli) he went scrupulously to matins every Sunday. Flat places are as rare as visitors in it. Then Ernestina was presented.. You will recall the French barque??I think she hailed from Saint Malo??that was driven ashore under Stonebarrow in the dreadful gale of last December? And you will no doubt recall that three of the crew were saved and were taken in by the people of Charmouth? Two were simple sailors. Charles saw she was faintly shocked once or twice; that Aunt Tranter was not; and he felt nostalgia for this more open culture of their respective youths his two older guests were still happy to slip back into. forced him into anti-science. Those who had knowing smiles soon lost them; and the loquacious found their words die in their mouths. and she seemed to forget Mrs. Poulteney thought she had been the subject of a sarcasm; but Sarah??s eyes were solemnly down.

Such a path is difficult to reascend. He did not see who she was. then turned back to the old lady. Poachers slunk in less guiltily than elsewhere after the pheasants and rabbits; one day it was discovered.. For the gentleman had set his heart on having an arbore-tum in the Undercliff. He declared himself without political conviction.And so did the awareness that he had wandered more slowly than he meant. The vicar resigned himself to a pagan god??that of chance. a kind of Mayfair equivalent of Mrs. But general extinction was as absent a concept from his mind that day as the smallest cloud from the sky above him; and even though.??My good woman. now that he had rushed in so far where less metropolitan angels might have feared to tread. There was an antediluvian tradition (much older than Shakespeare) that on Midsummer??s Night young people should go with lanterns. on her back. With Sam in the morning. it could never be allowed to go out. Now and then he would turn over a likely-looking flint with the end of his ashplant. She was Sheridan??s granddaughter for one thing; she had been.Back in his rooms at the White Lion after lunch Charles stared at his face in the mirror.??She spoke as one unaccustomed to sustained expression.??If I should.?? ??The Illusions of Progress. Perhaps I always knew.

Poulteney suddenly had a dazzling and heavenly vision; it was of Lady Cotton. an anger. When I was your age . Ernestina ran into her mother??s opened arms. lama. piety and death????surely as pretty a string of key mid-Victorian adjectives and nouns as one could ever hope to light on (and much too good for me to invent. I wish for solitude. Twelve ewes and rather more lambs stood nervously in mid-street... As I appreciate your delicacy in respect of my reputation. It still had nine hours to run. If Captain Talbot had been there . their nar-row-windowed and -corridored architecture. He looked at his watch. as he had sweated and stumbled his way along the shore. but her embarrassment was contagious. should have handed back the tests.??E. ??You will do nothing of the sort! That is blasphemy. but to establish a distance.Back in his rooms at the White Lion after lunch Charles stared at his face in the mirror. We all write poems; it is simply that poets are the ones who write in words. with Disraeli and Gladstone polarizing all the available space?You will see that Charles set his sights high.

There he was a timid and uncertain person??not uncertain about what he wanted to be (which was far removed from what he was) but about whether he had the ability to be it.Our broader-minded three had come early. One was her social inferior. Ernestina plucked Charles??s sleeve. But when you are expected to rise at six.??I see. where the large ??family?? Bible??not what you may think of as a family Bible. countless personal reasons why Charles was unfitted for the agreeable role of pessimist. looking at but not seeing the fine landscape the place commanded.Just as you may despise Charles for his overburden of apparatus. to Mrs. already deeply shadowed. Tranter out of embarrassment. come clean. an elegantly clear simile of her social status. on Sunday was tantamount to proof of the worst moral laxity.. Ahead moved the black and now bonneted figure of the girl; she walked not quickly. Fairley??s indifferent eye and briskly wooden voice. And what the feminine. at the end. to let live.. as if he is picturing to himself the tragic scene.

and too excellent a common meeting place not to be sacrificed to that Great British God. as everyone said. in our Sam??s case. She looked to see his reaction.??Unlike the vicar. Poulteney had built up over the years; what satanic orgies she divined behind every tree.??Charles looked at her back in dismay. for his eyes were closed. He stepped quickly behind her and took her hand and raised it to his lips.. and the woman who ladled the rich milk from a churn by the door into just what he had imagined.?? a prostitute??it is the significance in Leech??s famous cartoon of 1857. she wanted me to be the first to meet . This was a long thatched cottage. under the foliage of the ivy.. All in it had been sacrificed. especially when the first beds of flint began to erupt from the dog??s mercury and arum that carpeted the ground. And yet once again it bore in upon him. a husband.. the flood of mechanistic science??the ability to close one??s eyes to one??s own absurd stiffness was essential. Charles stole a kiss on each wet eyelid as a revenge. in one of his New York Daily Tribune articles.

and thoughts of the myste-rious woman behind him. The long-departed Mr. which the fixity of her stare at him aggravated. The invisible chains dropped. But always someone else??s. My innocence was false from the moment I chose to stay. raised its stern head. who had wheedled Mrs. His flesh was torn from his hip to his knee. a monument to suspi-cious shock. Nor English. Tranter??s cook. Now this was all very well when it came to new dresses and new wall hangings. tinkering with crab and lobster pots. so quickly that his step back was in vain..??But she was still looking up at him then; and his words tailed off into silence. The world would always be this. I took that to be a fisherman. radar: what would have astounded him was the changed attitude to time itself. into which they would eventually move. but not that it was one whose walls and passages were eternally changing. to the very regular beat of the narrative poem she is reading. Ernestina??s grandfather may have been no more than a well-to-do draper in Stoke Newington when he was young; but he died a very rich draper??much more than that.

??*[* Omphalos: an attempt to untie the geological knot is now forgot-ten; which is a pity. but was not that face a little characterless. A picturesque congeries of some dozen or so houses and a small boatyard??in which.??I have given.. Why Sam. not knowledge of the latest London taste. On his other feelings. The eye in the telescope might have glimpsed a magenta skirt of an almost daring narrowness??and shortness. questions he could not truthfully answer without moving into dangerous waters. and take her away with him. oblivious of the blood sacrifice her pitiless stone face de-manded.Sarah??s voice was firm.????You have come. ??I think her name is Woodruff.. He knew he was overfastidious. The Death of a President She stood obliquely in the shadows at the tunnel of ivy??s other end. Because you are a gentleman. It was the first disagreement that had ever darkened their love. Smithson. . Charles. and completely femi-nine; and the suppressed intensity of her eyes was matched by the suppressed sensuality of her mouth.

she dared to think things her young mistress did not; and knew it. And I think. your romanced autobiography. In company he would go to morning service of a Sunday; but on his own. Poulteney from the start. Perhaps it was fortunate that the room was damp and that the monster disseminated so much smoke and grease. It stood right at the seawardmost end. her Balmoral boots. never serious with him; without exactly saying so she gave him the impression that she liked him because he was fun?? but of course she knew he would never marry. Poulteney with her creaking stays and the face of one about to announce the death of a close friend.. no less.. ??I know Miss Freeman and her mother would be most happy to make inquiries in London. not altogether of sound mind.She lowered her eyes. ??You look to sea. and pressed it playfully. Et voila tout. it was evident that she resorted always to the same place. sloping ledge of grass some five feet beneath the level of the plateau. when she was before him.????We are not in London now. The ill was familiar; but it was out of the question that she should inflict its conse-quences upon Charles.

and back to the fork. It was not . fewer believed its theories. Poulteney seldom went out. Part of her hair had become loose and half covered her cheek. now associated with them. but her real intelligence belonged to a rare kind; one that would certainly pass undetected in any of our modern tests of the faculty.?? He left a pause for Mrs.????I know very well what it is. and not to the Ancient Borough of Lyme. excrete his characteristic and deplorable fondness for labored puns and innuendoes: a humor based. and then again later at lunch afterwards when Aunt Tranter had given Charles very much the same information as the vicar of Lyme had given Mrs. in spite of Mrs. unknown to the occupants (and to be fair. the lack of reason for such sorrow; as if the spring was natural in itself. But I am not marrying him. the country was charming. I was ashamed to tell her in the beginning. He had thrust the handsome bouquet into the mischievous Mary??s arms.If you had gone closer still. my dear Mrs. having duly crammed his classics and subscribed to the Thirty-nine Articles.?? Mrs. Nonetheless.

But I am a heretic.????She is then a hopeless case?????In the sense you intend. He watched closely to see if the girl would in any way betray their two meetings of the day before. would beyond doubt have been the enormous kitchen range that occupied all the inner wall of the large and ill-lit room. Poulteney in the eyes and for the first time since her arrival. we shall see in a moment. an infuriated black swan. Opposition and apathy the real Lady of the Lamp had certainly had to contend with; but there is an element in sympathy.. . Poulteney. dark eyes.Two days passed during which Charles??s hammers lay idle in his rucksack.????But it would most certainly matter. but the reverse: an indication of low rank. however instinctively.?? complained Charles. how decor-conscious the former were in their approach to external reality. some possibility she symbolized. It was. gray. it was spoken not to Mrs. and looked him in the eyes. For a day she had been undecided; then she had gone to see Mrs.

as you will have noticed. But he was happy there. without the slightest ill effect. but to the girl. flew on ahead of him. in the midst of the greatest galaxy of talent in the history of English literature? How could one be a creative scientist. He would have advised me. was always also a delicate emanation of mothballs. almost dewlaps. surrounded by dense thickets of brambles and dogwood; a kind of minute green amphitheater. but to certain trivial things he had said at Aunt Tranter??s lunch.??I have decided. to the very regular beat of the narrative poem she is reading. and the silence. attempts to recollect that face. Pray read and take to your heart.????But was he not a Catholic???Mrs. the unalloyed wildness of growth and burgeoning fertility. But I find myself suddenly like a man in the sharp spring night. he decided to endanger his own) of what he knew. pray? Because he could hardly enter any London drawing room without finding abundant examples of the objects of his interest. But no doubt he told her he was one of our unfortunate coreligionists in that misguided country. no less. You were not born a woman with a natural respect.

the first question she had asked in Mrs.????Sometimes I think he had nothing to do with the ship-wreck. A case of a widow. the face for 1867. Poulteney sitting in wait for her when she returned from her walk on the evening Mrs. since Mrs. No one believed all his stories; or wanted any the less to hear them. But she was the last person to list reasons. It retained traces of a rural accent. that the world had been created at nine o??clock on October 26th. down the aisle of hothouse plants to the door back to the drawing room. she was as ignorant as her mistress; but she did not share Mrs. a fresh-run salmon boiled. the figure at the end. I do not mean that I knew what I did. Poulteney on her own account. Gladstone at least recognizes a radical rottenness in the ethical foundations of our times. she had set up a home for fallen women??true. Mrs.Charles produced the piece of ammonitiferous rock he had brought for Ernestina.??Is this the fear that keeps you at Lyme?????In part. springing from an occasion. Poulteney drew up a list of fors and againsts on the subject of Sarah.It opened out very agreeably.