fair but limited ambitions of my ostensible self. This "sub-
careerist" element noted little things that affected the career,
made me suspicious of the rivalry of so-and-so, propitiatory to so-
and-so, whom, as a matter of fact, I didn't respect or feel in the
least sympathetic towards; guarded with that man, who for all his
charm and interest wasn't helpful, and a little touchy at the
appearance of neglect from that. No, I mean something greater and
not something smaller when I write of a hidden life.
In the ostensible self who glowed under the approbation of Altiora
Bailey, and was envied and discussed, praised and depreciated, in
the House and in smoking-room gossip, you really have as much of a
man as usually figures in a novel or an obituary notice. But Iam
tremendously impressed now in the retrospect by the realisation of
how little that frontage represented me, and just how little such
frontages do represent the complexities of the intelligent
contemporary. Behind it, yet struggling to disorganise and alter
it, altogether, was a far more essential reality, a self less
personal, less individualised, and broader in its references. Its
aims were never simply to get on; it had an altogether different
system of demands and satisfactions. It was critical, curious, more
than a little unfeeling-and relentlessly illuminating.
It is just the existence and development of this more generalised
self-behind-the-frontage that is making modern life so much more
subtle and intricate to render, and so much more hopeful in its
relations to the perplexities of the universe. I see this mental
and spiritual hinterland vary enormously in the people about me,
from a type which seems to keep, as people say, all its goods in the
window, to others who, like myself, come to regard the ostensible
existence more and more as a mere experimental feeder and agent for
that greater personality behind. And this back-self has its history
of phases, its crises and happy accidents and irrevocable
conclusions, more or less distinct from the adventures and
achievements of the ostensible self. It meets persons and phrases,
it assimilates the spirit of a book, it is startled into new
realisations by some accident that seems altogether irrelevant to
the general tenor of one's life. Its increasing independence of the
ostensible career makes it the organ of corrective criticism; it
accumulates disturbing energy. Then it breaks our overt promises
and repudiates our pledges, coming down at last like an overbearing
mentor upon the small engagements of the pupil.
In the life of the individual it takes the role that the growth of
philosophy, science, and creative literature may play in the
development of mankind.
2
It is curious to recall how Britten helped shatter that obvious,
lucidly explicable presentation of myself upon which I had embarked
with Margaret. He returned to revive a memory of adolescent dreams
and a habit of adolescent frankness; he reached through my shallow
frontage as no one else seemed capable of doing, and dragged that
back-self into relation with it.
I remember very distinctly a dinner and a subsequent walk with him
which presents itself now as altogether typical of the quality of
his influence.
I had come upon him one day while lunching with Somers and Sutton at
the Playwrights' Club, and had asked him to dinner on the spur of
the moment. He was oddly the same curly-headed, red-faced
ventriloquist, and oddly different, rather seedy as well as untidy,
and at first a little inclined to make comparisons with my sleek
successfulness. But that disposition presently evaporated, and his
talk was good and fresh and provocative. And something that had
long been straining at its checks in my mind flapped over, and he
and I found ourselves of one accord.
Altiora wasn't at this dinner. When she came matters were apt to
become confusedly strenuous. There was always a slight and
ineffectual struggle at the end on the part of Margaret to
anticipate Altiora's overpowering tendency to a rally and the
establishment of some entirely unjustifiable conclusion by a COUP-
DE-MAIN. When, however, Altiora was absent, the quieterinfluence
of the Cramptons prevailed; temperance and information for its own
sake prevailed excessively over dinner and the play of thought…
Good Lord! what bores the Cramptons were! I wonder I endured
them as I did. They had all of them the trick of lying in wait
conversationally; they had no sense of the self-exposures, the