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