would say - something very
sensible, no  doubt, but  Orlando heard it not,  for she was looking  at her
writing-table, out of the window, at the door. Upon which the Archduke would
say, "I  adore you", at the very same moment  that Orlando said  "Look, it's
beginning  to rain", at which they  were both much embarrassed,  and blushed
scarlet, and could  neither of them think what to say  next. Indeed, Orlando
was at her wit's end what to talk  about and had  she not bethought her of a
game called  Fly  Loo, at which great sums  of  money  can be lost with very
little expense of spirit, she would have had to marry him, she supposed; for
how else to get rid of him she knew not. By this device, however, and it was
a simple  one, needing only three lumps of sugar and a sufficiency of flies,
the embarrassment of conversation was overcome and the necessity of marriage
avoided. For now, the Archduke would bet her five hundred pounds to a tester
that a fly would settle on this lump and not  on that. Thus, they would have
occupation  for  a  whole morning  watching  the  flies (who were  naturally
sluggish  at this  season and often spent an hour  or so  circling round the
ceiling) until at length some fine blue-bottle made his choice and the match
was won. Many hundreds of pounds  changed hands  between  them at this game,
which the Archduke, who was a born  gambler, swore was every bit as  good as
horse racing, and vowed he could play at for ever. But Orlando soon began to
weary.
     "What's the good of being a fine young woman in the prime of life," she
asked,  "if I  have to pass  all my mornings watching  blue-bottles  with an
Archduke?"
     She began to detest the sight of sugar;  flies made her dizzy. Some way
out of the difficulty there must be, she supposed, but she was still awkward
in the arts of her sex, and as she could no longer knock a man over the head
or  run him through the  body  with  a rapier, she could think of  no better
method  than this. She caught a blue-bottle, gently  pressed the life out of
it (it was half dead  already; or  her kindness for the dumb creatures would
not have permitted it) and secured it by a drop of gum  arabic to  a lump of
sugar. While the Archduke was gazing at the ceiling, she  deftly substituted
this lump for the one  she  had laid  her money on, and  crying  "Loo  Loo!"
declared that she had won her bet. Her reckoning was that the Archduke, with
all his knowledge of sport and  horseracing, would detect  the fraud and, as
to cheat at Loo  is the most  heinous of crimes, and men  have been banished
from the society of  mankind to that of apes in the tropics for ever because
of  it, she calculated  that  he  would be  manly enough to  refuse  to have
anything  further  to  do with  her. But she misjudged the simplicity of the
amiable nobleman. He was no nice judge of  flies. A dead  fly looked  to him
much the same as a living one.  She played the trick twenty times on him and
he paid her over 17,250 pounds (which is about 40,885 pounds 6 shillings and
8  pence of  our own money) before Orlando  cheated so grossly that even  he
could be deceived  no longer. When he realized the truth at  last, a painful
scene ensued.  The Archduke rose to his  full height. He  coloured  scarlet.
Tears rolled down his cheeks one by one. That she had won a fortune from him
was nothing - she was welcome to it; that she had deceived him was something
- it hurt  him to think her capable  of it; but  that she had cheated at Loo
was  everything.  To  love  a  woman  who  cheated at  play  was,  he  said,
impossible. Here he  broke  down  completely. Happily, he  said,  recovering
slightly,  there were no  witnesses. She  was, after  all, only a  woman, he
said. In short, he was preparing in the chivalry of his heart to forgive her
and had bent  to  ask her pardon for the violence of his language,  when she
cut the matter short, as he stooped his proud head, by dropping a small toad
between his skin and his shirt.
     In justice  to her,  it must be  said  that  she would  infinitely have
preferred a rapier. Toads  are clammy things to conceal about one's person a
whole  morning.  But  if  rapiers are  forbidden;  one must have recourse to
toads. Moreover toads and laughter between them sometimes do what cold steel
cannot. She laughed. The Archduke blushed. She laughed. The Archduke cursed.
She laughed. The Archduke slammed the door.
     "Heaven be praised!" cried Orlando still laughing. She heard  the sound
of chariot  wheels  driven  at a furious pace  down the courtyard. She heard
them rattle  along the road.  Fainter and  fainter the sound became.  Now it
faded away altogether.
     "I am alone," said Orlando, aloud since there was no one to hear.
     That silence is more profound after  noise still wants the confirmation
of science. But that loneliness is more apparent directly after one has been
made  love  to,  many  women  would take their  oath. As  the  sound  of the
Archduke's chariot wheels died away,  Orlando felt drawing further from  her
and further from her an Archduke (she did not mind that), a fortune (she did
not mind that), a title (she did not mind that), the safety and circumstance
of married life (she did not mind that), but  life she heard going from her,
and  a  lover.  "Life  and  a   lover,"  she  murmured;  and  going  to  her
writing-table she dipped her pen in the ink and wrote:
     "Life and a lover" - a  line  which did not scan and made no sense with
what went before - something about the  proper way of dipping sheep to avoid
the scab. Reading it over she blushed and repeated,
     "Life  and  a  lover."  Then  laying her  pen  aside she went into  her
bedroom, stood in front of  her mirror, and arranged  her  pearls  about her
neck. Then  since pearls do not show to advantage against a morning gown  of
sprigged cotton,  she changed to a dove grey taffeta; thence to one of peach
bloom;  thence  to  a  wine-coloured  brocade. Perhaps  a dash of powder was
needed, and if her hair were disposed - so - about her brow, it might become
her.  Then she  slipped her feet into pointed slippers, and  drew an emerald
ring upon her finger. "Now," she said when all was ready  and lit the silver
sconces on either side  of the mirror. What woman would not have kindled  to
see  what  Orlando  saw  then burning  in  the  snow  -  for all  about  the
looking-glass were snowy lawns, and she was like a fire, a burning bush, and
the candle flames about her head were silver leaves; or again, the glass was
green  water,  and she a  mermaid,  slung with pearls,  a siren  in  a cave,
singing  so  that  oarsmen  leant from their  boats  and  fell down, down to
embrace her; so dark, so bright, so hard, so soft, was she, so astonishingly
seductive that it was a thousand  pities that there was no one there to  put
it in plain English,  and  say outright, "Damn it, Madam, you are loveliness
incarnate,"  which  was  the truth. Even Orlando (who had no conceit of  her
person) knew it, for she smiled the involuntary smile which women smile when
their  own beauty, which seems not their own, forms like a drop falling or a
fountain rising and confronts them all of a sudden in the glass - this smile
she  smiled  and then  she listened for a moment  and heard only  the leaves
blowing and the sparrows twittering,  and then she sighed, "Life, a  lover,"
and  then she turned on her heel  with extraordinary  rapidity;  whipped her
pearls from her neck, stripped the  satins from her back, stood erect in the
neat black silk knickerbockers of  an ordinary nobleman, and rang  the bell.
When the  servant came,  she  told him  to  order a coach and six  to  be in
readiness instantly. She was summoned by urgent affairs to London. Within an
hour of the Archduke's departure, off she drove.
     And as she drove, we may seize the opportunity, since the landscape was
of a simple  English kind  which needs no description, to draw the  reader's
attention  more  particularly  than we could at the  moment  to one  or  two
remarks which have slipped in here and there in the course of the narrative.
For example, it may have been observed that Orlando hid her manuscripts when
interrupted. Next, that she looked  long and intently in the glass; and now,
as she  drove to London, one might notice her starting and suppressing a cry
when the horses  galloped  faster  than she liked.  Her  modesty as  to  her
writing, her vanity as to her person, her fears for her safety  all seems to
hint  that  what was  said a short time  ago about  there being no change in
Orlando  the  man and Orlando the woman, was ceasing to be altogether  true.
She  was becoming a little more  modest, as women  are, of her brains, and a
little more vain, as women are, of her person. Certain susceptibilities were
asserting themselves,  and  others were diminishing.  The change  of clothes
had, some  philosophers will say, much to  do  with it. Vain trifles as they
seem, clothes  have, they say, more important offices than merely to keep us
warm. They change  our  view of  the world and the world's view  of us.  For
example,  when Captain  Bartolus  saw  Orlando's  skirt, he  had  an  awning
stretched for her  immediately, pressed  her to take another slice of  beef,
and  invited her to go ashore  with him in the long-boat. These  compliments
would certainly not have been paid  her  had her skirts, instead of flowing,
been cut tight  to her legs in the fashion of breeches. And when we are paid
compliments, it  behoves  us  to make  some  return.  Orlando curtseyed; she
complied; she flattered  the good  man's humours  as she would not have done
had his neat breeches been  a woman's skirts, and his braided coat a woman's
satin  bodice. Thus, there is much to  support  the view that  it is clothes
that wear us and not we  them; we may make them  take  the mould  of  arm or
breast,  but they mould our hearts, our brains, our tongues to their liking.
So,  having  now  worn skirts for a considerable time, a certain  change was
visible in Orlando, which is to be found if  the reader will  look at above,
even in her face. If we compare the picture of Orlando as a man with that of
Orlando as a woman we shall see that though both are undoubtedly one and the
same person, there are  certain changes. The man has  his hand free to seize
his sword, the woman must use hers to keep the satins from slipping from her
shoulders.  The man looks the world full in the face, as if it were made for
his uses and fashioned to his liking.  The woman takes a sidelong  glance at
it,  full  of subtlety, even  of  suspicion.  Had they both  worn  the  same
clothes, it is possible that their outlook might have been the same.
     That is the view of some philosophers and wise  ones, but on the whole,
we incline to another. The difference between the sexes is, happily,  one of
great profundity. Clothes are but a symbol of something hid deep beneath. It
was a change in Orlando herself that dictated her choice of  a woman's dress
and  of a  woman's sex.  And perhaps  in this she was only expressing rather
more openly  than  usual -  openness  indeed was the  soul  of her nature  -
something that happens to most people  without being thus plainly expressed.
For here again, we come  to a dilemma. Different though  the sexes are, they
intermix. In every human being a vacillation from one sex to the other takes
place, and  often  it is only  the clothes  that  keep  the male  or  female
likeness, while underneath the sex is the very opposite of what it is above.
Of  the complications  and confusions  which thus  result everyone  has  had
experience; but  here we leave  the general  question  and note only the odd
effect it had in the particular case of Orlando herself.
     For it was this mixture in her of  man  and woman,  one being uppermost
and then  the other,  that often gave her  conduct an unexpected  turn.  The
curious of her own sex would argue, for example, if Orlando was a woman, how
did she never take more than ten minutes  to dress? And were not her clothes
chosen rather  at  random, and sometimes worn rather shabby?  And  then they
would say, still, she has none of the formality of a man, or a man's love of
power. She  is  excessively  tender-hearted.  She could not endure to  see a
donkey beaten or  a  kitten  drowned. Yet  again,  they  noted, she detested
household matters, was up at dawn and out among the fields in  summer before
the  sun had risen. No  farmer knew  more about the crops than she did.  She
could drink with the best and liked games of hazard. She rode well and drove
six horses at a gallop over London Bridge. Yet again, though bold and active
as a man, it was remarked that the sight of another in danger brought on the
most womanly palpitations. She would burst into tears on slight provocation.
She was unversed in  geography, found mathematics intolerable, and held some
caprices which are more common among women than men, as for instance that to
travel south is to travel  downhill. Whether,  then, Orlando was most man or
woman, it is  difficult to say and cannot now be  decided. For her coach was
now rattling on the cobbles. She had reached her home in the city. The steps
were being let down; the iron gates were being opened. She was entering  her
father's house at Blackfriars,  which though fashion was fast deserting that
end of the town,  was still a  pleasant, roomy mansion, with gardens running
down to the river, and a pleasant grove of nut trees to walk in.
     Here she took up  her lodging and began instantly to look about her for
what she had come in search of - that is to say, life and a lover. About the
first there might  be some doubt; the  second  she  found  without the least
difficulty two days  after her arrival. It  was a  Tuesday  that she came to
town. On Thursday she  went for a walk in the Mall, as was then the habit of
persons of quality. She had not made more than  a turn or  two of the avenue
before she  was observed by a little knot of vulgar people  who go there  to
spy upon their  betters. As she came past them,  a  common woman  carrying a
child at her breast stepped forward, peered familiarly into Orlando's  face,
and cried out, "Lawk upon us, if it ain't the Lady Orlando!"  Her companions
came  crowding round, and Orlando found herself in a moment the centre of  a
mob  of staring  citizens and tradesmen's wives, all eager to  gaze upon the
heroine  of the celebrated lawsuit. Such was  the  interest  that  the  case
excited in  the minds  of the  common  people. She might, indeed, have found
herself gravely discommoded by the pressure of the crowd - she had forgotten
that ladies are not supposed to walk in public places alone - had not a tall
gentleman at once stepped forward and offered her the protection of his arm.
It was  the  Archduke. She  was overcome  with  distress and  yet with  some
amusement at the sight. Not only had this magnanimous nobleman forgiven her,
but in order to show that he took her levity with the toad in good  part, he
had procured a jewel made in the shape of that reptile which he pressed upon
her with a repetition of his suit as he handed her to her coach.
     What with the crowd, what with the Duke, what with the jewel, she drove
home in the  vilest  temper imaginable. Was it impossible then to  go for  a
walk without being half-suffocated, presented with a toad  set in  emeralds,
and  asked in marriage  by an Archduke?  She took  a kinder view of the case
next day  when  she found on her breakfast table half a  dozen  billets from
some of the greatest ladies in the land - Lady Suffolk, Lady Salisbury, Lady
Chesterfield, Lady  Tavistock, and others  who reminded her  in the politest
manner of old alliances  between their families and her own, and desired the
honour of her acquaintance. Next  day,  which  was a Saturday, many of these
great ladies waited on her in person. On Tuesday, about  noon, their footmen
brought cards of invitation to various routs, dinners, and assemblies in the
near  future; so that  Orlando  was  launched  without  delay, and with some
splash and foam at that, upon the waters of London society.
     To give a truthful account of London  society at  that or indeed at any
other  time, is beyond the  powers of the  biographer or the historian. Only
those who have little need of the truth, and no  respect for it -  the poets
and the novelists -  can be trusted to do it, for this is one of  the  cases
where the truth  does not exist. Nothing exists. The whole thing is a miasma
- a mirage.  To make our meaning plain - Orlando could come home from one of
these  routs at three or four in  the morning  with cheeks like a  Christmas
tree  and eyes like stars. She  would untie a lace, pace the room a score of
times, untie  another  lace, stop, and  pace  the room again.  Often the sun
would be  blazing  over Southwark chimneys before she could persuade herself
to get into bed, and there she would lie, pitching and tossing, laughing and
sighing for  an hour or longer before she slept at  last. And  what  was all
this  stir  about?  Society. And what had  society  said or done  to throw a
reasonable lady into such an  excitement?  In plain language, nothing.  Rack
her memory as she would, next day Orlando could never remember a single word
to  magnify  into the  name something. Lord O.  had  been gallant.  Lord  A.
polite. The  Marquis of C. charming. Mr M.  amusing. But  when she tried  to
recollect in what their gallantry, politeness,  charm, or wit had consisted,
she was bound  to  suppose her  memory  at fault, for she  could  not name a
thing.  It  was the same always. Nothing remained over the next day, yet the
excitement of the  moment  was intense. Thus  we are forced to conclude that
society is  one  of those brews such as skilled housekeepers serve hot about
Christmas time, whose flavour depends upon the proper mixing and stirring of
a dozen different ingredients. Take one out,  and  it is in itself  insipid.
Take  away  Lord O.,  Lord  A.,  Lord  C., or Mr  M. and separately  each is
nothing. Stir  them  all  together  and  they  combine to give  off the most
intoxicating   of   flavours,  the  most  seductive  of  scents.   Yet  this
intoxication,  this  seductiveness, entirely evade our analysis. At  one and
the same  time,  therefore,  society is everything  and society is  nothing.
Society is  the most  powerful concoction in the world and  society  has  no
existence whatsoever. Such  monsters  the  poets and the novelists alone can
deal  with;  with  such  something-nothings their  works  are stuffed out to
prodigious size; and to them with the best  will in the world we are content
to leave it.
     Following the  example of our predecessors, therefore, we will only say
that society in the  reign of Queen Anne was of unparalleled  brilliance. To
have the entry there was the aim of every  well-bred person. The graces were
supreme.  Fathers  instructed  their  sons,  mothers  their  daughters.   No
education was complete for either  sex which did not include the science  of
deportment, the  art of  bowing and  curtseying, the management of the sword
and the fan, the care  of the teeth, the conduct of the leg, the flexibility
of the knee, the proper methods  of  entering and  leaving the room, with  a
thousand etceteras, such  as will immediately suggest  themselves to anybody
who  has  himself been in society. Since Orlando had won the praise of Queen
Elizabeth for the way she handed a bowl  of rose water  as a boy, it must be
supposed  that  she was  sufficiently expert to pass muster. Yet it  is true
that  there was  an  absentmindedness about  her  which  sometimes  made her
clumsy; she was apt to think of poetry when she should have been thinking of
taffeta; her walk was a little too  much of a  stride for a  woman, perhaps,
and her gestures, being abrupt, might endanger a cup of tea on occasion.
     Whether  this  slight  disability  was  enough  to  counterbalance  the
splendour  of her bearing, or whether she inherited a drop  too much of that
black humour which ran in the veins of all her  race, certain it is that she
had not been in  the  world more than a score of times before she might have
been heard to ask herself, had  there been anybody but her spaniel Pippin to
hear her, "What the devil is the matter with me?" The occasion was  Tuesday,
the 16th of June 1712; she had just returned from a great  ball at Arlington
House; the dawn was in the sky,  and she  was pulling off her  stockings. "I
don't  care  if I never meet another soul as long as I live," cried Orlando,
bursting into tears. Lovers she had in plenty,  but  life, which  is,  after
all, of  some importance in its way, escaped her. "Is this," she asked - but
there was none to answer, "is this," she finished her sentence all the same,
"what  people  call  life?"  The spaniel raised  her  forepaw  in  token  of
sympathy. The  spaniel licked  Orlando with her tongue. Orlando stroked  the
spaniel with her hand. Orlando kissed the spaniel with her  lips. In  short,
there was the truest sympathy between them that can be between a dog and its
mistress,  and yet it cannot  be denied that  the dumbness  of  animals is a
great impediment to  the refinements  of intercourse. They wag their  tails;
they bow  the front  part of the body and elevate the hind;  they roll, they
jump, they paw, they whine, they bark,  they slobber, they have all sorts of
ceremonies and artifices of their own,  but the whole  thing is of no avail,
since speak they  cannot. Such was her quarrel, she thought, setting the dog
gently on to the floor, with the great people at Arlington House. They, too,
wag  their tails, bow,  roll, jump, paw, and  slobber, but talk they cannot.
"All these months that I've been  out in the world,"  said Orlando, pitching
one stocking across the room, "I've heard nothing but what Pippin might have
said. I'm cold. I'm  happy. I'm hungry.  I've  caught a mouse. I've buried a
bone. Please kiss my nose." And it was not enough.
     How, in so short a time, she had passed from intoxication to disgust we
will  only  seek to  explain by supposing that  this  mysterious composition
which we call society, is nothing absolutely good or bad in itself,  but has
a spirit in it, volatile but potent, which  either  makes you drunk when you
think it, as Orlando  thought it, delightful,  or gives you a headache  when
you think it, as Orlando thought it, repulsive.  That the faculty  of speech
has much to do with it either way, we take leave to doubt. Often a dumb hour
is  the  most  ravishing  of  all;  brilliant  wit  can  be  tedious  beyond
description. But to the poets we leave it, and so on with our story.
     Orlando threw  the  second  stocking after the first  and went  to  bed
dismally enough, determined that she would  forswear society  for ever.  But
again as it turned out, she was too hasty in  coming to her conclusions. For
the very next morning she woke to find, among the usual  cards of invitation
upon her table, one  from a  certain great  Lady, the Countess  of R. Having
determined overnight that she would never go into society again, we can only
explain Orlando's behaviour  - she  sent a messenger hot-foot to R. House to
say that she would attend her Ladyship with all  the pleasure in the world -
by the fact that she  was  still suffering from  the effect of three honeyed
words dropped into her ear  on  the deck of the "Enamoured Lady" by  Captain
Nicholas Benedict Bartolus  as they sailed down the Thames. Addison, Dryden,
Pope, he had said, pointing to the Cocoa Tree, and Addison, Dryden, Pope had
chimed in her head  like an  incantation ever  since. Who  can  credit  such
folly? but  so it  was.  All  her experience with Nick Greene had taught her
nothing. Such names still exercised  over her the most powerful fascination.
Something, perhaps, we must believe in, and as Orlando, we have said, had no
belief in the usual  divinities she bestowed her credulity upon  great men -
yet with a distinction. Admirals, soldiers, statesmen, moved her not at all.
But the very thought of a great writer stirred her to such a pitch of belief
that she almost  believed him to be invisible. Her instinct was a sound one.
One can only believe entirely, perhaps, in what one cannot see.  The  little
glimpse  she had  of these great  men  from the deck of the ship was of  the
nature  of a vision.  That the  cup  was china,  or the  gazette  paper, she
doubted. When Lord O. said one day that he  had dined with Dryden the  night
before,  she flatly disbelieved him.  Now, the Lady  R.'s reception room had
the reputation of  being the antechamber to  the presence room of genius; it
was  the place where men and women met to  swing censers  and chant hymns to
the bust  of  genius  in  a  niche in the wall.  Sometimes  the  God himself
vouchsafed  his  presence   for  a  moment.  Intellect  alone  admitted  the
suppliant, and nothing (so the report  ran)  was  said inside  that was  not
witty.
     It  was thus  with great trepidation that Orlando entered the room. She
found a company  already assembled in  a semicircle round the fire. Lady R.,
an oldish lady, of dark complexion, with a black lace  mantilla on her head,
was seated in a great arm-chair in the centre. Thus being somewhat deaf, she
could  control the conversation on both sides  of  her. On both sides of her
sat  men and women of the highest distinction. Every man,  it  was said, had
been  a  Prime  Minister  and  every  woman, it  was whispered, had been the
mistress  of a king. Certain  it is that all were brilliant,  and  all  were
famous. Orlando took her seat with a deep reverence in silence...After three
hours, she curtseyed profoundly and left.
     But  what,  the  reader may  ask with  some exasperation,  happened  in
between.  In three hours, such  a company must have said  the  wittiest, the
profoundest, the  most interesting  things  in the world. So it  would  seem
indeed. But the fact appears to  be that they said nothing. It is a  curious
characteristic which  they  share with all the most brilliant societies that
the world has seen. Old  Madame du Deffand  and her friends talked for fifty
years without stopping.  And  of  it all, what remains? Perhaps  three witty
sayings. So that we  are at liberty to suppose either that nothing was said,
or that nothing witty  was said, or that the fraction of three witty sayings
lasted eighteen thousand two hundred  and fifty nights, which does not leave
a liberal allowance of wit for any one of them.
     The truth would seem  to  be - if  we dare  use  such a word  in such a
connection - that  all these groups  of people lie under an enchantment. The
hostess is  our modern Sibyl. She  is a witch  who  lays her  guests under a
spell. In this house they think themselves happy; in that witty;  in a third
profound. It is all an illusion (which is  nothing against it, for illusions
are the most valuable and necessary of all  things, and  she who can  create
one is among the world's greatest benefactors), but as it  is notorious that
illusions are shattered by  conflict with reality, so  no real happiness, no
real wit, no real profundity are tolerated where the illusion prevails. This
serves to explain why Madame du Deffand said no more than three witty things
in  the course of fifty years. Had she said more, her circle would have been
destroyed. The  witticism, as it  left  her  lips, bowled  over the  current
conversation as a cannon ball lays low the violets and the daisies. When she
made  her   famous   "mot  de  Saint  Denis"  the  very  grass  was  singed.
Disillusionment  and desolation followed. Not a word was uttered. "Spare  us
another such, for Heaven's sake, Madame!" her friends cried with one accord.
And she  obeyed. For almost  seventeen years she  said nothing memorable and
all went well. The  beautiful counterpane  of illusion lay unbroken  on  her
circle as it  lay  unbroken on the circle of Lady R. The guests thought that
they  were  happy,  thought  that they  were witty, thought  that  they were
profound,  and, as they  thought this, other people thought  it  still  more
strongly; and so it got about that  nothing was more delightful than one  of
Lady  R.'s assemblies;  everyone envied  those who were admitted; those  who
were admitted  envied  themselves because  other people envied them;  and so
there seemed no end to it - except that which we have now to relate.
     For  about  the  third time  Orlando  went  there  a  certain  incident
occurred.  She was  still under the illusion that  she was listening  to the
most brilliant epigrams  in  the  world, though,  as a  matter of fact,  old
General C. was only saying, at some length, how the  gout had left his  left
leg and  gone to his right, while Mr L. interrupted when any proper name was
mentioned, "R.? Oh! I know Billy R. as well as I know myself. S.? My dearest
friend. T.? Stayed with him a fortnight in  Yorkshire" - which,  such is the
force of illusion, sounded like  the  wittiest  repartee, the most searching
comment  upon  human life,  and  kept the  company in a  roar; when the door
opened and a little gentleman entered whose name Orlando did not catch. Soon
a curiously disagreeable sensation came over her. To judge from their faces,
the rest began  to feel it as well. One gentleman said there was a  draught.
The  Marchioness  of  C. feared  a  cat must be under the sofa. It was as if
their eyes were being slowly opened after a  pleasant  dream and nothing met
them but a cheap wash-stand and a dirty counterpane. It was as  if the fumes
of some  delicious wine were  slowly leaving  them. Still the General talked
and still Mr L. remembered. But it became more and more apparent how red the
General's neck was, how bald  Mr  L.'s  head  was. As  for what  they said -
nothing more tedious and  trivial could be imagined.  Everybody fidgeted and
those who had fans yawned behind them. At last Lady R. rapped with hers upon
the arm of her great chair. Both gentlemen stopped talking.
     Then the little  gentleman said, He said  next, He said finally  (These
sayings are  too well known to require repetition, and besides, they are all
to be found in his published works.),
     Here, it cannot be denied,  was true wit, true wisdom, true profundity.
The company was thrown into complete dismay. One such saying was bad enough;
but  three, one after another, on the same evening! No society could survive
it.
     "Mr Pope," said old Lady R. in a  voice trembling with sarcastic  fury,
"you are  pleased  to be  witty." Mr Pope flushed red. Nobody spoke  a word.
They sat  in dead silence  some twenty minutes. Then, one by one, they  rose
and slunk  from  the room.  That they would  ever  come  back  after such an
experience  was doubtful. Link-boys could be heard calling their coaches all
down  South Audley  Street. Doors were  slammed  and  carriages  drove  off.
Orlando found  herself near Mr Pope on the staircase. His lean and misshapen
frame was shaken by a variety  of emotions.  Darts of malice, rage, triumph,
wit, and terror  (he was shaking like a leaf) shot from his  eyes. He looked
like  some squat reptile set with a burning topaz in  its forehead.  At  the
same time, the  strangest tempest  of emotion seized now  upon the  luckless
Orlando. A  disillusionment  so  complete as that  inflicted not an hour ago
leaves the mind rocking from side to side. Everything appears ten times more
bare and  stark than before. It is a moment fraught with the  highest danger
for  the human spirit. Women turn nuns and men priests  in  such moments. In
such  moments,  rich men sign  away their  wealth;  and  happy men cut their
throats  with  carving knives. Orlando  would have  done  all willingly, but
there was a rasher  thing still for her to do, and this she did. She invited
Mr Pope to come home with her.
     For if it is rash  to walk into a  lion's den unarmed, rash to navigate
the Atlantic in a rowing boat,  rash to stand on one  foot on  the top of St
Paul's, it is  still  more  rash to  go home alone with a poet.  A  poet  is
Atlantic and  lion  in  one. While one drowns us  the other gnaws  us. If we
survive the teeth, we succumb to the waves. A man who can  destroy illusions
is both beast and flood. Illusions are to the soul what atmosphere is to the
earth. Roll up that tender  air  and  the plant dies, the colour  fades. The
earth we walk on is a parched cinder.  It is marl we tread and fiery cobbles
scorch  our feet. By the truth we  are undone. Life is  a dream. 'Tis waking
that kills us. He who robs us of our dreams robs us of our life - (and so on
for  six pages  if you  will, but  the style  is  tedious  and may  well  be
dropped).
     On this showing, however, Orlando should have been a heap of cinders by
the time the chariot drew up at her house in Blackfriars. That she was still
flesh and  blood, though certainly exhausted, is entirely due  to a  fact to
which  we  drew attention earlier in the narrative. The less we see the more
we believe. Now the streets that lie between Mayfair and Blackfriars were at
that  time very imperfectly  lit. True, the lighting was a great improvement
upon that of the Elizabethan age. Then the benighted  traveller had to trust
to  the stars or  the  red flame of some night watchman to save him from the
gravel pits  at  Park  Lane  or  the oak woods  where swine  rootled  in the
Tottenham Court  Road. But even so it wanted much of our modern  efficiency.
Lamp-posts  lit with oil-lamps occurred every two hundred yards or  so,  but
between lay a considerable stretch of pitch  darkness. Thus for  ten minutes
Orlando and Mr Pope would be in blackness; and then for  about half a minute
again in the  light. A  very strange state of mind was thus bred in Orlando.
As the light  faded,  she began  to feel  steal over  her the most delicious
balm. "This  is  indeed  a very great honour for a young woman to be driving
with Mr Pope," she began to think, looking at the outline of his nose. "I am
the most blessed of my sex. Half  an inch from me - indeed, I feel the  knot
of his knee  ribbons pressing against my thigh - is the greatest wit in  Her
Majesty's dominions. Future ages will think of us with curiosity and envy me
with fury." Here came the lamp-post again. "What a foolish wretch I am!" she
thought. "There is no such thing as  fame and glory. Ages to come will never
cast a thought on me or on Mr Pope either. What's an `age', indeed? What are
`we'?" and their progress through Berkeley Square seemed the groping of  two
blind  ants,  momentarily  thrown  together  without interest or concern  in
common,  across a  blackened  desert.  She  shivered.  But  here  again  was
darkness.  Her  illusion revived.  "How  noble  his  brow  is," she  thought
(mistaking  a hump on a cushion  for  Mr  Pope's forehead  in the darkness).
"What a weight  of genius lives in it! What wit, wisdom,  and truth - what a
wealth of all those  jewels, indeed, for which  people are  ready  to barter
their lives! Yours  is the only light that burns for ever.  But for  you the
human pilgrimage would be performed in utter darkness"; (here the coach gave
a great lurch as it fell into a rut in  Park Lane) "without genius we should
be  upset and undone.  Most august, most  lucid  of beams,"  - thus  she was
apostrophizing the  hump on the cushion when they  drove beneath one of  the
street lamps in Berkeley Square and she realized  her mistake. Mr Pope had a
forehead no bigger than another man's. "Wretched man," she thought, "how you
have  deceived me!  I  took that hump for your forehead.  When  one sees you
plain, how ignoble, how despicable  you  are! Deformed and  weakly, there is
nothing to venerate in you, much to pity, most to despise."
     Again they were in  darkness and her anger became modified directly she
could see nothing but the poet's knees.
     "But it  is  I  that am  a wretch,"  she reflected,  once they were  in
complete obscurity again, "for base as you may be, am I not still  baser? It
is you who nourish and protect me,  you who  scare the wild beast,  frighten
the savage,  make me clothes  of  the silkworm's  wool,  and carpets of  the
sheep's. If I  want  to worship, have you  not provided me with  an image of
yourself and set it in the sky?  Are not  evidences of your care everywhere?
How humble, how grateful, how docile, should I not be, therefore?  Let it be
all my joy to serve, honour, and obey you."
     Here  they reached the big  lamp-post  at  the corner  of  what is  now
Piccadilly Circus. The light  blazed in her eyes, and she saw, besides  some
degraded creatures of her own  sex,  two wretched  pigmies on a stark desert
land. Both were naked, solitary, and  defenceless. The  one was powerless to
help the other. Each had enough to  do to look after itself. Looking Mr Pope
full in the face, "It is equally  vain," she thought, "for you to think  you
can  protect me,  or for me to think I  can worship you. The light  of truth
beats upon us  without shadow, and the light of truth is damnably unbecoming
to us both."
     All this time,  of course, they went on talking agreeably, as people of
birth and education use, about  the Queen's temper and  the Prime Minister's
gout, while the coach went from light to darkness down the Haymarket,  along
the  Strand,  up  Fleet  Street,  and  reached,  at  length,  her  house  in
Blackfriars. For some  time  the  dark  spaces between  the lamps  had  been
becoming brighter and the lamps themselves less bright - that is to say, the
sun  was rising, and it was in the equable but confused light of a  summer's
morning in which everything is seen but nothing is seen distinctly that they
alighted, Mr Pope handing Orlando  from  her carriage and Orlando curtseying
Mr Pope  to precede her into her mansion with the  most scrupulous attention
to the rites of the Graces.
     From  the foregoing  passage, however,  it must  not  be supposed  that
genius (but  the disease is now  stamped out in the  British Isles, the late
Lord  Tennyson, it  is said,  being the  last person to suffer from  it)  is
constantly  alight, for  then  we  should see everything  plain  and perhaps
should  be scorched  to  death  in  the  process. Rather  it  resembles  the
lighthouse in its working, which  sends one ray and then no more for a time;
save that genius is much more capricious in its manifestations and may flash
six or seven beams in quick succession  (as Mr Pope did that night) and then
lapse  into  darkness for a year or  for ever.  To  steer  by  its beams  is
therefore impossible, and when the dark spell is on them  men of genius are,
it is said, much like other people.
     It was happy  for Orlando,  though at first  disappointing,  that  this
should be so, for  she now  began to live much  in  the  company of  men  of
genius. Nor were they so different from the rest  of us  as  one might  have
supposed. Addison, Pope, Swift,  proved, she found, to  be fond of tea. They
liked arbours.  They  collected little bits of  coloured glass.  They adored
grottos. Rank  was not distasteful to them. Praise was delightful. They wore
plum-coloured  suits one day and grey another. Mr  Swift  had a fine malacca
cane. Mr Addison scented his  handkerchiefs. Mr Pope suffered with his head.
A piece  of  gossip  did  not  come  amiss.  Nor  were  they  without  their
jealousies. (We  are  jotting down a few  reflections that  came  to Orlando
higgledy-piggledy.) At first, she was annoyed with herself for noticing such
trifles, and kept a book in which to write down their memorable sayings, but
the page remained empty. All the same, her spirits  revived, and she took to
tearing up her cards of invitation to great parties; kept her evenings free;
began to look forward to Mr Pope's  visit, to Mr  Addison's, to Mr Swift's -
and so  on and so  on. If the reader will  here  refer to  the "Rape  of the
Lock",  to the  "Spectator",  to "Gulliver's Travels",  he  will  understand
precisely what these  mysterious words  may  mean.  Indeed,  biographers and
critics  might save themselves all their labours if readers would only  take
this advice. For when we read:
     Whether the Nymph shall break Diana's Law,
     Or some frail China Jar receive a Flaw,
     Or stain her Honour, or her new Brocade,
     Forget her Pray'rs or miss a Masquerade,
     Or lose her Heart, or Necklace, at a Ball
     - we know  as if we  heard him how  Mr Pope's tongue  flickered  like a
lizard's, how his eyes flashed, how his hand  trembled, how he loved, how he
lied, how he suffered. In  short,  every secret  of a  writer's soul,  every
experience  of his  life; every quality of  his mind is written large in his
work