The Children's Book

instincts and inclinations which had helped their ancestors. Political philosophers had believed that humans were rational creatures. They had not studied the structures of impulse. He analysed the nature of friendship, the emotional response to political candidates and monarchs, the forming of groups, crowds and herds. He introduced students like Karl to the essays by William Trotter on the Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War. Karl learned to think that men acted from irrational impulses, and that groups, crowds and herds behaved differently from individuals. He himself was an isolated individual, despite having signed the Fabian Basis, despite his socialism. He wanted to help the massed poor, but he did not know what to say when he met them, most particularly when they were in a group, or crowd.

Nevertheless, he undertook to lecture for the newly formed National Committee for the Break-Up of the Poor Law. This body, Beatrice Webb’s brainchild, had its offices between the Fabian Society’s premises and the London School of Economics, all just off the Strand. Their members overlapped considerably—they were all working to the same end. They hoped to be more realistic than the socialists. Beatrice Webb said that the vision of a socialist could stand as a long-term aim, but in the meantime something must be done with “the millions of destitute persons which constitute an infamous and wholly unnecessary accompaniment to an Individualist State.”

Individualist politics was difficult. There were meetings, conferences, summer schools, study groups and leaflets. There were sixteen thousand members, and branches everywhere. There were eleven paid employees and four hundred lecturers on call. The lecturers included, as well as Charles/Karl, Rupert Brooke, who travelled in a picturesque caravan from the New Forest to Corfe and back. He and his friend spoke engagingly on village greens and street corners. Beatrice Webb meant to bring about “a rapid but almost unconscious change in the substance of society.” Rupert Brooke was euphoric about human beings and human nature.

I suddenly feel the extraordinary value and importance of everybody I meet, and almost everything I see… that is, when the mood is on me. I roam about places—yesterday I did it even in Birmingham!—and sit in trains and see the essential glory and beauty of all the people I meet. I can watch a dirty middle-aged tradesman in a railway- carriage for hours, and love every dirty greasy sulky wrinkle in his weak chin and every button on his spotted unclean waistcoat. I know their states of mind are bad. But I’m so much occupied with their being there at all, that I don’t have time to think of that.

In 1910 also the Fabians held a summer camp. The camps were on the North Welsh coast—two weeks for the campaign workers who included a mix of Fabian Nursery, lower-class professionals, elderly ladies, teachers and politicians. These were followed by a conference of Fabians from universities. The University Fabians were high-spirited and the Cambridge contingent were camp. Rupert reported, to Lytton Strachey, late-night titillations and rampages. Beatrice Webb complained that they held “boisterous, larky entertainments” and were “inclined to go away rather more critical and supercilious than when they came … They won’t come unless they know who they are going to meet, sums up Rupert Brooke… they don’t want to learn, they don’t think they have anything to learn… the egotism of the young university man is colossal.”

Julian and Griselda did not go to this camp. Charles/Karl went to the camp for the campaign workers. The women wore gym tunics. The men wore flannels or breeches and stout socks. There were sensible shoes, and gymnastic exercises, and swimming. Charles/Karl had managed to persuade Elsie Warren to leave Ann with Marian Oakeshott and come to the camp. Elsie was reading and thinking with a speed and intensity much fiercer than Rupert Brooke’s little dives into Elizabethan poetry. As though her life depended on it, said Charles/Karl. It does, said Elsie. She read Matthew Arnold and George Eliot, A Modern Utopia and News from Nowhere, Morris’s poems and Edward Carpenter. She wrote down what she liked and disliked about her reading in an exercise book she did not show to Charles/Karl.

There was supposed to be no sex at Fabian camps. There was companionship, and purpose, and a clean mind in a clean body. Elsie asked questions, and questioned the answers she got. When she arrived, her accent was defiantly midlands. In fact she could, if she chose, neutralise it to a flat, nondescript intonation. Charles/Karl watched her engage battle and make friendships with a teacherly pleasure. There was also sex. Charles/Karl knew, he thought, that Elsie “liked” him. They had private jokes. They were at ease with each other. Too much, Charles/ Karl thought. Much depended on the weather. On one of the sunnier days they took a walk together, and sat down on a hummock nibbled by sheep. I should like to kiss you, said Charles/Karl.

“And then what?” said Elsie, moving neither closer nor further, lying at his side and examining the earth.

“Well, and then we might find out.”

“Find out what?” said Elsie steadfastly.

“Hurting you, in any way, is the worst thing I can think of.”

“And losing my independence is my worst.”

“You can give me an independent kiss.”

“Can I? I don’t think so. One thing leads to another.”

“You can’t say,” said Charles/Karl, daring greatly, “that you haven’t been led before. You know about it. I don’t.”

Elsie frowned. “You haven’t met a real snake in human form, I don’t think. A bird-charming snake with cold eyes and a will.”

“I have a will. But I don’t want to hurt you—”

“There’s a lot of things you don’t want to do, as well as that. Another thing I don’t want, is not to be friends with you. It means a lot to me.”

Charles reached for her hand. She let him. He moved his face towards hers, and she closed her eyes. And then snapped her lips shut and turned away.

At the end of the camp, Charles/Karl and Elsie set off a day early, missing a talk by Herbert Methley on “Art and Freedom, Social and Personal.” Elsie said she didn’t want to hear him, and Charles concurred. “We can change trains,” he said, “and look at the countryside.” He waited. “All right,” said Elsie.

They ended up at a pretty pub in Oxfordshire, with a garden sloping down to a stream, and roses, and pinks, and forget-me-nots. Charles said: “Elsie, you are Mrs. Wellwood.”

“No I’m not, and won’t be. But you can say so, this once. Just this once. I’ve thought it out, and I owe you.”

“Owe,” said Charles. “Damn you. I want you to be happy.”

“I’m not ever going to be happy. I’ve got out of my place, and not into any other. But here we can play-act, if you want, I said we could.”

In the bedroom to which they were shown, he thought of kissing her, and thought he would not kiss her, and opened the window on to the lawn so that they could hear the river running. Midges flew in. He closed the window.