“Are you listening?”
“Yes, but it hasn’t begun.”
“That is true. We can really omit all this introduction and at once begin.”
As the pages succeeded each other her hunger and fatigue changed to a fever of anxious attention.
“Well? Is not that a masterly analysis? You see. That should be translated for your Wimpole Street.”
“I don’t know. We are not like that. It would never occur to an English doctor to write for the general public anything that could shake its confidence in doctors. Foreigners are different. They think nothing of revealing and discussing the most awful things. It’s pessimism. They like pessimism.”
“It is a serious mistake to regard enlightenment as pessimism.”
“I don’t believe in Continental luminaries.”
“Your prejudices are at least frank.”
“I had forgotten the author was Russian. That idea of the rush of mixed subjects coming to the medical student too quickly one after the other for anything to be taken in, is awful, and perfectly true. Hosts of subjects, hosts of different theories about all of them; no general ideas. … Doctors have to specialise when they are boys and they remain ignorant all their lives.”
“This is not only for doctors. You have touched the great problem of modern life. No man can, today, see over the whole field of knowledge. The great Leibnitz was the last to whom this was possible.”
To be ignorant always, knowing one must die in ignorance. What was the use of going on? Life looked endless. Suddenly it would seem short. “Wait till you’re fifty and the years pass like weeks.” You would begin to see clearly all round you the things you could never do. Never go to Japan. Already it was beginning. No college. No wanderjahre. … Translating books might lead to wanderjahre.
“It’s certainly a book that ought to be translated.” At least there could be no more “Eminent men.” There might always be someone at work somewhere who would suddenly knock him down like a ninepin.
“Well you shall see. I will read you a passage from later, that you may judge whether you will care. I must tell you it deals of intimate matters. You must excuse.”
It was not only that he thought she might object. He also realised that the English reserves between them were being swept away. It was strange that a free Russian should have these sensibilities. He read his extract through, bringing it to a close in shaken tones, his features sensitively working.
Everyone ought to know. … It ought to be shouted from the housetops that a perfectly ordinary case leaves the patient sans connaissance et nageant dans le sang.
“It’s very interesting,” she said hurriedly, “but in English it would be condemned as unsuitable for general reading.”
“I thought that possible.”
“The papers would solemnly say that it deals with subjects that are better veiled.”
“Indeed it is remarkable. John Bull is indeed the perfect ostrich.”
“Oh those men who write like that don’t want them veiled from themselves.”
“I will tell you more than that. The Paris pornographia lives on its English patrons.”
“Oh no; I’m sure it doesn’t.”
“On the contrary I assure you this is a fact. Any French bookseller will tell you. I see that this distresses you. It is not perhaps in every case so base as would appear. There is always even in quite deliberate French obscenity a certain esprit. These subjects lend themselves.”
“Oh they don’t care about the esprit. It’s because they think they are being improper. They like to be what they call men of the world, in possession of a fund of things they think can’t be talked about; you can see their silly thoughts by the way they glance at each other; it’s all about nothing. What is obscenity? And the other half of them is ladies, who shout things by always carefully avoiding them; or, if they are ‘racey,’ flatter men’s topics by laughing in a pretended hilarious embarrassment, hitting them as it were, and rushing on to something else, very animated by a becoming blush. I never realised that before. But that’s the secret. What is obscenity?”
“You have touched a most interesting problem of psychology.”
“Besides Paris is full of Americans.”
“It is the same proposition. They are the cousins of the English.”
“I think the American ‘man of the world’ is much more objectionable. He is so horribly raw that he can’t help boasting openly, and the American woman flatters him, openly. It’s extraordinary. I mean the kind of heavy-featured fat middle-aged American woman who doesn’t smoke and thinks that voting would be unseemly for women. It used to make me simply ill with fury. … Dr. Bunyan Hopkinson’s brother came over for July and August two years ago. He was appalling. With a bright fair beard, and a most frightful twang; the worst I’ve ever heard. He used to talk incessantly, as if the whole table were waiting for his ideas. And knew everything, in the most awful superficial newspaper way. They have absolutely no souls at all. I never saw an American soul. The Canadians have. The Americans, at least the women, have reproachful ideals that they all agree about. So that they are all like one person; all the same effect. But wasn’t it screaming, Bunyan Hopkinson’s brother was called Bacchus. Yes. Did you ever hear anything so screaming? Isn’t that enough? Doesn’t it explain everything? He was a doctor too. He sat next to an elderly woman who was always scolding and preaching. She had an enormous American figure, and Guelph eyelids and Guelph cheeks coming down below her chin making great lengthways furrows on either side of it. But when Dr. Bacchus began to talk about Paris she would listen respectfully. He used always to be offering to
