---
title: "Keep the Aspidistra Flying"
author: "George Orwell"
languages: [en]
shelf: "Literature"
section: 1 of 12
url: https://scriptura.si/works/orwell-aspidistra-fp20181120/1/
cite: "George Orwell, Keep the Aspidistra Flying, section 1. Scriptura (scriptura.si), https://scriptura.si/works/orwell-aspidistra-fp20181120/1/"
---

# Keep the Aspidistra Flying

*George Orwell*

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> _Title:_ Keep the Aspidistra Flying
_Date of first publication:_ 1936
_Author:_ George Orwell (1903-1950)
_Date first posted:_ Nov. 14, 2018
_Date last updated:_ Nov. 14, 2018
Faded Page eBook #20181120

> This ebook was produced by: Delphine Lettau, Howard Ross & the online
Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net

> GEORGE ORWELL

> _Keep the_
                              _Aspidistra_
                                _Flying_

> Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have
    not money, I am become as a sounding brass, or a tinkling
    cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand
    all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith,
    so that I could remove mountains, and have not money, I am
    nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and
    though I give my body to be burned, and have not money, it
    profiteth me nothing. Money suffereth long, and is kind; money
    envieth not; money vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth
    not behave unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily
    provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but
    rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth all
    things, hopeth all things, endureth all things . . . And now
    abideth faith, hope, money, these three; but the greatest of
    these is money.

> I CORINTHIANS XIII (_adapted_)
                      Copyright 1936 by Eric Blair

> [The end of _Keep the Aspidistra Flying_ by George Orwell]

## 1. I

Source: https://scriptura.si/works/orwell-aspidistra-fp20181120/1/ · cite a paragraph as https://scriptura.si/works/orwell-aspidistra-fp20181120/1/#p-N

[¶0] The clock struck half past two. In the little office at the back of Mr
McKechnie's bookshop, Gordon—Gordon Comstock, last member of the
Comstock family, aged twenty-nine and rather moth-eaten already—lounged
across the table, pushing a fourpenny packet of Player's Weights open
and shut with his thumb.

[¶1] The ding-dong of another, remoter clock—from the Prince of Wales, the
other side of the street—rippled the stagnant air. Gordon made an
effort, sat upright and stowed his packet of cigarettes away in his
inside pocket. He was perishing for a smoke. However, there were only
four cigarettes left. Today was Wednesday and he had no money coming to
him till Friday. It would be too bloody to be without tobacco tonight as
well as all tomorrow.

[¶2] Bored in advance by tomorrow's tobaccoless hours, he got up and moved
towards the door—a small frail figure, with delicate bones and fretful
movements. His coat was out at elbow in the right sleeve and its middle
button was missing; his ready-made flannel trousers were stained and
shapeless. Even from above you could see that his shoes needed
re-soling.

[¶3] The money clinked in his trouser pocket as he got up. He knew the
precise sum that was there. Fivepence halfpenny—twopence halfpenny and
a Joey. He paused, took out the miserable little threepenny-bit and
looked at it. Beastly, useless thing! And bloody fool to have taken it!
It had happened yesterday, when he was buying cigarettes. 'Don't mind a
threepenny-bit, do you, sir?' the little bitch of a shop-girl had
chirped. And of course he had let her give it him. 'Oh no, not at all!'
he had said—fool, bloody fool!

[¶4] His heart sickened to think that he had only fivepence halfpenny in the
world, threepence of which couldn't even be spent. Because how can you
buy anything with a threepenny-bit? It isn't a coin, it's the answer to
a riddle. You look such a fool when you take it out of your pocket,
unless it's in among a whole handful of other coins. 'How much?' you
say. 'Threepence,' the shop-girl says. And then you feel all round your
pocket and fish out that absurd little thing, all by itself, sticking on
the end of your finger like a tiddleywink. The shop-girl sniffs. She
spots immediately that it's your last threepence in the world. You see
her glance quickly at it—she's wondering whether there's a piece of
Christmas pudding still sticking to it. And you stalk out with your nose
in the air, and can't ever go to that shop again. No! We won't spend our
Joey. Twopence halfpenny left—twopence halfpenny to last till Friday.

[¶5] This was the lonely after-dinner hour, when few or no customers were to
be expected. He was alone with seven thousand books. The small dark
room, smelling of dust and decayed paper, that gave on the office, was
filled to the brim with books, mostly aged and unsaleable. On the top
shelves near the ceiling the quarto volumes of extinct encyclopædias
slumbered on their sides in piles like the tiered coffins in common
graves. Gordon pushed aside the blue, dust-sodden curtains that served
as a doorway to the next room. This, better lighted than the other,
contained the lending library. It was one of those 'twopenny no-deposit'
libraries beloved of book-pinchers. No books in it except novels, of
course. And _what_ novels! But that too was a matter of course.

[¶6] Eight hundred strong, the novels lined the room on three sides
ceiling-high, row upon row of gaudy oblong backs, as though the walls
had been built of many-coloured bricks laid upright. They were arranged
alphabetically. Arlen, Burroughs, Deeping, Dell, Frankau, Galsworthy,
Gibbs, Priestley, Sapper, Walpole. Gordon eyed them with inert hatred.
At this moment he hated all books, and novels most of all. Horrible to
think of all that soggy, half-baked trash massed together in one place.
Pudding, suet pudding. Eight hundred slabs of pudding, walling him in—a
vault of puddingstone. The thought was oppressive. He moved on through
the open doorway into the front part of the shop. In doing so, he
smoothed his hair. It was an habitual movement. After all, there might
be girls outside the glass door. Gordon was not impressive to look at.
He was just five feet seven inches high, and because his hair was
usually too long he gave the impression that his head was a little too
big for his body. He was never quite unconscious of his small stature.
When he knew that anyone was looking at him he carried himself very
upright, throwing a chest, with a you-be-damned air which occasionally
deceived simple people.

[¶7] However, there was nobody outside. The front room, unlike the rest of
the shop, was smart and expensive-looking, and it contained about two
thousand books, exclusive of those in the window. On the right there was
a glass show-case in which children's books were kept. Gordon averted
his eyes from a beastly Rackhamesque dust-jacket; elvish children
tripping Wendily through a bluebell glade. He gazed out through the
glass door. A foul day, and the wind rising. The sky was leaden, the
cobbles of the street were slimy. It was St Andrew's day, the thirtieth
of November. McKechnie's stood on a corner, on a sort of shapeless
square where four streets converged. To the left, just within sight from
the door, stood a great elm-tree, leafless now, its multitudinous twigs
making sepia-coloured lace against the sky. Opposite, next to the Prince
of Wales, were tall hoardings covered with ads for patent foods and
patent medicines exhorting you to rot your guts with this or that
synthetic garbage. A gallery of monstrous doll-faces—pink vacuous
faces, full of goofy optimism. QT Sauce, Tru-weet Breakfast Crisps
('Kiddies clamour for their Breakfast Crisps'), Kangaroo Burgundy,
Vitamalt Chocolate, Bovex. Of them all, the Bovex one oppressed Gordon
the most. A spectacled rat-faced clerk, with patent-leather hair,
sitting at a café table grinning over a white mug of Bovex. 'Roland
Butta enjoys his meal with Bovex,' the legend ran.

[¶8] Gordon shortened the focus of his eyes. From the dust-dulled pane the
reflection of his own face looked back at him. Not a good face. Not
thirty yet, but moth-eaten already. Very pale, with bitter, ineradicable
lines. What people call a 'good' forehead—high, that is—but a small
pointed chin, so that the face as a whole was pear-shaped rather than
oval. Hair mouse-coloured and unkempt, mouth unamiable, eyes hazel
inclining to green. He lengthened the focus of his eyes again. He hated
mirrors nowadays. Outside, all was bleak and wintry. A tram, like a
raucous swan of steel, glided groaning over the cobbles, and in its wake
the wind swept a debris of trampled leaves. The twigs of the elm-tree
were swirling, straining eastward. The poster that advertised QT Sauce
was torn at the edge; a ribbon of paper fluttered fitfully like a tiny
pennant. In the side-street too, to the right, the naked poplars that
lined the pavement bowed sharply as the wind caught them. A nasty raw
wind. There was a threatening note in it as it swept over; the first
growl of winter's anger. Two lines of a poem struggled for birth in
Gordon's mind:

[¶9] Sharply the something wind—for instance, threatening wind? No, better,
menacing wind. The menacing wind blows over—no, sweeps over, say.

[¶10] The something poplars—yielding poplars? No, better, bending poplars.
Assonance between bending and menacing? No matter. The bending poplars,
newly bare. Good.

[¶11] _Sharply the menacing wind sweeps over_
                _The bending poplars, newly bare._

[¶12] Good. 'Bare' is a sod to rhyme; however, there's always 'air', which
every poet since Chaucer has been struggling to find rhymes for. But the
impulse died away in Gordon's mind. He turned the money over in his
pocket. Twopence halfpenny and a Joey—twopence halfpenny. His mind was
sticky with boredom. He couldn't cope with rhymes and adjectives. You
can't, with only twopence halfpenny in your pocket.

[¶13] His eyes refocused themselves upon the posters opposite. Foul, bloody
things. He had his private reasons for hating them. Mechanically he
re-read their slogans. 'Kangaroo Burgundy—the wine for Britons.' 'QT
Sauce Keeps Hubby Smiling.' 'Hike all day on a Slab of Vitamalt!' 'Are
you a Highbrow? Dandruff is the Reason.' 'Kiddies clamour for their
Breakfast Crisps.' 'Pyorrhea? Not me!' 'Roland Butta enjoys his meal
with Bovex.'

[¶14] Ha! A customer—potential, at any rate. Gordon stiffened himself.
Standing by the door, you could get an oblique view out of the front
window without being seen yourself. He looked the potential customer
over.

[¶15] A decentish middle-aged man, black suit, bowler hat, umbrella and
despatch-case—provincial solicitor or Town Clerk—keeking at the window
with large pale-coloured eyes. He wore a guilty look. Gordon followed
the direction of his eyes. Ah! So that was it! He had nosed out those D.
H. Lawrence first editions in the far corner. Pining for a bit of smut,
of course. He had heard of Lady Chatterley afar off. A bad face he had,
Gordon thought. Pale, heavy, downy, with bad contours. Welsh, by the
look of him—Nonconformist, anyway. He had the regular Dissenting
pouches round the corners of his mouth. At home, president of the local
Purity League or Seaside Vigilance Committee (rubber-soled slippers and
electric torch, spotting kissing couples along the beach parade), and
now up in town on the razzle. Gordon wished he would come in. Sell him a
copy of _Women in Love_. How it would disappoint him!

[¶16] But no! The Welsh solicitor had funked it. He tucked his umbrella under
his arm and moved off with righteously turned backside. But doubtless
tonight, when darkness hid his blushes, he'd slink into one of the
rubber-shops and buy _High Jinks in a Parisian Convent_, by Sadie
Blackeyes.

[¶17] Gordon turned away from the door and back to the bookshelves. In the
shelves to your left as you came out of the library the new and
nearly-new books were kept—a patch of bright colour that was meant to
catch the eye of anyone glancing through the glass door. Their sleek
unspotted backs seemed to yearn at you from the shelves. 'Buy me, buy
me!' they seemed to be saying. Novels fresh from the press—still
unravished brides, pining for the paper-knife to deflower them—and
review copies, like youthful widows, blooming still though virgin no
longer, and here and there, in sets of half a dozen, those pathetic
spinster-things, 'remainders', still guarding hopefully their long
preserv'd virginity. Gordon turned his eyes away from the 'remainders'.
They called up evil memories. The single wretched little book that he
himself had published, two years ago, had sold exactly a hundred and
fifty-three copies and then been 'remaindered'; and even as a
'remainder' it hadn't sold. He passed the new books by and paused in
front of the shelves which ran at right angles to them and which
contained more second-hand books.

[¶18] Over to the right were shelves of poetry. Those in front of him were
prose, a miscellaneous lot. Upwards and downwards they were graded, from
clean and expensive at eye-level to cheap and dingy at top and bottom.
In all bookshops there goes on a savage Darwinian struggle in which the
works of living men gravitate to eye-level and the works of dead men go
up or down—down to Gehenna or up to the throne, but always away from
any position where they will be noticed. Down in the bottom shelves the
'classics', the extinct monsters of the Victorian age, were quietly
rotting. Scott, Carlyle, Meredith, Ruskin, Pater, Stevenson—you could
hardly read the names upon their broad dowdy backs. In the top shelves,
almost out of sight, slept the pudgy biographies of dukes. Below those,
saleable still and therefore placed within reach, was 'religious'
literature—all sects and all creeds, lumped indiscriminately together.
_The World Beyond_, by the author of _Spirit Hands Have Touched Me_.
Dean Farrar's _Life of Christ_. _Jesus the First Rotarian._ Father
Hilaire Chestnut's latest book of RC propaganda. Religion always sells
provided it is soppy enough. Below, exactly at eye-level, was the
contemporary stuff. Priestley's latest. Dinky little books of reprinted
'middles'. Cheer-up 'humour' from Herbert and Knox and Milne. Some
highbrow stuff as well. A novel or two by Hemingway and Virginia Woolf.
Smart pseudo-Strachey predigested biographies. Snooty, refined books on
safe painters and safe poets by those moneyed young beasts who glide so
gracefully from Eton to Cambridge and from Cambridge to the literary
reviews.

[¶19] Dull-eyed, he gazed at the wall of books. He hated the whole lot of
them, old and new, highbrow and lowbrow, snooty and chirpy. The mere
sight of them brought home to him his own sterility. For here was he,
supposedly a 'writer', and he couldn't even 'write'! It wasn't merely a
question of not getting published; it was that he produced nothing, or
next to nothing. And all that tripe cluttering the shelves—well, at any
rate it existed; it was an achievement of sorts. Even the Dells and
Deepings do at least turn out their yearly acre of print. But it was the
snooty 'cultured' kind of books that he hated the worst. Books of
criticism and belles-lettres. The kind of thing that those moneyed young
beasts from Cambridge write almost in their sleep—and that Gordon
himself might have written if he had had a little more money. Money and
culture! In a country like England you can no more be cultured without
money than you can join the Cavalry Club. With the same instinct that
makes a child waggle a loose tooth, he took out a snooty-looking
volume—_Some Aspects of the Italian Baroque_—opened it, read a
paragraph and shoved it back with mingled loathing and envy. That
devastating omniscience! That noxious, horn-spectacled refinement! And
the money that such refinement means! For after all, what is there
behind it, except money? Money for the right kind of education, money
for influential friends, money for leisure and peace of mind, money for
trips to Italy. Money writes books, money sells them. Give me not
righteousness, O Lord, give me money, only money.

[¶20] He jingled the coins in his pocket. He was nearly thirty and had
accomplished nothing; only his miserable book of poems that had fallen
flatter than any pancake. And ever since, for two whole years, he had
been struggling in the labyrinth of a dreadful book that never got any
further, and which, as he knew in his moments of clarity, never would
get any further. It was the lack of money, simply the lack of money,
that robbed him of the power to 'write'. He clung to that as to an
article of faith. Money, money, all is money! Could you write even a
penny novelette without money to put heart in you? Invention, energy,
wit, style, charm—they've all got to be paid for in hard cash.

[¶21] Nevertheless, as he looked along the shelves he felt himself a little
comforted. So many of the books were faded and unreadable. After all,
we're all in the same boat. _Memento mori._ For you and for me and for
the snooty young men from Cambridge, the same oblivion waits—though
doubtless it'll wait rather longer for those snooty young men from
Cambridge. He looked at the time-dulled 'classics' near his feet. Dead,
all dead. Carlyle and Ruskin and Meredith and Stevenson—all are dead,
God rot them. He glanced over their faded titles. _Collected Letters of
Robert Louis Stevenson._ Ha, ha! That's good. _Collected Letters of
Robert Louis Stevenson!_ Its top edge was black with dust. Dust thou
art, to dust returnest. Gordon kicked Stevenson's buckram backside. Art
there, old false-penny? You're cold meat, if ever Scotchman was.

[¶22] Ping! The shop bell. Gordon turned round. Two customers, for the
library.

[¶23] A dejected, round-shouldered, lower-class woman, looking like a draggled
duck nosing among garbage, seeped in, fumbling with a rush basket. In
her wake hopped a plump little sparrow of a woman, red-cheeked,
middle-middle class, carrying under her arm a copy of _The Forsyte
Saga_—title outwards, so that passers-by could spot her for a highbrow.

[¶24] Gordon had taken off his sour expression. He greeted them with the
homey, family-doctor geniality reserved for library-subscribers.

[¶25] 'Good afternoon, Mrs Weaver. Good afternoon, Mrs Penn. What terrible
weather!'

[¶26] 'Shocking!' said Mrs Penn.

[¶27] He stood aside to let them pass. Mrs Weaver upset her rush basket and
spilled onto the floor a much-thumbed copy of Ethel M. Dell's _Silver
Wedding_. Mrs Penn's bright bird-eye lighted upon it. Behind Mrs
Weaver's back she smiled up at Gordon, archly, as highbrow to highbrow.
Dell! The lowness of it! The books these lower classes read!
Understandingly, he smiled back. They passed into the library, highbrow
to highbrow smiling.

[¶28] Mrs Penn laid _The Forsyte Saga_ on the table and turned her
sparrow-bosom upon Gordon. She was always very affable to Gordon. She
addressed him as Mister Comstock, shopwalker though he was, and held
literary conversations with him. There was the freemasonry of highbrows
between them.

[¶29] 'I hope you enjoyed _The Forsyte Saga_, Mrs Penn?'

[¶30] 'What a perfectly _marvellous_ achievement that book is, Mr Comstock! Do
you know that that makes the fourth time I've read it? An epic, a real
epic!'

[¶31] Mrs Weaver nosed among the books, too dim-witted to grasp that they were
in alphabetical order.

[¶32] 'I don't know what to 'ave this week, that I don't,' she mumbled through
untidy lips. 'My daughter she keeps on at me to 'ave a try at Deeping.
She's great on Deeping, my daughter is. But my son-in-law, now, 'e's
more for Burroughs. I don't know, I'm sure.'

[¶33] A spasm passed over Mrs Penn's face at the mention of Burroughs. She
turned her back markedly on Mrs Weaver.

[¶34] 'What I feel, Mr Comstock, is that there's something so _big_ about
Galsworthy. He's so broad, so universal, and yet at the same time so
thoroughly English in spirit, so _human_. His books are real _human_
documents.'

[¶35] 'And Priestley, too,' said Gordon. 'I think Priestley's such an awfully
fine writer, don't you?'

[¶36] 'Oh, he is! So big, so broad, so human! And so essentially English!'

[¶37] Mrs Weaver pursed her lips. Behind them were three isolated yellow
teeth.

[¶38] 'I think p'raps I can't do better'n 'ave another Dell,' she said. 'You
'ave got some more Dells, 'aven't you? I _do_ enjoy a good read of Dell,
I must say. I says to my daughter, I says, "You can keep your Deepings
and your Burroughses. Give me Dell," I says.'

[¶39] Ding Dong Dell! Dukes and dogwhips! Mrs Penn's eye signalled highbrow
irony. Gordon returned her signal. Keep in with Mrs Penn! A good, steady
customer.

[¶40] 'Oh, certainly, Mrs Weaver. We've got a whole shelf by Ethel M. Dell.
Would you like _The Desire of his Life_? Or perhaps you've read that.
Then what about _The Altar of Honour_?'

[¶41] 'I wonder whether you have Hugh Walpole's latest book?' said Mrs Penn.
'I feel in the mood this week for something epic, something _big_. Now
Walpole, you know, I consider a really _great_ writer, I put him second
only to Galsworthy. There's something so _big_ about him. And yet he's
so human with it.'

[¶42] 'And so essentially English,' said Gordon.

[¶43] 'Oh, of course! So essentially English!'

[¶44] 'I b'lieve I'll jest 'ave _The Way of an Eagle_ over again,' said Mrs
Weaver finally. 'You don't never seem to get tired of _The Way of an
Eagle_, do you, now?'

[¶45] 'It's certainly astonishingly popular,' said Gordon, diplomatically, his
eye on Mrs Penn.

[¶46] 'Oh, as_ton_ishingly!' echoed Mrs Penn, ironically, her eye on Gordon.

[¶47] He took their twopences and sent them happy away, Mrs Penn with
Walpole's _Rogue Herries_ and Mrs Weaver with _The Way of an Eagle._

[¶48] Soon he had wandered back to the other room and towards the shelves of
poetry. A melancholy fascination, those shelves had for him. His own
wretched book was there—skied, of course, high up among the unsaleable.
_Mice_, by Gordon Comstock; a sneaky little foolscap octavo, price three
and sixpence but now reduced to a bob. Of the thirteen BFs who had
reviewed it (and _The Times Lit. Supp._ had declared that it showed
'exceptional promise') not one had seen the none too subtle joke of that
title. And in the two years he had been at McKechnie's bookshop, not a
single customer, not a single one, had ever taken _Mice_ out of its
shelf.

[¶49] There were fifteen or twenty shelves of poetry. Gordon regarded them
sourly. Dud stuff, for the most part. A little above eye-level, already
on their way to heaven and oblivion, were the poets of yesteryear, the
stars of his earlier youth. Yeats, Davies, Housman, Thomas, De la Mare,
Hardy. Dead stars. Below them, exactly at eye-level, were the squibs of
the passing minute. Eliot, Pound, Auden, Campbell, Day Lewis, Spender.
Very damp squibs, that lot. Dead stars above, damp squibs below. Shall
we ever again get a writer worth reading? But Lawrence was all right,
and Joyce even better before he went off his coco-nut. And if we did get
a writer worth reading, should we know him when we saw him, so choked as
we are with trash?

[¶50] Ping! Shop bell. Gordon turned. Another customer.

[¶51] A youth of twenty, cherry-lipped, with gilded hair, tripped Nancifully
in. Moneyed, obviously. He had the golden aura of money. He hadn't been
in the shop before. Gordon assumed the gentlemanly-servile mien reserved
for new customers. He repeated the usual formula:

[¶52] 'Good afternoon. Can I do anything for you? Are you looking for any
particular book?'

[¶53] 'Oh, no, not weally.' An R-less Nancy voice. 'May I just _bwowse_? I
simply couldn't wesist your fwont window. I have such a tewwible
weakness for bookshops! So I just floated in—tee-hee!'

[¶54] Float out again, then, Nancy. Gordon smiled a cultured smile, as
booklover to booklover.

[¶55] 'Oh, please do. We like people to look round. Are you interested in
poetry, by any chance?'

[¶56] 'Oh, of course! I _adore_ poetwy!'

[¶57] Of course! Mangy little snob. There was a sub-artistic look about his
clothes. Gordon slid a 'slim' red volume from the poetry shelves.

[¶58] 'These are just out. They might interest you, perhaps. They're
translations—something rather out of the common. Translations from the
Bulgarian.'

[¶59] Very subtle, that. Now leave him to himself. That's the proper way with
customers. Don't hustle them; let them browse for twenty minutes or so;
then they get ashamed and buy something. Gordon moved to the door,
discreetly, keeping out of Nancy's way; yet casually, one hand in his
pocket, with the insouciant air proper to a gentleman.

[¶60] Outside, the slimy street looked grey and drear. From somewhere round
the corner came the clatter of hooves, a cold hollow sound. Caught by
the wind, the dark columns of smoke from the chimneys veered over and
rolled flatly down the sloping roofs. Ah!

[¶61] _Sharply the menacing wind sweeps over_
      _The bending poplars, newly bare,_
      _And the dark ribbons of the chimneys_
      _Veer downward_ tumty tumty (something like 'murky') _air_.

[¶62] Good. But the impulse faded. His eye fell again upon the ad-posters
across the street.

[¶63] He almost wanted to laugh at them, they were so feeble, so dead-alive,
so unappetising. As though anybody could be tempted by _those_! Like
succubi with pimply backsides. But they depressed him all the same. The
money-stink, everywhere the money-stink. He stole a glance at the Nancy,
who had drifted away from the poetry shelves and taken out a large
expensive book on the Russian ballet. He was holding it delicately
between his pink non-prehensile paws, as a squirrel holds a nut,
studying the photographs. Gordon knew his type. The moneyed 'artistic'
young man. Not an artist himself, exactly, but a hanger-on of the arts;
frequenter of studios, retailer of scandal. A nice-looking boy, though,
for all his Nancitude. The skin at the back of his neck was as
silky-smooth as the inside of a shell. You can't have a skin like that
under five hundred a year. A sort of charm he had, a glamour, like all
moneyed people. Money and charm; who shall separate them?

[¶64] Gordon thought of Ravelston, his charming, rich friend, editor of
_Antichrist_, of whom he was extravagantly fond, and whom he did not see
so often as once in a fortnight; and of Rosemary, his girl, who loved
him—adored him, so she said—and who, all the same, had never slept
with him. Money, once again; all is money. All human relationships must
be purchased with money. If you have no money, men won't care for you,
women won't love you; won't, that is, care for you or love you the last
little bit that matters. And how right they are, after all! For,
moneyless, you are unlovable. Though I speak with the tongues of men and
of angels. But then, if I haven't money, I _don't_ speak with the
tongues of men and of angels.

[¶65] He looked again at the ad-posters. He really hated them this time. That
Vitamalt one, for instance! 'Hike all day on a Slab of Vitamalt!' A
youthful couple, boy and girl, in clean-minded hiking kit, their hair
picturesquely tousled by the wind, climbing a stile against a Sussex
landscape. That girl's face! The awful bright tomboy cheeriness of it!
The kind of girl who goes in for Plenty of Clean Fun. Windswept. Tight
khaki shorts but that doesn't mean you can pinch her backside. And next
to them—Roland Butta. 'Roland Butta enjoys his meal with Bovex.' Gordon
examined the thing with the intimacy of hatred. The idiotic grinning
face, like the face of a self-satisfied rat, the slick black hair, the
silly spectacles. Roland Butta, heir of the ages; victor of Waterloo,
Roland Butta, Modern man as his masters want him to be. A docile little
porker, sitting in the money-sty, drinking Bovex.

[¶66] Faces passed, wind-yellowed. A tram boomed across the square, and the
clock over the Prince of Wales struck three. A couple of old creatures,
a tramp or beggar and his wife, in long greasy overcoats that reached
almost to the ground, were shuffling towards the shop. Book-pinchers, by
the look of them. Better keep an eye on the boxes outside. The old man
halted on the kerb a few yards away while his wife came to the door. She
pushed it open and looked up at Gordon, between grey strings of hair,
with a sort of hopeful malevolence.

[¶67] 'Ju buy books?' she demanded hoarsely.

[¶68] 'Sometimes. It depends what books they are.'

[¶69] 'I gossome _lovely_ books 'ere.'

[¶70] She came in, shutting the door with a clang. The Nancy glanced over his
shoulder distastefully and moved a step or two away, into the corner.
The old woman had produced a greasy little sack from under her overcoat.
She moved confidentially nearer to Gordon. She smelt of very, very old
breadcrusts.

[¶71] 'Will you 'ave 'em?' she said, clasping the neck of the sack. 'Only 'alf
a crown the lot.'

[¶72] 'What are they? Let me see them, please.'

[¶73] '_Lovely_ books, they are,' she breathed, bending over to open the sack
and emitting a sudden very powerful whiff of breadcrusts.

[¶74] 'Ere!' she said, and thrust an armful of filthy-looking books almost
into Gordon's face.

[¶75] They were an 1884 edition of Charlotte M. Yonge's novels, and had the
appearance of having been slept on for many years. Gordon stepped back,
suddenly revolted.

[¶76] 'We can't possibly buy those,' he said shortly.

[¶77] 'Can't buy 'em? _Why_ can't yer buy 'em?'

[¶78] 'Because they're no use to us. We can't sell that kind of thing.'

[¶79] 'Wotcher make me take 'em out o' me bag for, then?' demanded the old
woman ferociously.

[¶80] Gordon made a detour round her, to avoid the smell, and held the door
open, silently. No use arguing. You had people of this type coming into
the shop all day long. The old woman made off, mumbling, with
malevolence in the hump of her shoulders, and joined her husband. He
paused on the kerb to cough, so fruitily that you could hear him through
the door. A clot of phlegm, like a little white tongue, came slowly out
between his lips and was ejected into the gutter. Then the two old
creatures shuffled away, beetle-like in the long greasy overcoats that
hid everything except their feet.

[¶81] Gordon watched them go. They were just by-products. The throw-outs of
the money-god. All over London, by tens of thousands, draggled old
beasts of that description; creeping like unclean beetles to the grave.

[¶82] He gazed out at the graceless street. At this moment it seemed to him
that in a street like this, in a town like this, every life that is
lived must be meaningless and intolerable. The sense of disintegration,
of decay, that is endemic in our time, was strong upon him. Somehow it
was mixed up with the ad-posters opposite. He looked now with more
seeing eyes at those grinning yard-wide faces. After all, there was more
there than mere silliness, greed and vulgarity. Roland Butta grins at
you, seemingly optimistic, with a flash of false teeth. But what is
behind the grin? Desolation, emptiness, prophecies of doom. For can you
not see, if you know how to look, that behind that slick
self-satisfaction, that tittering fat-bellied triviality, there is
nothing but a frightful emptiness, a secret despair? The great
death-wish of the modern world. Suicide pacts. Heads stuck in gas-ovens
in lonely maisonettes. French letters and Amen Pills. And the
reverberations of future wars. Enemy aeroplanes flying over London; the
deep threatening hum of the propellers, the shattering thunder of the
bombs. It is all written in Roland Butta's face.

[¶83] More customers coming. Gordon stood back, gentlemanly-servile.

[¶84] The door-bell clanged. Two upper-middle-class ladies sailed noisily in.
One pink and fruity, thirty-fivish, with voluptuous bosom burgeoning
from her coat of squirrel-skin, emitting a super-feminine scent of Parma
violets; the other middle-aged, tough and curried—India, presumably.
Close behind them a dark, grubby, shy young man slipped through the
doorway as apologetically as a cat. He was one of the shop's best
customers—a flitting, solitary creature who was almost too shy to speak
and who by some strange manipulation kept himself always a day away from
a shave.

[¶85] Gordon repeated his formula:

[¶86] 'Good afternoon. Can I do anything for you? Are you looking for any
particular book?'

[¶87] Fruity-face overwhelmed him with a smile, but curry-face decided to
treat the question as an impertinence. Ignoring Gordon, she drew
fruity-face across to the shelves next the new books where the dog-books
and cat-books were kept. The two of them immediately began taking books
out of the shelves and talking loudly. Curry-face had the voice of a
drill-sergeant. She was no doubt a colonel's wife, or widow. The Nancy,
still deep in the big book on the Russian ballet, edged delicately away.
His face said that he would leave the shop if his privacy were disturbed
again. The shy young man had already found his way to the poetry
shelves. The two ladies were fairly frequent visitors to the shop. They
always wanted to see books about cats and dogs, but never actually
bought anything. There were two whole shelves of dog-books and
cat-books. 'Ladies' Corner', old McKechnie called it.

[¶88] Another customer arrived, for the library. An ugly girl of twenty,
hatless, in a white overall, with a sallow, blithering, honest face and
powerful spectacles that distorted her eyes. She was assistant at a
chemist's shop. Gordon put on his homey library manner. She smiled at
him, and with a gait as clumsy as a bear's followed him into the
library.

[¶89] 'What kind of book would you like this time, Miss Weeks?'

[¶90] 'Well'—she clutched the front of her overall. Her distorted,
black-treacle eyes beamed trustfully into his. 'Well, what I'd _really_
like's a good hot-stuff love story. You know—something _modern_.'

[¶91] 'Something modern? Something by Barbara Bedworthy, for instance? Have
you read _Almost a Virgin_?'

[¶92] 'Oh no, not her. She's too Deep. I can't bear Deep books. But I want
something—well, _you_ know—_modern_. Sex-problems and divorce and all
that. _You_ know.'

[¶93] 'Modern, but not Deep,' said Gordon, as lowbrow to lowbrow.

[¶94] He ranged among the hot-stuff modern love-stories. There were not less
than three hundred of them in the library. From the front room came the
voices of the two upper-middle-class ladies, the one fruity, the other
curried, disputing about dogs. They had taken out one of the dog-books
and were examining the photographs. Fruity-voice enthused over the
photograph of a Peke, the ickle angel pet, wiv his gweat big Soulful
eyes and his ickle black nosie—oh, so ducky-duck! But curry-voice—yes,
undoubtedly a colonel's widow—said Pekes were soppy. Give her dogs with
guts—dogs that would fight, she said; she hated these soppy lapdogs,
she said. 'You have no Soul, Bedelia, no Soul,' said fruity-voice
plaintively. The doorbell pinged again. Gordon handed the chemist's girl
_Seven Scarlet Nights_ and booked it on her ticket. She took a shabby
leather purse out of her overall pocket and paid him twopence.

[¶95] He went back to the front room. The Nancy had put his book back in the
wrong shelf and vanished. A lean, straight-nosed, brisk woman, with
sensible clothes and gold-rimmed pince-nez—schoolmarm possibly,
feminist certainly—came in and demanded Mrs Wharton-Beverley's history
of the suffrage movement. With secret joy Gordon told her that they
hadn't got it. She stabbed his male incompetence with gimlet eyes and
went out again. The thin young man stood apologetically in the corner,
his face buried in D. H. Lawrence's _Collected Poems_, like some
long-legged bird with its head buried under its wing.

[¶96] Gordon waited by the door. Outside, a shabby-genteel old man with a
strawberry nose and a khaki muffler round his throat was picking over
the books in the sixpenny box. The two upper-middle-class ladies
suddenly departed, leaving a litter of open books on the table.
Fruity-face cast reluctant backward glances at the dog-books, but
curry-face drew her away, resolute not to buy anything. Gordon held the
door open. The two ladies sailed noisily out, ignoring him.

[¶97] He watched their fur-coated upper-middle-class backs go down the street.
The old strawberry-nosed man was talking to himself as he pawed over the
books. A bit wrong in the head, presumably. He would pinch something if
he wasn't watched. The wind blew colder, drying the slime of the street.
Time to light up presently. Caught by a swirl of air, the torn strip of
paper on the QT Sauce advertisement fluttered sharply, like a piece of
washing on the line. Ah!

[¶98] _Sharply the menacing wind sweeps over_
               _The bending poplars, newly bare,_
               _And the dark ribbons of the chimneys_
               _Veer downward; flicked by whips of air,_
               _Torn posters flutter._

[¶99] Not bad, not bad at all. But he had no wish to go on—could not go on,
indeed. He fingered the money in his pocket, not chinking it, lest the
shy young man should hear. Twopence halfpenny. No tobacco all tomorrow.
His bones ached.

[¶100] A light sprang up in the Prince of Wales. They would be swabbing out the
bar. The old strawberry-nosed man was reading an Edgar Wallace out of
the twopenny box. A tram boomed in the distance. In the room upstairs Mr
McKechnie, who seldom came down to the shop, drowsed by the gas-fire,
white-haired and white-bearded, with snuff-box handy, over his
calf-bound folio of Middleton's _Travels in the Levant_.

[¶101] The thin young man suddenly realised that he was alone and looked up
guiltily. He was an habitué of bookshops, yet never stayed longer than
ten minutes in any one shop. A passionate hunger for books, and the fear
of being a nuisance, were constantly at war in him. After ten minutes in
any shop he would grow uneasy, feel himself _de trop_, and take to
flight, having bought something out of sheer nervousness. Without
speaking he held out the copy of Lawrence's poems and awkwardly
extracted three florins from his pocket. In handing them to Gordon he
dropped one. Both dived for it simultaneously; their heads bumped
against one another. The young man stood back, blushing sallowly.

[¶102] 'I'll wrap it up for you,' said Gordon.

[¶103] But the shy young man shook his head—he stammered so badly that he
never spoke when it was avoidable. He clutched his book to him and
slipped out with the air of having committed some disgraceful action.

[¶104] Gordon was alone. He wandered back to the door. The strawberry-nosed man
glanced over his shoulder, caught Gordon's eye and moved off, foiled. He
had been on the point of slipping Edgar Wallace into his pocket. The
clock over the Prince of Wales struck a quarter past three.

[¶105] Ding Dong! A quarter past three. Light up at half past. Four and
three-quarter hours till closing time. Five and a quarter hours till
supper. Twopence halfpenny in pocket. No tobacco tomorrow.

[¶106] Suddenly a ravishing, irresistible desire to smoke came over Gordon. He
had made up his mind not to smoke this afternoon. He had only four
cigarettes left. They must be saved for tonight, when he intended to
'write'; for he could no more 'write' without tobacco than without air.
Nevertheless, he had got to have a smoke. He took out his packet of
Player's Weights and extracted one of the dwarfish cigarettes. It was
sheer stupid indulgence; it meant half an hour off tonight's 'writing'
time. But there was no resisting it. With a sort of shameful joy he
sucked the papery smoke into his lungs.

[¶107] The reflection of his own face looked back at him from the greyish pane.
Gordon Comstock, author of _Mice; en l'an trentiesme de son eage_, and
moth-eaten already. Only twenty-six teeth left. However, Villon at the
same age was poxed, on his own showing. Let's be thankful for small
mercies.

[¶108] He watched the ribbon of torn paper whirling, fluttering on the QT Sauce
advertisement. Our civilisation is dying. It _must_ be dying. But it
isn't going to die in its bed. Presently the aeroplanes are coming.
Zoom—whizz—crash! The whole western world going up in a roar of high
explosives.

[¶109] He looked at the darkening street, at the greyish reflection of his face
in the pane, at the shabby figures shuffling past. Almost involuntarily
he repeated:

[¶110] '_C'est l'Ennui—l'œil chargé d'un pleur involontaire,_
         _Il rêve d'échafauds en fumant son houka!_'

[¶111] Money, money! Roland Butta! The humming of the aeroplanes and the crash
of the bombs.

[¶112] Gordon squinted up at the leaden sky. Those aeroplanes are coming. In
imagination he saw them coming now; squadron after squadron,
innumerable, darkening the sky like clouds of gnats. With his tongue not
quite against his teeth he made a buzzing, bluebottle-on-the-window-pane
sound to represent the humming of the aeroplanes. It was a sound which,
at that moment, he ardently desired to hear.