News from Nowhere quotes

… so used to, that it didn’t last him long, and after a brief discomfort, caused by disgust with himself for having lost his temper (which he was also well used to), he found himself musing on the subject-matter of discussion, but still discontentedly and unhappily.

“If I could but see a day of it,” he said to himself; “if I could but see it!”

As he formed the words, the train stopped at his station, five minutes’ walk from his own house, which stood on the banks of the Thames, a little way above an ugly suspension bridge.

“Oh, not very old,” he said; “it was built or at least opened, in 2003. There used to be a rather plain timber bridge before then.”

The date shut my mouth as if a key had been turned in a padlock fixed to my lips;

for I saw that something inexplicable had happened, and that if I said much, I should be mixed up in a game of cross questions and crooked answers.

It seems it was very catching, for many of the people afflicted by it were much secluded, and were waited upon by a special class of diseased persons queerly dressed up, so that they might be known.

They wore amongst other garments, breeches made of worsted velvet, that stuff which used to be called plush some years ago.

”

for nobody ever pretended that it was possible to make people act fairly to each other by means of brute force. Well, private property being abolished, all the laws and all the legal ‘crimes’ which it had manufactured of course came to an end.

Thou shalt not steal, had to be translated into, Thou shalt work in order to live happily.

Is there any need to enforce that commandment by violence?”

Said I: “Why, nothing, I should hope. But I fear—In short, I have been told that political strife was a necessary result of human nature.”

“Human nature!” cried the old boy, impetuously; “what human nature? The human nature of paupers, of slaves, of slaveholders, or the human nature of wealthy freemen? Which? Come, tell me that!”

“Well,” said I, “I suppose there would be a difference according to circumstances in people’s action about these matters.”

I will go on talking without noticing them when they come in. Now, this is what I want to ask you about—to wit, how you get people to work when there is no reward of labour, and especially how you get them to work strenuously?”

“No reward of labour?” said Hammond, gravely. “The reward of labour is life. Is that not enough?”

“But no reward for especially good work,” quoth I.

“For a time,” said he.

“And then the overturn,” said the old man, smiling, “and the nineteenth century saw itself as a man who has lost his clothes whilst bathing, and has to walk naked through the town.”

“You are very bitter about that unlucky nineteenth century,” said I.

“You are very bitter about that unlucky nineteenth century,” said I.

“Naturally,” said he, “since I know so much about it.”

He was silent a little, and then said: “There are traditions—nay, real histories—in our family about it; my grandfather was one of its victims.

“Tell me one thing, if you can,” said I. “Did the change, the ‘revolution’ it used to be called, come peacefully?”

“Peacefully?” said he; “what peace was there amongst those poor confused wretches of the nineteenth century? It was war from beginning to end⁠—bitter war, till hope and pleasure put an end to it.”

“Do you mean actual fighting with weapons?” said I, “or the strikes and lockouts and starvation of which we have heard?”

“How fearful! And I suppose that this massacre put an end to the whole revolution for that time?”

“No, no,” cried old Hammond; “it began it!”

He filled his glass and mine, and stood up and cried out, “Drink this glass to the memory of those who died there, for indeed it would be a long tale to tell how much we owe them.”

He went on: “And their opponents at least and at last learned something about the reality of life, and its sorrows, which they—their class, I mean—had once known nothing of. In short, the two combatants, the workman and the gentleman, between them—”

“Between them,” said I, quickly, “they destroyed commercialism!”

“Yes, yes, yes,” said he; “that is it. Nor could it have been destroyed otherwise;

“Yes,” said I—snappishly, I am afraid; for I was beginning rather to resent his formula.

“Well, I am far from sure that I do,” quoth he. “I think one may do more with one’s life than sitting on a damp cloud and singing hymns.”

I was rather nettled by this inconsequence, and said:

The old man sat silent for a little, but presently recovered himself and took comfort in his old phrase of “Well, you like it so, do you?”

“Yes,” said Ellen, “I love life better than death.”

“O, you do, do you?” said he. “Well, for my part I like reading a good old book with plenty of fun in it, like Thackeray’s Vanity Fair. Why don’t you write books like that now? Ask that question of your Bloomsbury sage.”

She led me up close to the house, and laid her shapely sun-browned hand and arm on the lichened wall as if to embrace it, and cried out,

“O me! O me! How I love the earth, and the seasons, and weather, and all things that deal with it, and all that grows out of it⁠—as this has done!”

I could not answer her, or say a word. Her exultation and pleasure were so keen and exquisite, and her beauty, so delicate, yet so interfused with energy, expressed it so fully, that any added word would have been commonplace and futile.

She led me on to the door, murmuring little above her breath as she did so,

“The earth and the growth of it and the life of it! If I could but say or show how I love it!”

We went in, and found no soul in any room as we wandered from room to room—from the rose-covered porch to the strange and quaint garrets amongst the great timbers of the roof, where of old time the tillers and herdsmen of the manor slept, …