The Green Hat quotes

It has occurred to the writer to call this unimportant history The Green Hat because a green hat was the first thing about her that he saw: as also it was, in a way, the last thing about her that he saw.

It was bright green, of a sort of felt, and bravely worn: being, no doubt, one of those that women who have many hats affect pour le sport.

but I am to be won only by the simple lines, the severe and menacing aspect, of the aces among motorcars; for economy hath charms, but not to the eye. This car charmed the eye.

Like a huge yellow insect that had dropped to earth from a butterfly civilisation, this car, gallant and suave, rested in the lowly silence of the Shepherd’s Market night.

Open as a yacht, it wore a great shining bonnet, and flying over the crest of this great bonnet, as though in proud flight over the heads of scores of phantom horses, was that silver stork by which the gentle may be pleased to know …

I was to have it again, profoundly, but I remember vividly that it came for the first time just then, in poor, furious Gerald’s room. Dingy—that is what I felt before this quiet, thoughtful woman with the absorbed eyes. Dingy.

I felt, I suppose, the immense dinginess of being a human being, for there is an immense, unalterable dinginess in being human, in the limitation of being human.

But why I should feel that particularly with her I did not know then. She, too, was human, quiet, gentle, very unaware. But, later, I was to know why.

She was—in that phrase of Mr. Conrad’s which can mean so little or so much—she was of all time.

She was, when the first woman crawled out of the mud of the primeval world. She would be, when the last woman walks towards the unmentionable end.

“Goodbye,” I said, and then, as I looked from the disordered room and my disenchanted life at her, the eyes in the shadow of the green hat were brilliant with laughter, so that I was stunned. “Why are you laughing?”

I had grown used to it, as one can grow used to anything, but people would remark on it adversely. The lady of the green hat said nothing, and that was how I knew that for her everything was inevitable.

That is an important thing to know about a woman, for you know then that you will never know where you are.

We became personal. She said: “Let us talk about our friends now.”

I had not a doubt but that he had been her second husband. “V.C. murdered. Sinn Feiners kill Captain Storm, V.C. Left on roadside with five bullet wounds. …”

She said suddenly: “I am a house of men.”

“What!” I said. “You surprise me.”

“You mustn’t believe in curses,” I said. “Good God, curses!”

“The Marches,” she said, “are never let off anything. That is the curse.”

Her eyes were stronger than mine, even as wind is stronger than air, and always in them was the magic of wide open places. I looked down, and far below, like pearls in the dust, shone two ankles clasped in silk the colour of daylight.

I took hold of the sword in my mind with both hands, but was not strong enough to lift it. I thought of the limbs of Aphrodite, of the sighs of Anaïtis, of the sharp cries of love’s delight.

I thought how charming men would be if they could misbehave outwardly as prettily as they can in their minds.

I said: “And so the house of March, fatal and damned, can never avoid its destiny. …”

The word I said was drowned in the din of a lorry that smashed through Whitehorse Street to Piccadilly. She took her hand gently from mine.

“There is a dream,” she said, “and there is a beast.”

“I can understand regret,” I said, “but—”

“But, Iris Storm, regret seems like a scar on you!”

“Not regret,” she said, so calmly. “Shame.”

And she took my hand again, closely. “You must forgive me. I couldn’t have said that to any other man. My shame mustn’t shame you, please! But you have a cold mind, you are disenchanted, you understand.

“Oh, if it was boyishness!” And she took from the pocket of her leather jacket a tube of gold, and she broke it into two pieces, and she stared moonstruck at the carmine tongue of the lip-salve.

“To be born a chaste woman,” she said to the carmine tongue, “is good. I am in favour of chastity. I would die for purity, in theory.”

She painted her mouth, staring moonstruck into the daylight. “Yes, I would die for purity. I wouldn’t mind dying anyhow, but it would be nice to die for purity. …”

“God!” sighed Gerald. Like a child, like a child … and like a fiend he suddenly laughed up at the veiled heavens.

“Imagine, you fool, just imagine the bloody degradation of being alive!”

But I will leave out Gerald’s “bloody’s.” One is tired of saying, hearing, reading that silly word.

when everything was going well with him, he would look about forty-five; when he was crossing a road, that is to say when he was thinking, he looked about fifty. This last was, I believe, his age.

Hilary was a man who had convinced himself and everyone else that he had neither use nor time for the flibberty-gibberties of life.

He collected postage-stamps and had sat as Liberal Member for an Essex constituency for fifteen years. To be a Liberal was against every one of his prejudices, but to be a Conservative was against all his convictions.

Unless, that is, she had changed a great deal since then. After all, one couldn’t be more unattractive than an Italian Jew who exported medicated champagne to America. No, really, that was too much.

“Your generation,” said Hilary thoughtfully, “is a mess. Have some brandy?”

“It’s absurd,” I said, “to talk ‘generations.’ Slack novelists do it to get easy effects. All generations are a mess. Thank you.”

“Your generation,” said Hilary thoughtfully, “is a mess. Have some brandy?”

“It’s absurd,” I said, “to talk ‘generations.’ Slack novelists do it to get easy effects. All generations are a mess. Thank you.”

“Your generation,” said Hilary thoughtfully, “has more opportunities for being a mess than ours had. That’s what I meant. And your children will have more opportunities than you have.

“But I thought we were discussing human beings!” And, as regards human beings, one couldn’t help thinking that a girl who had confessed that her lover had died “for purity” was purer than the lover who had not been able to live for it.

Boy Fenwick’s death had an air of getting away with rather a good thing.

He had destroyed the girl by exalting himself—for purity! How did boys come to have the infernal conceit of setting themselves up as connoisseurs of purity?

… lights in the night making love to the black shadows in their hair, their lips red as lobsters, their armpits clean as ivory, the men talking with facile gestures, the whole tapestry of the Château de Madrid like a painted fan against a summer night.

They call this rhythm the Blues, which is short for a low state of vitality brought about by the action of life on the liver.

O Baby, it’s divine!

I thought that Lady Pynte looked at me suspiciously, and Hilary, who was also fancying horses with us, told me later that it wasn’t done to look a lady straight in the eye and say “What withers!”

Horses make life complicated, that is what it is.

Hugo Cypress, dancing by with his wife Shirley, called out: “Ho, there! Seen the evening-paper? Friend of yours. …”

“What?” I said. “Hugo. …” But what on earth was this about the evening-paper? I was agitated—suddenly, I was very agitated indeed.

There is something quite beastly about evening-papers, beastly and naked.⁠ ⁠…

Astorias stayed his men, and Hilary came back to the table. Gloomily he looked at the angel that was frozen to its horse. And he looked worried.

…”

Paris rises in a cloud of chill darkness, the rain falls like whips of ice, the streetlamps loiter on vague, bitter errands, confused strings of light, a stealthy, idiot wind glories in being corrupted by corners.

The platforms of the omnibuses are packed tight with small men whose overcoats are too short for them, the brims of their felt-hats too narrow, their trousers turned up too high, their eyes too dark, their faces too pale.

She was closing the door! Terse as you like. I was helpless. “Madame est assez bien, je crois!” Dear Heaven, but didn’t one know those assez biens!

Isn’t there a company in Heaven wholly recruited from those who have been assez bien, and daily augmented by those who are assez bien!

I lifted up my voice.

But when, deceived by the calm of his voice, I looked at him, I found it better to look away again at the frowsty old lay-sister sewing away at her stocking. It was mean to look at him, he was too naked.

I realised how masked we always are, how this is a world of masked men, how we are masked all day long, even on the most trivial occasions.

Then I felt his hands suddenly tight around my arm. And tighter. Now what?

He thrust the letter into his gaping coat-pocket. I could see it there, that pencilled scrawl.

Letters, letters, letters like radium-bombs, left lying about for years, then bursting.

What fools men were, keeping letters … travelling about with them, sticking them into their coat-pockets. Suppose Venice saw that letter … just a few lines of it. Whether Iris lived or died … suppose Venice saw just a few lines of that letter.

“Listen,” she said sharply.

Wise those eyes were now, and steady as stars in a cavern, looking into me as though judging me, balancing life.

“Well?” I said, to get it over. But what could she know?

“I don’t think so,” I said. “But I’m not sure. …”

There is never any harm in saying one isn’t sure. One should never be sure, conversationally.

“I just had an idea,” Guy murmured, looking out over the heavy trees of the great square, “that Iris might conceivably be passing through London, as I heard from Eve Chalice today that old Portairley was lying near death. The last Portairley, dear, dear.”

Mr. Polly could have slept undisturbed for us. One hundred and twenty horses drew us, shadows of nothing from nothing to nothing beneath the impersonal stare of the stars.

Look away from the stars, lovers of the world’s delights, for they are the destroyers of the world’s delights with their dreams of grander things.

To listen to great music, to adore God in vast solitudes, to kneel before the face of beauty, to pass through the quiet land like an arrow with flaming eyes, swifter than your thoughts:

Iris and I marched slowly as the smoke of our cigarettes in the breathless night. She leaned on my arm, completely. “Foot hurts.” I wished she wouldn’t. I almost said, “don’t.” Her touch confounded, confused.

She was tangible, until she touched you. She was finite, until she touched you. She was a woman, until she touched you. Then she became woman, and you water.

She became a breath of womanhood clothed in the soft, delicious mystery of the flesh. Touching her, you touched all desire. She was impersonal and infinite, like all desire. She was indifferent to all but her desire, like all desire.

“Oh, because this, because that, because of the persecution of men, the savagery of beasts, the malice of gods!

Free me of your becauses!

Lies, all lies! One must be truthful, there is no other law, all other laws are lies. We are educated by lies, we live with lies, we worship lies, we fight for lies, we die bearded with lies.

“Oh, because this, because that, because of the persecution of men, the savagery of beasts, the malice of gods! Free me of your becauses! Lies, all lies! One must be truthful, there is no other law, all other laws are lies.

We are educated by lies, we live with lies, we worship lies, we fight for lies, we die bearded with lies.

God made men out of clay, countries out of mud, and what can the son of a marriage between clay and mud be but Master Lie? Oh, let us have just one look at the Demoiselle Truth!”

She glanced at me just then, and that second’s smile is like a wound on my memory. A car screamed and passed us, and she cried through the disordered air: “

I am afraid, but of course I am gay, too! Haven’t I waited twelve years for my inheritance!

”

Minutes later, she said: “

If people died of love I must have risen from the dead to be driving this car now!

”

But had Venice had a child I might have shone like Aldebaran and called Napier in vain. And that would have been right and just.

We must all give way before children, always, always.

Oh, if people had always done that, what miseries wouldn’t the world have been spared!

But now I can’t grudge Maurice the final satisfaction of telling me what he thinks of me. Dear, it matters so little what men like Maurice think of one. They worship all that is despicable, they despise all that is really good.

From the beginning of time this world has been wounded by the manliness of fools.

Oh, let Maurice have his say tonight! And mighty Guy. And my sweet Hilary! Let them have their say. I can only answer them with love. How could I answer them but with love? But I can silence them with love! Love, love, love!

“

Love smiles at lions. Love can never be a clown, but a lion can wear an ass’s skin.

Darling, I’m no good at natural history, but I have studied history.”

Like all decent Englishmen, he is like a woman: he knows everything without ever having been taught anything. He has a profound sense of obedience, therefore he is a good commander.

He never thinks when he is alone, lest thoughts should undermine his sense of obedience and paralyse his habit of command.

One day a thought will strike him, and instantly he will cease to be the captain of his soul. He is the only man in England who actually believes in obeying the King.”

“

Oh, Maurice is not good, not bad! Only immemorially infantile, like all successful men.

…”

“Maurice!” And Iris smiled, and those very white teeth bit the moment into two pieces with their smile and dropped the pieces into limbo. “You are a baby sometimes, Maurice.

You never dream of asking a woman ‘what sort of a woman are you?’ so long as she keeps to the laws made by men. But the first time you see a woman being a woman, you are surprised.

”

“Oh, come, Iris!” Guy murmured.

“If she didn’t think in English,” I said, “would she be here?”

Sir Maurice started. I was surprised, too.

“

Oh, I was proud then! As I am not proud now.

…”

Guy had caught her as she started back from him like a frightened animal. “Judas nothing,” he murmured. Her face streamed with tears. Guy held her, his eyes strangely sad. “

Judas nothing, my Iris,

” he murmured. “You’ve won, girl. Go away and play at your lovely game of love. You’ve got me again, as you had when you were a child. I must say I like someone who really loves and really hates. I’m proud of you, Iris.”