The Little Illiad

an excerpt from the beginning of the first chapter: INITIATION I AM sure that such things as I have to relate in these chapters—things of which I was the concerned witness from beginning to end— could not happen in any country of Europe but my own, a country where respect for things in being is carried to the other side of idolatry, and where, at the same time, you may see men, and even communities of men, run headlong down steep places to destruction in pursuit of abstract ideas, and win in the ridiculous act the admiration and respect of those to whom the ideas themselves are shocking. A Briton, you admit, reveres established order, fears God, honours the King, loves his father and mother, &c. So he does. But say that a man knocks his head against established order—sufficiently hard; say that he perishes for atheism's sake, is exiled for his nihilism, disputes his father's will, to bankruptcy, or runs away with his neighbour's wife on altruistic grounds—that man, when he has been disposed of with savagery, may easily become a national hero. We say that it's dogged that does it, that he is a True Blue, a hard-bitten man. If he is a poet, he becomes a classic. If he is a politician, he founds a party, and his name inflames men to dangerous cheering. To be short, we adore the thing that is, because it is; and we adore the man who tries to destroy it, not because he succeeds, but because he tries. It's all very odd. But sentiment, which in England carries its head so high, carries also lance and shield, and presents a brave front to the wind and the rain. The harder, indeed, it blows, the more bravely pricks the gentle knight. It is fair weather that brings him down. For he carries with him, too, his own bane; a little worm which gropes a way into his marrow, and inflames the optic nerve. When Hector Malleson went out to set the world into order it was not riot or clamour that loosened his knees. On the contrary, the extreme lengths to which the romantic led him were in themselves a warrant of success. He was in fact too successful. All fell out as he could have desired. He achieved a preposterous position for himself and his mistress. He bestrode a bottomless gulf with triumphant intrepidity. The world wondered. And then, even as we gaped, he sagged in the middle and fell in. The affair which he had begun went on of itself. It was as if the champion of Troy, instead of going out to face Achilles, had stayed at home with the toothache, and left the affair to Priam, King and Patriarch. That was what happened in this leaguer of a minor Troy, which I chronicle here. A maggot entered my poor Hector and palsied his blow. You see, I scorn concealment. I lay out my wares on the tray. I could even tell you the name of the maggot, but that you have guessed it for yourself.