 Part 12 of Confessions of Two Brothers. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Confessions of Two Brothers by John Cooper Poeus and Llewellyn Poeus. Confessions by Llewellyn, section 1, read by Grant Peterson. I do not think these vague autobiographical ramblings should, as a matter of fact, bear the title of Confessions. Confessions suggest that one has written about one's sins, this I have not had the courage to do. Instead I have endeavoured to recapture from the past some of the simplest sensations which have made up my life. My thanks are due to the editors of The New Statesman and The New Age for allowing me to republish passages from my diary which have already appeared in their papers. Section 1. To be suddenly born, to suddenly acquire consciousness on the surface of this unsteady and amazing planet, that is a chance indeed to justify everything. Life is a series of visions and sensations by which the wildest fortune it has been given to us to experience. Puritans are fond of the phrase, it is for us to do this or that. And it appears to me, it is for us merely to be irresponsible spectators of the drama of existence as it unrolls itself. Irresponsible however, that is the secret, that is the key to one's attitude in a world whose very foundations are so complex, so varied, so scandalously immoral. To an adventurous and imaginative spirit the world is as it should be. Nothing confined, nothing explained, nothing impossible. Of course if people endeavor to graft their own particular ideas of what life ought to be upon life as it is, they begin to sigh and grow grave immediately. Once however let a man come to understand that nothing really matters, that there is not a particular purpose in our corner of the universe, that the earth has but to circle the sun some seventy times and he is gone, and a new acquiescence will be born into his soul, an acquiescence which will give him time and taste to look around him and let the golden sand run through his fingers how wistfully. Out here in Central Africa these truths are brought home to one continually. One has but to draw aside the tangled branches of these ancient overgrown forests to appreciate what kind of a world we live in. In civilized countries the silly conceptions of silly people stifle our intelligence just as their drawing rooms stifle our lungs. But in this country where through terror the grass eaters never grow fat and where every night the striped fiery hunters feel the death throes of their prey one cannot be so easily deceived. Casualty and justice, demonic cruelty is patent and to realize that these goings on have received divine sanction from the earliest ages it is only necessary to raise one's eyes to the sun as he rises in his splendor morning after morning. I sometimes think that children, if left to themselves, understand the nature of the universe far better than grown up people. I think they look at the world in the right way, are more receptive and receive its experiences with more appropriate emotions. Those vague simple delicious memories of a child so delicate so evasive are amongst the memories one would wish if there was a future life to carry away with one. The first glimpse of tiny blue eggs in a hedge sparrow's nest, the happy tints on summer curtains put up unexpectedly in the night nursery after the dreary winter rains. The soothing somnolent twittering of swallows when one was trying to go to sleep with all the sounds and scents of the garden coming in at the open window. To a child also, the alternative, the terrible, is continually present. They are super sensitive to all those vague intimations of the unknown, of the supernatural which even the most naturalistic of us feel sometimes. As when by ourselves we open the doors of empty darkened rooms, they understand the romance of the terrible of the stark. I remember when I was a child, a black cat was hung on a wellingtonia in a field opposite the nursery window. Village boys used to come and whip it. I cried and was miserable, yet the spectacle had for my imagination the suggestion of endless terrible things which might be going on in the great world outside where truth to say it is given to certain human beings to derive pleasure from whipping and perhaps from whipping not only black cats. Another terrible revelation came with the death of my sister. She was only a little older than myself. The week before we had been looking for Linnet's eggs in the battlefield, pushing our way through the gorse bushes which were so prickly and so yellow and smelt so sweet in the April sunshine. I was taken into the spare room and saw her lying in bed, feverish and sick. She asked me how we were getting on with the house we were building in the garden and whether there were eggs yet in the chaffincher's nest at the end of the box hedge. The next day, as the rest of us were sitting under the shade of the Portugal Laurel on the lawn, my brother, JCP, came to say she had been taken away by the angels. I know now that it was only the way he put it. That really he does not believe in angels and never did. I think death alone, the mere report and rumour of it brings home in some degree to the most inexperienced intelligence, the fatal and exciting nature of our destiny, of the destiny of all living things who have each in their turn to go down into the pit. At school under the shadow of the grey abbey, I gradually awakened to the continuous poetry of life set as it was against so immemorial and romantic a background. It was there too that I came to learn for the first time of the passionate and tremulous emotions which lie at the back and root of all life. Masters used to try to persuade one in solemn conversations alone in the study that these emotions were wrong, that their only raison d'etre was as a means by which God tricked the human race into prolonging its life generation after generation. Sexual excitement to this day remains for me a treacherous and scarlet background, but I now understand that all lapses in this direction should be treated with the utmost indulgence, as being merely the expression of essential subterranean forces far more powerful than any of us. And as a matter of fact it very often happens that this strange and subtle ecstasy is alone capable of touching with a live coal the imagination of certain very stupid people. For years I remained in the lower school dreaming over my school books, my mind is dim and unlighted as the monk haunted classrooms where I sat. Then suddenly I found myself shoved into the upper school, into the clear white light of Mr R's classroom. The schoolmaster was not unlike the others, though curiously disillusioned as to the world in general, he was possessed by a passionate devotion for English literature. I think he knew the golden treasury off by heart. Over the chimney piece where the boys collected before class was hung a photograph of the Apollo Belvedere, and those shapely white limbs have often seemed to be symbolic of the white light of that room as it shone upon and inspired my confused boys mind. In 4A I read for the first time passages from Homer and Horace and came to understand from punctilish translations the strange magic latent in books. R's sarcasms made their impression. He used to accuse us of reading Greek history as if it was the history of black beetles. He continually seemed to be hinting of a larger and more gracious world. I remember to this day the enthusiasm he displayed in quoting Matthew Arnold. I remember the very lines which he selected. Through the vexed garden trees, the unplumbed salt estranging sea. It was at this time that my brother, JCP, began giving me books. Much of the poetry I did not understand, but again I got glimpses of a wider and freer and more magnanimous world than that presented to me by the official schoolmaster and by the school chapel. Certain passages of Swinburne filled me with a profane enthusiasm, but the gods of your fashion that take and give in their pity and passion, that scourge and forgive, they are all worms that are bred in the ban that falls off, they shall die and not live. I began to take the spell of the school chapel very lightly, the spell of those queer intervals of silent prayer and of the dim-lighted altar. I began to feel instead a thrill at the sight of the first salendine, for no other reason than that old Wadsworth had delighted in it. Or at the sight of the hay fields by the river, yes, red with sorrow as we wandered through them, our top hats in hands some hot Sunday afternoon in June. In the holidays I used to stay with my brother Theodore, that strange and lonely being who has never been under any illusion about reality and its worth, and has come to learn so much melancholy wisdom in lonely places. He was living then in a little village by the sea. In his house I could read what I liked, and from him I imbibed a healthy distaste for the work of the practical everyday world and an overturet love of quaint and profound thinking. Since then he has retired to a still more secluded village, and I have never revisited Studlin, but in my mind to this day a strange radiance and gladness seems to hang over the place. The radiance of youth and shimmering seas, the radiance of white chalk cliffs and wet moorlands, the radiance of children's faces and children's white frocks and the sad gladness of white sea birds crying to their young in clear sea sunshine. And then I went up to Cambridge. Perhaps no experience should be more bracing to a boy's intelligence than his first entrance into a university. To find oneself free to think and say what one likes is a privilege seldom permitted. But here in these antique rooms where there are no old people, the crass system of things is no longer so shielded. One comes across strange types, Jay, who kept human bones in his room and who would sleep all day and go down to the union at night with a great pipe in his mouth and an outrageous shock of red hair over his grotesque, severalist skull. L-U-W, still after everything, dearest and noblest of my friends, with his ardent and tenonian philosophy and graceful, aud-breed-bedsly appearance. D-Corpus, whose ears and nails were always filthy and who used to spend weeks at a time drinking and low out of the way taverns because, as he said, he liked to listen to the talk. He heard in such places and liked to feel himself relapsing into alcoholic oblivion with these quaint human beings as a background to his dreams. I remember perfectly well my first night in one of those old oak-paneled rooms. The weird sensation I got when raising my head, I read on one of the beams supporting the roof the words, pray for the soul of John Cooper Poeus. I had not known it had been my brother's room and this simple fraternal petition shocked me into understanding the grave and striking import of our lives as conceived by the one true Catholic Church. I knew that there were many people who held that my brother had no soul. Now that I look back on these short three years, I feel that I wasted my time. The actual world as I saw it seemed to absorb so much of my attention. We formed a club called the Club of Honest Cods, and we used to meet on Sunday evenings in the old court and drink hot punch and sing bawdy songs. Only at rare intervals did the old beautiful, cruel, gay, miraculous world reveal itself. I remember standing one afternoon by the side of the river, not far from Mr. Benson's house, envisaging the deep volume of still waters flowing on and on, year after year, so so detached, so profoundly indifferent to the lot of the wisest of all the animals who had chosen to congregate on its grass-grown banks. And sometimes, at the high noon of night, looking out at the illuminated million college windows, the smooth grass and the shining ivy leaves, I would experience vague intimations of the murmuring universe far, far removed from corpus and from my rowdy everyday existence. When I came down, I spent some months at home receiving those queer little blue type notices of academic vacancies from the scholastic agents, Gabatas and Thing. I used to take these into my father's study, and he used to look at them very gravely, and sometimes before prayers as the family was sitting waiting for the servants to come in, he would ask me if I had heard from Gabatas that morning. At last, a letter did arrive from the headmaster of a fashionable preparatory school on the Kentish Coast, asking me to come down and interview him. I did so. As soon as I arrived, I was taken into lunch in the school dining room. I remember it well, very well. When table number three was put into silence, I felt exactly the heart-sinking of a new boy at coming into contact with the arbitrariness of a discipline which sends a shiver down the spine of many grown-up people even. At other tables, I saw undermasters carrying on conversations with the boys who sat next to them with that particular forced jocularity and superciliousness which is so noticeable to a non-academic mind. Again my heart sank. The headmaster was a tall, imposing figure. In the middle of a lunch, I took from my pocket a scrap of Roman pottery, which I had found the day before in a molehill on Hamhill. It interested him, and I think it was this that made him select me. I was to take the place of one of his masters for the summer term. On the whole, I recall those three months with pleasure. At first I was terrified at having to teach it all. All the little boys were cleverer than me. I used to have to steal along to the classrooms every night to get a hold of a book with answers so that I might work out the sums we would do the next day in the seclusion of my bedroom. I also had to do this kind of preparation with the Latin prose and French. French. That was always terrible to me. Most of the boys had been abroad and knew how to speak it quite well. The worst of it was a certain good-natured madam who used to come over from Ramsgate twice a week to give conversation lessons. Seeing my predicament got it into her head that it would be a kindness to let me attend her classes. A chair was placed for me at the end of the room, and there I used to sit like a great clownish dunce, while these clever children chatted to each other over and to the lady. The mere possibility of being called upon to pronounce the simplest word made me literally sweat. It sounds as I tell it as if the situation was, after all, not so very awful. But it was enough to make me miserable. It was enough to make me hell when I was by myself. It was enough to make me take a French grammar concealed in my pocket during those thrice precious hours when I was free to go where I liked. I used to go off to Margate or Ramsgate by train, and those places I could feel the ebb and flow of the great world nothing here was closed down, nothing here was confined. I might no doubt have had no end of exciting assignations at these times, but I never did. It seemed quite enough for me simply to be there witnessing the manners, the comings and goings on the hot sands. Sometimes it is true as I paced along by the water's edge I did get glimpses which sent vague thrills through me. Thrills exquisite and innervating. There is always something pagan about the seashore. It is free and beautiful. Lust is there, but it is the lust of the open air and hot sunshine. At the end of the afternoon I would look out for some out-of-the-way tea shop where I was sure I would not be recognised, and where I could eat autocris and shrimps at my leisure. I would return again by tram-car, and as I went swaying along with that curious iron bar which I suppose connects the electricity crackling and hissing, rising and falling, I would never miss a certain orchard which I could just see over a high wall, an orchard with mid-summer grass and moon-daisies and cow-passly rising high under the apple trees, and seeming to me to be typical of the kind of place of romance one is always longing to find oneself wandering about in under quite new conditions and another life almost. And I had a need to restore myself with places of romance, for besides the boys I had the undermasters to contend with. I don't suppose any young man who is worth anything would be content to spend his life as an undermaster in a private preparatory school, and no doubt this is the reason why one comes across such objectionable and imbecile types in such a position. There were four here besides myself, they were all golfers. T, a straightforward and not altogether unpleasant type who had allowed his intellect to dwindle and dwindle from lack of use till he was capable of wondering how the filter, as they used to call the headmaster, could possibly give the top form such free interpretations of the Old Testament stories. W, an international football player very proud of his muscles with the manners of a prize fighter. He used to get the little boys to put their hands on his arm and then catch them as in a vice with his biceps. H, an unsufferably conceited gentleman with a talent for rhyming after the manner of Gilbert and Sullivan. The music master, I think now I could have made something of him. Lank and lean with crisp black hair cut short like a school boys and with quite an exceptionally long nose. He was certainly more intelligent than the others and certainly more incompetent, but I hated them all. They were petty and mean and wearysome. I used to die at having anything to do with such people. Every night coming home from supper we had to walk down a long passage, I being junior to the others walked behind. At the end of which was hung that picture of the Laughing Cavalier which has in it such an extraordinary amount of false staffion, rabbalasian earthiness. I used to look up at him and catch his eye, that eye that babbles of taverns and green fields, that libidious wine-bibing eye with its generous assurance that after all, undermasters did not make up the whole of life. But they were devils, these undermasters. They did not appear to have any brains at all. On one occasion I made my form learn that charming child's grace of herics, I wrote it on the blackboard. Here a little child I stand, holding up my either hand, cold as paddocks though they be, here I hold them up to thee, for a benison to fall on our meat and on us all. By some ill luck one of my colleagues, what a word, as JCP remarked when I used it in one of my letters to him, came in and read it. You can imagine what shouts of laughter the recital of those lines created as an example of what poface taught his form. They completed the school chapel while I was there. I would sometimes attend the early services and noted not without ironic interest how eagerly these school masters would return after their devotional exercises to their toast and marmalade and hot coffee, how snug and well-appointed that chapel was. A pair of the realm, whose pedigree is not unknown to me, presented it with an altar cloth costing 70 pounds. After the sands and whitecliffs, I think I look back upon the gardens with greater pleasure than anything else. They seemed so opulent of gorgeous midsummer flowers like peonies and poppies and carnations. I used to love to escape to the garden, chuckling to myself my head full of my own thoughts. I think wherever grass grows, wherever there is vegetation, trees and bushes and flowers, one can be happy. My predecessor was returning the next term, so I did not go back to that school again. I was again at home and again because no other profession presented itself, I sent out applications for scholastic vacancies. One day in November, I received a telegram asking me to go to a school in Worcestershire. I sent a reply saying I would come the next day and then went off for a walk through the stoke wood and over Ham Hill, wondering what this new venture was going to be like. A cold late afternoon mist enshrouded everything and the path through the wood was slippery with mud and sodden leaves. I arrived at my destination the next day, just as it was getting dark. I was told to go to a house called The Gates, where some of the masters lodged. They were all in school, but in the senior master's room, I found the remains of the tea they had just finished. You know the uncanny feeling of entering a room from which people, strangers, have only lately gone. One is conscious sometimes of an almost physical impact, as though the auras of the late occupants were still hovering in the air. The servant lighted a gas jet which flamed and spluttered. I sat down at the table in excited dejection and nibbled at a piece of plum cake. I looked at the bookshelves, my eyes encountered rows upon rows of soiled school books only too familiar. Lower down I did notice a few books of interest, but these were all in such new birthday gift covers that they in no way reassured me. I noticed the works of Anthony Trollop in the world's classics edition. By the fire was an armchair, and when I looked at it, I could almost see the school master sitting there night after night, having his last pipe before going to bed. There were two or three pipes lying idle on the chimney piece, and then my work began. This time I had to take a much larger class, and the boys were by no means all gentlemen. A more slack and slovenly lot I could hardly imagine. I was always telling them to clear up the classroom, but it always seemed to me smothered and used up full-scap rolled into round balls. The desks were battered and carved upon, and the fingers of all the boys were inky, and their collars grimy and crumpled. I am afraid I taught them very little. Every time I unlocked the classroom door, I felt as if I was going into prison, and something worse than prison. Once in a rage I determined to cane a boy, and when I had made all arrangements and saw his bent body covered with curiously shiny trousers, I could hardly raise my hand. At that time, pain suffered by any sentient being seemed awful to me. It is different now. This very morning standing in the heat of the day, I witnessed unperturbed, the merciless flogging of an ox, because it was refusing to work, and out of very despair had lain down. I did cane that boy. His name was Pringle, and he had red hair. On the whole the masters here were a more dignified lot of men than at the other more exclusive school. The headmaster was, I think, exceptionally distinguished. I used to sit next to him at lunchtime. He would always talk to me in a friendly, intelligent way. The masters lodging at the gates I had most to do with, and they were by no means the pick of the school staff. We used to have breakfast, and tea, and supper together. The senior master, whose room I was first shown into, was very spruce and well-groomed, and spoke with almost a lisp. He evidently took himself and his work very seriously, and considered himself a very responsible person. I came to hate him. He was capable of saying the most tedious things. Every day before going in to luncheon at the big school, we used to collect in a little room hung with old school groups. We used to look at these. They were, as the little man used to say, of perennial interest. Once he complained of gout. I suppose, he said with a smug, self-satisfied smile, we have to suffer for all the port our ancestors drank. In reality he was an awful little cad who never had any ancestors at all. He told us of how he was a staunch supporter of the Conservative Party in his suburban house near London, and he kept deploring the action of the government and giving a free government to the Boers after all the money spent. I must tell you that going and coming from the school to the gates, we had to pass through a very poor quarter of the town, where one was compelled to look upon the most appalling sights of penury and gloom. I continually saw children so starved that they looked like apes, and once an old woman walked in front of me with her white hair half eaten away by lice. Yet it was down these streets that this spruce complacent scholar of Immanuel College used to trip. All pious pompous sneaks come from Immanuel, quite oblivious to it all, with his role of carefully corrected papers under his arm and his dapper well fitting mortarboard on his head. It was in those days I began to read the clarion, that paper of Robert Blatchford's, which is at once so refreshing and so insipid. Then there was another master from Downing, a much more interesting individual with a really diabolical physiognomy, who had drifted into school mastering God only knows how. I understood from the first that he really did not care for any of these things, only for his dog, a great dame which was a terror to be in the town in general. But even in these surroundings, again I got moments of peculiar exultation. In the Easter term the spring began to show signs of its approach. I used to go for walks by myself, sometimes on the Kidminster Road, sometimes on the Birmingham Road. I remember being very elated once as I was returning westward by the appearance of that faint green far away light in the sky, which Coleridge and Waiter-Pater used to love, which always seemed so extraordinarily suggested of space and eternity. I remember too my pleasure at finding red dead nettle and colt's foot and also at the smell of the cut grass on one of those rare hot days in March when they were preparing the field for the school sports. But these masters, one could never get far away from them or their point of view. On one occasion I asked Si to come out with me for a walk after supper. He consented with amused condensation. As we walked down the lighted street, my eye caught sight of those soft shadows on the moon's surface outlined with peculiar distinctness. I remarked how strange it was to think of those cold dead mountain chasms being actually visible to us. So aloof as they were from our particular life from the wet shining pavements upon which we were walking from the mud and the lamp light and the newspaper posters. It was cold and the little man was wearing a pair of woolen gloves. He rubbed his wool-covered hands together and remarked that it was too cold for him to feel sentimental over the moon. Eventually the second term did come to an end and I was free again. I now wrote to my father that I was tired of school mastering and wanted to earn my living by writing for the papers. A suggestion vague enough to frighten anybody. My father very generously acquiesced. However, with his letter came another one offering me the post of private tutor to a boy of 14 at age. I was to be paid a good salary and the ideas seemed to offer certain possibilities. Anyway, it would be a new scene and a new sensation. I will quote from my diary. End of Part 12 Part 13 of Confessions of Two Brothers This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Confessions of Two Brothers by John Cooper Poeus and Llewellyn Poeus Confessions by Llewellyn Section 2 The Diary of a Private Tutor Wednesday, May 6 Arrived here yesterday, the discreet ironic civility of the coachman who was waiting for me on the platform made me at once aware of my new social position. Of the social position of a private tutor. The house is late Georgian and has overgrown with roses, jasmine and ivy. It has a slate roof and large sash windows. As I waited at the front door, I noticed a wire-head terrier standing under a tall fir tree. I neglected to raise my eyes to the branches above, where I might have detected the amused visage of my future pupil. He is large for his age. His steel grey eyes appear to change colour just like a ferret stew when you hold it up. His narrow lips clearly reveal his spoilt, ineffectual soul. I am not to sleep in the house. They have found rather nice lodgings for me on the outskirts of the town a mile away. Dinner in the evening was a repetition of tea, the same discreet overtures, the same critical and intense scrutiny. Thursday, May 7 Woke early, had breakfast at 8 o'clock, and then walked by the side of an old disused canal which meanders through grass fields. Arranged a programme of work, and was unutterably depressed at the sight of each dreary and well-known schoolbook. Swore to myself that I would never enter the hated profession again. After supper, took a long walk in the dark, came to a village churchyard, quite white with cow parsley. The delicate flowers casting a misty gossamer veil over innumerable mounds. As I sat there for a few minutes, smoking a cigarette, I could not help wondering if the dead, buried people all round had any kind of existence. It was a moonless night, but the sky was illumined by mighty suns reduced to mere specks of light in the infinite distance. I can never understand how people find consolation in looking at the stars. To me they appear profoundly melancholy. Monday the 11th, a gloomy day, there has been thunder about. I found Herb, Paris, and some private woods belonging to people called Hussie. Their house, and Elizabethan building, was not far off, and as we crossed a field heavy with drenched May grass, we saw a figure in black walking on one of the terraces. They tell me she was Mrs. Hussie, who had lost her only child, a boy of nine years, in the early spring. It rained all the evening. Tuesday the 12th, went for a motor drive and had a picnic on the downs. Coming back there was not room for me in the car, so I walked. You can guess how delightful that hour-and-a-half was. Trailing along through the white summer dust with ground ivy crushed in my hands and the sights and sounds of the countryside all about me. Wednesday the 13th, played tennis, but was all the time worried by the recollection of a letter I had posted in the morning to the secretary of the American University Extension Society. They have asked me to go out for the Easter term and give a course of lectures on English literature, and in my letter accepting their invitation I somehow managed to spell a needless with an A. This is an absurd mistake, which kept taunting my mind as villagers say, and I was continually making faces to myself and mentally howling. Thursday the 14th, there is a banquet clerk lodging also at Richmond Villa. This evening I talked for quite a long time with him, like a double-dyed fool referring to the ignomy of my present position, which of course he did not understand. Friday the 15th. This morning we made a diminutive pond in the orchard. We then caught a number of unfortunate leather-backed toads and made them swim in it. Saturday the 16th. Fell off my bicycle and bruised my knee badly. Rex absolutely refuses to walk and will not bicycle outside the garden. He likes to steer his way around the narrow kitchen garden paths with me behind him. I was doing this when I fell off. Monday the 18th. Tried to stir Rex's imagination by reading the burial march of Dundee. Heard from my brother, he says, To worry about needless is needless worry, for the secretary will only think it a slip or a late English fashion. Tuesday the 19th. We do our work in an upstairs room. We sit by an open window. From my chair I look across the lawn at three magnificent elm trees. Morning after morning the intervening atmosphere is quivering with life, a myriad of nets dancing in the hot sunlight. I wonder if they in their tiny life have invented gods for themselves, or if ever a single great-hearted net has died for the rest. Friday the 22nd. Saw the tomb of the Earls of a huge mausoleum standing on the edge of a hill, overshadowed by cedars and overlooking a luxuriant hamsher champagne. The building itself was strangely chilling to the spirits, as such places usually are. One thought of the succeeding generations so free and powerful, succumbing each in his turn, and being carried to this house of crumbling coffins and dead men's bones. The absolute inevitableness of death, one must never forget that. Sunday the 24th. Went to church and sat right at the back, next to the font. Periodically got a glimpse of my pupil and grinned like a lemur, and the afternoon played the fool with Rex and then walked around Bagnell with his sisters discussing socialism. Tuesday the 26th. As we were changing for tennis, Rex threw half a glass of water at a little village girl who was passing below his window, and had accidentally trodden on the edge of the lawn. I could have killed him as he stood there. His fat, flabby, half-naked body concealed behind the curtain. Saturday the 30th. Played tennis with two vulgar piano manufacturers. Their hair plastered down with brilliantine as I noticed when they bent down to alter the height of the net. I hated them, and the evening brought the clarion, how refreshing after intercourse with these people to read the direct and downright writing of old Blatchford and Neil Lyons. Sunday the 31st. Cecily is dead in Paris. I was haunted by this all day long. She was 17, and yet it seems such a little time, since I used to see her at parties, a child immaculate in dainty frock, blue sash, and evening shoes. Another horrible Sunday. Pain is the choice of the magnanimous. Pleasure is not an end in itself, but rather an accident. Wednesday, June 3rd. Walked by the river and watched azure blue dragonflies glide here and there. Saw the reflection of an old mill in the water, and from the mere joy of consciousness felt splendidly indifferent as to the future. Saturday the 6th. Rex insisted on catching dragonflies and letting them loose in a hot house. Was kept for supper. Saturday the 13th. Drove to a river three miles away, Rex fished but could catch nothing. I walked behind, peering into the deep clear water, so different from that of our Somerset parrot. The meadows on each side were golden with buttercups. I longed for escape, I longed to wander forever through such fields. Monday the 15th. We are digging a deep hole in the spiny, a kind of smuggler's cave. It is extraordinary what satisfaction I derive from this occupation. There is something in the actual physical labour which makes me forget my abasement. Tuesday the 16th. A silly old major has come to stay in the house. He went through the Indian mutiny, and now, in his dotage, plays at Ben Gallant with Mrs T. Wednesday the 17th. Went to the agricultural show with Rex. He wore a white Macintosh, and I was astonished to see how he had already acquired the insolent manner of the vulgar rich. It rained most of the time, but the flowers arranged inside the tents possessed amazing colour. I came across a farmer from our part of the country and longed to tell him to tell my brother he had seen me in hell. Thursday the 18th. Dug the hole. Sunday the 21st. Sat at the back of the church, next to a cripple with a pink bow in her hat. All these people must be absolutely mad. How could they otherwise be so dull and stupid in a world like this? In the evening, red in the little front garden of the villa, I helped my landlady water her flowers, geraniums, canterbury bells and snap-jagons. The smell of the dampened earth very delicious. All the time, village people were loitering along the road. Thursday the 25th. I have constructed a kind of tent in the little front garden. It is made by hanging blankets over an old clothes horse. I have brought a lamp and read late every night, often marking the time and date on the margin of the book, so that when I read the passage again, I shall be reminded of my time of consciousness in this tiny garden. Saturday the 27th. A little cousin of Rex's arrived today. We three played together and I was perfectly happy in her radiant and animated presence. She is only 14 years old. We showed her all the secret places in the garden, our hole and the nests in the trees. She got very hot and asked me to carry her summer hat because the elastic was tight and hurt her chin. Sunday the 28th. Sat in the back of the church and then played in the garden. I was asked to conduct merry to a friend's house. Our way was across fields and we walked side by side. It was very hot. In the tangled hedge rows, no bird sang. Only the shrill, bat-like cry of field mice was audible. She refused to go in at the gate, but clambered over a high wall at the bottom of the garden, waved goodbye and vanished forever. Tuesday the 30th. Picnic supper on the downs. Rex fell down and began to cry, and I felt extraordinarily exasperated. Rather an attractive scotch girl called Doris is staying here. She was at school with one of Rex's sisters. Saturday, July 4th. There was a party today, a fantastic affair, reminding me of the mad garden party in Alice of Wonderland. They all had more money than me. I could not have conceived it possible that so many silly Bulgarians could have collected together. One person alone attracted me. He was the parson of the place. We went apart and talked, and he, with tears in his eyes, spoke of Jesus as master. I could fancy him to have only just left our Lord's side. He might have been walking yesterday with the twelve in Galilean lanes. I was amazed. Here I thought, at last I have come across somebody whose life is reality, who really is alive. I loved him. Tuesday the 7th. Late in the evening I escaped and ran off to the vicarage. The priest was alone, his wife away. It was a beautiful night, and we wandered about his garden, over his lawn, and up and down his box-fringed path in the kitchen garden. We talked of literature and religion. Although his head is grey, there is a passion in his soul. The summer garden, as we walked about in it, seemed enchanted with its dim aromatic shadows and listening flowers. So enchanted that one could hardly believe that the dull importunacy of routine things would ever again obscure one's imaginative insight. Wednesday the 8th. It rained all day. We played hide and seek in the house. On one occasion I came across Doris, filled up in a linen cupboard, flushed and laughing and very provocative. Thursday the 9th. Played tennis in the rain at the doctor's house, then ran off to my lodgings, hoping to get an evening to myself. However, they sent a motor, begging me to come to dinner. Friday the 17th. We all went to play tennis at the Hussies, a very old family, tragic and doomed. The Squire, a man of 60, a lunatic asylum and has still the sullen, preoccupied look of a homicidal maniac. He is a very big man with an immensely broad back, pale face and slobbering articulation. I walked to the end of the terrace with his wife, the lady in black and she showed me her dead boy's garden with the flowers he had planted and the border stones he had arranged. Monday the 27th. Only one more week and I shall be free. Thursday the 30th. We have motored down to Weymouth for the night. Just now I walked to the end of the pier. The lights from the crescent shaped front shone like golden daggers in the sea. I am sitting in my bedroom near the open window, footsteps on the esplanade and the distant whistle of a railway train, shrill and weirdly romantic, are the only sounds audible and ripple of the sea. Monday, August 3rd. Free at last, wished goodbye to many people and the evening was with my brother. We walked to a village five miles from his home and had supper there in a little back parlor. We had much to talk about. It was midnight before we got back but we, who are possessed, never grow tired. End of part 13. Part 14 of Confessions of Two Brothers This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Confessions of Two Brothers by John Cooper Poece and Llewellyn Poece. Confessions by Llewellyn. Section 3. America. It was now that I fell more completely than ever under the influence of my brother JCP. He had persuaded me to try lecturing in America and the preparations for these lectures brought us together sometimes in Somerset, sometimes in Sussex. I began to learn more and more about the world. To understand the miracle of cornfields, golden and bread bearing and hot in the August sun. To understand the mystery of the sea, full of strange vegetation and shells and salt spray. And the old world melancholy of great woods and tidal rivers and ancient country towns. We were together always. Every insignificant incident of the day was experienced with relish. For few minutes out in the garden before breakfast, the lighting of cigarettes as we hurried off together afterwards. The pouring out of tea at some village and the old world melancholy with the road outside still light and dusty in the late afternoon. We visited churches and peered curiously at the symbols and images that had meant so much to our race. We loitered and read the old weather-beaten inscriptions on the stones outside. We thought of Hardy and Shakespeare and of the still bones of the peasant tree below in the earth. We stopped to watch village children with the cheeked shadows of old west country elms. To notice old laborers returning from the fields with stories of gladness and sorrow of births and deaths written on their disfigured brows. And all the time the world unfolded itself before my eyes. This world of sun and grain and of river and sea of churches and dead men's bones. We crossed the Atlantic together in the late autumn. And I looked out day after day at that huge track of heaving waters there from the beginning and so large a part of the earth. I was amazed. This I thought is the world. Vast lands and vast waters and with what happenings going on here and there. At the end of our journey we arrived at New York and I saw what the human race had done here. Like a giant city, New York raised some of the batlements in the darkness. I don't know that I had actually learned much from America. It was staggering, astounding and seemed possessed of an exaggerated reality of its own. With such a spectacle before my eyes any just view of existence was blurred. I received the impression of a tireless, a dominable people displaying absolute indifference to their fate. To anybody's fate. The people that rushed to and fro and entered upon the New Year the New Year of each of their destinies with hoots and rattles and cat callings. In a curious way they seemed separated from the rest of humanity. A race devoid of fear, devoid of reverence whom it was impossible to associate with the tragic misused beings for whose sake it was necessary for a young, somatic God noble and heroic to die. When I got back to England I had but a few months to spend before I became ill. It seems to me now that I was particularly fortunate at that time. I was always wondering about in places where cuckoo flowers grew and where sea poppies grew and where garlic was made white by the droppings of rooks. We spent two weeks I remember at Sidemouth in Devonshire under the shadow of those weird blood red cliffs overgrown in land hedges and rabbits pirouetting fantastically silhouetted against the Atlantic, against eternity. All the time a myriad microbes alive and active were eating away at my body at my very life. Suddenly I began spitting blood. There is no time to be lost said the doctor and I was hurried away to Switzerland. My brother JCP came with me. Together we listened to the sea on Dover Beach. Together we listened to the sighing of the wind in the house tops of Laon before even the Germans were there. I quote again from my diary. End of part 14. Part 15 of Confessions of Two Brothers. This is LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Confessions of Two Brothers by John Cooper Pois and Llewellyn Pois. Confessions by Llewellyn. Section 4. A Consumptive's Diary. November 29th, 1909. I must be ill. Last night I coughed up blood. I slept badly also. The sound of the wind and drifting rain keeping me awake. What an autumn it has been. We have not seen the sun for weeks. All low-lying fields are flooded. All roads heavy with mud and all trees black with dampness. I am going to the doctor this morning. Probably I have broken some small blood vessel and shall be all right in a day or two. I cannot help remembering, however, those ominous words of John Keats when he spat blood for the first time. I cannot help remembering, however, those ominous words of John Keats when he spat blood for the first time. I know the colour of that blood. That blood is arterial blood. It is my death warrant. I must die. Later. I have interviewed the doctor and he says I have consumption and must leave England at once. I asked if I might not wait until after Christmas, but he told me there was no time to be lost. December 2nd, 1909. I have not seen the sun. December 2nd. I am starting for Switzerland next week. My eldest brother is going to travel with me. I still have discolouration and slight fever. December 9th. We got here yesterday, having broken the journey at Basile. I have never been abroad before, so that in spite of my weakness, I found the journey extraordinarily exciting. Amazing. I see in reality the historic continent of Europe. For me, hither or two, only a matter of maps and writing. At first, I looked out upon the plain lands of Normandy, that country so dear to guide de Moussapont, with its limitless fields and small workaday farms, and now afterwards at the more undulating landscape of the frontier. With now and then a swollen river sweeping along quite clear to the railway line. A glimpse of the mountains coming up to La Croix, formidable grey granite cliffs, overhanging slate-coloured lakes, scenery somber enough and well-selected for Pontius Pilate's legendary end. At last, as it was getting dark, our train ran slowly into De Vos Platz Station. A crowd of porters, each with the name of a sanatorium or hotel inscribed on the front of his hat, stood waiting at the end of the platform. Eventually, we were conducted to a slay and driven up here. As we passed through De Vos, we could see on every side prostrate figures on lighted balconies. My room, number 14, is a fairly large one. The fact that number 13 is completely admitted, strikes me as an astonishing concession to the superstition of the modern European. Exactly opposite, on the other side of the valley, rises a huge fur-clad mountain with curious straight paths running down its precipitous sides. Used, so I am told, by woodcutters for sliding timber. I am to stay in bed for at least two or three weeks so as to become a climatised to the rarefied mountain air. My brother leaves tomorrow. December 10th. This afternoon I was examined by the doctor. He says my chances of recovery are good. As I looked down upon his bald head, with a stethoscope at my chest, it seemed extraordinary that one skeleton man by merely listening could possibly predict the longevity of another. December 15th. Today I was allowed on my balcony for a few hours. From my liege chair I could see a small village at the bottom of the valley, a village in miniature with flat-roofed hills clustering around a tiny church. December 20th. This morning I went down to the dining room for the first time. I sat at the English table between two men who had got the thing in their throats and could only communicate and whispers. One of them, a sentimental clerk from Newcastle, tried to enlist my sympathy by writing on a scrap of paper. I am a married chap. Then there was an Anglican priest at the table, a sly whimsical high churchman, plump as a partridge, but with death obviously upon him. December 21st. I went down again today and am getting to know the various people by sight. There is rather an attractive American woman at the table opposite. She is married, but seems just now very much occupied with a dower-faced Scotchman. At another table, a little further away, a graceful Serpentine figure strangely emaciated. There is a young Russian, also, a fellow of Herculian proportions, with heavy Slavonic jaw and expansive gestures. He is in love with a little compatriot of his, a beautiful barbarian, slender and delicate, with pale ivory hands and black Link's eyes. I have named her Hammerdryad and in truth her voice possesses something of the quaint shrillness of a wood-creature, for the rest of the room is filled with a curious medley of degenerates from every country in Europe, philosophic Germans, flushed and friendly, smartly dressed foreign-looking Frenchmen and aristocratic Austrians. December 22nd. Walked up and down the terrace. The cold freshness of the air when one first comes out is very delicious and I began to feel better. One of the two made jocular illusions as to the gravity of his health, but even so I saw the death terror at the back of his eyes. December 26th. Went down to the Christmas dinner last night and sat next to the Hammerdryad who, I fancy, was drinking too much champagne. I amused some of the patients afterwards by telling fortunes, your lifeline is a good one, I said to the Hungarian, good one, good one, he laughed. That's funny considering I am dying. He is a strange type, subtle and irresponsible and declares himself a disciple of Montague, like so many other Europeans, he has fallen under the spell of Napoleon. His room is packed with histories of that period and with busts and pictures of the great man. There, he says, pointing to the crowded relics, there is the past and there, indicating his table strewn with papers and musical instruments, there is the present, and there, and now he pointed to his bed, and there is the future. The death mask of Napoleon plastic and monumental lay on an ebony stand by itself. He noticed that it had caught my attention. I have often sat watching that for hours, he said. That is rest. January 1st, 1910. The whole sanatorium is immensely diverted by the behaviour of the Russian. This great boy giant has conceived a grand passion for the hammer-dryad. He showers her with choice and costly flowers, and this evening summons the Davos band for her entertainment. For all this, she takes precious little notice of him. In fact, she has told me she does not care about him. While waiting for the post this evening, the priest began likening the sanatorium to the cave of Polythemus. We are devoured one by one, he said. Certainly, his religion does not seem to reconcile him to the idea of death. I reminded him that Ulysses and a few of his men did at last escape, clinging to the bellies of sheep. January 17th. It has been a glorious day. The sun in the sky seemed smaller, but at the same time far brighter than it does in England. And under its rays, the white frozen mountains gleamed and glittered. True Davos weather, the habitats call it. I passed by many chalets, coloured a rich mellow brown by the heat of the sun. The Russian is as infatuated as ever. It is really laughable to observe him at a meal times, trying to look at her without being detected by the other patients. She does not appear to notice him at all. January 26th. This morning, out walking, I amused myself by watching the peasants sliding tree trunks down the mountainside. They use a kind of single pickaxe, which they dig into the trees, shouting and gruff unison, so as to strike and dig at the same moment. These were the weapons used against the Austrians. January 28th. The Hammer Dryad has been taken ill. I am sorry, as I have found her wild and willful personality strangely fascinating. I was quite surprised to discover how startled I was this morning by coming across her name written in the snow. It was like finding the footprint of a drowned child on the seashore. January 31st. The Hammer Dryad is much worse. Report says she may not recover. I went for a walk in the morning, but have come to hate these mountains of sorrow. From an open space in the woods, I looked out across a deserted white plain at Davos. There it stood, that city of dreadful death, forsaken for lawn, and shrouded in shame. In the immediate foreground was the black spire of a church, and beyond, in the enclosed piece of ground, where so many unfortunate patients congregate for the last time. Next week we are going to have fancy dress entertainment. I shall procure a costume from Davos. February 2nd. My temperature by no means normal. This morning, as I was putting on my snowshoes, I overheard a queer conversation. The room next door has for some weeks been occupied by a young Englishman. Last night he had a bad hemorrhage. I guessed it was so, because when I woke, I heard him give those successive gasping coughs, which were absolutely unmistakable. Apparently the doctor was with him, for I heard him ask in a querulous tone whether he was going to die. For some moments the noise of the nurse emptying basins was the only sound audible, then at last came the no, certainly not, certainly not, from the doctor. He was dead by the evening though. February 4th. Walked along the path above the sanatorium, kept digging my alpine stock into the snow and admiring the blue colour like that of a breaking wave to be seen in the hole where it had been. A peasant passed by, leading by a rope, an absurd, mouse-coloured cow. He was bearded and smoking a long and hanging pipe. The fancy dress entertainment is tomorrow. February 5th. What a scene it was, this fancy dress ball. I stood at the end of the lighted hall, dressed as a Welsh prince in scarlet and gold, and there passed by countless fantastics, a nun, a pyro, an emperor, everybody in the highest spirits, cigarettes, champagne, laughter and flushed cheeks. If it had not been for the continual sound of coughing like the voice of a hollow-toned stranger, now here, now there, one would never have suspected that all was not well with this gay and coloured picture. But this was brought home to me, when, going up to my room for some forgotten object, I happened upon a group of servant men taking, at the opportunity, now that the corridors were deserted. To carry away a corpse. I only saw them for one moment, but I knew directly, as though by instinct, what they were at, with their oblong burden, their hushed voices, their stocking feet. It is said that coffins of every size are stalled in the sanatorium to facilitate the secret removal of bodies for, after all, it is not pleasant to live patients to meet dead patients coming downstairs. February 8th. The hammer-dryad is dead. It was her they were carrying away last night. The death of a guest is never announced in a sanatorium until the corpse has been removed. It is necessary to diminish the startled shock such news gives to the others. When a day or two has elapsed, a sheep in a butcher's field they can be reassured. February 14th. Yesterday I drove down to the village in the valley. It was a wonderfully beautiful morning, but it turned off in the afternoon. I went inside the church. It was Zwingillian, and the interior was bare and desolate, except for faded floral wreaths hung here and there in the remembrance of the dead. A place more discouraging one could hardly imagine. Coming back, the sky was overcast, the mountains appeared chill and somber, and small flakes of snow began falling. I'm quite glad to get back to my room again. February 15th. I think the extra exertion must have been too much for me, for today I am in bed with a rising temperature. February 28th. Yesterday evening the Russian shot himself, but by a strange irony, owing to his illness, his heart had moved from its right place, so he is not dead. March 2nd. I am getting worse. March 10th. Still no improvement. It looks as though my dissolution is to be a rapid one. The doctors sound me and give me not unfavorable reports, but from their queer calculating looks I understand what they really think. April. This is terrible. I had no idea that I should come to fear death as I do. The whole perspective of my view of life has changed. It is as though I had been asleep or hypnotized all this time, and had only now waked. And what an awakening. And what an awakening. April 10th. 2 a.m. Hemorrhage. I see blood. I taste blood. I breathe blood. Will daylight never come? End of Part 15. Part 16 of Confessions of Two Brothers. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit our website. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Confessions of Two Brothers by John Cooper Poece and Llewellyn Poece. Confessions by Llewellyn. Section 5. Venice. After this hemorrhage, I gradually began to get better. At last I was able to go out again to look down at the little white buttress church in the valley and see the peasants come and go from its gates like tiny ants. I knew they went there to worship God, but I did not know whether they were wise or not. I made a scratch on the plastered wall of a chalet and used to look at it and wonder if I should ever see it again after I got back to England. This tiny scratch on this particular spot of the material universe. At last I was released and rushed back to England. It was May Day when my brother and I looked out of the hotel windows at Folkstone. How familiar, how delicious, how green everything looked. I could almost see the birds' nests and the hedges. I could almost smell the young elder leaves as we were whirled up to London. My illness had sharpened my wits. At night when I looked at the stars, I understood the background which belonged to our planet, poised and sailing from mystery to mystery, from abyss to abyss. I liked the idea of the blank, flaring spaces of infinity giving birth unwittingly to crafty intellectual eyes which peered out upon their secret astral chambers. The planet itself was sailing on to extinction, either by some catastrophic celestial collision or by slow, senseless withering. And each man, each woman and each child was destined also sooner or later to wear white stockings and be carried away to the churchyard. When I sat in church and heard my father speak so certainly of a future life, this was the life I envisaged. While the lamp light changed to a richer colour, the yellow ham hillstone of the chancel arch and the foolish village people grew restless for their suppers and the boys and girls lulled in their seats and sighed for one another. I was a whole year at home then all of a sudden I found myself emerged in a great wave of apathy. I have never been able to explain the cause of this. Was it, as my brother put it, that the iron of consumption was at last entering my soul or that my enforced inaction was dulling my capacity for pleasure. Who can tell? Who knows where these great clouds come from, clouds which come sailing out of eternity and settle sometimes so heavily on the heads of the sons of men. When, as I sit writing now with the scurratic escarpments of Africa around me, I recall those days and it seems perfectly incredible that any sadness of the kind could have overtaken me. Free as I was to wander over the station fields with brown hairs circling through the gleaming wind-blown spring grass with more hens dabbling in the water and with the noblest of women by my side. But so it was. When I went out in the early mornings I no longer wanted to smell the ground ivy to smell the very earth itself. My imagination seemed suddenly drugged, my senses seemed to have lost their finer edge and the dead weight of the commonplace dragged me down and filled my spirit with lamentable misgivings. I wrote to my brother in a curiously peevish tone and I accused him of deserting me. I told him he had forgotten the roads, the lanes, the wayside trees, the field ponds we had so often visited together. I told him I believed it was now of no consequence to him that the purple lilacs were already out by the side of the Fosway and casting spiral shadows on the white May dust. He came to see me at once and suggested as we sat in the corner of the potato garden that I should go with him to Venice. It was arranged. Before I started I went down to the terrace walk and picked for a buttonhole one of those spotted turkshead lilies which possess such a deadly and voluptuous and heavy perfume that was symbolic. It was what Oscar Wilde would have done and that was why I did it. We crossed the channel in Halcyon weather. We reached Venice the next day. Venice. I don't think any human apathy could oppress me for long in that city. Day follow day and I walked those marble piazzas in a kind of trance. We climbed to the top of the Champanile and looked down on the apostolic piazzas of the Champanile and upon the lion. We went over the glass factory saw the workmen twist the heated crystal into a thousand exquisite shapes. We crossed to Torcilio and wandered about the marshland behind. We visited the island cemetery and loitered down along the long cypress alleys tapping at the marble walls. Each one honeycombed with the dead. At night we glided through the city while ever and again out of the lapping waters rose unmistakable the smells of old long forgotten centuries. Sometimes we would wander into St. Mark's and on one occasion I remember we saw an old man shuffle up to the great pagan font and dip his fingers into the holy water and make the sign upon his forehead and upon the forehead of a child who was holding to him. We watched him there in the end of an ancient church while all the time far up above the altar the gilded angels saying hallelujahs to their creator to the creator of Venice to the creator of the world. The most trivial things seen during those days seem indelibly imprinted upon my mind. I have forgotten nothing. I recall exactly the direct momentary glance of an elaborately dressed cosmopolitan harlot so steely and ice cold that it seemed to penetrate to my very soul as I prowled one evening up and down the brilliantly lighted colonnade. I remember also the look of a girl eating a handful of red currants in a shady and insanitary side street. I remember the dune roses in the gardens on the Lido and the extraordinary knotted skin spiral shaped seahors so miniature yet so perfect in design which used to die by the hundreds amongst the fishes dragged in from the Adriatic but all the time I was conscious of my sickness it was always at the back of my mind I could never dismiss it I had a relapse on my way home and was laid up at Milan for weeks for a whole year afterwards my health was uncertain and desperation I called myself out of here in this abandoned and sun seared continent to be alive in Africa is better than to be dead in Europe we are still on the same planet writes JCP but that is about all that can be said I left England a month after war had been declared end of part 16 part 17 of Confessions of Two Brothers this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Confessions of Two Brothers by John Cooper Poece and Lou Allen Poece Confessions by Lou Allen section 6 from Monacute to Gisel September 4th travelled up to London slept at Cheswick in London the moon was in the sky and the pear trees were everywhere motored up to Blackwell Docks we were held up outside Tilbury for some hours across Essex Flats I could see a church tower tranquil and with the afternoon sunshine upon it September 5th there are tiresome people at my end of the table opposite sits a lady who looks like a prostitute however there is an English person a typical public school man whose appearance is as familiar and reassuring as an oak tree or Norman Arch September 7th a horrible night I could not sleep at all was sick continually the curious wishy washy smell of the cabin nauseated me I tried to drink soda water and was sick I tried to eat grapes and was sick and was confronted by an ice cold grey sea rolling and heaving as far as the eye could see lay in my deck chair all the morning watching white waves on the very borders of the horizon rise and fade and be submerged forever September 9th watched the sun go down behind a wall of black clouds rays of light fell in lines upon the water where a single bird was flying a mere dot in the sky September 11th slept on deck in the morning a sailor showed me a flying fish which had got stranded on deck I like to see its sharp spiky fins all day there were shoals of them skimming over the waves flying not for the joy in their hearts but for the terror September 12th during the afternoon we were all excited by the appearance of a huge ship on the horizon it made as though it would round us up however to our great relief it turned out to be British September 14th during the morning there were two torrential downpours of rain and we had to seek shelter in the afternoon a bird with black and white bars and crested head appeared suddenly flying after the ship it was a hoopoo other little birds are lighted on the gunnel also moths fluttered about the deck evidently we are not far from land September 17th all night the sea was illuminated by strange submarine lights shimmering now here now there like a kind of water lightning September 18th sat talking with the Eurasian doctor her charming fellow with a bald head bushy black moustache and skin like old ivory when we are dead we are dead he said laughing the hissing serpent laugh characteristic of Indians September 19th I was on an island at eleven o'clock I lay on my couch at the back of the ship and watched the mountains grow larger and larger and turn from grey to blue and from blue to mauve the island is volcanic it looks as though it had only just cooled down from a molten state and that the sea must still hiss around its rocks above us sharp winged swallow tailed seagulls sailed to and fro and below in an indigo sea September 22nd in the morning approached St. Helena red scurritic cliffs rising bolt out of the sea went on shore but could get no carriage to take me up to Longwood drifted up the main street very desolated and dilapidated it was with old black trots dusty chickens and lean cats everywhere as I was being rode back to the ship I noticed the dry cracked dirty feet of the negro and thought how like they were to the claws and hooves of animals with their toughness and clinging discoloured nails September 24th woke early as silent moving figures were swilling down the deck watched the white dawn spread over the sea in the afternoon sat talking with the tees what has made this fragile girl an atheist September 26th an albatross appeared and kept sailing after the ship with beautiful owl-like curves its wings wide outstretched I had my dinner by the light of the moon as all the ship was darkened from fear of the Germans September 27th talked with the little doctor who was going out to investigate the Tetsi fly and learned from him how we were surrounded by innumerable minute intelligences in the evening sat next to Mrs. T she did not want to go to bed when her husband arrived so she caressed his hand Siem believed Mr. Palace forced to go to bed I am not forcing I am only persuading and I remember night's words all women are either cats or birds October 1st Cape Town it rained in the morning but by 12 o'clock it began to look brighter I went into the town looked up the Green Avenue and into the gardens the gravel was steaming and there were heavy scents in the air I came upon a statue of Cecil Rhodes looking very absurd with its black baggy breeches September 3rd wasted all the day waiting to set sail as a matter of fact we did not get off until 6 o'clock I stood near Dr H as we sailed in the direction of the sinking sun which was making all the lower part and a full moon was rising pale lily white Nietzsche hated the moon he called it sly cat of the roofs fiercely stalking over the star carpets we have strayed like lost sheep we have followed the devices and desires of our own hearts why not why ever not why salvation why salvation why forgiveness why not so we chatted on as we glided past the 12 apostles in the call of the evening October 4th Sack talking with H he remembered well seeing a yellow ray of the sinking sun shine through the Muslim curtain of his nursing home and thinking to himself that there would be no more sunshine for him the next day I was suffering pain it makes me very angry now I had so much pain I was suffering useless useless pain what a creation it is think of it consider it for a moment God creates animals but carnivorous animals also God creates fishes but carnivorous fishes also the whole of creation is harassed in this way that explains why in East Africa the animals have no fat on them they are too harassed in the morning I talked with Dr. L the entomologist an alert little man who was surely an insect himself in his pre-incarnation he told me how the tropical jungle was teeming with life how every twig and branch was alive not only on the surface but inside also how the evidence of the underworld as to the existence of God was ever ambiguous was ever a yay and a nay and how they drive all before them how even elephants turn out of their way and how on many different occasions he had observed a rapid migration of all creeping things before a column of them mice and rats running for their lives and grasshoppers leaping and leaping October 6th reached Durban at 6 o'clock observed the public buildings by their lack of originality reflecting exactly the colonial taste I wandered away down odd by streets full of men with dusty birds claws for feet October 10th at breakfast saw a turtle paddle past us with absolute aplomb its brown shell gleaming in the sunshine in the evening sat talking with Miss Anne and nodded with Onwe Onwe some women are intended for embraces alone October 14th in the morning a warship appeared on the horizon she turned out to be British and soon after she had passed we changed our course to the south of the island by 2 o'clock we were lying off Zanzibar the remains of the unfortunate Pegasus still visible I went on shore the streets narrow and cool almost like passages the doorways decorated with Arabic carving within cavernous shops with bright-eyed Indians the unmistakable smell of Arab towns a sweet smell a smell of silken oriental tapestries in black and brown humanity October 15th woke as a strange rose-coloured dawn spread itself over Zanzibar the pale crescent of the moon was under its spell so were the motionless clouds so were the tropical shaped coconut trees which fringed the further hills October 16th arrived at an ambassador and after some difficulty got my luggage through the customs and settled myself in the Uganda train by next morning we had left behind the dry scrub country and were crossing vast grass plains with the sun drenching down upon them one saw many wild animals heartbeasts giraffes, zebras and gazelles from time to time this train stopped at stations and we looked out at Indians at queer black men with decorated mangled ears at tin roofed houses and at burning hot earth October 18th arrived at Gilgil a place 20 miles from the equator with an altitude of 8,000 feet the sun went down and immediately the darkness echoed and quivered with weird unfamiliar sounds it is certainly an amazing country of midnight murmurs of burnished ebony men of spotted golden-haired animals a country vast, profound inexplicable what beast for instance gave utterance to the agonised terror-stricken screams which I heard in the forest at the back of the house and why are the cedar trees so gnarled and so strangely bearded and who made that iron rock for the cold black mountain stream to flow over the pear trees grow end of part 17 part 18 of Confessions of Two Brothers this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Confessions of Two Brothers by John Cooper Powess and Llewellyn Powess Confessions by Llewellyn section 7 October 19th was too excited to sleep much I woke often and listened in terror to the sounds of the jungle what is going on out there in the green darkness October 20th rested all day on the veranda W brought me a lizard to look at which he'd caught in the garden it had a green back and the eye of a demon its ancestors must have been evolving some queer thoughts that were acquired an expression so dragon like and so cynical at night some boys came to say that a dead cacopoe was stinking like a dead porcupine these natives will never approach a dead body on their own reserve they get over the difficulty by dragging the dying to the hyenas we went out and set light to the whole hut it burnt furiously the cedar trees stood and the cacophony of bullock came and surveyed the scene with mild curiosity October 25th heard a hyena howl for the first time in my life a long low howl merging into a kind of whoop I looked across at the outline of the black forest where the little tree were piping before I went to sleep Orion had risen away to the west October 26th was always Africa a strange terrifying country a country inhabited by clawed creatures by creatures with striped and gilded pelts a country where even the moles are as large as water rats where the very nettle sting like wasps October 31st in the afternoon I sold my dove coloured flannel suit to a negro who wanted to make love not in Venice as I did when I bought it but in Nashiva November 2nd in the afternoon walked with W to the top of the escarpment the long grass and clumps of trees almost suggest English parklands came across some elephants dung we returned by a game path through cool moss grown places of the forest I tripped over a large bone gleaming ghastly white in the spangled sunlight W shot a duck it wagged its tail stiffened its webbed legs and opened and shut its round brown eyes but I did not care November 5th rode the mule to the swamps a white flamingo rose out of the rushes and floated away with graceful tilted head when I came back I found the tabby cat lying on the veranda panting miserably with its hind quarters crushed the boys would not kill it I got a saucer of milk but it would not drink Queda said the cook and it crawled with its front legs mewing I tried to write but could not at last I compelled myself to kill it flogging it with a heavy cedar stick a few blows and it was dead with its mouth open a little and its limbs extended I was reminded of another scene a human being's death or a tabby cat's death it is the same November 8th had tea at the bees it was dark before we got back Mashara came to meet us with a lantern W went to Abdullah's hut to see if we could buy any eggs I sat on the mule outside observing sickness flying across the milky way November 10th walked to the further Shamba and then home W killed a bullet for the boys he shot it with his rifle and it fell and rolled over with its legs in the air the Swahili's cut it up I peered into its reeking carcass and saw its pink lungs its yellow dung filled belly and a red gasping wind pipe the natives crowded around like black vultures like hyenas November 20th bee arrived he shot a monkey he threw it down on the veranda where it lay a little heaving man with black pads for hands all three slept on the veranda you won't believe then in religion Sarah, thou art said to have a stubborn soul that apprehends no further than this world and squarist thy life accordingly November the 26th received a letter from Jay I can't get over your remoteness we have on our mantelpiece that McEvellean picture of you with stick and hat it looks at me as one who would say strike out and use your horn all oh strange and hidden power of destiny how all is different now all all all these Germans are perpetually digging themselves in like great stinking badges they run to earth at every chance I've just been looking at some pictures of the Indian troops what noble faces I think I have never seen such noble human countenances anywhere the Sikhs I suppose if the war does really mean that the east is moving to the west civilization the owned self I think it is a good thing if men have noble generous brave and beautiful faces it must be right that they should conquer a so much for the German sausages for by God they aren't a lot of girders if these pictures represent them December 5th in the evening there was a dispute between two natives over all women all three came into the room heard the girl's voice and recognized at once the purring cat's voice of a woman what matter though her buttocks be velvet black instead of velvet white at night W went out after porcupines with lanterns and boys and dogs I was asleep when he returned he had dragged one back for me to look at a great heavy badger like brute stuck all over with quills it had a rattle at the end of its tail head was large and heavy and rhino-like December 12th R and A came to T I watched the three of them ride away then strolled out towards the forest I sat on a charred log natives shouted to each other humped back cattle browsed on the dry grass and the sun slowly went down over Africa in the evening a letter from J everyone is very quiet on the ship as if the wind were blowing over its hosts of dead crying and going all of them towards the race at Portland the spring in Elan seems out of everyone the spring shall we ever see the lilacs again as we walk down to the village to post our letters and back by the park December the 20th I came back and set off at once for the forest before I followed slowly behind I found them setting the trap on the other side of the river everywhere fragments of the buck were strewn on the ground the four legs the rib, the vertebrae December the 29th I went shooting I rode the mule over the escarpment up a narrow path a herd of zebras were quite close to us January the 6th went shooting monkeys in the afternoon or none set on the ground in the forest a few birds sang but not like English birds in every direction strange white trunked trees rose from the green brushwood set leopard trap it was a dark windy night January 7th went down to the leopard trap before breakfast coming over the hill we saw a spotted skin shot through the eye I smelt its warm yellow pelt looked at its claws and teeth Woolly carried it home on his back I walked behind stuffing stones into the hole in its skull to keep the brains from falling out January 9th T sent me a letter he had from G Robin goes to school for the first time but it's when a child gets alone with the other boys that the universe pinches him with its clumsy great finger and thumb what a world, Christ and God, what a world how many playful little scenes of pinching and prodding are occurring on this side and that Luludam his sly soul loves to have it so and has gone off to put up silky leopards and rule over Somali tribes after dark I noticed a fire far away in the forest opposite and I thought, oh, God I believed them I could see him there well out of the way warming his hands under the gaunt cedars who is Mungu, I asked Mungu lives up there, they answered and if he wants you to die you die and if he wants you to live you live January 11th caught an eagle in a gin it was brought to me and laid on the veranda its legs and wings with its unflinching eye I let it go it flew off in the direction of the afternoon sun it is not the first time I thought that an eagle has been caught in a gin January 31st rode the mule down to Jezal very hot white horses, careering about near the water filled me with alarm I was directed to the office and there I sat for half an hour while an unpleasant pale-faced accountant catchatised I with a hard, conceited face and yellow garters and hated him February 12th worked all day in the evening a boy came for po-show I went across with Marsheera to give him some the Pleiades were far up above a cedar tree which had something of the shape of a tinton-hole elm I have often seen those seven stars in England what are those stars I asked him Moto Mungu Eyes of God once more I got an odd sensation as though perhaps there really was a capricious, negroid deity up there, around, everywhere March 2nd Wade Barley and white-washed pigsty read a report of the funeral of the Countess Pollock at Hinton Street, George how pitiful are all our efforts to conceal to cast a veil over the ghastly reality within the coffin God I have seen dead faces I know what they look like March 13th unloaded the barley straw often throughout the day my mind reverted to scenes and sensations at home what about the first early days of spring the feel and the smell of the first sunny days what about the clear early evening light and dry March dust in the Bear High Street as I saw it that afternoon two years ago here in Africa the sun and the black men the vast tracts of land make all different and also there are no daffodils here no meadow sweet no wood and enemies end of confessions of two brothers