that statement, and people were impressed or
pretended to be."

The late Carleon Anthony, the poet, sang in his time of the domestic and
social amenities of our age with a most felicitous versification, his
object being, in his own words, "to glorify the result of six thousand
years' evolution towards the refinement of thought, manners and
feelings." Why he fixed the term at six thousand years I don't know.
His poems read like sentimental novels told in verse of a really
superior quality. You felt as if you, were being taken out for a
delightful country drive by a charming lady in a pony carriage. But in
his domestic life that same Carleon Anthony showed traces of the
primitive cave-dweller's temperament. He was a massive, implacable man
with a handsome face, arbitrary, and exacting with his dependants, but
marvellously suave in his manner to admiring strangers. These
contrasted displays must have been particularly exasperating to his
longsuffering family. After his second wife's death his boy, whom he
persisted by a mere whim in educating at home, ran away in conventional
style and, as if disgusted with the amenities of civilisation, threw
himself, figuratively speaking, into the sea. The daughter (the elder
of the two children) either from compassion or because women are
naturally more enduring, remained in bondage to the poet for several
years, till she too seized a chance of escape by throwing herself into
the arms, the muscular arms, of the pedestrian Fyne. This was either
great luck or great sagacity. A civil servant is, I should imagine, the
last human being in the world to preserve those traits of the
cave-dweller from which she was fleeing. Her father would never consent
to see her after the marriage. Such unforgiving selfishness is
difficult to understand unless as a perverse sort of refinement. There
were also doubts as to Carleon Anthony's complete sanity for some
considerable time before he died.

Most of the above I elicited from Marlow, for all I knew of Carleon
Anthony was his unexciting but fascinating verse. Marlow assured me
that the Fyne marriage was perfectly successful and even happy, in an
earnest, unplayful fashion, being blessed besides by three healthy,
active, self-reliant children, all girls. They were all pedestrians
too. Even the youngest would wander away for miles if not restrained.
Mrs Fyne had a ruddy out-of-doors complexion and wore blouses with a
starched front like