VIII

SALISBURY,
_January_.

1

[Sidenote: _CONTRASTS_]

Chilliness--a social and emotional chilliness that can with difficulty
be defined or nailed down to any cause--is, above and below all, what
one feels on returning from a poor man's house into middle-class
surroundings. It is not unlike that chill with which certain forms of
metropolitan hospitality strike a countryman. He meets a London friend,
a former fellow-townsman, perhaps, who has migrated to London and whom
he has not seen for a year or two. "Glad to see you," says the
Londoner. "You must call on my wife before you go back. Her day is
Wednesday." Or, "You must come to dinner one evening. When are you
free? Next Tuesday? or Friday?" If the hospitality had begun forthwith,
and the countryman had been haled off, country fashion, to the very
next pot-luck meal, he would have had a pleasant adventure. It would
have been like old times. The former glow of friendship would have more
than revived. But the calculated invitation for a future date, the idea
that the countryman will like to call for a twenty minutes' chat on
generalities and a couple of cups of bad afternoon tea.... Though he
may understand that a multiplicity of engagements in London renders
this sort of thing convenient, he none the less feels a chill when it
is applied to himself, and usually cares little whether he go or not.
He becomes conscious of the desire to save trouble, which is at the
bottom of such calculations. Had the Londoner revisited the country, he
would have found old friends ready to upset all their arrangements for
the sake of entertaining him. The London hospitality is the 'better
done,' but country hospitality is warmer. Middle-class life runs
smoother than the poor man's, it is more arranged and in many ways
'better done,' and it is chillier precisely because, for smooth
running, the warmer human impulses, both good and bad, must be
repressed. 'Something with a little love and a little murder' in it,
was what the illiterate old woman wanted to learn to read. It is what
we all want in our hearts, much more than smooth running and
impenetrable uniform politeness.

Down at Seacombe we warm our hands, so to speak, at the fire of life;
hunger lurks outside, and the fire is dusty and needs looking after;
but it glows, and we sit together round it. Here at