This hastening and that pressing upon this a mighty crowd within so narrow room

William Michael Rossetti

The sky is blue here, scarcely with a stain
Of grey for clouds: here the young grasses gain
A larger growth of green over this splinter
Fallen from the ruin. Spring seems to have told Winter
He shall not freeze again here. Tho’ their loss
Of leaves is not yet quite repaired, trees toss
Sprouts from their boughs. The ash you called so stiff
Curves, daily, broader shadow down the cliff.

How the rooks caw, and their beaks seem to clank!
Let us just move out there,—(it might be cool
Under those trees,) and watch how the thick tank
By the old mill is black,—a stagnant pool
Of rot and insects. There goes by a lank
Dead hairy dog floating. Will Nature’s rule
Of life return hither no more? The plank
Rots in the crushed weeds, and the sun is cruel.

III. The Breadth of Noon

Long time I lay there, while a breeze would blow
From the south softly, and, hard by, a slender
Poplar swayed to and fro to it. Surrender
Was made of all myself to quiet. No
Least thought was in my mind of the least woe:
Yet the void silence slowly seemed to render
My calmness not less calm, but yet more tender,
And I was nigh to weeping.—‘Ere I go,’
I thought, ‘I must make all this stillness mine;
The sky’s blue almost purple, and these three
Hills carved against it, and the pine on pine
The wood in their shade has. All this I see
So inwardly I fancy it may be
Seen thus of parted souls by _their_ sunshine.’

Look at that crab there. See if you can’t haul
His backward progress to this spar of a ship
Thrown up and sunk into the sand here. Clip
His clipping feelers hard, and give him all
Your hand to gripe at: he’ll take care not fall:
So,—but with heed, for you are like to slip
In stepping on the plank’s sea-slime. Your lip—
No wonder—curves in mirth at the slow drawl
Of the squat creature’s legs. We’ve quite a shine
Of waves round us, and here there comes a wind
So fresh it must bode us good luck. How long
Boatman, for one and sixpence? Line by line
The sea comes toward us sun-ridged. Oh! we sinned
Taking the crab out: let’s redress his wrong.

V. The Fire Smouldering

I look into the burning coals, and see
Faces and forms of things; but they soon pass,
Melting one into other: the firm mass
Crumbles, and breaks, and fades gradually,
Shape into shape as in a dream may be,
Into an image other than it was:
And so on till the whole falls in, and has
Not any likeness,—face, and hand, and tree,
All gone. So with the mind: thought follows thought,
This hastening, and that pressing upon this,
A mighty crowd within so narrow room:
And then at length heavy-eyed slumbers come,
The drowsy fancies grope about, and miss
Their way, and what was so alive is nought.

William Michael Rossetti

The sky is blue here, scarcely with a stain
Of grey for clouds: here the young grasses gain
A larger growth of green over this splinter
Fallen from the ruin. Spring seems to have told Winter
He shall not freeze again here. Tho’ their loss
Of leaves is not yet quite repaired, trees toss
Sprouts from their boughs. The ash you called so stiff
Curves, daily, broader shadow down the cliff.

How the rooks caw, and their beaks seem to clank!
Let us just move out there,—(it might be cool
Under those trees,) and watch how the thick tank
By the old mill is black,—a stagnant pool
Of rot and insects. There goes by a lank
Dead hairy dog floating. Will Nature’s rule
Of life return hither no more? The plank
Rots in the crushed weeds, and the sun is cruel.

III. The Breadth of Noon

Long time I lay there, while a breeze would blow
From the south softly, and, hard by, a slender
Poplar swayed to and fro to it. Surrender
Was made of all myself to quiet. No
Least thought was in my mind of the least woe:
Yet the void silence slowly seemed to render
My calmness not less calm, but yet more tender,
And I was nigh to weeping.—‘Ere I go,’
I thought, ‘I must make all this stillness mine;
The sky’s blue almost purple, and these three
Hills carved against it, and the pine on pine
The wood in their shade has. All this I see
So inwardly I fancy it may be
Seen thus of parted souls by _their_ sunshine.’

Look at that crab there. See if you can’t haul
His backward progress to this spar of a ship
Thrown up and sunk into the sand here. Clip
His clipping feelers hard, and give him all
Your hand to gripe at: he’ll take care not fall:
So,—but with heed, for you are like to slip
In stepping on the plank’s sea-slime. Your lip—
No wonder—curves in mirth at the slow drawl
Of the squat creature’s legs. We’ve quite a shine
Of waves round us, and here there comes a wind
So fresh it must bode us good luck. How long
Boatman, for one and sixpence? Line by line
The sea comes toward us sun-ridged. Oh! we sinned
Taking the crab out: let’s redress his wrong.

V. The Fire Smouldering

I look into the burning coals, and see
Faces and forms of things; but they soon pass,
Melting one into other: the firm mass
Crumbles, and breaks, and fades gradually,
Shape into shape as in a dream may be,
Into an image other than it was:
And so on till the whole falls in, and has
Not any likeness,—face, and hand, and tree,
All gone. So with the mind: thought follows thought,
This hastening, and that pressing upon this,
A mighty crowd within so narrow room:
And then at length heavy-eyed slumbers come,
The drowsy fancies grope about, and miss
Their way, and what was so alive is nought.

The Germ Part 22

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And told the dreary lengths of years I must drag my weight with me; Or be like a mastless ship stuck fast On a deep, stagnant sea.

A man on a dangerous height alone, If suddenly struck blind, Will never his home path find.

When divers plunge for ocean’s pearls, And chance to strike a rock, Who plunged with greatest force below Receives the heaviest shock.

With nostrils wide and breath drawn in, I rushed resolved on the race; Then, stumbling, fell in the chase.

Yet with time’s cycles forests swell Where stretched a desert plain: Time’s cycles make the mountains rise Where heaved the restless main: On swamps where moped the lonely stork, In the silent lapse of time Stands a city in its prime.

I thought: then saw the broadening shade Grow slowly over the mound, That reached with one long level slope Down to a rich vineyard ground: The air about lay still and hushed, As if in serious thought: But I scarcely heeded aught,

Till I heard, hard by, a thrush break forth, Shouting with his whole voice, So that he made the distant air And the things around rejoice.

My soul gushed, for the sound awoke Memories of early joy: I sobbed like a chidden boy.

Sonnet: Early Aspirations

How many a throb of the young poet-heart, Aspiring to the ideal bliss of Fame, Deems that Time soon may sanctify his claim Among the sons of song to dwell apart.— Time pa.s.ses—pa.s.ses! The aspiring flame Of Hope shrinks down; the white flower Poesy Breaks on its stalk, and from its earth-turned eye Drop sleepy tears instead of that sweet dew Rich with inspiring odours, insect wings Drew from its leaves with every changing sky, While its young innocent petals unsunn’d grew.

No more in pride to other ears he sings, But with a dying charm himself unto:— For a sad season: then, to active life he springs.

From the Cliffs: Noon

The sea is in its listless chime: Time’s lapse it is, made audible,— The murmur of the earth’s large sh.e.l.l.

In a sad blueness beyond rhyme It ends: sense, without thought, can pa.s.s No stadium further. Since time was, This sound hath told the lapse of time.

No stagnance that death wins,—it hath The mournfulness of ancient life, Always enduring at dull strife.

As the world’s heart of rest and wrath, Its painful pulse is in the sands.

Last utterly, the whole sky stands, Grey and not known, along its path.

Fancies at Leisure

The sky is blue here, scarcely with a stain Of grey for clouds: here the young gra.s.ses gain A larger growth of green over this splinter Fallen from the ruin. Spring seems to have told Winter He shall not freeze again here. Tho’ their loss Of leaves is not yet quite repaired, trees toss Sprouts from their boughs. The ash you called so stiff Curves, daily, broader shadow down the cliff.

How the rooks caw, and their beaks seem to clank!

Let us just move out there,—(it might be cool Under those trees,) and watch how the thick tank By the old mill is black,—a stagnant pool Of rot and insects. There goes by a lank Dead hairy dog floating. Will Nature’s rule Of life return hither no more? The plank Rots in the crushed weeds, and the sun is cruel.

III. The Breadth of Noon

Long time I lay there, while a breeze would blow From the south softly, and, hard by, a slender Poplar swayed to and fro to it. Surrender Was made of all myself to quiet. No Least thought was in my mind of the least woe: Yet the void silence slowly seemed to render My calmness not less calm, but yet more tender, And I was nigh to weeping.—‘Ere I go,’

I thought, ‘I must make all this stillness mine; The sky’s blue almost purple, and these three Hills carved against it, and the pine on pine The wood in their shade has. All this I see So inwardly I fancy it may be Seen thus of parted souls by _their_ sunshine.’

Look at that crab there. See if you can’t haul His backward progress to this spar of a ship Thrown up and sunk into the sand here. Clip His clipping feelers hard, and give him all Your hand to gripe at: he’ll take care not fall: So,—but with heed, for you are like to slip In stepping on the plank’s sea-slime. Your lip— No wonder—curves in mirth at the slow drawl Of the squat creature’s legs. We’ve quite a shine Of waves round us, and here there comes a wind So fresh it must bode us good luck. How long Boatman, for one and sixpence? Line by line The sea comes toward us sun-ridged. Oh! we sinned Taking the crab out: let’s redress his wrong.

V. The Fire Smouldering

I look into the burning coals, and see Faces and forms of things; but they soon pa.s.s, Melting one into other: the firm ma.s.s Crumbles, and breaks, and fades gradually, Shape into shape as in a dream may be, Into an image other than it was: And so on till the whole falls in, and has Not any likeness,—face, and hand, and tree, All gone. So with the mind: thought follows thought, This hastening, and that pressing upon this, A mighty crowd within so narrow room: And then at length heavy-eyed slumbers come, The drowsy fancies grope about, and miss Their way, and what was so alive is nought.

Papers of «The M.S. Society»

<12>The Editor is requested to state that «M. S.» does not here mean Ma.n.u.script.

No. I. An Incident in the Siege of Troy, seen from a modern Observatory

Sixteen Specials in Priam’s Keep Sat down to their mahogany: The League, just then, had made _busters_ cheap, And Hesiod writ his «Theogony,»

A work written to prove «that, if men would be men, And demand their rights again and again, They might live like G.o.ds, have infinite _smokes_, Drink infinite rum, drive infinite _mokes_, Which would come from every part of the known And civilized globe, twice as good as their own, And, finally, Ilion, the work-shop should be Of the world—one vast manufactory!»

From arrow-slits, port-holes, windows, what not, Their sixteen quarrels the Specials had shot From sixteen arblasts, their daily task; Why they’d to do it they didn’t ask, For, after they’d done it, they sat down to dinner; The sixteen Specials they didn’t get thinner; But kept quite loyal, and every day Asked no questions but fired away.

Would you like me to tell you the reason why These sixteen Specials kept letting fly From eleven till one, as the Chronicle speaks?

They did it, my boys, to annoy the Greeks, Who kept up a perpetual cannonade On the walls, and threaten’d an escalade.

The sixteen Specials were so arranged That the shots they shot were not shots exchanged, But every shot so told on the foe The Greeks were obliged to draw it mild: Diomedes—«A fix,» Ulysses—«No go»

Declared it, the «king of men» cried like a child; Whilst the Specials, no more than a fine black Tom I keep to serenade Mary from The tiles, where he lounges every night, Knew nor cared what they did, and were perfectly right.

But the fact was thus: one Helenus, A man much faster than any of us, More fast than a gent at the top of a «bus,»

More fast than the coming of «Per col. sus.»

Which Shakespeare says comes galloping, (I take his word for anything) This Helenus had a cure of souls— He had cured the souls of several Greeks, Achilles sole or heel,—the rolls Of fame (not French) say Paris:—speaks Anatomist Quain thereof. Who seeks May read the story from z to a; He has handled and argued it every way;— A subject on which there’s a good deal to say.

His work was ever the best, and still is, Because of this note on the Tendo Achillis.

This Helenus was a man well bred, He was _up_ in Electricity, Fortification, Theology, aesthetics and Pugilicity; Celsus and Gregory he’d read; Knew every «dodge» of _glove and fist;_ Was a capital curate, (I think I’ve said) And Transcendental Anatomist: _Well up_ in Materia Medica, _Right up_ in Toxicology, And Medical Jurisprudence, that sell!

And the _dead sell_ Physiology: Knew what and how much of any potation Would get him through any examination: With credit not small, had pa.s.sed the Hall And the College—-and they couldn’t _pluck_ him at all.

He’d written on Rail-roads, delivered a lecture Upon the Electric Telegraph, Had played at single-stick with Hector, And written a paper on half-and-half.

With those and other works of note He was not at all a «_people’s man_,»

Though public, for the works he wrote Were not that sort the people can Admire or read; they were Mathematic The most part, some were Hydrostatic; But Algebraic, in the main, And full of a, b, c, and n— And other letters which perplex— The last was full of double x!

In fact, such stuff as one may easily Imagine, didn’t go down greasily, Nor calculated to produce Such heat as «cooks the public goose,»

And does it of so brown a hue Men wonder while they relish too.

This hastening and that pressing upon this a mighty crowd within so narrow room

By MAX BEERBOHM

Author of «Enoch Soames,» «Zuleika Dobson,» etc.

I UNPACKED my things and went down to await luncheon.

It was good to be here again in this little old sleepy hostel by the sea. Hostel I say, though it spelt itself without an «s» and even placed a circumflex above the «o.» It made no other pretension. It was very cozy indeed.

I had been here just a year before, in mid-February, after an attack of influenza. And now I had returned, after an attack of influenza. Nothing was changed. It had been raining when I left, and the waiter— there was but a single, a very old waiter—had told me it was only a shower. That waiter was still here, not a day older. And the shower had not ceased.

Steadfastly it fell on to the sands, steadfastly into the iron-gray sea. I stood looking out at it from the windows of the hall, admiring it very much. There seemed to be little else to do. What little there was I did. I mastered the contents of a blue hand-bill which, pinned to the wall just beneath the framed engraving of Queen Victoria’s Coronation, gave token of a concert that was to be held—or, rather, was to have been held some weeks ago—in the town hall for the benefit of the Life-Boat Fund. I looked at the barometer, tapped it, was not the wiser. I wandered to the letter-board.

These letter-boards always fascinate me. Usually some two or three of the envelops stuck into the cross-garterings have a certain newness and freshness. They seem sure they will yet be claimed. Why not? Why shouldn’t John Doe, Esq., or Mrs. Richard Roe turn up at any moment? I do not know. I can only say that nothing in the world seems to me more unlikely. Thus it is that these young bright envelops touch my heart even more than do their dusty and sallowed seniors. Sour resignation is less touching than impatience for what will not be, than the eagerness that has to wane and wither. Soured beyond measure these old envelops are. They are not nearly so nice as they should be to the young ones. They lose no chance of sneering and discouraging. Such dialogues as this are only too frequent:

A Very Young Envelop: Something in me whispers that he will come to-day!

A Very Old Envelop: He? Well, that’s good! Ha, ha, ha! Why didn’t he come last week, when you came? What reason have you for supposing he’ll ever come now? It isn’t as if he were a frequenter of the place. He’s never been here. His name is utterly unknown here. You don’t suppose he’s coming on the chance of finding you?

A. V. Y. E.: It may seem silly, but—something in me whispers—

A. V. O. E.: Something in you? One has only to look at you to see there’s nothing in you but a note scribbled to him by a cousin. Look at me! There are three sheets, closely written, in me. The lady to whom I am addressed—

A. V. Y. E.: Yes, sir, yes; you told me all about her yesterday.

A. V. O. E.: And I shall do so to-day and to-morrow and every day and all day long. That young lady was a widow. She stayed here many times. She was delicate, and the air suited her. She was poor, and the tariff was just within her means. She was lonely, and had need of love. I have in me for her a passionate avowal and strictly honorable proposal, written to her, after many rough copies, by a gentleman who had made her acquaintance under this very roof. He was rich, he was charming, he was in the prime of life. He had asked if he might write to her. She had flutteringly granted his request. He posted me to her the day after his return to London. I looked forward to being torn open by her. I was very sure she would wear me and my contents next to her bosom. She was gone. She had left no address. She never returned. This I tell you, and shall continue to tell you, not because I want any of your callow sympathy,—no, thank you!—but that you may judge how much less than slight are the probabilities that you yourself—

But my reader has overheard these dialogues as often as I. He wants to know what was odd about this particular letter-board before which I was standing. At first glance I saw nothing odd about it. But presently I distinguished a handwriting that was vaguely familiar. It was mine. I stared, I wondered. There is always a slight shock in seeing an envelop of one’s own after it has gone through the post. It looks as if it had gone through so much. But this was the first time I had ever seen an envelop of mine eating its heart out in bondage on a letter-board. This was outrageous. This was hardly to be believed. Sheer kindness had impelled me to write to «A. V. Laider, Esq.,» and this was the result! I hadn’t minded receiving no answer. Only now, indeed, did I remember that I hadn’t received one. In multitudinous London the memory of A. V. Laider and his trouble had soon passed from my mind. But—well, what a lesson not to go out of one’s way to write to casual acquaintances!

My envelop seemed not to recognize me as its writer. Its gaze was the more piteous for being blank. Even so had I once been gazed at by a dog that I had lost and, after many days, found in the Battersea Home. «I don’t know who you are, but, whoever you are, claim me, take me out of this!» That was my dog’s appeal. This was the appeal of my envelop.

I raised my hand to the letter-board, meaning to effect a swift and lawless rescue, but paused at sound of a footstep behind me. The old waiter had come to tell me that my luncheon was ready. I followed him out of the hall, not, however, without a bright glance across my shoulder to reassure the little captive that I should come back.

I had the sharp appetite of the convalescent, and this the sea air had whetted already to a finer edge. In touch with a dozen oysters, and with stout, I soon shed away the unreasoning anger I had felt against A. V. Laider. I became merely sorry for him that he had not received a letter which might perhaps have comforted him. In touch with cutlets, I felt how sorely he had needed comfort. And anon, by the big bright fireside of that small dark smoking-room where, a year ago, on the last evening of my stay here, he and I had at length spoken to each other, I reviewed in detail the tragic experience he had told me; and I simply reveled in reminiscent sympathy with him.

A. V. LAIDER—I had looked him up in the visitors’-book on the night of his arrival. I myself had arrived the day before, and had been rather sorry there was no one else staying here. A convalescent by the sea likes to have some one to observe, to wonder about, at meal-time. I was glad when, on my second evening, I found seated at the table opposite to mine another guest. I was the gladder because he was just the right kind of guest. He was enigmatic. By this I mean that he did not look soldierly or financial or artistic or anything definite at all. He offered a clean slate for speculation. And, thank heaven! he evidently wasn’t going to spoil the fun by engaging me in conversation later on. A decently unsociable man, anxious to be left alone.

The heartiness of his appetite, in contrast with his extreme fragility of aspect and limpness of demeanor, assured me that he, too, had just had influenza. I liked him for that. Now and again our eyes met and were instantly parted. We managed, as a rule, to observe each other indirectly. I was sure it was not merely because he had been ill that he looked interesting. Nor did it seem to me that a spiritual melancholy, though I imagined him sad at the best of times, was his sole asset. I conjectured that he was clever. I thought he might also be imaginative. At first glance I had mistrusted him. A shock of white hair, combined with a young face and dark eyebrows, does somehow make a man look like a charlatan. But it is foolish to be guided by an accident of color. I had soon rejected my first impression of my fellow-diner. I found him very sympathetic.

Anywhere but in England it would be impossible for two solitary men, howsoever much reduced by influenza, to spend five or six days in the same hostel and not exchange a single word. That is one of the charms of England. Had Laider and I been born and bred in any other land than Eng we should have become acquainted before the end of our first evening in the small smoking-room, and have found ourselves irrevocably committed to go on talking to each other throughout the rest of our visit. We migh
t, it is true, have happened to like each other more than any one we had ever met. This off chance may have occurred to us both. But it counted for nothing against the certain surrender of quietude and liberty. We slightly bowed to each other as we entered or left the dining-room or smoking-room, and as we met on the wide-spread sands or in the shop that had a small and faded circulating library. That was all. Our mutual aloofness was a positive bond between us.

Had he been much older than I, the responsibility for our silence would of course have been his alone. But he was not, I judged, more than five or six years ahead of me, and thus I might without impropriety have taken it on myself to perform that hard and perilous feat which English people call, with a shiver, «breaking the ice.» He had reason, therefore, to be as grateful to me as I to him. Each of us, not the less frankly because silently, recognized his obligation to the other. And when, on the last evening of my stay, the ice actually was broken there was no ill-will between us: neither of us was to blame.

It was a Sunday evening. I had been out for a long last walk and had come in very late to dinner. Laider had left his table almost directly after I sat down to mine. When I entered the smoking-room I found him reading a weekly review which I had bought the day before. It was a crisis. He could not silently offer nor could I have silently accepted, six-pence. It was a crisis. We faced it like men. He made, by word of mouth, a graceful apology. Verbally, not by signs, I besought him to go on reading. But this, of course, was a vain counsel of perfection. The social code forced us to talk now. We obeyed it like men. To reassure him that our position was not so desperate as it might seem, I took the earliest opportunity to mention that I was going away early next morning. In the tone of his «Oh, are you?» he tried bravely to imply that he was sorry, even now, to hear that. In a way, perhaps, he really was sorry. We had got on so well together, he and I. Nothing could efface the memory of that. Nay, we seemed to be hitting it off even now. Influenza was not our sole theme. We passed from that to the aforesaid weekly review, and to a correspondence that was raging therein on faith and reason.

This correspondence had now reached its fourth and penultimate stage—its Australian stage. It is hard to see why these correspondences spring up; one only knows that they do spring up, suddenly, like street crowds. There comes, it would seem, a moment when the whole English-speaking race is unconsciously bursting to have its say about some one thing—the split infinitive, or the habits of migratory birds, or faith and reason, or what-not. Whatever weekly review happens at such a moment to contain a reference, however remote, to the theme in question reaps the storm. Gusts of letters come in from all corners of the British Isles. These are presently reinforced by Canada in full blast. A few weeks later the Anglo-Indians weigh in. In due course we have the help of our Australian cousins. By that time, however, we of the mother country have got our second wind, and so determined are we to make the most of it that at last even the editor suddenly loses patience and says, «This correspondence must now cease.—Ed.» and wonders why on earth he ever allowed anything so tedious and idiotic to begin.

I pointed out to Laider one of the Australian letters that had especially pleased me in the current issue. It was from «A Melbourne Man,» and was of the abrupt kind which declares that «all your correspondents have been groping in the dark» and then settles the whole matter in one short sharp flash. The flash in this instance was «Reason is faith, faith reason—that is all we know on earth and all we need to know.» The writer then inclosed his card and was, etc., «A Melbourne Man.» I said to Laider how very restful it was, after influenza, to read anything that meant nothing whatsoever. Laider was inclined to take the letter more seriously than I, and to be mildly metaphysical. I said that for me faith and reason were two separate things, and as I am no good at metaphysics, however mild, I offered a definite example, to coax the talk on to ground where I should be safer.

«Palmistry, for example,» I said. «Deep down in my heart I believe in palmistry.»

Laider turned in his chair.

«You believe in palmistry?»

«Yes, somehow I do. Why? I haven’t the slightest notion. I can give myself all sorts of reasons for laughing it to scorn. My common sense utterly rejects it. Of course the shape of the hand means something, is more or less an index of character. But the idea that my past and future are neatly mapped out on my palms—» I shrugged my shoulders.

«You don’t like that idea?» asked Laider in his gentle, rather academic voice.

«I only say it’s a grotesque idea.»

«Yet you do believe in it?»

«I’ve a grotesque belief in it, yes.»

«Are you sure your reason for calling this idea ‘grotesque’ isn’t merely that you dislike it?»

«Well,» I said, with the thrilling hope that he was a companion in absurdity, «doesn’t it seem grotesque to you?»

«It seems strange.»

«You believe in it?»

He smiled at my pleasure, and I, at the risk of reëntanglement in metaphysics, claimed him as standing shoulder to shoulder with me against «A Melbourne Man.» This claim he gently disputed.

«You may think me very prosaic,» he said, «but I can’t believe without evidence.»

«Well, I’m equally prosaic and equally at a disadvantage: I can’t take my own belief as evidence, and I’ve no other evidence to go on.»

He asked me if I had ever made a study of palmistry. I said I had read one of Desbarolles’s books years ago, and one of Heron-Allen’s. But, he asked, had I tried to test them by the lines on my own hands or on the hands of my friends? I confessed that my actual practice in palmistry had been of a merely passive kind—the prompt extension of my palm to any one who would be so good as to «read» it and truckle for a few minutes to my egoism. (I hoped Laider might do this.)

«Then I almost wonder,» he said, with his sad smile, «that you haven’t lost your belief, after all the nonsense you must have heard. There are so many young girls who go in for palmistry. I am sure all the five foolish virgins were ‘awfully keen on it’ and used to say, ‘You can be led, but not driven,’ and, ‘You are likely to have a serious illness between the ages of forty and forty-five,’ and, ‘You are by nature rather lazy, but can be very energetic by fits and starts.’ And most of the professionals, I’m told, are as silly as the young girls.»

For the honor of the profession, I named three practitioners whom I had found really good at reading character. He asked whether any of them had been right about past events. I confessed that, as a matter of fact, all three of them had been right in the main. This seemed to amuse him. He asked whether any of them had predicted anything which had since come true. I confessed that all three had predicted that I should do several things which I had since done rather unexpectedly. He asked if I didn’t accept this as, at any rate, a scrap of evidence. I said I could only regard it as a fluke—a rather remarkable fluke.

The superiority of his sad smile was beginning to get on my nerves. I wanted him to see that he was as absurd as I.

«Suppose,» I said—«suppose, for the sake of argument, that you and I are nothing but helpless automata created to do just this and that, and to have just that and this done to us. Suppose, in fact, we haven’t any free will whatsoever. Is it likely or conceivable that the Power which fashioned us would take the trouble to jot down in cipher on our hands just what was in store for us?»

Laider did not answer this question; he did but annoyingly ask me another.

«You believe in free will?»

«Yes, of course. I’ll be hanged if I’m an automaton.»

«And you believe in free will just as in palmistry—without any reason?»

«Oh, no. Everything points to our having free will.»

«Everything? What, for instance?»

This rather cornered me. I dodged out, as lightly as I could, by saying:

«I suppose you would say it’s written in my hand that I should be a believer in free will.»

«Ah, I’ve no doubt it is.»

I held out my palms. But, to my great disappointment, he looked quickly away from them. He had ceased to smile. There was agitation in his voice as he explained that he never looked at people’s hands now. «Never now—never again.» He shook his head as though to beat off some memory.

I was much embarrassed by my indiscretion. I hastened to tide over the awkward moment by saying that if I could read hands I wouldn’t, for fear of the awful things I might see there.

«Awful things, yes,» he whispered, nodding at the fire.

«Not,» I said in self-defense, «that there’s anything very awful, so far as I know, to be read in my hands.»

He turned his gaze from the fire to me.

«You aren’t a murderer, for example?»

«Oh, no,» I replied, with a nervous laugh.

This was a more than awkward, it was a painful, moment for me; and I am afraid I must have started or winced, for he instantly begged my pardon.

«I don’t know,» he exclaimed, «why I said it. I’m usually a very reticent man. But sometimes—» He pressed his brow. «What you must think of me!»

I begged him to dismiss the matter from his mind.

«It’s very good of you to say that; but—I’ve placed myself as well as you in a false position. I ask you to believe that I’m not the sort of man who is ‘wanted’ or ever was ‘wanted’ by the police. I should be bowed out of any police-station at which I gave myself up. I’m not a murderer in any bald sense of the word. No.»

My face must have perceptibly brightened, for, «Ah,» he said, «don’t imagine I’m not a murderer at all. Morally, I am.» He looked at the clock. I pointed out that the night was young. He assured me that his story was not a long one. I assured him that I hoped it was. He said I was very kind. I denied this. He warned me that what he had to tell might rather tend to stiffen my unwilling faith in palmistry, and to shake my opposite and cherished faith in free will. I said, «Never mind.» He stretched his hands pensively toward the fire. I settled myself back in my chair.

«My hands,» he said, staring at the backs of them, «are the hands of a very weak man. I dare say you know enough of palmistry to see that for yourself. You notice the slightness of the thumbs and of he two ‘little’ fingers. They are the hands of a weak and over-sensitive man—a man without confidence, a man who would certainly waver in an emergency. Rather Hamletish hands,» he mused. «And I’m like Hamlet in other respects, too: I’m no fool, and I’ve rather a noble disposition, and I’m unlucky. But Hamlet was luckier than I in one thing: he was a murderer by accident, whereas the murders that I committed one day fourteen years ago—for I must tell you it wasn’t one murder, but many murders that I committed—were all of them due to the wretched inherent weakness of my own wretched self.

This hastening and that pressing upon this a mighty crowd within so narrow room

The roots of the Great Reset agenda can very clearly be traced back to 80 years ago, when James Burnham, wrote a book on his vision for “The Managerial Revolution,” Cynthia Chung writes.

Klaus Schwab, the architect of the World Economic Forum (f. 1971), a leading, if not the leading, influencer and funder for what will set the course for world economic policy outside of government, has been the cause of much concern and suspicion since his announcement of “The Great Reset” agenda at the 50 th annual meeting of the WEF in June 2020.

The Great Reset initiative is a somewhat vague call for the need for global stakeholders to coordinate a simultaneous “management” of the effects of COVID-19 on the global economy, which they have eerily named as “pandenomics.” This, we are told will be the new normal, the new reality that we will have to adjust ourselves to for the foreseeable future.

It should be known that at nearly its inception, the World Economic Forum had aligned itself with the Club of Rome, a think tank with an elite membership, founded in 1968, to address the problems of mankind. It was concluded by the Club of Rome in their extremely influential “Limits to Growth,” published in 1972, that such problems could not be solved on their own terms and that all were interrelated. In 1991, Club of Rome co-founder Sir Alexander King stated in the “The First Global Revolution” (an assessment of the first 30 years of the Club of Rome) that:

“In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill. In their totality and their interactions these phenomena do constitute a common threat which must be confronted by everyone together. But in designating these dangers as the enemy, we fall into the trap, which we have already warned readers about, namely mistaking symptoms for causes. All these dangers are caused by human intervention in natural processes, and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself.” [emphasis added]

It is no surprise that with such a conclusion, part of the solution prescribed was the need for population control.

However, what forms of population control was Klaus Schwab in particular thinking of?

In the late 1960s, Schwab attended Harvard and among his teachers was Sir Henry Kissinger, whom he has described as among the top figures who have most influenced his thinking over the course of his life.

[Henry Kissinger and his former pupil, Klaus Schwab, welcome former- UK PM Ted Heath at the 1980 WEF annual meeting. Source: World Economic Forum]

To get a better idea of the kinds of influences Sir Henry Kissinger had on young Klaus Schwab, we should take a look at Kissinger’s infamous NSSM-200 report: Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for US Security and Overseas Interests, otherwise known as “The Kissinger Report,” published in 1974. This report, declassified in 1989, was instrumental in transforming US foreign policy from pro-development/pro-industry to the promotion of under-development through totalitarian methods in support of population control. Kissinger states in the report:

For Kissinger, the US foreign policy orientation was mistaken on its emphasis of ending hunger by providing the means of industrial and scientific development to poor nations, according to Kissinger, such an initiative would only lead to further global disequilibrium as the new middle classes would consume more, and waste strategic resources.

In Thomas Malthus’ “Essay on the Principle of Population” (1799), he wrote:

“We should facilitate, instead of foolishly and vainly endeavoring to impede, the operations of nature in producing this mortality; and if we dread the too frequent visitation of the horrid form of famine, we should sedulously encourage the other forms of destruction, which we compel nature to use. In our towns we should make the streets narrower, crowd more people into the houses, and court the return of the plague.” [emphasis added]

As a staunch Malthusian, Kissinger believed that “nature” had provided the means to cull the herd, and by using economic policies that utilised the courting of the plague, famine and so forth, they were simply enforcing a natural hierarchy which was required for global stability.

In addition to this extremely worrisome ideology that is only a stone’s throw away from eugenics, there has also been a great deal of disturbance over the 2016 World Economic Forum video that goes through their 8 “predictions” for how the world will change by 2030, with the slogan “You’ll own nothing, and you’ll be happy.”

It is this slogan in particular that has probably caused the most panic amongst the average person questioning what the outcome of the Great Reset will truly look like. It has also caused much confusion as to who or what is at the root in shaping this very eerie, Orwellian prediction of the future?

Many have come to think that this root is the Communist Party of China. However, whatever your thoughts may be on the Chinese government and the intentions of President Xi, the roots of the Great Reset agenda can very clearly be traced back to 80 years ago, when an American, former Trotskyist who later joined the OSS, followed by the CIA, and went on to become the founding father of neo-conservatism, James Burnham, wrote a book on his vision for “The Managerial Revolution.”

In fact, it was the ideologies of Burnham’s “The Managerial Revolution” that triggered Orwell to write his “1984”.

The Strange Case and Many Faces of James Burnham

“[James Burnham is] the real intellectual founder of the neoconservative movement and the original proselytizer, in America, of the theory of ‘totalitarianism.’”

It is understandably the source of some confusion as to how a former high level Trotskyist became the founder of the neo-conservative movement; with the Trotskyists calling him a traitor to his kind, and the neo-conservatives describing it as an almost road to Damascus conversion in ideology.

However, the truth of the matter is that it is neither.

That is, James Burnham never changed his beliefs and convictions at any point during his journey through Trotskyism, OSS/CIA intelligence to neo-conservatism, although he may have back-stabbed many along the way, and this two-part series will go through why this is the case.

James Burnham was born in 1905 in Chicago, Illinois, raised as a Roman Catholic, later rejecting Catholicism while studying at Princeton and professing atheism for the rest of his life until shortly before his death whereby he reportedly returned to the church. (1) He would graduate from Princeton followed by the Balliol College, Oxford University and in 1929 would become a professor in philosophy at the New York University.

It was during this period that Burnham met Sidney Hook, who was also a professor in philosophy at the New York University, and who professed to have converted Burnham to Marxism in his autobiography. In 1933, along with Sidney Hook, Burnham helped to organize the socialist organization, the American Workers Party (AWP).

It would not be long before Burnham found Trotsky’s use of “dialectical materialism” to explain the interplay between the human and the historical forces in his “History of the Russian Revolution” to be brilliant. As founder of the Red Army, Trotsky had dedicated his life to the spread of a worldwide Communist revolution, to which Stalin opposed in the form of Trotsky’s “Permanent Revolution” ideology. In this ideology, Trotskyists were tactically trained to be militant experts at infighting, infiltration and disruption.

Among these tactics was “entryism,” in which an organisation encourages its members to join another, often larger organization, in an attempt to take over said organization or convert a large portion of its membership with its own ideology and directive.

The most well-known example of this technique was named the French Turn, when French Trotskyists in 1934 infiltrated the Section Francaise de l’International Ouvriere (SFIO, French Socialist Party) with the intention of winning over the more militant elements to their side.

That same year, Trotskyists in the Communist League of America (CLA) did a French turn on the American Workers Party, in a move that elevated the AWP’s James Burnham into the role of a Trotsky lieutenant and chief adviser.

Burnham would continue the tactics of infiltrating and subverting other leftist parties and in 1935 attempted to do a French Turn on the much larger Socialist Party (SP), however, by 1937, the Trotskyists were expelled from the Socialist Party which led to the formation of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) at the end of the year. He would resign from the SWP in April 1940, and form the Workers Party only to resign less than two months later.

Burnham remained a “Trotskyist intellectual” from 1934 until 1940, using militant Trotskyist tactics against competing Marxist movements by turning their loyalties and ransacking their best talent. Although Burnham worked six years for the Trotskyists, as the new decade began, he renounced both Trotsky and “the ‘philosophy of Marxism’ dialectical materialism” altogether.

Perhaps Burnham was aware that the walls were closing in on Trotsky, and that it would only be a matter of six months from Burnham’s first renouncement that Trotsky would be assassinated by August 1940, at his compound outside Mexico City.

In February 1940 Burnham wrote “Science and Style: A Reply to Comrade Trotsky,” in which he broke with dialectical materialism, stressing the importance of the work of Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead’s approach:

“Do you wish me to prepare a reading list, Comrade Trotsky? It would be long, ranging from the work of the brilliant mathematicians and logicians of the middle of the last century to one climax in the monumental Principia Mathematica of Russell and Whitehead (the historic turning point in modern logic), and then spreading out in many directions – one of the most fruitful represented by the scientists, mathematicians and logicians now cooperating in the new Encyclopedia of Unified Science.” [emphasis added]

He summed up his feelings in a letter of resignation from the Workers Party on May 21, 1940:

“I reject, as you know, the “philosophy of Marxism,” dialectical materialism. …

The general Marxian theory of “universal history”, to the extent that it has any empirical content, seems to me disproved by modern historical and anthropological investigation.

Marxian economics seems to me for the most part either false or obsolete or meaningless in application to contemporary economic phenomena. Those aspects of Marxian economics which retain validity do not seem to me to justify the theoretical structure of the economics.

Not only do I believe it meaningless to say that “socialism is inevitable” and false that socialism is “the only alternative to capitalism”; I consider that on the basis of the evidence now available to us a new form of exploitive society (which I call “managerial society”) is not only possible but is a more probable outcome of the present than socialism. …

On no ideological, theoretic or political ground, then, can I recognize, or do I feel, any bond or allegiance to the Workers Party (or to any other Marxist party). That is simply the case, and I can no longer pretend about it, either to myself or to others.” [emphasis added]

In 1941, Burnham would publish “The Managerial Revolution: What is Happening in the World,” bringing him fame and fortune, listed by Henry Luce’s Life magazine as one of the top 100 outstanding books of 1924-1944. (2)

The Managerial Revolution

“We cannot understand the revolution by restricting our analysis to the war [WWII]; we must understand the war as a phase in the development of the revolution.”

– James Burnham “The Managerial Revolution”

In Burnham’s “The Managerial Revolution,” he makes the case that if socialism were possible, it would have occurred as an outcome of the Bolshevik Revolution, but what happened instead was neither a reversion back to a capitalist system nor a transition to a socialist system, but rather a formation of a new organizational structure made up of an elite managerial class, the type of society he believed was in the process of replacing capitalism on a world scale.

He goes on to make the case that as seen with the transition from a feudal to a capitalist state being inevitable, so too will the transition from a capitalist to managerial state occur. And that ownership rights of production capabilities will no longer be owned by individuals but rather the state or institutions, he writes:

“Effective class domination and privilege does, it is true, require control over the instruments of production; but this need not be exercised through individual private property rights. It can be done through what might be called corporate rights, possessed not by individuals as such but by institutions: as was the case conspicuously with many societies in which a priestly class was dominant…”

Burnham proceeds to write:

“If, in a managerial society, no individuals are to hold comparable property rights, how can any group of individuals constitute a ruling class?

The answer is comparatively simple and, as already noted, not without historical analogues. The managers will exercise their control over the instruments of production and gain preference in the distribution of the products, not directly, through property rights vested in them as individuals, but indirectly, through their control of the state which in turn will own and control the instruments of production. The state – that is, the institutions which comprise the state – will, if we wish to put it that way, be the ‘property’ of the managers. And that will be quite enough to place them in the position of the ruling class.”

Burnham concedes that the ideologies required to facilitate this transition have not yet been fully worked out but goes on to say that they can be approximated:

“from several different but similar directions, by, for example: Leninism-Stalinism; fascism-nazism; and, at a more primitive level, by New Dealism and such less influential [at the time] American ideologies as ‘technocracy’. This, then, is the skeleton of the theory, expressed in the language of the struggle for power.”

This is to be sure, a rather confusing paragraph but becomes clearer when we understand it from the specific viewpoint of Burnham. As Burnham sees it, all these different avenues are methods in which to achieve his vision of a managerial society because each form stresses the importance of the state as the central coordinating power, and that such a state will be governed by his “managers”. Burnham considers the different moral implications in each scenario irrelevant, as he makes clear early on in his book, he has chosen to detach himself from such questions.

Burnham goes to explain that the support of the masses is necessary for the success of any revolution, this is why the masses must be led to believe that they will benefit from such a revolution, when in fact it is only to replace one ruling class with another and nothing changes for the underdog. He explains that this is the case with the dream of a socialist state, that the universal equality promised by socialism is just a fairy tale told to the people so that they fight for the establishment of a new ruling class, then they are told that achieving a socialist state will take many decades, and that essentially, a managerial system must be put in place in the meantime.

Burnham makes the case that this is what happened in both Nazi Germany and Bolshevik Russia:

“Nevertheless, it may still turn out that the new form of economy will be called ‘socialist.’ In those nations – Russia and Germany – which have advanced furthest toward the new [managerial] economy, ‘socialism’ or ‘national socialism’ is the term ordinarily used. The motivation for this terminology is not, naturally, the wish for scientific clarity but just the opposite. The word ‘socialism’ is used for ideological purposes in order to manipulate the favourable mass emotions attached to the historic socialist ideal of a free, classless, and international society and to hide the fact that the managerial economy is in actuality the basis for a new kind of exploiting, class society.”

“Those Nations – [Bolshevik] Russia, [Nazi] Germany and [Fascist] Italy – which have advanced furthest toward the managerial social structure are all of them, at present, totalitarian dictatorships…what distinguishes totalitarian dictatorship is the number of facets of life subject to the impact of the dictatorial rule. It is not merely political actions, in the narrower sense, that are involved; nearly every side of life, business and art and science and education and religion and recreation and morality are not merely influenced by but directly subjected to the totalitarian regime.

It should be noted that a totalitarian type of dictatorship would not have been possible in any age previous to our own. Totalitarianism presupposes the development of modern technology, especially of rapid communication and transportation. Without these latter, no government, no matter what its intentions, would have had at its disposal the physical means for coordinating so intimately so many of the aspects of life. Without rapid transportation and communication it was comparatively easy for men to keep many of their lives, out of reach of the government. This is no longer possible, or possible only to a much smaller degree, when governments today make deliberate use of the possibilities of modern technology.”

Orwell’s Second Thoughts on Burnham

Burnham would go on to state in his “The Managerial Revolution” that the Russian Revolution, WWI and its aftermath, the Versailles Treaty gave final proof that capitalist world politics could no longer work and had come to an end. He described WWI as the last war of the capitalists and WWII as the first, but not last war, of the managerial society. Burnham made it clear that many more wars would have to be fought after WWII before a managerial society could finally fully take hold.

This ongoing war would lead to the destruction of sovereign nation states, such that only a small number of great nations would survive, culminating into the nuclei of three “super-states”, which Burnham predicted would be centered around the United States, Germany and Japan. He goes on to predict that these super-states will never be able to conquer the other and will be engaged in permanent war until some unforeseeable time. He predicts that Russia would be broken in two, with the west being incorporated into the German sphere and the east into the Japanese sphere. (Note that this book was published in 1941, such that Burnham was clearly of the view that Nazi Germany and fascist Japan would be the victors of WWII.)

Burnham states that “sovereignty will be restricted to the few super-states.”

In fact, he goes so far as to state early on in his book that the managerial revolution is not a prediction of something that will occur in the future, it is something that has already begun and is in fact, in its final stages of becoming, that it has already successfully implemented itself worldwide and that the battle is essentially over.

The National Review, founded by James Burnham and William F. Buckley (more on this in part two), would like to put the veneer that although Orwell was critical of Burnham’s views that he was ultimately creatively inspired to write about it in his “1984” novel. Yes, inspired is one way to put it, or more aptly put, that he was horrified by Burnham’s vision and wrote his novel as a stark warning as to what would ultimately be the outcome of such monstrous theorizations, which he would to this day organise the zeitgeist of thought to be suspicious of anything resembling his neologisms such as “Big Brother”, “Thought Police”, “Two Minutes Hate”, “Room 101”, “memory hole”, “Newspeak”, “doublethink”, “unperson”,”thoughtcrime”, and “groupthink”.

George Orwell, (real name Eric Arthur Blair), first published his “Second Thoughts on James Burnham” in May 1946. The novel “1984” would be published in 1949.

In his essay he dissects Burnham’s proposed ideology that he outlines in his “The Managerial Revolution” and “The Machiavellians” subtitled “Defenders of Freedom.”

“It is clear that Burnham is fascinated by the spectacle of power, and that his sympathies were with Germany so long as Germany appeared to be winning the war…curiously enough, when one examines the predictions which Burnham has based on his general theory, one finds that in so far as they are verifiable, they have been falsified…It will be seen that Burnham’s predictions have not merely, when they were verifiable, turned out to be wrong, but that they have sometimes contradicted one another in a sensational way…Political predictions are usually wrong, because they are usually based on wish-thinking…Often the revealing factor is the date at which they are made…It will be seen that at each point Burnham is predicting a continuation of the thing that is happening…the tendency to do this is not simply a bad habit, like inaccuracy or exaggeration…It is a major mental disease, and its roots lie partly in cowardice and partly in the worship of power, which is not fully separable from cowardice…

Power worship blurs political judgement because it leads, almost unavoidably, to the belief that present trends will continue. Whoever is winning at the moment will always seem to be invincible. If the Japanese have conquered south Asia, then they will keep south Asia for ever, if the Germans have captured Tobruk, they will infallibly capture Cairo…The rise and fall of empires, the disappearance of cultures and religions, are expected to happen with earthquake suddenness, and processes which have barely started are talked about as though they were already at an end. Burnham’s writings are full of apocalyptic visions…Within the space of five years Burnham foretold the domination of Russia by Germany and of Germany by Russia. In each case he was obeying the same instinct: the instinct to bow down before the conqueror of the moment, to accept the existing trend as irreversible.”

Interestingly, and happily we hear, George Orwell does not take Burnham’s predictions of a managerial revolution as set in stone, but rather, has shown itself within a short period of time to be a little too full of wishful thinking and bent on worshipping the power of the moment. However, this does not mean we must not take heed to the orchestrations of such mad men.

In Part two of this series, I will discuss Burnham’s entry into the OSS then CIA, how he became the founder of the neo-conservative movement and what are the implications for today’s world, especially concerning the Great Reset initiative.