Alexis de Tocqueville - "American Institutions And Their Influence"

William Shakespeare - "Der Erste Theil von Koenig Heinrich dem vierten"

J. Sheridan LeFanu - "The Room in the Dragon Volant"

August von Kotzebue - "The Stranger"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

Fortitude

H >> Hugh Walpole >> Fortitude




It was also, in some still stranger way, a fight against London itself--not
London, a place of streets and houses, of Oxford Street and Piccadilly
Circus but London, an animal--a kind of dragon as far as Stephen could make
it out with scales and a tail--

Now what was one to make of this except that the boy's head was being
turned and that he ought to see a doctor.

There was also the further question of an appeal to Brockett's or Mr.
Zanti. Stephen knew that Herr Gottfried or Mr. Zanti would lend help
eagerly did they but know, and he supposed, from the things that Peter had
told him, that there were also warm friends at Brockett's; but the boy had
made him swear, with the last order of solemnity, that he would send no
word to either place. Peter had said that he would never speak to him
again should he do such a thing. He had said that should he once obtain an
independent position then he would go back ... but not before.

Stephen did not know what to do nor where to go. In another month's time
the rent could not be paid and then they must go into the street and Peter
was in no condition for that--he should rather be in bed. Mrs. Williams,
it is true, would not be hard upon them, for she was a kind woman and had
formed a great liking for Peter, but she had only enough herself to keep
her family alive and she must, for her children's sake, let the room.

To Stephen, puzzling in vain and going round and round in a hopeless
circle, it seemed as though Peter's brains were locked in an iron box and
they could not find a key. For himself, well, it was natural enough! But
Peter, with that genius, that no one should want him!

And yet through it all, at the back of the misery and distress of it, there
was a wild pride, a fierce joy that he had the key with him, that he was
all in the world to whom the boy might look, that to him and to him alone,
in this wild, cold world Peter now belonged.

It was his moment....


II

At the end of a terrible day of disastrous rejections Peter, stumbling down
the Strand, was conscious of a little public-house, with a neat bow-window,
that stood back from the street. At the bottom of his trouser pocket a tiny
threepenny piece that Stephen had, that morning, thrust upon him, turned
round and round in his fingers. He had not spent it--he had intended to
restore it to Stephen in the evening. He had meant, too, to walk back all
the way to Bucket Lane but now he felt that he could not do that unless he
were first to take something. This little inn with its bow-windows.... Down
the Strand in the light of the setting sun, he saw again that which he had
often seen during these last weeks--that chain of gaunt figures that moved
with bending backs and twisted fingers, on and out of the crowds and the
carriages--The beggars!... He felt, already, that they knew that he was
soon to be one of their number, that every day, every hour brought him
nearer to their ranks. An old man, dirty, in rags, stepped with an eager
eye past him and stooped for a moment into the gutter. He rose again,
slipping something into his pocket of his tattered coat. He gave Peter a
glance--to the boy it seemed a glance of triumphant recognition and then he
had slipped away.

Peter had had very little to eat during these last days and to-night, for
the first time, things began to take an uncertain shape. As he stood on
the kerb and looked, it seemed to him that the Strand was the sea-road at
Treliss, that the roar of the traffic was the noise that the sea made, far
below them. If one could see round the corner, there where the sun flung
a patch of red light, one would come upon Scaw House in its dark clump of
trees--and through the window of that front room, Peter could see his
father and that old woman, one on each side of the fire-place, drinking.

But the sea-road was stormy to-night, its noise was loud in Peter's ears.
And then the way that people brushed against him as they passed recalled
him to himself and he slipped back almost into the bow-window of the little
inn. He was feeling very unwell and there was a burning pain in his chest
that hurt him when he drew a deep breath ... and then too he was very cold
and his teeth chattered in fits as though he had suddenly lost control of
them and they had become some other person's teeth.

Well, why not go into the little inn and have a drink? Then he would go
back to Bucket Lane and lie down and never wake again. For he was so tired
that he had never known before what it was to be tired at all--only Stephen
would not let him sleep.... Stephen was cruel and would not let him alone.
No one would let him alone--the world had treated him very evilly--what did
he owe the world?

He would go now and surrender to these things, these things that were
stronger than he ... he would drink and he would sleep and that should be
the end of everything ... the blessed end.

He swayed a little on his feet and he put his hand to his forehead in order
that he might think more clearly.

Some one had said once to him a great many years ago--"It is not life that
matters but the Courage that you bring to it." Well, that was untrue. He
would like to tell the man who had said that that he was a liar. No Courage
could be enough if life chose to be hard. No Courage--

Nevertheless, the thought of somewhere a long time ago when some one had
said that to him, slowly filled his tired brain with a distaste for the
little inn with the bow-windows. He would not go there yet, just a little
while and then he would go.

Almost dreaming--certainly seeing nothing about him that he recognised--he
stumbled confusedly down to the Embankment. Here there was at any rate
air, he drew his shabby blue coat more closely about him and sat down on a
wooden bench, in company with a lady who wore a large damaged feather in
her hat and a red stained blouse with torn lace upon it and a skirt of a
bright and tarnished blue.

The lady gave him a nod.

"Cheer, chucky," she said.

Peter made no reply.

"Down on your uppers? My word, you look bad-- Poor Kid! Well, never say
die--strike me blimy but there's a good day coming--"

"I sat here once before," said Peter, leaning forward and addressing her
very earnestly, "and it was the first time that I ever heard the noise that
London makes. If you listen you can hear it now--London's a beast you
know--"

But the lady had paid very little attention. "Men are beasts, beasts," she
said, scowling at a gap in the side of her boots, "beasts, that's what they
are. 'Aven't 'ad any luck the last few nights. Suppose I'm losin' my looks
sittin' out 'ere in the mud and rain. There was a time, young feller, my
lad, when I 'ad my carriage, not 'arf!" She spat in front of her--"'E
was a good sort, 'e was--give me no end of a time ... but the lot of men
I've been meetin' lately ain't fit to be called men--they ain't--mean
devils--leavin' me like this, curse 'em!" She coughed. The sun had set now
and the lights were coming out, like glass beads on a string on the other
side of the river. "Stoppin' out all night, ducky? Stayin' 'ere? 'Cause I
got a bit of a cough!--disturbs fellers a bit ... last feller said as 'ow
'e couldn't get a bit o' sleep because of it--damned rot I call it. 'Owever
it isn't out of doors you ought to be sittin', chucky. Feelin' bad?"

Peter looked at her out of his half-closed eyes.

"I can't bother any more," he said to her sleepily. "They're so cruel--they
won't let me go to sleep. I've got a pain here--in my chest you know. Have
you got a pain in your chest?"

"My leg's sore," she answered, "where a chap kicked me last week--just
because--oh well," she paused modestly and spat again--"It's comin' on
cold."

A cold little wind was coining up the river, ruffling the tips of the trees
and turning the leaves of the plane-trees back as though it wanted to clean
the other sides of them.

Peter got up unsteadily. "I'm going home to sleep," he said, "I'm
dreadfully tired. Good-night."

"So long, chucky," the lady with the damaged feather said to him. He left
her eyeing discontentedly the hole in her boot and trying to fasten, with
confused fingers, the buttons of the red blouse.

Peter mechanically, as one walking in a dream, crept into an omnibus.
Mechanically he left it and mechanically climbed the stairs of the house
in Bucket Lane. There were two fixed thoughts in his brain--one was that
no one in the world had ever before been as thirsty as he was, and that he
would willingly commit murder or any violence if thereby he might obtain
drink, and the other thought was that Stephen was his enemy, that he hated
Stephen because Stephen never left him alone and would not let him
sleep--also in the back of his mind distantly, as though it concerned some
one else, that he was very unhappy....

Stephen was sitting on one of the beds, looking in front of him. Peter
moved forward heavily and sat on the other bed. They looked at one another.

"No luck," said Stephen, "Armstrong's hadn't room for a man. Ricroft
wouldn't see me. Peter, I'm thinking we'll have to take to the roads--"

Peter made no answer.

"Yer not lookin' a bit well, lad. I doubt if yer can stand much more of
it."

Peter looked across at him sullenly.

"Why can't you leave me alone?" he said. "You're always worrying--"

A slow flush mounted into Stephen's cheeks but he said nothing.

"Well, why don't you say something? Nothing to say--it isn't bad enough
that you've brought me into this--"

"Come, Mr. Peter," Stephen answered slowly. "That ain't fair. I never
brought you into this. I've done my best."

"Oh, blame me, of course. That's natural enough. If it hadn't been for
you--"

Stephen came into the middle of the floor.

"Come, Peter boy, yer tired. Yer don't know what yer saying. Best go to
bed. Don't be saying anything that yer'd be regretting afterwards--"

Peter's eyes that had been closed, suddenly opened, blazing. "Oh, damn you
and your talk--I hate you. I wish I'd never seen you--a rotten kind of
friendship--" his voice died off into muttering.

Stephen went back to his bed. "This ain't fair, Mr. Peter," he said in a
low voice. "You'll be sorry afterwards. I ain't 'ad any very 'appy time
myself these last weeks and now--"

Their nerves were like hot, jangling wires. Suddenly into the midst of that
bare room there had sprung between them hatred. They faced each other ...
they could have leapt at one another's throats and fought....

Suddenly Peter gave a little cry that seemed to fill the room. His head
fell forward--

"Oh, Stephen, Stephen, I'm so damned ill, I'm so damnably ill."

He caught for a moment at his chest as though he would tear his shirt open.
Then he stumbled from the bed and lay in a heap on the floor with his hands
spread out--

Stephen picked him up in his arms and carried him on to his bed.


III

The little doctor who attended to the wants of Bucket Lane was discovered
at his supper. He was a dirty little man, with large dusty spectacles, a
red nose and a bald head. He wore an old, faded velveteen jacket out of the
pockets of which stuck innumerable papers. He was very often drunk and had
a shrew of a wife who made the sober parts of his life a misery, but he was
kind-hearted and generous and had a very real knowledge of his business.

Mrs. Williams volubly could not conceal her concern at Peter's
condition--"and 'im such a nice-spoken young genelman as I was saying only
yesterday tea-time, there's nothin' I said, as I wouldn't be willin' to do
for that there poor Mr. Westcott and that there poor Mr. Brant 'oo are as
like two 'elpless children in their fightin' the world as ever I see and
'ow ever can I help 'em I said--"

"Well, my good woman," the little doctor finally interrupted, "you can help
here and now by getting some hot water and the other things I've put down
here."

When she was gone he turned slowly to Stephen who stood, the picture of
despair, looking down upon Peter.

"'E's goin' to die?" he asked.

"That depends," the little doctor answered. "The boy's been starved--ought
never to have been allowed to get into this condition. Both of you hard up,
I suppose?"

"As 'ard up as we very well could be--" Stephen answered grimly.

"Well--has he no friends?"

There--the question at last. Stephen took it as he would have taken a blow
between the eyes. He saw very clearly that the end of his reign had come.
He had done what he could and he had failed. But in him was the fierce
furious desire to fight for the boy. Why should he give him up, now, when
they had spent all these weeks together, when they had struggled for their
very existence side by side. What right had any of these others to Peter
compared with his right? He knew very well that if he gave him up now the
boy would never be his again. He might see him--yes--but that passing of
Peter that he had already begun to realise would be accomplished. He might
look at him but only as a wanderer may look from the valley up to the hill.
The doctor broke in upon him as he stood hesitating there--

"Come," he said roughly, "we have not much time. The boy may die. Has he no
friends?"

Stephen turned his back to Peter. "Yes," he said, "I know where they are. I
will fetch them myself."

The doctor had not lived in Bucket Lane all these years for nothing. He put
his hand on Stephen's arm and said: "You're a good fellow, by God. It'll be
all right."

Stephen went.

On his way to Bennett Square a thousand thoughts filled his mind. He knew,
as though he had been told it by some higher power, that Peter was leaving
him now never to return. He had done what he could for Peter--now the boy
must pass on to others who might be able, more fittingly, to help him. He
cursed the Gods that they had not allowed him to obtain work during these
weeks, for then Peter and he might have gone on, working, prospering and
the parting might have been far distant.

But he felt also that Peter's destiny was something higher and larger than
anything that he could ever compass--it must be Peter's life that he should
always be leaving people behind him--stages on his road--until he had
attained his place. But for Stephen, a loneliness swept down upon him
that seemed to turn the world to stone. Never, in all the years of his
wandering, had he known anything like this. It is very hard that a man
should care for only two creatures in the world and that he should be held,
by God's hand, from reaching either of them.

The door of Brockett's was opened to him by a servant and he asked for Mrs.
Brockett. In the cold and dark hall the lady sternly awaited him, but the
sternness fell from her like a cloak when he told her the reason of his
coming--

"Dear me, and the poor boy so ill," she said. "We have all been very
anxious indeed about poor Mr. Peter. We had tried every clue but could hear
nothing of him. We were especially eager to find him because Miss Monogue
had some good news for him about his book. There is a gentleman--a friend
of Mr. Peter's--who has been doing everything to find him--who is with Miss
Monogue now. He will be delighted. Perhaps you will go up."

Stephen can have looked no agreeable object at this time, worn out by the
struggle of the last weeks, haggard and gaunt, his beard unkempt--but Norah
Monogue came forward to him with both her hands outstretched.

"Oh, you know something of Peter--tell us, please," she said.

A stout, pleasant-faced gentleman behind her was introduced as Mr. Galleon.

Stephen explained. "But why, why," said the gentleman, "didn't you let us
know before, my good fellow?"

Stephen's brow darkened. "Peter didn't wish it," he said.

But Norah Monogue came forward and put her hand on his arm. "You must
be the Mr. Brant about whom he has so often talked," she said. "I am so
glad to meet you at last. Peter owes so much to you. We have been trying
everywhere to get word of him because some publishers have taken his novel
and think very well of it indeed. But come--do let us go at once. There is
no time to lose--"

So they had taken his novel, had they? All these days--all these terrible
hours--that starving, that ghastly anxiety, the boy's terror--all these
things had been unnecessary. Had they only known, this separation now might
have been avoided.

He could not trust himself to speak to Bobby Galleon and Norah Monogue.
These were the people who were going to take Peter away.

He turned and went, in silence, down the stairs.

At Bucket Lane Bobby Galleon took affairs into his own hands. At once Peter
should be removed to his house in Chelsea--it would not apparently harm him
to be moved that night.

Peter was still unconscious. Stephen stood in the back of the room and
watched them make their preparations. They had all forgotten him. For a
moment as they passed down the stairs Stephen had his last glimpse of
Peter. He saw the high white forehead, the long black eyelashes, the white
drawn cheeks.... At this parting Peter had no eye for him.

Bobby Galleon and Miss Monogue both spoke to Stephen pleasantly before they
went away. Stephen did not hear what they said. Bobby took Stephen's name
down on a piece of paper.... Then they were gone. They were all gone.

Mrs. Williams looked through the door at him for a moment but something in
the man's face drove her away. Very slowly he put his few clothes together.
He must tramp the roads again--the hard roads, the glaring sun, cold
moon--always going on, always alone--

He shouldered his bag and went out....




BOOK III

THE ROUNDABOUT




CHAPTER I

NO. 72, CHEYNE WALK


I

Burnished clouds--swollen with golden light and soft and changing in their
outline--were sailing, against a pale green autumn evening sky, over
Chelsea.

It was nearly six o'clock and at the Knightsbridge end of Sloane Street a
cloud of black towers quivered against the pale green.

The yellow light that the golden clouds shed upon the earth bathed the neat
and demure houses of Sloane Street in a brief bewildered unreality. Sloane
Street, not accustomed to unreality, regretted amiably and with its gentle
smile that Nature should insist, once every day, for some half-hour or
so, on these mists and enchantments. The neat little houses called their
masters and mistresses within doors and advised them to rest before
dressing for dinner and so insured these many comfortable souls that they
should not be disturbed by any unwelcome violence on their emotions.
Soon, before looking-glasses and tables shining with silver hair-brushes
bodies would be tied and twisted and faces would be powdered and
painted--meanwhile, for that dying moment, Sloane Street was lifted into
the hearts of those burnished clouds and held for an instant in glory.
Then to the relief of the neat and shining houses the electric lights came
out, one by one, and the world was itself again....

Beyond Sloane Square, however, the King's Road chattered and rattled and
minded not at all whether the sky were yellow or blue. This was the hour
when shopping must be done and barrows shone beneath their flaring gas, and
many ladies, with the appearance of having left their homes for the merest
minute, hurried from stall to stall. The King's Road stands like a noisy
Cheap Jack outside the sanctities of Chelsea. Behind its chatter are the
quietest streets in the world, streets that are silent because they prefer
rest to noise and not at all because they have nothing to say. The King's
Road has been hired by Chelsea to keep foreigners away, and the faint smile
that the streets wear is a smile of relief because that noisy road so
admirably achieves its purpose. In this mellow evening light the little
houses glow, through the river mists, across the cobbles. The stranger, on
leaving the King's Road behind him, is swept into a quiet intimacy that
has nothing of any town about it; he is refreshed as he might be were he
to leave the noisy train behind him and plunge into the dark, scented
hedge-rows and see before him the twinkling lights of some friendly inn.
As the burnished clouds fade from the sky on the dark surface of the river
the black barges hang their lights and in Cheyne Row and Glebe Place, down
Oakley Street, and along the wide spaces of Cheyne Walk, lamps burn mildly
in a hundred windows. Guarded on one side by the sweeping murmur of the
river, on the other by the loud grimaces of the King's Road Chelsea sinks,
with a sound like a whisper of its own name, into evening....

As the last trailing fingers of the golden clouds die before the
approaching army of the stars, as the yellow above the horizon gives way to
a cold and iron blue, lights come out in that house with the green door and
the white stone steps--No. 72, Cheyne Walk--that is now Peter Westcott's
home.


II

Peter had, on the very afternoon of that beautiful evening, returned
from the sea; there, during the last three weeks, he had passed his
convalescence and now, once again, he faced the world. Mrs. Galleon and
the Galleon baby had been with him and Bobby had come down to them for the
week-ends. In this manner Peter had had an opportunity of getting to know
Mrs. Galleon with a certainty and speed that nothing else could have given
him. During the first weeks after his removal from Bucket Lane, he had been
too ill to take any account of his neighbours or surroundings. He had been
sent down to the sea as soon as it was possible and it was here, watching
her quietly or listening to her as she read to him, walking a little with
her, playing with her baby, that he grew to know her and to love her. She
had been a Miss Alice du Cane, at first an intelligent, cynical and rather
trivial person. Then suddenly, for no very sure reason that any one could
discover, her character changed. She had known Bobby during many years and
had always laughed at him for a solemn, rather-priggish young man--then she
fell in love with him and, to his own wild and delirious surprise, married
him. The companions of her earlier girlhood missed her cynicism and
complained that brilliance had given way to commonplace but you could not
find, in the whole of London, a happier marriage.

To Peter she was something entirely new. Norah Monogue was the only woman
with whom, as yet, he had come into any close contact, and she, by her very
humility, had allowed him to assume to her a superior, rather patronising
attitude. The brief vision of Clare Rossiter had been altogether of the
opposite kind, partaking too furiously of heaven to have any earthly
quality. But here in Alice Galleon he discovered a woman who gave him
something--companionship, a lively and critical intelligence, some
indefinable quality of charm--that was entirely new to him.

She chaffed him, criticised him, admired him, absorbed him and nattered him
in a breath. She told him that he had a "degree" of talent, that he was the
youngest and most ignorant person for his age that she had ever met, that
he was conceited, that he was rough and he had no manners, that he was too
humble, that he was a "flopper" because he was so anxious to please, that
he was a boy and an old man at the same time and finally that the Galleon
baby--a solemn child--had taken to him as it had never taken to any one
during the eventful three years of its life.

Behind these contradictory criticisms Peter knew that there was a friend,
and he was sensible enough also to realise that many of the things that
she said to him were perfectly true and that he would do well to take them
to heart. At first she had made him angry and that had delighted her,
so he had been angry no longer; it seemed to him, during these days of
convalescence, that the solemn melodramatic young man of Bucket Lane was
an incredibility.

And yet, although he felt that that episode had been definitely
closed--shut off as it were by wide doors that held back at a distance,
every sound, the noise, the confusion, the terror, was nevertheless there,
but for the moment, the doors were closed. Only in his dreams they rolled
back arid, night after night he awoke, screaming, bathed in sweat,
trembling from head to foot. Sometimes he thought that he saw an army of
rats advancing across the floor of their Bucket Lane room and Stephen and
he beat them off, but ever they returned....

Once he thought that their room was invaded by a number of old toothless
hags who came in at the door and the window, and these creatures, with
taloned fingers fought, screeching and rolling their eyes....

Twice he dreamt that he saw on a hill, high uplifted against a stormy
sky, the statue of the Man on the Lion, gigantic. He struggled to see the
Rider's face and it seemed to him that multitudes of other persons--men
and women--were pleading, with hands uplifted, that they too might see
the face. But always it was denied them, and Peter woke with a strange
oppression of crushing disappointment. Sometimes he dreamt of Scaw House
and it was always the same dream. He saw the old room with the marble clock
and the cactus plant, but about it all now there was dust and neglect. In
the arm-chair, by the fire, facing the window, his father, old now and
bent, was sitting, listening and waiting. The wind howled about the place,
old boards creaked, casements rattled and his father never moved but
leaning forward in his chair, watched, waited, eagerly, passionately, for
some news....

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