George Orwell, an English Trotskyist writer with enormous feet, who fought very valiantly in Spain, recently made a study of the literature consumed by the English and American young at the close of their tadpole days. He produced generalisations about it, which I have partially forgotten, and so I do not think it is any breach of the undertaking I have made to keep ideas completely out of this book, if I refer to one observation of his that has stuck in my mind, because it will be very helpful in framing the adolescence of Edward Albert in its proper setting,
His point was that, by the showing of this literature, in matters of sex and business alike, either the young American is precocious or the young Briton is retarded. That retardation is not altogether disadvantageous. Because of the postponement of those adult preoccupations the British boys and girls get on with their school work with easier minds, and are found to be sounder and further advanced in their schooling than Americans of the same age. This cannot be due to any profound difference in race. The blood of the American population is hardly more mongrelised than the British. Then why?
I was reflecting on this problem; albeit sternly resolved to put nothing about it into this story, but just for my own amusement, when it dawned upon me that though Edward Albert was born in the back streets of Camden Town in that melting-pot of humanity called London, both his mother and his father had lived, they and their progenitors, in a feudal world, in a feudal world from whose remote interferences the thirteen colonies escaped, finally and emphatically, a century and a half ago. What would seem strange about him to an American reader is just that difference. Feudal! I had the clue. Generalisations evaporate at this word and fact resumes its sway.
Mrs Tewler’s mother was born in the shires, under the shadow of a lord of the manor, and she was brought up, so to speak, bone-feudal. The Baptist connection was due to the fact that Dickybird was a Backslider from the Particular Baptists of Camden Town. His grandfather had found religion there, but Dickybird had never become a hall member by immersion, and the couple would probably have drifted back to the Anglican Communion if it had not been for his conspicuous inability to “find his place” in his prayer book. She was ashamed of him. The Baptists were easier.
Except for that one touch of dissent, Richard Tewler’s tradition was just as feudal as his wife’s. He was a Cockney craftsman of the fourth generation, and his Firm had been Royal Warrant Holders since Royal Warrant Holding began. The Royal Arms and “By Appointment to his Majesty,” headed their bills. His grandfather and his father had both been with Colebrook and Mahogany all their lives, and they would as soon have thought of leaving the Firm, as the Firm would have thought of dismissing them. Colebrook and Mahogany pensioned off their old hands, helped them with their domestic difficulties, took an interest in their children, as a matter of course.
Now this feudalism which ramifies to this day through the British social structure and gives its literature and social habits and distinctions that peculiar affectation of high unspoken values which so baffles and irritates Americans, was the underlying cause why our hero, instead of rushing forward, like a young American or a young Jew or a young barbarian, to embrace and wallow in his adolescence, advanced upon it, so to speak back foremost, pretending as far as possible to himself and the world at large that it really wasn’t there, and that it was not of the slightest consequence even if it was.
V. Terrifying Enterprise
Unrestrained youngsters think and talk of getting on in the world. Young Buffin Burleybank, who came into the school as a day boy for one short term until there was a vacancy for him at Mottiscombe, lived in an acquisitive home atmosphere where making money was openly discussed and glorified. He had wonderful stories of “young Harmsworth” and “old Newnes.” Young Harmsworth had lived just round the corner, so to speak, in Camden Town, and his father was an unsuccessful barrister who used to speak in the Camden Town Mock Parliament. And the youngster had borrowed a bit of money somehow, started something called Answers, started something else called Comic Cuts, and now was worth a cool million. Still young and worth a cool million. And Newnes had been just a little obscure country chemist until he read a bit out of a paper and said to his wife, “I call that a regular Tit Bit.” And then came the great idea, why not have a magazine filled up entirely with Tit Bits, with unconsidered trifles picked up here there and everywhere? And he put a bit of capital into it and here he was ’normously rich. ’Normously rich. “Why! he owns pretty nearly every funicular in the world!”
“What’s a funicular?” asked Edward Albert.
“My father says he does, anyhow,” said Buffin, evading the question. “What I’m going to do is, go in for cars. Yes, cars. Put my shirt on them. These motor cars are going big. They cost a lot to make and they’re always going to cost a lot to make. You got to have skilled exact workmen, my father says, and those you can’t get cheap. Nohow. So if the demand grows the price will go up. See? They’ve got cars now about as cheap first-hand as ever they’re going to be, and what people like doctors and commercial travellers and middle-class people will get will be anything from shop-soiled to tenth-hand. Well, that’s a business for you. Eh? Growing and growing. You can buy ’em, do ’em up as good as new, sell ’em hire purchase, hire ’em out—In a few years only dukes and earls and millionaires will have the slick new cars. There won’t be one car in ten on the road new. Not one in ten.”
“You don’t think they might somehow make reely cheap cars?” speculated Edward Albert.
“They’ve tried it, in America. My father knows all about that. There’s a man named Henry Ford and his cars—why they’re a joke! They rattle. They’re ugly as sin. They fall to pieces. He makes jokes about ’em himself. Then there’s these steam cars they have. Kettles on wheels. They blow out in a high wind. My father saw one of them blown out the other day. No. The car for a man of ordinary means is going to be the second-hand, third-hand, fourth-hand, high grade car, done-up and carefully renewed. There’s lots of cars on the road now that will still be on the road in twenty-five years’ time. And that’s where little Buffin Burleybank means to come in. That’s where we open the oyster. You watch me. Go to Buffin Burleybank for a car. Get his advice. See his selection. His ’normous selection. A Car for Everyman. There’s wonderful twists and turns in it. There’s such things as vintage years for cars, my father says. J’ever think of that?”
“What’s a vintage year?” asked Edward Albert.
“My father says they’ll buy ’em by their dates,” said Buffin, overriding the question. “It’s a great game. You got to watch out for everything. You got to keep your eyes skinned.”
And excited by this home-grown faith in his business ability, he actually started a scheme of his own for buying and selling bicycles right there in the school, that even impressed Mr Myame. If you bought a single bicycle you were the public and you had to pay full price; the dealer was bound by his contract with the wholesaler not to undersell. But suppose a few of you got together and made yourselves a firm and had an address and business notepaper all proper, then you could order half a dozen machines at trade rates and get them—Buffin was a little vague—twenty-five, thirty-five per cent off. Which meant, said Buffin, calculating rapidly, you get six at the price of four. “Practically,” said Buffin, seeing Mr Myame was checking his figures slowly but earnestly. For he talked the idea out to Mr Myame after school one day, and Mr Myame was interested and bent his countenance towards him and seemed to half believe in him. So it was that a firm named B. Burleybank and Co. came into actual being in Camden Town. It had the use of a small newsagent’s shop for its address, and by advance payments by Mr Myame and Nuts MacBryde and a friendly advance and an order from Burleybank père, who wanted to give the boy a bit of experience as well as a birthday present of a bicycle, the necessary capital was assembled and six shining bicycles were procured and stored, after a brief altercation, in the newsagent’s back yard.