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“Marry me, Bella!” I cried.
“No. I can’t do it with God, and that’s what is making him miserable. He’s too ordinary to have fun with in that kind of way. He’s as ordinary as I am.” “Nonsense, Miss Baxter! You and your guardian are the most extraordinary couple I have ever—” “Shut up Candle, you are too impressed by appearances.
“because Candle and I are going to get married and you must be happy about that.”
husky baritone voice,
Godwin's scream finally broke his voice.
I had worshipped and longed for her from the moment he introduced us—everything about her seemed to me the acme of womanly perfection—I would gladly endure the most horrible agonies to save her from the smallest inconvenience. I added that Bella would always be able to do whatever she wanted with me.
The imagination is, like the appendix, inherited from a primitive epoch when it aided the survival of our species, but in modern scientific industrial nations it is mainly a source of disease.
Bella now loves him, not you, McCandless.”
His response was so cool, remote and condescending that it obviously hurt her.
She also said that wicked people needed love as much as good people and were much better at it.
I learned to survive on small quantities of it, Bell. I cannot suddenly start enjoying whole armfuls.”
We sat till dawn in a melancholy silence broken by bursts of talk.
Many lives and limbs have been lost, McCandless, by excluding women from the more intricate medical arts.”
“THAT is why our arts and sciences cannot improve the world, despite what liberal philanthropists say. Our vast new scientific skills are first used by the damnably greedy selfish impatient parts of our nature and nation, the careful kindly social part always comes second.
If you committed a crime by making Bell as she is I am thankful for that crime because I love her as she is, whether she marries Wedderburn or no. I also doubt if the woman who chloroformed me will be anyone’s helpless plaything. Maybe we should pity Wedderburn.”
she has never been taught to feel her body is disgusting or to dread what she desires.
She did not let us forget her.
Basically innocent despite my wicked ways—fundamentally honest underneath my superficial hypocrisies—such was the man you introduced to your so-called niece, Mr. Baxter.
Duncan is incredibly dramatic and a contradicting hypocrite
and Bella’s way of talking suggested there was no limit to your generosity where she—the woman you pretend to be your niece—is concerned.
Duncan has figured out that Bella is not actually Godwins niece.
I was man enough for her, but the pace was terrific.
Duncan is…excruciatingly describing intercourse with Bella in his letter to Godwin--what a legend
I wish that I talked poetry all the time.
“I am going to omit several sentences here, McCandless,” said Baxter, “for they are hideously over-written, even by Wedderburn’s standards.
“But surely—surely you are the wife of General Blessington who I met at Cowes?” “Oo I hope so! Though God says I was in South America four years ago. What is my husband like? Handsomer than droopy old Wedders here? Taller? Stronger? Richer?” “There is obviously some mistake,” said the lady coldly, “though your appearance and voice are remarkably similar.” She bowed and walked on.
Someone recognized Bella from "Before"
With these two I had first discovered the pleasures of love, but they were now long past their best.
Duncan is really just giving us his life story for free. Iconic.
Honestly, McCandless, his style is so sickeningly derivative that I will summarize what follows.
Godwin is a LEGEND.
can you guess what happened then, McCandless?” “Not exactly.” “Wedderburn wants to confess all his sins from the age of five (when Auld Jessy taught him masturbation) to half an hour earlier when Bella booked him into what sounded like a brothel.
I am SCREAMING. That poor Priest, oh my.
So I know who your niece is now, Mr. Baxter. The Jews called her Eve and Delilah; the Greeks, Helen of Troy; the Romans, Cleopatra; the Christians, Salome. She is the White Daemon who destroys the honour and manhood of the noblest and most virile men in every age.
THE DRAMA
To King Louis she was Madame de Maintenon, to Prince Charlie she was Clementina Walkinshaw, to Robert Burns she was Jean Armour et cetera and to General Blessington she was Victoria Hattersley.
He's STILL going?!
You probably do not know you are Antichrist, for none are as deluded as the damned, so the Father of All Lies is condemned to know himself least of all. But you are a scientist. Examine the proofs I will now present coldly and logically, without using a lot of capital letters, except at the start.
Duncan needs grippy socks
WE WERE SILENT FOR A WHILE AFTER Baxter stopped reading. At last I said, “Can we do nothing to save that poor fellow’s sanity?” “Nothing,” said Baxter crisply.
yikes
“Why worry about Wedderburn, McCandless? He is a middleclass male in the prime of life with legal training, a secure home and three supportive females. Think of your fiancée, the attractive woman with the three-year-old brain he has left penniless in Paris. Do you not fear for her?” “No. With all his advantages Wedderburn is a poor creature. Bell is not.”
“Only bad religions depend on mysteries, just as bad governments depend on secret police. Truth, beauty and goodness are not mysterious, they are the commonest, most obvious, most essential facts of life, like sunlight, air and bread. Only folk whose heads are muddled by expensive educations think truth, beauty, goodness are rare private properties. Nature is more liberal. The universe keeps nothing essential from us—it is all present, all gift. God is the universe plus mind. Those who say God, or the universe, or nature is mysterious, are like those who call these things jealous or angry.
...more
Very clever. It does not make you an all-knowing god.”
That is how I learned he did not think that kissing hands is love. Love (Wedder thinks) only deserves the name when men insert their middle footless leg.
FOOTLESS LEG?!
(he is a baby)
This taught me how to sleep with open eyes. Soon I could also do it standing up
Bella is sleepwalking
That was what came of too much sleep-walking— I’d ended up not knowing where I was.
He said Russia is as young a country as the U.S.A. because a nation is only as old as its literature.
“People who care nothing for their country’s stories and songs,” he said, “are like people without a past—without a memory—they are half people.”
I am making up for lost time.
Though of course, bed bugs too must have their unique visions of the world.”
I would not have hated him had he said “O!” or “Eh?” but he said “Ah” as if he knew more than everyone else in the world, knew so much that talking was useless.
“Mr. Astley, you are worse than an atheist,” said Dr. H. gravely. “An atheist has at least a strong conviction of what he does not believe. You believe in nothing firm or fixed. You are a timeserver—a faithless man.”
He lent it to me so I could find peace in Jesus, but there is none. Jesus was as maddened by all-over cruelty and coldness as I am. He too must have hated discovering he had to make people better all by himself. He had one advantage over me—he could do miracles.
“That is because you are searching for a way which does not exist.” “I will search as long as I live rather than be a childish fool or selfish optimist or equally selfish cynic,”
He knows that when I can bear no more I run to the end of the ship and lean over the rail so that the wind blows my screams and wails out to sea.
“I would not have dared vote against the proposal had I known I must face you afterwards, Bell.”
“Then please hold my hand for a moment.” So I did and I felt for the first time who he really is—a tortured little boy who hates cruelty as much as I do but thinks himself a strong man because he can pretend to like it.
Misery stopped me thinking about good things, God, so I did not remember you until this morning.
You never said that cruelty to the helpless is good or inevitable or unimportant. One day you will tell me how to change what I cannot yet describe without my words swelling HUGE, vowels vanishing, tears washing ink away.
then said I should beware of men who talked about improving the world—many used such talk to entrap women of my sort. “What sort is that?” I asked, interested. He looked away from me and said coldly, “The brave and kind sort who feel generous to the miserable of every class and country—generous also to the cold, rich and selfish.” I nearly melted.
