Gerald! One canât help admiring his tactics. He asks The Times for a job. The Times gives him one and is promptly denounced for its hypocrisy. How dare it pretend to have standards of right and wrong if it hires people like Gerald, who outrage those standards? How dare it pretend ignorance of, for example, these two facts?
That, during the First World War, Gerald had been imprisoned and later interned in England because of his âopenly expressed pro-German and anti-British sentimentsâ and âenemy association.â (This had inspired Horatio Bottomley to write an article entitled âHang Hamilton!â)
And that, during 1924 and 1925, Gerald had spent several months in various French and Italian prisons, charged with swindling a Milanese jeweler out of a pearl necklace.
But now Gerald betrays himself into admitting that he has a double standard. While condemning The Times for employing a notorious traitor and thief, he maintains that he was really neither the one nor the other. Gerald wasnât a traitor, because he wasnât Britishâwell, technically, perhaps, but not in his heart, which was Irish through and through. Call him an Irish rebel, if you like, and a potential martyr to the cause of Irish freedom. He had proved his loyalty to Ireland by corresponding with Roger Casement, when Casement was in Berlin trying to get German help for a rising against the British. (Gerald must have expressed himself with extreme caution, for no evidence of his participation in this plot had ever been produced against him.)
As for the pearl necklaceâthat accusation was really just another technicality. If the jeweler hadnât sent in his bill so much earlier than Gerald had expected him to, and if Gerald himself hadnât delayed so long in taking care of the matter (âMy usual inclination towards a policy of laisser aller â), all the resulting unpleasantness could have been avoided. At worst, it was merely, as you might say, robbing Peter to pay Paulâand, anyhow, Gerald would never have become involved in the affair if he hadnât wanted to oblige a friend who was in financial difficulties ⦠Gerald had the art of talking like this without showing any genuine indignation and without exactly defending himself. He was well aware of his own double standard and he couldnât help giggling in the midst of his solemn sincerities. Having giggled, he would skip to happier themes: the many royal and titled ladies and gentlemen he had known; the palaces, castles, and chateaux he had been a guest at; the exotic meals he had eaten and the now extinct wines he had drunk.
It seems to me that Christopher ârecognizedâ Gerald Hamilton as Arthur Norris, his character-to-be, almost as soon as he set eyes on him. When William Bradshaw (the I-narrator of the novel) meets Mr. Norris on a train, their encounter seems remembered, not imagined, although its setting is fictitious. In these first sentences, Hamilton and Norris are still identical:
My first impression was that the strangerâs eyes were of an unusually light blue ⦠Startled and innocently naughty, they were the eyes of a schoolboy surprised in the act of breaking one of the rules ⦠His smile had great charm. His hands were white, small, and beautifully manicured. He had a large blunt fleshy nose and a chin which seemed to have slipped sideways. It was like a broken concertina. Above his ripe red cheeks, his forehead was sculpturally white, like marble. A queerly cut fringe of dark grey hair lay across it, compact, thick, and heavy. After a momentâs examination, I realized, with extreme interest, that he was wearing a wig.
From Christopherâs point of view, Gerald was enchantingly âperiod.â He introduced Wystan, Stephen, and other friends to him, and soon they were all treating him like an absurd but nostalgic artwork which has been rediscovered by a later generation. Gerald
That, during the First World War, Gerald had been imprisoned and later interned in England because of his âopenly expressed pro-German and anti-British sentimentsâ and âenemy association.â (This had inspired Horatio Bottomley to write an article entitled âHang Hamilton!â)
And that, during 1924 and 1925, Gerald had spent several months in various French and Italian prisons, charged with swindling a Milanese jeweler out of a pearl necklace.
But now Gerald betrays himself into admitting that he has a double standard. While condemning The Times for employing a notorious traitor and thief, he maintains that he was really neither the one nor the other. Gerald wasnât a traitor, because he wasnât Britishâwell, technically, perhaps, but not in his heart, which was Irish through and through. Call him an Irish rebel, if you like, and a potential martyr to the cause of Irish freedom. He had proved his loyalty to Ireland by corresponding with Roger Casement, when Casement was in Berlin trying to get German help for a rising against the British. (Gerald must have expressed himself with extreme caution, for no evidence of his participation in this plot had ever been produced against him.)
As for the pearl necklaceâthat accusation was really just another technicality. If the jeweler hadnât sent in his bill so much earlier than Gerald had expected him to, and if Gerald himself hadnât delayed so long in taking care of the matter (âMy usual inclination towards a policy of laisser aller â), all the resulting unpleasantness could have been avoided. At worst, it was merely, as you might say, robbing Peter to pay Paulâand, anyhow, Gerald would never have become involved in the affair if he hadnât wanted to oblige a friend who was in financial difficulties ⦠Gerald had the art of talking like this without showing any genuine indignation and without exactly defending himself. He was well aware of his own double standard and he couldnât help giggling in the midst of his solemn sincerities. Having giggled, he would skip to happier themes: the many royal and titled ladies and gentlemen he had known; the palaces, castles, and chateaux he had been a guest at; the exotic meals he had eaten and the now extinct wines he had drunk.
It seems to me that Christopher ârecognizedâ Gerald Hamilton as Arthur Norris, his character-to-be, almost as soon as he set eyes on him. When William Bradshaw (the I-narrator of the novel) meets Mr. Norris on a train, their encounter seems remembered, not imagined, although its setting is fictitious. In these first sentences, Hamilton and Norris are still identical:
My first impression was that the strangerâs eyes were of an unusually light blue ⦠Startled and innocently naughty, they were the eyes of a schoolboy surprised in the act of breaking one of the rules ⦠His smile had great charm. His hands were white, small, and beautifully manicured. He had a large blunt fleshy nose and a chin which seemed to have slipped sideways. It was like a broken concertina. Above his ripe red cheeks, his forehead was sculpturally white, like marble. A queerly cut fringe of dark grey hair lay across it, compact, thick, and heavy. After a momentâs examination, I realized, with extreme interest, that he was wearing a wig.
From Christopherâs point of view, Gerald was enchantingly âperiod.â He introduced Wystan, Stephen, and other friends to him, and soon they were all treating him like an absurd but nostalgic artwork which has been rediscovered by a later generation. Gerald
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