Point Counter Point by Aldous Huxley Page A

Man wasn’t the descendant of monastery-robbers,’ he would say to the praisers or admirers, ‘he’d be in the workhouse or the loony asylum.’
    And yet he was genuinely fond of the Old Man, he genuinely admired his talents and his character. The world, however, might be excused for not realizing the fact. ‘Unpleasant’ was the ordinary comment on Lord Edward’s assistant.
    But being unpleasant to and about the rich, besides a pleasure, was also, in Illidge’s eyes, a sacred duty. He owed it to his class, to society at large, to the future, to the cause of justice. Even the Old Man himself was not spared. He had only to breathe a word in favour of the soul (for Lord Edward had what his assistant could only regard as a shameful and adulterous passion for idealistic metaphysics); Illidge would at once leap out at him with a sneer about capitalist philosophy and bourgeois religion. An expression of distaste for hardheaded business men, of indifference to material interests, of sympathy for the poor, would bring an immediate reference, more or less veiled, but always sarcastic, to the Tantamount millions. There were days (and owing to the slip on the stairs and that snub from the General, this day was one of them) when even a reference to pure science elicited its ironic comment. Illidge was an enthusiastic biologist; but as a class-conscious citizen he had to admit that pure science, like good taste and boredom, perversity and platonic love, is a product of wealth and leisure. He was not afraid of being logical and deriding even his own idol.
    ‘Money to pay,’ he repeated. ‘That’s the essential.
    The Old Man looked rather guiltily at his assistant.
    These implied reproofs made him feel uncomfortable. He tried to change the subject. ‘What about our tadpoles? ‘ he asked
    ‘The asymmetrical ones.’ They had a brood of tadpoles hatched from eggs that had been kept abnormally warm on one side and abnormally cold on the other. He moved towards the glass tank in which they were kept. Illidge followed. ‘Asymmetrical tadpoles!’ he repeated.
    ‘Asymmetrical tadpoles! What a refinement! Almost as good as playing Bach on the flute or having a palate for wine.’ He thought of his brother Tom, who had weak lungs and worked a broaching machine in a motor factory at Manchester. He remembered washing days and the pink crinkled skin of his mother’s watersodden hands. ‘Asymmetrical tadpoles!’ he said once more and laughed.
     

     
    ‘Strange,’ said Mrs. Betterton, ‘strange that a great artist should be such a cynic.’ In Burlap’s company she preferred to believe that John Bidlake had meant what he said. Burlap on cynicism was uplifting and Mrs. Betterton liked to be uplifted. Uplifting too on greatness, not to mention art. ‘For you must admit,’ she added, ‘he is a great artist.’
    Burlap nodded slowly. He did not look directly at Mrs. Betterton, but kept his eyes averted and downcast as though he were addressing some little personage invisible to everyone but himself, standing to one side of her—his private daemon, perhaps; an emanation from himself, a little doppelganger. He was a man of middle height with a stoop and a rather slouching gait. His hair was dark, thick and curly, with a natural tonsure as big as a medal showing pink on the crown of his head. His grey eyes were very deeply set, his nose and chin pronounced but well shaped. his mouth full-lipped and rather wide. A mixture, according to old Bidlake, who was a caricaturist in words as well as with the pencil, of a movie villain and St. Anthony of Padua by a painter of the baroque, of a cardsharping Lothario and a rapturous devotee.
    ‘Yes, a great artist,’ he agreed, ‘but not one of the greatest.’ He spoke slowly, ruminatively, as though he were talking to himself. All his conversation was a dialogue with himself or that little doppelgdnger which stood invisibly to one side of the people he was supposed to be talking to; Burlap