The Forsyte Saga, Volume 3(182)

A debate on the ostracism of a fellow-being will bring almost any man to a Committee meeting; and the attendance included some never before known to come.

A motion had been framed by Jack Muskham.

‘That the Honourable Wilfrid Desert be requested, under Rule 23, to resign his membership of Burton’s Club, because of conduct unbecoming to a member.’

He opened the discussion in these words:

‘You’ve all had copies of Desert’s poem ‘The Leopard’ and The Daily Phase of yesterday week. There’s no doubt about the thing. Desert has publicly owned to having ratted from his religion at the pistol’s point, and I say he’s no longer fit to be a member of this Club. It was founded in memory of a very great traveller who’d have dared Hell itself. We don’t want people here who don’t act up to English traditions, and make a song about it into the bargain.’

There was a short silence, and then the fifth member of the Committee at the previous meeting remarked:

‘It’s a deuced fine poem, all the same.’

A well-known K.C., who had once travelled in Turkey, added:

‘Oughtn’t he to have been asked to attend?’

‘Why?’ asked Jack Muskham. ‘He can’t say more than is said in that poem, or in that letter of his publisher’s.’

The fourth member of the Committee at the previous meeting muttered: ‘I don’t like paying attention to The Daily Phase.’

‘We can’t help his having chosen that particular rag,’ said Jack Muskham.

‘Very distasteful,’ continued the fourth member, ‘diving into matters of conscience. Are we all prepared to say we wouldn’t have done the same?’

There was a sound as of feet shuffling, and a wrinkled expert on the early civilizations of Ceylon murmured: ‘To my mind, Desert is on the carpet – not for apostasy, but for the song he’s made about it. Decency should have kept him quiet. Advertising his book! It’s in a third edition, and everybody reading it. Making money out of it seems to me the limit.’

‘I don’t suppose,’ said the fourth member, ‘that he thought of that. It’s the accident of the sensation.’

‘He could have withdrawn the book.’

‘Depends on his contract. Besides, that would look like running from the storm he’s roused. As a matter of fact, I think it’s rather fine to have made an open confession.’

‘Theatrical!’ murmured the K.C.

‘If this,’ said Jack Muskham, ‘were one of the Service Clubs, they wouldn’t think twice about it.’

An author of Mexico Revisited said dryly:

‘But it is not.’

‘I don’t know if you can judge poets like other people,’ mused the fifth member.

‘In matters of ordinary conduct,’ said the expert on the civilization of Ceylon, ‘why not?’

A little man at the end of the table opposite the Chairman remarked, ‘The D-D-Daily Ph-Phase,’ as if releasing a small spasm of wind.

‘Everybody’s talking about the thing,’ said the K.C.

‘My young people,’ put in a man who had not yet spoken, ‘scoff. They say: “What does it matter what he did?” They talk about hypocrisy, laugh at Lyall’s poem, and say it’s good for the Empire to have some wind let out of it.’

‘Exactly!’ said Jack Muskham: ‘That’s the modern jargon. All standards gone by the board. Are we going to stand for that?’

‘Anybody here know young Desert?’ asked the fifth member.

‘To nod to,’ replied Jack Muskham.

Nobody else acknowledged acquaintanceship.

A very dark man with deep lively eyes said suddenly:

‘All I can say is I trust the story has not got about in Afghanistan; I’m going there next month.’

‘Why?’ said the fourth member.

‘Merely because it will add to the contempt with which I shall be regarded, anyway.’

Coming from a well-known traveller, this remark made more impression than anything said so far. Two members, who, with the Chairman, had not yet spoken, said simultaneously: ‘Quite!’

‘I don’t like condemning a man unheard,’ said the K.C.

‘What about that, “Squire”?’ asked the fourth member.

The Chairman, who was smoking a pipe, took it from his mouth.

‘Anybody anything more to say?’

‘Yes,’ said the author of Mexico Revisited, ‘let’s put it on his conduct in publishing that poem.’

‘You can’t,’ growled Jack Muskham; ‘the whole thing’s of a piece. The point is simply: Is he fit to be a member here or not? I ask the Chairman to put that to the meeting.’