A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf | Read by Natalie Dormer | Penguin Audiobooks

[Music] brought to you by penguin [Music] a room of one's own by virginia woolf read by natalie dormer chapter one but you may say we asked you to speak about women and fiction what has that got to do with a room of one's own i will try to explain when you asked me to speak about women and fiction i sat down on the banks of a river and began to wonder what the words meant they might mean simply a few remarks about fanny bernie a few more about jane austen a tribute to the brontes and a sketch of howath parsonage under snow some witticisms if possible about miss mitford a respectful allusion to george eliot a reference to mrs gaskell and one would have done but at second sight the words seemed not so simple the title women and fiction might mean and you may have meant it to mean women and what they are like or it might mean women and the fiction that they write or it might mean women and the fiction that is written about them or it might mean that somehow all three are inextricably mixed together and you want me to consider them in that light but when i began to consider the subject in this last way which seemed the most interesting i soon saw that it had one fatal drawback i should never be able to come to a conclusion i should never be able to fulfill what is i understand the first duty of a lecturer to hand you after an hour's discourse a nugget of pure truth to wrap up between the pages of your notebooks and keep on the mantelpiece forever all i could do was to offer you an opinion upon one minor point a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction and that as you will see leaves the great problem of the true nature of woman and the true nature of fiction unsolved i have shirked the duty of coming to a conclusion upon these two questions women and fiction remain so far as i'm concerned unsolved problems but in order to make some amends i am going to do what i can to show you how i arrived at this opinion about the room and the money i am going to develop in your presence as fully and freely as i can the train of thought which led me to think this perhaps if i lay bare the ideas the prejudices that lie behind this statement you will find that they have some bearing upon women and some upon fiction at any rate when a subject is highly controversial and any question about sex is that one cannot hope to tell the truth one can only show how one came to hold whatever opinion one does hold one can only give one's audience the chance of drawing their own conclusions as they observe the limitations the prejudices the idiosyncrasies of the speaker fiction here is likely to contain more truth than fact therefore i propose making use of all the liberties and licenses of a novelist to tell you the story of the two days that preceded my coming here how bowed down by the weight of the subject which you have laid upon my shoulders i pondered it and made it work in and out of my daily life i need not say that what i am about to describe has no existence oxbridge is an invention so is fernan i is only a convenient term for somebody who has no real being lies will flow from my lips but there may perhaps be some truth mixed up with them it is for you to seek out this truth and to decide whether any part of it is worth keeping if not you will of course throw the whole of it into the waste paper basket and forget all about it here then was i call me mary beaton mary seton mary carmichael or by any name you please it is not a matter of any importance sitting on the banks of a river a week or two ago in fine october weather lost in thought that collar i have spoken of women and fiction the need of coming to some conclusion on a subject that raises all sorts of prejudices and passions bowed my head to the ground to the right and left bushes of some sort golden and crimson glowed with the color even it seemed burnt with the heat of fire on the further bank the willows wept in perpetual lamentation their hair about their shoulders the river reflected whatever it chose of sky and bridge and burning tree and when the undergraduate had ored his boat through the reflections they closed again completely as if he had never been there one might have sat the clock round lost in thought thought to call it by a prouder name than it deserved had let its lying down into the stream it swayed minute after minute hither and thither among the reflections in the weeds letting the water lift it and sink it until you know the little tug the sudden conglomeration of an idea at the end of one's line and then the cautious hauling of it in and the careful laying of it out alas laid on the grass how small how insignificant this thought of mine looked the sort of fish that a good fisherman puts back into the water so that it may grow fatter and be one day worth cooking and eating i will not trouble you with that thought now though if you look carefully you may find it for yourselves in the course of what i'm going to say but however small it was it had nevertheless the mysterious property of its kind put back into the mind it became at once very exciting and important and as it darted and sank and flashed hither and thither set up such a wash and tumult of ideas that it was impossible to sit still it was thus i found myself walking with extreme rapidity across a grass plot instantly a man's figure rose to intercept me nor did i at first understand that the gesticulations of a curious looking object in a cutaway coat and evening shirt were aimed at me his face expressed horror and indignation instinct rather than reason came to my help he was a beadle i was a woman this was the turf there was the path only the fellows and scholars are allowed here the gravel is the place for me such thoughts were the work of a moment as i regained the path the arms of the beadle sank his face assumed its usual repose and though turf is better walking than gravel no very great harm was done the only charge i could bring against the fellows and scholars of whatever the college might happen to be was that in protection of their turf which has been rolled for 300 years in succession they had sent my little fish into hiding what idea had been that had sent me so audaciously trespassing i could not now remember the spirit of peace descended like a cloud from heaven for if the spirit of peace dwells anywhere it is in the courts and quadrangles of oxbridge on a fine october morning strolling through those colleges past those ancient halls the roughness of the present seemed smoothed away the body seemed contained in a miraculous glass cabinet through which no sound could penetrate and the mind freed from any contact with facts unless one trespassed on the turf again was it liberty to settle down upon whatever meditation was in harmony with the moment as chance would have it some stray memory of some old essay about revisiting oxbridge in the long vacation brought charles lamb to mind saint charles said thackery putting a letter of lambs to his forehead indeed among all the dead i give you my thoughts as they came to me lam is one of the most congenial one to whom one would have liked to say tell me then how you wrote your essays for his essays are superior even to max beer bones i thought with all their perfection because of that wild flash of imagination that lightning crack of genius in the middle of them which leaves them flawed and imperfect but starred with poetry lamb then came to oxbridge perhaps a hundred years ago certainly he wrote an essay the name escapes me about the manuscript of one of milton's poems which he saw there it was licidus perhaps and lam wrote how it shocked him to think it possible that any word in licidus could have been different from what it is to think of milton changing the words in that poem seemed to him a sort of sacrilege this led me to remember what i could of licidus and to amuse myself with guessing which word it could have been that milton had altered and why it then occurred to me that the very manuscript itself which lam had looked at was only a few hundred yards away so that one could follow lam's footsteps across the quadrangle to that famous library where the treasure is kept moreover i recollected as i put this plan into execution it is in this famous library that the manuscript of thackery's esmend is also preserved the critics often say that esmond is thackery's most perfect novel but the affectation of the style with its imitation of the 18th century hampers one so far as i remember unless indeed the 18th century style was natural to thackery a fact that one might prove by looking at the manuscript and seeing whether the alterations were for the benefit of the style or of the sense but then one would have to decide what is style and what is meaning a question which but here i was actually at the door which leads into the library itself i must have opened it for instantly they're issued like a guardian angel barring the way with a flutter of black gown instead of white wings a deprecating silvery kindly gentleman who regretted in a low voice as he waved me back that ladies are only admitted to the library if accompanied by a fellow of the college or furnished with a letter of introduction that a famous library has been cursed by a woman is a matter of complete indifference to a famous library venerable and calm with all its treasures safe locked within its breast it sleeps complacently and will as far as i'm concerned so sleep forever never will i wake those echoes never will i ask for that hospitality again i vowed as i descended the steps in anger still an hour remained before luncheon and what was one to do stroll on the meadows sit by the river certainly it was a lovely autumn morning the leaves were fluttering red to the ground there was no great hardship in doing either but the sound of music reached my ear some service or celebration was going forward the organ complained magnificently as i passed the chapel door even the sorrow of christianity sounded in that serene air more like the recollection of sorrow than sorrow itself even the groanings of the ancient organ seemed lapped in peace i had no wish to enter had i the right and this time the virgin might have stopped me demanding perhaps my baptismal certificate or a letter of introduction from the dean but the outside of these magnificent buildings is often as beautiful as the inside moreover it was amusing enough to watch the congregation assembling coming in and going out again busying themselves at the door of the chapel like bees at the mouth of a hive many were in cap and gown some had tufts of fur in their shoulders others were wheeled in bath chairs others though not past middle age seemed creased and crushed into shape so singular that one was reminded of those giant crabs and crayfish who heave with difficulty across the sand of an aquarium as i lent against the wall the university indeed seemed a sanctuary in which i preserved rare types which would soon be obsolete if left to fight for existence on the pavement of the strand old stories of old deans and old dons came back to mind but before i had summoned up courage to whistle it used to be said that at the sound of a whistle old professor x instantly broke into a gallop the venerable congregation had gone inside the outside of the chapel remained as you know its high domes and pinnacles can be seen like a sailing ship always voyaging never arriving lit up at night and visible for miles far away across the hills once presumably this quadrangle with its smooth lawns its massive buildings and the chapel itself was marsh too where the grass is waved and the swine rootled teams of horses and oxen i thought must have hauled the stone and wagons from far counties and then with infinite labor the grey blocks in whose shade i was now standing were poised in order one on top of another and then the painters brought their glass for the windows and the masons were busy for centuries up on that roof with putty and cement spade and trowel every saturday somebody must have poured gold and silver out of 11 purse into their ancient fists for they had their beer and skittles presumably of an evening an unending stream of gold and silver i thought must have flowed into this court perpetually to keep the stones coming and the masons working to level to ditch to dig and drain but it was then the age of faith and money was poured liberally to set these stones on a deep foundation and when the stones were raised still more money was poured in from the coffers of kings and queens and great nobles to ensure that hymns should be sung here and scholars taught lands were granted tithes were paid and when the age of faith was over and the age of reason had come still the same flow of gold and silver went on fellowships were founded lecture ships endowed only the gold and silver flowed now not from the coffers of the king but from the chests of merchants and manufacturers from the purses of men who had made say a fortune from industry and returned in their wills a bounteous share of it to endow more chairs more lectureships more fellowships in the university where they had learnt their craft hence the libraries and laboratories the observatories the splendid equipment of costly and delicate instruments which now stands on glass shelves where centuries ago the grass is waved and the swine rootled certainly as i strolled around the court the foundation of gold and silver seemed deep enough the pavement laid solidly over the wild grasses men with trays on their heads went busily from staircase to staircase gordy blossoms flowered in window boxes the strains of the gramophone bled out from the rooms within it was impossible not to reflect the reflection whatever it may have been was cut short the clock struck it was time to find one's way to luncheon it is a curious fact that novelists have a way of making us believe that luncheon parties are invariably memorable for something very witty that was said or for something very wise that was done but they seldom spare a word for what was eaten it is part of the novelist's convention not to mention soup and salmon and ducklings as if soup and salmon and ducklings were of no importance whatsoever as if nobody ever smoked a cigar or drank a glass of wine here however i shall take the liberty to defy that convention and to tell you that the lunch on this occasion began with souls sunk in a deep dish over which the college cook had spread a counterpane of the whitest cream save that it was branded here and there with brown spots like the spots on the flanks of a dough after that came the partridges but if this suggests a couple of bald brown birds on a plate you are mistaken the partridges many in various came with all their retinue of sauces and salads the sharp and the sweet each in its order their potatoes thin as coins but not so hard they're sprouts foliated as rosebuds but more succulent and no sooner had the roast and its retinue being done with then the silent serving man the beetle himself perhaps in a milder manifestation set before us wreathed in napkins a confection which rose all sugar from the waves to call it pudding and so relate it to rice and tapioca would be an insult meanwhile the wine glasses had flushed yellow and flushed crimson had been emptied had been filled and thus by degrees was lit halfway down the spine which is the seat of the soul not that hard little electric light which we call brilliance as it pops in and out upon our lips but the more profound subtle and subterranean glow which is the rich yellow flame of rational intercourse no need to hurry no need to sparkle no need to be anybody but oneself we are all going to heaven and van dyke is of the company in other words how good life seemed how sweet its rewards how trivial this grudge or that grievance how admirable friendship and the society of one's kind as lighting a good cigarette one sank among the cushions in the window seat if by good luck there had been an ashtray handy if one had not knocked the ash out of the window in default if things had been a little different from what they were one would not have seen presumably a cat without a tail the sight of that abrupt and truncated animal padding softly across the quadrangle changed by some fluke of the subconscious intelligence the emotional light for me it was as if someone had let fool a shade perhaps that excellent hawk was relinquishing its hold certainly as i watched the manx cat pause in the middle of the lawn as if it too questioned the universe something seemed lacking something seemed different but what was lacking what was different i asked myself listening to the talk and to answer that question i had to think myself out of the room back into the past before the war indeed and to set before my eyes the model of another luncheon party held in rooms not very far distant from these but different everything was different meanwhile the talk went on among the guests who were many and young some of this sex some of that it went on swimmingly it went on agreeably freely amusingly and as it went on i set it against the background of that other talk and as i matched the two together i had no doubt that one was the descendant the legitimate heir of the other nothing was changed nothing was different save only here i listened with all my ears not entirely to what was being said but to the murmur or current behind it yes that was it the change was there before the war at a luncheon party like this people would have said precisely the same things but they would have sounded different because in those days they were accompanied by a sort of humming noise not articulate but musical exciting which changed the value of the words themselves could one set that humming noise to words perhaps with the help of the poets one could a book lay beside me and opening it i turned casually enough to tennyson and here i found tennyson was singing there has fallen a splendid tear from the passion flower at the gate she is coming my dove my dear she is coming my life my fate the red rose cries she is near she is near and the white rose weeps she is late the lark spur listens i hear i hear and the lily whispers i wait was that what men hummed at luncheon parties before the war and the women my heart is like a singing bird whose nest is in a watered shoot my heart is like an apple tree whose bowels are bent with thick set fruit my heart is like a rainbow shell that paddles in a halcyon sea my heart is gladder than all these because my love is come to me was that what women hummed at luncheon parties before the war there was something so ludicrous in thinking of people humming such things even under their breath at luncheon parties before the war that i burst out laughing and had to explain my laughter by pointing at the manx cat who did look a little absurd poor beast without a tail in the middle of the lawn was he really born so or had he lost his tail in an accident the tailless cat though some are said to exist in the isle of man is rarer than one thinks it is a queer animal quaint rather than beautiful it is strange what a difference a tale makes you know the sort of things one says as a lunch party breaks up and people are finding their coats and hats this one thanks to the hospitality of the host had lasted far into the afternoon the beautiful october day was fading and the leaves were falling from the trees in the avenue as i walked through it gate after gate seemed to close with gentle finality behind me innumerable beetles were fitting innumerable keys into well-oiled locks the treasure house was being made secure for another night after the avenue one comes out upon a road i forget its name which leads you if you take the right turning along to fernam but there was plenty of time dinner was not till half past seven one could almost do without dinner after such a luncheon it is strange how a scrap of poetry works in the mind and makes the legs move in time to it along the road those words there has fallen a splendid tear from the passion flower at the gate she is coming my dove my dear sang in my blood as i stepped quickly along towards headingly and then switching off into the other measure i sang where the waters are churned up by the weir my heart is like a singing bird whose nest is in a watered chute my heart is like an apple tree what poets i cried aloud as one does in the dusk what poets they were in a sort of jealousy i suppose for our own age silly and absurd though these comparisons are i went on to wonder if honestly one could name two living poets now as great as tennyson and christina rossetti were then obviously it is impossible i thought looking into those foaming waters to compare them the very reason why that poetry excites one to such abandonment such rapture is that it celebrates some feeling that one used to have at luncheon parties before the war perhaps so that one responds easily familiarly without troubling to check the feeling or to compare it with any that one has now but the living poets express a feeling that is actually being made and torn out of us at the moment one does not recognize it in the first place often for some reason one fears it one watches it with keenness and compares it jealously and suspiciously with the old feeling that one knew hence the difficulty of modern poetry and it is because of this difficulty that one cannot remember more than two consecutive lines of any good modern poet for this reason that my memory failed me the argument flagged for want of material but why i continued moving on towards headingly have we stopped humming under our breath at luncheon parties why has alfred ceased to sing she is coming my dove my dear why has christina ceased to respond my heart is gladder than all these because my love is come to me shall we lay the blame on the war when the guns fired in august 1914 did the faces of men and women show so plain in each other's eyes that romance was killed certainly it was a shock to women in particular with their illusions about education and so on to see the faces of our rulers in the light of the shell fire so ugly they looked german english french so stupid but lay the blame where one will on whom one will the illusion which inspired tennyson and christina rossetti to sing so passionately about the coming of their loves is far rarer now than then one has only to read to look to listen to remember but why say blame why if it was an illusion not praise the catastrophe whatever it was that destroyed illusion and put truth in its place for truth that pause marks the spot where in search of truth i miss the turning up to fernan yes indeed which was truth and which was illusion i asked myself what was the truth about these houses for example dim and festive now with their red windows in the dusk but raw and red and squalid with their sweets in their boot laces at nine o'clock in the morning and the willows in the river and the gardens that run down to the river vague now with the mist stealing over them but gold and red in the sunlight which was the truth which was the illusion about them i spare you the twists and turns of my cognitations for no conclusion was found on the road to headingley and i ask you to suppose that i soon found out my mistake about the turning and retraced my steps to fernam as i have said already that it was an october day i dare not forfeit your respect and imperil the fair name of fiction by changing the season and describing lilacs hanging over garden walls crocuses tulips and other flowers of spring fiction must stick to facts and the truer the facts the better the fiction so we are told therefore it was still autumn and the leaves were still yellow and falling if anything a little faster than before because it was now evening 7 23 to be precise and a breeze from the southwest to be exact had risen but for all that there was something odd at work my heart is like a singing bird whose nest is in a watered chute my heart is like an apple tree whose bows are bent with thick set fruit perhaps the words of christina rossetti were partly responsible for the folly of the fancy it was nothing of course but a fancy that the lilac was shaking its flowers over the garden walls and the brimstone butterflies were scudding hither and thither and the dust of the pollen was in the air a wind blew from what quarter i know not but it lifted the half-grown leaves so that there was a flash of silver gray in the air it was the time between the lights when colors undergo their intensification and purples and golds burn in window panes like the beat of an excitable heart when for some reason the beauty of the world revealed and yet soon to perish here i pushed into the garden for unwisely the door was left open and no beetles seemed about the beauty of the world which is so soon to perish has two edges one of laughter one of anguish cutting the heart asunder the gardens of fernam lay before me in the spring twilight wild and open and in the long grass sprinkled and carelessly flung were daffodils and bluebells not orderly perhaps at the best of times and now wind blown and waving as they tugged at their roots the windows of the building curved like ships windows among generous waves of red brick changed from lemon to silver under the flight of the quick spring clouds somebody was in a hammock somebody but in this light they were phantom's only half guest half seen raced across the grass would no one stop her and then on the terrace as if popping out to breathe the air to glance at the garden came a bent figure formidable yet humble with her great forehead and her shabby dress could it be the famous scholar could it be j h herself all was dim yet intense too as if the scarf which the dusk had flung over the garden were torn asunder by star or sword the flash of some terrible reality leaping as its way is out of the heart of the spring for youth here was my soup dinner was being served in the great dining hall far from being spring it was in fact an evening in october everybody was assembled in the big dining room dinner was ready here was the soup it was a plain gravy soup there was nothing to stir the fancy in that one could have seen through the transparent liquid any pattern that there might have been on the plate itself but there was no pattern the plate was plain next came the beef with its attendant greens and potatoes a homely trinity suggesting the rumps of cattle in a muddy market and sprouts curled and yellowed at the edge the bargaining and cheapening and women with string bags on monday morning there was no reason to complain of human nature's daily food seeing that the supply was sufficient and coal miners doubtless were sitting down to less prunes and custard followed and if anyone complains that prunes even when mitigated by custard are an uncharitable vegetable fruit they are not stringy as a miser's heart and exuding a fluid such as might run in miser's veins who have denied themselves wine and warmth for 80 years and yet not given to the poor he should reflect that there are people whose charity embraces even the prune biscuits and cheese came next and here the water jug was liberally passed round for it is the nature of biscuits to be dry and these were biscuits to the core that was all the meal was over everybody scraped their chairs back the swing doors swung violently to and fro soon the hall was emptied of every sign of food and made ready no doubt for breakfast next morning down corridors and upstair cases the youth of england went banging and singing and was it for a guest a stranger for i had no more right here in fernand than in trinity or somerville or guertin or newarm or christchurch to say the dinner was not good or to say we were now mary seton and i in her sitting room could we not have dined up here alone for if i had said anything of the kind i should have been prying and searching into the secret economies of a house which to the stranger wears so fine a front of gaiety and courage no one could say nothing of the sort indeed conversation for a moment flagged the human frame being what it is heart body and brain all mixed together and not contained in separate compartments as they will be no doubt in another million years a good dinner is of great importance to good talk one cannot think well love well sleep well if one has not dined well the lamp in the spine does not light on beef and prunes we are all probably going to heaven and van dyke is we hope to meet us round the next corner that is the dubious and qualifying state of mind that beef and prunes at the end of the day's work breed between them happily my friend who taught science had a cupboard where there was a squat bottle and little glasses but there should have been soul and partridge to begin with so that we were able to draw up to the fire and repair some of the damages of the day's living in a minute or so we were slipping freely in and out among all those objects of curiosity and interest which form in the mind and the absence of a particular person and are naturally to be discussed on coming together again how somebody has married another has not one thinks this another that one has improved out of all knowledge the other most amazingly gone to the bad with all those speculations upon human nature and the character of the amazing world we live in which spring naturally from such beginnings while these things were being said however i became shame-facedly aware of a current setting in of its own accord and carrying everything forward to an end of its own one might be talking of spain or portugal of book or racehorse but the real interest of whatever was said was none of those things but a scene of masons on a high roof some five centuries ago kings and nobles brought treasure in huge sacks and poured it under the earth this scene was forever coming alive in my mind and placing itself by another of lean cows in a muddy market and withered greens and the stringy hearts of old men these two pictures disjointed and disconnected and nonsensical as they were were forever coming together and combating each other and had me entirely at their mercy the best course unless the whole talk was to be distorted was to expose what was in my mind to the air when with good luck it would fade and crumble like the head of the dead king when they opened the coffin at windsor briefly then i told miss seton about the masons who had been all those years on the roof of the chapel and about the kings and queens and nobles bearing sacks of gold and silver on their shoulders which they shoveled into the earth and then how the great financial magnates of our own time came and laid checks and bonds i suppose where the others had laid ingots and rough lumps of gold all that lies beneath the colleges down there i said but this college where we are now sitting what lies beneath its gallant red brick and the wild unkept grasses of the garden what force lies behind that plain china of which we dined and here it popped out of my mouth before i could stop it the beef the custard and the prunes well said mary seaton about the year 1860 oh but you know the story she said bored i suppose by the recital and she told me rooms were hired committees met envelopes were addressed circulars were drawn up meetings were held letters were read out so and so has promised so much on the contrary mr x won't give a penny the saturday review has been very rude how can we raise a fund to pay for offices shall we hold the bazaar can't we find a pretty girl to sit in the front row let us look up what john stuart mill said on the subject can anyone persuade the editor of the x to print a letter can we get lady x to sign it lady x is out of town that was the way it was done presumably 60 years ago and it was a prodigious effort and a great deal of time was spent on it and it was only after a long struggle and with the utmost difficulty that they got 30 000 pounds together so obviously we cannot have wine and partridges and servants carrying tin dishes on their heads she said we cannot have sofas in separate rooms the amenities she said quoting from some book or other will have to wait at the thought of all those women working year after year and finding it hard to get two thousand pounds together and as much as they could do to get thirty thousand pounds we burst out in scorn at the reprehensible poverty of our sex what had our mothers been doing then that they had no wealth to leave us powdering their noses looking in at shop windows flaunting in the sun at monte carlo there were some photographs on the mantelpiece mary's mother if that was her picture may have been a wasteful in her spare time she had 13 children by a minister of the church but if so her gay and dissipated life had left too few traces of its pleasures on her face she was a homely body an old lady in a plaid shawl which was fastened by a large cameo and she sat in a basket chair encouraging a spaniel to look at the camera with the amused yet strained expression of one who is sure that the dog will move directly the bulb is pressed now if she had gone into business had become a manufacturer of artificial silk or a magnate of the stock exchange if she had left two or three hundred thousand pounds to fernam we could have been sitting at our ease tonight and the subject of our talk might have been archaeology botany anthropology physics the nature of the atom mathematics astronomy relativity geography if only mrs seton and her mother and her mother before her had learnt the great art of making money and had left their money like their fathers and their grandfathers before them to found fellowships and lecture ships and prizes and scholarships appropriated to the use of their own sex we might have dined very tolerably up here alone off a bird and a bottle of wine we might have looked forward without undue confidence to a pleasant and honorable lifetime spent in the shelter of one of the liberally endowed professions we might have been exploring or writing mooning about the venerable places of the earth sitting contemplative on the steps of the parthenon or going at ten to an office and coming home comfortably at half past four to write a little poetry only if mrs seton and her like had gone into business at the age of 15 there would have been that was the snag in the argument no mary what i asked did mary think of that there between the curtains was the october night calm and lovely with a star or two caught in the yellowing trees was she ready to resign her share of it and her memories for they had been a happy family though a large one of games and quarrels up in scotland which he is never tired of praising for the fineness of its air and the quality of its cakes in order that fernan might have been endowed with fifty thousand pounds or so by a stroke of the pen for to endow a college would necessitate the suppression of families altogether making a fortune and bearing 13 children no human being could stand it consider the facts we said first there are nine months before the baby is born then the baby is born then there are three or four months spent in feeding the baby after the baby is fed there are certainly five years spent in playing with the baby you cannot it seems let children run about the streets people who have seen them running wild in russia say that the site is not a pleasant one people say too that human nature takes its shape in the years between one and five if mrs seton i said had been making money what sort of memories would you have had of games and quarrels what would you have known of scotland and its fine air and cakes and all the rest of it but it is useless to ask these questions because you would never have come into existence at all moreover it is equally useless to ask what might have happened if mrs seton and her mother and her mother before her had amassed great wealth and laid it under the foundations of college and library because in the first place to earn money was impossible for them and in the second had it been possible the law denied them the right to possess what money they earned it is only for the last 48 years that mrs seton has had a penny of her own for all the centuries before that it would have been her husband's property a thought which perhaps may have had its share in keeping mrs seton and her mothers off the stock exchange every penny i earn they may have said will be taken from me and disposed of according to my husband's wisdom perhaps to found a scholarship or to endow a fellowship in balial or kings so that to earn money even if i could earn money is not a matter that interests me very greatly i'd better leave it to my husband at any rate whether or not the blame rested on the old lady who was looking at the spaniel there could be no doubt that for some reason or other our mothers had mismanaged their affairs very gravely not a penny could be spared for amenities for partridges and wine beetles and turf books and cigars libraries and leisure to raise bare walls out of the bare earth was the utmost they could do so we talked standing at the window and looking as so many thousands look every night down on the domes and towers of the famous city beneath us it was very beautiful very mysterious in the autumn moonlight the old stone looked very white and venerable one thought of all the books that were assembled down there of the pictures of old prelates and worthies hanging in the paneled rooms of the painted windows that would be throwing strange globes and crescents on the pavements of the fountains and the grass of the quiet rooms looking across the quiet quadrangles and pardon me the thought i thought too of the admirable smoke and drink and deep armchairs and the pleasant carpets of the urbanity and the geniality the dignity which are the offspring of luxury and privacy and space certainly our mothers had not provided us with anything comparable to all this our mothers he found it difficult to scrape together thirty thousand pounds our mothers who bore thirteen children to ministers of religion at st andrews so i went back to my inn and as i walked through the dark streets i pondered this and that as one does at the end of the day's work i pondered why it was that mrs seaton had no money to leave us and what effect poverty has on the mind and i thought of the queer old gentleman i had seen that morning with tufts of fur upon their shoulders and i remembered how if one whistled one of them ran and i thought of the organ booming in the chapel and of the shut doors of the library and i thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out and i thought how it is worse perhaps to be locked in and thinking of the safety and prosperity of the one sex and of the poverty and insecurity of the other and of the effect of tradition and of the lack of tradition upon the mind of a writer i thought at last that it was time to roll up the crumpled skin of the day with its arguments and its impressions and its anger in its laughter and cast it into the hedge a thousand stars were flashing across the blue wastes of the sky one seemed alone with an inscrutable society all human beings were laid asleep prone horizontal dumb nobody seemed stirring in the streets of oxbridge even the door of the hotel sprang open at the touch of an invisible hand not a boots were sitting up to light me to bed it was so late thank you for listening to continue the book head to the link in the description below and click here to subscribe to the penguin youtube channel for more audiobook samples and videos with your favorite authors see you next time