than I had anticipated, but I was far too young and serious to let the
latter quality atone for its shortcomings. I am so remote from this
phase of my youth that I can look back at it all as dispassionately as
one looks at a picture--at some wonderful, perfect sort of picture
that is inexhaustible; but at the time these things filled me with
unspeakable resentment. Now I go round it all, look into its details,
generalise about its aspects. I'm interested, for example, to square it
with my Bladesover theory of the British social scheme. Under stress of
tradition we were all of us trying in the fermenting chaos of London to
carry out the marriage ceremonies of a Bladesover tenant or one of the
chubby middling sort of people in some dependent country town. There
a marriage is a public function with a public significance. There the
church is to a large extent the gathering-place of the community, and
your going to be married a thing of importance to every one you pass on
the road. It is a change of status that quite legitimately interests
the whole neighbourhood. But in London there are no neighbours, nobody
knows, nobody cares. An absolute stranger in an office took my notice,
and our banns were proclaimed to ears that had never previously heard
our names. The clergyman, even, who married us had never seen us before,
and didn't in any degree intimate that he wanted to see us again.

Neighbours in London! The Ramboats did not know the names of the people
on either side of them. As I waited for Marion before we started off
upon our honeymoon flight, Mr. Ramboat, I remember, came and stood
beside me and stared out of the window.

"There was a funeral over there yesterday," he said, by way of making
conversation, and moved his head at the house opposite. "Quite a smart
affair it was with a glass 'earse...."