MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON
IMET a friend of mine yesterday who informed me that he was thinking of emigrating to South Africa. I was astounded, and indeed enraged, by this proposal. I had not regarded my friend as belonging to the pioneer or emigrant type, but had always thought of him as a gentle humanist whose spiritual home was situated not beyond the equator or even the Atlantic, but in those once happy lands of Western Europe in which still lingers, although with decreasing potency, the savour of Greece and Rome. It was not as if he were the hunting type of man who would derive prolonged pleasure from pursuing and killing wildebeest, eland, mipiti or the long-tailed sugar bird. Although he was a skilled and tasteful gardener, I doubted whether the thorny or the succulent plants of South Africa would provide him with any durable satisfaction. The jacaranda tree, I admit, is among the loveliest of all Nature's extra- vagances ; but although other climates may for a short space of time produce trees and flowers more startling and more dramatic than our own, there is no climate in the world which can produce our English gardens, the variety and continuity of which remain unsurpassed. I can quite understand a horticul- turalist or a botanist obtaining great delight from the flora of Cape Colony ; but I do not understand any person who has ever gardened in England wishing to garden anywhere else. The loveliest of Mediterranean gardens is not in fact a pretty sight after the middle of June ; and no person can enjoy for long having to water huge terracotta vases when the sun has set.
* * * * I admit at once that the climate of the Cape is more stable than that of our own ever-changing skies, and that it is a disadvantage in England never to know on Monday whether Wednesday will be fine. But those who have lived for any space of time in cloudless countries will agree with me that within a year or so the monotony of fine weather begins to irritate and pall. Day after day the sun rises naked in the east, circles slowly in the hot white air, and then descends again naked to the west ; one comes to wish that Apollo would consent sometimes to wear his clothes ; and one yearns with an almost nostalgic longing for a cloud no bigger than a man's hand. I readily admit also that the Union of South Africa contains many men and women as friendly and as charming as any one can find in England, France, Holland, Belgium, Denmark, Norway and Sweden. But man is not a seedling or a pot-plant ; he grows in native soil, and his roots are more tender and strike deeper than we know or sometimes wish ; he seldom thrives when transplanted. The amenities of our native land, the invisible fibres of tradition which link us with our fellow-countrymen, have become so habitual to us that we only notice them when they are lost ; we can, it is true, grow fresh fibres if we are obliged to ; but compared to our native fibres they are unnatural, unhealthy and weak. And of all human ills, home-sickness when once contracted is the most difficult to cure. I urged these considerations upon my migrant friend ; he did not respond to my warnings ; there was a Groote Schuur look in his eyes. I could see that he was blinded by the vision of a white house among the jacarandas, of long lizards flash- ing through the euphorbias, of his first editions slumbering in a cool shuttered room, of vineyards sloping downwards to a purple sea. * * It all comes, I suppose, from taking a determinist view of history. It is probably true that we are passing through a serious social revolution ; it may be true even that social democracy is not a half- way house and that a Communist organisation of society is in the end the only alternative to capitalist enterprise. I do not feel this myself, but I admit that my scepticism on the subject is based upon no logical argument, but rather upon a deliberate form of disbelief. It may be true that within a few years we shall have but little income left to us while alive and be allowed to bequeath almost nothing to our children. Even today it is discouraging to be obliged to hand over to the Inland Revenue so large a proportion of what we earn ; it would distress me, if I ever thought about it, to realise
that out of every La I get for this article 9s. and more is taken by people who have not written a word of the article and who will never read it. It may be true that before I die I shall discover that I am very poor indeed. I should, I suppose, worry sadly about all this, but I do not worry. I should like, of course, to be very rich. I should like to have a large sailing yacht, an army of gardeners, to be able to buy pictures, and to have my books bound in blue morocco. But I have no desire whatsoever to possess the other things which my rich friends possess. I should hate to have a large house in London, or even in the country, and to be bothered by many servants. I should hate to have a motor car in London, since, being an impatient man, I dislike keeping other people wait- ing as much almost as I dislike waiting myself ; I prefer the tube. I do not like large parties ; I like small parties, when people can shout at each other across the table. I have no affection for orchids; and although I enjoy food and drink, I should always, I think, prefer to get these things outside without having to bother about internal managements. All of which means that I fit quite comfortably into the social-democratic age. I have no desire at all to go to South Africa.
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Yet even with me, I suppose, there would come a stage at which I also acquired a Groote Schuur look. I should certainly acquire that look if I came to feel that my personal liberty or my right to express my own views in public were in danger of being cur- tailed. But if that happened I should not want to go elsewhere ; I should want to remain in England and try to do something about it. There might come a stage even when my personal comforts became so restricted that I felt that England was no longer a country fit for elderly hedonists to live in. I should not wish to be deprived of food and warmth or soap and hot water. I should hate to be deprived of freedom of movement or to be unable ever again to travel abroad. I should not mind over-much having to make my own bed, but I dislike washing-up or cleaning boots more than I ought to dislike these occupations. Yet I could stand these privations and ordeals, and their arrival would not tempt me to emigrate. What I could not stand would he the denial of privacy. It is in regard to this that I am conscious of my own self-indulgence. For my happiness in this respect, I require not only a room where I can work in London, but a house and garden in the country If I were forced to it, I should abandon the former more readily than the latter, and should endure the wearisome ordeals of a daily train journey backwards and forwards. Since, apart from the delights whicIPthe country provides, it is there only that one can attain the true privacy which the soul desires. In London always there are people and telephones and doors banging and the sound of hurried footsteps upon the paving-stones. It is in the country only that one is given silence and emptiness and the excitement of being alone with oneself. If that privacy were taken from me, even I might begin to think of Bechuanaland.
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It may be that I have lived for so long abroad, and had so many contacts with foreign peoples, that my passion for my own country and my own countrymen is abnormal. It is certainly true that if all Englishmen had felt as I do there would be no British Common- wealth and Empire. But I know in all certainty that I should rather be uncomfortable in my own island than comfortable in other lands. It is for this reason, I suppose, that I have so deep a sympathy for those unfortunate beings who, owing to cruel circumstances, have been driven from their homes. A young man perhaps can strike roots and flourish in alien soils ; but the uprooting of the elderly is a harsh and dangerous process. I hinted as much to my friend who was so attracted by the jacarandas. He did not, I felt, relish being described as elderly ; he cast a cold, almost a hostile, look upon me when we parted. " You had better," he said, not in a kindly way, " write an article about this conversation." I have followed his advice.
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