The Pilgrim's Regress, by C. S. Lewis, Annotated: Only the Best Bits! Part 4: Mr. Vertue and the Clevers

John meets his conscience and the literary academia.

This series was first posted on Data Secret Lox-I’m posting one entry per week here.

Part 1: The Preface
Part 2: Puritania
Part 3: Mr. Enlightenment

Mr. Vertue

We are skipping almost nothing from the last post to this one: John is still waling about ecstatic that the Landlord, and his Rules, and his Black Hole, don’t exist. He sets back off on the road and encounters another traveler heading the same way. This traveler, Mr. Virtue, represents Lewis’s sense of morality.

At that moment he saw a man walking up the hill to meet him. Now I knew in my dream that this man’s name was Mr. Vertue, and he was about of an age with John, or a little older…
…they both turned and continued their journey to the West. After they had gone a little way Mr. Vertue stole a glance at John’s face and then he smiled a little.
 
‘Why do you smile?’ said John.
 
‘I was thinking that you looked very glad.’
 
‘So would you be if you had lived in the fear of a Landlord all your life and had just discovered that you were a free man.’
 
‘Oh, it’s that, is it?’
 
‘You don’t believe in the Landlord, do you!’
 
‘I know nothing about him—except by hearsay like the rest of us.’
 
‘You wouldn’t like to be under his thumb.’
 
‘Wouldn’t like? I wouldn’t be under anyone’s thumb.’
 
‘You might have to, if he had a black hole.’
 
‘I’d let him put me in the black hole sooner than take orders if the orders were not to my mind. ’
 
‘Why, I think you are right. I can hardly believe it yet—that I need not obey the rules. There’s that robin again. To think that I could have a shot at it if I liked and no one would interfere with me!’
 
‘Do you want to?’
 
‘I’m not sure that I do,’ said John, fingering his sling. But when he looked round on the sunshine and remembered his great happiness and looked twice at the bird, he said, ‘No, I don’t. There is nothing I want less. Still—I could if I liked.’
 
‘You mean you could if you chose. ’

‘Where’s the difference?’
 
‘All the difference in the world.’
 
I thought that John would have questioned him further, but now they came in sight of a woman who was walking slower than they so that presently they came up with her and wished her good-day…
 
‘And where are you travelling to, Mr. Vertue?’ she asked.
 
‘To travel hopefully is better than to arrive,’ said Vertue.
 
‘Do you mean you are just out for a walk, just for exercise?’
 
‘Certainly not,’ said Vertue, who was becoming a little confused. ‘I am on a pilgrimage. I must admit, now that you press me, I have not a very clear idea of the end. But that is not the important question. These speculations don’t make one a better walker. The great thing is to do one’s thirty miles a day.’
 
‘Why?’
 
‘Because that is the rule.’
 
‘Ho-ho!’ said John. ‘So you do believe in the Landlord after all.’
 
‘Not at all. I didn’t say it was the Landlord’s rule.’
 
‘Whose is it then?’
 
‘It is my own rule. I made it myself.’
 
‘But why?’
 
‘Well, that again is a speculative question. I have made the best rules I can. If I find any better ones I shall adopt them. In the meantime, the great thing is to have rules of some sort and to keep them.’

Context on the Moral Sense

Vertue represents the moral sense, and is seen here detached from any theistic foundation. What is right is what is right because Vertue decides it is right. It is interesting that this moral sense is depicted as a separate person from John. This may reflect the fact that Lewis primarily saw morality in the form of his friends, and not neccesarily in himself. He writes in Surprised by Joy that "It took me as long to acquire inhibitions as others (they say) have taken to get rid of them. That is why I often find myself at such cross-purposes with the modern world: I have been a converted Pagan living among apostate Puritans." In the same book he also discuses a friend he made during his time as a soldier who surprised him by being an agnostic but still living by a strict moral code:

Here I met one Johnson (on whom be peace) who would have been a lifelong friend if he had not been killed...He was moving towards Theism and we had endless arguments on that and every other topic whenever we were out of the line. But it was not this that mattered. The important thing was that he was a man of conscience. I had hardly till now encountered principles in anyone so nearly of my own age and my own sort. The alarming thing was that he took them for granted. It crossed my mind for the first time since my apostasy that the severer virtues might have some relevance to one's own life. I say "the severer virtues" because I already had some notion of kindness and faithfulness to friends and generosity about money--as who has not till he meets the temptation which gives all their opposite vices new and more civil names? But it had not seriously occurred to me that people like ourselves, people like Johnson and me who wanted to know whether beauty was objective or how Aeschylus handled the reconciliation of Zeus and Prometheus, should be attempting strict veracity, chastity, or devotion to duty. I had taken it that they were not our subjects. There was no discussion between us on the point and I do not think he ever suspected the truth about me. I was at no pains to display it. If this is hypocrisy, then I must conclude that hypocrisy can do a man good. To be ashamed of what you were about to say, to pretend that something which you had meant seriously was only a joke--this is an ignoble part. But it is better than not to be ashamed at all. And the distinction between pretending you are better than you are and beginning to be better in reality is finer than moral sleuthhounds conceive. I was, in intention, concealing only a part: I accepted his principles at once, made no attempt internally to defend my own "unexamined life". When a boor first enters the society of courteous people what can he do, for a while, except imitate the motions? How can he learn except by imitation?

The Clevers

We’ll skip over John stopping at the home of Mr. Halfways, a musician whose music brings visions of the Island to John. Here he has a very brief relationship with Mr. Halfways’ daughter, Media, who represents romantic love. In the end he finds that while both art and romantic love can remind him of the Island, they are not what he was looking for. Media’s brother, Gus, takes Lewis into the city of Eschropolis to experience some “real poetry. Not fantasies, the real thing.”

Gus represents the popular literary scene of the 1920s, and the following section depicts the art trends of the time and Lewis’s experience with them. The trends themselves did not last, so this is a neat little satirical look into what was avant garde 100 years ago.

Then I dreamed that he led John into a big room rather like a bathroom: it was full of steel and glass and the walls were nearly all window, and there was a crowd of people there, drinking what looked like medicine and talking at the tops of their voices. They were all either young, or dressed up to look as if they were young. The girls had short hair and flat breasts and flat buttocks so that they looked like boys: but the boys had pale, egg-shaped faces and slender waists and big hips so that they looked like girls—except for a few of them who had long hair and beards.
 
‘What are they so angry about?’ whispered John.
 
‘They are not angry,’ said Gus; ‘they are talking about Art.’
 
Then he brought John into the middle of the room and said:
 
‘Say! Here’s a guy who has been taken in by my father and wants some real hundred-per-cent music to clean him out. We had better begin with something neo-romantic to make the transition.’
 
Then all the Clevers consulted together and presently they all agreed that Victoriana had better sing first. When Victoriana rose John at first thought that she was a schoolgirl: but after he had looked at her again he perceived that she was in fact about fifty. Before she began to sing she put on a dress which was a sort of exaggerated copy of Mr. Halfways ’ robes, and a mask which was like the Steward’s mask except that the nose had been painted bright red and one of the eyes had been closed in a permanent wink.
 
‘Priceless!’ exclaimed one half of the Clevers, ‘too Puritanian.’
 
But the other half, which included all the bearded men, held their noses in the air and looked very stiff. Then Victoriana took a little toy harp and began. The noises of the toy harp were so strange that John could not think of them as music at all. Then, when she sang, he had a picture in his mind which was a little like the Island, but he saw at once that it was not the Island. And presently he saw people who looked rather like his father, and the Steward and old Mr. Halfways, dressed up as clowns and doing a stiff sort of dance. Then there was a columbine, and some sort of love-story. But suddenly the whole Island turned into an aspidistra in a pot and the song was over.
 
‘Priceless,’ said the Clevers.
 
‘I hope you liked it,’ said Gus to John.
 
‘Well,’ began John doubtfully, for he hardly knew what to say: but he got no further, for at that moment he had a very great surprise. Victoriana had thrown her mask away and walked up to him and slapped him in the face twice, as hard as she could.

‘That’s right,’ said the Clevers, ‘Victoriana has courage. We may not all agree with you, Vikky dear, but we admire your courage.’
 
‘You may persecute me as much as you like,’ said Victoriana to John. ‘No doubt to see me thus with my back to the wall, wakes the hunting lust in you. You will always follow the cry of the majority. But I will fight to the end. So there,’ and she began to cry.
 
‘I am extremely sorry,’ said John. ‘But-’
 
‘And I know it was a good song,’ sobbed Victoriana, ‘because all great singers are persecuted in their lifetime—and I’m per-persecuted—and therefore I must be a great singer.’
 
‘She has you there,’ said the Clevers, as Victoriana left the laboratory.
 
‘You mustn’t mind her being a little bitter,’ said Gus. ‘She is so temperamental and sensitive, and she has suffered a great deal.’
 
‘Well, I must admit,’ said one of the Clevers, ‘now that she has gone, that I think that stuff of hers rather vieux jeu.’
 
‘Can’t stand it myself,’ said another.
 
‘I think it was her face that needed slapping,’ said a third.
 
‘She’s been spoiled and flattered all her life,’ said a fourth. ‘That’s what’s the matter with her.’
 
‘Quite,’ said the rest in chorus.
 
‘Perhaps,’ said Gus, ‘someone else would give us a song.’

‘I will,’ cried thirty voices all together: but one cried much louder than the others and its owner had stepped into the middle of the room before anyone could do anything about it. He was one of the bearded men and wore nothing but a red shirt and a cod-piece made of the skins of crocodiles: and suddenly he began to beat on an African tom-tom and to croon with his voice, swaying his lean, half-clad body to and fro and staring at them all, out of eyes which were like burning coals. This time John saw no picture of an Island at all. He seemed to be in a dark green place frill of tangled roots and hairy vegetable tubes: and all at once he saw in it shapes moving and writhing that were not vegetable but human. And the dark green grew darker, and a fierce heat came out of it: and suddenly all the shapes that were moving in the darkness came together to make a single obscene image which dominated the whole room. And the song was over.

‘Priceless,’ said the Clevers. ‘Too stark! Too virile.’

John blinked and looked round; and when he saw all the Clevers as cool as cucumbers, smoking their cigarettes and drinking the drinks that looked like medicines, all as if nothing remarkable had happened, he was troubled in his mind; for he thought that the song must have meant something different to them, and ‘If so,’ he argued, ‘what very pure-minded people they must be.’ Feeling himself among his betters, he became ashamed.

‘You like it, hein?’ said the bearded singer.

‘I—I don’t think I understood it,’ said John.

‘I make you like it, hein,’ said the singer, snatching up his tom-tom again. ‘It was what you really wanted all the time.’

‘No, no,’ cried John. ‘I know you are wrong there. I grant you, that—that sort of thing—is what I always get if I think too long about the Island. But it can’t be what I want .’ ‘No? Why not?’

‘If it is what I wanted, why am I so disappointed when I get it? If what a man really wanted was food, how could he be disappointed when the food arrived? As well, I don’t understand-’

‘What you not understand? I explain to you.’

‘Well, it’s like this. I thought that you objected to Mr. Halfways’ singing because it led to brown girls in the end.’
 
‘So we do.’

‘Well, why is it better to lead to black girls in the beginning?’

A low whistle ran round the whole laboratory. John knew he had made a horrible blunder.

‘Look here,’ said the bearded singer in a new voice, ‘what do you mean? You are not suggesting that there is anything of that kind about my singing, are you?’

‘I—I suppose—perhaps it was my fault,’ stammered John.

‘In other words,’ said the singer, ‘you are not yet able to distinguish between art and pornography!’ and advancing towards John very deliberately, he spat in his face and turned to walk out of the room.

‘That’s right, Phally,’ cried the Clevers, ‘serve him right.’

‘Filthy-minded little beast,’ said one.

‘Yah! Puritanian!’ said a girl.

‘I expect he’s impotent,’ whispered another.

‘You mustn’t be too hard on him,’ said Gus. ‘He is lull of inhibitions and everything he says is only a rationalization of them. Perhaps he would get on better with something more formal. Why don’t you sing, Glugly?’
 
Glugly instantly rose. She was very tall and as lean as a post: and her mouth was not quite straight in her face. When she was in the middle of the room, and silence had been obtained, she began to make gestures. First of all she set her arms a-kimbo and cleverly turned her hands the wrong way so that it looked as if her wrists were sprained. Then she waddled to and fro with her toes pointing in. After that she twisted herself to make it look as if her hip bone was out of joint. Finally she made some grunts, and said:
 
‘Globol obol oogle ogle globol gloogle gloo,’ and ended by pursing up her lips and making a vulgar noise such as children make in their nurseries. Then she went back to her place and sat down.
 
‘Thank you very much,’ said John politely.
 
But Glugly made no reply, for Glugly could not talk, owing to an accident in infancy.
 
‘I hoped you liked it,’ said young Halfways.
 
‘I didn’t understand her.’
 
‘Ah,’ said a woman in spectacles who seemed to be Glugly’s nurse or keeper, ‘that is because you are looking for beauty. You are still thinking of your Island. You have got to realize that satire is the moving force in modern music.’
 
‘It is the expression of a savage disillusionment,’ said someone else.
 
‘Reality has broken down,’ said a fat boy who had drunk a great deal of the medicine and was lying flat on his back, smiling happily.
 
‘Our art must be brutal,’ said Glugly’s nurse.
 
‘We lost our ideals when there was a war in this country,’ said a very young Clever, ‘they were ground out of us in the mud and the flood and the blood. That is why we have to be so stark and brutal.’
 
‘But, look here,’ cried John, ‘that war was years ago. It was your fathers who were in it: and they are all settled down and living ordinary lives.’
 
‘Puritanian! Bourgeois!’ cried the Clevers. Everyone seemed to have risen.
 
‘Hold your tongue,’ whispered Gus in John’s ear. But already someone had struck John on the head, and as he bowed under the blow someone else hit him from behind.
 
‘It was the mud and the blood,’ hissed the girls all round him.
 
‘Well,’ said John, ducking to avoid a retort that had been flung at him, ‘if you are really old enough to remember that war, why do you pretend to be so young?’
 
‘We are young,’ they howled; ‘we are the new movement; we are the revolt. ’
 
‘We have got over humanitarianism,’ bellowed one of the bearded men, kicking John on the kneecap.
 
‘And prudery,’ said a thin little old maid trying to wrench his clothes off from the neck. And at the same moment six girls leaped at his face with their nails, and he was kicked in the back and the belly, and tripped up so that he fell on his face, and hit again as he rose, and all the glass in the world seemed breaking round his head as he fled for his life from the laboratory. And all the dogs of Eschropolis joined in the chase as he ran along the street, and all the people followed pelting him with ordure, and crying:
 
‘Puritanian! Bourgeois! Prurient!’

Mr. Mammon

On his way out of Eschropolis, John encounters the local landlord:

When he had limped about a mile he passed a man who was mending the fence of his field and smoking a big cigar. John stopped and asked him if he knew the way to the sea.
 
‘Nope,’ said the man without looking up.
 
‘Do you know of any place in this country where I could get a night’s lodging?’
 
‘Nope,’ said the man.
 
‘Could you give me a piece of bread?’ said John.
 
‘Certainly not,’ said Mr. Mammon, ‘it would be contrary to all economic laws. It would pauperize you.’ Then, when John lingered, he added, ‘Move on. I don’t want any loiterers about here.’
 
John limped on for about ten minutes. Suddenly he heard Mr. Mammon calling out to him. He stopped and turned round.
 
‘What do you want?’ shouted John.
 
‘Come back,’ said Mr. Mammon.
 
John was so tired and hungry that he humbled himself to walk back (and the way seemed long) in the hope that Mammon had relented. When he came again to the place where they had talked before, the man finished his work without speaking and then said:
 
‘Where did you get your clothes torn?’
 
‘I had a quarrel with the Clevers in Eschropolis.’
 
‘Clevers?’
 
‘Don’t you know them?’
 
‘Never heard of them.’
 
‘You know Eschropolis?’
 
‘Know it? I own Eschropolis.’
 
‘How do you mean?’
 
‘What do you suppose they live on?’
 
‘I never thought of that.’
 
‘Every man of them earns his living by writing for me or having shares in my land. I suppose the “Clevers” is some nonsense they do in their spare time—when they’re not beating up tramps,’ and he glanced at John. Then he resumed his work.
 
‘You needn’t wait,’ he said presently.

Usually I like to post some context from Lewis's autobiography or other works, but I don't really have anything for this. This may be his only book where he discusses the literary scene of the 20s. I can provide some of the running headlines for this section, where he describes the Clevers as showcasing "The poetry of the Silly Twenties", "The swamp literature of the Dirty Twenties", and "The gibberish literature of the Lunatic Twenties" respectively.

Next Thursday John will find himself a captive of a horrible giant, named Zeitgeist.

TL, DR: Best Bits

'Still—I could if I liked.’
 
‘You mean you could if you chose. ’

‘Where’s the difference?’
 
‘All the difference in the world.’

‘And I know it was a good song,’ sobbed Victoriana, ‘because all great singers are persecuted in their lifetime—and I’m per-persecuted—and therefore I must be a great singer.’

‘Could you give me a piece of bread?’ said John.
 
‘Certainly not,’ said Mr. Mammon, ‘it would be contrary to all economic laws. It would pauperize you.’