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An Interesting Condition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 November 2018

Thomas Pinney
Affiliation:
Pomona College, California
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Summary

Published: Pioneer, 20 December 1888.

Attribution: In Scrapbook 4 (28/4, p. 96).

Text: Pioneer.

Notes: For the group to which this item belongs see the introductory note to ‘The History of a Crime’. Gladstone, not at the moment prime minister, was political anathema to RK, as might be guessed from the statement quoted from Gladstone at the head of the piece. Gladstone's speech appeared in the Pioneer of 18 December 1888 and differs in some details from RK's text.

Reprinted in the Martindell–Ballard pamphlets; in The Victorian, April 1938; and in Harbord, iv, 2135–8.

The people of India were in a condition most interesting to every man qualified to comprehend the large principles and responsibilities of the English domains. They were desiring more and more to enter into the public life of their country which was beginning to have a public life of its own…. Our business is to foster and nourish that sentiment.– Mr. Gladstone on India.

It was the East – beautiful, unpitying and old.

It was, moreover, the East inhabited by the Englishman.

An Englishman has no sense of humour.

A man without a sense of humour is a monstrosity incroyable.

All Englishmen are monsters incroyable.

I include here the German who is almost an Englishman.

Mes amis, let us then be thankful that we are not Englishmen.

Also, that we do not inhabit the East.–

To elaborate Fiascos… …

I eliminate here Tonquin, which is not a Fiasco but an Experiment.

An Experiment does not become a Fiasco till the Englishman appears.

It then finds itself a Dam Mess, according to the language of the Englishmen.

The East sits upon a Throne. The West inhabits a bureau, a comptoir or a boutique; but the Throne belongs to the East.

The reason why a Throne exists in the East is that there are no paving- stones in the streets. There is only dust and sunshine. Me, I have seen it!

You cannot create barricades with dust and sunshine.

The reason-to-be of the Throne explains itself.

In the course of time arrives the Englishman, with his gret-coat upon his arm, his braddishaw in his hand and his wife upon his knee.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cause of Humanity and Other Stories
The Cause of Humanity and Other Stories Uncollected Prose Fictions
, pp. 320 - 324
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2018

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