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‘Betty’s not my wife, you know; my wife wouldn’t divorce
me. The children are bastards, every jack one of them, and
are they any the worse for that? Betty was one of the maids
in the little red brick house in Kensington. Four or five
years ago I was on my uppers, and I had seven children, and
I went to my wife and asked her to help me. She said she’d
make me an allowance if I’d give Betty up and go abroad.
Can you see me giving Betty up? We starved for a while
instead. My wife said I loved the gutter. I’ve degenerated;
I’ve come down in the world; I earn three pounds a week as
press agent to a linendraper, and every day I thank God that
I’m not in the little red brick house in Kensington.’
Sally brought in Cheddar cheese, and Athelny went on
with his fluent conversation.
‘It’s the greatest mistake in the world to think that one
needs money to bring up a family. You need money to make
them gentlemen and ladies, but I don’t want my children to
be ladies and gentlemen. Sally’s going to earn her living in
another year. She’s to be apprenticed to a dressmaker, aren’t
you, Sally? And the boys are going to serve their country.
I want them all to go into the Navy; it’s a jolly life and a
healthy life, good food, good pay, and a pension to end their
days on.’
Philip lit his pipe. Athelny smoked cigarettes of Havana
tobacco, which he rolled himself. Sally cleared away. Philip
was reserved, and it embarrassed him to be the recipient
of so many confidences. Athelny, with his powerful voice
in the diminutive body, with his bombast, with his foreign
look, with his emphasis, was an astonishing creature. He

0 Of Human Bondage