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learned how little there was in common between the poor
and the classes above them. They did not envy their bet-
ters, for the life was too different, and they had an ideal of
ease which made the existence of the middle-classes seem
formal and stiff; moreover, they had a certain contempt for
them because they were soft and did not work with their
hands. The proud merely wished to be left alone, but the ma-
jority looked upon the well-to-do as people to be exploited;
they knew what to say in order to get such advantages as the
charitable put at their disposal, and they accepted benefits
as a right which came to them from the folly of their supe-
riors and their own astuteness. They bore the curate with
contemptuous indifference, but the district visitor excited
their bitter hatred. She came in and opened your windows
without so much as a by your leave or with your leave, ‘and
me with my bronchitis, enough to give me my death of cold;’
she poked her nose into corners, and if she didn’t say the
place was dirty you saw what she thought right enough, ‘an’
it’s all very well for them as ‘as servants, but I’d like to see
what she’d make of ‘er room if she ‘ad four children, and ‘ad
to do the cookin’, and mend their clothes, and wash them.’
Philip discovered that the greatest tragedy of life to these
people was not separation or death, that was natural and
the grief of it could be assuaged with tears, but loss of work.
He saw a man come home one afternoon, three days after
his wife’s confinement, and tell her he had been dismissed;
he was a builder and at that time work was slack; he stated
the fact, and sat down to his tea.
‘Oh, Jim,’ she said.

Of Human Bondage