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who had remained in the army, and was a Brigadier-Gen-
eral. ‘The army leaves me time to think, and saves me from
having to face the battle of life,’ he said.
There was Charles May, an Irishman, who wrote scientif-
ically about stars. There was Hammond, another writer. All
were about the same age as Clifford; the young intellectuals
of the day. They all believed in the life of the mind. What
you did apart from that was your private affair, and didn’t
much matter. No one thinks of inquiring of another person
at what hour he retires to the privy. It isn’t interesting to
anyone but the person concerned.
And so with most of the matters of ordinary life...how
you make your money, or whether you love your wife, or if
you have ‘affairs’. All these matters concern only the person
concerned, and, like going to the privy, have no interest for
anyone else.
’The whole point about the sexual problem,’ said Ham-
mond, who was a tall thin fellow with a wife and two
children, but much more closely connected with a typewrit-
er, ‘is that there is no point to it. Strictly there is no problem.
We don’t want to follow a man into the w.c., so why should
we want to follow him into bed with a woman? And therein
liehe problem. If we took no more notice of the one thing
than the other, there’d be no problem. It’s all utterly sense-
less and pointless; a matter of misplaced curiosity.’
’Quite, Hammond, quite! But if someone starts making
love to Julia, you begin to simmer; and if he goes on, you are
soon at boiling point.’...Julia was Hammond’s wife.
’Why, exactly! So I should be if he began to urinate in