The Secret Places of the HeartWells, H. G. (Herbert George)
General
The Secret Places of the Heart
Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)
England -- Fiction; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Psychological fiction
“In England, it seems to me there are four main phases of history. Four.
Avebury, which I would love to take you to see to-morrow. Stonehenge.
Old Sarum, which we shall see in a moment as a great grassy mound on our
right as we come over one of these crests. Each of them represents
about a thousand years. Old Sarum was Keltic; it, saw the Romans and the
Saxons through, and for a time it was a Norman city. Now it is pasture
for sheep. Latest as yet is Salisbury,--English, real English. It may
last a few centuries still. It is little more than seven hundred years
old. But when I think of those great hangars back there by Stonehenge,
I feel that the next phase is already beginning. Of a world one will
fly to the ends of, in a week or so. Our world still. Our people, your
people and mine, who are going to take wing so soon now, were made in
all these places. We are visiting the old homes. I am glad I came back
to it just when you were doing the same thing.”
“I’m lucky to have found a sympathetic fellow traveller,” she said;
“with a car.”
“You’re the first American I’ve ever met whose interest in history
didn’t seem--” He sought for an inoffensive word.
“Silly? Oh! I admit it. It’s true of a lot of us. Most of us. We come
over to Europe as if it hadn’t anything to do with us except to supply
us with old pictures and curios generally. We come sight-seeing. It’s
romantic. It’s picturesque. We stare at the natives--like visitors at
a Zoo. We don’t realize that we belong.... I know our style.... But we
aren’t all like that. Some of us are learning a bit better than that.
We have one or two teachers over there to lighten our darkness. There’s
Professor Breasted for instance. He comes sometimes to my father’s
house. And there’s James Harvey Robinson and Professor Hutton Webster.
They’ve been trying to restore our memory.”
“I’ve never heard of any of them,” said Sir Richmond.
“You hear so little of America over here. It’s quite a large country and
all sorts of interesting things happen there nowadays. And we are waking
up to history. Quite fast. We shan’t always be the most ignorant people
in the world. We are beginning to realize that quite a lot of things
happened between Adam and the Mayflower that we ought to be told about.
I allow it’s a recent revival. The United States has been like one of
those men you read about in the papers who go away from home and turn up
in some distant place with their memories gone. They’ve forgotten what
their names were or where they lived or what they did for a living;
they’ve forgotten everything that matters. Often they have to begin
again and settle down for a long time before their memories come back.
That’s how it has been with us. Our memory is just coming back to us.”
“And what do you find you are?”
“Europeans. Who came away from kings and churches-@-and Corinthian
capitals.”
“You feel all this country belongs to you?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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