A Bostonian, Mrs Geldorf laughed at them. The Civil War was over ‘but silly old fogeys go on fighting nonetheless’; she seemed to enjoy these arguments. They called her a ‘gol-darned Yankee’, yet were evidently fond of her. Their rivalry, similar to that between Ukrainian and Great Russian, was meant in fun. It was well bred and never offensive and this was the tone everywhere aboard our ship, whether I spoke to Lord and Lady Cooper, of the famous beer concern, or Sir Humphrey Thin-Garbett, the well known QC. We formed what Mrs Geldorf called ‘Our Clan’, which also included Sir James Maggs, MP for Kerry, and his charming wife and daughter, Mr and Mrs Wilkinson of South Audley Street, London, who were couturiers. Sir Laurence Lane, the Shakespearian actor and Gloria his beautiful actress bride, William Browne, the industrialist film producer; Mr and Mrs Dewhurst, land owners from Croydon; Mrs Gladstone, widow of the famous Chancellor, Mr and Mrs Steenson, garden manicurists from Chicago, and Mr Fred T. Halpert who had made his fortune, he said, with a new type of screw. He and I had many interesting conversations, but my ideas were beyond him, as he frequently and admiringly admitted. To Mr Browne I gave the address of Mrs Cornelius, telling him she was one of the finest actresses on the London stage. He promised that as soon as he returned to London he would write and offer her an audition. He thanked me for my kindness in recommending her.
Meanwhile, missing Esmé and frustrated by the absence of feminine company, I discovered consolation in Mrs Helen Roe. This thin, red-headed lady, recently divorced from the tennis player, was on her way back to New York. She would stay with her parents before visiting California for, she said, a long rest. There was a possibility she would go to Florida instead. Since her interest in me was more than platonic, we passed several energetic nights together, though her tendency to sob loudly while at the same time calling upon me to ‘push harder you foreign bastard’ could be disconcerting. However, she gave me her New York address and this, together with other invitations I had received, meant I would not be completely friendless upon arrival in America.
Mauretania is a land lacking only forests and rivers, but some day her namesake shall have even these. There are shops and services to suit every need; cinemas, theatres, sports, lectures and exhibitions. There are bars, of course, and Americans patronise them with urgent gusto since the sale of alcohol at home became illegal. The days are ordered by a succession of meals; one exists in a timeless and opulent dream, with every need catered to by well mannered stewards anxious to discover one’s smallest desires. Press reporters sail back and forth on her, hardly ever landing, save to deliver an article, for she is a world with a thousand brilliant stories. Discretion frequently vanishes out of sight of land. The affairs of Mauretania’s citizens are of absorbing interest to the less privileged, for whom a voyage aboard a great liner shall always be an unrealised ambition. These buoyant worlds, able to distinguish the orbit of their choice, the epitome of glamour and breeding, are the ideal symbol of success. A society which refuses such symbols has neither standards nor progress. They offer the promise of a future we could all share. The finest combination of modern technology, they encourage almost every human creative talent to its greatest expression. No wonder the worth of a nation is measured by the number of great liners sailing under its colours. That is why the governments of the world bestow such considerable honour upon their leading shipowners. Prestige is not lightly won. Prestige is both the measure of a country’s power and the uses to which she puts it. The past and the future merge. The best of both worlds can, after all, be ours. The little, whispering, wicked voices of Carthage shall not touch us here. We are our own free nation. We ascend to the upper air, leaving the land to the brutalised, the ignorant and the depraved. Let them slaughter one another into non-existence. Down there the weary arms of helmeted half men rise and fall, hacking at the flesh of their fellows; a black smoke rolls into the valleys and the churches are burning. There are no trees which are not withered, no water that is not poisoned. Starving children crawl through mud which stinks of blood and urine while their dying mothers spread unwholesome legs for gangrenous soldiers, sobbing for life already lost. We, however; have escaped the Apocalypse, by virtue of our honour and our foresight. Russia shudders in suicidal agonies; Germany shrieks in chains; England stinks of untreated wounds, while France at last looks in the mirror and sees her cosmetics cracking, peeling to reveal the hideous canker beneath. But we have found the sky and populated it with civilised steel, with silver wings and golden domes. We can only weep for those below who are trapped in a terrible folly. We weep for them. To do more would be dangerous. If the mob scents weakness (and generosity is perceived as weakness) it strikes.
The mob cannot reach the ship. Here we are purified. There is no security in those flying cylinders, packed end to end with people unable to walk or feed themselves, waiting passively for malodorous trays. No wonder they complain, grow angry, panic. This is the flying the mob deserves: anything better would be unappreciated. It offers nothing for people of refinement. That is why I never travel now. What is left on the Atlantic? A single great Cunarderon which they do not even, I hear, dress for dinner? One Polish tub; two pathetic Soviet hulks built in Germany, full of rats and leaky lifeboats, grotesquely aping the glories of their overthrown masters? A Dutch tramp? A couple of South American banana boats? A single container carrier? Meanwhile the skies, which could have been glorious with my aerial cities, are littered with smelly steel tubes, worse than tourist buses. Those golden cities fade and fall like autumn leaves. Squalid winter covers the world with impure white; the blood and the filth, soaked upwards, encrust the surface like a cancer. When this snow melts everything revealed is misshapen and the colour of mud. The grey planes land to disgorge dazed and shambling cattle. Loaded up again with identical cargo, they move it as speedily as possible to another patch of mud. Some of these creatures are ‘on business’, some ‘on holiday’. How can they tell? By painted signs? Red tsu der vant! Is that all that is left? Our prophets are reviled. Our children are slaves. Our cities are conquered and we are driven from them. O Carthage, thou hast triumphed by treachery alone! By thy stealth and thy cunning hast thou overwhelmed us. With poison and with calumnies. And we are without place or name. Our faces are hidden and our raiment torn. Thou hast taken our daughters in fornication and placed our gold upon thine altars. O Carthage, thou has spat upon our holy things, cast down our temples and scattered the ashes of our books upon the wind. We wept for thee, Carthage, and thou turnest our tears into weapons against us. We did not know the Greek when He spoke to us. We heeded Him not. We are banished to timeless night. We can no longer find the Greek. In the awful midden of modern Russia swine stare stupified at huge portraits of their masters; perhaps the Greek walks there, bringing compassion to those still calling for Him. Carthage has stolen our future. Our wings have shrivelled to stumps on our shoulders. They have torn out our eyes so we raise bloody sockets to the skies, seeking only for the sounds of our lost cities. Little by little we are forgetting our future. In shut arein! Soon we shall remember nothing. Carthage shall be secure in all her citadels. They will not let me fly. I refuse to accept their yiddishkeit. They put a piece of metal in my stomach. They tried to hold me but the doctors could find nothing wrong. I looked in Springfield for the Greek but He had gone to Los Angeles and I no longer have the means to follow Him. I will not travel in their filthy cylinders. Why become wadding in a bullet aimed at your own heart? I have known true wonder, walking on the glowing balconies of an aerial city, a mile above the clouds, while an invisible orchestra plays music. There are people dancing. I hear their laughing conversation. They are elegant and courteous, these new Mauretanians, lovers of beauty and intelligence. They do not need to find the Greek. He has come to them already. There is a surge like a great, steady wave, and the city shivers, her white towers shimmering under the haze of her huge protective dome. She mounts the air, floats upon cloud masses which are rolling surf against the peaks of the Himalayas. Then, with a monstrous thrust, she turns towards the wild blaze of the sun, heading for the West, riding as a ship might ride upon the water, her hull rolling and vibrating and her steam whistle, pitched two octaves below Middle A, sounding like a lament for her lost dreams, her vanishing future. They took my children, meine einiklach.