VI

Here, in the effect upon him of beauty and of ideas communicated to his
mind by his reading--first manifested to him by the Byron
revelation--was the mark and label of his individuality: here was the
linking up of the boy who as Puzzlehead Sabre would wrinkle up his nut
and say, "Well, I can't quite see that, sir," with the man in whom the
same habit persisted; he saw much more clearly and infinitely more
intensely with his mind than with his eye. Beauty of place imagined was
to him infinitely more vivid than beauty seen. And so in all affairs:
it was not what the eye saw or the ear heard that interested him; it was
what his mind saw, questing behind the scene and behind the speech, that
interested him, and often, by the intensity of its perception, shook
him. And precisely as beauty touched in him the most exquisite and
poignant depths, so evil surroundings, evil faces dismayed him to the
point of mysterious fear, almost terror--

On a Sunday of his honeymoon in London he had conceived with Mabel the
idea of a bus ride through the streets,--"anywhere, the first bus that
comes." The first bus that came took them through South London, dodged
between main roads and took them through miles of mean and sordid
dwelling houses. At open windows high up sat solitary women, at others
solitary, shirt-sleeved men; behind closed windows were the faces of
children. All staring,--women and men and children, impassively
prisoned, impassively staring. Each house door presented, one above the
other, five or six iron bell-knobs, some hanging out and downwards, as
if their necks were broken. On the pavements hardly a soul. Just street
upon street of these awful houses with their imprisoned occupants and
the doors with their string of crazy bells.