Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler HOME AUTHOR’S NOTE This book was written in January-March 1941, before the German attack on Russia; yet the author sees no reason to modify his observations on the psychological effects of the Soviet-German pact of August 1939, or his opinion on the policy of the Communist Party in France. To smuggle in elements of a later knowledge when describing the mental pattern of people in an earlier period is a common temptation to writers, which should be resisted.
Arthur Koestler Scum of the Earth The first chapter, OME time during the last years of Queen Victoria’s reign, the Prince of Monaco had an anglicized mistress who wanted a bathroom of her own. He built her a villa, with a real bathroom that had parquet flooring, and colour prints of knights in armour and ladies in bustles fed on Benger’s Food adorning all the walls. He built it at a prudent distance from his own residence in Monaco: about fifty miles up the valley of the Vésubie and only ten miles from the Italian frontier, in the parish of Roque- billière, département des Alpes-Maritimes. With the march of time and the dawn of the twentieth century, the refined courtesan became a respectable old rentière, let the bathroom decay, planted cabbage in her garden, and eventually died. For some twenty years the house stood empty and the garden ran wild. Then, in the late nineteen-twenties, a landslide occurred in the valley of the Vé- subie, which destroyed about fifty of the hundred houses of Roquebillière and killed sixty out of its five hundred inhabitants. As a result of this, ground rents in Roquebillière became very low, and in 1929 Maria Corniglion, wife of Corniglion-upon-the-Bridge, talked her husband into buying the villa with the bath- room from the defunct lady’s heirs. Ettori Corniglion was a peasant who still cultivated his five acres of land himself, with a primitive plough and a yoke of oxen, but Maria Corniglion was an enterprising woman who had brought him a respectable dowry. The Corniglions-upon-the-Bridge were well-to-do people—more so than Corniglion-the-Grocer or Corniglion-the-Butcher. Mme. Ettori Corniglion was her- self born a Corniglion—for an area extending about twenty miles down the Vésubie from St. Martin one-third of the population were Corniglions. They intermarried frequently, producing a remarkable rate of cripples and idiots, and had the most imposing marble tombstones and family vaults in the graveyards of old Roque- billière, new Roquebillière, and St. Martin. The only son of Ettori and Maria Corniglion was lame; he was a schoolteacher at Lyons; during the holidays, which he spent at home, he spoke hardly a word, and read Dostoievsky and Julian Green. Their daughter was also a school-teacher; she was about thirty, rapidly becoming an old spinster, with a dark moustache which she shaved with a safety-razor. The fact that both the Corniglion children had become members of the corps d’en- seignement bore testimony to Mme. Corniglion’s ambitious character. She gave an- other proof of it when, the year before the landslide, she had fixed to their farm- house gate a notice with the inscription, ‘ HOTEL ST. SÉBASTIEN .’ Her third remarkable achievement was the purchase of the villa. But there old Ettori put a stop to her extravagance. He would not hear of repairing and refur- nishing the villa. He planted the better part of the garden with various kinds of sal- ads and vegetables, and installed a pig in the summer house. The villa itself was not touched and stood empty for another ten years. It was altogether thirty years since the proprietress had died, and the original rats and mice had been succeeded by the three hundred and sixtieth generation of their grandchildren, when we turned up. There were three of us: Theodore, G., and myself. We had searched the Riviera during the past three weeks, from Marseilles to Menton and up the valleys of the Basses-Alpes and of the Alpes-Maritimes, for a suitable house to live in. Although our requirements were very modest, we had not yet found the house we wanted. We had, between us, ten pounds a month to spend. We wanted a house with a bathroom. G. is a sculptor; she wanted a room suitable as a studio, with windows which would fulfil certain conditions of light. She also wanted the house to be quiet, with no neighbours and no wireless within a radius of five hundred yards, as she intended to make all the noise herself with her hammer and chisels. I wanted to finish the writing of a novel, so the house had to be old, with thick, solid walls, which would stifle the sound of G.’s hammering; my room was to be furnished very simply and soberly, like a monk’s cell, yet with a certain touch of homely com- fort. Then we wanted an abode for Theodore. Theodore was a Ford born in 1929, and with a noble pedigree of eight previous owners. The third owner had fitted him with a new body, and the fifth owner with a new engine. If it is true that the human body is completely renewed every seven years by the continuous discarding and replacing of the cells constituting its vital organs, Theodore was a new car. The only inconvenience with him was that we had always to carry two gallons of water in the dickey to quench his thirst, for he was unable to contain his water in the radi- ator—it escaped partly skywards in steam and froth and partly earthwards through sundry leaks. Hence the garage in the house which we were looking for had to have an easy access, which would spare Theodore those jerky leaps backward and for- ward which particularly annoyed him—after the third change of gear he would get a fit of megalomania, and blow white steam, believing himself to be a locomotive. Besides, the exit to the garage had to be on a slope to help start the engine, for Theodore’s only response to the starter-knob was a few chuckles and hiccoughs, as if the knob tickled him. We loved Theodore very much; he was still rather good- looking, especially in profile. We arrived at the Hotel St. Sébastien one morning at about 2 a.m. Everything was very dark and very quiet. We sounded our horn for some time and Theodore roared into the night like a hungry lion, until finally Mme. Corniglion appeared. Our acquaintance started with a mutual misunderstanding: we took the St. Sébastien for a real hotel and Mme. Corniglion took us for rich summer tourists. But next morning, when she saw Theodore, a sudden cunning look came into her old peas- ant eyes. She sat down at our breakfast table and after some preliminary beating about the bush, and a furtive look round as if to make sure nobody was listening, she offered to let us a villa with a garden, a bathroom, a large barn as garage, a reception-room as a studio, a quiet little attic in which the gentleman could write his poetry, and all modern conveniences. Of course, she would need a few days to clean it and arrange it, as the house had stood empty for a few weeks, owing to the illness of an aunt in Périgueux. We had a look at the house and liked it at once. It was exactly what we had been looking for. We agreed that we would move into the house in three days. We were to have our lunch and dinner at the Hotel St. Sébastien, breakfast would be brought by a maid who would come every morning to clean up for us. We were to pay 30 francs per head a day, or £5 a month, for villa, garden, meals, service and vin à discrétion—that is to say, as much wine as we liked or were able to stand. We intended to stay three or four months, and work and drink vin à discrétion. We were very happy. We moved into the house in the beginning of August, 1939, about the time when the puppet Senate of Danzig decided its attachment to the Reich.

Arthur Koestler HOME

AUTHOR’S NOTE
This book was written in January-March 1941, before the German attack on Russia; yet the author sees no reason to modify his observations on the psychological effects of the Soviet-German pact of August 1939, or his opinion on the policy of the Communist Party in France. To smuggle in elements of a later knowledge when describing the mental pattern of people in an earlier period is a common temptation to writers, which should be resisted.

Arthur Koestler

Scum of the Earth

The first chapter,

OME time during the last years of Queen Victoria’s reign, the Prince of Monaco had an anglicized mistress who wanted a bathroom of her own. He built her a villa, with a real bathroom that had parquet flooring, and colour prints of knights in armour and ladies in bustles fed on Benger’s Food adorning all the walls. He built it at a prudent distance from his own residence in Monaco: about fifty miles up the valley of the Vésubie and only ten miles from the Italian frontier, in the parish of Roque- billière, département des Alpes-Maritimes. With the march of time and the dawn of the twentieth century, the refined courtesan became a respectable old rentière, let the bathroom decay, planted cabbage in her garden, and eventually died. For some twenty years the house stood empty and the garden ran wild. Then, in the late nineteen-twenties, a landslide occurred in the valley of the Vé- subie, which destroyed about fifty of the hundred houses of Roquebillière and killed sixty out of its five hundred inhabitants. As a result of this, ground rents in Roquebillière became very low, and in 1929 Maria Corniglion, wife of Corniglion-upon-the-Bridge, talked her husband into buying the villa with the bath- room from the defunct lady’s heirs. Ettori Corniglion was a peasant who still cultivated his five acres of land himself, with a primitive plough and a yoke of oxen, but Maria Corniglion was an enterprising woman who had brought him a respectable dowry.

The Corniglions-upon-the-Bridge were well-to-do people—more so than Corniglion-the-Grocer or Corniglion-the-Butcher. Mme. Ettori Corniglion was her- self born a Corniglion—for an area extending about twenty miles down the Vésubie from St. Martin one-third of the population were Corniglions. They intermarried frequently, producing a remarkable rate of cripples and idiots, and had the most imposing marble tombstones and family vaults in the graveyards of old Roque- billière, new Roquebillière, and St. Martin. The only son of Ettori and Maria Corniglion was lame; he was a schoolteacher at Lyons; during the holidays, which he spent at home, he spoke hardly a word, and read Dostoievsky and Julian Green.

Their daughter was also a school-teacher; she was about thirty, rapidly becoming an old spinster, with a dark moustache which she shaved with a safety-razor. The fact that both the Corniglion children had become members of the corps d’en- seignement bore testimony to Mme. Corniglion’s ambitious character. She gave an- other proof of it when, the year before the landslide, she had fixed to their farm- house gate a notice with the inscription, ‘
HOTEL ST. SÉBASTIEN
.’ Her third remarkable achievement was the purchase of the villa. But there old Ettori put a stop to her extravagance. He would not hear of repairing and refur- nishing the villa. He planted the better part of the garden with various kinds of sal- ads and vegetables, and installed a pig in the summer house. The villa itself was not touched and stood empty for another ten years. It was altogether thirty years since the proprietress had died, and the original rats and mice had been succeeded by the three hundred and sixtieth generation of their grandchildren, when we turned up.

There were three of us: Theodore, G., and myself. We had searched the Riviera during the past three weeks, from Marseilles to Menton and up the valleys of the Basses-Alpes and of the Alpes-Maritimes, for a suitable house to live in. Although our requirements were very modest, we had not yet found the house we wanted. We had, between us, ten pounds a month to spend. We wanted a house with a bathroom. G. is a sculptor; she wanted a room suitable as a studio, with windows which would fulfil certain conditions of light. She also wanted the house to be quiet, with no neighbours and no wireless within a radius of five hundred yards, as she intended to make all the noise herself with her hammer and chisels. I wanted to finish the writing of a novel, so the house had to be old, with thick, solid walls, which would stifle the sound of G.’s hammering; my room was to be furnished very simply and soberly, like a monk’s cell, yet with a certain touch of homely com- fort. Then we wanted an abode for Theodore. Theodore was a Ford born in 1929, and with a noble pedigree of eight previous owners. The third owner had fitted him with a new body, and the fifth owner with a new engine. If it is true that the human body is completely renewed every seven years by the continuous discarding and replacing of the cells constituting its vital organs, Theodore was a new car. The only inconvenience with him was that we had always to carry two gallons of water in the dickey to quench his thirst, for he was unable to contain his water in the radi- ator—it escaped partly skywards in steam and froth and partly earthwards through sundry leaks. Hence the garage in the house which we were looking for had to have an easy access, which would spare Theodore those jerky leaps backward and for- ward which particularly annoyed him—after the third change of gear he would get a fit of megalomania, and blow white steam, believing himself to be a locomotive. Besides, the exit to the garage had to be on a slope to help start the engine, for Theodore’s only response to the starter-knob was a few chuckles and hiccoughs, as if the knob tickled him. We loved Theodore very much; he was still rather good- looking, especially in profile.

We arrived at the Hotel St. Sébastien one morning at about 2 a.m. Everything was very dark and very quiet. We sounded our horn for some time and Theodore roared into the night like a hungry lion, until finally Mme. Corniglion appeared. Our acquaintance started with a mutual misunderstanding: we took the St. Sébastien for a real hotel and Mme. Corniglion took us for rich summer tourists. But next morning, when she saw Theodore, a sudden cunning look came into her old peas- ant eyes. She sat down at our breakfast table and after some preliminary beating about the bush, and a furtive look round as if to make sure nobody was listening, she offered to let us a villa with a garden, a bathroom, a large barn as garage, a reception-room as a studio, a quiet little attic in which the gentleman could write his poetry, and all modern conveniences. Of course, she would need a few days to clean it and arrange it, as the house had stood empty for a few weeks, owing to the illness of an aunt in Périgueux. We had a look at the house and liked it at once. It was exactly what we had been looking for.

We agreed that we would move into the house in three days. We were to have our lunch and dinner at the Hotel St. Sébastien, breakfast would be brought by a maid who would come every morning to clean up for us. We were to pay 30 francs per head a day, or £5 a month, for villa, garden, meals, service and vin à discrétion—that is to say, as much wine as we liked or were able to stand.
We intended to stay three or four months, and work and drink vin à discrétion. We were very happy. We moved into the house in the beginning of August, 1939, about the time when the puppet Senate of Danzig decided its attachment to the Reich.