The pale hands of the past

Occasionally the antiquity of political futility raises the bigger spectre of human futility, perhaps the most dismal spectre of all. Like a wagging finger reaching out from the past, it says “you haven’t learned anything.”


The pale hands of the past had reached out and gathered us together again.

Thorne Smith – Dream’s End (1927)


Best wave those hands away and move on, but they won't be waved away –


Monferrand, the strong-handed man of government, who undertook to bury the African Railways scandal by bringing about a Commission of Inquiry, all the strings of which would be pulled by himself.

Emile Zola - Paris (1898)

Academic mercenaries

Still relevant 97 years later –

“No doubt you’ll think it rather ridiculous of me,” he said at last, “but there was a time when I wanted to become a leader. I thought it would be a splendid thing to educate the world. I felt that if I succeeded in clearing up only a few universal lies I should be accomplishing a great deal, but on my first attempt I found that all the roads to knowledge were already securely held by an established army of educators — academic mercenaries. There was no way of getting at the people. Even when you broke through the lines, the lies still surrounded the non-combatants like a picket fence. The people hid behind the lies and steadfastly refused to be disillusioned. They are doing it to-day.”

Thorne Smith – Dream’s End (1927)

Glendale Road

Being on a slightly higher elevation than the rest of the town, the street was happily called “Glendale Road.” It is rather terrifying to think that the real estate promoter responsible for this name is perhaps still unhung and busily engaged in giving equally stultifying names to other nice little streets in other nice little towns situated in other nice little localities throughout the United States.

Thorne Smith – Topper (1926)


Certainly not the most cringeworthy example, but this was nearly a century ago and new streets on new estates have to be called something.

Further thought tells me I wouldn’t mind that job, making up street names for new estates. An ideal job for retired people I reckon.

A lost corner of the world

Even today there are lost corners of the world, peacefully remote and curiously sad as Thorne Smith’s fictional character still finds the salt marshes of his youth. One or two quiet Derbyshire dales have a similar feel to them, especially where the curlew is heard. Norfolk salt marshes too, when released from the grip of the holiday season.


To me this is the fairest spot in the world, and the saddest. In the days of my youth when I first came upon it, I recall how I crept through the rushes and sat watching, as now I watch, the water trails in the marshes fill up with purple and crimson shades as the sun made down the sky.

I have always heard that disappointment follows the footsteps of those who retrace their paths back to the scenes of their youth. Mountains diminish to hills, I am told, and rivers change to muddy streams, nor does the sun ever shine so brightly or the sky seem quite so blue, I have not found it true in this case. If anything, time has intensified the beauty of these marshes. The influence they exert over me is as strong to-day as it was many years ago. I look upon them now, not with diminished vision, but with added appreciation. They have become a vital part of my life.

Through all the years that I have fled this place memory has held it ever fresh in my eyes; and now, as I behold it once more in reality, nothing seems to have changed... even the peculiar stillness hovering over the spot, the sensation of finding oneself quite alone in a lost corner of the world still lingers in the air, holding the soul within me in a calm but watchful hush.

Thorne Smith – Dream’s End (1927)