Crome Yellow

At Sunday morning breakfast, Priscilla reads in the paper that Surrey won a recent cricket game and attributes this victory to the sun being in Leo. Mr. Barbecue-Smith says that cricket is a very English game; Jenny mishears this and thinks he is asking her if she is English, to which she indignantly replies that she is. Priscilla tells Mr. Barbecue-Smith about a series of articles describing the next world, which will be known as “Summer Land and Gehenna” (36).

Mary enters and sits next to Denis, who she decided the previous night would be the man she pursues. While he is less talented than Gombauld, she sees him as a safer option. She asks him if he has been writing poetry lately, and he tells her curtly that he has not, as he does not have his typewriter. Mary tries to continue the conversation, but Denis wants to listen to Mr. Scogan, who is describing his plan for dealing with problems in the Church of England. He claims that requiring members of the clergy to wear their clothes and shoes backwards—and thus looking smooth and plain to the rest of the world—would prevent new people from entering the Church and enhance the beauty of holiness.

Priscilla and Mr. Barbecue-Smith continue talking about Summer Land and Gehenna. Mr. Barbecue-Smith assures Priscilla that the articles’ depiction of children flaying lambs alive in Hell is simply metaphorical. When he tries to explain what the lambs symbolize, Mr. Scogan talks over him, comparing his plan for the Church to the military’s standardization of plain uniforms and abandonment of accessories and decorations.

Henry enters and asks if anyone wants to attend the local church service with him. He says that the local reverend’s sermons are “sometimes worth hearing” (37). Mr. Barbecue-Smith declines, saying he prefers to worship in nature. He tries to quote a line from a Shakespearean play but does not know how the line ends.

Mr. Bodiham, the local reverend, sits in the study of his rectory. The room is full of brown furniture, the carpet is a brownish-red shade, and there is even a brown smell to the space. Mr. Bodiham has a narrow, hard face, small eyes, wiry hair, and a harsh voice. He has just returned from the church service, where he preached with a fiery passion, but those in attendance seemed uninterested. In his sermon, he tried to make them understand that God was not the compassionate, merciful being they imagined and argued that they are blinding themselves to the truth of God’s nature. But his most enthusiastic sermons are only ever met with polite stares, including from Henry Wimbush, who always sits in the front pew, beautifully dressed.

Mr. Bodiham remembers that it has been four years since his sermon on Matthew 24:7, a verse that says nations will rise up against each other and that famines, earthquakes, and pestilence will follow. He had the sermon printed as a pamphlet and begins rereading an old copy. It states that in the 19 centuries that have passed since Christ’s death, many kingdoms have fallen, diseases have swept away huge populations, and natural disasters have claimed many lives. None of these was a sign of Christ’s return; all were instead signs of God’s anger at mankind’s sinfulness. However, the current war actually is a sign of Christ’s imminent return because it shares a number of characteristics with other depictions of the Second Coming throughout Christian prophecy. One such sign is the increase in Christian evangelism around the world, and another is the fall of the Ottoman Empire, which Mr. Bodiham believes was prophesied in the Book of Revelations as the drying up of the Euphrates River.

Revelations also contains a prophecy of Armageddon that includes a destructive war, and Mr. Bodiham’s pamphlet breaks down the individual components of this prophecy even further. The passage claims Armageddon will be brought about by “the Dragon, the Beast, and the False Prophet” (41). He argues that the Dragon represents Rome, the Beast represents the Pope and the Catholic Church, and False Prophet refers to the Jesuits, a Catholic religious order. He also refers to these three figures as “Infidelity, Popery, and False Morality” (41). In the context of the modern world, Mr. Bodiham argues that infidelity is embodied in German Higher Criticism, a philosophical position that denies the existence of miracles and divine inspiration; popery is embodied in the Franco-Prussian War, a conflict Mr. Bodiham sees as orchestrated by Catholic powers; and false morality is embodied in Germany’s devotion to generally unchristian views and the way those views are applied to international politics. The sermon concludes by stating that after Christ’s return, those who opposed him will learn that a vengeful God exists alongside a forgiving God.

Mr. Bodiham feels satisfied with his sermon, believing his argument to be strong and convincing. However, four years later, the people of Crome are still sinful and do not seem to care about the future. He tells himself that World War I was simply a precursor to Armageddon, and he acknowledges that violence and turbulence are still happening around the world and that those events are part of the beginning of Armageddon too. However, he is still unsatisfied with this idea and feels frustrated and angry with his parishioners’ indifference.

Mrs. Bodiham comes in quietly, wearing a black dress and carrying a large envelope addressed to Mr. Bodiham. He opens it and finds a pamphlet for an ecclesiastical clothing store in Birmingham; it includes illustrations of young, handsome curates modeling the clothes, which disgusts Mr. Bodiham. He throws the pamphlet away. Mrs. Bodiham says quietly that the village is getting “worse and worse every day” (45).

Denis listens to Henry play the piano. He wants to dance, but instead pretends to read. Gombauld and Anne dance together gracefully, and Mr. Scogan and Mary dance together somewhat awkwardly. Jenny sits in the corner, writing in a red notebook, and Priscilla and Mr. Barbecue-Smith discuss spiritual matters. Mr. Barbecue-Smith says that optimism is an expansion of the soul toward God and pessimism is a contraction of the soul toward darkness.

Denis feels resentful as he watches Gombauld and Anne dance. He wishes he had “a face of brass” like Gombauld (47). Mary approaches Denis, startling him, and asks him what he is reading. Distracted by Anne and Gombauld, Denis had not even been aware of the title: it is a historical account of horse racing in the 18th century. Mary tells him he is smart to sit and read quietly and adds that dancing is boring. He ignores her, trying to listen to Priscilla and Mr. Barbecue-Smith, but then Mary asks him which contemporary poets he likes. Exasperated, he remembers the three diseases of wheat and says, “Blight, Mildew, and Smut” (48).

Later that night, Denis lies in bed, unable to sleep. He feels miserable about Anne, himself, the future, and the entire universe. He gets out of bed and writes a nine-line poem that describes the pain of unknown and unfulfilled desires. He throws the poem away, gets in bed, and falls asleep immediately.

Mr. Barbecue-Smith leaves the next morning, and the rest of the group watches his car drive away from the courtyard. Henry concludes that Mr. Barbecue-Smith was a good addition to their company for the weekend. The group walks down the hill from the terrace to the pool, and Denis remarks that the person who built Crome must have been an architect. Henry tells him that the builder was Sir Ferdinando Lapith, who lived during the reign of Queen Elizabeth. Sir Ferdinando had inherited the estate from his father, who had acquired it during the dissolution of the monasteries. At the time, all that sat on the property was a cloister of monks and a pond they used for fishing. Sir Ferdinando used the stone from the monks’ buildings to construct Crome. The group stares at the house, which looms over them menacingly.

Mr. Scogan says that the best thing about Crome is that it is unmistakably a work of art that could never be mistaken for a naturally occurring phenomenon. He argues that only the poor should live in homes that look like they have grown out of the earth; wealthy, sophisticated people should not imitate peasants and should instead live in obviously artificial, constructed dwellings.

Henry interrupts him to continue talking about Sir Ferdinando, who, during the construction of Crome, was concerned only with the proper placement of the privies. He even published a pamphlet on the subject in 1573. Sir Ferdinando believed the privies should be as far from the sewage containment system as possible, which meant that they should be located at the top of the house and connected by vertical shafts to an underground sewage system. Locating the privies close to the sky meant they would be closer to God, which would “counteract [the] degrading effects” of urination and defecation (51). Another way to accomplish this would be to put inspirational religious literature in each privy. Henry bemoans the 18th-century modernizations that required this system to be rebuilt but is glad the pamphlet exists so that Sir Ferdinando’s ideas are not forgotten. He stands in momentary silence, meditating on permanence, transience, and the mysterious workings of the universe.

Mr. Scogan enjoys hearing about eccentric English aristocrats and argues that they bring glory to their respective ages. Eccentricity, he claims, is the birthright of the aristocracy; every society must have a class that can do whatever its members want, especially because eccentric aristocrats often encourage eccentricity in others. In an extended metaphor, he compares the aristocrats to “Red Indians” and the rest of society to “Poor Whites,” claiming that someday the flamboyant “Red Indians” will be incorporated into the huge group of “Poor Whites” and people like Denis and Henry will not be allowed to do things like write poetry and live at Crome (53). Anne cuts him off, asking whether people like him will be allowed to talk. He says no and tells her he will have honest work to do.

Mary reflects on Denis’s reference to “Blight, Mildew, and Smut,” reluctantly concluding he was deliberately making fun of her. She angrily assumes he said this because he does not take women seriously. She decides to flirt with Gombauld instead, as he is a more serious worker, and she plans to associate herself with her future husband’s work.

Gombauld uses an unused granary in a field beyond the farmyard as his studio. The granary stands above the ground and is accessible by a short ladder, and Gombauld paints there for six or seven hours a day. He had been a Cubist painter for the past eight years, after which he went through a phase of “formalized nature” painting and a phase in which he painted only pure, abstract geometrical forms (55). While he enjoyed his abstract phase, he became upset by how few—and how uninteresting—the forms were that he could come up with. He decided his paintings would combine rich, nuanced images from nature with simple, formal ideas. He put together a portfolio full of ideas, one of which, his current project, is a painting of a man falling from a horse. The horse is immense and takes up most of the canvas, while the man’s smaller body lies in the extreme foreground; a white light illuminates the figures from the right foreground, and the background is intense, empty darkness.

Mary knocks at the granary door while Gombauld is taking a cigarette break, contemplating the painting. She climbs the ladder and hands Gombauld a letter that arrived for him. However, her candid face reveals that this is simply a pretext to talk to him. She looks at the painting, surprised not to see a Cubist masterpiece and confused about how to react to this odd image. She finally remarks on the large amount of chiaroscuro and Gombauld agrees. Emboldened, she says that while the painting is fine, she finds it too trompe-l’oeil for her taste. She describes a painter she encountered in Paris, Tschuplitski, whose work has become increasingly abstract: She suspects that he will eventually just present a blank canvas and that once he reaches total abstraction, he will simply become an architect. Gombauld says that he is going to continue painting and then puts his arm around Mary, guiding her to the ladder. He gives her some light smacks on her lower back and tells her to be careful on her way down. She leaves the granary, walking pensively through the farmyard.