so far. Her `friend' was a Clifford Chatterley, a young man of twenty-two,
who had hurried home from Bonn, where he was studying the technicalities of
coal-mining. He had previously spent two years at Cambridge. Now he had
become a first lieutenant in a smart regiment, so he could mock at
everything more becomingly in uniform.
Clifford Chatterley was more upper-class than Connie. Connie was
well-to-do intelligentsia, but he was aristocracy. Not the big sort, but
still it. His father was a baronet, and his mother had been a viscount's
daughter.
But Clifford, while he was better bred than Connie, and more `society',
was in his own way more provincial and more timid. He was at his ease in the
narrow `great world', that is, landed aristocracy society, but he was shy
and nervous of all that other big world which consists of the vast hordes of
the middle and lower classes, and foreigners. If the truth must be told, he
was just a little bit frightened of middle-and lower-class humanity, and of
foreigners not of his own class. He was, in some paralysing way, conscious
of his own defencelessness, though he had all the defence of privilege.
Which is curious, but a phenomenon of our day.
Therefore the peculiar soft assurance of a girl like Constance Reid
fascinated him. She was so much more mistress of herself in that outer world
of chaos than he was master of himself.
Nevertheless he too was a rebel: rebelling even against his class. Or
perhaps rebel is too strong a word; far too strong. He was only caught in
the general, popular recoil of the young against convention and against any
sort of real authority. Fathers were ridiculous: his own obstinate one
supremely so. And governments were ridiculous: our own wait-and-see sort
especially so. And armies were ridiculous, and old buffers of generals
altogether, the red-faced Kitchener supremely. Even the war was ridiculous,
though it did kill rather a lot of people.
In fact everything was a little ridiculous, or very ridiculous:
certainly everything connected with authority, whether it were in the army
or the government or the universities, was ridiculous to a degree. And as
far as the governing class made any pretensions to govern, they were
ridiculous too. Sir Geoffrey, Clifford's father, was intensely ridiculous,
chopping down his trees, and weeding men out of his colliery to shove them
into the war; and himself being so safe and patriotic; but, also, spending
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