That Hideous Strength: Chapter 2

Spoiler alert: This post is part of an in-depth discussion of That Hideous Strength by C. S. Lewis, which will inevitably reveal key plot points. Unless you're the sort of person who likes skipping to the last page, go read the book first.

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Mark and Jane Studdock have been married for six months and their marriage is on the rocks.

Jane Studdock is a graduate student, who was married six months ago, and the marriage was already in trouble. She struggles with her thesis, and she resents the life of a housewife. Jane was recently disturbed by a nightmare involving the disembodied head of a recently executed scientist and murderer. When she visited her tutor and his wife, they offered her the address of someone that she could talk to.

Her husband, Mark Studdock, is a Fellow at Bracton College in the University of Edgestow. Amongst the Fellows he is a member of the Progressive Element. At a College Meeting, they successfully leveraged the College's current financial difficulties to win a motion to sell Bragdon Wood, an ancient forest that legend says is the burial place of Merlin. The buyer was the National Institute of Co-Ordinated Experiments (N.I.C.E.), a scientific research institute.

The Progressive Element are:

• Curry, the sub-Warden: The leader of the clique. He enjoys playing politics and wants to be seen, along with Bracton College, as modern and progressive.
• James Busby, the College Bursar (financial administrator): He sees the sale of Bragdon Wood as a solution to the College's money problems, and allies with the other Progressives to push it through.
• Lord Feverstone: Also known as Dick Devine, he is an influential London politician. He uses his influence at the College to recruit Mark and close the sale of Bragdon Wood to the N.I.C.E.
• Mark Studdock: A Junior Fellow of Sociology, elected five years ago. He is ambitious, wanting to belong to the inner circle. He was elected over his chief rival, a man named Denniston, thanks to the influence of Lord Feverstone.

Chapter 2: Dinner with the Sub-Warden

Following the College Meeting, the Progressive Element have dinner at Curry's house.

The Warden (head) of Bracton is Charles Place. He was brought in by the Progressive Element 15 years earlier to bring "new blood" to the College, but is actually regarded as rather ineffective in his position. The "Die-Hards," or traditionalist faction of the Governing Board, nicknamed him "Non Olet" or "N.O.," which comes from the Latin saying Pecunia non olet ("Money doesn't stink"). It is attributed to the Roman emperor Vespasian, who levied a tax on urine collected from public toilets, a valuable source of ammonia for tanners and launderers. The saying means the value of money isn't tainted by where it comes from. The Die-Hards regard N.O.'s appointment as an insult to scholarship: he was not an academic, but a former civil servant who had written a "monumental report on National Sanitation."

After the College Meeting, the Die-Hards, who opposed the sale of Bragdon Wood to the N.I.C.E., were trying to lobby Place to reverse the decision. Their faction was led by Canon Jewel, who had spoken at the meeting in opposition to the sale and been shouted down and humiliated by Lord Feverstone. Mark feels sorry for Jewel. But Feverstone holds both sides equally in contempt. He regards the Die-Hards as relics standing in the way of progress. But he also mocks Curry for his obsession with political maneuvering, saying that if the Die-Hards gave up, "Othello's occupation would be gone." This is an allusion to Othello, act 3, scene 3. The foreigner Othello's acceptance as a Venetian military leader is tied to his marriage to Desdemona; finding out that she was (supposedly) unfaithful destroys his credibility and his sense of belonging. Feverstone says the same is true of Curry: without the Die-Hards to maneuver around, he has no reason for existence. Curry protests the barb, but this suggests that Feverstone hit pretty close to the mark.

They talk about what the N.I.C.E.'s business actually is. Curry calls it the beginning of the "really scientific era." He is impressed with their "wonderful gaget," something called a "Pragmatometer," which puts reports from various committees on some kind of electronic notice board lit up in coloured lights, along with arrows connecting them to the relevant bits of other reports. Busby adds that "Pragmatometry is going to be a big thing." And indeed it is: Lewis could not have predicted the Internet or World Wide Web, but the Pragmatometer is a hypertext engine rendered on a wall in coloured lights. A very big thing indeed. Feverstone adds that N.O. has said the "sanitation of the Institute was going to be something out of the ordinary." Of course he did. Warden Place's fascination with lavatories comes up more than once in this chapter. I wonder what a "really scientific" washroom looks like? (I'm imagining one of those fance Japanese washlets, 40 years ahead of its time.) Mark, for his part, cares nothing about that: he's glad that thanks to the N.I.C.E. and its government backing, social problems are going to be solved properly at last.

When Curry and Busby leave the room to answer a summons from the Warden, Feverstone's tone changes. He is actually contemptuous of them, finding them small-minded and unambitious. They are, at least, useful idiots for the N.I.C.E. He invites Mark to leave Bracton and join the Institute, revealing its real business.

First is what he calls the "interplanetary problem." This is currently unsolvable, thanks to the death of Edward Weston. Mark thinks he was killed in a blitz, but we know better, and apparently so does Feverstone, accusing "a respectable Cambridge don with weak eyes, a game leg, and a fair beard" of murdering him. Second is "our rivals on this planet," by which he means excess plant and animal life that needs to be removed. Third is "man himself." "Man has got to take charge of man," he says, and by this Feverstone means such things as sterilization, selective breeding, and genocide, moving on later to "biochemical conditioning…and direct manipulation of the brain."

In other words, the business of the N.I.C.E. is directing human evolution through eugenics, radical environmental transformation, and the colonization and domination of other planets, the last of which had to be set aside because Weston, the only genius capable of building an interplanetary craft, went to Venus and got himself killed by a philologist.

I told you the N.I.C.E. was up to no good.

Lord Feverstone, aka Dick Devine, is in fact Weston's financier and accomplice from Out of the Silent Planet. He helped kidnap his old schoolmate Ransom to take him to Mars as, he thought, a human sacrifice to Oyarsa, the ruler. Weston had high, though twisted, ideals about the destiny of the human race expanding out into the stars. But Devine was motivated by nothing loftier than material greed for abundant Martian gold. We're not yet told how he became Lord Feverstone and on the Governing Board of Bracton—but we can guess it has to do with plundered Martian gold buying him political connections and the influence of the N.I.C.E. He remains a cynical, amoral, ruthless sociopath who manipulates men like Busby, Curry, and the Fellows to serve N.I.C.E.'s ends.

Feverstone wants Mark as an information officer or publicity man. Mark asks if Feverstone wants him to "write up" the N.I.C.E.'s agenda; Feverstone replies that no, he wants him to "write it down—to camouflage it. He wants Mark as a propagandist. There's a great quotation here:

"Odd thing it is—the word 'experiment' is unpopular, but not the word 'experimental.' You mustn’t experiment on children: but offer the dear little kiddies free education in an experimental school attached to the N.I.C.E. and it's all correct!"

We see his point. To experiment (especially on children) suggests something cold, clinical, perhaps even cruel—think of Josef Mengele. But an experimental school suggests forward-thinking, progressive pedagogy. But, really, both terms refer to using children as test subjects: one with drugs and scalpels, and the other with learning methods.

Today, we might call this "Orwellianism," because some of George Orwell's most famous works were warnings against this kind of manipulation: the essay "Politics and the English Language" and the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. But neither was published before That Hideous Strength in 1945. But Lewis had published an essay in the Spectator a year earlier, titled "The Death of Words,"¹ in which he discusses the decay of precise language into vague, emotional terms. Take the term "gentleman," for example, which once meant someone who possessed land and a coat of arms. Today it means someone with good manners. Being a gentleman was once an objective fact but now is just vaguely praiseworthy. Lewis actually beat Orwell to the punch.²

Feverstone offers to drive Mark to the N.I.C.E. to see a man named John Wither. Mark had thought a novelist and scientific popularizer named Jules was the head there, as his name always appears in connection with the Institute. But Feverstone again disparages Jules as a publicist with no real ideas.

Devine is using his skill at manipulation to groom Mark for the N.I.C.E. He started by getting Mark elected into the Inner Ring of the Fellows. Presumably he drew him into the Progressive Element clique. By mocking both the Die-Hards and the Progressives, he has weakened Mark's loyalty to Bracton. He invites him to join the N.I.C.E. while he is stupefied at the scope of the Institute's actual activities, and implies that unlike Jules (whom, we may assume, is doing the same kind of propaganda work), Mark is more than just an empty-headed publicist. As I said last week, there's always another Inner Ring to belong to. Mark covets moving farther and farther in amongst the elite, and Feverstone is there to see that it happens.

Meanwhile, Jane has returned from the Dimbles' to the apartment. Her unease due to her nightmare has run away on her and put her in a state of panic. She calls Mrs. Dimble to get the address Mr. Dimble had offered. It belongs to a "Miss Ironwood" in the village of St. Anne's on the Hill. When Mark arrives home, he finds Jane, still frightened, sobbing on the doormat.

The next morning, Jane is angry at herself for crying and playing the "little woman" archetype who flies into her man's arms for comfort. Mark is no comfort to her; he offers to stay with her while she's feeling "nervy," but is dismissive of her dream, and concerned primarily with dissatisfaction in his present job and his visit to Wither. Feverstone and Jane's cleaning lady, Mrs. Maggs, arrive at the same time, and there's a bit of light comedy when Feverstone mistakes her for Jane.

Feverstone drives Mark to Belbury, where the N.I.C.E. has its temporary headquarters in the Edwardian mansion of the Blood Transfusion Office. Feverstone has a lead foot and little regard for animals or pedestrians on the road. But Jane decides to take the train to St. Anne's and arrives at Miss Ironwood's address, where she finds a long garden wall with a door and a bell pull. She thinks herself a fool for coming but rings the bell anyway. Just as she's sure there's no one home, she hears approaching footsteps on the other side of the wall.

We have already been informed that the Studdocks' marriage is difficult. Now Lewis shows us. Jane is not open with Mark and Mark is not a comfort to Jane. Contrast the other married couple we've seen so far, the Dimbles, who seem to be quite happy and comfortable with each other; unlike Mark, they even try to help Jane. As the chapter ends, they are going in different directions, literally and figuratively: Jane on a slow train journey through the countryside, reluctantly but determined to find out the truth; and Mark speeding headlong into a possible new career, not really knowing what he's in for.

St. Anne's on the Hill and Belbury are similarly contrasted. St. Anne's is an old, traditional village with an ancient Saxon cross next to the church, farmland, groves of trees, and garden walls. Of Belbury we see only the Blood Transfusion Office: a "florid Edwardian mansion" that has sprouted modernist, concrete additions. The Brutalist movement in architecture didn't really happen until the 1950s, but the picture of a stately Edwardian house surrounded by modernist, stark, functional and clinical Brutalist additions probably sets the right tone. One location is quaint, wild, and traditional; the other is modern, progressive, and perhaps a bit sterile.

In this chapter, the N.I.C.E. faction showed its cards a lot sooner than I expected. I suppose I'm accustomed to a bit more subtlety when it comes to conspiracy thrillers. I wonder, also, whether I'm also benefitting from 80 years of hindsight, and if a contemporary reader would have reacted quite as strongly to all the plain talk about forced sterilization, breeding programs, and biochemical conditioning. As I said last week, eugenics had been intellectually fashionable not long before That Hideous Strength was published.

Footnotes

1. C. S. Lewis, "The Death of Words," in On Stories and Other Essays on Literature, ed. Walter Hooper (New York: Harcourt, 1982), 105–107.

2. Orwell actually published a positive review of That Hideous Strength in 1946, although he thought it would have been a better novel without the supernatural elements. See Brenton Dickinson, "George Orwell's Review of C. S. Lewis' 'That Hideous Strength' (Throwback Thursday)," A Pilgrim in Narnia (blog), September 10, 2020, https://apilgriminnarnia.com/2020/09/10/george-orwells-review-of-c-s-lewis-that-hideous-strength-throwback-thursday/. Coincidentally, Lewis's review of Nineteen Eighty-Four immediately precedes "The Death of Words" in On Stories (101–04). He calls the Appendix on Newspeak "magnificent," though he was less impressed with the novel overall.