Crome Yellow

Crome Yellow, Aldous Huxley's first novel, was published in 1921, 11 years before Brave New World. Crome Yellow is a humorous satire of contemporary fads and personalities. Here the lady of the house explains the value of horoscopes and related subjects to her newly-arrived young houseguest.

For consolation she dallied with New Thought and the Occult. Her passion for racing still possessed her, and Henry [her husband], who was a kind-hearted fellow at bottom, allowed her forty pounds a month betting money. Most of Priscilla's days were spent in casting the horoscopes of horses, and she invested her money scientifically, as the stars dictated. She betted on football too, and had a large notebook in which she registered the horoscopes of all the players in all the teams of the League. The process of balancing the horoscopes of two elevens one against the other was a very delicate and difficult one. A match between the Spurs and the Villa entailed a conflict in the heavens so vast and so complicated that it was not to be wondered at if she sometimes made a mistake about the outcome. "Such a pity you don't believe in these things, Denis, such a pity," said Mrs. Wimbush in her deep, distinct voice.

"I can't say I feel it so."

"Ah, that's because you don't know what it's like to have faith. You've no idea how amusing and exciting life becomes when you do believe. All that happens means something; nothing you do is ever insignificant. It makes life so jolly, you know. Here am I at Crome. Dull as ditchwater, you'd think; but no, I don't find it so. I don't regret the Old Days a bit. I have the Stars… I have the Infinite to keep in tune with," she waved her hand. "And then there's the next world and all the spirits, and one's Aura, and Mrs. Eddy and saying you're not ill, and the Christian Mysteries and Mrs. Besant. It's all splendid. One's never dull for a moment. I can't think how I used to get on before--in the Old Days. Pleasure--running about, that's all it was; just running about. Lunch, tea, dinner, theatre, supper every day. It was fun, of course, while it lasted. But there wasn't much left of it afterwards."

In a later scene the novel satirizes palm readers when Mr. Scogan, an older male house guest probably intended as a caricature of Bertrand Russell, is disguised as "Sesostris, the Sorceress of Ecbatana" and predicts horrible fates at a local fair. "People stood in a queue outside the witch's booth waiting for the privilege of hearing sentence pronounced upon them." (T. S. Eliot alludes to Crome Yellow when he uses the name "Madame Sosostris" for the Tarot reader in his 1922 poem The Waste Land.)