Eeldrop and Appleplex — Reading Notes

The Observers' Method

Eeldrop and Appleplex are defined by their contrasting philosophies: Eeldrop is a sceptic with a taste for mysticism, learned in theology; Appleplex is a materialist leaning toward scepticism, studying physical and biological sciences. Yet they share a common drive to separate themselves from daily employments and social activities. Their method involves passive observation and active interrogation, but always with a detachment that prevents them from becoming part of the scenes they witness. The narrative emphasizes their preference for 'evil neighborhoods of silence' over those of noise, suggesting a fascination with concealed respectability and the eruptions of crime that momentarily disturb it.

The Artist and the Subject

In a later excerpt, the characters discuss the nature of art and the artist. Eeldrop asserts that 'there is no interest in the artist apart from his work,' and that people who provide material for art must have 'something unconscious, something which they do not fully realise or understand.' He contrasts this with a woman named Edith, who 'presents herself too well' and cannot be used as material because she uses herself too fully. The dialogue explores the idea that the artist is partly a drifter at the mercy of impressions, and partly a maker who uses those impressions. Edith, being too rational and self-aware, fails both as an artist and as material.

Rationality and Tragedy

The conversation continues with Appleplex picking up the thread, arguing that Edith is 'the least detached of all persons' because detachment requires standing by and criticizing one's own passions, whereas in Edith 'the critic is coaching the combatant.' Eeldrop concludes that Edith is not unhappy, merely dissatisfied, and not tragic because she is too rational. Her condition is static: 'there is no progression, no decline or degeneration.' This exchange reveals the story's interest in the limits of rationality and the conditions for tragedy, suggesting that true material for art requires an element of the unconscious or instinctual that Edith lacks.

The Unfinished Thread

The excerpt ends with Eeldrop expressing tiredness and proposing to consider 'Sets and Society' the next night, while Appleplex admits he is dining with Mrs. Howexden, the very person they had been discussing. This abrupt shift leaves the reader with a sense of incompleteness, as the characters' intellectual pursuits are interrupted by social engagements. The story does not resolve the questions it raises about art, observation, and human nature; instead, it presents a fragment of a larger, ongoing dialogue. The reader is left to ponder the connections between the characters' theories and their own embeddedness in the social world they seek to analyze.

Readers approaching this short work should attend to the interplay between the two protagonists' voices and the way their dialogue unfolds in a setting that itself becomes a character. The story rewards attention to the precise language of observation—the oaths, the spitting, the filing system—as well as the philosophical undercurrents about art and detachment. Because the text is brief and ends without conclusion, it invites rereading to trace how the opening scene of surveillance and the later conversation about Edith and Mrs. Howexden might reflect on each other.

I came back to Eliot’s notes on Eeldrop and Appleplex the other evening, and their careful, almost clinical watching of strangers reminded me of how Bierce studies a lone horseman against a cliff—both authors holding people at arm’s length to see them true. It left me quiet, thinking of A Son of the Gods, and A Horseman in the Sky — A Reader’s Guide, as if the same gray light fell on both pages.