CHAPTER XVI. ‑Crome yellow

In Chap­ter XVI of “Crome Yel­low,” the set­ting shifts to a post-din­ner atmos­phere among gen­tle­men, focus­ing on an eccen­tric con­ver­sa­tion led by Mr. Sco­gan. The women have depart­ed, allow­ing the port to cir­cu­late freely among the men left in the room. Sco­gan, engaged deeply with his thoughts and mild­ly enter­tained by a pri­vate amuse­ment, catch­es the atten­tion of Gom­bauld, who inquires about the source of his amuse­ment. Mr. Sco­gan reveals that he was assess­ing each per­son at the table, imag­in­ing which of the first six Cae­sars they would resem­ble in a hypo­thet­i­cal sce­nario where they behaved as such, ref­er­enc­ing Julius, Augus­tus, Tiberius, Caligu­la, Claudius, and Nero. He describes the Cae­sars as “char­ac­ters func­tion­ing in the void,” ful­ly devel­oped human beings that serve as a touch­stone or stan­dard for under­stand­ing oth­ers. By ampli­fy­ing traits and pecu­liar­i­ties, Mr. Sco­gan indulges in cre­at­ing Cae­sare­an for­mu­las for those around him.

When ques­tioned about his own resem­blance to any of the Cae­sars, Mr. Sco­gan amus­ing­ly claims he could poten­tial­ly embody all of them, except for Claudius, whom he con­sid­ers too unlike any facet of his char­ac­ter. He laments the mun­dane cir­cum­stances of his life—born into a coun­try rec­to­ry, bur­dened by sense­less hard work for min­i­mal reward—which pre­vent­ed the full real­i­sa­tion of his poten­tial into some­thing “fab­u­lous.”

The con­ver­sa­tion then shifts into a more philo­soph­i­cal reflec­tion. Mr. Sco­gan sug­gests it may be for­tu­nate that poten­tial tyrants among them, like Denis and Ivor, had not been allowed to blos­som into their worst forms, though it would have pro­vid­ed a curi­ous spec­ta­cle. He expands this idea into a cri­tique of human nature and soci­ety, com­par­ing peo­ple to bees capa­ble of pro­duc­ing a queen bee under the right con­di­tions, and mus­es on the unpre­dictable out­comes when humans are placed in a “Cae­sare­an envi­ron­ment.” He points out the irony of his­tor­i­cal sur­prise and moral out­rage at the cru­el­ties of the past and present, reflect­ing on events from the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry to the con­tem­po­rary after­math of World War I, sug­gest­ing that such envi­ron­ments inevitably pro­duce “lit­tle Cae­sars.”

Sco­gan con­cludes with a grim depic­tion of the cur­rent state of the world, where atroc­i­ties occur reg­u­lar­ly, high­light­ing the ubiq­ui­ty of vio­lence and suf­fer­ing as a prod­uct of the soci­etal and envi­ron­men­tal con­di­tions that fos­ter such behav­iors, akin to the emer­gence of lit­tle Cae­sars through­out his­to­ry. The chap­ter encap­su­lates a dark­ly satir­i­cal com­men­tary on human nature, pow­er, and the cycli­cal pat­tern of his­to­ry, pre­sent­ed through a live­ly yet morose philo­soph­i­cal dis­cus­sion that is both poignant and crit­i­cal­ly obser­vant.