diff options
| author | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 05:18:51 -0700 |
|---|---|---|
| committer | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 05:18:51 -0700 |
| commit | e5430ffc86fd8480ae7e93f693f5e9fea885aab8 (patch) | |
| tree | b28cf4dd888101cd9a1df314c6c6978afe5666c8 /old/ytagn10h.htm | |
Diffstat (limited to 'old/ytagn10h.htm')
| -rw-r--r-- | old/ytagn10h.htm | 3336 |
1 files changed, 3336 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/old/ytagn10h.htm b/old/ytagn10h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..dbac9af --- /dev/null +++ b/old/ytagn10h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,3336 @@ +<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> +<html> +<head> +<title>Yet Again, by Max Beerbohm</title> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content= +"text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> +<style type="text/css"> +<!-- +body {margin:10%; text-align:justify} +blockquote {font-size:14pt} +P {font-size:14pt} +--> +</style> +</head> +<body> +<pre> +***The Project Gutenberg Etext of Yet Again, by Max Beerbohm*** +#8 in our series by Max Beerbohm + + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check +the copyright laws for your country before posting these files!! + +Please take a look at the important information in this header. +We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an +electronic path open for the next readers. Do not remove this. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**Etexts Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*These Etexts Prepared By Hundreds of Volunteers and Donations* + +Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get Etexts, and +further information is included below. We need your donations. + + +Yet Again + +by Max Beerbohm + +August, 2000 [Etext #2292] + + +***The Project Gutenberg Etext of Yet Again, by Max Beerbohm*** +****This file should be named ytagn10h.htm or ytagn10h.zip***** + +Also available in .txt format as ytagn10.txt and ytagn10.zip + +Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, ytagn11.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, ytagn10a.txt + +This e-text was prepared by Tom Weiss (tom@iname.com) + +Project Gutenberg Etexts are usually created from multiple editions, +all of which are in the Public Domain in the United States, unless a +copyright notice is included. Therefore, we usually do NOT keep any +of these books in compliance with any particular paper edition. + + +We are now trying to release all our books one month in advance +of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing. + +Please note: neither this list nor its contents are final till +midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement. +The official release date of all Project Gutenberg Etexts is at +Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month. A +preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment +and editing by those who wish to do so. To be sure you have an +up to date first edition [xxxxx10x.xxx] please check file sizes +in the first week of the next month. Since our ftp program has +a bug in it that scrambles the date [tried to fix and failed] a +look at the file size will have to do, but we will try to see a +new copy has at least one byte more or less. + + +Information about Project Gutenberg (one page) + +We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work. The +time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours +to get any etext selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright +searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc. This +projected audience is one hundred million readers. If our value +per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2 +million dollars per hour this year as we release thirty-six text +files per month, or 432 more Etexts in 1999 for a total of 2000+ +If these reach just 10% of the computerized population, then the +total should reach over 200 billion Etexts given away this year. + +The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away One Trillion Etext +Files by December 31, 2001. [10,000 x 100,000,000 = 1 Trillion] +This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers, +which is only ~5% of the present number of computer users. + +At our revised rates of production, we will reach only one-third +of that goal by the end of 2001, or about 3,333 Etexts unless we +manage to get some real funding; currently our funding is mostly +from Michael Hart's salary at Carnegie-Mellon University, and an +assortment of sporadic gifts; this salary is only good for a few +more years, so we are looking for something to replace it, as we +don't want Project Gutenberg to be so dependent on one person. + +We need your donations more than ever! + + +All donations should be made to "Project Gutenberg/CMU": and are +tax deductible to the extent allowable by law. (CMU = Carnegie- +Mellon University). + +For these and other matters, please mail to: + +Project Gutenberg +P. O. Box 2782 +Champaign, IL 61825 + +When all other email fails. . .try our Executive Director: +Michael S. Hart [hart@pobox.com] +hart@pobox.com forwards to hart@prairienet.org and archive.org +if your mail bounces from archive.org, I will still see it, if +it bounces from prairienet.org, better resend later on. . . . + +We would prefer to send you this information by email. + +****** + +To access Project Gutenberg etexts, use any Web browser +to view http://promo.net/pg. This site lists Etexts by +author and by title, and includes information about how +to get involved with Project Gutenberg. You could also +download our past Newsletters, or subscribe here. This +is one of our major sites, please email hart@pobox.com, +for a more complete list of our various sites. + +To go directly to the etext collections, use FTP or any +Web browser to visit a Project Gutenberg mirror (mirror +sites are available on 7 continents; mirrors are listed +at http://promo.net/pg). + +Mac users, do NOT point and click, typing works better. + +Example FTP session: + +ftp sunsite.unc.edu +login: anonymous +password: your@login +cd pub/docs/books/gutenberg +cd etext90 through etext99 +dir [to see files] +get or mget [to get files. . .set bin for zip files] +GET GUTINDEX.?? [to get a year's listing of books, e.g., GUTINDEX.99] +GET GUTINDEX.ALL [to get a listing of ALL books] + +*** + +**Information prepared by the Project Gutenberg legal advisor** + +(Three Pages) + + +***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS**START*** +Why is this "Small Print!" statement here? You know: lawyers. +They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with +your copy of this etext, even if you got it for free from +someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our +fault. So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement +disclaims most of our liability to you. It also tells you how +you can distribute copies of this etext if you want to. + +*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS ETEXT +By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm +etext, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept +this "Small Print!" statement. If you do not, you can receive +a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this etext by +sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person +you got it from. If you received this etext on a physical +medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request. + +ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM ETEXTS +This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG- +tm etexts, is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor +Michael S. Hart through the Project Gutenberg Association at +Carnegie-Mellon University (the "Project"). Among other +things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright +on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and +distribute it in the United States without permission and +without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth +below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this etext +under the Project's "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark. + +To create these etexts, the Project expends considerable +efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain +works. Despite these efforts, the Project's etexts and any +medium they may be on may contain "Defects". Among other +things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other +intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged +disk or other etext medium, a computer virus, or computer +codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment. + +LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES +But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below, +[1] the Project (and any other party you may receive this +etext from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext) disclaims all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including +legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR +UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT, +INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE +OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE +POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. + +If you discover a Defect in this etext within 90 days of +receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any) +you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that +time to the person you received it from. If you received it +on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and +such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement +copy. If you received it electronically, such person may +choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to +receive it electronically. + +THIS ETEXT IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS". NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS +TO THE ETEXT OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT +LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A +PARTICULAR PURPOSE. + +Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or +the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the +above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you +may have other legal rights. + +INDEMNITY +You will indemnify and hold the Project, its directors, +officers, members and agents harmless from all liability, cost +and expense, including legal fees, that arise directly or +indirectly from any of the following that you do or cause: +[1] distribution of this etext, [2] alteration, modification, +or addition to the etext, or [3] any Defect. + +DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm" +You may distribute copies of this etext electronically, or by +disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this +"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg, +or: + +[1] Only give exact copies of it. Among other things, this + requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the + etext or this "small print!" statement. You may however, + if you wish, distribute this etext in machine readable + binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form, + including any form resulting from conversion by word pro- + cessing or hypertext software, but only so long as + *EITHER*: + + [*] The etext, when displayed, is clearly readable, and + does *not* contain characters other than those + intended by the author of the work, although tilde + (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may + be used to convey punctuation intended by the + author, and additional characters may be used to + indicate hypertext links; OR + + [*] The etext may be readily converted by the reader at + no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent + form by the program that displays the etext (as is + the case, for instance, with most word processors); + OR + + [*] You provide, or agree to also provide on request at + no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the + etext in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC + or other equivalent proprietary form). + +[2] Honor the etext refund and replacement provisions of this + "Small Print!" statement. + +[3] Pay a trademark license fee to the Project of 20% of the + net profits you derive calculated using the method you + already use to calculate your applicable taxes. If you + don't derive profits, no royalty is due. Royalties are + payable to "Project Gutenberg Association/Carnegie-Mellon + University" within the 60 days following each + date you prepare (or were legally required to prepare) + your annual (or equivalent periodic) tax return. + +WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO? +The Project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time, +scanning machines, OCR software, public domain etexts, royalty +free copyright licenses, and every other sort of contribution +you can think of. Money should be paid to "Project Gutenberg +Association / Carnegie-Mellon University". + +*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END* + +</pre> + +<p>This e-text was prepared by Tom Weiss (tom@iname.com)</p> + +<p> </p> + +<h1>Yet Again +<br><br> +by Max Beerbohm</h1> + +<h3>Fifth Edition</h3> + +<p>London, Chapman and Hall, Limited, 1909</p> + +<p><i> </i></p> + +<p><i>Till I gave myself the task of making a little selection +from what I had written since last I formed a book of essays, I +had no notion that I had put, as it were, my eggs into so many +baskets</i>—The Saturday Review, The New Quarterly, The New +Liberal Review, Vanity Fair, The Daily Mail, Literature, The +Traveller, The Pall Mall Magazine, The May Book, The Souvenir +Book of Charing Cross Hospital Bazaar, The Cornhill Magazine, +Harper’s Magazine, and The Anglo-Saxon +Review…<i>Ouf! But the sigh of relief that I heave at the +end of the list is accompanied by a smile of thanks to the +various authorities for letting me use here what they were so +good as to require.</i></p> + +<p>M. B.</p> + +<p> </p> + +<p> </p> + +<p>CONTENTS</p> + +<p>THE FIRE</p> + +<p>SEEING PEOPLE OFF</p> + +<p>A MEMORY OF A MIDNIGHT EXPRESS</p> + +<p>PORRO UNUM…</p> + +<p>A CLUB IN RUINS</p> + +<p>‘273’</p> + +<p>A STUDY IN DEJECTION</p> + +<p>A PATHETIC IMPOSTURE</p> + +<p>THE DECLINE OF THE GRACES</p> + +<p>WHISTLER’S WRITING</p> + +<p>ICHABOD</p> + +<p>GENERAL ELECTIONS</p> + +<p>A PARALLEL</p> + +<p>A MORRIS FOR MAY-DAY</p> + +<p>THE HOUSE OF COMMONS MANNER</p> + +<p>THE NAMING OF STREETS</p> + +<p>ON SHAKESPEARE’S BIRTHDAY</p> + +<p>A HOME-COMING</p> + +<p>‘THE RAGGED REGIMENT’</p> + +<p>THE HUMOUR OF THE PUBLIC</p> + +<p>DULCEDO JUDICIORUM</p> + +<p> </p> + +<p>WORDS FOR PICTURES</p> + +<p>‘HARLEQUIN’</p> + +<p>‘THE GARDEN OF LOVE’</p> + +<p>‘ARIANE ET DIONYSE’</p> + +<p>‘PETER THE DOMINICAN’</p> + +<p>‘L’ OISEAU BLEU’</p> + +<p>‘MACBETH AND THE WITCHES’</p> + +<p>‘CARLOTTA GRISI’</p> + +<p>‘HO-TEI’</p> + +<p>‘THE VISIT’</p> + +<p> </p> + +<p> </p> + +<p>THE FIRE</p> + +<p>If I were ‘seeing over’ a house, and found in +every room an iron cage let into the wall, and were told by the +caretaker that these cages were for me to keep lions in, I think +I should open my eyes rather wide. Yet nothing seems to me more +natural than a fire in the grate.</p> + +<p>Doubtless, when I began to walk, one of my first excursions +was to the fender, that I might gaze more nearly at the live +thing roaring and raging behind it; and I dare say I dimly +wondered by what blessed dispensation this creature was allowed +in a domain so peaceful as my nursery. I do not think I ever +needed to be warned against scaling the fender. I knew by +instinct that the creature within it was dangerous—fiercer +still than the cat which had once strayed into the room and +scratched me for my advances. As I grew older, I ceased to wonder +at the creature’s presence and learned to call it +‘the fire,’ quite lightly. There are so many queer +things in the world that we have no time to go on wondering at +the queerness of the things we see habitually. It is not that +these things are in themselves less queer than they at first +seemed to us. It is that our vision of them has been dimmed. We +are lucky when by some chance we see again, for a fleeting +moment, this thing or that as we saw it when it first came within +our ken. We are in the habit of saying that ‘first +impressions are best,’ and that we must approach every +question ‘with an open mind’; but we shirk the +logical conclusion that we were wiser in our infancy than we are +now. ‘Make yourself even as a little child’ we often +say, but recommending the process on moral rather than on +intellectual grounds, and inwardly preening ourselves all the +while on having ‘put away childish things,’ as though +clarity of vision were not one of them.</p> + +<p>I look around the room I am writing in—a pleasant room, +and my own, yet how irresponsive, how smug and lifeless! The +pattern of the wallpaper blamelessly repeats itself from +wainscote to cornice; and the pictures are immobile and +changeless within their glazed frames—faint, flat mimicries +of life. The chairs and tables are just as their carpenter +fashioned them, and stand with stiff obedience just where they +have been posted. On one side of the room, encased in coverings +of cloth and leather, are myriads of words, which to some people, +but not to me, are a fair substitute for human company. All +around me, in fact, are the products of modern civilisation. But +in the whole room there are but three things living: myself, my +dog, and the fire in my grate. And of these lives the third is +very much the most intensely vivid. My dog is descended, +doubtless, from prehistoric wolves; but you could hardly decipher +his pedigree on his mild, domesticated face. My dog is as tame as +his master (in whose veins flows the blood of the old cavemen). +But time has not tamed fire. Fire is as wild a thing as when +Prometheus snatched it from the empyrean. Fire in my grate is as +fierce and terrible a thing as when it was lit by my ancestors, +night after night, at the mouths of their caves, to scare away +the ancestors of my dog. And my dog regards it with the old +wonder and misgiving. Even in his sleep he opens ever and again +one eye to see that we are in no danger. And the fire glowers and +roars through its bars at him with the scorn that a wild beast +must needs have for a tame one. ‘You are free,’ it +rages, ‘and yet you do not spring at that man’s +throat and tear him limb from limb and make a meal of him! +‘and, gazing at me, it licks its red lips; and I, laughing +good-humouredly, rise and give the monster a shovelful of its +proper food, which it leaps at and noisily devours.</p> + +<p>Fire is the only one of the elements that inspires awe. We +breathe air, tread earth, bathe in water. Fire alone we approach +with deference. And it is the only one of the elements that is +always alert, always good to watch. We do not see the air we +breathe—except sometimes in London, and who shall say that +the sight is pleasant? We do not see the earth revolving; and the +trees and other vegetables that are put forth by it come up so +slowly that there is no fun in watching them. One is apt to lose +patience with the good earth, and to hanker after a sight of +those multitudinous fires whereover it is, after all, but a thin +and comparatively recent crust. Water, when we get it in the form +of a river, is pleasant to watch for a minute or so, after which +period the regularity of its movement becomes as tedious as +stagnation. It is only a whole seaful of water that can rival +fire in variety and in loveliness. But even the spectacle of sea +at its very best—say in an Atlantic storm—is less +thrilling than the spectacle of one building ablaze. And for the +rest, the sea has its hours of dulness and monotony, even when it +is not wholly calm. Whereas in the grate even a quite little fire +never ceases to be amusing and inspiring until you let it out. As +much fire as would correspond with a handful of earth or a +tumblerful of water is yet a joy to the eyes, and a lively +suggestion of grandeur. The other elements, even as presented in +huge samples, impress us as less august than fire. Fire alone, +according to the legend, was brought down from Heaven: the rest +were here from the dim outset. When we call a thing earthy we +impute cloddishness; by ‘watery’ we imply +insipidness; ‘airy’ is for something trivial. +‘Fiery’ has always a noble significance. It denotes +such things as faith, courage, genius. Earth lies heavy, and air +is void, and water flows down; but flames aspire, flying back +towards the heaven they came from. They typify for us the spirit +of man, as apart from aught that is gross in him. They are the +symbol of purity, of triumph over corruption. Water, air, earth, +can all harbour corruption; but where flames are, or have been, +there is innocence. Our love of fire comes partly, doubtless, +from our natural love of destruction for destruction’s +sake. Fire is savage, and so, even after all these centuries, are +we, at heart. Our civilisation is but as the aforesaid crust that +encloses the old planetary flames. To destroy is still the +strongest instinct of our nature. Nature is still ‘red in +tooth and claw,’ though she has begun to make fine +flourishes with tooth-brush and nail-scissors. Even the mild dog +on my hearth-rug has been known to behave like a wolf to his own +species. Scratch his master and you will find the caveman. But +the scratch must be a sharp one: I am thickly veneered. +Outwardly, I am as gentle as you, gentle reader. And one reason +for our delight in fire is that there is no humbug about flames: +they are frankly, primævally savage. But this is not, I am +glad to say, the sole reason. We have a sense of good and evil. I +do not pretend that it carries us very far. It is but the +tooth-brush and nail-scissors that we flourish. Our innate +instincts, not this acquired sense, are what the world really +hinges on. But this acquired sense is an integral part of our +minds. And we revere fire because we have come to regard it as +especially the foe of evil—as a means for destroying weeds, +not flowers; a destroyer of wicked cities, not of good ones.</p> + +<p>The idea of hell, as inculcated in the books given to me when +I was a child, never really frightened me at all. I conceived the +possibility of a hell in which were eternal flames to destroy +every one who had not been good. But a hell whose flames were +eternally impotent to destroy these people, a hell where evil was +to go on writhing yet thriving for ever and ever, seemed to me, +even at that age, too patently absurd to be appalling. Nor indeed +do I think that to the more credulous children in England can the +idea of eternal burning have ever been quite so forbidding as +their nurses meant it to be. Credulity is but a form of +incaution. I, as I have said, never had any wish to play with +fire; but most English children are strongly attracted, and are +much less afraid of fire than of the dark. Eternal darkness, with +a biting east-wind, were to the English fancy a far more fearful +prospect than eternal flames. The notion of these flames arose in +Italy, where heat is no luxury, and shadows are lurked in, and +breezes prayed for. In England the sun, even at its strongest, is +a weak vessel. True, we grumble whenever its radiance is a trifle +less watery than usual. But that is precisely because we are a +people whose nature the sun has not mellowed—a dour people, +like all northerners, ever ready to make the worst of things. +Inwardly, we love the sun, and long for it to come nearer to us, +and to come more often. And it is partly because this craving is +unsatisfied that we cower so fondly over our open hearths. Our +fires are makeshifts for sunshine. Autumn after autumn, ‘we +see the swallows gathering in the sky, and in the osier-isle we +hear their noise,’ and our hearts sink. Happy, selfish +little birds, gathering so lightly to fly whither we cannot +follow you, will you not, this once, forgo the lands of your +desire? ‘Shall not the grief of the old time follow?’ +Do winter with us, this once! We will strew all England, every +morning, with bread-crumbs for you, will you but stay and help us +to play at summer! But the delicate cruel rogues pay no heed to +us, skimming sharplier than ever in pursuit of gnats, as the hour +draws near for their long flight over gnatless seas.</p> + +<p>Only one swallow have I ever known to relent. It had built its +nest under the eaves of a cottage that belonged to a friend of +mine, a man who loved birds. He had a power of making birds trust +him. They would come at his call, circling round him, perching on +his shoulders, eating from his hand. One of the swallows would +come too, from his nest under the eaves. As the summer wore on, +he grew quite tame. And when summer waned, and the other swallows +flew away, this one lingered, day after day, fluttering dubiously +over the threshold of the cottage. Presently, as the air grew +chilly, he built a new nest for himself, under the mantelpiece in +my friend’s study. And every morning, so soon as the fire +burned brightly, he would flutter down to perch on the fender and +bask in the light and warmth of the coals. But after a few weeks +he began to ail; possibly because the study was a small one, and +he could not get in it the exercise that he needed; more probably +because of the draughts. My friend’s wife, who was very +clever with her needle, made for the swallow a little jacket of +red flannel, and sought to divert his mind by teaching him to +perform a few simple tricks. For a while he seemed to regain his +spirits. But presently he moped more than ever, crouching nearer +than ever to the fire, and, sidelong, blinking dim weak +reproaches at his disappointed master and mistress. One swallow, +as the adage truly says, does not make a summer. So this +one’s mistress hurriedly made for him a little overcoat of +sealskin, wearing which, in a muffled cage, he was personally +conducted by his master straight through to Sicily. There he was +nursed back to health, and liberated on a sunny plain. He never +returned to his English home; but the nest he built under the +mantelpiece is still preserved in case he should come at +last.</p> + +<p>When the sun’s rays slant down upon your grate, then the +fire blanches and blenches, cowers, crumbles, and collapses. It +cannot compete with its archetype. It cannot suffice a +sun-steeped swallow, or ripen a plum, or parch the carpet. Yet, +in its modest way, it is to your room what the sun is to the +world; and where, during the greater part of the year, would you +be without it? I do not wonder that the poor, when they have to +choose between fuel and food, choose fuel. Food nourishes the +body; but fuel, warming the body, warms the soul too. I do not +wonder that the hearth has been regarded from time immemorial as +the centre, and used as the symbol, of the home. I like the +social tradition that we must not poke a fire in a friend’s +drawing-room unless our friendship dates back full seven years. +It rests evidently, this tradition, on the sentiment that a fire +is a thing sacred to the members of the household in which it +burns. I dare say the fender has a meaning, as well as a use, and +is as the rail round an altar. In ‘The New Utopia’ +these hearths will all have been rased, of course, as +demoralising relics of an age when people went in for privacy and +were not always thinking exclusively about the State. Such heat +as may be needed to prevent us from catching colds (whereby our +vitality would be lowered, and our usefulness to the State +impaired) will be supplied through hot-water pipes +(white-enamelled), the supply being strictly regulated from the +municipal water-works. Or has Mr. Wells arranged that the sun +shall always be shining on us? I have mislaid my copy of the +book. Anyhow, fires and hearths will have to go. Let us make the +most of them while we may.</p> + +<p>Personally, though I appreciate the radiance of a family fire, +I give preference to a fire that burns for myself alone. And +dearest of all to me is a fire that burns thus in the house of +another. I find an inalienable magic in my bedroom fire when I am +staying with friends; and it is at bedtime that the spell is +strongest. ‘<i>Good</i> night,’ says my host, shaking +my hand warmly on the threshold; you’ve everything you +want?’ ‘Everything,’ I assure him; ‘good +<i>night</i>.’ ‘Good <i>night</i>.’ +‘<i>Good</i> night,’ and I close my door, close my +eyes, heave a long sigh, open my eyes, set down the candle, draw +the armchair close to the fire (<i>my</i> fire), sink down, and +am at peace, with nothing to mar my happiness except the feeling +that it is too good to be true.</p> + +<p>At such moments I never see in my fire any likeness to a wild +beast. It roars me as gently as a sucking dove, and is as kind +and cordial as my host and hostess and the other people in the +house. And yet I do not have to say anything to it, I do not have +to make myself agreeable to it. It lavishes its warmth on me, +asking nothing in return. For fifteen mortal hours or so, with +few and brief intervals, I have been making myself agreeable, +saying the right thing, asking the apt question, exhibiting the +proper shade of mild or acute surprise, smiling the appropriate +smile or laughing just so long and just so loud as the occasion +seemed to demand. If I were naturally a brilliant and copious +talker, I suppose that to stay in another’s house would be +no strain on me. I should be able to impose myself on my host and +hostess and their guests without any effort, and at the end of +the day retire quite unfatigued, pleasantly flushed with the +effect of my own magnetism. Alas, there is no question of my +imposing myself. I can repay hospitality only by strict attention +to the humble, arduous process of making myself agreeable. When I +go up to dress for dinner, I have always a strong impulse to go +to bed and sleep off my fatigue; and it is only by exerting all +my will-power that I can array myself for the final labours: to +wit, making myself agreeable to some man or woman for a minute or +two before dinner, to two women during dinner, to men after +dinner, then again to women in the drawing-room, and then once +more to men in the smoking-room. It is a dog’s life. But +one has to have suffered before one gets the full savour out of +joy. And I do not grumble at the price I have to pay for the +sensation of basking, at length, in solitude and the glow of my +own fireside.</p> + +<p>Too tired to undress, too tired to think, I am more than +content to watch the noble and ever-changing pageant of the fire. +The finest part of this spectacle is surely when the flames sink, +and gradually the red-gold caverns are revealed, gorgeous, +mysterious, with inmost recesses of white heat. It is often thus +that my fire welcomes me when the long day’s task is done. +After I have gazed long into its depths, I close my eyes to rest +them, opening them again, with a start, whenever a coal shifts +its place, or some belated little tongue of flame spurts forth +with a hiss…. Vaguely I liken myself to the watchman one +sees by night in London, wherever a road is up, huddled +half-awake in his tiny cabin of wood, with a cresset of live coal +before him…. I have come down in the world, and am a +night-watchman, and I find the life as pleasant as I had always +thought it must be, except when I let the fire out, and awake +shivering…. Shivering I awake, in the twilight of dawn. +Ashes, white and grey, some rusty cinders, a crag or so of coal, +are all that is left over from last night’s splendour. Grey +is the lawn beneath my window, and little ghosts of rabbits are +nibbling and hobbling there. But anon the east will be red, and, +ere I wake, the sky will be blue, and the grass quite green +again, and my fire will have arisen from its ashes, a cackling +and comfortable phoenix.</p> + +<p> </p> + +<p>SEEING PEOPLE OFF</p> + +<p>I am not good at it. To do it well seems to me one of the most +difficult things in the world, and probably seems so to you, +too.</p> + +<p>To see a friend off from Waterloo to Vauxhall were easy +enough. But we are never called on to perform that small feat. It +is only when a friend is going on a longish journey, and will be +absent for a longish time, that we turn up at the railway +station. The dearer the friend, and the longer the journey, and +the longer the likely absence, the earlier do we turn up, and the +more lamentably do we fail. Our failure is in exact ratio to the +seriousness of the occasion, and to the depth of our feeling.</p> + +<p>In a room, or even on a door-step, we can make the farewell +quite worthily. We can express in our faces the genuine sorrow we +feel. Nor do words fail us. There is no awkwardness, no +restraint, on either side. The thread of our intimacy has not +been snapped. The leave-taking is an ideal one. Why not, then, +leave the leave-taking at that? Always, departing friends implore +us not to bother to come to the railway station next morning. +Always, we are deaf to these entreaties, knowing them to be not +quite sincere. The departing friends would think it very odd of +us if we took them at their word. Besides, they really do want to +see us again. And that wish is heartily reciprocated. We duly +turn up. And then, oh then, what a gulf yawns! We stretch our +arms vainly across it. We have utterly lost touch. We have +nothing at all to say. We gaze at each other as dumb animals gaze +at human beings. We ‘make conversation’—and +<i>such</i> conversation! We know that these are the friends from +whom we parted overnight. They know that we have not altered. +Yet, on the surface, everything is different; and the tension is +such that we only long for the guard to blow his whistle and put +an end to the farce.</p> + +<p>On a cold grey morning of last week I duly turned up at +Euston, to see off an old friend who was starting for +America.</p> + +<p>Overnight, we had given him a farewell dinner, in which +sadness was well mingled with festivity. Years probably would +elapse before his return. Some of us might never see him again. +Not ignoring the shadow of the future, we gaily celebrated the +past. We were as thankful to have known our guest as we were +grieved to lose him; and both these emotions were made evident. +It was a perfect farewell.</p> + +<p>And now, here we were, stiff and self-conscious on the +platform; and, framed in the window of the railway-carriage, was +the face of our friend; but it was as the face of a +stranger—a stranger anxious to please, an appealing +stranger, an awkward stranger. ‘Have you got +everything?’ asked one of us, breaking a silence. +‘Yes, everything,’ said our friend, with a pleasant +nod. ‘Everything,’ he repeated, with the emphasis of +an empty brain. ‘You’ll be able to lunch on the +train,’ said I, though this prophecy had already been made +more than once. ‘Oh yes,’ he said with conviction. He +added that the train went straight through to Liverpool. This +fact seemed to strike us as rather odd. We exchanged glances. +‘Doesn’t it stop at Crewe?’ asked one of us. +‘No,’ said our friend, briefly. He seemed almost +disagreeable. There was a long pause. One of us, with a nod and a +forced smile at the traveller, said ‘Well!’ The nod, +the smile, and the unmeaning monosyllable, were returned +conscientiously. Another pause was broken by one of us with a fit +of coughing. It was an obviously assumed fit, but it served to +pass the time. The bustle of the platform was unabated. There was +no sign of the train’s departure. Release—ours, and +our friend’s—was not yet.</p> + +<p>My wandering eye alighted on a rather portly middle-aged man +who was talking earnestly from the platform to a young lady at +the next window but one to ours. His fine profile was vaguely +familiar to me. The young lady was evidently American, and he was +evidently English; otherwise I should have guessed from his +impressive air that he was her father. I wished I could hear what +he was saying. I was sure he was giving the very best advice; and +the strong tenderness of his gaze was really beautiful. He seemed +magnetic, as he poured out his final injunctions. I could feel +something of his magnetism even where I stood. And the magnetism, +like the profile, was vaguely familiar to me. Where had I +experienced it?</p> + +<p>In a flash I remembered. The man was Hubert le Ros. But how +changed since last I saw him! That was seven or eight years ago, +in the Strand. He was then (as usual) out of an engagement, and +borrowed half-a-crown. It seemed a privilege to lend anything to +him. He was always magnetic. And why his magnetism had never made +him successful on the London stage was always a mystery to me. He +was an excellent actor, and a man of sober habit. But, like many +others of his kind, Hubert le Ros (I do not, of course, give the +actual name by which he was known) drifted seedily away into the +provinces; and I, like every one else, ceased to remember +him.</p> + +<p>It was strange to see him, after all these years, here on the +platform of Euston, looking so prosperous and solid. It was not +only the flesh that he had put on, but also the clothes, that +made him hard to recognise. In the old days, an imitation fur +coat had seemed to be as integral a part of him as were his +ill-shorn lantern jaws. But now his costume was a model of rich +and sombre moderation, drawing, not calling, attention to itself. +He looked like a banker. Any one would have been proud to be seen +off by him.</p> + +<p>‘Stand back, please.’ The train was about to +start, and I waved farewell to my friend. Le Ros did not stand +back. He stood clasping in both hands the hands of the young +American. ‘Stand back, sir, please!’ He obeyed, but +quickly darted forward again to whisper some final word. I think +there were tears in her eyes. There certainly were tears in his +when, at length, having watched the train out of sight, he turned +round. He seemed, nevertheless, delighted to see me. He asked me +where I had been hiding all these years; and simultaneously +repaid me the half-crown as though it had been borrowed +yesterday. He linked his arm in mine, and walked me slowly along +the platform, saying with what pleasure he read my dramatic +criticisms every Saturday.</p> + +<p>I told him, in return, how much he was missed on the stage. +‘Ah, yes,’ he said, ‘I never act on the stage +nowadays.’ He laid some emphasis on the word +‘stage,’ and I asked him where, then, he did act. +‘On the platform,’ he answered. ‘You +mean,’ said I, ‘that you recite at concerts?’ +He smiled. ‘This,’ he whispered, striking his stick +on the ground, ‘is the platform I mean.’ Had his +mysterious prosperity unhinged him? He looked quite sane. I +begged him to be more explicit.</p> + +<p>‘I suppose,’ he said presently, giving me a light +for the cigar which he had offered me, ‘you have been +seeing a friend off?’ I assented. He asked me what I +supposed <i>he</i> had been doing. I said that I had watched him +doing the same thing. ‘No,’ he said gravely. +‘That lady was not a friend of mine. I met her for the +first time this morning, less than half an hour ago, +<i>here</i>,’ and again he struck the platform with his +stick.</p> + +<p>I confessed that I was bewildered. He smiled. ‘You +may,’ he said, ‘have heard of the Anglo-American +Social Bureau?’ I had not. He explained to me that of the +thousands of Americans who annually pass through England there +are many hundreds who have no English friends. In the old days +they used to bring letters of introduction. But the English are +so inhospitable that these letters are hardly worth the paper +they are written on. ‘Thus,’ said Le Ros, ‘the +A.A.S.B. supplies a long-felt want. Americans are a sociable +people, and most of them have plenty of money to spend. The +A.A.S.B. supplies them with English friends. Fifty per cent. of +the fees is paid over to the friends. The other fifty is retained +by the A.A.S.B. I am not, alas, a director. If I were, I should +be a very rich man indeed. I am only an employé. But even +so I do very well. I am one of the seers-off.’</p> + +<p>Again I asked for enlightenment. ‘Many Americans,’ +he said, ‘cannot afford to keep friends in England. But +they can all afford to be seen off. The fee is only five pounds +(twenty-five dollars) for a single traveller; and eight pounds +(forty dollars) for a party of two or more. They send that in to +the Bureau, giving the date of their departure, and a description +by which the seer-off can identify them on the platform. And +then—well, then they are seen off.’</p> + +<p>‘But is it worth it?’ I exclaimed. ‘Of +course it is worth it,’ said Le Ros. ‘It prevents +them from feeling "out of it." It earns them the respect of the +guard. It saves them from being despised by their +fellow-passengers—the people who are going to be on the +boat. It gives them a <i>footing</i> for the whole voyage. +Besides, it is a great pleasure in itself. You saw me seeing that +young lady off. Didn’t you think I did it +beautifully?’ ‘Beautifully,’ I admitted. +‘I envied you. There was I—’ ‘Yes, I can +imagine. There were you, shuffling from foot to foot, staring +blankly at your friend, trying to make conversation. I know. +That’s how I used to be myself, before I studied, and went +into the thing professionally. I don’t say I’m +perfect yet. I’m still a martyr to platform fright. A +railway station is the most difficult of all places to act in, as +you have discovered for yourself.’ ‘But,’ I +said with resentment, ‘I wasn’t trying to act. I +really <i>felt</i>.’ ‘So did I, my boy,’ said +Le Ros. ‘You can’t act without feeling. What’s +his name, the Frenchman—Diderot, yes—said you could; +but what did <i>he</i> know about it? Didn’t you see those +tears in my eyes when the train started? I hadn’t forced +them. I tell you I was <i>moved</i>. So were you, I dare say. But +you couldn’t have pumped up a tear to prove it. You +can’t express your feelings. In other words, you +can’t act. At any rate,’ he added kindly, ‘not +in a railway station.’ ‘Teach me!’ I cried. He +looked thoughtfully at me. ‘Well,’ he said at length, +‘the seeing-off season is practically over. Yes, I’ll +give you a course. I have a good many pupils on hand already; but +yes,’ he said, consulting an ornate note-book, ‘I +could give you an hour on Tuesdays and Fridays.’</p> + +<p>His terms, I confess, are rather high. But I don’t +grudge the investment.</p> + +<p> </p> + +<p>A MEMORY OF A MIDNIGHT EXPRESS</p> + +<p>Often I have presentiments of evil; but, never having had one +of them fulfilled, I am beginning to ignore them. I find that I +have always walked straight, serenely imprescient, into whatever +trap Fate has laid for me. When I think of any horrible thing +that has befallen me, the horror is intensified by recollection +of its suddenness. ‘But a moment before, I had been quite +happy, quite secure. A moment later—’ I shudder. Why +be thus at Fate’s mercy always, when with a little ordinary +second sight…Yet no! That is the worst of a presentiment: +it never averts evil, it does but unnerve the victim. Best, after +all, to have only false presentiments like mine. Bolts that +cannot be dodged strike us kindliest from the blue.</p> + +<p>And so let me be thankful that my sole emotion as I entered an +empty compartment at Holyhead was that craving for sleep which, +after midnight, overwhelms every traveller—especially the +Saxon traveller from tumultuous and quick-witted little Dublin. +Mechanically, comfortably, as I sank into a corner, I rolled my +rug round me, laid my feet against the opposite cushions, +twitched up my coat collar above my ears, twitched down my cap +over my eyes.</p> + +<p>It was not the jerk of the starting train that half awoke me, +but the consciousness that some one had flung himself into the +compartment when the train was already in motion. I saw a small +man putting something in the rack—a large black hand-bag. +Through the haze of my sleep I saw him, vaguely resented him. He +had no business to have slammed the door like that, no business +to have jumped into a moving train, no business to put that huge +hand-bag into a rack which was ‘for light baggage +only,’ and no business to be wearing, at this hour and in +this place, a top-hat. These four peevish objections floated +sleepily together round my brain. It was not till the man turned +round, and I met his eye, that I awoke fully—awoke to +danger. I had never seen a murderer, but I knew that the man who +was so steadfastly peering at me now…I shut my eyes. I +tried to think. Could I be dreaming? In books I had read of +people pinching themselves to see whether they were really awake. +But in actual life there never was any doubt on that score. The +great thing was that I should keep all my wits about me. +Everything might depend on presence of mind. Perhaps this +murderer was mad. If you fix a lunatic with your eye…</p> + +<p>Screwing up my courage, I fixed the man with my eye. I had +never seen such a horrible little eye as his. It was a sane eye, +too. It radiated a cold and ruthless sanity. It belonged not to a +man who would kill you wantonly, but to one who would not scruple +to kill you for a purpose, and who would do the job quickly and +neatly, and not be found out. Was he physically strong? Though he +looked very wiry, he was little and narrow, like his eyes. He +could not overpower me by force, I thought (and instinctively I +squared my shoulders against the cushions, that he might realise +the impossibility of overpowering me), but I felt he had enough +‘science’ to make me less than a match for him. I +tried to look cunning and determined. I longed for a moustache +like his, to hide my somewhat amiable mouth. I was thankful I +could not see his mouth—could not know the worst of the +face that was staring at me in the lamplight. And yet what could +be worse than his eyes, gleaming from the deep shadow cast by the +brim of his top-hat? What deadlier than that square jaw, with the +bone so sharply delineated under the taut skin?</p> + +<p>The train rushed on, noisily swaying through the silence of +the night. I thought of the unseen series of placid landscapes +that we were passing through, of the unconscious cottagers +snoring there in their beds, of the safe people in the next +compartment to mine—to his. Not moving a muscle, we sat +there, we two, watching each other, like two hostile cats. Or +rather, I thought, he watched me as a snake watches a rabbit, and +I, like a rabbit, could not look away. I seemed to hear my heart +beating time to the train. Suddenly my heart was at a standstill, +and the double beat of the train receded faintly. The man was +pointing upwards…I shook my head. He had asked me in a low +voice, whether he should pull the hood across the lamp.</p> + +<p>He was standing now with his back turned towards me, pulling +his hand-bag out of the rack. He had a furtive back—the +back of a man who, in his day, had borne many an alias. To this +day I am ashamed that I did not spring up and pinion him, there +and then. Had I possessed one ounce of physical courage, I should +have done so. A coward, I let slip the opportunity. I thought of +the communication-cord, but how could I move to it? He would be +too quick for me. He would be very angry with me. I would sit +quite still and wait. Every moment was a long reprieve to me now. +Something might intervene to save me. There might be a collision +on the line. Perhaps he was a quite harmless man…I caught +his eyes, and shuddered…</p> + +<p>His bag was open on his knees. His right hand was groping in +it. (Thank Heaven he had not pulled the hood over the lamp!) I +saw him pull out something—a limp thing, made of black +cloth, not unlike the thing which a dentist places over your +mouth when laughing-gas is to be administered. +‘Laughing-gas, no laughing matter’—the +irrelevant and idiotic embryo of a pun dangled itself for an +instant in my brain. What other horrible thing would come out of +the bag? Perhaps some gleaming instrument?… He closed the +bag with a snap, laid it beside him. He took off his top-hat, +laid that beside him. I was surprised (I know not why) to see +that he was bald. There was a gleaming high light on his bald, +round head. The limp, black thing was a cap, which he slowly +adjusted with both hands, drawing it down over the brow and +behind the ears. It seemed to me as though he were, after all, +hooding the lamp; in my feverish fancy the compartment grew +darker when the orb of his head was hidden. The shadow of another +simile for his action came surging up… He had put on the +cap so gravely, so judicially. Yes, that was it: he had assumed +the black cap, that decent symbol which indemnifies the taker of +a life; and might the Lord have mercy on my soul… Already +he was addressing me… What had he said? I asked him to +repeat it. My voice sounded even further away than his. He +repeated that he thought we had met before. I heard my voice +saying politely, somewhere in the distance, that I thought not. +He suggested that I had been staying at some hotel in Colchester +six years ago. My voice, drawing a little nearer to me, explained +that I had never in my life been at Colchester. He begged my +pardon and hoped no offence would be taken where none had been +meant. My voice, coming right back to its own quarters, reassured +him that of course I had taken no offence at all, adding that I +myself very often mistook one face for another. He replied, +rather inconsequently, that the world was a small place.</p> + +<p>Evidently he must have prepared this remark to follow my +expected admission that I <i>had</i> been at that hotel in +Colchester six years ago, and have thought it too striking a +remark to be thrown away. A guileless creature evidently, and not +a criminal at all. Then I reflected that most of the successful +criminals succeed rather through the incomparable guilelessness +of the police than through any devilish cunning in themselves. +Besides, this man looked the very incarnation of ruthless +cunning. Surely, he must but have dissembled. My suspicions of +him resurged. But somehow, I was no longer afraid of him. +Whatever crimes he might have been committing, and be going to +commit, I felt that he meant no harm to me. After all, why should +I have imagined myself to be in danger? Meanwhile, I would try to +draw the man out, pitting my wits against his.</p> + +<p>I proceeded to do so. He was very voluble in a quiet way. +Before long I was in possession of all the materials for an +exhaustive biography of him. And the strange thing was that I +could not, with the best will in the world, believe that he was +lying to me. I had never heard a man telling so obviously the +truth. And the truth about any one, however commonplace, must +always be interesting. Indeed, it is the commonplace +truth—the truth of widest application—that is the +most interesting of all truths.</p> + +<p>I do not now remember many details of this man’s story; +I remember merely that he was ‘travelling in lace,’ +that he had been born at Boulogne (this was the one strange +feature of the narrative), that somebody had once left him +£100 in a will, and that he had a little daughter who was +‘as pretty as a pink.’ But at the time I was +enthralled. Besides, I liked the man immensely. He was a kind and +simple soul, utterly belying his appearance. I wondered how I +ever could have feared him and hated him. Doubtless, the reaction +from my previous state intensified the kindliness of my feelings. +Anyhow, my heart went out to him. I felt that we had known each +other for many years. While he poured out his recollections I +felt that he was an old crony, talking over old days which were +mine as well as his. Little by little, however, the slumber which +he had scared from me came hovering back. My eyelids drooped; my +comments on his stories became few and muffled. +‘There!’ he said, ‘you’re sleepy. I ought +to have thought of that.’ I protested feebly. He insisted +kindly. ‘You go to sleep,’ he said, rising and +drawing the hood over the lamp. It was dawn when I awoke. Some +one in a top-hat was standing over me and saying +‘Euston.’ ‘Euston?’ I repeated. +‘Yes, this is Euston. Good day to you.’ ‘Good +day to you,’ I repeated mechanically, in the grey dawn.</p> + +<p>Not till I was driving through the cold empty streets did I +remember the episode of the night, and who it was that had awoken +me. I wished I could see my friend again. It was horrible to +think that perhaps I should never see him again. I had liked him +so much, and he had seemed to like me. I should not have said +that he was a happy man. There was something melancholy about +him. I hoped he would prosper. I had a foreboding that some great +calamity was in store for him, and wished I could avert it. I +thought of his little daughter who was ‘as pretty as a +pink.’ Perhaps Fate was going to strike him through her. +Perhaps when he got home he would find that she was dead. There +were tears in my eyes when I alighted on my doorstep.</p> + +<p>Thus, within a little space of time, did I experience two deep +emotions, for neither of which was there any real justification. +I experienced terror, though there was nothing to be afraid of, +and I experienced sorrow, though there was nothing at all to be +sorry about. And both my terror and my sorrow were, at the time, +overwhelming.</p> + +<p>You have no patience with me? Examine yourselves. Examine one +another. In every one of us the deepest emotions are constantly +caused by some absurdly trivial thing, or by nothing at all. +Conversely, the great things in our lives—the true +occasions for wrath, anguish, rapture, what not—very often +leave us quite calm. We never can depend on any right adjustment +of emotion to circumstance. That is one of many reasons which +prevent the philosopher from taking himself and his fellow-beings +quite so seriously as he would wish.</p> + +<p> </p> + +<p>PORRO UNUM...</p> + +<p>By graceful custom, every newcomer to a throne in Europe pays +a round of visits to his neighbours. When King Edward came back +from seeing the Tsar at Reval, his subjects seemed to think that +he had fulfilled the last demand on his civility. That was in the +days of Abdul Hamid. None of us wished the King to visit Turkey. +Turkey is not internationally powerful, nor had Abdul any Guelph +blood in him; and so we were able to assert, by ignoring her and +him, our humanitarianism and passion for liberty, quite safely, +quite politely. Now that Abdul is deposed from ‘his +infernal throne,’ it is taken as a matter of course that +the King will visit his successor. Well, let His Majesty betake +himself and his tact and a full cargo of Victorian Orders to +Constantinople, by all means. But, on the way, nestling in the +very heart of Europe, perfectly civilised and strifeless, +jewelled all over with freedom, is another country which he has +not visited since his accession—a country which, oddly +enough, none but I seems to expect him to visit. Why, I ask, +should Switzerland be cold-shouldered?</p> + +<p>I admit she does not appeal to the romantic imagination. She +never has, as a nation, counted for anything. Physically soaring +out of sight, morally and intellectually she has lain low and +said nothing. Not one idea, not one deed, has she to her credit. +All that is worth knowing of her history can be set forth without +compression in a few lines of a guide-book. Her one and only +hero—William Tell—never, as we now know, existed. He +has been proved to be a myth. Also, he is the one and only myth +that Switzerland has managed to create. He exhausted her poor +little stock of imagination. Living as pigmies among the blind +excesses of Nature, living on sufferance there, animalculae, her +sons have been overwhelmed from the outset, have had no chance +whatsoever of development. Even if they had a language of their +own, they would have no literature. Not one painter, not one +musician, have they produced; only couriers, guides, waiters, and +other parasites. A smug, tame, sly, dull, mercenary little race +of men, they exist by and for the alien tripper. They are the +fine flower of commercial civilisation, the shining symbol of +international comity, and have never done anybody any harm. I +cannot imagine why the King should not give them the incomparable +advertisement of a visit.</p> + +<p>Not that they are badly in need of advertisement over here. +Every year the British trippers to Switzerland vastly outnumber +the British trippers to any other land—a fact which shows +how little the romantic imagination tells as against cheapness +and comfort of hotels and the notion that a heart strained by +climbing is good for the health. And this fact does but make our +Sovereign’s abstention the more remarkable. Switzerland is +not ‘smart,’ but a King is not the figure-head merely +of his <i>entourage</i>: he is the whole nation’s +figure-head. Switzerland, alone among nations, is a British +institution, and King Edward ought not to snub her. That we +expect him to do so without protest from us, seems to me a rather +grave symptom of flunkeyism.</p> + +<p>Fiercely resenting that imputation, you proceed to raise +difficulties. ‘Who,’ you ask, ‘would there be +to receive the King in the name of the Swiss nation?’ I +promptly answer, ‘The President of the Swiss +Republic.’ You did not expect that. You had quite +forgotten, if indeed you had ever heard, that there was any such +person. For the life of you, you could not tell me his name. +Well, his name is not very widely known even in Switzerland. A +friend of mine, who was there lately, tells me that he asked one +Swiss after another what was the name of the President, and that +they all sought refuge in polite astonishment at such ignorance, +and, when pressed for the name, could only screw up their eyes, +snap their fingers, and feverishly declare that they had it on +the tips of their tongues. This is just as it should be. In an +ideal republic there should be no one whose name might not at any +moment slip the memory of his fellows. Some sort of foreman there +must be, for the State’s convenience; but the more obscure +he be, and the more automatic, the better for the ideal of +equality. In the Republics of France and of America the President +is of an extrusive kind. His office has been fashioned on the +monarchic model, and his whole position is anomalous. He has to +try to be ornamental as well as useful, a symbol as well as a +pivot. Obviously, it is absurd to single out one man as a symbol +of the equality of all men. And not less unreasonable is it to +expect him to be inspiring as a patriotic symbol, an incarnation +of his country. Only an anointed king, whose forefathers were +kings too, can be that. In France, where kings have been, no one +can get up the slightest pretence of emotion for the President. +If the President is modest and unassuming, and doesn’t, as +did the late M. Faure, make an ass of himself by behaving in a +kingly manner, he is safe from ridicule: the amused smiles that +follow him are not unkind. But in no case is any one proud of +him. Never does any one see France in him. In America, where no +kings have been, they are able to make a pretence of enthusiasm +for a President. But no real chord of national sentiment is +touched by this eminent gentleman who has no past or future +eminence, who has been shoved forward for a space and will anon +be sent packing in favour of some other upstart. Let some +princeling of a foreign State set foot in America, and lo! all +the inhabitants are tumbling over one another in their desire for +a glimpse of him—a desire which is the natural and pathetic +outcome of their unsatisfied inner craving for a dynasty of their +own. Human nature being what it is, a monarchy is the best +expedient, all the world over. But, given a republic, let the +thing be done thoroughly, let the appearance be well kept up, as +in Switzerland. Let the President be, as there, a furtive +creature and insignificant, not merely coming no man knows +whence, nor merely passing no man knows whither, but existing no +man knows where; and existing not even as a name—except on +the tip of the tongue. National dignity, as well as the +republican ideal, is served better thus. Besides, it is less +trying for the President.</p> + +<p>And yet, stronger than all my sense of what is right and +proper is the desire in me that the President of the Swiss +Republic should, just for once, be dragged forth, blinking, from +his burrow in Berne (Berne is the capital of Switzerland), into +the glare of European publicity, and be driven in a landau to the +railway station, there to await the King of England and kiss him +on either cheek when he dismounts from the train, while the +massed orchestras of all the principal hotels play our national +anthem—and also a Swiss national anthem, hastily composed +for the occasion. I want him to entertain the King, that evening, +at a great banquet, whereat His Majesty will have the +President’s wife on his right hand, and will make a brief +but graceful speech in the Swiss language (English, French, +German, and Italian, consecutively) referring to the glorious and +never-to-be-forgotten name of William Tell (embarrassed silence), +and to the vast number of his subjects who annually visit +Switzerland (loud and prolonged cheers). Next morning, let there +be a review of twenty thousand waiters from all parts of the +country, all the head-waiters receiving a modest grade of the +Victorian Order. Later in the day, let the King visit the +National Gallery—a hall filled with picture post-cards of +the most picturesque spots in Switzerland; and thence let him be +conducted to the principal factory of cuckoo-clocks, and, after +some of the clocks have been made to strike, be heard remarking +to the President, with a hearty laugh, that the sound is like +that of the cuckoo. How the second day of the visit would be +filled up, I do not know; I leave that to the President’s +discretion. Before his departure to the frontier, the King will +of course be made honorary manager of one of the principal +hotels.</p> + +<p>I hope to be present in Berne during these great days in the +President’s life. But, if anything happen to keep me here, +I shall content myself with the prospect of his visit to London. +I long to see him and his wife driving past, with the proper +escort of Life Guards, under a vista of quadrilingual mottoes, +bowing acknowledgments to us. I wonder what he is like. I picture +him as a small spare man, with a slightly grizzled beard, and +pleasant though shifty eyes behind a pince-nez. I picture him +frock-coated, bowler-hatted, and evidently nervous. His wife I +cannot at all imagine.</p> + +<p> </p> + +<p>A CLUB IN RUINS</p> + +<p>An antique ruin has its privileges. The longer the period of +its crumbling, the more do the owls build their nests in it, the +more do the excursionists munch in it their sandwiches. Thus, +year by year, its fame increases, till it looks back with +contempt on the days when it was a mere upright waterproof. Local +guide-books pander more and more slavishly to its pride; +leader-writers in need of a pathetic metaphor are more and more +frequently supplied by it. If there be any sordid question of +clearing it away to make room for something else, the public +outcry is positively deafening.</p> + +<p>Not that we are still under the sway of that peculiar cult +which beset us in the earlier part of the nineteenth century. A +bad poet or painter can no longer reap the reward of genius +merely by turning his attention to ruins under moonlight. Nor +does any one cause to be built in his garden a broken turret, for +the evocation of sensibility in himself and his guests. There +used to be one such turret near the summit of Campden Hill; but +that familiar imposture was rased a year or two ago, no one +protesting. <i>Fuit</i> the frantic factitious sentimentalism for +ruins. On the other hand, the sentiment for them is as strong as +ever it was. Decrepit Carisbrooke and its rivals annually tighten +their hold on Britannia’s heart.</p> + +<p>I do not grudge them their success. But the very fact that +they are so successful inclines me to reserve my own personal +sentiment rather for those unwept, unsung ruins which so often +confront me, here and there, in the streets of this aggressive +metropolis. The ruins made, not by Time, but by the ruthless +skill of Labour, the ruins of houses not old enough to be +sacrosanct nor new enough to keep pace with the demands of a +gasping and plethoric community—these are the ruins that +move <i>me</i> to tears. No owls flutter in them. No trippers +lunch in them. In no guide-book or leading-article will you find +them mentioned. Their pathetic interiors gape to the sky and to +the street, but nor gods nor men hold out a hand to save them. +The patterns of bedroom wall-papers, (chosen with what care, +after how long discussion! only a few short years or months ago) +stare out their obvious, piteous appeal to us for mercy. And +their dumb agony is echoed dumbly by the places where doors have +been—doors that lately were tapped at by respectful +knuckles; or the places where staircases have +been—staircases down whose banisters lately slid little +children, laughing. Exposed, humiliated, doomed, the home throws +out a hundred pleas to us. And the Pharisaic community passes by +on the other side of the way, in fear of a falling brick. Down +come the walls of the home, as quickly as pickaxes can send them. +Down they crumble, piecemeal, into the foundations, and are +carted away. Soon other walls will be rising—red-brick +‘residential’ walls, more in harmony with the +Zeitgeist. None but I pays any heed to the ruins. I am their only +friend. Me they attract so irresistibly that I haunt the door of +the hoarding that encloses them, and am frequently mistaken for +the foreman.</p> + +<p>A few summers ago, I was watching, with more than usual +emotion, the rasure of a great edifice at a corner of Hanover +Square. There were two reasons why this rasure especially +affected me. I had known the edifice so well, by sight, ever +since I was a small boy, and I had always admired it as a fine +example of that kind of architecture which is the most suitable +to London’s atmosphere. Though I must have passed it +thousands of times, I had never passed without an upward smile of +approval that gaunt and sombre façade, with its long +straight windows, its well-spaced columns, its long straight +coping against the London sky. My eyes deplored that these noble +and familiar things must perish. For sake of what they had +sheltered, my heart deplored that they must perish. The falling +edifice had not been exactly a home. It had been even more than +that. It had been a refuge from many homes. It had been a +club.</p> + +<p>Certainly it had not been a particularly distinguished club. +Its demolition could not have been stayed on the plea that +Charles James Fox had squandered his substance in its card-room, +or that Lord Melbourne had loved to doze on the bench in its +hall. Nothing sublime had happened in it. No sublime person had +belonged to it. Persons without the vaguest pretensions to +sublimity had always, I believe, found quick and easy entrance +into it. It had been a large nondescript affair. But (to adapt +Byron) a club’s a club tho’ every one’s in it. +The ceremony of election gives it a <i>cachet</i> which not even +the smartest hotel has. And then there is the note-paper, and +there are the newspapers, and the cigars at wholesale prices, and +the not-to-be-tipped waiters, and other blessings for mankind. If +the members of this club had but migrated to some other building, +taking their effects and their constitution with them, the ruin +would have been pathetic enough. But alas! the outward wreck was +a symbol, a result, of inner dissolution. Through the door of the +hoarding the two pillars of the front door told a sorry tale. +Pasted on either of them was a dingy bill, bearing the sinister +imprimatur of an auctioneer, and offering (in capitals of various +sizes) Bedroom Suites (Walnut and Mahogany), Turkey, Indian and +Wilton Pile Carpets, Two Full-sized Billiard-Tables, a Remington +Type-writer, a Double Door (Fire-Proof), and other objects not +less useful and delightful. The club, then, had gone to smash. +The members had been disbanded, driven out of this Eden by the +fiery sword of the Law, driven back to their homes. Sighing over +the marcescibility of human happiness, I peered between the +pillars into the excavated and chaotic hall. The porter’s +hatch was still there, in the wall. There it was, wondering why +no inquiries were made through it now, or, may be, why it had not +been sold into bondage with the double-door and the rest of the +fixtures. A melancholy relic of past glories! I crossed over to +the other side of the road, and passed my eye over the whole +ruin. The roof, the ceilings, most of the inner walls, had +already fallen. Little remained but the grim, familiar +façade—a thin husk. I noted (that which I had never +noted before) two iron grills in the masonry. Miserable +travesties of usefulness, ventilating the open air! Through the +gaping windows, against the wall of the next building, I saw in +mid-air the greenish Lincrusta Walton of what I guessed to have +been the billiard-room—the billiard-room that had boasted +two full-sized tables. Above it ran a frieze of white and gold. +It was interspersed with flat Corinthian columns. The gilding of +the capitals was very fresh, and glittered gaily under the summer +sunbeams.</p> + +<p>And hardly a day of the next autumn and winter passed but I +was drawn back to the ruin by a kind of lugubrious magnetism. The +strangest thing was that the ruin seemed to remain in practically +the same state as when first I had come upon it: the +façade still stood high. This might have been due to the +proverbial laziness of British workmen, but I did not think it +could be. The workmen were always plying their pick-axes, with +apparent gusto and assiduity, along the top of the building; +bricks and plaster were always crashing down into the depths and +sending up clouds of dust. I preferred to think the building +renewed itself, by some magical process, every night. I preferred +to think it was prepared thus to resist its aggressors for so +long a time that in the end there would be an intervention from +other powers. Perhaps from this site no ‘residential’ +affair was destined to scrape the sky? Perhaps that saint to whom +the club had dedicated itself would reappear, at length, glorious +equestrian, to slay the dragons who had infested and desecrated +his premises? I wondered whether he would then restore the ruins, +reinstating the club, and setting it for ever on a sound +commercial basis, or would leave them just as they were, a fixed +signal to sensibility.</p> + +<p>But, when first I saw the poor façade being pick-axed, +I did not ‘give’ it more than a fortnight. I had no +feeling but of hopeless awe and pity. The workmen on the coping +seemed to me ministers of inexorable Olympus, executing an +Olympian decree. And the building seemed to me a live victim, a +scapegoat suffering sullenly for sins it had not committed. To me +it seemed to be flinching under every rhythmic blow of those +well-wielded weapons, praying for the hour when sunset should +bring it surcease from that daily ordeal. I caught myself nodding +to it—a nod of sympathy, of hortation to endurance. +Immediately, I was ashamed of my lapse into anthropomorphism. I +told myself that my pity ought to be kept for the real men who +had been frequenters of the building, who now were waifs. I +reviewed the gaping, glassless windows through which they had +been wont to watch the human comedy. There they had stood, +puffing their smoke and cracking their jests, and tearing +women’s reputations to shreds.</p> + +<p>Not that I, personally, have ever heard a woman’s +reputation torn to shreds in a club window. A constant reader of +lady-novelists, I have always been hoping for this excitement, +but somehow it has never come my way. I am beginning to suspect +that it never will, and am inclined to regard it as a figment. +Such conversation as I have heard in clubs has been always of a +very mild, perfunctory kind. A social club (even though it be a +club with a definite social character) is a collection of +heterogeneous creatures, and its aim is perfect harmony and +good-fellowship. Thus any definite expression of opinion by any +member is regarded as dangerous. The ideal clubman is he who +looks genial and says nothing at all. Most Englishmen find little +difficulty in conforming with this ideal. They belong to a silent +race. Social clubs flourish, therefore, in England. Intelligent +foreigners, seeing them, recognise their charm, and envy us them, +and try to reproduce them at home. But the Continent is too +loquacious. On it social clubs quickly degenerate into +bear-gardens, and the basic ideal of good-fellowship goes by the +board. In Paris, Petersburg, Vienna, the only social clubs that +prosper are those which are devoted to games of +chance—those which induce silence by artificial means. Were +I a foreign visitor, taking cursory glances, I should doubtless +be delighted with the clubs of London. Had I the honour to be an +Englishman, I should doubtless love them. But being a foreign +resident, I am somewhat oppressed by them. I crave in them a +little freedom of speech, even though such freedom were their +ruin. I long for their silence to be broken here and there, even +though such breakage broke them with it. It is not enough for me +to hear a hushed exchange of mild jokes about the weather, or of +comparisons between what the <i>Times</i> says and what the +<i>Standard</i> says. I pine for a little vivacity, a little +boldness, a little variety, a few gestures. A London club, as it +is conducted, seems to me very like a catacomb. It is tolerable +so long as you do not actually belong to it. But when you do +belong to it, when you have outlived the fleeting gratification +at having been elected, when you…but I ought not to have +fallen into the second person plural. You, readers, are free-born +Englishmen. These clubs ‘come natural’ to you. You +love them. To them you slip eagerly from your homes. As for me, +poor alien, had I been a member of the club whose demolition has +been my theme, I should have grieved for it not one whit the more +bitterly. Indeed, my tears would have been a trifle less salt. It +was my detachment that enabled me to be so prodigal of pity.</p> + +<p>The poor waifs! Long did I stand, in the sunshine of that day +when first I saw the ruin, wondering and distressed, ruthful, +indignant that such things should be. I forgot on what errand I +had come out. I recalled it. Once or twice I walked away, bent on +its fulfilment. But I could not proceed further than a few yards. +I halted, looked over my shoulder, was drawn back to the spot, +drawn by the crude, insistent anthem of the pick-axes. The sun +slanted towards Notting Hill. Still I loitered, +spellbound… I was aware of some one at my side, some one +asking me a question. ‘I beg your pardon?’ I said. +The stranger was a tall man, bronzed and bearded. He repeated his +question. In answer, I pointed silently to the ruin. +‘<i>That?</i>’ he gasped. He stared vacantly. I saw +that his face had become pale under its sunburn. He looked from +the ruin to me. ‘You’re not joking with me?’ he +said thickly. I assured him that I was not. I assured him that +this was indeed the club to which he had asked to be directed. +‘But,’ he stammered, +‘but—but—’ ‘You were a +member?’ I suggested. ‘I <i>am</i> a member,’ +he cried. ‘And what’s more, I’m going to write +to the Committee.’ I suggested that there was one fatal +objection to such a course. I spoke to him calmly, soothed him +with words of reason, elicited from him, little by little, his +sad story. It appeared that he had been a member of the club for +ten years, but had never (except once, as a guest) been inside +it. He had been elected on the very day on which (by compulsion +of his father) he set sail for Australia. He was a mere boy at +the time. Bitterly he hated leaving old England; nor did he ever +find the life of a squatter congenial. The one thing which +enabled him to endure those ten years of unpleasant exile was the +knowledge that he was a member of a London club. Year by year, it +was a keen pleasure to him to send his annual subscription. It +kept him in touch with civilisation, in touch with Home. He loved +to know that when, at length, he found himself once again in the +city of his birth he would have a firm foothold on sociability. +The friends of his youth might die, or might forget him. But, as +member of a club, he would find substitutes for them in less than +no time. Herding bullocks, all day long, on the arid plains of +Central Australia, he used to keep up his spirits by thinking of +that first whisky-and-soda which he would order from a respectful +waiter as he entered his club. All night long, wrapped in his +blanket beneath the stars, he used to dream of that drink to +come, that first symbol of an unlost grip on civilisation… +He had arrived in London this very afternoon. Depositing his +luggage at an hotel, he had come straight to his club. ‘And +now…’ He filled up his aposiopesis with an uncouth +gesture, signifying ‘I may as well get back to +Australia.’</p> + +<p>I was on the point of offering to take him to my own club and +give him his first whisky-and-soda therein. But I refrained. The +sight of an extant club might have maddened the man. It certainly +was very hard for him, to have belonged to a club for ten years, +to have loved it so passionately from such a distance, and then +to find himself destined never to cross its threshold. Why, after +all, should he not cross its threshold? I asked him if he would +like to. ‘What,’ he growled, ‘would be the +good?’ I appealed, not in vain, to the imaginative side of +his nature. I went to the door of the hoarding, and explained +matters to the foreman; and presently, nodding to me solemnly, he +passed with the foreman through the gap between the doorposts. I +saw him crossing the excavated hall, crossing it along a plank, +slowly and cautiously. His attitude was very like +Blondin’s, but it had a certain tragic dignity which +Blondin’s lacked. And that was the last I saw of him. I +hailed a cab and drove away. What became of the poor fellow I do +not know. Often as I returned to the ruin, and long as I loitered +by it, him I never saw again. Perhaps he really did go straight +back to Australia. Or perhaps he induced the workmen to bury him +alive in the foundations. His fate, whatever it was, haunts +me.</p> + +<p> </p> + +<p>‘273’</p> + +<p>This is an age of prescriptions. Morning after morning, from +the back-page of your newspaper, quick and uncostly cures for +every human ill thrust themselves wildly on you. The age of +miracles is not past. But I would raise no false hopes of myself. +I am no thaumaturgist. Do you awake with a sinking sensation in +the stomach? Have you lost the power of assimilating food? Are +you oppressed with an indescribable lassitude? Can you no longer +follow the simplest train of thought? Are you troubled throughout +the night with a hacking cough? Are you—in fine, are you +but a tissue of all the most painful symptoms of all the most +malignant maladies ancient and modern? If so, skip this essay, +and try Somebody’s Elixir. The cure that I offer is but a +cure for overwrought nerves—a substitute for the ordinary +‘rest-cure.’ Nor is it absurdly cheap. Nor is it +instant. It will take a week or so of your time. But then, the +‘rest-cure’ takes at least a month. The scale of +payment for board and lodging may be, per diem, hardly lower than +in the ‘rest-cure’; but you will save all but a pound +or so of the very heavy fees that you would have to pay to your +doctor and your nurse (or nurses). And certainly, my cure is the +more pleasant of the two. My patient does not have to cease from +life. He is not undressed and tucked into bed and forbidden to +stir hand or foot during his whole term. He is not forbidden to +receive letters, or to read books, or to look on any face but his +nurse’s (or nurses’). Nor, above all, is he condemned +to the loathsome necessity of eating so much food as to make him +dread the sight of food. Doubtless, the grim, inexorable process +of the ‘rest-cure’ is very good for him who is strong +enough and brave enough to bear it, and rich enough to pay for +it. I address myself to the frailer, cowardlier, needier man. +Instead of ceasing from life, and entering purgatory, he need but +essay a variation in life. He need but go and stay by himself in +one of those vast modern hotels which abound along the South and +East coasts.</p> + +<p>You are disappointed? All simple ideas are disappointing. And +all good cures spring from simple ideas.</p> + +<p>The right method of treating overwrought nerves is to get the +patient away from himself—to make a new man of him; and +this trick can be done only by switching him off from his usual +environment, his usual habits. The ordinary rest-cure, by its +very harshness, intensifies a man’s personality at first, +drives him miserably within himself; and only by its long +duration does it gradually wear him down and build him up anew. +There is no harshness in the vast hotels which I have +recommended. You may eat there as little as you like, especially +if you are <i>en pension</i>. Letters may be forwarded to you +there; though, unless your case is a very mild one, I would +advise you not to leave your address at home. There are +reading-rooms where you can see all the newspapers; though I +advise you to ignore them. You suffer under no sense of tyranny. +And yet, no sooner have you signed your name in the +visitors’ book, and had your bedroom allotted to you, than +you feel that you have surrendered yourself irrepleviably. It is +not necessary to this illusion that you should pass under an +assumed name, unless you happen to be a very eminent actor, or +cricketer, or other idol of the nation, whose presence would +flutter the young persons at the bureau. If your nervous +breakdown be (as it more likely is) due to merely intellectual +distinction, these young persons will mete out to you no more +than the bright callous civility which they mete out impartially +to all (but those few) who come before them. To them you will be +a number, and to yourself you will have suddenly become a +number—the number graven on the huge brass label that +depends clanking from the key put into the hand of the summoned +chambermaid. You are merely (let us say) 273.</p> + +<p>Up you go in the lift, realising, as for the first time, your +insignificance in infinity, and rather proud to be even a number. +You recognise your double on the door that has been unlocked for +you. No prisoner, clapped into his cell, could feel less +personal, less important. A notice on the wall, politely +requesting you to leave your key at the bureau (as though you +were strong enough or capacious enough to carry it about with +you) comes as a pleasant reminder of your freedom. You remember +joyously that you are even free from yourself. You have begun a +new life, have forgotten the old. This mantelpiece, so strangely +and brightly bare of photographs or ‘knickknacks,’ is +meaning in its meaninglessness. And these blank, fresh walls, +that you have never seen, and that never were seen by any one +whom you know…their pattern is of poppies and mandragora, +surely. Poppies and mandragora are woven, too, on the brand-new +Axminster beneath your elastic step. ‘Come in!’ A +porter bears in your trunk, deposits it on a trestle at the foot +of the bed, unstraps it, leaves you alone with it. It seems to be +trying to remind you of something or other. You do not listen. +You laugh as you open it. You know that if you examined these +shirts you would find them marked ‘273.’ Before +dressing for dinner, you take a hot bath. There are patent taps, +some for fresh water, others for sea water. You hesitate. Yet you +know that whichever you touch will effuse but the water of Lethe, +after all. You dress before your fire. The coals have burnt now +to a lovely glow. Once and again, you eye them suspiciously. But +no, there are no faces in them. All’s well.</p> + +<p>Sleek and fresh, you sit down to dinner in the ‘Grande +Salle à Manger.’ Graven on your wine-glasses, +emblazoned on your soup-plate, are the armorial bearings of the +company that shelters you. The College of Arms might sneer at +them, be down on them, but to you they are a joy, in their grand +lack of links with history. They are a sympathetic symbol of your +own newness, your own impersonality. You glance down the endless +menu. It has been composed for a community. None of your +favourite dishes (you once had favourite dishes) appears in it, +thank heaven! You will work your way through it, steadily, +unquestioningly, gladly, with a communal palate. And the wine? +All wines are alike here, surely. You scour the list vaguely, and +order a pint of 273. Your eye roves over the adjacent tables.</p> + +<p>You behold a galaxy of folk evidently born, like yourself, +anew. Some, like yourself, are solitary. Others are with wives, +with children—but with new wives, new children. The +associations of home have been forgotten, even though +home’s actual appendages be here. The members of the little +domestic circles are using company manners. They are actually +making conversation, ‘breaking the ice.’ They are new +here to one another. They are new to themselves. How much newer +to you! You cannot ‘place’ them. That paterfamilias +with the red moustache—is he a soldier, a solicitor, a +stockbroker, what? You play vaguely, vainly, at the game of +attributions, while the little orchestra in yonder bower of +artificial palm-trees plays new, or seemingly new, cake-walks. +Who are they, these minstrels in the shadow? They seem not to be +the Red Hungarians, nor the Blue, nor the Hungarians of any other +colour of the spectrum. You set them down as the Colourless +Hungarians, and resume your study of the tables. They fascinate +you, these your fellow-diners. You fascinate them, doubtless. +They, doubtless, are cudgelling their brains to +‘spot’ <i>your</i> state in life—<i>your</i> +past, which now has escaped you. Next day, some of them are gone; +and you miss them, almost bitterly. But others succeed them, not +less detached and enigmatic than they. You must never speak to +one of them. You must never lapse into those casual acquaintances +of the ‘lounge’ or the smoking-room. Nor is it hard +to avoid them. No Englishman, how gregarious and garrulous +soever, will dare address another Englishman in whose eye is no +spark of invitation. There must be no such spark in yours. +Silence is part of the cure for you, and a very important part. +It is mainly through unaccustomed silence that your nerves are +made trim again. Usually, you are giving out in talk all that you +receive through your senses of perception. Keep silence now. Its +gold will accumulate in you at compound interest. You will +realise the joy of being full of reflections and ideas. You will +begin to hoard them proudly, like a miser. You will gloat over +your own cleverness—you, who but a few days since, were +feeling so stupid. Solitude in a crowd, silence among +chatterboxes—these are the best ministers to a mind +diseased. And with the restoration of the mind, the body will be +restored too. You, who were physically so limp and pallid, will +be a ruddy Hercules now. And when, at the moment of departure, +you pass through the hall, shyly distributing to the servants +that largesse which is so slight in comparison with what your +doctor and nurse (or nurses) would have levied on you, you will +feel that you are more than fit to resume that burden of +personality whereunder you had sunk. You will be victoriously +yourself again.</p> + +<p>Yet I think you will look back a little wistfully on the +period of your obliteration. People—for people are very +nice, really, most of them—will tell you that they have +missed you. You will reply that you did not miss yourself. And +you will go the more strenuously to your work and pleasure, so as +to have the sooner an excuse for a good riddance.</p> + +<p> </p> + +<p>A STUDY IN DEJECTION</p> + +<p>Riderless the horse was, and with none to hold his bridle. But +he waited patiently, submissively, there where I saw him, at the +shabby corner of a certain shabby little street in Chelsea. +‘My beautiful, my beautiful, thou standest meekly +by,’ sang Mrs. Norton of her Arab steed, ‘with thy +proudly-arched and glossy neck, thy dark and fiery eye.’ +Catching the eye of this other horse, I saw that such fire as +might once have blazed there had long smouldered away. Chestnut +though he was, he had no mettle. His chestnut coat was all dull +and rough, unkempt as that of an inferior cab-horse. Of his once +luxuriant mane there were but a few poor tufts now. His saddle +was torn and weather-stained. The one stirrup that dangled +therefrom was red with rust.</p> + +<p>I never saw in any creature a look of such unutterable +dejection. Dejection, in the most literal sense of the word, +indeed was his. He had been cast down. He had fallen from higher +and happier things. With his ‘arched neck,’ and with +other points which not neglect nor ill-usage could rob of their +old grace, he had kept something of his fallen day about him. In +the window of the little shop outside which he stood were things +that seemed to match him—things appealing to the sense that +he appealed to. A tarnished French mirror, a strip of faded +carpet, some rows of battered, tattered books, a few cups and +saucers that had erst been riveted and erst been dusted—all +these, in a gallimaufry of other languid odds and ends, seen +through this mud-splashed window, silently echoed the silent +misery of the horse. They were remembering Zion. They had been +beautiful once, and expensive, and well cared for, and admired, +and coveted. And now…</p> + +<p><i>They</i> had, at least, the consolation of being indoors. +Public laughing-stock though they were, they had a barrier of +glass between themselves and the irreverent world. To be warm and +dry, too, was something. Piteous, they could yet afford to pity +the horse. He was more ludicrously, more painfully, misplaced +than they. A real blood-horse that has done his work is rightly +left in the open air—turned out into some sweet meadow or +paddock. It would be cruel to make him spend his declining years +inside a house, where no grass is. Is it less cruel that a fine +old rocking-horse should be thrust from the nursery out into the +open air, upon the pavement?</p> + +<p>Perhaps some child had just given the horse a contemptuous +shove in passing. For he was rocking gently when I chanced to see +him. Nor did he cease to rock, with a slight creak upon the +pavement, so long as I watched him. A particularly black and +bitter north wind was blowing round the corner of the street. +Perhaps it was this that kept the horse in motion. Boreas +himself, invisible to my mortal eyes, may have been astride the +saddle, lashing the tired old horse to this futile activity. But +no, I think rather that the poor thing was rocking of his own +accord, rocking to attract my attention. He saw in me a possible +purchaser. He wanted to show me that he was still sound in wind +and limb. Had I a small son at home? If so, here was the very +mount for him. None of your frisky, showy, first-hand young +brutes, on which no fond parent ought to risk his +offspring’s bones; but a sound, steady-going, well-mannered +old hack with never a spark of vice in him! Such was the message +that I read in the glassy eye fixed on me. The nostril of faded +scarlet seemed for a moment to dilate and quiver. At last, at +last, was some one going to inquire his price?</p> + +<p>Once upon a time, in a far-off fashionable toy-shop, his price +had been prohibitive; and he, the central attraction behind the +gleaming shop-window, had plumed himself on his expensiveness. He +had been in no hurry to be bought. It had seemed to him a good +thing to stand there motionless, majestic, day after day, far +beyond the reach of average purses, and having in his mien +something of the frigid nobility of the horses on the Parthenon +frieze, with nothing at all of their unreality. A coat of real +chestnut hair, glossy, glorious! From end to end of the Parthenon +frieze not one of the horses had that. From end to end of the +toy-shop that exhibited him not one of the horses was thus +graced. Their flanks were mere wood, painted white, with +arbitrary blotches of grey here and there. Miserable creatures! +It was difficult to believe that they had souls. No wonder they +were cheap, and ‘went off,’ as the shopman said, so +quickly, whilst <i>he</i> stayed grandly on, cynosure of eyes +that dared not hope for him. Into bondage they went off, those +others, and would be worked to death, doubtless, by brutal little +boys.</p> + +<p>When, one fine day, a lady was actually not shocked by the +price demanded for him, his pride was hurt. And when, that +evening, he was packed in brown paper and hoisted to the roof of +a four-wheeler, he faced the future fiercely. Who was this lady +that her child should dare bestride him? With a biblical +‘ha, ha,’ he vowed that the child should not stay +long in saddle: he must be thrown—badly—even though +it <i>was</i> his seventh birthday. But this wicked intention +vanished while the child danced around him in joy and wonder. +Never yet had so many compliments been showered on him. Here, +surely, was more the manner of a slave than of a master. And how +lightly the child rode him, with never a tug or a kick! And oh, +how splendid it was to be flying thus through the air! Horses +were made to be ridden; and he had never before savoured the true +joy of life, for he had never known his own strength and +fleetness. Forward! Backward! Faster, faster! To floor! To +ceiling! Regiments of leaden soldiers watched his wild career. +Noah’s quiet sedentary beasts gaped up at him in +wonderment—as tiny to him as the gaping cows in the fields +are to you when you pass by in an express train. This was life +indeed! He remembered Katafalto—remembered Eclipse and the +rest nowhere. Aye, thought he, and even thus must Black Bess have +rejoiced along the road to York. And Bucephalus, skimming under +Alexander the plains of Asia, must have had just this glorious +sense of freedom. Only less so! Not Pegasus himself can have +flown more swiftly. Pegasus, at last, became a constellation in +the sky. ‘Some day,’ reflected the rocking-horse, +when the ride was over, ‘I, too, shall die; and five stars +will appear on the nursery ceiling.’</p> + +<p>Alas for the vanity of equine ambition! I wonder by what +stages this poor beast came down in the world. Did the little +boy’s father go bankrupt, leaving it to be sold in a +‘lot’ with the other toys? Or was it merely given +away, when the little boy grew up, to a poor but procreative +relation, who anon became poorer? I should like to think that it +had been mourned. But I fear that whatever mourning there may +have been for it must have been long ago discarded. The creature +did not look as if it had been ridden in any recent decade. It +looked as if it had almost abandoned the hope of ever being +ridden again. It was but hoping against hope now, as it stood +rocking there in the bleak twilight. Bright warm nurseries were +for younger, happier horses. Still it went on rocking, to show me +that it <i>could</i> rock.</p> + +<p>The more sentimental a man is, the less is he helpful; the +more loth is he to cancel the cause of his emotion. I did not buy +the horse.</p> + +<p>A few days later, passing that way, I wished to renew my +emotion; but lo! the horse was gone. Had some finer person than I +bought it?—towed it to the haven where it would be? +Likelier, it had but been relegated to some mirky recess of the +shop… I hope it has room to rock there.</p> + +<p> </p> + +<p>A PATHETIC IMPOSTURE</p> + +<p>Lord Rosebery once annoyed the Press by declaring that his +ideal newspaper was one which should give its news without +comment. Doubtless he was thinking of the commonweal. Yet a plea +for no comments might be made, with equal force, in behalf of the +commentators themselves. Occupations that are injurious to the +persons engaged in them ought not to be encouraged. The writing +of ‘leaders’ and ‘notes’ is one of these +occupations. The practice of it, more than of any other, depends +on, and fosters hypocrisy, worst of vices. In a sense, every kind +of writing is hypocritical. It has to be done with an air of +gusto, though no one ever yet enjoyed the act of writing. Even a +man with a specific gift for writing, with much to express, with +perfect freedom in choice of subject and manner of expression, +with indefinite leisure, does not write with real gusto. But in +him the pretence is justified: he has enjoyed thinking out his +subject, he will delight in his work when it is done. Very +different is the pretence of one who writes at top-speed, on a +set subject, what he <i>thinks</i> the editor <i>thinks</i> the +proprietor <i>thinks</i> the public thinks nice. If he happen to +have a talent for writing, his work will be but the more painful, +and his hypocrisy the greater. The chances are, though, that the +talent has already been sucked out of him by Journalism, that +vampire. To her, too, he will have forfeited any fervour he may +have had, any learning, any gaiety. How can he, the jaded +interpreter, hold any opinion, feel any enthusiasm?—without +leisure, keep his mind in cultivation?—be sprightly to +order, at unearthly hours in a whir-r-ring office? To order! Yes, +sprightliness is compulsory there; so are weightiness, and +fervour, and erudition. He must seem to abound in these +advantages, or another man will take his place. He must disguise +himself at all costs. But disguises are not easy to make; they +require time and care, which he cannot afford. So he must snatch +up ready-made disguises—unhook them, rather. He must know +all the cant-phrases, the cant-references. There are very, very +many of them, and belike it is hard to keep them all at +one’s finger-tips. But, at least, there is no difficulty in +collecting them. Plod through the ‘leaders’ and +‘notes’ in half-a-dozen of the daily papers, and you +will bag whole coveys of them.</p> + +<p>Most of the morning papers still devote much space to the +old-fashioned kind of ‘leader,’ in which the pretence +is of weightiness, rather than of fervour, sprightliness, or +erudition. The effect of weightiness is obtained simply by a +stupendous disproportion of language to sense. The longest and +most emphatic words are used for the simplest and most trivial +statements, and they are always so elaborately qualified as to +leave the reader with a vague impression that a very difficult +matter, which he himself cannot make head or tail of, has been +dealt with in a very judicial and exemplary manner.</p> + +<p>A leader-writer would not, for instance, say—</p> + +<p><i>Lord Rosebery has made a paradox.</i></p> + +<p>He would say:—</p> + +<p><i>Lord Rosebery</i></p> + +<p><i>whether intentionally or otherwise, we leave our readers to +decide,</i></p> + +<p>or, <i>with seeming conviction,</i></p> + +<p>or, <i>doubtless giving rein to the playful humour which is +characteristic of him,</i></p> + +<p><i>has</i></p> + +<p><i>expressed a sentiment,</i></p> + +<p>or, <i>taken on himself to enunciate a theory,</i></p> + +<p>or, <i>made himself responsible for a dictum,</i></p> + +<p><i>which,</i></p> + +<p><i>we venture to assert,</i></p> + +<p>or, <i>we have little hesitation in declaring,</i></p> + +<p>or, <i>we may be pardoned for thinking,</i></p> + +<p>or, <i>we may say without fear of contradiction,</i></p> + +<p><i>is</i></p> + +<p><i>nearly akin to</i></p> + +<p>or, <i>not very far removed from</i></p> + +<p><i>the paradoxical.</i></p> + +<p>But I will not examine further the trick of +weightiness—it takes up too much of my space. Besides, +these long ‘leaders’ are a mere survival, and will +soon disappear altogether. The ‘notes’ are the +characteristic feature of the modern newspaper, and it is in them +that the modern journalist displays his fervour, sprightliness, +and erudition. ‘Note’-writing, like chess, has +certain recognised openings, <i>e.g.</i>:—</p> + +<p><i>There is no new thing under the sun.</i></p> + +<p><i>It is always the unexpected that happens.</i></p> + +<p><i>Nature, as we know, abhors a vacuum.</i></p> + +<p><i>The late Lord Coleridge once electrified his court by +inquiring ‘Who is Connie Gilchrist?’</i></p> + +<p>And here are some favourite methods of conclusion:—</p> + +<p><i>A mad world, my masters!</i></p> + +<p><i>’Tis true ’tis pity, and pity ’tis +’tis true.</i></p> + +<p><i>There is much virtue in that ‘if.’</i></p> + +<p><i>But that, as Mr. Kipling would say, is another +story.</i></p> + +<p><i>Si non è vero, etc.</i></p> + +<p>or (lighter style)</p> + +<p><i>We fancy we recognise here the hand of Mr. Benjamin +Trovato.</i></p> + +<p>Not less inevitable are such parallelisms as:—</p> + +<p><i>Like Topsy, perhaps it ‘growed.’</i></p> + +<p><i>Like the late Lord Beaconsfield on a famous occasion, +‘on the side of the angels.’</i></p> + +<p><i>Like Brer Rabbit, ‘To lie low and say +nuffin.’</i></p> + +<p><i>Like Oliver Twist, ‘To ask for more.’</i></p> + +<p><i>Like Sam Weller’s knowledge of</i> <i>London, +‘extensive and peculiar.’</i></p> + +<p><i>Like Napoleon, a believer in ‘the big +battalions.’</i></p> + +<p>Nor let us forget Pyrrhic victory, Parthian dart, and Homeric +laughter; <i>quos deus vult</i> and <i>nil de mortuis;</i> Sturm +und Drang; masterly inactivity, unctuous rectitude, mute +inglorious Miltons, and damned good-natured friends; the sword of +Damocles, the thin edge of the wedge, the long arm of +coincidence, and the soul of goodness in things evil; +Hobson’s choice, Frankenstein’s monster, +Macaulay’s schoolboy, Lord Burleigh’s nod, Sir Boyle +Roche’s bird, Mahomed’s coffin, and Davy +Jones’s locker.</p> + +<p>A melancholy catalogue, is it not? But it is less melancholy +for you who read it here, than for them whose existence depends +on it, who draw from it a desperate means of seeming to +accomplish what is impossible. And yet these are the men who +shrank in horror from Lord Rosebery’s merciful idea. They +ought to be saved despite themselves. Might not a short Act of +Parliament be passed, making all comment in daily newspapers +illegal? In a way, of course, it would be hard on the +commentators. Having lost the power of independent thought, +having sunk into a state of chronic dulness, apathy and +insincerity, they could hardly, be expected to succeed in any of +the ordinary ways of life. They could not compete with their +fellow-creatures; no door but would be bolted if they knocked on +it. What would become of them? Probably they would have to perish +in what they would call ‘what the late Lord Goschen would +have called "splendid isolation."’ But such an end were +sweeter, I suggest to them, than the life they are leading.</p> + +<p> </p> + +<p>THE DECLINE OF THE GRACES</p> + +<p>Have you read <i>The Young Lady’s Book</i>? You have had +plenty of time to do so, for it was published in 1829. It was +described by the two anonymous Gentlewomen who compiled it as +‘A Manual for Elegant Recreations, Exercises, and +Pursuits.’ You wonder they had nothing better to think of? +You suspect them of having been triflers? They were not, believe +me. They were careful to explain, at the outset, that the Virtues +of Character were what a young lady should most assiduously +cultivate. They, in their day, labouring under the shadow of the +eighteenth century, had somehow in themselves that high moral +fervour which marks the opening of the twentieth century, and is +said to have come in with Mr. George Bernard Shaw. But, unlike +us, they were not concerned wholly with the inward and spiritual +side of life. They cared for the material surface, too. They were +learned in the frills and furbelows of things. They gave, indeed, +a whole chapter to ‘Embroidery.’ Another they gave to +‘Archery,’ another to ‘The Aviary,’ +another to ‘The Escrutoire.’ Young ladies do not now +keep birds, nor shoot with bow and arrow; but they do still, in +some measure, write letters; and so, for sake of historical +comparison, let me give you a glance at ‘The +Escrutoire.’ It is not light reading.</p> + +<p>‘For careless scrawls ye boast of no pretence;</p> + +<p>Fair Russell wrote, as well as spoke, with sense.’</p> + +<p>Thus is the chapter headed, with a delightful little wood +engraving of ‘Fair Russell,’ looking pre-eminently +sensible, at her desk, to prepare the reader for the imminent +welter of rules for ‘decorous composition.’ Not that +pedantry is approved. ‘Ease and simplicity, an even flow of +unlaboured diction, and an artless arrangement of obvious +sentiments’ is the ideal to be striven for. ‘A +metaphor may be used with advantage’ by any young lady, but +only ‘if it occur naturally.’ And ‘allusions +are elegant,’ but only ‘when introduced with ease, +and when they are well understood by those to whom they are +addressed.’ ‘An antithesis renders a passage +piquant’; but the dire results of a too-frequent indulgence +in it are relentlessly set forth. Pages and pages are devoted to +a minute survey of the pit-falls of punctuation. But when the +young lady of that period had skirted all these, and had observed +all the manifold rules of caligraphy that were here laid down for +her, she was not, even then, out of the wood. Very special stress +was laid on ‘the use of the seal.’ Bitter scorn was +poured on young ladies who misused the seal. ‘It is a habit +of some to thrust the wax into the flame of the candle, and the +moment a morsel of it is melted, to daub it on the paper; and +when an unsightly mass is gathered together, to pass the seal +over the tongue with ridiculous haste—press it with all the +strength which the sealing party possesses—and the result +is, an impression which raises a blush on her cheek.’</p> + +<p>Well! The young ladies of that day were ever expected to +exhibit sensibility, and used to blush, just as they wept or +fainted, for very slight causes. Their tears and their swoons did +not necessarily betoken much grief or agitation; nor did a rush +of colour to the cheek mean necessarily that they were +overwhelmed with shame. To exhibit various emotions in the +drawing-room was one of the Elegant Exercises in which these +young ladies were drilled thoroughly. And their habit of +simulation was so rooted in sense of duty that it merged into +sincerity. If a young lady did not swoon at the breakfast-table +when her Papa read aloud from <i>The Times</i> that the Duke of +Wellington was suffering from a slight chill, the chances were +that she would swoon quite unaffectedly when she realised her +omission. Even so, we may be sure that a young lady whose cheek +burned not at sight of the letter she had sealed +untidily—‘unworthily’ the Manual calls +it—would anon be blushing for her shamelessness. Such a +thing as the blurring of the family crest, or as the pollution of +the profile of Pallas Athene with the smoke of the taper, was +hardly, indeed, one of those ‘very slight causes’ to +which I have referred. The Georgian young lady was imbued through +and through with the sense that it was her duty to be gracefully +efficient in whatsoever she set her hand to. To the young lady of +to-day, belike, she will seem accordingly ridiculous—seem +poor-spirited, and a pettifogger. True, she set her hand to no +grandiose tasks. She was not allowed to become a hospital nurse, +for example, or an actress. The young lady of to-day, when she +hears in herself a ‘vocation’ for tending the sick, +would willingly, without an instant’s preparation, assume +responsibility for the lives of a whole ward at St. +Thomas’s. This responsibility is not, however, thrust on +her. She has to submit to a long and tedious course of training +before she may do so much as smooth a pillow. The boards of the +theatre are less jealously hedged in than those of the hospital. +If our young lady have a wealthy father, and retain her +schoolroom faculty for learning poetry by heart, there is no +power on earth to prevent her from making her début, +somewhere, as Juliet—if she be so inclined; and such is +usually her inclination. That her voice is untrained, that she +cannot scan blank-verse, that she cannot gesticulate with grace +and propriety, nor move with propriety and grace across the +stage, matters not a little bit—to our young lady. +‘Feeling,’ she will say, ‘is everything’; +and, of course, she, at the age of eighteen, has more feeling +than Juliet, that ‘flapper,’ could have had. All +those other things—those little technical +tricks—‘can be picked up,’ or ‘will +come.’ But no; I misrepresent our young lady. If she be +conscious that there are such tricks to be played, she despises +them. When, later, she finds the need to learn them, she still +despises them. It seems to her ridiculous that one should not +speak and comport oneself as artlessly on the stage as one does +off it. The notion of speaking or comporting oneself with +conscious art in real life would seem to her quite monstrous. It +would puzzle her as much as her grandmother would have been +puzzled by the contrary notion.</p> + +<p>Personally, I range myself on the grandmother’s side. I +take my stand shoulder to shoulder with the Graces. On the banner +that I wave is embroidered a device of prunes and prisms.</p> + +<p>I am no blind fanatic, however. I admit that artlessness is a +charming idea. I admit that it is sometimes charming as a +reality. I applaud it (all the more heartily because it is rare) +in children. But then, children, like the young of all animals +whatsoever, have a natural grace. As a rule, they begin to show +it in their third year, and to lose it in their ninth. Within +that span of six years they can be charming without intention; +and their so frequent failure in charm is due to their voluntary +or enforced imitation of the ways of their elders. In Georgian +and Early Victorian days the imitation was always enforced. +Grown-up people had good manners, and wished to see them +reflected in the young. Nowadays, the imitation is always +voluntary. Grown-up people have no manners at all; whereas they +certainly have a very keen taste for the intrinsic charm of +children. They wish children to be perfectly natural. That is +(æsthetically at least) an admirable wish. My complaint +against these grown-up people is, that they themselves, whom time +has robbed of their natural grace as surely as it robs the other +animals, are content to be perfectly natural. This contentment I +deplore, and am keen to disturb.</p> + +<p>I except from my indictment any young lady who may read these +words. I will assume that she differs from the rest of the human +race, and has not, never had, anything to learn in the art of +conversing prettily, of entering or leaving a room or a vehicle +gracefully, of writing appropriate letters, <i>et patati et +patata.</i> I will assume that all these accomplishments came +naturally to her. She will now be in a mood to accept my +proposition that of her contemporaries none seems to have been so +lucky as herself. She will agree with me that other girls need +training. She will not deny that grace in the little affairs of +life is a thing which has to be learned. Some girls have a far +greater aptitude for learning it than others; but, with one +exception, no girls have it in them from the outset. It is a not +less complicated thing than is the art of acting, or of nursing +the sick, and needs for the acquirement of it a not less +laborious preparation.</p> + +<p>Is it worth the trouble? Certainly the trouble is not taken. +The ‘finishing school,’ wherein young ladies were +taught to be graceful, is a thing of the past. It must have been +a dismal place; but the dismalness of it—the strain of +it—was the measure of its indispensability. There I beg the +question. Is grace itself indispensable? Certainly, it has been +dispensed with. It isn’t reckoned with. To sit perfectly +mute ‘in company,’ or to chatter on at the top of +one’s voice; to shriek with laughter; to fling oneself into +a room and dash oneself out of it; to collapse on chairs or +sofas; to sprawl across tables; to slam doors; to write, without +punctuation, notes that only an expert in handwriting could read, +and only an expert in mis-spelling could understand; to hustle, +to bounce, to go straight ahead—to be, let us say, +perfectly natural in the midst of an artificial civilisation, is +an ideal which the young ladies of to-day are neither publicly +nor privately discouraged from cherishing. The word +‘cherishing’ implies a softness of which they are not +guilty. I hasten to substitute ‘pursuing.’ If these +young ladies were not in the aforesaid midst of an artificial +civilisation, I should be the last to discourage their pursuit. +If they were Amazons, for example, spending their lives beneath +the sky, in tilth of stubborn fields, and in armed conflict with +fierce men, it would be unreasonable to expect of them any +sacrifice to the Graces. But they are exposed to no such +hardships. They have a really very comfortable sort of life. They +are not expected to be useful. (I am writing all the time, of +course, about the young ladies in the affluent classes.) And it +seems to me that they, in payment of their debt to Fate, ought to +occupy the time that is on their hands by becoming ornamental, +and increasing the world’s store of beauty. In a sense, +certainly, they are ornamental. It is a strange fact, and an +ironic, that they spend quite five times the annual amount that +was spent by their grandmothers on personal adornment. If they +can afford it, well and good: let us have no sumptuary law. But +plenty of pretty dresses will not suffice. Pretty manners are +needed with them, and are prettier than they.</p> + +<p>I had forgotten men. Every defect that I had noted in the +modern young woman is not less notable in the modern young man. +Briefly, he is a boor. If it is true that ‘manners makyth +man,’ one doubts whether the British race can be +perpetuated. The young Englishman of to-day is inferior to +savages and to beasts of the field in that they are eager to show +themselves in an agreeable and seductive light to the females of +their kind, whilst he regards any such effort as beneath his +dignity. Not that he cultivates dignity in demeanour. He merely +slouches. Unlike his feminine counterpart, he lets his raiment +match his manners. Observe him any afternoon, as he passes down +Piccadilly, sullenly, with his shoulders humped, and his hat +clapped to the back of his head, and his cigarette dangling +almost vertically from his lips. It seems only appropriate that +his hat is a billy-cock, and his shirt a flannel one, and that +his boots are brown ones. Thus attired, he is on his way to pay a +visit of ceremony to some house at which he has recently dined. +No; that is the sort of visit he never pays. (I must confess I +don’t myself.) But one remembers the time when no +self-respecting youth would have shown himself in Piccadilly +without the vesture appropriate to that august highway. Nowadays +there is no care for appearances. Comfort is the one aim. Any +care for appearances is regarded rather as a sign of effeminacy. +Yet never, in any other age of the world’s history, has it +been regarded so. Indeed, elaborate dressing used to be deemed by +philosophers an outcome of the sex-instinct. It was supposed that +men dressed themselves finely in order to attract the admiration +of women, just as peacocks spread their plumage with a similar +purpose. Nor do I jettison the old theory. The declension of +masculine attire in England began soon after the time when +statistics were beginning to show the great numerical +preponderance of women over men; and is it fanciful to trace the +one fact to the other? Surely not. I do not say that either sex +is attracted to the other by elaborate attire. But I believe that +each sex, consciously or unconsciously, uses this elaboration for +this very purpose. Thus the over-dressed girl of to-day and the +ill-dressed youth are but symbols of the balance of our +population. The one is pleading, the other scorning. ‘Take +me!’ is the message borne by the furs and the pearls and +the old lace. ‘I’ll see about that when I’ve +had a look round!’ is the not pretty answer conveyed by the +billy-cock and the flannel shirt.</p> + +<p>I dare say that fine manners, like fine clothes, are one of +the stratagems of sex. This theory squares at once with the +modern young man’s lack of manners. But how about the +modern young woman’s not less obvious lack? Well, the +theory will square with that, too. The modern young woman’s +gracelessness may be due to her conviction that men like a girl +to be thoroughly natural. She knows that they have a very high +opinion of themselves; and what, thinks she, more natural than +that they should esteem her in proportion to her power of +reproducing the qualities that are most salient in themselves? +Men, she perceives, are clumsy, and talk loud, and have no +drawing-room accomplishments, and are rude; and she proceeds to +model herself on them. Let us not blame her. Let us blame rather +her parents or guardians, who, though they well know that a +masculine girl attracts no man, leave her to the devices of her +own inexperience. Girls ought not to be allowed, as they are, to +run wild. So soon as they have lost the natural grace of +childhood, they should be initiated into that course of +artificial training through which their grandmothers passed +before them, and in virtue of which their grandmothers were +pleasing. This will not, of course, ensure husbands for them all; +but it will certainly tend to increase the number of marriages. +Nor is it primarily for that sociological reason that I plead for +a return to the old system of education. I plead for it, first +and last, on æsthetic grounds. Let the Graces be cultivated +for their own sweet sake.</p> + +<p>The difficulty is how to begin. The mothers of the rising +generation were brought up in the unregenerate way. Their scraps +of oral tradition will need to be supplemented by much research. +I advise them to start their quest by reading <i>The Young +Lady’s Book.</i> Exactly the right spirit is therein +enshrined, though of the substance there is much that could not +be well applied to our own day. That chapter on ‘The +Escrutoire,’ for example, belongs to a day that cannot be +recalled. We can get rid of bad manners, but we cannot substitute +the Sedan-chair for the motor-car; and the penny post, with +telephones and telegrams, has, in our own beautiful phrase, +‘come to stay,’ and has elbowed the art of +letter-writing irrevocably from among us. But notes are still +written; and there is no reason why they should not be written +well. Has the mantle of those anonymous gentlewomen who wrote +<i>The Young Lady’s Book</i> fallen on no one? Will no one +revise that ‘Manual of Elegant Recreations, Exercises, and +Pursuits,’ adapting it to present needs?… A few +hints as to Deportment in the Motor-Car; the exact Angle whereat +to hold the Receiver of a Telephone, and the exact Key wherein to +pitch the Voice; the Conduct of a Cigarette… I see a wide +and golden vista.</p> + +<p> </p> + +<p>WHISTLER’S WRITING</p> + +<p>No book-lover, I. Give me an uninterrupted view of my +fellow-creatures. The most tedious of them pleases me better than +the best book. You see, I admit that some of them are tedious. I +do not deem alien from myself nothing that is human: I +discriminate my fellow-creatures according to their contents. And +in that respect I am not more different in my way from the true +humanitarian than from the true bibliophile in his. To him the +content of a book matters not at all. He loves books because they +are books, and discriminates them only by the irrelevant standard +of their rarity. A rare book is not less dear to him because it +is unreadable, even as to the snob a dull duke is as good as a +bright one. Indeed, why should he bother about readableness? He +doesn’t want to read. ‘Uncut edges’ for him, +when he can get them; and, even when he can’t, the notion +of reading a rare edition would seem to him quite uncouth and +preposterous The aforesaid snob would as soon question His Grace +about the state of His Grace’s soul. I, on the other hand, +whenever human company is denied me, have often a desire to read. +Reading, I prefer cut edges, because a paper-knife is one of the +things that have the gift of invisibility whenever they are +wanted; and because one’s thumb, in prising open the pages, +so often affects the text. Many volumes have I thus mutilated, +and I hope that in the sale-rooms of a sentimental posterity they +may fetch higher prices than their duly uncut duplicates. So long +as my thumb tatters merely the margin, I am quite equanimous. If +I were reading a First Folio Shakespeare by my fireside, and if +the matchbox were ever so little beyond my reach, I vow I would +light my cigarette with a spill made from the margin of whatever +page I were reading. I am neat, scrupulously neat, in regard to +the things I care about; but a book, as a book, is not one of +these things.</p> + +<p>Of course, a book may happen to be in itself a beautiful +object. Such a book I treat tenderly, as one would a flower. And +such a book is, in its brown-papered boards, whereon gleam little +gilt italics and a little gilt butterfly, Whistler’s +<i>Gentle Art of Making Enemies.</i> It happens to be also a book +which I have read again and again—a book that has often +travelled with me. Yet its cover is as fresh as when first, some +twelve years since, it came into my possession. A flower freshly +plucked, one would say—a brown-and-yellow flower, with a +little gilt butterfly fluttering over it. And its inner petals, +its delicately proportioned pages, are as white and undishevelled +as though they never had been opened. The book lies open before +me, as I write. I must be careful of my pen’s transit from +inkpot to MS.</p> + +<p>Yet, I know, many worthy folk would like the book blotted out +of existence. These are they who understand and love the art of +painting, but neither love nor understand writing as an art. For +them <i>The Gentle Art of Making Enemies</i> is but something +unworthy of a great man. Certainly, it is a thing incongruous +with a great hero. And for most people it is painful not to +regard a great man as also a great hero; hence all the efforts to +explain away the moral characteristics deducible from <i>The +Gentle Art of Making Enemies,</i> and to prove that Whistler, +beneath a prickly surface, was saturated through and through with +the quintessence of the Sermon on the Mount.</p> + +<p>Well! hero-worship is a very good thing. It is a wholesome +exercise which we ought all to take, now and again. Only, let us +not strain ourselves by overdoing it. Let us not indulge in it +too constantly. Let hero-worship be reserved for heroes. And +there was nothing heroic about Whistler, except his unfaltering +devotion to his own ideals in art. No saint was he, and none +would have been more annoyed than he by canonisation; would he +were here to play, as he would have played incomparably, the +devil’s advocate! So far as he possessed the Christian +virtues, his faith was in himself, his hope was for the +immortality of his own works, and his charity was for the defects +in those works. He is known to have been an affectionate son, an +affectionate husband; but, for the rest, all the tenderness in +him seems to have been absorbed into his love for such things in +nature as were expressible through terms of his own art. As a man +in relation to his fellow-men, he cannot, from any purely +Christian standpoint, be applauded. He was inordinately vain and +cantankerous. Enemies, as he has wittily implied, were a +necessity to his nature; and he seems to have valued friendship +(a thing never really valuable, in itself, to a really vain man) +as just the needful foundation for future enmity. Quarrelling and +picking quarrels, he went his way through life blithely. Most of +these quarrels were quite trivial and tedious. In the ordinary +way, they would have been forgotten long ago, as the trivial and +tedious details in the lives of other great men are forgotten. +But Whistler was great not merely in painting, not merely as a +wit and dandy in social life. He had, also, an extraordinary +talent for writing. He was a born writer. He wrote, in his way, +perfectly; and his way was his own, and the secret of it has died +with him. Thus, conducting them through the Post Office, he has +conducted his squabbles to immortality.</p> + +<p>Immortality is a big word. I do not mean by it that so long as +this globe shall endure, the majority of the crawlers round it +will spend the greater part of their time in reading <i>The +Gentle Art of Making Enemies.</i> Even the pre-eminently immortal +works of Shakespeare are read very little. The average of time +devoted to them by Englishmen cannot (even though one assess Mr. +Frank Harris at eight hours per diem, and Mr. Sidney Lee at +twenty-four) tot up to more than a small fraction of a second in +a lifetime reckoned by the Psalmist’s limit. When I dub +Whistler an immortal writer, I do but mean that so long as there +are a few people interested in the subtler ramifications of +English prose as an art-form, so long will there be a few +constantly-recurring readers of <i>The Gentle Art.</i></p> + +<p>There are in England, at this moment, a few people to whom +prose appeals as an art; but none of them, I think, has yet done +justice to Whistler’s prose. None has taken it with the +seriousness it deserves. I am not surprised. When a man can +express himself through two media, people tend to take him +lightly in his use of the medium to which he devotes the lesser +time and energy, even though he use that medium not less +admirably than the other, and even though they themselves care +about it more than they care about the other. Perhaps this very +preference in them creates a prejudice against the man who does +not share it, and so makes them sceptical of his power. Anyhow, +if Disraeli had been unable to express himself through the medium +of political life, Disraeli’s novels would long ago have +had the due which the expert is just beginning to give them. Had +Rossetti not been primarily a poet, the expert in painting would +have acquired long ago his present penetration into the peculiar +value of Rossetti’s painting. Likewise, if Whistler had +never painted a picture, and, even so, had written no more than +he actually did write, this essay in appreciation would have been +forestalled again and again. As it is, I am a sort of herald. +And, however loudly I shall blow my trumpet, not many people will +believe my message. For many years to come, it will be the +fashion among literary critics to pooh-pooh Whistler, the writer, +as an amateur. For Whistler was primarily a painter—not +less than was Rossetti primarily a poet, and Disraeli a +statesman. And he will not live down quicklier than they the +taunt of amateurishness in his secondary art. Nevertheless, I +will, for my own pleasure, blow the trumpet.</p> + +<p>I grant you, Whistler was an amateur. But you do not dispose +of a man by proving him to be an amateur. On the contrary, an +amateur with real innate talent may do, must do, more exquisite +work than he could do if he were a professional. His very +ignorance and tentativeness may be, must be, a means of especial +grace. Not knowing ‘how to do things,’ having no +ready-made and ready-working apparatus, and being in constant +fear of failure, he has to grope always in the recesses of his +own soul for the best way to express his soul’s meaning. He +has to shift for himself, and to do his very best. Consequently, +his work has a more personal and fresher quality, and a more +exquisite ‘finish,’ than that of a professional, +howsoever finely endowed. All of the much that we admire in +Walter Pater’s prose comes of the lucky chance that he was +an amateur, and never knew his business. Had Fate thrown him out +of Oxford upon the world, the world would have been the richer +for the prose of another John Addington Symonds, and would have +forfeited Walter Pater’s prose. In other words, we should +have lost a half-crown and found a shilling. Had Fate withdrawn +from Whistler his vision for form and colour, leaving him only +his taste for words and phrases and cadences, Whistler would have +settled solidly down to the art of writing, and would have +mastered it, and, mastering it, have lost that especial quality +which the Muse grants only to them who approach her timidly, +bashfully, as suitors.</p> + +<p>Perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps Whistler would never, in any case, +have acquired the professional touch in writing. For we know that +he never acquired it in the art to which he dedicated all but the +surplus of his energy. Compare him with the other painters of his +day. He was a child in comparison with them. They, with sure +science, solved roughly and readily problems of modelling and +drawing and what not that he never dared to meddle with. It has +often been said that his art was an art of evasion. But the +reason of the evasion was reverence. He kept himself reverently +at a distance. He knew how much he could not do, nor was he ever +confident even of the things that he could do; and these things, +therefore, he did superlatively well, having to grope for the +means in the recesses of his soul. The particular quality of +exquisiteness and freshness that gives to all his work, whether +on canvas or on stone or on copper, a distinction from and above +any contemporary work, and makes it dearer to our eyes and +hearts, is a quality that came to him because he was an amateur, +and that abided with him because he never ceased to be an +amateur. He was a master through his lack of mastery. In the art +of writing, too, he was a master through his lack of mastery. +There is an almost exact parallel between the two sides of his +genius. Nothing could be more absurd than the general view of him +as a masterly professional on the one side and a trifling amateur +on the other. He was, certainly, a painter who wrote; but, by the +slightest movement of Fate’s little finger, he might have +been a writer who painted, and this essay have been written not +by me from my standpoint, but by some painter, eager to suggest +that Whistler’s painting was a quite serious thing.</p> + +<p>Yes, that painting and that writing are marvellously akin; and +such differences as you will see in them are superficial merely. +I spoke of Whistler’s vanity in life, and I spoke of his +timidity and reverence in art. That contradiction is itself +merely superficial. Bob Acres was timid, but he was also vain. +His swagger was not an empty assumption to cloak his fears; he +really did regard himself as a masterful and dare-devil fellow, +except when he was actually fighting. Similarly, except when he +was at his work, Whistler, doubtless, really did think of himself +as a brilliant effortless butterfly. The pose was, doubtless a +quite sincere one, a necessary reaction of feeling. Well, in his +writing he displays to us his vanity; whilst in his Painting we +discern only his reverence. In his writing, too, he displays his +harshness—swoops hither and thither a butterfly equipped +with sharp little beak and talons; whereas in his painting we are +conscious only of his caressing sense of beauty. But look from +the writer, as shown by himself, to the means by which himself is +shown. You will find that for words as for colour-tones he has +the same reverent care, and for phrases as for forms the same +caressing sense of beauty. +Fastidiousness—‘daintiness,’ as he would have +said—dandyishness, as we might well say: by just that which +marks him as a painter is he marked as a writer too. His meaning +was ever ferocious; but his method, how delicate and tender! The +portrait of his mother, whom he loved, was not wrought with a +more loving hand than were his portraits of Mr. Harry Quilter for +<i>The World</i>.</p> + +<p>His style never falters. The silhouette of no sentence is ever +blurred. Every sentence is ringing with a clear vocal cadence. +There, after all, in that vocal quality, is the chief test of +good writing. Writing, as a means of expression, has to compete +with talking. The talker need not rely wholly on what he says. He +has the help of his mobile face and hands, and of his voice, with +its various inflexions and its variable pace, whereby he may +insinuate fine shades of meaning, qualifying or strengthening at +will, and clothing naked words with colour, and making dead words +live. But the writer? He can express a certain amount through his +handwriting, if he write in a properly elastic way. But his +writing is not printed in facsimile. It is printed in cold, +mechanical, monotonous type. For his every effect he must rely +wholly on the words that he chooses, and on the order in which he +ranges them, and on his choice among the few hard-and-fast +symbols of punctuation. He must so use those slender means that +they shall express all that he himself can express through his +voice and face and hands, or all that he <i>would</i> thus +express if he were a good talker. Usually, the good talker is a +dead failure when he tries to express himself in writing. For +that matter, so is the bad talker. But the bad talker has the +better chance of success, inasmuch as the inexpressiveness of his +voice and face and hands will have sharpened his scent for words +and phrases that shall in themselves convey such meanings as he +has to express. Whistler was that rare phenomenon, the good +talker who could write as well as he talked. Read any page of +<i>The Gentle Art of Making Enemies</i>, and you will hear a +voice in it, and see a face in it, and see gestures in it. And +none of these is quite like any other known to you. It matters +not that you never knew Whistler, never even set eyes on him. You +see him and know him here. The voice drawls slowly, quickening to +a kind of snap at the end of every sentence, and sometimes rising +to a sudden screech of laughter; and, all the while, the fine +fierce eyes of the talker are flashing out at you, and his long +nervous fingers are tracing extravagant arabesques in the air. +No! you need never have seen Whistler to know what he was like. +He projected through printed words the clean-cut image and +clear-ringing echo of himself. He was a born writer, achieving +perfection through pains which must have been infinite for that +we see at first sight no trace of them at all.</p> + +<p>Like himself, necessarily, his style was cosmopolitan and +eccentric. It comprised Americanisms and Cockneyisms and Parisian +<i>argot</i>, with constant reminiscences of the authorised +version of the Old Testament, and with chips off Molière, +and with shreds and tags of what-not snatched from a +hundred-and-one queer corners. It was, in fact, an Autolycine +style. It was a style of the maddest motley, but of motley so +deftly cut and fitted to the figure, and worn with such an air, +as to become a gracious harmony for all beholders.</p> + +<p>After all, what matters is not so much the vocabulary as the +manner in which the vocabulary is used. Whistler never failed to +find right words, and the right cadence for a dignified meaning, +when dignity was his aim. ‘And when the evening mist +clothes the riverside with poetry, as with a veil, and the poor +buildings lose themselves in the dim sky, and the tall chimneys +become campanili, and the warehouses are palaces in the night, +and the whole city hangs in the heavens, and fairyland is before +us…’ That is as perfect, in its dim and delicate +beauty, as any of his painted ‘nocturnes.’ But his +aim was more often to pour ridicule and contempt. And herein the +weirdness of his natural vocabulary and the patchiness of his +reading were of very real value to him. Take the opening words of +his letter to Tom Taylor: ‘Dead for a ducat, dead! my dear +Tom: and the rattle has reached me by post. <i>Sans rancune,</i> +say you? Bah! you scream unkind threats and die +badly…’ And another letter to the same unfortunate +man: ‘Why, my dear old Tom, I never <i>was</i> serious with +you, even when you were among us. Indeed, I killed you quite, as +who should say, without seriousness, "A rat! A rat!" you know, +rather cursorily…’ There the very lack of coherence +in the style, as of a man gasping and choking with laughter, +drives the insults home with a horrible precision. Notice the +technical skill in the placing of ‘you know, rather +cursorily’ at the end of the sentence. Whistler was full of +such tricks—tricks that could never have been played by +him, could never have occurred to him, had he acquired the +professional touch And not a letter in the book but has some such +little sharp felicity of cadence or construction.</p> + +<p>The letters, of course, are the best thing in the book, and +the best of the letters are the briefest. An exquisite talent +like Whistler’s, whether in painting or in writing, is +always at its best on a small scale. On a large scale it strays +and is distressed. Thus the ‘Ten o’Clock,’ from +which I took that passage about the evening mist and the +riverside, does not leave me with a sense of artistic +satisfaction. It lacks structure. It is not a roundly conceived +whole: it is but a row of fragments. Were it otherwise, Whistler +could never have written so perfectly the little letters. For no +man who can finely grasp a big theme can play exquisitely round a +little one.</p> + +<p>Nor can any man who excels in scoffing at his fellows excel +also in taking abstract subjects seriously. Certainly, the little +letters are Whistler’s passport among the elect of +literature. Luckily, I can judge them without prejudice. Whether +in this or that case Whistler was in the right or in the wrong is +not a question which troubles me at all. I read the letters +simply from the literary standpoint. As controversial essays, +certainly, they were often in very bad taste. An urchin +scribbling insults upon somebody’s garden-wall would not go +further than Whistler often went. Whistler’s mode of +controversy reminds me, in another sense, of the writing on the +wall. They who were so foolish as to oppose him really did have +their souls required of them. After an encounter with him they +never again were quite the same men in the eyes of their fellows. +Whistler’s insults always stuck—stuck and spread +round the insulted, who found themselves at length encased in +them, like flies in amber.</p> + +<p>You may shed a tear over the flies, if you will. For myself, I +am content to laud the amber.</p> + +<p> </p> + +<p>ICHABOD</p> + +<p>It is not cast from any obvious mould of sentiment. It is not +a memorial urn, nor a ruined tower, nor any of those things which +he who runs may weep over. Though not less really deplorable than +they, it needs, I am well aware, some sort of explanation to +enable my reader to mourn with me. For it is merely a +hat-box.</p> + +<p>It is nothing but that—an ordinary affair of pig-skin, +with a brass lock. As I write, it stands on a table near me. It +is of the kind that accommodates two hats, one above the other. +It has had many tenants, and is sun-tanned, rain-soiled, scarred +and dented by collision with trucks and what not other +accessories to the moving scenes through which it has been +bandied. Yes! it has known the stress of many journeys; yet has +it never (you would say, seeing it) received its baptism of +paste: it has not one label on it. And there, indeed, is the +tragedy that I shall unfold.</p> + +<p>For many years this hat-box had been my travelling companion, +and was, but a few days since, a dear record of all the big and +little journeys I had made. It was much more to me than a mere +receptacle for hats. It was my one collection, my collection of +labels. Well! last week its lock was broken. I sent it to the +trunk-makers, telling them to take the greatest care of it. It +came back yesterday. The idiots, the accursed idots! had +carefully removed every label from its surface. I wrote to +them—it matters not what I said. My fury has burnt itself +out. I have reached the stage of craving general sympathy. So I +have sat down to write, in the shadow of a tower which stands +bleak, bare, prosaic, all the ivy of its years stripped from it; +in the shadow of an urn commemorating nothing.</p> + +<p>I think that every one who is or ever has been a collector +will pity me in this dark hour of mine. In other words, I think +that nearly every one will pity me. For few are they who have +not, at some time, come under the spell of the collecting spirit +and known the joy of accumulating specimens of something or +other. The instinct has its corner, surely, in every breast. Of +course, hobby-horses are of many different breeds; but all their +riders belong to one great cavalcade, and when they know that one +of their company has had his steed shot under him, they will not +ride on without a backward glance of sympathy. Lest my fall be +unnoted by them, I write this essay. I want that glance.</p> + +<p>Do not, reader, suspect that because I am choosing my words +nicely, and playing with metaphor, and putting my commas in their +proper places, my sorrow is not really and truly poignant. I +write elaborately, for that is my habit, and habits are less +easily broken than hearts. I could no more ‘dash off’ +this my <i>cri de cœur</i> than I could an elegy on a +broomstick I had never seen. Therefore, reader, bear with me, +despite my sable plumes and purple; and weep with me, though my +prose be, like those verses which Mr. Beamish wrote over +Chloë’s grave, ‘of a character to cool +emotion.’ For indeed my anguish is very real. The +collection I had amassed so carefully, during so many years, the +collection I loved and revelled in, has been obliterated, swept +away, destroyed utterly by a pair of ruthless, impious, +well-meaning, idiotic, unseen hands. It cannot be restored to me. +Nothing can compensate me for it gone. It was part and parcel of +my life.</p> + +<p>Orchids, jade, majolica, wines, mezzotints, old silver, first +editions, harps, copes, hookahs, cameos, enamels, black-letter +folios, scarabaei—such things are beautiful and fascinating +in themselves. Railway-labels are not, I admit. For the most +part, they are crudely coloured, crudely printed, without sense +of margin or spacing; in fact, quite worthless as designs. No one +would be a connoisseur in them. No one could be tempted to make a +general collection of them. My own collection of them was +strictly personal: I wanted none that was not a symbol of some +journey made by myself, even as the hunter of big game cares not +to possess the tusks, and the hunter of women covets not the +photographs, of other people’s victims. My collection was +one of those which result from man’s tendency to preserve +some obvious record of his pleasures—the points he has +scored in the game. To Nimrod, his tusks; to Lothario, his +photographs; to me (who cut no dash in either of those veneries, +and am not greedy enough to preserve <i>menus</i> nor silly +enough to preserve press-cuttings, but do delight in travelling +from place to place), my railway-labels. Had nomady been my +business, had I been a commercial traveller or a King’s +Messenger, such labels would have held for me no charming +significance. But I am only by instinct a nomad. I have a tether, +known as the four-mile radius. To slip it is for me always an +event, an excitement. To come to a new place, to awaken in a +strange bed, to be among strangers! To have dispelled, as by +sudden magic, the old environment! It is on the scoring of such +points as these that I preen myself, and my memory is always +ringing the ‘changes’ I have had, complacently, as a +man jingles silver in his pocket. The noise of a great terminus +is no jar to me. It is music. I prick up my ears to it, and paw +the platform. Dear to me as the bugle-note to any war-horse, as +the first twittering of the birds in the hedgerows to the +light-sleeping vagabond, that cry of ‘Take your seats +please!’ or—better still—‘<i>En +voiture!</i>’ or ‘<i>Partenza!</i>’ Had I the +knack of rhyme, I would write a sonnet-sequence of the journey to +Newhaven or Dover—a sonnet for every station one does not +stop at. I await that poet who shall worthily celebrate the iron +road. There is one who describes, with accuracy and gusto, the +insides of engines; but he will not do at all. I look for +another, who shall show us the heart of the passenger, the +exhilaration of travelling by day, the exhilaration and romance +and self-importance of travelling by night.</p> + +<p>‘Paris!’ How it thrills me when, on a night in +spring, in the hustle and glare of Victoria, that label is +slapped upon my hat-box! Here, standing in the very heart of +London, I am by one sweep of a paste-brush transported instantly +into that white-grey city across the sea. To all intents and +purposes I am in Paris already. Strange, that the porter does not +say, ‘V’là, M’sieu’!’ +Strange, that the evening papers I buy at the bookstall are +printed in the English language. Strange, that London still holds +my body, when a corduroyed magician has whisked my soul verily +into Paris. The engine is hissing as I hurry my body along the +platform, eager to reunite it with my soul… Over the windy +quay the stars are shining as I pass down the gangway, hat-box in +hand. They twinkle brightly over the deck I am now +pacing—amused, may be, at my excitement. The machinery +grunts and creaks. The little boat quakes in the excruciating +throes of its departure. At last!… One by one, the stars +take their last look at me, and the sky grows pale, and the sea +blanches mysteriously with it. Through the delicate cold air of +the dawn, across the grey waves of the sea, the outlines of +Dieppe grow and grow. The quay is lined with its blue-bloused +throng. These porters are as excited by us as though they were +the aborigines of some unknown island. (And yet, are they not +here, at this hour, in these circumstances, every day of their +lives?) These gestures! These voices, hoarse with passion! The +dear music of <i>French</i>, rippling up clear for me through all +this hoarse confusion of its utterance, and making me +happy!… I drink my cup of steaming coffee—true +coffee!—and devour more than one roll. At the tables around +me, pale and dishevelled from the night, sit the people whom I +saw—years ago!—at Charing Cross. How they have +changed! The coffee sends a glow throughout my body. I am +fulfilled with a sense of material well-being. The queer ethereal +exaltation of the dawn has vanished. I climb up into the train, +and dispose myself in the dun-cushioned <i>coupé.</i> +‘Chemins de Fer de l’Ouest’ is perforated on +the white antimacassars. Familiar and strange inscription! I +murmur its impressive iambs over and over again. They become the +refrain to which the train vibrates on its way. I smoke +cigarettes, a little drowsily gazing out of the window at the +undulating French scenery that flies past me, at the silver +poplars. Row after slanted row of these incomparably gracious +trees flies past me, their foliage shimmering in the unawoken +landscape Soon I shall be rattling over the cobbles of unawoken +Paris, through the wide white-grey streets with their unopened +jalousies. And when, later, I awake in the unnatural little +bedroom of walnut-wood and crimson velvet, in the bed whose +curtains are white with that whiteness which Paris alone can give +to linen, a Parisian sun will be glittering for me in a Parisian +sky.</p> + +<p>Yes! In my whole collection the Paris specimens were dearest +to me, meant most to me, I think. But there was none that had not +some tendrils on sentiment. All of them I prized, more or less. +Of the Aberdeen specimens I was immensely fond. Who can resist +the thought of that express by which, night after night, England +is torn up its centre? I love well that cab-drive in the chill +autumnal night through the desert of Bloomsbury, the dead leaves +rustling round the horse’s hoofs as we gallop through the +Squares. Ah, I shall be across the Border before these doorsteps +are cleaned, before the coming of the milk-carts. Anon, I descry +the cavernous open jaws of Euston. The monster swallows me, and +soon I am being digested into Scotland. I sit ensconced in a +corner of a compartment. The collar of my ulster is above my +ears, my cap is pulled over my eyes, my feet are on a hot-water +tin, and my rug snugly envelops most of me. Sleeping-cars are for +the strange beings who love not the act of travelling. Them I +should spurn even if I could not sleep a wink in an ordinary +compartment. I would liefer forfeit sleep than the consciousness +of travelling. But it happens that I, in an ordinary compartment, +am blest both with the sleep and with the consciousness, all +through the long night. To be asleep and to <i>know</i> that you +are sleeping, and to know, too, that even as you sleep you are +being borne away through darkness into distance—that, +surely, is to go two better than Endymion. Surely, nothing is +more mysteriously delightful than this joint consciousness of +sleep and movement. Pitiable they to whom it is denied. All +through the night the vibration of the train keeps one-third of +me awake, while the other two parts of me profoundly slumber. +Whenever the train stops, and the vibration ceases, then the +one-third of me falls asleep, and the other two parts stir. I am +awake just enough to hear the hollow-echoing cry of +‘Crewe’ or ‘York,’ and to blink up at the +green-hooded lamp in the ceiling. May be, I raise a corner of the +blind, and see through the steam-dim window the mysterious, empty +station. A solitary porter shuffles along the platform. Yonder, +those are the lights of the refreshment room, where, all night +long, a barmaid is keeping her lonely vigil over the beer-handles +and the Bath-buns in glass cases. I see long rows of glimmering +milk-cans, and wonder drowsily whether they contain forty modern +thieves. The engine snorts angrily in the benighted silence. Far +away is the faint, familiar sound—<i>clink-clank</i>, +<i>clink-clank</i>—of the man who tests the couplings. +Nearer and nearer the sound comes. It passes, recedes It is +rather melancholy…. A whistle, a jerk, and the two waking +parts of me are asleep again, while the third wakes up to mount +guard over them, and keeps me deliciously aware of the rhythmic +dream they are dreaming about the hot bath and the clean linen, +and the lovely breakfast that I am to have at Aberdeen; and of +the Scotch air, crisp and keen, that is to escort me, later along +the Deeside.</p> + +<p>Little journeys, as along the Deeside, have a charm of their +own. Little journeys from London to places up the river, or to +places on the coast of Kent—journeys so brief that you +lunch at one end and have tea at the other—I love them all, +and loved the labels that recalled them to me. But the labels of +long journeys, of course, took precedence in my heart. Here and +there on my hat-box were labels that recalled to me long journeys +in which frontiers were crossed at dead of night—dim +memories of small, crazy stations where I shivered half-awake, +and was sleepily conscious of a strange tongue and strange +uniforms, of my jingling bunch of keys, of ruthless arms diving +into the nethermost recesses of my trunks, of suspicious grunts +and glances, and of grudging hieroglyphics chalked on the slammed +lids. These were things more or less painful and resented in the +moment of experience, yet even then fraught with a delicious +glamour. I suffered, but gladly. In the night, when all things +are mysteriously magnified, I have never crossed a frontier +without feeling some of the pride of conquest. And, indeed, were +these conquests mere illusions? Was I not actually extending the +frontiers of my mind, adding new territories to it? Every crossed +frontier, every crossed sea, meant for me a definite +success—an expansion and enrichment of my soul. When, after +seven days and nights of sea traversed, I caught my first glimpse +of Sandy Hook, was there <i>no</i> comparison between Columbus +and myself? To see what one has not seen before, is not that +almost as good as to see what no one has ever seen?</p> + +<p>Romance, exhilaration, self-importance these are what my +labels symbolised and recalled to me. That lost collection was a +running record of all my happiest hours; a focus, a monument, a +diary. It was my humble Odyssey, wrought in coloured paper on +pig-skin, and the one work I never, never was weary of. If the +distinguished Ithacan had travelled with a hat-box, how finely +and minutely Homer would have described it—its depth and +girth, its cunningly fashioned lock and fair lining withal! And +in how interminable a torrent of hexameters would he have +catalogued all the labels on it, including those attractive views +of the Hôtel Circe, the Hôtel Calypso, and other +high-class resorts. Yet no! Had such a hat-box existed and had it +been preserved in his day, Homer would have seen in it a +sufficient record, a better record than even he could make, of +Odysseus’ wanderings. We should have had nothing from him +but the Iliad. I, certainly never felt any need of commemorating +my journeys till my labels were lost to me. And I am conscious +how poor and chill is the substitute.</p> + +<p>My collection like most collections, began imperceptibly. A +man does not say to himself, ‘I am going to collect’ +this thing or that. True, the schoolboy says so; but his are not, +in the true sense of the word, collections. He seeks no set +autobiographic symbols, for boys never look back—there is +too little to look back on, too much in front. Nor have the +objects of his collection any intrinsic charm for him. He starts +a collection merely that he may have a plausible excuse for doing +something he ought not to do. He goes in for birds’ eggs +merely that he may be allowed to risk his bones and tear his +clothes in climbing; for butterflies, that he may be encouraged +to poison and impale; for stamps…really, I do not know why +he, why any sane creature goes in for stamps. It follows that he +has no real love of his collection and soon abandons it for +something else. The sincere collector, how different! His hobby +has a solid basis of personal preference. Some one gives him +(say) a piece of jade. He admires it. He sees another piece in a +shop, and buys it; later, he buys another. He does not regard +these pieces of jade as distinct from the rest of his +possessions; he has no idea of collecting jade. It is not till he +has acquired several other pieces that he ceases to regard them +as mere items in the decoration of his room, and gives them a +little table, or a tray of a cabinet, all to themselves. How well +they look there! How they intensify one another! He really must +get some one to give him that little pedestalled Cupid which he +saw yesterday in Wardour Street. Thus awakes in him, quite +gradually, the spirit of the collector. Or take the case of one +whose collection is not of beautiful things, but of +autobiographic symbols: take the case of the glutton. He will +have pocketed many <i>menus</i> before it occurs to him to +arrange them in an album. Even so, it was not until a fair number +of labels had been pasted on my hat-box that I saw them as +souvenirs, and determined that in future my hat-box should always +travel with me and so commemorate my every darling escape.</p> + +<p>In the path of every collector are strewn obstacles of one +kind or another; which, to overleap, is part of the fun. As a +collector of labels I had my pleasant difficulties. On any +much-belabelled piece of baggage the porter always pastes the new +label over that which looks most recent; else the thing might +miss its destination. Now, paste dries before the end of the +briefest journey; and one of my canons was that, though two +labels might overlap, none must efface the inscription of +another. On the other hand, I did not wish to lose my hat-box, +for this would have entailed inquiries, and descriptions, and +telegraphing up the line, and all manner of agitation. What, +then, was I to do? I might have taken my hat-box with me in the +carriage? That, indeed, is what I always did. But, unless a thing +is to go in the van, it receives no label at all. So I had to use +a mild stratagem. ‘Yes,’ I would say, +‘everything in the van!’ The labels would be duly +affixed. ‘Oh,’ I would cry, seizing the hat-box +quickly, ‘I forgot. I want this with me in the +carriage.’ (I learned to seize it quickly, because some +porters are such martinets that they will whisk the label off and +confiscate it.) Then, when the man was not looking, I would +remove the label from the place he had chosen for it and press it +on some unoccupied part of the surface. You cannot think how much +I enjoyed these manœuvres. There was the moral pleasure of +having both outwitted a railway company and secured another +specimen for my collection; and there was the physical pleasure +of making a limp slip of paper stick to a hard +substance—that simple pleasure which appeals to all of us +and is, perhaps, the missing explanation of philately. Pressed +for time, I could not, of course, have played my trick. Nor could +I have done so—it would have seemed heartless—if any +one had come to see me off and be agitated at parting. Therefore, +I was always very careful to arrive in good time for my train, +and to insist that all farewells should be made on my own +doorstep.</p> + +<p>Only in one case did I break the rule that no label must be +obliterated by another. It is a long story; but I propose to tell +it. You must know that I loved my labels not only for the +meanings they conveyed to me, but also, more than a little, for +the effect they produced on other people. Travelling in a +compartment, with my hat-box beside me, I enjoyed the silent +interest which my labels aroused in my fellow-passengers. If the +compartment was so full that my hat-box had to be relegated to +the rack, I would always, in the course of the journey, take it +down and unlock it, and pretend to be looking for something I had +put into it. It pleased me to see from beneath my eyelids the +respectful wonder and envy evoked by it. Of course, there was no +suspicion that the labels were a carefully formed collection; +they were taken as the wild-flowers of an exquisite restlessness, +of an unrestricted range in life. Many of them signified +beautiful or famous places. There was one point at which Oxford, +Newmarket, and Assisi converged, and I was always careful to +shift my hat-box round in such a way that this purple patch +should be lost on none of my fellow-passengers. The many other +labels, English or alien, they, too, gave their hints of a life +spent in fastidious freedom, hints that I had seen and was seeing +all that is best to be seen of men and cities and country-houses. +I was respected, accordingly, and envied. And I had keen delight +in this ill-gotten homage. A despicable delight, you say? But is +not yours, too, a fallen nature? The love of impressing strangers +falsely, is it not implanted in all of us? To be sure, it is an +inevitable outcome of the conditions in which we exist. It is a +result of the struggle for life. Happiness, as you know, is our +aim in life; we are all struggling to be happy. And, alas! for +every one of us, it is the things he does not possess which seem +to him most desirable, most conducive to happiness. For instance, +the poor nobleman covets wealth, because wealth would bring him +comfort, whereas the <i>nouveau riche</i> covets a pedigree, +because a pedigree would make him <i>of</i> what he is merely in. +The rich nobleman who is an invalid covets health, on the +assumption that health would enable him to enjoy his wealth and +position. The rich, robust nobleman hankers after an intellect. +The rich, robust, intellectual nobleman is (be sure of it) as +discontented, somehow, as the rest of them. No man possesses all +he wants. No man is ever quite happy. But, by producing an +impression that he <i>has</i> what he wants—in fact, by +‘bluffing’—a man can gain some of the +advantages that he would gain by really having it. Thus, the poor +nobleman can, by concealing his ‘balance’ and keeping +up appearances, coax more or less unlimited credit from his +tradesman. The <i>nouveau riche</i>, by concealing his origin and +trafficking with the College of Heralds, can intercept some of +the homage paid to high birth. And (though the rich nobleman who +is an invalid can make no tangible gain by pretending to be +robust, since robustness is an advantage only from within) the +rich, robust nobleman can, by employing a clever private +secretary to write public speeches and magazine articles for him, +intercept some of the homage which is paid to intellect.</p> + +<p>These are but a few typical cases, taken at random from a +small area. But consider the human race at large, and you will +find that ‘bluffing’ is indeed one of the natural +functions of the human animal. Every man pretends to have what +(not having it) he covets, in order that he may gain some of the +advantages of having it. And thus it comes that he makes his +pretence, also, by force of habit, when there is nothing tangible +to be gained by it. The poor nobleman wishes to be thought rich +even by people who will not benefit him in their delusion; and +the <i>nouveau riche</i> likes to be thought well-born even by +people who set no store on good birth; and so forth. But +pretences, whether they be an end or a means, cannot be made +successfully among our intimate friends. These wretches know all +about us—have seen through us long ago. With them we are, +accordingly, quite natural. That is why we find their company so +restful. Among acquaintances the pretence is worth making. But +those who know anything at all about us are apt to find us out. +That is why we find acquaintances such a nuisance. Among perfect +strangers, who know nothing at all about us, we start with a +clean slate. If our pretence do not come off, we have only +ourselves to blame. And so we ‘bluff’ these +strangers, blithely, for all we are worth, whether there be +anything to gain or nothing. We all do it. Let us despise +ourselves for doing it, but not one another. By which I mean, +reader, do not be hard on me for making a show of my labels in +railway-carriages. After all, the question is whether a man +‘bluff’ well or ill. If he brag vulgarly before his +strangers, away with him! by all means. He does not know how to +play the game. He is a failure. But, if he convey subtly (and, +therefore, successfully) the fine impression he wishes to convey, +then you should stifle your wrath, and try to pick up a few +hints. When I saw my fellow-passengers eyeing my hat-box, I did +not, of course, say aloud to them, ‘Yes, mine is a +delightful life! Any amount of money, any amount of leisure! And, +what’s more, I know how to make the best use of them +both!’ Had I done so, they would have immediately seen +through me as an impostor. But I did nothing of the sort. I let +my labels proclaim distinction for me, quietly, in their own way. +And they made their proclamation with immense success. But there +came among them, in course of time, one label that would not +harmonise with them. Came, at length, one label that did me +actual discredit. I happened to have had influenza, and my doctor +had ordered me to make my convalescence in a place which, +according to him, was better than any other for my particular +condition. He had ordered me to Ramsgate, and to Ramsgate I had +gone. A label on my hat-box duly testified to my obedience. At +the time, I had thought nothing of it. But, in subsequent +journeys, I noticed that my hat-box did not make its old effect, +somehow. My fellow-passengers looked at it, were interested in +it; but I had a subtle sense that they were not reverencing me as +of yore. Something was the matter. I was not long in tracing what +it was. The discord struck by Ramsgate was the more disastrous +because, in my heedlessness, I had placed that ignoble label +within an inch of my <i>point d’appui</i>—the trinity +of Oxford, Newmarket and Assisi. What was I to do? I could not +explain to my fellow-passengers, as I have explained to you, my +reason for Ramsgate. So long as the label was there, I had to +rest under the hideous suspicion of having gone there for +pleasure, gone of my own free will. I did rest under it during +the next two or three journeys. But the injustice of my position +maddened me. At length, a too obvious sneer on the face of a +fellow-passenger steeled me to a resolve that I would, for once, +break my rule against obliteration. On the return journey, I +obliterated Ramsgate with the new label, leaving visible merely +the final TE, which could hardly compromise me.</p> + +<p><i>Steterunt</i> those two letters because I was loth to +destroy what was, primarily, a symbol for myself: I wished to +remember Ramsgate, even though I had to keep it secret. Only in a +secondary, accidental way was my collection meant for the public +eye. Else, I should not have hesitated to deck the hat-box with +procured symbols of Seville, Simla, St. Petersburg and other +places which I had not (and would have liked to be supposed to +have) visited. But my collection was, first of all, a private +autobiography, a record of my scores of Fate; and thus positively +to falsify it would have been for me as impossible as cheating at +‘Patience.’ From that to which I would not add I +hated to subtract anything—even Ramsgate. After all, +Ramsgate was not London; to have been in it was a kind of score. +Besides, it had restored me to health. I had no right to rase it +utterly.</p> + +<p>But such <i>tendresse</i> was not my sole reason for sparing +those two letters. Already I was reaching that stage where the +collector loves his specimens not for their single sakes, but as +units in the sum-total. To every collector comes, at last, a time +when he does but value his collection—how shall I +say?—collectively. He who goes in for beautiful things +begins, at last, to value his every acquisition not for its +beauty, but because it enhances the worth of the rest. Likewise, +he who goes in for autobiographic symbols begins, at last, to +care not for the symbolism of another event in his life, but for +the addition to the objects already there. He begins to value +every event less for its own sake than because it swells his +collection. Thus there came for me a time when I looked forward +to a journey less because it meant movement and change for myself +than because it meant another label for my hat-box. A strange +state to fall into? Yes, collecting is a mania, a form of +madness. And it is the most pleasant form of madness in the whole +world. It can bring us nearer to real happiness than can any form +of sanity. The normal, eclectic man is never happy, because he is +always craving something of another kind than what he has got. +The collector, in his mad concentration, wants only more and more +of what he has got already; and what he has got already he +cherishes with a passionate joy. I cherished my gallimaufry of +rainbow-coloured labels almost as passionately as the miser his +hoard of gold. Why do we call the collector of current coin a +miser? Wretched? He? True, he denies himself all the reputed +pleasures of life; but does he not do so of his own accord, +gladly? He sacrifices everything to his mania; but that merely +proves how intense his mania is. In that the nature of his +collection cuts him off from all else, he is the perfect type of +the collector. He is above all other collectors. And he is the +truly happiest of them all. It is only when, by some merciless +stroke of Fate, he is robbed of his hoard, that he becomes +wretched. Then, certainly, he suffers. He suffers proportionately +to his joy. He is smitten with sorrow more awful than any sorrow +to be conceived by the sane. I whose rainbow-coloured hoard has +been swept from me, seem to taste the full savour of his +anguish.</p> + +<p>I sit here thinking of the misers who, in life or in fiction, +have been despoiled. Three only do I remember: Melanippus of +Sicyon, Pierre Baudouin of Limoux, Silas Marner. Melanippus died +of a broken heart. Pierre Baudouin hanged himself. The case of +Silas Marner is more cheerful. He, coming into his cottage one +night, saw by the dim light of the hearth, that which seemed to +be his gold restored, but was really nothing but the golden curls +of a little child, whom he was destined to rear under his own +roof, finding in her more than solace for his bereavement. But +then, he was a character in fiction: the other two really +existed. What happened to him will not happen to me. Even if +little children with rainbow-coloured hair were so common that +one of them might possibly be left on my hearth-rug, I know well +that I should not feel recompensed by it, even if it grew up to +be as fascinating a paragon as Eppie herself. Had Silas Marner +really existed (nay! even had George Eliot created him in her +maturity) neither would he have felt recompensed. Far likelier, +he would have been turned to stone, in the first instance, as was +poor Niobe when the divine arrows destroyed that unique +collection on which she had lavished so many years. Or, may be, +had he been a very strong man, he would have found a bitter joy +in saving up for a new hoard. Like Carlyle, when the MS. of his +masterpiece was burned by the housemaid of John Stuart Mill, he +might have begun all over again, and builded a still nobler +monument on the tragic ashes.</p> + +<p>That is a fine, heartening example! I will be strong enough to +follow it. I will forget all else. I will begin all over again. +There stands my hat-box! Its glory is departed, but I vow that a +greater glory awaits it. Bleak, bare and prosaic it is now, +but—ten years hence! Its career, like that of the Imperial +statesman in the moment of his downfall, ‘is only just +beginning.’</p> + +<p>There is a true Anglo-Saxon ring in this conclusion. May it +appease whomever my tears have been making angry.</p> + +<p> </p> + +<p>GENERAL ELECTIONS</p> + +<p>I admire detachment. I commend a serene indifference to +hubbub. I like Archimedes, Leonardo da Vinci, Goethe, Balzac, +Darwin, and other sages, for having been so concentrated on this +or that eternal verity in art or science or philosophy, that they +paid no heed to alarums and excursions which were sweeping all +other folk off their feet. It is with some shame that I haunt the +tape-machine whenever a General Election is going on.</p> + +<p>Of politics I know nothing. My mind is quite open on the +subject of fiscal reform, and quite empty; and the void is not an +aching one: I have no desire to fill it. The idea of the British +Empire leaves me quite cold. If this or that subject race threw +off our yoke, I should feel less vexation than if one comma were +misplaced in the printing of this essay. The only feeling that +our Colonies inspire in me is a determination not to visit them. +Socialism neither affrights nor attracts me—or, rather, it +has both these effects equally. When I think of poverty and +misery crushing the greater part of humanity, and most of all +when I hear of some specific case of distress, I become a +socialist indeed. But I am not less an artist than a human being, +and when I think of Demos, that chin-bearded god, flushed with +victory, crowned with leaflets of the Social Democratic League, +quaffing temperance beverages in a world all drab; when I think +of model lodging-houses in St. James’s Park, and trams +running round and round St. James’s Square—the mighty +fallen, and the lowly swollen, and, in Elysium, the shade of +Matthew Arnold shedding tears on the shoulder of a shade so +different as George Brummell’s—tears, idle tears, at +sight of the Barbarians, whom he had mocked and loved, now +annihilated by those others whom he had mocked and hated; when +such previsions as these come surging up in me, I do deem myself +well content with the present state of things, dishonourable +though it is. As to socialism, then, you see, my mind is evenly +divided. It is with no political bias that I go and hover around +the tape-machine. My interest in General Elections is a merely +‘sporting’ interest. I do not mean that I lay bets. A +bad fairy decreed over my cradle that I should lose every bet +that I might make; and, in course of time, I abandoned a practice +which took away from coming events the pleasing element of +uncertainty. ‘A merely dramatic interest’ is less +equivocal, and more accurate.</p> + +<p>‘This,’ you say, ‘is rank incivism.’ I +assume readily that you are an ardent believer in one political +party or another, and that, having studied thoroughly all the +questions at issue, you could give cogent reasons for all the +burning faith that is in you. But how about your friends and +acquaintances? How many of them can cope with you in discussion? +How many of them show even a desire to cope with you? Travel, I +beg you, on the Underground Railway, or in a Tube. Such places +are supposed to engender in their passengers a taste for +political controversy. Yet how very elementary are such arguments +as you will hear there! It is obvious that these gentlemen know +and care very little about ‘burning questions.’ What +they do know and care about is the purely personal side of +politics. They have their likes and their dislikes for a few +picturesque and outstanding figures. These they will attack or +defend with fervour. But you will be lucky if you overhear any +serious discussion of policy. Emerge from the nether world. Range +over the whole community—from the costermonger who says +‘Good Old Winston!’ to the fashionable woman who says +‘I do think Mr. Balfour is <i>rather</i> +wonderful!’—and you will find the same plentiful lack +of interest in the impersonal side of polities. You will find +that almost every one is interested in politics only as a +personal conflict between certain interesting men—as a +drama, in fact. Frown not, then, on me alone.</p> + +<p>Whenever a General Election occurs, the conflict becomes +sharper and more obvious—the play more exciting—the +audience more tense. The stage is crowded with supernumeraries, +not interesting in themselves, but adding a new interest to the +merely personal interest. There is the stronger +‘side,’ here the weaker, ranged against each other. +Which will be vanquished? It rests with the audience to decide. +And, as human nature is human nature, of course the audience +decides that the weaker side shall be victorious. That is what +politicians call ‘the swing of the pendulum.’ They +believe that the country is alienated by the blunders of the +Government, and is disappointed by the unfulfilment of promises, +and is anxious for other methods of policy. Bless them! the +country hardly noticed their blunders, has quite forgotten their +promises, and cannot distinguish between one set of methods and +another. When the man in the street sees two other men in the +street fighting, he doesn’t care to know the cause of the +combat: he simply wants the smaller man to punish the bigger, and +to punish him with all possible severity. When a party with a +large majority appeals to the country, its appeal falls, +necessarily, on deaf ears. Some years ago there happened an +exception to this rule. But then the circumstances were +exceptional. A small nation was fighting a big nation, and, as +the big nation happened to be yourselves, your sympathy was +transferred to the big nation. As the little party was suspected +of favouring the little nation, your sympathy was transferred +likewise to the big party. Barring ‘khaki,’ sympathy +takes its usual course in General Elections. The bigger the +initial majority, the bigger the collapse. It is not enough that +Goliath shall fall: he must bite the dust, and bite plenty of it. +It is not enough that David shall have done what he set out to +do: a throne must be found for this young man. Away with the +giant’s body! Hail, King David!</p> + +<p>I should like to think that chivalry was the sole motive of +our zeal. I am afraid that the mere craving for excitement has +something to do with it. Pelion has never been piled on Ossa; and +no really useful purpose could be served by the superimposition. +But we should like to see the thing done. It would appeal to our +sense of the grandiose—our hankering after the unlimited. +When the man of science shows us a drop of water in a test-tube, +and tells us that this tiny drop contains more than fifteen +billions of infusoria, we are subtly gratified, and cherish a +secret hope that the number of infusoria is <i>very much</i> more +than fifteen billions. In the same way, we hope that the number +of seats gained by the winning party will be even greater +to-morrow than it is to-day. ‘We are sweeping the +country,’ exclaims (say) the professed Liberal; and at the +word ‘sweeping’ there is in his eyes a gleam that no +mere party feeling could have lit there. It is a gleam that comes +from the very depths of his soul—a reflection of the innate +human passion for breaking records, or seeing them broken, no +matter how or why. ‘Yes,’ says the professed Tory, +‘you certainly are sweeping the country.’ He tries to +put a note of despondency into his voice; but hark how he rolls +the word ‘sweeping’ over his tongue! He, too, though +he may not admit it, is longing to creep into the smoking-room of +the National Liberal Club and feast his eyes on the blazing +galaxy of red seals affixed to the announcements of the polling. +He turns to his evening paper, and reads again the list of +ex-Cabinet ministers who have been unseated. He feels, in his +heart of hearts, what fun it would be if they had all been +unseated. He grudges the exceptions. For political bias is one +thing; human nature another.</p> + +<p> </p> + +<p>A PARALLEL</p> +</body> +</html> + + |