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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..81019b3 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #51015 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/51015) diff --git a/old/51015-0.txt b/old/51015-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index a6effed..0000000 --- a/old/51015-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,2213 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Moral Poison in Modern Fiction, by -Reginald Brimley Johnson - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - -Title: Moral Poison in Modern Fiction - -Author: Reginald Brimley Johnson - -Release Date: January 23, 2016 [EBook #51015] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MORAL POISON IN MODERN FICTION *** - - - - -Produced by Clarity, Lisa Reigel, Michael Zeug, and the -Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net -(This file was produced from images generously made -available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries) - - - - - - - - - - MORAL POISON - IN MODERN FICTION - - - - - MORAL POISON - IN - MODERN FICTION - - - BY - - R. BRIMLEY JOHNSON - - AUTHOR OF - "SOME CONTEMPORARY NOVELISTS," ETC. - - - [Illustration] - - - LONDON - A. M. PHILPOT, LTD. - 69 GREAT RUSSELL STREET, W.C.1 - - - - -CONTENTS - - - PAGE - I. "LIKE THE REST OF THEIR YOUNG WORLD" 7 - - II. THEN CAME THE WAR! 12 - - III. WHILE THEY LIVED VIOLENTLY, YOUTH ALSO THOUGHT - HARD 17 - - IV. WHAT, THEN, WERE THE NEW MORAL PROBLEMS? WHAT - WAS THE FRANK OUTLOOK, RAISED AND LARGELY ACCEPTED, - BEFORE THE WAR? 21 - - V. THE "SPADE" IDEAL IN FICTION 24 - - VI. NOVELS OF "GAY LIFE" ARE, QUITE OBVIOUSLY, STRONG - MORAL INTOXICANTS 33 - - VII. WHAT DO THE NEW WRITERS AND THINKERS TO-DAY TEACH? - HOW DO THEY INTERPRET LIFE AND LOVE? 39 - - VIII. WHAT IS THIS LOVE? IT IS SEX-CONFLICT 53 - - IX. WHO _IS_ THE IDEAL MISTRESS? 64 - - X. HERE ARE TWO PICTURES OF FREE LOVE 72 - - XI. HAVE WE ALREADY FORGOTTEN THE NATURAL LOYALTY OF - YOUTH? HOW ARE WE PAYING OUR DEBT TO THEM? 79 - - - - -FOREWORD - - -I have not systematically searched modern fiction to illustrate or -support the arguments of this book. Every novel quoted, or even -mentioned, has come before me in the day's work, as a reviewer. It is -scarcely necessary to add that no personal reflection upon any writer -has even crossed my mind. I am not here concerned with the cause or -motive of literature, but with its effect. - - R. B. J. - - - - -I - -"THEY STRUGGLED ALONG LIKE THE REST OF THEIR YOUNG WORLD, THE EYE FOR -THE EYE, THE TOOTH FOR THE TOOTH, LUST AND LOVING ALIKE ONLY IN RETURN -FOR LOVING AND LUST." - - -It is a grim enough charge against our generation. Dare we pronounce it -untrue? Upon what theories of private morality are the young now fed? - -Morals are, obviously, influenced in most cases by example and the -atmosphere of the home; but are not these themselves mainly produced, -whether consciously or not, by the teaching and tone of these who -profess to think? In these latter days most thought reaches us through -fiction, most emotion through drama. - -_Without hesitation, I would maintain that an immense number of novels -now being written contain much deadly poison._ - -Let me not be misunderstood. I have no wish to draw down the -blinds again upon vital questions of sex, to bring out once more -the comfortable "wraps" of Victorian days, to uphold reserve if not -silence, or shut the door upon open talk. Nor would I say to youth: "We -are older and _therefore_ we know; believe us, things were far better -and happier in our time." - -Such a reproach were neither wise nor true. Human nature, like all -forms of life, always grows and improves (in a long view), steps on -towards the Ideal. But to-day we must face the sharp arrest of all -normal progress, the actual throw-back to savagery, caused by the -war: which came, as a moral influence, upon minds unsettled by the -Revolution of Ideas that had set in before 1914. - -Revolution may, and in fact does, largely express itself by -exaggeration, but it is not Anarchy. The ideas then first revealed -were due to a natural and healthy awakening among advanced thinkers. -Winds blew upon our comfortable complacencies. The moral assumptions -we had accepted, and refused to discuss, were boldly questioned. The -Sex-Revolt had begun. - -And rightly. Many reforms were badly needed in the legal applications -of morality; the ideal of purity had stiffened into conventions -that chained the mind and stifled the heart. There was a taint of -insincerity over the realities of life: the false gods of narrow-minded -respectability, breeding secret sin. - -Wider knowledge; the sifting of old ideas and the questioning of fixed -thought, can harm none. On the whole, moreover, protest was made in -earnest, with a due sense of responsibility. It was not, as to-day, -wildly shouted on the housetops; without reflection, undigested; in a -riot of burning words. - -There were, of course, wild statements made in bitter anger; foolish -experiments attempted; in some quarters, merely a new cant and -upside-down convention upheld to replace the old. But, on the whole, -still only among the few. In all probability, under normal conditions, -the needed frank discussion and honest thought would have sifted the -true from the false, before the temporary confusion had inflamed -popular imagination, and uprooted, without reforming, the habits and -thought of daily life. - -Looking back, I think, one can fairly summarize the position then -arrived at by advanced thinkers, that was beginning to be generally -discussed: - - That there is nothing inherently evil in the human body, to - be hidden up, and if possible ignored; particularly, that the - instincts of sex are natural and healthy, a vital part of pure - love. - - That women are moved by physical "desires" equally with - men, though more habituated to restraint; wherefore the old - one-sided tolerance towards men, "who cannot help themselves," - is utterly false and, combined with the conventional innocence - of women, creates morbid barriers between the sexes, whereby - "the woman pays." - - That these truths should be known and faced by both sexes - _before_, not after, marriage; with all the consequences they - involve and the dangers they should enable us to avoid: the - risks of a "sheltered" youth and the real meaning of purity, - true and false passion or love, marriage wrecked by ignorance, - divorce, the unmarried mother, birth control, the position of - the prostitute, etc. - - Truth, the ventilation of morality, the honest consideration - of problems which may at any moment take us unawares, should - not defile the heart or suggest evil thought. Real knowledge - strengthens the will; and we must look at sin, see it clearly, - if we can ever hope to conquer it. - -If some of us felt that these, in a sense "new," truths were rather -hurried upon us, often crudely expressed and applied; we knew that each -generation must seek its own light, and add something to inherited -wisdom. We saw children cramped and losing _themselves_ in their -fathers' fetters; we saw injustice, misery, and wasted lives; many a -marriage that proved a prison or a doll's house. We learned honestly -to face, almost for the first time, the terrible abuse of sex behind -drawn blinds that, seeming an integral part of civilization, was eating -away the very heart of humanity and condemning, with grim cynicism, the -complacency of the old code. - - - - -II - -THEN CAME THE WAR! - - -—Which meant that thousands of boys and girls were suddenly snatched -away from their homes and parents, flung out into the heat of life, -under conditions of abnormal, and wholly vile, excitement. They had to -act and think for themselves without guidance, training, or experience: -to face problems almost entirely new to young and old alike. - -Practically, there were no safeguards. - -It was not that men rebelled against and defied the established -traditions: these simply did not apply to life as it burst upon our -sons and daughters. Normal existence was wiped out by a flash of -lightning. The old duties, habits, manners, responsibilities, were -rudely cast aside: for what seemed, and perhaps was, a higher call. The -whole of life was revised in a few hours; and it is no exaggeration to -say that none knew their way about the new world. - -Only a clear understanding of what war really meant for us, can reveal -the special problems of to-day in their relation to the permanent, -which are the only real, emotions and instincts of human nature. - -To a large extent, the mental and moral growth of all young men -was abruptly stopped short. Those who have come back, physically -fit, are—in all the essentials of character—five years younger -than by the calendar, though more "fixed" in their few ideas. Many -are further hampered and—in a sense—abnormal; maimed, diseased, -or nerve-shattered; definitely unbalanced in some way; only half -themselves, liable to sudden loss, or defiance, of self-control. - -For five years they were not men, but screws in a vast evil machine. -They had, indeed, experience of death; none of life. They had, -practically, no responsibility towards, or for, themselves; no sense -of duty before them except obedience; no aim beyond a standardized -efficiency. They lost every influence of home, neighbourliness, -citizenship, and above all the refinement and sanctity of love. To live -for the moment became their Ideal; in a vision of noble patriotism and -sublime self-sacrifice. It was not for them to plan, look forward, -build up life and character for themselves. - -This unnatural and irresponsible existence, moreover, was to be spent -among scenes of appalling savagery and the worst primitive passions. - - "The place was rotten with dead; green clumsy legs - High-booted, sprawled and grovelled along the saps; - And trunks, face downward, in the sucking mud, - Wallowed like trodden sand-bags loosely filled; - And naked sodden buttocks, mats of hair, - Bulged, clotted heads slept in the plastering slime." - -Only devils can serve the Devil of War; and _the supreme sacrifice our -sons made for us was the sacrifice of their humanity_. - -To "do their bit," they put away themselves. - -But this abnormal, unreal existence, these lives in the Flame of -Hate, hardened and coarsened by the day's work, positively _had_ to -discover some outlet; quick, sure ways to forget. Quite unused to the -normal "decencies," without experience in "ordering" themselves, the -sex-instinct became explosive, a sense-riot unrestrained. Remember, -that to men (and women, for that matter), hard working at high -pressure, leading a strained and feverish life, the sex-thirst springs -out. There is no drug for worn-out bodies and souls so easy and so -sweet-savoured, so prompt in its effects, for the moment so complete. -In those days few stopped to count the cost, face the consequences, or -note the weakening of the will. With death "round the corner," why stop -to think? Life was all snatching; action meant a shrewd blow, careless -of what, in ourselves or in another, we killed by the way. - -And for girls and young women there was one Rule of Life—"give the men -a good time." I know the inspiring motive, however little conscious in -some, was a generous self-forgetting. To give is always ennobling, and -God forbid one should ever, by thought or word, belittle the selfless -heroism born in woman. - -But then, our daughters had no chance to know and choose, no test -between real emotion and fevered desire—their own or another's. -Inheriting a beautiful home-womanliness, the flower of sheltered -innocence, they had to make and be themselves in the open of a new -world. Nobility shone out among us in those days, miracles beyond -belief of what woman can do and suffer for big, or small, men: a new -vision of the mothering of humanity that brought God to our side. Also, -alas, terrible shattering of English girlhood, ugly staining of the -pure in heart, feverish unrest, a fury of overdoing, a hard glitter of -cold joy. Always haste, never growth. Wherefore to-day our morality is -an ash-heap, which some weep over, others kick up. - -_Dare we refuse to face the black awakening to disillusion?_ - - - - -III - -BECAUSE WHILE THEY LIVED VIOLENTLY, YOUTH ALSO THOUGHT HARD. - - -What was their "food for thought"? Largely away from, and independent -of, personal influence from the intimacies of home life; almost -entirely freed from authority even in daily conduct, and from the -restraints of an accepted moral code; they talked and read. All the -rebellions and revolts of before 1914 were conspicuously abroad. -Above all, then and to-day, the novels (devoured for distraction) had -forced sex-problems upon the most thoughtless; demanded for all on -the threshold of life full licence for self-expression; analysed what -they called the soul in undigested detail; lingered over body-contact, -flushes and fires of the flesh; loudly proclaimed new Laws of Love. - -The whole experience of mankind, our most sacred instincts, are flouted -with contempt. The conflicting claims, which none can avoid, between -young and old, have been flung off. The old distinctions between wrong -and right are categorically denied; all now demand an absolutely fresh -start based on universal knowledge of sin, absolute freedom for the -individual, frank discussion of physical intimacies, full rights to -the Egoist—"a commonplace promiscuity that masquerades as liberty, -as courageousness, as art. A slimy, glittering snail-track threaded -through all society." - -And we have not, even yet, gone far enough! since, it is said, -"Conversation is over-sexed, the novel under-sexed, therefore untrue, -therefore insincere." By this creed, there is only one _real_ thing in -life—physical passion. - -I do not suggest that contemporary thought is _all_ evil, unclean or -false. Many of our writers are serious, pure-minded men and women, -rightly indignant with old falsehoods, honestly seeking new light. Much -of their work, too, reveals both sincerity and truth, a finer instinct -for the ideal than the Victorians ever knew. Their courage is heroic, -their frankness most wise. - -But they are, on the whole, prone to haste. They denounce often without -understanding; eager to knock down, without preparation to build up. -_There is a large body of new doctrine, or interpretation of life and -manhood, which is false, morbid, and poisonous in its effects._ - -Above all, the message has taken youth unprepared—just when (more than -ever before in the history of the world) they needed quiet patience for -complete understanding. _And_ it has, naturally, proved an attractive -instrument for cheap sensation-mongers to feed novelty and excitement, -in second-rate, widely read, novels. The appeal here is far more -dangerous, because it lacks thought or any sense of responsibility -in the writers. These insincere books, written for success to catch -the crowd, even when slightly more veiled in phrase, are far more -suggestive and unclean. They present conclusions without reasons, -gospels without faith. They partly create, and largely reflect, life as -it is for the moment. Taking evil for granted, they do devil's work. - -Such are the prevailing influences of the day; very mixed, of grave -peril, that have already done much to prolong the crime of war. - -But the following pages shall not be given to mere abuse, idle -complaints, or dogmatic assertion. - -It is necessary, quite frankly, but with all possible _clear_ -thinking, to examine and present the new moral teaching, to sift true -from false; to declare how much has come from more knowledge and -understanding, and how much from unreasoning anger, impatience of -control, the search for novelty and pride in revolt. Where, too, mere -dirt has stained the page. - - - - -IV - -WHAT, THEN, WERE THE NEW MORAL PROBLEMS, WHAT WAS THE FRANK OUTLOOK, -RAISED AND ADOPTED BEFORE THE WAR? - - -What are their effects, for good and evil, upon modern literature? - -We recognize the physical expression of love as itself no way impure -or unclean: but as a part of true passion. We know that sin means a -state of mind or emotion, a false conception of moral values; and that -virtue is not secured by legal sanction. We recognize, frankly, man's -weakness and the complexity of social life; wherefore the dangers and -temptations of ill-doing must be faced and understood. - -Finally, we believe that _knowledge brings strength_; and, therefore, -these "difficult" questions cannot, and should not, be ignored in -conversation or in books: above all, not by those who, whether -intentionally or not, do influence thought by their power to create -character in fiction. - -This awakening to a new view of Truth, however, has produced an -atmosphere in modern novels which—whatever the aim or intention of -modern novelists, leads to grave evil. - - 1. The determination to call a spade a spade, complete - frankness in words, too often ignores the relative importance - of things or deeds thus exposed. It tends, unavoidably, to - over-emphasize the physical, no less than our grandparents - exaggerated the romantic. - - 2. A recognition of the unmarried mother and the refusal to - boycott a whole class, produce detailed and frank pictures of - "gay life," in which the pleasures and even the moral conquests - are so brought into prominence as to convey the totally false - impression that such conditions are freer, and therefore - better, than prosaic domesticity. - - 3. The gospel of self-expression in emotion, itself a - fine ideal inspiring sincerity, is too often so violently - proclaimed as to ignore any consideration for others and the - "consequences" to oneself:—the inevitable weakening of the - will. - - 4. In particular, the glorification of burning passion which - (as a physical fact) cannot be continuous, is revealed to - justify the lie that, as the _nature_ of love changes or grows, - it also turns cold and dies. Therefore, they seek to show that - the noblest love does not last, that men and women alike need - constant change in emotion, that marriage is not a bond but - bondage. - -Everywhere, they confound the abuses of truth with truth itself; -proclaim an ideal false simply because it has been degraded and -misunderstood. They condemn because we cannot attain. - -Obviously, however, the novelists may still reply, "We are concerned -with life not with ideals. If these things be sin, we must write of -sin." That we all admit. The novel with any ambition towards truth dare -not ignore temptation or the failure to resist. It must reveal human -nature, no less at its worst than its best; face the struggle between -faith and disloyalty to oneself; picture life's cruel ironies and the -tyranny of fate. - -_But that can never excuse doubt, or confusion between right and wrong, -exalting evil, or perversion of the truth._ - - - - -V - -THE "SPADE" IDEAL IN FICTION - - -This has been summarized once for all in his description of what Mr. -W. L. George calls a "sincere" novel: "There would be as many scenes -in the bedroom as in the drawing-room, probably more, given that human -beings spend more time in the former than the latter apartment." - -There is nothing sincere in that definition except its nasty flavour; -the lust it suggests. The actual effect, if not the intention, is a -quick shock to our natural instincts. - -Any possible value it might appear to possess at first sight, as a -serious argument, has been lost by the insincere reason given. Mr. -George himself is far too good an artist not to know that _real_ life -is _not_ measured by length of hours. Crises are, nearly always, swift. -Too often, a character is lost or won in a moment; we grow old in a -night; gain the happiness of a lifetime by the right word. How many a -man is bound to "spend more time" over his ledger than beside his lady! - -This weak reasoning gives the realists away. They are so set on the -letter of truth as to deny its spirit. Aiming at exact photographic -reproduction of life, they lose all sense of proportion and real -values, hiding the wood in the trees. Whether or not the material facts -be true, the reality is false, the proportions misplaced, the picture -out of focus. - -In practice, moreover, they do select no less arbitrarily than the -romantic Victorians. In their view, "one can only get at most women's -minds through their bodies." - -But Mr. George has only _expressed_ one reason for his contention; even -if _that_ be seriously intended. The argument really _means_ that, -often, if not always, the most vital moments of our life are spent in -the bedroom; a half-truth more dangerous and misleading than a lie. - -What the word "bedroom" in this sentence honestly stands for is -obviously something quite real; but it does not reveal or test -character, and can never in any way complete a _true_ picture of life. -The accidents of expression are not truth itself. - -In a recent drama of temperament called _Enter Madame_, the author's -mere instinct for stage-effects has, as it were by accident, provided -an illustration that proves our point. The hero of this spontaneous -and light-hearted drama is attracted by two women of whom one largely -appeals to his passions (though _not_ his lust); and the other appears -to possess what modernists would call the "tame" comforting qualities -of a "good" wife. He chooses passion in the end, following his love -_off the stage_, into a bedroom. In this scene we have the whole truth; -no added sincerity in the presentment, no shade of character the most -minute, would have been added by opening that door. The emotional -decision was the reality. - -To the realist the play would probably seem a square fight between wife -and mistress—with the inevitable result! - -But, in actual fact, almost every detail went to confound the new -morality. The passionate woman was the hero's wife, whom he had just -divorced—to achieve domesticity. She did _not_ exclusively depend upon -the physical appeal; though it was used to bring him back. They had a -thousand other, more subtle, points of sympathy and mutual attraction, -despite the exasperating petty irritations of life, which she would -not allow to wreck their love. On the other hand, it was not any fixed -aversion to marriage, any weakness in the bond itself, that caused her -rival's failure. She simply was not, when—as it were—put to the test, -his spiritual mate. For him, she was the wrong woman. - -Most certainly this play was not inspired by any conscious theories on -life or art. A straightforward, workmanlike picture of everyday people; -its very lack of intention made it the more convincing. The author had -no axe to grind. - -As in life, we saw that the best feelings of an ordinary decent sort of -man are expressed, as his ultimate happiness is secured, by 'putting -up with his wife's tantrums for love of her dear self.' That is, by -some kind of self-control about the small things of life for the sake -of the big; an instinctive knowledge of values or sense of proportion; -mutual accommodation, and self-expression in self-sacrifice. He would -not rush away from her for a change or new experience, to that placid -domesticity which, because he had missed it, he—for a moment—supposed -would prove ideal. - -Nevertheless, it is absolutely clear that his decision does _not_ -establish the superiority of passion-storms over carpet slippers. -He chose between two women, not between two modes of life: a matter -of temperament, and the man's individual, permanent feeling. Though -married, he had not—as he too hastily imagined—fallen "out of" love. - -Life is distorted to-day by the orgy of crude passion in most -second-rate fiction, of which Mr. Evan Morgan's _Trial by Ordeal_ is an -extreme case. Unfortunately such novelists have the smart air of being -absolutely at home all over the world, without really knowing their way -about anywhere. - -The leading lady of this brightly variegated human manure-heap is a -"vampire, like a sea-breeze, like the noise of a waterfall at night"; -her familiar ally is a discreet "sort of lady dressmaker, whose sons, -numbering almost equally with her lovers, had forced her to take to -a genteel trade." It is a picture of life among "bolsters with the -temperaments of wood-lice; . . . among talented women, gifted women, -immoral women." - -Here Miss Hazell O'Neill "netted a half-blind poet, whom she took out -and dusted on bright days and holidays." Him she ultimately left, as -part of her luggage, to a landlady in Jersey; and proceeded to "smash -a sculptor with his own statue." - -Caught at last by "romance," falling in love with a man who -wondered—"would she be more trouble than she was worth"; this -determined young woman "leapt up and began undressing . . . plunged into -the water"; so that "the momentary glance he had of her naked beauty, -the excitement, overcame him." - -The hero, in his "first affair" with "the daughter of a very -respectable God-fearing parson," carefully taught her the new ideals of -"free love, free conscience, free everything . . . hoping himself -to reap the fruit of his labours." Submitting, however, to the -"ceremonial" of marriage, he was caught in his own trap. She was -now "enlightened," and "dreading suddenly the binding nature of the -service," ran away, at the eleventh hour, with another man. - -Afterwards "she came back ill, very ill, and he left her to sink or -swim." Such is the chivalry of free love; that ultimately drove her to -become "a horrible, decadent, drug-maniac." - -Of his "spiritual" union with another, we read: "Both were exhausted, -the _emotions of the soul_ had overpowered them, they fell fainting -against the cool grey stone, and there, like a burning picture of all -the romances there have been since the beginning of time, they leant in -the twilight." - -By all means call a spade a spade; but do not imagine that all life is -spades. To insist upon bedroom scenes in fiction or drama, and all the -nakedness of phrase such a conception of art implies, does, and must, -often suggest the sly and coarse innuendo. It is the same with all -_excess_ of emphasis on physical detail. When Mr. D. H. Lawrence dwells -on the feverish symptoms (mainly skin-deep) of his lovers, describes -their breasts and loins, he is—actually—playing with the obscene. - -The reticence we demand is not based on any pretence that our bodies -are unclean, on any conventional association between mere words and -thoughts. - -A nude painting may be supremely, spiritually, beautiful: it may be -lewd: but it is not, as many would now declare, more real _because_ of -its nudity. - -Can we _honestly_ say that the increasing undress on stage or in daily -life provokes more deep, true and sincere feeling, reveals more of -a girl's or a woman's real and best self? We know it does not. _It -distracts our thoughts from the woman herself_ to memories of purely -animal and gross experience, tempts us to lower depths. It matters -not, in the book or in the play, that innocence prevail. I have heard -men, for example, when the curtain fell at _The Sign of the Cross_, -chuckling over the public attack on a girl's body (though it failed), -with gay plans for vile conquests. - -Obviously, there can be no fixed verbal rule. To say that no writer may -use certain words or describe certain actions and things; no playwright -may paint certain scenes; would be to "speak as a fool." Each case must -be determined by its inner spiritual truth. - -In one sense our selection of phrase must be a matter of taste and -good feeling; in another, it comes from our artistic instinct. What I -maintain, and have tried to show, is that modern novels are, too often, -both poisonous _and_ untrue to life because their choice of words and, -indeed, their whole picture of life, is dominated by a false view: -that, if only your figures are naked they _must_ be true, that our -bodies cannot lie. _In angry revolt against the half-truths of the -past, they snatch at the other half and swear it is the whole._ - -Let the writer be sure that he cares only for truth; and loyalty to his -vision will give him the right, clean thoughts and words. - -Let the reader trust to his own natural instincts. Almost certainly, -if a phrase or thought either shock or suggest the unclean, it is -itself—as then used—unclean, false to life and nature; _and_ also -bad art. If you are told that the first slight shock, prick of the -conscience, impulse to shrink away, is false hypocrisy, _do not believe -it_. - -Nearly always the most inexperienced youth _feels straight_. Once -the poison is drunk and you have let yourself go with the injected -delirium, you will have lost the power to see and feel for yourself. - - - - -VI - -NOVELS OF "GAY LIFE," WITH THE PROSTITUTE HEROINE, ARE, QUITE -OBVIOUSLY, STRONG MORAL INTOXICANTS. - - -One does not pronounce the subject forbidden. We know, and recognize, -that a man's mistress _may_ be a nobler woman than his wife, the love -between them more real; we know and recognize where mere passion may -lead; and we do not carelessly push beyond the pale, those whom a -hundred different circumstances—quite different degrees of moral -weakness or reckless defiance through special trouble—may have led to -live on man's desires. We do not dismiss them from thought, reading, -and conversation. - -Nevertheless many novels now written use these most grave issues for -mere dramatic effect, or to confound morality; and, to these ends, -offer a falsely attractive picture of emotional adventure. In his -terrible _Bed of Roses_, on the other hand, Mr. W. L. George treats -his theme with the definite object of exposing the tragedy of a young -woman with no training, suddenly forced to earn her living; and of -expressing his righteous anger against the conditions of civilization. -Because, he declares, "a woman can scratch up a living but not a -future; and the only job she's really fit for is to be a man's keep, -legal or illegal, permanent or temporary." The narrative itself is -most emphatically not free from offence, but the motive is honest and -sincere. - -Mr. Gilbert Cannan, again, with less earnest intention but still -legitimately, seems to have written _Pink Roses_ to illustrate the -demoralizing effects of the war on a quite decent, average young man, -who was "left out" of things—through a weak heart. He drifts into an -experiment of lust, but is not finally destroyed, because he recognized -from the first that he had only sought the adventure—to fill the blank -years. - -The frail "Cora" of Mr. Snaith's _Sailor_ merely stands for temptation, -which no novelist can omit. The episode is not shirked, but it is -treated with all the traditional reticence, which puts it outside our -discussion here. - -In these examples the motive may be acknowledged towards -justification; but such books as Mr. W. L. George's _Confessions of -Ursula Trent_ only respond to a morbid preference for melodramatic -atmosphere: they assume, and encourage, our interest in the unclean. - -To heighten the effect, they are—almost inevitably—untrue. The -attractions and drama are exaggerated, giving a false glamour to the -gravest tragedy of human nature. There is here obvious adventure, -and far greater variety or colour than we can, most of us, reach in -ordinary respectable life. There is even some real liberty for the -individual (though far less than these superficial narratives suggest), -in dramatic contrast to the slaving drudgery and imprisoned minds—of -underpaid long hours of toil and drab unloving homes. - -The hopeless tragedy, the bitter knowledge, the utter weariness and the -slavery of the soul do not provide the novelist with dramatic material, -and are—to a large extent—left out of the picture. He slurs over, -or altogether ignores, the blunting of moral sense, the coarsening of -moral fibre, the lowering of all ideals: the gradual loss of power -over oneself, loss of will, loss of freedom, loss—even—of desire. -He may use the more obvious foulness and brutality as an occasion for -drama—naturally not wishing to be transparently unreal. The moral -tragedy is not _there_. - -But by his own art standard, that demands the exact truth, he is -condemned; and he is guilty of just that falsehood which he set out -to expose and revile—of treating his characters as a _class apart_, -rather types than individuals. As the Victorians assumed, without -charity, they were always lower than the "respectable"; he almost -conveys the impression that they are necessarily higher—as careless, -and far more dangerous, an assumption. - -We can perhaps see more clearly where this perverse attack upon -convention really leads from another example of fiction, frankly -designed to sell. - -It is, indeed, hard to detect the serious object or thought behind such -books as _The Age of Consent_. The publisher claims "extraordinary -delicacy" for its treatment of a "difficult, perilous, and exciting -situation," which is "modern in the fullest sense." There is, we admit, -nothing coarse here in language or thought, a welcome exception to-day; -and the combination of essential purity, in a very real sense, with a -courageous acceptance of life, is revealed with real understanding of -morality and of our natural instincts. - -In other words, Pamela is a true woman; with exceptional possession of -herself, heroic impulse and a clean mind; capable of sustained, genuine -self-sacrifice and self-restraint. - -_But when we consider the tests by which her nature is revealed and -developed, the sordid vice in which she grew from girl to woman; -the whole impression is reversed._ Circumstances and atmosphere are -violently morbid and also quite abnormal. We have not only every -conceivable variety in the cruel and profit-sharing intrigues of lust -(with no sudden impulse to excuse, if not condone); but illustration -and discussion of the most extreme and vile form of criminal mania that -serves no purpose but to heighten the crude sensationalism. - -The legal problem suggested by the title (a "practical" issue of -grave importance to public morality) is only used for the mechanism -of the plot; and spiritual purity is fertilized by manure. This, of -course, may be achieved by a strong nature: virtue does sometimes -triumph against long odds. But such books without doubt imply that the -surroundings of loathly sin _provide the most favourable soil_ for the -growth and strengthening of a girl's innocence to perfect womanhood. -Which is a lie. - -_Can we finally hesitate to proclaim that too many novels, written -round "gay life," create moods and stimulate emotions, by which truth -and the Right are hidden or denied?_ - - - - -VII - -WHAT DO THE "NEW" WRITERS AND THINKERS TO-DAY ACTUALLY TEACH? HOW DO -THEY INTERPRET LIFE AND LOVE? - - -We have, so far, considered rather the effects of "new" morality -than the morality itself; and, to some extent, dwelt more upon the -characteristics of modern fiction than on the thought it expounds. - -It is now necessary to examine the actual teaching, or interpretation, -of life and love. - -The poison permeating literature and society seems to have its main -origin in over-emphasis and a determination to reform by destruction. - -A violent, but not altogether unjustified, reaction against our old -moral rules and formulæ, which laid undue stress on "appearances," has -led to a passionate declaration that the first right and duty of every -man or woman is to express himself or herself at all costs. The one -sin now held unpardonable is hypocrisy, or the insincere moulding of -oneself by rule; falling in line, accepting any authority or tradition, -any form of self-sacrifice. There is great confusion here between good -and evil. We have already more than once explained that we of the older -days frankly admit our mistake. We did conform over-much, fixed our -ideals in a groove, and—with too anxious love—sought to guide and -direct youth, rather than help and stimulate them to be their best -selves. - -But, if we laid too great stress on restraint, control, sacrifice, and -mere orderliness; the new thinkers have, here again, missed the truth -by their fiery haste. As the clear-sighted heroine of a recent novel -has remarked, "It was a great and fine act to let yourself go—only no -one said precisely where you went to." - -Their Self is not a complete purposeful human being, of strong -character and sustained courage, clear faith, and reasonable hope: -certainly not of any charity whatsoever. _The ego they would exalt is -a mere riot of moods._ They snatch at a moment's joy, utter a moment's -emotion, act on a moment's thought. There is no idea of "finding" -oneself _before_ expressing oneself. Every passing fancy, feverish -excitement, sudden hate, is to be flung out upon a bewildered world; -above all to the confounding and wounding of steadier souls—the old, -the middle-aged, or any that bear another's burden. Such tempestuous -demands on life are based on anger against parental preachments and on -a curious lack of self-confidence. Seeing the glory of youth's capacity -for enthusiasm, they seem always afraid that it will fade and die -unless encouraged perpetually to explode. They will not tolerate any -idea of growth and strength through self-control, any appeal to the -higher, deeper Self, built up on loving service and kindness to one's -fellow-men. - -No theory of life ever produced such weak, formless, and utterly -miserable human beings. _They quickly cease to have any self to -express._ Swayed in a thousand contrary directions by every idle -mood, they become more absolutely slaves to chance encounter and -a thoughtless word than one would have supposed possible to an -intelligent man or woman, with any pride in self or any standard -of honour. It should be obvious that such a perpetual series of -unconsidered experiments in emotion must wear out all independent -thought, all strength of will, all capacity for judgment. - -Miss Sheila Kaye Smith does not teach this ideal in _Joanna Godden_, -but she exposes it with her usual grim sincerity. The heroine of that -profound tragedy kills her lonely soul by a perpetual struggle to -snatch happiness for herself. Originally a strong woman, she goes on -"blundering worse and worse," until "there she stood, nearly forty -years old, her lover, her sister, her farm, her home, her good name, -all lost." - -A novel in which we can, however, clearly detect confusion between -love and the quick, vicious, response to every sensuous impression, -is _The Sleeping Fire_ of W. E. B. Henderson, described by its author -as a tale of "the urge in woman . . . where the flesh, crying like an -infant for food, is yet held back by scruples of a spirit that bows to -circumstance, from fastening on the breast of personal choice." - -Here "the woman," Viva Barrington, is, again and again, described as "a -human soul, innately decent and fine"; and yet she "suddenly kindled" -at any man's mere touch. The young guardsman whom "considerable -practice had enabled to use his fine eyes with much effect," declared -"she could be no end o' fun, if she'd only let herself go." In fact, -he took up a bet, "ten to one in quids," that he would kiss her before -the last supper dance; "a real live kiss, mind you, where she gives as -good as she gets. None of your stolen pecks." - -As this "splendid specimen of the vigorous young male smoothed back -her hair, devouring her with his eyes . . . a delicious languor . . . -as of one yielding to an anæsthetic . . . was stealing over her. -Husband, children—everything of her outside life slipped away." - -And at his kiss "primordial passion" awoke. "Feeling herself a live -coal of shame from head to foot she raised herself slightly upwards -towards him, and with closed eyes and utter abandon, passionately -returned the pressure of his lips." - -This "pure" woman, already a mother, is fired by a "vulgar wager," a -vain boy wanting to kiss her "for the mere enjoyment of the contact," -in the conservatory, heated by champagne and the dance. There is no -attempt to suggest real feeling, the passionate awakening that _may_ -come after a foolish marriage; when the "right man" stirs unknown -depths, beating down "fears, doubts, self-distrusts." She crumples up -at the first chance shot. - -No wonder that, after some months' experimenting among men, she grows -"afraid—afraid! . . . now I know I'm liable to—to kindle, suddenly, -inexplicably. . . . There's a man here—one of those to-night. He's -unclean, through and through. I never used to attract that type. And -now apparently I do. The 'sleeping fire' . . . he sees it in me and -tries to feed it. He sickens me! Oh, I'm frightened. Suppose one day -that type _ceased_ to sicken me. I've seen the demi-monde at the -tables. Their faces haunt me. _They_ began with the sleeping fire, and -men fed it and fed it till it became a furnace . . . for me, it's been -like summer lightning so far . . . only summer lightning. Look after me, -help me, lest it ever be forked lightning . . . the lightning that can -strike and destroy." - -So she appeals to the husband she had originally accepted as "a -crutch," and who had looked upon her as "furniture." Fortunately—for -the children, because he has "changed, broadened in outlook and -understanding"—he is ready "to build afresh, stone by stone." - -We admit that Mr. Henderson's moral is sound enough; he has, indeed, -found "the way of salvation." But he has _not_ drawn for us the -"innately decent and fine woman." Viva is weak and abnormally sensual -from the first; pulled out of the mire by luck, human kindness, and -a dim taste for "the things that are good, decent, and worth while"; -_inherited from clean-living forebears_. - -The danger for her was exceptional, not "that _natural_ yearning" -against which "_all women_ must be _eternally_ on their guard." Her -husband, we notice, hoped to guard his daughter "_against her mother's -tendency_." - -We have a precisely similar situation in _The Mother of All Living_ -by Mr. Keable. An emotional, but high-minded woman, whose husband -was not aggressively incompatible, is here suddenly stirred to the -depths—practically at first sight—by a cynical, handsome man of the -world. There is absolutely no attempt whatever to even suggest any -natural affinity in mind or tastes between the two; no urge except the -unexplained, and inexplicable, mystery of the spark that fires sex. The -abandon to which this unnatural awakening leads up belongs to quite a -different type of woman; and when, at the eleventh hour, she repents in -melodrama, we have still a third personality, no way like the girl her -husband wooed and won. - -This is, perhaps, why Mr. Keable calls her _The Mother of all Living_, -Eve incarnate, the World-Woman. As Mr. Masefield draws Mary Queen -of Scots—too "big" for one lover. Both writers chose to forget, or -to ignore, that love has no meaning, unless one's _whole_ self is -expressed. - -Mr. Temple Thurston, again, in _The Green Bough_, seems resolutely -determined to uphold Pope's dictum that "every woman is at heart a -rake." - -Mary, indeed, is a woman "whom life had discarded and thrown aside"; -whom, therefore, we are ready to judge leniently. It does _not_, -therefore, follow "How vast a degree of false modesty there is in the -world . . . it had _all been false_ that modesty which their mother had -taught them." - -She, at any rate without modesty, sought and found love. So fine -a thing this that she took it, without hesitation, from a married -man, who had told her how much he loved his wife. "It happened—in a -fortnight." - -Of her sisters, reproaching her, she declares "Jane thinks herself -a true woman just because she's clung to modesty and chastity and a -fierce reserve; but these things are only of true value when they're -needed, and what man has needed them of us? _Who cares at all whether -we've been chaste or pure?_ None but ourselves! And what made us care -_but those false values_ that make Jane's shame of me? . . . You're not -really ashamed of me. You're _envious, jealous, and you're stung with -spite_. Calling me a servant girl or a woman of the streets only feeds -your spite, it doesn't satisfy your heart. _You'd give all you know to -have what I have._ . . . I'm going to have a child. . . . It's not a -sin. It's not a shame. It's the most wonderful thing in the world." - -_There is one unanswerable reply to that fearful charge—"What man has -needed chastity of us, who cares?"—a son's honouring of his mother, -the man's instinct to defend his wife, his sister, or his child._ - -False, or forced, "modesty" may degenerate into "spite"; but it will be -a sad day for human nature when all women are "jealous" of the "free!" - -Mr. Thurston seems to claim, in this novel, to be "the one man in the -world who understands the truth about women." This is his reading of -truth! - -It had been "the one night of her lover's life"; but he went back to -that "wonderful woman," his wife, who had "as big a heart as all this -stretch of acres and that breadth of sea." To Mary, he wrote, "I blame -myself utterly and I blame myself alone. . . . So many another woman -would have reckoned the cost before she knew the full account. You said -nothing. _You are wonderful, Mary_, and if any woman deserves to escape -the consequences of passion, it is you." - -"God!" she cried, "was that the little mind her own had met with? . . . -She knew how in the deepest recesses of her soul there did not live a -father to her child. . . . If this was a man, then men were nothing to -women. Two nights of burning passion he had been with her and for those -moments they had been inseparably one. But now he had gone as though -the whole world divided them. . . . With that letter he had cancelled -all existence in the meaning of life. There was no meaning in him." - -He was "the mere servant of Nature, whipped with passion to her purpose -. . . no father at all." - -Wherefore _she tries to explain_ to him: "Women are not complicated. -It is only the laws that make us appear so. . . . That first of our -two nights on the cliffs, did you find me complicated or difficult -of understanding? I showed, as well as gave you myself, and this -is how you have treated that revelation. . . . _Why do you hint about -shame to me? Did you think I shared what you call your weakness? Did -you think for those moments that, as you say of yourself, I forgot -or lost restraint?_ . . . You would not believe me if I told you that -all women in their essence are the same. It is only with so many that -. . . the hollow dignity of social position, the chimera of good repute -. . . are more attractive and alluring than the pain and discomfort and -difficulty of bringing children into a competitive world. . . . But -starve one of these women . . . deny to her the first function which -justifies her existence . . . and you will find her behave as I -behaved. . . . I had no shame then. I loved. Loving no longer, I still -now have no shame because, and believe me it is not in anger, we have no -cause to meet again." - -On the other hand, Miss E. M. Delafield's _Humbug_ reveals with -startling clearness the falseness of self-seeking in passion. -Her argument is the more convincing because her heroine, Lily -Stellenthorpe, has the best of reasons for adopting the new ideal, the -strongest possible temptation to follow a false light. Her sensitive -and vital nature had been cramped from birth by "a good woman's -capacity for the falsification of moral values." Her father literally -drove her along the same demoralizing groove. Love and respect for -their honest, but kind, goodness almost compel insincerity and the -complete self-annihilation. Under such influences, she acquires a -_good_ husband. He, alas, dictates her conscience, assumes that so -sweet a woman will conform to type. It seems almost a brutal sin for -her to act, think, or even feel, for herself. Steadily she grows more -hidden, secret, and hypocritical. - -This careful preparation for modern self-passion is admirably drawn. We -can scarcely deny that any sudden outburst of even cruel selfishness or -revolt might be excused, if not absolutely justified, for _her_. - -Inevitably the occasion comes. The expected lover appears, young, -ardent, understanding; all, it seems to her revived free impulse, that -she had been seeking for many years. Lily, however, does not snatch -at happiness, flare out herself. She looks into herself, getting -herself—as it were—in order, before so fateful a choice. - -She thought first, _as she had been told by a sympathetic -schoolmistress_, "What I need, what I must have, if I am ever to -fulfil myself—is romance. I must learn not to be afraid of life. Some -day, I shall love. Am I to pretend to myself that such a thing is out -of the question because I am married?" Why not strike for freedom, and -begin life again? She "thought that the conflict lay, as so often, -between sincerity and sentiment." Only sentiment made it "impossible -for her to be ruthless" to her husband. - -"_Then illumination came to her, searing and vivid._" - -The lover was, after all, a mere "pretext," an opportunity for one more -experiment with life, one more feverish attempt to find some false -image of herself. - -"Was the freedom for which she looked to be based upon yet another -artificial value? After all, why should she arrogate to herself the -right of deciding what her greatest happiness was to be? . . . The -long, long way round that it had been, to arrive at last at her own -convictions, and cease to try and wrench them into line with those of -other people!" - -"The gift" of herself "had been made" to her husband. Her real self lay -with him and with their coming child. - -So she conquered the final test, escaped "applying a general law to a -particular case—taking one's values ready-made—the old, old humbug." -As "the last comforting falsity fell from her she saw . . . the truth." - -This was the truth _for her_. It is not offered as an argument for or -against a dogmatic rule that no woman may ever be justified in leaving -her husband. - -What this thoroughly modern and sincere novel _does_ establish, is the -equal folly, and almost greater moral danger, of the opposite dogma: -that self-expression for its own sake, the mere putting a moment's -apparent happiness above all other claims or aims, without considering -the future, or seeking to find one's real self, _is a false and evil -ideal_. - -_Miss Delafield gives the "new" morality a fair, and even an eloquent, -hearing, chooses a case where all the circumstances seem combined for -its support, and then exposes the fallacy of its reasoning._ - - - - -VIII - -WHAT, THEN, IS THIS NEW LOVE? IT IS SEX-CONFLICT. - - -The most obvious, and the most sincere, form of self-expression rests -on pure emotion—a natural and healthy impulse. The right thus to -express oneself belongs, as we acknowledge to-day, to women no less -than men. - -But, largely misled by their over-insistence upon the physical in human -nature, too many modern thinkers confuse fierce excitement with deep -emotion. Also seeing, and wisely exalting, the glory of youth's dream, -they sanction, and even advise, thoughtless haste and action on every -impulse. - -It is now taught, not only that physical passion stands for, or rather -_is_, the Love of which it forms only a part; but that the fire of -sudden desire is the only true, or natural, expression of love itself. - -Such a view has been, again and again, formally stated with quite -serious, honest intent by our leading novelists. It is assumed, -without argument or justification, in most second-rate popular fiction; -thereby reaching and poisoning the very readers least qualified to -resist evil influence and, as we have shown, particularly ill-equipped -to-day. - -For Mr. Cannan's Matilda love is a "kiss of the lips, a surrender to -the flood of perilous feeling, a tampering with forces that might or -might not sweep you to ruin; a matter of fancy, dalliance, and risk." -His Cora, the "natural light of love," "kissed" her lover's "eyes, his -lips, his ears, and bit the tip of his nose until it was bruised and -swollen." - -He may well ask: "Does any man want any woman, or any woman any man? -Are these wild flashes more than things of a moment? . . . Is not every -woman any man's woman? Is not every man any woman's man? Why property? -Why impossible pledges? Why pretend so much that is obviously false? -Why build upon a lie and call it sacred? . . . Why do men and women live -hideously together? . . . Why, and why again?" - -With a cynic's frankness Mr. W. L. George answers why: - -"Men may have us," said his Victoria, "as breeders and housekeepers, -but the mistress is the root of all." This is not, as one might -suppose, a confession of sin; for "Love is outside marriage, because -love's too big to stay inside . . . don't you see that of itself it -carries the one sanctity that may exist between men and women? That it -cannot be bound because it is as light airs, imponderable; so fierce -that all things it touches it burns, so sweet that whosoever has drunk -shall ever more be thirsty." - -_Because a man soon tires of such burning sweetness, he must satisfy -his thirst elsewhere._ - -Woman, indeed, he is annoyed to find, is still unable to "understand -love in its neurotic moods; she cannot yet understand that a greater -intensity might creep into passion if one _knew_ it to be transient, -that one might love more urgently, with greater fierceness, if one -_knew_ that soon the body, temple of that love, would fade, wither, -die, then decay . . . that haste to live made living more intense." - -WHAT, THEN, IS THIS LOVE. IT IS A SEX-CONFLICT; wherein the man "has -to make war, to conquer." The woman begs him "to hurt her, to set his -imprint upon her"; even when "about to conquer" she must wear "the -slave look." This is precisely the woman he also finds, more crudely -phrased, in the "mean streets": "If yer lives alone nothing 'appens -. . . stuck in the mud like. But when yer've got a 'usband, things 'as -wot they calls zest . . . if 'e do come 'ome . . . p'r'aps 'e'll give -yer one in the mouf. Variety, that's wot it is, variety. . . . He may -lift his elbow a bit and all that, but anyhow 'e's a man." If he does -_not_ come home, love means "waking up in the middle of the night and -running about the room like a crazy thing because she'd dreamed he was -with some other girl." In the afternoon it meant "feeling all soft and -swoony just because he helped you into the 'bus by the elbow." - -More thoughtful or intelligent young ladies come "to think there's no -such thing as a pure-minded girl." Marriage is "merely evidence that -the girl has held out" and "only a dodge for getting rid of being in -love." - -Mr. Hugh Walpole once very sensibly remarked that "people don't want -to know what a young ass thinks about life if he can't tell a story." -Perhaps, if such muddled ideas were only expressed by these solemn and -very intellectual young men (who, however, can "tell a story"), we -might be disposed to leave the matter in their hands and trust to time -for their enlightening. - -But, unfortunately, the same false "new love" is about us everywhere. -It is a commonplace to boys and girls, and has crept into the great -majority of second-rate, easily read, novels published to-day. - -What does it really mean? How has it come about? - -In the first place, the new thinkers have done precisely what they -are always protesting against. They confuse "marriage" with the legal -contract. A great part of their abuse, half their plea for the greater -sincerity of free love, has no standing against spiritual marriage, -founded on true love. - -Nevertheless the argument against _permanency_ remains. The demand for -continual new adventure in emotion (set out to condone both intimacy -without marriage or disloyalty to marriage) does rest on something -which has the appearance of truth and reason. - -The fiery, swooning passion of mere bodily impulse _does not last_. -But even physical passion, the sex-urge, means more than that. Our -new teachers ignore what all experience has proved and science -taught—that _every_ physical impulse—whether to eat or drink, work -or play—demands restraint for its fruition. The value of self-control -is no less of the body than the soul. - -It is the fever-bred passion, born of stimulated sex-consciousness, -that must snatch at every chance for expression and demands constant -change. This, indeed, does weary and satiate the spirit, weaken bodily -vigour, and destroy manhood. Bid us look for, welcome, and artificially -develop every first faint stirring of the sex-urge, and you make us -slaves indeed. If you consider less fundamental desires and pleasures -of the body, you will admit at once that feverish, uncontrolled, -and constant straining to put out all your strength at once, can -produce no kind of good sportsman. Who more rigorously disciplines -himself than the athlete? The power to be passionate, to express the -love of the flesh, dies before it has ever been really attained, -for those who always at once yield to mere craving. Their "deeply -sensual associations" are "always robbed of mystery and delight when -long-balked attraction comes to a tardy blooming." - -And as Scott told us long ago, "It is no small aggravation of this -jaded and uncomfortable state of mind, that the voluptuary cannot -renounce the pursuits with which he is satiated, but must continue, for -his character's sake, or from the mere force of habit, to take all the -toil, fatigue, and danger of the chase, while he has so little real -interest in the termination." - -That is, they quickly lose the very pleasures which were their object -and their excuse. - -_I have known, or read of, no more miserable and weak human beings than -many of the men and women in modern fiction._ - -Does it then follow that spiritual love, a true union of souls, for -which we claim a higher and a more lasting happiness, is a thing apart, -wherein the physical must be kept under, put aside; or, if conceded -to our common weakness (the penalty of our earthly existence), should -be calmly and occasionally indulged, only under official licence, -in secret as a shameful deed? Certainly _not_. The pure know far -more of passion than the loose. But, as other bodily pleasure, i.e., -self-expression, gains strength and depth by taking responsibility for -itself, "ordering" itself; so, above all, does our strongest, and most -ultimate, physical need. - -It is the true passion, naturally found in comradeship and love, -spontaneously constant and controlled, which will complete man's -vitality, deepen and strengthen, while it steadies, physique. -Spiritually the one expresses itself by _taking_, the other achieves -itself by _giving_. - -The biggest adventure in life, the deepest and truest feelings do, -actually, involve that emotional abandon, or complete self-forgetting, -which modernists exalt. But the giving away of one's whole self, -that is, expressing one's whole self in passionate service, is _not_ -achieved by sudden, untested intimacy. It can only come, or grow, -for those who seek understanding of each other, suffer the first -mystery—(stirring the wonder dreams of youth)—to unfold and reveal -itself in steady, controlled devotion to the vision of romance. Then, -and only then (soon or late, as the individual self prompts), he shall -dare, _because he knows_. - -In other words, the physical passion, in which to-day men find the -_birth_ of love, belongs in nature to maturity and completion, when man -has gained the courage to be himself and express himself. It is the -harvest of pure romance, only possible to those who have earned full -knowledge of themselves and of each other. - -The humdrum pictures of insincere marriage, with which fiction is -crowded to-day, come from mistakes or spiritual failure to be one's -best self, _not_ from constancy and faith. The need to perpetually -revive intense emotion with a new mistress can never be felt in a true -marriage. It _is_ inevitable for so-called "free" love, the bitterest -slavery of man. - -For wedded love—that is, the permanent union of body and soul—there -is ever a new and wonderful adventure, the deepening mystery of the -closer bond. And the highest happiness, which is _intense_ emotion, has -the gravest responsibilities, demanding the greatest courage and hope. -As Mr. Middleton Murray has written in _The Things We Are_: "The taking -of a wife or the taking of a friend is an eternal act; if it be less, -it is a treachery, a degradation." - -It is true, certainly, that the _nature_ of love and passion may -change with time and the comradeship of daily life; but the change is -not a weakening, not even a lowering of the pulse. Its ardour does -not diminish but conquers life more completely. It is, actually, the -constant and faithful heart, which has most strength to bear with, or -to ennoble, the deadening trivialities of existence (that no free -lover can escape), to make small things great; which finds most courage -to face Fate. - -The deadening influence of constant "experiments" in passion ("walking -round and round the thing you want, gloating over it with your eyes"); -the bitter tragedy of a life that is "one long series of eager -conquests turned to listless ones," has been dramatically exposed, with -unflinching realism, by Miss Olive Mary Salter in her _God's Wages_; -which also reveals "that love beyond self which is human companionship." - -For Anne Verity, we read, "marriage" had been "the finger-post to -Death." In "making man her own she made him stale. . . . There was no -end to those upon whom she had lived and left them to pay the bill." -Always "life must be savoured anew by fresh interests, hashed up -aspects of the same old facts served up over and over again to one's -easily deceived palate." It was "her vanity that must be ministered -to afresh, its staleness and satiation relieved by the sacrifice of -someone else's young virility." - -She found that "love doesn't stay with this generation, it touches us -and flies again. . . . It's this awful quality of inconstancy in me, as -if my heart had got a hole in it. . . . We've lost the art of looking -on at anybody but ourselves." - -But, at long last, when a man explained to her: "I want you to love my -mind, that lives, instead of my body, that will die," she awoke. - -She learnt then, that "the right man, or the right woman for the matter -of that, isn't ever ready made. It needs effort of the most intense -kind to fit a man perfectly into a woman's life, a woman perfectly into -a man's." - -_Wherefore, "Love, real love, is the consummation of great effort, -neither more nor less."_ - - - - -IX - -WHO _IS_ THE "IDEAL" MISTRESS? - - -The most determined advocates of free-love have never upheld the old, -lazy indulgence towards man and his "wild oats." The ideal mistress, -whom they so confidently exalt over the wife, is not the "kept woman" -behind Victorian respectability. Modern writers have, boldly and -justly, attacked that discreet indiscretion with the unanswerable -logic of facts. If we allow men licence, justice demands equal liberty -for women. Sin is not less, but greater, for being in secret, however -flimsy the veil. - -It is difficult, nevertheless, to see how _mutual_ infidelity can -actually remove the admitted evils of a situation it makes more -complex; or to believe that publicity can, of itself, turn black to -white. By some curious twist of reasoning, it really would seem that -they maintain: "By lifting the blinds, we have created a 'new' woman, -the ideal of all the ages." - -For where, after all, have they turned to find her, save to their -knowledge and experience of the past? We cannot, positively, -reconstruct human nature. - -There is a clear and concise exposition of the whole theory in Miss -Romer Wilson's last novel, _The Death of Society_. It is the story of -Mr. Smith and his short visit to a distinguished Norwegian writer. He, -quite openly, worships the old man's young wife—"his girl, his woman, -his desire"—and though for them "time was so short they could not -afford to sleep," it is expressly stated that "_she, the perfect woman -in whom all women live, raised him to perfect manhood_." "Now," he -said, "I have confidence to do what I think right. . . . I do not care -for opinion any longer." - -Together, "they fell into the deep pool of love," when she "was too far -gone in bliss to reply." - -"Many men," she said, "men who came to see my husband, thought that -I was part of the visit, and that no man who thought well of himself -should go away without seducing me." But "that is how you seduced me, -because I saw love sprang straight from your heart and not from custom." - -"There was an Italian man who loved me, but not more than the books -with gold covers on his shelves. . . . He said I was the Muse of -Comedy. . . . There was a Frenchman who said I was the Muse of -Poetry. . . . There was a Russian who said nothing. . . . He loved me -because we were both animals; but only you love me because I am part of -your life and so I love you equally." - -Miss Wilson, indeed, attempts to impart a unique atmosphere into this -commonplace intrigue by a remarkable device. Smith "cannot speak -German, nor speak Norwegian." _She_ knows only a few words of English. -"I like to _pretend_ you hear," said Rosa, "I have always pretended"; -and he "could address her in whatever words he liked," since "lovers' -language is universal." - -By this method they do, in fact, hold conversations by the hour, -answering each other with quite miraculous preciseness; understanding, -we are expected to believe, the intimacies of thought and feeling -behind each phrase: "though he had no idea what she had said, word for -word." The intention, obviously, is to suggest some special mysterious, -if not miraculous, bond of the spirit knitting two souls in one. The -comment of a plain man, who deals with facts, must be that inarticulate -love can be only physical. It does not elevate, but further degrades, -their intimacy. He "had gone back to the dust to learn about God." - -They parted, however, because "they loved each other too much to ask -for each other's lives." Meanwhile, "in patience and humility" they -must wait "until after the Death of Society"—when they can be together. - -"How should I act," said Rosa, "if there were no such a thing as -Society? I know how I should act. . . . I owe nothing to either man or -woman. My name? My husband's name?—these belong to Society. . . . I -will not leave my husband, because he is an old man, nor my daughters, -because they are young; but if I give you a day of love, and again -a day perhaps, whom shall I hurt? . . . My soul belongs to nobody: -I—Rosa Christiansen—am my own. _My body is my soul's servant and -friend, and by it I can know other souls as I know my own._ . . . Oh! -oh! My soul is mine, and loves your soul!" - -We see that the "perfect woman" still kept on husband and home. - -And Smith, thus "proudly numbering himself among the angels," also -found time for a secondary, but quite passionate, intercourse with one -of the daughters of the house, who willingly gives him everything she -has; because she loves him so much, he is all she wants. - -He "kissed her violently on the face . . . squeezed her ribs as tight -as ever he dared," and replied without hesitation, "I love you as I -love flowers and the trees and the sky. I love you because you are -lovable as a wet or fine day is lovable. Why, yes, I must confess that -I love you. . . . . I believe all men love a great many women. . . . I -am a Bluebeard with a cellar full of wives. . . . You see, God hasn't -created the woman yet who represents the whole of female perfection. -Don't mistake me, Nathalia; I am not a beast. I don't run after women -solely as women. . . . He began to stroke her head as he thought of all -those past and bygone romances." - -And so on——! Strangely enough, "his heart was filled with deep and -tender _respect for her_." - -More frequently, however, the novelists of this school seem to have -gone back to the casual lusts of _Tom Jones_, with the rôle of hero and -heroine reversed. There are many tales, almost romantic, of Sir Galahad -waiting and tilting for Cleopatra or Mary Queen of Scots. Too often, -marriage is merely evidence that "the _man_ has held out." - -Still we maintain that the modernists are really looking to the -old-world "kept" woman for their ideal of more or less open and, as it -were, established free love. We find clear, specific complaints against -the new system: "They had lapsed into a relation which slowly from -irregular grew regular. It was not marriage, but it was in the nature -of marriage." Now, "after two and a half years . . . she had done wifely -things for him. . . . Love and domestic economy; it was very like -marriage after all." - -What then, frankly speaking, is the real charm of the new -mistress-love? Most obviously it comes, ultimately, from the holiday -spirit; its freedom from sordid or petty cares, the prose of our daily -life, business or home worries, the responsibilities that dull the -eye and wear down body and soul: which _means_ the incarnation of -selfishness. - -Outspoken and simply coarse writers of the past centuries expose this -fact by their frank hints on "the honeymoon"; of which we acknowledge -the underlying truth. - -It has been cynically maintained, nor dare one quite deny, that -our romance-lady, the sheltered and innocent pure girl, would have -been broken long ago but for the "outlet," to mere males, of her -under-sister. I would suggest that the new "ideal" mistress is -certainly no less, probably more, dependent upon the housewife—the -tame, tied woman who bears her lover's name. - -We can none of us escape "the day's work." Under the conventional "wild -oats" scheme of life, we _can_ place the whole burden upon the wife: -and so find elsewhere "The Woman"—passionately and emotionally our -ideal. - -But no theory of free love was ever based upon two establishments. The -whole weight of the new thought cries out for open, frank _leaving one -woman_ and _going to the other_; where possible by mutual consent. The -secrecy, the misunderstanding, _the divided allegiance_, of the old -world, is the very evil they are clamouring to wipe out. Yet _can_ -we leave our bills, our servants, and our children behind with the -fixtures of the old "home to let"? Can we spend our life, or for that -matter, more than a few days or weeks, in one perpetual holiday among -the "beach-flappers" of Miss Amber Reeves' unstable _Helen in Love_ and -the boys they so gaily and easily annex? - -The truth, of course, cannot be denied. These new, glorified -sex-contracts (whether entirely free, or on a "short lease" subject -to "things going well") will, and must, involve all the trials of -domesticity, without the compensations of a shared responsibility: -a real bond to halve our sorrows and double our joys. There will, -moreover, be a thousand times more occasion for incompatibility, the -jar of nerves; where there is no steady, devoted endeavour towards -mutual forbearance and understanding, no spur to forgive—in courageous -hope. Life in hotels may, superficially, expose less friction; but it -quickly destroys any reality in comradeship. Only daily service can -build up Love. - -The mistress, in fact, remains an enervating luxury, a habit of living -beyond our emotional means, a sparkling drug. - -_We have not found the Ideal, because it does not exist._ - - - - -X - -HERE ARE TWO PICTURES OF FREE LOVE! - - -"After all, what is life for me? _Strange doors in strange houses, -strange men and strange intimacies._ Sometimes weirdly grotesque and -incredibly beastly. The secret vileness of human nature flung at -me. Man revealing himself, through individual after individual, as -utterly contemptible. I tell you, my dear eager fool, it is beyond -my conception ever to regard a man as higher than a frog, as less -repulsive." - -It is a cry from Mr. Compton Mackenzie's glittering land of many, and -strange, sins—surely a nightmare of hell itself; cry of the gallant -Sylvia Scarlett, writing her own epitaph—"Here lies Sylvia Scarlett -_who was always running away_." - -On the surface, indeed, it is a gay enough scene Mr. Mackenzie has -painted for us, when "her arm was twined round him like ivy, and their -two hands came together like leaves." - -Glittering and hot in the first flush of adventure, we see youth's -brave curiosity endlessly awake. Yet it was cold, hard, and "strange" -at the core: always, everywhere, a "stranger" upon the earth. Sylvia -"was always running away"—from men and from herself; so weary, so -hurt, and so afraid. For there was none to share the burden and the -joy, no footing for her; nothing to hold on to and steady life, no -future to build: weary and restless and alone. She could never stay -anywhere, with anyone; searching for ever, for she knows not what. For -"life, which means freedom and space and movement, she is willing to -pay with utter loneliness at the end." - -For the wanderers there is no end we dare tell. Mr. Mackenzie has "a -jolly conception of the adventurous men of London, with all its sly -and labyrinthine romance"; but has he ever thought of following beside -any of the men and women who flutter across his page—we cannot say -to their homes, for they have none? Dare he _live_ with "the muslin -and patchouli, the aspidestras and yellowing photographs, as in unseen -basements children whined, while on the mantelpiece garish vases -rattled to the vibration of the traffic"; or with Mrs. Smith "creeping -about the stairs like a spider?" Dare he see his shrewd, bright Daisy -die? - -To the novelist, indeed, they do not matter. They have played their -part in his drama, and may shuffle off to the wings. _They are human -beings in real life._ And for the truth about them, we could tell -such a dreary, monotonous, bitter and tragic sheaf of "Lonely Lives." -We should show them to you, wandering round and round, in and out, -under bright lights or behind dark corners; every year more weak and -frightened, till strength fails them even for movement without hope, -and they slip away into some silent pond. - -And finally, from the first, if all love means constant change to -revive passion, a life of continual experiment in emotion; we dare not -face the child. - -Novelists to-day, indeed, have given much thought to children. "You -know," wrote Mr. Mackenzie, "that if I were to set down all I could -remember of my childhood the work would not yet have reached beyond -the fifth year." They all often remember much, with rare understanding -and delicate insight. Heroes and heroines, to-day, are introduced to -us in the cradle, and for many a chapter remain nursery-bound. But, -curiously enough, we meet them all _at home, in a family group_. Every -one of the "newest" men and women, in modern novels, were brought up by -their parents (or nearest relatives), and did inherit the great gift -of influences they make no attempt to hand on. To fight fate they had, -at least, the traditional defence: _a self moulded by a mother's and -father's love_. - -Fiction has not yet faced the offspring of Free Love. - -They are still, however, bravely inspired by visions of mother-love. -The faith and loyalty they forbid to lovers, is still honoured in sons. -How many of Mr. Cannan's young heroines, for instance, could ever have -mothered his own Renè Fourny or the "Three Pretty Men." The Mrs. Morel -of D. H. Lawrence, most passionately tempestuous of all the moderns, -comes very near to the ideal. Few women have lived more absolutely -or continuously for, and in, their child. Yet few women can have had -better excuse or more temptation to desertion, greater need for a new -start. _Here was no love and no home, save what she made by loyal -constancy to the building up of the child she had borne._ - -Who would condemn more fiercely, and with more bitter tears, the -teaching of these men than the great mothers they have so nobly -created? - -There would be none such in life so lived. - - * * * * * - -Could any novelist have drawn for us a more mad picture of the emotions -aroused by sex-licence than may be read in _The Jewel in the Lotus_ by -Rosita Forbes? The heroine, Corona, "who paints, you know," is not, -professionally, a gay woman. She had, perhaps justifiably, divorced her -first husband; and achieved something like real love with a Spanish -Catholic, whose religion alone prevented the legal sanction. He, -however, died suddenly before the story opens; and "from that time -Corona deliberately cut away the soft side of life . . . she fought her -lonely battle and she won." - -But "_she did not attempt to shut sex out of her life again_. On the -contrary, _there were many incidents_ in many countries, but to no -single lover did she give any part of her soul. For a little while -they drifted into her life, fulfilling the need her loneliness had -of companionship. She paid the price asked for affection, sympathy, -kindness, and _it left no mark on her_. Sometimes passion took her and -she _loved like a man_ for a time and then forgot, but nothing and no -one interfered with the strange, new force she was developing." - -"At thirty-five she was a woman, strong, courageous, intelligent, a -brilliant conversationalist"—in fact, a popular Society Queen. Her -"existence had been an orgy of sensation." - -Then the boy, Gerald, came into her life. He had a "wonderful" mother: -"There's nothing I would not tell her, nothing that we do not talk -over." It was his plan, and hers, for him not to marry "for ages, not -for ten years, if then. You see, I want to make my castle first. Then -I will ask someone to live in it. I want to give my wife everything. I -want to stick her up in the public view and just arrange things for her -quietly." - -_But_ his mother was "broad-minded." When "she sees a woman obviously -happy, she feels that she probably has a lover." She "wouldn't want all -the best" of her son's life. "She knows I don't mean to marry, and she -knows also that no man goes very far without a woman in his life." - -And, _not_ "necessarily, in the background. I can imagine a very great -friendship developing into something more passionate while one was -young and impulsive, and then slipping gradually back into a wonderful -comradeship." - -"And," he added, "I should never marry a woman who would mind my having -_friends_!" - -All this he tells Corona—"very quietly and simply"; and then, "kissing -her face swiftly, hotly, . . . till she bit him"; with incredible -_naivete_, explains that he had talked about her with his mother—"She -feels I should be safe with you" and "she would be a good friend to my -mistress." - -In her first blaze of anger and scorn Corona spits out: "I suppose Sir -Henry is your mother's lover"; and the boy cries, "No, he is not! How -dare you suggest it? _My mother is much too fine a woman to have a -lover._ She never had one and never will have." - -This is the truth none can escape: the one answer possible for any -decent boy: the inspiration of all the youth of all ages, who have made -for us a fair world, illumined by faith, courage, and hope. - - - - -XI - -HAVE WE ALREADY FORGOTTEN THE NATURAL LOYALTY OF YOUTH. HOW ARE WE -PAYING—OUR DEBT TO THEM? - - -Honour the dead, care for those who saved the homes: for, as we have -here striven to show, never before has youth been in such dire need of -sympathy, understanding, and help. Too soon we forget that war blasts -humanity, a state of war makes us all brutes, degrades every man, -woman, and child, in every part of their nature, for all hours of their -lives. Youth, indeed, was rudderless through no fault of its own and, -when least prepared, most needing a clear vision, it has been tossed -into such a medley of mad notions as never before deluded mankind. - -We were, indeed, at the approach of Dawn; new light was breaking over -the mists of Victorian morality. To recover the _real_ progress, which -has been diverted into a mere riot of attack, we have endeavoured to -gather together, examine, and clearly state what the "new" morality -_really means and leads to_, how it has come to be upheld. Without -denying in some the honest seeking of truth, we have sought to make -clear where the teaching around us to-day is untrue, destructive of -reality, and poisonous in its effect. - -As now proclaimed, this teaching cannot escape its responsibility for -much evil talk, thought, and emotion, for many black deeds. Under its -influence, thoughtless humanity is fast coming to believe and say that -all love, or even comradeship, between the sexes without immediate -physical satisfaction is hypocritical and unreal; that is, cramped by -forced self-denial or an evidence of cold blood and incapacity for real -love. The young live feverishly by this conviction: they flaunt their -passions, their falls and their conquests, before the world. They jest -at sin, sneer at restraint, and spare no thought for purity. Kindness, -courtesy, thought for others, are cast to the winds. At all costs, they -must be themselves, and snatch the hour's joy. - -Such feverish disorder of emotion—the swooning delirium, sudden fires, -and complete abandon of balance—is not natural to wholesome humanity; -but, as we have seen, _it can easily be produced by suggestion_. Now -that popular novelists casually produce drama and crude excitement -by smart tales of such over-sexed human beings, an immense body of -readers, without knowledge or experience to combat the falseness of the -picture, have come to accept it as a _normal record_ of real life. They -are adapting themselves to its alluring thrills, modelling their lives -to its pattern, and acting upon its teaching. From men and women, they -may too soon become mere male and female, as God did _not_ create them. -The whole history of mankind, our centuries of growth from cave-man to -the last word in civilization, have established truths which remain -true. Our right to be ourselves can never wipe out our duty to others. -There is an eternal and infinite difference between Right and Wrong, -and those who ignore this _cannot escape the penalty_. Love is not -lust. All that is finest and noblest in human nature has been built -upon a pure and constant loyalty; of which the eternal symbol (however -smirched and stained by folly or sin) is marriage and the home. -Character, which ultimately rules the world, grows straight amidst -the influence of family life. The permanent ideal for man and woman; -creating new life, bearing and cherishing each new generation, is a -complete union of the whole nature, spiritual and physical, whereof the -spiritual bond must be supreme. - -_Self-control, restraint, and, if needs be, Sacrifice, are the highest -expression of Self._ - -If we may not refuse new light, we can never forget old truth. The -foundations of morality have been established by our gradual emergence -from that state of savagery, into which we were again for a few years -submerged by war. - -Those who blot out the Vision attained by centuries of man's upward -fight, thereby confounding the ultimate issues of right and wrong, -setting the body above the soul, _are intoxicating and poisoning -humanity as with a deadly drug_. - - -PRINTED BY GARDEN CITY PRESS, LETCHWORTH, ENGLAND. - - - - -From A. M. PHILPOT'S LIST - - -BLUE BOOKLET, VOL. I - - THE - FALLACIES _of_ SPIRITUALISM - -By A. LEONARD SUMMERS - -2s. 6d. net. - -SOME EARLY REVIEWS - - "This booklet is an extremely able and interesting criticism - of a craze that has become widespread with the most pernicious - results. The writer does not limit himself to an account of the - sensational frauds that have been exposed on both sides of the - Atlantic, but he analyses the evidence of Sir Oliver Lodge, - Sir A. Conan Doyle, Mr. Vale Owen, and other distinguished - spiritualists, with merciless severity and very great - acumen."—_Freeman's Journal._ - - "Lucidly written, and without bitterness, Mr. Summers makes out - a good case for the 'againsts' in this little book."—_Glasgow - Citizen._ - - "As a popular indictment, Mr. Summer's pamphlet is likely to - make a considerable impression. It remains for his opponents to - offer as succinct and well-documented an answer."—_The Times - Literary Supplement._ - - -BLUE BOOKLET, VOL. II - - PSYCHIC PHENOMENA IN - THE OLD TESTAMENT - -By SARAH A. TOOLEY - -2s. 6d. net. - -Scenes and occurrences in the Old Testament, so familiar as to have -lost their real significance, are here described in a way that will be -of extraordinary interest to the psychic student of to-day. - - -BLUE BOOKLET, VOL. III - - MORAL POISON IN - MODERN FICTION - -By R. BRIMLEY JOHNSON - -2s. 6d. net. - -The truth about certain new theories of morality, taught in some modern -novels, assumed in others, and to some extent already put in practice -by young readers, frankly and carefully examined, with an exposure -of their probable evil influence. Extracts from novels by well-known -writers give point and interest to what amounts to an unhesitating -condemnation. - - - - -_NEW BOOK BY TROWARD._ - - - THE HIDDEN POWER. By T. TROWARD. With frontispiece portrait of - the author. Uniform with author's Complete Works. Crown 8vo, - cloth, 8s. 6d. net. - - This important volume, which includes practically all Troward's - unpublished manuscripts and magazine articles, concludes - the series of books on Mental Science by an author who was - described by the late Archdeacon Wilberforce as "one of the - greatest thinkers of our times." It is significant to note that - these books, beautiful in their sustained clearness of thought - and style, are now included in the curriculum of societies, - clubs and classes devoted to the study of Mental Science. - - -_Complete List of the Series._ - - 1. THE EDINBURGH LECTURES ON MENTAL SCIENCE. Crown 8vo, cloth - and linen, 6s. net. - - Mental Science defined as the proper understanding of - Livingness, based on the distinction between Spirit and Matter; - i.e., Thought and Form. - - 2. THE DORÉ LECTURES _on_ MENTAL SCIENCE. Crown 8vo, cloth, - 6s. net. - - An exposition of the relation of the Individual to the - Universal Originating Principle of the Cosmos—the Mind of God. - - 3. THE CREATIVE PROCESS _in the_ INDIVIDUAL. Crown 8vo, cloth, - 8s. 6d. net. - - A study of spiritual evolution which, the author maintains, is - but another aspect of physical evolution. - - "_No thinker should be without this book._"—The late - Archdeacon WILBERFORCE. - - 4. BIBLE MYSTERY AND BIBLE MEANING. Demy 8vo, cloth, 10s. 6d. - net. - - Troward here proposes that "we shall re-read the Bible on the - supposition that Jesus and these other speakers _really meant - what they said_, which is a startling proposition from the - standpoint of traditional interpretation." An illumination - for those who seek to render the older theology into terms of - modern science. - - 5. BIBLE PROPHECY, 1914-23. Crown 8vo, paper, 1s. net. - - An arresting pamphlet upon the Great War; providing clues to - prophetic utterances of the Bible concerning the Time of the - End. To-day _is_ the End of the Age. - - 6. THE LAW AND THE WORD. With a Foreword by PAUL DERRICK. Crown - 8vo, cloth, 8s. 6d. net. - - In this posthumous volume, Troward formulates a final statement - of his beliefs after long investigation and profound study in - the field of Mental Science. - - -A. M. 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You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - -Title: Moral Poison in Modern Fiction - -Author: Reginald Brimley Johnson - -Release Date: January 23, 2016 [EBook #51015] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MORAL POISON IN MODERN FICTION *** - - - - -Produced by Clarity, Lisa Reigel, Michael Zeug, and the -Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net -(This file was produced from images generously made -available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries) - - - - - - -</pre> - - -<p><!-- Page 1 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</a></span></p> - - - - -<p class="firsttitle">MORAL POISON<br /> -IN MODERN FICTION</p> - -<p><!-- Page 2 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</a></span></p> - - - - -<div class="chapter"> -<hr class="newchapter" /> -<p><!-- Page 3 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span></p> -<div class="title"> -<h1>MORAL POISON<br /> -<small>IN</small><br /> -MODERN FICTION</h1> -</div> - - -<p class="tpother">BY</p> - -<p class="tpauthor">R. BRIMLEY JOHNSON<br /> - -<small>AUTHOR OF<br /> -"SOME CONTEMPORARY NOVELISTS," ETC.</small></p> - - -<div class="figcenter"> -<img src="images/colophon.png" width="100" height="66" alt="Urnas Imple Mentis--Implementis Nostris colophon" /> -</div> - - -<p class="tppublisher">LONDON<br /> -A. M. PHILPOT, LTD.<br /> -69 GREAT RUSSELL STREET, W.C.1</p> -</div> - -<p><!-- Page 4 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span></p> - - - - -<div class="chapter"> -<hr class="newchapter" /> -<p><!-- Page 5 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak"><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS</h2> -</div> - -<table summary="Table of Contents" border="0"> - <tr> - <th> </th> - <th> </th> - <th>PAGE</th> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdright">I.</td> - <td class="tdleft">"<span class="allcapsc">LIKE THE REST OF THEIR YOUNG WORLD</span>"</td> - <td class="tdpage"><a href="#Chapter_I">7</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdright">II.</td> - <td class="tdleft"><span class="allcapsc">THEN CAME THE WAR!</span></td> - <td class="tdpage"><a href="#Chapter_II">12</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdright">III.</td> - <td class="tdleft"><span class="allcapsc">WHILE THEY LIVED VIOLENTLY, YOUTH ALSO THOUGHT - HARD</span></td> - <td class="tdpage"><a href="#Chapter_III">17</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdright">IV.</td> - <td class="tdleft"><span class="allcapsc">WHAT, THEN, WERE THE NEW MORAL PROBLEMS? WHAT - WAS THE FRANK OUTLOOK, RAISED AND LARGELY ACCEPTED, - BEFORE THE WAR?</span></td> - <td class="tdpage"><a href="#Chapter_IV">21</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdright">V.</td> - <td class="tdleft"><span class="allcapsc">THE "SPADE" IDEAL IN FICTION</span></td> - <td class="tdpage"><a href="#Chapter_V">24</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdright">VI.</td> - <td class="tdleft"><span class="allcapsc">NOVELS OF "GAY LIFE" ARE, QUITE OBVIOUSLY, STRONG - MORAL INTOXICANTS</span></td> - <td class="tdpage"><a href="#Chapter_VI">33</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdright">VII.</td> - <td class="tdleft"><span class="allcapsc">WHAT DO THE NEW WRITERS AND THINKERS TO-DAY TEACH? - HOW DO THEY INTERPRET LIFE AND LOVE?</span></td> - <td class="tdpage"><a href="#Chapter_VII">39</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdright">VIII.</td> - <td class="tdleft"><span class="allcapsc">WHAT IS THIS LOVE? IT IS SEX-CONFLICT</span></td> - <td class="tdpage"><a href="#Chapter_VIII">53</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdright">IX.</td> - <td class="tdleft"><span class="allcapsc">WHO <em>IS</em> THE IDEAL MISTRESS?</span></td> - <td class="tdpage"><a href="#Chapter_IX">64</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdright">X.</td> - <td class="tdleft"><span class="allcapsc">HERE ARE TWO PICTURES OF FREE LOVE</span></td> - <td class="tdpage"><a href="#Chapter_X">72</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdright">XI.</td> - <td class="tdleft"><span class="allcapsc">HAVE WE ALREADY FORGOTTEN THE NATURAL LOYALTY OF - YOUTH? HOW ARE WE PAYING OUR DEBT TO THEM?</span></td> - <td class="tdpage"><a href="#Chapter_XI">79</a></td> - </tr> -</table> - - - - -<p><!-- Page 6 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span></p> - -<div class="chapter"> -<hr class="newchapter" /> -<h2 class="nobreak"><a name="FOREWORD" id="FOREWORD"></a>FOREWORD</h2> -</div> - - -<p>I have not systematically searched modern fiction to illustrate or -support the arguments of this book. Every novel quoted, or even -mentioned, has come before me in the day's work, as a reviewer. It is -scarcely necessary to add that no personal reflection upon any writer -has even crossed my mind. I am not here concerned with the cause or -motive of literature, but with its effect.</p> - -<p class="author">R. B. J.</p> - - - - -<div class="chapter"> -<hr class="newchapter" /> -<p><!-- Page 7 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak"><a name="Chapter_I" id="Chapter_I"></a>I<br /> - -<small>"THEY STRUGGLED ALONG LIKE THE REST OF THEIR YOUNG WORLD, THE -EYE FOR THE EYE, THE TOOTH FOR THE TOOTH, LUST AND LOVING -ALIKE ONLY IN RETURN FOR LOVING AND LUST."</small></h2> -</div> - - -<p>It is a grim enough charge against our generation. Dare we pronounce it -untrue? Upon what theories of private morality are the young now fed?</p> - -<p>Morals are, obviously, influenced in most cases by example and the -atmosphere of the home; but are not these themselves mainly produced, -whether consciously or not, by the teaching and tone of these who -profess to think? In these latter days most thought reaches us through -fiction, most emotion through drama.</p> - -<p><em>Without hesitation, I would maintain that an immense number of novels -now being written contain much deadly poison.</em></p> - -<p>Let me not be misunderstood. I have no <!-- Page 8 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span>wish to draw down the -blinds again upon vital questions of sex, to bring out once more -the comfortable "wraps" of Victorian days, to uphold reserve if not -silence, or shut the door upon open talk. Nor would I say to youth: "We -are older and <em>therefore</em> we know; believe us, things were far better -and happier in our time."</p> - -<p>Such a reproach were neither wise nor true. Human nature, like all -forms of life, always grows and improves (in a long view), steps on -towards the Ideal. But to-day we must face the sharp arrest of all -normal progress, the actual throw-back to savagery, caused by the -war: which came, as a moral influence, upon minds unsettled by the -Revolution of Ideas that had set in before 1914.</p> - -<p>Revolution may, and in fact does, largely express itself by -exaggeration, but it is not Anarchy. The ideas then first revealed -were due to a natural and healthy awakening among advanced thinkers. -Winds blew upon our comfortable complacencies. The moral assumptions -we had accepted, and refused to discuss, were boldly questioned. The -Sex-Revolt had begun.</p> - -<p>And rightly. Many reforms were badly needed in the legal applications -of morality; <!-- Page 9 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span>the ideal of purity had stiffened into conventions -that chained the mind and stifled the heart. There was a taint of -insincerity over the realities of life: the false gods of narrow-minded -respectability, breeding secret sin.</p> - -<p>Wider knowledge; the sifting of old ideas and the questioning of fixed -thought, can harm none. On the whole, moreover, protest was made in -earnest, with a due sense of responsibility. It was not, as to-day, -wildly shouted on the housetops; without reflection, undigested; in a -riot of burning words.</p> - -<p>There were, of course, wild statements made in bitter anger; foolish -experiments attempted; in some quarters, merely a new cant and -upside-down convention upheld to replace the old. But, on the whole, -still only among the few. In all probability, under normal conditions, -the needed frank discussion and honest thought would have sifted the -true from the false, before the temporary confusion had inflamed -popular imagination, and uprooted, without reforming, the habits and -thought of daily life.</p> - -<p>Looking back, I think, one can fairly summarize the position then -arrived at by advanced thinkers, that was beginning to be generally -discussed:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p><!-- Page 10 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span>That there is nothing inherently evil in the human body, to -be hidden up, and if possible ignored; particularly, that the -instincts of sex are natural and healthy, a vital part of pure -love.</p> - -<p>That women are moved by physical "desires" equally with -men, though more habituated to restraint; wherefore the old -one-sided tolerance towards men, "who cannot help themselves," -is utterly false and, combined with the conventional innocence -of women, creates morbid barriers between the sexes, whereby -"the woman pays."</p> - -<p>That these truths should be known and faced by both sexes -<em>before</em>, not after, marriage; with all the consequences they -involve and the dangers they should enable us to avoid: the -risks of a "sheltered" youth and the real meaning of purity, -true and false passion or love, marriage wrecked by ignorance, -divorce, the unmarried mother, birth control, the position of -the prostitute, etc.</p> - -<p>Truth, the ventilation of morality, the honest consideration -of problems which may at any moment take us unawares, should -not defile the heart or suggest evil <!-- Page 11 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span>thought. Real knowledge -strengthens the will; and we must look at sin, see it clearly, -if we can ever hope to conquer it.</p></div> - -<p>If some of us felt that these, in a sense "new," truths were rather -hurried upon us, often crudely expressed and applied; we knew that each -generation must seek its own light, and add something to inherited -wisdom. We saw children cramped and losing <em>themselves</em> in their -fathers' fetters; we saw injustice, misery, and wasted lives; many a -marriage that proved a prison or a doll's house. We learned honestly -to face, almost for the first time, the terrible abuse of sex behind -drawn blinds that, seeming an integral part of civilization, was eating -away the very heart of humanity and condemning, with grim cynicism, the -complacency of the old code.</p> - - - -<div class="chapter"> -<hr class="newchapter" /> -<p><!-- Page 12 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak"><a name="Chapter_II" id="Chapter_II"></a>II<br /> - -<small>THEN CAME THE WAR!</small></h2> -</div> - - -<p>—Which meant that thousands of boys and girls were suddenly snatched -away from their homes and parents, flung out into the heat of life, -under conditions of abnormal, and wholly vile, excitement. They had to -act and think for themselves without guidance, training, or experience: -to face problems almost entirely new to young and old alike.</p> - -<p>Practically, there were no safeguards.</p> - -<p>It was not that men rebelled against and defied the established -traditions: these simply did not apply to life as it burst upon our -sons and daughters. Normal existence was wiped out by a flash of -lightning. The old duties, habits, manners, responsibilities, were -rudely cast aside: for what seemed, and perhaps was, a higher call. The -whole of life was revised in a few hours; and it is no exaggeration to -say that none knew their way about the new world.</p> - -<p><!-- Page 13 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span>Only a clear understanding of what war really meant for us, can reveal -the special problems of to-day in their relation to the permanent, -which are the only real, emotions and instincts of human nature.</p> - -<p>To a large extent, the mental and moral growth of all young men -was abruptly stopped short. Those who have come back, physically -fit, are—in all the essentials of character—five years younger -than by the calendar, though more "fixed" in their few ideas. Many -are further hampered and—in a sense—abnormal; maimed, diseased, -or nerve-shattered; definitely unbalanced in some way; only half -themselves, liable to sudden loss, or defiance, of self-control.</p> - -<p>For five years they were not men, but screws in a vast evil machine. -They had, indeed, experience of death; none of life. They had, -practically, no responsibility towards, or for, themselves; no sense -of duty before them except obedience; no aim beyond a standardized -efficiency. They lost every influence of home, neighbourliness, -citizenship, and above all the refinement and sanctity of love. To live -for the moment became their Ideal; in a vision of noble patriotism and -sublime self-sacrifice. It was not for them to <!-- Page 14 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span>plan, look forward, -build up life and character for themselves.</p> - -<p>This unnatural and irresponsible existence, moreover, was to be spent -among scenes of appalling savagery and the worst primitive passions.</p> - -<div class="poem"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="line">"The place was rotten with dead; green clumsy legs</div> - <div class="line">High-booted, sprawled and grovelled along the saps;</div> - <div class="line">And trunks, face downward, in the sucking mud,</div> - <div class="line">Wallowed like trodden sand-bags loosely filled;</div> - <div class="line">And naked sodden buttocks, mats of hair,</div> - <div class="line">Bulged, clotted heads slept in the plastering slime."</div> - </div> -</div> - -<p>Only devils can serve the Devil of War; and <em>the supreme sacrifice our -sons made for us was the sacrifice of their humanity</em>.</p> - -<p>To "do their bit," they put away themselves.</p> - -<p>But this abnormal, unreal existence, these lives in the Flame of -Hate, hardened and coarsened by the day's work, positively <em>had</em> to -discover some outlet; quick, sure ways to forget. Quite unused to the -normal "decencies," <!-- Page 15 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span>without experience in "ordering" themselves, the -sex-instinct became explosive, a sense-riot unrestrained. Remember, -that to men (and women, for that matter), hard working at high -pressure, leading a strained and feverish life, the sex-thirst springs -out. There is no drug for worn-out bodies and souls so easy and so -sweet-savoured, so prompt in its effects, for the moment so complete. -In those days few stopped to count the cost, face the consequences, or -note the weakening of the will. With death "round the corner," why stop -to think? Life was all snatching; action meant a shrewd blow, careless -of what, in ourselves or in another, we killed by the way.</p> - -<p>And for girls and young women there was one Rule of Life—"give the men -a good time." I know the inspiring motive, however little conscious in -some, was a generous self-forgetting. To give is always ennobling, and -God forbid one should ever, by thought or word, belittle the selfless -heroism born in woman.</p> - -<p>But then, our daughters had no chance to know and choose, no test -between real emotion and fevered desire—their own or another's. -Inheriting a beautiful home-womanliness, <!-- Page 16 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span>the flower of sheltered -innocence, they had to make and be themselves in the open of a new -world. Nobility shone out among us in those days, miracles beyond -belief of what woman can do and suffer for big, or small, men: a new -vision of the mothering of humanity that brought God to our side. Also, -alas, terrible shattering of English girlhood, ugly staining of the -pure in heart, feverish unrest, a fury of overdoing, a hard glitter of -cold joy. Always haste, never growth. Wherefore to-day our morality is -an ash-heap, which some weep over, others kick up.</p> - -<p><em>Dare we refuse to face the black awakening to disillusion?</em></p> - - - - -<div class="chapter"> -<hr class="newchapter" /> -<p><!-- Page 17 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak"><a name="Chapter_III" id="Chapter_III"></a>III<br /> - -<small>BECAUSE WHILE THEY LIVED VIOLENTLY, YOUTH ALSO THOUGHT HARD.</small></h2> -</div> - - -<p>What was their "food for thought"? Largely away from, and independent -of, personal influence from the intimacies of home life; almost -entirely freed from authority even in daily conduct, and from the -restraints of an accepted moral code; they talked and read. All the -rebellions and revolts of before 1914 were conspicuously abroad. -Above all, then and to-day, the novels (devoured for distraction) had -forced sex-problems upon the most thoughtless; demanded for all on -the threshold of life full licence for self-expression; analysed what -they called the soul in undigested detail; lingered over body-contact, -flushes and fires of the flesh; loudly proclaimed new Laws of Love.</p> - -<p>The whole experience of mankind, our most sacred instincts, are flouted -with contempt. The conflicting claims, which none can avoid, <!-- Page 18 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span>between -young and old, have been flung off. The old distinctions between wrong -and right are categorically denied; all now demand an absolutely fresh -start based on universal knowledge of sin, absolute freedom for the -individual, frank discussion of physical intimacies, full rights to -the Egoist—"a commonplace promiscuity that masquerades as liberty, -as courageousness, as art. A slimy, glittering snail-track threaded -through all society."</p> - -<p>And we have not, even yet, gone far enough! since, it is said, -"Conversation is over-sexed, the novel under-sexed, therefore untrue, -therefore insincere." By this creed, there is only one <em>real</em> thing in -life—physical passion.</p> - -<p>I do not suggest that contemporary thought is <em>all</em> evil, unclean or -false. Many of our writers are serious, pure-minded men and women, -rightly indignant with old falsehoods, honestly seeking new light. Much -of their work, too, reveals both sincerity and truth, a finer instinct -for the ideal than the Victorians ever knew. Their courage is heroic, -their frankness most wise.</p> - -<p>But they are, on the whole, prone to haste. They denounce often without -understanding; eager to knock down, without preparation to <!-- Page 19 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span>build up. -<em>There is a large body of new doctrine, or interpretation of life and -manhood, which is false, morbid, and poisonous in its effects.</em></p> - -<p>Above all, the message has taken youth unprepared—just when (more than -ever before in the history of the world) they needed quiet patience for -complete understanding. <em>And</em> it has, naturally, proved an attractive -instrument for cheap sensation-mongers to feed novelty and excitement, -in second-rate, widely read, novels. The appeal here is far more -dangerous, because it lacks thought or any sense of responsibility -in the writers. These insincere books, written for success to catch -the crowd, even when slightly more veiled in phrase, are far more -suggestive and unclean. They present conclusions without reasons, -gospels without faith. They partly create, and largely reflect, life as -it is for the moment. Taking evil for granted, they do devil's work.</p> - -<p>Such are the prevailing influences of the day; very mixed, of grave -peril, that have already done much to prolong the crime of war.</p> - -<p>But the following pages shall not be given to mere abuse, idle -complaints, or dogmatic assertion.</p> - -<p>It is necessary, quite frankly, but with all <!-- Page 20 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span>possible <em>clear</em> -thinking, to examine and present the new moral teaching, to sift true -from false; to declare how much has come from more knowledge and -understanding, and how much from unreasoning anger, impatience of -control, the search for novelty and pride in revolt. Where, too, mere -dirt has stained the page.</p> - - - -<div class="chapter"> -<hr class="newchapter" /> -<p><!-- Page 21 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak"><a name="Chapter_IV" id="Chapter_IV"></a>IV<br /> - -<small>WHAT, THEN, WERE THE NEW MORAL PROBLEMS, WHAT WAS THE FRANK -OUTLOOK, RAISED AND ADOPTED BEFORE THE WAR?</small></h2> -</div> - - -<p>What are their effects, for good and evil, upon modern literature?</p> - -<p>We recognize the physical expression of love as itself no way impure -or unclean: but as a part of true passion. We know that sin means a -state of mind or emotion, a false conception of moral values; and that -virtue is not secured by legal sanction. We recognize, frankly, man's -weakness and the complexity of social life; wherefore the dangers and -temptations of ill-doing must be faced and understood.</p> - -<p>Finally, we believe that <em>knowledge brings strength</em>; and, therefore, -these "difficult" questions cannot, and should not, be ignored in -conversation or in books: above all, not by those who, whether -intentionally or not, do influence thought by their power to create -character in fiction.</p> - -<p><!-- Page 22 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span>This awakening to a new view of Truth, however, has produced an -atmosphere in modern novels which—whatever the aim or intention of -modern novelists, leads to grave evil.</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>1. The determination to call a spade a spade, complete -frankness in words, too often ignores the relative importance -of things or deeds thus exposed. It tends, unavoidably, to -over-emphasize the physical, no less than our grandparents -exaggerated the romantic.</p> - -<p>2. A recognition of the unmarried mother and the refusal to -boycott a whole class, produce detailed and frank pictures of -"gay life," in which the pleasures and even the moral conquests -are so brought into prominence as to convey the totally false -impression that such conditions are freer, and therefore -better, than prosaic domesticity.</p> - -<p>3. The gospel of self-expression in emotion, itself a -fine ideal inspiring sincerity, is too often so violently -proclaimed as to ignore any consideration for others and the -"consequences" to oneself:—the inevitable weakening of the -will.</p> - -<p>4. In particular, the glorification of <!-- Page 23 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span>burning passion which -(as a physical fact) cannot be continuous, is revealed to -justify the lie that, as the <em>nature</em> of love changes or grows, -it also turns cold and dies. Therefore, they seek to show that -the noblest love does not last, that men and women alike need -constant change in emotion, that marriage is not a bond but -bondage.</p></div> - -<p>Everywhere, they confound the abuses of truth with truth itself; -proclaim an ideal false simply because it has been degraded and -misunderstood. They condemn because we cannot attain.</p> - -<p>Obviously, however, the novelists may still reply, "We are concerned -with life not with ideals. If these things be sin, we must write of -sin." That we all admit. The novel with any ambition towards truth dare -not ignore temptation or the failure to resist. It must reveal human -nature, no less at its worst than its best; face the struggle between -faith and disloyalty to oneself; picture life's cruel ironies and the -tyranny of fate.</p> - -<p><em>But that can never excuse doubt, or confusion between right and wrong, -exalting evil, or perversion of the truth.</em></p> - - - - -<div class="chapter"> -<hr class="newchapter" /> -<p><!-- Page 24 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak"><a name="Chapter_V" id="Chapter_V"></a>V<br /> - -<small>THE "SPADE" IDEAL IN FICTION</small></h2> -</div> - - -<p>This has been summarized once for all in his description of what Mr. -W. L. George calls a "sincere" novel: "There would be as many scenes -in the bedroom as in the drawing-room, probably more, given that human -beings spend more time in the former than the latter apartment."</p> - -<p>There is nothing sincere in that definition except its nasty flavour; -the lust it suggests. The actual effect, if not the intention, is a -quick shock to our natural instincts.</p> - -<p>Any possible value it might appear to possess at first sight, as a -serious argument, has been lost by the insincere reason given. Mr. -George himself is far too good an artist not to know that <em>real</em> life -is <em>not</em> measured by length of hours. Crises are, nearly always, swift. -Too often, a character is lost or won in a moment; we grow old in a -night; gain the happiness of a lifetime by the right word. <!-- Page 25 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span>How many a -man is bound to "spend more time" over his ledger than beside his lady!</p> - -<p>This weak reasoning gives the realists away. They are so set on the -letter of truth as to deny its spirit. Aiming at exact photographic -reproduction of life, they lose all sense of proportion and real -values, hiding the wood in the trees. Whether or not the material facts -be true, the reality is false, the proportions misplaced, the picture -out of focus.</p> - -<p>In practice, moreover, they do select no less arbitrarily than the -romantic Victorians. In their view, "one can only get at most women's -minds through their bodies."</p> - -<p>But Mr. George has only <em>expressed</em> one reason for his contention; even -if <em>that</em> be seriously intended. The argument really <em>means</em> that, -often, if not always, the most vital moments of our life are spent in -the bedroom; a half-truth more dangerous and misleading than a lie.</p> - -<p>What the word "bedroom" in this sentence honestly stands for is -obviously something quite real; but it does not reveal or test -character, and can never in any way complete a <em>true</em> picture of life. -The accidents of expression are not truth itself.</p> - -<p>In a recent drama of temperament called <!-- Page 26 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span><cite>Enter Madame</cite>, the author's -mere instinct for stage-effects has, as it were by accident, provided -an illustration that proves our point. The hero of this spontaneous -and light-hearted drama is attracted by two women of whom one largely -appeals to his passions (though <em>not</em> his lust); and the other appears -to possess what modernists would call the "tame" comforting qualities -of a "good" wife. He chooses passion in the end, following his love -<em>off the stage</em>, into a bedroom. In this scene we have the whole truth; -no added sincerity in the presentment, no shade of character the most -minute, would have been added by opening that door. The emotional -decision was the reality.</p> - -<p>To the realist the play would probably seem a square fight between wife -and mistress—with the inevitable result!</p> - -<p>But, in actual fact, almost every detail went to confound the new -morality. The passionate woman was the hero's wife, whom he had just -divorced—to achieve domesticity. She did <em>not</em> exclusively depend upon -the physical appeal; though it was used to bring him back. They had a -thousand other, more subtle, points of sympathy and mutual attraction, -despite the exasperating petty irritations <!-- Page 27 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span>of life, which she would -not allow to wreck their love. On the other hand, it was not any fixed -aversion to marriage, any weakness in the bond itself, that caused her -rival's failure. She simply was not, when—as it were—put to the test, -his spiritual mate. For him, she was the wrong woman.</p> - -<p>Most certainly this play was not inspired by any conscious theories on -life or art. A straightforward, workmanlike picture of everyday people; -its very lack of intention made it the more convincing. The author had -no axe to grind.</p> - -<p>As in life, we saw that the best feelings of an ordinary decent sort of -man are expressed, as his ultimate happiness is secured, by 'putting -up with his wife's tantrums for love of her dear self.' That is, by -some kind of self-control about the small things of life for the sake -of the big; an instinctive knowledge of values or sense of proportion; -mutual accommodation, and self-expression in self-sacrifice. He would -not rush away from her for a change or new experience, to that placid -domesticity which, because he had missed it, he—for a moment—supposed -would prove ideal.</p> - -<p>Nevertheless, it is absolutely clear that his <!-- Page 28 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span>decision does <em>not</em> -establish the superiority of passion-storms over carpet slippers. -He chose between two women, not between two modes of life: a matter -of temperament, and the man's individual, permanent feeling. Though -married, he had not—as he too hastily imagined—fallen "out of" love.</p> - -<p>Life is distorted to-day by the orgy of crude passion in most -second-rate fiction, of which Mr. Evan Morgan's <cite>Trial by Ordeal</cite> is an -extreme case. Unfortunately such novelists have the smart air of being -absolutely at home all over the world, without really knowing their way -about anywhere.</p> - -<p>The leading lady of this brightly variegated human manure-heap is a -"vampire, like a sea-breeze, like the noise of a waterfall at night"; -her familiar ally is a discreet "sort of lady dressmaker, whose sons, -numbering almost equally with her lovers, had forced her to take to -a genteel trade." It is a picture of life among "bolsters with the -temperaments of wood-lice; . . . among talented women, gifted women, -immoral women."</p> - -<p>Here Miss Hazell O'Neill "netted a half-blind poet, whom she took out -and dusted on bright days and holidays." Him she ultimately left, as -part of her luggage, to a landlady <!-- Page 29 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span>in Jersey; and proceeded to "smash -a sculptor with his own statue."</p> - -<p>Caught at last by "romance," falling in love with a man who -wondered—"would she be more trouble than she was worth"; this -determined young woman "leapt up and began undressing . . . plunged into -the water"; so that "the momentary glance he had of her naked beauty, -the excitement, overcame him."</p> - -<p>The hero, in his "first affair" with "the daughter of a very -respectable God-fearing parson," carefully taught her the new ideals of -"free love, free conscience, free everything . . . hoping himself -to reap the fruit of his labours." Submitting, however, to the -"ceremonial" of marriage, he was caught in his own trap. She was -now "enlightened," and "dreading suddenly the binding nature of the -service," ran away, at the eleventh hour, with another man.</p> - -<p>Afterwards "she came back ill, very ill, and he left her to sink or -swim." Such is the chivalry of free love; that ultimately drove her to -become "a horrible, decadent, drug-maniac."</p> - -<p>Of his "spiritual" union with another, we read: "Both were exhausted, -the <em>emotions <!-- Page 30 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span>of the soul</em> had overpowered them, they fell fainting -against the cool grey stone, and there, like a burning picture of all -the romances there have been since the beginning of time, they leant in -the twilight."</p> - -<p>By all means call a spade a spade; but do not imagine that all life is -spades. To insist upon bedroom scenes in fiction or drama, and all the -nakedness of phrase such a conception of art implies, does, and must, -often suggest the sly and coarse innuendo. It is the same with all -<em>excess</em> of emphasis on physical detail. When Mr. D. H. Lawrence dwells -on the feverish symptoms (mainly skin-deep) of his lovers, describes -their breasts and loins, he is—actually—playing with the obscene.</p> - -<p>The reticence we demand is not based on any pretence that our bodies -are unclean, on any conventional association between mere words and -thoughts.</p> - -<p>A nude painting may be supremely, spiritually, beautiful: it may be -lewd: but it is not, as many would now declare, more real <em>because</em> of -its nudity.</p> - -<p>Can we <em>honestly</em> say that the increasing undress on stage or in daily -life provokes more deep, true and sincere feeling, reveals more of -a girl's or a woman's real and best <!-- Page 31 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span>self? We know it does not. <em>It -distracts our thoughts from the woman herself</em> to memories of purely -animal and gross experience, tempts us to lower depths. It matters -not, in the book or in the play, that innocence prevail. I have heard -men, for example, when the curtain fell at <cite>The Sign of the Cross</cite>, -chuckling over the public attack on a girl's body (though it failed), -with gay plans for vile conquests.</p> - -<p>Obviously, there can be no fixed verbal rule. To say that no writer may -use certain words or describe certain actions and things; no playwright -may paint certain scenes; would be to "speak as a fool." Each case must -be determined by its inner spiritual truth.</p> - -<p>In one sense our selection of phrase must be a matter of taste and -good feeling; in another, it comes from our artistic instinct. What I -maintain, and have tried to show, is that modern novels are, too often, -both poisonous <em>and</em> untrue to life because their choice of words and, -indeed, their whole picture of life, is dominated by a false view: -that, if only your figures are naked they <em>must</em> be true, that our -bodies cannot lie. <em>In angry revolt against the half-truths of the -<!-- Page 32 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span>past, they snatch at the other half and swear it is the whole.</em></p> - -<p>Let the writer be sure that he cares only for truth; and loyalty to his -vision will give him the right, clean thoughts and words.</p> - -<p>Let the reader trust to his own natural instincts. Almost certainly, -if a phrase or thought either shock or suggest the unclean, it is -itself—as then used—unclean, false to life and nature; <em>and</em> also -bad art. If you are told that the first slight shock, prick of the -conscience, impulse to shrink away, is false hypocrisy, <em>do not believe -it</em>.</p> - -<p>Nearly always the most inexperienced youth <em>feels straight</em>. Once -the poison is drunk and you have let yourself go with the injected -delirium, you will have lost the power to see and feel for yourself.</p> - - - - -<div class="chapter"> -<hr class="newchapter" /> -<p><!-- Page 33 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak"><a name="Chapter_VI" id="Chapter_VI"></a>VI<br /> - -<small>NOVELS OF "GAY LIFE," WITH THE PROSTITUTE HEROINE, ARE, QUITE -OBVIOUSLY, STRONG MORAL INTOXICANTS.</small></h2> -</div> - - -<p>One does not pronounce the subject forbidden. We know, and recognize, -that a man's mistress <em>may</em> be a nobler woman than his wife, the love -between them more real; we know and recognize where mere passion may -lead; and we do not carelessly push beyond the pale, those whom a -hundred different circumstances—quite different degrees of moral -weakness or reckless defiance through special trouble—may have led to -live on man's desires. We do not dismiss them from thought, reading, -and conversation.</p> - -<p>Nevertheless many novels now written use these most grave issues for -mere dramatic effect, or to confound morality; and, to these ends, -offer a falsely attractive picture of emotional adventure. In his -terrible <cite>Bed of Roses</cite>, on the other hand, Mr. W. L. George <!-- Page 34 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span>treats -his theme with the definite object of exposing the tragedy of a young -woman with no training, suddenly forced to earn her living; and of -expressing his righteous anger against the conditions of civilization. -Because, he declares, "a woman can scratch up a living but not a -future; and the only job she's really fit for is to be a man's keep, -legal or illegal, permanent or temporary." The narrative itself is -most emphatically not free from offence, but the motive is honest and -sincere.</p> - -<p>Mr. Gilbert Cannan, again, with less earnest intention but still -legitimately, seems to have written <cite>Pink Roses</cite> to illustrate the -demoralizing effects of the war on a quite decent, average young man, -who was "left out" of things—through a weak heart. He drifts into an -experiment of lust, but is not finally destroyed, because he recognized -from the first that he had only sought the adventure—to fill the blank -years.</p> - -<p>The frail "Cora" of Mr. Snaith's <cite>Sailor</cite> merely stands for temptation, -which no novelist can omit. The episode is not shirked, but it is -treated with all the traditional reticence, which puts it outside our -discussion here.</p> - -<p>In these examples the motive may be <!-- Page 35 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span>acknowledged towards -justification; but such books as Mr. W. L. George's <cite>Confessions of -Ursula Trent</cite> only respond to a morbid preference for melodramatic -atmosphere: they assume, and encourage, our interest in the unclean.</p> - -<p>To heighten the effect, they are—almost inevitably—untrue. The -attractions and drama are exaggerated, giving a false glamour to the -gravest tragedy of human nature. There is here obvious adventure, -and far greater variety or colour than we can, most of us, reach in -ordinary respectable life. There is even some real liberty for the -individual (though far less than these superficial narratives suggest), -in dramatic contrast to the slaving drudgery and imprisoned minds—of -underpaid long hours of toil and drab unloving homes.</p> - -<p>The hopeless tragedy, the bitter knowledge, the utter weariness and the -slavery of the soul do not provide the novelist with dramatic material, -and are—to a large extent—left out of the picture. He slurs over, -or altogether ignores, the blunting of moral sense, the coarsening of -moral fibre, the lowering of all ideals: the gradual loss of power -over oneself, loss of will, loss of freedom, loss—even—of <!-- Page 36 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span>desire. -He may use the more obvious foulness and brutality as an occasion for -drama—naturally not wishing to be transparently unreal. The moral -tragedy is not <em>there</em>.</p> - -<p>But by his own art standard, that demands the exact truth, he is -condemned; and he is guilty of just that falsehood which he set out -to expose and revile—of treating his characters as a <em>class apart</em>, -rather types than individuals. As the Victorians assumed, without -charity, they were always lower than the "respectable"; he almost -conveys the impression that they are necessarily higher—as careless, -and far more dangerous, an assumption.</p> - -<p>We can perhaps see more clearly where this perverse attack upon -convention really leads from another example of fiction, frankly -designed to sell.</p> - -<p>It is, indeed, hard to detect the serious object or thought behind such -books as <cite>The Age of Consent</cite>. The publisher claims "extraordinary -delicacy" for its treatment of a "difficult, perilous, and exciting -situation," which is "modern in the fullest sense." There is, we admit, -nothing coarse here in language or thought, a welcome exception to-day; -and the combination of essential purity, in a very real sense, with a -courageous acceptance of <!-- Page 37 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span>life, is revealed with real understanding of -morality and of our natural instincts.</p> - -<p>In other words, Pamela is a true woman; with exceptional possession of -herself, heroic impulse and a clean mind; capable of sustained, genuine -self-sacrifice and self-restraint.</p> - -<p><em>But when we consider the tests by which her nature is revealed and -developed, the sordid vice in which she grew from girl to woman; -the whole impression is reversed.</em> Circumstances and atmosphere are -violently morbid and also quite abnormal. We have not only every -conceivable variety in the cruel and profit-sharing intrigues of lust -(with no sudden impulse to excuse, if not condone); but illustration -and discussion of the most extreme and vile form of criminal mania that -serves no purpose but to heighten the crude sensationalism.</p> - -<p>The legal problem suggested by the title (a "practical" issue of -grave importance to public morality) is only used for the mechanism -of the plot; and spiritual purity is fertilized by manure. This, of -course, may be achieved by a strong nature: virtue does sometimes -triumph against long odds. But such books without doubt imply that the -surroundings of loathly sin <em>provide the most <!-- Page 38 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span>favourable soil</em> for the -growth and strengthening of a girl's innocence to perfect womanhood. -Which is a lie.</p> - -<p><em>Can we finally hesitate to proclaim that too many novels, written -round "gay life," create moods and stimulate emotions, by which truth -and the Right are hidden or denied?</em></p> - - - - -<div class="chapter"> -<hr class="newchapter" /> -<p><!-- Page 39 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak"><a name="Chapter_VII" id="Chapter_VII"></a>VII<br /> - -<small>WHAT DO THE "NEW" WRITERS AND THINKERS TO-DAY ACTUALLY TEACH? -HOW DO THEY INTERPRET LIFE AND LOVE?</small></h2> -</div> - - -<p>We have, so far, considered rather the effects of "new" morality -than the morality itself; and, to some extent, dwelt more upon the -characteristics of modern fiction than on the thought it expounds.</p> - -<p>It is now necessary to examine the actual teaching, or interpretation, -of life and love.</p> - -<p>The poison permeating literature and society seems to have its main -origin in over-emphasis and a determination to reform by destruction.</p> - -<p>A violent, but not altogether unjustified, reaction against our old -moral rules and formulæ, which laid undue stress on "appearances," has -led to a passionate declaration that the first right and duty of every -man or woman is to express himself or herself at all costs. The one -sin now held unpardonable is <!-- Page 40 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span>hypocrisy, or the insincere moulding of -oneself by rule; falling in line, accepting any authority or tradition, -any form of self-sacrifice. There is great confusion here between good -and evil. We have already more than once explained that we of the older -days frankly admit our mistake. We did conform over-much, fixed our -ideals in a groove, and—with too anxious love—sought to guide and -direct youth, rather than help and stimulate them to be their best -selves.</p> - -<p>But, if we laid too great stress on restraint, control, sacrifice, and -mere orderliness; the new thinkers have, here again, missed the truth -by their fiery haste. As the clear-sighted heroine of a recent novel -has remarked, "It was a great and fine act to let yourself go—only no -one said precisely where you went to."</p> - -<p>Their Self is not a complete purposeful human being, of strong -character and sustained courage, clear faith, and reasonable hope: -certainly not of any charity whatsoever. <em>The ego they would exalt is -a mere riot of moods.</em> They snatch at a moment's joy, utter a moment's -emotion, act on a moment's thought. There is no idea of "finding" -oneself <em>before</em> expressing oneself. Every passing fancy, feverish -excitement, sudden hate, is to be flung <!-- Page 41 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span>out upon a bewildered world; -above all to the confounding and wounding of steadier souls—the old, -the middle-aged, or any that bear another's burden. Such tempestuous -demands on life are based on anger against parental preachments and on -a curious lack of self-confidence. Seeing the glory of youth's capacity -for enthusiasm, they seem always afraid that it will fade and die -unless encouraged perpetually to explode. They will not tolerate any -idea of growth and strength through self-control, any appeal to the -higher, deeper Self, built up on loving service and kindness to one's -fellow-men.</p> - -<p>No theory of life ever produced such weak, formless, and utterly -miserable human beings. <em>They quickly cease to have any self to -express.</em> Swayed in a thousand contrary directions by every idle -mood, they become more absolutely slaves to chance encounter and -a thoughtless word than one would have supposed possible to an -intelligent man or woman, with any pride in self or any standard -of honour. It should be obvious that such a perpetual series of -unconsidered experiments in emotion must wear out all independent -thought, all strength of will, all capacity for judgment.</p> - -<p>Miss Sheila Kaye Smith does not teach this <!-- Page 42 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span>ideal in <cite>Joanna Godden</cite>, -but she exposes it with her usual grim sincerity. The heroine of that -profound tragedy kills her lonely soul by a perpetual struggle to -snatch happiness for herself. Originally a strong woman, she goes on -"blundering worse and worse," until "there she stood, nearly forty -years old, her lover, her sister, her farm, her home, her good name, -all lost."</p> - -<p>A novel in which we can, however, clearly detect confusion between -love and the quick, vicious, response to every sensuous impression, -is <cite>The Sleeping Fire</cite> of W. E. B. Henderson, described by its author -as a tale of "the urge in woman . . . where the flesh, crying like an -infant for food, is yet held back by scruples of a spirit that bows to -circumstance, from fastening on the breast of personal choice."</p> - -<p>Here "the woman," Viva Barrington, is, again and again, described as "a -human soul, innately decent and fine"; and yet she "suddenly kindled" -at any man's mere touch. The young guardsman whom "considerable -practice had enabled to use his fine eyes with much effect," declared -"she could be no end o' fun, if she'd only let herself go." In fact, -he took up a bet, "ten to one in quids," that he would kiss her before -the last supper <!-- Page 43 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span>dance; "a real live kiss, mind you, where she gives as -good as she gets. None of your stolen pecks."</p> - -<p>As this "splendid specimen of the vigorous young male smoothed back -her hair, devouring her with his eyes . . . a delicious languor . . . -as of one yielding to an anæsthetic . . . was stealing over her. -Husband, children—everything of her outside life slipped away."</p> - -<p>And at his kiss "primordial passion" awoke. "Feeling herself a live -coal of shame from head to foot she raised herself slightly upwards -towards him, and with closed eyes and utter abandon, passionately -returned the pressure of his lips."</p> - -<p>This "pure" woman, already a mother, is fired by a "vulgar wager," a -vain boy wanting to kiss her "for the mere enjoyment of the contact," -in the conservatory, heated by champagne and the dance. There is no -attempt to suggest real feeling, the passionate awakening that <em>may</em> -come after a foolish marriage; when the "right man" stirs unknown -depths, beating down "fears, doubts, self-distrusts." She crumples up -at the first chance shot.</p> - -<p>No wonder that, after some months' experimenting among men, she grows -"afraid—<!-- Page 44 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span>afraid! . . . now I know I'm liable to—to kindle, suddenly, -inexplicably. . . . There's a man here—one of those to-night. He's -unclean, through and through. I never used to attract that type. And -now apparently I do. The 'sleeping fire' . . . he sees it in me and -tries to feed it. He sickens me! Oh, I'm frightened. Suppose one day -that type <em>ceased</em> to sicken me. I've seen the demi-monde at the -tables. Their faces haunt me. <em>They</em> began with the sleeping fire, and -men fed it and fed it till it became a furnace . . . for me, it's been -like summer lightning so far . . . only summer lightning. Look after me, -help me, lest it ever be forked lightning . . . the lightning that can -strike and destroy."</p> - -<p>So she appeals to the husband she had originally accepted as "a -crutch," and who had looked upon her as "furniture." Fortunately—for -the children, because he has "changed, broadened in outlook and -understanding"—he is ready "to build afresh, stone by stone."</p> - -<p>We admit that Mr. Henderson's moral is sound enough; he has, indeed, -found "the way of salvation." But he has <em>not</em> drawn for us the -"innately decent and fine woman." <!-- Page 45 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span>Viva is weak and abnormally sensual -from the first; pulled out of the mire by luck, human kindness, and -a dim taste for "the things that are good, decent, and worth while"; -<em>inherited from clean-living forebears</em>.</p> - -<p>The danger for her was exceptional, not "that <em>natural</em> yearning" -against which "<em>all women</em> must be <em>eternally</em> on their guard." Her -husband, we notice, hoped to guard his daughter "<em>against her mother's -tendency</em>."</p> - -<p>We have a precisely similar situation in <cite>The Mother of All Living</cite> -by Mr. Keable. An emotional, but high-minded woman, whose husband -was not aggressively incompatible, is here suddenly stirred to the -depths—practically at first sight—by a cynical, handsome man of the -world. There is absolutely no attempt whatever to even suggest any -natural affinity in mind or tastes between the two; no urge except the -unexplained, and inexplicable, mystery of the spark that fires sex. The -abandon to which this unnatural awakening leads up belongs to quite a -different type of woman; and when, at the eleventh hour, she repents in -melodrama, we have still a third personality, no way like the girl her -husband wooed and won.</p> - -<p>This is, perhaps, why Mr. Keable calls her <!-- Page 46 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span><cite>The Mother of all Living</cite>, -Eve incarnate, the World-Woman. As Mr. Masefield draws Mary Queen -of Scots—too "big" for one lover. Both writers chose to forget, or -to ignore, that love has no meaning, unless one's <em>whole</em> self is -expressed.</p> - -<p>Mr. Temple Thurston, again, in <cite>The Green Bough</cite>, seems resolutely -determined to uphold Pope's dictum that "every woman is at heart a -rake."</p> - -<p>Mary, indeed, is a woman "whom life had discarded and thrown aside"; -whom, therefore, we are ready to judge leniently. It does <em>not</em>, -therefore, follow "How vast a degree of false modesty there is in the -world . . . it had <em>all been false</em> that modesty which their mother had -taught them."</p> - -<p>She, at any rate without modesty, sought and found love. So fine -a thing this that she took it, without hesitation, from a married -man, who had told her how much he loved his wife. "It happened—in a -fortnight."</p> - -<p>Of her sisters, reproaching her, she declares "Jane thinks herself -a true woman just because she's clung to modesty and chastity and a -fierce reserve; but these things are only of true value when they're -needed, and what man has needed them of us? <em>Who cares at all <!-- Page 47 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span>whether -we've been chaste or pure?</em> None but ourselves! And what made us care -<em>but those false values</em> that make Jane's shame of me? . . . You're not -really ashamed of me. You're <em>envious, jealous, and you're stung with -spite</em>. Calling me a servant girl or a woman of the streets only feeds -your spite, it doesn't satisfy your heart. <em>You'd give all you know to -have what I have.</em> . . . I'm going to have a child. . . . It's not a -sin. It's not a shame. It's the most wonderful thing in the world."</p> - -<p><em>There is one unanswerable reply to that fearful charge—"What man has -needed chastity of us, who cares?"—a son's honouring of his mother, -the man's instinct to defend his wife, his sister, or his child.</em></p> - -<p>False, or forced, "modesty" may degenerate into "spite"; but it will be -a sad day for human nature when all women are "jealous" of the "free!"</p> - -<p>Mr. Thurston seems to claim, in this novel, to be "the one man in the -world who understands the truth about women." This is his reading of -truth!</p> - -<p>It had been "the one night of her lover's life"; but he went back to -that "wonderful woman," his wife, who had "as big a heart as all this -stretch of acres and that breadth of <!-- Page 48 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span>sea." To Mary, he wrote, "I blame -myself utterly and I blame myself alone. . . . So many another woman -would have reckoned the cost before she knew the full account. You said -nothing. <em>You are wonderful, Mary</em>, and if any woman deserves to escape -the consequences of passion, it is you."</p> - -<p>"God!" she cried, "was that the little mind her own had met with? . . . -She knew how in the deepest recesses of her soul there did not live a -father to her child. . . . If this was a man, then men were nothing to -women. Two nights of burning passion he had been with her and for those -moments they had been inseparably one. But now he had gone as though -the whole world divided them. . . . With that letter he had cancelled -all existence in the meaning of life. There was no meaning in him."</p> - -<p>He was "the mere servant of Nature, whipped with passion to her purpose -. . . no father at all."</p> - -<p>Wherefore <em>she tries to explain</em> to him: "Women are not complicated. -It is only the laws that make us appear so. . . . That first of our -two nights on the cliffs, did you find me complicated or difficult -of understanding? I showed, as well as gave you myself, and <!-- Page 49 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span>this -is how you have treated that revelation. . . . <em>Why do you hint about -shame to me? Did you think I shared what you call your weakness? Did -you think for those moments that, as you say of yourself, I forgot -or lost restraint?</em> . . . You would not believe me if I told you that -all women in their essence are the same. It is only with so many that -. . . the hollow dignity of social position, the chimera of good repute -. . . are more attractive and alluring than the pain and discomfort and -difficulty of bringing children into a competitive world. . . . But -starve one of these women . . . deny to her the first function which -justifies her existence . . . and you will find her behave as I -behaved. . . . I had no shame then. I loved. Loving no longer, I still -now have no shame because, and believe me it is not in anger, we have no -cause to meet again."</p> - -<p>On the other hand, Miss E. M. Delafield's <cite>Humbug</cite> reveals with -startling clearness the falseness of self-seeking in passion. -Her argument is the more convincing because her heroine, Lily -Stellenthorpe, has the best of reasons for adopting the new ideal, the -strongest possible temptation to follow a false light. Her sensitive -and vital nature <!-- Page 50 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span>had been cramped from birth by "a good woman's -capacity for the falsification of moral values." Her father literally -drove her along the same demoralizing groove. Love and respect for -their honest, but kind, goodness almost compel insincerity and the -complete self-annihilation. Under such influences, she acquires a -<em>good</em> husband. He, alas, dictates her conscience, assumes that so -sweet a woman will conform to type. It seems almost a brutal sin for -her to act, think, or even feel, for herself. Steadily she grows more -hidden, secret, and hypocritical.</p> - -<p>This careful preparation for modern self-passion is admirably drawn. We -can scarcely deny that any sudden outburst of even cruel selfishness or -revolt might be excused, if not absolutely justified, for <em>her</em>.</p> - -<p>Inevitably the occasion comes. The expected lover appears, young, -ardent, understanding; all, it seems to her revived free impulse, that -she had been seeking for many years. Lily, however, does not snatch -at happiness, flare out herself. She looks into herself, getting -herself—as it were—in order, before so fateful a choice.</p> - -<p>She thought first, <em>as she had been told by a sympathetic -schoolmistress</em>, "What I need, <!-- Page 51 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span>what I must have, if I am ever to -fulfil myself—is romance. I must learn not to be afraid of life. Some -day, I shall love. Am I to pretend to myself that such a thing is out -of the question because I am married?" Why not strike for freedom, and -begin life again? She "thought that the conflict lay, as so often, -between sincerity and sentiment." Only sentiment made it "impossible -for her to be ruthless" to her husband.</p> - -<p>"<em>Then illumination came to her, searing and vivid.</em>"</p> - -<p>The lover was, after all, a mere "pretext," an opportunity for one more -experiment with life, one more feverish attempt to find some false -image of herself.</p> - -<p>"Was the freedom for which she looked to be based upon yet another -artificial value? After all, why should she arrogate to herself the -right of deciding what her greatest happiness was to be? . . . The -long, long way round that it had been, to arrive at last at her own -convictions, and cease to try and wrench them into line with those of -other people!"</p> - -<p>"The gift" of herself "had been made" to her husband. Her real self lay -with him and with their coming child.</p> - -<p><!-- Page 52 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span>So she conquered the final test, escaped "applying a general law to a -particular case—taking one's values ready-made—the old, old humbug." -As "the last comforting falsity fell from her she saw . . . the truth."</p> - -<p>This was the truth <em>for her</em>. It is not offered as an argument for or -against a dogmatic rule that no woman may ever be justified in leaving -her husband.</p> - -<p>What this thoroughly modern and sincere novel <em>does</em> establish, is the -equal folly, and almost greater moral danger, of the opposite dogma: -that self-expression for its own sake, the mere putting a moment's -apparent happiness above all other claims or aims, without considering -the future, or seeking to find one's real self, <em>is a false and evil -ideal</em>.</p> - -<p><em>Miss Delafield gives the "new" morality a fair, and even an eloquent, -hearing, chooses a case where all the circumstances seem combined for -its support, and then exposes the fallacy of its reasoning.</em></p> - - - - -<div class="chapter"> -<hr class="newchapter" /> -<p><!-- Page 53 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak"><a name="Chapter_VIII" id="Chapter_VIII"></a>VIII<br /> - -<small>WHAT, THEN, IS THIS NEW LOVE? IT IS SEX-CONFLICT.</small></h2> -</div> - - -<p>The most obvious, and the most sincere, form of self-expression rests -on pure emotion—a natural and healthy impulse. The right thus to -express oneself belongs, as we acknowledge to-day, to women no less -than men.</p> - -<p>But, largely misled by their over-insistence upon the physical in human -nature, too many modern thinkers confuse fierce excitement with deep -emotion. Also seeing, and wisely exalting, the glory of youth's dream, -they sanction, and even advise, thoughtless haste and action on every -impulse.</p> - -<p>It is now taught, not only that physical passion stands for, or rather -<em>is</em>, the Love of which it forms only a part; but that the fire of -sudden desire is the only true, or natural, expression of love itself.</p> - -<p>Such a view has been, again and again, formally stated with quite -serious, honest <!-- Page 54 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span>intent by our leading novelists. It is assumed, -without argument or justification, in most second-rate popular fiction; -thereby reaching and poisoning the very readers least qualified to -resist evil influence and, as we have shown, particularly ill-equipped -to-day.</p> - -<p>For Mr. Cannan's Matilda love is a "kiss of the lips, a surrender to -the flood of perilous feeling, a tampering with forces that might or -might not sweep you to ruin; a matter of fancy, dalliance, and risk." -His Cora, the "natural light of love," "kissed" her lover's "eyes, his -lips, his ears, and bit the tip of his nose until it was bruised and -swollen."</p> - -<p>He may well ask: "Does any man want any woman, or any woman any man? -Are these wild flashes more than things of a moment? . . . Is not every -woman any man's woman? Is not every man any woman's man? Why property? -Why impossible pledges? Why pretend so much that is obviously false? -Why build upon a lie and call it sacred? . . . Why do men and women live -hideously together? . . . Why, and why again?"</p> - -<p>With a cynic's frankness Mr. W. L. George answers why:</p> - -<p>"Men may have us," said his Victoria, "as <!-- Page 55 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span>breeders and housekeepers, -but the mistress is the root of all." This is not, as one might -suppose, a confession of sin; for "Love is outside marriage, because -love's too big to stay inside . . . don't you see that of itself it -carries the one sanctity that may exist between men and women? That it -cannot be bound because it is as light airs, imponderable; so fierce -that all things it touches it burns, so sweet that whosoever has drunk -shall ever more be thirsty."</p> - -<p><em>Because a man soon tires of such burning sweetness, he must satisfy -his thirst elsewhere.</em></p> - -<p>Woman, indeed, he is annoyed to find, is still unable to "understand -love in its neurotic moods; she cannot yet understand that a greater -intensity might creep into passion if one <em>knew</em> it to be transient, -that one might love more urgently, with greater fierceness, if one -<em>knew</em> that soon the body, temple of that love, would fade, wither, -die, then decay . . . that haste to live made living more intense."</p> - -<p><strong>What, then, is this Love. It is a sex-conflict</strong>; wherein the man "has -to make war, to conquer." The woman begs him "to hurt her, to set his -imprint upon her"; even when "about to conquer" she must <!-- Page 56 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span>wear "the -slave look." This is precisely the woman he also finds, more crudely -phrased, in the "mean streets": "If yer lives alone nothing 'appens -. . . stuck in the mud like. But when yer've got a 'usband, things 'as -wot they calls zest . . . if 'e do come 'ome . . . p'r'aps 'e'll give -yer one in the mouf. Variety, that's wot it is, variety. . . . He may -lift his elbow a bit and all that, but anyhow 'e's a man." If he does -<em>not</em> come home, love means "waking up in the middle of the night and -running about the room like a crazy thing because she'd dreamed he was -with some other girl." In the afternoon it meant "feeling all soft and -swoony just because he helped you into the 'bus by the elbow."</p> - -<p>More thoughtful or intelligent young ladies come "to think there's no -such thing as a pure-minded girl." Marriage is "merely evidence that -the girl has held out" and "only a dodge for getting rid of being in -love."</p> - -<p>Mr. Hugh Walpole once very sensibly remarked that "people don't want -to know what a young ass thinks about life if he can't tell a story." -Perhaps, if such muddled ideas were only expressed by these solemn and -very intellectual young men (who, however, can "tell a story"), we -might be disposed to <!-- Page 57 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span>leave the matter in their hands and trust to time -for their enlightening.</p> - -<p>But, unfortunately, the same false "new love" is about us everywhere. -It is a commonplace to boys and girls, and has crept into the great -majority of second-rate, easily read, novels published to-day.</p> - -<p>What does it really mean? How has it come about?</p> - -<p>In the first place, the new thinkers have done precisely what they -are always protesting against. They confuse "marriage" with the legal -contract. A great part of their abuse, half their plea for the greater -sincerity of free love, has no standing against spiritual marriage, -founded on true love.</p> - -<p>Nevertheless the argument against <em>permanency</em> remains. The demand for -continual new adventure in emotion (set out to condone both intimacy -without marriage or disloyalty to marriage) does rest on something -which has the appearance of truth and reason.</p> - -<p>The fiery, swooning passion of mere bodily impulse <em>does not last</em>. -But even physical passion, the sex-urge, means more than that. Our -new teachers ignore what all experience has proved and science -taught—that <em>every</em> physical impulse—whether to eat or drink, <!-- Page 58 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span>work -or play—demands restraint for its fruition. The value of self-control -is no less of the body than the soul.</p> - -<p>It is the fever-bred passion, born of stimulated sex-consciousness, -that must snatch at every chance for expression and demands constant -change. This, indeed, does weary and satiate the spirit, weaken bodily -vigour, and destroy manhood. Bid us look for, welcome, and artificially -develop every first faint stirring of the sex-urge, and you make us -slaves indeed. If you consider less fundamental desires and pleasures -of the body, you will admit at once that feverish, uncontrolled, -and constant straining to put out all your strength at once, can -produce no kind of good sportsman. Who more rigorously disciplines -himself than the athlete? The power to be passionate, to express the -love of the flesh, dies before it has ever been really attained, -for those who always at once yield to mere craving. Their "deeply -sensual associations" are "always robbed of mystery and delight when -long-balked attraction comes to a tardy blooming."</p> - -<p>And as Scott told us long ago, "It is no small aggravation of this -jaded and uncomfortable state of mind, that the voluptuary cannot -<!-- Page 59 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span>renounce the pursuits with which he is satiated, but must continue, for -his character's sake, or from the mere force of habit, to take all the -toil, fatigue, and danger of the chase, while he has so little real -interest in the termination."</p> - -<p>That is, they quickly lose the very pleasures which were their object -and their excuse.</p> - -<p><em>I have known, or read of, no more miserable and weak human beings than -many of the men and women in modern fiction.</em></p> - -<p>Does it then follow that spiritual love, a true union of souls, for -which we claim a higher and a more lasting happiness, is a thing apart, -wherein the physical must be kept under, put aside; or, if conceded -to our common weakness (the penalty of our earthly existence), should -be calmly and occasionally indulged, only under official licence, -in secret as a shameful deed? Certainly <em>not</em>. The pure know far -more of passion than the loose. But, as other bodily pleasure, i.e., -self-expression, gains strength and depth by taking responsibility for -itself, "ordering" itself; so, above all, does our strongest, and most -ultimate, physical need.</p> - -<p>It is the true passion, naturally found in comradeship and love, -spontaneously <!-- Page 60 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span>constant and controlled, which will complete man's -vitality, deepen and strengthen, while it steadies, physique. -Spiritually the one expresses itself by <em>taking</em>, the other achieves -itself by <em>giving</em>.</p> - -<p>The biggest adventure in life, the deepest and truest feelings do, -actually, involve that emotional abandon, or complete self-forgetting, -which modernists exalt. But the giving away of one's whole self, -that is, expressing one's whole self in passionate service, is <em>not</em> -achieved by sudden, untested intimacy. It can only come, or grow, -for those who seek understanding of each other, suffer the first -mystery—(stirring the wonder dreams of youth)—to unfold and reveal -itself in steady, controlled devotion to the vision of romance. Then, -and only then (soon or late, as the individual self prompts), he shall -dare, <em>because he knows</em>.</p> - -<p>In other words, the physical passion, in which to-day men find the -<em>birth</em> of love, belongs in nature to maturity and completion, when man -has gained the courage to be himself and express himself. It is the -harvest of pure romance, only possible to those who have earned full -knowledge of themselves and of each other.</p> - -<p><!-- Page 61 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span>The humdrum pictures of insincere marriage, with which fiction is -crowded to-day, come from mistakes or spiritual failure to be one's -best self, <em>not</em> from constancy and faith. The need to perpetually -revive intense emotion with a new mistress can never be felt in a true -marriage. It <em>is</em> inevitable for so-called "free" love, the bitterest -slavery of man.</p> - -<p>For wedded love—that is, the permanent union of body and soul—there -is ever a new and wonderful adventure, the deepening mystery of the -closer bond. And the highest happiness, which is <em>intense</em> emotion, has -the gravest responsibilities, demanding the greatest courage and hope. -As Mr. Middleton Murray has written in <cite>The Things We Are</cite>: "The taking -of a wife or the taking of a friend is an eternal act; if it be less, -it is a treachery, a degradation."</p> - -<p>It is true, certainly, that the <em>nature</em> of love and passion may -change with time and the comradeship of daily life; but the change is -not a weakening, not even a lowering of the pulse. Its ardour does -not diminish but conquers life more completely. It is, actually, the -constant and faithful heart, which has most strength to bear with, or -to ennoble, the deadening trivialities of existence (that no <!-- Page 62 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span>free -lover can escape), to make small things great; which finds most courage -to face Fate.</p> - -<p>The deadening influence of constant "experiments" in passion ("walking -round and round the thing you want, gloating over it with your eyes"); -the bitter tragedy of a life that is "one long series of eager -conquests turned to listless ones," has been dramatically exposed, with -unflinching realism, by Miss Olive Mary Salter in her <cite>God's Wages</cite>; -which also reveals "that love beyond self which is human companionship."</p> - -<p>For Anne Verity, we read, "marriage" had been "the finger-post to -Death." In "making man her own she made him stale. . . . There was no -end to those upon whom she had lived and left them to pay the bill." -Always "life must be savoured anew by fresh interests, hashed up -aspects of the same old facts served up over and over again to one's -easily deceived palate." It was "her vanity that must be ministered -to afresh, its staleness and satiation relieved by the sacrifice of -someone else's young virility."</p> - -<p>She found that "love doesn't stay with this generation, it touches us -and flies again. . . . It's this awful quality of inconstancy in me, as -if my heart had got a hole in it. . . . We've <!-- Page 63 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span>lost the art of looking -on at anybody but ourselves."</p> - -<p>But, at long last, when a man explained to her: "I want you to love my -mind, that lives, instead of my body, that will die," she awoke.</p> - -<p>She learnt then, that "the right man, or the right woman for the matter -of that, isn't ever ready made. It needs effort of the most intense -kind to fit a man perfectly into a woman's life, a woman perfectly into -a man's."</p> - -<p><em>Wherefore, "Love, real love, is the consummation of great effort, -neither more nor less."</em></p> - - - - -<div class="chapter"> -<hr class="newchapter" /> -<p><!-- Page 64 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak"><a name="Chapter_IX" id="Chapter_IX"></a>IX<br /> - -<small>WHO <span class="emph">IS</span> THE "IDEAL" MISTRESS?</small></h2> -</div> - - -<p>The most determined advocates of free-love have never upheld the old, -lazy indulgence towards man and his "wild oats." The ideal mistress, -whom they so confidently exalt over the wife, is not the "kept woman" -behind Victorian respectability. Modern writers have, boldly and -justly, attacked that discreet indiscretion with the unanswerable -logic of facts. If we allow men licence, justice demands equal liberty -for women. Sin is not less, but greater, for being in secret, however -flimsy the veil.</p> - -<p>It is difficult, nevertheless, to see how <em>mutual</em> infidelity can -actually remove the admitted evils of a situation it makes more -complex; or to believe that publicity can, of itself, turn black to -white. By some curious twist of reasoning, it really would seem that -they maintain: "By lifting the blinds, we have created a 'new' woman, -the ideal of all the ages."</p> - -<p>For where, after all, have they turned to <!-- Page 65 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span>find her, save to their -knowledge and experience of the past? We cannot, positively, -reconstruct human nature.</p> - -<p>There is a clear and concise exposition of the whole theory in Miss -Romer Wilson's last novel, <cite>The Death of Society</cite>. It is the story of -Mr. Smith and his short visit to a distinguished Norwegian writer. He, -quite openly, worships the old man's young wife—"his girl, his woman, -his desire"—and though for them "time was so short they could not -afford to sleep," it is expressly stated that "<em>she, the perfect woman -in whom all women live, raised him to perfect manhood</em>." "Now," he -said, "I have confidence to do what I think right. . . . I do not care -for opinion any longer."</p> - -<p>Together, "they fell into the deep pool of love," when she "was too far -gone in bliss to reply."</p> - -<p>"Many men," she said, "men who came to see my husband, thought that -I was part of the visit, and that no man who thought well of himself -should go away without seducing me." But "that is how you seduced me, -because I saw love sprang straight from your heart and not from custom."</p> - -<p>"There was an Italian man who loved me, but not more than the books -with gold covers <!-- Page 66 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span>on his shelves. . . . He said I was the Muse of -Comedy. . . . There was a Frenchman who said I was the Muse of -Poetry. . . . There was a Russian who said nothing. . . . He loved me -because we were both animals; but only you love me because I am part of -your life and so I love you equally."</p> - -<p>Miss Wilson, indeed, attempts to impart a unique atmosphere into this -commonplace intrigue by a remarkable device. Smith "cannot speak -German, nor speak Norwegian." <em>She</em> knows only a few words of English. -"I like to <em>pretend</em> you hear," said Rosa, "I have always pretended"; -and he "could address her in whatever words he liked," since "lovers' -language is universal."</p> - -<p>By this method they do, in fact, hold conversations by the hour, -answering each other with quite miraculous preciseness; understanding, -we are expected to believe, the intimacies of thought and feeling -behind each phrase: "though he had no idea what she had said, word for -word." The intention, obviously, is to suggest some special mysterious, -if not miraculous, bond of the spirit knitting two souls in one. The -comment of a plain man, who deals with facts, must be that inarticulate -love can be only physical. It does <!-- Page 67 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span>not elevate, but further degrades, -their intimacy. He "had gone back to the dust to learn about God."</p> - -<p>They parted, however, because "they loved each other too much to ask -for each other's lives." Meanwhile, "in patience and humility" they -must wait "until after the Death of Society"—when they can be together.</p> - -<p>"How should I act," said Rosa, "if there were no such a thing as -Society? I know how I should act. . . . I owe nothing to either man or -woman. My name? My husband's name?—these belong to Society. . . . I -will not leave my husband, because he is an old man, nor my daughters, -because they are young; but if I give you a day of love, and again -a day perhaps, whom shall I hurt? . . . My soul belongs to nobody: -I—Rosa Christiansen—am my own. <em>My body is my soul's servant and -friend, and by it I can know other souls as I know my own.</em> . . . Oh! -oh! My soul is mine, and loves your soul!"</p> - -<p>We see that the "perfect woman" still kept on husband and home.</p> - -<p>And Smith, thus "proudly numbering himself among the angels," also -found time for a secondary, but quite passionate, intercourse with one -of the daughters of the house, who <!-- Page 68 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span>willingly gives him everything she -has; because she loves him so much, he is all she wants.</p> - -<p>He "kissed her violently on the face . . . squeezed her ribs as tight -as ever he dared," and replied without hesitation, "I love you as I -love flowers and the trees and the sky. I love you because you are -lovable as a wet or fine day is lovable. Why, yes, I must confess that -I love you. . . . . I believe all men love a great many women. . . . I -am a Bluebeard with a cellar full of wives. . . . You see, God hasn't -created the woman yet who represents the whole of female perfection. -Don't mistake me, Nathalia; I am not a beast. I don't run after women -solely as women. . . . He began to stroke her head as he thought of all -those past and bygone romances."</p> - -<p>And so on——! Strangely enough, "his heart was filled with deep and -tender <em>respect for her</em>."</p> - -<p>More frequently, however, the novelists of this school seem to have -gone back to the casual lusts of <cite>Tom Jones</cite>, with the rôle of hero and -heroine reversed. There are many tales, almost romantic, of Sir Galahad -waiting and tilting for Cleopatra or Mary Queen of Scots. Too often, -marriage is merely evidence that "the <em>man</em> has held out."</p> - -<p><!-- Page 69 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span>Still we maintain that the modernists are really looking to the -old-world "kept" woman for their ideal of more or less open and, as it -were, established free love. We find clear, specific complaints against -the new system: "They had lapsed into a relation which slowly from -irregular grew regular. It was not marriage, but it was in the nature -of marriage." Now, "after two and a half years . . . she had done wifely -things for him. . . . Love and domestic economy; it was very like -marriage after all."</p> - -<p>What then, frankly speaking, is the real charm of the new -mistress-love? Most obviously it comes, ultimately, from the holiday -spirit; its freedom from sordid or petty cares, the prose of our daily -life, business or home worries, the responsibilities that dull the -eye and wear down body and soul: which <em>means</em> the incarnation of -selfishness.</p> - -<p>Outspoken and simply coarse writers of the past centuries expose this -fact by their frank hints on "the honeymoon"; of which we acknowledge -the underlying truth.</p> - -<p>It has been cynically maintained, nor dare one quite deny, that -our romance-lady, the sheltered and innocent pure girl, would have -been broken long ago but for the "outlet," to <!-- Page 70 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span>mere males, of her -under-sister. I would suggest that the new "ideal" mistress is -certainly no less, probably more, dependent upon the housewife—the -tame, tied woman who bears her lover's name.</p> - -<p>We can none of us escape "the day's work." Under the conventional "wild -oats" scheme of life, we <em>can</em> place the whole burden upon the wife: -and so find elsewhere "The Woman"—passionately and emotionally our -ideal.</p> - -<p>But no theory of free love was ever based upon two establishments. The -whole weight of the new thought cries out for open, frank <em>leaving one -woman</em> and <em>going to the other</em>; where possible by mutual consent. The -secrecy, the misunderstanding, <em>the divided allegiance</em>, of the old -world, is the very evil they are clamouring to wipe out. Yet <em>can</em> -we leave our bills, our servants, and our children behind with the -fixtures of the old "home to let"? Can we spend our life, or for that -matter, more than a few days or weeks, in one perpetual holiday among -the "beach-flappers" of Miss Amber Reeves' unstable <cite>Helen in Love</cite> and -the boys they so gaily and easily annex?</p> - -<p>The truth, of course, cannot be denied. These new, glorified -sex-contracts (whether <!-- Page 71 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span>entirely free, or on a "short lease" subject -to "things going well") will, and must, involve all the trials of -domesticity, without the compensations of a shared responsibility: -a real bond to halve our sorrows and double our joys. There will, -moreover, be a thousand times more occasion for incompatibility, the -jar of nerves; where there is no steady, devoted endeavour towards -mutual forbearance and understanding, no spur to forgive—in courageous -hope. Life in hotels may, superficially, expose less friction; but it -quickly destroys any reality in comradeship. Only daily service can -build up Love.</p> - -<p>The mistress, in fact, remains an enervating luxury, a habit of living -beyond our emotional means, a sparkling drug.</p> - -<p><em>We have not found the Ideal, because it does not exist.</em></p> - - - - -<div class="chapter"> -<hr class="newchapter" /> -<p><!-- Page 72 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak"><a name="Chapter_X" id="Chapter_X"></a>X<br /> - - -<small>HERE ARE TWO PICTURES OF FREE LOVE!</small></h2> -</div> - - -<p>"After all, what is life for me? <em>Strange doors in strange houses, -strange men and strange intimacies.</em> Sometimes weirdly grotesque and -incredibly beastly. The secret vileness of human nature flung at -me. Man revealing himself, through individual after individual, as -utterly contemptible. I tell you, my dear eager fool, it is beyond -my conception ever to regard a man as higher than a frog, as less -repulsive."</p> - -<p>It is a cry from Mr. Compton Mackenzie's glittering land of many, and -strange, sins—surely a nightmare of hell itself; cry of the gallant -Sylvia Scarlett, writing her own epitaph—"Here lies Sylvia Scarlett -<em>who was always running away</em>."</p> - -<p>On the surface, indeed, it is a gay enough scene Mr. Mackenzie has -painted for us, when "her arm was twined round him like ivy, and their -two hands came together like leaves."</p> - -<p><!-- Page 73 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span>Glittering and hot in the first flush of adventure, we see youth's -brave curiosity endlessly awake. Yet it was cold, hard, and "strange" -at the core: always, everywhere, a "stranger" upon the earth. Sylvia -"was always running away"—from men and from herself; so weary, so -hurt, and so afraid. For there was none to share the burden and the -joy, no footing for her; nothing to hold on to and steady life, no -future to build: weary and restless and alone. She could never stay -anywhere, with anyone; searching for ever, for she knows not what. For -"life, which means freedom and space and movement, she is willing to -pay with utter loneliness at the end."</p> - -<p>For the wanderers there is no end we dare tell. Mr. Mackenzie has "a -jolly conception of the adventurous men of London, with all its sly -and labyrinthine romance"; but has he ever thought of following beside -any of the men and women who flutter across his page—we cannot say -to their homes, for they have none? Dare he <em>live</em> with "the muslin -and patchouli, the aspidestras and yellowing photographs, as in unseen -basements children whined, while on the mantelpiece garish vases -rattled to the vibration of the traffic"; or with Mrs. Smith "creeping -about the stairs <!-- Page 74 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span>like a spider?" Dare he see his shrewd, bright Daisy -die?</p> - -<p>To the novelist, indeed, they do not matter. They have played their -part in his drama, and may shuffle off to the wings. <em>They are human -beings in real life.</em> And for the truth about them, we could tell -such a dreary, monotonous, bitter and tragic sheaf of "Lonely Lives." -We should show them to you, wandering round and round, in and out, -under bright lights or behind dark corners; every year more weak and -frightened, till strength fails them even for movement without hope, -and they slip away into some silent pond.</p> - -<p>And finally, from the first, if all love means constant change to -revive passion, a life of continual experiment in emotion; we dare not -face the child.</p> - -<p>Novelists to-day, indeed, have given much thought to children. "You -know," wrote Mr. Mackenzie, "that if I were to set down all I could -remember of my childhood the work would not yet have reached beyond -the fifth year." They all often remember much, with rare understanding -and delicate insight. Heroes and heroines, to-day, are introduced to -us in the cradle, and for many a chapter remain nursery-bound. But, -curiously <!-- Page 75 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span>enough, we meet them all <em>at home, in a family group</em>. Every -one of the "newest" men and women, in modern novels, were brought up by -their parents (or nearest relatives), and did inherit the great gift -of influences they make no attempt to hand on. To fight fate they had, -at least, the traditional defence: <em>a self moulded by a mother's and -father's love</em>.</p> - -<p>Fiction has not yet faced the offspring of Free Love.</p> - -<p>They are still, however, bravely inspired by visions of mother-love. -The faith and loyalty they forbid to lovers, is still honoured in sons. -How many of Mr. Cannan's young heroines, for instance, could ever have -mothered his own Renè Fourny or the "Three Pretty Men." The Mrs. Morel -of D. H. Lawrence, most passionately tempestuous of all the moderns, -comes very near to the ideal. Few women have lived more absolutely -or continuously for, and in, their child. Yet few women can have had -better excuse or more temptation to desertion, greater need for a new -start. <em>Here was no love and no home, save what she made by loyal -constancy to the building up of the child she had borne.</em></p> - -<p>Who would condemn more fiercely, and with more bitter tears, the -teaching of these <!-- Page 76 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span>men than the great mothers they have so nobly -created?</p> - -<p>There would be none such in life so lived.</p> - -<hr class="thoughtbreak" /> - -<p>Could any novelist have drawn for us a more mad picture of the emotions -aroused by sex-licence than may be read in <cite>The Jewel in the Lotus</cite> by -Rosita Forbes? The heroine, Corona, "who paints, you know," is not, -professionally, a gay woman. She had, perhaps justifiably, divorced her -first husband; and achieved something like real love with a Spanish -Catholic, whose religion alone prevented the legal sanction. He, -however, died suddenly before the story opens; and "from that time -Corona deliberately cut away the soft side of life . . . she fought her -lonely battle and she won."</p> - -<p>But "<em>she did not attempt to shut sex out of her life again</em>. On the -contrary, <em>there were many incidents</em> in many countries, but to no -single lover did she give any part of her soul. For a little while -they drifted into her life, fulfilling the need her loneliness had -of companionship. She paid the price asked for affection, sympathy, -kindness, and <em>it left no mark on her</em>. Sometimes passion took her and -she <em>loved like a man</em> for a time and then forgot, but nothing <!-- Page 77 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span>and no -one interfered with the strange, new force she was developing."</p> - -<p>"At thirty-five she was a woman, strong, courageous, intelligent, a -brilliant conversationalist"—in fact, a popular Society Queen. Her -"existence had been an orgy of sensation."</p> - -<p>Then the boy, Gerald, came into her life. He had a "wonderful" mother: -"There's nothing I would not tell her, nothing that we do not talk -over." It was his plan, and hers, for him not to marry "for ages, not -for ten years, if then. You see, I want to make my castle first. Then -I will ask someone to live in it. I want to give my wife everything. I -want to stick her up in the public view and just arrange things for her -quietly."</p> - -<p><em>But</em> his mother was "broad-minded." When "she sees a woman obviously -happy, she feels that she probably has a lover." She "wouldn't want all -the best" of her son's life. "She knows I don't mean to marry, and she -knows also that no man goes very far without a woman in his life."</p> - -<p>And, <em>not</em> "necessarily, in the background. I can imagine a very great -friendship developing into something more passionate while one was -young and impulsive, and then slipping <!-- Page 78 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span>gradually back into a wonderful -comradeship."</p> - -<p>"And," he added, "I should never marry a woman who would mind my having -<em>friends</em>!"</p> - -<p>All this he tells Corona—"very quietly and simply"; and then, "kissing -her face swiftly, hotly, . . . till she bit him"; with incredible -<em>naivete</em>, explains that he had talked about her with his mother—"She -feels I should be safe with you" and "she would be a good friend to my -mistress."</p> - -<p>In her first blaze of anger and scorn Corona spits out: "I suppose Sir -Henry is your mother's lover"; and the boy cries, "No, he is not! How -dare you suggest it? <em>My mother is much too fine a woman to have a -lover.</em> She never had one and never will have."</p> - -<p>This is the truth none can escape: the one answer possible for any -decent boy: the inspiration of all the youth of all ages, who have made -for us a fair world, illumined by faith, courage, and hope.</p> - - - - -<div class="chapter"> -<hr class="newchapter" /> -<p><!-- Page 79 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak"><a name="Chapter_XI" id="Chapter_XI"></a>XI<br /> - -<small>HAVE WE ALREADY FORGOTTEN THE NATURAL LOYALTY OF YOUTH. HOW ARE -WE PAYING—OUR DEBT TO THEM?</small></h2> -</div> - - -<p>Honour the dead, care for those who saved the homes: for, as we have -here striven to show, never before has youth been in such dire need of -sympathy, understanding, and help. Too soon we forget that war blasts -humanity, a state of war makes us all brutes, degrades every man, -woman, and child, in every part of their nature, for all hours of their -lives. Youth, indeed, was rudderless through no fault of its own and, -when least prepared, most needing a clear vision, it has been tossed -into such a medley of mad notions as never before deluded mankind.</p> - -<p>We were, indeed, at the approach of Dawn; new light was breaking over -the mists of Victorian morality. To recover the <em>real</em> progress, which -has been diverted into a mere riot of attack, we have endeavoured to -gather <!-- Page 80 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span>together, examine, and clearly state what the "new" morality -<em>really means and leads to</em>, how it has come to be upheld. Without -denying in some the honest seeking of truth, we have sought to make -clear where the teaching around us to-day is untrue, destructive of -reality, and poisonous in its effect.</p> - -<p>As now proclaimed, this teaching cannot escape its responsibility for -much evil talk, thought, and emotion, for many black deeds. Under its -influence, thoughtless humanity is fast coming to believe and say that -all love, or even comradeship, between the sexes without immediate -physical satisfaction is hypocritical and unreal; that is, cramped by -forced self-denial or an evidence of cold blood and incapacity for real -love. The young live feverishly by this conviction: they flaunt their -passions, their falls and their conquests, before the world. They jest -at sin, sneer at restraint, and spare no thought for purity. Kindness, -courtesy, thought for others, are cast to the winds. At all costs, they -must be themselves, and snatch the hour's joy.</p> - -<p>Such feverish disorder of emotion—the swooning delirium, sudden fires, -and complete abandon of balance—is not natural to wholesome humanity; -but, as we have seen, <em>it can <!-- Page 81 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span>easily be produced by suggestion</em>. Now -that popular novelists casually produce drama and crude excitement -by smart tales of such over-sexed human beings, an immense body of -readers, without knowledge or experience to combat the falseness of the -picture, have come to accept it as a <em>normal record</em> of real life. They -are adapting themselves to its alluring thrills, modelling their lives -to its pattern, and acting upon its teaching. From men and women, they -may too soon become mere male and female, as God did <em>not</em> create them. -The whole history of mankind, our centuries of growth from cave-man to -the last word in civilization, have established truths which remain -true. Our right to be ourselves can never wipe out our duty to others. -There is an eternal and infinite difference between Right and Wrong, -and those who ignore this <em>cannot escape the penalty</em>. Love is not -lust. All that is finest and noblest in human nature has been built -upon a pure and constant loyalty; of which the eternal symbol (however -smirched and stained by folly or sin) is marriage and the home. -Character, which ultimately rules the world, grows straight amidst -the influence of family life. The permanent ideal for man and woman; -creating <!-- Page 82 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span>new life, bearing and cherishing each new generation, is a -complete union of the whole nature, spiritual and physical, whereof the -spiritual bond must be supreme.</p> - -<p><em>Self-control, restraint, and, if needs be, Sacrifice, are the highest -expression of Self.</em></p> - -<p>If we may not refuse new light, we can never forget old truth. The -foundations of morality have been established by our gradual emergence -from that state of savagery, into which we were again for a few years -submerged by war.</p> - -<p>Those who blot out the Vision attained by centuries of man's upward -fight, thereby confounding the ultimate issues of right and wrong, -setting the body above the soul, <em>are intoxicating and poisoning -humanity as with a deadly drug</em>.</p> - - -<p class="sectctr">PRINTED BY GARDEN CITY PRESS, LETCHWORTH, ENGLAND.</p> - - - - -<div class="chapter"> -<hr class="newchapter" /> -<p class="centerbigb"><span class="underline">From A. M. PHILPOT'S LIST</span></p> -</div> - - -<p class="center">BLUE BOOKLET, VOL. I</p> - -<p class="centerbigger"><small>THE</small><br /> -FALLACIES <i>of</i> SPIRITUALISM</p> - -<p class="centerbig">By A. LEONARD SUMMERS</p> - -<p class="ctrbold">2s. 6d. net.</p> - -<p class="center">SOME EARLY REVIEWS</p> - -<p class="bqad">"This booklet is an extremely able and interesting criticism -of a craze that has become widespread with the most pernicious -results. The writer does not limit himself to an account of the -sensational frauds that have been exposed on both sides of the -Atlantic, but he analyses the evidence of Sir Oliver Lodge, -Sir A. Conan Doyle, Mr. Vale Owen, and other distinguished -spiritualists, with merciless severity and very great -acumen."—<cite>Freeman's Journal.</cite></p> - -<p class="bqad">"Lucidly written, and without bitterness, Mr. Summers makes out -a good case for the 'againsts' in this little book."—<cite>Glasgow -Citizen.</cite></p> - -<p class="bqad">"As a popular indictment, Mr. Summer's pamphlet is likely to -make a considerable impression. It remains for his opponents to -offer as succinct and well-documented an answer."—<cite>The Times -Literary Supplement.</cite></p> - -<hr class="thoughtbreak" /> - -<p class="center">BLUE BOOKLET, VOL. II</p> - -<p class="centerbigger">PSYCHIC PHENOMENA IN<br /> -THE OLD TESTAMENT</p> - -<p class="centerbig">By SARAH A. TOOLEY</p> - -<p class="ctrbold">2s. 6d. net.</p> - -<p class="ads">Scenes and occurrences in the Old Testament, so familiar as to have -lost their real significance, are here described in a way that will be -of extraordinary interest to the psychic student of to-day.</p> - -<hr class="thoughtbreak" /> - -<p class="center">BLUE BOOKLET, VOL. III</p> - -<p class="centerbigger">MORAL POISON IN<br /> -MODERN FICTION</p> - -<p class="centerbig">By R. BRIMLEY JOHNSON</p> - -<p class="ctrbold">2s. 6d. net.</p> - -<p class="ads">The truth about certain new theories of morality, taught in some modern -novels, assumed in others, and to some extent already put in practice -by young readers, frankly and carefully examined, with an exposure -of their probable evil influence. Extracts from novels by well-known -writers give point and interest to what amounts to an unhesitating -condemnation.</p> - - - -<hr class="thoughtbreak" /> -<p class="centerbig"><i>NEW BOOK BY TROWARD.</i></p> - -<p class="hang"><b>THE HIDDEN POWER.</b> By <span class="smcap">T. Troward</span>. With frontispiece -portrait of the author. Uniform with author's Complete -Works. Crown 8vo, cloth, 8s. 6d. net.</p> - -<p class="ads">This important volume, which includes practically all Troward's -unpublished manuscripts and magazine articles, concludes -the series of books on Mental Science by an author who was -described by the late Archdeacon Wilberforce as "one of the -greatest thinkers of our times." It is significant to note that -these books, beautiful in their sustained clearness of thought -and style, are now included in the curriculum of societies, -clubs and classes devoted to the study of Mental Science.</p> - - -<p class="sectctr"><i>Complete List of the Series.</i></p> - -<p class="hang"><b>1. THE EDINBURGH LECTURES ON MENTAL SCIENCE.</b> Crown 8vo, cloth -and linen, 6s. net.</p> - -<p class="ads">Mental Science defined as the proper understanding of -Livingness, based on the distinction between Spirit and Matter; -i.e., Thought and Form.</p> - -<p class="hang"><b>2. THE DORÉ LECTURES <i>on</i> MENTAL SCIENCE.</b> Crown 8vo, cloth, -6s. net.</p> - -<p class="ads">An exposition of the relation of the Individual to the -Universal Originating Principle of the Cosmos—the Mind of God.</p> - -<p class="hang"><b>3. THE CREATIVE PROCESS <i>in the</i> INDIVIDUAL.</b> Crown 8vo, cloth, -8s. 6d. net.</p> - -<p class="ads">A study of spiritual evolution which, the author maintains, is -but another aspect of physical evolution.</p> - -<p class="ads">"<em>No thinker should be without this book.</em>"—The late -Archdeacon <span class="smcap">Wilberforce</span>.</p> - -<p class="hang"><b>4. BIBLE MYSTERY AND BIBLE MEANING.</b> Demy 8vo, cloth, 10s. 6d. -net.</p> - -<p class="ads">Troward here proposes that "we shall re-read the Bible on the -supposition that Jesus and these other speakers <em>really meant -what they said</em>, which is a startling proposition from the -standpoint of traditional interpretation." An illumination -for those who seek to render the older theology into terms of -modern science.</p> - -<p class="hang"><b>5. BIBLE PROPHECY, 1914-23.</b> Crown 8vo, paper, 1s. net.</p> - -<p class="ads">An arresting pamphlet upon the Great War; providing clues to -prophetic utterances of the Bible concerning the Time of the -End. To-day <em>is</em> the End of the Age.</p> - -<p class="hang"><b>6. THE LAW AND THE WORD.</b> With a Foreword by <span class="smcap">Paul -Derrick</span>. Crown 8vo, cloth, 8s. 6d. net.</p> - -<p class="ads">In this posthumous volume, Troward formulates a final statement -of his beliefs after long investigation and profound study in -the field of Mental Science.</p> - - -<p class="sectctr">A. M. PHILPOT LTD, 69 Great Russell Street, W.C. 1</p> - - - - -<hr class="newchapter" /> -<div class="notebox"> -<p class="tnhead">TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:</p> - - -<p>Pages 2 and 4 are blank in the original.</p> - -<p>The following correction has been made to the original text:</p> - -<div class="tnblock"> - <p>Page 55: because it is as light airs[original has "a light as - air"], imponderable</p> -</div> -</div> - - - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Moral Poison in Modern Fiction, by -Reginald Brimley Johnson - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MORAL POISON IN MODERN FICTION *** - -***** This file should be named 51015-h.htm or 51015-h.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/1/0/1/51015/ - -Produced by Clarity, Lisa Reigel, Michael Zeug, and the -Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net -(This file was produced from images generously made -available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries) - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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