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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/6304-8.txt b/6304-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..45ceb30 --- /dev/null +++ b/6304-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,13365 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Without Prejudice, by Israel Zangwill + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the +copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing +this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. + +This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project +Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the +header without written permission. + +Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the +eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is +important information about your specific rights and restrictions in +how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: Without Prejudice + +Author: Israel Zangwill + +Release Date: August, 2004 [EBook #6304] +[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] +[This file was first posted on November 22, 2002] +[Date last updated: August 15, 2003] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, WITHOUT PREJUDICE *** + + + + +William Fishburne, Charles Aldarondo, and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team. + + +WITHOUT PREJUDICE + +BY I. ZANGWILL + +Author Of "The Master," "Children Of The Ghetto" Etc., Etc. + + * * * * * + +TO YOU + + * * * * * + +_NOTE_ + +_This book is a selection, slightly revised, from my miscellaneous work +during the last four or five years, and the title is that under which the +bulk of it has appeared, month by month, in the "Pall Mall Magazine." In +selecting, I have omitted those pieces which hang upon other people's +books, plays, or pictures--a process of exclusion which, while giving +unity to a possible collection of my critical writings in another volume, +leaves the first selection exclusively egoistic._ + +_I.Z._ + + * * * * * + +CONTENTS + + +I + +GOSSIPS AND FANTASIES + + +I. A VISION OF THE BURDEN OF MAN: WHICH MAY SERVE TO INTRODUCE THE + INTRODUCTION +II. TUNING UP +III. ART IN ENGLAND +IV. BOHEMIA AND VERLAINE +V. THE INDESTRUCTIBLES +VI. CONCERNING GENERAL ELECTIONS +VII. THE REALISTIC NOVEL +VIII. IN DEFENCE OF GAMBLING +IX. TRULY RURAL +X. OPINIONS OF THE YOUNG FOGEY +XI. CRITICS AND PEOPLE +XII. TABLE-TALK +XIII. THE ABOLITION OF MONEY +XIV. MODERN MYTH-MAKING +XV. THE PHILOSOPHY OF TOPSY-TURVYDOM +XVI. GHOST-STORIES +XVII. A THEORY OF TABLE-TURNING +XVIII. SOCIETIES TO FOUND +XIX. INDECENCY ON THE ENGLISH STAGE +XX. LOVE IN LIFE AND LITERATURE +XXI. DEATH AND MARRIAGE +XXII. THE CHOICE OF PARENTS +XXIII. PATER AND PROSE +XXIV. THE INFLUENCE OF NAMES +XXV. AUTHORS AND PUBLISHERS +XXVI. THE PENALTIES OF FAME +XXVII. ON FINISHING A BOOK + + + +II + +HERE, THERE, AND SOMEWHERE ELSE: Philosophic Excursions + + +I. ABERDEEN +II. ANTWERP +III. BROADSTAIRS AND RAMSGATE +IV. BUDAPEST +V. CHICAGO +VI. EDINBURGH +VII. FIESOLE AND FLORENCE +VIII. GLASGOW +IX. HASLEMERE +X. PARIS +XL SLAPTON SANDS +XII. VENICE +XIII. VENTNOR +XIV. SOMEWHERE ELSE + + + +III + +AFTERTHOUGHTS: A Bundle of Brevities + + +MOONSHINE +CAPITAL +CREDIT +THE SMALL BOY +A DAY IN TOWN +THE PROFESSION OF CHARITY +THE PRIVILEGES OF POVERTY +SALVATION FOR THE SERAPHIM +TRUTH--LOCAL AND TEMPORAL +THE CREED OF DESPAIR +SOCIAL BUGBEARS +MARTYRS +THE LONDON SEASON +THE ACADEMY +PORTRAITS OF GENTLEMEN +PHOTOGRAPHY AND REALISM +THE GREAT UNHUNG +THE ABOLITION OF CATALOGUES +THE ARTISTIC TEMPERAMENT +PROFESSIONAL ETHICS +LAY CONFESSORS +Q. E. D. NOVELS +THE MOUSE WHO DIED +THEOLOGIC NOVELS +MUDIE MEASURE +THE PROP OF LETTERS +THE LATTER-DAY POET +AN ATTACK OF ALLITERATION +THE HUMOROUS +THE DISCOUNT FARCE +THE FRANCHISE FARCE +THE MODERN WAR FARCE +FIREWORKS +TIME'S FORELOCK +DIARIES +"LOOKING BACKWARD" +LONG LIVES +VIVE LA MORT! +MEN AND BOOKMEN +JAMES I. ON TOBACCO +A COUNTERBLAST TO JAMES I. +VALEDICTORY + + * * * * * + +PART I + +GOSSIPS AND FANTASIES + + + + +I + +A VISION OF THE BURDEN OF MAN + +And it came to pass that my soul was vexed with the problems of life, so +that I could not sleep. So I opened a book by a lady novelist, and fell +to reading therein. And of a sudden I looked up, and lo! a great host of +women filled the chamber, which had become as the Albert Hall for +magnitude--women of all complexions, countries, times, ages, and sexes. +Some were bewitching and beautiful, some wan and flat-breasted, some +elegant and stately, some ugly and squat, some plain and whitewashed, and +some painted and decorated; women in silk gowns, and women in divided +skirts, and women in widows' weeds, and women in knickerbockers, and +women in ulsters, and women in furs, and women in crinolines, and women +in tights, and women in rags; but every woman of them all in tears. The +great chamber was full of a mighty babel; shouts and ululations, groans +and moans, weeping and wailing and gnashing of false and genuine teeth, +and tearing of hair both artificial and natural; and therewith the +flutter of a myriad fans, and the rustle of a million powder-puffs. And +the air reeked with a thousand indescribable scents--patchouli and attar +of roses and cherry blossom, and the heavy odours of hair-oil and dyes +and cosmetics and patent medicines innumerable. + +Now when the women perceived me on my reading-chair in their midst, the +shrill babel swelled to a savage thunder of menace, so that I deemed they +were wroth with me for intruding upon them in mine own house; but as mine +ear grew accustomed to the babel of tongues, I became aware of the true +import of their ejaculations. + +"O son of man!" they cried, in various voices: "thy cruel reign is over, +thy long tyranny is done; thou hast glutted thyself with victims, thou +hast got drunken on our hearts' blood, we have made sport for thee in our +blindness. But the Light is come at last, the slow night has budded into +the rose of dawn, the masculine monster is in his death-throes, the +kingdom of justice is at hand, the Doll's House has been condemned by the +sanitary inspector." + +I strove to deprecate their wrath, but my voice was as the twitter of a +sparrow in a hurricane. At length I ruffled my long hair to a leonine +mane, and seated myself at the piano. And lo! straightway there fell a +deep silence--you could have heard a hairpin drop. + +"What would you have me do, O daughters of Eve?" I cried. "What is my +sin? what my iniquity?" Then the clamour recommenced with tenfold +violence, disappointment at the loss of a free performance augmenting +their anger. + +"Give me a husband," shrieked one. + +"Give me a profession," shrieked another. + +"Give me a divorce," shrieked a third. + +"Give me free union," shrieked a fourth. + +"Give me an income," shrieked a fifth. + +"Give me my deceased sister's husband," shrieked a sixth. + +"Give me my divorced husband's children," shrieked a seventh. + +"Give me the right to paint from the nude in the Academy schools," +shrieked an eighth. + +"Give me an Oxford degree," shrieked a ninth. + +"Give me a cigar," shrieked a tenth. + +"Give me a vote," shrieked an eleventh. + +"Give me a pair of trousers," shrieked a twelfth. + +"Give me a seat in the House," shrieked a thirteenth. + +"Daughters of the horse-leech," I made answer, taking advantage of a +momentary lull, "I am not in a position to give away any of these things. +You had better ask at the Stores." But the tempest out-thundered me. + +"I want to ride bareback in the Row in tights and spangles at 1 p. m. on +Sundays," shrieked a soberly clad suburban lady, who sported a +wedding-ring. "I want to move the world with my pen or the point of my +toe; I want to write, dance, sing, act, paint, sculpt, fence, row, ride, +swim, hunt, shoot, fish, love all men from young rustic farmers to old +town _roués_, lead the Commons, keep a salon, a restaurant, and a +zoological garden, row a boat in boy's costume, with a tenor by moonlight +alone, and deluge Europe and Asia with blood shed for my intoxicating +beauty. I am primeval, savage, unlicensed, unchartered, unfathomable, +unpetticoated, tumultuous, inexpressible, irrepressible, overpowering, +crude, mordant, pugnacious, polyandrous, sensual, fiery, chaste, modest, +married, and misunderstood." + +"But, madam," I remarked--for in her excitement she approached within +earshot of me--"I understand thee quite well, and I really am not +responsible for thy emotions." Her literary style beguiled me into the +responsive archaicism of the second person singular. + +"Coward!" she snapped. "Coward and satyr! For centuries thou hast +trampled upon my sisters, and desecrated womanhood." + +"I beg thy pardon," I rejoined mildly. + +"Thou dost not deserve it," she interrupted. + +"Thou art substituting hysteria for history," I went on. "I was not born +yesterday, but I have only scored a few years more than a quarter of one +century, and seeing that my own mother was a woman, I must refuse to be +held accountable for the position of the sex." + +"Sophist!" she shrieked. "It is thy apathy and selfishness that +perpetuate the evil." + +Then I bethought me of my long vigils of work and thought, the slow, +bitter years in which I "ate my bread with tears, and sat weeping on my +bed," and I remembered that some of those tears were for the sorrows of +that very sex which was now accusing me of organised injustice. But I +replied gently: "I am no tyrant; I am a simple, peaceful citizen, and it +is as much as I can do to earn my bread and the bread of some of thy sex. +Life is hard enough for both sexes, without setting one against the +other. We are both the outcome of the same great forces, and both of us +have our special selfishnesses, advantages, and drawbacks. If there is +any cruelty, it is Nature's handiwork, not man's. So far from trampling +on womanhood, we have let a woman reign over us for more than half a +century. We worship womanhood, we have celebrated woman in song, picture, +and poem, and half civilisation has adored the Madonna. Let us have +woman's point of view and the truth about her psychology, by all means. +But beware lest she provoke us too far. The _Ewigweibliche_ has become +too literal a fact, and in our reaction against this everlasting woman +question we shall develop in unexpected directions. Her cry for equal +purity will but end in the formal institution of the polygamy of the +Orient--" + +As I spoke the figure before me appeared to be undergoing a +transformation, and, ere I had finished, I perceived I was talking to an +angry, seedy man in a red muffler. + +"Thee keeps down the proletariat," he interrupted venomously. "Thee lives +on the sweat of his brow, while thee fattens at ease. Thee plants thy +foot on his neck." + +"Do I?" I exclaimed, lifting up my foot involuntarily. + +Mistaking the motion, he disappeared, and in his stead I saw a withered +old pauper with the Victoria Cross on his breast. "I went to the mouth of +hell for thee," he said, with large reproachful eyes; "and thou leavest +me to rot in the workhouse." + +"I am awfully sorry!" I said. "I never heard of thee. It is the nation--" + +"The nation!" he cried scornfully. "_Thou_ art the nation; the nation is +only a collection of individuals. Thou art responsible. Thou art the +man." + +"Thou art the man," echoed a thousand voices: "Society is only an +abstraction." And, looking round, I saw, to my horror, that the women had +quite disappeared, and their places were filled by men of all +complexions, countries, times, ages, and sexes. + +"I died in the streets," shouted an old cripple in the background--"round +the corner from thy house, in thy wealthy parish--I died of starvation in +this nineteenth century of the Christian era, and a generation after +Dickens's 'Christmas Carol.'" + +"If I had only known!" I murmured, while my eyes grew moist. "Why didst +thou not come to me?" + +"I was too proud to beg," he answered. "The really poor never beg." + +"Then how am I responsible?" I retorted. + +"How art thou responsible?" cried the voices indignantly; and one +dominating the rest added: "I want work and can't get it. Dost thou call +thyself civilised?" + +"Civilised?" echoed a weedy young man scornfully. "I am a genius, yet I +have had nothing to eat all day. Thy congeners killed Keats and +Chatterton, and when I am dead thou wilt be sorry for what thou hast not +done." + +"But hast thou published anything?" I asked. + +"How could I publish?" he replied, indignantly. + +"Then how could I be aware of thee?" I inquired. + +"But my great-grandfather _did_ publish," said another. "Thou goest into +ecstacies over him, and his books have sold by tens of thousands; but me +thou leavest pensionless, to earn my living as a cooper. Bah!" + +"And thou didst put _my_ father in prison," said another, "for publishing +the works of a Continental novelist; but when the novelist himself comes +here, thou puttest him in the place of honour." + +I was fast growing overwhelmed with shame. + +"Where is thy patriotism! Thou art letting some of the most unique +British birds become extinct!" "Yes, and thou lettest Christmas cards be +made in Germany, and thou deridest Whistler, and refusest to read Dod +Grile, and thou lettest books be published with the sheets pinned instead +of sewn. And the way thou neglectest Coleridge's grave----" + +"Coleridge's grave?" interrupted a sad-eyed enthusiast. "Why, thou hast +put no stone at all to mark where James Thomson lies!" + +"Thou Hun, thou Vandal!" shrieked a fresh contingent of voices in +defiance of the late Professor Freeman. "Thou hast allowed the Emanuel +Hospital to be knocked down, thou hast whitewashed the oaken ceiling of +King Charles's room at Dartmouth, and threatened to destroy the view from +Richmond Hill. Thou hast smashed cathedral windows, or scratched thy name +on them, hast pulled down Roman walls, and allowed commons to be +inclosed. Thou coverest the Lake District with advertisements of pills, +and the blue heaven itself with sky-signs; and in thy passion for cheap +and nasty pictorial journalism thou art allowing the art of +wood-engraving to die out, even as thou acceptest photogravures instead +of etchings." + +I cowered before their wrath, while renewed cries of "Thou art +responsible! Thou! Thou!" resounded from all sides. + +"A pretty Christian _thou_ art!" exclaimed another voice in unthinking +vituperation. "Thou decimatest savage tribes with rum and Maxim guns, +thou makest money by corrupting the East with opium. Thou allowest the +Armenians to be done to death, and thou wilt not put a stop to +child-marriages in India." + +"But for thee I should have been alive to-day," broke in a venerable +spirit hovering near the ceiling. "If thou hadst refused to sell poison +except in specially shaped bottles----" + +"What canst thou expect of a man who allows anybody to carry firearms?" +interrupted another voice. + +"Or who fills his newspaper with divorce cases?" + +"Is it any wonder the rising generation is cynical, and the young maiden +of fifteen has ceased to be bashful?" + +"Shame on thee!" hissed the chorus, and advanced upon me so threateningly +that I seized my hat and rushed from the room. But a burly being with a +Blue Book blocked my way. + +"Where didst thou get that hat?" he cried. "Doubtless from some sweating +establishment. And those clothes; didst thou investigate where they were +made? didst thou inquire how much thy tailor paid his hands? didst thou +engage an accountant to examine his books?" + +"I--I am so busy," I stammered feebly. + +"Shuffler! How knowest thou thou art not spreading to the world the germs +of scarlet fever and typhoid picked up in the sweaters' dens?" + +"What cares _he_?" cried a tall, thin man, with a slight stoop and gold +spectacles. "Does he not poison the air every day with the smoke of his +coal fires?" + +"Pison the air!" repeated a battered, blear-eyed reprobate. "He pisoned +my soul. He ruined me with promiskus charity. Whenever I was stoney-broke +'e give me doles in aid, 'e did. 'E wos werry bad to me, 'e wos. 'E +destroyed my self-respeck, druv me to drink, broke up my home, and druv +my darters on the streets." + +"This is what comes of undisciplined compassion," observed the +gold-spectacled gentleman, glowering at me. "The integrity and virtue of +a whole family sacrificed to the gratification of thy altruistic +emotions!" + +"Stand out of the way!" I cried to the burly man; "I wish to leave my own +house." + +"And carry thy rudeness abroad?" he retorted indignantly. "Perchance thou +wouldst like to go to the Continent, and swagger through Europe clad in +thy loud-patterned checks and thine insular self-sufficiency." + +I tried to move him out of the way by brute force, and we wrestled, and +he threw me. I heard myself strike the floor with a thud. + +Rubbing my eyes, instead of my back, I discovered that I was safe in my +reading-chair, and that it was the lady novelist's novel that had made +the noise. I picked it up, but I still seemed to see the reproachful eyes +of a thousand tormentors, and hear their objurgations. Yet I had none of +the emotions of Scrooge, no prickings of conscience, no ferment of good +resolutions. Instead, I felt a wave of bitterness and indignation +flooding my soul. + +"I will _not_ be responsible for the universe!" I cried to the ceiling. +"I am sick of the woman question, and the problem of man makes my gorge +rise. Is there one question in the world that can really be settled? No, +not one, except by superficial thinkers. Just as the comprehensive +explanation of 'the flower in the crannied wall' is the explanation of +the whole universe, so every question is but a thin layer of ice over +infinite depths. You may touch it lightly, you may skate over it; but +press it at all, and you sink into bottomless abysses. The simplest +interrogation is a doorway to chaos, to endless perspectives of winding +paths perpetually turning upon themselves in a blind maze. Suppose one is +besought to sign a petition against capital punishment. A really +conscientious and logical person, pursuing truth after the manner +recommended by Descartes, and professed by Huxley, could not settle this +question for himself without going into the endless question of Free-will +_versus_ Necessity, and studying the various systems of philosophy and +ethics. Murder may be due to insane impulse: Insanity must therefore be +studied. Moreover, ought not hanging to be abolished in cases of murder +and reserved for more noxious crimes, such as those of fraudulent +directors? This opens up new perspectives and new lines of study. The +whole theory of Punishment would also have to be gone into: should it be +restrictive, or revengeful, or reformative? (See Aristotle, Bentham, +Owen, etc.) Incidentally great tracts of the science of Psychology are +involved. And what right have we to interfere with our fellow-creatures +at all? This opens up the vast domains of Law and Government, and +requires the perusal of Montesquieu, Bodin, Rousseau, Mill, etc., etc. +Sociology would also be called in to determine the beneficent or +maleficent influence of the death-punishment upon the popular mind; and +statistics would be required to trace the operation of the systems of +punishment in various countries. History would be consulted to the same +effect. The sanctity of human life being a religious dogma, the religions +of the world would have to be studied, to see under what conditions it +has been thought permissible to destroy life. One ought not to rely on +translations: Confucius should be read in Chinese, the Koran in Arabic, +and the few years spent in the acquisition of Persian would be rewarded +by a first-hand familiarity with the Zend Avesta. The Old Testament +enjoins capital punishment. On what grounds, then, if one is leaning the +other way, may a text be set aside that seems to settle the matter +positively? Here comes in the vast army of Bible commentators and +theologians. But perhaps the text is of late origin, interpolated. The +Dutch and German savants rise in their might, with their ingenious +theories and microscopic scholarship. But there are other scientists who +bid us not heed the Bible at all, because it contradicts the latest +editions of their primers. Is, then, science strictly accurate? To answer +this you must have a thorough acquaintance with biology, geology, +astronomy, besides deciding for yourself between the conflicting views at +nearly every point. By the time you have made up your mind as to whether +capital punishment should be abolished, it has passed out of the +statute-book, and you are dead, or mad, or murdered. + +"But were this the only question a man has to settle in his short span of +years, he might cheerfully engage in its solution. But life bristles with +a hundred questions equally capital, and with a thousand-and-one minor +problems on which he is expected to have an opinion, and about which he +is asked at one time or other, if only at dinner." + +At this moment the Poet who shares my chambers came in--later than he +should have done--and interrupted my soliloquy. But I was still hot, and +enlisted his interest in my vision and my apologia, and began drawing up +a list of the questions, in which after a while he became so interested +that he started adding to it. Hours flew like minutes, and only the +splitting headache we both brought upon ourselves drove us to desist. +Here is our first rough list of the questions that confront the modern +man--a disorderly, deficient, and tautological list, no doubt, to which +any reader can add many hundred more. + + + VEXED QUESTIONS + + Queen Mary and Bothwell. Shakespeare and Bacon. Correct + transliteration of Greek; pronunciation of Latin. Sunday opening of + museums; of theatres. The English Sunday; Bank Holiday. Darwinism. Is + there spontaneous creation? or spontaneous combustion? The germ + theory; Pasteur's cures; Mattei's cures; Virchow's cell theory. Unity + of Homer; of the Bible. Dickens v. Thackeray. Shall we ever fly? or + steer balloons? The credit system; the discount system. + Impressionism, decadence, Japanese art, the _plein air_ school. + Realism _v._ romance; Gothic _v._ Greek art. Russian fiction, Dutch, + Bulgarian, Norwegian, American, etc., etc.: opinion of every novel + ever written, of every school, in every language (you must read them + in the original); ditto of every opera and piece of music, with + supplementary opinions about every vocalist and performer; ditto of + every play, with supplementary opinions about every actor, dancer, + etc.; ditto of every poem; ditto of every picture ever painted, with + estimates of every artist in every one of his manners at every stage + of his development and decisions as to which pictures are not + genuine; also of every critic of literature, drama, art, and music + (in all of which departments certain names are equal to an appalling + plexus of questions--Wagner, Ibsen, Meredith, Browning, Comte, + Goethe, Shakespeare, Dante, Degas, Rousseau, Tolstoï, Maeterlinck, + Strindberg, Zola, Whistler, Leopardi, Emerson, Carlyle, Swedenborg, + Rabelais). Socialism, its various schools, its past and its future; + Anarchism: bombs. Labour questions: the Eight Hours' Day, the + Unemployed, the Living Wage, etc., etc. Mr. Gladstone's career. Shall + members of Parliament be paid? Chamberlain's position; ditto for + every statesman in every country, to-day and in all past ages. South + Africa, Rhodes, Captain Jim. The English girl _v._ the French or the + American. Invidious comparisons of every people from every point of + view, physical, moral, intellectual, and aesthetic. Vizetelly. + Vivisection. First love _v._ later love; French marriage system _v._ + the English. The corrupt choruses in the Greek dramas (also in modern + burlesque--with the question of the Church and Stage Guild, Zaeo's + back, the County Council, etc.). How to make London beautiful. Fogs. + Bi-metallism. Secondary Education. Volunteer or conscript? Anonymity + in journalism. Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, and Mohammedanism: + their mutual superiorities, their past and their future. Plato, + Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, and all philosophers and philosophies. The + Independent Theatre. The origin of language, Where do the Aryans come + from? Was Mrs. Maybrick guilty? Same question for every great + murderer. The Tichborne case, and every other _cause célèbre_, + including divorce cases. Crime and punishment. Music-hall songs. + Heredity: are acquired qualities inherited? Is tobacco a mistake? Is + drink? Is marriage? Is the high hat? Polygamy; the social evil. Are + the planets inhabited? Is the English concert pitch too high? The + divided skirt. The antiquity of man. Geology: is the story of the + rocks short, or long, or true? Geology _v._ Genesis; Genesis _v._ + Kuenen. Was Pope a poet? Was Whitman? Was Poe a drunkard, or Griswold + a liar? Was Hamlet mad? Was Blake? Is waltzing immoral? Is humour + declining? Is there a modern British drama? Corporal punishment in + schools. Compulsory vaccination. What shall we do with our daughters? + or our sons? or our criminals? or our paupers? or ourselves? Female + franchise. Republicanism. Which is the best soap? or tooth-powder? Is + Morris's printing really good? Is the race progressing? Is our navy + fit? Should dynamite be used in war? or in peace? What persons should + be buried in Westminster Abbey? Origin of every fairy-tale. Who made + our proverbs and ballads? Cold baths _v._ hot or Turkish. Home Rule. + Should the Royal Academy be abolished? and who should be the next + R.A.? Should there be an Academy of Literature? or a Channel Tunnel? + Was De Lesseps to blame? Should we not patronise English + watering-places? Should there be pianos in board schools? or + theology? Authors and publishers; artists and authors. Is literature + a trade? Should pauper aliens be admitted? or pauper couples + separated? Bank Holiday. Irving _v._ Tree. The world's politics, + present, future, and even past--retrospective questions being + constantly re-agitated: as, Should the American slaves have been + emancipated? or Was the French Revolution a Folly? _Apropos_, which + is the best history of it? Who is the rightful Queen of England? Is + cycling injurious to the cyclist? or the public? Who was the Man in + the Iron Mask? Is the Stock Exchange immoral? What is influenza? + Ought we to give cabmen more than their fare? Tips generally. Should + dogs be muzzled? Have we a right to extend our empire? or to keep it? + Should we federate it? Are there ghosts? Is spiritualism a fraud? Is + theosophy? Was Madame Blavatsky? Was Jezebel a wretch, or a + Hellenist? The abuse of the quarantine. Should ladies ride astride? + Amateurs _v_. professionals in sports. Is prize-fighting beneficial? + Is trial by jury played out? The cost of law: Chancery. Abuses of the + Universities. The Cambridge Spinning House. Compulsory Greek. The + endowment of research. A teaching university in London. Is there a + sea-serpent? Servants _v._ mistresses. Shall the Jews have Palestine? + Classical _v._ modern side in schools. Should we abolish the + censorship of plays? or fees? or found a dramatic academy? or a State + theatre? Should gambling be legal? Should potatoes be boiled in their + skins? should dynamiters? Should newspapers publish racing tips? or + divorce cases? or comment? The New Journalism. What is the best ninth + move in the Evans gambit? Would Morphy have been a first-class + chess-player to-day? Is the Steinitz gambit sound? Do plants dream? + Ought we to fill up income-tax papers accurately? Shelley and Harriet + and Mary. Swift and Vanessa and Stella. Lord and Lady Byron. Did Mrs. + Carlyle deserve it? The limits of biography; of photography in + painting; of the spot-stroke in billiards. Did Shakespeare hold + horses? Should girls be brought up like boys, or boys like girls, or + both like one another? Are animals automata? Have they reason? or do + they live without reason? Will Brighton A's fall? or Peruvians rise? + Is it cruel to cage birds and animals? What is the best breed of + horses? Did Wellington say "Up, Guards, and at 'em"? Cremation _v._ + Burial. Should immoral men be allowed to retain office? Is suicide + immoral? Opinion of the character of Elizabeth, Parnell, Catherine, + Cleopatra, Rousseau, Jack the Ripper, Semiramis, Lucrezia Borgia, + etc., etc. The present state of the Libel Law; and of the Game Laws. + Is vegetarianism higher? or healthier? Do actors feel their parts? + Should German type be abolished? or book-edges cut? or editions + artificially limited? or organ-grinders? How about + church-and-muffin-bells? Peasant proprietorship. Deer or Highlanders? + Were our ancestors taller than we? Is fruit or market-gardening or + cattle-farming more profitable? Dutch _v._ Italian gardening. What is + an etching? Do dreams come true? Is freemasonry a fraud? or + champagne? are Havanas? Best brand of whiskey? Ought Building and + Friendly Societies to be supervised? Smoking in theatres. Should + gentlemen pay ladies' cab-fares? Genius and insanity. Are cigarettes + poisonous? Is luxury a boon? Thirteen at table, and all other + superstitions--are they foolish? Why young men don't marry. Shall we + ever reach the Pole? How soon will England and the States be at war? + The real sites and people in Thackeray's novels. A universal penny + post? Cheap telegrams and telephones? Is the Bank of England safe? + Are the planets inhabited? Should girls have more liberty? Should + they propose? or wear crinolines? Why not have an unlimited paper + currency? or a decimal system and coinage? or a one-pound note? + Should we abolish the Lords? or preserve the Commons? Why not + euthanasia? Should dramatic critics write plays? Who built the + Pyramids? Are the English the Lost Ten Tribes? Should we send + missions to the heathen? How long will our coal hold out? Who + executed Charles I.? Are the tablets of Tel-el-Amarna trustworthy? + are hieroglyphic readers? Will war ever die? or people live to a + hundred? The best moustache-forcer, bicycle, typewriter, and system + of shorthand or of teaching the blind? Was Sam Weller possible? Who + was the original of Becky Sharp? Of Dodo? Does tea hurt? Do + gutta-percha shoes? or cork soles? Shall we disestablish the church? + or tolerate a reredos in St. Paul's? Is Euclid played out? Is there a + fourth dimension of space? Which is the real old Curiosity Shop? Is + the Continental man better educated than the Briton? Why can't we + square the circle? or solve equations to the _n_th degree? or + colour-print in England? What is the use of South Kensington? Is + paraffin good for baldness? or eucalyptus for influenza? How many + elements are there? Should cousins marry? or the House be adjourned + on Derby Day? Do water-colours fade? Will the ether theory live? or + Stanley's reputation? Is Free Trade fair? Is a Free Press? Is + fox-hunting cruel? or pigeon-shooting? How about the Queen's + staghounds? Should not each railway station bear its name in big + letters? and have better refreshments? Should we permit sky-signs? + Limits of advertisement. Preservation of historic buildings and + beautiful views _v_. utilitarianism. Is the coinage ugly? Should we + not get letters on Sunday? Who really wrote the "Marseillaise"? Are + examinations any real test? Promotion in the Army or the Civil + Service. Is logic or mathematics the primal science? and what is the + best system of symbolic logic? Should curates be paid more and + archbishops less? Should postmen knock? or combine? Are they under + military régime? or underpaid? Should Board School children be taught + religion? The future of China and Japan. Is Anglo-Indian society + immoral? Style or matter? Have we one personality or many?--with a + hundred other questions of psychology and ethics. A graduated income + tax--with a hundred other questions of political economy. Asphalt for + horses. Will the French republic endure? Will America have an + aristocracy? Shall Welsh perish? Is Platonic love possible? Did + Shakespeare write "Coriolanus"? Is there a skull in Holbein's + "Ambassadors"? What is the meaning of Dryden's line, "He was and is + the Captain of the Test"? or of the horny projection under the left + wing of the sub-parasite of the third leg of a black-beetle? Was Orme + poisoned? Are there fresh-water jelly-fishes? Is physiognomy true? or + phrenology? or graphology? or cheiromancy? If so, what are their + laws? Opinions on Guelphs and Ghibellines, fasting displays, + infanticide, the genealogy of the peerage, the origin of public-house + signs, Siberia, the author of Junius, of the Sibylline Books, + werewolves, dyeing one's hair, coffin-ships, standing armies, the + mediaeval monasteries, Church Brotherhoods, state insurance of the + poor, promiscuous almsgiving, the rights of animals, the C. D. Acts, + the Kernoozer Club, emigration, book-plates, the Psychical Society, + Kindergarten, Henry George, Positivism, Chevalier's Coster, + colour-blindness, Total Abstinence, Arbitration, the best hundred + books, Local Option, Women's Rights, the Wandering Jew, the Flying + Dutchman, the Neanderthal skull, the Early Closing movement, the + Prince of Wales, and the Tonic Sol-fa notation. Is there an English + hexameter? Is a perfect translation impossible? Will the coloured + races conquer? Is consumption curable? Is celibacy possible? Can + novels be really dramatised? Is the French school of acting superior + to ours? Should literary men be offered peerages? or refuse them? + Should quack-doctors be prosecuted? Should critics practise without a + license? Are the poor happier or unhappier than the rich? or is Paley + right? Did Paley steal his celebrated watch? Did Milton steal from + Vondel? Is the Salon dead in England? Should duelling be revived? + What is the right thing in dados, hall-lamps, dressing-gowns, etc.? + Should ladies smoke? Is there a Ghetto in England? Anti-Semitism. Why + should London wait? or German waiters? Mr. Stead's revival of + pilgrimages. Is Grimm's Law universal? The abuses of the Civil + Service; of the Pension List. Dr. Barnardo. Grievances of + match-girls; of elementary teachers. Are our police reliable? Is + Stevenson's Scotch accurate? Is our lifeboat service efficient? The + Eastern Question. What is an English fairy-tale? What are the spots + on the sun? Have they anything to do with commercial crises? Should + we spoil the Court if we spared the Black Rod? or the City if we + spared the Lord Mayor? Is chloroforming dangerous? Should armorial + bearings be taxed? or a tradesman's holiday use of his cart? Should + classical texts be Bowdlerised for school-boys? Is the confessional + of value? Is red the best colour for a soldier's uniform or for a + target? Will it rain to-morrow? Ought any one to carry firearms? Do + we permit the cancan on the English stage? or aërial flights without + nets? Where are the lost Tales of Miletus? Should lawyers wear their + own hair? Was the Silent System so bad? Should a novel have a + purpose? Was the _Victoria_ Fund rightly distributed? What is the + origin of Egyptian civilisation? Is it allowable to say, "It's me"? + Every other doubtful point of grammar and--worse still--of + pronunciation; also of etymology. May we say "Give an ovation"? Is + the German Emperor a genius, or a fool? Should bachelors be taxed? + Will the family be abolished? Ensilage. Why was Ovid banished from + Rome? Is the soul immortal? Is our art-pottery bad? Is the Revised + Version of the Bible superior to the Old? Who stole Gainsborough's + picture? Which are the rarest coins and stamps? Is there any sugar in + the blood? Blondes or brunettes? Do monkeys talk? What should you + lead at whist? Should directors of insolvent companies be prosecuted? + Or classics be annotated? Was Boswell a fool? Do I exist? Does + anybody else exist? Is England declining? Shall the costers stand in + Farringdon Street? Do green wall-papers contain arsenic? Shall we + adopt phonetic spelling? Is life worth living? + + +The last question at least I thought I could answer, as I bore to bed +with me that headache which you have doubtless acquired if you have been +foolish enough to read the list. If only one were a journalist, one would +have definite opinions on all these points. + +And to these questions every day brings a fresh quota. You are expected +to have read the latest paragraph in the latest paper, and the newest +novel, and not to have missed such and such an article in such and such a +quarterly. And all the while you are fulfilling the duties of, and +solving the problems of, son, brother, cousin, husband, father, friend, +parishioner, citizen, patriot, all complicated by specific religious and +social relations, and earning your living by some business that has its +own hosts of special problems, and you are answering letters from +everybody about everything, and deciding as to the genuineness of begging +appeals, and wrestling with some form or forms of disease, pain, and +sorrow. + +"Truly, we are imperfect instruments for determining truth," I said to +the Poet. "The sane person acts from impulse, and only pretends to give a +reason. Reason is only called in to justify the verdict of prejudice. +Sometimes the impulse is sentiment--which is prejudice touched with +emotion. We cannot judge anything on pure, abstract grounds, because the +balance is biassed. A human being is born a bundle of prejudices, a group +of instincts and intuitions and emotions that precede judgment. +Patriotism is prejudice touched with pride, and politics is prejudice +touched with spite. Philosophy is prejudice put into propositions, and +art is prejudice put into paint or sound, and religion is a pious +opinion. Every man is born a Platonist or an Aristotelian, a Romanticist, +or a Realist, or an Impressionist, and usually erects his own limitations +into a creed. Every country, town, district, family, individual, has a +special set of prejudices along the lines of which it moves, and which it +mistakes for exclusive truths or reasoned conclusions. Touch human +society anywhere, it is rotten, it crumbles into a myriad notes of +interrogation; the acid of analysis dissolves every ideal. Humanity only +keeps alive and sound by going on in faith and hope,--_solvitur +ambulando_,--if it sat down to ask questions, it would freeze like the +traveller in the Polar regions. The world is saved by bad logic." + +"And by good feeling," added my friend the Poet. + +"And in the face of all these questions," I cried, surveying the list +ruefully again, "we go on accumulating researches and multiplying books +without end, vituperating the benefactors who destroyed the library of +Alexandria, and exhuming the civilisations that the earthquakes of Time +have swallowed under. The Hamlet of centuries, 'sicklied o'er with the +pale cast of thought,' the nineteenth of that ilk mouches along, +soliloquising about more things in heaven and earth than were dreamt of +in any of its predecessors' philosophies. Ah me! Analysis is paralysis +and introspection is vivisection and culture drives one mad. What will be +the end of it all?" + +"The end will be," answered the Poet, "that the overstrung nerves of the +century will give way, and that we shall fall into the simple old faith +of Omar Khayyám: + + "A Book of Verses underneath the Bough, + A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread, and Thou + Beside me singing in the Wilderness-- + O Wilderness were Paradise enow." + +"Yes," said I, "the only wisdom is to live. Action is substance and +thought shadow." And so--paradoxically enough--I began to think out + + A WORKING PHILOSOPHY + + The solar system turns without thine aid. + Live, die! The universe is not afraid. + What is is right! If aught seems wrong below, + Then wrong it is--of thee to leave it so. + Then wrong it first becomes for human thought, + Which else would die of dieting on naught. + Tied down by race and sex and creed and station, + Go, learn to find thy strength in limitation, + To do the little good that comes to hand, + Content to love and not to understand; + Faithful to friends and country, work and dreams, + Knowing the Real is the thing that seems. + While reverencing every nobleness, + In whatsoever tongue or shape or dress, + Speak out the word that to _thy_ soul seems right, + Strike out thy path by individual light: + 'Tis contradictory rays that give the White. + +"The ideas are good. But what a pity you are not a poet!" said my friend +the Poet. + +But, though I recognise that prejudice in the deepest sense supplies the +matter of judgment, while logic is only regulative of the form, yet in +the more work-a-day sense of the word in which prejudice is taken to mean +an opinion formed without reasoning and maintained in despite of it, I +claim to write absolutely without prejudice. The syllogism is my lord and +king. A kind-hearted lady said I had a cruel face. It is true. I am +absolutely remorseless in tracking down a _non sequitur_, pitiless in +forcing data to yield up their implicit conclusions. "Logic! Logic!" +snorted my friend the Poet. "Life is not logical. We cannot be logical." +"Of course not," said I; "I should not dream of asking men to live +logically: all I ask is that they should argue logically." + +But to be unprejudiced does not mean to have no convictions. The +superficial confuse definiteness with prejudice, forgetting that definite +opinions may be the result of careful judgment. Post-judiced I trust I +am. But prejudiced? Heaven forfend! Why, 'tis because I do not wish to +bind myself to anything that I may say in them that I mark these personal +communications "Without Prejudice"! For I do not at all mind +contradicting myself. If it were some one of reverend years or superior +talents I might hesitate, but between equals----! Contradiction is the +privilege of _camaraderie_ and the essence of _causerie_. We agree to +differ--I and myself. I am none of your dogmatic fellows with +pigeon-holes for minds, and whatever I say I do not stick to. And I will +tell you why. There is hardly a pretty woman of my acquaintance who has +not asked for my hand. Owing to this passion for palmistry in polite +circles, I have discovered that I possess as many characters as there are +palmists. Do you wonder, therefore, if, with such a posse of +personalities to pick from, I am never alike two days running? With so +varied a psychological wardrobe at command, it would be mere self-denial +to be faithful to one's self. I leave that to the one-I'd who can see +only one side of a question. Said Tennyson to a friend (who printed it): +"'In Memoriam' is more optimistic than I am"; and there is more of the +real man in that little remark than in all the biographies. The published +prophet has to live up to his public halo. So have I seen an actress on +tour slip from a third-class railway carriage into a brougham. Tennyson +was not mealy-mouthed, but then he did not bargain for an audience of +phonographs. Nowadays it is difficult to distinguish your friends from +your biographers. The worst of it is that the land is thick with fools +who think nothing of a great man the moment they discover he was a man. +Tennyson was all the greater for his honest doubt. The cocksure centuries +are passed for ever. In these hard times we have to work for our +opinions; we cannot rely on inheriting them from our fathers. + +I write with a capital I at the risk of being accused of egotism. +Apparently it is more modest to be conceited in the third person, like +the child who says "Tommy is a good boy," or in the first person plural, +like the leader-writer of "The Times," who bids the Continent tremble at +his frown. By a singular fallacy, which ought scarcely to deceive +children, it is forgotten that everything that has ever been written +since the world began has been written by some one person, by an "I," +though that "I" might have been omitted from the composition or replaced +by the journalistic "we." To some extent the journalist does sink his +personality in that imaginary personality of his paper, a personality +built up, like the human personality, by its past; and the result is a +pompous, colourless, lifeless simulacrum. But in every other department +of letters the trail of the "I" is over every page and every sentence. +The most impersonal essays and poems are all in a sense egoistic. +Everything should really be between inverted commas with an introductory +_Thus say I_. But as these are omitted, as being understood, they come at +last to be _mis_understood. + +In the days ere writing was invented, this elementary error was not +possible. The words were heard issuing from the lips of a single man; +every opinion, every law of conduct, must have been at first formulated +through the lips of some one man. And to this day, in spite of the +wilderness of tradition and authority by which we are overgrown, the +voice of the one man is still our only living source of inspiration and +help. Every new thought must pass through the brain, every moral ideal +through the conscience, of an individual. Voices, voices, we want--not +echoes. Better the mistaken voice of honest individuality than the +soulless bleat of the flock. There are too many of Kipling's Tomlinsons +in the world, whose consciences are wholly compact of _on dits_, on whom +the devil himself, sinned they never so sadly, would refuse to waste his +good pit-coal. "Bad taste"--that opprobrious phrase which, worse than the +accusation of a crime, cannot be refuted, for it is the king of the +question-beggars,--"bad taste" is responsible for half the reticence that +marks current writing, for the failure to prick the bladders of every +species that bloat themselves all around us. "Good taste" is the +staunchest ally of hypocrisy, and corruption is the obverse side of +civilisation. I do not believe in these general truths that rule the +market. What is "true for all" is false for each. It is the business of +every man to speak out, to be himself, to contribute his own thought to +the world's thinking--to be egoistic. To be egoistic is not to be +egotistic. Egoism should be distinguished from egotism. The egoist thinks +for himself, the egotist about himself. Mr. Meredith's Sir Willoughby +should not have been styled the _Egoist_. The egoist offers his thought +to his fellow-men, the egotist thinks it is the only thought worth their +acceptance. These papers of mine joyously plead guilty to egoism, but not +to egotism. If they, for instance, pretend to appraise the powers of my +contemporaries, they do not pretend to be more than an individual +appraisal. Whoever wants another opinion can go somewhere else. There is +no lack of practitioners in criticism, more or less skilful. There must +be a struggle for existence among opinions, as among all other things, +and the egoist is content to send the children of his thought into the +thick of the fray, confident that the fittest will survive. Only he is +not so childish as to make-believe that an impersonal dignified +something-not-himself that makes for the ink-pot is speaking--and not he +himself, he "with his little I." The affectation of modesty is perhaps +the most ludicrous of all human shams. I am reminded of the two Jews who +quarrelled in synagogue, during the procession of palm-branches, because +each wanted to be last, as befitted the humblest man in Israel, which +each claimed to be. This is indeed "the pride that apes humility." There +is a good deal of this sort of pride in the careful and conscientious +suppression of the egoistic in books and speeches. I have nothing of this +modesty to be proud of. I know that I am cleverer than the man in the +street, though I take no credit to myself for it, as it is a mere +accident of birth, and on the whole a regrettable one. It was this +absence of modesty from my composition that recently enabled me to +propose the toast of literature coupled with the name of Mr. Zangwill. I +said that I could wish that some one more competent and distinguished +than myself had been chosen to do justice to such a toast and to such a +distinguished man of letters, but I did my best to pay him the tribute he +deserved ere I sat down amid universal applause. When I rose amid renewed +cheers to reply, I began by saying that I could wish that some one more +competent and distinguished than myself had been chosen to respond to so +important a toast--the last speaker had considerably overrated my humble +achievements in the fields of literature. So that you see I could easily +master the modest manner, if I took any pains or set any store by it. But +in my articles of faith the "I" is just what I would accentuate most, the +"I" through which for each of us the universe flows, by which any truth +must be perceived in order to be true, and which is not to be replaced by +that false abstraction, the communal mind. Here are a laughing +philosopher's definitions of some cardinal things: + + Philosophy--All my I. + Art--All my Eye. + Religion--All my Ay. + +Also at the outset let it be distinctly understood that I write without +any prejudice in favour of grammar. The fear of the critics is the +beginning of pedantry. I detest your scholiast whose footnotes would take +Thackeray to task for his "and whiches," and your professor who disdains +the voice of the people, which is the voice of the god of grammar. I know +all the scholiast has to say (surely he is the silly [Greek: +scholastikos] of Greek anecdote), and indeed I owe all my own notions of +diction to a work on "Style" written by him. It was from the style of +this work that I learnt what to avoid. The book reminded me of my old +schoolmaster, who grew very angry with me for using the word "ain't," and +vociferated "Ain't! How often am I to tell you ain't ain't a word?" I +suppose one may take it for granted that the greater the writer the worse +the grammar. "Fools follow rules. Wise men precede them." (Query: this +being a quotation from myself, was I bound to put the inverted commas?) +Shakespeare has violated every rule of the schoolroom, and the more +self-conscious stylist of our own day--Stevenson--would be caned for +composition. I find him writing "They are not us," which is almost as +blasphemous as "It's me." His reputation has closed the critics' eyes to +such sentences as these in his essay on "Some Portraits by Raeburn": +"Each of his portraits are not only a piece of history ..."; "Neither of +the portraits of Sir Walter Scott were very agreeable to look upon." +Stevenson is a master, but not a schoolmaster, of English. Of course bad +grammar does not make a genius, any more than bad morals. (Note how much +this sentence would lose in crispness if I made it grammatical by tacking +on "do.") My friend the musician complained to me that when he studied +harmony and form he was told he must not do this, that and the other; +whereas, when he came to look into the works of the great composers he +found they made a practice of all the three. "Am I a genius?" he queried +pathetically. "If so, I could do as I please. I wish I knew." Every +author who can read and write is in the same predicament: on the one hand +his own instinct for a phrase or a sentence, on the other the contempt of +every honest critic. The guardians of the laws of English have a stock of +taboos; but unlike the guardians of the laws of England they credit every +disregard of them to ignorance. They cannot conceive of malice +aforethought. We are forbidden, for example, to use the word "phenomenal" +in the sense of "extraordinary." But, with Mr. Crummles's Infant +Phenomenon in everybody's mind, can we expect the adjective to shake off +the old associations of its parent noun? + +Last year I culled an amusing sentence from a "Standard" criticism of a +tale of adventure: "The story is a well-told, and in spite of the word +'unreliable,' a well-written one." Now just as many foolish persons +object to "a ... one" as to "unreliable." As for the first phrase, I am +sure so great a writer as Tom Hood would have pronounced it A1, while +"unreliable" is defended with unusual warmth by Webster's Dictionary. The +contention that "reliable" should be "reli-on-able," is ridiculous, and +Webster's argument is "laughable," which should obviously be +"laugh-at-able." These remarks are made quite without prejudice, for +personally I have little to complain of. (By the way, this sentence is as +open to blame as that of the professor who told his pupils "You must not +use a preposition to end a sentence with.") Though I have sat under an +army of critics, I have but once been accused of inelegant English, and +then it was only by a lady who wrote that my slipshod style "aggravated" +her. + +Finally it will be remarked that by dispensing with illustrations I +preserve intact my egoism and the dignity of a rival art. Nothing can be +more absurd than the conventional illustration which merely attempts to +picture over again what the writer has already pictured in words. Not +only is the effort superfluous, a waste of force, but the artist's +picture is too often in flat contradiction of the text. Whom are you to +believe, the author or the artist? the man who tells you that the heroine +is ethereal, or the man who plainly demonstrates that she is podgy? How +often, too, do the people dress differently in the words and in the +picture, not to speak of the shifting backgrounds! Dickens had so much +difficulty with his illustrations because he saw his characters so much +more clearly than any other novelist; the sight of his inner eye was so +good. And one can understand, too, how Cruikshank came to fancy he had +created Oliver Twist, much as an actor imagines he "creates" a character. +The true collaboration between author and artist requires that the work +should be divided between them, not reduplicated. Those parts of the +story which need the intervention of words should be allotted to the +writer, while to the artist should be entrusted the parts better told by +pencil. Neither need trench on the other's province. Description--which +so many readers skip already--would be abolished. Even incidents--such as +murder--could be caught by the artist in the act. And after the artist +had killed a character, the author could preach over his corpse. Thus +there would be an agreeable reversion to picture-language, the earliest +way of writing, and the latest. The ends of the ages would meet in a +romance written on these lines:-- + +"Sick at heart we watched till the grey dawn stole in through the +diamond-paned casements of the Grange, and then, at last, when we had +given up all hope, we saw coming up the gravel pathway----" + +[_Illustration._[*]] + +After which the author proceeds: "Fascinated by the blood that dripped +from the edges of the eight umbrellas, we stood silent; then, throwing +off our coats, we---- + +[_Illustration._[*]] + +"So that was how I won the sweetest little bride I ever wedded. But if I +live to wed a hundred, I shall never forget that terrible night in +Grewsome Grange. + +"THE END." + +[* Transcriber's note: So in original. These are _not_ placeholders for +actual illustrations in the book.] + +My friend the artist once collaborated with me in an experiment of this +sort, but we did not pursue it, discovering how feeble an advance ours +would be after all; for there were points at which both of us felt we +ought to give way to the tone-poet. When the emotions became too +intangible for intellectual expression I asked my friend the musician to +insert paragraphs in a minor key. The love-scenes I was particularly +anxious to have written in musical phrases. But he shrank from so +unconventional a form, not being sure he was a genius. I was also +disheartened by the disappointing behaviour of the diverse scents with +which I had expressed myself on certain blank pages. They would not +remain in their places. + + + + +II + +TUNING UP + +They were "tuning up" in a wooden hall, stupidly built on the pier to +shut off the sea and the night (a penny to pay for the privation), and in +that strange cacophony of desolate violin strings, tuneless trombones, +and doleful double basses, in that homeless wail of forlorn brass and +lost catgut, I found a music sweeter than a Beethoven symphony; for +memory's tricksy finger touched of a sudden the source of tears, and +flashed before the inner eye a rainbow-lit panorama of the early joys of +the theatre--the joys that are no more. Was it even at a theatre--was it +even more than an interlude in a diorama?--that divine singing of "The +Last Rose of Summer" by a lady in evening dress, whose bust is, perhaps +for me alone in all the world, still youthful? Was it from this hall of +the siren, or was it from some later enchantment, that I, an infant +Ulysses, struggled home by night along a sea road, athwart a gale that +well-nigh blew me out to sea? How fierce that salt wind blew, a-yearn to +drive me to the shore's edge and whirl me over! How fresh and tameless it +beats against me yet, blowing the cobwebs from my brain as that real +breeze outside the pier could never do! When my monitory friends gabble +of change of air I inhale that wind and am strong. For the child is of +the elements, elemental, and the man of the complexities, complex. And so +that good salt wind blows across my childhood still, though it cannot +sweep away the mist that hovers thereover. + +For who shall say whether 't was I or my sister who was borne shrieking +with fear from the theatre when the black man, "Othello," appeared on the +boards! The first clear memory of things dramatic is of an amateur +performance--alas! I have seen few others. 'T was a farce--when was an +amateur performance other? There was much play of snuff-boxes passed +punctiliously 'twixt irascible old gentlemen with coloured handkerchiefs. +Also there was dinner beforehand--my first experience of chicken and +champagne. And then there is a great break till the real theatre rises +stately and splendid, like Britannia ruling the waves--nay, Britannia +herself, or, as they call it lovingly down Shoreditch way, "the Brit." + +When to my fashionable friends I have held forth on the glories and the +humours of "the Brit.," they have taken it for granted, and I have lacked +the courage or the energy to undeceive them, that my visits to this +temple of the people were expeditions of Haroun Al Raschid in the back +streets of Bagdad or adventures of Prince Florizel in Rupert Street; but +of a truth I have climbed the gallery stairs in sober boyish earnestness, +elbowed of the gods, and elbowing, and if I did not yield to the +seductions of "ginger-beer and Banbury" that filled up clamantly the +entr'actes, 't was that I had not the coppers. "Guy Fawkes" was my first +piece, in the days when the drama's "fireworks" were not epigrams, and so +the smell of the sulphur still purifies the air. All the long series of +"London successes," with their array of genius and furniture, have faded +like insubstantial pageants, but the rude vault piled with flour-barrels +for the desperado's torch is fixed as by chemic process. Consider the +preparation of the brain for that memory. What! I should actually go to a +play--that far-off wonder! "The Miller and his Men" cut in cardboard +should no longer stave off my longing for the living passion of the +theatre. 'T was a very elongated young man who took me, a young +cigar-maker fond of reciting, spouting Shakespeare from a sixpenny +edition, playing Hamlet mentally as he rolled the tobacco-leaf. There was +a halo about his head, for he was on speaking terms with the low comedian +of the "Brit.," and, I understood, was permitted upon occasion to pay for +a pint of half-and-half. Alas! all this did not avail to save him from an +early tomb. Poor worshipper of the green room, perchance thy ghost still +walks there. Or is there room in some other world for thy baffled +aspirations? + +In such clouds of glory did the drama first come to me, sulphurously +splendid. In the "Brit." I made my first acquaintance with the limelit +humanity that, magnificent in its crimes and in its virtues, sins or +suffers in false eyebrows or white muslin to the sound of soft music. +Here I met that strange creation, the villain--a being as mythic, +meseems, as the centaur, and, like it, more beast than man. The "Brit." +was a hot place for villains, the gallery accepting none but the highest +principles of speech and conduct, and ginger-beer were not too weighty a +form of expressing detestation of the more comprehensive breaches of the +decalogue. Hisses the villain never escaped, and I was puzzled to know +how the poor actor could discriminate betwixt the hiss ethical and the +hiss aesthetic. But perhaps no player ever received the latter; the house +was very loyal to its favourites, all of whom had their well-defined +rôles in every play, which spared the playwrights the task of indicating +character. Before the heroine had come on we knew that she was young and +virtuous--had she not been so for the last five and twenty years?--the +comic man had not to open his mouth for us to begin to laugh; a latent +sibilance foreran the villain. Least mutable of all, the hero swaggered +on, virtuous without mawkishness, pugnacious without brutality. How +sublime a destiny, to stand for morals and muscle to the generations of +Hoxton, to incarnate the copy-book crossed with the "Sporting Times!" +Were they bearable in private life, these monsters of virtue? + +J. B. Howe was long this paragon of men--affectionately curtailed to +Jabey. Once, when the villain was about to club him, "Look out, Jabey!" +cried an agonised female voice. It followed from the happy understanding +on both sides of the curtain that--give ear, O envious lessees!--no play +ever failed. How could it? It was always the same play. + +Of like kidney was the Grecian Theatre, where one went out between the +acts to dance, or to see the dancing, upon a great illuminated platform. +'T was the drama brought back to its primitive origins in the Bacchic +dances--the Grecian Theatre, in good sooth! How they footed it under the +stars, those regiments of romping couples, giggling, flirting, munching! +Alas! _Fuit Troja!_ The Grecian is "saved." Its dancing days are over, it +is become the Headquarters of Salvation. But it is still gay with music, +virtue triumphs on, and vice grovels at the penitent form. In such quaint +wise hath the "Eagle" renewed its youth, for the Grecian began life as +the Eagle, and was Satan's deadliest lure to the 'prentices of +Clerkenwell and their lasses: + + Up and down the City Road, + In and out the Eagle; + That's the way the money goes! + Pop goes the weasel. + +Concerning which immortal lines one of your grammatical pedants has +observed, "There ain't no rhyme to City Road, there ain't no rhyme to +Eagle." Great pantomimes have I seen at the Grecian--a happy gallery boy +at three pence--pantomimes compact of fun and fantasy, far surpassing, +even to the man's eye, the gilded dullnesses of Drury Lane. The +pantomimes of the Pavilion, too, were frolicsome and wondrous, marred +only by the fact that I knew one of the fairies in real life, a +good-natured girl who sewed carpet-slippers for a living. The Pavilion, +by the way, is in the Whitechapel Road, not a mile from the People's +Palace, in the region where, according to the late Mr. Walter Besant, +nobody ever laughs. The Pavilion, like the "Brit.," had its stock +company, and when the leading lady appeared for her Benefit as "Portia," +she was not the less applauded for being drunk. The quality of mercy is +_not_ strained. And what more natural than that one should celebrate +one's benefit by getting drunk? Sufficient that "Shylock" was sober! + +In Music-Halls, the East-End was as rich as the West,--was it not the +same talent that appeared at both, like Sir Boyle Roche's bird, winging +its way from one to t' other in cabs? Those were the days of the great +Macdermott, who gave Jingoism to English history, of the great Vance, of +the lion comiques, in impeccable shirt-fronts and crush hats. There was +still a chairman with a hammer, who accepted champagne from favoured +mortals, stout gentlemen with gold chains, who might even aspire to +conversation with the comiques themselves. _Sic itur ad astra_. Now there +is only a chairman of directors who may, perhaps, scorn to be seen in a +music-hall: a grave and potent seignior whose relations with the +footlights may be purely financial. There were still improvisatori who +would turn you topical verses on any subject, and who, on the very +evening of Derby-day, could rhyme the winner when unexpectedly asked by +the audience to do so. A verse of Fred Coyne's--let me recall the name +from the early oblivion which gathers over the graves of those who live +amid the shouts of worshippers--still lingers in my memory, bearing in +itself its own chronology: + + And though we could wish, some beneficent fairy + Had preserved the life of the Prince so dear, + Yet we WON'T lay the blame on Lieutenant Carey; + And these are the latest events of the year. + +With what an answering pandemonium we refused to hold the lieutenant +accountable for the death of the victim of the African assegais! And the +ladies! How ravishingly they flashed upon the boards, in frocks that, +like Charles Lamb at the India Office, made up for beginning late by +finishing early! How I used to agree with the bewitching creature who +sang that lovely lyric strangely omitted from the Anthologies: + + What a nice place to be in! + What a nice place, I 'm sure! + Such a very jolly place, + I've never seen before. + It gives me, oh! such pleasure, + And it fills my heart with bliss, + I could stay here for ever: + What a nice place is this! + +Such eyes she made at me--at whom else?--aloft in the balcony; and oh, +what arch smiles, what a play of white teeth! If we could only have met! +Yester-year at a provincial town some one offered to introduce her to me. +She was still playing principal boy in the pantomime--a gay, gallant +Prince, in plumed cap and tights. But I declined. Another of the great +comic singers of my childhood--a man--I met on a Margate steamboat. He +told me of the lost glories of the ancient days _quorum pars magna fuit_, +and of the after-histories of his great rivals. One, I recollect, had +retired with a fortune, opened a magnificent Temperance Hotel at the +seaside, and then broken his neck by falling down his own splendid +staircase, drunk. "Ah," said the veteran, sighing at an overcrowded +profession, "there were only two or three comic singers in those days." +"There are only two or three now," quoth I. And the old man beamed. +Another ancient hero of the halls, long since translated to the theatres, +whom I first saw at a music-hall in St. Giles', buttonholed me the other +night in St. James', in the halls of a Duchess: a curious meeting. That I +should have ever reverenced him seemed as strange as that there should be +still people to reverence the coronet of the Duchess. Yes, it is very far +off, that magic time when the world was full of splendid things and +splendid men and women, a great Fair, and I, like the child in Henley's +poem, wandered about, enjoying, desiring, possessing. Now I know there is +nothing worth wanting, and nothing but poor flesh and blood, despite all +the costumes and accessories. For there is no sense in which I have not +been "behind the scenes." And as for the literal theatric sense, I have +flirted with the goddesses at the wings till they have missed their cues, +I have supped at the Garrick Club of a Saturday night, when all the stars +come out, I have toured with a travelling company, I have had words of my +own spoken by dainty lips,--nay, I have even played myself, _en amateur_, +the irascible old gentleman with the snuff-box and the coloured +handkerchief. And what is there to say of the human spectacle, but that +perhaps the pains and the crimes are necessary to the show, and that +without a blood-and-thunder plot human life would not run, drying up of +its own dullness? "All the world's a stage," and we are all cast for +stock rôles. Some of us have the luck to be heroes, the complacent centre +of eternal plaudits, some are born for villainy and the brickbat. And +while others have had to play goodness knows what--mediaeval Italian +princesses, Cockney cabmen, old Greek hetairae, German cuirassiers, +American presidents, burglars, South Sea Islanders--I find myself--for +the first time on any stage--in the applauded rôle of man of letters, if +with little option of throwing up the part. They have an optimistic +phrase, those happy-go-lucky creatures of the footlights, when, on the +very day of production, nobody knows his words or his business, the scene +will not shape itself, and chaos is lord. "It will be all right at +night," they say. And we, who play our parts gropingly on this confused +and noisy scene, wondering what is the plot, and where is the manager, +and straining our ears for the prompter's whisper, can but echo with +another significance their cheery hope: "It will be all right at night." +Perhaps, when the long day's work has drawn to its end, and the curtain, +has fallen upon the plaudits and the hisses, we shall all sit down to +supper after the play, complimented by the Author, smiling at the +seriousness with which we took our rôles of hero or villain, and glad to +be done with, the make-up and the paint. And in the music that shall +hover about our table, we may perhaps find a celestial restfulness, +compared to which the most exquisite orchestras of this earth shall sound +but as "tuning up." + + + + +III + +ART IN ENGLAND + +My friend the Apostle was in hot haste, and would not stay to be +contradicted. "Not going to-night!" he cried, in horror-struck accents. +"Why, to-night is the turning-point in the history of the British drama! +To-night is the test-battle of the old and the new; it is the shock of +schools, the clash of nature against convention. This play will decide +the fate of our drama for the rest of the century. Here you have a play +by a leader of the old school produced at a leading theatre. If it +succeeds, the old drama may linger on for a year or two more; but if it +fails, it will be the death-blow of the old gang. They may pack up!" The +Apostle was at the other end of the street ere I had taken in the full +import of these brave words. What! there was a crisis in the drama, and +I, living in the heart of art, had heard nothing about it! Fortunately it +was not too late. I could still make amends for my ignorance. It was +still open to me to assist at this historic contest, for the arena was to +be the Haymarket, where I am a _persona gratis_. Visions of the great +first night of "Hernani" thronged tumultuously before me; my blood pulsed +with something of its ancient youthful ardour as I girded my loins with +black trousers for the fray, and adjusted my white tie with faltering +fingers. I had half a mind to don a _gilet rouge_, but the reflection +that my wardrobe did not boast of coloured waistcoats gave the victory to +the other half. I dashed up to the theatre. All was placid. The stalls +were packed with a brilliant audience in correct and unemotional costume. +There were classic faces, and romantic faces, and faces that were +realistic, but each and all blank of the consciousness of a crisis. The +talk was of everything save art and literature. The critics did not even +sharpen their pencils. They looked bored to a man. In vain my eye roved +the arm-chairs in search of a fighting figure. I could not even see the +musical iconoclast who had carried his pepper-and-salt suit into the holy +of holies of the Italian opera. My heart sank within me. When the +orchestra ceased I gave one last despairing glance all round the theatre +in search of my friend the Apostle. _He was not there!_ + +The play was "The Charlatan,"--the work of that other apostle, whose +outspoken Epistles to the English chronically relieve the dull decorum of +London journalism; the man of whom Tennyson came near writing-- + + Buchanan to right of him, + Buchanan to left of him, + Buchanan in front of him, + Volleyed and thundered. + +But that night it was the audience that volleyed and thundered, in +unanimous applause. Hisses or party-cries were not. During the intense +episodes, when the house was wrapt in silence, and you could have heard a +programme drop, no opposition partisan as much as laughed. The author was +called at curtain-fall, and retired uninjured. Next morning the critics +were scrupulously suave, with no sign of the battle they had been +through. Most wonderful to relate, Mr. William Archer, the risen hope of +the stern and unbending Radicals, launched into unwonted praise, and gave +an airing to some of the eulogistic adjectives that had been mouldering +in his dictionary; nor did he even appear to be aware that he had gone +over to the enemy! + +For one thing, Bard Buchanan had given us neither old school nor new, but +a blend of both--nay, a blend of all forms of both--a structure at once +modern and mediaeval, with a Norwegian wing. It combined the common-sense +of England with the glamour of the East, the physiology of the hypnotist +with the psychology of Ibsen. More! It was an epitome of all the +Haymarket plays, a _résumé_ of all Mr. Tree's successes. The heroine was +a mixture of Ophelia and hysteria, the hero was a combination of Captain +Swift, Hamlet, and the Tempter; the paradoxical pessimist was a reminder +of Mr. Wilde's comedies, the bishop and scientist were in the manner of +Mr. Jones. How clever! Social satire _à la Savoy_, séance _à la salle +Egyptienne_, sleep-walking _à la Bellini_, moonlight poetry _à la +Christabel_, a touch of spice _à la Française_, and copious confession _à +la Norvégienne_, all baked into one pie. How characteristic! And +characteristic, mark you, not only of Mr. Buchanan's chaotic cleverness, +but of Mr. Tree's experimental eclecticism. Did I say an epitome of the +Haymarket plays? This is but another way of saying an abstract and brief +chronicle of the time, to whose age and body Mr. Tree so shrewdly holds +up the mirror. For this dying century of ours is all things to all men. +We are living in the most picturesque confusion of the old and new known +to history--in a cross-road of chronology where all the ages meet. 'T is +a confusion of tongues outbabbling Babel, a simultaneous chattering of +the centuries. And, more troubled than the Tower-builders, we understand, +one another better than we understand ourselves; again, like "The +Charlatan," half odic force, half fraud, who is never so honest as when +he confesses himself charlatan. + +But this is not what I set out to say. There was a moral to the tale of +my friend the absentee Apostle who was so cocksure about the crisis. This +moral is that he has Continental blood in his veins. To these foreign +corpuscles he owes the floridness of his outlook, his conception of the +excited Englishman. The Englishman takes his authors placidly; he is +never in a ferment or a frenzy about anything save politics, religion, or +sport: these are the poles and the axis of his life's pivot; he is not an +artistic person. Art has never yet taken the centre of the stage in his +consciousness; it has never even been accepted as a serious factor of +life. All the pother about plays, poems and pictures is made by small +circles. Our art has never been national art: I cannot imagine our making +the fuss about a great writer that is made about a second-rate journalist +in Paris. It is Grace the cricketer for whom the hundred thousand +subscribe their shilling: fancy a writer thus rewarded, even after +scoring his century of popular novels. The winning of the Derby gives a +new fillip to the monarchy itself. A Victor Hugo in London is a thought +_à faire rire_. A Goethe at the court of Victoria, or directing Drury +Lane Theatre, is of a comic-opera incongruity. Our neighbours across the +border have a national celebration of Burns' birthday--they think as much +of him as of the Battle of Bannockburn. We English, who have produced the +man whom the whole world acknowledges its greatest poet, have not even a +Shakespeare Day. Surely Shakespeare Sunday would do as much good to the +nation as Hospital Saturday or Shrove Tuesday! Charles Lamb wanted to say +grace before reading Shakespeare, but the Puritans who make England so +great and so dull are only thankful for stomachic mercies. + +I cannot easily conceive our working ourselves up to such enthusiasm as +the Hungarians lately displayed over the jubilee of Jokaï, an enthusiasm +that resounded even unto this country, and shook the _lacunar aureum_ of +the Holborn Restaurant with shouts of "Eljen." + +The peculiarity of the Hungarian temperament does not, however, entirely +explain their joy in Jokaï. He is so much more than a mere novelist, poet +and dramatist, with three or four hundred volumes (one need not be +particular to a hundred with this modern Lope de Vega) to his credit. He +is also a soldier and a politician, skilful with the sword as well as the +pen, and with the tongue as well as the sword. He has drawn blood with +each and all of these weapons, and though nowadays he often votes in the +House without inquiring what he is voting for till he has recorded his +vote, this does not diminish his claims to practical wisdom. He married +the leading actress of Hungary, who, without waiting for an introduction, +rushed forward from the audience to present him with a bunch of flowers +when a play of his made a hit. Fancy Ellen Terry rushing forward to +present Pinero with a bunch of flowers at the conclusion of "The Second +Mrs. Tanqueray"! No, the thing is as impossible in England as the +combination of rôles in Jokaï himself. The idea of letting a man be at +once man of letters and man of action! Why, we scarcely allow that a man +of letters may occupy more than one pigeonhole! If he is a poet, we will +not admit he can write prose--forgetting that is just what most poets do. +If he is a novelist, he cannot write plays,--the truth being, of course, +that it is the playwrights who cannot write plays. If he is a humourist +he can never be taken seriously, and if he is accepted seriously he must +be careful to conceal his sense of the humour of the position. Not only +so, but we insist on the sub-sub-specialisation which Adam Smith showed +to be so profitable in the making of pins, and which, passing from the +factory to the laboratory, now threatens to pass from science into +literature. Having analysed away the infinitely great, we are now +devoting ourselves to the apotheosis of the infinitely little. + +_A priori_, one would think action the salvation of the literary man, the +corrective of "the fallacies of the den," the provider of that experience +which is the raw material of literature, and prevents it from being spun +out of the emptiness of one's own entrails. But the practical Briton +knows better. He has never forgiven John Morley for going into politics +(though I doubt not "honest John" would now find much to revise in his +essay on "Compromise"); and he finds Socialism ever so much more Utopian +since William Morris went into it. Can you imagine a true-born Briton +following the flag of Swinburne, or throwing up a barricade with George +Meredith? To the last Beaconsfield was suspected of persiflage because he +wrote novels and was witty. America makes her authors ministers and +envoys, but England insists that brains are a disqualification for +practical life. "Authors are so unpractical: we don't want them to +act--we only want them to teach us how to act." A chemist or an +astronomer must needs isolate himself from the world to supply the pure +theory on which the practical arts are founded, and so the _littérateur_, +too, is expected to live out of the world in order to teach it how to +live. But the analogy is false. + +You can work out your mathematical calculations by the week, and hand +over the results to the navigator. But the navigation of the stream of +time is another matter. There is no abstract theory of life that can be +studied without living oneself. Life is always concrete; it is built up +of emotions, and you cannot have the emotions brought into your study, as +you can order in your hydrochloric acid or your frog's leg. As well +expect anchorites to set the tune for men in the thick of the fight! They +will chant Masses when they should be shouting Marseillaises. In despair +our men of letters leave the country, and become politicians in little +savage islands; or they leave the town and become invisible behind their +haloes; or they take to golf in small Scotch cities, and pretend that +this satisfies their thirst for activity. Sometimes they turn +market-gardeners and fob off the interviewer with remarks about +caterpillars. Browning was reduced to dining out. It may be contended +that the writer must sequester himself to cultivate the Beautiful. But +the Beautiful that has not its roots in the True is not the Good. Or it +maybe urged that active life would limit the writer's output. Exactly: +that is one of the reasons that make active life so advisable. Every +writer would write less and feel more. The crop of literature should only +be grown in alternate years. As it is, a writer is a barrel-organ who +comes to the end of his tunes, clicks, and starts afresh, just as a +scholar is a revolving bookcase. Consider, too, how a holiday of action +would disenthral the writer from the pettiness of cliques and coteries, +with their pedantic atmosphere and false perspectives. I would have every +University don work in the docks six months a year (six months' idleness +is surely quite enough for any man); every platonic essayist should +attend a course of music-halls; and if I could afford it I would set up +all the superfine critics in nice little grocers' shops, with the cosiest +of back parlours. Why, bless my soul! it is your man of culture, your +author, your leader of thought, who is parochial, suburban, _borné_, and +the rest of it! It is a commonplace that the Londoner is the most +provincial of all Englishmen, living in sublime ignorance of what is +thought and done in the rest of the kingdom; and in similar wise, when a +man sneers at the _bourgeoisie_, I never think of looking up his pedigree +in Debrett. It is, no doubt, extremely exasperating that the world was +not created for the convenience and to the taste of artistic persons, but +unfortunately the thing had to be turned out before their advice could be +obtained. + +That young England--bless its stupid healthy soul--is more interested in +life and football than in literature and art, was amply proved by the +lethargy about the Laureateship. On the Continent the claims of the +rivals would have set the students brawling and the journalists duelling; +here it barely caused a ripple in the five o'clock teacup. My friend the +Apostle was not wholly wrong; there is a development of native drama +ahead of us; only it will come about peaceably,--we shall not hear the +noise of the captains and the shouting. And the old conventions have a +long run yet before them. They cling even to the skirts of "The Second +Mrs. Tanqueray." Indeed, the new school can scarcely be said to have +appeared. The literary quality of our plays has improved, thanks to Jones +and Pinero, and not forgetting Grundy. And that is all. The old school is +as vigorous as ever. In the person of "Charley's Aunt" it is alive and +kicking up its petticoats, and the audience rolls in helpless laughter at +Mr. Penley's slightest movement. Talk of literature, indeed! Why, the +fortunate comedian assured me that if he chose he could spin out +"Charley's Aunt" from a two-hours' play to a four-hours' play, merely by +eking out his own "business." Think of this, aspiring Sheridans, ye who +polish the dialogue with midnight oil; realise the true inwardness of the +drama, and go burn me your epigrams! + +In literature, where the clash of new and old is more audible, it is +still the same story. On the conservative side, the real fighting is done +by Messrs. Smith, who refuse to sell the too daring publication. The +radicals are crippled by the timidity of editors, and cajoled by the +fatness of their purses. A gifted young story-teller has been lecturing +on the Revolt of the Authors. But it seems to me our literature has +already as wide a charter as is desirable. The two bulwarks of the +British library are Shakespeare and the Bible, and both treat human life +comprehensively, not with the onesidedness of self-styled Realism. I +would advise my young literary friends to emblazon on their banner +"Shakespeare and the Bible." Real Realism is what English literature +needs. The one undoubted development in recent English literature is the +short story. But this is less due to any advance in artistic aspiration +than to the fact that there is a good serial market for short stories, +and the turnover is quicker for the trader than if he turned out long +novels. Small stories, quick returns! In verity, this much-vaunted +efflorescence of the _conte_ is due to the _compte_. It is quite +characteristic of our nation to arrive at a new art-form through this +practical channel. But if you want a proof of the half-heartedness of our +literary battles, turn to the "Fogey's" article on "The Young Men" in a +recent _Contemporary Review_. What a chance for a much-needed onslaught +on our minor prophets! It might have been "English bards and Scotch +reviewers" over again. But no! the Scotch reviewer's weapon is merely a +rose-water squirt. The only thing that perturbates him (as Mr. Francis +Thompson would say) is my assertion that a ray of hopefulness is stealing +again into English poetry. Since the days of Jeffrey we have only had one +really "first-class fighting man" (Henley); but even with him there is no +real party fighting, for he is catholic in his antipathies, and those +whom he chastises love him, and swear that his is the least jaded Pegasus +of the day. You see, therefore, how well-balanced we are in this "happy +isle, set in a silver sea." The Fogeys are respectful to the young men, +and the young men actually admire the Fogeys. That the young men admire +one another goes without saying. Here surely is "the atmosphere of +praise" of Mr. Pinero's hortation. + +And while I do not believe that art is best nourished in this "atmosphere +of praise," preferring to read instead "an atmosphere of appraisal," I +believe that of this appraisal the more important element is "praise." +Criticism with the praise left out savours of the counsel for the +prosecution rather than of the judge,--and indeed some critics assume +that every author is guilty till he is proved good: if he is popular the +presumption of his guilt is almost irresistible. A Henley young man once +explained to me that the function of the critic was to guard the gates of +literature, keeping at bay the bulk of print, for it would surely not be +literature. This last is true enough; yet the watch-dog attitude +generates a delight to bark and bite, and turns critic literally into +cynic. Should not the true critic be an interpreter? For bad work let him +award the damnation of silence. "It is better to fight for the good than +to rail at the ill." + +It is a great privilege to praise. It is a great joy to give an artist +the joy of being understood. Not every artist arrives at the divine +standpoint: "And God saw all that He made, and behold it was very good." +The human creator is not always content with the rapture of creation. He +sits lonely amid his worlds. Neglect may be the nurse of strength, but as +often it is the handmaid of idleness. The artist without an audience will +smoke the enchanted cigarettes of Balzac. The rough labour of execution +is largely the labour of conveying to others what the artist already +feels and sees. Why should he toil thanklessly? It is sweeter to dream. +Even the money that art produces may be a valuable incentive. Not, of +course, if the artist aims at the money; but art wrought for love may +bring in money, like a woman married for love. In so far as the lover has +his eye on the dowry, in so far his love is vitiated; and in so far as +the artist has his eye on the profits, in so far is he untrue to a +mistress who demands undivided allegiance. Natheless, the _auri sacra +fames_ may be his salvation. What subtle sympathy connects _fama_ with +_fames_? The butcher's bill may drive him from the dreamland of luxurious +meditation to the practical embodiment of his dreams. Only, while he is +at work, the laws of art alone must be his masters; he must not alter or +abate a jot by way of concession to the great cash question. When he has +completed his work, then indeed he may sell it in the best market. But +the least preliminary paltering with the spirit of commerce is a +degradation. Does this seem an ideal demand? Let us remember, then, +ideals are goads and goals, counsels of perfection. No one expects people +to come quite up to them, but it is better for human nature that they +should be there. For there is something in hero-worship, despite +Carlyle's grandiosities, provided you choose your hero wisely. We do, in +this valley of doubt and confusion, touched with false sparkles, follow +men who speak from their souls sincerely, who work from their hearts. +Instinctively we feel it degrading and disillusionising that inspiration +shall be paid in hard cash, and genius entered on the credit side of a +ledger. Does a man plead that he has to support his wife and children? +Well, in the first place, he need not have got them. In the second, one +may be admirable as a man, but as an artist abominable. Still it is +better that a man should write Adelphi dramas than that his starving +family should qualify for scenes in them. All honour to the artist who +lives on bread and water in a garret rather than prostitute his art! but +less honour to the man who lives on _my_ bread, and adds somebody else's +whisky to his water, rather than earn an honest living by dishonest books +and plays. This was the question that split up the Bohemians of Murger. +While the majority did odd jobs for the Philistines, to have the time for +real art, the very poet consenting to write Alexandrines for a dentist at +fifteen sous a dozen--vastly cheaper than oysters--there was an inner +band of the faithful who preferred starvation to the desecration of their +genius for the unsaleable. Even so among the vegetarians there is a +holier circle that eats only nuts and fruits. The sensible artist will +compromise. There is in political economy a region called "the margin of +subsistence." It is a sort of purgatory. Above it, we enter the heaven of +superfluities; below it, lies the dread Hades of hunger. It is here that +the impecunious artist--with a family (and, alas! the artist is nearly +always impecunious--with a family) should pitch his tent. He may be +allowed to prostitute himself, if need be, sufficiently to pay the +ground-rent. He must not be driven lower down by his devotion to the +Muses: an artist who dies of starvation is simply a dead donkey. Rather +than play a false note, he stops his music for ever. It is sublime--but +silly. He had better black boots. There is no reason on earth why a +shoeblack should not read Schiller, or moralise as he does in Bret +Harte's parody of Bulwer Lytton. A bachelor artist might do worse than +get locked up for some simple offence, and thus throw himself upon the +nation. Remember what Sir Walter Raleigh did in prison. The poet can rise +superior to the sordidness of skilly. Only he must be careful to preserve +his seclusion. Leigh Hunt made his cell the artistic centre of London, +but I doubt if he got through much work; and more recently, when Jokaï +was in gaol, he was compelled to insist on two hours' privacy and +confinement per day. To be a "first-class misdemeanant" seems to me the +height of happiness for a literary man. + +Unfortunately there are few honest opportunities for going to gaol. The +most honest way of all would be to write the truth about men and things; +but this editors will not print. So one has to live at one's own expense. +Nevertheless, the Hotel of the Black Maria remains an ideal. + + + + +IV + +BOHEMIA AND VERLAINE + +It is one of the pleasures of my life that I never saw Tennyson. Hence I +am still able to think of him as a poet, for even his photograph is not +disillusionising, and he dressed for the part almost as well as Beerbohm +Tree would have done. Why one's idea of a poet is a fine frenzied being, +I do not quite know. One seems to pick it up in the very nursery, and +even the London _gamin_ knows a poet when he doesn't see one. Probably it +rests upon the ancient tradition of oracles and sibyls, foaming at the +mouth like champagne bottles. Inspiration meant originally demoniac +possession, and to "modern thought" prophecy and poetry are both +epileptic. "Genius is a degenerative psychosis of the epileptoid order." +A large experience of poets has convinced me as little of this as of the +old view summed up in _genus irritabile vatum_. Poets seem to me the +homeliest and most hardworking of mankind--'t is a man in possession, not +a _daimon_ nor a disease. Of course they have their mad moods, but they +don't write in them. Writing demands serenity, steadiness, patience; and +of all kinds of writing, poetry demands the steadiest pen. Complex metres +and curious rhyme-schemes are not to be achieved without pain and +patience. Prose is a path, but poetry is a tight-rope, and to walk on it +demands the nicest dexterity. You may scribble off prose in the fieriest +frenzy--who so fiery and frenzied as your journalist with the printer's +devil at his elbow?--but if you would aspire to Parnassus, you must go +slow and steady. Fancy inditing a sonnet with the compositors waiting for +"copy"! Pegasus were more truly figured as a drayhorse than a steed with +wings; he jogs along trot-trot, and occasionally he stands at an +obstinate pause. The splendid and passionate lyrics of Swinburne, with +their structural involutions and complicacies, must have been "a dem'd +grind." The English language does not easily lend itself to so much +"linked sweetness long drawn out." Even the manuscript of Pope's easy +meandering verse is disfigured by ceaseless corrections. As he himself +says: + + True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, + As those move easiest who have learn'd to dance. + +Probably these very lines run in the original manuscript somewhat as +follows: + +[Illustration: Handwriting sample] + +Shelley is the ideal of a poet, a soul of white fire, fed by bread and +raisins; yet Shelley's last manuscripts are full of lacunae and erasures, +some of which have had to be reproduced perforce in the printed editions. + + Clothed with the ... as with light, + And the shadows of the night, + Like ... next, Hypocrisy, + On a crocodile rode by. + +It reads like a puzzle set by a Competition Editor. Here is another one, +which begins as beautifully as Hedda Gabler could desire, and ends in +blankness. + + Within the surface of the fleeting river + The wrinkled image of the city lay, + Immovably unquiet, and for ever + It trembles, but it never fades away; + Go to the [ ] + You, being changed, will find it then as now. + +The fact is, of course, that inspiration is no guarantee of perfection. +The limitations of inspiration vary with the limitations of the writer--a +proposition that may be commended to the theologians. Genius can no more +safeguard a man against his own ignorance than it can find a rhyme to +"silver." Inspiration could not save Keats from his Cockney rhymes nor +Mrs. Browning from her rhymeless rhymes. I met a poet in a London +suburb--it seemed odd to see one out of Fleet Street--but after a few +bewildered instants I recognised him. There was on his brow the burden of +a brooding sorrow. I sought delicately to probe the cause of his grief, +and he confessed at last that in a much-praised poem just published he +had made a monosyllable dissyllabic. He had never got over a youthful +mispronunciation, and in an unguarded moment of inspiration it had +slipped in. + +This prosaic view of poetry is distasteful to many, who like to think +that "Paradise Lost" came out in a jet. But all these grandiose +conceptions belong to the obscurantist view of human life, which is +popular with all who hate, in Matthew Arnold's phrase, "to think clear +and see straight." People fancy that the dignity of human life demands +that artists at least should be Ouidaesque, but the true dignity of the +artist is to be sublimely simple rather than simply sublime. The finest +art--be it literature, music, or painting--is, after all that inspiration +can do has been done, a matter of painful pegging away; and the finest +artists will be found quietly occupying themselves with their art without +pose or fuss. That side of the business is largely monopolised by the +little men. But even the big men sometimes fall victims to the popular +conception, as when a Byron stagily takes the centre of the universe, and +looms lurid like the spirit of the Brocken. We do not need biographical +scandal-mongers to tell us what "the real Lord Byron" was like. He was +like "Don Juan," his own poem; shrewd, cynical, worldly, with flashes of +exquisite feeling. The poem which is cut out of young ladies' editions of +Byron is the one that represents him most truly in his blend of +sensualism and idealism, whereas the Brocken figure is but Byron as he +appeared to himself in his stormiest and gloomiest moments, and even that +phantasm artistically draped and limelit by a poet's imagination. If +people realised how much Byron wrote in his pitiable span of thirty-six +years, how much hard labour went to make those cleverly-rhymed stanzas of +"Childe Harold" or "Don Juan," despite Swinburne's accusation of +botchery, they would see that he really had very little time to be +wicked. They would understand that art--even the most decadent--is based +on strenuous labour. + + Young, gay, + Radiant, adorned outside; a hidden ground + Of thought and of austerity within. + +Even in poetically declaring himself a decadent, the artist must take as +many pains as fall to the prosiest bourgeois. This is the paradox of the +position. Just as the pyrrhonist in maintaining that there is no truth +asserts one, so the literary pessimist partly contradicts his contention +of the futility of existence by his anxiety to express himself elegantly. +Leopardi's Italian and Schopenhauer's German are far superior to those of +the optimistic philosophers; and one of the most polished poems of our +day is poor Thomson's "City of Dreadful Night." So, too, the poet who +declares himself an idler and a vagabond gives the lie to his pretensions +by the labour he takes to clothe them in unimpeachable verse. The other +morning I looked out of my study window after breakfast and discovered +that the weather was heavenly. I had lingered over the meal, reading the +beautiful political speeches, from which I gathered there was a Crisis at +hand. I knew that Crisis. I had heard about it ever since I learnt to +hear. Nevertheless, the newspapers were still devoting as much space to +it as if it were brand-new, and beguiling me to take interest in it. I +felt quite annoyed when I looked at the blue sky after breakfast and took +deep breaths of ambrosial air, and thought how I had wasted my time. +Thrilled by the sunshine, a cosmic rapture seized me, and I wondered that +men should fritter away their time in politics and other serious +occupations. The inspiration grew and grew, and I felt that my lips had +been touched by the sacred fire, and that I had been called to preach a +great moral lesson to mankind. So I took up my pen and wrote: + + Bright the sun this lovely May-day; + Youth and love should have their heyday; + Every day should be a play-day. + + Yet mankind will work and worry, + Over trifles fuss and flurry, + Getting hot as Indian curry. + + Orators, in such a season, + How unreasonable is reason! + 'Gainst the sunshine't is a treason. + + What care I for Gladstone's glories? + Hang the Radicals and Tories! + Give me hammocks, pipes and stories! + + What's the use of all this wrangling, + Grammar and emotions mangling? + Up the river let's go angling. + + Sweet are walks and swimming nice is, + Bring me lemon-squash and ices, + Bother that eternal Crisis! + +I was called away to lunch in the middle of the attack of inspiration. +Inspiration is of course very useful, but it has a way of suggesting +words that won't rhyme, and luring you off into all sorts of false +tracks. Moreover, it affords no help whatever in polishing. After lunch I +set to work with renewed zeal, licking the lines into their present +perfection. At last they were finished, and as I lit the gas to enable me +to see to make a fair copy, I realised that the beautiful blue day was +gone. + +Yes, the busy bee is a fraud by the side of the irresponsible artistic +butterfly. + +Sims Reeves tells an amusing anecdote of Mario the singer. Being brought +one Thursday night by an eminent composer to sing at a big fashionable +party, he found so great a line of carriages in front of his own that it +was past midnight ere he arrived at the door. The thought that it was +already Friday, and that he was about to sing in a new house, whose +hostess he did not even know, had already dismayed the superstitious +singer. But when he saw the number on the door was 13, no power on earth +and no amount of argument could induce him to enter. "Ah, yes," said the +hostess, smiling pleasantly, when the composer explained, "a very +ingenious excuse, for which Mario ought to be grateful to you. Of course +he was intoxicated, and after a long argumentation you at last persuaded +him to go home." + +Poe was doubtless occasionally drunk; but think of the years of sober +labour, of stooping over desks, that must have gone to make those +wonderful tales! Which is the true Poe, the hard drinker or the hard +worker? That the artist must get drunk is, indeed, the belief of certain +schools of young men even to-day; but is it not based on the old eternal +false-logic, that because some artists have got drunk, therefore to get +drunk is to be artistic? It was Murger who invented the Bohemian artist, +poor and gay and of an easy morality. "Musette and Mimi!" says Sarcey. +"The image of those ideal beings shone on every man who was twenty-one +about 1848. 'La Vie de Bohème' was youth's breviary--fifty years ago." +The great dramatic critic goes on to complain of the onslaught made upon +him because he wrote against this "idleness of disposition, this +heedlessness for the morrow, this inclination to look for the day's +tobacco and the quarter's rent from loans and debts rather than from +honest work, this witty contempt for current morality." But this is +scarcely the teaching of the ever delightful book, which catches the +spirit of youth and gaiety and irresponsibility wedded to artistic ardour +as no other book has done before or since, and for which one might put in +the plea that Charles Lamb made for the dramatists of the Restoration. +Its world is only a pleasing fiction, and the ordinary rules of morality +do not carry over into it. It is the East of Suez of literature, "where +there ain't no Ten Commandments, and a man may raise a thirst." The real +Bohemia, as Jules Valdes showed in "Réfractaires," is a world of misery +and discontent. Still more sordid is the English Bohemia expounded by Mr. +Gissing in "New Grub Street." Mr. Robert Buchanan indeed writes as if +there had been a Murgerian Bohemia in England in his young days. "_Et ego +fui in Bohemiâ_. There were inky fellows and bouncing girls, _then_; +_now_ there are only fine ladies, and respectable God-fearing men of +letters." Really! Surely there are plenty of bouncing girls and inky +fellows still, just as there were respectable God-fearing men of letters +and fine ladies even in the roaring forties. I doubt if Bohemia was ever +so amusing as Mr. Buchanan imagines now, and I suspect the bouncing girls +were "gey ill to live with." What is true in the immortal Bohemian myth, +what appeals to the universal human instinct, is the eternal contrast +between the dreams and aspirations of youth and the sobrieties of success +and middle age. As Jeffery Prowse sang: + + I dwelt in a city enchanted, + And lonely, indeed, was my lot; + Two guineas a week, all I wanted, + Was certainly all that I got. + Well, somehow I found it was plenty, + Perhaps you may find it the same, + If--_if_ you are just five-and-twenty, + With industry, hope, and an aim; + Though the latitude's rather uncertain, + And the longitude also is vague, + The persons I pity who know not the City, + The beautiful City of Prague! + +This Bohemia will never disappear, because every generation of youth +reconstructs it afresh, to migrate from it into the world of +respectability above or the world of shame below. "Qu'on est bien à vingt +ans!" will always be a cry to fill the breast of portly respectability +with tender regret. As Thackeray put it in that delightful poem, which is +almost an improvement on Béranger: + + With pensive eyes the little room I view, + Where, in my youth, I weathered it so long; + With a wild mistress, a staunch friend or two, + And a light heart still breaking into song; + Making a mock of life and all its cares, + Rich in the glory of my rising sun, + Lightly I vaulted up four pair of stairs + In the brave days when I was twenty-one. + +What a pity that life is so stern and severe, that for the light morality +of Bohemia somebody must pay, some life be wrecked! Nature fills us with +youth and romance, but for her own purposes only. She is the great +matrimonial agent, and heavy is the penalty she exacts from those who +would escape her books, and extract from life more poetry than it holds. +And so the beautiful roselight of Bohemia veils many a tragedy, many a +treachery. Yet will the _grisette_ be ever a gracious memory, and +literature will always embalm the "Mimi Pinson" of De Musset. + +She is dead now, _la grisette_, even in Paris, and "hic jacet" may be +written over the bonnet she threw _pardessus les moulins_. + + Ah, Clemence! When I saw thee last + Trip down the rue de Seine, + And turning, when thy form had pass'd, + I said, "We meet again," + I dreamed not in that idle glance + Thy latest image came, + And only left to Memory's trance + A shadow and a name. + +That is how she affected even the Puritan Oliver Wendell Holmes. Yes, +there is something in the Bohemian tradition that touches the sternest of +us--not the roystering, dissolute, dishonourable, shady Bohemia that is +always with us, bounded by the greenroom, the racecourse, the gambling +club, and the Bankruptcy Court, but the Bohemia that is as unreal as +Shakespeare's "desert country near the sea," the land of light purses and +light loves, set against the spiritual blight that sometimes follows on +pecuniary and connubial blessedness. For, after all, morality is larger +than a single virtue, and Charles Surface is always more agreeable than +Joseph or Tom Jones than Blifil, even when Joseph or Blifil is as proper +as he pretends. And if Tom or Charles is a poet to boot, what can we not +forgive him? The poet must have his experiences--be sure that nine tenths +of them are purely of the imagination. For the other tenth--well, if +Burns had been strictly temperate, "the world had wanted many an idle +song," and we should not have celebrated his centenary so +enthusiastically. The poet expresses the joy and sorrow of the race whose +silent emotions become vocal in him, and it is necessary that he should +have a full and varied life, from which "nihil humanum" is alien. Mr. +Barry Pain once wrote a subtle story, which only three persons +understood, to show that a great poet might be an elegant egotist, of +unruffled life and linen. If so, I should say that such a poet's genius +would largely consist of hereditary experience; he would, in language +that is not so unscientific as it sounds, be a reincarnation of a soul +that had "sinned and suffered." But as a rule the poet does his own +sinning and suffering, and catches for himself that haunting sense of the +glory and futility of life which is the undertone of the modern poet's +song, and which finds such magical expression in Heine's verses: + + I have loved, oh, many a maiden kind, + And many a right good fellow,-- + Where are they all? So pipes the wind, + So foams and wanders the billow. + +But the poet's morals are maligned. The fierce light which beats upon the +throne of song reveals the nooks and crannies of the singers' lives, +which for the rest they themselves expose rather than conceal. I should +say that the average morality of the poet is much superior to the average +morality of the man of the world who sins in well-bred silence. The poet +gloats over his sins--is musically remorseful or swingingly defiant; he +hints or exaggerates or invents. That is where the poet's imagination +comes in--to give to airy nothings a local habitation and a name. The +poet's imagination is often far more licentious than his life; the +"poet's licence" is rightly understood to be limited to his language. To +have written erotic verses is almost a certificate of respectability: the +energy that might have been expended in action has run to rhyme. _Qui +ose tout dire arrive à tout faire_, say the French. Arrives _at_, +perhaps, though even this is doubtful, but certainly does not start from +that platform. Much less questionable were it to say: _Qui ose tout faire +arrive à ne rien dire._ + +The late M. Verlaine will be cited as a substantiation of the popular +idea of the vagabond poet. The Verlaine legend has now been consecrated +by his death; and for all time, I suppose, Verlaine will rank with Villon +as an impossible person. He may have been all that is said, all that is +hinted, even in Mr. George Moore's famous description of him. "I once saw +Verlaine. I shall not forget the bald prominent forehead (_une tête +glabre_), the cavernous eyes, the macabre expression of burnt-out lust +smouldering upon his face." + +But there is another side to him, and it is perhaps because I do not go +about the world with Mr. Moore's "macabresque" eye, which to-day happily +sees things in a soberer colouring, that I saw this other side of +Verlaine when, like Mr. George Moore, I hunted him up on his native +heath. For one thing, I was not prepared to see anything very lurid and +_diabolique_: life is really not so picturesque as all that. I knew +besides that he had been a schoolmaster in England; and can you imagine +anything more tedious and toilsome than to be the "French master," the +poor, despised, "frog-eating Mounseer Jacques" of boys' stories, the butt +of all their facetious brutality? If ever anything was calculated to make +a man _diabolique_! I trust biographers will not forget to place all this +depressing drudgery to our "vagabond's" credit. Think of it! The first +poet of France correcting French exercises! The poet of the passions +conjugating the verb _aimer_ in its hideous grammatical reality! + + Fumons philosophiquement, + Promenons-nous + Paisiblement: + Rien faire est doux. + +So might Verlaine write, though contradicting himself by doing something +in so doing; but in the absurd actual he had to earn his bread and +butter, and man cannot live by poetry alone, unless one sings the joys +and sorrows of the middle classes. It was rather late at night before, +having vainly hunted for him in his favourite restaurants, I found the +narrow, poverty-stricken _rue_ in which Verlaine was living a year or so +ago. Passing through a dark courtyard, I had to mount interminable stone +stairs, lighting foul French matches as I went, to relieve the blackness. +At last I arrived outside his door, very near the sky. I knocked. A voice +called out, "I've gone to bed." I explained my lateness and said I would +call to-morrow. + +"No, no! _Attendez!_" I heard him jump out of bed, stumble and grope +about, and then strike a match; and in another instant the door opened, +and in the interstice appeared a homely nightcapped _bourgeois_ pulling +on his trousers. There flashed on me incongruously the thought of our +English laureate's stately home by the sea, in which, jealously guarded +by hedges and flunkeys, the poet chiselled his calm stanzas; and all the +vagabond in me leapt out to meet the unpretentious child of Paris. He +greeted me with simple cordiality; and, ugly and coarse though his face +was, it was lit up throughout by a pleasant smile. His notorious leg was +bandaged, but not repulsively. No, "homely" is the only impression I +shall ever have of Verlaine, the man. Even in that much maligned +"macabresque" head of his, there was more of the _bonhomme_ than of the +poet or the satyr. The little garret was his all in all; a bed took up +half the space. On the table stood the remains of supper. A few shelves +of books, a sketch or two, and a bird-cage with a canary were the only +attempts at ornament. + +Such was Verlaine at the climax of his fame, when he had won a sure +immortality; simple and childlike, and with a child's unshamed acceptance +of any money one might leave behind on the mantelpiece. He seems to have +made very little by his verses. He spoke English quite well, having +probably acquired it when teaching French; and he was perhaps more proud +of it than of his poems. Mr. Moore says he wished to translate Tennyson. +He read aloud a poem he had just written in celebration of his own +fiftieth birthday. There was an allusion to a "crystal goblet." "_Ce +verre-là!_" he interpolated, with a humorous smile, pointing to a cheap +glass with the dregs of absinthe that stood on the table. There was also +an allusion to a "blue-bird," a sort of symbol of the magic of spring, I +fancy, that flutters through many of his poems. (The "_plumage bleutê de +l'orgueil_" figures in one of his very last verses.) When he arrived at +this "blue-bird" he pointed to the cage with the same droll twinkle: +"_Cet oiseau-ci._" When I left him he stood at the head of the gloomy +stone stairs to light me down, and the image of him in his red cotton +nightcap is still vivid. And now he is only an immortal name. Ah, well! +after the English school-rooms, the French prisons, the Parisian garrets +and hospitals, the tomb is not so bad. _Rien faire est doux_. + +In giving him place with the immortals I feel no hesitation. An English +clergyman found immortality by writing one poem,--"The Burial of Sir John +Moore,"--and, however posterity may appraise Verlaine's work as a whole, +he has left three or four lyrics which can die only if the French +language dies, or if mankind in its latter end undergoes a paralysis of +the poetic sense such as Darwin suffered from in his old age. Much of his +verse--especially his later verse--is to me, at least, as obscure as +Mallarmé. But + + Il pleut dans mon coeur + Comme il pleut dans la rue + +can never be surpassed for the fidelity with which it renders the endless +drip, drip of melancholia, unless it is by that other magical lyric: + + Les sanglots longs + Des violons + De l'automne + Blessent mon coeur + D'une langueur + Monotone. + +He is the poet of rhythm, of the nuance, of personal emotion. French +poetry has always leant to the frigid, the academic, the rhetorical--in a +word, to the prosaic. The spirit of Boileau has ruled it from his cold +marble urn. It has always lacked "soul," the haunting, elusive magic of +wistful words set to the music of their own rhythm, the "finer light in +light," that are of the essence of poetry. This subtle and delicate echo +of far-off celestial music, together with some of the most spiritual +poems that Catholicism has ever inspired, have been added to French +literature by the gross-souled, gross-bodied vagrant of the prisons and +the hospitals! Which is a mystery to the Philistine. But did not our own +artistic prisoner once sing: + + Surely there was a time I might have trod + The sunlit heights, and from life's dissonance + Struck one clear chord to reach the ears of God? + +Was ever more devout Catholic than Benvenuto Cellini, who murdered his +enemies and counted his beads equal gusto? + + + + +V + +THE INDESTRUCTIBLES + +I wonder if you have ever been struck by the catholicity--not to say the +self-contradictoriness--of the constant correspondent. The creature will +enter with zest into any discussion; there is no topic too small for it, +and certainly none too great. The following letters, carefully culled +from the annual contributions of a lady whose epistolary career I have +followed with interest, will indicate the delicious inconsequence that +has made them for me such grateful reading: + +1888. + + SIR,--There is nothing in life worth purchasing by pulsations and + respirations. The world is a dank, malarious marsh, with fitful + Will-o'-the-Wisp flashes of false radiance--a vast cemetery waiting + for our corpses. There is no such thing as happiness. + + Nature, red in tooth and claw + With ravin, shrieks against + + the idea. Youth is an illusion, maturity a regret, and old age an + apprehension. Fortunately Providence has sent us a panacea--Universal + Suicide. + + I am, Sir, + Yours obediently, + AGATHA P. ROBINS. + +1889. + + SIR,--Surely "A Mad Englishman" and "Dorothy X.," who maintain so + glibly that country life is more enjoyable than town life, fail to + realise how much of our pleasure depends on human intercourse. It is + given only to poets to talk with trees. Nor can ordinary mortals find + + Sermons in stones, + Books in the running brooks. + + We need the cathedrals and the libraries that are to be found only in + the great centres of national life--yes, and also the art galleries + and the theatres. Of course, if people will martyr themselves to keep + up appearances, and want to live in a fashionable neighbourhood, they + will not find town life either cheap or pleasant. But if they are + content to live outside the aristocratic radius, they can find many a + comfortable villa, with baths (hot and cold), and back gardens which + may easily be converted into rustic retreats (I would especially + recommend rhododendrons). If you are also not above omnibuses (taking + a cab only when it rains, and selecting a driver who does not look as + if he would swear), and are satisfied to go to the pit, then I feel + sure London is not only as cheap as the obscurest village, but gives + you a far greater return for your money. Newly-married couples in + especial often make a great mistake in settling in the country for + the sake of economy. It is only in the town that they can really lead + a tranquil, happy life, enriched with all the resources of culture + and civilisation. + + I am, Sir, + Yours obediently, + AGATHA P. ROBINS. + +1890. + + SIR,--The failure of marriage is too apparent to be glossed over any + longer. "A.Y.Z." and "A Woman of No Importance" deserve the thanks of + every honest heart for their brave outspokenness. Too long has this + mediaeval monstrosity cramped our lives. The beautiful word "Home" + conceals a doll's house or whitewashes a sepulchre. Marriage is + misery in two syllables. How can people be happy chained together + like galley-slaves? It contradicts all we know of human nature. + + Love, free as air, at sight of human ties + Spreads his light wings and in a moment flies. + + Away with this effete Pharisaism! Let us realise the infinite + possibilities of happiness latent in the blessing of existence. The + world is longing for freedom to love truly, nobly, wisely, many. + + I am, Sir, + Yours obediently, + AGATHA P. ROBINS. + +1891. + + SIR,--I can testify by personal experience to the fact that the + manners of our children are deteriorating. Coming up to the + Metropolis for a day's excursion last Bank Holiday, I could not walk + anywhere without overhearing ribald remarks--and, what was worse, at + my own expense--even from respectably dressed children. Let those + look to it who + + Teach the young idea how to shoot. + + I thank Heaven my lot has always been cast in a sweet Devonshire + village, where the contagion of ill-conduct has not yet spread among + the juvenile population. + + I am, Sir, + Yours obediently, + AGATHA P. ROBINS. + +1892. + + SIR,--Have your flippant correspondents, "Polygamist" and "Illegal + Brother-in-Law," any conception of the thousands (ay, tens of + thousands) of hearts that are, languishing in misery because they + cannot marry their deceased sisters' husbands? And all because of a + text which is not to be found in the Bible! Fie upon you, ye + so-called Bishops, + + Dressed in a little brief authority. + + Abolish this unrighteous law, I say, and let floods of sunshine and + happiness into a million darkened homes. + + I am, Sir, + Yours obediently, + AGATHA P. ROBINS. + +But, after all, is it fair to juxtaposit Agatha's letters? What if one +were to collect the leaders of any newspaper on any given subject, before +or after any event? I have met Agatha P. Robins in many other places at +many other times. Sometimes she is interested in the best substitute for +shirt-buttons or for Christianity, sometimes in the problem of living on +a thousand a year, sometimes in the abolition of stag-hunting. + + SIGNS OF THE SILLY SEASON. + + A gooseberry that groweth green and great, + A serpent round the sea serenely curled, + A lonely soul that fails to find a mate, + A boy redundant in a teeming world, + + A sister yearning for dead sisters' shoes, + A life that longs for death, or after-life, + A ghost, a mistress whom her maids abuse, + An erring judge, a French or German wife, + + A child's long ear or holiday, a slum, + A man gone bald, or drunk, a coin's design-- + Should things like these across your paper come, + Conclude the Silly Season will be fine. + +It is difficult to trace exactly when "The Season" ends and "The Silly +Season" begins. It needs the finest discrimination to know when the +adjective comes in--without a worldly training, indeed, you cannot tell +the one from the other. But the past masters of the social art proclaim +that "The Season" is dead, and we bow our heads in reverence. Yes, it is +vanished, that focus of futilities, that wonderful Season, that +phantasmagoria of absurdities, of abortive ambitions, over which a +hundred humourists have made merry: it is dead, with its splendours and +jubilations and processions--dead as the ropes of roses in St. James's +street. Often have I debated the potency of satire, again and again have +I suggested to learned friends a scientific and historical investigation +of the popular belief that satire moves mountains or even molehills. But +they agree only in shrinking from the task. To take only the last +half-century: we have had one supreme satirist who harped eternally on +the failings of fashion and the vanity of things. In his novels society +saw itself reflected in all its attitudes and postures and posings. Not +one meanness or folly escaped. What Professor Huxley has done for the +crayfish, that Thackeray did for the Snob. He studied him lovingly, he +dissected him, he classified every variety of him. A thousand disciples, +less gifted but equally remorseless, followed in the Master's footsteps. +"Punch" took up the tale, and week by week repeated the joke. It was +heard in drawing-room recitations to the accompaniment of pianos; it even +went on the stage. Ladies rushed into print to expose foibles men never +guessed, and to say of the sex at large what less gifted women say only +of their personal friends. For years we have never ceased for a moment to +hear the lash of the whip, the swish of the birch, the whizz of the +arrow, the ping of the bullet, the thwack of the flail, the thud of the +hammer, the buzzing of the hornet. And what does it all amount to? How +much execution has been done? Is society purer or nobler? Have less +daughters been sold at Vanity Fair, or more invitations been sent to poor +relatives? Has Jones got better manners or champagne? Is Mrs. Ponsonby de +Tomkins more distant to duchesses? Did my Lady Clara Vere de Vere +consider whether Hood's seamstress was at work on her court gown? Is any +one wiser or kinder or honester for all the literary pother? Are the +diplomatic corps less maculate than in the days of Grenville Murray? Have +we not, on the contrary, cast on our own imperfections the complaisance +of an eye educated in the superior imperfections of our neighbours? + +Lo, here is a new satirist arisen, Sarah Jeannette Duncan, who, in "The +Simple Adventures of a Memsahib," sketches Anglo-Indian society in a +manner that would not discredit Thackeray--and with something, too, of +Thackeray's haunting sense of the pathos of the dead Past and the flying +Present. But will the memsahib of to-morrow take warning by the fate of +Helen Peachey, who went out to India in all her bridal bravery, in all +her youth and freshness? Will she escape exchanging the placidity of Fra +Angelico's piping cherubim for the petulance and ring-shadowed eyes of +the seasoned matron? Will she be on her guard against shrinking to the +prejudices and flirtations of a coterie, dying to all finer and higher +issues? Will she worship virtue more and viceroys less? Alas, I fear me +not--no more than Pagett, M. P., will leave off talking solar myths, or +foolish things cease to be done under the deodars. Will Hogarth keep +wine-bibbers from the bottle, or can you make men sober by acts of +"L'Assommoir"? Will "Madame Bovary" stay a sister's fall, or "Sapho" +repel an eligible young man? Will "The Dunciad" keep one dunce from +scribbling, or "Le Tartufe" elevate a single ecclesiastic? As well expect +"long firms" to run short, and the moths to avoid the footlights, and the +fool to cease from the land. "How gay they were, and how luxurious, and +how important in their little day! How gorgeous were the attendants of +their circumstances, on the box with a crest upon their turbans!--there +is a firm in Calcutta that supplies beautiful crests. And now, let me +think! some of them in the Circular Road Cemetery--cholera, fever, +heat-apoplexy; some of them under the Christian daisies of +England--probably abscess of the liver." Yes, madam, we know it all, we +recognize the Thackeray touch. "And soon, very soon, our brief day, too, +will have died in a red sunset behind clustering palms, and all its +little doings and graspings and pushings, all its petty scandals and +surmises and sensations, will echo further and further back into the +night." True, most true, and pity 't is 't is true. But meantime we will +go on with our little doings and graspings and pushings--yes, madam, even +you and I who have realised the vanity of all things; for the knowledge +thereof--this, too, is vanity. "And it was all a striving and a striving, +and an ending in nothing, and no one knew what they had lived and worked +for." Yea, so it is, Frau Schreiner. And still we are living on--and oh! +how hard we work (on African farms or otherwhere) to express artistically +our sense of the futility of life! + + VANITAS VANITATUM. + + A rich voluptuous languor of dim pain, + A dreamy sense of passionate regret, + Delicious tears and some sweet, sad refrain, + Some throbbing, vague, and tender canzonet, + That mourns for life so real and so vain, + Wherein we glory while our eyes are wet. + +I am afraid, if I pursue this investigation, I shall end by believing +that satire is simply an aesthetic satisfaction--the last luxury of the +sinful. Ridicule, we are always told, is a tremendous destructive--an +atmosphere in which nothing can live. But is it? Christianity, Kings, and +War are little the worse for the jets of mockery that have been playing +on them for two centuries. In Swift's day the wits at the coffee-houses +regarded religion as a farce that even the Augurs could not keep up any +longer without public winking; yet Diderot and the Encyclopaedia are +dead, and the bishops we have always with us! It was thought War could +not survive Voltaire's remark that a monarch picks up a parcel of men who +have nothing to do, dresses them in blue cloth at two shillings a yard, +and marches away with them to glory--but here is our Henley singing a +song of the sword, while all our novelists are looking to their weapons. +Despite Heine's sarcasm, the collection of English kings is as incomplete +as ever. A passing fad can, perhaps, be made to pass along a little +faster, but it only makes room for another. True, "Punch" killed the +craze for sunflowers and long necks; but then "Punch" invented it. It was +merely made to be destroyed brilliantly, like a Chinese cracker or a +Roman candle. Folly is older than "Punch's" jokes, and will survive them. +Snobbery and self-seeking, pettiness and stupidity, envy, hate, and all +uncharitableness, were no secret to the mummies in the British Museum. +"Unto the place whither the rivers go, thither they go again." Are there +not a hundred sayings in Ecclesiastes and Menander, in Horace and +Molière, as apt to-day as though fresh from the typewriter? One of the +learned friends to whom I proposed the thesis contended that Perseus and +Juvenal at least are out of date. But this was merely my learned friend's +ignorance. Is it not the truest piety to conclude that those things which +the ridicule of the ages cannot kill deserve their immortality--that +Kings, War, and Christianity play a part in the scheme of creation, and +that even snobbery and jobbery, folly and fraud, rouge and +respectability, and horse-racing, bounders and politicians, the +prize-ring and the marriage market, are all necessary to the fun of +Vanity Fair! They are thrown up by the flux of things for Honesty to set +his heel on. So houp-la! On with the dance! louder, ye fiddlers! faster, +O merry-go-round! Nay, not so glum, ye moralists and satirists, +philanthropists and preachers; link hands all--_ducdame, ducdame!_--and +thank the gods for keeping you in occupation. What should we do without +our fools? The question seems pat for a Silly Season correspondence. +Come, gather, fools all. Ye could not be better employed than in +answering it. For, mark, brother-satirists mine, you cannot kill the +Silly Season correspondence. + +And you cannot kill Ghosts. Perhaps because they do not exist. No other +dead thing is so tenacious of life as your ghost. If ridicule were really +fatal, we should have given up the ghost long since. Consider the fires +of burlesque through which he has passed unscathed. What indignity has +been spared him? Now at last he is to encounter the supreme test--he is +to be taken seriously. The Psychical Society has the matter in hand--or +should one say, the spirit? And Mr. Stead, who believes in himself in a +way that is refreshing in these atheistic times, proposes either to +rehabilitate the ghost or to lay him for ever. But this latter is beyond +the might of man or society. + +And you cannot kill Grouse. At least I can't. I sometimes suspect there +are others of the population equally incompetent, and perhaps still less +interested in battues; though the Twelfth figures in everybody's calendar +like a Church festival, and the newspapers devote leaders to it, and the +comic papers have pictures, and sometimes even jokes about it, and you +would think the whole population of these islands struck work and went +a-shooting with gillies and dogs and appropriate costume. But that is the +craftiness of the editors, from Mr. Buckle and Mr. Yates down to the +editor of the _Halfpenny Democrat_--they make the humblest of us feel we +are in the best sets, so we all come up to town for the season, and are +seen at three parties a night, and we ride in the Park, and we go to +Henley and Goodwood to a man; and we yacht at Cowes, and pot grouse in +Scotland--still with the same wonderful unanimity; and we hunt with the +hounds, and run with the salmon, and keep our Christmas in country +houses, and come up smiling for the New Year, ready to recommence the +same old Sisyphean round. I suppose the people who really do these things +could be exhibited in the National Gallery, but the space their doings +fill is incalculable. + +And you cannot kill Adelphi Melodrama. But I have a piece of advice to +offer to the Italian gentlemen who have done so much for our stage. It +is, that they run their theatre on a principal of duality befitting their +joint management. Let it be the home of Melodrama and Burlesque, the same +play serving for both _genres_. Let, say, Mr. Sims--who is so clever in +either species--write the pieces--each melodrama being its own burlesque. +An extra dash of colour here, an ambiguous line there, with a serious +meaning in the melodrama and a droll in the burlesque, will secure the +brothers two audiences, and after eight o'clock I guarantee standing room +only. The simple will come to weep and thrill, the cynics to laugh and +chuckle. And everybody will be happy. + +In sooth, is not the world divided into those who take the great cosmic +drama seriously, and those who treat it as farce? On the one hand the +workers and the fighters, on the other the journalists, politicians, and +men about town. Yet have the workers and the fighters the nobler part. A +genuine emotion, an earnest conviction, vitalises life. The day-dreams of +hungry youth are better than the dinners of prosaic maturity, and a +simple maiden in her flower is worth a hundred epigrams. I had rather be +an Adelphi god than a smoking-room satyr. + +Who shall blame the melodramatist? He writes for those to whom literature +makes no appeal. Literature is a freemasonry of the highest minds, and +that poetry is Greek to the masses I should scarcely have thought a +"Question at Issue" demanding substantiation from Mr. George Gissing. Mr. +Gosse must know that the eclipse which darkened England at the passing of +Alfred Tennyson was invented by the newspapers and the poets who outraced +one another to weep upon his tomb. Look upon Mr. Booth's map of East +London, with its coloured lines showing the swarms of human beings who +live ignobly and die obscurely, and realise for yourself of what import +the cult of beautiful form is to these human ant-heaps. Walk down the +populous Whitechapel Road of a Saturday night, or traverse the long slimy +alleys of Rotherhithe among the timber wharves, and discover how many of +your countrymen and contemporaries are living neither in your country nor +in your century. To Mr. Henry James, the dull undertone of pain and +sorrow is part of the music of London--such harmony is in aesthetic +souls. But the dull and the gross, who only suffer and endure, the muddy +vesture of decay closes them in and they cannot hear it. + +What shall literature do for these? In a great smoky Midland town, on +dreary pavements, under sloppy skies, I saw a girl who was a greater +argument for melodrama than all the cheques of all the managers. She was +going to her work in the raw dawn, her lunch in a package under her arm; +the back was bent and the face was pale and pinched, but there was a +slumbering fire of romance in the deep-fringed eyes, and suggestions of +poetry lurked in the shadows of her hair; and at once my breast was full +of stirrings to write for her--only for her--a book full of beauty and +happiness and sunshine, and, oh! such false views of life, such +inaccurate pictures of the pleasures of a society she would never know. +The hero should be handsome and brave and good, with a curling moustache; +and the heroine should be beautiful and true, with an extensive wardrobe; +and the clouds would come only to roll by, and the story should die away +in an odour of orange-blossom, and in a music of marriage-bells. And +there should be lots of money for everybody, and any amount of laughter +and gaiety, and I would give dances twice a volume, and see that all the +girls had partners, delightful waltzers with good conversation. And there +would be garden-parties (weather permitting invariably), and picnics +without green spiders, and sails without sea-sickness. And as for truth +and realism--fie on them! We can create a much nicer world than nature's. +Why be plagiarists, when we can make universes of our own? + + + + +VI + +CONCERNING GENERAL ELECTIONS + +Twice in succession has it befallen me to be privately busy in a +backwater when the main stream was spuming and ramping with the great +bore of a general election. I have been able to hear the swallows twitter +at sunrise in serene unconsciousness of the crisis, to watch the rooks +homing at twilight, as though the course of Nature were still the same, +and to see the moonlight rippling over the sombre water at midnight in +unaffected tranquillity. Myself was scarcely better informed of the tidal +flood: stray echoes of speech, odd fragments of newspaper floated down to +me, and at intervals some visitant from the greater deep held, like a +sea-shell, the rumour of its sounding waters. + +And, indeed, where shall we find a better metaphor for party-government +than this of the tide, of the ebb and flow of political +power--remorseless, inevitable, regardless of those who, tossed high on +the stream, imagine they direct it? And in this metaphor the People must +play Moon, like the clown in "A Midsummer Night's Dream." But, as Juliet +says: + + O swear not by the moon, th' inconstant moon. + +The cause of this inconstancy has not escaped even the philosophers. The +Whig and the Tory, rival lovers of Luna,--moonstruck ravers,--woo her +with honeyed words and dulcet promises, and she inclines her coquettish +ear--most of the month she is all ear--to the highest bidder. But when +she comes to her full--and is all eye--then she perceives her swain +faithless and empty-handed, and straightway she plights her troth to his +clamorous and expostulant fellow, who dangles his untried promises before +her disappointed vision. And the days pass, and she rises and sets; but +lo! the bridal gifts linger still, and the horn of plenty is an empty +trumpet, and, forgetful of her first lover's failure, she turns to him +again. And so for ever, in a fickle quest of fidelity, pathetic enough. +Perhaps she--with the two strings to her bow--shares the just fate of +coquettes, happy with neither; perhaps she were wiser to give herself to +a single lover, and be rid for ever of these hesitancies. And yet, would +she profit by the change? Endymion, the one youth whose beauty drew her +from heaven, remained perpetually asleep. Is there not some profound +significance in the ancient myth, some truth that would have pleased +Francis Bacon, Baron Verulam (as the pedants will have us call the man +who did not write Shakespeare). + +But the philosophers, who have understood the levity of mind that +underlies changes of Cabinets, have not always understood the numerical +pettiness of the voting power by which the change is effected. Just as +every philosopher is born a Platonist or an Aristotelian, so, as Mr. +Gilbert sings, is every Englishman born a little Liberal or a little +Conservative: even if his politics be not original sin, it is early +acquired. Thus, then, the nation consists of two great camps--the +Liberals and the Conservatives--which are practically fixed; standing +armies that may be relied upon. A born Liberal may wax fat and kick at +his ancient principles: a born Conservative may change his coat and turn +Whig. But these exceptions are rare. For the most part men stick to their +party and die as foolish as they were born--which is called consistency. +Convinced sometimes against their will, they are of the same opinion +still. Loyalty and obstinacy will look facts in the face and never +blench, and every one remains truer to his social circle than to his +private judgments. People's politics are their prejudices at a masked +ball, and the Conservatives will vote Conservative and the Liberals +Liberal, through a cannonade of unanswerable cartoons. Apart from these +two great standing armies, there is a shifting body of free-lances, +guerrillas, Jacks-o'-both-sides, call them what you will--waverers who +have too much conscience or too little, who are swayed by their reason or +their pocket, or who are gullible enough to believe that the opposition +will do better, or sportsmen enough to desire fair play and a chance for +the other side, and who are found fighting now in this camp, now in that. +The camps themselves are fairly matched: Rads and Tories--the sexes of +politics--are as evenly created as men and women. They are like ten-pound +weights standing on either scale of a balance. What, then, determines the +oscillation this way or that? Evidently the miserable little half-ounce +weight placed sometimes on one side, sometimes on the other. In +fine,'tisthe tiny squadron of free-lances that wins general elections, +the voters who think or who don't think, or who veer to be with the +majority. The Jacks-o'-both-sides rule England, even as the Parnell +brigade ruled Parliament. To this floating population is it given to make +or unmake Cabinets; theirs is the righteous indignation that sweeps the +country like a new broom, and sweeps Ministries into limbo; to them is +made the magniloquent "appeal to the country!" _L'état, c'est nous!_ +might be the motto of this third party, were it but conscious of itself +as a party. + +"The majority is never right," cries Dr. Stockmann in "The Enemy of the +People." "Never, I say. That is one of those conventional lies against +which a free, thoughtful man must rebel. Who are they that make up the +majority of a country? Is it the wise men or the foolish? I think we must +agree that the foolish folk are, at present, in a terribly overwhelming +majority all around and about us the wide world over. But, devil take it, +it can surely never be right that the foolish should rule over the +wise.... The majority has might--unhappily--but right it has not. I and a +few others are right." But how if "I and a few others" organised +themselves after the fashion of the Parnellites? how if the wise men made +up their minds that the world should no longer be governed with the +proverbial minimum of wisdom, and, taking advantage of the natural +balance of parties, resolved that they should be the ones to supply the +principle of movement to the equilibrated social machine? Surely the +Millennium could not long resist the Philosophers' party. But, alas! +would the wise men agree? Would not they also split up into two factions? +And even if philosophers were kings and kings philosophers, _would_ the +kingdom of Plato be at hand? + +Popular suffrage is much maligned. "Think," says Bouvard, one of the +tragi-comic twain who serve for title to that saddest of all humorous +books, Flaubert's "Bouvard et Pécuchet," "think of all those who buy +pomades and patent medicines. These blockheads form the electorate and we +submit to their will. Why can't one make three thousand a year by +breeding rabbits? Because too much crowding together is fatal to them. In +like manner, by the mere coming together of a crowd the germs of +stupidity which it contains get developed and the consequences are +incalculable." But popular suffrage does not operate like this at all. +One might almost say that half the stupidity contradicts and annihilates +the other half: in practice the franchise carries its own antidote,--the +"germs of stupidity" do not get developed, but destroyed. The metaphor of +germs would be more appropriate if applied to the ideas of the +party-programmes, for these ideas are introduced by a few wise or foolish +men and disseminated epidemically throughout their respective parties. +Democracy never escapes aristocracy, for the people never invents ideas; +its whole power is that of choice between the ideas offered by its +would-be leaders, and even these ideas it accepts less as a philosopher +than as a patient, rather as "germs" than as thoughts. And when once it +has accepted its leaders or its representatives, the beautiful +parliamentary system deprives it of all further rights of interference +for a term of years, and the policy of the country is far more dependent +on the intestine rivalries and manoeuvrings of the representatives than +on the desires and demands of the represented. In a really democratic +system there would be a central bureau of statesmen not necessarily +elected by the voice of the people, and this bureau should have for +object not the wrangling over measures, but the mere proposition of them. +These trained thinkers and diplomatists--accepting advice freely from the +great newspapers and the chiefs of factions--would propose whatever +measures seemed necessary from time to time for the preservation, the +elevation, and the dignity of the commonweal, and these propositions +would be submitted officially to every franchise-holder, just as the +inquisitive census-paper or the parochial voting-paper is to-day. The +"Ayes" or "Noes" of the people would have it, not of those who represent +them, save the mark! The details could be drafted by specialists, as +to-day. That this would be a better or even a feasible system I do not +say; but I do maintain that any other democracy than this is a fraud. To +have the ten-thousandth part of a voice in selecting among the varying +policies of sundry ambitious gentlemen, all of whom have been foisted on +me by committees, and of whom the successful one--whose professed views +may be quite antithetical to mine and can at best only roughly represent +them--will have, when he is not absent or manoeuvred into silence, the +six-hundred-and-seventieth part of a voice in accepting or rejecting the +ideas of half a dozen very ambitious gentlemen, whose measures are +themselves liable to be quashed at the eleventh hour by an Upper House +that sits without my will or consent, and which is in its turn legally +liable to be superseded by the Sovereign, whose government is all the +while being really carried on in silence by permanent officials whose +very names I do not know and who have no connection with me beyond +accepting, in ignorance of my existence, my dole towards their +salaries,--this is not a form of democracy that appeals very attractively +to me as an individual member of Demos. + +And, moreover, the position of my Member of Parliament is scarcely less +paradoxical than my own rôle of free and independent elector. He is the +mouthpiece of his constituents, and yet he is expected to have a will and +conscience of his own. Why? Why should he be any more honest than a +lawyer or a journalist? Each of these classes is paid to maintain certain +propositions, and the most successful in these lines are those with the +highest powers of persuasion. The constituency wishes certain opinions +and desires put forward in Parliament,--why should the man who offers to +execute the job be presumed to share those opinions and desires? The +point is, can he represent them more forcibly than the rival candidates? +I do not for a moment imagine that the M. P. invariably agrees with the +politics of his electors; I only inquire why he should have to profess +to,--why should he pay this homage of hypocrisy to an illogical ideal? +Theoretically we do not elect our M. P. because _he_ wants to get on, but +because _we_ want to get on or the country to get on; because _we_ want +certain measures carried, not because _he_ wants certain measures +carried. Therefore it is to our interest to get the most skilled advocate +at our command; his personal opinions are no concern of ours. A fig for +his ambitions and aspirations! This may not be a dignified position for +the M. P., but it is the one logically implicated in the democratic +notion of universal suffrage; and when the gentleman honestly asserts +himself and his private ambitions and his private conscience, he is +deucedly dishonest to his constituents. + +To be strictly logical, indeed, M. P.'s should confine themselves to +stating the wishes of the people they represent: they might as well be +mechanical dolls, moved through the lobbies by the respective +wire-pullers and fitted with inarticulate noises. Or, for the matter of +that, they might be superseded altogether by written summaries of the +opinions of the winning majority in each constituency on all the points +at issue in the current session. The chiefs of the party could play the +game with markers. But indeed what is the use of dealing the cards at +all, when the Prime Minister holds all the trumps in advance, not up his +sleeve, but openly on the table? As for the speeches in the House, they +have as much effect upon the issue as the conversations at the +card-table. They are an obsolete survival from the times when members +were liable to come to the House with open minds, instead of having them +closed by their constituencies. Indeed, I can suggest a simple device by +which, without any departure from the ancient forms of the House, most of +the evils of Party Government could be swept away. By the system of +"pairing" a Tory may neutralize a Radical, and both go on together +without interfering with the good of the country. Let therefore the +entire minority pair off with members of the opposite party, leaving the +bare majority in possession of the floor. Being agreed on their policy, +these would not want to make speeches, but would simply spend their time +walking through the "Ayes" lobby. A few afternoons of pleasant +promenading would provide the country with enough legislation for a +lifetime. _Solvitur ambulando._ The party leaders would be enabled to +husband their energies for the hustings, since like all the agreeable +members they would easily find "partners." It is only the bores who would +be left to walk the House. It will be observed that this incalculable +gain of time, temper, money, and Acts of Parliament would be secured +without revolution, on constitutional lines, and by a mere extension of +an existing practice. I am convinced the salvation of the country depends +on the universal adoption of the system of Parliamentary "pairing," or +legislation by walking "wall-flowers." + +A further advantage of this system deserves to be noted. As it takes +forty members to make a House, should the Governmental majority fall +below this number no business could be transacted. Thus it would become +impossible, when the country was almost equally divided, for one party to +impose its will on the nation by force of a bare majority. Again, +therefore, a very necessary reform would be achieved on strictly +constitutional lines. + +In so confused a constitution, or so constitutional a confusion, it ill +becomes one to inquire why pre-eminence in Parliament is attained by +dexterity in the word-duel, and why a John Stuart Mill, who gave his life +to the study of sociological questions, is a failure in the House, while +a Randolph Churchill, who confessedly found politics more exciting than +any other form of sport, including even horse-racing, should be a +success. As in Athens of old, the rhetorician is master of the field. +Does it not seem ridiculous that a man shall be allowed to legislate who +has not passed an examination in political philosophy, political economy, +and universal history? As absurd as that men should be able to set up as +critics merely by purchasing reviews, that they should be permitted to +ply without a license. Still, monstrous as is the mischief wrought by the +quack critic, his sphere of influence is limited. But this question of +government touches us all. No one ought to be allowed in the House who +has not satisfactorily grappled with papers like the following. + +1. Explain the use of the following phrases: "Home Rule," "Liberty," +"Well-being of the Masses," "G. O. M.," "Good of the State," "The +Constitution." What meaning do you attach to them, if any? + +2. "The Function of an Opposition Is To Oppose." Criticise this statement +from the point of view of the Party in Power, and trace carefully the +modification in its view produced by a change of government. + +3. What is a good electoral address? Is there any relation between it and +its owner's votes in the House? + +4. (a) Prove that Female Franchise is demanded not only by the women of +England, but by every consideration of reason and justice. + +(b) Disprove the same. + +5. The leader of your party suddenly reverses his policy. + +(a) What would you think? + +(b) What would you say? + +(c) How would you vote? + +Give no reasons for your answer. + +6. If C represents Conscience, and C1 the Constituency, show that C1 will +always be represented by C2[*]. + +[Transcriber's note: So in original.] + +7. What is a working-man? Explain why professional men who work sixteen +hours a day are excluded from this category. + +8. Define a political victory, and distinguish between a political +victory and a moral victory. + +But perhaps the discrepancy is less than meets the eye. The House of +Commons is a _Representative_ Assembly; the rhetoricians and fencers +represent the unreason and the pugnacity of the partisans. A country has +the politicians it deserves. I have heard the most ignorant girls rage +against Mr. Gladstone; damsels in their teens who knew nothing of life or +its problems, nor could have studied any question for themselves; pretty +girls withal, but who at the mention of the veteran statesman took on the +avenging aspect of the Eumenides. + +It was a girl of quite another temper who replied to me when, talking +over old times and old discussions, I said I had not yet become a +Socialist: "I don't think you ever knew what you were." I winced as at a +just reproach, yet when I had left her the retort occurred to me (as +retorts will, when too late) that there was no particular merit in being +a "what," that men were not necessarily "'ists" or "'ites," that thoughts +did not fit into pigeonholes, and that if there was any merit in the +matter it consisted rather in preserving free play and elasticity of +mind. Because certain men had put certain ideas into the world it did not +follow that every other man had definitely to accept or reject each and +all of them, and to become an "'ite" or an "anti-'ite" in so doing. +Plague take great men! What right had they to force one into the +jury-box? Still less was it compulsory to return a verdict if, as the +vulgar were apt to think, the acceptance of any one "'ism" precluded the +acceptance of another, so that to be an Ibsenite was synonymous with +detesting the dramas of Sardou, and to be a Wagnerite involved a horror +of Mendelssohn. It was only the uncultured who held their artistic and +political creeds with the narrowness of Little Bethel, importing into +thought and aesthetics the zealotry they had lost in religion. The book +of Experience, thought I, is not an Encyclopaedia, with every possible +topic neatly ranged in alphabetical order; 'tis no A B C Time Table, with +the trains docketed for the enlightenment of the simple,'t is rather an +Encyclopaedia torn into a million million fragments by kittens and pasted +together again by infants, so that all possible things are inextricably +interfused, every one with every other; 't is a Bradshaw edited by a +maniac, where the trains that start but don't arrive are not even +distinguished from the trains that arrive but don't start. Wherever +persons are conscious of the infinite complexities of things, they will +be found cautious of creed and timid of assertion. You have probably +noted that at Waterloo Station, in London, no porter will ever bind +himself to a definite statement concerning any train. It is only the +inartistic who hold that black is black and white is white, +unconditionally, irretrievably; and who have invented the proverb "He'd +say black's white" to express the Sophist _in excelsis_. It must be true, +as Ruskin contends, that not one man in fifteen thousand has ever +observed anything, else how account for this wide-spread fallacy? The +"wit of one," instead of crystallising this "wisdom of the many," should +have flatly contradicted it. For, take two blackboards and place them at +right angles to each other: let a ray of bright sunlight fall upon them, +so that one cast a shadow on the other. The portion of blackboard +overshadowed will indeed be blackish, but the portion illuminated by full +sunlight will be comparatively white, although it is still thought of as +a "_black_-board." So, too, ask the man in the street for the colour of +trees, and he will reply "green." If I may permit myself a vulgar +locution, the green is in his eye. Trees are, of course, all colours of +the rainbow, according to kind and season; and grass, too, is by no means +always so green as people think it. We start in our childhood with +prejudices on these subjects--what is education but the systematic +imparting of prejudice?--and we rarely recover. Even the primitive rhymes +of childhood fix ideas unalterably in our minds: + + The rose is red, the violet's blue, + Sugar is sweet and so are you. + +Tea-roses are not red nor Neapolitan violets blue; sugar is only sweet to +those unversed in metaphysics, and sugar of lead not even to them. As for +the compliment to the juvenile petticoat, let it remain. But the +blackness of black is a superstition that deserves no such courteous +concessions. There is, in fact, no black and no white at all, as any +black-and-white artist will tell you. Black is not a colour: it is merely +the negation of light. By day nothing is ever black--it always contains +reflected light from some surrounding object or objects: if you look at a +"black" thing by day, you see its details, which convincingly proves that +light is not absent. If there were such a thing as a black object, it +could only prove its existence by being seen; but if it is seen it is no +longer black, and if it is black it is no longer seen. The mourners at a +funeral no more wear black than the bridesmaids at a wedding wear white. +To be white, a thing would have to escape all reflected light; and even +if this were possible, the sunlight itself, the source of all light and +colour, would tinge it with yellow, or red, or pink, according to the +time of day. "What!" the injudicious reader will cry, "is not snow white? +Does not the Dictionary boast even a double-barreled epithet +'snow-white'! How about the 'great white sea' that stretches round the +Pole?" I cannot help it: these adjectives, these expressions were +invented before artists had taught men to see: hastily, as by men falling +in love at first sight, who are destined to make many discoveries +concerning their idol later on. Snow is never white, any more than the +beloved is absolutely blameless. For snow to be "snow-white," the sky +would have to be white, whereas in those arctic circles it should be +either blue or grey. Moreover, the snow being only semi-opaque must be +tinctured by the shadow of the darkness of its own depths; as for +icebergs, well, you may see green, brown, and even deep-grey ice, whilst +the whitest have pinnacles and crags that must break the light like +prisms into all the colours of the spectrum, and all these hues, again, +do not fail to tint the snow. Nor will the white bear improve the +situation, for, to judge by the specimen in our London Zoological +Gardens, white bears are dirty yellow, just as black bears are dirty +brown. + +But, so far from realising that black may be white, your average voter +seems to imagine that neither is ever even tempered: that his party is +purest white, and the opposition party impurest black. That the other +side reverses this colouring does not trouble him: it is merely due to +the aforesaid sophistical faculty of proving black white. I once knew a +man--no average voter he--who owned two comic papers, the one Radical, +the other Conservative. How he must have chuckled as he planned the +cartoons and settled the chiaroscuro! What blacks for the Tories to be +answered by counter-blacks for the Radicals! Beaconsfield as a sweep, +Gladstone as an Angel of Light; Beaconsfield as Ormuzd, Gladstone as +Ahriman; each in turn Lucifer, Son of the Morning, and Satan, the +discomfited demon. I tremble to think what would have happened if, by one +of those _contretemps_ which sometimes occur even in real life, the +cartoons had got interchanged. And caricatures such as these influence +the elections! The most childish nonsense, written in the +picture-language so dear to children! And on such ineptitudes the +destinies of the nation are supposed to turn! 'T is a comforting +reflection, then, that the whole thing is so largely a farce, that the +real axis of events is elsewhere--by no means a thing to grieve over. If +the British Constitution is a paradox not to be fathomed by human +intellect, why, that is a quality which it shares with Space and Time and +all deep and elemental things. Your deep thinker is invariably a +paradox-monger, because everything when probed to its bottom proves +illusive, and is found to contain its own contradiction. Truth is not a +dead butterfly, to be transfixed with a pin and labelled, but a living, +airy, evasive butterfly. Perhaps that is the inner meaning of the +Whistlerian motto. The Hegelian self-contradictoriness of the British +Constitution will not, therefore, affright us. To Tennyson the fact that +it is a "crowned republic" seemed a source of security. The English have +abolished the Crown, though they are too loyal to inform the Sovereign of +his deposition; in like manner they have evaded Democracy by conceding +universal suffrage. The strength of the British Constitution lies in its +inherent absurdity, its audacious paradoxicalness. It exists by force of +not being carried out. And the reason of this illogicality is clear: our +Constitution, like Topsy, was not made but "growed," and that which grows +is never logically perfect; it is like an old tree, strangely gnarled, +with countless abrasions and mutilations, and sometimes even curious +grafts. Here the lightning struck it, and yonder branch was snapped in +the great gale. Machine-made schemes may be theoretically perfect, but +they will never suit human nature, which is a soil for living growths, +not a concrete foundation for elegant architecture. This is the truth +which trips up Comte, and Fourier, and St. Simon, and all the +system-makers and utopia-builders. Perfect things are dead things: the +law of life is imperfection and movement. Life is never logical, it is +only alive. If man had been made by machinery his body would not have +been erratically hairy; his toes would long since have been improved away +or welded together by an American patentee; nor would there have +remained, for our humiliation, those traces of a caudal appendage which +some osteologists have thought to perceive in our distinguished anatomy; +our brotherhood to the beasts would have been betrayed only by our +behaviour. + +So that, though Politics be as absurd as the Constitution, God bless her, +it may yet fulfil as useful a function. Who would deprive the hosts of +working-men of their generous enthusiasms, even though these be to the +profit of the professional politician? Who would narrow their horizon +back to the public-house and the workshop or the clerical desk and the +music-hall, by assuring them that all these great national and +international questions will be no penny the worse or the better for +their interest in them? For it is they, not the State, that will be +benefited. Politics is a great educative force: it teaches history, +geography, and the art of debate, and is not without relation to +Shakespeare and the musical glasses. The flies on the wheel are not +moving the wheel, but they are travelling and seeing the world, whereas +they might otherwise be buzzing around the dust-bin. Politics sets the +humblest at the centre of great cross-roads of history: it promotes clubs +and all manner of fellowship, and enables the poorest--on polling-day at +least--to know himself the equal of the greatest. Even the most +illiterate is spared the mortification of being reminded that he cannot +sign his name. And finally, and most of all, it preserves among us the +lost art of fighting. The long and oft-vaunted immunity of England from +the foot of a foreign foe has its drawbacks: we have forgotten what war +really means, we have delegated our courage and patriotism to an army of +mercenaries, who represent us in the field as a nobleman's carriage +represents him at a funeral; we are valiant vicariously and sublime by +deputy; we take the war-fever in its pleasant heats, and contract out the +chills and the blood-letting. And so the blood-letting fails to purge us +as before: the evil humours are still in the system. All those seething, +restless spirits which generate in the blood of a once warlike race clog +us up and turn to bile and dyspeptic distempers. Our militant instincts, +suppressed by a too-secure civilization, break out in sordid maladies of +the social organism. As a vent-hole for the envy, hatred and +uncharitableness of mankind, politics cannot be overestimated. In the +absence of real battles on our soil these sham fights of the +polling-booth--sham because they determine nothing, because the great +silent forces are working behind all the noises--are the national purge +for "our present discontents"; no more truly efficacious than that +ancient therapeutics of the lancet, a General Election yet comforts the +patient, he takes a lease of fresh hope, the sun leaps out, the clouds +pack, the sky is blue, the grass is dew-pearled, God's in his heaven, and +all's right with the world. Even the beaten party feels that it has won a +moral victory, and confidently looks forward to victory without morality +at the next turn of the wheel. And so all these diseased humours of the +body politic pass harmlessly off. + +No one but a confirmed cynic would wish to do away with all this harmless +dissipation, all the innocent fun of electioneering, the speeches, +riotings, mud-throwings, everybody happy as sandboys or mudlarks. What a +great day that was--Plancus being M. P. and I a boy in a provincial +town--when the Blues and the Reds meant broken heads, and the flowing +tide of beer, and spruce carriages with beribboned horses, and jocund +waggonettes, and bands and banners, and "hoorays," and shuttered shops, +and an outpour of citizens; a day festive, yet solemn, pregnant with +mysterious dooms and destinies, fatal, ineluctable, if victory fell to +the wrong-coloured ribbons. I remember when my father went to poll his +vote--a strange, weird article that had to be carried carefully concealed +on the person, lest the roughs of the opposition should catch a glimpse +of the tip of it and bash in the holder's head--with what awed +imagination we followed his course, as of a hero gone to storm a redoubt +or lead a forlorn hope! with what anxiety we waited at home with the +bandages! For the civil war, which our constitution foments, was less of +a sham then than now, and the polling-booths vied with the playing-fields +of Eton as the nursery of England's heroes. Ah, the brave old times! An +anaemic age languishes for want of you, and finds its solace in "bluggy" +tales. For just as politics supplies the shadow, the simulacrum of +fighting, so art supplies the shadows of life to those who lack the +substance. We herd in towns, and take the country in dashes of +water-colour framed in gilt. We marry for money, and satiate our baulked +sense of romance with concoctions from Mudie's. We lie and haggle and +cheat only the better to apprehend the subtleties of spiritual discourse +in fashionable churches, and our generous appreciation of the consummate +chivalry of the hero of melodrama is the reward we owe ourselves for the +pain it gave us to kick our wives. Practical joking is banished from +reputable circles--even Bob Sawyer is ranging himself; and so this +primitive appetite seeks its satisfaction in farcical comedies. Poetic +tragedies owe their attraction to the dominance in real life of the drab +and the unlovely, and the overstrain of the intellect in modern life +gives a peculiar flavour to the ineptitudes of Gaiety burlesque. All the +primal instincts and passions are still in us, though distorted, +exaggerated, diminished, modified, applied to different objects and +purposes. The man with vagabond instincts becomes an explorer, Ishmael +writes social dramas, the happier son of a defalcating cashier rises to +be a minister of finance, the born liar turns novelist, the man with +murder in his soul hunts big game in foreign lands or settles down at +home as a critic. And so, too, the born warrior becomes a political +leader; and politics, if it does not do any of the things it professes to +do, plays yet an invaluable part in modern life, bridging over, +perchance, the transition from the bellicose ages to those belauded days +when the war-drum shall throb no longer, "and the kindly earth shall +slumber, lapt in universal law." + +That this is confusedly and sub-consciously understood, even by +politicians, is shown by their very vocabulary. The Salvation Army itself +boasts no more militant a phraseology than the profession whose business +it is to administer peacefully the affairs of the realm. That which +should be, and sometimes is, expressed by nautical metaphors--the ship of +state, guiding the helm, and the rest of it--is much more frequently +expressed by military metaphors. Even the posts of duty are the "spoils" +of office. The State which to Plato was a deliberately harmonised music +is to us a deliberate discord, and the acme of politics, whose crowning +glory should be a peaceful measure, is by the vulgar not so inaccurately +regarded as attained at a General Election, the nomenclature of which +positively bristles with bayonets. Seats are won as towns were of old, +and, as in the days of Joshua, victory is achieved by walking round the +town and blowing your own trumpets. Great organs shamelessly lament that +their side has no good grievance to go to the country with,--as if the +absence of grievances were not the very object of government! A stirring +war-cry--that is the indispensable. If good government were really the +object of a General Election, it would all be over and done with in a +day. Election day would everywhere be as simultaneous as Christmas, and +votes would be polled with the punctuality with which puddings are eaten. +But this would be to contract a campaign into a battle--to make a short +story out of a great military serial, peppered with exciting incidents, +to be continued in our next. We want our vicissitudes, our sharpshooting, +our skirmishing, our days of triumph for the Whigs, and our days of +triumph for the Tories. What we like best of all is when the fighting is +so level that the Election progresses as breathlessly as a good +University boat race. Failing that, we like to see one side swamping the +other, like a great flood, the stream rising daily higher and higher, +with a crescendo roar, till the vanquished are swept away in a thunderous +mountain of waters. So for a full moon the waters rage, the noise of +battle roars, till our suppressed fighting instincts have been deluded +into repose and satisfaction, till the champing war-horses have been +quieted by being allowed to snort and cry "Ha! ha!" to see the glitter of +stage spears, and to hear the noise of the supers and the shouting. This +is the real end masked beneath all those interminable phrases. And it is +achieved at any and every cost. For does not everybody complain that a +General Election upsets everything? The publishers groan, the theatrical +managers tear their wigs. Englishmen cannot think of two things at once; +they are like heavy, solid craft, sound of timber but slow of turning. +"One thing at a time" is a national proverb. They cannot even read two +books at once, and if two classics should be published on the same day +one would be a failure. There is the book of the week, and the book of +the season, and the book of the year. This applies even to our +appreciation of past periods, and because Shakespeare is the first of the +Elizabethan dramatists, the rest are nowhere. Wherefore one would suppose +that everybody would make haste to get the Election out of the way; but, +on the contrary, it is allowed to linger on, till sometimes our +overstrained suspense snaps, and the Election dribbles out in unregarded +issues. No, the fight's the thing! War, if not dead, is banished from our +shores; the duello has been laughed to death; cock-fighting and +bull-baiting have ceased to charm: politics alone remains to gratify the +pugnacity and cruelty that civilisation has robbed of their due objects. +How we brighten up again at a bye-election, when duels which passed +unregarded in the big battle, when towns scarcely noted at the fag-end of +the great campaign, become the cynosure of every eye. Through Slocum or +Eatonswill the hub of the universe temporarily passes: to its population +of four thousand, mostly fools, are entrusted the destinies of the +Empire; it is theirs to make or mar. The duel is watched by a breathless +nation. The party leaders on each side cheer on their men; their careers +and claims and countenances fill up the papers, and they cross swords in +a shower of telegrams. Advice to those about to enter Parliament: Elect +for a bye-election. Why be a nonentity, a mere M.P., when by a little +patience you may hold the centre of the stage, if only for a week? Better +almost to be beaten at a bye-election than to be successful at a General. + +In case I should ever seek the suffrages of electors myself, I would +venture to remind opposition agents and private secretaries that these +random criticisms of the glorious constitution (hear, hear!) of that +great Empire on which the sun never sets (cheers), over which the Union +Jack waves (loud cheers)--a thousand years the battle and the +breeze--hem!--I--I--ahem!--Lord Salisbury (loud and prolonged cheers)--I +mean that I trust they will not forget that all this is set down without +prejudice. + + + + +VII + +THE REALISTIC NOVEL + +The realistic novel, we know from Zola, that apostle of insufficient +insight, is based on "human documents," and "human documents" are made up +of "facts." _But in human life there are no facts._ + +This is not a paradox, but a "fact." Life is in the eye of the observer. +The humour or the pity of it belongs entirely to the spectator, and +depends upon the gift of vision he brings. There are no facts, like +bricks, to build stories with. What, pray, in the realm of human life +_is_ a fact? By no means a stubborn thing, as the proverb pretends. On +the contrary, a most pliant, shifting, chameleon-coloured thing, as +flexible as figures in the hands of the statistician. What is commonly +called a fact is merely a one-sided piece of information, a dead thing, +not the series of complex, mutually inter-working relations that +constitutes a fact as it exhibits itself to the literary vivisectionist. +I walked with a friend in a shabby district of central London, a region +that had once been genteel, but was now broken up into apartments. +Squalid babies, with wan, pathetic faces, pullulated on the doorsteps; +they showed from behind dingy windows at the breasts of haggard women. +The fronts of the houses were black, the plaster had crumbled away, the +paint had peeled off. It was the ruins of a minor Carthage, and, like +Marius, I was lost in mournful reverie; my companion remarked, "These +houses are going up; they now pay 7 per cent." He was perfectly +justified. There are a hundred ways of looking at any fact. The +historian, the scientist, the economist, the poet, the philanthropist, +the novelist, the anarchist, the intelligent foreigner,--each would take +away a different impression from the street, and all these impressions +would be facts, all equally valid, all equally true, and all equally +false. Life, I repeat, is in the eye of the observer. What is farce to +you is often tragedy to the actual performer. The man who slips over a +piece of orange peel, or chases his hat along the muddy pavement, is +rarely conscious of the humour of the situation. On the other hand, you +shall see persons involved in heartrending tragedies to whom the thing +shows as farce, like little children playing in churchyards or riding +tombstones astride. To the little imps of comedy, who, according to Mr. +Meredith, sit up aloft, holding their sides at the spectacle of mankind, +to the + + Spirit of the world, + Beholding the absurdities of men, + Their vaunts, their feats, ... + +human life must be a very different matter from what we poor players on +the scene imagine it; we are cutting a very different figure, not only +from that which faces us from the mirror of vanity, but from that which +is "as ithers see us." Not only, then, may our tragedy be comedy; our +comedy may be tragedy. The play of humour at least suggests these +alternatives. Life is Janus-faced, and the humourist invests his +characters with a double mask; they stand for comedy as well as for +tragedy; Don Quixote wears the buskin as well as the sock. Humour, whose +definition has always eluded analysis, may, perhaps (to attempt a +definition _currente calamo_), be that subtle flashing from one aspect to +another, that turning the coin so rapidly that one seems to see +simultaneously the face and the reverse, the pity and the humour of life, +and knows not whether to laugh or weep. Humour is, then, the simultaneous +revelation of the dual aspects of life; the synthetical fusion of +opposites; the gift of writing with a double pen, of saying two things in +one, of showing shine and shadow together. This is why the humourist has +always the gift of pathos; though the gift of pathos does not equally +imply the gift of humour. The tragic writer must always produce one-sided +work, so must the "funnyman" who were only a "funny man" and not a +humourist (though this is rarer). Each can only show one side of life at +a time; the humourist alone can show both. Great novels of romance and +adventure, great works of imagination, great poems, may be written by +persons without humour; but only the humourist can reproduce life. Milton +is great; but the poet of life is Shakespeare. Thus the whole case of +"realism" falls to the ground. There being no "facts," Zola's laborious +series is futile; it may be true to art, but it is not true to life. His +vision is incomplete, is inexhaustive; it lacks humour, and to the +scientific novelist the lack of humour is fatal. He is the one novelist +who cannot succeed without it. Leave out humour, and you may get art and +many other fine things, but you do not get the lights and shadows or the +"values" of life. + +All novels are written from the novelist's point of view. They are his +vision of the world. They are not life, but individual refractions of it. +The ironical pessimism of Thomas Hardy is as false as the sentimental +optimism of Walter Besant or the miso-androus meliorism of Sarah Grand. +What Hall Caine happily calls "the scenic view of life" of Dickens is no +more true than the philosophic view of Mrs. Humphry Ward. Each is +existence viewing itself through a single medium. "Tess of the +D'Urbervilles" is as false as "Lorna Doone" or "Plain Tales from the +Hills." Life, large, chaotic, inexpressible, not to be bound down by a +formula, peeps at itself through the brain of each artist, but eludes +photography. This is the true inwardness of the Proteus myth. The +humourist alone, by presenting life in its own eternal contradictoriness, +by not being tied down to one point of view, like his less gifted +brother, comes nearest to expressing its elusive essence. The great +novelists are Fielding, Cervantes, Flaubert, Thackeray. But all the +novelists supplement one another, and relatively-true single impressions +of life go to make up a true picture of + + Life, like a dome of many coloured glass. + +It is because there are all novels and every aspect of existence in +Shakespeare that he sits supreme, the throned sovereign of the literature +of life. + +All this is writ to console those who suffer too poignantly from +book-tragedies and "pictures of life." The artist selects, he studies +tone and composition, whereas in real life tragedies are often +accompanied by "extenuating circumstances." The unloved girl temporarily +forgets her sorrow in the last new novel, or a picnic up the river; the +broken-hearted hero betakes himself to billiards and brandy-and-soda, or +toys with a beefsteak. Again, many pathetic tales are the outcome of +imperfect insight. The novelist imagines how he would feel in the shoes +of his characters, and cries out with the pain of hypothetic bunions. +This mistake better deserves the name of "the pathetic fallacy" than the +poetic misreading of Nature to which Buskin has annexed it. A good novel +may be made of bad psychology; indeed, this is what most novels are made +of. Yet the gentle reader, misled by the simulation of life, makes +himself miserable over dabs of black ink on white paper. The failure of +two imaginary beings to unite their lives in wedlock brings unhappiness +into myriad homes. How delicious is that story of the German novelist +who, having failed to unite his leading couple at the conclusion of a +newspaper serial, saw no way of appeasing the grief and indignation of +his vast audience save by inserting in the advertisement columns of a +later issue of the journal an announcement of their union under the usual +head of "Marriages"! + + + + +VIII + +IN DEFENCE OF GAMBLING + +Without gambling life would lose its salt in many a humble household. The +humdrum, deadening routine of monotonous daily toil finds relief by this +creation of an outside interest; to have a shilling on the favourite +enlarges and colours existence, gives it a wider and vaguer horizon. +Imagine the delicious anguish of suspense, the excitement of hearing the +result, the exultation of winning. And the beauty of gambling is that you +cannot lose. Gambling is really a disguised system of purchase. One buys +excitement, a most valuable emotion, for which even the members of the +Anti-Gambling League are prepared to pay heavily in other forms! And the +advantage of gambling over all these other forms is the possibility that +you may not be called upon to pay for your purchase after all--nay, that +_you_ may even be paid instead! You get not only excitement, but a +possible bonus. Is there any earthly transaction that offers such +advantages? Why, 't is always "heads I win, tails you lose." Who speaks +of losing at cards? As well speak of losing at play-going or +novel-reading; what is called loss is simply payment for excitement. You +cannot lose at cards, though you may win; unless it be in games where +skill preponderates, and then loss means penalty for lack of skill. The +mere transfer of money from hand to hand leaves the wealth of the world +what it was before. 'T is redistribution, not destruction. It is scarcely +relevant to look for the evils of gambling in its effects--to point to +ruined reputations and ruined homes. Everything is capable of abuse, from +love to religion. The evil of gambling lies in the fact that it is an +unworthy form of excitement--that it is possible to colour life more +intellectually. The Anti-Gambling League, for all its recent prospectus, +will not put down gambling among the poorer classes, except by widening +their outlook otherwise, by creating other interests outside the dull +daily groove. For the well-to-do classes there is less excuse. With all +the arts and amenities of life at their command, it is degrading to use +up time and nervous energy in so brainless a pursuit. The gambling that +is inherent in the constitution of modern civilization is another affair: +that is pursued for the sake of gain; or for a livelihood. The Stock +Exchange is an unhappy consequence of the joint-stock company; credit in +business is an equally inevitable outcome of the ramified mechanism of +exchange. We are all gamblers to-day, insomuch as there is no stable +relation between work and reward, and the failure of a bank in Calcutta +may impoverish a shopkeeper in Camden Town. Our investments may rise or +fall in value through the obscure machinations of unknown millionaires. +And even the Anti-Gambling League has no word to say against those great +gambling concerns, Life and Fire Assurance Societies, which bet you that +you will not die or be burnt out within a certain number of years, or +those journals which offer you large odds that you won't be smashed up +while reading them. The prudential considerations behind these forms of +gambling seem quite to moralise them: indeed, to refuse to accept the bet +of the Life Assurance Companies is now considered immoral; a man is +expected to amend on his marriage at the very latest. + +There is a form of gambling to which I must myself plead guilty. A +forlorn, shabby creature, pathetically spruced up, arrives from a +ten-mile tramp. He has been a journalist or a poet, but owing to this or +that he is on his beam-ends. He has eaten nothing for two days. His wife +is dying, his children are weeping for food. His voice breaks beautifully +as he tells me I am his last hope. What is to be done? According to +Charles Lamb, the solution is to give, to give always. For either the man +is in need and speaks truth, or he is a liar and therefore a consummate +actor. We pay for stage representations: why deny our obolus to the +histrionics of the beggar? So artistic a make up, an elocution with such +moving notes of pathos, surely deserve our tribute. Nay (and this Elia +forgot to note), the beggar-actor is frequently the author of his own +piece; that consistent argument, those tragical episodes, those touches +of nature, that minute detail, all are his. For my part, this view does +not touch me; I scarcely ever pay for the play, so I expect even the +beggar to perform to me as to one of "the press." If I give to beggars, +it is purely from the gambling spirit. What are the odds against the man +being a scamp? If they are short, or if the betting is level, I incline +to the side of mercy. The money is of so much more consequence to him +than to me, if the beggar is genuine, that the speculation is well +warranted. I know how wrong it is from the point of view of the Charity +Organization Society, but I am a man, not a bureau of beneficence. Few of +us, I fancy, escape this godly gambling. + +How ill Society is ordered! We pay poor rates and support hospitals and +orphan asylums; but is there any thinking man who can banquet with the +assurance that nobody is starving? It spoils the dinner of Dives to +meditate on the longings of Lazarus, and this is the true skeleton at the +feast. The business of philanthropy seems but a mockery, and Government +takes charitable toll from us without pacifying our consciences. There is +something rotten in the state of Denmark. Cannot the intellect of man +devise a means of guaranteeing the deserving poor against starvation? + +Novel-reading is the woman's substitute for gambling--the thing that +takes her outside her narrow circle of interests. Her ravenous appetite +for new novels is amazing; children are not so gluttonous of cream-tarts. +To supply this demand sequestered spinsters in suburban or rustic bowens +sit spinning the woof and warp of life as it never was on sea or land. +Bound goes the wheel, to and fro glides the shuttle, and the long, +endless pattern unwinds itself in all its wealth of imaginative device +and all its glory of fanciful colour. Poor things! What are they to do? +They have not the means to study the life they depict; they cannot mix in +the circles they describe. Fortunately their ignorance is their +salvation; the pretty patterns please the young ladies, the brave notes +of colour set them a-dreaming. And now in the revolt against the +three-volume novel these simple scribblers are to be swept away; the +country parcels will know them no more, and the three-deckers they built +of yore will be dismantled in the dry dock of the fourpenny box. Poor +creatures! Some will take to typewriting and some to drink, some will be +driven to the workhouse and some to literature. + + + + +IX + +TRULY RURAL + + "ENGINEER AND SURVEYOR'S DEPARTMENT. + + "_5 & 6 Wm. IV., cap. 50, sect. 65._ + + "SIR, + + "I am directed to call your attention to the present condition of + trees within your premises, which now overhang the public footpath + adjoining, and thereby cause considerable inconvenience to the + public. I shall be glad if you will kindly give the matter your best + attention, with a view to lopping or cutting the trees in such a + manner as to obviate the inconvenience at present complained of. + + "Yours obediently, + "P. LEONARDO MACREADY, + "_Engineer to the Board._" + +Amid the cosmopolitan medley of letters on my metropolitan +breakfast-table--the long and formal-looking, the fat and foreign, and +the over-scrawled and the underpaid (the last mainly requests for +autographs)--this delightful home-grown epistle came with refreshing +piquancy. It brought a breath of summer into the grey chillness of a +London winter, a suggestion of rustling foliage about the chandelier, and +the scent of the hay over the gaslights. "My dear!" I exclaimed to the +partner of my bosom (a tame white rat that likes to perch there), "_Have +we any trees?_" + +My partner gave a little plaintive squeak. That is her idea of +conversation. She screams at everything. She would scream at the sight of +a mouse. + +I pushed away my plate. I had sat down hungry as a hunter, and had had +two helpings of everything; but now I could eat no more. Excitement had +taken away my appetite. The prospect of rural discoveries agitated me. I +hastened to the window and looked at the front garden. To my astonishment +and joy there was vegetation in it. There was a dwarf evergreen bush and +a fragment of vine stretching itself sleepily, and a tall thin tree--they +might all have got comfortably into one bed, but they had been planted in +three far apart, and this gave the garden a desolate Ramsgate-in-winter +air of "Beds to let." The tall thin tree was absolutely naked, without an +inch of foliage to cover its wooden limbs; a mere mass of dry sticks. I +looked hard at the tree to see where it offended, determined to pluck it +out. But it returned my gaze with the stolidity of conscious +innocence--it held up its wooden arms in deprecation. I re-read Mr. P. +Leonardo Macready's letter. "Which now overhang the public footpath"! Ah! +that was what was the matter with my trees. It was raining, but I am an +Englishman and the law is sacred, and I went outside into the public +highway and looked at the tall thin tree from the new point of view. Sure +enough--very far up--there _was_ a bough overhanging the public footpath. + +I looked up at it and shook my fist menacingly, but it waved its twigs in +response with an irritating amiability. I began to understand what an +annoyance it must be to have a bough up there that you couldn't flick at +with your stick as you passed by, and that even when weighed down by its +summer greenery would bemock you if you made a casual clutch at its +foliage, and laugh at you in its leaves. I went inside and returned with +a step-ladder and an umbrella and a carving-knife, and I stood on the +summit of the ladder and made abortive slashes at space with my right +hand, while the open umbrella in my left made equally abortive efforts to +soar with me skywards. After nearly stabbing the partner of my bosom I +went in, both of us wet like drowned rats, and as I settled myself again +to coffee and correspondence, I could not help wishing that Chang, the +Chinese giant, had remained alive to triumph over my tantalising trees. +Nor could I help wishing that the activity of the local engineers and +surveyors had been directed by His Gracious Majesty King William IV. into +quite a contrary channel. + + William, spare that tree, + Touch not a single bough; + If you had planted three, + They would protect me now. + +If, instead of being requested to amputate a beautiful overhanging arm of +foliage, every citizen of London were served with a notice to plant a +tree in front of his demesne, the face of the great stony city would be +transformed. It would become a _rus in urbe_. Why not? Everybody knows +what the late Duke of Devonshire made of Eastbourne; and the beauty of +Bournemouth is mainly an affair of trees. Why should we not walk under +the boughs of Oxford Street? What law of nature or William IV. ordains an +eternal divorce between shops and trees? Why should one not hear the +birds sing in the Strand as well as in the Inns of Court? Let us have +trees instead of lamp-posts--with electric lights twinkling from their +leaves. Already there are London streets quite well-wooded. Even in the +Whitechapel Road it is possible to read-- + + A book of verses underneath a bough; + +but I shall not be content till Matthew Arnold's exquisite quatrain comes +literally true of London-- + + Roses that down the _alleys_ shine afar, + And open jasmine-muffled lattices, + And groups under the dreaming garden-trees, + And the full moon and the white evening star. + +It might be well if we could transplant to our more prosaic city ways the +beautiful old custom of planting a tree on the birth of a child. It is +true that ladies might object to having their age recorded by the growth +of rings on the trunk; but then they could easily pass the tree on to an +elder sister when they got beyond the average wedding-ring age. Besides, +people would quickly forget whose birth it marked, and the town trees +would soon become anonymous. I would therefore suggest the formation of a +tree-planting party, pledged not to support any candidate for Parliament +who would not vote for the ruralisation of the Metropolis. To the Home +Rule of Mr. Gladstone, with his weakness for cutting down trees, must be +opposed Home Ruralisation. What a fine platform cry--"a truly rural +London!"--with the unique advantage of being unpronounceable by +demagogues in drink. The poor would welcome the policy as a boon. They +are not by any means so unpoetical as Gissing would make out. Only the +other day a baby was found buried in a window flower-box; which is +practically the idea of Keats' "Isabella, or the Pot of Basil," an idea +which was itself a graft from the stock of Boccaccio. + +If the parish dignitaries became thus associated in our minds with the +Beautiful instead of with bills and blue papers, one might be able to +whip up some enthusiasm for the civic life, and contemplate even +income-tax schedules with a Platonic or Aristotelian rapture. It is not +everybody who can rhapsodise with Mr. Bernard Shaw or the Fabian Society +over sewer rates, and find in the contemplation of communal gas and water +something of the inspiration and ecstasy that the late Professor Tyndall +found in the thought of the conservation of energy. + +In firing us to local patriotism by the example of provincial cities, the +enthusiast does not allow sufficiently for the size of London. It +swallows us all up; there are twenty provincial cities in its maw: it is +not a city, but a province. We cannot rouse ourselves to an interest in +Brixton and Camberwell, in Poplar and Highbury. There is no glory in +being a dweller in so amorphous a city, whose motley floating population +is alone sufficient to stock a town; there can be no sense of brotherhood +in meeting a Londoner abroad, still less a Middlesex or Surrey man. +Devonians may feast off junkets and cream, in touching fellowship, and +the hearts of Edinburgh men stir with common memories of Princes Street; +but a Cockney, who has far more to be proud of, is overwhelmed into +apathy. It is only in a compact city that one can develop that sense of +special belonging which George Eliot contends is at the root of so many +virtues. I might just as well be taxed to beautify Dublin as Canonbury, +for all the difference it would make in my grumblings. And if our city is +too large to inspire us, our parish is too small. And so to most of us, I +fear, parochialism is a bore. Theoretically, we know that the parish we +live in is greater than many a provincial town. We know that we ought to +take an interest in its history, and be proud of its great men. But +somehow, despite Mr. Frederic Harrison, our suburb leaves us cold. Our +real life does not centre about our own parish at all. We circle about +the great thoroughfares that radiate from Charing Cross, and the pivot of +our lives is Piccadilly. Born to the Metropolis, we cannot narrow our +minds to a district, nor to parish give up what was meant for London. We +refuse to become provincials. We do not even know that we boast of a Town +Hall, till we are compelled to attend and show cause why we have not paid +the rates, or any part thereof, the same having been lawfully demanded. +If there are any other great men in the neighbourhood, we do not know +their addresses. They are shy and retiring. It is only the retired who +are not shy. That sort of great man comes forth in his tens. He _has_ +been a butcher, a baker, or a candlestick maker, and he _is_--a bore. +Once he solicited your patronage, to-day he solicits your vote. Having +given up making profits, he now wishes to make by-laws, and finds a gleam +of his old delight in sending out heavy bills to the neighbourhood. You +get a list of him, which policemen announce their intention of calling +for. You are asked to decide among a column of him, uniformly obscure, +but divided invidiously enough into tradesmen and gentlemen. Who compiled +this list or nominated these gentlemen and tradesmen, you have not the +ghost of a notion. They are sprung upon you as imperiously and +mysteriously as their own demand-notes. You look down the column and make +random crosses by the wayside. You select a sanitary engineer in +preference to an undertaker, forgetting that he is the deadlier of the +two, and you vote for your retired wine-dealer to prevent him going back +into business. But most of the names convey nothing to you, and give you +the sensation of a donkey between two heaps of straw, or of a straw +between two heaps of donkeys. And having thus exercised that high English +privilege, for which you would shed your blood if it were taken away, you +are content for the rest of the year to grumble at the doings of your +representatives. It does not occur to you that public duty calls upon you +to comprehend the parochial mysteries and solicit the parochial +dignities. They seem too petty for a man of any stature--a sort of small +beer for babes and sucklings. + +May it not be that the voice of public duty, when it calls upon you to be +a citizen and a parishioner, calls with too piping a voice? There is no +rousing note, nothing of the resonance of a clarion call. A suggestion of +poverty and the workhouse clings to everything parochial, something of +drab and joyless. Is there no way of infusing colour into this depressing +greyness, a martial _timbre_ into this anaemic note? If we are to pay the +piper let us hear him. Let the tax-collector go his rounds at the head of +a brass band, playing patriotic airs. Let brocaded standard-bearers raise +aloft a banner with the soul-stirring insignia, "England expects every +man to pay his duty." Let the hollow roll of the drum thrill the dull +suburban street, and animate the areas of semi-detached villas. No longer +shall the devil and General Booth have all the good tunes, and the ragged +rearguard of urchins keeping time with their bare feet shall follow the +drum to the surer and saner goal of civic salvation. The music of the +streets will become a joy instead of a terror, and English performers +will find a new market. See paterfamilias prick up his ears as the +distant strains of national music impinge upon his tympanum, see his +heart heaving his shirt-front with patriotic ardour, while, with a joyous +cry "The Collectors are coming, hurrah, hurrah!" he rushes to his +cheque-book as the soldier rushes to arms. Is he not serving his country +as much as the soldier, and without pay--or even discount? Nay, why +should the idea of patriotic duty be so emphatically connected with the +shedding of blood, and all the pomp and pageantry reserved for the +profession of Destruction? Why should not the lifeboat be launched, or +the coal dug, or the drain-pipe laid, or the taxes paid, to a musical +accompaniment, and under the shadow of the national flag? Great is the +power of the Symbol: for a few inches of rag at elevenpence +three-farthings a yard (warranted not to shrink) men will give their +lives. And greater still is the power of music. + + Dear to the London housemaid, + The fife of fusilier, + And to the Cockney urchin + The drum of Booth is dear; + Sweet sounds the barrel-organ + Where'er the cits parade; + But the dearest of all music + The Tax-Collectors played. + +You will be glad to hear that scarcely had this grumble appeared in print +when I saw a procession that made me think Birnam wood had come to +Dunsinane. Soon either pavement was planted with ready-made trees, all +a-blowing and a-growing. If it had happened in the night, I should have +rubbed my eyes and imagined some good genius had transported me to the +Boulevards. I hastened to place a little _guéridon_ outside the garden +gate, and to decorate it with glasses of absinthe and vermouth; but a +gendarme came along and asked me to move on. + + + + +X + +OPINIONS OF THE YOUNG FOGEY + +When I first met the Young Fogey I thought him very brilliant. His +philosophical pose, too, of combining the caution of age with the daring +of youth was fascinating. "I have evolved," he used to say. "Once I would +not attach sanctity to ideas because they were old: now I attach no +sanctity to ideas because they are new." But I soon discovered that the +Young Fogey was one of that large class of persons who do not evolve but +revolve, whose brilliancy is that of the fixed star. They give out +arrestive thoughts, and you are vastly impressed, but on longer +acquaintance, or on returning to them after an interval, you find that it +is they who have been arrested by their thoughts. Such persons do not +last you more than one or two years: they require a succession of new +audiences to keep up their reputation, like a witty play, which all the +world goes to see in turn, but which it would be deucedly dull to see +night after night, year in, year out. The cleverest of them know this +need of new ears, and of making provincial and foreign tours when they +have exhausted London. But when the Young Fogey chanced upon me drinking +lager beer at the Austrian Derby, during a tedious interval between the +races, he was probably confused by the distance from Piccadilly into a +sense of originality, and perceiving a couple of books on my table: +"What! do you _read_ the books you review?" he asked in feigned +astonishment; adding, with an impromptu air, "I always _write_ the books +_I_ review. Criticism of other people is waste of time. An artist who is +worth his salt knows his value better than anybody else; and an artist +who is not worth his salt is not worth your criticism, and will learn +nothing from it in any case. There is immeasurably too much book-making, +as it is." + +"But criticism tends to keep down book-making," I observed meekly. + +"Quite the contrary. Criticism encourages it. Most books are not read. +Who can possibly read ninety-nine of the worst hundred books published +every week? If they were not even criticised, the writers would shut up +their inkstands. Publicity is their aim, but publication does not supply +it. Most publishers are rather privateers. It is the critics who supply +fame to fools. It's even worse with plays. Why should every trumpery +farce that can get itself badly produced by a moneyless manager who +decamps the day after, be allotted a space in every morning, evening, and +weekly newspaper, Fame blowing simultaneously a hundred trumps? My +greatest book never got half as much notice as a wretched little +curtain-raiser which took me a morning to knock off, and the news of +which was flashed from China to Peru immediately, whereas the eulogies of +my book were dribbled out in monthly instalments, and belated +testimonials kept straggling in long after its successor had been +published. In those days I belonged to a Press-cutting Agency, and I +discovered that--to measure Fame by the square inch--you may get many +more yards of reputation by the most flippant playlet than by your +literary _magnum opus_; to say nothing of the pictures and interviews of +your actors and actresses. That your silliest player--especially if it be +a pretty she--gets photographed in the papers sixteen times to your once, +goes without saying. The only real recipe for Fame nowadays is to be a +pretty girl and exhibit yourself publicly. The modern editor has got it +into the paste-brush he calls his head that the public is infinitely +greedy for the minutest theatrical details. It is really too idiotic, +this fuss over our parrots. If there were only plays for them to talk! +The decline of the British drama----" + +"By which you mean that they decline your plays," I interrupted. + +"Granted," said the Young Fogey; "but even when they give us Shakespeare, +they play the patron, and literary critics argue deferentially with them +as to the treatment of the text, and beg them not to put William's head +under the pump. Did you see that monumental headline in the 'Daily +Chronicle,' the paper that poses as the organ of sweetness and light?-- + + 'MR. TREE'S NEW PLAY. + 'Henry IV. At The Haymarket.' + +"So Mr. Tree 'created' Falstaff in more than the conventional sense of +that arrogant stage-verb! Act? Anybody can act! We're all acting, always, +in every phase of our social life. Every back drawing-room is a theatre +royal. A child can act, and the 'infant phenomenon' cannot be +distinguished from the leading lady or gentleman except by size. But no +child ever wrote a play. Acting is the lowest of the arts. And even if it +were the highest, it would be brought low again by its infinite +self-repetition. Imagine playing one part for a season, a year, a decade. +Actors are not even parrots--they are automatic puppets that move their +limbs in fixed fashions, and make squeaking sounds at prescribed moments. +There was a French Minister of Education who drew up a most rigid +Time-Code, which hung in his bureau; and it was the joy of his life to +take out his watch and say 'Half-past three! Ha! every boy in France is +now learning geography'; or, 'A quarter to twelve! Ha! every French +schoolgirl is now writing in a copy-book.' I have the same sort of +feeling about my actor-acquaintances. 'Half-past nine? Ah! What is +Herbert doing? He is taking poison.' 'A quarter to eleven! Dear me! Rose +is crawling under a table.' + +"And these creatures want every privilege, forsooth! Fame, gold, +champagne, the best society and the worst. To be of Bohemia and +Belgravia, to make the best of both worlds. If things don't mend, to sit +in a stall will soon become an index of imbecility. It will be like being +seen at the Academy. + +"And, talking of the Academy, did ever any more infantile idea enter the +human brain than that a couple of thousand pictures worth seeing can be +painted every year? Why, since the beginning of the world there haven't +been two thousand pictures painted worth seeing! Imagine two thousand +manuscript novels being scattered around on two thousand desks, a +shilling admission! Do we get one good novel a year? Scarcely. One good +symphony or opera? Of course not. Then why expect to get a picture worth +hanging? And every picture should hang by itself--it's an artistic +entity, self-complete. To crowd it among a lot of others is like +conducting an orchestra every instrument of which is playing a different +tune. 'T isn't even as if the poor painters got anything out of the show. +People won't buy pictures--prices are monstrously inflated to an +artificial point: the artists would take less, only they don't like to +come down from their pedestal, and so they starve up there in dignity. +Artists have played a foolish game. They have gone nap on gentility and +high prices, and gentility has failed them. + +"When great prices are given for pictures, it is generally with a view to +selling them again: a dubious compliment to the artist. No man gets a +thousand pounds' worth of pure art joy out of any picture. He can spend +his thousand pounds to much more of aesthetic advantage. But there is no +inherent sacredness in prices. A picture is worth only what it will +fetch. Let our artists be satisfied with a fair day's wage for a fair +day's work, like any other species of craftsman. After all, they were all +craftsmen--Michael Angelo, Titian, Donatello, Canova--wall-decorators, +door-painters, ceiling-colourers, tomb-builders, stone-masons, working to +contract and to measure. When our artists are content with the pay of +manual labourers and the joy of art, taste may be stimulated in the +masses, and original work be going at the price of lithographs. Why +shouldn't artists even paint public-house signs? Beer being the national +religion, why shouldn't it find adequate expression in Art? + +"Not that it matters much whether our artists live or die,--Art seems +about over. It seems to be an accident that happened once or twice in the +Past,--among the Greeks, at the Renaissance, in Spain, in Holland,--which +no amount of art-schools and art-publications can coax back. To found +Academies and R.A.-ships is to spur a dead horse. Look at the Greek +sculptures, look at the Italian pictures, and ask yourself what we have +to put beside them after all our endless exhibitions! Modern +improvements! _Plein air!_ Bah! Where can you show me more 'atmosphere' +than in Carpaccio, or in Jacques d'Arthois. Impressionism? Look at that +snow-effect by old Van Valckenborch here! But we do the modern, the +contemporary, you cry----" + +"No, I don't," I interrupted feebly, more to let him take breath than for +the jest's sake. But he ignored the opportunity. + +"But they've all done the contemporary! Only _their_ contemporary, not +yours. The fallacy almost amounts to an Irish bull. The ancients _were_ +the moderns--to themselves--just as we shall be the ancients to our +successors. The Renaissance people all did contemporary work, under +pretence of doing historical: contemporary types for Madonnas, local +landscapes for Oriental scenery, up-to-date dresses for New Testament +episodes, portraits of their patrons for patron-saints and apostles. Did +you ever see a more modern figure than Tintoretto's portrait of himself, +the elderly man in a frock-coat who looks on at his own wonderful picture +of St. Mark descending to rescue a Christian slave? An Academician or a +new English Art Clubbite who had done only one tiny corner of this +picture would so swell as to the head that his laurel-wreath wouldn't fit +him any longer. There's no ambition nowadays--Degas, Whistler, yes. But +for the rest--dwarfs. Modern improvements indeed! Science may improve, +but not art. Art, like religion, is an absolute in life--nobody will ever +paint better than Velasquez, write better than Shakespeare, or pray +better than the Psalmist. Science is the variable--always on the go; and +when we think of progress it is just as well that we foolishly keep our +eye on the machine-room." + +"Won't you have a drink?" I broke in, seizing the first opportunity. + +"Thanks! What's that book?" + +"'Olympia's Journal'! It's all about Olympia's husband, she married him +to write about him--he was such 'good copy.'" + +I had unchained a torrent. "Novelists ought never to be introduced into +novels," burst forth the Young Fogey. "The subject-matter of novelists is +real normal life, and novelists are neither real nor normal. They are +monsters whose function in life is to observe other people's lives. For +one novelist to make copy of another is like cannibalism. + +"If the psychology of the novelist, who is the student of other people's +psychology, is to be studied, where are you to stop? Why not study the +peculiarities of the novelist who studies the novelist, of the reflector +of life who reflects the reflector of life--nay, of the critic who +reflects upon the reflection of the reflector? This modern mania for +picking ourselves to pieces is only the old childish desire 'to see the +wheels go wound.' People were much better in the old days when they +didn't bother so much how their wheels went round. I always sympathised +with the indignant old lady who came to my schoolmaster when our class +began to take up physiology, and protested that she wasn't going to have +her boy learn what was in his inside--it was indecent. People are not +made healthier by knowing how their functions work; animals never study +physiology, and plants blossom without knowing anything at all about +anything. Knowledge only generates a morbid fussiness, as with Mr. +Jerome's celebrated Cockney who discovered himself to be possessed of +every ailment in the medical dictionary except housemaid's knee. And to +learn what is in your mental inside is equally indecent and equally +discomposing. 'I have never thought about thinking,' said the wise +Goethe. No one can go through a treatise on insanity and come out as sane +as he started. And there is an even more insidious way in which this +human vivisection operates for evil. People now forgive their +friends--they call their eccentricities 'pathological,' and endure +instead of discouraging them. I had two letters this very morning. 'Poor +A!' said B.: 'his vanity has ceased to offend me--I feel it is +pathological.' 'Poor B!' said A.: 'it is impossible to resent his +egotism--it is simply pathological.' + +"This scientific Christianity wouldn't be so bad if people didn't condone +their own faults, too. They can't get up early--it's heredity. The early +bird who caught the worm must have had a grandparent who stayed out late. +Are they lazy? Their uncle was a country parson. They are like the man +who refused to give charity because he had such expensive tastes. To +acquiesce in your own weaknesses because they are hereditary, without +making an effort to eradicate them, is bad science as well as bad morals. +Among the items given you by heredity do not forget the potentiality of +self-improvement by inward struggle. No one says, 'I can't speak French, +and I sha'n't try, because my father was an illiterate Irishman.' +Self-knowledge tends to weaken self-discipline, foster self-indulgence, +and corrode character." + +"But what of the old Greek maxim 'Know thyself'?" + +"Old Greek sophistry! Knowing requires a subject to know and an object to +be known. You can't be subject and object too--introspection is a +self-contradiction. Hasn't every one noticed that everybody else fails to +discover himself in a novel or a sermon, though his lineaments are +painted down to the minutest details of wart and mole? And it's quite +natural. Every soul is to itself the centre of the universe--through +which the infinite panorama passes; nothing exists but in relation to it: +to its standards of beauty, of right and wrong, of humour, of admiration, +everything is brought. There's no man so low or so ridiculous but he +finds somebody else more so, and the London street-boy who sneers at the +long-haired poet is exalted to a sense of superiority. I once met a human +monstrosity--hunch-backed, cross-eyed, palsied, and wooden-legged. My +soul sickened with pity, but his face brightened in a smile of contempt +and his cross-eyes danced with glee. I appealed to his sense of the +ridiculous. Listen to the comments of people upon one another after a +party, and confess that a coterie is often but a mutual contempt society. +That is what makes life livable--every living creature is an amused eye +upon the universe. Terence said as much long ago. We amuse one another, +and exist to gratify one another's sense of superiority, like the +islanders who live by taking in one another's washing. It will be a +thousand pities if the spread of travelling removes the mutual +superiorities of Englishmen and Frenchmen, Chinamen and Hindoos. I went +to a dinner-party the other day. The host and hostess were +impossible--like spiteful studies by Thackeray caricatured by Dickens. +Yet there were they arrogating to themselves every privilege of judgment +and jurisdiction that the most fashionable peers or the sublimest souls +could claim; to their own minds the arbiters of elegance, the patrons of +the arts, the flagellators of vice and snobbery, the gracious laudators +of virtue, the easy fomenters of scandal. + +"Prithee, was ever one of us capable of not lecturing on ethics or not +preaching a sermon? Did not Sir Barnes Newcome lecture on the Family? Do +we not all hold forth on the condition of the poor, the morality of the +mining-market; the inferior ethics of the coloured races, and a hundred +other lofty topics, warming our coat-tails at the glow of our own virtue? +'T is the fault of language which enables arrant scoundrels to use fine +words that they have never felt. Humility, self-sacrifice, +noble-mindedness, are phrases easily picked up by people for whom their +only meaning is in the dictionary, and who know it is the correct thing +to admire them. They are like students of chemistry who babble of H2SO4 +and NH3 by book without ever having seen a laboratory or a retort, or +tone-deaf people raving over Beethoven. And these lip-servants of virtue +are unconscious that they have never known the real thing. Every +discussion between civilised persons presupposes moral perfection all +round--a common elevated platform from which one surveys the age and its +problems, and considers how to bring the world at large up to one's own +level. You cannot discuss anything with a person who has ever been +publicly imperfect--at any point you may tread on his corns. Has he been +bankrupt? The slightest reference to honesty, finance, or business may +seem an insult. Has he figured in the Divorce Court? How are you to talk +about the last new play without seeming personal? This explains why +exposed persons are cut: they have made conversation impossible by +cutting away the common ground of it, the hypothesis of perfection. Even +with persons who have merely lost relatives one has to be careful to +avoid references to mortality. The complete diner-out has to be equipped +with a knowledge of his fellows to the third and fourth generation, so as +to avoid giving offence. To say that late marriages are a mistake or +second marriages a folly may be to make enemies for life. Which, by the +way, is absurd: all conversation should be regarded as privileged and +impersonal. 'T is brain meeting brain, not foot treading gingerly among +irrelevant personal considerations. And just as we are all willing to +preach, we are all willing to be preached at--it gives us such an +opportunity of gauging the preacher's morality and ability. The Scotch +peasants who denounce their meenister's orthodoxy are an extreme case, +but if we were not really judging our judges we should go to opposition +churches. What we demand from preaching--as from newspapers--is an echo +of our own voices, and when the preacher or the newspaper leads it is +only by pretending to follow. Opportunity makes the politician. Watch the +crowd streaming out of church after a sermon. Do they wear an air of +edification or humiliation? Are they bowed down with the consciousness of +their backslidings? No: they are aesthetes come from a literary and +oratorical performance. They are not thinking of themselves at all, but +of the quality of the sermon. Yes, around each of us the world turns, and +each soul is the hub of the universe. Popular suffrage is the recognition +of this great fact: not one of us but is competent to arrange the affairs +of the country. Every man Jack and woman Jill is a standard, a test, an +imperial weight and measure, and the universe must endure our verdict as +it goes round us. To expect this central standard to turn back on itself +and become aware of its own defects and distortions is like expecting a +pair of scales to weigh itself; or--more absurd still--expecting a false +pair of scales to weigh itself truly. 'All men think all men mortal but +themselves,' and so all men find all men wanting except themselves. If +they ever for a moment suspect that they are not perfect--whether the +suspicion leak in through reflection or reprobation--'t is but for a +moment. We cannot live on bad terms with ourselves, nor with a +consciousness which doubts and despises us--whether it be our own +consciousness or a friend's. Our nature throws up earthworks against a +contemptuous opinion. Just as a bodily wound is repaired by the wonderful +normal processes of circulation and nutrition, so our self-love tends to +repair the wounds of the soul. We feel that even if we are not perfect, +we are as perfect as possible _under the circumstances_. If so-and-so and +so-and-so had had to go through our sufferings or our temptations, he or +she would have acted no better. And even in our wildest remorse we are +self-satisfied with our self-dissatisfaction. Nor is this need of our +nature for self-reconcilement wholly without spiritual significance. It +points to an incurable morality in the human soul, and to the truth that +if we mainly use our ideals to condemn other people by, we are bound to +condemn ourselves by them if we can once be got to perceive that we +_have_ violated them ourselves, though we at once seek peace in +extenuating circumstances. Peace of mind is the homage which vice pays to +virtue. Nor, though it matters immensely to society what ideals people +have, and that they have the right ones, to the people themselves it +matters only that they _have_ ideals, right or wrong. Where there is +honour among thieves, a thief may have a fine sense of self-respect." + +"Plato agrees with you," said I. "He points out that if thieves were +utter scoundrels they could not act in concert." + +"Ah!" said the Young Fogey, "Plato was a great thinker. In truth, the +only incorrigible rogue is he who is devoid of ideals, who has allowed +his ethical nature to disintegrate. Such a one ceases to be a _person_. +He has lost the integrating factor--the moral--which binds human +personality together. He is a mere aggregation of random impulses. The +last stage of moral decay is impersonality. Impersonality sums up 'the +daughters of joy,' with their indifference to aught but the moment. + +"But it is wonderful what shreds of personality, what tags and rags of +the ideal, the most degraded may retain. Was there ever a soul that did +not think some one action beneath its dignity? An absolutely unscrupulous +person is a contradiction in terms. To be unscrupulous were to cease to +be a person, to have become a bundle of instincts and impulses. But no +one is so good or so bad as he appears. The chronicler of the 'Book of +Snobs' was himself a bit of a snob, and the poet who sought for the +spiritual where Thackeray had looked for the snobbish, who bade us note + + "All the world's coarse thumb + And finger failed to plumb, + So passed in making up the main account; + All instincts immature, + All purposes unsure, + That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man's amount, + +was almost as weak as the satirist in that respect for titles and riches +which is the veritable 'last infirmity of noble minds.' + +"Still, Browning's is the truer view of human life, and till we see our +neighbours as Omniscience sees them, our kindest and cruellest estimates +will be equally wide of the mark. + +"And conversely, unless you develop a personality, you cannot be moral, +or even immoral. You can be social or anti-social--that is, your actions +can make for the good or the ill of society. But moral or immoral it is +not given to everybody to be. For I do not agree with those who would +substitute social and anti-social for those ancient adjectives. We are +concerned with the quality of acts as well as with their effects, with +the soul as well as its environment. And it takes a real live soul to do +good or evil. That is the point of Mr. Kipling's Tomlinson--a mere bundle +of hearsays--who could win neither hell nor heaven. It is also the +teaching of Ibsen. You must not shrink from wrong because you are told it +is wrong, but because you see it is wrong. But few people can expect to +develop a personality of their own. Current morality is the automatic +application of misunderstood principles. And so it must always be. For +the function of the average man is to obey. Was it not Napoleon who said +that men are meant either to lead or to obey, and those who can do +neither should be killed off? Ethics is the conscience of the best +regulating the conduct of the worst. Hence there are no immutable rules +of morality: + + "For the wildest dreams of Kew are the facts of Khatmandoo, + And the crimes of Clapham chaste at Martaban. + +But there are immutable _principles_. To spit in a guest's face is with +some savage tribes a mark of respect. But this does not invalidate the +principle that to guests should be shown courtesy. Rules vary with time +and place, principles are eternal; and even if unmentionable things are +done in Africa and Polynesia, if 'the dark places of the earth are full +of cruelty,' that does not invalidate the principles of morality, as our +modern blood-and-thunder young man affects to believe. For that the +principles of right and justice have not yet been discovered in barbarous +countries no more destroys their universality and legitimacy than the +principles of the differential calculus are affected by the primitive +practice of counting on the fingers. And while the ethical geniuses--the +senior wranglers of the soul--are groping towards further truths and +finer shades of feeling, deeper reaches of pity and subtler perceptions +of justice, the rank and file and the wooden spoons must needs apply the +old ethics, even against the new teachers themselves. Every truth has to +fight for recognition, to prove itself not a lie. The brilliant and +impatient young men who scoff at conventions because the people who hold +them are unreal--not persons, feeling and passing moral truths through +their own soul, but parrots--forget that just because the people are +unreal, their maxims are real; that they do not represent the people who +mouth them, but the great moralists and thinkers behind. Against the +brilliant rushlights of contemporary cleverness shine the stars of the +ages. 'T is the immemorial mistake of iconoclasts--even granted they are +taller than their fellow-men--to be ever conscious of the extra inches, +instead of the common feet. Nevertheless" (and here the Young Fogey put +on his most judicial manner) "the extra inches must tell. For because +real ethics resides not in rules but in principles, obedience to the +letter may mean falsity to the spirit, if the circumstances that dictated +the rules have changed. This is not casuistry. 'T is a concept not to be +found in Panaetius or Cicero or the Jesuit Fathers. It means that we are +not to wear our boyhood's waistcoats, but to be measured for manhood's. +Tight-lacing is bad for the spiritual circulation. 'Get rid of the Hebrew +old clo', cried that curious Carlyle, the chief dealer in them. Amen, say +I: but do not let us therefore go naked. And since we have stumbled upon +'Sartor Resartus,' permit me a comparison in keeping. I once saw a tailor +measuring the boys in a charity school. He drew a chalk line five feet up +a wall, and dividing the upper part of the line by horizontal +chalk-marks, stood the boys beside it, one after another, and according +to the chalk-mark which the crown of the unfortunate creature's head +grazed, Master Snip called out 'Fours,' 'Ones,' 'Fives.' Fat boys or lean +boys, big-bodied or big-legged, narrow-chested or broad-shouldered, 't +was all ones--or twos--to him. Did they agree in height, the same +clothes--tight or loose--for all! Thus is it with our moral maxims. +Genius or goose, saint or sinner--your head to the chalk-mark! And +rightly. When one has to deal with great masses one cannot consider +little details. The principles of morality must be broad and simple, and +the world is right to apply them sternly and undiscriminatingly. The +general cannot consider the peculiarities of a particular soldier, though +the corporal of the regiment may make allowances for him. And so with +breaches of morals. The world at large should condemn; but the private +friends, who know the circumstances in every petty involution, who know +the temptations and the extenuating factors, should form as it were a +court of appeal. If they elected to stand by the offender, the world at +large should reconsider its verdict. This is what practically took place +in the George Eliot and Lewes instance. Weighed, not by the steelyard of +general principle, but by the delicate chemical balance of special +detail, they were not found wanting. The Magna Charta is still only a +pious aspiration. 'Every man shall be tried by a jury of his peers.' How +profound! For only our equals can know our travails and temptations. How, +now, if we had to try Shakespeare! which of us would dare sit on the +panel? Yet we 'chatter about Shelley.' He did wrong--granted. But was it +wrong of him to do it? That is another question altogether. Subjective +morality and objective morality are two different things. But the whole +subject of the sexes is wrapped in hypocrisy, and the breaches of +morality are committed less by the celebrated than by the obscure. The +savage sarcasm of Schopenhauer's refusal to discuss monogamy because it +had never yet come within the range of practical politics is still +justified. I remember once reading an anecdote about a besieged town. The +defenders resolved to make a sortie on a certain day, only, in dread of +their plan somehow leaking out beyond the gates, or of their womankind +dissuading some from the perilous enterprise, they administered a solemn +oath to one another that none of them should tell his wife, nor speak of +it again even to another man, till the moment arrived. But each +individual man told the partner of his bosom, only binding her by most +fearsome oaths to say nothing to any other woman or man. All the women +kept their oaths, each going about with the proud sense of being the only +woman in the great secret. And so the women all met in the market-place, +chattering about every subject on earth but that which was nearest their +hearts, and the men moved among them, mutually silent. The whole +community knew the secret whereof no one spoke. You perceive the +parallel? Sex is the secret we are all in. Why shouldn't we talk openly? +Why shouldn't we face facts? The marriage laws should be made as +flexible, not as inflexible, as possible. Why? Because the bad people +will evade everything and the good people endure anything. The bad people +will break the best laws and the good people will respect the worst laws. +Hence, stringency squeezes the saint and lets the sinner slip. Harsh +legislation puts a penalty on virtue: the vicious skirt round it +surreptitiously, or are openly happy in despite of it. The only thing +immutable in sexual morality is the principle of regulating it with a +view to the highest ends of the soul and the state: the regulations +themselves are mutable, and we should not sacrifice too many human beings +to gratify the idealism of the happily married. At the same time do not +suspect me of Hilltopsy-turveydom, which seems to me based on bad +physiology and worse psychology. Mr. Grant Allen, man of science as he is +in his spare moments, is more like Matthew Arnold's Shelley, a beautiful +and ineffectual angel beating in the void his luminous wings in vain. So +complex is the problem which seems to him so simple, that it is not +improbable that the present monogamy (tempered by polygamy) is the best +of all possible arrangements. This is not to belaud the present system, +any more than it is optimistic to say this is the best of all possible +worlds. It may be so, but it remains a pity that no better was possible. +And Mrs. Grundy herself seems to me as over-abused as marriage. The +celerity with which she became a byword, from the moment she made her +accidental appearance in Tom Morton's 'Speed the Plough,' shows how the +popular instinct needed some such incarnation of our neighbours' +opinions. She stands, the representative of the ethical level of the age, +not of fixed pruderies. She is by no means the staid old soul her +maligners imagine--never was there creature more changeable. As we move +on, so will she move on with us. Once she allowed our squires to get +drunk after dinner, now she is shocked at a one-bottle man. You will +never shake her off, you brilliant young gentlemen. For as you +established your own ethics, she would still be there to see that your +ideas were carried out. Granted she is a scandal-monger. But scandal is +the sewer-system of society: the dirty work must be done somehow. Mrs. +Grundy is your scavenger. Americans don't talk scandal, but I fail to see +how they will keep their homes clean without it. The scandal-mongers may +be inspired by no lofty motives, but they make a wonderful unpaid +detective force. Sheridan was not a philosopher. Ubiquitous and +omniscient, Mrs. Grundy is always with you. Once you might have escaped +her by making the grand tour, but now she has a Cook's circular ticket +and watches you from the Pyramids or the temples of Japan,--especially +if, like myself, you have the misfortune to be a celebrity. The only way +to escape her is to be photographed widely. Wasn't it Adam Smith who said +that conscience was only the reflection in ourselves of our neighbours' +opinions? If we didn't value their opinions there would be no morality. +Foreign travel makes you feel there is something in the idea. Who cares +what a parcel of jabbering strangers think about his actions? The moment +you lose touch with your environment, the moment you cease to vibrate to +its nuances, your morality is in a parlous condition. Better go home and +sit down on the well-known couch of Catullus, and feel once more that +people are real and life is earnest and the horizon is not its goal. What +is this mania for movement? If you travel unintelligently you see nothing +that you couldn't have seen more comfortably in a panorama--the world +going round you. If you travel intelligently, you discover the relativity +of all customs and ideas, you distrust your own beliefs, your backbone is +relaxed, your vitality snapped, and you come home a molluscous +cosmopolitan. It is the same thing that happens if you travel mentally +instead of by mileage--if you go in for that modern curse, 'Culture.' You +are not meant to absorb the art and literature of foreigners and dead +peoples, fluttering like a bee from flower to flower. These things were +made by men for their own race and age; they never thought of you,--you +are an eavesdropper. Cathedrals were built for Christians to pray in, not +for connoisseurs to gloat over. You should develop along your own lines, +strong and simple, not be a many-sided nullity. The true Englishmen are +ploughmen and sailors and shopkeepers, not culture-snobs. + +"The greatest poets in every language are those who know only their own +language. Shakespeare and Keats handled English as a million Professors +of Poetry cooperating could never handle it. The greatest Art has always +sprung from the direct pressure of the real world upon the souls of the +artists. To be cultured is to lose that vivid sense of the reality of the +life around you, to see it intellectually rather than to feel it +intuitively. Hence art that is too self-conscious misses the throb of +life. George Eliot failed as soon as she began to substitute intellectual +concepts for the vivid impressions of early memories. The moment people +begin to prate about Art, the day of Art is over, and decadence is set +in. Art should be the natural semi-unconscious enhancement of other +things. The speaker wishing to convince becomes artistically oratorical, +the prophet becomes artistically poetic, the church-builder artistically +architectural, the painter of Madonnas artistically picturesque, the +composer of prayer-chants artistically musical. Art was the child of +Religion, but it has long since abandoned its mother. Portrait and +landscape painting arose as accessories to sacred pictures; the origin of +the opera is to be sought in the Mass; literature developed from +religious writings. But gradually it was discovered that you might paint +noblemen as well as sages, and that scenery could be dissociated from the +backgrounds of Crucifixions and Marriages at Cana. And from seeing that +Art needn't have a religious meaning or content, men came to see that it +needn't have any meaning or content at all. Art, indeed, presents +possibilities of a divorce from intellect and morals of which artists +have eagerly availed themselves. But Art for Art's sake is Dead-Sea +fruit--rosy without, ashes within. Socrates was not perhaps quite right +in saying that the Beautiful was the Useful, but it doesn't follow that +the Beautiful should be the Useless. Even crockery, cutlery, and +furniture should never be Beautiful at the cost of utility. Their Beauty +should be implicated with their natural shapes, inblent with and +inseparable from their uses, not a monstrous accretion from without. The +most artistic knife is the quintessence of knifehood." + +"But that is my idea of Art for Art's sake," I interrupted, for he had +now got his second wind. "Art has always to express the quintessence of +something--be it a street, a life, a national movement, a----" + +"Art for Art's sake means making beautiful knives that won't cut and +beautiful glasses that won't hold water, and beautiful pictures and poems +that say nothing. The people who want their Art dissociated from their +morals are in danger of spiritual blight, and inhabiting a universe of +empty nothings. Too much self-consciousness is as sterile as too little. +Look at these modern Renaissances! They all----" + +"Yes, I know: I have written about that," I said. "And now there is +another one, the Jewish. Have you read the plan for 'A Jewish State,' by +Dr. Herzl, of Vienna? No dreamer he, but wonderfully sane, despite his +lofty conception of a moralised, rationalised, modern State. Too +'modern,' indeed, this idea of Messiah as a joint-stock company! I +predicted years ago we should come to that. But methinks the Doctor----" + +"They are starting the Grand Prix," hastily interrupted the Young Fogey. +"Good-bye! Such a delightful talk!" And turning his back on the horses, +he hurried off the field to lose himself and perhaps find a new pair of +English ears among the parasols and equipages of the sunlit Prater. + + + + +XI + +CRITICS AND PEOPLE + +What is the critic's duty at the play? Does he represent Art, or does he +represent the Public? If he represent Art, then he is but a refracting +medium between the purveyor and the public, which will therefore be +wofully mistaken if it seek in his critiques a guide to its play-going, +as it to some extent does. For while people do not always like a play +because they are told it is good, they often refrain from going to see +one because they are told it is bad. When I was a dramatic critic--a +phrase that merely means I did not pay for my seat--nothing struck me +more forcibly than the frequent discrepancy between the opinions of the +audience at a _première_ and the opinions of the papers. Again and again +have I seen an audience moved to laughter and cheers and tears by a play +which the great outside public would be informed the next morning was +indifferent or worse. The discrepancy was sometimes explicable by +_claques_, which are almost as discreditable to managements as the +keeping of tame critics, who eat food out of their hand. Sometimes it was +not professional _claques_, but amateurs come to see a friend's play _en +masse_, and applauding out of all proportion to its merits, not so much +perhaps from friendship as from simple astonishment at finding any +merits. But putting aside _claques_, it remains true that an audience +will often heartily enjoy what a critic will heartily damn--sometimes in +half a dozen papers, your capable critic being like a six-barrelled +revolver. And so--often enough--the piece, after futile efforts to +masquerade in the advertisement columns in a turned garment of favourable +phrases, dies in an odour of burnt paper; the treasury is robbed of its +due returns; and numerous worthy persons to whom it would have given +boundless pleasure are deprived of their just enjoyment. The obvious +truth is that the public and the critics--the people who pay to see plays +and the people who are paid to see plays--have different canons of +criticism. Sometimes their judgments coincide, but quite as frequently +they disagree. It is the same with popular books. And the reason of this +is not far to seek. The critic is not only more cultured than the average +playgoer, he is more _blasé_. He knows the stock situations, the stage +tricks, the farcical misunderstandings, the machine-made pathos, the dull +mechanic round of repartee, the innocent infant who intervenes in a +divorce suit (like the Queen's Proctor), the misprised mother-in-law, the +bearded spinster sighing like a furnace, the ingenuous and slangy young +person of fifteen with the well-known cheek, and the even more +stereotyped personages preserved in Mr. Jerome's "Stage-land." They all +come, if not from Sheffield, from a perpetual tour in the provinces. The +critic knows, too, which plays are taken from the French and which from +the English, where the actor is gagging and when he is "fluffy." A good +deal of the disillusionment of the scene is also his: he knows that the +hero is not young nor the heroine beautiful, nor the villain as vicious +as either. + +How different the attitude of the occasional playgoer! Seeing only a +tithe of the plays of the day, he neither knows nor cares whether they +repeat one another. The most hackneyed device may seem brilliantly +original to him, the stalest stage trick as fresh as if just hot from the +brain; and jokes that deterred the dove from returning to the ark arride +him vastly. _Per contra_, for his unjaded imagination absolutely new +scenes and dialogues have no more novelty than the comparatively aged. +Probability or truth to life he demands not, perfection of form were +thrown away upon him. His soul melts before the simplest pathos, he is +made happy by a happy ending, and when Momus sits on a hat "he openeth +his mouth and saith Ha! ha!" He is a flute upon which you may play what +false notes you will. In some versions of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" he placidly +accepts two Topsies. I s'pec's one growed out of t' other. He hath a +passion for the real as well as the ideal, and in order to see a +fire-engine, or Westminster Bridge, or a snow-storm, he will perspire you +two hours at the pit's mouth. He could see them any day in the street, +but it gives him wondrous joy to see them in their wrong places. How +absurd, then, for the average critic to be play-taster to the occasional +playgoer! He no more represents him than an M. P. represents the baby he +kisses. As well might one ask a connoisseur to choose the claret for a +back-parlour supper-party. Thus the critic cannot honestly represent the +Public. That he cannot represent Art without injuring the Theatre as well +as the Public, has already been shown. The conclusion one is driven to is +that the critic has no _raison d'être_ at all in the topical press. There +he should be replaced by the reporter. The influence of cultivated +criticism should be brought to bear on the drama only from the columns of +high-class magazines or books. + +Nor am I more certain of the use of the art critic. He is far too +conflicting to be of any practical value, and he as often contradicts +himself as his fellows. He hides his ignorance in elegant English, +sometimes illuminated by epigram, and from his dogmatic verdicts there is +no appeal. Not infrequently he is resolved to be a critic "in spite of +nature," as Sir Joshua has it in a delicious phrase which was possibly +given him by his friend "the great lexicographer." In a letter to the +"Idler," the painter recommends those devoid of eye or taste, and with no +great disposition to reading and study, to "assume the character of a +connoisseur, which may be purchased at a much cheaper rate than that of a +critic in poetry." "The remembrance of a few names of painters, with +their general characters," says Sir Joshua, "and a few rules of the +Academy, which they may pick up among the Painters, will go a great way +towards making a very notable Connoisseur." He goes on to describe a +gentleman of this cast, whose mouth was full of the cant of Criticism, +"which he emitted with that volubility which generally those orators have +who annex no ideas to their words." + +When I once expressed to Mr. Whistler my conviction that, with the single +exception of religion, more nonsense was talked on the subject of art +than on any other topic in the world, that great authority refused to +allow religion any such precedence. Certainly during the season when, for +the middle-class Londoner, art "happens," the claims of art to that proud +pre-eminence become overwhelming, if only temporarily so. Everybody gives +his opinion freely, and it is worth the price. To criticise painting is +only less difficult than to execute it. Fifty per cent. of art is sheer +science, the rigid, accurate science of form and perspective, I do not +say that accuracy is necessary to art. Still it is what most people +presume to judge. But does one person in a hundred know the true +proportions of things, or possess the eye to gauge the anatomy of a +figure? Owing to the neglect in schools of the rudiments of drawing, our +eyes barely note the commonest objects; we remark just enough of their +characteristics to identify them. "Consider!" as Mr. John Davidson writes +in his "Random Itinerary": "did you ever see a sparrow? You have heard +and read about sparrows. The streets are full of them; you know they +exist. But you could not describe one, or say what like is its note. You +have never seen a sparrow, any more than you have seen the +thousand-and-one men and women you passed in Fleet street the last time +you walked through it. _Did_ you ever see a sparrow?" And then there is +colour. Do you really know what the colour of that landscape is, or what +complex hues mantle the surface of yonder all-mirroring pool? Do you know +that, the appearance of nature is constantly varying with every change of +light and every passing cloud? Do you know how Primrose Hill looks at +night? Perhaps you think you know how a haystack looks in the sunlight; +yet across the Channel the illustrious Monet devoted months to painting +one haystack, making fresh discoveries daily. I do not believe you know +how many Roman figures there are on your watch-dial. You probably think +there are twelve. But what is far more important, you may be quite devoid +of artistic sensibility. Yet you would not hesitate to criticise the +Academy or even to be paid for it. I had occasion to buy a doll the other +day. It was a she-doll. There seems, by the way, a tremendous +preponderance of the fair sex in dolls: what difficult social problems +must agitate the Dolls' Houses! This was a pretty doll, with wide blue +eyes, and a wealth of golden tow, and an expression of aristocratic +innocence on its waxen cheek, faintly flushed with paint, and I bore it +home with pride. But when I came to examine it, I found it was but a +sawdust abomination. Oh the modelling of the arm, oh the anatomy of the +leg, oh the patella proximate to the ankle! I felt that if I gave that +doll to the expectant infant, she might grow up to be an art critic. +Thus, then, mused I sorrowfully, is the nation's taste made in Germany. +We are corrupted from the cradle, even as upon our tombs badly carved +angels balance themselves dolefully. Let me make a nation's dolls: I care +not who makes its pictures. Was it of these dolls a late President of the +Royal Academy was thinking, when he said that the German genius did not +find its best expression in plastic art? The Academy will not be +permanently improved until we improve our dolls. + + + + +XII + +TABLE-TALK + +Now that the world is so full of free dinners for the well-fed, it +behoves hostesses to reconsider their methods. With so many dinner-tables +open to the lion, or even to the cub, they must do their spiriting +dexterously if they would feed him. In these days when seven hostesses +pluck hold of the swallow-tails of one man, and the form of grace before +meals must be, "For those we are about to receive, Lord make us truly +thankful," something more than the average attraction is needed to induce +the noble animal to dine at your expense. There is one improvement in the +great dinner function for which I would respectfully solicit the +attention of ladies who entertain but do not amuse. "It is a great point +in a gallery how you hang your pictures," says the sage of Concord, "and +not less in society how you seat your party. When a man meets his +accurate mate, Society begins and life is delicious." Yes, but how rarely +does a man meet his accurate mate in these minor marriages of the +dinner-table! How often is he chained for hours to an unsympathetic soul +he has not even made the mistake of selecting. The terrible length of the +modern dinner makes the grievance very real, and in a society already +vibrant with the demand for easier divorce it is curious that there has +arisen no Sarah Grand of the dining-room to protest against this diurnal +evil. Suppose that at a dance you were told off to one perpetual partner, +who would ever don pumps? Is it not obvious that at a dinner you should +have the same privilege as at a dance--the privilege of choosing your +partner for each course? It could be done during the drawing-room wait. I +give an example of an ordinary menu, marked after the fashion of a +gentleman's dance programme, from which it will the seen at a glance how +much more delightful a dinner would become if you could change your +partner as often as your plate. + + MENU, JUNE 15th, 1894. + + Plats. Engagements. + 1. Hors d'oeuvres . . . . S. S. + 2. Soup . . . . . . . . . A. P. S. + 3. Poisson . . . . . . . Pinky. + 4. Poisson . . . . . . . L. R. + 5. Entrée . . . . . . . . Blue Bow. + 6. Entrée . . . . . . . . Red Hair. + 7. Joint . . . . . . . . W. + 8. Sweet . . . . . . . . Minnie. + 9. Sweet . . . . . . . . Minnie. + 10. Cheese . . . . . . . Long Arms. + 11. Dessert . . . . . . . I. V. + + (Interval before ladies rise.) + + Extra Entrée . . . . . . Agnes. + Extra Joint . . . . . . . Eyeglasses. + Extra Sweet . . . . . . . Minnie. + +You perceive at once that you would always put your idol _pro tem_, down +for the sweets, which would become as fertile a source of flirtation as +"love" in tennis. Of course the same tact and discretion would be needed +in filling your menu as in filling your programme. Some ladies who are +excellent at the entrée may be inadvisable for the joint, which they may +sit out, expecting to monopolise your attention to the detriment of your +meal. Others who are dull at the soup may be agreeably vivacious towards +the later items. A new series of formulae would be added to the language: + +"May I have the pleasure of seeing your menu?" + +"Will you give me one sweet?" + +"Can you spare me the joint?" + +"I am so sorry: I have just given it away." + +"See me eat the poisson, as Grossmith says." + +"Will you put me down for a fish?" + +"This is our entrée, I think." + +"May I have my dessert, Minnie?" + +"Are you engaged for the cheese?" + +"Yes; but you can have the second entrée." + +"Don't forget to keep the soup for me!" + +"If you don't mind sitting it out!" + +"Are you open for the extra joint?" + +"Thank you: I am full up." + +For hostesses who shrink from such a revolution, a beginning might be +made by an automatic change of seats by the gentlemen, say one to the +right as in the _chassé-croisé_ of the Caledonians. Failing this, the +only remaining method of avoiding monotony and the chilling separation of +the extremes of the board is to follow the example of King Arthur and +employ a round table. The round dinner-table is the only way of making +both ends meet. + +Having got your round table, what are you to eat upon it? There is hardly +any edible known to the menu which some sect or other would not banish +from the kitchen, while if you were to follow the "Lancet" you would eat +nothing at all, starving like Tantalus amid a wealth of provisions. Of +these sects of the stomach I was aware of many. But it is only recently +that the claims of "natural food" have been brought within my heathen +ken. The apostle of the new creed is an American lady doctor, whose +gospel, however, is somewhat vitiated by her championship of Mrs. +Maybrick, so that one cannot resist the temptation of suspecting that she +thinks the jury would never have found that interesting lady guilty if +they had fed upon starchless food. For this is the creed of the new +teaching. All starch foods are chiefly digested in the intestines instead +of in the main stomach, and hence are unnatural and morbiferous, and the +chief cause of the nervous prostration and broken-down health that abound +on all sides. (Herr Nordau gives quite a different explanation of the +general breakdown, but no matter.) "The 'Natural Food Society,'" says its +official organ, "is founded in the belief that the food of primeval man +consisted of fruit and nuts of sub-tropical climes, spontaneously +produced; that on these foods man was, and may again become, at least as +free from disease as the animals are in a state of nature." How curiously +apposite seem Dryden's lines, written in a very different connection! + + This was the fruit the private spirit brought, + Occasioned by great zeal and little thought. + While crowds unlearned, with rude devotion warm, + About the sacred viands buzz and swarm. + +And this couplet of his, too, might be commended to the devotees: + + A thousand daily sects rise up and die; + A thousand more the perished race supply. + +What does it matter what primeval man ate? It is not even certain that he +was a member of the Natural Food Society. The savage, as we know him, +lives on the game he hunts and shoots, and prefers his fellow-man to +vegetarianism. No one ever accused the red Indian of nervous prostration, +"when wild in woods the noble savage ran"; nor are leopards and tigers +usually in broken-down health. But, in justice to the Natural Food +Society, I must admit that it displays a pleasant absence of fanaticism, +for there is a proviso in italics: "_All persons about to experiment with +the non-starch food system are urged at first not to use nuts, but to use +instead whatever animal food they have been accustomed to._" The central +feature of the system is abstention from bread, cereals, pulses, and +starchy vegetables, for which food fruits are to be substituted. All this +seems a mighty poor excuse for the formation of a new sect. Fortunately +the Society uses up its superfluous energies "in working for the higher +life," and in its coupling of health and holiness is sound in its +psychology, whatever it may be in its physiology. + +You never heard of Peterkin's pudding, by the way, but there is a fine +moral baked in it. Johannes came to his wife one day and said, "_Liebes_ +Gretchen, could you not make me a pudding such as Peterkin is always +boasting his wife makes him? I am dying of envy to taste it. Every time +he talks of it my chops water." "It is not impossible I could make you +one," said Gretchen good-naturedly; "I will go and ask Frau Peterkin how +she makes it." When Johannes returned that evening from the workshop, +where Peterkin had been raving more than ever over his wife's pudding, +Gretchen said gleefully, "I have been to Frau Peterkin: she has a good +heart, and she gave me the whole recipe for Peterkin's pudding." Johannes +rubbed his hands, and his mouth watered already in anticipation. "It is +made with raisins," began Gretchen. Johannes's jaw fell. "We can scarcely +afford raisins," he interrupted: "couldn't you manage without raisins?" +"Oh, I dare say," said Gretchen, doubtfully. "There is also candied +lemon-peel." Johannes whistled. "Ach, we can't run to that," he said. +"No, indeed," assented Gretchen; "but we must have suet and yeast." "I +don't see the necessity," quoth Johannes. "A good cook like you"--here he +gave her a sounding kiss--"can get along without such trifles as those." +"Well, I will try," said the good Gretchen, as cheerfully as she could; +and so next morning Johannes went to work light-hearted and gay. When he +returned home, lo! the long-desired dainty stood on the supper-table, +beautifully brown. He ran to embrace his wife in gratitude and joy; then +he tremblingly broke off a hunch of pudding and took a huge bite. His +wife, anxiously watching his face, saw it assume a look of perplexity, +followed by one of disgust. Johannes gave a great snort of contempt. +"_Lieber Gott!_" he cried, "and _this_ is what Peterkin is always +bragging about!" + + + + +XIII + +THE ABOLITION OF MONEY + +The Cynic was very old and very wise and very unpopular. I was the only +person at his "At Home" that afternoon. I gave him my views on +Bi-metallism, having just read the leader in the "Times." He yawned +obtrusively, and growled, "Bi-metallism, indeed! The only remedy for +modern civilisation is A-metallism. Money must be abolished. The root of +all evil must be pulled up." + +"Money abolished!" I echoed in amaze. "Why, any student of political +economy will tell you we could not live without it. Lacking a common +measure of value, we----" + +"So it has always been held by students when answering political-economy +papers," he interrupted impatiently. "Yet I dreamt once of a land where +the currency was called in, and the morning stars sang together." + +"But the exchange of commodities----" I began. + +"Was effected by the sublime simplicity of barter. At one sweep were +swept away all that monstrous credit system which had created an army of +accountants and a Court of bankruptcy; all that chaos of single and +double-faced entry--all that sleight-of-hand abracadabra of +signatures--all those paper phantoms of capital. The Stock Exchange and +other gambling-hells shrivelled up. There was a vast saving of clerical +labour, and there were few loopholes for fraud. Everything was too +simple. Swift retribution overtook the man who shirked his obligations to +his fellows. Nobody could juggle with bits of paper at the North Pole and +ruin people at the South. The windows of human Society were cleared of +the gigantic complex cobweb full of dead flies. One could look inside and +see what was going on. 'Gentlemen' could not flourish in the light. They +were like the fungi that grew in cellars. Every man became both a worker +and a trader." + +"Not an unmixed gain, that," I protested. + +"I grant you," said the Cynic. "Some of the finer shades of fine +gentlemanliness were lost: the honourable feeling of cheating one's +tradesmen, the noble scorn of tailors, the lofty despisal of duns. When +all men were tradesmen, these higher class distinctions fused into one +another. There arose a clannish feeling which prevented the tradesman +from defrauding one of his own class. But there was an even graver evil +to be placed to the debit side of the new system. For the professors of +political economy (who had thrown up their posts as a conscientious +protest against the abolition of money and of salaries) proved to be +right. So clumsy was the mechanism of exchange that men were actually +driven to doing more than one kind of work. All those advantages of +specialisation which Adam Smith, supplemented by Babbage, had so +laboriously pointed out were completely lost to a wasteful world. Rather +than be without certain luxuries and necessaries men gave up moving their +legs all day up and down in time with iron treadles, or feeding machines +with bits of material exactly alike, or remaining doubled up underground, +or making marks from hour to hour and from year to year on pieces of +ruled paper. The waste by friction became enormous. Some of the least +thrifty even made their own furniture, and wove their own clothes, and +carved out rude ornaments for themselves. Whether from a natural want of +economy, or from an unwillingness to encounter the difficulties of +traffic, or from a mere spirit of independence, these men deliberately +reverted to the condition from which mankind had so painfully emerged. + +"Some even pretended to enjoy it, and, rather paradoxically, asserted +that the abolition of gold had brought about the golden age of primitive +legend. Others who felt keenly the falling-off in production, and the +absence of those huge stores of unsold commodities which glutted the +ancient markets, and gave a nation a sense of wealth in the midst of +poverty; the aesthetic spirits who lamented the disappearance of the +ancient mansions and palaces, which, although they were empty three parts +of the year, yet afforded men the consolation of knowing that they were +ample enough to shelter the majority of the homeless--men of this stamp +were chagrined by the cumbersome mechanism of exchange, which made these +glories of the past impracticable, and they were for introducing +counters. But counters, although they had the advantage of lacking +intrinsic value, would be quite as bad as actual coins if men could +entirely trust one another never to repudiate their obligations. +Unfortunately Society had grown so honest under the new _régime_ that +this condition was fulfilled, and the operation of counters would have +been identical with that of money. Moreover, counters would have brought +back card-playing, horse-racing, fire and life assurance, and other forms +of gambling, which without them involved such complex calculations and +valuations of loaves and fishes that all the pleasure was spoilt. When +these things were pointed out to the aesthetic and the economical, they +were convinced and remained of the same opinion. + +"But even with all these deficits, the balance in favour of the _status +quo_ was eminently satisfactory. It was rediscovered that man really +wanted very little here below, and that it was better for all to get it +than for some to continue to want it; and, taking into account also the +general freedom from war, newspapers, and other evils of a moneyed +civilisation, it must be conceded that the common people had very little +to grumble at." + +"But what of the uncommon people?" I interrupted at last. "They must have +been martyred." + +"Certainly, for the good of the common people. You see, everything was +topsy-turvey. Besides, they suffered only during the earlier stages of +transition. There was, for instance, the poet who went round among the +workmen to chaffer verses. But there were few willing to barter solid +goods for poetry. Here and there an intelligent artisan in love purchased +a serenade, and an occasional lunatic (for Nature hath her aberrations +under any system) became the proprietor of an epic. But the sons of toil +drove few bargains or hard with the sons of the Muses. The best poets +fared worst, for the crowd sympathised not with their temper, nor with +their diction, and they were like to die of starvation and so achieve +speedy recognition. But the minor poets, too, were in sore strait. The +market was exceedingly limited. Sellers were many and buyers few. +Rondeaux were hawked about from butcher to baker, at ten to the joint, or +three to the four-pound loaf, and triolets were going at a +hollow-toothful of brandy. A ballade-worth of butter would hardly cover a +luncheon biscuit, while a five-act blank-verse tragedy was given away for +a pound of tea, and that only when the characters were incestuous and the +caesuras irreproachable. A famous female poet was reduced to pawning her +best sonnet for a glass of lemonade and a bun. + +"Times were no less hard for the comic writer. Hitherto he had only to +outrage his mother-tongue, or to debase the moral currency, to find the +land ready to accord him of the fat thereof. He used to sit in a room in +Fleet street and make or steal jokes in return for gold. By the wonderful +mechanism of the old Society other men and women, in whatever part of the +world he might stray, would rush to feed and clothe and house him, and +play and sing and dance to him, and physic him, and drive him about in +carriages, and tell him the news and shave him, and press upon him +aromatic mixtures to smoke, and love him, and kowtow to him, and beg of +him, and even laugh at his jokes, all in return for making or stealing +jokes in Fleet street. Some of these men and women would detest jokes, or +have a blindness to their points; nevertheless, not one but would be +eager to express in the most practical form his or her sense of the +services rendered to Society by the joker. But now that people saw with +open eyes through the transparent mechanism of exchange, they were +extremely loth to part with their tangible commodities in return for mere +flashes of wit or vulgarity. Previously they had only half realised that +they were soberly and seriously making coats, or working machines, or +smelting iron, while these jesters were merely cudgelling their brains or +consulting back files. The complexity of the thing had disguised the +facts. But now that they saw exactly what was going on, they became +suddenly callous to numerous vested interests, and their new-found desire +to know why they should give up the fruits of their labour pressed very +cruelly upon innocent individuals. The comic writer found it no joke to +live with 'I'd Rajah not's' going at seventy-five to the cigarette, or +mockeries of the mother-in-law yielding but a ton of coals to the +thousand. Puns were barely vendible, and even comic pictures could only +be sold at a great sacrifice of decency. + +"The heir was a type of sufferer. When he came around asking for +champagne and chicken, the working-man said, 'What are you offering us in +exchange?' and he replied, 'My relationship to my father.' But they would +not buy. + +"Antiquarians and scholars, too, found it a hard task to live. No one +needed the things they raked up from the dust-heap of the past. Critics +were in an exceptionally critical condition. No one cared to exchange his +productions with a man who in return had to offer only his opinion of +somebody else's! As this opinion was usually worthless even under the old +_régime_, people soon began to turn up their noses at it, and nobody +would give a rusk for the information that Turner was a better artist +than Nature, or that hanging was too good for Whistler. Remarks about the +Italian Renaissance were accounted paltry equivalents for green peas, +invidious comparisons among the Lake poets were not easily negotiable for +alpaca umbrellas, and the subtlest misreadings of Shakespeare were +considered trivial substitutes for small-clothes. The artists were +reduced to borrowing half-rolls from their models, partly because people +had gone back to Nature and liked their scenery free from oil, and drank +in the Spirit of Beauty without water, and partly because it was so +difficult to assess the value of a picture now that critics had been +starved out and speculation had died away. Allegorical painters continued +a much-misunderstood race, and the fusion of classes had reacted fatally +on the brisk trade in 'Portraits of a Gentleman.' People who, in their +celestial aspirations after the True, the Good, and the Beautiful, had +forgotten that they ate and drank and required food, warmth, and shelter +to hatch all these sublime things with Capital Letters--people who had +heretofore poured lofty scorn on those who could not forget that a man +was a being with a body--these were now the most clamant demanders of the +material. Only by the withdrawal of physical necessaries and luxuries did +they come to realise how much they had depended on such, or to perceive +the impossibility of the Worship of Truth on an empty stomach. Alas! +under this crude system of barter the most ardent expression of their +sentiments concerning the ideal and the _Kalokagathon_ would not keep +them in cigars. The professional paradoxist went about with holes in his +boots. Epigrams in hand, sickness at heart, and emptiness at stomach, he +crawled through the town in search of a buyer. He offered a dozen of the +choicest apothegms for a pair of hob-nailed boots, conjuring the cobbler +like the veriest 'commercial' to note the superiority of the manufacture. +He pointed out that he travelled with the latest novelties in +Impressionist Ethics, perfect unfitness guaranteed. He even offered to +make a reduction if the cobbler would take a quantity. The worthy +craftsman, stung by the prospect of a cheap job lot of epigrams, was +prevailed upon to look at the goods. But when he read that 'Vice is the +foundation of all virtue,' that 'Self-sacrifice is the quintessence of +selfishness,' and that 'The Good of Evil outweighs the Evil of Good,' he +felt that he could do much better with his boots, even if he only +employed them to kick the epigrammatist. The poor wretch thought himself +lucky when he succeeded in purchasing two epigramsworth of tobacco and a +paradoxworth of potatoes. To cap his misfortunes, the nation suffered +from a sudden invasion of immigrant epigrammatists, so that cynicisms +went a-begging at ten for a sausage-roll. Nor was the dull but moral +maxim at less discount than the witty but improper epigram. Essays +inculcating the most superior virtues failed to counterbalance a day's +charing, and the finest spiritualistic soft soap would not wash clothes. +Even the washerwoman deemed her work more real and valuable than the +manufacture of moralities too fine for use, and the deliberate effusion +of sentiments too good to be true. + +"In those days, too, a complete political platform, comprising a score of +first-class articles of faith, sold at a pair of second-hand +slop-trousers, and a speech of three hours and three hundred parentheses +could not fetch more than a pot of jam in the open market. The workhouses +were crowded with politicians, critics, poets, novelists, bishops, +sporting tipsters, scholars, heirs, soldiers, dudes, painters, +journalists, peers, bookmakers, landlords, punsters, idealists, and other +incorrigible persons. Nothing was more curious and heartrending in the +history of this transition to a new stage than the rapidity with which +those who had been most exigent towards life bated their terms. Men who, +in their aspirations after the Good and the Beautiful and the True, had +unwittingly wasted an intolerable deal of the world's substance in +riotous idealising,--men who had so long breathed the atmosphere of +ottomans and rose-leaves that they were barely conscious of their +privileges,--now found themselves clamouring for bread wherewith to stay +the cravings of their inner selves, and accounted themselves happy if +they found a roof to shelter them. The pathos of it was that they felt it +all too intensely to see the pathos of it, or to express it in poem, +picture, or song. + +"It was, of course, the current political economy to which was due this +immense depreciation in the exchange value of the higher kinds of +intellectual and artistic work. In the old Socialistic system which had +been swept away by the abolition of money, men had purchased literary and +musical commodities in common, each consumer paying his quota for his +share of an unconsumable and infinitely divisible whole. But now few +individuals cared or could afford to purchase whole works for their +private edification; and so it came to pass that men of talent suffered +as much as men of genius in the olden days. And when it began to be +understood of the people that the times were other, and that Art and +Letters and Apostleship would not pay, men turned in resignation to work +with their hands, and they made all kinds of useful things. + +"And the bookmakers returned not to their pens, nor the pot-boiling +painters to their palettes, nor the apostles to their prophesying, being +otherwise engaged and not thereto driven by inward necessity. + +"And the Society of Authors perished! + +"But the great poets, and the prophets, and the workers in colour and +form, upon whom the spirit rested, these wrought on when their daily +labour for a livelihood was at an end, for joy of their art and for the +religious fire that was in them, giving freely of their best to their +fellow-men, and exempt for evermore from all taint of trade." + +The Cynic paused, and I sat silent, deeply impressed by what he had said, +and striving to imprint every word of it upon my memory, so that I might +sell it to a magazine. + + + + +XIV + +MODERN MYTH-MAKING + +So far as I can gather from the publications of the Folklore Society, the +science of Folklore is in a promising condition. The doctors seem to be +agreed neither about the facts nor the methods nor the conclusions, but +otherwise their unanimity is wonderful. Originally the science was made +in Germany, where it still flourishes, like all sciences that require +infinite pains and inexhaustible dulness. All that can be done with any +fruitfulness is apparently the collection and classification of stories, +songs and superstitions. Hypotheses and theories are mainly bricks +without straw, and the only certain conclusion that may be drawn from the +prevalence of folk-tales all over the world is that all men are liars. +This was the first contribution to the science, and the Psalmist may be +regarded as the founder of Folklore. Herder made an advance when he +collected the folk-songs of many nations; and Grimm as a collector was +truly scientific, but when he brought in his mythological explanations he +brought in mythology. Benfey's celebrated theory that European folk-tales +are Oriental in origin and comparatively recent in date seems to be +bearing up well. + +But no one seems to study the mythopoetic instinct as it manifests itself +in modern life, in the daily refraction of fact through the medium of +imagination (a medium whose power of refraction is far greater than that +of water). Because we no longer create gods and goddesses, or people the +woods and brooks with fairies and nymphs, and the forest with gnomes and +the hills with hobgoblins--because we do not soften our lives with an +atmosphere of gracious supernaturalism, and fresco our azure ceiling with +angels--it is assumed that the mythopoetic instinct is dead. Far from it! +It is as lively as ever, and we may watch it at play in the building up +of legends, in the creation of mythical figures; in the shaping of the +Boulanger legend, the Napoleonic legend, the Beaconsfield legend with its +poetical machinery of the primrose, the Booth legend, the Blavatsky +legend; in the fathering of epigrams upon typical wits like Sheridan, or +the attribution of all jokes to "Punch"; in the creation of non-existent +bodies like the Æsthetes, and in the private circulation of scandals +about public personages; in the perpetual revival of the Blood Accusation +against the Jews, or the pathetic clinging to the miracles of exposed +Spiritualists and Theosophists; in the Gladstone of Tory imaginations and +the Balfour of Radical; in the Irish patriot of oratory; in the +big-footed Englishwoman of French fancy, and the English conception of +the Scotchman who cannot see a joke; in the persistence of traditional +beliefs or prejudices that would be destroyed by one inspection. + +Apotheosis is still with us, and diabolification (if I may coin a word). +We canonise as prodigally as in the mediaeval ages, and are as keen as +ever about relics. We are still looking out for dead King Arthur: he will +return by way of the County Council. _Plus ça change plus c'est la +méme[*] chose_--probably the profoundest observation ever made by a +Frenchman. Our mythopoetic instinct is as active as of yore, only the +mode of its expression is changed. It works on modern lines, has taken to +prose instead of poetry, and only occasionally unfurls wings. Why does +not the Folklore Society investigate the origin of our modern myths? Why +not seize on the instinct as it is seen at play in our midst, moulding +movements and fashioning faiths? Why not catch it in the act--employ +vivisection, so to speak, instead of dissecting dead remains? Why not try +to extract from the living present the laws of the creation and +development of myths and the conditions of their persistence, so that by +applying these laws retrospectively we may come to understand our +heritage of tradition? Ah! but this would require insight into life, +which your scientist has no mind for. Besides, dry-as-dust +work--collation and classification--may be distributed among the members +of a society; but how require of them fresh vision? There is dispute as +to how folklore arose: one school talks vaguely of creation by the clan, +the community, the race; another insists that the germ at least must +always have sprung from some one individual mind, just as a proverb may +be the wisdom of many but must be the wit of one; that ideas that are "in +the air," like a tree whose branches are everywhere and whose trunk +nowhere, had a single root once; and that every _on dit_ was literally +"_one says_" originally. But if we watch the process of mythopoetising in +our daily life, we shall see both theories illustrated. Consider the myth +of Lord Randolph's small stature: it may be traced easily enough to Mr. +Furaiss's pencil. Many people who have the impression forget whence they +derived it; and many who never saw Punch had the idea conveyed to them by +London letter-writing journalists who never saw Churchill. Yet there is +no doubt that the myth is the creation of a single man. In this instance +the genesis is clear, and it makes for the one-man theory. In other +instances, I can quite imagine myths arising from a spectacle witnessed +in common by a multitude, or an incident developing itself under the eyes +of many. No single reporter of the doings in Sherwood Forest built up the +Robin Hood legend. + +[* Transcriber's note: So in original. One would rather expect an accent +circonflexe on the first 'e', not an accent aigu.] + +Doubtless every ballad was the work of an individual; crowds do not +spontaneously burst out into identical remarks, except on the stage. But +the crowd was ready for the individual's ballad; it furnished him with +his theme and his inspiration, so that he "gave back in rain what he +received in mist." Thus, most folklore would owe its birth to the +co-operation of the individual and the community--the former the creative +or male factor, the latter the receptive or feminine factor. The one man +launches his jest, his caricature, his story, his melody, into a +sympathetic but inarticulate environment. Then it is taken up, it is +transformed, it grows mighty. The "Times" is something very different +from the total of the contributors' manuscripts. + +Perhaps the most interesting field of folklore work, from the point of +view of mere literature, was that opened up by Von Hahn's classification +of the stories of the world according to their original elements, their +bare plots. There are about seventy main types of stories to which all +the wandering tales of the world may be reduced. As thus: + + +GRATEFUL BEASTS' TYPE + +1. A man saves some beasts and a man from a pit. + +2. The beasts somehow make him rich, and the man somehow tries to ruin +him. + +I have little doubt that these might be fined down to seventeen on a very +broad basis of classification. I should like to see an analysis of the +world's novels similar to that which Polti has made for the drama. +Probably it would need a Society to do it, though it would be easy enough +to keep pace with the output when once the arrears were cleared off. +There are only twenty novels published every week in England, omitting +serials, and probably only two or three hundred in the whole world. By a +division of labour these could be easily taken to pieces and their plots +dissected. In time this might lead to a copyright in incidents as well as +in words and titles, and the stock situations would be stocked no more, +and the conventional novelists would be killed off. Even if Parliament +did not see its way to copyrighting incidents, for fear good ideas +spoiled by weak writers should be lost to use by the strong, the +publication of a catalogue of the motives of fiction already treated +would deter all but the most shameless from changing infants at nurse, or +rescuing young ladies from bulls, or mistaking brother and sister for +lovers, or having to do with wills lost, stolen, or strayed. Colossal as +the task looks, a first rough analysis would sweep away half the new +novels of the month and include three-fourths of the fiction of the past. +Here is the broadest and most general formula of English fiction as she +is wrote for the young person: _A young man meets a young woman under +unpropitious conditions which delay their union._ + +Nine-tenths of the novels of the day may be dissected under the following +heads: (_a_) Description of Hero; (_b_) Of Heroine; (_c_) How they first +met; (_d_) Why they did not marry till the last chapter. + +There! Quite unintentionally I have given away the secret of +novel-writing. It is, for all the world, like the parlour game of +Consequences, wherein each person fills up a form unknown to the others. +The muscular John Jones met the beautiful Princess of Portman Square in +the Old Kent Road, and said to her, "Oh, 'Arriet, I'm waitin' for you," +and she replied, "You must wait till the end of the third volume," and +the consequences were that they got married, and the world said, "We must +get this from Mudie's." After this lesson in fiction any one may rival +the masters, provided he can hold a pen and doesn't mind leaving the +spelling to the compositors. You may perhaps think that the real value of +a book lies in the accessories before the marriage, in the pictures of +life and character; but I can assure you, unless you turn everything +round this axis, the critics will tell you you can't construct. For my +part, I would rather have "The Story of an African Farm," two-storied as +it really is, than a hundred bungalow romances. Better genius without art +than art without genius. + +For French fiction the formula would have to be varied. It would run: +(_a_)Hero; (_b_)Heroine; (_c_)How they first loved; (_d_)What the hero's +wife or the heroine's husband did; (_e_)Who died? + +Another piece of work I should like to see done is a census of the +population of novels. Then we should see clearly how far they are a +reflection of life. In England I warrant the professional men would +outnumber all others; the aristocracy would come next, and the urban +working-man would be swamped by the villagers. The nation of shopkeepers +would be poorly represented, and artisans would be few in the land. There +would be more perfectly beautiful English girls than there are girls in +England, more American millionaires than even the States can raise, and +more penniless lords than if Debrett were a charity list of paupers; more +satanic guardsmen than ever wore "the widow's uniform," more briefless +barristers than all the men who have eaten dinners in vegetarian +restaurants, and more murderers than have ever been caught since the days +of Jonathan Wild. Indeed, I am not certain but what the population of +English novels would come out thirteen millions, mostly criminals. The +relative proportions of blondes and brunettes would also be brought out, +and whether there is a run on any especial colour of hair. Plain heroines +came in with Jane Eyre. It would be interesting to ascertain if they are +still worn or still weary. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +THE PHILOSOPHY OF TOPSY-TURVEYDOM + +My friends, topsy-turveydom is not so easy as it looks. The trouble is +not in inverting, but in finding _what to invert_. Our language is full +of ancient saws, but it takes wit to discover which to turn upside down. +Anybody can stand anything on its head, but it is only the real humourist +who knows which thing can stand on its head without falling or looking +foolish. 'T is the same in stage dialogue. Many a man of moderate wit can +find a repartee when the joke is unconsciously led up to by another +speaker. It is the preparation for the joke that is the dramatist's +difficulty. To borrow a term from the Greek grammars, the protasis of the +repartee is more troublesome than the apodosis. The puzzle is, therefore, +find the protasis. When Barry Pain says that sometimes the glowing fire +in the grate stares at you from behind its bars, as if it could read +pictures in you, you cannot help laughing. If he had given you the +protasis, "You gaze into the fire as if you could read pictures in it," +even you could have invented the inversion. Topsy-turveydom is, I repeat, +no laughing matter. It is an art--and must be studied. When Besant's +School of Literature is founded, there will be + + +EXERCISES IN TOPSY-TURVEYDOM + +1. Invert the following commonplaces humorously: + + Honesty is the best policy. + The cup that cheers but not inebriates. + Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. + Like a child in its mother's arms. + (_Not so easy, you see!_) + +2. Invert the following _motifs_ humorously: + + (_a_) A parted husband and wife reconciled by their little child. + (Stock Poetry.) + + (_b_) A patient marrying his nurse on recovery. (Stock Story.) + + (_c_) A mother-in-law who comes to stay six months. (The Old Humour.) + +Inversion may be applied, you see, both to ideas and to phrases. Let me +contribute a specimen of either sort to the literary primer of the +future: + + +THE ECONOMY OF SMOKING + +I must really give up not smoking, at least till the American Copyright +Act works smoothly, and I am in a position to afford luxuries. At present +this habit of not smoking is a drain upon my resources which I can ill +support. Whenever a man comes to my house, I have to give him cigars, or +else gain the reputation of a churly and ill-mannered host. In the olden +days, when I was economical and smoked all day long, I could go to that +man's house and get those cigars back. Very often, too, I used to get the +best of the bargain, and thus effect considerable economies in the +purchase of good tobacco. Nowadays, not only have I got to give away +cigars for nothing, but they must be good ones. Formerly if I gave my +friends bad cigars, it was from a box I was obviously smoking myself, and +therefore they had at least the consolation of knowing I was a companion +in misfortune. But to give others "evils from which you are yourself +exempt" (to quote Lucretius) would be a terrible blend of bad taste and +inhospitality. Under such circumstances a man looks on a bad cigar as an +insult, and the greater insult because it is a gratuitous one. But my +losses from these sources are trivial compared with the item for +theatres. In the pure, innocent days, when I could not bear to let my +pipe out of my mouth even for a moment, I was unable to go to theatres; +but now that I have taken to not smoking, I have fallen a victim to my +other craving--the passion for the play. Three stalls a week tot up +frightfully in a year. No, decidedly I must check this extravagant habit +of not smoking before I am irretrievably ruined. + +This is forced, but Truth often dwells the bottom of a paradox. + + +THE DANGER OF LEARNING TO SWIM + +The danger of drowning arises mainly from being able to swim. The ability +to swim is of little use as a safeguard against drowning, for it is only +in a minority of cases that the accident thoughtfully allows you every +facility for displaying your powers of natation; you are not conceded +calm stream, a calm mind, and a bathing-costume; usually you are +disorganised, _ab initio_, by the unexpectedness of the thing, you are +weighed down by your clothes and your purse, you are entangled with +sails, or clutched at by fellow-passengers, or sucked into vortices. In a +big steamer accident, what chance is there for those who can swim? Only +an occasional Hercules can keep afloat in a heavy sea, and he not for +long. The most that swimming can do for you is to enable you to save +yourself in circumstances where you would very probably be saved by +somebody else. On the other hand, the ability to swim exposes you to many +risks you w|uld never have run had you been helpless in the water. You +swim in perilous places, you go out too far and cannot get back, you +expose yourself to the possibilities of cramp, you try to save other +people's lives and lose your own. There is also the temptation to go to +the Bath Club in Piccadilly and die of a too luxurious lunch. On the +whole, I believe as many swimmers are drowned as non-swimmers when a +general accident occurs, while the swimmers invite special accidents of +their own. Do you deduce from this that I advise you not to learn to +swim? Quite the contrary: it is a delightful and invigorating exercise. +Only you must not imagine you are thereby armed against fate. Swimming +for amusement is as different from swimming for life as yachting on the +Thames is from crossing the Atlantic. + + +For my example of phrase-inversion I cannot do better than reprint the +open letter addressed by me--in the height of his success, and in parody +of his manner--to the great _phraseur_ and _farunix_ of his little day; +especially as some have thought to see in it proof that prophecy has not +yet died out of Israel. + + +MY DEAR SIR: I have never for one moment doubted that you are a thinker, +a poet, an art critic, a dramatist, a novelist, a wit, an Athenian, and +whatever else you say you are. You are all these things--I confess it to +your shame. I have always looked down upon you with admiration. As an +epigrammatist I consider you only second to myself, though I admit that +in the sentiment, "to be intelligible is to be found out," I had the +disadvantage of prior publication. When you point out that Art is +infinitely superior to Nature, I feel that you are cribbing from my +unpublished poems, and I am quite at one with you in regarding the sunset +as a plagiarism. Nature is undoubtedly a trespasser, and should be warned +off without the option of a fine. I say these things to make it quite +clear that I speak to you more in anger than in sorrow. You are much too +important to be discussed seriously, and if I take the trouble to give +you advice, it is only because I am so much younger than you. I am +certain you are ruining yourself by cigarette cynicism; far better the +rough, clay-pipe cynicism of a Swift. There is no smoke without fire, but +it requires very little fire to keep a cigarette going. The art of +advertising oneself by playful puffs is not superior to Nature. But you +are not really playful and innocent; it would be ungracious to deny that +you have all the corruption which the Stage has so truly connected with +the cigarette. Still, isn't it about time you got divorced and settled +down? At present there are only two good plays in the world--"The Second +Book of Samuel" and "Lady Windermere's Fan"; surely you have power to add +to their number. Try a quiet life of artistic production, and don't talk +so much about Art. We are tired of missionaries, whether they wear the +white tie of the Church or of Society, and it is a great pity we have not +the simple remedy of the savages, who eat theirs. These few words of +admonition would be incomplete if I did not impress upon you that policy +is the only honesty. Art is short and life is long, and a stitch in time +debars one from having a new coat. You can take a drink to the horse, but +you can't make him well; and nothing succeeds like failure. Vice is the +only perfect form of virtue, and virtue---- Easy there! Steady! Avast! +Belay! Which! + +The Boeotians are dull folk, no doubt, but life would be dull without +them. Imagine a wilderness of Wildes! It would be like a sky all +rainbows. Then what beautiful whetstones the Boeotians are! Abuse them, +by all means, so long as they will pay for it. But what a blessing that +the minds capable of taking the artistic view of life are rare enough to +keep the race sane! The coarser forms of egotism seem less baneful to the +brain-tissue. You claim to be an Athenian, but the Athenians did not +smoke cigarettes. It is true that tobacco had not been invented, but this +is a sordid detail If Athens stands for anything in the history of +culture, it is for sanity, balance, strength. Aristotle, at least as much +an Athenian as any native of Ireland, meditated about aesthetics, but he +meditated also about politics, logic, philosophy, political economy, +ethics--everything. Socrates was a _causeur_, but he was also a martyr. +No, after all the Beautiful is _not_ so important as you imagine you are. +No doubt for a few billion years painters and musicians and +epigrammatists will remain the centre cf creation; but when the sun grows +cold it is conceivable that invaluable canvases may be used up as fuel, +and that humanity may sacrifice even your printed paradoxes to keep +warmth a little longer in its decrepit bones. The fact is, you are too +_borné_, too one-sided, to be accepted as as a "king of men." You take +such broad views that you grow narrow. What you want is a little +knowledge of life, and twelve months' hard labour. + + +But though topsy-turveydom may be attained with comparative ease, it +performs a lofty philosophical function. Everything rusts by use. Our +moral ideals grow mouldy if preached too much; our stories stale if told +too often. Conventionality is but a living death. The other side of +everything must be shown, the reverse of the medal, the silver side of +the shield as well as the golden. Convex things are equally concave, and +concave things convex. The world was made round so that one man's "up" +should be another man's "down." The world is the Earthly Paradox, with +four cardinal points of mutual contradiction, all equally N., S., E., and +W. 'T is thus a symbol of all paradoxes, of all propositions in which +mutually contradictory things are true. Nay, paradox is the only truth, +for it cannot be denied; including, like the world, its own +contradiction. Topsy-turveydom unfolds our musty ideas to the sun and +spreads them out the other way. The man who reverses the Fifth +Commandment and says that parents should honour their children is not a +flippant jester, but a philosophic thinker. This is the true inwardness +of the topsy-turvey humourist. + +Topsy-turveydom has played a prodigious part in the progress of thought. +The history of philosophy and science is merely a tale of development by +topsy-turveydom, every new thinker simply contradicting his predecessor. +Thales said water was the primitive principle of all things; so +Anaximander said it was air, whereupon Anaximenes said it was matter. +This made Pythagoras maintain it was not concrete matter but abstract +number; whereupon Xenophanes would have it that it was not number but +pure monistic being, and his disciple Zeno invented some delightful and +immortal paradoxes to prove that time and motion and number and change +have no existence, and only existence exists. Up comes Heraclitus, +proving that existence doesn't exist, and there is nothing in the world +but becoming: that so far from change not existing, nothing exists but +change. It was now about time to return to earth, and so Empedocles and +Democritus came along with their Atoms; thereby provoking Anaxagoras into +bringing in Soul to explain things. Things were going on thus +satisfactorily when the Sophists appeared on the scene to say that we +didn't really know anything, because all our knowledge was subjective, so +Socrates insisted that it didn't matter, because conduct was +three-fourths of life. Plato retorted that it did matter, and he invented +an archetypal universe of which this was a faint and distorted copy. +Naturally Aristotle must contradict him by founding empirical science, +which concerns itself only with this world. On his heels came the Stoics, +who would have nothing to do with science except in so far as it made men +virtuous, and who wanted to live soberly and severely. This provoked the +neo-Platonists into craving for ecstatic union with the supernatural. The +transition period from ancient philosophy to modern was one long fight +between Nominalists and Realises, the one school teaching the exact +opposite of the other. + +But it is in the history of Modern Philosophy and Modern Science that one +finds the strongest examples of this progress by paradox. The triumph of +topsy-turveydom was when Galileo, the Oscar Wilde of Astronomy, declared +that the earth went round the sun--a sheer piece of inversion. Darwin, +the Barry Pain of Biology, asserted that man rose from the brutes, and +that, instead of creatures being adapted to conditions, conditions +adapted creatures. Berkeley, the Lewis Carroll of Metaphysics, +demonstrated that our bodies are in our minds, and Kant, the W. S. +Gilbert of Philosophy, showed that space and time live in us. In +Literature it is the same story. To credit the scholars, Homer is no +longer a man, nor the Bible a book. As for Zechariah, it was written +before Genesis. This topsy-turveydom is a valuable organon of scientific +discovery. Take any accepted proposition, invert it, and you get a New +Truth. Any historian who wishes to make a name has but to state that Ahab +was a saint and Elijah a Philistine--that Ananias was a realist and +George Washington a liar--that Charles I. was a Republican hampered by +his official position, and that the Armada defeated Drake--that Socrates +died of drinking, and that hemlock was what he gave Xantippe. In fact, +there is no domain of intellect in which a judicious cultivation of +topsy-turveydom may not be recommended. Ask why R. A.'s are invariably +colour-blind, and you become a great art critic, while a random regret +that Mendelssohn had no ear for music will bring you to the very front in +musical circles. For the tail shall always wag the dog in the end, and +Aristides will never be able to remain in Athens if men will call him +"the Just." _Tout passe, tout casse, tout lasse._ We are bored--and then +comes the topsy-turveyist's opportunity. "To every action there is an +equal and contrary reaction" is a sure law of motion, and in the seesaw +of speculation the "down" of to-day is the "up" of to-morrow. Next +century we shall be sick of science; and indeed the spooks are already +returning for the funeral of this. I shall end with + + AN APOLOGY TO A CELEBRATED CHARACTER + + As a synonym for sin, + Jezebel, + I 'll no longer drag you in, + Jezebel. + Now I know your glorious mission was to spread + the truths Phoenician, + Metaphoric life anew you shall begin, + Jezebel; + Metaphoric life anew you shall begin, + + Cultured Baalite, loyal wife, + Jezebel, + Martyr in a noble strife, + Jezebel; + Protestant for light and sweetness 'gainst the + narrow incompleteness + Of Elijah and Elisha's view of life, + Jezebel; + Of Elijah and Elisha's view of life. + + + + +XVI + +GHOST-STORIES + +Why do ghosts walk at Christmas? What seduction hath Yule Tide for these +phantastic fellows, that it lures them from their warm fireplaces? Is it +that the cool snow is grateful after the fervours of their torrid zone, +where even the pyrometer would fail to record the temperature? Is it that +Dickens is responsible for the season, and that Marley's ghost has set +the fashion among the younger spooks? The ghost of Hamlet's father was +not so timed: he walked in all weathers. Perhaps it is the supernatural +associations of Christmas that create the atmosphere in which ghosts live +and move and have their being. Or perchance it is at the season of family +reunion that the thoughts turn most naturally to vacant chairs and the +presences that once filled them. Or is it that the ghosts walk for me +alone, by reason that Christmas always brings me haunting thoughts of +them? For my youth was nursed upon the "penny dreadfuls" of an age that +knew not "Chums," nor the "Boys' Own Paper." They were not so very +dreadful, those "penny dreadfuls," though dreadfully disrespectful to +schoolmasters, who were wont to rend them in pieces in revenge. The +heroes of the stories began to urge on their wild career in the +school-room, where they executed practical jokes that would have +gladdened the heart of Mr. Gilbert's merry Governor; the jokers were +never found out unless they confessed to spare another boy's feelings, +and then the schoolmaster was so touched that he spared theirs. After +passing through five forms and upsetting them all, they arrived at the +sixth form, which demanded a new volume to itself, called, let us say, +"Tom Tiddler's School-days Continued," and mainly devoted to cigars and +flirtation. "Tom Tiddler at College" followed--all "wines" and +proctor-baiting, with Tom Tiddler as stroke in the victorious 'Varsity +eight. "Tom Tiddler Abroad" was the next title, for the chronicle of a +popular hero would run on for years and years; and in this section red +Indians and wild beasts were rampant. 'T were long to trace the fortunes +of Tom Tiddler in all their thrilling involutions; but when he had +painted the globe red he married and settled down. And then began "Young +Tom Tiddler's School-days," "Young Tom Tiddler's Schooldays Continued," +"Young Tom Tiddler Abroad," and all the weekly round of breathlessness; +and never was proverb truer than that the young cock cackles as the old +cock crows. By the time interest palled in the son a new generation of +readers had arisen, and the unblushing paper commenced to run "Tom +Tiddler's School-days" again. So went the whirligig. But at Christmas, +when the blue-nosed waifs carol in the cold and boys have extra pennies, +Tom Tiddler himself slunk into the background, lost in the ample folds of +a "Double Number," the same blazoned impudently, as though it did not +demand double money. But the extra pennyworth was all ghosts: ghosts, +ghosts, ghosts; full measure, pressed down and running over; not your +Ibsenian shadows of heredity, but real live ghosts, handsomely appointed, +with chains and groans and wavy wardrobes. They lived in moated granges +and ivy-wreathed castles, and paced snowy terraces or dark, desolate +corridors. There was no talk then of psychic manifestations, or auras, or +telepathy, or spiritual aether. Ghosts were solid realities in those days +of the double number. + +"To every man upon this earth death cometh soon or late," as Macaulay +sings, and it is no less impossible to escape spirit-rapping and all the +fascinating _menu_ of the Psychical Society. The epidemic, which is +contagious to the last degree, seizes its victims when they are off +guard, under pretense of amusing an idle hour, and ends by robbing them +of sleep and health; some it drives into lunatic asylums and some into +newspaper correspondence. That thought-reading is not necessarily +delusion or collusion is now generally recognised; a _protégée_ of Mr. F. +W. Myers convinced me of the possibility of simple feats, though not of +her explanation of them. She credited them to spirits, and wicked spirits +to boot. In vain, I pointed out that spirits who occupied themselves so +docilely about matters so trivial must be harmless creatures with no more +guile than the village idiot: she would concede no grain of goodness in +their composition. Table-turning I had never seen. Ghosts I had never +met, though I had met plenty of persons who had their acquaintance. Like +Lady Mary Wortley Montagu--or is it Madame de Stäel[*]?--I did not +believe in them, but I was afraid of them. Premonitions I had often had, +but they had scarcely ever come true. But now I am prepared to believe +anything and everything, and to come up to the Penitent Form--if there be +one--of the Psychical Society and to declare myself saved. I am already +preparing a waxen image of a notorious critic, to stick pins thereinto. +Not that I did not always believe the Spook Society was doing necessary +work in supplementing the crude treatises of our psychologists, who are +the most fatuous and self-complacent scientists going. + +[* Transcriber's note: So in original. One would rather expect the accent +tréma on the 'e', not on the 'a'.] + +My conversion to a deeper interest in the obscurer psychic phenomena +befell through encountering a theatrical touring company in a dull +provincial town. The barber told me about it--a dapper young Englishman +of twenty-five, with an unimpeachable necktie. + +BARBER. "They're playing 'Macbeth' to-night, sir." + +AUTHOR. (growling). "Indeed?" + +B. "Yes, sir; I'm told it's pretty thick." + +A. "What's pretty thick?" + +B. "'Macbeth.'" + +A. "What do you mean by 'thick'?" + +B. "Full of gore, sir. I don't like those sort o' pieces. I like +opera--'Utopia' and that sort o' thing. You can see plenty o' thick +things in real life. I don't want to go to the theatre to get the creeps +and horrors. But I've seen 'Othello' and 'Virginius.'" + +A. "Ha! Do you know who wrote 'Othello'?" + +B. "No, that I don't." + +A. "Do you know who wrote 'Macbeth'?" + +B. "Now you ask me something!" + +A. (speculating sadly on the vanity of fame and the absurdity of being a +national bard, but determined to vindicate a brother author) "'Othello' +and 'Macbeth' were written by Shakespeare." + +B. (unmoved) "Ah! that's the man that wrote 'Taming of the Shrew,' isn't +it?" + +A. (astonished) "Yes." + +So the Author went to see the thick play, and found he knew Lady Macbeth, +nay, had--by an odd episode--first seen her in dressing-gown and +curl-papers; so, presuming upon this intimate acquaintanceship, he got +himself bidden to the Banquet--in less Shakespearian language, he went to +supper. The Banquet was uninterrupted by Banquos or other bogies. Lady +Macbeth--in a Parisian art-gown--sipped milk after her bloody exertions, +and listened graciously, her fair young head haloed in smoke, to her +guest's comparison of herself with Mrs. Siddons. But Lady Macbeth's +Chaperon was a Medium, self-made, and when the compliments and the supper +had been cleared away, the Medium kindly proposed to exhibit her +newly-discovered prowess with the Planchette. The Planchette, as +everybody knows, and as I didn't know myself till I saw it, is a wooden +heart that runs on two hind wheels, and has a pencil stuck through the +centre of its apex. The Medium gracefully places her hand upon the heart, +which after an interval of Quaker-like meditation begins to write, as +abruptly as a Quaker is moved by the Spirit, and as abruptly finishes. + +AUTHOR. "What do I want to do early to-morrow morning?" + +What was in his mind was: "Send a wire to Manchester." The Planchette +almost instantly scribbled: "Send a telegram to your brother." Now, his +brother _was_ connected with the matter; and although at the time he +considered the Planchette half wrong, yet in the morning, after +reconsidering the question, the Author actually did send the wire to his +brother instead. Sundry other things did the Planchette write, mostly +wise, but sometimes foolish. It did not hesitate, for example, over the +publisher of a certain anonymous book, but failed to give the title, +though it wrote glibly, "Children of Night." These results were +sufficiently startling to invite further investigation, so the trio next +proceeded to "call spirits from the vasty deep" by making a circle of +their thirty fingers upon a wooden table. Very soon the table gave signs +of upheaval, while some cobbling sprite fell to tapping merrily at his +trade within its ligneous recesses. Lady Macbeth said that these taps +denoted its readiness to hold communion with the grosser earth, and +constituted its sole vocabulary. As in the game of Animal, Vegetable, and +Mineral, its information was to be extracted by a series of queries +admitting of "yes" or "no" in answer. One tap denoted "no," three "yes," +and two "doubtful." It could also give numerical replies. The table or +the sprite, having indicated its acquiescence in this code, proceeded to +give a most satisfactory account of itself. It told the Author his age, +the time of day, the date of the month, carefully allowing for its being +past midnight (which none of the human trio had thought of); it was +excellently posted on his private concerns, knowing the date of his +projected visit to America, and the name of his past work and his future +wife. Its orthography was impeccable, though its method was somewhat +todious, for the Author had to run through the alphabet to provoke the +sprite into tapping at any particular letter. But one soon grew +reconciled to its cumbrous methods, as though holding converse with a +foreigner; and its remarks made up in emphasis what they lacked in +brevity, and were given with exemplary promptitude. Interrogated as to +its own personality, it declared it was an unborn spirit, destined to be +born in ten years. "Do you know what makes you be born?" inquired the +Author. "Yes," it replied. "Will you tell us?" "Yes." "Tell us, then." +"F-O-R-C-E." "Is it God's force?" "No." "Is He not omnipotent, then?" +"No." "What is the true religion?" "Buddhism." "Do you mean Madame +Blavatsky was right?" "Yes." "Is there a heaven?" "Yes." "A Hell?" "No." +To hear a small still voice rapping, rapping in the silence of the small +hours, rapping out the secrets of the universe, was weird enough. It was +as though Milton's words were indeed inspired, and-- + + Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth + Unseen. + +"What!" thought the Author, "shall the Great Secret which has puzzled so +many heads--heads in caps and heads in turbans, heads in bonnets and +heads in berettas, as Heine hath it--shall the explanation of the +Universe, which baffled Aristotle, and puzzled Hegel, and still more his +readers, be the property of this wretched little unborn babe, this infant +rapping in the night, and with no language but a rap? Was, then, +Wordsworth right, and is our birth 'but a sleep and a forgetting'?" And, +mingled with these questionings, a sort of compassion for the poor orphan +spirit, inarticulate and misunderstood, beating humbly at the gates of +speech. Natheless was the Author quite incredulous, and even while he was +listening reverently to these voices from Steadland, his cold cynic brain +was revolving a scientific theory to account for the striking +manifestations. + +In the course of two or three _séances_, with lights turned low, but +honesty burning high--for Lady Macbeth was guileless, and her Chaperon +above suspicion,--various other "spirits" hastened to be interviewed. +There was "Ma," who afterwards turned out to be the Chaperon's "Pa," +whose name--a queer French name--it gave in full. The Chaperon's "Pa," +who was dead, announced he was no longer a widower, for his relief had +just rejoined him on Wednesday--the 10th. This news of her mother's death +was unknown to the Chaperon. In truth, "Pa" is still a widower. + +Another "spirit"--a woman (who refused to give her age)--predicted that +the amount of money taken at the theatre the next night would be £44. The +actual returns on the morrow were £44 0_s_. 6_d_. But when, elated by its +success, it prophesied £43, the returns were only £34. But this same +creature, that gave only an inverted truth--perhaps it was momentarily +controlled by the spirit of Oscar Wilde--displayed remarkable knowledge +in other directions. Asked if it knew what piece had been played the week +before in the theatre--a question that none of the three could have +answered--it replied, "'The Road to ----'" "Do you mean 'The Road to +Ruin'?" the Author interrupted eagerly, tired of its tedious +letter-by-letter methods. "No," it responded vehemently; and finished, +"'F-o-r-t-u-n-e.'" Lady Macbeth consulted the "Era," and sure enough "The +Road to Fortune" had preceded her own company. "Can you tell us the piece +to follow?" the author asked; and the "spirit" responded readily "'The +Pro----'" "Do you mean 'The Professor's Love Story'?" the Author again +interrupted. "No; 'The Prodigal,'" answered the table. "Ah! 'The +Prodigal,'" echoed the Author, confounding it temporarily with "The +Profligate"; but the spirit dissented, and added, "'Daughter.'" There +being no means of verifying this for the moment, the Author proceeded to +inquire for the piece to follow that, and was unhesitatingly informed +that it was "The Bauble Shop." "Where is 'The Bauble Shop' now?" he +inquired. The spirit amiably rapped out "Eastbourne." This was correct +according to the "Era." Consulting the hoardings after leaving the house, +the Author discovered that the other replies were quite exact, save for +the fact that "The Bauble Shop" was to come first and "The Prodigal +Daughter" second. Here was the paradoxical humour of this Oscar Wilde-ish +"spirit" again. + +Endless was the information vouchsafed by these disembodied +intelligences, in any language one pleased; and, although they at times +displayed remarkable obstinacy, refusing to answer, or breaking off +abruptly in the middle of a most interesting communication, as though +they had been betrayed into indiscretion: yet, to speak generally, there +was scarcely any topic on which they were not ready to discourse--past, +present, or to come--and their remarks, whether accurate or not, were +invariably logical, bearing an intelligible relation to the question. +Even sporting tips were obtainable without a fee, and Avington was given +as the winner of the Liverpool Cup, though the Author had never heard of +him, and the other two were not aware he was booked for the race, still +less that he was the favourite. In the sequel he only came second. Real +tips did the "spirits" give, tipping the table vehemently. They were also +very obedient to commands, moving or lifting the table in whatsoever +direction the Author ordered, much as though they were men from Maple's; +and when he willed them to raise it, the united forces of Lady Macbeth +and Lady Macbeth's Chaperon could not easily depress its spirits. Nor did +they contradict one another. There was a cheerful unanimity about the +Author's dying at fifty-seven. But this did not perturb the Author, whose +questions were all cunningly contrived to test his theory of the +"spiritual world." For instance, he set them naming cards, placed on the +table with faces downwards and _unknown to anybody_; arguing that with +their bloated omniscience they could scarcely fail to name a card shoved +under their very noses. Nor did they--altogether. Most began well, but +were spoiled by success. However, here is the record performance--eight +consecutive attempts of the table to give the "correct card" under the +imposition of the hands of the Chaperon and the Author only, neither +knowing the card till it was turned up to verify the table's assertion: + + TABLE'S CARD. ACTUAL CARD. + +1. Jack of Diamonds . . . Queen of Spades. + +2. Jack of Diamonds . . . Jack of Diamonds. + +3. Three of Clubs . . . Jack of Spades. + +4. Jack of Diamonds . . . Jack of Diamonds. + +5. Seven of Clubs . . . Five of Diamonds. + +6. Three of Spades . . . Three of Spades. + +7. Ten of Hearts . . . Ten of Hearts. + +8. Nine of Clubs . . . Nine of Clubs. + +Here are five bull's-eyes out of eight shots! The name of the performer +deserves record. It was the spirit of a German woman, named Gretehen, who +died three years ago, but refused to say at what age. She was wrong +sometimes, but then it may have been her feminine instinct for fibbing. +"The spirits play tricks," say the spiritualists. "Sometimes they are +wicked spirits, who tell lies." The Planchette also wrote out the names +of unseen cards placed upon it face downwards. The artistic spirit of the +Author now bids him pause: the narrative has now reached a point of +interest at which recollections of "Tom Tiddler's Schooldays" urge him to +pen the breathless motto: "To be continued in our next." + + + + +XVII + +A THEORY OF TABLE-TURNING + +The yearning of humanity for the supernatural, even for the +pseudo-supernatural, is as pathetic as it is profound. Wherefore I regret +that I can make no concessions to it. The following theory of +table-turning came to me as I experimented, from my general knowledge of +psychology. I have not compared it with the theories of the Psychical +Society, which I have never read, preferring to jot down the impressions +of an independent observer, which, if they should at all coincide with +the explanations of the spook-hunters, will irrefutably demonstrate that +their Society was founded in vain. If, moreover, as Mr. Andrew Lang has +since pointed out, it coincides largely with the theory of Dr. Carpenter, +so much the better. + +What are the facts? If two or more people (according to the size of the +table) place their hands in circular contact around a table, and possess +their souls in patience for a delightfully uncertain period, sundry +strange manifestations will occur. Even after the first few moments the +more imaginative will feel the table throbbing, unsuspicious of the fact +that it is the blood at their finger-tips. Presently, too, an uncanny +wave of cold air will pass underneath the arch of their palms. This is, +according to the professional witches of Endor, the frigid flitting of +the spirits, but the most superficial meteorologist will expound it you +learnedly. Your hand, passive and in a fixed position, heats the air +under it, which, becoming lighter, is constantly displaced by the colder +circumambient air. Finally, when everybody is wrought up to an exalted +expectation of the supernatural, the table begins to oscillate, to move +slowly to and fro, to waltz, and even to raise itself partially or wholly +off the ground. Sometimes it taps instead of moving. Nor are these +motions and these taps merely the intoxicated irregularities of an +exuberant energy. They are coherent responses (according to a code agreed +upon with the "spirit" in possession) to questions asked by one of the +sitters. They are the expression of infinite and ungrudging information +on almost every subject. Through this wooden language, through this music +of the tables and this dancing movement of their legs, tabular +information respecting your past or other people's past and future lives, +together with full details of the doings of the departed in those other +spheres of heaven or hell which they adorn or illumine respectively, may +be obtained at the lowest rates, and with only that reasonable delay +which results from the exigencies of a letter-code. For the "spirits" of +the table, be it understood, are unable to communicate with earth except +by taps and movements for "yes" or "no," or by rapping out numbers; so +that they have to signify their meaning, snailwise, letter by letter. The +"spirit" of the Planchette will indeed write you out sentences; but to +that, like the actor in melodrama, I will return anon. In the stock +_séances_, I know, spirits materialise themselves and glide white-sheeted +through darkened rooms. But as my own _séances_ and "spirits" were +personally conducted by myself, the optical illusions of Messrs. +Maskelyne & Cook, the Pepper's Ghost of the dear old Polytechnic, had no +opportunity of putting in an appearance. My spooks did nothing but answer +questions, so that the very suggestion that they were spirits came +entirely from me. In fact, they do but dance to the "medium's" piping; +and should he suggest that they are methylated, the chances are that not +a few would cheerfully acquiesce in this description of themselves. In +short, it is only the prepossession, the pathetic prejudice, in favour of +visitors from other worlds that leads at all to the thought of "spirits," +drawing such a red herring across the track that the average observer, +who is nothing if not unobservant, has all his partisan faculties of +mis-observation brought into full play on behalf of the spirit-world. +Doubtless the actual presence of "spirits" is the cheapest way of +accounting for the phenomena. But one might as well call in "spirits" to +explain the dancing of a kettle-lid. Not till every natural hypothesis +has been exhausted is the scientific observer entitled to call in the +supernatural. And in reality all that has to be explained is the +mechanical movements of tables under certain specified conditions, the +said movements having an apparent relation to will and intelligence. + +First of all, what moves the table? + +Well, the slightest exercise of the finger or wrist muscles is sufficient +to move the small, light round table which is usually the subject of +experiment; and when once the slightest movement is established--by the +involuntary contraction of a single muscle--all the other persons' +muscles, in accommodating themselves to the movement of the table, cannot +help helping it, either by pulling or pushing in the direction in which +it is going. It is, in fact, almost impossible to follow the movement of +a moving table and yet keep your superimposed hands perfectly passive; +and with ninety-nine persons out of a hundred the startled interest in +the movement even begets an unconscious desire to help it, which at times +almost rises to a curious semi-conscious self-deception, a voluntary +exaggeration of the marvellous. Yet nothing makes the ordinary sitter +angrier than to be told he has helped to move the table. It is as though +he were accused of cheating at whist, or worse, of playing a foolish +card. Take half a dozen persons at random, and there are sure to be one +or two so impressionable and emotional that they cannot help contributing +the slight initial impulse which gathers force as it goes. These nervous +subjects cannot sit a quarter of an hour perfectly still without a +twitching of the muscles, while the tense state of expectation which +subtly transforms itself into a wish to see the table move and not have +the experiment in vain, finally compels them, despite themselves, to +start the "manifestations." Indeed, to think of a thing is half to do it. +Every idea has a tendency to project itself in action. If you think +strongly, for instance, of lifting your hand, it is difficult not to do +it, for the idea of motion is motion in embryo. The wish is father to the +thought, and the thought to the deed. The wish to see the table move is +the grandfather of its motion. Even with the most sceptical, when the +table is requested to go in a particular direction the muscles +involuntarily tend thither. All the deepest analyses of scientific +psychology are involved in this wretched little episode of table-turning, +and it is not marvellous that the ordinary observer should perceive only +the marvellous. + +So much for the movements. But how about the raps? How about those +mysterious tappings which come from the very heart of the table, as +eloquent of the preternatural as those immortal taps heard by Poe ere the +raven stepped into his chamber? I should be more impressed by these taps +if I were not capable of manufacturing them myself _ad lib._ without +detection, by secretly manipulating the ball of my thumb. One is +therefore justified in assuming that, where these raps are not produced +by conscious fraud, they are the involuntary result of the same motions +that produced them voluntarily. Even wood has a certain elasticity, and +an imperceptible increase followed by an imperceptible relaxation of +pressure on the surface of the table will alter the tension of the wood, +the molecules of which in springing back to their prior position will +emit a creak or a tap, just as a piece of extended elastic will when let +go again. Both the raps and the movements, then, are in essence phenomena +of the same order: simple results of muscular pressure, conscious, +sub-conscious, or unconscious. + +It now only remains to explain the answers themselves, to account not +only for their almost invariably logical form, but also for their +occasionally astonishing content. For the table is not infrequently wiser +than anybody in the room; also it knows the past and is ready to predict +the future. + +The whole thing is really an excellent object-lesson in Psychology. For +the solution is obvious. The table being unconscious, _you answer +yourself_--you not only produce the raps and movements, but you regulate +them. + +The connection between mind and body is, it seems to me, admirably +illustrated by table-turning. According to the latest philosophic view, +the connection itself defies human comprehension. It is simply a case of +_non possumus intelligere_. But the connection itself may be expressed +thus: No idea or feeling without physical disturbance, no physical +disturbance without feeling or idea. Mind and body are as related as the +tune to the violin-string. Every state of mind tends to set up nervous +vibration, and every nervous vibration tends to set up a state of mind. +In either case the tendency may be, and usually is, counteracted. The +average member of a spiritualistic circle cannot prevent the thought in +his brain taking on bodily expression to the extent of a muscular +contraction stimulating the very sensitive tips of the fingers. You +cannot think of a joke or see the humour of anything without wanting to +smile, though you may suppress your smile in obedience to other +considerations. Nor can you put your features into smiling position, +without experiencing a latent sense of amusement, though you would not +know what you were smiling at. But if six cool scientific intellects, +acquainted with the tricks of their own organisms and determined to +dissever thought from motion, were to sit round a table, they might sit +till doomsday without the "spirit" turning up. This is what the +spiritualists mean by unsympathetic persons, persons obnoxious to the +spirits, persons with antipathetic auras, and all the rest of the jargon. +But six intellects taken at random, being anything but cool and +scientific, are not able to prevent their ideas passing over into action +in the shape of muscular twitches; though if even the unscientific were +to look up at the ceiling and forget all about the table, the table would +probably forget to move. Now the majority of the replies of the table +deal with matters actively present to the consciousness of at least one +of the six owners of the superimposed hands. When the table raps out +something known only to this one person, and the startled person admits +that the table is right, an uncanny feeling is produced; the table seems +at least to be a thought-reader, and on this wave of astonishment the +hypothesis of "spirits" rides up triumphantly. When the topic is one of +which nobody knows anything--_e.g._, whether the supposed spirit is a man +or woman--chance, or a vague idea floating up in the mind of one of the +party, determines the reply. + +But what of those replies in which some striking truth is told of which +none of the party was conscious, as for instance in the examples I gave +in my last, when the table informed us that Mr. Jones's "Bauble Shop" was +then playing at Eastbourne, or that "The Road to Fortune" had been +playing in the town in which we were the week before we arrived? To clear +up this most remarkable aspect of the whole matter we must go still +deeper into Psychology. + +What we are pleased to call our Mind is made up of two parts--our +Consciousness and--what I shall call loosely yet sufficingly and without +prejudice to Metaphysics--our Sub-Consciousness. The latter is +immeasurably the vaster portion. It is a tossing ocean of thoughts which +feeds the narrow little fountain of Consciousness. It holds all our +memories. We cannot be conscious of all ourselves and all our past at +once--that way madness lies, or divinity. We may know ten languages, but +we can only think in the mould of one at a time. Our thoughts and +memories can only come up into clear Consciousness by ones or twos--to be +dealt with and then dismissed. They spirit from the great deep of +Sub-Consciousness into the thin fountain-stream of Consciousness, and +fall back again into the great deep. And this great deep is never still, +though we know nothing of its churning save by its tossing up through the +fountain some new mental combination of which it had received only the +elements--as when the mathematician has the solution of a problem flashed +upon him at the moment of waking, or as the author has the development of +his plot thrust upon him when he is playing billiards, or as the wit +finds repartees invented for him by his brilliant but unknown +collaborator. This is what the crowd calls "inspiration," the late Mr. +Stevenson "Brownies," and the scientist "unconscious cerebration." A man +of talent has a good Working Consciousness, a man of genius a good +Working Sub-Consciousness. Hence the frequent mental instability of +genius. The Infant Prodigy's feats are done by his Sub-Consciousness. +Instinct is Racial Genius, Genius is Individual Instinct. The highest +Genius is sane. A Shakespeare or a Goethe has both a good Working +Consciousness and a good Working Sub-Consciousness, with the former so +self-balanced that it regulates the products of the latter. The +cultivation of the Working Consciousness may either improve or impair the +products of its bigger brother. Education, the cultivation of the +critical faculty, would be fatal to some writers, actors, painters, and +musicians; it would but spoil the Working Sub-Consciousness. Others--more +sanely balanced--would gain in art more than they lost in nature. + +Now, what are the elements with which our Sub-Consciousness works?--what +does this ocean contain? It would be easier to discover what it does not +contain. Wrecks and argosies and dead faces, mermaidens and subterranean +palaces, and the traces of vanished generations; these are but a +millionth part of its treasures: the Sub-Consciousness were perhaps +better likened to the property-room and scene-dock of the Great Cosmic +Theatre, holding infinite wardrobes and scenes ready-painted, parks and +seas and libraries, and ruined cottages and whitewashed attics, to say +naught of an army of supers ready to put on all the faces we have ever +seen. In our Sub-Consciousness, moreover, are stored up all the voices +and sounds and scents we have ever perceived, and to all these +reminiscences of our own sensations are perhaps added the shadows of our +ancestors' sensations--episodes that perchance we re-experience only in +dreamland--so that part of the vivid vision of genius, of the poet's eye +bodying forth the shapes of things unknown, may be inherited Memory. And +thus Imagination, when it is not a mere fresh combination of elements +experienced, may be only a peculiar variety of atavism. + +From this boundless reservoir, then, which holds our heredity and our +experience, go forth the battalions of dreams--the infinitely possible +permutations and combinations of its elements, wrought by the Working +Sub-Consciousness when the poor Working Consciousness cannot get sound +asleep, but must watch perforce with half an eye the procession of +thoughts and images over which it has lost control. For it is the duty of +Consciousness to control the stream sent up by Sub-Consciousness. When it +is awake but unable to do this, we have Insanity; when asleep, Dreams. In +Somnambulism the Working Sub-Consciousness is seen in an accentuated +phase. It does all the work of its little brother, even to exercising its +owner's muscles. To be "possessed" by a popular song is a species of +insanity--Consciousness ridden by a singing Sub-Consciousness. + +Between our Consciousness and our Sub-Consciousness there is more or less +easy communication. It is not perfect. You cannot draw up what you will +from the ocean: you cannot always directly remember a name or a date that +you know--you can only set an indirect train of thought at work. _Per +contra_, it is not easy to transfer certain conscious states to the +storehouse of Sub-Consciousness--to learn a page of prose, or deposit the +memory of a piece of music, which you are forced to play slowly and +thoughtfully before the digital dexterity is added to the treasures of +your Sub-Consciousness. Under exceptional conditions, exceptional flotsam +and jetsam is tossed up into Consciousness, as in the case of that +servant girl who spoke Latin, Greek, and Hebrew in her delirium, having +unconsciously absorbed the same from overhearing the studies of her +learned master many years before. + +Now, just as a conscious thought has an accompaniment of physical motion, +so has a sub-conscious thought. Thus, then, a thought which does not pass +through the thin fountain-stream of Consciousness may yet produce the +same muscular twitches as if it were clearly present to the presiding +Ego. In the case of the "Road to Fortune," the name must have really sunk +into my brain, although I was unaware of it, and probably could not have +consciously recalled it to save my life. The stage-manager subsequently +reminded me that he had in my presence regretted that the "Road to +Fortune" had done such good business, since there would probably be a +reaction. _I_ have only a recollection of his telling me that the success +of the preceding piece would hurt his--my Consciousness had grasped at +the intellectual side of his remark, my Sub-Consciousness had absorbed +the irrelevant fact of the name of the piece. In examining the "Era," to +verify this item, Lady Macbeth's eye must have unconsciously noted that +"The Bauble Shop" was at Eastbourne; but the information was not +registered in her Consciousness, for there is a struggle of thoughts to +catch the thinker's I--that is to say the Central Consciousness--and only +the fittest can survive. We are indeed wiser than we know. Our +Sub-Consciousness knows all we know, and all we have forgotten, and all +that our mental sponge sucked in without spirting it through +Consciousness. In fact, attention or inattention often determines whether +a thought or a feeling shall come up into clear Consciousness or not. You +can feel a pain in your big toe if you want to. Conversely, in the +excitement of battle soldiers do not always feel their wounds. + +When the table prophesies or delivers "a message from the other world," +the result is a compound of fluke with expectation or with apprehension. +Fears or hopes dimly in the mind get accentuated, or transmuted, or +distorted as in dreams; and when the "spirits" are proved wrong, as in +the matter of the Chaperon's mother, the spiritualists tell you that you +have got hold of a "lying spirit." Verily a cheap explanation! "They play +tricks sometimes," say their apologists. The true explanation is that +your Sub-Consciousness was ignorant of the reply your Consciousness asked +for. Endless as its contents seem, there are limits; and when it does not +know, your Sub-Consciousness will rarely confess it. It makes a brazen +guess, keeping the logical form of the answer, because your +Sub-Consciousness knows that, but blundering deplorably in the matter. +Sometimes it will not speak at all, but when it does it is cocksure to +the last degree. Its humour is the humour of the stock joke, the Old +Humour--as when it will not tell a woman's age. Its sulkiness and +eccentricity and occasional indecency are just what one would expect from +a Sub-Consciousness, whose thoughts have no central I to keep them in +order. (Compare Goethe's explanation of the obscenities of Ophelia.) +Sometimes, too, there are Obstructive Associations, which account for its +inability to make up its want of mind; and as there are usually several +persons at table, the result is complicated by their separate +Sub-Consciousnesses. In brief, table-turning is a method of interrogating +your Sub-Consciousness. It is, so to speak, objective introspection. The +table enables you to peep at your Sub-Consciousness, to know your larger +self. It is an external medium on which you may see registered visibly +and audibly (through the vibrations you sub-consciously communicate to +it) that Sub-Consciousness which _ex hypothesi_ you cannot peep at +directly. The moving table may be considered the objectification of +Sub-Consciousness, or a mirror in which Sub-Consciousness is reflected to +the gaze of Consciousness (to the great benefit of the science of +Psychology, which may be revolutionised by table-turning). By humouring +your Sub-Consciousness, by addressing it as though it were a separate +identity utterly unconnected with you, by asking a "spirit" to answer +you, you help to break your Mind in two, to detach the Sub-Consciousness +from the Consciousness, and so to get results which astonish yourself. So +divided is mind against itself that (as when I thought "The Pro--" was to +be "The Professor's Love Story") even a conscious expectation of +something different does not turn the Sub-Consciousness from its first +dogged determination; or it may be that somebody else's Sub-Consciousness +was in the ascendant. The "mediums" who excuse the "spirits" on the +ground of their mendacity are not necessarily frauds: they are themselves +deceived; they do not know that if the "spirits" lie, it is because a +true reply was not latent in any one of the _human_ Consciousnesses or +Sub-Consciousnesses present. But the conclusion of the whole matter seems +to be this: there is a germ of scientific truth which the professional +spiritualists doctor and wrap round with complex trickery in order to +extract backsheesh from poor old women of both sexes anxious for +information about deceased relatives. Circles are formed with pretentious +mysticism, and no self-respecting "spirit" will appear without being +received in state with extinguished lights and creepy accompaniments. The +unconscious revelations made by the sitters are the sole genuine +foundation of the spiritualists' influence. Consciousness holds converse +with deceased relatives, and Sub-Consciousness, which knows all about +them, answers for them. "I can call spirits from the vasty deep" myself, +and they will come when I call them, but the "vasty deep" is the deep of +my own Sub-Consciousness. We seem to hear voices from spirit-land; but as +when we hold a sea-shell to our ear and seem to hear the ocean it is only +the blood in our own veins, so--to continue Eugene Lee-Hamilton's fine +sonnet-- + + Lo! in my heart I hear, as in a shell, + The murmur of a world beyond the grave, + Distinct, distinct, though faint and far it be. + Thou fool! this echo is a cheat as well,-- + The hum of earthly instincts,--and we crave + A world unreal as the shell-heard sea. + +Tables might be "turned" to various purposes. Criminals might be +compelled to yield up their secrets to them in uncontrollable muscular +vibrations, their Sub-Consciousness being tapped. For students under +examination table-turning would be very useful for recalling forgotten +knowledge. The Planchette would be the most convenient form. For +obviously the _modus operandi_ of the Planchette is exactly the same as +the table's. The medium's Sub-Consciousness arrives at an answer by +guesswork, reminiscence, etc., and produces the muscular movements of +writing without first passing the message through the writer's +Consciousness. Mr. Stead has, I believe, a familiar spirit called Julia. +This is merely a projection of his own Sub-Consciousness, the Planchette +being the artificial instrument for enabling him to give +pseudo-objectivity to his thought, to detach a shred of his mind. Even +so, many a dramatist marshals toy figures on a mimic stage. The external +image is a help to weak imaginations. The process of novel-writing +involves breaking up your mind into bits--one for each character. And +when the characters are said to take the reins into their own hands, it +means that the bits are developing an independent existence. If Mr. Stead +is not careful, Julia will get the upper hand of him, his +Sub-Consciousness will dominate his Consciousness, and then he will be +mad. This detachment of bits of mind is dangerous; the monster may +overpower Frankenstein. Julia is literally a child of Mr. Stead's brain, +a psychical daughter embodied in a Planchette. Double Consciousness, +Double Identity, are well-known forms of insanity. In a mild degree they +consist with sanity. Landseer could paint different heads simultaneously +with both hands. + +Hypnotism, on this theory, would be the lulling of the patient's +Consciousness, the closing of his central I, and the setting of his +Sub-Consciousness to work in accordance with suggestions. +Thought-transference seems a superfluous hypothesis here. Death is the +cessation of both Consciousness and Sub-Consciousness; and when a drowned +man is resuscitated his Sub-Consciousness can never have ceased. Do you +fail to understand Sub-Consciousness? So do I--as much as that our +digestion operates and our blood circulates without asking our +permission. It is not unreasonable to suppose that Sub-Consciousness is +simply the psychical side of the molecular changes that are going on in +our nervous system. There is more than "metaphysical conceit" in that +elegy of Donne's: + + Her pure and eloquent blood + Spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought + That one might almost say her body thought. + +Sub-Consciousness is a greater marvel in itself than any that it +explains, and beats the spooks hollower than they are. Just consider the +phenomena of dreams, what things we do, what sights we see. It is only +the commonness of dreams that blinds us to the fact that they are more +marvellous than ghost-stories. Mr. Lang thinks the theory of the +sub-conscious self that uses our muscles for its own ends is "the most +startling thing ever offered to the public; and that it should be +regarded as true by a sceptic is staggering to our judicial faculties." +But why? Our noble selves--are they not already exposed to the indignity +of dreams? What matters another insult? We need not be greatly put out if +Sub-Consciousness is busy in the day-time too. And what about +Somnambulism? What about musical or literary creation? Are not our ideas +made for us in the kitchen of our Sub-Consciousness? Our Consciousness is +only a small part of ourselves. What produced De Quincey's opium dreams +was certainly not Consciousness. I can see visions, myself, without +opium. In certain excited states of the brain I can travel in my chair, +or bed, perfectly awake, through an endless and variegated series of +scenes--domestic interiors with people talking or eating or playing +cards, battle-fields with glittering phalanxes, beautiful tossing seas, +gorgeous forests, melancholy hospitals, busy newspaper offices, etc., +etc. These are almost entirely detached from my will, and the chief +interest of the spectacle is the unexpectedness of its episodes. The +scenes and the people have all the concreteness and detail of actuality, +although I never forget that I am observing my own hallucinations. Just +fancy what ghosts I could see in the dark if I lost my central control +and let my Sub-Consciousness get the upper hand! Sociologists say, the +seeing of dead people in dreams gave rise to the idea of ghosts. I would +suggest that the same process as that of dreaming gives rise to the +ghosts themselves. Great is the Sub-Consciousness! Who shall say what it +does not contain, either _in esse_ or _in posse!_ Till we have exhausted +the Sub-Consciousness let us not talk of spooks. + +Two things alone remain to be considered. One is how the Planchette or +the table is able to read cards placed face downwards upon it; the second +is, is telepathy or thought-transference a possibility? As to the first +point I have never yet been able to satisfy myself whether the results +are more than Chance would account for; for Chance has strange +vagaries--themselves part of the doctrine of Chances--and in order to +decide, one would have to make a far more extended induction than I have +had time for. But if the mathematical probabilities are really exceeded, +one would be driven to the suspicion that there resides in the +Sub-Consciousness a sense of which we are unaware, perhaps an extra way +of perceiving by the tips of the fingers, which may be either a new +embryonic sense, not yet developed by the struggle for existence, or the +rudimentary survival of an old sense eliminated in the struggle, perhaps +a relic from those primeval homogeneous organisms in which every part of +the body did every kind of work. After all, the senses are all +developments of the sense of touch. This suspicion is strengthened by the +fact that the correct card is often given at the first trial, and not +after, as if this unused sense were soon exhausted. By the way, though +the "spirits" mostly failed to tell a card placed face down, and unknown +to any one in the room, they were invariably successful when it was +placed face up: a sufficient proof--is it not?--that there could be +nothing in the replies which was not already in some one's mind. + +With regard to the question of telepathy, though I am tempted to believe +in it, I have not yet met with any convincing instance of it. +Thought-reading _à la_ Stuart Cumberland almost any one could do who +practised it. The thought-reader merely takes the place of the table as a +receiver of muscular vibrations. What tempts me to believe in the +transfer of thought without physical connection is that, given telepathy, +all the mysterious phenomena that have persisted in popular belief +through the centuries could be swept away at one fell swoop. By +telepathy, working mainly through the Sub-Consciousness, I will explain +you Clairvoyance (that is, not the mere seeing of pictures, which is a +phenomenon akin to dreaming, but the vision of other people's +Sub-Consciousnesses), ghosts, witchcraft, possession, wraiths, Mahatmas, +astral bodies, etc., etc. But it is rather absurd to call in a new +mystery to explain what may not even be facts. And so, till I am +convinced either of ghosts or of telepathy, I must accord an impartial +incredulousness to both. _Credat Christianus_, F. W. Myers or W. T. +Stead! For I gather that the Psychical Society assert that they _must_ +exist. But as yet--_je n'en vois pas la nécessité_. If it is indeed +possible to telegraph without fees and to put a psychical girdle round +the earth in twenty seconds, by all means let the noses of those +extortionate cable companies be put out of joint. To me it is just as +wonderful that mind can communicate with mind by letter or even by +speech. One more puzzle adds no light to our darkness. And as for ghosts, +I have more than a lurking sympathy with the farrier in "Silas Marner." + +"'If ghos'es want me to believe in 'em, let 'em leave off skulking i' the +dark and i' lone places--let 'em come where there's company and candles!' + +"'As if ghos'es 'u'd want to be believed in by anybody so ignorant!' said +Mr. Macey, in deep disgust at the farrier's crass incompetence to +apprehend the conditions of ghostly phenomena." + +And supposing "ghos'es" do exist--the moment the Supernatural is attested +and classified it becomes as natural as anything else. Such spooks would +add nothing to the dignity and sanctity of the scheme of creation, and +are no friends to religion. The world would only be made to look more +ridiculous if our deceased friends really rapped tables and pulled off +bedclothes, as Miss Florence Marryat's do. Mrs. Besant (who up to the +moment of going to press is still a Theosophist), in her latest reading +of the riddle of this painful earth, does but explain _obscurum per +obscurius_. Where is the point of a progression through stages, if there +is no continuous consciousness? What does it matter if I am not myself, +but somebody else in his fifth plane or her nineteenth incarnation? +Decidedly it is better to bear the religions we have, than fly to others +that we know not of. If Mr. F. W. Myers hears that some ill-trained +observers have seen ghosts, he becomes Dantesque and dithyrambic about +"the love that rules the world and all the stars." For my part, I fail to +draw the moral. I am content to look nearer home--at coal-heavers and +costermongers, poets and engineers--and to found my theory of life on +less deniable data. A fig for your ghosts! What! Here have I been living +and working and thinking nigh half a lifetime, and only now these gentry +should deign to give me cognisance of their existence. Dame Nature would +have indeed treated me scurvily had she reduced me to such absurd +oracles. The phenomena seem so rare and so irregular, the vast majority +of mankind having to go through life only afraid of ghosts, but never +seeing them, that no general law of posthumous existence could be based +on these obscure and erratic accidents. There may be only a survival of +the fittest. It is not in the aberrations, but in the constant factors of +human life that we must seek for light, and the attitude of these +smellers after immortality is precisely that of the mediaevals who sought +for the workings of divinity in eccentric variations from its own habits, +till miracles became so commonplace that, as Charles Reade deliciously +sums it up, a man in "The Cloister and the Hearth" could reply to his +fellow, who was anxious to know why the market-place was black with +groups, "Ye born fool! it is only a miracle." If I am to seek for +"intimations of immortality," let me find them not in the haphazard +freaks of disembodied intelligence, but where Wordsworth found them, and +where Mr. Myers was once content to find them, in + + Those obstinate questionings + Of sense and outward things, + Fallings from us, vanishings! + Blank misgivings of a creature + Moving about in worlds not realised, + High instincts before which our mortal nature + Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised. + +If Moses came to London he would be very disgusted with Mr. Stead and the +correspondents of "Borderland" who collect "facts" for him. For that +supremely sane and sage legislator made one clean sweep of all the +festering superstitions that fascinate the silly and the sentimental +to-day as much as they did three thousand years ago. Mr. Stead is a +Puritan, and the Old Testament should be his impregnable rock. Yet +Deuteronomy is most definite about "Julia." "There shall not be found +with thee ... a consulter with a familiar spirit. For whosoever doeth +these things is an abomination unto the Lord." His organisation of +research is a delusion; science is not to be thus syndicated. The +ordinary observer has no idea of scientific sifting, and in ten minutes I +exposed a gentleman who impressed a large London club as "the most +wonderful thought-reader in Europe." + +"Nature has many methods of producing the same effect," says Henry +James's greater brother. "She may make our ears ring by the sound of a +bell, or by a dose of quinine; make us see yellow by spreading a field of +buttercups before our eyes, or by mixing a little Santonine powder with +our food." Probably not ten per cent. of the correspondents of +"orderland" are aware of the existence of such "subjective sensations," +or realize, despite their nightly experience of dreams, that it does not +take an actual external object to give you the sensation of something +outside yourself. And passing optical illusions may have all the +substantiality of ghosts. When Benvenuto Cellini went to consult a +wizard, as he relates in his "Memoirs," countless spirits were raised for +his behoof, dancing amid the voluminous smoke of a kindled fire. He +actually _saw_ them: it was a splendid case for "Borderland." Yet the +probabilities are that the cunning magician merely projected +magic-lantern pictures on the background of the vapour. My brother woke +up one morning, and accidentally directing his eyes to the ceiling, +beheld there a couple of monsters--uncouth, amorphous creatures with +ramifying conformations and deep purple veins. After a few moments they +passed away; but the next morning, lo! they were there again, and the +next, and the next, till at last, in alarm, off he goes to a specialist +in eyes and unfolds his tale of woe. Is he, perhaps, going blind? "So +you've discovered them at last!" laughs the eminent oculist. "These +things are Purkinje's Figures--the shadows of the network of +blood-vessels of the retina microscopically magnified on the ceiling: +everybody ought to see them--it's a sign the eye is a good working lens. +But they don't notice them except by accident, when the light slants +sideways, and when there's a specially good background for them to be +projected and magnified upon." And, taking him into his mystic chamber, +and reconstituting the conditions, "Look!" says he, "there are your old +friends again!" And there they were, sure enough, in all their amorphous +horror. It is, in fact, not so much the actual external object that +determines our perception, as attention or inattention; and with wise +unconsciousness we ignore all that it is not necessary for us to see at +the moment. If our organism were always in perfect health, if our senses +were not deceivers ever, if we did not dream as solid a world as that +which we inhabit by day, then, indeed, a single appearance of a ghost +would settle the question; but as things are, our own eyes are just what +we mustn't believe. + +As Helmholtz pointed out, we ought to see everything double, except the +few objects in the centre of vision; and as a matter of fact we do get +double images, but the prejudiced intelligence perceives them as one. The +drunken man is thus your only true seer. Genius, which has always been +suspected of affinity with drunkenness, is really a faculty for seeing +abnormally--that is to say, veraciously. Andrew Lang, who thinks that all +children have genius, is thus partially justified; for till they have +been taught to see conventionally, they see with fresh insight. Hence the +awkwardness of their questions. Mr. Bernard Shaw recently wrote an +article on "How to Become a Genius," but he omitted to supply the recipe. +It is simply this: see what you do see, and not what everybody tells you +you see. To think what everybody says is to be a Philistine, and to say +what everybody thinks is to be a genius. Every healthy eye sees +Purkinje's Figures when the conditions are present; but only a rare eye +perceives them consciously. That is the eye of genius, but the +Philistines cry, "Disease! Degeneration!" + + + + +XVIII + +SOCIETIES TO FOUND + +I have noted in my Sancho Panza moments a number of deficiencies in the +commonweal which can only be remedied--in our modern manner--by +societies. Let me start with a few of the most needed. + + +1. SOCIETY FOR PROVIDING NEW OATHS + +The present currency is badly worn and was always nasty. Swear-words are +a necessity. They are the safety-valves of the soul. Why not have them +nice and innocent--the kind of oath a girl can use to her mother? It is +unfair men should monopolise the bad language. I wonder the Women's +Rights women have not sworn about it. I have already suggested that +Wellington's "twopenny damn" be replaced by "I don't care a double-blank +domino." This gives a compound or twopenny sensation of the unspeakable, +combined with absolute innocuity, like a vegetarian chop or a temperance +champagne. A milder form (the penny plain) would be "a blank cheque." The +society ought to offer prizes for the best suggestions. + + +2. SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING READINGS AMONG REVIEWERS + +It is a notorious fact that critics are the most ill-read class in the +community. There are few occupations so laborious, exhaustive, and +inadequately remunerated, as reviewing; and who can wonder if the +wretched reviewer never finds time to read a book from one week's end to +the other. It is a cruel anomaly that men, some of whom may have souls as +much as we have, should be shut out from all the pleasures of literature, +and all the possibilities of self-culture that books contain. The poor +critic goes to his grave, picking up a smattering of cant phrases that +are in the air--"Zolaism,"--"Ibsenites," "Décadents," "Symbolism," "the +new humour," "the strong-man poetry," and what not--but to become +acquainted at first hand with the meaning or meaninglessness of these +phrases is denied him by the hard conditions of his life. Publishers +would greatly help the proposed society by sending out books cut. + + +3. SOCIETY FOR THE SUPPRESSION OF CELEBRITIES + +"Mankind's available stock of admiration is not large enough for all the +demands made upon it," wrote Professor Bain, with the one flash of humour +I have noticed in his big treatises. If, as Wordsworth contends, + + We live by Admiration, Hope, and Love, + +a certain number of objects of admiration is indispensable. But the +surplusage of celebrities in this age is simply overwhelming. Celebrity +is cheap to-day. You may arrive at it by a million avenues. It is almost +impossible to keep your name out of the papers. Culture is so catholic +that celebrities who in the old days would have been monopolised by +esoteric cliques are common property. The paleographer and the +coleopterist claim a share of our admiration equally with the serpentine +dancer and the record-breaking cyclist, and the judicious editor prints +their "interviews" at equal length. We have an impartial acquaintance +with the tastes and views of cardinals and comic singers; and the future +of the papacy is given almost as much space as Little Tich's talent for +water-colour, and his fondness for the 'cello and his baby. Moreover, +that coil of cable which makes the whole world kin has burdened us with +the celebrities of the universe. When to these are added the celebrities +of the past, of every period, country, and variety, the brain reels. Too +many cooks spoil the broth, and too many celebrities numb our faculty of +wonder. The vivid feeling that is possible when heroes are few fades into +a faint reflection of emotion. The celebrity's name calls up not +admiration, but only a shadowy consciousness that admiration is due. We +never pause to get the emotion. I am afraid the first proceeding of the +society will have to be the suppression of the illustrated weeklies, +which manufacture celebrities artificially to fill up their pages, and, +in order to have pretty pictures, give every actress that makes a little +hit a prominence which Shakespeare did not deserve. If there is no +celebrity of the week it is necessary to create one, is the editorial +motto. If a man is a celebrity you interview him, and if you interview +him he is a celebrity. + +You will not believe me (though I don't care a double-blank domino if you +don't, for it is true) when I tell you that an opposition society already +exists--a society for the manufacture of celebrities. Self-puffery has +always gone on in a sporadic fashion, most people sending their own puffs +to the papers, and rolling their own logs, on the principle that if you +want a thing done well you must do it yourself. But the idea of the +society is the organisation of self-puffery. It is done through an +association which undertakes (for a fee) to insert anything you choose to +send it about yourself in a hundred native papers, and a hundred +Colonial, Indian, and American papers, as well as to get special articles +written thereon, and to organise press receptions, luncheons, journeys, +dinners, etc., etc. _O tempora! O mores!_ What an exposure of the lower +journalism! Oh the crush of celebrities there will be when the society +has been at work a few years! + + +4. THE CHARITY OF CHARITIES + +The begging-letters and circulars are enough to light your fires the +whole year, and it is a pity they are not sent to the poor, to whom they +would be of more value. Still, not to have the worry of receiving and +discriminating among these appeals is another of the many compensations +of poverty. There are a thousand varieties of Charity (some beginning at +a Home and others going abroad), and the most munificent can support only +a few, and perhaps will select the wrong few. And most of these Charities +are struggling along painfully, their resources taxed to the utmost by +the severe winter and the coal strike; many can scarcely make both ends +meet. There is nothing to prevent the weaker dying of want, and our +Charities suffering from a heavy mortality. And of course it will be the +best and most retiring Charities that will starve to death rather than +beg of the first comer, while the brazen Charities will perambulate the +streets with strident clamour, rattling full money-boxes. + +Do we not therefore need another Charity? Nay, blaspheme not, nor clench +thy purse-strings. One other Charity--just one more--is a social +necessity. I would call it "The Charity of Charities." 'T is a central +bureau of beneficence, to which each doubting philanthropist should send +such sums as he knows not how to dispense. The bureau should inquire into +the circumstances of each Charity, and grant or refuse relief strictly in +accordance with its needs or merits. The Charity Organisation Society is +another affair altogether. Perhaps people are afraid of pauperising the +Charities assisted, but there is no reason why these should not continue +to be self-supporting as far as possible. Such as could not manage to +exist in this country could be assisted to emigrate, while every help +would be given to exiled or persecuted Charities to gain a sphere of +activity in this country. Fortunately, there are always large-minded men +among us who will receive any Charity, however despised, with open arms! +There would be visitation committees to call at the offices of the +Charities, to see that they were not pleading poverty when the officials +were drawing big salaries; a loan society to help them over bad times, so +as not to destroy their self-respect by doles in aid; while a cookery +school for accounts and a sanatorium for those that failed to keep their +balance might also be annexes of this grand institution. + + + + +XIX + +INDECENCY ON THE ENGLISH STAGE + +[_This protest was dated Jan. 1, 1891. Things are rather better now._] + +I am not a young person. Nothing ever brings a blush to my cheek except +the rouge-pencil or the exposure of my stealthy deeds of good I can read +the Elizabethan dramatists or Rabelais with equanimity, and the only +thing that mars my enjoyment of Juvenal is the occasional obscurity of +the Latin. I like the immoral passages in "Mademoiselle de Maupin," even +if I do not go so far as Swinburne and call it "the holy book of beauty." +Ibsen refreshes me like a tonic, and I even believe in Zola. And yet, if +I were State censor of the English stage--which fortunately I am not--I +should suppress half of our plays for their indecency. The other half I +should suppress for their fatuity. But that is another story. + +That vice loses half its evil by losing all its grossness, is a maxim for +which the world cannot be too thankful to Burke; for though the point of +view be not true, an important aspect of the truth is undoubtedly +exhibited. Now, what we get on the English stage is the grossness without +the vice--or, to put it more accurately, the vulgarity without the open +presentation of the vice. You may mean anything, so long as you say +something else. Almost every farcical comedy or comic opera--to leave the +music-hall alone--is vitiated by a vein of vulgar indecency which is +simply despicable. The aim of the artist is not to conceal art--there is +none to conceal--but to conceal his indecencies decently, and yet in the +most readily discoverable manner. The successful stage-piece is too often +but a symphony in blue. What the English, with their fashion of spoiling +French importations, incorrectly term _doubles entendres_, are almost +indispensable items in the fare of some London theatres of good repute. +And the references to things sexual are usually as stupid as they are +superfluous to the development of the plot or the characters. There is +not the shadow of an excuse for their introduction. They are simply silly +accretions on the play, quite unimplicated with the spirit of the scene, +and losing all meaning in their effort to have two. One can enjoy the +sparkle of wit and the rich halo of comedy playing around situations +unaffectedly "improper"; even the farces of the Palais Royal amuse with +the broad foolery of their _esprit gaulois_; but the English endeavour to +make the best of both worlds, the English author who combines the prude +and the pimp--for these one can have nothing but contempt. And the +measure of one's longing for a sane and virile view and presentation of +life will be the measure of one's abhorrence of immorality which has not +even the decency to be indecent. + +The French dramatist gives us characters living in "a state of sin" (one +of the United States not recognised at the Court of St. James's). The +English dramatist conveys the plot, conveys the situations which spring +out of the "state of sin," but leaves out the basis on which the whole +rests. Thus, instead of situations intelligibly indecent, we get +situations unintelligibly indecent. Eros, like an Indian conjuror, is +left suspended from nothing. As the English playgoer does not ask for +intelligible situations, he is satisfied with the residuum. The +dramatist's uneasy striving to account for the behaviour of his +personages only renders the latent character of the residuum more +glaring. + +The truth is, that everything depends on treatment and atmosphere. Lord +Houghton has treated the difficult theme of a mother's and daughter's +love for the same man with tenderness and grace; a foreign writer would +lay bare and anatomise with more of scalpel and less of sentiment. The +former satisfies our aesthetic instincts; the latter would, in addition, +appeal to our intellectual curiosity. To the English dramatist the whole +story would be _tabu_; but if the Continental man had got some striking +situations out of it, the Briton's soul would hanker after those +situations. So he would make the mother a maiden aunt, and give us the +familiar spectacle of the aged spinster languishing for matrimony, as +incarnated for the nonce in the person of her niece's lover. Miss Sophie +Larkin would play the part, and it would be intended to be a comic one. +There is more suggestiveness in the conventional stage figure of the +amorous old maid than in all Congreve's comedies. And yet what figure is +more certain to please, in the whole gallery of puppets? Scenes and +characters of this sort you may have by the dozen; but to build a moral +play upon an "immoral" basis is to court damnation. To construct a noble +piece of work on the basis of "improper" relations between your chief +characters is to show the cloven hoof. Once the initial scheme granted, +the rest may be as bracing as an Alpine breeze; but the critics will +scent brimstone. But to build an immoral play upon a "moral" basis--that +way gladness lies. Critics, who would rage at the delineation of a +character remotely resembling a human being's, will pat you on the back +with a good-humoured smile, and at most a laughing word of reprobation +for your azure audacities. Ladies, who, whether they are married or +unmarried, are in England presumed to be agnostics in sexual matters, +will roar themselves hoarse over farces whose stories could only be told +to the ultramarines. Ibsen may not untie a shoe-latchet in the interest +of truth, while English burlesque managers may put an army of girls into +tights. One dramatist may steal a horse-laugh by a tawdry vulgarity, +while another may not look over an ankle. It is the same with literature. +We look askance at "The Kreutzer Sonata," but tolerate the vulgar +anecdotal indecencies of the sporting journal. The artist's eye may not +see life steadily, and see it whole; but it is licensed to wink and ogle +at will from behind its blinker. If the artist's "immorality" is the +artistic embodiment of a frank Paganism, or is inspired by an ethical or +a scientific purpose, he is a filthy-minded fellow. Seriousness is the +unpardonable sin. Coarseness can be condoned, if it is only flippant and +frivolous enough. In short, the only excuse for indecency is to have +none. + +Unfortunately, practical considerations are so involved with artistic +that it may be imprudent to accord the artist as wide a charter as he +would wish. The ideals of sincerity and honesty may in the present social +environment be so potential for harm that it is for the common interest +that they should not be gratified. This may be so, though I do not +believe it. But whether it be so or not, of one thing I am certain,--and +that is that the half-hearted dallying with things sexual is wholly an +evil; that the prurient sniffing and sniggering round the subject is more +fraught with peril to a community, more debasing to the emotional +currency, more blighting to the higher sexual feelings of the race, than +the most shameless public repudiation of all moral restraints. Evil cures +itself in the sunlight; it grows and flourishes in the darkness. Vice +looks fascinating in the gloaming; the morning shows up the tawdriness +and the paint. + + + + +XX + +LOVE IN LIFE AND LITERATURE + +Love! Love! Love! The air is full of it as I write, though the autumn +leaves are falling. Shakespeare's immortal love-poem is playing amid the +cynicism of modern London, like that famous fountain of Dickens's in the +Temple gardens. The "largest circulation" has barely ceased to flutter +the middle-class breakfast-table with discussions on "the Age of Love" +and Little Billee and Trilby--America's "Romeo and Juliet"--loom large at +the Haymarket. Mr. T. P. O'Connor, forgetting even Napoleon, his King +Charles's head, is ruling high at the libraries with _réchauffés_ of +"Some Old Love Stories," and the "way of a man with a maid" is still the +unfailing topic of books and plays. One would almost think that Coleridge +was to be taken "at the foot of the letter"-- + + All thoughts, all passions, all delights + Whatever stirs this mortal frame, + All are but ministers of Love, + And feed his sacred flame. + +But alas! suffer me to be as sceptical as Stevenson in "Virginibus +Puerisque." In how many lives does Love really play a dominant part? The +average taxpayer is no more capable of a "grand passion" than of a grand +opera. "Man's love is of man's life a thing apart." Ay, my Lord Byron, +but 'tis not "woman's whole existence," neither. Focussed in books or +plays to a factitious unity, the rays are sadly scattered in life. +Natheless Love remains an interest, an ideal, to all but the hopeless +Gradgrinds. Many a sedate citizen's pulse will leap with Romeo's when +Forbes-Robertson's eye first lights upon the Southern child "whose beauty +hangs upon the cheek of night like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear." Many +a fashionable maid, with an eye for an establishment, will shed tears +when Mrs. Patrick Campbell, martyr to unchaffering love, makes her +quietus with a bare dagger. + +For the traces left by Love in life are so numerous and diverse that even +the cynic--which is often bad language for the unprejudiced +observer--cannot quite doubt it away. There seems to be no other way of +accounting for the facts. When you start learning a new language you +always find yourself confronted with the verb "to love"--invariably the +normal type of the first conjugation. In every language on earth the +student may be heard declaring, with more zeal than discretion, that he +and you and they and every other person, singular or plural, have loved, +and do love, and will love. "To love" is the model verb, expressing the +archetype of activity. Once you can love grammatically there is a world +of things you may do without stumbling. For, strange to say, "to love," +which in real life is associated with so much that is bizarre and +violent, is always "regular" in grammar. Ancient and modern tongues tell +the same tale--from Hebrew to street-Arabic, from Greek to the +elephantine language that was "made in Germany." Not only is "to love" +deficient in no language (as _home_ is deficient in French, and _Geist_ +in English), but it is never even "defective." No mood or tense is ever +wanting--a proof of how it has been conjugated in every mood and tense of +life, in association with every variety of proper and improper noun, and +every pronoun at all personal. Not merely have people loved +unconditionally in every language, but there is none in which they would +not have loved, or might not have loved, had circumstances permitted; +none in which they have not been loved, or (for hope springs eternal in +the human breast) have been about to be loved. Even woman has an Active +Voice in the matter; indeed, "to love" is so perfect that, compared with +it, "to marry" is quite irregular. For, while "to love" is sufficient for +both sexes, directly you get to marriage you find in some languages that +division has crept in, and that there is one word for the use of ladies +and another for gentlemen only. Turning from the evidence enshrined in +language to the records of history, the same truth meets us at any date +we appoint. Everywhere "'T is love that makes the world go round." It is +dizzying to think what would have happened if Eve had not accepted Adam. +What could have attracted her if it was not love? Surely not his money, +nor his family. For these she couldn't have cared a fig-leaf. +Unfortunately, the daughters of Eve have not always taken after their +mother. The statistics of crime and insanity testify eloquently to the +reality of love, arithmetic teaching the same lesson as history and +grammar. Consider, too, the piles of love at Mudie's! A million +story-tellers in all periods and at all places cannot have all told +stories, though they have all, alas! told the same story. They must have +had mole-hills for their mountains, if not straw for their bricks. There +are those who, with Bacon, consider love a variety of insanity; but it is +more often merely a form of misunderstanding. When the misunderstanding +is mutual, it may even lead to marriage. As a rule Beauty begets man's +love, Power woman's. At least, so women tell me. But then, I am not +beautiful. It must be said for the man that every lover is a species of +Platonist--he identifies the Beautiful with the Good and the True. The +woman's admiration has less of the ethical quality; she is dazzled, and +too often feels, "If he be but true to me, what care I how false he be." + +"The Stage is more beholding to Love than the life of man," says Bacon. +The "Daily Telegraph" is perhaps even more "beholding" to it. The +ingenuity with which this great organ raises the cloyless topic every +silly season under another name, is beyond all praise. No conclusion will +ever be arrived at, of course, because "Love" means a different thing +with each correspondent, and it is difficult to lay down general truths +about a relation that varies with each of the countless couples that have +ever experienced it, or have fancied they experienced it. The set theme +of a newspaper correspondence always reminds me of a nervous old lady +crossing the roadway: she runs this way and that way, gets splashed by +every passing wheel, jumps back, jumps forward again, finds temporary +harbour on a crossing-stage under a lamp, darts sideways, and ends by +arriving in another street altogether. So that the heading of a +correspondence is scant guide as to what is being discussed under it; and +no one would be surprised to find a recipe against baldness under the +title of "The Age of Love." But then "The Age of Love" is an absurd and +answerless question. Experience shows that all ages fall in love--and out +again; so that, to quote the pithy Bacon again, "a man may have a quarrel +to marry when he will." Octogenarians elope, and Mr. Gilbert's elderly +baby died a _blasé_ old _roué_ of five. + +Romeo's passion was a second, not a first, love: he had already loved +Rosaline. Juliet's first--and only--love came to her only eleven years +after she had been weaned, "come Lammas." Save that the "Age of Love" may +be said to be "Youth"--for Love aye rejuvenates--there is nothing to be +said. Wherefore the German gentleman who protested against the _clichés_ +of novel-writers in the matter of the eternity of passion was well within +the wilderness of the subject. The _cliché_ metaphor, by the way, is +itself becoming a _cliché_, so stereotyped do we grow in protesting +against the stereotyped. Germans are, perhaps, not the best authorities +on passion: they are too sentimental for love and too domestic for +romance. Still, our German is justified in his complaint: the love-scenes +in our novels and dramas correspond very little to human nature. In works +of pure romance this is no drawback to artistic beauty; but in much +modern work purporting to mirror contemporary life, the love-making has +neither the beauty that springs from idealisation, nor that which springs +from reality. Property-speeches and stock-sentiments still do duty for +what really takes place in modern love-making. We have played with the +traditional puppets so long that we have come to believe they are alive. +They may have been alive once--when life was more elemental; they still +exist, perchance, in those primitive conditions which are really the past +surviving into the present. But in no field of human life is there +greater need of fresh observation than in this of love. The +ever-increasing subtlety and complexity of modern love have not yet found +adequate registration and interpretation in art. Art always seems to me a +magic mirror in which the shapes of the past are held long after they +have passed away. The author of to-day looks not into his heart--but into +the mirror--and writes. Primitive Love found its poet in Longus the +Greek, with his "Daphnis and Chloe"; but who has given us Modern Love? +Not Meredith himself, despite his sonnets; though "The Egoist" is a +terrible analysis of a modern lover, as saddening as the "Modern Lover" +of George Moore. The poets are ill guides to love. Their passions are +half-fantastic, if not of imagination all compact. Shelley's +"Epipsychidion" was the expression of a passing mood; Tennyson's "Come +into the Garden, Maud," a lyric exaltation that must have died down when +Maud appeared, and could in any case scarce have survived its fiftieth +rewriting; Rossetti's interpretation of "The House of Life" is as purely +individual as Patmore's "Angel in the House"; Swinburne sings of +phantasms; we can no more take our poets for types of modern lovers than +we can accept Dante or Petrarch as representatives of the mediaeval +lover. These poets used their goddesses as mystic inspirers. Dante was +not in love with Beatrice, the daughter of Portinari, but with his own +imagination: she married Simone as he Gemma, and thus he was still able +to worship her. The devotion of Petrarch to Laura did not prevent his +having children by another lady. If we turn to modern prose-writers, we +fail to find any really subtle treatment of Modern Love. Henry James +himself shrinks from analysing it, even allusively and insinuatingly. +Zola's handling of the love-theme is as primary as Pierre Loti's, for +Zola has the eye for masses, not for individual subtleties. Tolstoï, +informed by something of the rage of the old ascetics, is too iconoclast; +Maupassant's stories sometimes suggest a cynicism as profound as +Chamfort's or that old French poet's who wrote: + + Femme, plaisir de demye heure, + Et ennuy qui sans fin demeure. + +Ibsen is as idealistic as Strindberg is materialist. Shall we seek light +in the modern lady-novelist, with her demand for phases of passion suited +to every stage of existence? Shall we fall in with the agnosticism of +John Davidson, and admit that no man has ever understood a woman, a man, +or himself, and _vice versa_? 'T is seemingly the opinion of Nordau that, +after the first flush of youth, we do but play "The Comedy of Sentiment," +feigning and making believe to recapture + + That first lyric rapture. + +And his friend Auguste Dietrich writes: + + Se faire vivement désirer et paraître refuser alors ce qu'elle brûle + d'accorder ... voilà la comédie que de tout temps ont jouée les + femmes. + +Not quite a fair analysis, this: like all cynicism, it is crude. Juliet +for one did not play this comedy, though she was aware of the rôle. + + Or, if thou think'st I am too quickly won, + I'll frown and be perverse and say thee nay, + So thou wilt woo. + +Nor is it always comedy, even when played. Darwin, in his "Descent of +Man," recognizes a real innate coyness, and that not merely of the female +sex, which has been a great factor in improving the race. And, since we +are come to the scientific standpoint, let it be admitted that marriage +is a racial safeguard which does not exhaust the possibilities of +romantic passion. Nature, as Schopenhauer would say, has over-baited the +hook. Our capacities for romance are far in excess of the needs of the +race: we have a surplus of emotion, and Satan finds mischievous vent for +it. We are confronted with a curious dualism of soul and body, with two +streams of tendency that will not always run parallel: _hinc illae +lachrymae_. This it is that makes M. Bourget's "Cruel Enigme." Perhaps +the ancients were wiser, with whom the woman had no right of choice, +passing without will from father to husband. When the Romans evolved +their concept of the marriage-contract between man and woman instead of +between father and son-in-law, the trouble began. Emancipated woman +developed soul and sentiment, and when Roman Law conquered the world, it +spread everywhere the seeds of romance. Romance--the very etymology +carries its history, for 't is only natural that the first love-stories +should have been written in the language of Rome. Nor is it inapt that +the typical lover should recall Rome by his name: + + O, Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou. Romeo? + +Romantic Love is the rose Evolution has grown on earthly soil. _Floreat!_ +Strange that Nordau, in his "Conventional Lies of Civilisation," should +echo this aspiration and gush over the Goethean _Wahlverwandtschaft_--the +elective affinity of souls--almost with the rapture of a Platonist, +conceiving love as the soul finding its pre-natal half. Surely, to his +way of thinking, scientific selection were better for the race than such +natural selection, especially as natural selection cannot operate in our +complicated civilisation, where at every turn the poetry of life dashes +itself against the dead wall of prose. The miracle has happened. Edwin +loves Angelina, and by a strange coincidence Angelina also loves Edwin. +But then come the countless questions of income, position, family. Adam +and Eve were the only couple that started free from relatives. Else, +perhaps, had their garden not been "Paradise." All later lovers have had +to consult other people's tastes as well as their own, and there has +probably never been a marriage that has pleased all parties unconcerned. +And even when the course of true love runs smooth, do the lovers marry +whom they were in love with? Alas! marriage is a parlous business: one +loves one's ideal, but the beloved is always real. The wiser sort take a +leaf out of Dante's book or Petrarch's, and retain their illusions. "The +poets call it love--we doctors give it another name," says a kindly old +character in one of Echegaray's comedies: "How is it cured? This very day +with the aid of the priest; and so excellent a specific is this, that +after a month's appliance, neither of the wedded pair retains a vestige +of remembrance of the fatal sickness." + +There is a kind of scientific selection in the intermarriage of persons +of quality, which is at the bottom of their supposed superciliousness and +disdain of trade, though blood does not infallibly produce breeding. +There is the same tribal instinct in the aversion of Jews from exogamy, +and it is this sort of scientific selection which is subconsciously going +on when parents and guardians, sisters, cousins, and aunts, interfere +with the "elective affinities." Money, too, is really a security for the +due rearing of offspring. It is to be hoped there is a tear beneath the +sneers of Sudermann's comedy, "Die Schmetterlingschlacht," for the +sorrows of moneyless mothers with unmarriageable girls. + + Doän't thou marry for munny, but goä wheer munny is, + +said Tennyson's Northern Farmer--a sentiment which was anticipated or +plagiarised by Wendell Holmes as "Don't marry for money, but take care +the girl you love has money." Few people may marry directly for money, or +even for position, but few marriages are uncomplicated by considerations +of money and position. Little wonder if + + Love, light as air, at sight of human ties + Spreads his light wings and in a moment flies. + +Lovers may thrust such thoughts into the background, but is not this +wilful blindness as much "The Comedy of Sentiment" as that which supplies +the theme of Nordau's novel? It weighed upon Walter Bagehot that +"immortal souls" should have to think of tare and tret and the price of +butter; but "sich is life"--prose and poetry intertangled. The cloud may +have a silver lining, but clouds are not all silver. Wherefore Nordau's +glorification of the love-match is curiously unscientific; it belongs to +silver-cloudland; it might work among the birds of [Greek: +Nephelo-kokkugia]. Loveless marriages may beget happiness, if not +ecstacy; and love-matches may be neither for the interest of the +individuals nor of the race. They serve, however, to feed Art, and one +real love-match will justify a hundred novels and plays, just as one good +ghost will supply a hundred ghost-stories. Considering how many dead +people there are, the percentage of those permitted to play ghost is so +infinitesimal as to be incredible _a priori_; nevertheless, how we snatch +at the possibility of ghosts! Even so we like to connect love and +marriage, two things naturally divorced, and to fancy that wedding bells +are rung by Cupid. But, after all, what is love? In lawn-tennis it counts +for nothing. In the dictionary it figures, _inter alia_, as "a kind of +light silken stuff." And, as Dumas _fils_ sagely sums it up in "Le +Demi-Monde": "Dans le mariage, quand l'amour existe, l'habitude le tue, +et quand il n'existe pas elle le fait naître." + + + + +XXI + +DEATH AND MARRIAGE + +It was with melancholy amusement that I read in the scientific journals +that sewer-gas was comparatively innocuous. After the hundreds of +sanitary tracts in which the deadliness of sewer-gas has been an axiom of +faith, after the thousand-and-one deaths from it in the contemporary +novel, it is grimly diverting to learn that sewer-gas may be welcomed +without fear to our hearths and homes. The same process appears to be +overtaking science with which we are familiar in the sphere of +history--all the bad gases are getting purified and the good spirits +vilified. The invincible solids are being liquefied, and the aëry +nothings are being given solid habitations. The Professor tells me that +liquid oxygen is obtainable only under great pressure, and at a colossal +cost. I beg respectfully to suggest to the millionaires the advisability +of laying in quarts of it for their dinner-parties. This sparkling +beverage--essence of oxygen, mark you--would not need to be iced, for the +North Pole is as a red-hot poker compared with it. Such a beverage would +make a sensation and provide paragraphs for the society journals and the +"Times" obituary. It is true the guests would not like it, but they would +be anxious to quaff it. Have you never noticed the innocent joy which the +pop and froth of cheap champagne gives to suburban souls? There is a +magic halo about champagne--an aroma of aristocracy--which sanctifies it +for people who would be happier with lemonade. Wherefore I doubt not +there would be a public to adventure on liquid oxygen, though it were +congealed in the attempt. The imbibition thereof might indeed replace +suicide and cremation--it would both kill and cure, and our frozen bodies +might be preserved in family ice-safes for the edification of scientific +posterity. I should not marvel if liquid air or oxygen became an article +of the euthanasian creed. As for sewer-gas, we may yet live to see it +manufactured artificially for the improvement of the public health, and +conveyed to our overcrowded drawing-rooms with all the paraphernalia of +pipes and the mendacious meter. Science has turned so many somersaults +even in my short lifetime that I am prepared for anything. I have even +serious doubts as to the stability of Darwinism, I have seen so many +immortal truths die young. I verily believe that the cocksureness of our +century is destined to be the amusement of the next, which may not +impossibly believe that the ape is descended from man by retrogression. + + Our little systems have their day, + They have their day--and come again. + +The science of medicine in particular seems to be always in a critical +condition, and the bacillus bobs up and down in a manner that is "painful +and free." Like Hamlet's father's ghost, it eludes our question: we know +not if it is "a spirit of health or goblin damned," angel or demon or +delusion. The microbe of to-day is the myth of to-morrow. Surgery is the +only department of medicine which has made real advances in our century. +The rest is guesswork and experiment on vile bodies. I do not know why +the Peculiar People should be persecuted for refusing vivi-injection. +Tolstoï, a friend of his told me, breathes fire and fury against the +doctors, and will have none of their drugs or their doctrines, and he is +not alone in believing that every tombstone is a monument to some +doctor's skill. "When doctors disagree," says the proverb. But do they +ever agree--unless they consult? I went to an eminent oculist once, who +anointed my eyes with cocaine in order to make the pupils dilate. But my +pupils refused to obey. He was dumfoundered, and said that such a refusal +was unheard of: it contradicted all experience and all the books. I felt +quite conscience-stricken. He tried again and again, but my pupils +remained obdurately small. I apologised for my originality, and he peered +at my eyes minutely, evidently expecting to find the new humour. So I +suggested he might try Horror, which I understood from the novelists made +the pupils dilate; but he replied that that would not be professional. He +told me, however, a fact which I thought well worth his fee. An erudite +scientist had devoted a monograph to cocaine, but failed to discover the +one fact about it which was worth knowing, and which had raised cocaine +to the first rank--to wit, that applied externally it was an anaesthetic, +so that if you put a drop on your tongue you might bite your tongue +without hurting yourself. Doubtless the poor man was ready enough to bite +his tongue when his book was spoilt by the discovery. But I cannot help +thinking that his case was typical of science--which is appallingly +exhaustive and self-satisfied, but seems just to miss the one essential +thing. + +Have you heard the legend of the Marriage of the Angel of Death with a +mortal woman? He was aweary of his cheerless professional round, and +longed for domestic joys to brighten his scanty leisure. It did not +strike him to "domesticate the Recording Angel"; but one day, being sent +to despatch a beautiful woman, he fell in love with her instead, and +married her. But dire was the punishment of his disobedience. The +beautiful woman turned out a shrew, who made Death's life not worth +living, and as he had refused to kill her when her hour sounded, she was +now immortal. In despair he deserted her and her child, and would never +go near her, so that her neighbourhood was always healthy, and she +unconsciously made the fortune of several insanitary watering-places. In +course of time Death's son grew up, and with that curious filial +perversity (which has been especially remarked in the children of +clergymen) he became a physician. And his fame as a physician spread far +and wide, inasmuch as he knew the secret of Death, that uxorious and +henpecked Angel having revealed it to his wife in a weak moment. If the +Angel stood at the foot of the bed, he was only terrifying the patient; +if, however, he took up his position at the head of the bed, he was in +deadly earnest, and hope was vain. Inheriting sufficient of his father's +nature to see him when he was invisible to others, the physician was +naturally able to prophesy with undeviating accuracy, though the cunning +rascal made great play with stethoscopes and syringes and what not, and +felt pulses and thumped chests before he gave judgment, and was +solicitous in administering drugs when he foresaw the patient was +destined to recover. Now, it befell one day that the Princess of +Paphlagonia (of whom I have told elsewhere) fell grievously sick, and +none of the physicians could do aught to relieve her. So the king issued +a proclamation that whosoever could cure her could have her to wife. Now, +the fame of the beauty of the princess had travelled as far as the renown +of the mighty physician, so that desire was kindled in his heart to try +for the grand prize. And so Death's son set out and travelled over land +and sea, comforting the sick everywhere as he passed by, and curing all +those that were fated not to die. And at last he arrived in the capital +of Paphlagonia, and was received with great joy by the king and all his +court, and ushered into the sick-chamber. A great warmth gathered at his +heart as his eyes fell upon the marvellous fairness of the princess; but +the next moment his heart was turned to ice, for lo! he perceived the +Angel of Death standing at the head of the bed. After a moment of agony +the physician commanded all present to leave the chamber; then for the +first time he broke the silence his mother had imposed upon him. +"Father," he said, "have you no pity upon me--you who once loved a woman +yourself?" Then Death answered, in a hollow voice: "I must do my duty. I +disobeyed once, and my punishment was greater than I could bear." +"Father," pleaded the physician again, "will you not move to the foot of +the bed?" "Nay, I cannot," answered Death harshly: "I was commanded to +stay here, and here I must stay." "And thou wilt stay there whatever I +say or do?" asked the physician plaintively. "Yea," answered Death +stoutly. Then, wrought up to desperation, the physician called the +attendants in again and bade them turn the bed round, so that Death was +left standing at the foot. But the Angel, seeing himself outwitted, +rushed back to the head. The physician thereupon dismissed the attendants +and upbraided him with his broken promise, but Death stood firm. At last +the physician lost his temper and all his good bedside manner, and cried +furiously: "If you're not gone instantly, I'll send for mother!" And the +Angel of Death vanished in the twinkling of the bedpost. + +Till we can marry off Azrael to a termagant, I do not believe we shall +ever really turn the tables upon him. Nothing is more surprising to a +reader of advertisement columns than that people still continue to die. +An army of alchemists has discovered the Elixir of Life, and retails it +at one-and-three-halfpence a phial. Paracelsus has turned pill-maker, and +prospers exceedingly, and sells out to a joint-stock company. But the +great procession gravewards goes on, the "thin black lines" creeping +along all day long, and there is no falling off in the consumption of +sherry and biscuits. The scythe of the Black Angel shines--_opus +fervet_--and it is always the mowing season. Sometimes he stands at the +foot of the bed, and then there is triumph for the pharmacopoeia; +sometimes he stands at the head, and then the bed becomes a grave and he +a tombstone. Alas! his marriage is but a pleasant myth, and his +infallible son a dream. Azrael is still a bachelor, and science is not +shrew enough to drive him away. Perhaps 't is as well the leeches cannot +avert him; perhaps 't is a blessing that they blunder, and the kindly +grass grows over their mistakes. As it is, too many people are an +unconscionable long time in dying. Their habit of procrastination is with +them to the last. They linger on--a misery to themselves, and a thorn to +those anxious to mourn their loss. They do not know how to retire +gracefully. The art of leaving a world should be taught as a branch of +deportment. + +An American philanthropist who died recently was in the habit of girding +at the arrangements of the universe, which did not seem to him organised +after the fashion of a bureau of beneficence. He was wont to regret that +he had not been present at the creation, so as to give a few hints. +"Well, what would you have advised?" a friend once challenged him to say. +"I would have advised," he retorted, "that health be made catching +instead of disease." At first hearing, this sounds taking, but its +plausibility diminishes under investigation. Health is the normal state +of an organism, the perfect working of its parts,--it is not something +superadded, as disease is. You might as well expect one watch to catch +the right time from another. The philanthropist would have been more +within the bounds of the reasonable if he had demanded that disease +should be more egotistic and less epidemic. Every organism ought to +consume its own smoke, and not communicate its misfortunes to its +neighbours. And this it does satisfactorily enough in organic disease; it +is only when those impish germs, microbes and bacilli, mix themselves up +with the matter that we get pathological socialism. I confess that the +whole germ business seems to me an illogical element in the scheme of +destruction, though 't is of a piece with the structure of things. And +yet there is a sense in which health _is_ catching. There is a contagion +of confidence as well as of panic, and the surest way to escape epidemics +is to disbelieve them. Radiant people radiate health. The mind is a big +factor in things hygienic. 'T is a poor medicine that takes no account of +the soul. We are not earthen receptacles for drugs, but breathing clay +vivified by thoughts and passions. And in the universe of morals, at any +rate, health is catching just as much as disease. We are ennobled by +noble souls, and uplifted by righteousness. We pattern ourselves +unconsciously upon our friends. Character is contagious, and emotion +epidemic, and good-humour has its germs; copy-book maxims are null and +void: packets of propositions leave us cold. Morality can only be taught +by object-lessons; they err egregiously who would teach it by the card. A +fine character in a play or a novel outweighs a sermon; and in real life +the preacher pales before the practiser. It is a great day when a man +discovers for himself that honesty is the best policy. Morality is a +matter of feeling and will, not of intellect. Handbooks of ethics may +edify the intellect, and "Cicero de Officiis" be the favourite reading of +rogues. I knew a university student who at his examination cribbed Kant's +panegyric of the moral law from a concealed text-book. + +The legend of Death's marriage recalls to me that of John L. Sullivan's. +It is said that the famous bruiser was in like grievous plight. His wife +beat him, and he had to sue for a divorce on the ground of cruelty! There +is something deliciously pathetic about the insignificance of a great man +to his wife--his valet feels small at least on pay-day. "The Schoolmaster +Abroad" is a rampant divinity with a ferocious ferule; at home he is a +meek person in slippers. The policeman who stands majestically at the +cross-roads, waving the white glove of authority, nods in the +chimney-corner without a helmet. Bishop Proudie was not much of a hero to +Mrs. Proudie, and even a beadle is, I fear, but moderately imposing in +the domestic sanctum. That a prophet is not without honour save in his +own country, we know; but even if he travel abroad, he must leave his +wife behind him,--else will he never continuously contemplate his own +greatness. This is why so many great men remain bachelors. It perhaps +also explains why the others are so unhappy in their marriages. Perhaps +there ought to be a training-school for the supply of great men's wives. + + + + +XXII + +THE CHOICE OF PARENTS + +"Yes," said Marindin quietly, "they may say they write for Posterity, but +what living author besides myself does write for Posterity?" + +This sounded so unlike Marindin's modesty that I wondered if the port and +the paradoxes of our Christmas dinner had got into his head at last. The +veteran man of letters had talked brilliantly _more suo_ of many things, +most of all perhaps of his dead friend, Charles Dickens. Who seemed more +surely to have been writing Christmas stories for Posterity? we had asked +ourselves musingly, as we discussed the change of temper since the days +when Dickens or Father Christmas might have stood for the Time-Spirit. +Many good things had Marindin said of Ibsen and Nietzsche and the modern +apostles of self-development who sneered at the Gospel of self-sacrifice, +and at all the amiable virtues our infancy had drawn from "The Fairchild +Family" with its engaging references to Jeremiah xvii. 9. But now he was +breaking out in a new way, and I missed the reassuring twinkle in his +eye. + +"I think I may without arrogance claim to be the one author who really +has considerable influence with Posterity," he went on, drawing serenely +at his cigar and adjusting his right leg more comfortably across the arm +of his easy-chair. "Is there any one else whom Posterity listens to?" + +I shifted uneasily in my own arm-chair. "What do you mean?" I inquired +baldly. + +"Don't you know I write for the unborn?" he counter-queried. + +"But they don't read you--yet," I said, trying to smile. + +"My dear fellow! Why, I'm the best-read man in Ante-land. The unborn +swear by me! My publishers, Fore and Futurus, are simply rolling in +promissory notes." + +"You've become a Theosophist!" I cried in alarm, for that familiar +twinkle in his eye had been replaced by a strange exaltation. + +"And what if I have?" + +"Theosophy!" I cried scornfully--"Theology for Atheists! The main +contemporary form of the Higher Foolishness." + +"The Higher Foolishness!" echoed Marindin indignantly. + +"Yes, the Foolishness of the fool with brains. The brainless fool fulfils +himself in low ways--in alcoholic saturnalia, in salvation carnivals, in +freethought hysterics, in political bombs. The Higher Foolishness +expresses itself in aberrations of poetry and art, in table-rapping and +theosophy, in vegetarianism, and in mystic calculations about the Beast." + +"It is you who are the fool," he replied shortly. "Theosophy is +true--that is, my form of it. Birth is but the name for the entry upon +this particular form of existence. + + "Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting. + The soul that rises with us, our life's star, + Hath had elsewhere its setting, + And cometh from afar. + +"The unborn pre-exist, even as the dead persist; and instead of +addressing Posterity posthumously and circuitously, I have anticipated +its verdict. I have written for the unborn, direct. I have been the +apostle of the New Ethics among the pre-natal populations, the prophet of +individualism among the unborn." + +"What! You have propagated the teaching that free choice must be the +battle-cry of the future, that the only genuine morality is that which is +the spontaneous outcome of an emancipated individuality!" + +"Precisely." + +"But what has free choice to do with the unborn?" + +"What has it to do? Great heavens! Everything. The battle-cry of the +future will be Free Birth." + +"Free Birth!" I echoed. + +"Yes--this is what I have been preaching to the unborn--the choice of +their parents before consenting to be born! Compulsory birth must be +swept away. What! would you sweep away all checks upon the individuality +of the individual--once he is born would you tear asunder all the +swaddling-bands of our baby civilisation; would you replace the rules of +the nursery by the orderly anarchy of manhood and womanhood, and yet +retain such an incoherent anachronism as compulsory birth--a disability +which often cripples a man upon the very threshold of his career? Without +this initial reform the individualism of your Ibsens and Auberon Herberts +becomes a mere simulacrum, a hollow mockery. If you are to develop your +individuality, it must be your own individuality that you develop, not an +individuality thrust upon you by a couple of outsiders." + +"And you have preached this with success?" + +"With unheard-of success." + +"Unheard-of, indeed!" I muttered sarcastically. + +"In _your_ plane of existence!" he retorted. "In Ante-land the movement +has spread widely; scarcely a soul but has become convinced of the evils +of compulsion in this most personal matter, and of the necessity of +having a voice in its own incarnation. And it is I, _moi qui vous parle_, +who have sown the seeds of the revolt against our present social +arrangements. Too long had parents presumed upon the ignorance and +helplessness of the unborn and upon their failure to combine. But now the +great wave of emancipation which is lifting us all off our feet has +reached the coming race. And soon the old ideal will be nothing but a +strangled snake by the cradle of Hercules." + +"Why, I never heard of such a thing in all my born days!" I cried +helplessly. + +"Of course not; you are more ignorant than the babe unborn. You trouble +yourself about the next world, but as to what may be going on in the last +world, that never enters your head. But for the tyranny of outward social +forms you and I might have deferred our birth till a serener century. +Henceforth the dreamer of dreams will have only himself to blame if he is +born out of his due time and called upon to set the crooked straight. Job +himself would have escaped his misfortunes if he had only had the +patience to wait. In future any one who is born in a hurry will be a born +idiot." + +"What! Will the unborn choose the time of birth as well as their +parents?" + +"One is implicated in the other. Suppose the soul wished to be the son of +an American Duke, naturally it would have to wait till aristocracy was +developed across the Atlantic, say some time in the next century." + +"I see. And is there a public opinion in Ante-land that regulates private +action?" + +"Yes, but I have now educated it to the higher ethics. It used to be the +respectable thing to be born of strangers without one's own consent, +though at the bottom of their souls many persons believed this to be +sheer immorality, and cursed the day they were led to the cradle, and +became the mere playthings of the parents who acquired them--pretty toys +to be dandled and caressed, just a larger variety of doll. But all this +is almost over. Henceforth birth will be considered immoral unless it is +spontaneous--the outcome of an intelligent selection of parents, based on +love." + +"On love?" + +"Yes; should not a child love its father and mother? and how can we +expect it to love people it has never seen, to whom it is tied in the +most brutal way, without a voice in the control of its destinies at the +absolutely most important turning-point of its whole existence?" + +"True, a child should love its parents," I conceded. "But is not the +quiet, sober affection that springs up after birth, an affection founded +on mutual association and mutual esteem, better than all the tempestuous +ardours of pre-natal passion that may not survive the christening?" + +"Ah, that is the good old orthodox cant!" cried Marindin, puffing out a +great cloud of smoke. "What certainty is there this post-natal love would +spring up? And, at any rate, a man would no longer be able to blame +Providence if he found himself tied for life to a couple for whom he had +nothing but loathing and contempt. Even the adherents of the old +conception of compulsory childship begin to see that the stringency of +the filial tie needs relaxation. Already it is recognised that in cases +of cruelty the child may be divorced from the parent. But there is a +hopeless incompatibility of temper and temperament which is not +necessarily attended with cruelty. Drunkenness, lunacy, and criminality +should also be regarded as valid grounds for divorce, the parent being no +longer allowed to bear the name of the child it has dishonoured." + +"But who shall say," I asked sceptically, "that the new self-appointed +generation will be happier than the old? What guarantee is there that the +choice of parents will be made with taste and discretion?" + +Marindin shrugged his shoulders impatiently. + +"Come and interview the unborn," he said, and fixed his unsmiling eye on +mine, as though to hypnotise me. What happened then I shall never be able +to explain. I was translated into another scale of being, into the last +world in fact; and just as it is impossible to describe a symphony to a +deaf mute or a sunset to a man born blind, so it is impossible for me to +put down in terms of our present consciousness the experiences I went +through in that earlier pre-natal stage of existence. What I perceived in +Ante-land must needs be expressed through the language of this world, to +which in effect it bears as true and constant a relation as the vibration +of a violin string to its music. I soon gathered that, as Marindin had +claimed, his doctrines had made considerable incursions in the last +world, and, what was more surprising, in this. There seemed to be quite a +considerable sect of parents spread all through Europe and America, +pledged to respect the rights of the unborn, and it was in co-operation +with this enlightened minority--destined, no doubt, in time to become the +Universal Church--that the unborn worked. The sect embraced many couples +of wealth and position, and, as was to be expected, at the start there +had been a rush among the unborn for millionaire parents. But it was soon +discovered that birth for money was a mistake, that it too often led to a +spendthrift youth and a bankrupt age, and that there was not seldom a +legacy duty to pay in the shape of hereditary diseases, sometimes +amounting to as much as two pains in the pound; the gold rush was +therefore abating. Birth for beauty had also been popular till experience +demonstrated the insubstantiality of good looks as a panoply throughout +life. Gradually the real conditions of earthly happiness were coming to +be understood. Unborn preachers in their unbuilt churches tried in their +unspoken sermons to lead souls to the higher bodies or to save souls from +precipitate incarnation. Marindin's own unwritten books sustained Paley's +thesis of the essentially equal distribution of happiness among all +classes, and left it for the individual soul to decide between the +realities of toil and the unrealities of prosperity, Marindin took the +opportunity of our presence in Ante-land to pay a visit to his +publishers, Fore and Futurus, of whose honesty and generosity he spoke in +glowing terms. Fore received us; he seemed to be a thorough gentleman, +this unborn publisher. He showed us the design for a cover to a new +"Guide to the Selection of Parents," which he was about to bring out, and +which he hoped would become the standard work on the subject. I gathered +that these "Guides" were very popular as birthday presents, enabling, as +they did, those just about to be born to think once more before making +the final plunge. The feature of the Fore and Futurus "Guide" was the +appendix of contributions from souls already born, whose mistakes might +serve to benefit those still unattached. + +"But how can there be a guide to such a frightful labyrinth?" I inquired +curiously. "Japhet in search of a father had a light task before him +compared with the selection of one. And it is not only the selection of a +father, but of a mother! To take the outside variations only: the father +may be handsome, good-looking, plain or ugly; the mother may be +beautiful, pretty, plain or ugly. Any of these types of fathers may be +paired with any of these types of mothers, which makes sixteen +complications. Then there is complexion--fair or dark--which makes +sixty-four, for you know how, by algebraic calculations, every new +possibility multiplies into all the others. If one turns to mental and +moral characteristics, one's brain swims to think of the new +complications incalculably numerous and all multiplying into the old +physical combinations. Multiply furthermore by all the combinations +arising from considerations of health, money, position, nationality, +religion, order of birth--whether as first, second, or thirteenth +child--and the strongest intellect reels and breaks down. Even now I have +not enumerated all the possibilities; for the total would have to be +doubled for the contingency of sex, since I presume birth would not be +absolutely free, unless it included the right of choosing one's sex. + +"To take a concrete instance of the embarrassment which Free Birth would +bring, and of the invidious distinctions that would have to be made: +which is the better lot?--to be the third daughter of a +nineteenth-century, healthy, ugly, penniless, clever, middle-aged, moral, +free-thinking German Baron by a beautiful, rich, stupid, plebeian Spanish +dancer, with one child by a previous marriage, and a tendency to +consumption; or the second son of a twentieth-century American Duke, +unhealthy, uncultured, handsome, chaste, Ritualist, elderly and poor, by +an English heiress, ugly, low-born, Low Church, ill-bred, intellectual, +with a silly and only semi-detached mother? But this would be a problem +of unreal simplicity, bearing as much relation to actuality as the first +law of motion to the flight of a bird, for your choice would lie not +between one pair and another, but among all possible pairs." + +"All existing pairs possible to you," corrected Marindin. "People manage +to choose husbands and wives, though according to your computation the +whole of the opposite sex would have to be examined and selected from. In +practice the choice is narrowed down to a few individuals. So with the +choice of parents--most are already snapped up, monopolised or mortgaged, +or contracted for, and you have either to choose from the leavings or +postpone your birth, and bide your time a century or two. But the problem +is greatly simplified by the P. C." + +"What is the P. C.?" I murmured. + +"The Parental Certificate, of course. Throughout the terrestrial branch +of our sect no one is eligible for parentage who does not possess it. It +is given only to those who have passed the P. D. or Parents' Degree +examination, and supplements the old P. L. or Parents' Licence, which was +openly bought and sold." + +"And the qualifications?" + +"Oh, very elementary. The candidate is required to pass an exam, (both +written and oral) in the training of the young, and to be certified of +sound mind in sound body. The P. L. itself has been transformed into a +licence to keep one, two or more children, according to means." + +"You see our 'Guide' deals merely with the great typical pairs," +explained the publisher. "What Aristotle did for Logic our author has +done for Birth. He only pretends to give general categories. Aristotle +could not guarantee a man shall properly reason, nor can any individual +be infallibly inspired to the wisest choice of parentage. Of course the +photographs of parents are of great service to the unborn who are +thinking of settling down." + +"How do they get to see them?" + +"Oh, as soon as a couple passes the P. D. and receives the P. C. they +appear in the illustrated papers--especially the ladies' papers. +'Graduates of the Week' is the heading. And then there is the P. T.--the +Pathological Tree." + +I looked at the publisher in perplexity. + +"Gracious! I forget this is your first visit to Ante-land," he said, +apologetically. "Look! Here are some P. Ts. my lawyer has just been +looking over for me, the property of parents whose advertisements for +children I have been answering. My friends are rather anxious I should +incarnate." + +I surveyed the parchment roll with curiosity. It was a tree, on the model +of a genealogical tree, but tracing the hygienic record of the family. + +"In our sect," said Marindin impressively, "it will become the pride of +the family to have an unblemished pedigree, and any child who gets +himself born into such a family will do so with the responsibility of +carrying on the noble tradition of the house and living up to the +sanitary scutcheon--_santé oblige_. When children begin to be fastidious +about the families they are born into, parents will have to improve, or +die childless. And, as the love of offspring springs eternal in the human +breast, this will have an immense influence upon the evolution of the +race to higher goals. I do not know any force of the future on which we +can count more hopefully than on the refinement resulting from the +struggle for offspring and the survival of the fittest to be parents. +Undesirable families will become extinct. The unborn will subtly mould +the born to higher things. Childlessness will become again what it was in +the Orient--a shame and a reproach." + +"Yes," asserted the publisher, smoothing out the P. Ts.; "the old +unreasoned instinct and repugnance will be put on a true basis when it is +seen that childlessness is a proof of unworthiness--a brand of failure." + +"As old-maidenhood is, less justly, to-day," I put in. + +"Quite so," said Marindin eagerly. "In their anxiety to be worthy of +selection by Posterity, parents will rise to heights of health and +holiness of which our sick generation does not dream. If they do not, woe +to them! They will be remorselessly left to die out without issue. + +"The change has begun; our sect is spreading fast. In the course of a +century or two physical and mental deformities will vanish from the +earth." His eye flashed prophetic fire. + +"So soon?" I said, with a sceptical smile. + +"How could they survive?" Marindin inquired scathingly. + +"Is it likely any of us would consent to be born hunchbacks?" broke in +the publisher; "or to enter families with hereditary gout? Would any sane +Antelander put himself under the yoke of animal instincts or tendencies +to drink? Ah, here is a bibulous grandfather!" and he tossed one of the +P. Ts. disdainfully aside, though I observed that the old gentleman in +question had been an English Earl. + +"But, Mr. Fore," I protested, "will all the unborn attach such importance +to the pathological pedigree as you do? What power will make them train +up their parents in the way they should go?" + +"The greatest power on earth," broke in Marindin; "the power of +selfishness, backed by education. Enlightened selfishness is all that is +needed to bring about the millennium. The selfishness of to-day is so +stupid. Let the unborn care only for their own skins, and they will +improve the parents, and be well brought up themselves by the good +parents they have selected." + +"But come now, Mr. Fore," I said; "the new system has been partially at +work, I understand, for some time. Do you assure me, on your word of +honor as an unborn publisher, that the filial franchise has been +invariably exercised wisely and well?" + +"Of course not," interrupted Marindin. "Haven't I already told you there +has been much fumbling and experimentation, some souls being born for +money and some for beauty and some for position? But pioneers must always +suffer--for the benefit of those who come after." + +"Certainly there have been rash and improvident births," admitted the +publisher. "Hasty births, premature births, secret births, morganatic +births, illegitimate births, and every variety of infelicitous intrusion +upon your planet. The rash are born too early, the cautious too late; +some even repent on the very brink of birth and elect to be stillborn. +But in the majority of cases birth is the outcome of mature deliberation; +a contract entered into with a full sense of the responsibilities of the +situation." + +"But what do you understand by illegitimate birth?" I asked. + +"The selection of parents not possessing the P. C. There are always +eccentric spirits who would defy the dearest and most sacred institutions +organised by society for its own protection. We are gradually creating a +public opinion to discountenance such breaches of the law, and such +perils to the commonweal, subversive as they are of all our efforts to +promote the general happiness and holiness. Even in your uncivilised +communities," continued the publisher, "these unlicensed and illegitimate +immigrants are stamped with life-long opprobrium and subjected to +degrading disabilities; how much infamy should then attach to them when +the sin they are born in is their own!" + +"A lesser degree of illegitimacy," added Marindin, "is to be born into a +family already containing the full number it is licensed for. This +happens particularly in rich families, introductions into which are +naturally most sought after. It is still a moot point whether the birth +should be legitimatised on the death of one of the other children." + +"But it is the indirect results that I look forward to most," he went on +after a pause. "For example, the solution of Nihilism in Russia." + +"What has that to do with the unborn?" I asked, quite puzzled. + +"Don't you see that the czarship will die out?" + +"How so?" + +"No one will risk being born into the Imperial family. I should say that +birth within four degrees of consanguinity of the Czar would be so rare +that it would come to be regarded as criminal." + +"Yes, that and many another question will be solved quite peaceably," +said the publisher. "You saw me reject a noble grandfather; the growth of +democratic ideals among us must ultimately abolish hereditary +aristocracy. So, too, the question of second marriages and the deceased +wife's sister may be left to the taste and ethical standards of the +unborn, who can easily, if they choose, set their faces against such +unions." + +"You see the centre of gravity would be shifted to the pre-natal period," +explained Marindin, "when the soul is more liable to noble influences. +The moment the human being is born it is definitely moulded; all your +training can only modify the congenital cast. But the real potentialities +are in the unborn. While there is not life there is hope. When you +commence to educate the child it is already too late. But if the great +forces of education are brought to bear upon the unformed, you may bring +all Itigh qualities to birth. Think, for instance, how this will +contribute to the cause of religion. The unborn will simply eliminate the +false religions by refusing to be born into them. Persuade the unborn, +touch _them_, convert _them_! You, I am sure, Mr. Fore," he said, turning +to the worthy publisher, "would never consent to be born into the wrong +religion!" + +"Not if hell-fire was the penalty of an unhappy selection," replied Mr. +Fore. + +"Of course not," said Marindin. "Missionaries have always flown in the +face of psychology. Henceforward, moreover, Jews will be converted at a +period more convenient for baptism." + +"We hope to mould politics, too," added the publisher, "by boycotting +certain races and replenishing others." + +"Yes," cried Marindin; "it is my hope that by impregnating the unborn +with a specific set of prejudices, they might be induced to settle in +particular countries, and I cannot help thinking that patriotism would be +more intelligent when it was voluntary; self-imposed from admiration of +the ideals and history of a particular people. Indeed this seems to me +absolutely the only way in which, reason can be brought to bear on the +great war question, for in lieu of that loud eloquence of Woolwich +infants there would be exercised the silent pressure of the unborn, who +could simply annihilate an undesirable nation, or decimate an offensive +district by refusing to be born in it. Surely this would be the most +rational way of settling the ever-menacing Franco-Prussian quarrel." + +"I observe already a certain anti-Gallic feeling in Ante-land," put in +the publisher. "A growing disinclination to be born in France, if not a +preference for being made in Germany. But these things belong to _la +haute politique_" + +"My own suspicion is," I ventured to suggest, "that there is a growing +disinclination to be born anywhere, and this new privilege of free choice +will simply bring matters to a climax. Your folks, confronted by the +endless problem of choosing their own country and century, their own +family and their own religion, will dilly-dally and shilly-shally and put +off birth so long that they will never change their condition at all. +They will come to the conviction that it is better not to be born; better +to bear the evils that they know than fly to others that they know not +of. What if the immigration of destitute little aliens into our planet +ceased altogether?" + +Marindin shrugged his shoulders, and there came into his face that +indescribable look of the hopeless mystic. + +"Then humanity would have reached its goal: it would come naturally and +gently to an end. The euthanasia of the race would be accomplished, and +the glorified planet, cleansed of wickedness at last, would take up its +part again in the chorus of the spheres. But like most ideals, I fear +this is but a pleasant dream." Then, as the publisher turned away to +replace the P. Ts. in a safe, he added softly: "Intelligence is never +likely to be so widely diffused in Ante-land that the masses would fight +shy of birth. There would always be a sufficient proportion of unborn +fools left who would prefer the palpabilities of bodily form to the +insubstantialities of pre-natal existence. Between you and me, our friend +the publisher is extremely anxious to be published." + +"And yet he seems intelligent enough," I argued. + +"Ah, well, it cannot be denied that there are _some_ lives decidedly +worth living, and our friend Fore will probably bring up his parents to +the same profession as himself." + +"No doubt there would always be competition for the best _births_," I +observed, smiling. + +"Yes," replied Marindin sadly; "the struggle for existence will always +continue among the unborn." + +Suddenly a thought set me a-grin. "Why, what difference can the choice of +parents make after all?" I cried. "Suppose you had picked my parents--you +would have been I, and I should be somebody else, and somebody else would +be you. And there would be the three of us, just the same as now," and I +chuckled aloud. + +"You seem to have had pleasant dreams, old man," replied Marindin. But +his voice sounded strange and far away. + + * * * * * + +I opened my eyes wide in astonishment, and saw him buried in an +easy-chair, with a book in his hand and two tears rolling down his +cheeks. + +"I've been reading of Tiny Tim while you snoozed," he said +apologetically. + + + + +XXIII + +PATER AND PROSE + +It seems only yesterday--and it is only yesteryear--since Walter Pater +sat by my side in a Club garden, and listened eloquently to my +after-lunch _causerie_, and now he is gone + + To where, beyond the Voices, there is Peace. + +You grasp that his eloquence was oracular, silent. He had an air. There +was in him--as in his work--a suggestion of aloofness from the homespun +world. I suspect he had never heard Chevalier. I should not wonder if he +had never even heard of him. He was wrapped in the atmosphere of Oxford, +and though "the last enchantments of the Middle Ages" in no wise threw +their glamour over his thought, there was a cloistral distinction in his +attitude. He reminded me of my friend the Cambridge professor, who, when +the O'Shea business was filling eight columns daily of the papers that +deprecate honest art, innocently asked me if there was anything new about +Parnell. Pater did not probably carry detachment from the contemporary so +far as that, but he was in harmony with his hedonistic creed in +permitting only a select fraction of the cosmos to have the entry to his +consciousness. A delightful, elegantly-furnished consciousness it was, +with the latest improvements, and with every justification for +exclusiveness. But there is in men of Mr. Pater's stamp something of what +might be termed the higher Pod-snappery. They put things aside with the +wave of a white-gloved hand: this and that do not exist, Mr. Podsnap +himself--O the irony of it!--among them. Like Mr. Podsnap, though on a +different plane, they take themselves and their view of life too +seriously. When I told Mr. Pater that there was a pun in his "Plato and +Platonism," he asked anxiously for its precise locality, so that he might +remove it. This I could not remember, but I told him I did not see why he +should remove one of the best things in the book. But my assurances that +the pun was excellent did not seem to tranquillise him. Now, why should +not a philosopher make a pun? Shakespeare was an incorrigible punster. +Why should a man's life be divided into little artificial sections, like +the labelled heads in the phrenologist's window? I do not want to see a +man put on his Sunday clothes to talk about religion. But a congenital +inelasticity is fostered in the atmosphere of common-rooms, there where +solemn-footed serving-men present the port with sacerdotal ceremonies, +and where, if the dons are no longer (in the classic phrase of Gibbon) +"sunk in port and superstition," the port is still a superstition. This +absence of humour, this superhuman seriousness bred of heavy traditions +peculiarly English, this sobriety nourished by sacerdotal port, give the +victim quite a wrong sense of values and proportions. He mistakes +University for Universe. His tastes become the measure of a creation of +which he is the centre. Hence an abiding gravity that is ever on the +brink of dulness. The Englishman cannot afford to be grave, the bore is +so close at hand. + +And yet, if one did not take oneself seriously, I suppose nothing would +ever be done. A kindly illusion about their importance in the scheme of +things is Nature's instrument for getting work out of men. "Don't you +think Flaubert took himself too seriously?" I heard a lady novelist ask a +gentleman practitioner. Certainly his correspondence with George Sand +reveals an anchorite of letters, who tortured the phrase and sacrificed +sleep to the adjective, and the brothers De Goncourt--themselves very +serious gentlemen--have recorded how he considered his book as good as +finished because he had invented the "dying falls" of the music of his +periods. But if Flaubert had sufficiently contemplated the infinities, +the immense indifference of things, if, like the astronomer in search of +a creed, he had concentrated his vision on the point to which the whole +solar system is drifting, French prose would have lost some of its most +wonderful pages; and had the late Mr. Pater been less troubled by the +rose-leaf of style and more by the thorns of the time, English prose +would have been the poorer by harmonies and felicities unsurpassed and +unsurpassable. This is to ignore Pater the Philosopher and Pater the +Critic. Of these persons there will be varying estimates. They have even +in a sense, through the extravagances of a disciple, been subjected to +the verdict of a British jury--a sufficiently ironic revenge upon the +fastidious shrinker from the Philistines; and though, of course, it was +not theories of art and philosophy that were being "tried by jury," yet +these side-issues contributed to prejudice the twelve good men and true. +But it is only congruous with the trend of democratic thought that +everything should come under the censorship of the crowd, and the only +wonder is that long ere this the vexed questions of our troubled time +have not been solved by _plébiscite_. + +A leading New York paper is commended for its patronage of literature, +because it offers large prizes for stories, the prizes to be awarded by +the votes of its readers. If the crowd is capable of appraising +literature, there is no reason why it should not take science and art +similarly into its hands, nor why the counting of heads should not +replace the marshalling of arguments in philosophy and ethics. In +politics the mob has a right to be heard, because it has a right to +express its grievances. Could an aristocracy be trusted to do justly by +Demos, democracy would have no reason to be. But this right of the +many-headed monster to a control of the governmental agencies that affect +its own happiness, does not involve the ability to decide less selfish +problems; and when, as rarely happens, abstract problems find themselves +in the witness-box, then the "Palladium of British liberty" becomes a +mockery of justice. "Legal judgment of his peers," says Magna Charta; but +when an exceptional man blunders into the dock, is he ever accorded a +panel of his equals? Things are no better in France. When Flaubert was +arraigned for his "Madame Bovary," he did not get a box of men of +letters, though there is so much more sense of art in the citizens of +Paris, that even by the bourgeois jury he was acquitted without a stain +on the character of his book. The central figure of our English episode +had nothing so creditable as an immoral book to his charge, but +indirectly the relations of art and morality came into question, and he +declared that he followed Pater, the one critic he recognised, in +believing that there were no relations between art and morality, that a +book could not be immoral, but might be something worse--badly written. +Now, this is the favourite doctrine of Chelsea, and doubtless something +may be said for it; but to put it forth, as the doctrine of Pater is a +libel--almost a criminal libel--on that great writer. These young men who +live for the Beautiful have only understood as much of Pater as would +justify epicurean existence. + +Let us examine this pretension of the prophet of the importance of being +flippant, to be a disciple of Pater. + +No doubt Pater was something of an Impressionist in his philosophy of +life. An eloquent expounder of the Heracletian flux, [Greek: panta rei], +of the relativity of systems of thought and conduct, and of the duty of +seizing the flying moments--"failure in life is to form habits,"--he did +not omit, like his one-sided disciples, to consider the quality of those +moments. It was the _highest_ quality you were to give to your moments as +they passed; to fail to do this was "on this short day of frost and sun +to sleep before evening." ("The Renaissance.") "Marius the Epicurean" was +not an Epicurean in the sense in which the doctrines of Epicurus have +been travestied through the ages: he turned away sickened from the +barbarities of the gladiatorial combats, longing for the time when the +forces of the future would create a heart that would make it impossible +to be thus pleasured. If "_Carpe diem_" is Pater's motto, the hour is not +to be plucked ignobly; if style is his watchword in art, style alone +cannot make great Art, though it may make good Art. The distinction, +between good Art and great Art depends immediately _not on its form_ but +on its matter. "It is on the quality of the matter it informs or +controls, its compass, its variety, its alliance to great ends, or the +depth of the note of revolt, or the largeness of hope in it, that the +greatness of literary art depends, as 'The Divine Comedy,' 'Paradise +Lost,' 'Les Misérables,' the English Bible, are great art." ("Essay on +Style.") Your Chelsea manikin would never dream of these things as great +art: his whole soul is expressed in ballads and canzonets, in strange +esoteric contes, in nocturnes and colour-symphonies, in the bric-à-brac +of aesthetics. Furthermore let the _soi-disant_ disciples ponder this +explicit statement of the Master: "Given the conditions I haye tried to +explain as constituting good art,--then, if it be devoted further to the +increase of men's happiness, to the redemption of the oppressed, or the +enlargement of our sympathies with each other, or to such presentment of +new or old truth about ourselves and our relation to the world as may +ennoble and fortify us in our sojourn here, or immediately, as with +Dante, to the glory of God, it will also be great Art." Yes, if Pater +protested against "the vulgarity which is dead to form," he was no less +contemptuous of "the stupidity which is dead to the substance." +("Postscript to Appreciations.") If he fought shy of the Absolute, if he +denied "fixed principles," and repudiated "every formula less living and +flexible than life" ("Essay on Coleridge"), he could still sympathise +passionately with Coleridge's hunger for the Eternal. + +So much for the literary art. But even in painting, where the +self-sufficiency of style is proclaimed somewhat more speciously, the +purveyor of Chelsea ware will find scant countenance in the adored +Master. Nowhere can I find him preaching "Art for Art's sake," in the +jejune sense of the empty-headed acolytes of the aesthetic. With him the +formula was for the _spectator_ of art; it has been misapplied to the +_maker_ of art. Pater's studies of the great pictures of the Renaissance +are, if anything, rather too much taken up with their intellectual +content, and their latent revelation of the temper of the time and the +artist. No, these young men are no disciples of Pater. In their +resoluteness to live in the Beautiful (which is not always +distinguishable from the Bestial), they have forgotten the other items of +the trinity of Goethe, they have lost sight of the True and the Whole. It +is Whistler who is the prophet of the divorce of Art from Life, of the +antithesis of Art and Nature. When Whistler said, "Another foolish +sunset," he spake the word that called into being all these "degenerate" +paradoxes, though I am not sure but what Mr. Sydney Grundy was before him +in creating a stage-manager who thinks meanly of the moons and the scenic +backgrounds of real life. It is a good joke, this of Nature paling before +Art, or reduced to plagiarising Art,--"Where, if not from the +Impressionists, do we get those wonderful brown fogs that come creeping +down our streets, blurring the gas lamps and changing the houses into +monstrous shadows?"--but as the basis of a philosophy of Art it palls. +The germ of truth in it is that metaphysically these effects may be said +not to have existed till artists taught us to see and to look for them. +But, after all, wise old Shakespeare has the last word: + + Nature is made better by no mean + But Nature makes that mean: so o'er that Art, + Which you say adds to Nature, is an Art + That Nature makes. + +But these things are not for the British jury. Pater, the literary +artist, however, one is more driven to praise than to appraise. This +exquisite care for words has something of moral purity--as well as +physical daintiness in it. There is indeed something priestly in this +consecration of language, in this reverent ablution of the counters of +thought, those poor counters so overcrusted with the dirt of travel, so +loosely interchangeable among the vulgar; the figure of the stooping +devotee shows sublime in a garrulous world. What a heap of mischief M. +Jourdain has done by his discovery that he was talking prose all his +life! Prose, indeed! Moliere has much to answer for. The rough, +shuffling, slipshod, down-at-heel, clipped, frayed talk of every-day life +bears as much relation to prose as a music-hall ditty to poetry. The name +"prose" must be reserved for the fine art of language--that fine art +whose other branch is poetry. It is a grammarians' term, "prose," and +belongs not to the herd. They do not need it, and it would never have +come into M. Jourdain's head or out of his mouth, had he not taken a +tutor. And yet the delusion is common enough--even with those to whom +Moliere is Greek--that prose is anything which is not poetry. As well say +that poetry is anything which is not prose. Of the two branches of the +art of language, prose is the more difficult. This is not the opinion of +those who know nothing about it. They fancy a difficulty about rhymes and +metres. 'T is all the other way. Rhymes are the rudders of thought; they +steer the poet's bark. He cannot get to Heaven itself without striking +"seven," or mixing up his meaning with foreign "leaven." His shifts to +avoid these shifts are pathetic to a degree. He flounders about twixt +"given" and "levin," and has been known to snatch desperately at +"reaven." Of all fraudulent crafts commend me to the poet's. He is a +paragon of deceit and quackery, a jingling knave. 'T is a game of _bouts +rimés_, and he calls it "inspiration." No wonder Plato would have none of +him in his Republic, even though Plato's poets were guiltless of rhyme +and slaves only to metre. But the metre of verse, too, is a friend to +thought, and its enemy. It is like wheels to a cart; not unsagaciously is +Pegasus figured with wings. He flies away with you, and you are lulled by +the regular flap, flap of his pinions, and his goal concerns you little. +The swing and the rush of the verse compensate for reason, and it is +wonderful how far a little sense will fly when tricked out with fine +feathers. Even in stately, rhymeless decasyllabics the march and music of +the verse help a limping thought along like a sore-footed soldier +striding to the band. But the prose-writer has none of these advantages. +He is like an actor without properties. His thoughts do not go along with +a flutter of flags and a blare of trombones. Nor do they glide upon +castors. They must needs lumber on after a fashion of their own, and if +there is a music to their ambulation it must be individual, neither in +common nor in three-eight time, but winding and quickening at will, with +no strait symmetry of antiphonal bars. There is nothing to tell you the +writer has made "prose"--as the spacing and the capital letters invite +you to look for poetry. He has to depend only upon himself. This is why +blank verse--which approaches prose most nearly--is so much more +difficult to write than rhymed verse, though it looks so much easier and +more tempting to the amateur. Are we not justified, then, in taking the +logical step further, and saying that prose, which strips itself of the +last rags of adventitious ornament, and which tempts the amateur most of +all, is the highest of all literary forms, the most difficult of all to +handle triumphantly? May we not compare the music of it--that music which +we get in Ruskin and in Pater--to the larger rhythms to which the savage +drum-beat has developed? Rhythm is undoubtedly an instinct, but +civilisation brings complexity. From the tom-tom to the tune, from the +tune to the symphony. In the vaster reaches and sweeps of the rhythm of +prose there is a massive music as of Wagnerian orchestras. Anybody can +enjoy the castanet-play of rhymes; half your popular proverbs clash at +the ends; "the jigging of our rhyming mother-wits" is on everybody's +lips. But for the blank verse of "Paradise Lost" there is only "audience +fit, though few"; and as for the music of prose, so little is it +understood that critics vaguely aware of it had to invent the term "prose +poet" when they found the stress of passion and imagination effervescing +into resonant utterance. On the other hand, there are those who do not +acknowledge Pope as a poet. The essence of the long-standing quarrel is a +confusion. From the point of view of form there is only one kind of +writer to be recognised--the artist in words. Of him there are two +varieties: the artist who uses rhyme and metre, and the artist +who--wilfully or through impotence--dispenses with them. From the point +of view of matter there is the artist with "soul" and the artist without +"soul." "Soul" is shorthand for that mysterious something the absence of +which urges people to deny Pope the title of poet. They feel the +intangible something is not there, "the consecration and the poet's +dream." But with the conventional distinctions, there is no name left for +Pope, if he is not a poet. The truth is that he was an artist in +words--as masterly as the Mantuan himself, though without that golden +cadence and charm which keep Virgil a poet by any classification. On the +other hand, Carlyle, who had such scorn of the rhyming crew, was himself +a poet to the popular imagination, though to us he will be an artist in +prose _plus_ soul. There are, thus, really two classes of writers: + + I. Prose-Artists. + II. Verse-Artists. + +Each of these splits up into two kinds, according as the writer has or +lacks "soul." Or, if you think "soul" the more important differentia, we +will say there are artists with "soul" and artists without "soul," and +that some of each sort work in prose and some in verse. But the +classification is a crass one, and the English language unfortunately +does not possess words to express the distinctions, while the ambiguous +associations of the word "prose" increase the difficulty of inventing +them. We do not even possess any equivalent of the French "prosateur," +though I see no reason why "prosator" should not be used. Without +neologisms, and avoiding the ambiguous adjective "prosaic," and using +"poetic" to express "soulfulness" and not the handling of metres, we get + + +1. Poetic Verse-Artists. (Poets.) + +2. Non-Poetic Verse-Artists. (Verse-Writers.) + +3. Poetic Prose-Artists. (Prose Poets.) + +4. Non-Poetic Prose-Artists. (Prose Writers.) + + +Keats is a verse poet, Pope a verse writer, Buskin a prose poet, and +Hallam a prose writer. + + * * * * * + +The two great writers of our day who have sinned most against the laws of +writing are Browning and Meredith, the one in verse, the other in prose. +I speak not merely of obscurities, to perpetrate which is in +every sense to stand in one's own light, but of sheer fatuities, +tweakings-of-the-nose to our reverend mother-tongue, as either might have +expressed it. But what I am most concerned to suggest here is that the +distinction between prose and poetry (using prose to mean artistically +wrought language) will not survive investigation. The popular instinct +has long ago seen that the vital thing is the _matter_--that it is +profanity to call that "poetry" which is only verse; it remains to be +recognised that even the distinction of form rests only on the +non-recognition of the rhythm of "prose,"--a rhythm that is not metre in +so far as metre has the sense of regular measure, but may for all that +have laws of its own, which await the discoverer and the systematiser. + +The affinity of prose-rhythms is, I have hinted, with the higher +developments of music, which, compared with the simple tunes of the +street, are as apparently lawless and unlicensed as is prose compared to +verse. And as it is not poets who follow laws, but precede them--as +trochee and iambic, alcaic and hexameter, are the inventions of +grammarians following on the trail of genius--so it behoves the Aristotle +who would discover the laws of the rhythm of prose to study the masters +of the art, masters by instinct and a faultless ear and the grace of God, +and endeavour by patient induction to wrest from their sentences the +secrets of their harmonies. Who will write the prosody of prose? + +It is sad to have to declare that the bulk of contemporary writers lie +outside all these classifications. They are artists neither in prose nor +verse, and though they may have "soul," they cannot make it visible. For +"soul" may be expressed equally through painting and sculpture and music +and acting, audits dimly discerned presence can scarcely convert slipshod +writing into literature. No one would accept as art a picture in which a +gleam of imagination struggled against the draughtsmanship of the +schoolboy to whom arms are toasting-forks, or applaud an actor who might +be brimming over with sensibility but could command neither his voice nor +his face. No one has any business to come before the public who has not +studied the medium through which he proposes to exhibit his "soul": +unfortunately this is the age and England is the country of the amateur, +and in every department we are deluged with the crude. The fault lies +less with the amateur than with the public before which he presents +himself, and which, incompetent to distinguish art from amateurishness, +is as likely to bless the one as the other. Of all forms of art +literature suffers most; for the pity is, and pity'tis't is true, +everybody learns to talk and write at an early age. This makes the +transition to literature so fatally easy. _Facilis descensus Averni!_ To +paint, one must at least know how to mix colours and handle a brush; to +compose, one must be familiar with the meaning of strayed spiders' legs +on curious parallel bars, and there are strange disconcerting rumours of +"orchestration." But to produce literature you have simply to dip pen in +ink or open your mouth and see what God will give you. Hence particularly +the flood of novels, hence the low position of the novel; although, as +Theodore Watts has pointed out, it is practically the modern Epic. I have +met distinguished students of Greek texts who have never conceived of the +novel as a work of art, or as anything beyond the amusement of an idle +hour--something for the women and the children. One such told me he would +not read "The Mill on the Floss" because it ended unhappily. I must +conclude he has only read Aeschylus for his examinations. Acting stands +next to literature in its seductiveness. The actor's instrument is his +body, and everybody has a body. If, in addition to a "body," the creature +conceives himself to possess a "soul," the odds are there will be +laughter for the "gods." I tremble for the time when the popular +educationist shall have had his way and every child be seised of the +rudiments of drawing. We shall see sights then. At present, despite the +horrors of the galleries and the widespread ignorance of art, painting +cannot compete with literature as a misunderstood art. For the +public--which is the only critic that counts in the long run--does not +demand grammar, much less style; and the novel of the season may bristle +with passages that could be set for correction at examinations in +English. It is a little thing, but it seems to me significant, that the +announcement of terms of the local branch of Mudie's, in the little town +at which I am writing these lines, runs thus: + + The subscription for one set entitles the subscriber to one complete + work at a time, whether in one, two, or three volumes, and can be + exchanged as often as desired. + + + + +XXIV + +THE INFLUENCE OF NAMES + +Far-fetched as the idea seems that names and characters have any +interconnection, yet no great writer but has felt that one name, and one +alone, would suit each particular creation. The tortures and travels that +Balzac went through till he found "Z. Marcas" are well known. So is the +agony of Flaubert on hearing that Zola was anticipating him in the name +of Bouvard, which it had cost Flaubert six years' search to find. Zola's +magnanimity in parting with it deserves a _fauteuil_. Somebody in the +provinces told me that his minister had preached upon the subject of +names, laying it down that in every name lurked a subtle virtue,--or +vice; the former the bearer of the name was in duty bound to cultivate, +the latter to root out. Fantastic as this speculation be, even for a +minister, no one doubts that people's names may have an influence upon +their lives; and, in the case of the Christian name at least, children +ought to be protected by the State against the bad taste and the cruelty +of their parents. More certainly than the stars our names control our +destinies, for they are no meaningless collocation of syllables, but have +deep-rooted relations with the history and manner of life of our +ancestors. The Smiths were once smiths, the Browns dark in complexion; +and so, if we could only trace it, every name would reveal some inner +significance, from Adam (red earth) downwards. Why do publishers tend to +"n" in their names'? Some of the chief London publishers run to a final +"n"--Macmillan, Longman, Chapman; Hodder & Stoughton; Hutchinson & Co.; +Sampson Low, Marston & Co.; Lawrence & Bullen; Fisher Unwin; Heinemann. +The last, indeed, is nothing but "n" sounds; such a name could not escape +taking to publishing. I find also in the publishers' lists T. Nelson & +Co.; Eden, Remington & Co.; Henry Sotheran; John Lane; Effingham Wilson; +Innes & Co. (as fatal as Heinemann); George Allen & Co.; Osgood, +McIlvaine & Co.; Gardner, Darton & Co. Sometimes the "n" is prominent at +the beginning or in the middle, as in Henry & Co.; Ward & Downey; +Constable & Co.; Digby, Long & Co.; Arnold; G. P. Putnam's Sons; Kegan +Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co. (wherein each partner boasts his separate +"n"); Oliphant, Anderson & Ferrier (wherein there are at least three +"n"s); John C. Nimmo; Edward Stanford; Gibbings & Co.; Chatto & Windus; +Nisbet & Co. When the "n" is not in the surname, at least the Christian +contains the indispensable letter, as John Murray, Elkin Matthew. + +Even when it can find refuge nowhere else the "n" creeps into the "and" +of the firm or into the "Sons." The very Clarendon Press has the +trademark. Who is the stock publisher of the eighteenth century? Tonson! +Who were the first publishers of Shakespeare? Condell & Heminge. + +And while publishers run mysteriously to "n," authors run with equal +persistency to "r"--in their surnames for the most part, but at least +somehow or somewhere. + +Who are our professors of fiction to-day? Hardy, Meredith, Blackmore, +Barrie, Rudyard Kipling, Walter Besant (and James Rice), George Moore, +Frankfort Moore, Olive Schreiner, George Fleming, Henry James, Hamlin +Garland, Henry B. Fuller, Harold Frederic, Frank Harris, Marion Crawford, +Arthur Conan Doyle, Rider Haggard, Miss Braddon, Sarah Grand, Mrs. Parr, +George Egerton, Rhoda Broughton, H. D. Traill, Jerome K. Jerome, Barry +Pain, W. E. Norris, Crockett, Ian Maclaren, Robert Barr, Ashby Sterry, +Morley Roberts, Mabel Robinson, F. W. Robinson, John Strange Winter, Du +Maurier (late but not least to follow his lucky "r"), Helen Mathers, +Henry Seton Merriman, etc., etc. + +Who were the giants of the last generation? Thackeray, Charles Dickens, +Charles Reade, George Eliot, Bulwer Lytton, Charlotte Brontë, Trollope, +Disraeli. + +Who are our prophets and thinkers? Carlyle, Ruskin, Emerson, Darwin, John +Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer, Froude, Freeman. + +Who are the poets of the Victorian era? Robert Browning, Alfred Tennyson, +Algernon Charles Swinburne ("r"-ed throughout), D. Gabriel Rossetti, +Christina Rossetti, Matthew Arnold, William Morris, Robert Buchanan, +Andrew Lang, Robert Bridges, Lewis Morris, Edwin Arnold, Alfred Austin, +Norman Gale, Richard Le Gallienne, Philip Bourke Marston, Mary F. +Robinson, Theodore Watts, etc., etc. + +Who are the dramatists of to-day? Grundy, Pinero, Henry Arthur Jones, W. +S. Gilbert, Haddon Chambers, Comyns Carr, Carton, Raleigh, George E. Sims +(mark the virtue of that long-mysterious "r"). + +And who in the past have done anything for our prose dramatic literature? +Sheridan and Oliver Goldsmith, and, earlier still, Congreve, Wycherley, +Farquhar, and Vanbrugh. Nay, which are the mighty names in our +literature? Chaucer, Spenser, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Herrick, Dryden, +Alexander Pope, Butler, Sterne, Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Walter +Scott, Robert Burns. + +You may even look at the greatest names in the world's literature. Homer, +Virgil (Maro), Horace, Firdusi, Omar Khayyam, Cervantes, Calderon, +Petrarch, Rabelais, Dante Alighieri, Schiller, Voltaire, Rousseau, +Moliere, Corneille, Racine, Honore de Balzac, Flaubert, Victor Hugo, +Verlaine, Heinrich Heine. + +Of course there are not a few minus the "r," as Milton, Keats, Goethe, +Swift, etc., etc. + +There seems indeed to be a sub-species of "sons"--Ben Jonson, Dr. +Johnson, William Watson, John Davidson, Austin Dobson. Nevertheless there +is an overwhelming preponderance of "r" sounds in the names of the +world's authors. What is the underlying reason? Is there a certain rugged +virility in the letter, which made it somehow expressive of the nature of +the original owners? "N" is certainly suave and plausible in comparison, +and might well produce a posterity of publishers. What adds some colour +to the suspicion is that, when writers have chosen _noms de guerre_, they +have frequently--though all unconsciously--taken names in "r." This +explains why all the lady novelists run to "George." Publisher _versus_ +author may now be expressed symbolically as N/R, N over R, the N of money +over the R of art. + +With our artists I find a less strong tendency to "l's" as well as to +"r's," and it is therefore only appropriate that a Leighton should long +preside over the Royal Academy, a Millais be its chief ornament, and +finally its head, and a Whistler its chief omission; that constable and +Walker should be the glory of English art, that Reynolds should be our +national portrait-painter, and Landseer our animal-painter, and Wilkie +our domestic painter. Turner made up for his surname by the superfluity +of "l's" in his William Mallord, Raphael starts as an R. A., while +Michael Angelo, with his predominance in "l's," is rightly king of art. +The absence of "l" in Hogarth's name and the strong presence of "r" of +course denotes that the satirist was more of a literary man than an +artist. The "r" in Whistler, on the other hand, clearly indicates the +literary faculty of the author of "The Gentle Art of Making Enemies." And +if Du Maurier's real future was hinted in his orthography, Leech and +Tenniel and Phil May and Linley Sambourne have vindicated their "l's." So +have Luke Fildes, Alma Tadema, H. T. Wells, G. D. Leslie, John Collier, +Val Prinsep, Solomon J. Solomon, Frank Bramley, Phil Morris, Calderon, +Leader, Nettleship, Seymour Lucas, Waterlow, William Strutt, Albert +Moore, W. W. Ouless, C. W. Wyllie, Sir John Gilbert, Louise Jopling, +Onslow Ford, and even W. C. Horsley. There are only three foreign +Academicians at the time of writing, but they all boast the "l." + +With musicians there is a tendency to "m's" and "n's," which sounds +harmonious enough, Mendelssohn, Massenet, Mascagni, Mackenzie, Schumann, +have both letters; Mozart but one. Haydn, Beethoven, Chopin, Saint-Saëns, +Sullivan, Charles Salaman, Edward Solomon, Frederic Cowen, run "n"-wards +with the unanimity of publishers, while Gounod, Stanford, Audran, +Sebastian Bach, Donizetti, work in the "n" otherwise, and Wagner has the +librettist's "r" in addition. Would you play the piano? You must have the +"n" of the piano, like Pachmann, Rubinstein, Rosenthal, Hofmann, +Frederick Dawson, Madame Schumann, Fanny Davies, Agnes Zimmermann, +Leonard Borwick, Nathalie Janotha, Sapellnikoff, Sophie Menter. Even for +other instruments, including the human voice divine, the "n" is +advisable. Paganini, Jenny Lind, Norman Néruda, Christine Nilsson--all +patronized it largely. Adelina Patti, Johannes Wolf, and many others make +a "Christian" use of it. If, on the other hand, you wish to manufacture +pianos your chance of founding a first-class firm will be largely +enhanced if your name begins with "b." + +Actors, like authors, roll their "r's"; and if their names are +pseudonyms, so much the greater proof that some occult instinct makes +them elect for that virile letter. Who are our leading actors and +actor-managers? The double-r's: Henry Irving, Herbert Beerbohm Tree (two +pairs), Forbes-Robertson, George Alexander, Arthur Roberts, Edward S. +Willard, Edward Terry, Charles Brookfield, Wilson Barrett, Fred Terry, +Fred Kerr, Charles Warner, W. Terriss, George Grossmith, Charles Hawtrey, +Arthur Bourchier (two pairs). Scarcely any leading actor lacks one "r," +as Charles Wyndham, Cyril Maude, Louis Waller, etc., etc. Those without +any "r's" may console themselves with the memory of Edmund Kean, though +Garrick--a name almost wholly compact of "r"--is the patron saint of the +stage. + +The ladies follow the gentlemen. From Ellen Terry and Winifred Emery to +Ada Rehan and Mrs. Patrick Campbell, from Rose Leclercq and Marie +Bancroft to Marion Terry and Irene Vanbrugh, few dare dispense with the +"r." + +But I have said enough. I have opened up new perspectives for the curious +and the philosophic, which they may follow up for themselves. Here is a +fresh field for faddists and mystagogues. Already I have proved as much +as many systems of mediaeval philosophy which strove to extract the +essence of things from the study of words and letters. Already I have +collected more evidence than the sectarians of the Shakespeare-Bacon. +Bacon write Shakespeare, indeed! A man without an "r" to his name, +pointed out by his "n" for a publisher, and, indeed, not without some of +the characteristics of the class. Seriously, the truth is that l, m, n, +and r are the leading letters in name-making; but still there does seem +to be more in the coincidence to which I have drawn attention than mere +accident explains. + + + + +XXV + +AUTHORS AND PUBLISHERS + +It is done. The publishers have formed a League. The poor sweated victims +of the author's greed have at last turned upon the oppressor. Mr. Gosse, +on a memorable occasion, confusedly blending the tones of the prophet of +righteousness with the accents of the political economist, admonished the +greedy author that he was killing the goose with the golden eggs. And now +the goose has resolved to be a goose no longer. The Authors' Society, a +sort of trade union, has been answered by the creation of a Publishers' +Union, with all the delightful potentialities of a literary lock-out. It +is time, therefore, for a person without prejudice to say a word to both +sides. + +With the spirit which prompted the creation of the Authors' Society, +Literature has nothing to do. To define Literature exactly is not easy. +To say at what point words become or cease to be literature is a problem +similar in kind to the sophistical Greek puzzle of saying at what point +the few become many. Perhaps we shall find a solution by looking at the +genesis and history of written words. Literature, we find, began as +religion. The earliest books of every nation are sacred books. Herbert +Spencer dwells on the veneration which the average person feels for the +printed word, his almost touching belief in books and newspapers. "I read +it in a book" is equivalent to saying "It is certainly true." The great +philosopher has failed to see that this instinct is a survival from the +times when the only books were holy books. The first book published in +Europe, as soon as printing was invented, was the Latin Bible--the +Mazarin Bible as it is called; and it is the Bible which is responsible +for the belief in print. Despite the degradation of the printed word +to-day, there is something fine in this tenacious popular instinct, as +there is something ignoble in all Literature which palters with it. The +Literature of every country is still sacred. The books of its sages and +seers should still be holy books to it. The true man of letters always +was and must always be a lay priest, even though he seem neither to +preach nor to be religious in the popular sense of those terms. The +qualities to be sought for in Literature are therefore inspiration and +sincerity. The man of letters is born, not made. His place is in the +Temple, and it is not his fault that the moneychangers have set up their +stalls there. But, in addition to these few chosen spirits, born in every +age to be its teachers, there is an overwhelming multitude of writers +called into being by the conditions of the time. These are the artists +whom Stevenson likened to the "Daughters of Joy." They are cunning +craftsmen, turning out what the public demands, without any priestly +consciousness, and sometimes even without conscience, mere tradesmen +with--at bottom--the souls of tradesmen. Their work has charm, but lacks +significance. They write essays which are merely amusing, histories which +are only facts, and stories which are only lies. + +The capacity of the world for reading the uninspired is truly +astonishing, and the hundred worst books may be found in every +bookseller's window. Would that it were of books that Occam had written: +"Non sunt multiplicandi praeter necessitatem"! The men who produce these +unnecessary books perform a necessary function, as things are. Why should +they be less well treated than bootmakers or tailors, butchers or bakers +or candlestick makers? Why should they not get as much as possible for +their labours? Why should they not, like every other kind of working-man, +found a Labour Union? Indeed, instead of censuring these authors for +trying to obtain a fair wage, I feel rather inclined to reproach them for +not having more closely imitated the methods of Trades-Unionism, for not +having welded the whole writing body into a strong association for the +enforcement of fair prices and the suppression of sweating, which is more +monstrous and wide-spread in the literary than in any other profession +whatever. Such an organisation would be met by many difficulties, for +writing differs from other species of skilled labour by the immense +differences of individual talent, while from professions in which there +are parallel variations of skill, _e.g._, law and medicine, it differs by +the fact that there is no initial qualification (by examination) +attesting a minimum amount of skill. Not even grammar is necessary for +authorship, or even for successful authorship. Besides which, writing is +done by innumerable persons in their spare time--Literature is a world of +inky-fingered blacklegs. Thus, writing admits neither of the union-fixed +minimum wage of the manual labourer, nor of the etiquette-fixed fee of +the professional; so that the methods of the trade union are only +partially applicable to the ink-horny-handed sons of toil. But even the +possible has not yet been achieved, so that the current idea of an +organization of the writing classes, against which publishers have had to +gird up their loins to fight, has very little foundation. There is +nothing but a registered disorganisation. What the publishers are really +afraid of is not a Society, but a man, and that man a middle-man? no +other than that terrible bogey, the agent, who drinks champagne out of +their skulls. + +So much for the author-craftsman. But what of the author-priest? Do the +commercial conditions apply to him? Certainly they do--with this +important modification, that, while with the author-craftsman the +commercial conditions may justly regulate the matter and manner of his +work, with the author-priest the commercial conditions do not begin until +he has completed his work. The state of the market, the condition of the +public mind--these will have no influence on the work itself. Not a comma +nor a syllable will he alter for all the gold of Afric[*]. But, the +manuscript once finished, the commercial considerations begin. The +prophet has written his message, but the world has yet to hear it. Now, +we cannot easily conceive Isaiah or Jeremiah hawking round his prophecies +at the houses of publishers, or permitting a smart Yankee to syndicate +them through the world, or even allowing popular magazines to dribble +them out by monthly instalments. But the modern prophet has no housetop, +and it is as difficult to imagine him moving his nation by voice alone as +arranging with a local brother-seer to trumpet forth the great tidings +simultaneously at New York in order to obtain the American copyright. +Even if he should try to teach the people by word of mouth, there will be +bare benches unless he charges for admission, as all lecturers will tell +you. People value at nothing what they can get for nothing; and, as +Stevenson suggested, "if we were charged so much a head for sunsets, or +if God sent round a drum before the hawthorns came in flower, what a work +should we not make about their beauty!" No, the prophet cannot escape the +commercial question. For, in order that his message may reach his age, it +must be published, and publication cannot be achieved without expense. + +[* Transcriber's note: So in original.] + +Tolstoï himself, who gives his books freely to the world, cannot really +save the public the expense of buying them. All he sacrifices is that +comparatively small proportion of the returns which is claimed by the +author in royalties; he cannot eliminate the profits of the publisher, +the bookseller, etc., etc. For between the message and its hearers come a +great number of intermediaries, many of them inevitable. We will assume +for the purposes of our analysis that our prophet is already popular. The +hearers are waiting eagerly. Here is the manuscript, there are the +readers. Problem--to bring them together. This is the task of the +publisher. Incidentally, the publisher employs the printer, bookbinder, +etc.; but this part of the business, though usually undertaken by the +publisher, does not necessarily belong to him. He is essentially only the +distributor. In return for this function of distribution, whether it +includes supervising mechanical production or not, the publisher is +entitled to his payment. How much? Evidently, exactly as much as is made +by capital and personal service in business generally. The shillings of +the public are the gross returns for the book. These have to be divided +between all the agents employed in producing the book--author, printer, +binder, publisher, bookseller, etc. This is not literally what happens, +but it is arithmetically true in the long run. How much for each? +Evidently just as much as they can each get, for there is no right but +might and nothing but tug-of-war. There is nothing absolute in the +partition of profits: infinite action and reaction. While the costs of +the mechanical part are comparatively stable, the relation of author and +publisher oscillates ceaselessly; and while the cautious publisher by the +multiplicity of his transactions may rely upon an average of profits, +like all business men plucking stability out of the heart of vicissitude, +the author has no such surety. Between merit and reward there is in +literature no relation. Just as the music-hall singer may earn a larger +income than the statesman, so may the tawdry tale-teller drive the +thinker and artist out of the market. + +The artistic value of a book is therefore absolutely unrelated to the +commercial value; but such commercial value as there is--to whom should +it fall if not to the author? Like the other parties, he has a right to +all he can get. You will say it is very sordid to think of money; you +will speak of divine inspiration; you would rather see him go on the +rates; to save him from base reward you even borrow his books instead of +buying them; you cannot understand why he should prefer an honest +Copyright Act to a halo. Good! Put it that I agree with you. It is sordid +to sell one's muse. One should be like Mr. Harold Skimpole, and let the +butcher and the baker go howl. The thought of money sullies the fairest +manuscript. The touch of a cheque taints. Good again! _Only_, when the +great poem is written, when the great novel is done, _there is money in +it_! Who is to have this money? The author? Certainly not. We are agreed +his soul must be kept virgin. _But why the publisher?_ (Above all, why +the American publisher?) Why not the printer? Why not the binder or the +bookseller? Why not the deserving poor? None of these will be defiled by +the profits. Why should the money not be used to found a Lying-in +Hospital, or an Asylum for Decayed Authors, or a Museum to keep Honest +Publishers in? Why should not authors have the _kudos_ of paying off the +National Debt? If they are to be the only Socialists in a world of +individualists, let them at least have the satisfaction of knowing their +money is applied to worthy public purposes. + +But I do _not_ agree with you. "The best work at the best prices" is no +unworthy motto. The Authors' Society, indeed, tries to put this non-moral +principle of valuation upon an ethical basis. It says, for instance, that +if the publisher reckons his office expenses in the cost of production, +then the author has a right to reckon his, even including any journeys or +researches he may have had to make in order to write his book. But this +right is not only an ethical fallacy: it is a politico-economical one, +because the economical question is only concerned with the _distribution_ +of the work, and the money or the heart's blood that went to make it has +nothing to do with the question, while the publisher's office expenses +are of the essence of the question. Some authors also claim that the +publisher has no right to make successful books pay for unsuccessful. But +here again he has every right. The publisher is not a piece-worker; he +has to keep a large organization going, involving ramifications in every +town. It is the existence of this network, of this distributive +mechanism, that enables the successful book to be sold everywhere; and +the publisher, like every business man, must allow percentages for bad +debts and unprofitable speculations. Publishers have a right to capture +the bulk of the profits of authors' first books, because they largely +supply the author with his public. It is surprising how even good books +have to be pressed on an unwilling world, much as cards are forced by +conjurers. The number of people that select their books by their own +free-will is incredibly small. On the other hand, when a popular author +brings a publisher a book, it is he who improves the publisher's +distributing agency, by bringing him new clients, and even sometimes +strengthening his position with booksellers and libraries, by enabling +him, armed with a book universally in demand, to fight against deductions +and discounts throughout his business generally. And, just as the +publisher may rightly depress the profits of an unknown author, so the +popular author has a moral right to larger royalties--which right, +however, would avail him nothing were it not backed by might. It is in +the competition of rival publishers that his strength lies. + +And here comes in the question of the agent. Publishers may rave as they +will, but authors have every right to employ agents to save them from the +unpleasant task of chaffering and of speaking highly of themselves. And +it is the author who pays the agent, not the publishers, their whinings +notwithstanding. The agent may indeed squeeze out larger sums than +publishers like to disgorge, but how can he obtain more than the +market-value? Political economy is dead against the possibility. He +cannot, in fact, obtain more than the author may and frequently does +obtain for himself. If a competing publisher offers a larger sum than +will pay him in coin, at any rate he will not offer more than will pay +him in reputation, or in the extension of his _clientèle_ on the lines +indicated above. It is still only the market-value. If the reputation +honourably built up by the labours of years comes to have a monetary +value outside the monetary value of the particular book--a sort of +goodwill value, in fact,--why should the author or his agent be abused +for obtaining it? Will not the publisher in his turn grind down the +unknown man to the lowest possible penny? The prostration of the +publisher before the celebrity is only equalled by his insolence toward +the obscure. Is there any author who has not suffered in his beginnings +from the greed of publishers? Far from making money at the start, how +many authors have got a hearing without having had to pay for it out of +their own pockets? "The wrongs of publishers" is a good red-herring to +draw across the track, a smart counter-cry. But publishers have still the +game in their hands all along the line. Not a few still keep their +accounts secret, still recklessly supply themselves with that opportunity +which, the proverb says, makes even honest men thieves. As for +America--what goes on across that week of ocean who dares conjecture? And +now, what with rumors of wars and free silver--ah me! + +In forming a Masters' Union, the publishers have at last abandoned the +pretence of being swayed by any but pecuniary considerations in the +exercise of their high function. There is something refreshing in this +clearing of the air, in this abandonment of the Joseph Surface manner. +And yet, I confess, my heart shelters a regret for the old style of +publisher, as for the old style of author. Something of picturesque +clings even to Jacob Tonson, with "his two left legs." The publisher as +the patron of genius, the nurser of young talent, the re-inspirer of old, +the scholar and gentleman, at once the friend and the banker of his +authors, makes a pleasing figure. It was perhaps more ideal than real, +for even of Murray we read in "Lord Beaconsfield's Letters ": "Washington +Irving demanded a large price. Murray murmured. Irving talked of +posterity and the badness of the public taste, and Murray said that +authors who wrote for posterity must publish on their own account." +Still, if the publisher would live up to this ideal, his would remain an +honorable profession, instead of sinking to a trade. He would rank with +the rare theatrical manager to whom art is dearer than profit--if such a +one still survives. But the trail of business is over the age: the +theatrical manager is a shameless tradesman, and more and more the +publisher will become the mere distributer, if indeed he be not +eliminated by a mechanical organisation. The popular author needs only a +central store to supply the trade with his printed writings, the cost of +production of which is covered by the first day's sales. This is, of +course, to ignore the publisher in his aspect of initiator of series, art +books and encyclopaedias. But to originate is to depart from publishing +proper and to become entitled to the profits of the inventor; nay, almost +to step over into the province of authorship and the dignity thereof. + +But if we can forgive the publisher for succumbing to the business spirit +of the age, we cannot as readily acquiesce in the huckstering spirit that +has crept over literature. The "battle of the books" has become one of +account-books, and the literary columns of the newspapers bristle with +pecuniary paragraphs. Even the "chatter about Shelley" was better than +the contemporary gossip about the takings of authors, for the most part +vastly exaggerated. A paragraph which must have inflated him with pride +led to a friend of mine being haled up before the Income Tax +Commissioners. "How long have you been an author?" he was asked in +addition. "Six years," he replied. "And you have only paid income tax for +five!" was the horrified exclamation. Here is the nemesis of all this +foolish fuss about _L. S. D._ The British mind now supposes authorship to +be a trade, like any other. You go into it, and you at once begin to make +a regular income; and, once successful, you go on steadily earning large +sums, automatically. The thing works itself. You are never ill or +uninspired; you are never to let your mind lie fallow, never to travel +and gather new inspiration, never to shut up shop and loaf. You simply go +on making so much a year--for do not the papers say so? And that you +should cherish the immoral sentiments contained in the following stanzas, +as at least two authors of my acquaintance do, is simply incredible to +the envious Philistine. + + THE AUTHOR TO THE SYNDICATOR. + + Thou lord, of bloated syndicates, + Thou master of the mint, + Who payest at the highest rates + And takest without stint, + Go back, go back to wild New York, + Go back across the sea; + Go, corners make in beans and pork, + No corners make in me. + + For thou art 'cute and thou art smart, + No dead flies hang on thee; + Thou carest not one jot for Art, + But only _L. S. D._ + Go 'back, go back, etc. + + Thy aims are low, thy profits high; + Thy mind is only bent, + Whatever live, whatever die, + To scoop in cent per cent. + Go back, go back, etc. + + To thee the greatest authors are + Those who most greatly sell; + But he whose soul is as a Star-- + Why, he may go to H-ll! + Go back, go back to wild New York, + Go back across the sea; + Go, corners make in beans and pork, + No corners make in me. + +An author's income must be indeed difficult to adjudge. He is the +manufacturer of a patent article--which only he can turn out. But he is +also the vendor thereof, and his transactions involve sales of serial--as +well as of book-rights synchronised in two or more countries--a tedious +and delicate task. And a great part of his business--"the tributes that +take up his time," the MSS. he has to read, etc., etc.--must be conducted +entirely without profit, or rather must be run at a loss. Who can +determine what are the working expenses of so complex an industrial +enterprise? An artist subtracts the cost of his models: may an author +subtract the cost of the experiences which supply him with his material, +and, if so, how are they to be estimated? Mr. Conan Doyle and Mr. Anthony +Hope both write historical novels; but while the former buys and studies +large quantities of books, and travels to see castles and battlefields, +the latter professedly works from intuition. Are both these men's incomes +to be treated alike? Goethe deliberately fell in love so as to write +poems when the passion had subsided: how much should be deducted from his +gross returns to cover the working expenses of his love-affairs? And even +when we do not go about it in such cold blood, our art--is it not woven +of our pain and our passion, our "emotions recollected in tranquility"? +Do these emotions cost us nothing? Do they not "wear and tear" our +system, justifying us in writing off 5 per cent. for depreciation in our +machinery? Countless are the problems that arise out of this new view of +authorship as an exact trade. Scientifically speaking, the author is a +pieceworker, whose productiveness is fitful and temporary. However widely +the fame of his business extend, he cannot extend it; he cannot increase +his output by adding new clerks or new branches: every order received +means work for his own brain and his own hands. If he keep other hands +they are called ghosts, and such ghosts are frowned upon even by the +Psychical Society. + +No, the more I think of it, the more it is borne in upon me that authors +should be exempted from income tax altogether--if, indeed, the income +itself should not rather be provided for them (free of duty) by a +grateful Government. Carlyle is said to have claimed exemption on the +ground that the earnings of a writer are incalculable: it seems to me +that it is rather the working expenses which are incalculable. "I +sometimes sit and yearn for anything in the shape of an income that would +come in," wrote poor sick Stevenson on a languorous summer afternoon,--by +the way, I hope his doctors' expenses were deducted from his gross +returns, as incurred in order to keep the writing machinery going; or did +he perchance fly to Samoa to escape the tax altogether?--"Mine has all +got to be gone and fished for with the immortal mind of man. What I want +is the income that really comes in of itself, while all you have to do is +just to blossom and exist, and sit on chairs." Poor R. L. S.!--does it +not make you think of "mighty poets in their misery dead"? Does it +not--if you are more prosaic--bring home to you the absurdity of taxing +professional incomes as though they were akin to those which "come in" to +the happy folk who have but "to blossom and exist and sit on chairs"? And +will you not, whoever you are, rejoice that the work done with so much +art and conscience and suffering, obtained, in Stevenson's latter days, +its highest possible money-reward through the much-abhorred Agent? Why do +not millionaires hear of the woes of authors and send them anonymous +bank-notes? Why do not "national testimonials" happen in the author's +lifetime in the shape of purses of gold? They are more digestible than +posthumous stones. Alas! the author's path is thorny enough. And it is +against this jaded, unhappy creature that the publishers have had to make +a Union! Well, well, there will soon be no Authors' Union except the +Workhouse. + + + + +XXVI + +THE PENALTIES OF FAME + +There is one form of persecution to which celebrity or notoriety is +subject, which Ouida has omitted in her impassioned protest. It is +interviewing carried one step further--from the ridiculous to the sublime +of audacity. The auto-interview, one might christen it, if the +officiating purist would pass the hybrid name. Yon are asked to supply +information about yourself by post, prepaid. The ordinary interview, +whatever may be said against it, is at least painless; and, annoying as +it is to after-reflection to have had your brain picked of its ideas by a +stranger who gets paid for them, still the mechanical vexations of +literature are entirely taken over by the journalist who hangs on your +lips; though, if I may betray the secrets of the prison-house, he often +expects you to supply the questions as well as the answers. But when you +are asked to write your life for a biographical dictionary, or to +communicate particulars about yourself to a newspaper, it is difficult, +however equable your temperament, not to feel a modicum of irritation. It +is not only the labour of writing and the cost of stamps that anger you. +Your innate modesty is outraged. How is it possible for you to say all +those nice things about yourself which you know to be your due, and which +a third person might even exaggerate? What business have editors to +expose you to such inner conflict? A scholar I knew suffered agonies from +this source. He was constantly making learned discoveries which nobody +understood but himself, and so editors were always pestering him to write +leaderettes about them. He got over the difficulty by leaving blanks for +the eulogistic adjectives, which the editors had to fill in. As thus: +"Mr. Theophilus Rogers, the ---- savant, has unearthed another papyrus in +Asia Minor which throws a flood of light on the primitive seismology of +Syria." Once a careless editor forgot to fill in the lacuna, and the +paper lost a lot of subscribers by reason of its improper language, +whilst the friends of Theophilus wanted him to bring an action for libel, +unconscious that it would lie against himself. + +But perhaps the climax of irritation is reached when, having troubled to +write down autobiographical details, having wrestled with your modesty +and overthrown it, having posted your letter and prepaid it, the ---- +editor rejects your contribution without thanks. This hard fate overtook +me--_moi qui vous parle_--not very long ago. The conductor of a penny +journal, not unconnected with literary tit-bits, honoured me with a +triple interrogatory. This professional Rosa Dartle wanted to know-- + + (1) The conditions under which you write your novels. + + (2) How you get your plots and characters. + + (3) How you find your titles. + +I was very busy. I was very modest. But the accompanying assurance that +an anxious world was on the _qui vive_ for the information appealed to my +higher self, and I took up my pen and wrote:-- + + (1) The conditions under which I write my novels can be better + imagined than described. + + (2) My plots and characters I get from the MSS, submitted to me by + young authors, whose clever but crude ideas I hate to see wasted. I + always read everything sent to me, and would advise young authors to + encourage younger authors to send them their efforts. + + (3) As for my titles, they are the only things I work out myself, and + you will therefore excuse me if I preserve a measure of reticence as + to the method by which I get them. + +"What is being interviewed like?" a young lady once asked me, unconscious +she was subjecting me to the process. "It is being asked what you +drink--and not getting it," I explained to her. The curiosity of the +interviewer is indeed boundless. He even asks which is your favourite +author, so that you are forced to advertise some other fellow. And yet +there is another side to the question, which Ouida ignores. There are two +periods in the life of successful persons--the first when they are +anxious to be interviewed, the second when people are anxious to +interview them. With some there thus arrives a third period, in which +they are anxious not to be interviewed, but this is rare. Doubtless there +are superior persons who never craved for fame even in their callow +youth, and possibly Ouida herself may have taken to authorship as an +elaborate means of diverting attention from herself. But the majority of +mortals, being fools by edict of Puck and Carlyle, are pleased to fly +through the lips of men. Even Tennyson, whose horror of the interviewer +almost reached insanity, whose later life was one long "We are observed: +let us dissemble," is said to have been disappointed when the casual +pedestrian took no notice of him at all. A lady in the Isle of Wight told +me that the great poet was wont to put his handkerchief over his face if +he met anybody. Naturally this would make the most illiterate person stop +and gaze and wonder who this merry-andrew might be. Assuredly this is not +the fine simplicity of manners one expects from a great man. "Earl, do +you wear one of these?" asked an American democrat of an English peer at +his table, as he produced a coronet from a cupboard and stuck the +pudding-dish upon the inverted spikes. Tennyson seemed to be always +conscious of his laurel crown. The nobler course had been to deck his +puddings with the sprigs. + + Kind hearts are more than laurel crowns, + And simple mien than Saxon song. + +Ouida does a public service by insisting that it is presumptuous of the +crowd to judge the conduct of men of genius, whose life is pitched in +quite a different key, and runs very frequently in the melancholy minor +mode. The travail of soul, the workings of the mind, the agonies and the +raptures of genius must be so remote from the common ken, that it is +unjust to apply to it the vulgar meteyard; and so, far be it from me to +blame the inspired singer of "Crossing the Bar," or to imagine that he +could have been other than he was! All the same, it is permissible to +regret that he should have throughout his life pandered to the popular +conception of a poet. There was something of a robuster quality in +Browning, who managed to be a seer and a mystic in despite of afternoon +teas. Ouida beats the tom-tom far too loudly. From one point of view the +post-mortem revelations of great men's friends, which kindle her ire, +perform a public good, even if at the expense of a private wrong. The +attempt to apotheosise human nature, to invest our kindred clay with +theatrical glamour and to drape it from the property-room, this mythical +creation of "a magnified non-natural man," what is it all but the +perpetuation of the false psychology of the past? There is no durable +good in this childish "make-believe." It is time for humanity to outgrow +this puerile self-deception about its powers and characteristics and +limitations. A great man is a man as well as great, and he may be all the +wonderful things that Carlyle claimed without ceasing to be human and +therefore erring. And if he would go about simply and naturally, without +developing a self-consciousness as vast and unhealthy as the liver of a +goose intended for _pâté_, he would be happier and wiser, and secure the +inattention he yearns for. Moreover, while Ouida is rightly intolerant of +the abuse of genius by the bourgeois, the dictionary scarcely affords her +own genius sufficient vituperation for the bourgeois. I am at a loss to +understand by what logic genius gains the right to hate the bourgeois. It +has not the excuse of the bourgeois--stupidity. That the crowd hates +superiority and is venomously anxious to degrade it to its own level, is +one of Ouida's many delusions about life. Discounting vulgar curiosity, a +good deal of the crowd's interest in genius, however annoying and +ridiculous the shapes it takes, springs at bottom from a sense of +reverence and admiration; and surely it is sheer priggishness, if it be +not rank midsummer madness, on the part of genius to regard itself as +persecuted by foolish and malicious persons. Methinks the lady doth +protest too much. Still it would be unjust to deny her perfect seclusion +from the world, if she feels she needs it. + +Perhaps the mildest form of persecution is that of the autographomaniacs. +"They send me my own books," one of the most popular authors in England +complained to me pathetically the other day, "and they ask me to write in +them. But to write in them is all that you can do for the books of your +friends. If you do this for strangers, what is there left for your +friends?" Although far less beloved of the book-buyer than the +illustrious novelist, I could yet offer him the sympathy of a minor +fellow-sufferer. It is the American reader who is the main persecutor. He +is not "gentle," forsooth--a very bully, rather. But why do I say "he," +when it is generally "she"? "You have eluded all my wiles hitherto," she +wrote me the other day: "now I ask you straight out for your autograph." +This honesty would have softened me had I not just had to pay fivepence +on the letter--and for the second time that day! Of course her request +was not accompanied by a stamped envelope either, though, if it had been, +the stamp would have been an American; invalid, a pictorial irony. She +has a trick, moreover, of addressing you--most economically--care of your +American publishers, who expedite the letter with vengeful +_empressement_, so that you pay double at your end of the Atlantic. And +when everything else is in order, her epistle is insufficiently stamped, +and your income is frittered away in futile fivepences. It is too much. +The cup is full. We must no longer bow our necks beneath the oppressor's +yoke, no longer tremble at the postman's knock. _We_ must strike, +instead--we other men of letters. For authors, too, are human: manual +labourers, overworked and underpaid, with no hope of an eight hours' day. +Their pay must not be still further reduced by this monstrous stamp-tax. +Will not some Burns--more poetical than John--raise the banner of revolt? +Perhaps William Morris may reconcile his hitherto contradictory _rôles_ +by placing himself at the head of the movement. Henceforward no author is +to despatch his autograph to an admirer, charm she never so cunningly. +Beshrew these admirers! a man's personality is in his books, not in his +scrawl. Whosoever violates this prescription shall be accounted a +blackleg. On one condition only shall autographs be sent--to wit, that +they be paid for. + +I do not, indeed, propose that the author shall pocket the money, though +I see no shame in the deed: everything is worth what it can fetch, and if +an adventitious value comes to attach to a signature, the author were +amply justified in pocketing this legitimate supplement to the scanty +rewards of his travail of soul and body--just as he were justified, +should locks of his hair come into demand, in alternating the scissors +and the hair-restorer. But as a suspicion still prevails that authors +live on ambrosia and nectar (carriage paid), that the butcher, the baker, +and the candlestick maker tumble over one another in their eagerness to +offer their goods at the shrine of genius, it may be unwise to shock +one's admirers too much by pocketing their oboli; and I would suggest--in +all seriousness--that a charge be made in the future for all autographs: +each celebrity could fix it according to the special demand, and the +returns should go for charitable purposes. An "Autograph Fund" should be +founded in every profession admitting of notoriety. Among actors the fund +could be devoted to that excellent charity the Dramatic and Musical +Benevolent Fund; among writers, to the support of decayed critics and +neglected novelists. Why not? In days when men cannot bear to see even +Niagara wasting its energies in misdirected roars, why should so prolific +a source of profit as autographomania be neglected? The authors' strike +must be initiated at once: the Autograph Fund demands an instant +Treasurer. I don't mind contributing ten signatures to start it, if +twelve other writers, of equal eminence and illegibility, will guarantee +a like amount. + +What profits it to woo the thankless Muse, or to appeal to the +autograph-huntress? In a foolish moment of unpardonable sentimentality, I +suggested that she should pay for her treasure by a charity contribution; +at the very least let her refrain, I prayed, from American stamps. But +she does not read me, alas! though my writings are the sole solace of her +days and nights; there is no way of attracting her attention. Still, +still her stamps flow in. I cry _Oyez, Oyez_, but she is bent over +"Trilby," and I am but the shadow of a name--of a name that is +interesting enough tacked on to my favourite motto or a brief +autobiography, and may serve to round off her autographic alphabet. Will +not Mr. Du Maurier cry aloud to her on behalf of his brother-authors, he +whose housetop is the sun, whose voice reaches from the summits of the +Rockies to the pampas of La Plata, and echoes from the ice-floes of +Labrador to the cliffs of Cape Horn? Will he not tell her that even as +"the crimes of Clapham" are "chaste in Martaban," so the stamps of the +States are the waste-paper of the London mails. Mr. Kipling, whom I have +just quoted, is more fortunate. Breathing the air of Brattleboro', +Vermont, he is supplied with native stamps to carry on his correspondence +withal. For Mr. Kipling--so he has confided to me in an amusing narrative +of his autograph experiences, designed for the warning of +fellow-craftsmen to whom my project may have sounded seductive--had +actually anticipated my plan: he had sent out two hundred circulars to +the admiring crew who ranked him before Shakespeare, proposing that they +should send him a donation for a charity in return for his signature. +Then the flood-gates--not of heaven--were opened. For weeks abuse rained +in upon him, and "thief" seems to have been the mildest rebuke he +received. To be asked for an autograph was an honour (even with the +stamps omitted). He bowed his head beneath the deluge, praying perhaps-- + + Of the two hundred grant but two + To take a charitable view. + +But no, as one man and one woman they cast him out of grace. + +And yet he seems to persevere--for 't is indeed an excellent way of +circumventing the wily. In the Chicago _Record_ I read that he wrote to +an autograph-beggar that he would send his autograph on receiving proof +that the autograph-hunter had deposited two and a half dollars in a +certain New York fresh air fund. This is an ingenious variation of the +original scheme, for it puts aside the possibility of personal +peculation; but I doubt whether it answers. Each celebrity must solve for +himself this harassing problem: there be those who simply stick to the +stamps ... great free spirits, these, the Napoleons of the pen, _Jenseits +von Gut und Böse_, whose names it is not for me to bewray. Others, like +myself, stricken with the paralysis of a Puritan conscience, waver and +vex themselves. One ought not to encourage this craze for the external +accidents of greatness--the appeal may be fraudulent--and yet what right +have you to the stamps?--and after all 't is flattering to be adored from +Terra del Fuego; it argues taste--and taste should not go unrecognized in +a Philistine world. _Eureka!_ I have found the solution. Don't stick to +the stamps, but send _them_ to the funds of a charity. + +These views of mine on autographs have greatly distressed the unfair sex. +The ladies--God bless them--resent a severely logical view of anything, +and to disturb their small sentimentalities is to be cold-blooded and +cynical. Once, when I wasj imprudent enough to wonder if the "young +person" with the well-known cheek, to which blushes were brought, existed +any longer in this age of neurotic novels written by ladies for +gentlemen, I received a delicious communication from an Australian damsel +informing me that she had been in love with me up till the fatal day on +which she read my cynical conception of her sex,--which reminds me of +another well-meaning young lady who wrote me the other day from America +that her epistle was prompted "neither by love nor admiration." If I hint +that popular lady novelists do not invariably produce masterpieces of +style and syntax, I am accused of inflicting the "tarantulous bites of +envious detractors." I am driven--most reluctantly--to a suspicion that +has long been faintly glimmering in my bosom, a suspicion that ladies +have no sense of humour. It is gravely pointed out to me by incensed +writers of incense-laden letters that the demand for a writer's autograph +is a mark of veneration; that his letter is reverentially handed about on +special occasions quite without a thought of its possible commercial +value and that often--though here the argument itself becomes cunningly +commercial--it becomes the focus of a local hero-worship that expresses +itself outwardly in increased purchases of the author's books. Now, of +course every author is only too aware that requests for his autographs +are manifestations of reverence, and is only too apt to disregard the +supposition of crude curiosity. He knows that it is only natural that +people, forewarned by the scarcity of autographs of Shakespeare, should +be anxious to safeguard posterity against a similar calamity. But that +any author should have humour enough to see the absurdity of the +autograph mania, this is what his fair _clientèle_ has not humour enough +to understand. Anthony Hope--who, by the way, told me he had received a +letter from an unknown lady, the object of which was to abuse _me_ for my +heresy on this heart-burning question--says that if to write his name on +slips of paper adds to the sum of the world's pleasure, he is ready to do +it. This is a noble attitude; but the good people do not always do the +most good. Ought one to pamper this interest in mere externals? Here are +the man's books, pictures, symphonies: if these have profited you, be +content--you have had enough. He has shown you his soul,--why should he +show you his hand? One knows into what this sort of thing +degenerates--into the exploitation of celebrities by smart American +journalists, to whom genius and notoriety are equally alike mere +possibilities of sensational copy with screaming head-lines. A. Z. has +written the opera of the century: the public is dying to know the cut of +his trousers and the proportion of milk in his _café au lait_. X. Y. has +murdered his uncle and vivisected his grandmother: how interesting to +ascertain his favourite novel, and whether he approves of the bicycle for +ladies! For one person who knows anything of the artistic output of the +day there are ten who know all about the producers and how much money +they are making. Even when our interest in artistic work is intellectual, +we are more likely to read criticisms of it than to place ourselves +_vis-à-vis_ with the work. Not the truest criticism, not the subtlest +misinterpretation, can give us anything like the sensation or the +stimulus that results from direct contact with the work itself. As well +enjoy the "Moonlight Sonata" through a technical analysis of its form. +But this is a venial vice compared with taking your Sonata through the +medium of a paragraph about Beethoven's shoe-buckles. + +The autograph craze is, I maintain, only another aspect of this modern +mania for irrelevant gossip; just as the tit-bits breed of papers is but +the outer manifestation of an inner disgrace. We no longer tackle great +works and ordered trains of thought: everything must be snappy and spicy; +and we open our books and papers, awaiting, like the criminal in "The +Mikado," "the sensation of a short sharp shock." To possess a man's +autograph may as easily become a substitute for studying his work as an +incentive to purchasing it. The critique displaces the book itself: the +autograph may displace even the critique. All this without reference to +the trouble and expense entailed by an aggregation of the trivial +taskwork of signing one's name, addressing envelopes, sticking on stamps, +and occasionally paying for them, and not infrequently defraying the +extra postage on insufficiently stamped admiration. Henry James, in his +latest story in "The Yellow Book," says deliciously: "Lambert's novels +appeared to have brought him no money: they had only brought him, so far +as I could make out, tributes that took up his time." The earnings of the +most popular authors are, I fear me, sadly exaggerated, and their own +anticipations seldom realised. As the other American novelist--Mr. +Howells--humourously puts it: "I never get a cheque from my publisher +without feeling distinctly poorer." The average author is indeed very +much in the position of a cabman surveying a shilling. And the even less +substantial "tributes," be it noted, are not limited to aspirations after +autographs. That would be little to grumble at. But everybody knows that +the demands made upon a celebrity--and especially upon an author--are +"peculiar and extensive." He is expected to be not only an author--and +even, according to the more high-minded among the unsuccessful critics, +to be that without fee or reward--but also to officiate gratuitously as +publisher's reader to the universe at large--unprinted; as author's +agent, hawking unknown MSS. about among his friends the publishers, and +placing unknown young men on the staff of the leading journals; as +dramatic agent, introducing plays and players to his friends the +managers--who will not produce his own works; and, in fine, to act as +general adviser to aspirants of every species. Nay, was not Hall Caine +recently asked by a lady admirer in poor health, about to visit the Isle +of Man, to find lodgings for her? Heavens! who knows what scandal might +have arisen had the author of "The Manxman" inconsiderately turned +himself into a house-agent! The famous tale of the Nova Scotian sheep in +"The School for Scandal" might have been eclipsed by the sequel. Now, the +poor lady meant well enough: she may even have thought to show how deep +her faith in the novelist's domestic genius and financial impeccability! +It simply did not occur to her that she was not the only call upon Mr. +Caine's time; and she may have felt as resentful at his reluctance as the +beggar who stigmatises Rothschild as niggard because he cannot wheedle a +share in his bounty. It may be that I am incapable of envisaging this +whole matter fairly, because--to make a clean breast of it--I am one of +those Philistine persons who shock Americans by never having been to +Stratford-on-Avon. It is true that I have read Shakespeare--and even his +commentators, which gives me the pull over Shakespeare himself; it is +true that I agree with the persons who haven't read him that he is the +greatest poet the world has ever seen or is likely to see; it is true +that Shakespeare is part of my life and thought; but somehow my interest +in him does not extend to his second-best bed, and I do not greatly yearn +to see the room in which Bacon was not born. I do not even care whether +Shakespeare was written by Shakespeare or "by another man of the same +name." Do you remember that poem of Amy Levy's, telling of how she sat +listening to people chattering about a dead, poet they had known, his +looks and ways, and thinking to herself-- + + I, who had never seen your face, + Perhaps I knew you best. + +It is this flaw in an otherwise well regulated mind, this "blind spot" in +my spiritual eye, that perhaps makes me attach undue unimportance to the +attraction of autographs. There is an eminent actress who invariably +refuses to send her autograph; but the eminent actor who is her husband +invariably sends a letter of apology to the disappointed correspondent. +Since I am in the mood for confessions, let me candidly admit that my own +attitude has a somewhat similar duality. Though I curse in these pages, I +bless like Balaam when it comes to the point. Never have I omitted to +return a sufficiently stamped, envelope with the coveted +sign-manual--never twice alike. Never have I failed to put my name in a +birthday book under a specific date--never twice alike. And though I hate +to answer applications for autographs, I should be still more annoyed not +to receive them. And as for sneering at the ladies, they have, I vow, no +more constant admirer. I could, indeed, desire that when they are next +angry with me they would read me before they criticise me; that they +would base their denunciations on my text, and my whole text, rather than +on some paper's mistaken comment upon another paper's inaccurate extract. +But nothing that they can say of me, however harsh, shall, I protest, +abate a jot of my respect for them or myself. + + + + +XXVII + +ON FINISHING A BOOK + +Between three and four of the morning the last words of the book were +written, and, putting down my pen--without falling asleep, as I should +have done had my task been to read the book, instead of to write it--I +began to muse on the emotions I ought to have felt, and on the emotions +other and greater authors had felt. There was a time, "in the days that +were earlier," when the writing of a book was a rare and solemn task, to +be approached--like the writing of "Paradise Lost"--after years of devout +and arduous preparation, under the "great Taskmaster's eye." Now it is +all a rush and a fever and a fret, and the mad breathlessness of the New +York newspaper office has spread from journalism to literature, and +novelists cheerfully contract to write books in the next century, quite +unregardful of whether there will be any books in them by then. That was +a very leisurely prescription in the Old Testament: "When a man taketh a +new wife he shall not go out in the host, neither shall he be charged +with any business; he shall be free at home one year, and shall cheer his +wife which he hath taken." Delightful honeymoon of those pastoral days! +Now the honeymoon has dwindled to a week, or in the case of actors and +actresses to a matinee (for they appear at night as usual), and few of us +possess sufficient oxen and sheep and manservants and maidservants to +strike work for a year. If only our authors would produce but one book a +year, instead of yielding two or three harvests to make hay withal while +the sun shines! Nor do they do these things much better in France. From +the patient parturition of a Flaubert--the father of the Realists--we +have come down to the mechanical annual crop of his degenerate +descendant, Zola. Perhaps the age of great works--like the age of great +folios--is over, so that none will ever have again those fine sensations +that made Gibbon chronicle how he finished his monumental history between +the hours of eleven and twelve at night in the summer-house at Lausanne, +or that dictated the stately sentiment of Hallam's wind-up of his +"Introduction to the Literature of Europe": "I hereby terminate a work +which has furnished, the occupation of not very few years.... I cannot +affect to doubt that I have contributed something to the general +literature of my country, something to the honourable estimation of my +own name and to the inheritance of those, if it is for me still to +cherish that hope, to whom I have to bequeath it." + +Thackeray must have felt something of this fine glow when he finished +"Vanity Fair," despite his genial simulation of "Come, children, let us +shut up the box and the puppets, for our play is played out." Dickens, +who had not humour enough for such self-mockery, took his endings very +seriously indeed, and even in the middle of his books had all the +emotions of parting when some favourite character had to quit the stage, +some poor Dombey or Little Nell. You remember what he wrote in the +preface to "David Copperfield" of "how sorrowfully the pen is laid down +at the close of a two-years' imaginative task, or how an author feels as +if he were dismissing some portion of himself into the shadowy world, +when a crowd of the creatures of his brain are going from him for ever." +And contrast his superfluously solemn asseveration, "No one can ever +believe this narrative in the reading more than I believed it in the +writing," with the whimsical melancholy of the "Vanity Fair" preface, the +references to the Becky doll and the Amelia puppet. One feels that +Thackeray was the greater Master, in that he took himself less seriously, +and had the finer sense of proportion. But that he lived with his +characters quite as much as his great contemporary may be seen from that +charming Roundabout Paper "De Finibus," where he describes the loneliness +of his study after all those people had gone who had been boarding and +lodging with him for twenty months. They had plagued him and bored him at +all sorts of uncomfortable hours, and yet now he would be almost glad if +one of them would walk in and chat with him as of yore--"an odd, +pleasant, humourous, melancholy feeling." In how much more solemn a mood +Dickens finishes "Our Mutual Friend," congratulating himself on having +been saved--with Mr. and Mrs. Boffin and the Lammles, with Bella Wilfer +and Rogue Riderhood--from a destructive railway accident, so that he +cannot help thinking of the time when the words with which he closes the +book will be written against his life--"The End." Thackeray needed no +railway accident to remind him of "The End," and two lines before the +close of "Vanity Fair" we find him writing--in the prime of his life, +"Ah, _vanitas vanitatum_! Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us +has his desire, or, having it, is satisfied?" That thought occurred to +Gibbon, too, for he had not taken many turns under the silver moon in +that coveted walk of acacias, enjoying the spectacle of the lake and the +mountains, and the recovery of his freedom and the establishment of his +fame, before a sober melancholy was spread over his mind by the idea that +he "had taken an everlasting leave of an old and agreeable companion, and +that whatsoever might be the future fate of his history, the life of the +historian must be short and precarious." When George Eliot put the last +stroke to "Romola," the book which "ploughed into her more than any of +her books," which she "began as a young woman and finished as an old +woman," she exclaimed in her diary--"_Ebenezer!_" O unpredictable +ejaculation! _Ebenezer!_ 'T is true the erudite Miss Evans had Hebrew an +knew that it meant "a stone of help." And in the evening she went to her +"La Gazza Ladra." Let us hope that some false persuasion of the +immortality of "Romola" counteracted that bodily malaise and suffering of +which she complained to Sara Hennell. Such pleasant persuasion buoyed up +Fielding, as he wrote the beginning of the end of "Tom Jones,"--that +almost endless epic,--for with a last fling at the critics he cries: "All +these works, however, I am well convinced, will be dead long before this +page shall offer itself to thy perusal; for however short the period may +be of my own performances, they will most probably outlive their own +infirm author, and the weakly productions of his abusive cotemporaries." + +But it is rather the tradition of Trollope that rules to-day--Trollope, +that canny craftsman who wrote every day for a stated number of hours, +and who, if he finished a novel twenty minutes before the end of his +term, would take up a clean sheet of paper and commence another. Did I +say the canny Trollope? Nay, this is rather uncanny, unearthly, unhuman. +What! You have lived with your characters day and night for months and +months, have thought their thoughts and been racked by their passions, +and you can calmly wind up their affairs and turn instanter to a new +circle of acquaintances? 'T is the very coquetry of composition, the +heartless flirtation of fiction-mongering. Thackeray, indeed, confesses +to liking to begin another piece of work after one piece is out of hand, +were it only to write half a dozen lines; but "that is something towards +Number the Next," not towards Book the Next, for these old giants wrote +from hand to mouth. I have always figured to myself Trollope's novels as +all written on a long endless scroll of paper rolled on an iron axis, +nailed up in his study. The publishers approach to buy so many yards of +fiction, and shopman Anthony, scissors in hand, unrolls the scroll and +snips it off at the desired point. This counter-jumping conception of the +Muses prevails with the customers to-day, with the editors who buy +fiction at so much a thousand words. Carlyle--Heaven preserve me from +finishing a book as he did his "French Revolution," to lose it and write +it all over again!--had the truer idea when he suggested that authors +should be paid by what they do _not_ write. But it was reserved for the +libraries to reach the lowest conception of literature. Their clients +enjoy the privilege of having so many books at a time, a book being a +book just as an orange is an orange. If the book the reader wants is not +there, why, there is another book for him to take; by which beautiful +system the good writer reaps very little advantage over the mediocre, for +indifferent books are forced upon the public as the conjuror forces cards +on people who think they are choosing them. It is a wonder the libraries +do not purvey their literature by the pound. + + + + +PART II. + +HERE, THERE, AND SOMEWHERE ELSE: PHILOSOPHIC EXCURSIONS. + +[The following pages are not intended as a substitute for Baedeker or +Murray. Nor can I solicit your interest on the ground of new places and +strange discoveries. To the philosophic tourist all places are equally +good to soliloquise in; and in inviting you to accompany my excursions I +need scarcely explain that the route is not according to Bradshaw but to +the A. B. C., and that you may break the journey at any point.] + + + + +ABERDEEN + +Critics of London allow too little for the charm of irregularity and +historical association--for odd bits and queer views coming unexpectedly +round the corner to meet one, for strange ancient gardens and fragments +of field in the backways of Holborn, for quaint waterside alleys and +old-world churches in out-of-the-way turnings--for everything, in fact, +that has the charm of natural growth. If I had my way, I would not give +up Booksellers' Row for a thousand improvements in the Strand. Where +shall you find a more piquant peace than in the shady quadrangles that +branch out of the bustle of Fleet Street, and flash a memory of Oxford +spires or Cambridge gardens on the inner eye? What spot in the world has +inspired a nobler sonnet than Wordsworth's on Westminster Bridge? Who +would exchange our happy incongruity for the mechanical regularity of the +mushroom cities of the States? Paris has, no doubt, made herself +beautiful; but she could have afforded not to be, much better than she +can afford to be. The theorist holds up Glasgow as a model city--a +pioneer--and the splendour of its municipal buildings is as the justice +of Aristides. But if an ugly woman does not dress well, who should? With +all its civic spirit, Glasgow remains grey, prosaic, intolerable--the +champion platitude of commercial civilisation. Aberdeen would have been a +far finer example of the schematic city of which theorists dream. There +is something heroic about the spaciousness of its streets, the loftiness +of the buildings, and the omnipresence of granite--a Tyrtaean spirit, +which finds its supreme embodiment in the noble statue of Wallace poised +on rough craglets of unpolished granite, and of General Gordon with his +martial cloak around him. If Edinburgh be the Athens of Scotland, +Aberdeen is its Sparta. And yet after a while Aberdeen becomes a +weariness and an abomination. For you discover that it is one endless +series of geometrical diagrams. The pavements run in parallel lines, the +houses are rectilineal, the gardens are squares or oblongs; if by chance +the land sprawls in billocks and hollows, nevertheless is it partitioned +in rigid lines. The architecture is equally austere. The very curves +demonstrate the theorem that a curve is made up of little straight lines, +the arches are stiff and unbending, and wherever a public building +demands an ornament, a fir-shaped cone of straight lines rises in stoic +severity. In vain one seeks for a refuge from Euclid--for an odd turning +or a crooked by-way. To match the straight-ness of their streets and the +granite of their structures the Aberdonians are hard-headed, +close-fisted, and logical (there is a proverb that no Jew can settle +among them), and when they die they are laid out neatly in a rectangular +cemetery with parallel rows of graves. Even when they stand about +gossiping they fall naturally into geometric figures: if two disconnected +men are smoking silently in the roadway, they trisect it; and if another +man arrives he converts the company into an equilateral triangle. I am +convinced the moon shrinks from appearing in Union Street except it is in +perfect quarters, and hides timidly behind a cloud unless its arcs are +presentable. Professor Bain was born in Aberdeen. This accounts for much +in our British metaphysics. Aberdeen produced the man who vivisected +Shelley's "Skylark," and explained away the human mind and all that is +therein; Aberdeen educated him, graduated him, married him, gave him the +chair of Logic in her University, and finally made him Lord Rector. Bain +thinks entirely in straight lines. He is the apotheosis of the +Aberdonian. Which is a warning against regular cities. + +According to the Rev. W. A. Cornaby in "The Contemporary Review," the +straight line is an abomination to the Chinese; they avoid it by curves +and zigzags, and they think in curves and zigzags. Hence it seems the +Chinese suffer from a spurious idealism, just as my Aberdonians suffer +from a spurious materialism. If only the maidens of Aberdeen would marry +the mandarins of the too Flowery Land, what a perfect race we might +expect! + + + + +ANTWERP + +This is the era of Exhibitions. An epidemic of Exhibitions traverses the +world, breaking out now at Paris, now at Chicago, now at Antwerp. To +visit them is our modern Pilgrimage; they force us to make the Grand +Tour, as our little wars teach us geography. They are supposed to give a +fillip to the prosperity of their town, and to nourish the pride and +pocket of the citizens. What other function they fulfil is dubious. Time +was when "the long laborious miles" of the Crystal Palace were acclaimed +as the dawn of the Golden Age, when swords should be turned into the most +improved substitute for pruning-hooks, and each man + + find his own in all men's good, + And all men work in noble brotherhood. + +Unhappily, that millennial vision is still far away,-- + + Far, how far, no tongue can say, + +as the canny Tennyson did not forget, even in his rapt prophetic strain. +And we have grown chiller. We no longer raise the song of praise because +manufacturers of all nations send specimens of their work to a common +centre in quest of medals. The world is already federated by the chains +of commerce; international barter is an inseparable part of the movement +of life, and infinite intertangled threads of union stretch across the +seas from shipping office to shipping office. Wherefore the millennium is +as likely to arrive _viâ_ Bayreuth or Lourdes, or any other centre of +Pilgrimage, as by way of an International Exhibition. No, we must take +our Exhibitions more humbly: they are amusing and instructive; they earn +dividends or lose capital; they stimulate orders for the goods on view, +and they end in a shower of medals. In France, according to Mark Twain, +few men escape the Legion of Honor. Is there any artificial product that +has escaped a medal at some Exhibition or the other? I cannot recall +eating or drinking anything undecorated. They grow on every bush, those +medals, copious as the Queen's Arms over the shop-windows of the High +Street. No store, however lowly, but the Queen deals there; no article, +however poor, but has earned golden opinions, or at least silver and +bronze. For the industrial or Gradgrind mind an Exhibition is doubtless a +riot, an orgy; for the exhibitors it is a sensational battle-field; for +the average spectator it is as exciting as a walk through Whiteley's, or +a stroll down Oxford Street. From the Antwerp Exhibition proper I bear +away nothing but an impression of a wonderful paper-making machine, at +one end of which the paper enters as liquid pulp, to issue at the other +as a solid sheet. A pity the process was not carried one step farther, to +the printed newspaper stage--so that what went in as rags should come out +as mendacity. Such success as the Antwerp Exhibition has won is a success +of side-shows; a panorama of camels and dancing-girls defiles before my +eyes, my ears are yet ringing with the barbarous music and incantations +of the Orient. Old Antwerp rises picturesque, with its burghers and +warriors; the glorious picture galleries stretch away, overladen with +artistic treasure; the mimic elephant mounts, mammoth-like, to the skies; +the grounds and the façades of the buildings gleam fairy-like in the soft +night air, with a million illuminations; and lo! there in the German +restaurant the beautiful daughters of the Fatherland smile, in coifs and +tuckers and short skirts, Katti and Luisa and Nina, dulciferous names +that trip off the tongue as the gentle creatures trip from table to table +with flasks of Rhenish wine; the mellifluous voice of Sarah cries +cigarettes at her booth in the Rue du Caire--Sarah, the Egyptian Jewess, +whose ancestors went back to the land of Pharaoh in defiance of Rabbinic +decree--Sarah, with the charm of her eighteen summers and her graceful +virginal figure and her sweet unconscious coquetry, as different from the +barmaid's as Rosalind's from Audrey's; and Sarah's brother, briskest of +business boys, resurges with his polyglot solicitations to buy nougat: a +mannish swashbuckler without, a cherubic infant within: I see the Congo +negroes, mere frauds from the States, in your opinion, daintiest of +American friends, who came all the way from Paris to meet me. But soft! +what has all this to do with the Industrial Exhibition? + +_Rien, absolument rien._ Give us these things anywhere, give us lights +and gardens and music, give us dances and damsels, give us Congo +encampments and "_ballons dirigeables_," and thither will we troop to +make us merry. Ah! but the incurable conscientiousness of the human race +insists on pills with its jam. Or is it that it has never yet dawned upon +humanity that jam may be taken without pills? There was a time--it lasted +seventy thousand ages according to the Chinese manuscript which Elia +saw--when mankind ate their meat raw. Then, one day, as every schoolboy +knows, Bo-bo carelessly set his father's cottage on fire, and, burning +the litter of new-farrowed pigs it held, accidentally invented +_crackling_. So delicious was burnt pig discovered to be that everybody +fell to setting his house on fire to obtain it. "Thus this custom of +firing houses continued, till in process of time a sage arose, like our +Locke, who made a discovery that the flesh of swine, or indeed of any +other animal, might be cooked (_burnt_, as they called it) without the +necessity of consuming a whole house to dress it.... By such slow degrees +do the most useful and seemingly the most obvious arts make their way +among mankind." For seventy thousand ages mankind did without _al fresco_ +entertainments. Then some one invented Exhibitions, and mankind found it +delicious to promenade the grounds amid twinkling lights and joyous +music. But no Locke has yet discovered that musical promenades may be had +without elevating a whole Exhibition in the background. At Earl's Court +they still keep up a pretence of Industrial Exhibition, though we have +long since lost interest in the pretext, and no longer inquire whether +the painted scenery that walls in the grounds is called the Alps or the +Apennines or the Champs-Elysées. And yet methinks mankind did discover +the open-air entertainment, as perchance roast pig was known and +forgotten again long centuries before Bo-bo. For what was Ranelagh, what +Vauxhall? Were not the gardens of Vauxhall "made illustrious by a +thousand lights finely disposed," or, as Thackeray puts it, by a "hundred +thousand _extra_ lamps, which were always lighted"? Were not "concerts of +musick" given nightly by fiddlers in cocked hats, ensconced in a "gilded +cockleshell," and was not the price of admission a shilling? "Vauxhall +must ever be an estate to its proprietor," wrote Boswell, "as it is +peculiarly adapted to the taste of the English nation; there being a +mixture of curious show--gay exhibition--music, vocal and instrumental, +not too refined for the general ear; and, though last not least, good +eating and drinking for those who choose to purchase that regale." But +Boswell prophesied ill. Public gardens were always distasteful to English +Puritanism, because they lent themselves to rendezvous; and though +Boswell, in protesting against the rise of price to two shillings, +certifies to the elegance and innocence of the entertainment, and though +Mr. Osborne and Miss Amelia walked unharmed in its groves and glades, and +it was not Rebecca Sharp's fault that Jos. Sedley got drunk on the bowl +of rack punch, still Vauxhall, like Ranelagh and Cremorne, has come down +to us with tainted reputation. It died in the odour of brimstone, and +only in the magical ink-pool of literature can we still behold the +heralded gallants in the boxes junketing with low-bodiced ladies of +quality whose patches show piquantly on their damask cheeks. Rosherville +remains in ignoble respectability, the place to spend an h-less day, our +one uninstructive institution, for even "Constantinople" and "Venice" +have a specious background of geographical and even of industrial +information: Rosherville, which only once flowered into poetry, and then +under another name,--when Mr. Anstey's barber wedded the Tinted Venus +with a ring. + +And in the magical ink-pool I see you and me still sitting, O +Transatlantic Parisienne, as we sat that sunny afternoon--three hundred +years ago--in ancient Antwerp, in _oud Antwerpen_, niched in the +windowseat of that quaint hostelry which gives on the great market-place, +and watching the festive procession. Do you remember the gorgeous +costumes of our fellow-burghers, and the trappings of their prancing +chargers in those days when life was not plain, but coloured, and +existence was one vast fancy-dress ball? How glad we were to welcome the +Archduke Martinias of Austria, our sovereign elect, or was it François +Sonnius, our first Bishop, coming to be installed in our glorious +Cathedral, amid the joyous carillons of its bells! Can you not still see +the Angels hovering over the Virgin, and the Golden Calf, +flower-wreathed, and the Flight into Egypt, on that naïve donkey, and +"the Flying Dutchman," tugged by a horse, and the gilded galley rowed in +make-believe by little children in their Sunday clothes, catching crabs +in air, and the incongruous camels bestridden by Arab sheikhs with +African pages, and the Persians on ponies, and the Crusaders in their +fine foolish coats-of-mail, and the gay courtiers, with clanking swords, +and the halberdiers, and the particoloured arquebusiers, and the archers +in green and red, and the spearsmen in sugarloaf hats, and the cherubs +riding on dolphins? Can you not hear the beating of the drum, and the Ave +Maria of the white-robed chorus-boys, and the irrelevant strains of the +Danish national anthem, and the japes of the jester with his cap and +bells? What happy times for butchers and bakers and candlestick-makers +when, instead of working, they could go in processions, bearing aloft the +insignia of their guilds, and when middle-class girls, ignorant of the +New Womanhood, could loll on triumphal cars with roses in their hair! Do +you remember how the topmost divinity smiled to me from her perilous +perch, too high to rouse your jealousy, and how the little cherub that +sat up aloft besprinkled us mischievously with eau de cologne? Ah, shall +we ever again be as happy as we were three hundred years ago? will the +wine be ever as red, the potato salad as appetising, or the cheese (did +they really enjoy Gorgonzola and Camembert in the sixteenth century?) as +delicious as in that ancient Flemish hostelry with its Lutheran motto: + + Wie nikt mint Wijn, Wijf en Sangh, + Blijft een Geck sijn Leven langh! + +Was it from its inscribed beams that Shelley borrowed his famous lyric +"Love's Philosophy"? for did we not read: + + Den Hemel drinckt, en d'Aerde drinckt: + Waerom souden wij niët drinckt? + +("Heaven drinks, and earth drinks: why shouldn't we drink?") At any rate +it pleased us to recall the delectable lines: + + And the sunlight clasps the earth, + And the moonbeams kiss the sea; + What are all these kissings worth + If thou kiss not me? + +But what does it matter what one did three hundred years ago? + +Or, what does it matter what one did that dim Arabian night when we set +out with the cavalcade of camels in the marriage procession, and the +bride cowered veiled in her corner of the coach, and the plump mother +smiled archly at us, and the brother and the bridegroom, mounted on Arab +steeds, smacked each other's faces in ceremonial solemnity, exactly like +"the two Macs" in the music-hall? Was it then, or in the nineteenth +century, that we rode the camel together, I on the hindmost peak? "Oh, +the oont, oh, the oont, oh, the gawdforsaken oont!" as the poet of the +barrack-room sings. He seems to double up like a garden-chair to receive +one; then his knees unfold and the rider shoots up; then the camel rises +to his full height, and one ducks instinctively for fear of striking the +stars. "_Salaam Aleikhoom_," I cried to the drivers, airing my Arabic, +which I make by mispronouncing Hebrew; and they answered effusively, +"Yankee Doodle! Chicago!" Alas for the glamour of the Orient! They had +all come from the greater fair, perhaps spent their lives in traveling +from fair to fair, mercenaries of some latter-day Barnum. + +There was a fine stalwart Egyptian, who stood beating a gong to summon +the faithful to improper dances. I gave him a cup of coffee, and he held +it on high, and with gratitude effusing from every pore of his dusky +face, cried, "Columbus!" Then he mounted a flight of stairs and shouted +beamingly, "1492!" + +He took a sip, and then his wife called him chidingly, and he fled to +her. But he returned to drain the cup in my presence, crying between each +sip "Columbus" or "1492." Never before have I bought so much gratitude +for ten centimes. Henceforward I found "Columbus" a watchword, and "1492" +a magic talisman, causing dusky eyes to kindle and turbaned heads to nod +beamingly. + +The town-barber of _Alt Antwerpen_, who was wont to shave me in the +sixteenth century, had a beautiful motto:-- + + I am Hair-dresser, Barber, and Surgeon, + I shave with, soap and much delight, + Although there are barbers who do it + As though they were in a fright. + +But it is surpassed by a hundred delightful things in "The Visitor's +Handybook," which the touts in New Antwerp, ignorant of its treasures, +press upon the traveller gratis. It opens auspiciously: "The opening +pages of our little guide we have devoted to a short review of the city +of Antwerp, the streets of which still contain elegant specimens of those +quaint and handsome edifices of the Netherlands are truly famous, and +which in Antwerp, perhaps more than in any other city, seem to abound." +Here are some more gems: "Visitors will be naturally anxious to secure a +comfortable apartment, in selecting which the following list will be +found of service:--see advertisements, all of which can be strongly +recommended." "Facing you is the King's Palace; not a very attractive +one; however, as a rule, not open to the public, but admission may +sometimes be obtained although at great trouble during the absence of the +King." "It was formally inaugurated by the presence of the Queen, +Princess Beatrice, and a numerous compagny representing the European +Benches and Pairs." "A wonderfully painted ceiling, in which the +attendant can point out some marvellous effects." "The Visitor's +Handybook" is in its thirteenth free edition, and is worth double the +price. Antwerp is very strong linguistically. The _quatre +langues_--Flemish, French, English, and German--make a universal +confusion of tongues, and the whole town is nothing but a huge open +Flemish--French dictionary, every shop-sign or street-name being +translated. A few sturdy burghers stick to the old tongue, and sometimes +English rules the roast. "The Welsh Harp" (which is Antwerp way) is a +sailor's cabaret near the quay. There is even a trace of Irish influence +in the etymology of Antwerp as given in the official handbook; for +Antigon, the giant who used to cut off the hand of any shipman that +refused him tribute, and whose throwing it (_Handwerpen_) into the river +gave the name to the city, is stated beforehand to have lived in the +castle of Antwerp. They are not destitute of wit, the Belgians, if I may +judge by some specimens I heard. It is a local joke to refer to the +famous "_dirigeable_" balloon, which burst in the latter days of the +Exhibition, as the "_déchirable_" balloon. "They pooh-pooh the past +nowadays," said a tram-conductor to me, "but when I look at the Cathedral +and Rubens' 'Descent from the Cross' I think our forefathers were _assez +malins_." A seedy vendor of lottery-tickets declared that every one of +them would draw a prize. "Wherefore, then, my friend," quoth I, "do you +not keep them?" "_Je ne suis pas égoïste_," he said, with a shrug. To +defend myself against his masterful solicitousness, I stated solemnly +that lotteries were illegal in England, and that if I returned thither +with a lottery-ticket the British Government would throw me into prison. +But he was not daunted: "_Appuyez-vous sur moi_," he replied +reassuringly. + + + + +BROADSTAIRS AND RAMSGATE + +A story is current in the Clubs that Mr. Henry James innocently went to +Ramsgate, in order to possess his soul in peace. 'T was the height of the +rougher Ramsgate season, and there is something irresistibly incongruous +in the juxtaposition of the rarefied American novelist and the roaring +sands of Albion. In the which juxtaposition the story leaves him; and we +are ignorant of whether he turned tail and fled back to quieter London, +or whether he stayed on to collect unexpected material. Our analytical +cousin's stippling methods are, it is to be feared, but poorly adapted +for the painting of holiday crowds, which require the scene-painter's +brush, and lend themselves reluctantly to nuances. The colours have not +that dubiety so dear to the artist of the penumbra; the sands are as +yellow as the benches are red; and the niggers are quite as black as they +are burnt-corked. The love-making, too, is devoid of subtlety. When you +see--as I saw last Bank Holiday on Ramsgate beach--Edwin and Angelina +asleep in each other's arms, the situation strikes you as too simple for +analysis. It is like the loves of the elements, or the propensity of +carbon to combine with oxygen. An even more idyllic couple I came upon +prone amid the poppies on the cliff hard by, absorbing the peace and the +sunshine, steeping themselves in the calm of Nature after the finest +Wordsworthian manner. But presently there is the roll of a drum, and the +scream of a fife in distress rises from below, and Angelina pricks up her +ears. "I wish they'd come up 'ere," she murmurs wistfully; "I'd jump up +like steam; I could just do a dance." + +Yet all the same their seclusion among the wild flowers on the edge of +the cliff showed a glimmering of soul. Not theirs the hankering for that +strip of sand near the stone pier, which a worthy dame of my acquaintance +once compared to a successful fly-paper. Scientific investigation shows +the congestion at this particular spot to be due to the file of +bathing-machines which blocks the view of the sea from half the beach. To +the bulk of the visitors this yellow patch _is_ Ramsgate, just as a +small, cocoanut-bearing area of Hampstead woodland is the Heath, most of +whose glorious acres have never felt the tread of a donkey or a cheap +tripper. Not that there are many other attractions in Ramsgate, which is +administered by councillors more sleepy than sage. Having literally +defaced their town by a railway-station, built a harbour which will not +hold water, constructed a promenade pier in the least accessible quarter, +and provided a band which plays mainly "intervals," they naturally refuse +to venture on further improvements, such as refuges on the parade, or +trees in the shadeless streets, and, in the excess of their zeal, have +even, so I hear, declined the railway company's offer to give them a lift +(from sands to cliff), and Mr. Sebag Montefiore's offer to allow the +public gardens to be continued right through his estate on towards +Dumpton. Even so, these worthy burghers have more of my regard than their +brethren of Margate, who have sacrificed their trust to the Moloch of +advertisement. Stand on Margate Parade and look seaward, and the main +impression is Pills. Sail towards Margate Pier and look landward, and the +main impression is Disinfectant Powder. + +Baby Broadstairs has known better how to guard its dignity and its +beauty; so that Dickens might still look from Bleak House on as dainty a +scene as in the days when he lounged on the dear old, black, +weather-beaten pier. I spent a week at Broadstairs in the height of a +Dynamite Mystery. We were very proud of the Mystery, we of Broadstairs, +and of the space we filled in the papers. Ramsgate, with its +contemporaneous murder sensation, we turned up our noses at, till +Ramsgate had a wreck and redressed the balance. For the rest, we made +sand-pies, and bathed and sailed, and listened to a band that went wheezy +on Bank Holiday. Broadstairs boasts of one drunkard, who does odd jobs as +well. He is tall, venerable, and melancholy, and has the air of a +temperance orator. "Joe's one of the best chaps on the pier when he's +sober," said his mate to me sorrowfully; "but when he's drunk he makes a +fool of himself." This was not quite true; for Joe was not always +foolish. Why, when two gentlemen came down from London in a gipsy caravan +to teach us Theosophy, and all Broadstairs fluttered towards their +oil-lamp, leaving the band to tootle to the sad sea waves, I could not +get him to mount the Cheap Jack rostrum in opposition! The most I could +spur him to was an indignant defence of London against the lecturer's +denunciation of it as an immoral city, a pit of unrighteousness. "'T +ain't true!" he thundered raucously. "Many's the gent from Lunnon as has +behaved most liberal to me." One day there was an attempt to disturb +Joe's monopoly as drunkard, and I am afraid I had a hand in it. A human +caricature in broken boots addressed me as I lay on the beach (writing +with a stylographic pen and blotting the sheets with the sand), and +besought me to buy sprigs of lavender. He proved to me by ocular +demonstration that he had no money in his pockets; whereupon I proved to +him by parity of reasoning that I had none in mine either. However, I +remembered me of a penny postage-stamp (unlicked), and tendered it +diffidently, and he received it with disproportionate benedictions. Later +in the day he reappeared under my window, hurling up maudlin abuse. He +had got drunk on my postage-stamp! + +I told him to get along with him, which he did. For some time he +staggered about Broadstairs in search of its policeman. He came across +him at last, and was straightway clapped into an open victoria and driven +across the sunny fields to Ramsgate. Meantime, Broadstairs was left +unprotected--perhaps Joe kept an eye on it. + +Broadstairs has also a jolly old waterman, who paddles about apparently +to pick up exhausted bathers. One morning as I was swimming past his boat +he warned me back. "Any danger?" I asked. "Ladies," he replied, +ambiguously enough. It thus transpired that his function is to preserve a +scientific frontier between the sexes. Considering that the ladies one +meets at sea are much more clothed than the ladies whose diaphanous +drapery one engirdles in ball-rooms, this prudery is amusing. It is +consoling to remember that the Continental practice prevails in many a +quaint nook along our coasts, and that the ladies are sensible enough to +walk to and from their bathing tents, clothed and unashamed. Strange to +say, Broadstairs has placed its ladies' machines nearest the pier, for +the benefit of loungers armed with glasses; and I must not forget to +mention that the boatman himself holds a daily _levée_ of mermaidens, who +make direct for his boat and gambol around the prow. If anything needs +reforming in our marine manners, it is rather the male costume. Why we +men are allowed to go about like savages, clothed only in skins (and +those our own), is to me one of the puzzles of popular ethics. What is +sauce for the gander is sauce for the goose. At Folkestone, where the +machine-people are dreadfully set against ladies and gentlemen using the +same water, promiscuous bathing flourishes more nakedly than anywhere on +the Continent; and the gentlemen have neither tents nor costumes. In +Margate and Deal the machines are of either sex, and the gentlemen are +clad in coloured pocket-handkerchiefs. At Birchington I bathed from a +boat which was besieged by a bevy of wandering water-nymphs, begging me +to let them dive from it. And they dived divinely! + +Though the _profanum vulgus_ takes possession of our strands, and Edwin +and Angelina are common objects of the sea-shore, yet I cannot help +thinking that there is many a vulgar British beach that would ravish us +did we light upon it in other lands. Oh, how picturesque! What a gay +grouping of colour! What an enchanting medley of pink parasols and golden +sand and chintz tents and white bathing-machines, and blue skies and +black minstrels and green waters, and creamy flannels and gauzy dresses! +And--_ciel!_ what cherubic children! and--_corpo di Bacco!_--what pretty +women! What frank _abandon_ to the airy influences of the scene! What +unconventionality! What unrestraint! See how that staid old _signor_ +allows himself to be buried and excavated by the _bambino_. Watch that +charming _maman_ unblushingly bathing _bébé_. Note that portly _matrona_ +careering upon the _asino_! What cares she for her dignity? Listen to the +babel--"[Greek: hokae pokae, hokae pokae]" "Drei shies a pfennig!" "Your +photograph, _señorita?_" Look! the coquettish _contadina_ is slapping the +face of the roguish _vetturino_! How the good-natured crowd, easily +pleased, gathers round the Ethiopian troubadour, trolling in unison his +amorous catches!-- + + _Daisy, Daisy, donne-moi ta réponse._ + +And hark! Do you not hear in the distance the squeak of _Puncinello_? Ah! +why have we none of this happy carelessness in England?--we who take our +pleasures _moult tristement_--why have we not this lightheartedness, this +_camaraderie_ of enjoyment? Why cannot we throw aside our insular +stiffness, our British hauteur, and be natural? + +I journeyed to Broadstairs, late at night, riding in a three-horsed brake +with many a jocund passenger. And then something happened. Something +ineffably trivial, and yet a matter of life and death. We were bowling +merrily along the country lanes in the fragrant air. It was a dark, +starless night, but so warm that the easterly sea-breeze fanned us like a +zephyr. And through the gloom a flash-light leaped and waned, flickered +and died and gleamed again with electric brilliance--"the Winnaker(?) +light from France," a garrulous inhabitant assured us; a rare phenomenon +to be seen only once in a decade, when an east wind clarifies the +atmosphere, and allows the rays to pierce through two dozen miles of +strait. It seemed like La Belle France winking amicably to us across the +waters. And a little to the left twinkled "The Green Man"--no friendly +public-house, but a danger-signal from behind the Goodwin Sands, likewise +visible but by miracle. + +And as we marvelled at these jewels of the night, that shamed the +absentee stars, the brake stood still with a jolt and a shock that threw +our gay company into momentary alarm. But it was nothing. Only a horse +fallen down dead! One of our overworked wheelers had suddenly sunk upon +the earth, a carcase. Dust to dust! Who shall tell of the daylong agony +of the dumb beast as he plodded pertinaciously through the heat, +ministering to the pleasures of his masters? Had he been a man, how we +should have praised him, belauded the beauty of his end, telling one +another sanctimoniously that he had died in harness. As it was we merely +stripped him of his harness and deposited it in the brake! We unhitched +the leader and put him between the shafts, side by side with the other +horse, both incurious and indifferent, wasting nor glance nor nasal rub +upon their defunct comrade. We men feign better. And then we drew him to +the edge of the track, a rigid, lumbering mass; and the garrulous +inhabitant discussed the value of the carcase, and the driver cracked his +whip, and the living horses stirred their haunches, and in a moment we +were spanking along, leaving our fellow-creature to darkness and +solitude. Only the flash-light from France glimmered upon the poor dead +beast, coming all the way to cheer him; only the green eye from beyond +the Goodwins blinked upon his unheaving flanks. + +And from far ahead came back to his deaf ears with ever-diminishing +intensity our noisy madrigal--most music-hall, most melancholy--his only +dirge: + + Mary Jane was a farmer's daughter, + Mary Jane did what she oughter. + She fell in love but all in vain. + O poor Mary! O poor Jane! + + + + +BUDAPEST + +The Millennial Exhibition of Budapest--for which the Directors gave me a +season ticket as soon as they heard I was leaving--professes to celebrate +the foundation of Hungary; but 896 is a very long time ago, and the event +does not seem to have been reported in the newspapers of the period. +However, as a Hungarian explained to me, when you are counting by +thousands you are not particular to a year or two, so perhaps it was not +precisely ten centuries ago that the foundation of Hungary was +inaugurated by a national assembly that created "the Constitution of +Pusztaszer." After all, have not those irrepressible German savants +discovered that Christ was born in the year 6 B.C.? At any rate, there is +no doubt that the Magyars did steal a country some time or other in the +remote past, or in more political language, did obtain a footing in +Europe by ousting the Slav tribes that peopled the great plain bounded by +the Carpathians and the Danube and the Tisza. They came from Central +Asia, on a late wave of that big "Westward ho!" movement of the Eastern +peoples, a race of shepherds changed into an army of mounted archers, and +pitched their tents first in Galieia, uniting their seven tribes under +the great chief Arpád; but, harassed continually by local tribes with +unpronounceable names, they moved farther westwards to their present +quarters, where, after a vain but spirited attempt to annex Europe +generally, they settled down to comfort and civilisation, ceased to offer +white horses to idols, and embraced Christianity. + +It seems that land-thieves are called conquerors; and after a thousand +years of possession of their stolen goods, the glamour of a divine +sanctity gets over the past, and high-minded natives live and die for the +country which seems to have been theirs from time immemorial, and in +which their holiest feelings are enrooted. What makes national robberies +moral is the fact that there is honour among the thieves. The morality of +crowds is, in fact, as different from that of individuals as "the +psychology of crowds" which has just engaged the attention of an +ingenious scientist. Into the original conquerors of a country a +miscellaneous assortment of other races always gets absorbed, as the +Franks by the Gauls, the Turkish Bulgarians by the Slavs. The Hungarians +absorbed into themselves Italians, Germans, and Czechs, and the modern +Hungarian is, according to Arminius Vambery, a typical product of the +fusion of Europe and Asia, Turanian and Aryan. And that is the sort of +way in which after a few centuries we get the chauvinistic cries: +"Germany for the Germans," "Poland for the Polish," "Hungary for the +Hungarians." In truth, no nation has a right to anything it cannot hold +by might. And who shall determine what a nation is? Who are the +Americans? Who are the English? "Norman and Saxon and Dane are we." And +once upon a time some of us threw up our country and sailed away in the +_Mayflower_. For patriotism is not the only bond of brotherhood. Men may +be the sons of an idea as well as of a soil. There was a Hungarian girl +selling silver at a stall, who had spent four years in Chicago. Never +have I heard better American, except it be from a Budapest man who had +come back to revisit his native town, and was disgusted with its +smallness and slowness. _Per contra_, I met an American girl in +Switzerland who had lived much in Germany, and whose English had such a +Teutonic intonation that it was difficult to realise she was not speaking +German. And language is but typical of the rest. All other national +characteristics are imbibed as subtly. What makes a nation is a certain +common spirit,--_Volksgeist_, as the German psychologists have christened +it,--and this spirit exercises a hypnotic effect over all that comes +within its range, moulding and transforming. There is action and +reaction. The nation makes the national spirit, and the national spirit +makes the nation. The flag, the constitution, the national anthems, the +national prejudices, the language, the proverbs--these are the product of +the people they produce. + +I am inclined to allow more importance to education and environment than +to actual birth in a country, and to believe that for a "native," birth +is only an etymological necessity. Natives are made as well as born. The +"born" native has merely the advantage of prior arrival, and if the +"foreign" immigrant is only of a plastic age he may come to love the +step-mother-country more than one of her own sons, educated abroad. This +consideration would solve every _Uitlander_ question: is the national +spirit strong enough to suck in the foreigners? Can the nation digest +them, to vary the metaphor--assimilate them to its own substance? I once +proposed to a biologist--who flouted it--that a definition of Life might +be "the power of converting foreign elements, taken in as food, to one's +own substance." Thus, a plant sucks up chemical elements and makes +flowers; a man turns them to flesh. Here is a piece of meat: eaten by a +dog it runs to tail and teeth, for a cat it makes fur and whiskers, for a +bird feathers, for a woman a lovable face. And so the test of life in a +nation would be its power of transforming its immigrants into patriots. +Only a dead nation is afraid of foreigners. + +The figure has its limits, however: one cannot gulp down too large a +piece of meat. And there are things inedible--substances which no stomach +can digest. The Americans will never make Yankees of their Chinese. On +the other hand, nowhere have I found more ardent patriots than among the +Jews. Englishmen in England, Americans in America, Italians in Italy, +Frenchmen in France, and only not Russians in Russia because they are not +allowed to be, they are rabid Hungarians in Hungary; and if I have caught +any enthusiasm for Hungary it is from the lips of a young and brilliant +Jew, Vidor Emil, who piloted me about Budapest, and who, under Marmorek +Oszkár, another young Jew, built "Old Buda," perhaps the most interesting +feature of the Millennial Exhibition. This Jewish patriotism, which loves +at once Israel and some other nation, may appear curious and +contradictory; but human nature is nothing if not curious and +contradictory, and this dual affection has been aptly compared to that of +a mother for her different children. And besides, in a contest the love +of Israel goes down before the more local patriotism. French and German +Jews fought each other in the Franco-German war, and probably it is only +persecution that accentuates the consciousness of Jewish brotherhood. +Wherever the Jews have perfect equality and have been tempted out of the +Ghetto, there the beginnings of disintegration are manifest. And who +shall say how much Jewish blood dilutes the nations of the Occident, for +all their chauvinistic talk! + +Mr. Du Maurier, in his unmentionable novel, suspects, like Lowell, that a +drop of it has lurked in every artistic temperament. And, in sober truth, +the drain from Israel throughout the centuries has been immense. In every +age, in every country, Jews have been sucked up into the more brilliant +life around them, exchanging contempt and danger for consideration and +peace. I know an English gentleman who goes about in fear and trembling +lest it transpire that he is of the race of the apostles, and he be +driven out of decent Christian society. _Cherchez le Juif_ is, indeed, +no empty cry, whenever a new artistic or journalistic planet swims into +our ken. That the Jew rules over the Continental press is not quite so +untrue as most anti-Semitic cries. "Have you any Christians on your +staff?" I said to the editor of the great Budapest newspaper, "Pesther +Lloyd," a fine figure of a man, long-bearded and benevolent, like an +ancient sage. He pondered. "I think we have one," he said. On the other +hand, there are many German and Austrian papers on which there is only +one Jew. And in any case the real meaning of the cry is ludicrously +untrue. + +For the Jew by no means uses his power to help Jews indiscriminately: +there is no secret brotherhood of the synagogue. The Jewish journalists +have probably never been in a synagogue, except perhaps as children; they +are divorced in thought and temper from the body proper. And the only +sense in which their pen can be said to have a Jewish bias is in that +complimentary sense which makes the Jew synonymous with the champion of +sweetness and light, of liberty and reason. In this sense it is true that +the Jew is wielding an insidious influence throughout Europe, like the +old apostles among the heathen. + +"Oh yes, the Jews are very well off in Hungary," said one of the staff of +the "Pesther Lloyd." "There are 150,000 Jews in Budapest; they enter all +the professions, and supply two members to the House of Magnates, and +nine to the Chamber of Deputies, and there are two State Councillors; and +you know with us every member of Parliament 'thous' every other in +private as an equal. For the laws, liberal as they are, are not so +liberal as the spirit of society. I, mere journalist as I am, have the +most friendly talks with the Prime Minister, and am a member of the +swellest political clubs. We are a good deal like England, by the way: +our middle-classes produce our leaders, our aristocracy lacks eloquence +and talent, and has only a court influence. Our House of Commons is the +most fashionable club. We have no censor, whereas Austria has an +oppressive censorship as well as anti-Semitism. In fact, the influence of +Vienna has caused a decline in our own tolerant spirit, and at the best +of times a Jew needed to have three times the talent of a Christian to +make equal progress in any career." A consideration which sufficiently +accounts for the superiority of the Jewish remnant. Intolerance and +persecution are furnaces which, when they do not destroy, temper and +anneal and strengthen. It is as with the bare-footed, half-clad, underfed +children of the slums: those that do survive are strong indeed. Let my +patriotic cicerone, the Jewish architect, testify. First in all his +examinations, a violinist, a bicyclist, a gymnast, he was to be gazetted +a premier lieutenant as soon as he had completed his military service. He +was a linguist, too (as every travelled Hungarian must be, for Hungarian +will carry him nowhere), speaking excellent English and reading our +magazines regularly. _Humani nihil a me alienum puto_ might have been his +motto. Kossuth himself is said to have had a Jewish grandmother. The Jews +are largely responsible for the prosperity of Budapest, as they were for +that of Vienna, which now turns round upon them. Fancy a country +quarrelling with its coal and iron! And the true wealth of a country is +even more in its population than in its dead products. I found the +Viennese comic papers full of the old anti-Semitic jokes, hashed up, I +have little doubt, by the same journalists who are supposed to judaize +the press of Europe. Even so in America, are not the Jewish caricatures +in _Puck_ often done by a brother of M. de Blowitz? In something of the +same spirit, when the notorious Lueger, whose platform was the extinction +of the Jews of Vienna, was up for election as Burgomaster of that town, a +poor Jew took a bribe of a couple of florins to vote for him. "God will +frustrate him," said the pious Jew. "Meantime I have his money." + +The chief surprise of Hungary is its language. Though one knows that +Jokaï writes in the strange tongue which sticks its verb into the middle +of its noun, yet one vaguely thinks of it as of Gaelic or +Welsh--something archaic, kept for Eisteddfods and Renaissances--and it +is not till one arrives in Hungary that one realises that it is a living, +disconcerting reality. The great European languages have affinities with +one another: Latin puts one on bowing terms with French and Spanish, +Italian and Portuguese; English is not entirely unrelated to German, +Dutch, and even Norwegian; old Greek is the key to modern. But in Hungary +one comes face to face with an absolutely new language, in which even +guesswork is impossible. When "Levelezö-Lap" means a postcard, and "ára +egy napra" means price per day, you feel that it is all up. The nearest +relatives of Hungarian are Turkish and Finnish, the Asiatic ancestors of +the race having lived between Finns and Turks; and it bears traces of +their migrations, and of the great Mongol invasion of Europe by Djingis +Khan. + +With a language thus handicapped, it was a mistake to have scarcely a +word of any other tongue in an Exhibition designed to attract Europe. The +only scrap of English I saw was in the "French Theatre," in the show of +"Living Pictures," the (London) director of which had forgotten to alter +the titles printed beneath the frames. Even in giving the names of +foreign authors the Hungarians preserve their habit of placing the +Christian name second; so that I saw in the booksellers' windows works by +Eliot George, Kock Paul, and Black William. + +Hungary is still in the flush of youth, high-spirited, brilliant, +enthusiastic, and a little out of perspective in its national +consciousness. But who would ever do anything if he saw his true place in +the cosmos? The rapid rise of Budapest--unprecedented save in the gold +countries--into a capital of European importance, has shed a buoyant +optimism, refreshing enough in this jaded century, over the inhabitants +of that beautiful city. "We are the Vienna of the future," cried my +cicerone, "and already Vienna is feeling our rivalry. The retired Jewish +merchants who went there to spend their fortunes are now coming to us; +the anti-Semitism of Vienna is at once the cause and the effect of bad +business. And Vienna is on the downward grade; we are on the upward. +Vienna has never been the capital of Austria,--which is a mere federation +of races,--as Budapest is the capital of Hungary. The German is proud of +Vienna, yes; but the Czech looks to Prague, the Pole to Cracow, the +Austro-Italian swears by Trieste." + +He also complained that there is rather a tendency to think of Hungary as +subject to Austria, instead of an associated state; and that this +tendency is fomented by the Austrian papers, whose references to Hungary +insinuate this conception. The Hungarian papers, whose tone would +counteract it, not being in German, are not read by the rest of Europe. +Hungary had always beaten Austria. She had never been defeated save by +allies of Austria. But Hungary, which is so mettlesome and restive in her +patriotism, whose great son, Kossuth, would never even accept the +compromise with the House of Hapsburg, has yet no compunction in +dominating inferior races, in grinding Serbs, Croats and Roumanians into +her own pattern. The Hungarians, who are in the minority, are yet +moulding these alien nationalities to their own will. But _que +voulez-vous?_ The inhabitants of many nations have adopted Christianity, +the nations themselves never. Perhaps the next step for the Christian +missionaries is to found international Christianity. + +Still the Hungarians have the qualities of their defects. Unlike the +Turks, their neighbours, they are a race with a future, and Budapest is +from one point of view one of the sightliest capitals of Europe. What +town has a fairer situation? With Parisian Pesth sitting stately on one +bank of the Danube, and Turkish Buda climbing up the hills in a series of +hanging gardens crowned by gilt domes and cupolas on the other, the two +joined by wonderful bridges, she exhibits an unsurpassed contrast; and at +night, when the long stretch of the river is a-twinkle with lights +reflected as shining spears, she may even vie with Venice or the Thames +Embankment. From the Andrassy Avenue, a beautiful Boulevard, with its +cafés and book-shops, and pleasant interludes of flower-beds and +fountains, you may get, in a few minutes--crossing the Danube on a great +steamer, and ascending the heights of Buda by a funicular railway--to a +spot where, seated in an avenue of chestnut trees and looking on the +villa-strewn slopes of sleeping hills, or watching the sun set in +splendour behind them, you may forget that you are living in a bustling +modern town, and one with an Exhibition to boot. + +You may dream of the picturesque days when, as shown in Ujváry's great +panorama of the sister towns in 1680, Buda was by far "the better half," +and Pesth was a tiny spot. You may visit the tomb of Gul Baba, father of +the roses, a shrine of pilgrimage to all good Turks. You may find a good +quarter of an hour in the Church of St. Matthias, whose spire comes up +white amid the green as you turn a corner; a curious monument, that was +three centuries a-building; its interior suffused, like St. Mark's, by a +golden glow, its coloured windows original in shape, and no two pillars +or capitals alike in design, yet all contributing to a quaint unity and +harmony. And it is at Buda that the chief national buildings stand, +usually flanked by chestnut trees, and the statues in memory of the wars. +Here is the War-Office of the Territorial Army (which is distinct from +the joint Austro-Hungarian army); here are the Premier's Palace, the +Houses of Parliament, and the King's Palace of many windows set on a +breezy hill, and now being enlarged at a cost of thirty million florins. +Fortunate Francis Joseph, to command such a panorama from his bedroom +window: his hanging gardens, that slope towards the Danube, flowing with +molten sparkle, spanned by the great suspension bridge and the railway +bridges; and broken by the beautiful Margaret Island; the spires and +chimneys and cupolas of Pesth, and the mountains of Buda. + +Margaret Island is the "Pearl of the Danube," a charming retreat in +spring and autumn, when the heat does not force Fashion to the mountains, +and famous for its mineral springs, hot and cold. It belongs to the +King's cousin, Prince Joseph, and is a white elephant. The cost of +gardening this beautiful island is colossal, and though the Prince has +just drained a portion which used to be a swamp, the Danube is a standing +danger. It is scarcely surprising that he cannot find a purchaser at +three million florins. One of the walls of his private garden (which +produces celebrated roses) is the remnant of an old cloister. A tramcar +runs through the island, giving one tantalising vistas of glorious +stretches of woodland. Altogether Budapest would be an ideal place for a +honeymoon but for the beauty of the women, which might make the +bridegroom dissatisfied. + +But the Pesth part of Budapest is a disappointment. One expects to feel +the first breath of the East, and one gets a modern, a Western, almost an +American town, with an electric underground railway and a telephonic +newspaper which reads itself out all day long to whosoever will clap the +cups to his ears--the old town crier in terms of modern science. But it +rounds off the day, poetically enough, with music, so that when I sought +to hear the latest news, I was treated to Handel's "Hallelujah." How much +more soothing than our own "extra special," with its final crop of +horrors! Music, indeed, is ever resounding: the gipsy bands are +everywhere playing--Hungarian, not gipsy music, as Liszt imagined, for +they never play to "the white men." The splendid "Rákóczi" March, which +Berlioz introduced into his "Faust," is, however, of gipsy origin, having +been invented, says tradition, by Cinka Panna, the faithful gipsy girl of +Rákóczi II., after his defeat. There are also Betjár melodies, the songs +of the brigand cavaliers, the romantic robbers who took from the rich to +give to the poor, like our Robin Hood. + +The Exhibition, which I fear will be a financial failure, is only one of +the many celebrations of the Millennium, which include the erection of +statues and an Arc de Triomphe, the opening of a canal, the construction +of two new bridges, of three or four great public buildings, the +inauguration of the splendid new Houses of Parliament--situated like our +own on the river-side,--international congresses, historical cortèges, +and the opening of five hundred new primary schools! This programme is a +sufficient guarantee that the Exhibition itself is similarly +thorough-going, that it represents every side and department of the +national life; and if much of it does not differ from other Exhibitions, +or even from Whiteley's Stores, this can only be the more gratifying to +the Hungarians, inasmuch as it proves that they have indeed come into +step with the general march of European civilisation. For my part I am +not sure that I do not prefer Arpád's Hungarians, who believed in one God +and one wife, and roved about Europe in the four-wheeled waggons they had +invented. And I am certain that in the Exhibition I preferred the +beautiful aquarium in the cool dim grotto, which has nothing to do with +Hungary, to all the splendours of the Historical Group of Buildings, to +the great model steamer, the naval and military pavilions, the very new +and very glaring native pictures, and even the wonderful models of the +town and the steamer-laden Danube. One great lack in the Exhibition is +lavatories. Even at my hotel--a place of gilded saloons--they charged two +florins (about 3_s_. 4_d_.) for a plain bath, as if in sheer surprise. In +"Old Buda" I could only get a bucket from an old woman in which to wash. +And the next day, when I repaired confidently in search of this bucket, +there was nothing but a tiny saucepan, the contents of which she poured +over my hands, watering a garden-plot at the same time. After the first +jet I moved my hands away and said that would do. "No, no," she cried: +"if you wash, you must wash properly." And I had to stand still and be +poured upon till she was satisfied. + +Perhaps the most interesting exhibit is the "ethnographic village," +designed to represent the life of the Hungarian provinces, though made +rather ridiculous by the rigidity of the waxwork figures, arranged about +the quaint and impossibly clean houses in their various occupations, but +having the air of "tableaux morts" rather than of "tableaux vivants." The +best group was _al fresco_, representing half-naked gipsy-like creatures +with coal-black hair squatting outside tents and mud-houses, the women +smoking pipes. And this exhibition of unrealities brings me on to the +most original feature of the Exhibition, which seems to have escaped all +the reporters--to wit, the exhibition of realities. For the committee +have hit on a most ingenious notion. The peasants of Hungary marry, and +they marry picturesquely. Why should this picturesqueness be wasted, or +only be reproduced artificially in comic operas? When a marriage is to be +celebrated in any village, let the scene be shifted to the capital: let +the wedding-party come up to the Exhibition. Free transit is provided on +the railway for the happy couple, the wedding-guests, and all the +stage-properties. And so they come up to Budapest,--from Toroczkó, +Szabolcs, Krassó-Szörény, and who knows what outlandish places, glad of +the opportunity of seeing the great capital,--and they gather in the +Exhibition grounds, the lads with flower-wreathed hats and streamers of +many-coloured ribbons, the lasses with gay skirts and tall black combs, +the old women with lace head-shawls, carrying bundles of house-linen and +stockings for the bride; and the sheepish pair are made one, and the +peasants dance and then go in procession to the strains of the Rákóczi +March, and are photographed with odd spectators (like myself) tacked on, +and they sit down to the wedding-dinner under the trees, and the viands +are heaped high on the white table-cloths, sun-dappled with the shadows +of the moving leaves. And then they visit themselves in waxwork, and go +into ecstacies over the stolid representations of their life and their +furniture, and they walk about the town--a sort of grown-up +school-procession--and go home to thrill the wide-eyed village with tales +of the wonderful city. + +But the other instance of converting realities into spectacles is not so +commendable. In the supplementary exhibition of "Old Buda" stands a +reproduction of an Old Buda mosque, built of stone, majolica and wood, in +a mixture of Turkish and European architecture, with minaret and cupolas, +and a small kiosk in the Indian style for a sleeping fakir. Here Moslems +and Dervishes assemble to say or dance their prayers; and for a florin +you may ascend the gallery and watch them below. The mosque opened on the +holy night of Bairam, the most solemn feast of the Mohammedan year, and +quite a crowd planked down their silver to listen to the pious +worshippers. Is it not shameful? I am happy to say I did not pay for my +seat. Even in Budapest I was a _persona gratis_. 'T was certainly a +remarkable scene, its solemnity emphasized by the thunder without, that +drowned the voice of the muëddin calling to prayer, and by the lightning +and rain-torrents that sent the pretty little _al fresco_ waitresses +scudding about with their serviettes on their heads to tend the few +parties in the leafy square that dined on regardless of diluted wine or +under the protection of umbrellas. How the Turks further wetted +themselves by complex ablutions in the tank (meydiäh) in the courtyard +without, how they removed their shoes and, entering the mosque, knelt on +their carpets facing towards Mecca, and turning their backs on me, a +serried array of long-robed figures swaying and falling forward with +automatic regularity, and showing pairs of heels not always clean, while +the Imam chanted heart-breaking dirges overhead, I shall not detail, for +everybody has read of Moslem services. But I do not remember to have come +across any accurate description of a service of Dancing Dervishes such as +followed the more orthodox ceremonial. + +All the mere Mussulmans having retired, the Dervishes sat around +cross-legged, forming an oval. Presently they began to say some phrase, +presumably Turkish (it sounded like _es "klabbam vivurah"_), which they +repeated and repeated and repeated with the same endless, uniform, +monotonous intonation, swaying from right to left and from left to right, +till I felt the whole universe was this phrase, and nothing else would +happen till the end of the world, and the world would never end. At last, +when I had reconciled myself to living for ever and ever with this sound +in my ears, they broke into a pleasant melody with rhyming stanzas and a +refrain of _Hazlee_. Then they started on another word with endless +iteration, and then they repeated _Allah, Allah, Allah_, swaying and +swaying till the universe began to reel. I became aware that their chief, +who was seated on a special red carpet, was counting on a rosary, and I +drew relief from the deduction that an end would come. It did, but worse +remained behind; for the Dervishes got up and formed a ring round their +chief, and began swaying right and left and backwards and forwards, +unrestingly, remorselessly, getting quicker and quicker, till there was +nothing in the world but swayings this way and that way, back and forth. + +At last the movements began to slow down and to sweep over larger curves, +and suddenly they stopped altogether, only to recommence as the fanatics +started singing a joyous hymn. Alas! thought I, one half the world is a +laughing-stock to the other half, if indeed not rather a source of tears. +For now the chief, whose fine gloomy Eastern face still haunts me, was +bowing to his men, and they were responding with strange raucous cries +compounded of the roars of wild beasts and the pants of locomotives. _Hu! +Hu!_ they roared in savage unison, _Hu! Hu!_ monotonously, endlessly, +making strange motions. Hoarser and more bestial grew the frightful +roars, wilder and wilder grew the movements, the head-gear falling off, +faces growing black, the chief standing silent with his hand on his +breast, but in his pale face a tense look of ever-gathering excitement. +And then two of the Dervishes held out a curved sword, and the roars +redoubled and the chests heaved with wilder breaths; and suddenly the +Chief, throwing off his stocking-wraps, jumped on the blade with his +naked feet and balanced himself upon it, the muscles of his face rigid, +his teeth clenched. Four times he stood upon the bare sword-edge amid +this hellish howling and this mad swaying, the perspiration running down +the foreheads of the devotees, some of them foaming at the mouth. And +then they moved round in a circle to the right, howling _He! He!_ an +Armenian Dervish in a tall brown hat varying it by _Ho! Ho!_ and another +worshipper singing in a high voice. + +The chief bared his breast, and twirling a heavy-hafted dagger, plunged +it into his side. When this had been repeated three or four times, +pandemonium ceased. The Holy Man, with an air of supreme exhaustion and +supreme ecstasy, reclad himself in his white mantle, and the faithful +ones wiped their brows, and re-squatting on the ground exultantly +vociferated _Allah_ about a hundred times, nodding their heads, and +finally changing their cry into _Bou! Bou!_ After a little singing and a +shouting of _Din! Din!_ they pressed their foreheads to the ground with a +shout of _Bou!_ and suddenly rose and decamped. Other nights other +services, and the hysterical worship sometimes embraces a sort of +serpentine skirt-dancing with frenzied twirling. There was no blood from +the chief's wounds, but the performance does not seem to me to be +jugglery. It seems rather akin to hypnotism. The wild cries and gyrations +induce a state of anesthesia, just as by the excitement of battle the +soldier is so wrought up that he does not feel his wounds. Even in a sham +fight a soldier told me he got to such a pitch that he could have done or +suffered anything. As for the blood not running from the wounds, I +conjecture that the places had become insensitive by frequent stabbing in +the same spot. And this is the miracle that testifies to the saintliness +of the Dervish and to the truth of his doctrines! I suspect that much of +"the wisdom of the East" is of this character: ancient discoveries of the +shady side of human psychology, the grotesque aberrations, trances, +hypnotic impressionability, double personalities, ghosts, second-sight, +what not. And these being misunderstood have always been supposed to +trench on the divine. For what is not normal is not human, and what is +not human is superhuman. So runs the simple logic. But hysteria can never +be a foundation for a creed, and a true religion must always appeal to +the common central facts of human experience. + +There was another Exhibition going on, as it always goes on, in the town, +for the People's Park has very little verdure and consists almost +entirely of side-shows and open-air restaurants. I saw swings and +merry-go-rounds, a circus, and a marionette theatre, and heard Punch and +Judy discussing their domestic differences in Hungarian, and Toby barking +in the same uncouth tongue. The joy with which the public greeted each +crack on the head administered by Herr Punch's stick showed me how +hopeless it was to write literary plays. For the primitive emotions will +always be the most captivating. A fight must ever beat the most subtle +psychology; and indeed those writers for whom the drama is the art of +manufacturing excitement and suspense must find it difficult to compete +with a lottery drawing, a prize-fight, or a horse-race, where the issue +is known not even to the organiser of the excitement. And this +consideration will show why some books are very successful, the art of +which is very little. Nothing is harder in real life than to put your +back against the wall on a dark staircase and keep three armed men at bay +with your whirling sword. But nothing is easier than for the romantic +writer to dip his pen in ink and say that his hero did that. And nothing +is more stimulating and exciting for the reader than to imagine the hero +doing it; and in his gratitude to the giver of all this beautiful +breathlessness he is likely, unless he is an analytical person, to +mistake a cheap effect for precious art. But the bulk of humanity must +always remain at the Punch-and-Judy stage of art. If only the critics +would outgrow it! The clowns in the circus who came on with red noses +were a further proof of the sempiternal simplicity of our race; and I +could have wished for the heart of that urchin whom I saw trying to peer +in under the canvas, and whom, with a reminiscence of the young +Gradgrinds, I was about to pay for, when he suddenly produced a florin +and many coppers and went in like a man. Sitting in the front row, I had +a curious presentiment that the daring bare-backed rider would be thrown +at my feet; and sure enough he was, and, as I picked him up, I saw by the +perspiration what toil his graceful feats concealed. Poor cavalier! I am +sure his pride was more hurt than his person, and he excelled himself in +galloping round poised on one toe. When he was recalled after his exit, +he tumbled his thanks, giving us complex somersaults in lieu of bows. I +sometimes fancy he was a holier person than the Chief of the Dancing +Dervishes. + + + + +CHICAGO + +The function and value of literature are curiously illustrated by the +passing away of the Great White Elephant. The criticisms by spectators of +the World's Fair have not been so comprehensive as the Fair itself, and I +feel that I ought to supplement them by the impressions it made upon one +who did not see it. For, despite the assurance of the official programme, +that I delivered an address in the Parliament of Religions, I was in +England, so far as I know, the whole time. The first impression the Fair +made upon me was one of sublimity--but of what Sir William Hamilton calls +"the material sublime," scarcely at all of "the moral sublime," which was +supposed to be its _raison d'être_. I was, of course, aware that great +spiritual facts underlay the physical grandeurs; but spiritual emotion is +difficult to get at a distance. One requires the actual objects to +impinge on the soul, the architectural glories and industrial splendours +to touch through bodily vision. One realises it so vaguely, and fails to +get the half-aesthetic, half-religious, uplifting that concrete +visualisation should supply. It is, perhaps, a pity that Whitman did not +live to see the spectacle, he whose inspiration came so often from +synthesis, from a vision of the ALL. The cosmopolitan cataloguer, the man +who made inventories almost epical, is the one man to whom the Fair would +have been a magnificent inspiration. Judging from the Fair, Whitman would +seem justified in claiming to be the voice of America. The Fair was like +him both in its moral broadness and its material all-inclusiveness. In +his absence no poet has risen "to the height of this great argument," so +that now the insubstantial pageant is faded, now that "the cloud-capp'd +towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples," have dissolved, "like +the baseless fabric of a vision," they have left not a rack of real +literature behind. And to what but literature can one look for a +permanent conservator of the eternal lesson of an ephemeral exhibition? +Truly, as the Latin poet said, literature is more durable than monuments +and dynasties. Except as an object-lesson in the unity and federation of +mankind, the Fair had no valuable _raison d'être_, and, unfortunately, +the school-term was short and the number of pupils comparatively limited. + +America is a long way from everywhere, even from itself, and the moral +heat dissipates in crossing the ocean to the Old World. The Congress of +Religions in whose voluminous report the Fair has still a chance of +surviving itself, was the most patently spiritual side of the Exposition, +and was, undoubtedly, a most valuable index of the progress of human +catholicism. That the sects are as narrow as they are numerous, is still +largely true, and half the world is still ignorant of how the other half +prays, though by a happy accident of birth all the world inherits the one +true religion. The greatest force in the universe is the "_vis +inertiae_," and the forces already at work must "dree their weird." To +those who are outside all the sects without even circumscribing them, the +World's Fair must bring home at once the greatness and vanity of man's +life--man who lives like the angels and dies like the brutes--the mortal +paradox that has puzzled all thinkers from the Psalmist to Pascal. For +the unbeliever this must ever be the ugly reverse of all glories that are +merely material, though the sensuous optimist need not allow the skeleton +at the feast to spoil his appetite. + +The last impression made by the World's Fair upon me was one of +sadness--sadness at not having seen it. + + + + +EDINBURGH + +Till I went to Edinburgh I did not know what "The Evergreen" was. +Newspaper criticisms had given me vague misrepresentations of a Scottish +"Yellow Book" calling itself a "Northern Seasonal." But even had I seen a +copy myself I doubt if I should have understood it without going to +Edinburgh and even had I gone to Edinburgh I should still have been in +twilight had? I not met Patrick Geddes, Professor of Botany at the +University of Dundee. For Patrick Geddes is the key to the Northern +position in life and letters. "The Evergreen" was not established as an +antidote to the "Yellow Book," though it might well seem a colour +counter-symbol--the green of spring set against the yellow of decadent +leaves. It is, indeed, an antidote but undesigned; else had not yellow +figured so profusely upon the cover. "The Evergreen" of to-day professes +to be inspired by "The Evergreen" which Allan Ramsay published in 1724, +to stimulate a return to local and national tradition and living nature. +Patrick Geddes and Colleagues, who publish it and other books--on a new +system of giving the author all the profits, as certified by a chartered +accountant--inherit Ramsay's old home. That is to say, they are located +in a sort of "University Settlement," known as Ramsay Garden, a charming +collection of flats, overlooking from its eastled hill the picturesque +city, and built by the many-sided Professor of Botany, and they aspire +also to follow in "the gentle shepherd's" footsteps as workers and +writers, publishers and builders. In fact, their aim is synthesis, +construction, after our long epoch of analysis, destruction. They would +organise life as a whole, expressing themselves through educational and +civic activities, through art and architecture, and make of Edinburgh the +"Cité du Bon Accord" dreamed of by Elisée Reclus. They feel acutely the +"need of fresh readings in life, of fresh groupings in science, both now +mainly from the humanist's side, as lately from the naturalist's side." +In this University Settlement the publishing and writing department is to +represent the scriptorium of the ancient monasteries. Of the local and +national traditions this new Scottish school is particularly concerned to +foster the so-called "Celtic renascence," and--what is more interesting +to outsiders--the revival and development of the old Continental +sympathies of Scotland. The ancient league with France has deeply marked +Scotch history, and even moulded Scotch architecture. As Disraeli said in +his inaugural address on his institution as Lord Rector of the University +of Glasgow, "it is not in Scotland that the name of France will ever be +mentioned without affection." So, among the endless projects of the +effervescent Professor, is one for reviving the Scotch college in +Paris--the original building happening still to survive--and for making +it a centre for Scottish students and Scottish culture in the gay city. + +Thus, while the men of "The Evergreen" would renew local feeling and +local colour, they "would also express the larger view of Edinburgh as +not only a National and Imperial but a European city--the larger view of +Scotland, again as in recent, in mediaeval, most of all in ancient times, +one of the European Powers of Culture--as of course far smaller countries +like Norway are to-day." An aspiration with which all intelligent men +must sympathise. The quest at once of local colour and cosmopolitanism is +not at all self-contradictory. The truest cosmopolitanism goes with the +intensest local colour, for otherwise you contribute nothing to the human +treasury and make mankind one vast featureless monotony. Harmonious +diversity is the true cosmopolitan concept, and who will not applaud this +desire of Edinburgh to range itself again amongst the capitals of +culture? Why should it take its tone from London? That centripetal force +which draws villages to towns and towns to capitals everywhere tends to +concentrate in one city a country's culture, and to brand as provincial +that which is not of the centre. But the centre is corrosive of +originality, and if now and then a great man does abide therein, it is +because he has the gift of solitude amid crowds, and is not obnoxious to +the contagion of the common thought. The Scotch School, though its effort +to emancipate itself from the intellectual thraldom of London is to be +commended, does not escape the dangers that lie in wait for all schools, +which upset one convention by another. Still, a school of thought which +is also a school of action has in itself the germs of perpetual +self-recuperation. + +Yes, there can be little danger of sinking into barren formulae, into +glib aesthetic prattle about Renascence, in a movement of which one +expression is the purification of those plaguy, if picturesque, Closes, +which are the foul blot upon the beautiful Athens of the North. Those +sunless courts, entered by needles' eyes of apertures, congested with +hellish, heaven-scaling barracks, reeking with refuse and evil odours, +inhabited promiscuously by poverty and prostitution, worse than the worst +slums of London itself--how could they have been left so long to pollute +the fairest and well-nigh the wealthiest city in the kingdom? "Do you +wonder Edinburgh is renowned for its medical schools?" asked the +Professor grimly, as he darted in and out among those foul alleys, +explaining how he was demolishing this and reconstructing that--at once a +Destroying Angel and a Redeemer. Veritable ghettoes they seemed, these +blind alleys of gigantic habitations, branching out from the High Street, +hidden away from the superficial passer-by faring to Holyrood. They were +the pioneers of the trans-Atlantic sky-builders, were those old burghers, +who, shut in about their castled hill by the two lochs, one of which is +now the enchanting Princes Street, were fain to build heavenwards as +population grew. It was a stormy morning when the mercurial Professor of +Botany, recking naught of the rain that saturated his brown cloak, itself +reluctantly donned, led me hither and thither, through the highways and +byways of old Edinburgh. Everywhere a litter of building operations, and +we trod gingerly many a decadent staircase. Sometimes a double row of +houses had already been knocked away, revealing a Close within a Close, +eyeless house behind blind alley, and even so the diameter of the court +still but a few yards. What human ant-heaps, what histories, farces, +tragedies played out in airless tenebrosity! + +The native writers seem to have strangely neglected the artistic wealth +of all this poverty: pathos and humour reside, then, only in villages! +Thrums and Drum-tochty and Galloway exhaust the human tragi-comedy. Ah! +my friends, go to the ant-hill and be wise! The Professor of Botany +(seeming now rather of entomology) explained the principle upon which he +was destroying and rebuilding. One had to be cautious. He pointed out the +head of a boy carved over one of the archways, the one survivor of a +fatal subsidence many years ago, when the ground floor of one of the +gigantic houses was converted into a shop, with plate-glass windows in +lieu of the solid stonework. "Heave awa'!" cried a piping voice amid the +_débris_: "I'm no dead yet." + +The Professor's own destruction was conservative in character: it was his +aim to preserve the ancient note in the architecture, and to make a clean +Old Edinburgh of a dirty. Air and light were to be no longer excluded; +outside every house, as flats or storeys are called, a balcony was to +run, giving on sky and open ground. Eminent personages like Lord +Rosebery, ancestrally connected with ancient demesnes, long perverted +into pigsties, had been induced to repurchase them, thus restoring an +archaic flavour of aristocratic prestige to these despised quarters. The +moral effect of grappling with an evil that had seemed so hopeless could +not fail to be inspiring; and, as we plodded through the pouring: +streets, "I will remove this, I will reconstruct that," cried the +enthusiastic Professor, till I almost felt I was walking with the Emperor +of Edinburgh. But whence come the sinews of war? Evidently no professor's +privy purse would suffice. I gathered that the apostle of the sanitary +picturesque had inspired sundry local capitalists with his own patriotic +enthusiasm. What a miracle, this trust in a man over-brimming with ideas, +the brilliant biological theoriser of "The Evolution of Sex" in the +Contemporary Science Series, the patron of fantastic artists like John +Duncan! Obviously it is his architectural faculty that has saved him. +There stand the houses he has built--visible, tangible, delectable; +concrete proofs that he is no mere visionary. + +And yet we may be sure the more frigid society of Edina still looks +askance on this dreamer in stone and fresco; for after all Edinburgh, as +Professor Blaekie said, is an "East-windy, west-endy city." Cold and +stately, it sits on its height with something of the austere mournfulness +of a ruined capital. But we did not concern ourselves about the legal and +scholastic quarters, the Professor and I. We penetrated into inhabited +interiors in the Closes, meeting strange female ruins on staircases, or +bonny housewives in bed-sitting-rooms, in one of which a sick husband lay +apologetically abed. And when even the Professor was forced at last to +take refuge from the driving rain, it was in John Knox's house that we +ensconced ourselves--the grim, unlovely house of the great Calvinist, the +doorway of which fanatically baptised me in a positive waterfall, and in +whose dark rooms, as the buxom care-taker declared in explaining the +presence of an empty cage, no bird could live. It is not only in its +Closes, methought, that Scotland needs regen eration. Many a spiritual +blind-alley has still to receive sunshine and air, "sweetness and light." +So let us welcome "The Evergreen" and the planters thereof, stunted and +mean though its growth be as yet; for not only in Scotland may they bring +refreshment, but in that larger world where analysis and criticism have +ended in degeneration and despair. + + + + +FIESOLE AND FLORENCE + +At Fiesole I just missed a sensation. Two friends of mine were climbing +at midnight the steep hill to the village, when from beneath a dark arch +there dashed down towards them two breathless _carabinieri_, their cloaks +flapping in the moonlight like the wings of the demon-bats of pantomime. +"Is it your way that the murdered man lies?" they panted. "Murdered man!" +At once a hundred shadowy reminiscences stirred in my friends' minds: +Prosper Mérimée's novels, stories of vendettas, plots of plays, _morceaux +d'opéras_, even of comic operas; and it was with a feeling in which the +latter element predominated that they answered that they had come across +no corpse. The police-officers thanked them and hurried off, so my +friends soon understood, as far as possible from the scene of the event; +for, passing through the arch, the _Inglesi_ came upon a track of blood, +black and clotted in the moonlight. But it did not seem real to +them--they still had a consciousness of comic opera, a consciousness +which was intensified rather than lessened when they emerged upon a group +of excited villagers discussing the crime, and learnt its cause. Two +rival bands, one from a neighbouring village, had been performing at a +local _concerto_, and the two rival trumpeters had continued to blow +their own trumpets after business hours. "Fancy blowing with that little +mouth!" said one. "I'm glad I haven't your maw (_boccone_)!" retorted the +other. + +From words it came to knives, and ere you could say Jacopo Robinson a +trumpeter lay weltering in his blood, or rather in his gore, and the +murderer was flying into the arms of the police, who incontinently turned +and fled the other way. When my friends passed by the house of the +victim, the midnight air was ringing with the horrible curses of his +bereaved sister, whose spasmodic face was visible at a window. But the +cold-blooded artistic English felt no answering throb of sympathy--it was +still a scene in a play to them, still a _coup de théâtre_--they had lost +the primary human instincts, corrupted by a long course of melodrama and +comic opera. To-day I myself saw a carnival procession in the village +piazza--a veritable survival of the Middle Ages; a triumphal car wreathed +in flowers, driven by masquerading mummers and surrounded by Pierrots and +peasant buffoons, a thoroughly naïve and primitive bit of religion. But +it needed a perceptible effort to shake off the sense of the operatic, to +accept the thing as genuine. Ruskin contended (in that _olla podrida_ +called "Modern Painters") that the Swiss peasants do not really dance and +sing happily in the market-place; and hence he argued--comically +enough--that the money spent on the stage reproduction of their happiness +should be spent in really promoting their happiness. With my Italian +peasants I feel the opposite: that such excellent picturesque effects +should not be wasted on mere reality, but should be turned to real use +upon the stage. So, too, it is difficult to take a roadside beggar +seriously; he seems to ask, not for alms, but for a frame. Happy the +unlettered and the inartistic, to whom even the picturesque person is a +person, who can think of olive oil when he sees the olive-trees weaving +their graceful patterns above the stone walls, and can watch the sun set +in lurid splendour behind the purple mountains with never a thought of +Turner or Childe Harold! + +For modern civilised beings, in incessant relations with the reflections +of life through literature and art, it is difficult to receive any +impressions which do not re-reflect what lies in the mirror of art. And +here is an amusing side-issue. We are presented in plays and books, with +numerous situations in which the ignorance of one of the parties is a +necessary factor in the particular dramatic situation which it is sought +to evolve. But as this person, _ex hypothesi_, belongs to the class of +society which is familiar with this particular plot _ad nauseam_, is it +possible that he or she should go on betraying the same ignorance on +which the plot originally was based? Even Marguerite has seen "Faust" +nowadays! + +This suggests an objection to old plots quite apart from their oldness, +for that which started by being probable becomes improbable by age. Even +if it were ever possible for a man to be jealous of a woman because he +saw her kissing a man whom, after long and weary years of superfluous +separation, he discovered to be her brother, it should surely be +impossible to-day. If I saw any man kissing my _fiancée_ I should know at +once it was my future brother-in-law--or at any rate I should +inquire--which the old hero never seemed to do. And yet I will wager that +in the course of this year at least a dozen novels and plays will be +built up upon this theme. It is, by the way, a noticeable characteristic +of people in plays never to have read nor to be interested in any but the +petty dramatic matter which is interesting them--and let us hope the +audience--at the moment. It may be replied that the economy of the stage +demands that everything that is not strictly essential should be +eliminated; but yet it ought to be possible, by a few words, to give the +idea that the figures upon the boards are doing more than moving to the +strings of the playwright. Just so the painter of the gulf should suggest +the ocean beyond; the painter of the landscape, the infinity of space and +atmosphere in which it is enisled. What the _plein air_ school contended +for in painting is no less requisite in literature. + +This consideration seems to account for the uneasy sense of unreality +which we feel in the modern machine-made Sardou play, in which the +characters have the air of existing entirely to themselves, and for the +sake of the particular play, and do not give that large sense of being +part of the civilised humanity we know that reads and thinks. The men +make love or profess hate, repudiate their wives, or cut off their sons +with shillings, all with the air of its happening for the first time, and +wholly devoid of that sense of the ridiculous which they could not help +feeling if they had been accustomed themselves to read novels and sit in +stalls. + +It is, in fact, impossible for us moderns, educated in a long literary +tradition, to live our lives as naturally and naïvely as the unlettered +of to-day, or the people of the preliterary geological epoch. This is +brought out "ostensively," as Bacon would say, in "Don Quixote," or in +the Russian novel "A Simple Story"--apparently so called because it is so +complex--in which Gontcharov's hero lives in what Alice might call +"behind the looking-glass" of literature. He is a country boy who comes +up to St. Petersburg, and after a course of Russian novels is transformed +into a series of imitations of their heroes. He does nothing, feels +nothing, thinks nothing except after the pattern of these creatures of +the quill. + +Well! we are all like that, more or less. Though we may not be as +chivalrously inspired as the Knight of La Mancha, nor run to the extremes +of the simple Russian, we are all to some extent remoulded in imitation +of the Booklanders, and this is the truth in the "decadent" paradox that +nature copies art. There is a drop of ink in the blood of the most +natural of us; we are all hybrids, crossed with literature, and +Shakespeare is as much the author of our being as either of our parents. +The effect of the stage in regulating the poses and costumes of +susceptible souls has not escaped notice; but the effect of novels and +poetry is more insidious. Who ever shuddered with bitter alliterative +kisses before Swinburne, and who has failed to do so since? What poor +little cockney clerk in his first spasms of poetry but has felt, sitting +by his girl in the music hall, that if she walked over the grave in which +he was planted, his "dust would hear her and beat, had he lain for a +century dead" (though how Maud could survive her lover for a century, +Tennyson failed to explain)? _Per contra_, the ingenuous spinster taking +her notions of love from Maupassant's "Bel-Ami," or Gabriele d'Annunzio's +"Trionfo della Morte," becomes a man-hater. Yes, I fear that the artistic +treatment of life has a good deal to answer for. People do not yet +understand that the mirror of art does not reflect life unrefracted. The +great eternal theme of art is love-making; but even artists have to give +up some time to art-making. + +But to wind up anent our murderer. He is still at large. The police have +given up the chase in despair. But he has never left the village, and we +villagers all wink at one another as we discuss his whereabouts; and when +we meet him driving his cart or come across him cutting wood in the +forest and he genially gives us _Buon' giorno_ we salute him with +answering politeness. Only in the village band there is a temporary +trumpeter, for even the police might hear of him if he performed in +public loudly enough. But Italian justice, though it does really savour +of comic opera, is not so farcical as it appears on the surface. It is an +unwritten law that the police shall not _pigliare_ him till the sessions +are nigh. He is on parole, so to speak, to come up when called upon; if +he were really to take flight, he would be declared an outlaw, and the +only reason the police cannot find him is that they know where he is. How +sensible! Why board and lodge him gratis for weeks? He has outraged the +community: shall the community reward him with free meals? Even when he +is caught he will be treated with the same economy. Capital punishment +there is none in Italy. Why waste a citizen and a tax-payer? Especially +when one has already been destroyed! No, he will be sentenced to a term +of imprisonment. But he will not serve it. He will escape, or it will be +commuted. And while he is in gaol he will have a good time. He will smoke +and play cards, or, leaning out of his dungeon casement, hold a levee of +his friends. Recently the soldiers at Bergamo mutinied because they were +supplied with worse bread than the denizens of the gaol. I trust the +ringleaders were sent to prison so as to remedy this dietary injustice. + +Please do _me_ the justice to remark that I have been in Italy for +several paragraphs without once referring to the Old Masters. But the +fact is that I have not been much at the Masked Balls. Does this saying +seem cryptic? All it means is that the confusion into which our +scientific century has thrown us is worse confounded than usual in the +universe of pictures; that the Galleries appear to be made up of pictures +masquerading under wrong names. Time was when one might go about +comfortably with a Baedeker and a stock of admiration and distribute it +as per instructions. But these good old times are over. The Old Masters +of yesterday are the young apprentices of to-day. It is pitiable to think +how many well-meaning enthusiasts have fallen victims to the careless or +crafty curator. Sometimes it scarcely needs a connoisseur to suspect the +good faith of catalogues. I, myself, a mere babe and suckling, came to +the conclusion, after a visit to the Velasquez Exhibition in London, that +Velasquez must have been very versatile. It is too bad that artists +should be hanged for crimes they never committed. 'T is to be hoped their +ghosts carefully avoid the Galleries. But beshrew your paintings! My eyes +make pictures--not like Coleridge's when they're shut, but when they 're +open. Who would not rather lie with me in the _podere_ in the shade of +the cypress trees, under the blue, blue sky, and behold through a tangle +of olive-boughs the marvellous Dome of Florence, as satisfying as the +sea, or under a starry heaven the loveliest of cities glittering like a +rival firmament with answering constellations? And yet I recant. For if +there is one piece of art which is better than nature, 't is Botticelli's +so-called "Spring," which, long misprised and now worm-riddled, adds the +last magic to the wonderful flower-city. To her that hath shall be given. + + + + +GLASGOW + +"And what do you think of Glasgow?" said the pretty lady interviewer--I +have the right to say she was pretty because she said in print that I +wasn't. I replied that of course Glasgow wasn't pretty but--and here +would have followed an amiable dissertation upon the municipal +superiority of Glasgow. "But," hastily interrupted the lady interviewer, +"have you seen the fine vista of St. Vincent Street, the Great Western +Road, the finest thoroughfare in Europe, the charming residential +districts of Pollokshields West and Dowanhill, the wide view from the +South Side Park or picturesque Camphill?" I tried to edge in an abashed +"No," for a monosyllable is the most one can hope to secure of the +conversation in an interview; but the pretty lady interviewer went on +reproachfully: "Have you seen that stately hill of the dead, the +Necropolis, from Cathedral Square? It is itself a quaint and beautiful +medley of architecture past and present. Have you seen beautiful +Kelvingrove, through which flows the classic Kelvin? In many world-famous +cities have I been and yet seen nothing more beautiful than the view on +one side of Partick Bridge." I apologised to Glasgow, inwardly +confounding the eminent Scotch _littérateur_ who had assured me that +Glasgow was the most loathsome den north of Tweed, almost the only such +den,--his malison upon Glasgow! But although I feel personally nothing +but gratitude to Glasgow and its noisy University students, I cannot +honestly award it the apple for beauty. After all it is the centre of the +town that one naturally gravitates to, and no charm of suburbs can remove +the general impression of commercial dinginess. + +No, Glasgow must be content with its wealth and its public spirit. If it +does not stir the imagination like Edinburgh, it satisfies the brain and +the heart, for it is grappling manfully with many social problems, with +the opening of parks and hospitals, and especially with the housing of +the poor, and is developing an artistic conscience to boot. It owns its +gas and water, and I had the felicity of meeting the Lord Provost at the +very moment when, his glittering insignia heaving with emotion on his +joyous breast, he had to announce to the Town Council that the +fiercely-canvassed step of taking over the tramways had resulted in a +balance to the good. When the Lord Provost had returned to his chair, I +was shown the Councillors themselves at their mahogany tables, in their +beautiful Council-chamber, and I made notes--not of the debate, as the +lynx-eyed reporter, who counted the number of times I sucked my pencil, +imagined--but of the improved appearance of George Square under snow. +Seen through the windows the square stretched away pure and beautiful the +gloomy statues blanched and Prince Albert's horse gleaming proudly with +white trappings. The Municipal Buildings deserve all the praise they have +received. The special staircase, which is used only on state occasions, +presents from point to point a marvellously proportioned medley of arches +and pillars and arcades, with a dominant Corinthian note. It is really +"frozen music." And when adorned with tropical plants and lit up with +electric lights and pretty faces, it must indeed be a superb sight. Very +imposing, too, is the vast Banqueting Hall, from whose platform, to test +the acoustic effect of the rows of wires stretched six inches apart under +the ceiling to break the sound, I addressed vacancy. The panels of this +hall still await their artists. 'T is a rare opportunity for Glasgow to +emulate the Parisian Pantheon; and, indeed, there is so much art-work to +be done in Glasgow that one begins to understand why it is threatening to +become the capital of British Art. The best road in Scotland is no longer +that which leads to England. It was curious for a humble author to walk +these stately halls, convoyed by courteous officers in red swallow-tails, +and to rub shoulders with civic millionaires. An awesome air of wealth +hung over the men and the place, a crushing suggestion of vast +enterprises, of engineering and railway building and the running of +steamers, a subtle aroma of colossal fortunes, wrested from the world by +the leverage of an initial half-crown. I have often gone to places with +only half a crown in my pocket, but it never seemed to lead to anything. +So I surveyed these men with blended reverence and bewilderment, +wondering why they bothered themselves to make all that money, and +whether they ever suspected they were but tools in the hands of destiny, +by whose marvellous alchemy the self-centred ambition of the individual +is transmuted to the service of the world. The genial Bailie Simons, who +was my host--fancy living in daily contact with a Bailie!--informed me +that the grave city fathers are sadly degenerating. Thirty years ago they +did not smoke in public: now there is a smoking-room in the sacred +building itself; and at least one of them has been seen to leave it in a +white hat. + +Like the king's daughter, Glasgow is all glorious within, and its inner +artistic aspirations make up for and are perhaps inversely inspired by +its outer unloveliness. The world must not judge Glasgow's taste by the +recent Puritanic rumpus over the nude. The worthy Bailies and the Chief +Constable who drew the line at Leighton and Solomon have overlooked the +interesting nudities in their own Galleries. The affinity of the Scotch +and the French, which has often been noted in history, and which accounts +for their swamping the English in literature, has made Style the +watchword of the Glasgow School of Art. Whistler's "Carlyle" hangs in the +Corporation Galleries, and it was the stylist, Lavery, who secured the +tedious commission to commemorate Her Majesty's opening of the Glasgow +Exhibition by the usual plethora of portraits. It would have made a more +interesting picture had Mr. Lavery perpetuated the fact--so pregnant a +contribution to the philosophy of Exhibitions--that a profit of £10,000 +was derived from the switchbacks. The picture would then have made a nice +supplement to Mr. Lavery's famous studies of "Croquet" and "Tennis." The +very slabs of the Corporation staircase are infected with Impressionism, +and their natural veinings body forth, here a charge of cavalry, there a +march of infantry, and yonder a portrait of Sir William Vernon Harcourt +with a prophetic coronet. The stones of Glasgow await their Ruskin. The +Exhibition which I saw at the Glasgow Institute of Fine Arts was far more +interesting than the last Academy, though it contained some of the same +pictures. I was able to tell the Scotch artists an anecdote which no one +had heard before, for the simple reason that it was true, and that it +happened to me. It was in Perth that, puzzling over a grimy statue, I was +accosted by a bare-footed newsboy with his raucous cry of "Hair-r-ald, +Glasgow Hair-r-ald!" + +"I'll take one," quoth I, "if you'll tell me whose statue that is." + +"'T is Rabbie Burns" replied he, on the nail. + +"Thank you," said I, taking the paper. "And what did he do, to deserve +the statue?" + +My newsboy scratched his head. Perceiving his embarrassment, a party of +his friends down the street called out in stentorian chorus: "Ay, 't is +Babbie Burns." + +"But what did he do to deserve the statue?" I thundered back. They hung +their heads. At last my newsboy recovered himself; his face brightened. +"Well?" said I again, "what did he do to deserve this statue?" + +"He _deed_!" answered the intelligent little man. + +Another newsboy, whom I asked if he had ever read Sir Walter Scott, +replied, "No, he is _ower dreich_ (over dry)." + +Talking of statues, I see that Paisley is going to erect a full-sized +figure of the late Thomas Coats, with a bronze high hat under his bronze +arm. The history of the Corporation Art Galleries is curious. The nucleus +of the collection is the bequest of a coach-builder, who seems to have +had a Glaswegian Renaissance all to himself, for it was years after his +death before his legacy was routed out from the lumber-rooms to which it +had been consigned, and ere its many genuine treasures were catalogued by +Mr. James Paton, the learned curator, whose magic-lantern exhibit the +other day of the coach-building connoisseur's face was the first display +of his lineaments to an ungrateful posterity. The Galleries now claim to +contain so many Old Masters that no connoisseur is complete without a +knowledge of them. Except Velasquez, there is scarcely one of the great +painters who is not represented here, even including Giorgione, of whom, +parodying Hegel's remark about the one disciple who understood him ("and +he doesn't understand me!"), it may be said that there are only two +genuine specimens of him in the world, and that both of these are by his +pupils. What Mary Logan would say to these Rembrandts and Rubenses I know +not; but there is much of indisputable value in this collection, to say +nothing of Flaxman's masterpiece--the statue of Pitt,--or the recent +accessions, such as the Whistler, or David Murray's "Fir Faggots," or the +bust of Victor Hugo by Rodin. + +Pictorially the hill of the dead was the most interesting part of Glasgow +I saw--a scene which, especially in its simple severe Protestant draping +of snow, might well tempt the artist. At its summit John Knox looks down +upon the Cathedral, whose altars and images were broken during the +Reformation, and whose new stained windows (made in Germany) testify by +their preference for Old Testament subjects to the latent Puritanism of +Caledonia. Especially interesting is the crypt, with its sepulchral +church, whose subterranean service is recorded in "Rob Roy." One of the +pillars of the crypt proper is called the Rob Roy pillar, for behind it +the great outlaw is supposed to have hidden. Near it is the shrine of St. +Mungo, patron saint of Glasgow, who has presumably risen in the hierarchy +now that Glasgow has been made a county. Facing the shrine is a window +decorated with a portrait of Edward Irving, clothed as St. John the +Baptist. The cicerone said it was greatly admired because the eyes +followed you about wherever you walked. This is not the first time I have +been asked to admire as supreme art what is really one of the commonest +of optical delusions. After the Cathedral had closed, it had to be +reopened because I had lost a glove within. After a careful search the +glove was found in the gloomy crypt, pointing its finger at this +miraculous picture, unable to tear itself away. But perhaps the most +characteristic thing I came across in Glasgow was an inscription at the +end of the bridge leading to the picturesque cemetery. "The adjoining +bridge was erected by the Merchants' House of Glasgow to afford a proper +entrance to their new cemetery, combining convenient access to the +grounds with suitable decoration to the venerable Cathedral and +surrounding scenery, to unite the tombs of many generations who have gone +before with the resting-places destined for generations yet unborn, where +the ashes of all shall repose until the rising of the just, when that +which is born a natural body shall be raised a spiritual body, when this +corruptible must put on incorruption, when this mortal must put on +immortality, when death is swallowed up in victory." There you have +Glasgow! An auctioneer's advertisement blent with an edifying sermon, a +happy combination of commerce and Christianity, making the best of this +world and the next. + +I left Glasgow in a choking yellow fog. Five minutes from the city the +train steamed into bright sunshine, which continued till five minutes +from London, where a sisterly yellow fog was waiting. As Tennyson sings, +I had gone "from the night to the night." + + + + +HASLEMERE + +I am up a "Bô tree." Every schoolboy knows (that is, of course, every +Buddhistic schoolboy) that when the Buddha made "the great renunciation," +he attained Nirvana by sitting under a "Bô tree." My "Bô tree" is a great +oak in the heart of the woods, mounted by a dizzy spiral staircase, at +the summit of which you enter Nirvana by means of the "House on the +Garden," a glass-house floored with boards and furnished with rustic +chairs, a lounge and a writing-table; and here, amid the tree-tops, I +write to the music of thrush and blackbird, with restful glances at the +sailing clouds or at the sunny weald, that circles for miles around and +ends to the south in the "downs" that hide the English Channel. Perhaps +it is because my landscape takes in Tennyson's happy Haslemere home that +my thought runs so much on him to-day, and then runs back to a cold stone +staircase up which I toiled in pitchy blackness to see a great French +poet. Taine, who preferred Alfred de Musset to Tennyson, made of a +contrast between the two men the most telling pages in his history of our +literature, setting in graphic antithesis the dust and flare and fever of +the Boulevards against the + + English home, gray twilight poured + On dewy pastures, dewy trees, + Softer than sleep,--all things in order stored, + A haunt of ancient peace, + +where the English Laureate brooded over his chiselled verses. How much +more piquant a contrast might be drawn between the jealously-guarded +castle in which Tennyson entrenched himself and the accessible garret in +the Rue St. Jacques where Verlaine held his court in absolute bonhomie +and déshabille. + +But, alas! there is no Nirvana on my "Bô Tree"--at least, not to-day. The +blatancy of a brass band bursts forth on the breeze. A popular waltz +silences the cuckoos. I climb down my spiral staircase and hasten across +the wood to discover what these strange sounds portend. In front of the +creeper-clad house I come upon a scene of comic opera. This is the +village fête day, and here are the festive villagers come to pay +allegiance to the lord of the manor. The majority are Foresters, +and wear green sashes, and carry banners like to the pictorial +pocket-handkerchiefs of Brobdingnag. The music gives over, and my host +addresses them from between the roses of his porch, and they laugh at his +genial jokes with the unanimity of the footlights. There are tiny tots +and old women in the background, and yonder is the Village Beauty--a ripe +maid, i' faith, and a comely. There are other girls in her train; but, +oddsbobs! what have they done with their tights? and why do they delay to +announce her approaching marriage in merry melodic chorus? But I conceal +my surprise and, as the cynical Man from Town (gadzooks!), ogle the Pride +of the Village, to the disgust of her rural swain, who has started +blowing the trombone and dare not desist, though his cheeks get redder +and more explosive each instant. In the next Act we all go down to the +annual dinner, in a long rose-wreathed tent, and the Parson says grace +and the Parson's Clerk "Amen," and the Squire (in corduroy knickerbockers +and leggings) bestows his benediction on all the village, while without, +the happy peasants project sticks at cocoanuts or try their strength with +mallets, and all is virtuous and feudal. In the third Act we are in the +Vicarage Garden--a beautiful set, with real rhododendrons. Sir Roger de +Coverley takes tea i'fackins with the Parson, and the Stalwart Farmer +passes the sugar to the Man from Town, who is gazing out wistfully +towards the Village Green, where the Village Beauty foots it featly with +the Village Idiot. The last Act passes in the Drawing-Boom of "Bô tree" +House, where the Archdeacon's Daughter touches her tinkling guitar and +warbles a plaintive ballad:-- + + O give my love to Nancy, + The girl that I adore-- + Tell her that she'll never see + Her soldier any more-- + Tell her I died in battle + Fighting with the black, + Every inch a soldier, + Beneath the Union Jack. + +Dear naïve old song, fitting climax of a feudal day, sweet with the +freshness of those simple times, when art for art's sake was a shibboleth +uninvented, and every other man was not diabolically clever! How many +mothers and sisters wept over thy primitive pathos, as they knitted the +Berlin wool-work! how many masculine hearts throbbed more manfully at the +appeal of thy crude patriotism! To-day we analyse ruthlessly thy metre, +proclaiming it the butterwoman's rank to market, and thy sentiment, which +we dub pinchbeck, and we remember that the Union Jack is used only in the +Navy; we are deaf to thy inspiration and dumb at thy chorus; we are +sceptical as to thy soldier's love: Nancy, we know from realistic poets +of the Barrack Room, took up with another young man before her month was +out; and as for the black, he is the object of our devoutest solicitude. +Go to! thou art surely a Gilbertian travesty, a deliciously droll +compound of vulgar patriotism and maudlin pathos. And yet somehow there +are tears on the smiling cheeks of the Man from Town. Let us go out and +hear the nightingales and be sentimental under the moon. Hark how they +precipitate their notes in a fine lyric rapture. This is the same "Jug, +Jug, Jug," that called forth Keats' immortal ode. We cannot hear the +birds' music for itself; it comes to us through melodious chimes of +poetry. Nature has been so filtered through human emotion, so passed and +repassed through the alembic of poetic passion, that she has ceased to be +natural. Little children and fools, on whom, according to the Talmud, the +gift of prophecy devolved when the Temples fell, may still see her naked, +but for the lettered man she is draped in lyric conventions. There is +anthropomorphism in literature as well as in theology: for George Eliot +Nature is steeped in humanity; she cannot see anything for itself. "Our +delight in the sunshine on the deep-bladed grass to-day might be no more +than the faint perception of wearied souls, if it were not for the +sunshine and the grass in the far-off years which still live in us and +transform our perception into love." I wonder if she ever wrote a pure +description of scenery without psychological or mythological allusions. +To a soul saturated with literary prepossessions, nightingales, like love +and most things human, are apt to disappoint and disenchant. + + Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard + Are sweeter. + +The cultured American, who has no nightingales at home--not even big +ones--and who arranges to hear an English nightingale between a +performance at Ober-Ammergau and an exploration of the Catacombs of +Paris, often wants his money back after the songster "on yon bloomy +spray" has "warbled at eve when all the woods are still." He has been +expecting something like a song of Patti accompanied on the piano by +Paderewski. It was an American poetess--Mrs. Piatt--who informed the +skylark: + + The song thou sang'st to Shelley was not half + So sweet as that which Shelley sang to thee! + +After all, birds repeat themselves sadly--they strike one note, like a +minor poet, and live on the reputation of their first success. It is +amusing for a few minutes to hear a clever bird giving imitations of the +cuckoo clock, but the joke palls. The Archdeacon's Daughter has a wider +repertoire. And so? though the nightingales are still singing, +conversation springs up in the copse as if it were a drawing-room and the +singers human. My host discourses of the litter of pigs just arrived from +the Great Nowhere, and dilates upon the fact that of the 3,423,807 pigs +in England no two tails are curled alike. Perhaps even so no two +nightingales curl their phrase identically, and one roulade differeth +from another in glory. + + + + +PARIS + +Decidedly the Parisian atmosphere is charged with artistic electricity. +The play, the novel and the picture flourish on the same stem, and the +very advertisement posters tell their lies artistically. Paris is the +metropolis of ideas. You may catch them there and set up as a prophet on +the strength of a fortnight's holiday. Maeterlinck says he learnt all he +knows from a man he met in a _brasserie_. Fancy picking up ideas in a +pothouse! In London you could only pick up "h's." The reverse of the +medal is the morbidity that ideas and _brasseries_ engender. In the cafés +of the Boule Miehe, where the decadent movements are hatched and the +fledgling Verlaines come to drown theusorrows in vermouth, you may see +the lacklustre visages and tumbled hair of "diabolical" poets and the +world-weary figures of end-of-the-century youngsters pledging their +mistresses in American grog. + +But the great heart of the People, that beats still to the homely old +music, and you shall find no trace of morbidity in the melodramas of the +Porte-St.-Martin or the music-halls of the people's quarter. To-day is +the Gingerbread Fair--_La Foire au Pain d'Épices_; and _Tout Paris_--that +is to say, everybody who isn't anybody--is elbowing its way towards the +centre of gaiety. Tramcars deposit their packed freights near the +Bastile[*], and where the women of the Revolution knitted, feeding their +eyes on blood, bonnetless old crones sit drinking red wine in the sun. +The sky is radiantly blue, and there is a music of merry-go-rounds. They +are far more elegant than our English merry-go-rounds, these +_carrousels_, hung with tapestry, and offering you circumambient +palanquins or even elephants. Before a toy stage, on which a mechanical +skirt-dancer disports herself with a tireless smile, an automatic +_chef-d'orchestre_ conducts the revolutionary march (none other than +"Ta-ra-ra-Boom-de-ay") while grotesque figures strike stiffly at bells. +On the pavement an old man has spread for sale a litter of broken dolls, +blind, halt and lame, when not decapitated; and in the roadway the +festive crowd splits to allow the passage of a child's coffin covered +with white flowers. The air thrills with the "ping" of unsuccessful +shots: I take a gun, and by aiming at a ball dancing on a fountain jet, +hit a bull's-eye two yards to the left. I throw flat rings at a sort of +ninepins, five shots for a halfpenny: the first four leave the pins +stolid and the public derisive. I throw the last at random, bring down +half the pins, and stalk off: nonchalantly, the pet of the fickle French +populace. I buy pancakes fried on the stall while you wait--they are +selling like hot cakes--and but for the difficulty of finding one with my +name picked out in pink on the gingerbread, I would buy a pig and hang it +on my breast. Some of the pigs have mottoes instead of names: + + De toute la création + C'est moi le plus cochon. + +[* Transcriber's note: So in original.] + +Another asserts: + + De la tête à la queue + Je suis délicieux. + +I ignore the pigs, but I pacify local prejudice by buying two gingerbread +sailors--a Russian and a French--shaking hands in symbolisation of the +Russo-French alliance, and I further prove myself a patriot by throwing +bright wooden balls into the mouth of a great-faced German, for which I +receive the guerdon of a paper rose and a Berlin wool monkey. I purchase +a ticket from a clown standing on a platform begirt by noisy cages, and +partake in a raffle for a live turkey; but fortunately I am spared the +task of carrying it through the Fair, and not wishing to tempt Providence +again, I content myself with trying for soap. A pack of cards is spread +round a wheel with an index: round goes the wheel, and whoever has the +card at which the index stops gets an orange, or if he likes to save up +his oranges exchanges them for a box of soap. You get four cards for two +sous, but I take all the pack. Round goes the wheel imperturbably. It +stops. Amid the breathless anxiety of the crowd I examine my cards, and +invariably find myself the fortunate possessor of the winning one. But, +by some mysterious arithmetic, which amuses the crowd, every time I win I +have to pay several sous. By such roundabout methods I ultimately arrive +at the soap. I have my portrait taken, allured by the "only a franc." My +image has a degenerate air; the photographer informs me it will not stay +unless he fixes it with enamel--which will be another franc. By the time +it is framed it has come up to six francs, and then, as I leave, the +attendant begs I will remember him! I give him the photograph, and +depart, hoping he will remember me. At the Place de la Nation the fun +grows thicker: there is a rain of confetti, and everybody comes out in +coloured spots; the switchback is busy, chairs mount and descend on +ropes, and there is a bunch of balloons; on a platform outside a booth a +showman beats a drum, the riding-master cracks his whip, and ladies of +uncertain ages and exuberant busts smile all day in evening dress; in the +neighbouring Cirque the Ball of the City of Paris is whirling noisily. +Yes, life goes on in the old, old way in the land of equality and +brotherhood; and the "red fool-fury of the Seine" is but a froth on the +surface. The "Twilight of the Peoples" is the morbid vision of a myopic +seer. With which reflection we will leave Sanity Fair. + +As I write there is an appalling, long-drawn crash, which brings the +whole Quarter to its doors and windows. "Bombs" are in everybody's mouth, +and I find myself automatically repeating a sentence out of the Latin +exercise-book of my boyhood: "How comes it that thunder is sometimes +heard when the sky is clear?" I irrelevantly remember that "sometimes" +must be translated "not never." In the streets little groups are +gathered, gesticulating and surmising. Some say "The Panthéon," others +"The Luxembourg"; others trust it is only a gas explosion. I shock my +group by hoping it is a bomb, so that I may say I have heard it go off. +But I know nothing till I read "Paris Day by Day" next evening in "The +Daily Telegraph," and find that my ambition has been gratified, and that +the chief victim of the explosion is a Decadent Poet. Has any one been +taking seriously Nordau's cry for the extinction of the Degenerates? + +The dead have their day in France, but it was not _le jour des morts_ +when I bethought myself of visiting the grave of Maupassant. I do not +care for these crowded "at homes,"--I prefer to pay my respects in +solitude. You will not think this remark flippant if you are familiar +with French cemeteries, if you know those great family sepulchres, fitted +up as little chapels, through whose doors, crowned with the black cross, +you may see the great wax tapers in the candelabra at the altar, the +stained-glass windows with the figure of the Madonna and Child, the +eikons of Christ, the praying-stools, the vases, the busts or photographs +of the deceased--worthy people who not only thought life worth living but +death worth dying, and did the one and the other respectably and +becomingly. Maupassant lies in one art-quarter of Paris, just as Heinrich +Heine lies in the other. The cemetery is off the Boulevard Raspail, +within bow-shot of the _ateliers_ of Whistler and Bouguereau, overlooked +by an imposing statue of M. Raspail which sets forth that scientific +citizen's many virtues and services. He proclaimed Universal Franchise in +1830, he proclaimed the Republic in 1848, and his pedestal now proclaims +with equal cocksureness that science is the only religion of the future. +"Give me a cell and I will build you up all organised life," cries the +statue, and its stony hand seems to wave theatrically as in emulation of +the bas-reliefs on its base representing Raspail animating his +_camarades_ to victory. But alas! _tout passe, tout casse, tout lasse_, +and not all the residents of the Boulevard are aware of the origin of +their address. Chateaubriand survives as a steak and Raspail as a +Boulevard. + +The cemetery Montparnasse is densely populated, and I wandered long +without finding the author of "Boule de Suif." It was a wilderness of +artificial flowers, great wreaths made of beads. Beads, beads, beads, +black or lavender, and even white and yellow, blooming garishly in all +sizes on every grave and stone, in strange theatrical sentimentality; +complex products of civilisation, making death as unnatural as the +feverish life of the Boulevards. Sometimes the beaded flowers were +protected by glass shades, sometimes they were supplemented by leaden or +marble images. Over one grave I found a little porcelain angel, his wings +blue as with the cold; and under him last year's angel in melancholy +supersession. Elsewhere, most terrible sight of all in this ghastly +place, was a white porcelain urn on which were painted a woman's and a +man's hand clasped, the graceful feminine fingers in artistic contrast +with the scrupulously-cuffed male wrist with the motto, "_À mon mari, +Regrets éternels._" Wondering how soon she remarried, I roved gloomily +among these arcades of bourgeois beads, these fadeless flowers, these +monstrous ever-blacks, relieved to find a touch of humour, as in a +colossal wreath ostentatiously inscribed "_À ma belle-mère._" I peeped +into the great family tombs, irresistibly reminded of "Lo, the poor +Indian," and the tribes who provision their dead; I wondered if the old +ghosts ever turn in their graves (as there is plenty of room for them to +do) when some daughter of their house makes an imprudent alliance. Do +they hold family councils in the chapel, I thought, and lament the +growing scepticism of their grandchildren? Do they sigh to see themselves +so changed from the photographs in the family album that confronts their +hollow orbits? Do they take themselves as seriously in death as they did +in life? But they were all scornfully incommunicative. And at last, +despairing of discovering the goal of my journeyings, I inquired of a +guardian in a peaked blue cap and a blue cloak, who informed me that it +was in the twenty-sixth section of the other cemetery. Wonderfully +precise, red-tape, bureaucratic, symmetrical people, the French, for all +their superficial curvetings! I repaired to the other portion of the +cemetery, to lose myself again among boundless black beads and endless +chapels and funereal urns; and at last I besought another blue-cloaked +guardian to show me the grave of Maupassant. "_Par içi,_" he said +nonchalantly: and eschewing the gravel walks he took a short cut through +a lane of dead maidens-- + + What's become of all the gold + Used to hang and brush their bosoms?-- + +and, descending an avenue of estimable _pères de famille_, turned the +corner of an elegant sepulchre, to which only the most fashionable ghosts +could possibly have the entry. Dear, dear, what heart-burnings there must +be among the more snobbish shadows of Montparnasse! My guide made me +pause and admire, and he likewise insisted on the tribute of my tear +before an obelisk to slaughtered soldiers and a handsome memorial to +burnt firemen. + +But perceiving my impatience to arrive at the grave of Maupassant, +"_Mais, monsieur_," he protested, "_il n'y a rien d'extraordinaire._" +"_Vraiment!_" said I, "_c'est là l'extraordinaire._" "_Rien du tout +d'extraordinaire_," he repeated doggedly. "_Sauf le cadavre_," I +retorted. He shook his head, "_Très pauvre la tombe_," he muttered: "_pas +du tout riche._" Another guardian, wall-eyed, here joined him, and +catching the subject of conversation, "_Très pauvre_," he corroborated +compassionately. But he went with us, accompanied by a very lean young +Frenchman with a soft felt hat, an over-long frock-coat, tweed trowsers, +and a black alpaca umbrella. He looked like a French translation of some +character of Dickens. At last we arrived at the grave. "_C'est là!_" and +both guardians shook their heads dolefully. "_Très pauvre!_" sighed one. +"_Rien du tout--rien_," sighed the other. And, thank Heaven, they were +right. Nothing but green turf and real flowers, and a name and a date on +a black cross--the first real grave I had come across. No beads, no +tawdry images, nothing but the dignity of death, nothing but "Guy de +Maupassant, 6 Juillet, '93," on the cross, and "Guy de Maupassant, +1850-93," at the foot. The shrubs were few, and the flowers were common +and frost-bitten; but in that desert of bourgeois beads, the simple green +grave stood out in touching sublimity. The great novelist seemed to be as +close to the reality of death as he had been to that of life. Those other +dead seemed so falsely romanticist. It was a beautiful sunny winter +afternoon. There was a feel of spring in the air, of the Resurrection and +the Life. Beyond the bare slim branches of the trees of the other +cemetery, gracefully etched against the sky, the sun was setting in a +beautiful bank of dusky clouds. Life was so alive that day, and death so +dead. Outside the tomb the poem of light and air, and inside the +tomb--what? I thought of the last words of "Une Vie," that fine novel, +which even Tolstoï considers great, of the old servant's summing up: "_La +vie, voyez-vous, ça n'est jamais si bon ni si mauvais qu'on croit_." +"Perhaps," thought I, "'t is the same with death." "The _Société des Gens +de Lettres_ had to buy the ground for him," interrupted the wall-eyed +guardian compassionately. The Dickensy Frenchman heaved a great sigh. +"_Vous croyez!_" he said. "Yes," asseverated the other guardian--"he has +it in perpetuity." Ignorant of the customs of death, I wondered if one's +corpse were liable to eviction, and whether the statute of limitations +ought not to apply. "_Je pensais qu'il avait une certaine position_," +observed the Frenchman dubiously. "_Non_," replied the wall-eyed +guardian, shaking his head, "_Non, il est mort sans le sou_." At the +mention of coin I distributed _pourboire_. The first guardian went away. +I lingered at the tomb, alive now to its more sordid side. Only one row +of bourgeois graves, some occupied, some still _á louer_, separated it +from an unlovely waste piece of ground, bounded by the gaunt brick wall +of the fast-filling cemetery. As I began to muse thereon, I heard a cry, +and perceived my guardian peeping from round the corner of a distant +tomb, and beckoning me with imperative forefinger. I wanted to stay; I +wanted to have "Meditations at the grave of Maupassant," to ponder on the +irony of death, to think of the brilliant novelist, the lover of life, +cut off in his pride, to lie amid perspectives of black and lavender +beads. But my guardian would not let me. "_Il n'y a rien à voir_," he +cried almost angrily, and haled me off to see the real treasures of his +cemetery. In vain I persisted that I must not give him trouble, that I +could discover the beauties for myself. "_O monsieur!_" he said +reproachfully. Fearing he might return my _pourboire_, I followed him +helplessly to inspect the pompous bead-covered tombs of the well-to-do, +shocking him by stopping to muse at the rude mound of an anonymous +corpse, remembered only by a little bunch of _immortelles_. One of the +fashionable sepulchres stood open, and was being dusted by a man and a +woman (on a dust _from_ dust principle, apparently). Most of the dust +seemed to be little beads. My keeper exchanged a word with the cleaners, +and I profited by the occasion to escape. I sneaked back to the grave of +Maupassant, but I had barely achieved a single Reflection, when "_Holà, +holà!_" resounded in loud tones from afar. I started guiltily, but in a +moment I realised that it was the cry of expulsion. The sunset was +fading, and the gates were to be locked. I hastened across the cemetery, +evading my guardian's face of reproach, and in another few moments the +paths were deserted, the twilight had fallen, and the dead were left +alone with their beads. + + + + +SLAPTON SANDS + +After all the world is a large place. At the moment of writing I have +never heard of Home Rule, nor do I care two straws whether the House of +Lords is to be blown up on the fifth of November. What moves my interest, +what stirs my soul, what arouses the politician that lurks in the best of +us, is this question of the crab-pots. Shall the trawlers of Brixham be +allowed to slash at our cords and to send our wicker baskets adrift, +spoiling our marine harvests and making our larders barren against the +winter? They hover about our beautiful bay--these fiends in human shape, +with brown wings outspread--and wantonly lay waste our fishing-pots in +their reckless course, so that our crabs walk backwards into the sea. We +have had gentlefolks down from London about it, men who argue and +palaver, and wear high hats and are said to have long bills, and there is +talk of a Government cutter to protect us, towed by red tape, and the +trawlers are to cast their nets farther asea. But beware of believing +what you read in the Brixham papers,--we have no voice to represent us in +the press, and so these Brixham organs spread falsehoods about us in +every corner of the globe. A pretty pretence, forsooth, that it is the +steamers who plough up our crab-pots. Why, from Michaelmas to Christmas, +when the trawlers are away, not a single pot is disturbed from its +station, though the funnels smoke as usual in the eye of heaven. No, no, +ye hirelings of the press. Turn your mercenary quills elsewhere, beslaver +Mr. Gladstone or belabour him, arbitrate on the affairs of nations, and +throw your weighty influence into the scale of European politics. But do +not confuse the mind of the country on the question of crab-pots. + +We do not get the Brixham papers here, but friends in London tell us that +is what they say. It is the same with the crabs--we have to order them +from London. All local products come _viâ_ London nowadays: London is +like a central ganglion, through which all sensations must travel before +being felt at the outside points where they were really incurred. This is +the case even with Irish patriots: they are made in Ireland, but if you +want them you have to go to London clubs for them. We have only had one +funeral here since I came, and then we got our material from London. He +had gone up to a London hospital--poor fellow!--and that was the end of +him. The village butcher it was, who thus went the way of all flesh, and +all of us went to his funeral and wept, for want of something else to do. +One cannot always be flippant, even on a holiday. Fortunately the butcher +left an aged father, who announced his intention of carrying on the +business, so we dried our eyes and dined, sure of the future. We thought +of the many creatures the deceased had killed--the Juno-eyed oxen, the +tender lambs, the peaceful pigs--and we did not see why we should be so +sentimental over the human species. We are all murderers, and yet we are +ready to gush over the first corpse that comes along. How I envy the +death-bed of a vegetarian! + +We are not vegetarians here, but at least we eschew the six-course dinner +which so few travellers ever succeed in shaking off, even in _Ultima +Thule_. The most of modern travelling is a sort of Cook's Tour. +Everywhere the _menu_ is before you, everywhere waves the napkin, like +the flag of civilisation. Nowhere do we eat ourselves into the real life +of the people; everywhere the same monotonous variety of fare in +kitchen-French. In the remotest Orkneys, in the caves of Iona, in the +fjords of Norway, amid the crevasses of the Alps,--'t is the same tale of +_entrées_ and _entremets_. When Dr. Johnson made his tour in the +Highlands, he was allowed to forget he was not taking a walk down Fleet +Street. He interviewed the chiefs in their fastnesses, the cottagers in +their crofts. He broke rye-bread with the shepherd, ate haggis and +porridge with the peasant, and drank a gill of whisky to see "what makes +a Scotchman happy." Behind him he left his dish of tea, and the pet pork +that made the veins of his forehead swell with ecstasy. But to-day the +dinner-gong resounds where Rob Boy's bugle blared, and you may sit behind +your serviette + + Where the sun his beacon red + Kindles on Ben Voirlich's head, + +or where the monument of a Gaelic poet broods above the heather. The +tyranny of the _table-d'hôte_ ceases not even at sea. Every ship bears +these monster meals in its belly--from salami to pineapple--whether it +walk the Boreal waters, or touch the Happy Isles of Mid-Pacific, or +swelter in the Red Sea. Not all the majesties and terrors of naked nature +can dock one _hors d'oeuvre_ from the _menu_. Our stomachs we have always +with us--the traveller's only real _vade mecum_. We change our sky but +not our stomach. When Nansen reaches the North Pole, he will, I am sure, +be able to put up at the local hotel, and have every luxury of the +cosmopolitan cuisine except the ices, which will probably have been all +sent up to the London market. It is this sort of thing that makes foreign +travel merely an expensive delusion. Your common traveller never gets +away from England, fare he never so far. His church, his kitchen and his +company are those he left behind him. To get away from England one must +go to Devonshire or Cornwall. But even here, amid the combes and the +leys, the crags and the quarries, the modern hotel, with its perfect +sanitation and imperfect French, is springing up with the rapidity of +Badraoulbadour's palace. It spoils the primitiveness of the people, and +gives them ideas below their station. They lose their simple manliness +and take tips. They corrupt their autochthonic customs, and drink +champagne cider. The modern hotel is a upas-tree, under whose boughs +poetry withers. One looks to see the ancient ballads lose their blood and +brawn. In time we may expect to find Cornwall producing _vers de +société_. As thus:-- + + And shall Trelawney dine? + And shall Trelawney dine? + Then thrice ten thousand Cornish men + Will order in the wine. + +In the absence of six-course dinners and newspapers about Home Rule, we +have had to fall back upon literature. We borrowed Zola's latest--from +the rector,--and read it simultaneously, stealing it from one another. +Even the dogs have devoured bits of it. The poodle has taken in most, +being French. She is an elegant, tricksy creature, Miss Plachecki by +name, but called--for short--"Wopsy." Wopsy's back is arranged in beds +like a Dutch garden; she has rosettes of black hair symmetrically +disposed about her hind quarters, and her tail is exactly like a mutton +cutlet in its frill. She belongs to the Woman of the party. Chum belongs +to the Girl. He is a bull-pup, with a frightfully ferocious face, but he +never bites unless he wants to hurt you. Girl says she took him to a +fashionable photographer's, but the artist refused to pose him. In vain +she pointed out that Chum was more paralysed than he; that Chum was +trembling all over (I opine 't was at the sight of the actresses' +portraits--the young dog!). The photographer steadfastly kept the +apparatus between him and the animal, telling Girl a story about a man +who owned a bull-dog with a bad memory. The man, coming home late, and +entering his sitting-room, was met by an ominous growl in the darkness. +Bull-dogs have little smell, and so the man was not recognized. He made a +movement towards the mantelpiece, where the matches were, to strike a +light and convince the dog of its mistake. But unfortunately the dog +guarded the mantelpiece, and every move was answered by a ghastly growl. +More unfortunately still, the man's bedroom was only approached through +the sitting-room, and its door was only approached through the dog. So, +for want of a match, the man passed the night like a Peri at the gates of +Paradise. At last Girl posed Chum, herself, her draperies constituting a +nebulous background; and the artist, walking warily, adjusted his +instrument, and the sun which shines alike on saints and bull-pups, +painted the squatter's portrait. But, alas! a woeful disappointment was +in store. When the proofs arrived, it was found that all that delightful +uncouthness of visage which is Chum's chief charm, all that fascinating +ferocity which makes him a thing of ugliness and a joy for ever, had +vanished--refined away, idealised into a demureness as of domestic tabby, +a platitudinarian peacefulness--nay, a sort of beauty! The camera had +been so accustomed to actresses that it could no longer work naturally. + + + + +VENICE + +I am reading Nietzsche and Tolstoï. Each tells me that the morality of +the day is all wrong, and that he has discovered the one true way of +salvation. Life, cries Nietzsche, strength, sunshine, beauty. Death, +cries Tolstoï, abnegation, pity, holiness. 'T is all as old as the hills, +and withal so simple that one wonders why Nietzsche should have needed +eleven volumes to say it in and Tolstoï endless pamphlets. I never can +understand the lengths to which some authors go in self-repetition. Half +the books are written to prove that water is dry, and the other half that +it's wet. If you would only stop and think just for one moment, cries +Tolstoï, you would at once see what a ridiculous life you are leading and +you would refuse to lead it any longer. Stop and think! Ay, but 't is +difficult thinking to-day. + +It will be all over and done with so long--by the time you read +this--that the Triple Alliance may be in three pieces; but for the moment +the complications of European politics alternately startle and depress my +day with furious cannonades of honour from an Italian gunboat and brazen +dronings of national anthems from a German band. For the young man whom +Tolstoï has described as the most comic figure in Europe, coming to meet +Umberto I. in Venice, inconsiderately stationed his yacht just outside my +window; and though he is gone at last, _Gott sei Dank_, the echoes of him +still linger in irrelevant cannon-shots that send the pigeons scurrying +in mad swoops; while, as if removed from the oppression of his presence, +the band of the _Hohenzollern_ plays London music-hall tunes all day +long, commencing, significantly enough, with "Oh, Mr. Porter, what a +funny man you are!" I never realised how international is our music-hall +till I heard Italians staggering home at midnight, singing "Two lovely +black eyes" in choice Venetian. A beautiful yacht this _Hohenzollern_, as +large as an Atlantic liner: I suppose an Imperial yacht is like an +Imperial pint. 'T was a great moment when it sailed in round a bend, +slow and serene--a glorious white vessel, radiant with flags, stately and +majestic in its movement as a sonnet of Milton, and about it a black +swarm of gondolas, those of the noble families equipped with half a dozen +gondoliers in green, yellow, or blue liveries, and at the stern of each +boat a trail of silk. And the dense crowds huzzahed, and the band played +"God Save the Queen," only in German, so that it meant, _Heil dir im +Siegeskranz_. And after that came the Italian national air, which isn't +an anthem, but a quick march, and so lacks dignity. The "Wacht am Rhein" +made a half-hearted effort to be present, but in the night we had the +Emperor's own "Sang an Aegir," stuck in the middle of a Wagner programme. +Beyond this, compliment could scarcely go. + +This brazen air was the one jar on the poetry of a spectacle possible +only in Venice. Imagine it! Wagner played on a floating fairy-pagoda, +built as of gold flame, and shot with green and red, on the broad bosom +of St. Mark's basin, in the divine night, the stars seen hanging +diversely in free space, not stuck like gold-headed nails in a dark +ceiling; and in the mystery of the darkness, the domes and spires and +palaces of Venice, and the dim creeping boats, and the quivering +reflections of the illuminated Imperial vessel; and across the narrow +track of luminous water made by the Pagoda--that glittered with a +fantastic splendour as of Aladdin and Arabian nights--sudden gondolas +gliding from darkness to darkness, the beautiful curve of the prow +sharply revealed, the gondolier growing semi-transparent and quivering +with light, a strange half-demoniac figure bestriding his black bark. +And, mingled with the music, the hum of multitudes and the tramp of feet +and the silence of the vast night. All as Nietzsche's poem on Venice hath +it--"Gondeln, Lichter, Musik." Yes, they play politics prettily on the +Grand Canal--the finest street in Europe. Does it matter much what is the +game? Cannons and colour, bands and decorations, bread and circuses, +emperors uncovering to us, beautiful queens waving dainty +handkerchiefs--this is what lies behind the dry Treaties of the history +books. A few short weeks back we had been very angry with our King, and +had talked of Republics and what not. But the dead men in Abyssinia are +dead, and we are alive, and the Bengal fire on the palaces is really very +picturesque. If we would only stop and think--just for one moment! But +there's the rub. + +It's no use stopping and thinking, unless everybody else will stop and +think at the same time. For you cannot refuse to lead a life that +everybody is leading, unless you are willing to be crushed by the +revolutions of the social machinery. Socialists, for instance, are often +twitted with not "behaving as sich." But socialists say that socialism +should be the law of the land: they do not say that it is practicable for +an odd man here and there to be a socialist in a world of individualists. +Tolstoï, to be of effect, would have to move all mankind at once to +renounce its ways, to abjure the lust of the eye and the pride of life. +And he would have to keep on moving it, or back it would roll. Mazzini +and the unification of Italy--what words to conjure with! But Mazzini is +dead, and how much of Italy is alive! 'T is more like a great show-place, +supported by its visitors, than a real, live country. Stop and think! 'T +is perhaps better not to think, for fear we should stop. William II., at +any rate--he is not likely to stop and think. This young man--from all I +have observed since he became my neighbour--lives a highly coloured +dramatic existence, in which there are sixty minutes to every hour and +sixty seconds to every minute, the sort of life that should have pleased +Walter Pater. He must be a disciple of Nietzsche, a lover of the strong +and the splendid, this German gentleman who is just off to Vienna to +prance at the head of fifteen hundred horsemen. While he lived opposite +me, it was all excursions and alarums. As a neighbour an emperor is +distinctly noisy. The local comic papers suggested that, as a universal +genius, Guglielmo II. would at once set about rowing a two-oared sandolo. +But this difficult feat Guglielmo did not essay, being convoyed more +comfortably in a long-boat by a brawny crew. Curious, by the way, that +transformation of William! They announce plays here by G. Shakespeare, +the divine Guglielmo. + +'T is all very well for Guglielmo, the gondola of Avon, to invite us to +sit on the ground and tell sad stories of the death of kings; and in a +city of departed Doges and lost glories't is easy to moralise over +earthly greatness. But kings are not always dead, and I daresay as +William II. in his cocked hat gazed from the quarter-deck of the +_Hohenzollern_ at the marvellous but untenanted Palace of the ancient +Bridegrooms of the Sea, he felt that a living lion is better than a dead +Doge. And yet it is a strange life, a king's. What an unreal universe of +flags and cannons and phrases must monarchs inhabit! Do they think that +the streets are always gay with streamers and bunting and triumphal +arches, always thunderous with throats of men or guns, always impassable? +Do they imagine their subjects spend their whole lives in packed black +masses, waving hats? Poor kings! I always class them with novelists for +ignorance of real life. And to think that they can only get to know life +from novels! If they would only stop, and think! But even when they do +stop, they never seem to think. Napoleon on St. Helena never faced +realities, aggressively pompous to the end. Then there is Don Carlos, +whom I miss in my afternoon stroll. He who might have dazzled us with +divinity is visibly a feather-less biped. The poor, mock king had to +leave Venice because his brother-sovereigns would not have called upon +him. For Don Carlos still keeps up the form and style of a crowned head, +and remains the last of the Bourbons, a picturesque ruin, reproach to a +blasphemous generation, heedless of the divine right of kings. + +And the "divinity that doth hedge a king" can be kept up nowhere so +cheaply as in Venice. Venice is the dress-coat of cities, making all men +equal. Well might Wordsworth dub her "the eldest child of liberty"! For +in the streets of Venice you cannot drive or ride--walk you must. No +gleaming broughams, no spanking steeds: nothing--be you monarch or +mendicant--but your two legs. 'T is strange, in a land of no horses, to +find Venetians styled "Cavalier" for title of honour. They should surely +be called "Gondoliers." For the gondola is your only chance of display. +Rich Americans may flaunt it with four gondoliers and print "Palazzo" on +their visiting-cards. But doctors and lawyers live in Palaces, and even a +moderate purse can keep a horseless carriage. And your St. Mark's Square, +which is the largest drawing-room in the world, is also the most +democratic. Ladies of quality jostle shawled street-walkers, a German +sailor galls the kibe of a beautiful Browning duchess, officers with +showy epaulettes glitter among respectable shopkeepers; helmeted +cuirassiers, Austrian admirals, policemen with coloured tufts like +lamp-cleaners, German baronesses, bouncing bonnes with babies, +garlic-scented workingmen, American schoolgirls, and kings in exile, are +mixed pell-mell, all in perfect freedom and equality, and, though in the +shadow of St. Mark's Church, quite Christian. And an Italian crowd is +also Christian in its freedom from crush. It does not turn a fete into a +fight and a concourse into a competition. Thus, as the Prince Consort was +amused to find we English said of our pleasure-parties, all "passes off +well." Except when there is rain. And the heavens threw unmistakable cold +water on the Triple Alliance. The day of the Emperor's stay was the one +wet day Venice had known for months--so dank and chill, with so sooty a +sky, that my friend the artist, who had just been reading in the London +paper that his work had not caught the glamour and the colour of Venice, +that the South had not yet revealed its passionate secrets to him, +chuckled grimly. What is all this nonsense about an Italian hothouse? At +Florence I was afraid of being snow-bound in the sunny South. For, long +and heavily, though the London meteorologists registered sunshine, + + Cadeva dal cielo la neve + Con tutta la sua quiete. + + (Down from heaven fell the snow + With all its quietness.) + +This perfect description of snowfall--which I found rudely chalked on the +wall of a Venetian alley--could never have been conceived in the Italy of +popular imagination. The superstition about Italian sunshine is like that +about Italian beauty. If the country about Florence is the loveliest in +Europe, surely the plain of Lombardy around Padua is the ugliest--a land +of symmetrical tree-stumps and stony villas flaunting themselves on the +roadway in pompous publicity. + +In Venice the Emperor seemed specially to irritate the elements. The +illuminations were extinguished by a terrific torrent that sent the +people pattering away into the black, starless night, gleaming with rain +and fire; and to-night when the imperial band attempted to play "Sang an +Aegir" again, the heavens fell, and audience and orchestra vanished in +the twinkling of a gas-lamp, while the pavement of the Piazza glittered +golden as the facade of St. Mark's with dancing reflections, and the +lights burnt blue in the wind. Yes, though the papers next day said the +Emperor's Song was applauded enthusiastically, Jupiter Pluvius at least +never plays the courtier, and Boreas must be a rude reminder to monarchs +of their essential humanity. Come, let us sit upon the ground and tell +sad stories of the colds of kings. In the daylight I chanced upon a rough +wooden platform, bordered with plush and surrounded by tawdry terraces of +coloured, glass cups. This was the fairy, Aladdin-like Pagoda. And such, +methinks, are kings, on closer acquaintance. How majestic seemed William +II., and Humbert, the Kaiserin and Queen Margherita, when, massed in our +thousands on the Piazza, we clamoured for a glimpse of them: how +inaccessible and star-like when, after much exciting but irrelevant +shadow pantomime, they actually appeared on the balcony of the Palace, as +if to feed us like the pigeons we had displaced! With what tumultuous +rapture did we behold their faces! Stop and think! You cannot stop and +think. Enthusiasm is a microbe, and is independent of its object: even so +we could yawn over Punch and Judy, if the crowd assembled to yawn. +Republicans who came to sneer remained to cheer. + + 'T is comic this, + And comic that, + And clown on royal pay, + But 't is "Long live _unser Kaiser!_" + When the band begins to play. + +And humanity has need of leaders, heroes--'t is a primal instinct. The +Jews had Jehovah himself for sovereign, but nothing would content them +but a real man-king, who should rule them and judge them and go out +before them in war. Kings were leaders once, but in modern days they are +only symbols, just as flags are: the whole force of the nation is behind +them, and they stand for home and country. This it is that gives them +majesty and divinity. 'T is a case of transformation of function, an old +institution adapted to new uses, and valuable partly as giving colour to +life, partly for preventing the evils which Gibbon so pregnantly showed +to be inseparable from any system of primacy not based on an immutable +heredity. The trouble is when the flag wishes to order the march. + +An unbroken tradition has kept up the old phrases of loyalty, and so what +wonder if a king sometimes takes them seriously! "_Le roi le veult_" not +unnaturally leads sometimes to a king willing. And also we are not quite +conscious of the transformation; it has come about so gradually that no +one knows when kings ceased to be leaders, and when they became flags, +and so with the new feeling blend confusedly strands of the old. We +English have abolished the sovereign, but we are too loyal to say so. In +Germany the sovereign has refused to be a symbol, and in a country +over-civilised in thought and under-civilised in action, he has had a +pretty good innings. I must confess I do not find this attitude of his +merely ridiculous. It forces clearly upon the modern world the question +of kingship, whether it is to be a sham or a reality. Unpopular as +William II. has made himself by his martinet methods--ridiculous, if you +will--yet there is only one step from the ridiculous to the sublime. In a +flippant age he takes himself seriously, has a sense of a responsible +relation to his people. Have you seen the cartoon he designed to inspire +the nations of the West to league together for the protection of their +ideals against the races of the East? The thought may be trite, the +philosophy leagues behind the doctrines of the Berlin _Aufgeklärter_, but +it shows a soul above card-playing or court-gossip. What a noble chance +there would be for a modern sovereign who should really be the head of +his people, on a par with the culture of his age, in harmony with its +highest ideals, fostering all that is finest in life and character, in +art and thought! Snobbishness would be converted to useful ends, and +courtiers would become philosophers out of sheer flattery. But such a +Platonic king is scarcely to be looked for: the training is so bad. + +The presence of kings makes places abnormal and out of character, but in +Venice it rather gives one a sense of the true Venice, she that once held +the gorgeous East in fee. For the Venice of every day only escapes +vulgarity by force of beauty: she lives up to the English and German +tripper, borders her great Piazza with photograph shops, and counts on +the sentimental traveller to feed her pigeons. Oh, that trail of the +tourist over Europe, falsifying the very things he went out for to see! +"Coelum non animum mutant," said the Roman poet long ago of travellers, +but the modern traveller carries his sky with him. Instead of "Venice in +London" 't is London in Venice. Carefully fenced off from the local life +by his _table d'hôte_, it is rarely that the Briton comes to understand +that he and not the native is the foreigner, the _forestiere_. Cities on +show are never real; they are like people posturing before a camera, +instead of being taken _au naturel_. And "the season" is the time in +which they are least real. Too many Cooks' tourists spoil the broth. +Cities _en fête_ are masked and prankt, and the spring in Italy is like +one long _Forestieri_ day. At the church of Eremitani in Padua I was +taken to see some Mantegnas at a side-altar while a very devout +congregation was celebrating Eastertide, and the verger unlocked a gate +and pocketed his tip with undiminished piety. How apt an image of life, +these Italian churches--some of us praying and some of us sightseeing! It +must be confusing to the celestial bookkeepers to distinguish the Bibles +from the Baedekers. And while the real Venice is as unreal as the real +Florence or the real Rome, Venice welcoming her king gives one a truer +impression of the Venice of our dreams, the Queen of the seas in the +brave days of old. Let us forget the steamboats and the iron bridges, let +us make believe that the _Hohenzollern_ is the great Bucentaur, in which +the Doge went out to wed the Adriatic and which that arch-Philistine +Napoleon broke up. For the Venice of every day is a dead city, with +nothing left of its ancient glories but wealth. Though the millions be +reckoned in lire, there are over a hundred millionaires in Venice. But of +that mighty artistic and religious impulse which produced countless +churches and palaces, pictures and frescoes, which strewed the very +street walls with spirited sculpture, and warmed even parochial offices +with priceless paintings, there is as little trace as of the indomitable +energy that founded a great Republic on wooden piles and guarded it from +the sea by dykes and from its enemies by the sea. The escutcheons of its +great families are fast becoming archaeological, and Americans and Jews +inhabit their palaces. How great a power Venice was I never realised till +I was permitted to see the Archives. It takes three-quarters of an hour +to walk through these galleries of town records. Miles of memorandums, +wildernesses of reports, acres of ambassadors' letters from every court +in Europe, written in cipher with inter-bound Italian translations. I +tried to find the report of the ambassador at the Court of St. James +anent the execution of Charles I., but gave up hopeless, oppressed by the +musty myriads of volumes, and found comfort in the signature of Queen +Elizabeth, surely the most regal autograph in the world, like some ship +going out against the Armada with swelling canvas and pennants streaming. +There's a woman after Nietzsche's heart--strong, splendid, and +unscrupulous. If Nietzsche had married her, he might have changed his +philosophy. What a diplomatist, this Englishwoman! To this day the +Direttore of the Archives of Venice swears by her. Those awesome +Archives! The reports of the Council of Ten alone stretch away through +vasty halls of death. And then people talk of writing history! How +fortunate that the exact details of royal, political and military events +are as unessential as they are unattainable! Real history consists mainly +of the things that haven't happened--the millions of everyday lives, +sunrise and sunset, ships and harvests, the winds and the rain, and the +bargains in the market-place. The reading of Clio's blood-stained scroll +would be unbearable, were it not for the reflection that all the +important things have been left out--the myriads of sunny mornings that +dawned on the "Dark Ages," and filled creation with the joy of life; the +hopes and loves throbbing in the great obscure mass of humanity; the +individual virtues and victories that co-existed with the decadence of +great empires; the vast ocean of consciousness of which History just +skims the surface. And now all that great Venetian life is over, the +dreaded Council of Ten is as the dust that covers its reports, and the +Doge's Palace is a spectacle for tourists at a franc a head. Great Caesar +dead and turned to show. And those who pay the franc scarcely seem to +reflect that princes and artists did not live and die in Italy to help +young British or German couples over their honeymoon; that Dandolo and +Foscari, Sansovino and Tintoretto, passed away with no suspicion of that +latter-day trinity--Bride, Bridegroom, and Baedeker. Strange that that +which was so real to themselves is so romantic to us! Such is the +transmutation of time, which can colour with poetry things much more +prosaic than life in ancient Venice. Nothing of us that doth fade + + But doth, suffer a sea-change + Into something rich and strange. + +Poets and seers feel the richness and strangeness of the life that is +passing under their very eyes. With Maeterlinck it is the mystery, with +Stevenson the colour, with Wordsworth the divinity. To see the glamour of +the contemporary is the note of your modern. Whitman spent his life +trying to see it in the most unpromising materials. The wondering +perception of steamships and electric-cables has already grown dulled to +us: it requires a Kipling to revivify it. The new photographic process +which enables one to carry out Sydney Smith's desire on a hot day, to +take off one's flesh and sit in one's bones, alone seems wonderful to us; +though to see through a window is just as marvellous as to see through a +brick wall. For if _nil admirari_ be the motto of the sage, _omne +admirari_ is that of the poet, and the poetry which wafts from the past +to the soul of the most commonplace person is seen in the present by him +who hath eyes. The pathos of that which _must_ pass away is no less great +than the pathos of that which _has_ passed away. And what produces the +art-feeling in both cases is the same--the fresh, intense perception of +things for themselves alone: only the ordinary man finds it easier to +detach his own interests from the past than from the present of which he +is part. Romance is not in things, but in the souls that observe. Every +place, however enchanted, is inhabited by prosaic persons who earn their +living there. My chambermaid was born in Padua--Padua, outside which +Donatello could not achieve perfection; Padua, ever dear to us because +Portia feigned to have studied law at its University. Alas! alas! the two +gentlemen of Verona go down to business in tram-cars, and the + + Magic casements opening on the foam + Of faëry lands in perilous seas forlorn + +are cleaned and repaired by some one who sends in the bill. Yet, since +believing is seeing, let us behold, not the chambermaid and the +window-cleaner, but the magic casement and the moonrise. And if to the +commonplace our own age is commonplace, yet our age, like youth, is a +fault that will mend with time. Our politics, and philosophies too, will +crumble and decay, the dust will gather on our books and newspapers, +archaeologists will prize our coins, the fashion of our ugly garments +will grow picturesque, and samples of our streets will be rebuilt in +exhibitions. What is then left to console us for the eternal flux? Only +that posterity shall grow old-fashioned too, while we, like antiquity, +shall have enjoyed that which never grows old--the sunshine and the +stars, love and friendship, the smiles of little children, and the +freshness of flowers, aspiration and achievement, thought and worship, +struggle and self-sacrifice. + +These, these are the eternal things--that persist in every age, in every +environment, in old Etruscan villages as in the Paris of to-day: these +are the realities to which "the latest scientific conveniences" are but +padding, and in which we have had no superiority over our ancestors, even +as we shall have no inferiority to our successors, though they riot in +"Vril" and balloons, and go on Cooks' Tours to the constellations. The +network of nerves in which we live and move and have our being is only +capable of a certain quota of sensations, and no invention will really +enlarge our enjoyments except it be of a new set of nerves. Persons whose +lives have known strange vicissitudes have been astonished to find +pleasure and pain about equally distributed in all; and I am optimist +enough to think that no age will be really less unhappy than the present. +Reformers who imagine they improve on the past age do but alter old +institutions to fit new feelings. Reformers are necessary because +otherwise the new feelings would be cramped by the old institutions. But +there is no addition to the sum of pleasure. Progress really means not +lagging behind; and however far we march, the same sunshine will throw +the same shadow of pain across our path. The notion of progress, said +Spinoza, is a futility, because God, of whom the universe is a +manifestation, is always perfect. Later philosophers have found this +doctrine a barren blind-alley, and craved for the notion of a more +energising God. But both notions seem perfectly compatible. Progress may +be just the way perfection manifests itself. The universe moves--and at +each point is perfect. It is as good as it could be--at the moment: it +could not be any better. For if it could have been, it would have been: +it has no interest in being otherwise. That it is not perfect in our +sense of the word matters little to the metaphysician. We have such +limited experiences of universes that we cannot judge what a really good +one should be like; and to say that ours is bad is to foul our own nest. + +He had no doubt of the perfection of the universe, that gentle old +Franciscan who lives with his twenty-nine brethren on the islet of St. +Francesco del Deserto, a rarely visited spot off Venice, that somehow +reminded me of the island in Mr. H. A. Jones' "Michael and his Lost +Angel." He had never been to Assisi, where his tutelary saint was born. +"Have you no wish to see it?" I asked. "My only wish is to obey." Dear +old man! He had stopped all his life; but thinking--ah! that is another +matter. It was in this island that St. Francis preached to the birds. He +was saying the Office when all the birds stopped to listen, and St. +Francis took advantage of the opportunity. It was his disciple St. Antony +who preached to the fishes, and there is a delicious picture in Padua +showing all the fishes perking their heads out of the water and listening +in devout dumbness, the very oysters open to conviction. Poor dear +fishes! What a delightful change to receive from the upper world +something else than hooks! What a sweet simple cloister hath this lonely +monastery--a plain stone walk under a red-tiled arcade supported by rough +brick pillars, the walls lined by quaint black-and-white engravings of +saints engaged in miracles. There is a well in the centre which used to +be of sea-water, but St. Bernard of Siena blessed it and it turned sweet. +I have drunk of the water, so I can vouch the story is true. And there is +a beautiful cypress walk. What a tranquil retreat! + + O Beata Solitudo! + O Sola Beatitudo! + +as the inscription over the lintel hath it. I do not wonder that St. +Francis came here when he was greatly fatigued, "after converting the +Sultan of Egypt," as the old Franciscan naïvely explained. 'T is the sort +of sanatorium Tolstoï would need, after converting the German Emperor! +And despite St. Francis, and his doctrine of brotherhood with birds and +fishes, we go on with our cannibal cookery, and even his own Church still +teaches that animals have no souls, though that is perhaps because they +have no _soldi_. And despite Tolstoï and his tracts, the people who stop +will not think and the people who think will not stop. For to convert the +world is the one miracle that the saints have never compassed. Yet is the +sunshine of these sweet souls never lost, and the gentle mien of the old +Franciscan made me feel at peace even with my sandolier when I found him +sound asleep in his boat, wrapped up in my cloak. + +And these are the types of character Nietzsche would destroy. They are +degenerative, forsooth! They make against life and the joy thereof. Ah, +but the joy of life is not only the joy of self-assertion: there is the +joy of self-effacement, which is only another form of self-expression, +the assertion of a higher self. That was the secret of Jesus, of Buddha. +Whereas the doctrine of Nietzsche--_c'est le secret de Polichinelle_. The +man in the street needs no encouragement to enjoyment. It is only by the +travail of the centuries that he has been taught to prefer to his own +pleasure somebody else's absence of pain. Human nature is like Venice or +Holland--a province slowly wrested from the sea, and secured by dams and +dykes. Woe to him who makes a breach in the sea-walls! And yet Nietzsche +is to be read, though 't is a pity he is to be translated into English +for the seduction of unripe minds. The desuetude of Latin as a common +language for scholars is to be regretted; it kept the thinkers of Europe +in touch, and kept out the _profanum vulgus_. As I have often pointed +out, a truth grows so stale that it is almost a lie, and to invert any +conventionality is to produce what is almost a truth. Truth is convex as +well as concave. + +This method of inversion is Nietzsche's main weapon: as earnest as any of +our pulpiteering Puritans, he wears his morality inside out. He denies +the copy-book, as Luther denied the infallibility of the Pope. He +transposes all moral values, finds virtue often weakness and vice often +strength, girds at all the cloud-spinning philosophers, and is one of the +most brilliant and suggestive of modern writers, full of epigram and +whimsy, and wielding the clumsy German tongue with rare grace and +dexterity. But, as might be expected of the son of a parson, he pursues +his reaction against conventional cant beyond the bounds of legitimate +paradox, replacing the narrow by the narrower. Nietzsche was necessary; +some one had to call a spade a spade. The great forces of modern thought, +which have been gathering for centuries, had to find shameless +expression; and Nietzsche's scorn for those who have tried to patch up +hollow truces with bygone beliefs, and dress up new heresies in old +Sunday clothes, is amply justified. But what is not justified is his +admiration of himself--an admiration so pronounced that it has landed him +in a lunatic asylum. Our systems of chronology ought to be recast, cries +he; and even as men have dated from A.D., so are they to date from A.N., +the year of Nietzsche. Not that he expects immediate recognition: "Erst +das Uebermorgen gehört mir. Einige werden posthum geboren." But the bulk +of what he tells us is really involved in all modern conceptions of the +cosmus--it could have been found long ago in Herbert Spencer. + +Anti-Christ he calls himself, and beats the drum and invites you to +inspect the greatest philosophy on earth. "Now hold your breath with +awe," he has the air of saying, "or if you are not strong enough to hear +this fearsome truth, go home to the nursery and read Hegel." And after +this fanfaronade, lo! some commonplace that you shall find in a hundred +modern poets or philosophers. 'T is like the clown in the circus who +works himself up with a mighty pother to mount the bare-backed steed, and +then hangs on to the tail. No, no, good Herr Nietzsche, we want our +Saints Francis as well as our Napoleons. The one kind is as much in the +"order of nature" as the other; and pity and humility, if they are the +virtues of "nations in their decline," are preferable to the vices of +nations at their zenith. And, good Count Tolstoï, a universe of Saints +Francis would be an intolerable bore. The cowl does not cover all the +virtues, nor the dress-coat all the sins. 'T is a world we live in, not +a monastery; and it is amid the clash of mighty opposites that the music +of the spheres is beaten out. + +"Everything in Venice is delivered up to the Evil One now," writes John +Buskin to Father Jacopo of the Armenian monastery; and such has been the +immemorial language of prophets. I sometimes suspect the Evil One +deserves more gratitude than he gets. Where would be the play without the +villain of the piece? No, the devil is not so black as he is painted, nor +the angel so white. And hence these incessant swings of the philosophical +pendulum as one truth or the other is perceived. The true ethics of the +future will give the devil his due, and deduct a discount from the angel. + +The Armenian monastery which has posted up Ruskin's letter is +paradoxically proud of its association with Lord Byron, who studied +Armenian there; and visitors come there in consequence, and buy books +that the monks print. So that Satan has his uses, and Scripture can quote +the devil for its own purposes. The book I bought was a charming +collection of Armenian folk-songs, and it contains one delicious poem +whose refrain has haunted me ever since: + + ON THE PARTRIDGE. + + The sun boats from the mountain's top, + Pretty, pretty. + The partridge comes from her nest: + She was saluted by the flowers, + She flew and came from the mountain's top, + Ah! pretty, pretty, + Ah! dear little partridge! + +Only the highest genius--and what is higher than the folk-genius?--would +dare to be so naïve: + + Ah! pretty, pretty, + Ah! dear little partridge! + + + + +VENTNOR + +I did not get to Ventnor without a struggle. Everybody that I met held up +hands of horror. "What! Going to Ventnor? You will be roasted before your +time." My friends grieved, my very publishers wrung their hands, my +newsvendor took me aside and besought me to live on a high hill. Yet +through the whole of August I sat coolly writing on a low terrace. There +is a superstition about Ventnor, and none of the people who talk glibly +about its temperature have ever been there. But I think I have discovered +the origin of the great Ventnor myth. The place is a winter resort of +consumptives; and Mr. Frederick Greenwood, who was the chief charm of +Ventnor, told me that you may take coffee on your lawn in November. The +town, then, is warm in winter. The popular mind, with its hasty logic, +thinks that this is tantamount to saying it is broiling hot in summer. I +fancy there is a similar fiction about Bournemouth. But as a rule the +British climate pays no heed to guide-books. By the natives, Ventnor, +though as beautiful as a little Italian town, seems to be regarded as a +good place to go away from, for every other man keeps a coaching +establishment (I don't mean a school), and you cannot walk two yards +without being accosted by a tout, who resents your walking the next two. +Its regatta is a puerile affair, its own boating crews going off by +preference to rival regattas. But in illuminations it comes out far +better than Cowes, whose loyal inhabitants throw all the burden of +fireworks upon the royal and other yachts anchored in the bay. And +besides, Ventnor has a carnival, which I saw in the shop-windows in the +shape of comic masks. + +Bonchurch, the suburb of Ventnor, which plumes itself upon a very +artificial pond, furnished in the best style with sycamores, Scotch firs, +elms and swans, is more interesting for containing the old churchyard by +the sea which received the bones of John Sterling and inspired the best +poem of Philip Bourke Marston:-- + + Do they hear, through the glad April weather, + The green grasses waving above them? + Do they think there are none left to love them, + They have lain for so long there together? + Do they hear the note of the cuckoo, + The cry of gulls on the wing, + The laughter of winds and waters, + The feet of the dancing Spring? + +I was married in Ventnor. At least so I gather from the local newspapers, +in whose visitors' lists there figures the entry, "Mr. and Mrs. +Zangwill." I do not care to correct it, because, the lady being my +mother, it is perfectly accurate and leads to charming misconceptions. +"There, that's he," loudly whispered a young man, nudging his sweetheart, +"and there's his wife with him." "That! why, she looks old enough to be +his mother," replied the young lady. "Ah!" said her lover, with an air of +conscious virtue and a better bargain, "they're awfully mercenary, these +literary chaps." The reverse of this happened to a young friend of mine. +He married an old lady who possessed a very large fortune. During the +honeymoon his solicitous attentions to her excited the admiration of +another old lady, who passed her life in a Bath-chair. "Dear me!" she +thought: "how delightful in these degenerate days to see a young man so +attentive to his mother!" and, dying soon after, left him another large +fortune. + + + + +SOMEWHERE ELSE + +Before I chanced on the great discovery which has made all my holidays +real boons, and pleasure trips quite a pleasure, I used to go through all +the horrors of preliminary indecision, which are still, alas! the lot of +the vast majority. I would travel for weeks in Bradshaw, and end by +sticking a pin at random between the leaves as if it were a Bible, vowing +to go where destiny pointed. Once the pin stuck at London, and so I had +to stick there too, and was defrauded of my holiday. But even when the +pin sent me to Putney, or Coventry, I was invariably disappointed. Like +the inquisitive and precocious infant of the poem, I was always asking +for the address of Peace, but whenever I called I was told that she was +not in, while the mocking refrain seemed to ring in my ears: "Not there, +not there, my child." And at last I asked angrily of the rocks and caves: +"Will no one tell me where Peace may be found? Wherever I go I find she +is somewhere else." Then, at last, one nymph's soft heart grew tender and +pitiful towards me, and Echo, hardly waiting till I had completed my +sentence, answered: "Somewhere Else." + +A wild thrill of joy ran through me. At last I had found the solution of +the haunting puzzle. Somewhere Else. That was it. Not Scotland, nor +Switzerland, nor Japan. None of the common places of travel. But +Somewhere Else. Wherever I went, I wished I had gone Somewhere Else. +Then, why not go there at first? What was the good of repining when it +was too late? In future, I would make a bee-line for the abode of +Peace--not hesitate and shilly-shally, and then go to Bournemouth, or +Norway, or Ceylon, only to be sorry I had not gone to Somewhere Else +direct. In a flash, all the glories of the discovery crowded upon me--the +gain of time, temper, money, everything. "A thousand thanks, sweet Echo," +I cried. "My obedience to thy advice shall prove that I am not +ungrateful." Echo, with cynical candour, shouted "Great fool," but I +cannot follow her in her end-of-the-century philosophy. And I have taken +her advice. I went Somewhere Else immediately, and since then I have gone +there every year regularly. My relatives do not care for it, and suggest +all sorts of conventional places, such as Monte Carlo and Southend, but +wherever they go, be it the most beautiful spot on earth, I remain +faithful to my discovery, and go to Somewhere Else, where Peace never +fails to greet me with the special welcome accorded to an annual visitor. +The place grows upon me with every season. Sometimes, I think I should +like to stay on and die there. No other spot in the wide universe has +half such charm for me, and even when I do die, I don't think I shall go +to where all the other happy idlers go. I shall go to Somewhere Else. + +For Cromer may be the garden of sleep, but you shall find sleepier +gardens and more papaverous poppies--Somewhere Else. The mountain-pines +of Switzerland may be tall, and the skies of Italy blue, but there are +taller pines and bluer skies--Somewhere Else. The bay of San Francisco +may be beautiful, and the landscapes of Provence lovely, and the crags of +Norway sublime, but Somewhere Else there are fairer visions and scenes +more majestical-- + + An ampler setter, a diviner air, + And fields invested with purpureal gleams. + +It never palls upon you--Somewhere Else. Every loved landmark grows +dearer to you year by year, and year by year apartments are +cheaper--Somewhere Else. The facilities for getting to it are enormous. +All roads lead to it, far more truly than to Rome. There can be no +accidents on the journey. How often do we read of people setting forth on +their holidays full of life and hope--yea, sometimes even on their +honeymoon--and lo! a signalman nods, or a bridge breaks, and they are +left mangled on the rails or washed into the river. And to think that +they would have escaped if they had only gone to Somewhere Else! Too late +the weeping relatives wring their hands and moan the remark. Henceforth, +among the ten million pleasure-pilgrims, who will be guided by me, there +will be no more tragedies by flood or field. Railway assurance will +become a thing of the past, and a fatal blow will be struck at modern +hebdomadal journalism. To turn to minor matters, your friends can never +utter the irritating "I told you not to go there!" if you have been to +Somewhere Else. And you need not label your luggage; that always goes to +Somewhere Else of itself. Last advantage of Somewhere Else, you may show +your face in it, though you departed last year without paying your bill. +There are no creditors in this blessed haven. Earth's load drops off your +shoulders when you go to Somewhere Else. + +I give this counsel in a disinterested spirit. I have not made +speculative purchases of land, I am not booming a generous jerry-builder. +And yet I cannot help reflecting apprehensively on the consequences of my +recommendation. Already I see my sweet retreat the prey of the howling +mob; I hear the German band playing on the stone parade, and catch the +sad strains of the comic singer. Sacrilegious feet tramp the solitudes, +and sandwich papers become common objects of the sea-shore. Shilling +yachts will ply where I watched the skimming curlew, and new villas will +totter on the edge of the ocean and beguile the innocent billows to be +house-breakers. Nay, the place will become the Alsatia of humanity, the +refuge for all those men and women people would rather see Somewhere +Else, and whose travelling expenses they will perchance defray. +Imagination reels before the horror of such an agglomeration of the +unamiable. And the terrible thing about my terrestrial paradise is that +there is no escaping from it. Everything has the defects of its +qualities, and this is the reverse of the dazzling medal--the drawback +which annuls all the advantages of Somewhere Else in the event of its +becoming popular. In vain shall I then endeavour to flee from it. Though +I projected myself from the giant cannon that sent Jules Verne's hero to +the moon, I should inevitably arrive--boomerang-like--at Somewhere Else. + + + + +PART III. + +AFTER-THOUGHTS: A BUNDLE OF BREVITIES. + + + + +[Sidenote: Moonshine] + +Certainly the Moon was very charming that soft summer's night, as I +watched its full golden orb gliding nonchalantly in the serene, starry +heaven, and keeping me company as I strode across the silent gorse. +But--to be indiscreet--I had grown aweary of the Moon, and of the stars +also, as of beautiful pictures hung--or should one say, skied?--in a +perpetual Academy. _Caelum non animum mutant_ is only tolerably true. A +derangement of stars is all the change you get by travelling--everywhere +the same golden-headed nails, as Hugo, hard-driven, called them, are +sticking in the firmament. This particular moon was hanging, not over a +church steeple, like De Musset's moon, + + Comme un point sur un i, + +but like the big yellow dial of the clock in a church tower. An +illuminated clock-face--but blank, featureless, expressionless, useless; +in a word, without hands. Now I could not help thinking that if there had +really been a Providence it would have put hands to the Moon--a big and a +little--and made it the chronometer of the world--nay, of the cosmos--the +universal time-piece, to which all eyes, in every place and planet, could +be raised for information; by which all clocks could be set--moon +time--an infallible monitor and measurer of the flight of the hours; +divinely right, not to be argued with; though I warrant there be some +would still swear by their watches. This were the true cosmopolitanism, +destroying those distressful variations which make your clock vary with +your climate, and which throw the shadow of pyrrhonism over truths which +should be clear as daylight. For if, when it is five o'clock here, it may +be two o'clock there and supper-time yonder, if it is night and day at +the same moment, then is black white, and Pilate right--and +Heraclitus,--and the nonconformist conscience a vain thing. + +In supporting correct moral principles, the Moon would be of some use, +instead of staring at us with an idiot face, signifying nothing. The +stars, too, could be better employed than in winking at what goes on here +below. Like ladies' gold watches by the side of Big Ben, they could +repeat the same great eternal truth--that it was half-past nine, or five +minutes to eleven. + + Soon as the evening shades prevail + The moon takes up the wondrous tale, + While all the stars that round her burn, + And all the planets in their turn, + Confirm the tidings as they roll, + And spread the _time_ from pole to pole. + +An obvious result of a synchronised universe would be the federation of +mankind, Peace on Earth, and all those other beatitudes at present vainly +sought by World Fairs, and pig-sticking prophets. + +Till we have hands to the Moon I shall not look for the Millennium. + + + + +[Sidenote: Capital] + +Suddenly the Moon went behind a cloud, as if to demonstrate that even +then there would be difficulties. Besides, I remembered it had its +quarter-days. Here my thoughts made a transition to money matters, and, +after the manner of Richard Carstone in "Bleak House," I fell to +reckoning up the sums I had saved of late. It is a calculation I make +almost every week nowadays. I have lost nothing by any of the +Jerry-Building Societies, nothing by any of the great Bank Failures. By +not having any money one saves thousands a year in these unsettled times. +Mr. Hamerton cites with amusement the remark of a wealthy Englishman, who +could not understand "why men are so imprudent as to allow themselves to +sink into money embarrassments." "There is a simple rule that I follow +myself," said he, "and that I have always found a great safeguard: it is, +_never to let one's balance at the banker's fall below five thousand +pounds_." The rich Englishman's rule was quite wrong: the only safeguard +is to have no balance at all. High and dry on the Lucretian tower of +poverty, you may watch with complacency the struggles of the sinking +funds. What a burden capital must be to those anxious to find safe +investments at high rates of interest! It looks as if interest will sink +to freezing point, and capital will have to flow to other planets if that +comical claim for "wages of abstinence" is to be met any longer. Perhaps +it will flow to Mars, the home in exile of the old political economy. +Already a beginning has been made by investments in mines which are not +upon this earth. + + + + +[Sidenote: Credit] + +Every day makes clearer the evils of our complex credit system--that +Frankenstein creation we have lost control over, that ampulaceous growth +of capital, most of which is merely figures in a book, and which only +exists in virtue of not being asked for, much as the tit-bits on a +restaurant menu are "off" when ordered. The real meaning of National +Debts is that every civilised country is bankrupt, and only goes on +trading because its creditors give it time. To the uncertainties of the +weather, and the chances of cholera, war, and earthquake, we have added +an artificial uncertainty worse than any of these--we have invented a +series of financial cyclones, which sweep round the globe, devastating +all lands, and no more to be predicted--despite theories of sun-spots, +cyclones and financial crises--than wrecks at sea; indeed, far less +predictable, for I believe with the ex-mayor quoted by Bonamy Price, that +finance is a subject which no man can understand in this world, or even +in the next. The infinite ramifications, the endless actions and +reactions, are beyond the grasp of any one but an impostor. The Professor +just mentioned thought he had found the right thread of theory in the +labyrinth of "Currency and Banking," and really did make a most sensible +analysis of what actually went on in financial operations. Only he left +out one great factor--the immense influence on the market of other +people's wrong theories. No, if there is a right thread of theory, it +must be so tangled as to be worse than useless. My friend the business +man tells me that for success in business one requires four things: a +large capital, industry, insight, and caution--and then it's a toss-up. I +am fain to believe this whole system of modern commerce was devised to +please the amateurs of the aleatory. + + + + +[Sidenote: The Small Boy] + +A plague on both your Houses of Parliament! They legislate day and night, +yet leave our lives unmodified. For our lives revolve on the pivot of +custom, and our everyday movements are not political. The real ruler of +England is the small boy of the streets! And, in truth, is it not so? By +the unphilosophic regarded as akin to vermin, existing for the greater +confusion of theologians, the small boy looms large to the man of +insight, as the true conservator of custom--the one efficient _custos +morum_. He it is who regulates the lengths to which we may go in +eccentricity, and, above all, in hair: + + Get your hair cut! + +He is particular to a shade about clothes, and has a nice taste in hats. +One wonders how he acquired it. His patriotic proclivity, his hostility +to national costumes other than English, his preference for uncoloured +complexions--this one may understand; but his aesthetic instinct is a +problem for Weismann. As the interpreter of the conventions, he is of a +cast-iron rigidity, for is he not a child of Mrs. Grundy--his mother's +own boy? He has no exceptions--it is "one law and one measure." He is the +scavenger of manners, as the Constantinople street-dog is of gutters; a +natural _police des moeurs_, infinitely more efficient than any +artificial organisation; an all-ramifying association created to keep the +bounds of social order, on duty at every street corner, alert to check +every outbreak of individuality. Do ladies aspire to ride bicycles? Or +wear bloomers? There is the small boy to face. It is a question for him. +Conciliate him, and you may laugh at the pragmatic. His, too, is a +healthy barbarism, beneficent in its action, that thinks scorn of +eyeglasses and spectacles, and leads him to denounce quadruple vision, +as, indeed, all departure from the simplicities of physical perfection. A +human scarecrow he abhors, and will follow such an one through six +streets to express his disapprobation. Extremes of size? whether of +tallness or shortness? offend him equally. Whitman was not kinder to "the +average man." Nor is the small boy's influence limited to sumptuary and +corporeal censorship: by taking up certain songs he "makes" the nation's +ballads, and every one knows what that means. Let me train a nation's +small boys, I care not who makes its laws. O small boy, true sovereign of +England, I take off my hat to thee!--to show thee the maker's name in the +lining, and satify thy anxious inquiries as to where I got it. + + + + +[Sidenote: A Day in Town.] + +I have often wondered what country children do for a holiday. Do good +people go round collecting to give them a day in London or Liverpool or +Manchester, so that their stunted lives that stretch on from year to year +with never a whiff of town fog, never a glimpse of green 'buses, or +dangerous crossings, or furnace-smoke, may be expanded and elevated? If +not, I beg to move the starting of a Town Fund at once. Nothing can be +more narrowing than rustic existence--there are old yokels whose lives +have always moved within a four-mile radius, women who have grown gray +without ever knowing what lay beyond the blue hills that girdled their +native village. I once knew a chawbacon who came to town and was barked +at by a street-dog. He stooped down to pick up one of the rough stones +lying in the roadway to ward it off withal, but to his astonishment the +stone refused to budge, for it was an integral part of the road. "Danged +if that baint[*] queer!" he exclaimed. "At home the dogs be tied and the +stones be loose. Here the dogs be loose and the stones be tied." Now, if +that man had enjoyed a school excursion to the town when a boy, he would +have deprived me of a good story. A glimpse of the town in youth might +also do good in checking the perpetual urban immigration, which, alas! +removes so many of the rustic population from the soil, and places them +under it. To this end all school excursions to London should take place +in November. Yes, there is a vast future before that fund, and I shall be +happy to start it with five thousand pounds, if two hundred and +sixty-three one-armed Scotchmen of good moral character will bind +themselves to do the same. + +[* Transcriber's note: So in original.] + + + + +[Sidenote: The Profession of Charity.] + +Mr. Labouchere is singularly unfair to a new profession. Beggary has long +been a recognised profession, with its traditions, customs, and +past-masters, and it is time that philanthropy should now be admitted to +an equal status. There is no reason in the world why it should be left in +the hands of amateurs, who muddle away funds by their lack of science and +experience. Supposing a man sees his way to doing good--founding a home +for incurables, or drunkards, or establishing a dispensary, or anything +you please--why should he not make a living by it? What if he does get +five hundred a year, is he not worth it, provided always the institution +fulfils a useful function and is not a sham? Surely he does more for +Society in return for his money than a Treasury clerk! Probably but for +him--but for his wish to earn an income--the charitable institution would +never have come into existence. Political economy already shows us how +the individual's desire for profit brings humanity all its blessings, +opens up new countries for it, and supplies them with wars and railways. +If men did not buy shares with a view to a percentage on their savings, +the march of civilisation would come to a halt. Since the philanthropy of +percentage is so obvious, why should we not recognise the percentage of +philanthropy? Charity has gone into business. Why not? + + + + +[Sidenote: The Privileges of Poverty.] + +The only people who seem to escape the malady of the century are the +poor. The _Weltschmerz_ touches them not; however great their suffering, +it is always individual. The privileges of poverty are, I fear, +insufficiently appreciated in these grasping times. It is not only +income-tax that the poor man is exempt from. There is a much more painful +tax on income than the pecuniary--it is the thought of those who are +worsted in the struggle for bare existence. _Vae victis!_ Yet those who +achieve the bare existence, who starve not, neither shiver, have surely +enviable compensations. Not theirs the distressful, wearying problems of +sociology. Far from feeling any responsibility for their fellow-beings, +they do not even fulfil their own personal duty to society,--witness the +breeding of babies in back streets. They have no sympathy with the +troubles of any other class--they eat their hard crust and they drink +their bitter beer without a thought of the dyspepsia of the diner-out, +and their appetite is not dulled by any suspicion of heart-sickness in +good society. Starvation other than physical they do not understand, and +spiritual struggles are caviare. The state of the rich does not give them +sleepless nights--they have no yearnings to reform them or amend their +condition. The terrible overcrowding of the upper classes on Belgravian +staircases wakes not a pang; they are untouched by the sufferings of +insufficiently-clad ladies in draughty stalls and royal antechambers; and +the grievances of old army men move them not. Not theirs to ponder +sorrowfully over the lost souls of politicians or the degeneration of +public manners. They live their own lives--and, whatsoever the burden, +they do not bear any one's but their own. + + + + +[Sidenote: Salvation for the Seraphim] + +Herbert Spencer says he knew a retired naval officer in whose mind God +figured as a transcendently powerful sea-captain; and we have all heard +the story of the English admiral who, when fighting the Dutch, felt sure +God wouldn't desert a fellow-countryman. But this ingenuous +identification of earthly and divine interests has been carried to the +point of imbecility by General Booth in his claim to + + "THE LARGEST CIRCULATION." + + The _War Cry_, so the General states, + Among the angels circulates, + To Heaven having gone; but, oh, + That it had first expired below! + +Which is uglier--the crude spiritualism of the Salvationist or the crude +materialism of the scientist? I receive the same sort of shock when I +peruse Mrs. Spurgeon's fond picture of her departed husband waylaying the +angels at the shining street-corners to preach the gospel to them, as +when I read that woman's poetry is inferior to man's because she exhales +less carbonic acid. + + + + +[Sidenote: Truth--Local and Temporal] + +The other day I listened to some green-room persiflage between an actress +and an eminent actor-manager. The lady said she had loved him years ago, +and thrown herself at his head, but had never been able to bring him to a +proposal. I asked if she would have been satisfied with the provincial +rights. I am not at all sure that the introduction of this principle of +legal partition would not promote domestic harmony, especially in +theatrical circles, where the practice already prevails in the matter of +plays. Indeed, this principle of partition has already been carried +beyond its original sphere. Do I not remember a theatrical lawsuit four +or five years ago in which the plaintiff sought to restrain the defendant +from styling himself part-author of a piece, on the ground that he (the +defendant) had not done a stroke of the work, and had been paid ten +pounds for it; while the defendant claimed that he had only parted with +his rights as regards London, and that in the provinces he was still +entitled to claim a share of the authorship? Pascal long ago pointed out, +in his "Pensées," that virtue and vice were largely dependent on distance +from the equator (a latitudinarianism in morals that does not seem to +have shocked his Port Royal friends). But even he failed to reach this +daring conception of "local fame." The marvel is that when once reached +it should have been let slip again. It seems to me an invaluable remedy +for disputes: absolutely infallible. When Mr. Stuart Cumberland wrote +from India to claim the plot of "The Charlatan," how simple to accord him +the authorship--_in India!_ At once we perceive a _modus vivendi_ for the +followers of Donnelly and the adherents of common-sense. In America Bacon +shall be the author of "Hamlet," but the English rights in the piece +shall go to Shakespeare. In the same spirit of compromise Cruikshank +might have been content to be the author of "Oliver Twist" in the +Hebrides and the second-class saloons of Atlantic steamers. Herman should +be sole author of "The Silver King" in Pall Mall, and Jones in +Piccadilly. Some metropolitan streets belong by one pavement to one +parish, and by the other to another; so that in the case of parochial +celebrities it would be possible for the rival great men to glare at each +other across the road--not, however, daring to cross it, for fear of +losing their reputation. The Frenchman's long-standing assumption of +Parisian rights in the victory of Waterloo would be put upon a legitimate +basis. + +By a logical extension of the principle we could allow Homer to be born +in Chios on Mondays, in Colophon on Tuesdays, and so with each of the +seven cities which starved him. They use up the week nicely. On the odd +day of leap year we might concede that he never existed, and allow him to +be resolved into the pieces into which he was torn by Wolf. Had this +pacificatory principle been discovered earlier, "The Letters of Phalaris" +would never have fluttered Europe, and Swift would have had no need to +write "The Battle of the Books." It is never too late to mend, however, +and an academy of leading politicians and ecclesiastics should be at once +formed to draw up an authoritative "Calendar and Topography of Belief," +fixing once for all the dates and places on or in which it is permissible +to hold any given opinion. Although, when I come to think of it, Science +and Religion have long been tacitly reconciled on this principle, +Religion being true on Sundays and Science on week-days. + + + + +[Sidenote: The Creed of Despair.] + +I am convinced that optimism is exactly the wrong sort of medicine for +our "present discontents." It is time to try homoeopathy. My suggestion +is that the religion of the future shall consist of the most pessimistic +propositions imaginable; its creed shall be godless and immoral, its +thirty-nine articles shall exhaust the possibilities of unfaith and its +burden shall be _vanitas vanitatum_. Man shall be an automaton, and life +an hereditary disease, and the world a hospital, and truth a dream, and +beauty an optical illusion. These sad tidings of great sorrow shall be +organized into a state church, with bishops and paraphernalia, and shall +be sucked in by the infant at its mother's breast. Men shall be tutored +in unrighteousness, and innocence shall be under ecclesiastical ban. +Faith and Hope shall be of the seven deadly virtues, and unalloyed +despair of man and nature a dogma it were blasphemous to doubt. The good +shall be persecuted and the theists tortured, and those that say there is +balm in Gilead, shall be thrust beyond the pale of decent society. + +Then, oh, what a spiritual revival there will be! Every gleam of light +will be eagerly sought for, every ray focussed; every hint of love and +pity and beauty, of significance and divinity, in this infinite and +infinitely mysterious universe, will be eagerly snatched up and thrust +upon an age hide-bound in orthodoxy; every touch and trace of tenderness +that softens suffering and sweetens the bitterness of death, will be +treasured up in secret mistrust of the reigning creed; every noble +thought and deed, every sacred tear, will be thrown into the balance of +heresy with every dear delight of poetry and art, of woods and waters, of +dawns and sunsets; with every grace of childhood and glory of man and +womanhood. And every suppressed doubt of the hideousness of the universe +will sink deep and ferment in darkness, and persecution will sit on every +natural safety valve till at last the pent forces will swell and crack +the sterile soil, and there will be an explosion that shall send a pillar +of living fire towards the heavens of brass. The clerics will be among +the first to feel the stirrings of infidel hope--a few will give up their +livings rather than preach what they do not believe, but the +majority--especially the bishops--will cling to the Church of Despair, +hoping against hope that their despair is true. There will be wonderful +word-spinnings in the reviews, and the dominant pessimism will be +justified by algebraic analogies. But, beneath it all, the church will be +infected to the core with faith, and for the first time in history we +shall get a believing clergy. There will be secret societies founded to +publish the Bible, and Colonel Ingersoll will lecture at the hall of +religion, and the prisons will be crowded with martyred iconoclasts +incredulous of the gospel of science. No, there is nothing so unwise as +your optimistic organized creeds, with their suggestions of officialdom, +red-tape, and back-stairs influence. We shall never be perfectly +religious and moral till we are trained from childhood to ungodly works, +forced to attend long sermons on the error of existence, and badgered +into public impiety by force of opinion. + + + + +[Sidenote: Social Bugbears.] + +First there were the Radicals, who stood for the apogee of human +villainy, though it now appears they were Conservatives of the mildest +type. Then came the turn of the Atheists, who, for all I have been able +to discover, were very respectable creatures full of religious ardour, +who spelt God with a small "g" and justice with a capital "J." Then the +Socialists had their innings. But "we are all Socialists now," and the +empty mantle of villainy has fallen upon Anarchism, which, as far as I +can make out, is the simplest and most innocent creed ever invented, and +which debars its adherents from exercising any compulsion upon anybody +else, relying upon the natural moral working of the human heart. How this +is compatible with bombs it is for _Messieurs les Anarchistes_ to +explain. Needless to say the assassinous Anarchists are disavowed by +their philosophical brethren. + + + + +[Sidenote: Martyrs.] + +Although we moderns work harder than our fathers for our opinions, we are +sometimes taunted with not being so ready to die for them. But, as Renan +points out, thinkers have no need to die to demonstrate a theorem. Saints +may die for their faith because faith is a personal matter. Even so we +are still ready to die for our honour. The Christian martyrs did prove +that Christianity was a reality to them; but Galileo's death would have +been irrelevant to the rotation of the earth. There is no _argumentum per +hominem_ possible here; the truth is impersonal. It is only for beliefs +that exclude certainty that a man is tempted to martyrdom. The martyr is +indeed, as the etymology implies, a witness; but his death is not a +witness to the truth of his belief--merely to the truth of his believing. +Blandine at her stake, enduring a hundred horrors unflinchingly, seems in +addition to prove that faith was the first anaesthetic. It is curious to +note how the word "martyr" has been degraded; so that we have to-day +martyrs to the gout instead of to the truth. The idea of suffering has +quite ousted the idea of witnessing. What a pity the word got these +painful associations! There are "martyrs" to the truth--witnesses who +without dying testify to the divine streak in life; and unconscious +"martyrs" who, by their simple sincerity, their unpretentious +unselfishness, prove more than a bookshelf of theology. I have found +"martyrdom" in the grip of a friend's hand, though if I had told him so +he would have apologised for squeezing so hard. And is not every pretty +woman a "martyr"--a revelation of an inner soul of beauty and goodness in +this chaotic universe? There! I have succumbed again to the common +masculine impulse to conceive beauty and goodness as a chemical +combination, subtly inter-related; whereas the slightest practical +experience in the laboratory of life discovers them but a mechanical +mixture, dissociable and not seldom antipathetic. + + + + +[Sidenote: The London Season] + +I remember being so bored one night at dinner, by the ceaseless chatter +about Burne-Jones, that I asked my fair neighbour: "Who is Burne-Jones?" +Her reply was as smart as it was feminine. "I don't believe you." There +is a moral in this. Why be a slave to the season? Why bother to read all +the newest novels, see all the newest plays, hear all the newest +musicians, remember all the newest "Reminiscences," and believe all the +newest religions, when by pleading ignorance you will pass not only as an +eccentric but a connoisseur? On second thoughts, why not eschew the +season altogether? God made the seasons and man made the season, as +Cowper forgot to say. And a nice mess man has made of it, turning night +into day and heating his rooms in the summer. The London Season, not +Winter, Mr. Cowper, is the true "Ruler of the Inverted Year." + + + + +[Sidenote: The Academy] + +The Academy has survived Mr. Burne-Jones' desertion of his old +associates, as it would survive art itself. I for one should regret its +disappearance. It is a whetstone for wit, like everything established and +respectable. I am only sorry we have no Academy of Letters. It gives one +such a standing not to be a member--almost as good a standing as to be +one. If you are left out in the cold you loudly pity those asphyxiating +in the heat, and if you have a cozy chair by the fireside you fall asleep +and say nothing. This promotes happiness all round, and makes the +literary man contented with his lot. In England authors have no Academy, +and so have to fall back on the poor publishers: _Hinc illae lachrymae!_ + + + + +[Sidenote: Portraits of Gentlemen] + +Everybody paints the portrait of nobody. Imagine a great writer being +called upon to produce a black-and-white picture of a man of no +importance: Let us imagine, say Meredith, being offered a thousand pounds +for a pen-and-ink portrait of a provincial mayor--being asked to devote +his graphic art, his felicitous choice of words, his gifts of insight and +sympathy, his genius, in a word, to the portrayal of a real live +mayor--the same to be published in book-form, asked for at the libraries, +and discussed at dinner-tables and in the reviews as a specimen of the +season's art. Of course Meredith would tell the man to go and be hanged +(in the Academy); but if he consented, see what would take place. The +literary portrait involves, of course, both mind and body, and +practically the work would have to take the shape of a biography. For +some weeks the man would come to Meredith's study and give him talkings. +At the first talking Meredith would also make a sketch of the outside +appearance of his subject. Here the resources of language far exceed +those of colour. The happy euphemism of language permits a squint to be +described as an ambidexterity of vision; it is even quite possible to +omit an ill-regulated feature altogether. Suppose an artist paints a man +without a nose--the defect _sauterait aux yeux_: it would be as plain as +the nose not upon his face. But it is quite possible for the literary +artist to omit a man's nose without attracting any attention. The +reader's imagination supplies the nose, without even being conscious of +its purveyorship. As for the psychological portion of the portrait, the +author would be entirely dependent on the information given by the +subject, so that provincial mayors would develop unsuspected virtues. +Where the difficulty would come in would be in the absence of darker +qualities, which would make literary chiaroscuro impossible. It is quite +likely, though, that as a result of the talkings the subject would +unwittingly present the novelist with a real character who would appear +in his next work of fiction, and be entirely unrecognized either by the +reader of the biography or its subject. + + + + +[Sidenote: Photography and Realism] + +No artist of the brush can afford to dispense with models; when he draws +from his inner consciousness the composition is tame and the +draughtsmanship wild. The novelist, though his object is not portraiture, +but creation, can as little afford to keep aloof from real men and women. +When George Eliot ceased to draw from models and fell back on intuition +and her library, she produced "Daniel Deronda." But I would demur +altogether to the use of "photography" in literary criticism as +synonymous with realism. The photograph is an utter misrepresentation of +life, and this not merely because of its false shades and its lack of +colour, but because the photographer is not content with literalness. He +aspires to art. So far from being a realist, he is the greatest idealist +of all. He not only puts you into poses you would never fall into +naturally, he not only arranges you so as to hide your characteristic +uglinesses, and bids you call up an expression you never use, but he +touches up and tones down after you are gone, and treats his pictures, +indeed, as though they were actors and he the dresser. And as each +photographer has his own style, no two portraits are ever alike. My +portraits of Annabel pass as a collection of pretty actresses. Still, if +they are not like one another, they resemble one another in being unlike +her. The only good photographs I have ever seen of myself were done by an +amateur--most of the others might just as well have been taken in my +absence. And there is always a painful neatness about photographs: my +humble study was once photographed, and it looked like a princely +library. Bags come out with artistic interstices, fustian gleams like +satin. It is the true Platonic touch, glorifying and gilding everything. +Filth itself would come out like roses. No, no, let us hear no more about +Zola's "photography." + + + + +[Sidenote: The Great Unhung] + +What becomes of all the old pins is a problem that worries many simple +souls. What becomes of all the rejected pictures is a question that seems +to trouble nobody. And yet at every exhibition the massacre of innocents +is appalling. The Royal Academy of London, which is the most hospitable +institution in the world toward "wet paint," still turns away very many +more canvases than it admits. Their departure is like the retreat of the +Ten Thousand. Into the Salon one year six thousand eager frames crowded, +but when the public came to see, only thirteen hundred were left to tell +the tale-- + + All that was left of them, + Left of six thousand. + +More ruthless still was the slaughter in the New Salon, the Salon of the +Champs de Mars, where the pictures were decimated. Out of two thousand +seven hundred works sent in by outsiders, only three hundred survived. It +is impossible to believe that ideal justice was done, especially when we +consider that the jury took only one day to consider the outcome of so +many aspirations, such manifold toil. The pictures were wheeled past them +on gigantic easels, an interminable panorama. Even supposing that the +gentlemen of the jury took a full working day of eight hours, with no +allowance for déjeuner, the average time for examining a picture works +out at something like ten seconds. In each minute of that fateful day the +destiny of half a dozen pictures was decided. Verily, our +picture-connoisseur seems to have elevated criticism into an instinct--he +is the smoothest human mechanism on record. One wonders if the critic +will ever be replaced by an automaton, something analogous to the camera +that has replaced the artist. Meantime, the point is--what becomes of the +refused, those unwelcome revenants that return to lower the artist in the +eyes of landladies and concierges? Sometimes, we know, the stone which +the builders rejected becomes the corner-stone of the temple, and the +proscribed painter lives to despise publicly the judges in the gate. But +these revenges are rare, and for the poor bulk of mankind the whirligig +of time revolves but emptily. The average artist rejected of one +exhibition turns him to another, and the leavings of the Salon beat at +the doors of Antwerp and Munich, where the annual of art blooms a little +later in the spring. + +Pitiful it is to follow a picture from refusal to refusal; one imagines +the painter sublime amid the litter of secretarial notifications, +gathering, Antaeus-like, fresh strength from every fall, and coming to a +grim and gradual knowledge of the great cosmopolitan conspiracy. One year +the rejected of the Academy were hung in London by an enterprising +financier. It was the greatest lift-up the Academy had ever had. Even its +enemies were silenced temporarily. But the rejected may console +themselves. The accepted have scant advantage over them. To sell a +picture is becoming rarer and rarer, and the dealer is no more respectful +to the canvas that has achieved the honor of the catalogue than to that +which has preserved the sequestration of the studio. Sometimes the unhung +picture becomes the medium upon which another is painted (for a picture +is always worth the canvas it is painted on), sometimes (if it is large) +it is cut up and sold in bits, sometimes it adorns the family +dining-room, or decorates the hall of a good-natured friend, and +sometimes, after a variety of pecuniary adventures, it becomes the proud +possession of a millionaire. + + + + +[Sidenote: The Abolition of Catalogues.] + +The average Englishman takes his religion on Sundays and his Art in the +spring. Influences that should permeate life are collected in chunks at +particular seasons. This is sufficient to prove how little they are +really felt or understood. The Academy headache is the due penalty of +hypocrisy. It is the catalogue that is the greatest coadjutor of cant. If +pictures, besides being hung, were treated like convicts in becoming +merely numbers, without names either of painters or subjects, what a +delightful confusion of critical tongues would ensue! But conceding that +a picture should have the painter's name, for the sake of the artist (or +his enemies), I would propose that everything else be abolished. It is +not unfair to subject pictures to this severe test, because, of all forms +of art, painting is the one whose appeal is instantaneous, simple and +self-complete. If a picture cannot speak for itself, no amount of +advocacy will save it. If it tells a story (which no good picture +should), let it at least do so without invoking the aid of the rival art +of literature. Literature does not ask the assistance of pictures to make +its meaning clear. Nor, too, is anything gained by calling colours +harmonies or symphonies. Let such pictures strike their own chords and +blow their own trumpets. Catalogues of all kinds are but props to +artistic inefficiency. If dumb-show plays did not rely on "books of the +words," pantomime would have to become a finer art. If ballets had no +thread of narrative attached to them, their constructors would be driven +to achieve greater intelligibility, or to give up trying for it--which +were the more gratifying alternative. So with the descriptions of +symphonies we find in our programmes. Why should good music be translated +into bad literature? Surely each art should be self-sufficient; +developing its effects according to its own laws! A melody does not need +to be painted, nor a picture to be set to music. The graceful evolutions +of the dance are their own justification. The only case in which I would +allow a title to a picture is when it is a portrait. That is an obvious +necessity. Portrait-painting is a branch of art which demands +recognition. + + + + +[Sidenote: The Artistic Temperament] + +There are two aspects of the artistic temperament--the active or creative +side, and the passive or receptive side. It is impossible to possess the +power of creation without possessing also the power of appreciation; but +it is quite possible to be very susceptible to artistic influences while +dowered with little or no faculty of origination. On the one hand is the +artist--poet, musician, or painter; on the other, the artistic person to +whom the artist appeals. Between the two, in some arts, stands the +artistic interpreter--the actor who embodies the aery conceptions of the +poet, the violinist or pianist who makes audible the inspirations of the +musician. But in so far as this artistic interpreter rises to greatness +in his field, in so far he will be found soaring above the middle ground, +away from the artistic person, and into the realm of the artist or +creator. Joachim and De Reszké, Paderewski and Irving, put something of +themselves into their work; apart from the fact that they could all do +(in some cases have done) creative work on their own account. So that +when the interpreter is worth considering at all, he may be considered in +the creative category. Limiting ourselves, then, to these two main +varieties of the artistic temperament, the active and the passive, I +should say that the latter is an unmixed blessing, and the former a mixed +curse. + +What, indeed, can be more delightful than to possess good aesthetic +faculties--to be able to enjoy books, music, pictures, plays! This +artistic sensibility is the one undoubted advantage of man over other +animals, the extra octave in the gamut of life. Most enviable of mankind +is the appreciative person, without a scrap of originality? who has every +temptation to enjoy, and none to create. He is the idle heir to treasures +greater than India's mines can yield; the bee that sucks at every flower, +and is not even asked to make honey. For him poets sing, and painters +paint, and composers write. "_O fortunates nimium_," who not seldom yearn +for the fatal gift of genius! For _this_ artistic temperament is a +curse--a curse that lights on the noblest and best of mankind! From the +day of Prometheus to the days of his English laureate it has been a curse + + To vary from the kindly race of men, + +and the eagles have not ceased to peck at the liver of men's benefactors. +All great and high art is purchased by suffering--it is not the +mechanical product of dexterous craftsmanship. This is one part of the +meaning of that mysterious "Master Builder" of Ibsen's. "Then I saw +plainly why God had taken my little children from me. It was that I +should have nothing else to attach myself to. No such thing as love and +happiness, you understand. I was to be only a master builder--nothing +else." And the tense strings that give the highest and sweetest notes are +most in danger of being overstrung. + +But there are compensations. The creative artist is higher in the scale +of existence than the man, as the man is higher than the beatified oyster +for whose condition, as Aristotle pointed out, few would be tempted to +barter the misery of human existence. The animal has consciousness, man +self-consciousness, and the artist over-consciousness. Over-consciousness +may be a curse, but, like the primitive curse--labour--there are many who +would welcome it! + + + + +[Sidenote: Professional Ethics] + +There's no knowing where the artistic temperament may break out. "I don't +think that a person ought to come to the binder and just say to him, +'Bind that book for so much money.' I think the binder ought to say, 'Is +the book worth binding?' and that if it were not he ought to refuse." The +applications of this remarkable principle, enunciated by a bookbinder, +are obvious. Applied universally it would reform the race. The tailor, +when a man came to be measured, would say, "Yes, but are you worth +measuring?" and if he was out of drawing would refuse to dress him, thus +extruding deformity from the world and restoring the Olympian gods. The +charwoman, inspired by George Herbert, would not only "sweep a room as by +God's laws," but would inquire whether it was worth sweeping; the wine +merchant would refuse wine to rich customers who did not deserve to drink +it; and the doctors would certainly not devote their best energies to +keeping gouty old noblemen alive. + + + + +[Sidenote: Lay Confessors] + +We writers, as Beaeonsfield said to his sovereign, are a good substitute +for the confessional; we like to be allowed peeps into the secret +chambers of the heart. The most miserable sinners may be as sure of our +secrecy as of our absolution. The more terrible the crime the better we +are pleased. So come and ease your labouring consciences, and pour your +sorrows into our sympathetic shorthand books, and we will work you up the +bare material of your lives so artistically that you are the veriest +Philistines if you shall not be rather glad to have sinned and suffered. +For deep down in our hearts lurks the belief that, as Jerome wittily puts +it, "God created the world to give the literary man something to write +about!" + + + + +[Sidenote: Q. E. D. Novels] + +A novel, like a metaphor, proves nothing: 't is merely a vivid pictorial +presentation of a single case. I have just read one novel aspiring to +prove that a couple who skip the marriage ceremony cannot be happy ever +after, and another aspiring to prove that marriage is the one drawback to +a happy union. In reality both novels prove the same thing--that the +author is a fool. There is nothing I would not undertake to "prove" in a +novel. You have only to take an exceptional case and treat it as if it +were normal. Aesop's fables could easily be rewritten to prove exactly +the opposite morals, just as there is no popular apothegm whose antidote +may not be found in the same treasury of folk-wisdom: "Never put off till +to-morrow what you can do to-day," and "Sufficient for the day is the +evil thereof"; "Penny wise, pound foolish!" "Look after the pence and the +pounds will take care of themselves." + +In sooth I suffer from an inability to see the morals of stories--like +the auditor who blunts the point of the drollest anecdote by inquiring +"And what happened then?" Even the beautiful allegory of the three rings +in "Nathan der Weise," always seems to me to throw considerable discredit +on the father who set his sons wrangling over the imitation rings. And, +inversely, nothing seems easier to me than to invent fables to prove +wrong morals: _e.g._ + + + + +[Sidenote: The Mouse Who Died] + +A pretty gray mouse was in the habit of sauntering from its hole every +evening to pick up the Crumbs in the Dining Boom. "What a pretty Mouse!" +said the Householder, and made more crumbs for Mousie to eat. So great a +banquet was thus spread that the Noble-hearted little Mouse cheeped the +news to its Sisters and its Cousins and its Aunts, and they all came +every evening in the Train of its Tail to regale themselves on the +remains of the Repast. "Dear, dear!" cried the Householder in despair, +"the house is overrun with a plague of Vermin." And he mixed poison with +the crumbs, and the poor little pioneer Mouse perished in contortions of +agony. Moral: Don't. + + + + +[Sidenote: Theologic Novels] + +Usually the speculations that first reach the great public through the +medium of the novel have been familiar _ad nauseam_ to the reading +classes for scores of years. Conceive Noah, aroused by the grating of the +Ark upon the summit of Mount Ararat, looking out of the window and +exclaiming, "Why, it's been raining!" Then imagine Mrs. Noah, catching an +odd syllable of her husband's remark, writing a love story to prove that +the barometer portended showers. Finally, picture the world looking in +alarm for its umbrella, and you have an image of the inception and effect +of the modern Mrs. Noah's theologic novel. + + MUDIE MEASURE. + + Ten lines make one page; + Ten pages make one point; + Two points make one chapter; + Five chapters make one episode; + Two episodes make one volume: + Three volumes make one tired. + + + + +[Sidenote: The Prop of Letters] + +Is it a bright or a black day for an author when he gets so popular that +the big advertisers insist on having him in any organ in which they place +their advertisements? There can be no question but that it will be a +black day for letters when the advertiser becomes the arbiter of +literature, as this newest development forebodes. Where is this leprosy +of advertisement to stop? Already it covers almost our whole +civilisation. Already the advertiser is a main prop of the press. + + A SONG OF ADVERTISEMENTS. (_After_ Whitman.) + + Give me Hornihand's Pure Mustard; + Give me Apple's Soap, with the negress laving the cherub; + Give me Bentley's Brimstone Tablets, and Ploughman's + Pills--those of the Little Liver. + (O get me ads., you agent with the frock-coat and the fountain pen, + You with the large commissions + And the further discount on cash, + Get me ads., _camarado_! + Full pages preferred, though little ones not scorning, + For I scorn nothing, my brother.) + Give me the Alphabetical Snuff; + Give me Electric Batteries and False Teeth; also the Tooth-powders; + Give me all the Soft Soaps and the Soothing Syrups; + Give me all the Cocoas and Cough Lozenges and Corsets; + Give me Infants' Food--yea, the diet of babes and sucklings; + Give me the Nibs and the Beef Essences, and do not forget the + Typewriters. + (Forget nothing, _camarado_, for I, the poet, never forget + anything.) + Give me of the Fat of your agency, and of the Anti-Fat thereof! + And I will build you magazines, high-class and well illustrated; + Or pictureless _à volonté_, the latter with heavier articles. + Also newspapers, daily and weekly, with posters flamboyant, + That shall move the state and its pillars, + That shall preach the loftiest morals, elevating the masses, + By the strength of advertisements, + By the mighty strength of advertisements! + +It has been suggested that flypapers should be so sprinkled as to produce +an aesthetic design in dead flies, so as to introduce beauty into the +homes of the poor. It would be more in harmony with the age to lay out +our public gardens with floral injunctions to use B's hair-dye and C's +corn-plaster. Brag and display are the road to riches, and the trail of +vulgarity is over it all. I take credit to myself for having been among +the first to cry in the wilderness; but the critics--bless them!--say it +is all empty paradox. + + + + +[Sidenote: The Latter-day Poet] + +The one exception to the hunger for advertisement is the modern bard. He +achieves his vogue by limited editions, and takes pains to prevent +himself being an influence. He acquires a factitious fame and an +artificial value by printing only a few copies, thus making his paper and +print sought after rather than his matter. It is all very well for a book +to become rare by the vicissitudes of literary fortune, but this +machine-made rarity can only be prized by people who value their +possessions merely because other people haven't got them. The old minor +poet was frenzied and unbought; the new is calm and "collected." At this +rate the greatest poets would be those of whose works only one copy is +extant--in MS. + + Bend, bend the knee, and bow the head + To reverence the great unread, + The great unread and much-reviewed, + Whose lines are treasured like the lewd, + His first editions prizes reckoned + Because there never was a second. + Obscurely famous in his rut, + Unknown, unpopular, "uncut," + Where Byron thrilled a continent, + To thrill an auction-room content, + He struggles through oblivion's bogs, + To gain a place in--catalogues! + And falls asleep and joins the dust + In simple hope and modest trust + That, though Posterity neglect + His bones, his books it will collect, + And these will grow--O prospect fair!-- + From year to year more "scarce" and "rare." + + + + +[Sidenote: An Attack of Alliteration] + +Have you noticed the Renaissance of alliteration in the new journalism? +The early English Poets made alliteration the chief element of their +poetry, and in modern times Swinburne has paid more attention to it (and +to rhyme) than to meaning, with the result that there has arisen a school +of poets who don't mean anything--and say it. In the olden days, a bride +was bonny, and was requested to busk herself in consequence; all of which +was intelligible. Nowadays, the poet would call a basilisk bonny rather +than miss his alliteration. Is it because the new journalism is so +imaginative and emotional that it throws off alliterative phrases as +naturally and unconsciously as Whittier confesses he did in writing "The +Wreck of Rivermouth"? It is sometimes difficult to believe that +providence is not on the side of the evening bills. When Balmaceda died +he committed Suicide by Shooting himself in Santiago--of all places in +the world. Boulanger, if from a local point of view he died less +satisfactorily, was yet careful to employ a Bullet. It is for the sake of +the phrase-makers that Burglars good-naturedly prefer Bermondsey, and +that Tigers do not escape from their cages to play in Tragedies till the +show arrives at Tewkesbury. The Baboon is already so largely alliterative +in himself that it was an excess of generosity that made one recently +attack an infant under such circumstances as to allow the report to be +headed, "Baby Bitten by a Baboon in a Backyard at Bow." Alliteration has +become a mighty factor in politics: it is fast replacing epigram, while +its effects on moral character are tremendous. That "hardened criminal," +Mr. Balfour, might have been a good man instead of a "base brutal bully," +if his name had only commenced with an X. He is a noteworthy martyr to +the mania of the times. I am convinced that the Death of the Duke of +Devonshire was accelerated by anxiety to please the sub-editors, and it +is a source of real regret to me to reflect that my own death can afford +them no supplementary gratification of this nature. + + + + +[Sidenote: The Humorous] + +To start anything exclusively funny is a serious mistake. This was why +poor Henry J. Byron's "Mirth" was so short-lived. It died of laughing. A +friend of mine, with a hopeless passion for psychological analysis, says +that the reason people do not laugh over comic papers is that the element +of the unexpected is wanting. This, he claims, is the essence of the +comic. You laugh over a humorous remark in the middle of a serious essay, +over a witty epigram flashed upon a grave conversation, over the slipping +into the gutter of a ponderous gentleman--it is the shock of contrast, +the flash of surprise, that tickles. Now this explanation of why people +do not laugh over comic papers is obviously wrong, because you are +surprised when you see a joke in a comic paper; at the same time, it +contains an element of truth. The books which gain a reputation for +brilliance are those which are witty at wide intervals; the writer who +scintillates steadily stands in his own light. + + + + +[Sidenote: The Discount Farce] + +Having started your magazine, you will begin humorously enough by +affixing a mock price to it. What a strange world of make-believe it is! +We are so habituated to shams that we cannot help shamming even where +there is nothing to be gained by it. Why is music published at four +shillings when you can buy it for one and four, or at most one and eight? +Why are novels published at thirty-one and six and the magazines at a +shilling? "Shilling shockers" are sold at ninepence, which is as comical +as selling "tenpenny nails" at sixpence. The same principle rules in +other trades. It almost seems as if there is an ineradicable instinct in +humanity for getting things below their price, even if at more than their +value. Hence the marked popularity of "sales" and "reductions." The idea +of getting things cheap reconciles one to getting things one doesn't +want. The craze for cheap things leads one into frightful extravagance. +In some shops the weakness of humanity is pandered to without disguise, +and every article is ticketed with a little card, from which the first +price is carefully ruled out, and even on the second price you get a +discount for cash. This same discount for cash is at least intelligible, +but business men are painfully familiar with another wonderful deduction. +After you wait months for your money, you get a cheque less "discount on +payment." This seems to involve an exasperating Hibernicism. "On +payment," forsooth! So long as it remains unpaid, the debt due to you is, +say, one hundred pounds. But the moment you really get it, it shrinks to +ninety-five. Why not call it ninety-five at the start and be done with +it? But, no! men will not give up the subtle pleasure of discounts, +ineffably childish though it be. The rather deaf lady who being asked six +shillings a yard for stuff replied "Sixteen shillings a yard! I'll give +you eleven," and who, when her mistake was pointed out, said "I couldn't +think of paying more than four and sixpence" was a genuine type of the +population of these islands. + + + + +[Sidenote: The Franchise Farce] + +One American defense of bribery is as clever as it is cynical. It amounts +to this: that universal suffrage is such a peril to the commonweal that +having been given prematurely, it must insidiously be nullified in +practice, even at the cost of universal corruption; in short, if the old +society is to be preserved, universal franchise must be transformed into +universal corruption. What an ironic commentary on the constitution that +was founded by George Washington, who couldn't tell a lie! The honour of +America, it appears, "rooted in dishonour" stands, and "faith unfaithful" +makes its politicians falsely true. When one remembers some of the other +gigantic evils of the society thus conserved by corruption, when one +thinks of the great immoral capitalists, playing their game regardless of +whom they ruin or whom they enrich, when one thinks of the squalid slums +of the great cities, one wonders whether the society which these things +shadow were not better damned. It were cleaner, at any rate, to abolish +universal franchise than to flaunt this farce in the eyes of Europe. If +universal suffrage was a mistake, if indeed the gift of the franchise +does not develop a man's conscience and education--and certainly bribery +is not the way to give him a chance of such development--then why not +honestly admit that America has made this mistake, that the ideals of the +Pilgrim Fathers were inferior to Tammany Hall's, and that even the negro +is not a man and a brother? + +Does our American reply that it is impossible now to take back the +franchise? But on his own showing the electors merely regard it as an +opportunity for extracting "boodle." All that would be impossible, then, +is to take away this ancient concession without compensation. The +electors must be bought out at the full market-value of their votes, with +a few cents and corpse-revivers thrown in for their loss of amusement. At +every election dollars and drinks for the ex-electors would be +circulating freely under the direction of the Treasury. And, _ex +hypothesi_, the bulk, or a number of electors sufficient to annul the +danger to society, will accept the liquidation, and thus the dishonest +will be honestly weeded out of the electorate. But if the cynics were +wrong, and there remained among the poorer electorate men sufficiently +honest to retain their votes, and sufficiently numerous to swamp the old +society--why, then the devil take the old society! The object of +government is only the good of the majority, and these men, being the +majority, have every right to select their own form of good. If they were +mistaken, nature would soon convince them of their mistake, and the next +generation would profit by the object-lesson. Demos would go on, a sadder +and a wiser man. + +The solution of the question is that the people must not only govern: it +must be fit to govern. To corrupt it with dollars, to drowse it with +drink, is only to put off the inevitable day. It were far wiser to help +it to educate itself for its functions. For, if the revolutionary +economic ideas that are in the air are false, they will destroy +themselves. And if they are true, they have got to be realised, and will +get themselves realised. No amount of corruption will save society in the +long run. Meantime, either let universal suffrage operate honestly, or +let it be suspended or abolished. Let even those States which have +enfranchised the black man, and which now, in accordance with the deep +Machiavellian principle, brazenly revealed by our American, dishonestly +render his vote nugatory by a reliable inaccuracy in the counting, +withdraw their spurious Christianity. A double standard of morals subtly +infects the whole core of the nation. Corruption cannot be localised; it +creeps and spreads through all departments of thought and action. To give +with the right hand, and take away with the left in exchange for a few +dollars, is a manoeuvre unworthy of a great nation. The transaction is +fair; let it be above board, let it be lifted into the plane of ethics. +To found society upon a farce is to lower those ideals by which, as much +as by bread, a nation lives. + + + + +[Sidenote: The Modern War Farce] + +The horrors of war seem to have reached the vanishing point in our latest +African campaign. The smallness of the English losses is appalling. I do +not see the fun of fighting (_i.e._, of paying taxes) if all the spice +and relish is to be taken out of the results. I want more blood for my +money--hecatombs of corpses. Two men killed in a whole battle? +Ridiculous! If I cannot have my war at my own doors, and hear the bands +and the cannon I have paid for, I must at least have sensational +battle-fields--Actiums and Waterloos and Marengos. What is the use of war +if it does not even serve to reduce our surplus population? Soldiering +was never so healthy an occupation as to-day; one fights only a few days +a year at the utmost, and if the pay is poor, so is that of the scavenger +and the engine-driver and the miner, and everybody else who does the +dirty work of civilisation, and does it, too, without pomp and +circumstance and brass bands and laureates. + + + + +[Sidenote: Fireworks] + +If people cannot do without sulphur and noise, there are always +fireworks. It is difficult to imagine festivity without them, and yet +there must have been a time when rockets did not rise or Catherine wheels +go round. You cannot have fireworks without gunpowder, and every +school-boy knows that gunpowder was only invented in--I haven't got a +dictionary of dates handy. Surely we ought to let off fireworks on Roger +Bacon's birthday. "They let off fireworks when he was born," say the +French in a slyly witty proverb, which is a circumlocutory way of saying +that a man won't set the Thames on fire. For "he has not invented +gunpowder" is the French equivalent for this idiom of ours, and it is +obvious to the meanest intellect that a man whose birth was celebrated by +fireworks could not have been the inventor of gunpowder. And yet there +were fireworks of a kind from the earliest times, from the first +appearance of stars in the firmament with their wandering habits and +shooting expeditions. And, indeed, did not humanity long regard the +heavens as a firework show for its amusement, a set piece entirely for +its delectation? Mankind has always been fond of playing with fire--ever +since Prometheus stole it from heaven and burnt his fingers. I am +convinced the ancients only used bonfires for messages so as to enjoy the +flare-up on the mountains. Who would not fight when summoned by a tongue +of flame? + + And the red glare on Skiddaw roused the burghers of Carlisle. + +Roman candles were unknown to the Romans, but they enjoyed themselves +with torches, and these were the fireworks at wedding fêtes. The golden +rain in which Jupiter wooed Danaë was another sort of hymeneal fireworks. +There were fireworks at the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. The love +of fireworks is a natural passion. Does not nature amuse herself with +fireworks, especially on tropical summer nights? She loves to flash her +lightnings (which are not to be put out by the rain), and to crash her +thunder (which, as everybody knows, is only the report of the meeting of +two electric clouds). And who does not admire her grand pyrotechnic +display--twice daily--at sunrise and at sunset, or her celebrated local +effect, the Aurora Borealis? + +I have loved fireworks from boyhood, and would rather have had dry bread +and fireworks than cake with jam. In manhood often I have listened to the +long-drawn ecstatic "aw" of the Crystal Palace crowd. I have even written +a poem on fireworks. Here it is:-- + + A dazzling fiery show of sphery rainbows, + Whereof each wonder, monarch of a moment, + Yields up its glory to the next one's splendour, + And sadly sinks into the arms of darkness. + +Is it not a true simile of the favour of the fickle crowd? The most +brilliant phenomena are forgotten after a moment. Life and Time are full +of such fireworks--religions, philosophies, fashions, dynasties. And +overhead the sure stars shine on. In literature fireworks rarely last. +They are too clever to live. A humble rushlight lasts longer. "All +fireworks are unsound," says Steinitz. He is talking of chess, and chess +is very much like life. Whistler has painted fireworks--I mean +literally--in his blue and silver nocturne of old Battersea Bridge. +Tennyson has painted them in his "Welcome to Alexandra" and elsewhere. + + Flash, ye cities, in rivers of fire! + Rush to the roof, sudden rocket, and higher, + Melt into stars for the land's desire! + +"Sudden rocket." How good the adjective is! A poet I know spent hall a +day in finding the correct epithet for rockets, and was equally pleased +and annoyed to discover subsequently that he had chosen the same +adjective as the Master. + + + + +[Sidenote: Time's Forelock.] + +Nowadays we let off all our fireworks a day before the fair and tug Time +by his forelock. A magazine coming out in January must be dated February +at the very earliest. We "go ahead" in an Irish-American sense, and +cannot endure not to be in advance of our age. We live entirely in the +future, and are too busy to live just at present. Christmas falls late in +October and extends to the end of November, the period being marked by +heavy showers of Christmas numbers. The Jews begin all their festivals +the day before, and Christmas is by far the most Jewish of our holidays. +Our evening papers come out in the morning, though this will right itself +in time, for they are getting earlier and earlier, and will ultimately +come out the evening before. Dr. Johnson's line about Shakespeare, "And +panting Time toils after him in vain," is truer of the man of to-day. +What's that you say? All this has been said before? Naturally. + + + + +[Sidenote: Diaries.] + +Who is the most marvellous man? He who keepeth a diary. And by keeping a +diary I mean keeping it for the whole year, from January 1st to December +31st--keeping it, moreover, by daily entry. Only one year in my life did +I succeed in filling up every department of the three hundred and +sixty-five, and even then I was often in arrears. Diaries are for those +who lead cloistral lives and pure, so that the task is trivial, and +whatsoever record of their own leap to light they shall not be shamed. +Diaries are not for those whose existence is a whirlpool; for such the +blank page is an added perturbation, a haunting whiteness beseeching the +blackness of diurnal autobiography, an I O U that calls for instant +satisfcation. To the spontaneous vexings of conscience has been added an +artificial pricking at the neglect of a supererogatory duty. How have I +blonched to see day adding itself to day, unrecorded, time flying without +being "kodak'd" on the wing; and each new neglect retarding the day of +reckoning even while it aggravated it! Then have I felt myself sinking +beneath the self-imposed + + Yoke, intolerable, not to be borne + Of the too vast orb of my fate, + +yearning for a smaller circumference and a shorter biography. At the +outset one begins a diary, as one practises a new virtue, or plays with a +new toy--enthusiastically. For the first few days of January the entries +are rich in psychological and episodical matter. Then gradually the +interest trails off; to the fertile plains of narrative and analysis +succeeds a barren desert, relieved only by a few dates of appointments. +With Mark Twain it will be remembered the entries were reduced to "Got +up, washed, went to bed." The keeping of a diary is generally the first +New Year resolution to be broken. How eloquent these old diaries filled +up for a month or two--and the rest silence! + +On second thoughts there is a more marvellous than the most marvellous +man. It is he who keepeth a pecuniary diary. I know one such. He has kept +a perfect and absolutely complete record of every farthing he has laid +out since the days when farthings were his standard of currency. Which of +us would dare do this, or, doing, would dare cast a backward glance on +the financial past? There is a crude, relentless actuality about items of +expenditure, not to be softened by euphemistic phrasing. Surely a truer +proverb than any of its species would be: "Tell me what you buy, and I'll +tell you what you be." And to think, in reviewing your pecuniary +biography, that, though you owe no man a farthing, you have still to pay +the bill; that many things you have bought have yet to be paid for "over +and over again," as the Master Builder said, "over and over again." + + + + +[Sidenote: "Looking Backward"] + +Looking backward is a luxury which should be indulged in only +moderation--say once in fifty years. The preachers will tell you +differently. But life is so restless and feverish nowadays that there is +no time for obeying the preachers. It is as much as we can do to find +time to listen to them. Goethe says, "He who looks forward sees only one +way to pursue, but he who looks backward sees many." This is the last +word on the subject. It speaks volumes. But as you cannot walk through +any of those backways, what is the use of bothering to look for them? +True, your own experience enables you to give advice to others. But +advice is a drug in the market. What am I saying? A drug! No, no! Even a +drug is taken sometimes. Advice never is. We learn only from our own +mistakes, and when it is too late to profit by them. No; there is not +much profit in looking backwards. Often it tends to make you pessimistic, +to sap your energy, to petrify you, as it did Lot's wife. At other times, +contrariwise, it makes you expel such salt as is already in you, +dissolved in tears-- + + So sweet, so sad, the days that are no more. + +Yet what is this but another form of Buskin's "Pathetic fallacy"? Those +divinely sweet, sad days were in reality just as commonplace as to-day. + + Life is a chaos of comic confusion, + Past things alone take a halo harmonious; + So from illusion we wake to illusion, + Each as the rest just as true and erroneous. + +A familiar form of the new illusion we wake to is seen in the exclamation +that so often follows retrospection: "Oh, what a fool I was!" As a rule, +nothing can be more conceited than this use of the past tense. A few +people, perhaps, can look back complacently upon "a well-spent life" +(wherein all the years have been laid out to advantage, and every hour +has been made to go as far as seventy-five minutes, and every odd second +has been worth a row of pins at least); but I should not care to meet +them. For the bulk of us it is best to press on, doing what our hand +findeth to do, and letting the dead past bury its dead. It is quite +enough to know we cannot escape paying the funeral bills. One of my +friends found himself let in for the discharge of a number of extra +bills, owing to his retrospective proclivities. He was just beginning to +overcome the adverse financial fates when, taking a complacent survey of +his past, he was horrified to find it bristling with forgotten debts. +Looking backward nearly ruined that man. Another of my friends lost his +life entirely through it. He was an old man and a celebrity, and a +publisher offered him £2000 for his memoirs. Unfortunately my friend had +a very bad memory and no diaries, and, like my other friend, he was +conscientious. The publisher's offer tantalized him terribly. He did not +know what to do. At last, in despair, he determined to drown himself. On +the moment before his death all his past life would come back to him and +pass before his mental vision. Of course I was to rescue him the instant +he lost consciousness, have him rubbed with hot towels and the rest of +it. We went out bathing together, and everything came off as arranged, +all except his resurrection. He was too old for such experiments. + +A cynical Frenchman has defined life as the collection of recollections +for the time when you shall have no memory. It is, at any rate, true (and +the preachers are welcome to the moral) that the keenest joys of the +senses leave a scant deposit in the memory, and that if sensual pleasures +are doubled in anticipation, it is the spiritual that are doubled in +looking backward. + + + + +[Sidenote: Long Lives] + +Just as there are many persons of whose existence you are unaware till +you read their obituaries, so there are many of whose celebrity you are +ignorant till you see the advertisement of their biographies. On all +sides we are flooded with big books about little people. What is this new +disease that has come upon us? Life is short but a "Life" is long. Can +there be any one man in this great procession of the suns who deserves +the two royal octavo volumes, which is the least monument that the pious +biographer builds? The perspective is all wrong. Bossuet got the history +of the world into a fifth of the space. How keen must be the struggle for +life amid these shoals of "Lives." How futile and vain this aspiration +for a "Life" beyond the grave! Vainer still the bid for immortality, when +one's own hand raises the mendacious memorial. It is an open question +whether even Marie Bashkirtseff's self-hewn shrine will stand--she, who +sacrificed her life to her "Life." If it does, it will not be by virtue +of its veracity. I would not trust George Washington himself to write a +perfectly accurate record of a prior day. As for the average biography, +it is but the "In Memoriam" of memory. A friend of mine has written some +excellent fiction and some entertaining reminiscences; only he has +mis-labelled his books, and called his fiction "reminiscences," and his +reminiscences "fiction." + + VIVE LA MORT! + + Wherefore do the critics rage? + 'T is the Biographic Age. + Every dolt who duly died + In a book is glorified + Uniformly with his betters; + All his unimportant letters + Edited by writers gifted, + Every scrap of MS. sifted, + Classified by dates and ages, + Pages multiplied on pages, + Till the man is--for their pains-- + Buried 'neath his own Remains. + Every day the craze grows stronger, + Art is long, but "lives" are longer. + Those who were the most in view + Block the stage _post mortem_ too. + Hark the tongues of either sex-- + Reminiscences of X! + Of his juvenile affections + Hundreds write their Recollections, + (None will recollect their writings) + Telling of his love for whitings + Fried in butter, or his fancy + For bananas, buns, and Nancy. + Thank the gracious gods on high, + Every day some "Life" must die: + Death alone is our salvation. + Though'tisdubious consolation + That of all these countless "Lives" + Only the unfit survives. + + + + +[Sidenote: Men and Bookmen] + +The literary market is inundated with people who have no right to a +stall. Aristocrats are badgered for books merely because they have the +titles; and to have achieved success in any other profession than +literature is the surest recommendation to the favour of the publishers. +If I had to start my literary career over again, I should commence by +hopping on one leg through the Pyrenees, or figuring in a big divorce +case; anything short of assassination, which makes one's success too +posthumous. It is most unfair, this doubling of the parts of doing and +writing. Our modern heroes and heroines are quite too self-conscious; +amid all their deeds of derring-do they have their eye on Mudie's. The +old way was better. Even before the Pyramids were reared, when books were +pictures and letters were cuneiform, heroes had their poets and kings +their laureates. You can no more imagine Agamemnon, after the fall of +Troy, rushing off to write an account of it for "Bentley's," than you can +imagine Helen certifying that she found Pears' soap matchless for the +complexion. It was better for the heroes as well as for the writers. +Aeneas would never have dared to draw such constant attention to his +"piety" as Virgil does; and even Louis Quatorze would have hesitated to +describe the taking of Namur in the language of Boileau-- + + Et vous, vents, faites silence: + Je vais parler de Louis. + +The true hero nowadays is the man who conquers himself and does not write +books. + + + + +[Sidenote: James I. on Tobacco] + +But even ancient kings did write sometimes, as witness this of James I: I +hold it aye to be a Kings part to the Body-Politicke of all euils & +excesses, & would fain demonstrate afresh to my dear Countrey-men how +abhorrent to Heauen is this stinking incense that ascendeth day & night; +but amid the heat & burden of the day I cannot find an hour to examine +into this matter _de nouo_, & must needs be content with commending to +the readers of "Without Prejudice" my booklet, "A Counterblaste to +Tobacco," imprinted _Anno_ 1604, wherein they will find the abuses of +this foreign custome duly set forth at length. But, on second thoughts, +perchance these moderns read nothing but what is under their noses, so I +will shortly recapitulate my main positions, merely adding that my +objections to Smoak are to-day even stronger than when I wrote. (1) It is +a fallacie of the vulgar that _because_ the braines of men are colde & +wet, therefore _Tobacco_ Smoak, being hote and dry, is good for them; a +conclusion which no more followeth on the Premiss than the Ratiocination +of one who should apply a cake of cold lead to his stomacke, because the +Liver, being the fountaine of blood, is always hote. Moreover, the Smoak +hath also a venomous qualitee. (2) It is a vulgar fallacie that the +affection of mankind for the Practise is a proof that it is good for +them; inasmuch as men are ledd astray by a mode, & furthermore, the +affectation & conceit of the patient persuadeth him he is benefited; yet +how shall one drug cure of all diseases men of all complexions? (3) Men +are by this custom disabled in their goods, spending many pounds a year +upon this precious stinke, and are no better than drunkards. (4) It is a +great iniquitee & against all humanity that the husband shall not bee +ashamed to reduce thereby his delicate, wholesome and cleane complexioned +wife to that extremitee that either shee must also corrupt her sweete +breath therewith, or else resolve to live in a perpetual stinking +torment. In short, tis a custome lothsome to the eye, hateful to the +Nose, harmefull to the braine, dangerous to the Lungs, & in the blacke +stinking fume thereof neerest resembling the horrible Stigian smoke of +the pit that is bottomeless. + + + + +[Sidenote: A Counterblaste to James I.] + +So please your Majestie, I would beg leave in all loyaltie & service to +cry you mercy on behalf of the foreign weed, _Tobacco_, which stands for +all time condemned by the potent _Counterblaste_ of a monarch, the +maruelle of _Christendom_, whose brow hath borne at once the bays of +Apollo, the laurels of Mars, & the crownes of Scotia & Anglia. And +_imprimis_ I would venture humbly to obserue that your Majesties +arguments are to the last Degree asinine. Euen the title--which, as is +customarie with great personages, is the best part of your Majesties +book--is marred by an unseemlie concession to paronomasia. That your +Majesties manifold abuses of the Logicks may be better espied, I will +take them _seriatim_. (1) The ground founded upon the Theoricke of a +deceiuable apparence of Reason--your Majestie is mistaken in thinking +that I hold it a sure aphorisme in the Physickes. For the braines are +neuer colde & wet saue when there is water on them; & those who do not +Smoak haue no braines for _Tobacco_ to benefit. (2) Your Majesties +argumentation proueth how zealously your Majestie striueth to liue up to +the nickname of the _British Solomon_. And, of a veritie, I could not +myself run atilt more cunningly at this popular fallacie; though I might +back up your Majestie with a most transparent illustration--to wit, that +the affection of Mankind for monarchs is no proof that they are good for +them. (3) I denie that _Tobacco_ wastes ones substance, & I would refer +your Majestie to my demonstration of the Extrauagance of not smoaking. +(4) And is it not an advantage that it resembleth to the Stigian smoak of +the pit? The more we accustom ourselves thereto, the lesse we shall +suffer when we join your Majestie. Will your Majestie kindlie recommend a +Brande? Nor can I conclude without a word as to the ill-taste of that +supplement to your Majesties booklet--a tax of Six Shillings & +Eighte-Pence uppon euery Pounde-Waighte of _Tobacco_, ouer & aboue the +Custome of Two Pence uppon the Pound-Waighte usuallye paide heretofore. +Did your Majestie hope to effect so little by Reason that your Majestie +must needs fall back on Reuenue? Hauing challenged this habit by the +Kings pen, how unmannerly to resort to the coastguards cutlass & fight +the custome at the Custome House. Was it, perhaps, that your Majestie was +wishful to promote English Agriculture or was getting up a cornere in +Cabbaiges? + +Howsoever, Smoak hath suruiued the _Stuarts_. May I offer your Majestie a +Cigarre? + + + + +[Sidenote: Valedictory] + +And now, gentle reader, the hour has come for parting. You have kept me +company a long time; tolerant of all my whimsies and vagaries, and not +too restive when I became serious and heavy. I have written for you in +many places and in many moods, and I cannot hope to have escaped the mood +of dulness. + + Up! up! my Friend, and quit your books; + Or surely you'll grow double; + Up! up! my Friend, and clear your looks: + Why all this toil and trouble? + +Ah, dear Wordsworth, 't is easy enough to answer your question. Still, at +last the pen falls from my tired fingers. + + Books! 't is a dull and endless strife: + Come, hear the woodland linnet! + How sweet his music! On my life, + There's more of wisdom in it. + +Yes, I will go down and hear the woodland linnet, there is one in the +bird-shop round the corner. Ah me! he will not pipe--his is the wisdom of +silence. Never mind; the pavements are flooded with sunshine, and the +folk are walking gaily, and the omnibuses roll along top-heavy, and there +is a blue strip of sky over the Strand. Yes, Spring is here, and the +violets are blooming in the old women's baskets. How happy everybody +seems! Even the sandwich-men have lost their doleful air. The sap is +stirring in their boards. They are dreaming of their ancient springtides, +when they edited magazines or played "Hamlet." And so, having taken up my +pen again to tell you how I dropped it, let me not lay it down without +bidding you a fond and last farewell--without prejudice. + + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, WITHOUT PREJUDICE *** + +This file should be named 6304-8.txt or 6304-8.zip + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. 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