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diff --git a/old/aldsc10.txt b/old/aldsc10.txt deleted file mode 100644 index a6b5e46..0000000 --- a/old/aldsc10.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,5420 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Alarms and Discursions, by G. K. Chesterton - -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: Alarms and Discursions - -Author: G. K. Chesterton - -Release Date: January, 2006 [EBook #9656] -[This file was first posted on October 13, 2003] - -Edition: 10 - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: US-ASCII - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, ALARMS AND DISCURSIONS *** - - - - -Scanned by Georges Allaire. Send errors to Martin Ward -<Martin.Ward@durham.ac.uk> - - - - - - - -ALARMS AND DISCURSIONS - -by G. K. Chesterton - - - - - - - - - -CONTENTS - - 1: INTRODUCTORY: ON GARGOYLES - - 2: THE SURRENDER OF A COCKNEY - - 3: THE NIGHTMARE - - 4: THE TELEGRAPH POLES - - 5: A DRAMA OF DOLLS - - 6: THE MAN AND HIS NEWSPAPER - - 7: THE APPETITE OF EARTH - - 8: SIMMONS AND THE SOCIAL TIE - - 9: CHEESE - -10: THE RED TOWN - -11: THE FURROWS - -12: THE PHILOSOPHY OF SIGHT-SEEING - -13: A CRIMINAL HEAD - -14: THE WRATH OF THE ROSES - -15: THE GOLD OF GLASTONBURY - -16: THE FUTURISTS - -17: DUKES - -18: THE GLORY OF GREY - -19: THE ANARCHIST - -20: HOW I FOUND THE SUPERMAN - -21: THE NEW HOUSE - -22: THE WINGS OF STONE - -23: THE THREE KINDS OF MEN - -24: THE STEWARD OF THE CHILTERN HUNDREDS - -25: THE FIELD OF BLOOD - -26: THE STRANGENESS OF LUXURY - -27: THE TRIUMPH OF THE DONKEY - -28: THE WHEEL - -29: FIVE HUNDRED AND FIFTY-FIVE - -30: ETHANDUNE - -31: THE FLAT FREAK - -32: THE GARDEN OF THE SEA - -33: THE SENTIMENTALIST - -34: THE WHITE HORSES - -35: THE LONG BOW - -36: THE MODERN SCROOGE - -37: THE HIGH PLAINS - -38: THE CHORUS - -39: A ROMANCE OF THE MARSHES - - - - -Introductory: On Gargoyles - -Alone at some distance from the wasting walls of a disused -abbey I found half sunken in the grass the grey and goggle-eyed -visage of one of those graven monsters that made the ornamental -water-spouts in the cathedrals of the Middle Ages. It lay there, -scoured by ancient rains or striped by recent fungus, but still -looking like the head of some huge dragon slain by a primeval hero. -And as I looked at it, I thought of the meaning of the grotesque, -and passed into some symbolic reverie of the three great stages of art. - - - - - -I - -Once upon a time there lived upon an island a merry and innocent people, -mostly shepherds and tillers of the earth. They were republicans, -like all primitive and simple souls; they talked over their affairs -under a tree, and the nearest approach they had to a personal ruler -was a sort of priest or white witch who said their prayers for them. -They worshipped the sun, not idolatrously, but as the golden crown -of the god whom all such infants see almost as plainly as the sun. - -Now this priest was told by his people to build a great tower, -pointing to the sky in salutation of the Sun-god; and he pondered long -and heavily before he picked his materials. For he was resolved to use -nothing that was not almost as clear and exquisite as sunshine itself; -he would use nothing that was not washed as white as the rain -can wash the heavens, nothing that did not sparkle as spotlessly -as that crown of God. He would have nothing grotesque or obscure; -he would not have even anything emphatic or even anything mysterious. -He would have all the arches as light as laughter and as candid as logic. -He built the temple in three concentric courts, which were -cooler and more exquisite in substance each than the other. -For the outer wall was a hedge of white lilies, ranked so thick -that a green stalk was hardly to be seen; and the wall within -that was of crystal, which smashed the sun into a million stars. -And the wall within that, which was the tower itself, was a tower -of pure water, forced up in an everlasting fountain; and upon the very -tip and crest of that foaming spire was one big and blazing diamond, -which the water tossed up eternally and caught again as a child -catches a ball. - -"Now," said the priest, "I have made a tower which is a little -worthy of the sun." - - - - -II - -But about this time the island was caught in a swarm of pirates; -and the shepherds had to turn themselves into rude warriors and seamen; -and at first they were utterly broken down in blood and shame; -and the pirates might have taken the jewel flung up for ever from -their sacred fount. And then, after years of horror and humiliation, -they gained a little and began to conquer because they did not -mind defeat. And the pride of the pirates went sick within them -after a few unexpected foils; and at last the invasion rolled back -into the empty seas and the island was delivered. And for some reason -after this men began to talk quite differently about the temple -and the sun. Some, indeed, said, "You must not touch the temple; -it is classical; it is perfect, since it admits no imperfections." -But the others answered, "In that it differs from the sun, that shines -on the evil and the good and on mud and monsters everywhere. -The temple is of the noon; it is made of white marble clouds -and sapphire sky. But the sun is not always of the noon. -The sun dies daily, every night he is crucified in blood and fire." -Now the priest had taught and fought through all the war, -and his hair had grown white, but his eyes had grown young. -And he said, "I was wrong and they are right. The sun, the symbol -of our father, gives life to all those earthly things that are full -of ugliness and energy. All the exaggerations are right, if they -exaggerate the right thing. Let us point to heaven with tusks -and horns and fins and trunks and tails so long as they all point -to heaven. The ugly animals praise God as much as the beautiful. -The frog's eyes stand out of his head because he is staring at heaven. -The giraffe's neck is long because he is stretching towards heaven. -The donkey has ears to hear--let him hear." - -And under the new inspiration they planned a gorgeous cathedral -in the Gothic manner, with all the animals of the earth -crawling over it, and all the possible ugly things making up -one common beauty, because they all appealed to the god. -The columns of the temple were carved like the necks of giraffes; -the dome was like an ugly tortoise; and the highest pinnacle was -a monkey standing on his head with his tail pointing at the sun. -And yet the whole was beautiful, because it was lifted up in one -living and religious gesture as a man lifts his hands in prayer. - - - - -III - -But this great plan was never properly completed. The people had brought -up on great wagons the heavy tortoise roof and the huge necks of stone, -and all the thousand and one oddities that made up that unity, -the owls and the efts and the crocodiles and the kangaroos, -which hideous by themselves might have been magnificent if -reared in one definite proportion and dedicated to the sun. -For this was Gothic, this was romantic, this was Christian art; -this was the whole advance of Shakespeare upon Sophocles. -And that symbol which was to crown it all, the ape upside down, -was really Christian; for man is the ape upside down. - -But the rich, who had grown riotous in the long peace, obstructed -the thing, and in some squabble a stone struck the priest on the head -and he lost his memory. He saw piled in front of him frogs and elephants, -monkeys and giraffes, toadstools and sharks, all the ugly things -of the universe which he had collected to do honour to God. -But he forgot why he had collected them. He could not remember -the design or the object. He piled them all wildly into one heap -fifty feet high; and when he had done it all the rich and influential -went into a passion of applause and cried, "This is real art! -This is Realism! This is things as they really are!" - -That, I fancy, is the only true origin of Realism. -Realism is simply Romanticism that has lost its reason. -This is so not merely in the sense of insanity but of suicide. -It has lost its reason; that is its reason for existing. -The old Greeks summoned godlike things to worship their god. -The medieval Christians summoned all things to worship theirs, -dwarfs and pelicans, monkeys and madmen. The modern realists -summon all these million creatures to worship their god; -and then have no god for them to worship. Paganism was in art -a pure beauty; that was the dawn. Christianity was a beauty created -by controlling a million monsters of ugliness; and that in my belief -was the zenith and the noon. Modern art and science practically -mean having the million monsters and being unable to control them; -and I will venture to call that the disruption and the decay. -The finest lengths of the Elgin marbles consist splendid houses -going to the temple of a virgin. Christianity, with its gargoyles -and grotesques, really amounted to saying this: that a donkey could -go before all the horses of the world when it was really going -to the temple. Romance means a holy donkey going to the temple. -Realism means a lost donkey going nowhere. - -The fragments of futile journalism or fleeting impression which -are here collected are very like the wrecks and riven blocks -that were piled in a heap round my imaginary priest of the sun. -They are very like that grey and gaping head of stone that I -found overgrown with the grass. Yet I will venture to make -even of these trivial fragments the high boast that I am -a medievalist and not a modern. That is, I really have a notion -of why I have collected all the nonsensical things there are. -I have not the patience nor perhaps the constructive intelligence -to state the connecting link between all these chaotic papers. -But it could be stated. This row of shapeless and ungainly monsters -which I now set before the reader does not consist of separate -idols cut out capriciously in lonely valleys or various islands. -These monsters are meant for the gargoyles of a definite cathedral. -I have to carve the gargoyles, because I can carve nothing else; -I leave to others the angels and the arches and the spires. -But I am very sure of the style of the architecture, and of the -consecration of the church. - - - - -The Surrender of a Cockney - -Evert man, though he were born in the very belfry of Bow and spent -his infancy climbing among chimneys, has waiting for him somewhere -a country house which he has never seen; but which was built for him -in the very shape of his soul. It stands patiently waiting to be found, -knee-deep in orchards of Kent or mirrored in pools of Lincoln; -and when the man sees it he remembers it, though he has never seen -it before. Even I have been forced to confess this at last, who am -a Cockney, if ever there was one, a Cockney not only on principle, -but with savage pride. I have always maintained, quite seriously, -that the Lord is not in the wind or thunder of the waste, -but if anywhere in the still small voice of Fleet Street. -I sincerely maintain that Nature-worship is more morally dangerous -than the most vulgar man-worship of the cities; since it can -easily be perverted into the worship of an impersonal mystery, -carelessness, or cruelty. Thoreau would have been a jollier fellow -if he had devoted himself to a greengrocer instead of to greens. -Swinburne would have been a better moralist if he had worshipped -a fishmonger instead of worshipping the sea. I prefer the -philosophy of bricks and mortar to the philosophy of turnips. -To call a man a turnip may be playful, but is seldom respectful. -But when we wish to pay emphatic honour to a man, to praise -the firmness of his nature, the squareness of his conduct, -the strong humility with which he is interlocked with his equals -in silent mutual support, then we invoke the nobler Cockney metaphor, -and call him a brick. - -But, despite all these theories, I have surrendered; I have struck -my colours at sight; at a mere glimpse through the opening of a hedge. -I shall come down to living in the country, like any common Socialist -or Simple Lifer. I shall end my days in a village, in the character -of the Village Idiot, and be a spectacle and a judgment to mankind. -I have already learnt the rustic manner of leaning upon a gate; -and I was thus gymnastically occupied at the moment when my eye caught -the house that was made for me. It stood well back from the road, -and was built of a good yellow brick; it was narrow for its height, -like the tower of some Border robber; and over the front door -was carved in large letters, "1908." That last burst of sincerity, -that superb scorn of antiquarian sentiment, overwhelmed me finally. -I closed my eyes in a kind of ecstasy. My friend (who was helping me -to lean on the gate) asked me with some curiosity what I was doing. - -"My dear fellow," I said, with emotion, "I am bidding farewell -to forty-three hansom cabmen." - -"Well," he said, "I suppose they would think this county rather -outside the radius." - -"Oh, my friend," I cried brokenly, "how beautiful London is! -Why do they only write poetry about the country? I could turn -every lyric cry into Cockney. - - "'My heart leaps up when I behold - A sky-sign in the sky,' - -"as I observed in a volume which is too little read, founded on -the older English poets. You never saw my 'Golden Treasury Regilded; -or, The Classics Made Cockney'--it contained some fine lines. - - "'O Wild West End, thou breath of London's being,' - -"or the reminiscence of Keats, beginning - - "'City of smuts and mellow fogfulness.'; - -"I have written many such lines on the beauty of London; -yet I never realized that London was really beautiful till now. -Do you ask me why? It is because I have left it for ever." - -"If you will take my advice," said my friend, "you will humbly -endeavour not to be a fool. What is the sense of this mad -modern notion that every literary man must live in the country, -with the pigs and the donkeys and the squires? Chaucer and Spenser -and Milton and Dryden lived in London; Shakespeare and Dr. Johnson -came to London because they had had quite enough of the country. -And as for trumpery topical journalists like you, why, they would -cut their throats in the country. You have confessed it yourself -in your own last words. You hunger and thirst after the streets; -you think London the finest place on the planet. And if by some -miracle a Bayswater omnibus could come down this green country lane -you would utter a yell of joy." - -Then a light burst upon my brain, and I turned upon him -with terrible sternness. - -"Why, miserable aesthete," I said in a voice of thunder, "that is -the true country spirit! That is how the real rustic feels. The real -rustic does utter a yell of joy at the sight of a Bayswater omnibus. -The real rustic does think London the finest place on the planet. -In the few moments that I have stood by this stile, I have grown -rooted here like an ancient tree; I have been here for ages. -Petulant Suburban, I am the real rustic. I believe that the streets -of London are paved with gold; and I mean to see it before I die." - -The evening breeze freshened among the little tossing trees of that lane, -and the purple evening clouds piled up and darkened behind my -Country Seat, the house that belonged to me, making, by contrast, -its yellow bricks gleam like gold. At last my friend said: -"To cut it short, then, you mean that you will live in the country -because you won't like it. What on earth will you do here; -dig up the garden?" - -"Dig!" I answered, in honourable scorn. "Dig! Do work at my -Country Seat; no, thank you. When I find a Country Seat, I sit -in it. And for your other objection, you are quite wrong. -I do not dislike the country, but I like the town more. -Therefore the art of happiness certainly suggests that I should live -in the country and think about the town. Modern nature-worship is -all upside down. Trees and fields ought to be the ordinary things; -terraces and temples ought to be extraordinary. I am on the side -of the man who lives in the country and wants to go to London. -I abominate and abjure the man who lives in London and wants to go -to the country; I do it with all the more heartiness because I -am that sort of man myself. We must learn to love London again, -as rustics love it. Therefore (I quote again from the great Cockney -version of The Golden Treasury)-- - - "'Therefore, ye gas-pipes, ye asbestos? stoves, - Forbode not any severing of our loves. - I have relinquished but your earthly sight, - To hold you dear in a more distant way. - I'll love the 'buses lumbering through the wet, - Even more than when I lightly tripped as they. - The grimy colour of the London clay - Is lovely yet,' - -"because I have found the house where I was really born; -the tall and quiet house from which I can see London afar off, -as the miracle of man that it is." - - - - -The Nightmare - -A sunset of copper and gold had just broken down and gone to pieces -in the west, and grey colours were crawling over everything in earth -and heaven; also a wind was growing, a wind that laid a cold finger -upon flesh and spirit. The bushes at the back of my garden began to -whisper like conspirators; and then to wave like wild hands in signal. -I was trying to read by the last light that died on the lawn -a long poem of the decadent period, a poem about the old gods -of Babylon and Egypt, about their blazing and obscene temples, -their cruel and colossal faces. - - "Or didst thou love the God of Flies who plagued - the Hebrews and was splashed - With wine unto the waist, or Pasht who had green - beryls for her eyes?" - -I read this poem because I had to review it for the Daily News; -still it was genuine poetry of its kind. It really gave out -an atmosphere, a fragrant and suffocating smoke that seemed really -to come from the Bondage of Egypt or the Burden of Tyre There is not -much in common (thank God) between my garden with the grey-green -English sky-line beyond it, and these mad visions of painted -palaces huge, headless idols and monstrous solitudes of red -or golden sand. Nevertheless (as I confessed to myself) I can -fancy in such a stormy twilight some such smell of death and fear. -The ruined sunset really looks like one of their ruined temples: -a shattered heap of gold and green marble. A black flapping thing -detaches itself from one of the sombre trees and flutters to another. -I know not if it is owl or flittermouse; I could fancy it was -a black cherub, an infernal cherub of darkness, not with the wings -of a bird and the head of a baby, but with the head of a goblin -and the wings of a bat. I think, if there were light enough, -I could sit here and write some very creditable creepy tale, -about how I went up the crooked road beyond the church and met Something-- -say a dog, a dog with one eye. Then I should meet a horse, perhaps, -a horse without a rider, the horse also would have one eye. -Then the inhuman silence would be broken; I should meet a man -(need I say, a one-eyed man?) who would ask me the way to my -own house. Or perhaps tell me that it was burnt to the ground. -I could tell a very cosy little tale along some such lines. -Or I might dream of climbing for ever the tall dark trees above me. -They are so tall that I feel as if I should find at their tops the nests -of the angels; but in this mood they would be dark and dreadful angels; -angels of death. - -Only, you see, this mood is all bosh. I do not believe in it -in the least. That one-eyed universe, with its one-eyed -men and beasts, was only created with one universal wink. -At the top of the tragic trees I should not find the Angel's Nest. -I should only find the Mare's Nest; the dreamy and divine nest -is not there. In the Mare's Nest I shall discover that dim, -enormous opalescent egg from which is hatched the Nightmare. -For there is nothing so delightful as a nightmare--when you know -it is a nightmare. - -That is the essential. That is the stern condition laid upon -all artists touching this luxury of fear. The terror must -be fundamentally frivolous. Sanity may play with insanity; -but insanity must not be allowed to play with sanity. Let such -poets as the one I was reading in the garden, by all means, be free -to imagine what outrageous deities and violent landscapes they like. -By all means let them wander freely amid their opium pinnacles -and perspectives. But these huge gods, these high cities, are toys; -they must never for an instant be allowed to be anything else. -Man, a gigantic child, must play with Babylon and Nineveh, -with Isis and with Ashtaroth. By all means let him dream -of the Bondage of Egypt, so long as he is free from it. -By all means let him take up the Burden of Tyre, so long as he can -take it lightly. But the old gods must be his dolls, not his idols. -His central sanctities, his true possessions, should be Christian -and simple. And just as a child would cherish most a wooden horse -or a sword that is a mere cross of wood, so man, the great child, -must cherish most the old plain things of poetry and piety; -that horse of wood that was the epic end of Ilium, or that cross -of wood that redeemed and conquered the world. - -In one of Stevenson's letters there is a characteristically humorous -remark about the appalling impression produced on him in childhood by the -beasts with many eyes in the Book of Revelations: "If that was heaven, -what in the name of Davy Jones was hell like?" Now in sober truth -there is a magnificent idea in these monsters of the Apocalypse. -It is, I suppose, the idea that beings really more beautiful or more -universal than we are might appear to us frightful and even confused. -Especially they might seem to have senses at once more multiplex -and more staring; an idea very imaginatively seized in the multitude -of eyes. I like those monsters beneath the throne very much. -But I like them beneath the throne. It is when one of them goes -wandering in deserts and finds a throne for himself that evil -faiths begin, and there is (literally) the devil to pay--to pay -in dancing girls or human sacrifice. As long as those misshapen -elemental powers are around the throne, remember that the thing -that they worship is the likeness of the appearance of a man. - -That is, I fancy, the true doctrine on the subject of Tales -of Terror and such things, which unless a man of letters do well -and truly believe, without doubt he will end by blowing his brains -out or by writing badly. Man, the central pillar of the world -must be upright and straight; around him all the trees and beasts -and elements and devils may crook and curl like smoke if they choose. -All really imaginative literature is only the contrast between -the weird curves of Nature and the straightness of the soul. -Man may behold what ugliness he likes if he is sure that he will -not worship it; but there are some so weak that they will -worship a thing only because it is ugly. These must be chained -to the beautiful. It is not always wrong even to go, like Dante, -to the brink of the lowest promontory and look down at hell. -It is when you look up at hell that a serious miscalculation has -probably been made. - -Therefore I see no wrong in riding with the Nightmare to-night; -she whinnies to me from the rocking tree-tops and the roaring wind; -I will catch her and ride her through the awful air. Woods and -weeds are alike tugging at the roots in the rising tempest, -as if all wished to fly with us over the moon, like that wild -amorous cow whose child was the Moon-Calf. We will rise to that mad -infinite where there is neither up nor down, the high topsy-turveydom -of the heavens. I will answer the call of chaos and old night. -I will ride on the Nightmare; but she shall not ride on me. - - - - -The Telegraph Poles - -My friend and I were walking in one of those wastes of pine-wood -which make inland seas of solitude in every part of Western Europe; -which have the true terror of a desert, since they are uniform, -and so one may lose one's way in them. Stiff, straight, and similar, -stood up all around us the pines of the wood, like the pikes of a -silent mutiny. There is a truth in talking of the variety of Nature; -but I think that Nature often shows her chief strangeness in -her sameness. There is a weird rhythm in this very repetition; -it is as if the earth were resolved to repeat a single shape until -the shape shall turn terrible. - -Have you ever tried the experiment of saying some plain word, -such as "dog," thirty times? By the thirtieth time it has -become a word like "snark" or "pobble." It does not become tame, -it becomes wild, by repetition. In the end a dog walks about -as startling and undecipherable as Leviathan or Croquemitaine. - -It may be that this explains the repetitions in Nature, it may be -for this reason that there are so many million leaves and pebbles. -Perhaps they are not repeated so that they may grow familiar. -Perhaps they are repeated only in the hope that they may at last -grow unfamiliar. Perhaps a man is not startled at the first cat he sees, -but jumps into the air with surprise at the seventy-ninth cat. -Perhaps he has to pass through thousands of pine trees before he finds -the one that is really a pine tree. However this may be, there is -something singularly thrilling, even something urgent and intolerant, -about the endless forest repetitions; there is the hint of something -like madness in that musical monotony of the pines. - -I said something like this to my friend; and he answered with -sardonic truth, "Ah, you wait till we come to a telegraph post." - -My friend was right, as he occasionally is in our discussions, -especially upon points of fact. We had crossed the pine forest -by one of its paths which happened to follow the wires of the -provincial telegraphy; and though the poles occurred at long intervals -they made a difference when they came. The instant we came to the -straight pole we could see that the pines were not really straight. -It was like a hundred straight lines drawn with schoolboy pencils all -brought to judgment suddenly by one straight line drawn with a ruler. -All the amateur lines seemed to reel to right and left. A moment -before I could have sworn they stood as straight as lances; now I could -see them curve and waver everywhere, like scimitars and yataghans. -Compared with the telegraph post the pines were crooked--and alive. -That lonely vertical rod at once deformed and enfranchised the forest. -It tangled it all together and yet made it free, like any grotesque -undergrowth of oak or holly. - -"Yes," said my gloomy friend, answering my thoughts. "You don't know -what a wicked shameful thing straightness is if you think these trees -are straight. You never will know till your precious intellectual -civilization builds a forty-mile forest of telegraph poles." - -We had started walking from our temporary home later in the day -than we intended; and the long afternoon was already lengthening -itself out into a yellow evening when we came out of the forest -on to the hills above a strange town or village, of which the lights -had already begun to glitter in the darkening valley. The change -had already happened which is the test and definition of evening. -I mean that while the sky seemed still as bright, the earth was growing -blacker against it, especially at the edges, the hills and the pine-tops. -This brought out yet more clearly the owlish secrecy of pine-woods; -and my friend cast a regretful glance at them as he came out under -the sky. Then he turned to the view in front; and, as it happened, -one of the telegraph posts stood up in front of him in the last sunlight. -It was no longer crossed and softened by the more delicate lines -of pine wood; it stood up ugly, arbitrary, and angular as any crude -figure in geometry. My friend stopped, pointing his stick at it, -and all his anarchic philosophy rushed to his lips. - -"Demon," he said to me briefly, "behold your work. That palace of -proud trees behind us is what the world was before you civilized men, -Christians or democrats or the rest, came to make it dull with your dreary -rules of morals and equality. In the silent fight of that forest, -tree fights speechless against tree, branch against branch. -And the upshot of that dumb battle is inequality--and beauty. -Now lift up your eyes and look at equality and ugliness. -See how regularly the white buttons are arranged on that black stick, -and defend your dogmas if you dare." - -"Is that telegraph post so much a symbol of democracy?" I asked. -"I fancy that while three men have made the telegraph to get dividends, -about a thousand men have preserved the forest to cut wood. -But if the telegraph pole is hideous (as I admit) it is not due to -doctrine but rather to commercial anarchy. If any one had a doctrine -about a telegraph pole it might be carved in ivory and decked with gold. -Modern things are ugly, because modern men are careless, -not because they are careful." - -"No," answered my friend with his eye on the end of a splendid -and sprawling sunset, "there is something intrinsically deadening -about the very idea of a doctrine. A straight line is always ugly. -Beauty is always crooked. These rigid posts at regular intervals -are ugly because they are carrying across the world the real -message of democracy." - -"At this moment," I answered, "they are probably carrying across the world -the message, 'Buy Bulgarian Rails.' They are probably the prompt -communication between some two of the wealthiest and wickedest of His -children with whom God has ever had patience. No; these telegraph -poles are ugly and detestable, they are inhuman and indecent. -But their baseness lies in their privacy, not in their publicity. -That black stick with white buttons is not the creation of -the soul of a multitude. It is the mad creation of the souls -of two millionaires." - -"At least you have to explain," answered my friend gravely, -"how it is that the hard democratic doctrine and the hard telegraphic -outline have appeared together; you have... But bless my soul, -we must be getting home. I had no idea it was so late. -Let me see, I think this is our way through the wood. Come, let us -both curse the telegraph post for entirely different reasons and get -home before it is dark." - -We did not get home before it was dark. For one reason or another -we had underestimated the swiftness of twilight and the suddenness -of night, especially in the threading of thick woods. When my -friend, after the first five minutes' march, had fallen over -a log, and I, ten minutes after, had stuck nearly to the knees -in mire, we began to have some suspicion of our direction. -At last my friend said, in a low, husky voice: - -"I'm afraid we're on the wrong path. It's pitch dark." - -"I thought we went the right way," I said, tentatively. - -"Well," he said; and then, after a long pause, "I can't see any -telegraph poles. I've been looking for them." - -"So have I," I said. "They're so straight." - -We groped away for about two hours of darkness in the thick of -the fringe of trees which seemed to dance round us in derision. -Here and there, however, it was possible to trace the outline -of something just too erect and rigid to be a pine tree. -By these we finally felt our way home, arriving in a cold green -twilight before dawn. - - - - -A Drama of Dolls - -In a small grey town of stone in one of the great Yorkshire dales, -which is full of history, I entered a hall and saw an old -puppet-play exactly as our fathers saw it five hundred years ago. -It was admirably translated from the old German, and was the original -tale of Faust. The dolls were at once comic and convincing; -but if you cannot at once laugh at a thing and believe in it, -you have no business in the Middle Ages. Or in the world, -for that matter. - -The puppet-play in question belongs, I believe, to the fifteenth century; -and indeed the whole legend of Dr. Faustus has the colour of -that grotesque but somewhat gloomy time. It is very unfortunate -that we so often know a thing that is past only by its tail end. -We remember yesterday only by its sunsets. There are many instances. -One is Napoleon. We always think of him as a fat old despot, ruling -Europe with a ruthless military machine. But that, as Lord Rosebery -would say, was only "The Last Phase"; or at least the last but one. -During the strongest and most startling part of his career, -the time that made him immortal, Napoleon was a sort of boy, -and not a bad sort of boy either, bullet-headed and ambitious, -but honestly in love with a woman, and honestly enthusiastic for a cause, -the cause of French justice and equality. - -Another instance is the Middle Ages, which we also remember -only by the odour of their ultimate decay. We think of the life -of the Middle Ages as a dance of death, full of devils and -deadly sins, lepers and burning heretics. But this was not -the life of the Middle Ages, but the death of the Middle Ages. -It is the spirit of Louis XI and Richard III, not of Louis IX -and Edward I. - -This grim but not unwholesome fable of Dr. Faustus, with its rebuke -to the mere arrogance of learning, is sound and stringent enough; but it -is not a fair sample of the mediaeval soul at its happiest and sanest. -The heart of the true Middle Ages might be found far better, -for instance, in the noble tale of Tannhauser, in which the dead staff -broke into leaf and flower to rebuke the pontiff who had declared -even one human being beyond the strength of sorrow and pardon. - -But there were in the play two great human ideas which the -mediaeval mind never lost its grip on, through the heaviest -nightmares of its dissolution. They were the two great jokes -of mediaevalism, as they are the two eternal jokes of mankind. -Wherever those two jokes exist there is a little health and hope; -wherever they are absent, pride and insanity are present. -The first is the idea that the poor man ought to get the better -of the rich man. The other is the idea that the husband is afraid -of the wife. - -I have heard that there is a place under the knee which, when struck, -should produce a sort of jump; and that if you do not jump, -you are mad. I am sure that there are some such places in the soul. -When the human spirit does not jump with joy at either of those two -old jokes, the human spirit must be struck with incurable paralysis. -There is hope for people who have gone down into the hells of greed -and economic oppression (at least, I hope there is, for we are such -a people ourselves), but there is no hope for a people that does not -exult in the abstract idea of the peasant scoring off the prince. -There is hope for the idle and the adulterous, for the men -that desert their wives and the men that beat their wives. -But there is no hope for men who do not boast that their -wives bully them. - -The first idea, the idea about the man at the bottom coming out on top, -is expressed in this puppet-play in the person of Dr. Faustus' -servant, Caspar. Sentimental old Tones, regretting the feudal times, -sometimes complain that in these days Jack is as good as his master. -But most of the actual tales of the feudal times turn on the idea -that Jack is much better than his master, and certainly it is so -in the case of Caspar and Faust. The play ends with the damnation -of the learned and illustrious doctor, followed by a cheerful and -animated dance by Caspar, who has been made watchman of the city. - -But there was a much keener stroke of mediaeval irony earlier -in the play. The learned doctor has been ransacking all -the libraries of the earth to find a certain rare formula, -now almost unknown, by which he can control the infernal deities. -At last he procures the one precious volume, opens it at the proper page, -and leaves it on the table while he seeks some other part of his -magic equipment. The servant comes in, reads off the formula, -and immediately becomes an emperor of the elemental spirits. -He gives them a horrible time. He summons and dismisses them -alternately with the rapidity of a piston-rod working at high speed; -he keeps them flying between the doctor's house and their own more -unmentionable residences till they faint with rage and fatigue. -There is all the best of the Middle Ages in that; the idea -of the great levellers, luck and laughter; the idea of a sense -of humour defying and dominating hell. - -One of the best points in the play as performed in this Yorkshire -town was that the servant Caspar was made to talk Yorkshire, -instead of the German rustic dialect which he talked in the original. -That also smacks of the good air of that epoch. In those old pictures -and poems they always made things living by making them local. -Thus, queerly enough, the one touch that was not in the old mediaeval -version was the most mediaeval touch of all. - -That other ancient and Christian jest, that a wife is a holy terror, -occurs in the last scene, where the doctor (who wears a fur -coat throughout, to make him seem more offensively rich and refined) -is attempting to escape from the avenging demons, and meets -his old servant in the street. The servant obligingly points -out a house with a blue door, and strongly recommends Dr. Faustus -to take refuge in it. "My old woman lives there," he says, -"and the devils are more afraid of her than you are of them." -Faustus does not take this advice, but goes on meditating -and reflecting (which had been his mistake all along) until the clock -strikes twelve, and dreadful voices talk Latin in heaven. -So Faustus, in his fur coat, is carried away by little black imps; -and serve him right for being an Intellectual. - - - - -The Man and His Newspaper - -At a little station, which I decline to specify, somewhere between -Oxford and Guildford, I missed a connection or miscalculated a route -in such manner that I was left stranded for rather more than an hour. -I adore waiting at railway stations, but this was not a very -sumptuous specimen. There was nothing on the platform except a chocolate -automatic machine, which eagerly absorbed pennies but produced no -corresponding chocolate, and a small paper-stall with a few remaining -copies of a cheap imperial organ which we will call the Daily Wire. -It does not matter which imperial organ it was, as they all say -the same thing. - -Though I knew it quite well already, I read it with gravity as I -strolled out of the station and up the country road. It opened with -the striking phrase that the Radicals were setting class against class. -It went on to remark that nothing had contributed more to make our -Empire happy and enviable, to create that obvious list of glories -which you can supply for yourself, the prosperity of all classes -in our great cities, our populous and growing villages, the success -of our rule in Ireland, etc., etc., than the sound Anglo-Saxon -readiness of all classes in the State "to work heartily hand-in-hand." -It was this alone, the paper assured me, that had saved us from -the horrors of the French Revolution. "It is easy for the Radicals," -it went on very solemnly, "to make jokes about the dukes. -Very few of these revolutionary gentlemen have given to the poor one half -of the earnest thought, tireless unselfishness, and truly Christian -patience that are given to them by the great landlords of this country. -We are very sure that the English people, with their sturdy -common sense, will prefer to be in the hands of English gentlemen -rather than in the miry claws of Socialistic buccaneers." - -Just when I had reached this point I nearly ran into a man. -Despite the populousness and growth of our villages, he appeared -to be the only man for miles, but the road up which I had wandered -turned and narrowed with equal abruptness, and I nearly knocked him -off the gate on which he was leaning. I pulled up to apologize, -and since he seemed ready for society, and even pathetically -pleased with it, I tossed the Daily Wire over a hedge and fell -into speech with him. He wore a wreck of respectable clothes, -and his face had that plebeian refinement which one sees in small -tailors and watchmakers, in poor men of sedentary trades. -Behind him a twisted group of winter trees stood up as gaunt -and tattered as himself, but I do not think that the tragedy -that he symbolized was a mere fancy from the spectral wood. -There was a fixed look in his face which told that he was one -of those who in keeping body and soul together have difficulties -not only with the body, but also with the soul. - -He was a Cockney by birth, and retained the touching accent -of those streets from which I am an exile; but he had lived nearly -all his life in this countryside; and he began to tell me the affairs -of it in that formless, tail-foremost way in which the poor -gossip about their great neighbours. Names kept coming and going -in the narrative like charms or spells, unaccompanied by any -biographical explanation. In particular the name of somebody called -Sir Joseph multiplied itself with the omnipresence of a deity. -I took Sir Joseph to be the principal landowner of the district; -and as the confused picture unfolded itself, I began to form -a definite and by no means pleasing picture of Sir Joseph. -He was spoken of in a strange way, frigid and yet familiar, as a child -might speak of a stepmother or an unavoidable nurse; something intimate, -but by no means tender; something that was waiting for you by your own -bed and board; that told you to do this and forbade you to do that, -with a caprice that was cold and yet somehow personal. It did not -appear that Sir Joseph was popular, but he was "a household word." -He was not so much a public man as a sort of private god or omnipotence. -The particular man to whom I spoke said he had "been in trouble," -and that Sir Joseph had been "pretty hard on him." - -And under that grey and silver cloudland, with a background of those -frost-bitten and wind-tortured trees, the little Londoner told me -a tale which, true or false, was as heartrending as Romeo and Juliet. - -He had slowly built up in the village a small business as -a photographer, and he was engaged to a girl at one of the lodges, -whom he loved with passion. "I'm the sort that 'ad better marry," -he said; and for all his frail figure I knew what he meant. -But Sir Joseph, and especially Sir Joseph's wife, did not want -a photographer in the village; it made the girls vain, or perhaps they -disliked this particular photographer. He worked and worked until -he had just enough to marry on honestly; and almost on the eve of his -wedding the lease expired, and Sir Joseph appeared in all his glory. -He refused to renew the lease; and the man went wildly elsewhere. -But Sir Joseph was ubiquitous; and the whole of that place was -barred against him. In all that country he could not find a shed -to which to bring home his bride. The man appealed and explained; -but he was disliked as a demagogue, as well as a photographer. -Then it was as if a black cloud came across the winter sky; -for I knew what was coming. I forget even in what words he told -of Nature maddened and set free. But I still see, as in a photograph, -the grey muscles of the winter trees standing out like tight ropes, -as if all Nature were on the rack. - -"She 'ad to go away," he said. - -"Wouldn't her parents," I began, and hesitated on the word "forgive." - -"Oh, her people forgave her," he said. "But Her Ladyship..." - -"Her Ladyship made the sun and moon and stars," I said, impatiently. -"So of course she can come between a mother and the child of her body." - -"Well, it does seem a bit 'ard ..." he began with a break in his voice. - -"But, good Lord, man," I cried, "it isn't a matter of hardness! -It's a matter of impious and indecent wickedness. If your Sir Joseph -knew the passions he was playing with, he did you a wrong for which -in many Christian countries he would have a knife in him." - -The man continued to look across the frozen fields with a frown. -He certainly told his tale with real resentment, whether it -was true or false, or only exaggerated. He was certainly sullen -and injured; but he did not seem to think of any avenue of escape. -At last he said: - -"Well, it's a bad world; let's 'ope there's a better one." - -"Amen," I said. "But when I think of Sir Joseph, I understand -how men have hoped there was a worse one." - -Then we were silent for a long time and felt the cold of the day -crawling up, and at last I said, abruptly: - -"The other day at a Budget meeting, I heard." - -He took his elbows off the stile and seemed to change from -head to foot like a man coming out of sleep with a yawn. -He said in a totally new voice, louder but much more careless, -"Ah yes, sir,... this 'ere Budget ... the Radicals are doing -a lot of 'arm." - -I listened intently, and he went on. He said with a sort of careful -precision, "Settin' class against class; that's what I call it. -Why, what's made our Empire except the readiness of all classes -to work 'eartily 'and-in-'and." - -He walked a little up and down the lane and stamped with the cold. -Then he said, "What I say is, what else kept us from the 'errors -of the French Revolution?" - -My memory is good, and I waited in tense eagerness for the phrase -that came next. "They may laugh at Dukes; I'd like to see them 'alf -as kind and Christian and patient as lots of the landlords are. -Let me tell you, sir," he said, facing round at me with the final air -of one launching a paradox. "The English people 'ave some common sense, -and they'd rather be in the 'ands of gentlemen than in the claws -of a lot of Socialist thieves." - -I had an indescribable sense that I ought to applaud, as if I -were a public meeting. The insane separation in the man's soul -between his experience and his ready-made theory was but a type -of what covers a quarter of England. As he turned away, -I saw the Daily Wire sticking out of his shabby pocket. -He bade me farewell in quite a blaze of catchwords, and went -stumping up the road. I saw his figure grow smaller and smaller -in the great green landscape; even as the Free Man has grown smaller -and smaller in the English countryside. - - - - -The Appetite of Earth - -I was walking the other day in a kitchen garden, which I find has somehow -got attached to my premises, and I was wondering why I liked it. -After a prolonged spiritual self-analysis I came to the conclusion -that I like a kitchen garden because it contains things to eat. -I do not mean that a kitchen garden is ugly; a kitchen garden -is often very beautiful. The mixture of green and purple on -some monstrous cabbage is much subtler and grander than the mere -freakish and theatrical splashing of yellow and violet on a pansy. -Few of the flowers merely meant for ornament are so ethereal -as a potato. A kitchen garden is as beautiful as an orchard; -but why is it that the word "orchard" sounds as beautiful as -the word "flower-garden," and yet also sounds more satisfactory? -I suggest again my extraordinarily dark and delicate discovery: -that it contains things to eat. - -The cabbage is a solid; it can be approached from all sides at once; -it can be realized by all senses at once. Compared with that -the sunflower, which can only be seen, is a mere pattern, a thing -painted on a flat wall. Now, it is this sense of the solidity -of things that can only be uttered by the metaphor of eating. -To express the cubic content of a turnip, you must be all round it -at once. The only way to get all round a turnip at once is to eat -the turnip. I think any poetic mind that has loved solidity, -the thickness of trees, the squareness of stones, the firmness -of clay, must have sometimes wished that they were things to eat. -If only brown peat tasted as good as it looks; if only white firwood -were digestible! We talk rightly of giving stones for bread: -but there are in the Geological Museum certain rich crimson marbles, -certain split stones of blue and green, that make me wish my -teeth were stronger. - -Somebody staring into the sky with the same ethereal -appetite declared that the moon was made of green cheese. -I never could conscientiously accept the full doctrine. -I am Modernist in this matter. That the moon is made of cheese -I have believed from childhood; and in the course of every month -a giant (of my acquaintance) bites a big round piece out of it. -This seems to me a doctrine that is above reason, but not contrary -to it. But that the cheese is green seems to be in some degree -actually contradicted by the senses and the reason; first because -if the moon were made of green cheese it would be inhabited; -and second because if it were made of green cheese it would be green. -A blue moon is said to be an unusual sight; but I cannot think -that a green one is much more common. In fact, I think I have seen -the moon looking like every other sort of cheese except a green cheese. -I have seen it look exactly like a cream cheese: a circle of warm -white upon a warm faint violet sky above a cornfield in Kent. -I have seen it look very like a Dutch cheese, rising a dull red -copper disk amid masts and dark waters at Honfleur. I have seen it -look like an ordinary sensible Cheddar cheese in an ordinary sensible -Prussian blue sky; and I have once seen it so naked and ruinous-looking, -so strangely lit up, that it looked like a Gruyere cheese, -that awful volcanic cheese that has horrible holes in it, -as if it had come in boiling unnatural milk from mysterious and -unearthly cattle. But I have never yet seen the lunar cheese green; -and I incline to the opinion that the moon is not old enough. -The moon, like everything else, will ripen by the end of the world; -and in the last days we shall see it taking on those volcanic -sunset colours, and leaping with that enormous and fantastic life. - -But this is a parenthesis; and one perhaps slightly lacking in -prosaic actuality. Whatever may be the value of the above speculations, -the phrase about the moon and green cheese remains a good example -of this imagery of eating and drinking on a large scale. -The same huge fancy is in the phrase "if all the trees were bread -and cheese," which I have cited elsewhere in this connection; -and in that noble nightmare of a Scandinavian legend, in -which Thor drinks the deep sea nearly dry out of a horn. -In an essay like the present (first intended as a paper to be read -before the Royal Society) one cannot be too exact; and I will concede -that my theory of the gradual vire-scence of our satellite is to be -regarded rather as an alternative theory than as a law finally -demonstrated and universally accepted by the scientific world. -It is a hypothesis that holds the field, as the scientists say -of a theory when there is no evidence for it so far. - -But the reader need be under no apprehension that I have suddenly -gone mad, and shall start biting large pieces out of the trunks -of trees; or seriously altering (by large semicircular mouthfuls) -the exquisite outline of the mountains. This feeling for expressing -a fresh solidity by the image of eating is really a very old one. -So far from being a paradox of perversity, it is one of the oldest -commonplaces of religion. If any one wandering about wants to have -a good trick or test for separating the wrong idealism from the right, -I will give him one on the spot. It is a mark of false religion -that it is always trying to express concrete facts as abstract; -it calls sex affinity; it calls wine alcohol; it calls brute starvation -the economic problem. The test of true religion is that its energy -drives exactly the other way; it is always trying to make men feel -truths as facts; always trying to make abstract things as plain -and solid as concrete things; always trying to make men, not merely -admit the truth, but see, smell, handle, hear, and devour the truth. -All great spiritual scriptures are full of the invitation not to test, -but to taste; not to examine, but to eat. Their phrases are full -of living water and heavenly bread, mysterious manna and dreadful wine. -Worldliness, and the polite society of the world, has despised -this instinct of eating; but religion has never despised it. -When we look at a firm, fat, white cliff of chalk at Dover, I do not -suggest that we should desire to eat it; that would be highly abnormal. -But I really mean that we should think it good to eat; good for -some one else to eat. For, indeed, some one else is eating it; -the grass that grows upon its top is devouring it silently, -but, doubtless, with an uproarious appetite. - - - - -Simmons and the Social Tie - -It is a platitude, and none the less true for that, that we need -to have an ideal in our minds with which to test all realities. -But it is equally true, and less noted, that we need a reality -with which to test ideals. Thus I have selected Mrs. Buttons, -a charwoman in Battersea, as the touchstone of all modern -theories about the mass of women. Her name is not Buttons; -she is not in the least a contemptible nor entirely a comic -figure. She has a powerful stoop and an ugly, attractive face, -a little like that of Huxley--without the whiskers, of course. -The courage with which she supports the most brutal bad luck has -something quite creepy about it. Her irony is incessant and inventive; -her practical charity very large; and she is wholly unaware -of the philosophical use to which I put her. - -But when I hear the modern generalization about her sex on all sides -I simply substitute her name, and see how the thing sounds then. -When on the one side the mere sentimentalist says, "Let woman -be content to be dainty and exquisite, a protected piece of social -art and domestic ornament," then I merely repeat it to myself -in the "other form," "Let Mrs. Buttons be content to be dainty -and exquisite, a protected piece of social art, etc." It is -extraordinary what a difference the substitution seems to make. -And on the other hand, when some of the Suffragettes say in their -pamphlets and speeches, "Woman, leaping to life at the trumpet call -of Ibsen and Shaw, drops her tawdry luxuries and demands to grasp -the sceptre of empire and the firebrand of speculative thought"-- -in order to understand such a sentence I say it over again in the -amended form: "Mrs. Buttons, leaping to life at the trumpet call -of Ibsen and Shaw, drops her tawdry luxuries and demands to grasp -the sceptre of empire and the firebrand of speculative thought." -Somehow it sounds quite different. And yet when you say Woman I -suppose you mean the average woman; and if most women are as capable -and critical and morally sound as Mrs. Buttons, it is as much as we -can expect, and a great deal more than we deserve. - -But this study is not about Mrs. Buttons; she would require -many studies. I will take a less impressive case of my principle, -the principle of keeping in the mind an actual personality when we -are talking about types or tendencies or generalized ideals. -Take, for example, the question of the education of boys. -Almost every post brings me pamphlets expounding some advanced and -suggestive scheme of education; the pupils are to be taught separate; -the sexes are to be taught together; there should be no prizes; -there should be no punishments; the master should lift the boys -to his level; the master should descend to their level; we should -encourage the heartiest comradeship among boys, and also the tenderest -spiritual intimacy with masters; toil must be pleasant and holidays -must be instructive; with all these things I am daily impressed -and somewhat bewildered. But on the great Buttons' principle I -keep in my mind and apply to all these ideals one still vivid fact; -the face and character of a particular schoolboy whom I once knew. -I am not taking a mere individual oddity, as you will hear. -He was exceptional, and yet the reverse of eccentric; he was -(in a quite sober and strict sense of the words) exceptionally average. -He was the incarnation and the exaggeration of a certain spirit -which is the common spirit of boys, but which nowhere else became -so obvious and outrageous. And because he was an incarnation he was, -in his way, a tragedy. - -I will call him Simmons. He was a tall, healthy figure, strong, but a -little slouching, and there was in his walk something between a slight -swagger and a seaman's roll; he commonly had his hands in his pockets. -His hair was dark, straight, and undistinguished; and his face, -if one saw it after his figure, was something of a surprise. -For while the form might be called big and braggart, the face -might have been called weak, and was certainly worried. It was a -hesitating face, which seemed to blink doubtfully in the daylight. -He had even the look of one who has received a buffet that -he cannot return. In all occupations he was the average boy; -just sufficiently good at sports, just sufficiently bad at work -to be universally satisfactory. But he was prominent in nothing, -for prominence was to him a thing like bodily pain. He could not endure, -without discomfort amounting to desperation, that any boy should -be noticed or sensationally separated from the long line of boys; -for him, to be distinguished was to be disgraced. - -Those who interpret schoolboys as merely wooden and barbarous, -unmoved by anything but a savage seriousness about tuck or cricket, -make the mistake of forgetting how much of the schoolboy life is -public and ceremonial, having reference to an ideal; or, if you like, -to an affectation. Boys, like dogs, have a sort of romantic -ritual which is not always their real selves. And this romantic -ritual is generally the ritual of not being romantic; the pretence -of being much more masculine and materialistic than they are. -Boys in themselves are very sentimental. The most sentimental thing -in the world is to hide your feelings; it is making too much of them. -Stoicism is the direct product of sentimentalism; and schoolboys -are sentimental individually, but stoical collectively, - -For example, there were numbers of boys at my school besides myself -who took a private pleasure in poetry; but red-hot iron would not -have induced most of us to admit this to the masters, or to repeat -poetry with the faintest inflection of rhythm or intelligence. -That would have been anti-social egoism; we called it "showing off." -I myself remember running to school (an extraordinary thing to do) -with mere internal ecstasy in repeating lines of Walter Scott -about the taunts of Marmion or the boasts of Roderick Dhu, and then -repeating the same lines in class with the colourless decorum -of a hurdy-gurdy. We all wished to be invisible in our uniformity; -a mere pattern of Eton collars and coats. - -But Simmons went even further. He felt it as an insult to brotherly -equality if any task or knowledge out of the ordinary track was -discovered even by accident. If a boy had learnt German in infancy; -or if a boy knew some terms in music; or if a boy was forced to confess -feebly that he had read "The Mill on the Floss"--then Simmons was in -a perspiration of discomfort. He felt no personal anger, still less -any petty jealousy, what he felt was an honourable and generous shame. -He hated it as a lady hates coarseness in a pantomime; it made him -want to hide himself. Just that feeling of impersonal ignominy -which most of us have when some one betrays indecent ignorance, -Simmons had when some one betrayed special knowledge. He writhed -and went red in the face; he used to put up the lid of his -desk to hide his blushes for human dignity, and from behind -this barrier would whisper protests which had the hoarse emphasis -of pain. "O, shut up, I say. .. O, I say, shut up. ... O, shut -it, can't you?" Once when a little boy admitted that he had -heard of the Highland claymore, Simmons literally hid his head -inside his desk and dropped the lid upon it in desperation; -and when I was for a moment transferred from the bottom of the form -for knowing the name of Cardinal Newman, I thought he would have -rushed from the room. - -His psychological eccentricity increased; if one can call -that an eccentricity which was a wild worship of the ordinary. -At last he grew so sensitive that he could not even bear any question -answered correctly without grief. He felt there was a touch -of disloyalty, of unfraternal individualism, even about knowing -the right answer to a sum. If asked the date of the battle of Hastings, -he considered it due to social tact and general good feeling -to answer 1067. This chivalrous exaggeration led to bad feeling -between him and the school authority, which ended in a rupture -unexpectedly violent in the case of so good-humoured a creature. -He fled from the school, and it was discovered upon inquiry that -he had fled from his home also. - -I never expected to see him again; yet it is one of the two -or three odd coincidences of my life that I did see him. -At some public sports or recreation ground I saw a group of -rather objectless youths, one of whom was wearing the dashing -uniform of a private in the Lancers. Inside that uniform was -the tall figure, shy face, and dark, stiff hair of Simmons. -He had gone to the one place where every one is dressed alike-- -a regiment. I know nothing more; perhaps he was killed in Africa. -But when England was full of flags and false triumphs, when everybody -was talking manly trash about the whelps of the lion and the brave -boys in red, I often heard a voice echoing in the under-caverns -of my memory, "Shut up... O, shut up ... O, I say, shut it." - - - - -Cheese - -My forthcoming work in five volumes, "The Neglect of Cheese in -European Literature" is a work of such unprecedented and laborious -detail that it is doubtful if I shall live to finish it. -Some overflowings from such a fountain of information may therefore -be permitted to springle these pages. I cannot yet wholly explain -the neglect to which I refer. Poets have been mysteriously -silent on the subject of cheese. Virgil, if I remember right, -refers to it several times, but with too much Roman restraint. -He does not let himself go on cheese. The only other poet I -can think of just now who seems to have had some sensibility on -the point was the nameless author of the nursery rhyme which says: -"If all the trees were bread and cheese"--which is, indeed a rich -and gigantic vision of the higher gluttony. If all the trees were -bread and cheese there would be considerable deforestation in any part -of England where I was living. Wild and wide woodlands would reel -and fade before me as rapidly as they ran after Orpheus. Except Virgil -and this anonymous rhymer, I can recall no verse about cheese. -Yet it has every quality which we require in exalted poetry. -It is a short, strong word; it rhymes to "breeze" and "seas" -(an essential point); that it is emphatic in sound is admitted -even by the civilization of the modern cities. For their citizens, -with no apparent intention except emphasis, will often say, "Cheese it!" -or even "Quite the cheese." The substance itself is imaginative. -It is ancient--sometimes in the individual case, always in the type -and custom. It is simple, being directly derived from milk, which is one -of the ancestral drinks, not lightly to be corrupted with soda-water. -You know, I hope (though I myself have only just thought of it), -that the four rivers of Eden were milk, water, wine, and ale. -Aerated waters only appeared after the Fall. - -But cheese has another quality, which is also the very soul of song. -Once in endeavouring to lecture in several places at once, I made -an eccentric journey across England, a journey of so irregular -and even illogical shape that it necessitated my having lunch on four -successive days in four roadside inns in four different counties. -In each inn they had nothing but bread and cheese; nor can -I imagine why a man should want more than bread and cheese, -if he can get enough of it. In each inn the cheese was good; -and in each inn it was different. There was a noble Wensleydale -cheese in Yorkshire, a Cheshire cheese in Cheshire, and so on. -Now, it is just here that true poetic civilization differs from that -paltry and mechanical civilization which holds us all in bondage. -Bad customs are universal and rigid, like modern militarism. -Good customs are universal and varied, like native chivalry -and self-defence. Both the good and bad civilization cover us -as with a canopy, and protect us from all that is outside. -But a good civilization spreads over us freely like a tree, -varying and yielding because it is alive. A bad civilization -stands up and sticks out above us like an umbrella--artificial, -mathematical in shape; not merely universal, but uniform. -So it is with the contrast between the substances that vary -and the substances that are the same wherever they penetrate. -By a wise doom of heaven men were commanded to eat cheese, but not -the same cheese. Being really universal it varies from valley to valley. -But if, let us say, we compare cheese with soap (that vastly -inferior substance), we shall see that soap tends more and more -to be merely Smith's Soap or Brown's Soap, sent automatically all -over the world. If the Red Indians have soap it is Smith's Soap. -If the Grand Lama has soap it is Brown's soap. There is nothing subtly -and strangely Buddhist, nothing tenderly Tibetan, about his soap. -I fancy the Grand Lama does not eat cheese (he is not worthy), -but if he does it is probably a local cheese, having some real -relation to his life and outlook. Safety matches, tinned foods, -patent medicines are sent all over the world; but they are not produced -all over the world. Therefore there is in them a mere dead identity, -never that soft play of slight variation which exists in things -produced everywhere out of the soil, in the milk of the kine, -or the fruits of the orchard. You can get a whisky and soda at -every outpost of the Empire: that is why so many Empire-builders -go mad. But you are not tasting or touching any environment, -as in the cider of Devonshire or the grapes of the Rhine. -You are not approaching Nature in one of her myriad tints of mood, -as in the holy act of eating cheese. - -When I had done my pilgrimage in the four wayside public-houses I -reached one of the great northern cities, and there I proceeded, -with great rapidity and complete inconsistency, to a large and -elaborate restaurant, where I knew I could get many other things -besides bread and cheese. I could get that also, however; or at -least I expected to get it; but I was sharply reminded that I -had entered Babylon, and left England behind. The waiter brought -me cheese, indeed, but cheese cut up into contemptibly small pieces; -and it is the awful fact that, instead of Christian bread, he brought -me biscuits. Biscuits--to one who had eaten the cheese of four -great countrysides! Biscuits--to one who had proved anew for himself -the sanctity of the ancient wedding between cheese and bread! -I addressed the waiter in warm and moving terms. I asked him who -he was that he should put asunder those whom Humanity had joined. -I asked him if he did not feel, as an artist, that a solid but yielding -substance like cheese went naturally with a solid, yielding substance -like bread; to eat it off biscuits is like eating it off slates. -I asked him if, when he said his prayers, he was so supercilious -as to pray for his daily biscuits. He gave me generally to -understand that he was only obeying a custom of Modern Society. -I have therefore resolved to raise my voice, not against the waiter, -but against Modern Society, for this huge and unparalleled modern wrong. - - - - -The Red Town - -When a man says that democracy is false because most people are stupid, -there are several courses which the philosopher may pursue. -The most obvious is to hit him smartly and with precision on the exact -tip of the nose. But if you have scruples (moral or physical) -about this course, you may proceed to employ Reason, which in this -case has all the savage solidity of a blow with the fist. -It is stupid to say that "most people" are stupid. It is like -saying "most people are tall," when it is obvious that "tall" -can only mean taller than most people. It is absurd to denounce -the majority of mankind as below the average of mankind. - -Should the man have been hammered on the nose and brained with logic, -and should he still remain cold, a third course opens: lead him -by the hand (himself half-willing) towards some sunlit and yet secret -meadow and ask him who made the names of the common wild flowers. -They were ordinary people, so far as any one knows, who gave -to one flower the name of the Star of Bethlehem and to another -and much commoner flower the tremendous title of the Eye of Day. -If you cling to the snobbish notion that common people are prosaic, -ask any common person for the local names of the flowers, -names which vary not only from county to county, but even from -dale to dale. - -But, curiously enough, the case is much stronger than this. -It will be said that this poetry is peculiar to the country populace, -and that the dim democracies of our modern towns at least have lost it. -For some extraordinary reason they have not lost it. Ordinary London -slang is full of witty things said by nobody in particular. -True, the creed of our cruel cities is not so sane and just as the creed -of the old countryside; but the people are just as clever in giving -names to their sins in the city as in giving names to their joys -in the wilderness. One could not better sum up Christianity than by -calling a small white insignificant flower "The Star of Bethlehem." -But then, again, one could not better sum up the philosophy -deduced from Darwinism than in the one verbal picture of "having -your monkey up." - -Who first invented these violent felicities of language? -Who first spoke of a man "being off his head"? The obvious comment -on a lunatic is that his head is off him; yet the other phrase is far -more fantastically exact. There is about every madman a singular -sensation that his body has walked off and left the important part -of him behind. - -But the cases of this popular perfection in phrase are even -stronger when they are more vulgar. What concentrated irony -and imagination there is for instance, in the metaphor which -describes a man doing a midnight flitting as "shooting the moon"? -It expresses everything about the run away: his eccentric occupation, -his improbable explanations, his furtive air as of a hunter, -his constant glances at the blank clock in the sky. - -No; the English democracy is weak enough about a number of things; -for instance, it is weak in politics. But there is no doubt -that democracy is wonderfully strong in literature. Very few books -that the cultured class has produced of late have been such good -literature as the expression "painting the town red." - -Oddly enough, this last Cockney epigram clings to my memory. -For as I was walking a little while ago round a corner near -Victoria I realized for the first time that a familiar lamp-post -was painted all over with a bright vermilion just as if it -were trying (in spite of the obvious bodily disqualification) -to pretend that it was a pillar-box. I have since heard -official explanations of these startling and scarlet objects. -But my first fancy was that some dissipated gentleman on his way -home at four o'clock in the morning had attempted to paint the town -red and got only as far as one lamp-post. - -I began to make a fairy tale about the man; and, indeed, this phrase -contains both a fairy tale and a philosophy; it really states almost -the whole truth about those pure outbreaks of pagan enjoyment to which -all healthy men have often been tempted. It expresses the desire -to have levity on a large scale which is the essence of such a mood. -The rowdy young man is not content to paint his tutor's door green: -he would like to paint the whole city scarlet. The word which to us -best recalls such gigantesque idiocy is the word "mafficking." -The slaves of that saturnalia were not only painting the town red; -they thought that they were painting the map red--that they were -painting the world red. But, indeed, this Imperial debauch has in it -something worse than the mere larkiness which is my present topic; -it has an element of real self-flattery and of sin. The Jingo -who wants to admire himself is worse than the blackguard who only -wants to enjoy himself. In a very old ninth-century illumination -which I have seen, depicting the war of the rebel angels in heaven, -Satan is represented as distributing to his followers peacock feathers-- -the symbols of an evil pride. Satan also distributed peacock -feathers to his followers on Mafeking Night... - -But taking the case of ordinary pagan recklessness and pleasure -seeking, it is, as we have said, well expressed in this image. -First, because it conveys this notion of filling the world -with one private folly; and secondly, because of the profound -idea involved in the choice of colour. Red is the most joyful -and dreadful thing in the physical universe; it is the fiercest note, -it is the highest light, it is the place where the walls of this -world of ours wear thinnest and something beyond burns through. -It glows in the blood which sustains and in the fire which destroys us, -in the roses of our romance and in the awful cup of our religion. -It stands for all passionate happiness, as in faith or in first love. - -Now, the profligate is he who wishes to spread this crimson of -conscious joy over everything; to have excitement at every moment; -to paint everything red. He bursts a thousand barrels of wine to -incarnadine the streets; and sometimes (in his last madness) he will -butcher beasts and men to dip his gigantic brushes in their blood. -For it marks the sacredness of red in nature, that it is secret -even when it is ubiquitous, like blood in the human body, -which is omnipresent, yet invisible. As long as blood lives it -is hidden; it is only dead blood that we see. But the earlier -parts of the rake's progress are very natural and amusing. -Painting the town red is a delightful thing until it is done. -It would be splendid to see the cross of St. Paul's as red as -the cross of St. George, and the gallons of red paint running down -the dome or dripping from the Nelson Column. But when it is done, -when you have painted the town red, an extraordinary thing happens. -You cannot see any red at all. - -I can see, as in a sort of vision, the successful artist -standing in the midst of that frightful city, hung on all sides -with the scarlet of his shame. And then, when everything is red, -he will long for a red rose in a green hedge and long in vain; -he will dream of a red leaf and be unable even to imagine it. -He has desecrated the divine colour, and he can no longer see it, -though it is all around. I see him, a single black figure against -the red-hot hell that he has kindled, where spires and turrets stand up -like immobile flames: he is stiffened in a sort of agony of prayer. -Then the mercy of Heaven is loosened, and I see one or two flakes -of snow very slowly begin to fall. - - - - -The Furrows - -As I see the corn grow green all about my neighbourhood, there rushes -on me for no reason in particular a memory of the winter. -I say "rushes," for that is the very word for the old sweeping lines -of the ploughed fields. From some accidental turn of a train-journey -or a walking tour, I saw suddenly the fierce rush of the furrows. -The furrows are like arrows; they fly along an arc of sky. -They are like leaping animals; they vault an inviolable hill -and roll down the other side. They are like battering battalions; -they rush over a hill with flying squadrons and carry it with a -cavalry charge. They have all the air of Arabs sweeping a desert, -of rockets sweeping the sky, of torrents sweeping a watercourse. -Nothing ever seemed so living as those brown lines as they shot sheer -from the height of a ridge down to their still whirl of the valley. -They were swifter than arrows, fiercer than Arabs, more riotous and -rejoicing than rockets. And yet they were only thin straight lines -drawn with difficulty, like a diagram, by painful and patient men. -The men that ploughed tried to plough straight; they had no notion -of giving great sweeps and swirls to the eye. Those cataracts -of cloven earth; they were done by the grace of God. I had always -rejoiced in them; but I had never found any reason for my joy. -There are some very clever people who cannot enjoy the joy unless -they understand it. There are other and even cleverer people -who say that they lose the joy the moment they do understand it. -Thank God I was never clever, and I could always enjoy things when I -understood them and when I didn't. I can enjoy the orthodox Tory, though I -could never understand him. I can also enjoy the orthodox Liberal, -though I understand him only too well. - -But the splendour of furrowed fields is this: that like all -brave things they are made straight, and therefore they bend. -In everything that bows gracefully there must be an effort at stiffness. -Bows arc beautiful when they bend only because they try to remain rigid; -and sword-blades can curl like silver ribbons only because they are -certain to spring straight again. But the same is true of every tough -curve of the tree-trunk, of every strong-backed bend of the bough; -there is hardly any such thing in Nature as a mere droop of weakness. -Rigidity yielding a little, like justice swayed by mercy, -is the whole beauty of the earth. The cosmos is a diagram just -bent beautifully out of shape. Everything tries to be straight; -and everything just fortunately fails. - -The foil may curve in the lunge, but there is nothing beautiful -about beginning the battle with a crooked foil. So the strict aim, -the strong doctrine, may give a little in the actual fight with facts: -but that is no reason for beginning with a weak doctrine or a -twisted aim. Do not be an opportunist; try to be theoretic at all -the opportunities; fate can be trusted to do all the opportunist part -of it. Do not try to bend, any more than the trees try to bend. -Try to grow straight, and life will bend you. - -Alas! I am giving the moral before the fable; and yet -I hardly think that otherwise you could see all that I -mean in that enormous vision of the ploughed hills. -These great furrowed slopes are the oldest architecture of man: -the oldest astronomy was his guide, the oldest botany his object. -And for geometry, the mere word proves my case. - -But when I looked at those torrents of ploughed parallels, -that great rush of rigid lines, I seemed to see the whole -huge achievement of democracy, Here was mere equality: but -equality seen in bulk is more superb than any supremacy. -Equality free and flying, equality rushing over hill and dale, -equality charging the world--that was the meaning of those military -furrows, military in their identity, military in their energy. -They sculptured hill and dale with strong curves merely because -they did not mean to curve at all. They made the strong lines -of landscape with their stiffly driven swords of the soil. -It is not only nonsense, but blasphemy, to say that man has spoilt -the country. Man has created the country; it was his business, -as the image of God. No hill, covered with common scrub or patches -of purple heath, could have been so sublimely hilly as that ridge -up to which the ranked furrows rose like aspiring angels. -No valley, confused with needless cottages and towns, can have been -so utterly valleyish as that abyss into which the down-rushing -furrows raged like demons into the swirling pit. - -It is the hard lines of discipline and equality that mark out a landscape -and give it all its mould and meaning. It is just because the lines -of the furrow arc ugly and even that the landscape is living and superb. -As I think I have remarked elsewhere, the Republic is founded -on the plough. - - - - -The Philosophy of Sight-seeing - -It would be really interesting to know exactly why an intelligent person-- -by which I mean a person with any sort of intelligence--can and does -dislike sight-seeing. Why does the idea of a char-a-banc full of -tourists going to see the birth-place of Nelson or the death-scene -of Simon de Montfort strike a strange chill to the soul? -I can tell quite easily what this dim aversion to tourists -and their antiquities does not arise from--at least, in my case. -Whatever my other vices (and they are, of course, of a lurid cast), -I can lay my hand on my heart and say that it does not arise from a paltry -contempt for the antiquities, nor yet from the still more paltry contempt -for the tourists. If there is one thing more dwarfish and pitiful -than irreverence for the past, it is irreverence for the present, -for the passionate and many-coloured procession of life, which includes -the char-a-banc among its many chariots and triumphal cars. -I know nothing so vulgar as that contempt for vulgarity which sneers -at the clerks on a Bank Holiday or the Cockneys on Margate sands. -The man who notices nothing about the clerk except his Cockney -accent would have noticed nothing about Simon de Montfort except -his French accent. The man who jeers at Jones for having dropped -an "h" might have jeered at Nelson for having dropped an arm. -Scorn springs easily to the essentially vulgar-minded, and it is -as easy to gibe at Montfort as a foreigner or at Nelson as a cripple, -as to gibe at the struggling speech and the maimed bodies of the mass -of our comic and tragic race. If I shrink faintly from this -affair of tourists and tombs, it is certainly not because I am -so profane as to think lightly either of the tombs or the tourists. -I reverence those great men who had the courage to die; I reverence -also these little men who have the courage to live. - -Even if this be conceded, another suggestion may be made. -It may be said that antiquities and commonplace crowds are indeed -good things, like violets and geraniums; but they do not go together. -A billycock is a beautiful object (it may be eagerly urged), -but it is not in the same style of architecture as Ely Cathedral; -it is a dome, a small rococo dome in the Renaissance manner, and does -not go with the pointed arches that assault heaven like spears. -A char-a-banc is lovely (it may be said) if placed upon a pedestal -and worshipped for its own sweet sake; but it does not harmonize with -the curve and outline of the old three-decker on which Nelson died; -its beauty is quite of another sort. Therefore (we will suppose -our sage to argue) antiquity and democracy should be kept separate, -as inconsistent things. Things may be inconsistent in time and space -which are by no means inconsistent in essential value and idea. -Thus the Catholic Church has water for the new-born and oil for -the dying: but she never mixes oil and water. - -This explanation is plausible; but I do not find it adequate. -The first objection is that the same smell of bathos haunts the soul -in the case of all deliberate and elaborate visits to "beauty spots," -even by persons of the most elegant position or the most -protected privacy. Specially visiting the Coliseum by moonlight -always struck me as being as vulgar as visiting it by limelight. -One millionaire standing on the top of Mont Blanc, one millionaire -standing in the desert by the Sphinx, one millionaire standing -in the middle of Stonehenge, is just as comic as one millionaire -is anywhere else; and that is saying a good deal. On the other hand, -if the billycock had come privately and naturally into Ely Cathedral, -no enthusiast for Gothic harmony would think of objecting to the -billycock--so long, of course, as it was not worn on the head. -But there is indeed a much deeper objection to this theory -of the two incompatible excellences of antiquity and popularity. -For the truth is that it has been almost entirely the antiquities -that have normally interested the populace; and it has been almost -entirely the populace who have systematically preserved the antiquities. -The Oldest Inhabitant has always been a clodhopper; I have never -heard of his being a gentleman. It is the peasants who preserve -all traditions of the sites of battles or the building of churches. -It is they who remember, so far as any one remembers, the glimpses -of fairies or the graver wonders of saints. In the classes -above them the supernatural has been slain by the supercilious. -That is a true and tremendous text in Scripture which says that "where -there is no vision the people perish." But it is equally true -in practice that where there is no people the visions perish. - -The idea must be abandoned, then, that this feeling of faint -dislike towards popular sight-seeing is due to any inherent -incompatibility between the idea of special shrines and -trophies and the idea of large masses of ordinary men. -On the contrary, these two elements of sanctity and democracy -have been specially connected and allied throughout history. -The shrines and trophies were often put up by ordinary men. -They were always put up for ordinary men. To whatever things -the fastidious modern artist may choose to apply his theory of -specialist judgment, and an aristocracy of taste, he must necessarily find -it difficult really to apply it to such historic and monumental art. -Obviously, a public building is meant to impress the public. -The most aristocratic tomb is a democratic tomb, because it exists -to be seen; the only aristocratic thing is the decaying corpse, -not the undecaying marble; and if the man wanted to be thoroughly -aristocratic, he should be buried in his own back-garden. The -chapel of the most narrow and exclusive sect is universal outside, -even if it is limited inside, its walls and windows confront -all points of the compass and all quarters of the cosmos. -It may be small as a dwelling-place, but it is universal as a monument; -if its sectarians had really wished to be private they should have -met in a private house. Whenever and wherever we erect a national -or municipal hall, pillar, or statue, we are speaking to the crowd -like a demagogue. - -The statue of every statesman offers itself for election as much -as the statesman himself. Every epitaph on a church slab is put -up for the mob as much as a placard in a General Election. -And if we follow this track of reflection we shall, I think, -really find why it is that modern sight-seeing jars on something in us, -something that is not a caddish contempt for graves nor an equally -caddish contempt for cads. For, after all, there is many a-- -churchyard which consists mostly of dead cads; but that does not -make it less sacred or less sad. - -The real explanation, I fancy, is this: that these cathedrals and columns -of triumph were meant, not for people more cultured and self-conscious -than modern tourists, but for people much rougher and more casual. -Those leaps of live stone like frozen fountains, were so placed and poised -as to catch the eye of ordinary inconsiderate men going about their -daily business; and when they are so seen they are never forgotten. -The true way of reviving the magic of our great minsters and historic -sepulchres is not the one which Ruskin was always recommending. -It is not to be more careful of historic buildings. Nay, it is -rather to be more careless of them. Buy a bicycle in Maidstone -to visit an aunt in Dover, and you will see Canterbury Cathedral -as it was built to be seen. Go through London only as the shortest -way between Croydon and Hampstead, and the Nelson Column will -(for the first time in your life) remind you of Nelson. -You will appreciate Hereford Cathedral if you have come for cider, -not if you have come for architecture. You will really see the -Place Vendome if you have come on business, not if you have come for art. -For it was for the simple and laborious generations of men, practical, -troubled about many things, that our fathers reared those portents. -There is, indeed, another element, not unimportant: the fact -that people have gone to cathedrals to pray. But in discussing -modern artistic cathedral-lovers, we need not consider this. - - - - -A Criminal Head - -When men of science (or, more often, men who talk about science) -speak of studying history or human society scientifically they -always forget that there are two quite distinct questions involved. -It may be that certain facts of the body go with certain facts -of the soul, but it by no means follows that a grasp of such -facts of the body goes with a grasp of the things of the soul. -A man may show very learnedly that certain mixtures of race make -a happy community, but he may be quite wrong (he generally is) -about what communities are happy. A man may explain scientifically -how a certain physical type involves a really bad man, but he may be -quite wrong (he generally is) about which sort of man is really bad. -Thus his whole argument is useless, for he understands only one half -of the equation. - -The drearier kind of don may come to me and say, "Celts are unsuccessful; -look at Irishmen, for instance." To which I should reply, -"You may know all about Celts; but it is obvious that you know -nothing about Irishmen. The Irish are not in the least unsuccessful, -unless it is unsuccessful to wander from their own country over a great -part of the earth, in which case the English are unsuccessful too." -A man with a bumpy head may say to me (as a kind of New Year -greeting), "Fools have microcephalous skulls," or what not. -To which I shall reply, "In order to be certain of that, you must -be a good judge both of the physical and of the mental fact. -It is not enough that you should know a microcephalous skull -when you see it. It is also necessary that you should know a fool -when you see him; and I have a suspicion that you do not know -a fool when you see him, even after the most lifelong and intimate -of all forms of acquaintanceship." - -The trouble with most sociologists, criminologists, etc., is that -while their knowledge of their own details is exhaustive and subtle, -their knowledge of man and society, to which these are to -be applied, is quite exceptionally superficial and silly. -They know everything about biology, but almost nothing about life. -Their ideas of history, for instance, are simply cheap and uneducated. -Thus some famous and foolish professor measured the skull of -Charlotte Corday to ascertain the criminal type; he had not historical -knowledge enough to know that if there is any "criminal type," -certainly Charlotte Corday had not got it. The skull, I believe, -afterwards turned out not to be Charlotte Corday's at all; -but that is another story. The point is that the poor old man -was trying to match Charlotte Corday's mind with her skull without -knowing anything whatever about her mind. - -But I came yesterday upon a yet more crude and startling example. - -In a popular magazine there is one of the usual articles -about criminology; about whether wicked men could be made good -if their heads were taken to pieces. As by far the wickedest men I -know of are much too rich and powerful ever to submit to the process, -the speculation leaves me cold. I always notice with pain, however, -a curious absence of the portraits of living millionaires from such -galleries of awful examples; most of the portraits in which we -are called upon to remark the line of the nose or the curve of the -forehead appear to be the portraits of ordinary sad men, who stole -because they were hungry or killed because they were in a rage. -The physical peculiarity seems to vary infinitely; sometimes it is -the remarkable square head, sometimes it is the unmistakable round head; -sometimes the learned draw attention to the abnormal development, -sometimes to the striking deficiency of the back of the head. -I have tried to discover what is the invariable factor, the one -permanent mark of the scientific criminal type; after exhaustive -classification I have to come to the conclusion that it consists -in being poor. - -But it was among the pictures in this article that I received -the final shock; the enlightenment which has left me in lasting -possession of the fact that criminologists are generally more ignorant -than criminals. Among the starved and bitter, but quite human, -faces was one head, neat but old-fashioned, with the powder of -the 18th century and a certain almost pert primness in the dress -which marked the conventions of the upper middle-class about 1790. -The face was lean and lifted stiffly up, the eyes stared forward -with a frightful sincerity, the lip was firm with a heroic firmness; -all the more pathetic because of a certain delicacy and deficiency -of male force, Without knowing who it was, one could have guessed -that it was a man in the manner of Shakespeare's Brutus, a man -of piercingly pure intentions, prone to use government as a mere -machine for morality, very sensitive to the charge of inconsistency -and a little too proud of his own clean and honourable life. -I say I should have known this almost from the face alone, -even if I had not known who it was. - -But I did know who it was. It was Robespierre. And underneath -the portrait of this pale and too eager moralist were written -these remarkable words: "Deficiency of ethical instincts," -followed by something to the effect that he knew no mercy (which is -certainly untrue), and by some nonsense about a retreating forehead, -a peculiarity which he shared with Louis XVI and with half the people -of his time and ours. - -Then it was that I measured the staggering distance between the knowledge -and the ignorance of science. Then I knew that all criminology -might be worse than worthless, because of its utter ignorance -of that human material of which it is supposed to be speaking. -The man who could say that Robespierre was deficient in ethical instincts -is a man utterly to be disregarded in all calculations of ethics. -He might as well say that John Bunyan was deficient in ethical instincts. -You may say that Robespierre was morbid and unbalanced, and you may say -the same of Bunyan. But if these two men were morbid and unbalanced -they were morbid and unbalanced by feeling too much about morality, -not by feeling too little. You may say if you like that Robespierre was -(in a negative sort of way) mad. But if he was mad he was mad on ethics. -He and a company of keen and pugnacious men, intellectually impatient -of unreason and wrong, resolved that Europe should not be choked up -in every channel by oligarchies and state secrets that already stank. -The work was the greatest that was ever given to men to do except -that which Christianity did in dragging Europe out of the abyss -of barbarism after the Dark Ages. But they did it, and no one else -could have done it. - -Certainly we could not do it. We are not ready to fight all Europe -on a point of justice. We are not ready to fling our most powerful -class as mere refuse to the foreigner; we are not ready to shatter -the great estates at a stroke; we are not ready to trust ourselves -in an awful moment of utter dissolution in order to make all -things seem intelligible and all men feel honourable henceforth. -We are not strong enough to be as strong as Danton. We are not strong -enough to be as weak as Robespierre. There is only one thing, -it seems, that we can do. Like a mob of children, we can play -games upon this ancient battlefield; we can pull up the bones -and skulls of the tyrants and martyrs of that unimaginable war; -and we can chatter to each other childishly and innocently -about skulls that are imbecile and heads that are criminal. -I do not know whose heads are criminal, but I think I know -whose are imbecile. - - - - -The Wrath of the Roses - -The position of the rose among flowers is like that of the dog -among animals. It is so much that both are domesticated as -that have some dim feeling that they were always domesticated. -There are wild roses and there are wild dogs. I do not know the -wild dogs; wild roses are very nice. But nobody ever thinks of either -of them if the name is abruptly mentioned in a gossip or a poem. -On the other hand, there are tame tigers and tame cobras, but if -one says, "I have a cobra in my pocket," or "There is a tiger in -the music-room," the adjective "tame" has to be somewhat hastily -added. If one speaks of beasts one thinks first of wild beasts; -if of flowers one thinks first of wild flowers. - -But there are two great exceptions; caught so completely into the wheel -of man's civilization, entangled so unalterably with his ancient -emotions and images, that the artificial product seems more natural -than the natural. The dog is not a part of natural history, -but of human history; and the real rose grows in a garden. -All must regard the elephant as something tremendous, but tamed; -and many, especially in our great cultured centres, regard every -bull as presumably a mad bull. In the same way we think of most -garden trees and plants as fierce creatures of the forest or morass -taught at last to endure the curb. - -But with the dog and the rose this instinctive principle is reversed. -With them we think of the artificial as the archetype; the earth-born -as the erratic exception. We think vaguely of the wild dog as if -he had run away, like the stray cat. And we cannot help fancying -that the wonderful wild rose of our hedges has escaped by jumping -over the hedge. Perhaps they fled together, the dog and the rose: -a singular and (on the whole) an imprudent elopement. Perhaps -the treacherous dog crept from the kennel, and the rebellious -rose from the flower-bed, and they fought their way out in company, -one with teeth and the other with thorns. Possibly this is why my -dog becomes a wild dog when he sees roses, and kicks them anywhere. -Possibly this is why the wild rose is called a dog-rose. Possibly not. - -But there is this degree of dim barbaric truth in the quaint -old-world legend that I have just invented. That in these two cases -the civilized product is felt to be the fiercer, nay, even the wilder. -Nobody seems to be afraid of a wild dog: he is classed among -the jackals and the servile beasts. The terrible cave canem is written -over man's creation. When we read "Beware of the Dog," it means -beware of the tame dog: for it is the tame dog that is terrible. -He is terrible in proportion as he is tame: it is his loyalty and -his virtues that are awful to the stranger, even the stranger within -your gates; still more to the stranger halfway over your gates. -He is alarmed at such deafening and furious docility; he flees -from that great monster of mildness. - -Well, I have much the same feeling when I look at the roses ranked -red and thick and resolute round a garden; they seem to me bold and -even blustering. I hasten to say that I know even less about my own -garden than about anybody else's garden. I know nothing about roses, -not even their names. I know only the name Rose; and Rose is -(in every sense of the word) a Christian name. It is Christian -in the one absolute and primordial sense of Christian--that it comes -down from the age of pagans. The rose can be seen, and even smelt, -in Greek, Latin, Provencal, Gothic, Renascence, and Puritan poems. -Beyond this mere word Rose, which (like wine and other noble words) -is the same in all the tongues of white men, I know literally nothing. -I have heard the more evident and advertised names. I know there is -a flower which calls itself the Glory of Dijon--which I had supposed -to be its cathedral. In any case, to have produced a rose and a cathedral -is to have produced not only two very glorious and humane things, -but also (as I maintain) two very soldierly and defiant things. -I also know there is a rose called Marechal Niel--note once more -the military ring. - -And when I was walking round my garden the other day I spoke -to my gardener (an enterprise of no little valour) and asked him -the name of a strange dark rose that had somehow oddly taken my fancy. -It was almost as if it reminded me of some turbid element in -history and the soul. Its red was not only swarthy, but smoky; -there was something congested and wrathful about its colour. -It was at once theatrical and sulky. The gardener told me it was -called Victor Hugo. - -Therefore it is that I feel all roses to have some secret power -about them; even their names may mean something in connexion -with themselves, in which they differ from nearly all the sons of men. -But the rose itself is royal and dangerous; long as it has remained -in the rich house of civilization, it has never laid off its armour. -A rose always looks like a mediaeval gentleman of Italy, with a cloak -of crimson and a sword: for the thorn is the sword of the rose. - -And there is this real moral in the matter; that we have -to remember that civilization as it goes on ought not perhaps -to grow more fighting--but ought to grow more ready to fight. -The more valuable and reposeful is the order we have to guard, the more -vivid should be our ultimate sense of vigilance and potential violence. -And when I walk round a summer garden, I can understand how those high mad -lords at the end of the Middle Ages, just before their swords clashed, -caught at roses for their instinctive emblems of empire and rivalry. -For to me any such garden is full of the wars of the roses. - - - - -The Gold of Glastonbury - -One silver morning I walked into a small grey town of stone, like twenty -other grey western towns, which happened to be called Glastonbury; -and saw the magic thorn of near two thousand years growing in the open -air as casually as any bush in my garden. - -In Glastonbury, as in all noble and humane things, the myth is more -important than the history. One cannot say anything stronger of -the strange old tale of St. Joseph and the Thorn than that it dwarfs -St. Dunstan. Standing among the actual stones and shrubs one thinks -of the first century and not of the tenth; one's mind goes back beyond -the Saxons and beyond the greatest statesman of the Dark Ages. The tale -that Joseph of Arimathea came to Britain is presumably a mere legend. -But it is not by any means so incredible or preposterous a legend -as many modern people suppose. The popular notion is that the thing -is quite comic and inconceivable; as if one said that Wat Tyler -went to Chicago, or that John Bunyan discovered the North Pole. -We think of Palestine as little, localized and very private, -of Christ's followers as poor folk, astricti globis, rooted to their -towns or trades; and we think of vast routes of travel and constant -world-communications as things of recent and scientific origin. -But this is wrong; at least, the last part of it is. It is -part of that large and placid lie that the rationalists tell -when they say that Christianity arose in ignorance and barbarism. -Christianity arose in the thick of a brilliant and bustling -cosmopolitan civilization. Long sea-voyages were not so quick, -but were quite as incessant as to-day; and though in the nature -of things Christ had not many rich followers, it is not unnatural -to suppose that He had some. And a Joseph of Arimathea may easily -have been a Roman citizen with a yacht that could visit Britain. -The same fallacy is employed with the same partisan motive in the case -of the Gospel of St. John; which critics say could not have been -written by one of the first few Christians because of its Greek -transcendentalism and its Platonic tone. I am no judge of the philology, -but every human being is a divinely appointed judge of the philosophy: -and the Platonic tone seems to me to prove nothing at all. -Palestine was not a secluded valley of barbarians; it was -an open province of a polyglot empire, overrun with all sorts -of people of all kinds of education. To take a rough parallel: -suppose some great prophet arose among the Boers in South Africa. -The prophet himself might be a simple or unlettered man. -But no one who knows the modern world would be surprised if one -of his closest followers were a Professor from Heidelberg or an -M.A. from Oxford. - -All this is not urged here with any notion of proving that the tale -of the thorn is not a myth; as I have said, it probably is a myth. -It is urged with the much more important object of pointing -out the proper attitude towards such myths.. The proper attitude -is one of doubt and hope and of a kind of light mystery. -The tale is certainly not impossible; as it is certainly not certain. -And through all the ages since the Roman Empire men have fed their -healthy fancies and their historical imagination upon the very twilight -condition of such tales. But to-day real agnosticism has declined -along with real theology. People cannot leave a creed alone; -though it is the essence of a creed to be clear. But neither can they -leave a legend alone; though it is the essence of a legend to be vague. -That sane half scepticism which was found in all rustics, -in all ghost tales and fairy tales, seems to be a lost secret. -Modern people must make scientifically certain that St. Joseph did -or did not go to Glastonbury, despite the fact that it is now quite -impossible to find out; and that it does not, in a religious sense, -very much matter. But it is essential to feel that he may have -gone to Glastonbury: all songs, arts, and dedications branching -and blossoming like the thorn, are rooted in some such sacred doubt. -Taken thus, not heavily like a problem but lightly like an old tale, -the thing does lead one along the road of very strange realities, -and the thorn is found growing in the heart of a very secret maze -of the soul. Something is really present in the place; some closer -contact with the thing which covers Europe but is still a secret. -Somehow the grey town and the green bush touch across the world -the strange small country of the garden and the grave; there is verily -some communion between the thorn tree and the crown of thorns. - -A man never knows what tiny thing will startle him to such ancestral -and impersonal tears. Piles of superb masonry will often pass like a -common panorama; and on this grey and silver morning the ruined towers -of the cathedral stood about me somewhat vaguely like grey clouds. -But down in a hollow where the local antiquaries are making -a fruitful excavation, a magnificent old ruffian with a pickaxe -(whom I believe to have been St. Joseph of Arimathea) showed me -a fragment of the old vaulted roof which he had found in the earth; -and on the whitish grey stone there was just a faint brush of gold. -There seemed a piercing and swordlike pathos, an unexpected -fragrance of all forgotten or desecrated things, in the bare -survival of that poor little pigment upon the imperishable rock. -To the strong shapes of the Roman and the Gothic I had grown accustomed; -but that weak touch of colour was at once tawdry and tender, -like some popular keepsake. Then I knew that all my fathers were -men like me; for the columns and arches were grave, and told of -the gravity of the builders; but here was one touch of their gaiety. -I almost expected it to fade from the stone as I stared. -It was as if men had been able to preserve a fragment of a sunset. - -And then I remembered how the artistic critics have always praised -the grave tints and the grim shadows of the crumbling cloisters and -abbey towers, and how they themselves often dress up like Gothic ruins -in the sombre tones of dim grey walls or dark green ivy. I remembered -how they hated almost all primary things, but especially primary colours. -I knew they were appreciating much more delicately and truly than I -the sublime skeleton and the mighty fungoids of the dead Glastonbury. -But I stood for an instant alive in the living Glastonbury, -gay with gold and coloured like the toy-book of a child. - - - - -The Futurists - -It was a warm golden evening, fit for October, and I was watching -(with regret) a lot of little black pigs being turned out of my garden, -when the postman handed to me, with a perfunctory haste which doubtless -masked his emotion, the Declaration of Futurism. If you ask me what -Futurism is, I cannot tell you; even the Futurists themselves seem -a little doubtful; perhaps they are waiting for the future to find out. -But if you ask me what its Declaration is, I answer eagerly; -for I can tell you quite a lot about that. It is written by an -Italian named Marinetti, in a magazine which is called Poesia. -It is headed "Declaration of Futurism" in enormous letters; it is -divided off with little numbers; and it starts straight away like this: -"1. We intend to glorify the love of danger, the custom of energy, -the strengt of daring. 2. The essential elements of our poetry -will be courage, audacity, and revolt. 3. Literature having up -to now glorified thoughtful immobility, ecstasy, and slumber, -we wish to exalt the aggressive movement, the feverish insomnia, -running, the perilous leap, the cuff and the blow." While I am -quite willing to exalt the cuff within reason, it scarcely seems -such an entirely new subject for literature as the Futurists imagine. -It seems to me that even through the slumber which fills the Siege -of Troy, the Song of Roland, and the Orlando Furioso, and in spite -of the thoughtful immobility which marks "Pantagruel," "Henry V," -and the Ballad of Chevy Chase, there are occasional gleams -of an admiration for courage, a readiness to glorify the love -of danger, and even the "strengt of daring," I seem to remember, -slightly differently spelt, somewhere in literature. - -The distinction, however, seems to be that the warriors of -the past went in for tournaments, which were at least dangerous -for themselves, while the Futurists go in for motor-cars, -which are mainly alarming for other people. It is the Futurist -in his motor who does the "aggressive movement," but it is the -pedestrians who go in for the "running" and the "perilous leap." -Section No. 4 says, "We declare that the splendour of the world -has been enriched with a new form of beauty, the beauty of speed. -A race-automobile adorned with great pipes like serpents -with explosive breath. ... A race-automobile which seems -to rush over exploding powder is more beautiful than the Victory -of Samothrace." It is also much easier, if you have the money. -It is quite clear, however, that you cannot be a Futurist at -all unless you are frightfully rich. Then follows this lucid -and soul-stirring sentence: "5. We will sing the praises of man -holding the flywheel of which the ideal steering-post traverses -the earth impelled itself around the circuit of its own orbit." -What a jolly song it would be--so hearty, and with such a simple -swing in it! I can imagine the Futurists round the fire in a tavern -trolling out in chorus some ballad with that incomparable refrain; -shouting over their swaying flagons some such words as these: - - A notion came into my head as new as it was bright - That poems might be written on the subject of a fight; - No praise was given to Lancelot, Achilles, Nap or Corbett, - But we will sing the praises of man holding the flywheel of which the ideal -steering-post traverses the earth impelled itself around the circuit -of its own orbit. - -Then lest it should be supposed that Futurism would be so weak -as to permit any democratic restraints upon the violence and levity -of the luxurious classes, there would be a special verse in honour -of the motors also: - - My fathers scaled the mountains in their pilgrimages far, - But I feel full of energy while sitting in a car; - And petrol is the perfect wine, I lick it and absorb it, - So we will sing the praises of man holding the flywheel of which the ideal -steering-post traverses the earth impelled itself around the circuit -of its own orbit. - -Yes, it would be a rollicking catch. I wish there were space to finish -the song, or to detail all the other sections in the Declaration. -Suffice it to say that Futurism has a gratifying dislike both of -Liberal politics and Christian morals; I say gratifying because, -however unfortunately the cross and the cap of liberty have quarrelled, -they are always united in the feeble hatred of such silly -megalomaniacs as these. They will "glorify war--the only true -hygiene of the world--militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture -of Anarchism, the beautiful ideas which kill, and the scorn of woman." -They will "destroy museums, libraries, and fight against moralism, -feminism, and all utilitarian cowardice." The proclamation ends with -an extraordinary passage which I cannot understand at all, all about -something that is going to happen to Mr. Marinetti when he is forty. -As far as I can make out he will then be killed by other poets, -who will be overwhelmed with love and admiration for him. -"They will come against us from far away, from everywhere, -leaping on the cadence of their first poems, clawing the air with -crooked fingers and scenting at the Academy gates the good smell -of our decaying minds." Well, it is satisfactory to be told, -however obscurely, that this sort of thing is coming to an end -some day, to be replaced by some other tomfoolery. And though -I commonly refrain from clawing the air with crooked fingers, -I can assure Mr. Marinetti that this omission does not disqualify me, -and that I scent the good smell of his decaying mind all right. - -I think the only other point of Futurism is contained in this -sentence: "It is in Italy that we hurl this overthrowing and -inflammatory Declaration, with which to-day we found Futurism, -for we will free Italy from her numberless museums which cover -her with countless cemeteries." I think that rather sums it up. -The best way, one would think, of freeing oneself from a museum -would be not to go there. Mr. Marinetti's fathers and grandfathers -freed Italy from prisons and torture chambers, places where people -were held by force. They, being in the bondage of "moralism," -attacked Governments as unjust, real Governments, with real guns. -Such was their utilitarian cowardice that they would die in hundreds -upon the bayonets of Austria. I can well imagine why Mr. Marinetti -in his motor-car does not wish to look back at the past. If there -was one thing that could make him look smaller even than before it -is that roll of dead men's drums and that dream of Garibaldi going by. -The old Radical ghosts go by, more real than the living men, -to assault I know not what ramparted city in hell. And meanwhile -the Futurist stands outside a museum in a warlike attitude, -and defiantly tells the official at the turnstile that he will never, -never come in. - -There is a certain solid use in fools. It is not so much that they -rush in where angels fear to tread, but rather that they let out -what devils intend to do. Some perversion of folly will float -about nameless and pervade a whole society; then some lunatic -gives it a name, and henceforth it is harmless. With all really -evil things, when the danger has appeared the danger is over. -Now it may be hoped that the self-indulgent sprawlers of Poesia -have put a name once and for all to their philosophy. In the case -of their philosophy, to put a name to it is to put an end to it. -Yet their philosophy has been very widespread in our time; it could -hardly have been pointed and finished except by this perfect folly. -The creed of which (please God) this is the flower and finish -consists ultimately in this statement: that it is bold and spirited -to appeal to the future. Now, it is entirely weak and half-witted -to appeal to the future. A brave man ought to ask for what he wants, -not for what he expects to get. A brave man who wants Atheism in -the future calls himself an Atheist; a brave man who wants Socialism, -a Socialist; a brave man who wants Catholicism, a Catholic. -But a weak-minded man who does not know what he wants in the future -calls himself a Futurist. - -They have driven all the pigs away. Oh that they had driven away -the prigs, and left the pigs! The sky begins to droop with darkness -and all birds and blossoms to descend unfaltering into the healthy -underworld where things slumber and grow. There was just one true -phrase of Mr. Marinetti's about himself: "the feverish insomnia." -The whole universe is pouring headlong to the happiness of the night. -It is only the madman who has not the courage to sleep. - - - - -Dukes - -The Duc de Chambertin-Pommard was a small but lively relic of a really -aristocratic family, the members of which were nearly all Atheists -up to the time of the French Revolution, but since that event -(beneficial in such various ways) had been very devout. -He was a Royalist, a Nationalist, and a perfectly sincere patriot -in that particular style which consists of ceaselessly asserting -that one's country is not so much in danger as already destroyed. -He wrote cheery little articles for the Royalist Press entitled -"The End of France" or "The Last Cry," or what not, and he gave -the final touches to a picture of the Kaiser riding across a pavement -of prostrate Parisians with a glow of patriotic exultation. -He was quite poor, and even his relations had no money. -He walked briskly to all his meals at a little open cafe, -and he looked just like everybody else. - -Living in a country where aristocracy does not exist, he had a high -opinion of it. He would yearn for the swords and the stately -manners of the Pommards before the Revolution--most of whom had been -(in theory) Republicans. But he turned with a more practical -eagerness to the one country in Europe where the tricolour has -never flown and men have never been roughly equalized before the -State. The beacon and comfort of his life was England, which all -Europe sees clearly as the one pure aristocracy that remains. -He had, moreover, a mild taste for sport and kept an English -bulldog, and he believed the English to be a race of bulldogs, -of heroic squires, and hearty yeomen vassals, because he read all -this in English Conservative papers, written by exhausted little -Levantine clerks. But his reading was naturally for the most part -in the French Conservative papers (though he knew English well), -and it was in these that he first heard of the horrible Budget. -There he read of the confiscatory revolution planned by the -Lord Chancellor of the Exchequer, the sinister Georges Lloyd. -He also read how chivalrously Prince Arthur Balfour of Burleigh -had defied that demagogue, assisted by Austen the Lord Chamberlain -and the gay and witty Walter Lang. And being a brisk partisan -and a capable journalist, he decided to pay England a special visit -and report to his paper upon the struggle. - -He drove for an eternity in an open fly through beautiful woods, -with a letter of introduction in his pocket to one duke, who was -to introduce him to another duke. The endless and numberless avenues -of bewildering pine woods gave him a queer feeling that he was driving -through the countless corridors of a dream. Yet the vast silence -and freshness healed his irritation at modern ugliness and unrest. -It seemed a background fit for the return of chivalry. In such -a forest a king and all his court might lose themselves hunting -or a knight errant might perish with no companion but God. The castle -itself when he reached it was somewhat smaller than he had expected, -but he was delighted with its romantic and castellated outline. -He was just about to alight when somebody opened two enormous gates -at the side and the vehicle drove briskly through. - -"That is not the house?" he inquired politely of the driver. - -"No, sir," said the driver, controlling the corners of his mouth. -"The lodge, sir." - -"Indeed," said the Duc de Chambertin-Pommard, "that is where -the Duke's land begins?" - -"Oh no, sir," said the man, quite in distress. "We've been in his -Grace's land all day." - -The Frenchman thanked him and leant back in the carriage, -feeling as if everything were incredibly huge and vast, like Gulliver -in the country of the Brobdingnags. - -He got out in front of a long facade of a somewhat severe building, -and a little careless man in a shooting jacket and knickerbockers -ran down the steps. He had a weak, fair moustache and dull, blue, -babyish eyes; his features were insignificant, but his manner -extremely pleasant and hospitable, This was the Duke of Aylesbury, -perhaps the largest landowner in Europe, and known only as a horsebreeder -until he began to write abrupt little letters about the Budget. -He led the French Duke upstairs, talking trivialties in a hearty way, -and there presented him to another and more important English oligarch, -who got up from a writing-desk with a slightly senile jerk. -He had a gleaming bald head and glasses; the lower part of his -face was masked with a short, dark beard, which did not conceal -a beaming smile, not unmixed with sharpness. He stooped -a little as he ran, like some sedentary head clerk or cashier; -and even without the cheque-book and papers on his desk would -have given the impression of a merchant or man of business. -He was dressed in a light grey check jacket. He was the Duke -of Windsor, the great Unionist statesman. Between these two loose, -amiable men, the little Gaul stood erect in his black frock coat, -with the monstrous gravity of French ceremonial good manners. -This stiffness led the Duke of Windsor to put him at his ease -(like a tenant), and he said, rubbing his hands: - -"I was delighted with your letter ... delighted. I shall be very -pleased if I can give you--er--any details." - -"My visit," said the Frenchman, "scarcely suffices for -the scientific exhaustion of detail. I seek only the idea. -The idea, that is always the immediate thing." - -"Quite so," said the other rapidly; "quite so ... the idea." - -Feeling somehow that it was his turn (the English Duke having done all -that could be required of him) Pommard had to say: "I mean the idea -of aristocracy. I regard this as the last great battle for the idea. -Aristocracy, like any other thing, must justify itself to mankind. -Aristocracy is good because it preserves a picture of human dignity -in a world where that dignity is often obscured by servile necessities. -Aristocracy alone can keep a certain high reticence of soul and body, -a certain noble distance between the sexes." - -The Duke of Aylesbury, who had a clouded recollection of having squirted -soda-water down the neck of a Countess on the previous evening, -looked somewhat gloomy, as if lamenting the theoretic spirit -of the Latin race. The elder Duke laughed heartily, and said: -"Well, well, you know; we English are horribly practical. -With us the great question is the land. Out here in the country -... do you know this part?" - -"Yes, yes," cried the Frenchmen eagerly. "I See what you mean. -The country! the old rustic life of humanity! A holy war upon -the bloated and filthy towns. What right have these anarchists to attack -your busy and prosperous countrysides? Have they not thriven under -your management? Are not the English villages always growing larger -and gayer under the enthusiastic leadership of their encouraging squires? -Have you not the Maypole? Have you not Merry England?" - -The Duke of Aylesbury made a noise in his throat, and then said -very indistinctly: "They all go to London." - -"All go to London?" repeated Pommard, with a blank stare. "Why?" - -This time nobody answered, and Pommard had to attack again. - -"The spirit of aristocracy is essentially opposed to the greed -of the industrial cities. Yet in France there are actually -one or two nobles so vile as to drive coal and gas trades, -and drive them hard." The Duke of Windsor looked at the carpet. -The Duke of Aylesbury went and looked out of the window. -At length the latter said: "That's rather stiff, you know. -One has to look after one's own business in town as well." - -"Do not say it," cried the little Frenchman, starting up. -"I tell you all Europe is one fight between business and honour. -If we do not fight for honour, who will? What other right have we -poor two-legged sinners to titles and quartered shields except -that we staggeringly support some idea of giving things which -cannot be demanded and avoiding things which cannot be punished? -Our only claim is to be a wall across Christendom against the Jew -pedlars and pawnbrokers, against the Goldsteins and the--" - -The Duke of Aylesbury swung round with his hands in his pockets. - -"Oh, I say," he said, "you've been readin' Lloyd George. -Nobody but dirty Radicals can say a word against Goldstein." - -"I certainly cannot permit," said the elder Duke, rising rather shakily, -"the respected name of Lord Goldstein--" - -He intended to be impressive, but there was something in the Frenchman's -eye that is not so easily impressed; there shone there that steel -which is the mind of France, - -"Gentlemen," he said, "I think I have all the details now. -You have ruled England for four hundred years. By your own -account you have not made the countryside endurable to men. -By your own account you have helped the victory of vulgarity and smoke. -And by your own account you are hand and glove with those very -money-grubbers and adventurers whom gentlemen have no other business -but to keep at bay. I do not know what your people will do; -but my people would kill you." - -Some seconds afterwards he had left the Duke's house, and some hours -afterwards the Duke's estate. - - - - -The Glory of Grey - -I suppose that, taking this summer as a whole, people will not -call it an appropriate time for praising the English climate. -But for my part I will praise the English climate till I die-- -even if I die of the English climate. There is no weather -so good as English weather. Nay, in a real sense there is no -weather at all anywhere but in England. In France you have much -sun and some rain; in Italy you have hot winds and cold winds; -in Scotland and Ireland you have rain, either thick or thin; -in America you have hells of heat and cold, and in the Tropics you have -sunstrokes varied by thunderbolts. But all these you have on a broad -and brutal scale, and you settle down into contentment or despair. -Only in our own romantic country do you have the strictly romantic -thing called Weather; beautiful and changing as a woman. -The great English landscape painters (neglected now like everything -that is English) have this salient distinction: that the Weather is not -the atmosphere of their pictures; it is the subject of their pictures. -They paint portraits of the Weather. The Weather sat to Constable. -The Weather posed for Turner, and a deuce of a pose it was. -This cannot truly be said of the greatest of their continental -models or rivals. Poussin and Claude painted objects, ancient -cities or perfect Arcadian shepherds through a clear medium -of the climate. But in the English painters Weather is the hero; -with Turner an Adelphi hero, taunting, flashing and fighting, -melodramatic but really magnificent. The English climate, -a tall and terrible protagonist, robed in rain and thunder and snow -and sunlight, fills the whole canvas and the whole foreground. -I admit the superiority of many other French things besides French art. -But I will not yield an inch on the superiority of English weather and -weather-painting. Why, the French have not even got a word for Weather: -and you must ask for the weather in French as if you were asking -for the time in English. - -Then, again, variety of climate should always go with stability of abode. -The weather in the desert is monotonous; and as a natural consequence -the Arabs wander about, hoping it may be different somewhere. -But an Englishman's house is not only his castle; it is his fairy castle. -Clouds and colours of every varied dawn and eve are perpetually -touching and turning it from clay to gold, or from gold to ivory. -There is a line of woodland beyond a corner of my garden -which is literally different on every one of the three hundred -and sixty-five days. Sometimes it seems as near as a hedge, -and sometimes as far as a faint and fiery evening cloud. -The same principle (by the way) applies to the difficult problem -of wives. Variability is one of the virtues of a woman. -It avoids the crude requirement of polygamy. So long as you have -one good wife you are sure to have a spiritual harem. - -Now, among the heresies that are spoken in this matter is the habit -of calling a grey day a "colourless" day. Grey is a colour, -and can be a very powerful and pleasing colour. There is also an -insulting style of speech about "one grey day just like another" -You might as well talk about one green tree just like another. -A grey clouded sky is indeed a canopy between us and the sun; -so is a green tree, if it comes to that. But the grey umbrellas differ -as much as the green in their style and shape, in their tint and tilt. -One day may be grey like steel, and another grey like dove's plumage. -One may seem grey like the deathly frost, and another grey -like the smoke of substantial kitchens. No things could seem -further apart than the doubt of grey and the decision of scarlet. -Yet grey and red can mingle, as they do in the morning clouds: -and also in a sort of warm smoky stone of which they build the little -towns in the west country. In those towns even the houses that are wholly -grey have a glow in them; as if their secret firesides were such furnaces -of hospitality as faintly to transfuse the walls like walls of cloud. -And wandering in those westland parts I did once really find a sign-post -pointing up a steep crooked path to a town that was called Clouds. -I did not climb up to it; I feared that either the town would not be -good enough for the name, or I should not be good enough for the town. -Anyhow, the little hamlets of the warm grey stone have a geniality -which is not achieved by all the artistic scarlet of the suburbs; -as if it were better to warm one's hands at the ashes of Glastonbury -than at the painted flames of Croydon. - -Again, the enemies of grey (those astute, daring and evil-minded men) -are fond of bringing forward the argument that colours suffer in -grey weather, and that strong sunlight is necessary to all the hues -of heaven and earth. Here again there are two words to be said; -and it is essential to distinguish. It is true that sun is needed -to burnish and bring into bloom the tertiary and dubious colours; -the colour of peat, pea-soup, Impressionist sketches, brown velvet -coats, olives, grey and blue slates, the complexions of vegetarians, -the tints of volcanic rock, chocolate, cocoa, mud, soot, slime, old boots; -the delicate shades of these do need the sunlight to bring out -the faint beauty that often clings to them. But if you have a -healthy negro taste in colour, if you choke your garden with poppies -and geraniums, if you paint your house sky-blue and scarlet, -if you wear, let us say, a golden top-hat and a crimson frock-coat, -you will not only be visible on the greyest day, but you will notice -that your costume and environment produce a certain singular effect. -You will find, I mean, that rich colours actually look more -luminous on a grey day, because they are seen against a sombre -background and seem to be burning with a lustre of their -own. Against a dark sky all flowers look like fireworks. -There is something strange about them, at once vivid and secret, -like flowers traced in fire in the phantasmal garden of a witch. -A bright blue sky is necessarily the high light of the picture; -and its brightness kills all the bright blue flowers. But on a -grey day the larkspur looks like fallen heaven; the red daisies -are really the red lost eyes of day; and the sunflower is the -vice-regent of the sun. - -Lastly, there is this value about the colour that men call colourless; -that it suggests in some way the mixed and troubled average of existence, -especially in its quality of strife and expectation and promise. -Grey is a colour that always seems on the eve of changing to some -other colour; of brightening into blue or blanching into white -or bursting into green and gold. So we may be perpetually reminded -of the indefinite hope that is in doubt itself; and when there is -grey weather in our hills or grey hairs in our heads, perhaps they -may still remind us of the morning. - - - - -The Anarchist - -I have now lived for about two months in the country, and have gathered -the last rich autumnal fruit of a rural life, which is a strong desire -to see London. Artists living in my neighbourhood talk rapturously -of the rolling liberty of the landscape, the living peace of woods. -But I say to them (with a slight Buckinghamshire accent), "Ah, that is -how Cockneys feel. For us real old country people the country -is reality; it is the town that is romance. Nature is as plain -as one of her pigs, as commonplace, as comic, and as healthy. -But civilization is full of poetry, even if it be sometimes -an evil poetry. The streets of London are paved with gold; -that is, with the very poetry of avarice." With these typically -bucolic words I touch my hat and go ambling away on a stick, -with a stiffness of gait proper to the Oldest Inhabitant; -while in my more animated moments I am taken for the Village Idiot. -Exchanging heavy but courteous salutations with other gaffers, I reach -the station, where I ask for a ticket for London where the king lives. -Such a journey, mingled of provincial fascination and fear, -did I successfully perform only a few days ago; and alone and -helpless in the capital, found myself in the tangle of roads around -the Marble Arch. - -A faint prejudice may possess the mind that I have slightly exaggerated -my rusticity and remoteness. And yet it is true as I came to that corner -of the Park that, for some unreasonable reason of mood, I saw all London -as a strange city and the civilization itself as one enormous whim. -The Marble Arch itself, in its new insular position, with traffic -turning dizzily all about it, struck me as a placid monstrosity. -What could be wilder than to have a huge arched gateway, with people -going everywhere except under it? If I took down my front door -and stood it up all by itself in the middle of my back garden, -my village neighbours (in their simplicity) would probably stare. -Yet the Marble Arch is now precisely that; an elaborate entrance -and the only place by which no one can enter. By the new arrangement -its last weak pretence to be a gate has been taken away. The cabman -still cannot drive through it, but he can have the delights of riding -round it, and even (on foggy nights) the rapture of running into it. -It has been raised from the rank of a fiction to the dignity -of an obstacle. - -As I began to walk across a corner of the Park, this sense of what -is strange in cities began to mingle with some sense of what is -stern as well as strange. It was one of those queer-coloured -winter days when a watery sky changes to pink and grey and green, -like an enormous opal. The trees stood up grey and angular, -as if in attitudes of agony; and here and there on benches under -the trees sat men as grey and angular as they. It was cold even for me, -who had eaten a large breakfast and purposed to eat a perfectly -Gargantuan lunch; it was colder for the men under the trees. -And to eastward through the opalescent haze, the warmer whites -and yellows of the houses in Park-lane shone as unsubstantially -as if the clouds themselves had taken on the shape of mansions to mock -the men who sat there in the cold. But the mansions were real-- -like the mockery. - -No one worth calling a man allows his moods to change his convictions; -but it is by moods that we understand other men's convictions. -The bigot is not he who knows he is right; every sane man knows -he is right. The bigot is he whose emotions and imagination -are too cold and weak to feel how it is that other men go wrong. -At that moment I felt vividly how men might go wrong, even unto dynamite. -If one of those huddled men under the trees had stood up and asked -for rivers of blood, it would have been erroneous--but not irrelevant. -It would have been appropriate and in the picture; that lurid grey -picture of insolence on one side and impotence on the other. -It may be true (on the whole it is) that this social machine -we have made is better than anarchy. Still, it is a machine; -and we have made it. It does hold those poor men helpless: -and it does lift those rich men high ... and such men--good Lord! -By the time I flung myself on a bench beside another man I was half -inclined to try anarchy for a change. - -The other was of more prosperous appearance than most of the men -on such seats; still, he was not what one calls a gentleman, -and had probably worked at some time like a human being. He -was a small, sharp-faced man, with grave, staring eyes, and -a beard somewhat foreign. His clothes were black; respectable -and yet casual; those of a man who dressed conventionally -because it was a bore to dress unconventionally--as it is. -Attracted by this and other things, and wanting an outburst -for my bitter social feelings, I tempted him into speech, -first about the cold, and then about the General Election. -To this the respectable man replied: - -"Well, I don't belong to any party myself. I'm an Anarchist." - -I looked up and almost expected fire from heaven. -This coincidence was like the end of the world. I had sat down -feeling that somehow or other Park-lane must be pulled down; -and I had sat down beside the man who wanted to pull it down. -I bowed in silence for an instant under the approaching apocalypse; -and in that instant the man turned sharply and started talking -like a torrent. - -"Understand me," he said. "Ordinary people think an Anarchist means -a man with a bomb in his pocket. Herbert Spencer was an Anarchist. -But for that fatal admission of his on page 793, he would be a -complete Anarchist. Otherwise, he agrees wholly with Pidge." - -This was uttered with such blinding rapidity of syllabification -as to be a better test of teetotalism than the Scotch one of saying -"Biblical criticism" six times. I attempted to speak, but he began -again with the same rippling rapidity. - -"You will say that Pidge also admits government in that tenth chapter -so easily misunderstood. Bolger has attacked Pidge on those lines. -But Bolger has no scientific training. Bolger is a psychometrist, -but no sociologist. To any one who has combined a study of Pidge with -the earlier and better discoveries of Kruxy, the fallacy is quite clear. -Bolger confounds social coercion with coercional social action." - -His rapid rattling mouth shut quite tight suddenly, and he looked -steadily and triumphantly at me, with his head on one side. -I opened my mouth, and the mere motion seemed to sting him to -fresh verbal leaps. - -"Yes," he said, "that's all very well. The Finland Group has -accepted Bolger. But," he said, suddenly lifting a long finger as -if to stop me, "but--Pidge has replied. His pamphlet is published. -He has proved that Potential Social Rebuke is not a weapon of -the true Anarchist. He has shown that just as religious authority -and political authority have gone, so must emotional authority -and psychological authority. He has shown--" - -I stood up in a sort of daze. "I think you remarked," -I said feebly, "that the mere common populace do not quite -understand Anarchism"--"Quite so," he said with burning swiftness; -"as I said, they think any Anarchist is a man with a bomb, whereas--" - -"But great heavens, man!" I said; "it's the man with the bomb that -I understand! I wish you had half his sense. What do I care how many -German dons tie themselves in knots about how this society began? -My only interest is about how soon it will end. Do you see those fat -white houses over in Park-lane, where your masters live?" - -He assented and muttered something about concentrations of capital. - -"Well," I said, "if the time ever comes when we all storm -those houses, will you tell me one thing? Tell me how we shall -do it without authority? Tell me how you will have an army -of revolt without discipline?" - -For the first instant he was doubtful; and I had bidden him farewell, -and crossed the street again, when I saw him open his mouth and begin -to run after me. He had remembered something out of Pidge. - -I escaped, however, and as I leapt on an omnibus I saw again the enormous -emblem of the Marble Arch. I saw that massive symbol of the modern mind: -a door with no house to it; the gigantic gate of Nowhere. - - - - -How I found the Superman - -Readers of Mr. Bernard Shaw and other modern writers may be -interested to know that the Superman has been found. I found him; -he lives in South Croydon. My success will be a great blow to Mr. Shaw, -who has been following quite a false scent, and is now looking -for the creature in Blackpool; and as for Mr. Wells's notion -of generating him out of gases in a private laboratory, I always -thought it doomed to failure. I assure Mr. Wells that the Superman -at Croydon was born in the ordinary way, though he himself, of course, -is anything but ordinary. - -Nor are his parents unworthy of the wonderful being whom they -have given to the world. The name of Lady Hypatia Smythe-Browne -(now Lady Hypatia Hagg) will never be forgotten in the East End, -where she did such splendid social work. Her constant cry of "Save -the children!" referred to the cruel neglect of children's eyesight -involved in allowing them to play with crudely painted toys. -She quoted unanswerable statistics to prove that children allowed -to look at violet and vermilion often suffered from failing eyesight -in their extreme old age; and it was owing to her ceaseless crusade -that the pestilence of the Monkey-on-the-Stick was almost swept -from Hoxton. The devoted worker would tramp the streets untiringly, -taking away the toys from all the poor children, who were often -moved to tears by her kindness. Her good work was interrupted, -partly by a new interest in the creed of Zoroaster, and partly -by a savage blow from an umbrella. It was inflicted by a dissolute -Irish apple-woman, who, on returning from some orgy to her ill-kept -apartment, found Lady Hypatia in the bedroom taking down an oleograph, -which, to say the least of it, could not really elevate the mind. -At this the ignorant and partly intoxicated Celt dealt the social -reformer a severe blow, adding to it an absurd accusation of theft. -The lady's exquisitely balanced mind received a shock, and it was -during a short mental illness that she married Dr. Hagg. - -Of Dr. Hagg himself I hope there is no need to speak. -Any one even slightly acquainted with those daring experiments -in Neo-Individualist Eugenics, which are now the one absorbing -interest of the English democracy, must know his name and often -commend it to the personal protection of an impersonal power. -Early in life he brought to bear that ruthless insight into the history -of religions which he had gained in boyhood as an electrical engineer. -Later he became one of our greatest geologists; and achieved that bold and -bright outlook upon the future of Socialism which only geology can give. -At first there seemed something like a rift, a faint, but perceptible, -fissure, between his views and those of his aristocratic wife. -For she was in favour (to use her own powerful epigram) of protecting -the poor against themselves; while he declared pitilessly, -in a new and striking metaphor, that the weakest must go to the wall. -Eventually, however, the married pair perceived an essential union -in the unmistakably modern character of both their views, and in this -enlightening and intelligible formula their souls found peace. -The result is that this union of the two highest types of -our civilization, the fashionable lady and the all but vulgar -medical man, has been blessed by the birth of the Superman, -that being whom all the labourers in Battersea are so eagerly -expecting night and day. - -I found the house of Dr. and Lady Hypatia Hagg without much difficulty; -it is situated in one of the last straggling streets of Croydon, -and overlooked by a line of poplars. I reached the door towards -the twilight, and it was natural that I should fancifully see something -dark and monstrous in the dim bulk of that house which contained -the creature who was more marvellous than the children of men. -When I entered the house I was received with exquisite courtesy -by Lady Hypatia and her husband; but I found much greater -difficulty in actually seeing the Superman, who is now about -fifteen years old, and is kept by himself in a quiet room. -Even my conversation with the father and mother did not quite -clear up the character of this mysterious being. Lady Hypatia, -who has a pale and poignant face, and is clad in those impalpable -and pathetic greys and greens with which she has brightened -so many homes in Hoxton, did not appear to talk of her offspring -with any of the vulgar vanity of an ordinary human mother. -I took a bold step and asked if the Superman was nice looking. - -"He creates his own standard, you see," she replied, with a slight sigh. -"Upon that plane he is more than Apollo. Seen from our lower plane, -of course--" And she sighed again. - -I had a horrible impulse, and said suddenly, "Has he got any hair?" - -There was a long and painful silence, and then Dr. Hagg said smoothly: -"Everything upon that plane is different; what he has got is -not... well, not, of course, what we call hair... but--" - -"Don't you think," said his wife, very softly, "don't you think -that really, for the sake of argument, when talking to the mere public, -one might call it hair?" - -"Perhaps you are right," said the doctor after a few moments' reflection. -"In connexion with hair like that one must speak in parables." - -"Well, what on earth is it," I asked in some irritation, "if it -isn't hair? Is it feathers?" - -"Not feathers, as we understand feathers," answered Hagg in -an awful voice. - -I got up in some irritation. "Can I see him, at any rate?" I asked. -"I am a journalist, and have no earthly motives except curiosity -and personal vanity. I should like to say that I had shaken hands -with the Superman." - -The husband and wife had both got heavily to their feet, -and stood, embarrassed. "Well, of course, you know," said Lady Hypatia, -with the really charming smile of the aristocratic hostess. -"You know he can't exactly shake hands ... not hands, you know.... -The structure, of course--" - -I broke out of all social bounds, and rushed at the door of -the room which I thought to contain the incredible creature. -I burst it open; the room was pitch dark. But from in front of me -came a small sad yelp, and from behind me a double shriek. - -"You have done it, now!" cried Dr. Hagg, burying his bald brow -in his hands. "You have let in a draught on him; and he is dead." - -As I walked away from Croydon that night I saw men in black carrying -out a coffin that was not of any human shape. The wind wailed above me, -whirling the poplars, so that they drooped and nodded like the plumes -of some cosmic funeral. "It is, indeed," said Dr. Hagg, "the whole -universe weeping over the frustration of its most magnificent birth." -But I thought that there was a hoot of laughter in the high wail -of the wind. - - - - -The New House - -Within a stone's throw of my house they are building another house. -I am glad they are building it, and I am glad it is within -a stone's throw; quite well within it, with a good catapult. -Nevertheless, I have not yet cast the first stone at the new house-- -not being, strictly speaking, guiltless myself in the matter -of new houses. And, indeed, in such cases there is a strong -protest to be made. The whole curse of the last century has -been what is called the Swing of the Pendulum; that is. -the idea that Man must go alternately from one extreme to the other. -It is a shameful and even shocking fancy; it is the denial of -the whole dignity of mankind. When Man is alive he stands still. -It is only when he is dead that he swings. But whenever one meets -modern thinkers (as one often does) progressing towards a madhouse, -one always finds, on inquiry, that they have just had a splendid escape -from another madhouse. Thus, hundreds of people become Socialists, -not because they have tried Socialism and found it nice, but because -they have tried Individualism and found it particularly nasty. -Thus, many embrace Christian Science solely because they are quite -sick of heathen science; they are so tired of believing that -everything is matter that they will even take refuge in the revolting -fable that everything is mind. Man ought to march somewhere. -But modern man (in his sick reaction) is ready to march nowhere-- -so long as it is the Other End of Nowhere. - -The case of building houses is a strong instance of this. -Early in the nineteenth century our civilization chose to abandon -the Greek and medieval idea of a town, with walls, limited and defined, -with a temple for faith and a market-place for politics; -and it chose to let the city grow like a jungle with blind cruelty -and bestial unconsciousness; so that London and Liverpool are -the great cities we now see. Well, people have reacted against that; -they have grown tired of living in a city which is as dark -and barbaric as a forest only not as beautiful, and there has -been an exodus into the country of those who could afford it, -and some I could name who can't. Now, as soon as this quite -rational recoil occurred, it flew at once to the opposite extreme. -People went about with beaming faces, boasting that they -were twenty-three miles from a station. Rubbing their hands, -they exclaimed in rollicking asides that their butcher only called -once a month, and that their baker started out with fresh hot -loaves which were quite stale before they reached the table. -A man would praise his little house in a quiet valley, but gloomily admit -(with a slight shake of the head) that a human habitation on -the distant horizon was faintly discernible on a clear day. -Rival ruralists would quarrel about which had the most completely -inconvenient postal service; and there were many jealous heartburnings -if one friend found out any uncomfortable situation which the other -friend had thoughtlessly overlooked. - -In the feverish summer of this fanaticism there arose the phrase -that this or that part of England is being "built over." -Now, there is not the slightest objection, in itself, to England -being built over by men, any more than there is to its being -(as it is already) built over by birds, or by squirrels, or by spiders. -But if birds' nests were so thick on a tree that one could see nothing -but nests and no leaves at all, I should say that bird civilization -was becoming a bit decadent. If whenever I tried to walk down the road -I found the whole thoroughfare one crawling carpet of spiders, -closely interlocked, I should feel a distress verging on distaste. -If one were at every turn crowded, elbowed, overlooked, overcharged, -sweated, rack-rented, swindled, and sold up by avaricious and -arrogant squirrels, one might at last remonstrate. But the great towns -have grown intolerable solely because of such suffocating vulgarities -and tyrannies. It is not humanity that disgusts us in the huge cities; -it is inhumanity. It is not that there are human beings; -but that they are not treated as such. We do not, I hope, dislike men -and women; we only dislike their being made into a sort of jam: -crushed together so that they are not merely powerless but shapeless. -It is not the presence of people that makes London appalling. -It is merely the absence of The People. - -Therefore, I dance with joy to think that my part of England -is being built over, so long as it is being built over in -a human way at human intervals and in a human proportion. -So long, in short, as I am not myself built over, like a pagan -slave buried in the foundations of a temple, or an American clerk -in a star-striking pagoda of flats, I am delighted to see the faces -and the homes of a race of bipeds, to which I am not only attracted -by a strange affection, but to which also (by a touching coincidence) -I actually happen to belong. I am not one desiring deserts. -I am not Timon of Athens; if my town were Athens I would stay in it. -I am not Simeon Stylites; except in the mournful sense that every -Saturday I find myself on the top of a newspaper column. -I am not in the desert repenting of some monstrous sins; -at least, I am repenting of them all right, but not in the desert. -I do not want the nearest human house to be too distant to see; that is -my objection to the wilderness. But neither do I want the nearest human -house to be too close to see; that is my objection to the modern city. -I love my fellow-man; I do not want him so far off that I can -only observe anything of him through a telescope, nor do I want -him so close that I can examine parts of him with a microscope. -I want him within a stone's throw of me; so that whenever it is -really necessary, I may throw the stone. - -Perhaps, after all, it may not be a stone. Perhaps, after all, -it may be a bouquet, or a snowball, or a firework, or a Free Trade Loaf; -perhaps they will ask for a stone and I shall give them bread. -But it is essential that they should be within reach: how can I -love my neighbour as myself if he gets out of range for snowballs? -There should be no institution out of the reach of an indignant -or admiring humanity. I could hit the nearest house quite well -with the catapult; but the truth is that the catapult belongs to a -little boy I know, and, with characteristic youthful 'selfishness, -he has taken it away. - - - - -The Wings of Stone - -The preceding essay is about a half-built house upon my -private horizon; I wrote it sitting in a garden-chair; and as, -though it was a week ago, I have scarcely moved since then -(to speak of), I do not see why I should not go on writing about it. -Strictly speaking, I have moved; I have even walked across a field-- -a field of turf all fiery in our early summer sunlight--and studied -the early angular red skeleton which has turned golden in the sun. -It is odd that the skeleton of a house is cheerful when the skeleton -of a man is mournful, since we only see it after the man is destroyed. -At least, we think the skeleton is mournful; the skeleton himself -does not seem to think so. Anyhow, there is something strangely -primary and poetic about this sight of the scaffolding and main -lines of a human building; it is a pity there is no scaffolding -round a human baby. One seems to see domestic life as the daring -and ambitious thing that it is, when one looks at those open staircases -and empty chambers, those spirals of wind and open halls of sky. -Ibsen said that the art of domestic drama was merely to knock one wall -out of the four walls of a drawing-room. I find the drawing-room -even more impressive when all four walls are knocked out. - -I have never understood what people mean by domesticity -being tame; it seems to me one of the wildest of adventures. -But if you wish to see how high and harsh and fantastic an adventure -it is, consider only the actual structure of a house itself. -A man may march up in a rather bored way to bed; but at least -he is mounting to a height from which he could kill himself. -Every rich, silent, padded staircase, with banisters of oak, -stair-rods of brass, and busts and settees on every landing, -every such staircase is truly only an awful and naked ladder -running up into the Infinite to a deadly height. The millionaire -who stumps up inside the house is really doing the same thing -as the tiler or roof-mender who climbs up outside the house; -they are both mounting up into the void. They are both making an -escalade of the intense inane. Each is a sort of domestic mountaineer; -he is reaching a point from which mere idle falling will kill a man; -and life is always worth living while men feel that they may die. - -I cannot understand people at present making such a fuss about -flying ships and aviation, when men ever since Stonehenge and -the Pyramids have done something so much more wild than flying. -A grasshopper can go astonishingly high up in the air, his -biological limitation and weakness is that he cannot stop there. -Hosts of unclean birds and crapulous insects can pass through the sky, -but they cannot pass any communication between it and the earth. -But the army of man has advanced vertically into infinity, -and not been cut off. It can establish outposts in the ether, -and yet keep open behind it its erect and insolent road. -It would be grand (as in Jules Verne) to fire a cannon-ball at the moon; -but would it not be grander to build a railway to the moon? -Yet every building of brick or wood is a hint of that high railroad; -every chimney points to some star, and every tower is a Tower -of Babel. Man rising on these awful and unbroken wings of stone -seems to me more majestic and more mystic than man fluttering -for an instant on wings of canvas and sticks of steel. How sublime -and, indeed, almost dizzy is the thought of these veiled ladders -on which we all live, like climbing monkeys! Many a black-coated -clerk in a flat may comfort himself for his sombre garb by -reflecting that he is like some lonely rook in an immemorial elm. -Many a wealthy bachelor on the top floor of a pile of mansions -should look forth at morning and try (if possible) to feel like -an eagle whose nest just clings to the edge of some awful cliff. -How sad that the word "giddy" is used to imply wantonness or levity! -It should be a high compliment to a man's exalted spirituality -and the imagination to say he is a little giddy. - -I strolled slowly back across the stretch of turf by the sunset, -a field of the cloth of gold. As I drew near my own house, -its huge size began to horrify me; and when I came to the porch of it -I discovered with an incredulity as strong as despair that my house -was actually bigger than myself. A minute or two before there -might well have seemed to be a monstrous and mythical competition -about which of the two should swallow the other. But I was Jonah; -my house was the huge and hungry fish; and even as its jaws darkened -and closed about me I had again this dreadful fancy touching the dizzy -altitude of all the works of man. I climbed the stairs stubbornly, -planting each foot with savage care, as if ascending a glacier. -When I got to a landing I was wildly relieved, and waved my hat. -The very word "landing" has about it the wild sound of some one washed -up by the sea. I climbed each flight like a ladder in naked sky. -The walls all round me failed and faded into infinity; I went up -the ladder to my bedroom as Montrose went up the ladder to the gallows; -sic itur ad astro. Do you think this is a little fantastic-- -even a little fearful and nervous? Believe me, it is only one of -the wild and wonderful things that one can learn by stopping at home. - - - - -The Three Kinds of Men - -Roughly speaking, there are three kinds of people in this world. -The first kind of people are People; they are the largest and probably -the most valuable class. We owe to this class the chairs we sit down on, -the clothes we wear, the houses we live in; and, indeed (when we -come to think of it), we probably belong to this class ourselves. -The second class may be called for convenience the Poets; -they are often a nuisance to their families, but, generally speaking, -a blessing to mankind. The third class is that of the Professors -or Intellectuals; sometimes described as the thoughtful people; -and these are a blight and a desolation both to their families and -also to mankind. Of course, the classification sometimes overlaps, -like all classification. Some good people are almost poets and -some bad poets are almost professors. But the division follows -lines of real psychological cleavage. I do not offer it lightly. -It has been the fruit of more than eighteen minutes of earnest -reflection and research. - -The class called People (to which you and I, with no little pride, -attach ourselves) has certain casual, yet profound, assumptions, -which are called "commonplaces," as that children are charming, -or that twilight is sad and sentimental, or that one man fighting -three is a fine sight. Now, these feelings are not crude; -they are not even simple. The charm of children is very subtle; -it is even complex, to the extent of being almost contradictory. -It is, at its very plainest, mingled of a regard for hilarity and a -regard for helplessness. The sentiment of twilight, in the vulgarest -drawing-room song or the coarsest pair of sweethearts, is, so far -as it goes, a subtle sentiment. It is strangely balanced between -pain and pleasure; it might also be called pleasure tempting pain. -The plunge of impatient chivalry by which we all admire a man -fighting odds is not at all easy to define separately, it means -many things, pity, dramatic surprise, a desire for justice, a delight -in experiment and the indeterminate. The ideas of the mob are really -very subtle ideas; but the mob does not express them subtly. -In fact, it does not express them at all, except on those occasions -(now only too rare) when it indulges in insurrection and massacre. - -Now, this accounts for the otherwise unreasonable fact of the existence -of Poets. Poets are those who share these popular sentiments, -but can so express them that they prove themselves the strange -and delicate things that they really are. Poets draw out the shy -refinement of the rabble. Where the common man covers the queerest -emotions by saying, "Rum little kid," Victor Hugo will write "L'art -d'etre grand-pere"; where the stockbroker will only say abruptly, -"Evenings closing in now," Mr. Yeats will write "Into the twilight"; -where the navvy can only mutter something about pluck and being -"precious game," Homer will show you the hero in rags in his own hall -defying the princes at their banquet. The Poets carry the popular -sentiments to a keener and more splendid pitch; but let it always be -remembered that it is the popular sentiments that they are carrying. -No man ever wrote any good poetry to show that childhood was shocking, -or that twilight was gay and farcical, or that a man was -contemptible because he had crossed his single sword with three. -The people who maintain this are the Professors, or Prigs. - -The Poets are those who rise above the people by understanding them. -Of course, most of the Poets wrote in prose--Rabelais, for instance, -and Dickens. The Prigs rise above the people by refusing -to understand them: by saying that all their dim, strange -preferences are prejudices and superstitions. The Prigs make -the people feel stupid; the Poets make the people feel wiser -than they could have imagined that they were. There are many -weird elements in this situation. The oddest of all perhaps -is the fate of the two factors in practical politics. The Poets -who embrace and admire the people are often pelted with stones -and crucified. The Prigs who despise the people are often loaded -with lands and crowned. In the House of Commons, for instance, -there are quite a number of prigs, but comparatively few poets. -There are no People there at all. - -By poets, as I have said, I do not mean people who write poetry, -or indeed people who write anything. I mean such people as, -having culture and imagination, use them to understand and share -the feelings of their fellows; as against those who use them -to rise to what they call a higher plane. Crudely, the poet -differs from the mob by his sensibility; the professor differs -from the mob by his insensibility. He has not sufficient -finesse and sensitiveness to sympathize with the mob. His only -notion is coarsely to contradict it, to cut across it, in -accordance with some egotistical plan of his own; to tell -himself that, whatever the ignorant say, they are probably wrong. -He forgets that ignorance often has the exquisite intuitions of -innocence. - -Let me take one example which may mark out the outline of the contention. -Open the nearest comic paper and let your eye rest lovingly upon -a joke about a mother-in-law. Now, the joke, as presented for -the populace, will probably be a simple joke; the old lady will be -tall and stout, the hen-pecked husband will be small and cowering. -But for all that, a mother-in-law is not a simple idea. -She is a very subtle idea. The problem is not that she is big -and arrogant; she is frequently little and quite extraordinarily nice. -The problem of the mother-in-law is that she is like the twilight: -half one thing and half another. Now, this twilight truth, -this fine and even tender embarrassment, might be rendered, -as it really is, by a poet, only here the poet would have to be -some very penetrating and sincere novelist, like George Meredith, -or Mr. H. G. Wells, whose "Ann Veronica" I have just been reading -with delight. I would trust the fine poets and novelists -because they follow the fairy clue given them in Comic Cuts. -But suppose the Professor appears, and suppose he says (as he almost -certainly will), "A mother-in-law is merely a fellow-citizen. -Considerations of sex should not interfere with comradeship. -Regard for age should not influence the intellect. A mother-in-law -is merely Another Mind. We should free ourselves from these tribal -hierarchies and degrees." Now, when the Professor says this -(as he always does), I say to him, "Sir, you are coarser than Comic Cuts. -You are more vulgar and blundering than the most elephantine -music-hall artiste. You are blinder and grosser than the mob. -These vulgar knockabouts have, at least, got hold of a social shade -and real mental distinction, though they can only express it clumsily. -You are so clumsy that you cannot get hold of it at all. -If you really cannot see that the bridegroom's mother and the bride -have any reason for constraint or diffidence, then you are neither -polite nor humane: you have no sympathy in you for the deep -and doubtful hearts of human folk." It is better even to put -the difficulty as the vulgar put it than to be pertly unconscious -of the difficulty altogether. - -The same question might be considered well enough in the old -proverb that two is company and three is none. This proverb -is the truth put popularly: that is, it is the truth put wrong. -Certainly it is untrue that three is no company. Three is -splendid company: three is the ideal number for pure comradeship: -as in the Three Musketeers. But if you reject the proverb altogether; -if you say that two and three are the same sort of company; -if you cannot see that there is a wider abyss between two -and three than between three and three million--then I regret -to inform you that you belong to the Third Class of human beings; -that you shall have no company either of two or three, but shall -be alone in a howling desert till you die. - - - - -The Steward of the Chiltern Hundreds - -The other day on a stray spur of the Chiltern Hills I -climbed up upon one of those high, abrupt, windy churchyards -from which the dead seem to look down upon all the living. -It was a mountain of ghosts as Olympus was a mountain of gods. -In that church lay the bones of great Puritan lords, of a time when most -of the power of England was Puritan, even of the Established Church. -And below these uplifted bones lay the huge and hollow valleys -of the English countryside, where the motors went by every now -and then like meteors, where stood out in white squares and oblongs -in the chequered forest many of the country seats even of those -same families now dulled with wealth or decayed with Toryism. -And looking over that deep green prospect on that luminous -yellow evening, a lovely and austere thought came into my mind, -a thought as beautiful as the green wood and as grave as the tombs. -The thought was this: that I should like to go into Parliament, -quarrel with my party, accept the Stewardship of the Chiltern Hundreds, -and then refuse to give it up. - -We are so proud in England of our crazy constitutional anomalies -that I fancy that very few readers indeed will need to be told -about the Steward of the Chiltern Hundreds. But in case there -should be here or there one happy man who has never heard of such -twisted tomfooleries, I will rapidly remind you what this legal -fiction is. As it is quite a voluntary, sometimes even an eager, -affair to get into Parliament, you would naturally suppose -that it would be also a voluntary matter to get out again. -You would think your fellow-members would be indifferent, -or even relieved to see you go; especially as (by another exercise -of the shrewd, illogical old English common sense) they have carefully -built the room too small for the people who have to sit in it. -But not so, my pippins, as it says in the "Iliad." If you are -merely a member of Parliament (Lord knows why) you can't resign. -But if you are a Minister of the Crown (Lord knows why) you can. -It is necessary to get into the Ministry in order to get out -of the House; and they have to give you some office that doesn't -exist or that nobody else wants and thus unlock the door. -So you go to the Prime Minister, concealing your air of fatigue, -and say, "It has been the ambition of my life to be Steward of the -Chiltern Hundreds." The Prime Minister then replies, "I can imagine -no man more fitted both morally and mentally for that high office." -He then gives it you, and you hurriedly leave, reflecting how -the republics of the Continent reel anarchically to and fro for lack -of a little solid English directness and simplicity. - -Now, the thought that struck me like a thunderbolt as I sat on -the Chiltern slope was that I would like to get the Prime Minister -to give me the Chiltern Hundreds, and then startle and disturb him -by showing the utmost interest in my work. I should profess a general -knowledge of my duties, but wish to be instructed in the details. -I should ask to see the Under-Steward and the Under-Under-Steward, -and all the fine staff of experienced permanent officials who are -the glory of this department. And, indeed, my enthusiasm would -not be wholly unreal. For as far as I can recollect the original -duties of a Steward of the Chiltern Hundreds were to put down -the outlaws and brigands in that part of the world. Well, there are -a great many outlaws and brigands in that part of the world still, -and though their methods have so largely altered as to require -a corresponding alteration in the tactics of the Steward, I do -not see why an energetic and public-spirited Steward should not -nab them yet. - -For the robbers have not vanished from the old high forests -to the west of the great city. The thieves have not vanished; -they have grown so large that they are invisible. You do not -see the word "Asia" written across a map of that neighbourhood; -nor do you see the word "Thief" written across the countrysides -of England; though it is really written in equally large letters. -I know men governing despotically great stretches of that country, -whose every step in life has been such that a slip would have sent -them to Dartmoor; but they trod along the high hard wall between right -and wrong, the wall as sharp as a swordedge, as softly and craftily -and lightly as a cat. The vastness of their silent violence itself -obscured what they were at; if they seem to stand for the rights -of property it is really because they have so often invaded them. -And if they do not break the laws, it is only because they make them. - -But after all we only need a Steward of the Chiltern Hundreds -who really understands cats and thieves. Men hunt one animal -differently from another; and the rich could catch swindlers -as dexterously as they catch otters or antlered deer if they -were really at all keen upon doing it. But then they never have -an uncle with antlers; nor a personal friend who is an otter. -When some of the great lords that lie in the churchyard behind me -went out against their foes in those deep woods beneath I wager -that they had bows against the bows of the outlaws, and spears against -the spears of the robber knights. They knew what they were about; -they fought the evildoers of their age with the weapons of their age. -If the same common sense were applied to commercial law, -in forty-eight hours it would be all over with the American Trusts -and the African forward finance. But it will not be done: -for the governing class either does not care, or cares very much, -for the criminals, and as for me, I had a delusive opportunity -of being Constable of Beaconsfield (with grossly inadequate powers), -but I fear I shall never really be Steward of the Chiltern Hundreds. - - - - -The Field of Blood - -In my daily paper this morning I read the following interesting -paragraphs, which take my mind back to an England which I do not -remember and which, therefore (perhaps), I admire. - -"Nearly sixty years ago--on 4 September, 1850--the Austrian -General Haynau, who had gained an unenviable fame throughout the world -by his ferocious methods in suppressing the Hungarian revolution in 1849, -while on a visit to this country, was belaboured in the streets -of London by the draymen of Messrs. Barclay, Perkins and Co., -whose brewery he had just inspected in company of an adjutant. -Popular delight was so great that the Government of the time -did not dare to prosecute the assailants, and the General-- -the 'women-flogger,' as he was called by the people--had to leave -these shores without remedy. - -"He returned to his own country and settled upon his estate at Szekeres, -which is close to the commune above-mentioned. By his will the estate -passed to his daughter, after whose death it was to be presented -to the commune. This daughter has just died, but the Communal Council, -after much deliberation, has declined to accept the gift, -and ordered that the estate should be left to fall out of cultivation, -and be called the 'Bloody Meadow.'" - -Now that is an example of how things happen under an honest democratical -impulse. I do not dwell specially on the earlier part of the story, -though the earlier part of the story is astonishingly interesting. -It recalls the days when Englishmen were potential lighters; that is, -potential rebels. It is not for lack of agonies of intellectual anger: -the Sultan and the late King Leopold have been denounced as heartily -as General Haynau. But I doubt if they would have been physically -thrashed in the London streets. - -It is not the tyrants that are lacking, but the draymen. Nevertheless, it -is not upon the historic heroes of Barclay, Perkins and Co. that I build -all my hope. Fine as it was, it was not a full and perfect revolution. -A brewer's drayman beating an eminent European General with a stick, -though a singularly bright and pleasing vision, is not a complete one. -Only when the brewer's drayman beats the brewer with a stick shall -we see the clear and radiant sunrise of British self-government. -The fun will really start when we begin to thump the oppressors -of England as well as the oppressors of Hungary. It is, however, -a definite decline in the spiritual character of draymen that -now they can thump neither one nor the other. - -But, as I have already suggested, my real quarrel is not -about the first part of the extract, but about the second. -Whether or no the draymen of Barclay and Perkins have degenerated, -the Commune which includes Szekeres has not degenerated. -By the way, the Commune which includes Szekeres is called -Kissekeres; I trust that this frank avowal will excuse me from -the necessity of mentioning either of these places again by name. -The Commune is still capable of performing direct democratic actions, -if necessary, with a stick. - -I say with a stick, not with sticks, for that is the whole argument -about democracy. A people is a soul; and if you want to know -what a soul is, I can only answer that it is something that can -sin and that can sacrifice itself. A people can commit theft; -a people can confess theft; a people can repent of theft. -That is the idea of the republic. Now, most modern people have got -into their heads the idea that democracies are dull, drifting things, -a mere black swarm or slide of clerks to their accustomed doom. -In most modern novels and essays it is insisted (by way of contrast) -that a walking gentleman may have ad-ventures as he walks. -It is insisted that an aristocrat can commit crimes, because an aristocrat -always cultivates liberty. But, in truth, a people can have adventures, -as Israel did crawling through the desert to the promised land. -A people can do heroic deeds; a people can commit crimes; -the French people did both in the Revolution; the Irish people -have done both in their much purer and more honourable progress. - -But the real answer to this aristocratic argument which seeks to -identify democracy with a drab utilitarianism may be found in action -such as that of the Hungarian Commune--whose name I decline to repeat. -This Commune did just one of those acts that prove that a separate -people has a separate personality; it threw something away. -A man can throw a bank note into the fire. A man can fling a sack -of corn into the river. The bank-note may be burnt as a satisfaction -of some scruple; the corn may be destroyed as a sacrifice to some god. -But whenever there is sacrifice we know there is a single will. -Men may be disputatious and doubtful, may divide by very narrow -majorities in their debate about how to gain wealth. But men have -to be uncommonly unanimous in order to refuse wealth. It wants -a very complete committee to burn a bank note in the office grate. -It needs a highly religious tribe really to throw corn into the river. -This self-denial is the test and definition of self-government. - -I wish I could feel certain that any English County Council -or Parish Council would be single enough to make that strong -gesture of a romantic refusal; could say, "No rents shall -be raised from this spot; no grain shall grow in this spot; -no good shall come of this spot; it shall remain sterile for a sign." -But I am afraid they might answer, like the eminent sociologist -in the story, that it was "wiste of spice." - - - - -The Strangeness of Luxury - -It is an English misfortune that what is called "public spirit" -is so often a very private spirit; the legitimate but strictly -individual ideals of this or that person who happens to have -the power to carry them out. When these private principles are held -by very rich people, the result is often the blackest and most -repulsive kind of despotism, which is benevolent despotism. -Obviously it is the public which ought to have public spirit. -But in this country and at this epoch this is exactly what it has -not got. We shall have a public washhouse and a public kitchen -long before we have a public spirit; in fact, if we had a public -spirit we might very probably do without the other things. -But if England were properly and naturally governed by the -English, one of the first results would probably be this: -that our standard of excess or defect in property would be changed -from that of the plutocrat to that of the moderately needy man. -That is, that while property might be strictly respected, everything that -is necessary to a clerk would be felt and considered on quite a -different plane from anything which is a very great luxury to a clerk. -This sane distinction of sentiment is not instinctive at present, -because our standard of life is that of the governing class, -which is eternally turning luxuries into necessities as fast as pork -is turned into sausages; and which cannot remember the beginning -of its needs and cannot get to the end of its novelties. - -Take, for the sake of argument, the case of the motor. -Doubtless the duke now feels it as necessary to have a motor as to have -a roof, and in a little while he may feel it equally necessary to have -a flying ship. But this does not prove (as the reactionary sceptics -always argue) that a motor really is just as necessary as a roof. -It only proves that a man can get used to an artificial life: -it does not prove that there is no natural life for him to get used to. -In the broad bird's-eye view of common sense there abides -a huge disproportion between the need for a roof and the need -for an aeroplane; and no rush of inventions can ever alter it. -The only difference is that things are now judged by the abnormal -needs, when they might be judged merely by the normal needs. -The best aristocrat sees the situation from an aeroplane. -The good citizen, in his loftiest moments, goes no further than -seeing it from the roof. - -It is not true that luxury is merely relative. It is not true -that it is only an expensive novelty which we may afterwards come -to think a necessity. Luxury has a firm philosophical meaning; -and where there is a real public spirit luxury is generally -allowed for, sometimes rebuked, but always recognized instantly. -To the healthy soul there is something in the very nature of certain -pleasures which warns us that they are exceptions, and that if they -become rules they will become very tyrannical rules. - -Take a harassed seamstress out of the Harrow Road and give her one -lightning hour in a motorcar, and she will probably feel it as splendid, -but strange, rare, and even terrible. But this is not (as the -relativists say) merely because she has never been in a car before. -She has never been in the middle of a Somerset cowslip meadow before; -but if you put her there she does not think it terrifying -or extraordinary, but merely pleasant and free and a little lonely. -She does not think the motor monstrous because it is new. -She thinks it monstrous because she has eyes in her head; she thinks it -monstrous because it is monstrous. That is, her mothers and grandmothers, -and the whole race by whose life she lives, have had, as a matter -of fact, a roughly recognizable mode of living; sitting in a green -field was a part of it; travelling as quick as a cannon ball was not. -And we should not look down on the seamstress because she mechanically -emits a short sharp scream whenever the motor begins to move. -On the contrary, we ought to look up to the seamstress, and regard her -cry as a kind of mystic omen or revelation of nature, as the old Goths -used to consider the howls emitted by chance females when annoyed. -For that ritual yell is really a mark of moral health--of swift -response to the stimulations and changes of life. The seamstress -is wiser than all the learned ladies, precisely because she can -still feel that a motor is a different sort of thing from a meadow. -By the accident of her economic imprisonment it is even possible -that she may have seen more of the former than the latter. -But this has not shaken her cyclopean sagacity as to which is -the natural thing and which the artificial. If not for her, -at least for humanity as a whole, there is little doubt about -which is the more normally attainable. It is considerably cheaper -to sit in a meadow and see motors go by than to sit in a motor -and see meadows go by. - -To me personally, at least, it would never seem needful to own a motor, -any more than to own an avalanche. An avalanche, if you have luck, -I am told, is a very swift, successful, and thrilling way of coming -down a hill. It is distinctly more stirring, say, than a glacier, -which moves an inch in a hundred years. But I do not divide these -pleasures either by excitement or convenience, but by the nature -of the thing itself. It seems human to have a horse or bicycle, -because it seems human to potter about; and men cannot work horses, -nor can bicycles work men, enormously far afield of their ordinary -haunts and affairs. - -But about motoring there is something magical, like going to the moon; -and I say the thing should be kept exceptional and felt -as something breathless and bizarre. My ideal hero would own -his horse, but would have the moral courage to hire his motor. -Fairy tales are the only sound guidebooks to life; I like the -Fairy Prince to ride on a white pony out of his father's stables, -which are of ivory and gold. But if in the course of his adventures -he finds it necessary to travel on a flaming dragon, I think he ought -to give the dragon back to the witch at the end of the story. -It is a mistake to have dragons about the place. - -For there is truly an air of something weird about luxury; and it is -by this that healthy human nature has always smelt and suspected it. -All romances that deal in extreme luxury, from the "Arabian Nights" -to the novels of Ouida and Disraeli, have, it may be noted, -a singular air of dream and occasionally of nightmare. In such -imaginative debauches there is something as occasional as -intoxication; if that is still counted occasional. Life in -those preposterous palaces would be an agony of dullness; -it is clear we are meant to visit them only as in a flying vision. -And what is true of the old freaks of wealth, flavour and fierce -colour and smell, I would say also of the new freak of wealth, -which is speed. I should say to the duke, when I entered his house -at the head of an armed mob, "I do not object to your having -exceptional pleasures, if you have them exceptionally. I do not mind -your enjoying the strange and alien energies of science, if you feel -them strange and alien, and not your own. But in condemning you -(under the Seventeenth Section of the Eighth Decree of the Republic) -to hire a motor-car twice a year at Margate, I am not the enemy -of your luxuries, but, rather, the protector of them." - -That is what I should say to the duke. As to what the duke would -say to me, that is another matter, and may well be deferred. - - - - -The Triumph of the Donkey - -Doubtless the unsympathetic might state my doctrine that one should -not own a motor like a horse, but rather use it like a flying dragon -in the simpler form that I will always go motoring in somebody -else's car. My favourite modern philosopher (Mr. W. W. Jacobs) -describes a similar case of spiritual delicacy misunderstood. -I have not the book at hand, but I think that Job Brown was reproaching -Bill Chambers for wasteful drunkenness, and Henery Walker spoke up -for Bill, and said he scarcely ever had a glass but what somebody -else paid for it, and there was "unpleasantness all round then." - -Being less sensitive than Bill Chambers (or whoever it was) -I will risk this rude perversion of my meaning, and concede that I -was in a motor-car yesterday, and the motor-car most certainly was -not my own, and the journey, though it contained nothing that is -specially unusual on such journeys, had running through it a strain -of the grotesque which was at once wholesome and humiliating. -The symbol of that influence was that ancient symbol of the humble -and humorous--a donkey. - -When first I saw the donkey I saw him in the sunlight as the -unearthly gargoyle that he is. My friend had met me in his car -(I repeat firmly, in his car) at the little painted station in the middle -of the warm wet woods and hop-fields of that western country. -He proposed to drive me first to his house beyond the village -before starting for a longer spin of adventure, and we rattled -through those rich green lanes which have in them something -singularly analogous to fairy tales: whether the lanes produced -the fairies or (as I believe) the fairies produced the lanes. -All around in the glimmering hop-yards stood those little hop-kilns -like stunted and slanting spires. They look like dwarfish churches-- -in fact, rather like many modern churches I could mention, -churches all of them small and each of them a little crooked. -In this elfin atmosphere we swung round a sharp corner and half-way -up a steep, white hill, and saw what looked at first like a tall, -black monster against the sun. It appeared to be a dark and dreadful -woman walking on wheels and waving long ears like a bat's. A -second glance told me that she was not the local witch in a state -of transition; she was only one of the million tricks of perspective. -She stood up in a small wheeled cart drawn by a donkey; -the donkey's ears were just set behind her head, and the whole -was black against the light. - -Perspective is really the comic element in everything. -It has a pompous Latin name, but it is incurably Gothic and grotesque. -One simple proof of this is that it is always left out of all dignified -and decorative art. There is no perspective in the Elgin Marbles, -and even the essentially angular angels in mediaeval stained glass -almost always (as it says in "Patience") contrive to look both -angular and flat. There is something intrinsically disproportionate -and outrageous in the idea of the distant objects dwindling and -growing dwarfish, the closer objects swelling enormous and intolerable. -There is something frantic in the notion that one's own father by -walking a little way can be changed by a blast of magic to a pigmy. -There is something farcical in the fancy that Nature keeps one's uncle -in an infinite number of sizes, according to where he is to stand. -All soldiers in retreat turn into tin soldiers; all bears in rout -into toy bears; as if on the ultimate horizon of the world everything -was sardonically doomed to stand up laughable and little against heaven. - -It was for this reason that the old woman and her donkey -struck us first when seen from behind as one black grotesque. -I afterwards had the chance of seeing the old woman, the cart, -and the donkey fairly, in flank and in all their length. -I saw the old woman and the donkey PASSANT, as they might have -appeared heraldically on the shield of some heroic family. -I saw the old woman and the donkey dignified, decorative, and flat, -as they might have marched across the Elgin Marbles. Seen thus -under an equal light, there was nothing specially ugly about them; -the cart was long and sufficiently comfortable; the donkey was -stolid and sufficiently respectable; the old woman was lean but -sufficiently strong, and even smiling in a sour, rustic manner. -But seen from behind they looked like one black monstrous animal; -the dark donkey cars seemed like dreadful wings, and the tall -dark back of the woman, erect like a tree, seemed to grow taller -and taller until one could almost scream. - -Then we went by her with a blasting roar like a railway train, -and fled far from her over the brow of the hill to my friend's home. - -There we paused only for my friend to stock the car with some kind -of picnic paraphernalia, and so started again, as it happened, -by the way we had come. Thus it fell that we went shattering down -that short, sharp hill again before the poor old woman and her donkey -had managed to crawl to the top of it; and seeing them under a -different light, I saw them very differently. Black against the sun, -they had seemed comic; but bright against greenwood and grey cloud, -they were not comic but tragic; for there are not a few things -that seem fantastic in the twilight, and in the sunlight are sad. -I saw that she had a grand, gaunt mask of ancient honour -and endurance, and wide eyes sharpened to two shining points, -as if looking for that small hope on the horizon of human life. -I also saw that her cart contained carrots. - -"Don't you feel, broadly speaking, a beast," I asked my friend, -"when you go so easily and so fast?" For we had crashed by so that -the crazy cart must have thrilled in every stick of it. - -My friend was a good man, and said, "Yes. But I don't think it -would do her any good if I went slower." - -"No," I assented after reflection. "Perhaps the only pleasure we can -give to her or any one else is to get out of their sight very soon." - -My friend availed himself of this advice in no niggard spirit; -I felt as if we were fleeing for our lives in throttling fear after -some frightful atrocity. In truth, there is only one difference -left between the secrecy of the two social classes: the poor hide -themselves in darkness and the rich hide themselves in distance. -They both hide. - -As we shot like a lost boat over a cataract down into a whirlpool of -white roads far below, I saw afar a black dot crawling like an insect. -I looked again: I could hardly believe it. There was the slow old -woman, with her slow old donkey, still toiling along the main road. -I asked my friend to slacken, but when he said of the car, -"She's wanting to go," I knew it was all up with him. For when -you have called a thing female you have yielded to it utterly. -We passed the old woman with a shock that must have shaken the earth: -if her head did not reel and her heart quail, I know not what they -were made of. And when we had fled perilously on in the gathering dark, -spurning hamlets behind us, I suddenly called out, "Why, what -asses we are! Why, it's She that is brave--she and the donkey. -We are safe enough; we are artillery and plate-armour: and she stands up -to us with matchwood and a snail! If you had grown old in a quiet valley, -and people began firing cannon-balls as big as cabs at you in your -seventieth year, wouldn't you jump--and she never moved an eyelid. -Oh! we go very fast and very far, no doubt--" - -As I spoke came a curious noise, and my friend, instead of going fast, -began to go very slow; then he stopped; then he got out. -Then he said, "And I left the Stepney behind." - -The grey moths came out of the wood and the yellow stars came -out to crown it, as my friend, with the lucidity of despair, -explained to me (on the soundest scientific principles, of course) -that nothing would be any good at all. We must sleep the night -in the lane, except in the very unlikely event of some one coming -by to carry a message to some town. Twice I thought I heard -some tiny sound of such approach, and it died away like wind -in the trees, and the motorist was already asleep when I heard -it renewed and realized. Something certainly was approaching. -I ran up the road--and there it was. Yes, It--and She. -Thrice had she come, once comic and once tragic and once heroic. -And when she came again it was as if in pardon on a pure errand of prosaic -pity and relief. I am quite serious. I do not want you to laugh. -It is not the first time a donkey has been received seriously, -nor one riding a donkey with respect. - - - - -The Wheel - -In a quiet and rustic though fairly famous church in my neighbourhood -there is a window supposed to represent an Angel on a Bicycle. -It does definitely and indisputably represent a nude youth sitting -on a wheel; but there is enough complication in the wheel and sanctity -(I suppose) in the youth to warrant this working description. -It is a thing of florid Renascence outline, and belongs to the highly -pagan period which introduced all sorts of objects into ornament: -personally I can believe in the bicycle more than in the angel. -Men, they say, are now imitating angels; in their flying-machines, -that is: not in any other respect that I have heard of. So perhaps -the angel on the bicycle (if he is an angel and if it is a bicycle) -was avenging himself by imitating man. If so, he showed that high order -of intellect which is attributed to angels in the mediaeval books, -though not always (perhaps) in the mediaeval pictures. - -For wheels are the mark of a man quite as much as wings are the mark -of an angel. Wheels are the things that are as old as mankind and yet -are strictly peculiar to man, that are prehistoric but not pre-human. - -A distinguished psychologist, who is well acquainted with physiology, -has told me that parts of himself are certainly levers, -while other parts are probably pulleys, but that after feeling -himself carefully all over, he cannot find a wheel anywhere. -The wheel, as a mode of movement, is a purely human thing. -On the ancient escutcheon of Adam (which, like much of the rest -of his costume, has not yet been discovered) the heraldic emblem -was a wheel--passant. As a mode of progress, I say, it is unique. -Many modern philosophers, like my friend before mentioned, -are ready to find links between man and beast, and to show that man -has been in all things the blind slave of his mother earth. -Some, of a very different kind, are even eager to show it; -especially if it can be twisted to the discredit of religion. -But even the most eager scientists have often admitted in my hearing -that they would be surprised if some kind of cow approached them -moving solemnly on four wheels. Wings, fins, flappers, claws, -hoofs, webs, trotters, with all these the fantastic families -of the earth come against us and close around us, fluttering and -flapping and rustling and galloping and lumbering and thundering; -but there is no sound of wheels. - -I remember dimly, if, indeed, I remember aright, that in some of -those dark prophetic pages of Scripture, that seem of cloudy purple -and dusky gold, there is a passage in which the seer beholds a violent -dream of wheels. Perhaps this was indeed the symbolic declaration -of the spiritual supremacy of man. Whatever the birds may do above -or the fishes beneath his ship, man is the only thing to steer; -the only thing to be conceived as steering. He may make the birds -his friends, if he can. He may make the fishes his gods, if he chooses. -But most certainly he will not believe a bird at the masthead; -and it is hardly likely that he will even permit a fish at the helm. -He is, as Swinburne says, helmsman and chief: he is literally -the Man at the Wheel. - -The wheel is an animal that is always standing on its head; -only "it does it so rapidly that no philosopher has ever found -out which is its head." Or if the phrase be felt as more exact, -it is an animal that is always turning head over heels and progressing -by this principle. Some fish, I think, turn head over heels -(supposing them, for the sake of argument, to have heels); -I have a dog who nearly did it; and I did it once myself when I -was very small. It was an accident, and, as delightful novelist, -Mr. De Morgan, would say, it never can happen again. Since then -no one has accused me of being upside down except mentally: -and I rather think that there is something to be said for that; -especially as typified by the rotary symbol. A wheel is the -sublime paradox; one part of it is always going forward and the other -part always going back. Now this, as it happens, is highly similar -to the proper condition of any human soul or any political state. -Every sane soul or state looks at once backwards and forwards; -and even goes backwards to come on. - -For those interested in revolt (as I am) I only say meekly that one cannot -have a Revolution without revolving. The wheel, being a logical thing, -has reference to what is behind as well as what is before. It has -(as every society should have) a part that perpetually leaps helplessly -at the sky and a part that perpetually bows down its head into the dust. -Why should people be so scornful of us who stand on our heads? -Bowing down one's head in the dust is a very good thing, -the humble beginning of all happiness. When we have bowed -our heads in the dust for a little time the happiness comes; -and then (leaving our heads' in the humble and reverent position) -we kick up our heels behind in the air. That is the true origin -of standing on one's head; and the ultimate defence of paradox. -The wheel humbles itself to be exalted; only it does it a little -quicker than I do. - - - - -Five Hundred and Fifty-five - -Life is full of a ceaseless shower of small coincidences: -too small to be worth mentioning except for a special purpose, -often too trifling even to be noticed, any more than we notice -one snowflake falling on another. It is this that lends -a frightful plausibility to all false doctrines and evil fads. -There are always such crowds of accidental arguments for anything. -If I said suddenly that historical truth is generally told -by red-haired men, I have no doubt that ten minutes' reflection -(in which I decline to indulge) would provide me with a handsome -list of instances in support of it. I remember a riotous argument -about Bacon and Shakespeare in which I offered quite at random -to show that Lord Rosebery had written the works of Mr. W. B. Yeats. -No sooner had I said the words than a torrent of coincidences -rushed upon my mind. I pointed out, for instance, that Mr. Yeats's -chief work was "The Secret Rose." This may easily be paraphrased -as "The Quiet or Modest Rose"; and so, of course, as the Primrose. -A second after I saw the same suggestion in the combination of "rose" -and "bury." If I had pursued the matter, who knows but I might have -been a raving maniac by this time. - -We trip over these trivial repetitions and exactitudes at -every turn, only they are too trivial even for conversation. -A man named Williams did walk into a strange house and murder -a man named Williamson; it sounds like a sort of infanticide. -A journalist of my acquaintance did move quite unconsciously -from a place called Overstrand to a place called Overroads. -When he had made this escape he was very properly pursued by a -voting card from Battersea, on which a political agent named -Burn asked him to vote for a political candidate named Burns. -And when he did so another coincidence happened to him: -rather a spiritual than a material coincidence; a mystical thing, -a matter of a magic number. - -For a sufficient number of reasons, the man I know went up to vote -in Battersea in a drifting and even dubious frame of mind. -As the train slid through swampy woods and sullen skies there came -into his empty mind those idle and yet awful questions which come when -the mind is empty. Fools make cosmic systems out of them; knaves make -profane poems out of them; men try to crush them like an ugly lust. -Religion is only the responsible reinforcement of common courage -and common sense. Religion only sets up the normal mood of health -against the hundred moods of disease. - -But there is this about such ghastly empty enigmas, that they always -have an answer to the obvious answer, the reply offered by daily reason. -Suppose a man's children have gone swimming; suppose he is -suddenly throttled by the senseless--fear that they are drowned. -The obvious answer is, "Only one man in a thousand has his -children drowned." But a deeper voice (deeper, being as deep -as hell) answers, "And why should not you--be the thousandth man?" -What is true of tragic doubt is true also of trivial doubt. -The voter's guardian devil said to him, "If you don't vote -to-day you can do fifteen things which will quite certainly do -some good somewhere, please a friend, please a child, please a -maddened publisher. And what good do you expect to do by voting? -You don't think your man will get in by one vote, do you?" -To this he knew the answer of common sense, "But if everybody -said that, nobody would get in at all." And then there came -that deeper voice from Hades, "But you are not settling what -everybody shall do, but what one person on one occasion shall do. -If this afternoon you went your way about more solid things, -how would it matter and who would ever know?" Yet somehow the voter -drove on blindly through the blackening London roads, and found -somewhere a tedious polling station and recorded his tiny vote. - -The politician for whom the voter had voted got in by five hundred -and fifty-five votes. The voter read this next morning at breakfast, -being in a more cheery and expansive mood, and found something -very fascinating not merely in the fact of the majority, but even -in the form of it. There was something symbolic about the three -exact figures; one felt it might be a sort of motto or cipher. -In the great book of seals and cloudy symbols there is just such -a thundering repetition. Six hundred and sixty-six was the Mark -of the Beast. Five hundred and fifty-five is the Mark of the Man; -the triumphant tribune and citizen. A number so symmetrical as that -really rises out of the region of science into the region of art. -It is a pattern, like the egg-and-dart ornament or the Greek key. -One might edge a wall-paper or fringe a robe with a recurring decimal. -And while the voter luxuriated in this light exactitude of the numbers, -a thought crossed his mind and he almost leapt to his feet. -"Why, good heavens!" he cried. "I won that election; and it was -won by one vote! But for me it would have been the despicable, -broken-backed, disjointed, inharmonious figure five hundred -and fifty-four. The whole artistic point would have vanished. -The Mark of the Man would have disappeared from history. It was I -who with a masterful hand seized the chisel and carved the hieroglyph-- -complete and perfect. I clutched the trembling hand of Destiny when it -was about to make a dull square four and forced it to make a nice -curly five. Why, but for me the Cosmos would have lost a coincidence!" -After this outburst the voter sat down and finished his breakfast. - - - - -Ethandune - -Perhaps you do not know where Ethandune is. Nor do I; nor does anybody. -That is where the somewhat sombre fun begins. I cannot even tell you -for certain whether it is the name of a forest or a town or a hill. -I can only say that in any case it is of the kind that floats -and is unfixed. If it is a forest, it is one of those forests -that march with a million legs, like the walking trees that were -the doom of Macbeth. If it is a town, it is one of those towns -that vanish, like a city of tents. If it is a hill, it is -a flying hill, like the mountain to which faith lends wings. -Over a vast dim region of England this dark name of Ethandune floats -like an eagle doubtful where to swoop and strike, and, indeed, -there were birds of prey enough over Ethandune, wherever it was. -But now Ethandune itself has grown as dark and drifting as the black -drifts of the birds. - -And yet without this word that you cannot fit with a meaning -and hardly with a memory, you would be sitting in a very different -chair at this moment and looking at a very different tablecloth. -As a practical modern phrase I do not commend it; if my private -critics and correspondents in whom I delight should happen to -address me "G. K. Chesterton, Poste Restante, Ethandune," I fear -their letters would not come to hand. If two hurried commercial -travellers should agree to discuss a business matter at Ethandune -from 5 to 5.15, I am afraid they would grow old in the district -as white-haired wanderers. To put it plainly, Ethandune is anywhere -and nowhere in the western hills; it is an English mirage. -And yet but for this doubtful thing you would have probably -no Daily News on Saturday and certainly no church on Sunday. -I do not say that either of these two things is a benefit; -but I do say that they are customs, and that you would not possess -them except through this mystery. You would not have Christmas -puddings, nor (probably) any puddings; you would not have Easter eggs, -probably not poached eggs, I strongly suspect not scrambled eggs, -and the best historians are decidedly doubtful about curried eggs. -To cut a long story short (the longest of all stories), you would -not have any civilization, far less any Christian civilization. -And if in some moment of gentle curiosity you wish to know why you -are the polished sparkling, rounded, and wholly satisfactory citizen -which you obviously are, then I can give you no more definite answer -geographical or historical; but only toll in your ears the tone -of the uncaptured name--Ethandune. - -I will try to state quite sensibly why it is as important as it is. -And yet even that is not easy. If I were to state the mere fact -from the history books, numbers of people would think it equally -trivial and remote, like some war of the Picts and Scots. -The points perhaps might be put in this way. There is a -certain spirit in the world which breaks everything off short. -There may be magnificence in the smashing; but the thing is -smashed. There may be a certain splendour; but the splendour -is sterile: it abolishes all future splendours. I mean (to take a -working example), York Minster covered with flames might happen -to be quite as beautiful as York Minster covered with carvings. -But the carvings produce more carvings. The flames produce nothing -but a little black heap. When any act has this cul-de-sac quality it -matters little whether it is done by a book or a sword, by a clumsy -battle-axe or a chemical bomb. The case is the same with ideas. -The pessimist may be a proud figure when he curses all the stars; -the optimist may be an even prouder figure when he blesses them all. -But the real test is not in the energy, but in the effect. -When the optimist has said, "All things are interesting," we are -left free; we can be interested as much or as little as we please. -But when the pessimist says, "No things are interesting," -it may be a very witty remark: but it is the last witty remark -that can be made on the subject. He has burnt his cathedral; -he has had his blaze and the rest is ashes. The sceptics, like bees, -give their one sting and die. The pessimist must be wrong, -because he says the last word. - -Now, this spirit that denies and that destroys had at one -period of history a dreadful epoch of military superiority. -They did burn York Minster, or at least, places of the same kind. -Roughly speaking, from the seventh century to the tenth, a dense tide -of darkness, of chaos and brainless cruelty, poured on these islands -and on the western coasts of the Continent, which well-nigh cut them -off from all the white man's culture for ever. And this is the final -human test; that the varied chiefs of that vague age were remembered -or forgotten according to how they had resisted this almost cosmic raid. -Nobody thought of the modern nonsense about races; everybody thought -of the human race and its highest achievements. Arthur was a Celt, -and may have been a fabulous Celt; but he was a fable on the right side. -Charlemagne may have been a Gaul or a Goth, but he was not a barbarian; -he fought for the tradition against the barbarians, the nihilists. -And for this reason also, for this reason, in the last resort, only, -we call the saddest and in some ways the least successful of the Wessex -kings by the title of Alfred the Great. Alfred was defeated -by the barbarians again and again, he defeated the barbarians again -and again; but his victories were almost as vain as his defeats. -Fortunately he did not believe in the Time Spirit or the Trend of -Things or any such modern rubbish, and therefore kept pegging away. -But while his failures and his fruitless successes have names still in use -(such as Wilton, Basing, and Ashdown), that last epic battle which really -broke the barbarian has remained without a modern place or name. -Except that it was near Chippenham, where the Danes gave up their -swords and were baptized, no one can pick out certainly the place -where you and I were saved from being savages for ever. - -But the other day under a wild sunset and moonrise I passed the place -which is best reputed as Ethandune, a high, grim upland, partly bare -and partly shaggy; like that savage and sacred spot in those great -imaginative lines about the demon lover and the waning moon. -The darkness, the red wreck of sunset, the yellow and lurid moon, -the long fantastic shadows, actually created that sense of -monstrous incident which is the dramatic side of landscape. -The bare grey slopes seemed to rush downhill like routed hosts; -the dark clouds drove across like riven banners; and the moon was -like a golden dragon, like the Golden Dragon of Wessex. - -As we crossed a tilt of the torn heath I saw suddenly between -myself and the moon a black shapeless pile higher than a house. -The atmosphere was so intense that I really thought of a pile -of dead Danes, with some phantom conqueror on the top of it. -Fortunately I was crossing these wastes with a friend who knew -more history than I; and he told me that this was a barrow older -than Alfred, older than the Romans, older perhaps than the Britons; -and no man knew whether it was a wall or a trophy or a tomb. -Ethandune is still a drifting name; but it gave me a queer emotion -to think that, sword in hand, as the Danes poured with the torrents -of their blood down to Chippenham, the great king may have lifted up -his head and looked at that oppressive shape, suggestive of something -and yet suggestive of nothing; may have looked at it as we did, -and understood it as little as we. - - - - -The Flat Freak - -Some time ago a Sub-Tropical Dinner was given by some -South African millionaire. I forget his name; and so, very likely, -does he. The humour of this was so subtle and haunting that it has -been imitated by another millionaire, who has given a North Pole Dinner -in a grand hotel, on which he managed to spend gigantic sums of money. -I do not know how he did it; perhaps they had silver for snow -and great sapphires for lumps of ice. Anyhow, it seems to have -cost rather more to bring the Pole to London than to take Peary -to the Pole. All this, one would say, does not concern us. -We do not want to go to the Pole--or to the hotel. I, for one, -cannot imagine which would be the more dreary and disgusting-- -the real North Pole or the sham one. But as a mere matter of psychology -(that merry pastime) there is a question that is not unentertaining. - -Why is it that all this scheme of ice and snow leaves us cold? -Why is it that you and I feel that we would (on the whole) -rather spend the evening with two or three stable boys in a pot-house -than take part in that pallid and Arctic joke? Why does the modern -millionaire's jest--bore a man to death with the mere thought of it? -That it does bore a man to death I take for granted, and shall do -so until somebody writes to me in cold ink and tells me that he really -thinks it funny. - -Now, it is not a sufficient explanation to say that the joke -is silly. All jokes are silly; that is what they are for. -If you ask some sincere and elemental person, a woman, for instance, -what she thinks of a good sentence from Dickens, she will say -that it is "too silly." When Mr. Weller, senior, assured -Mr. Weller, junior, that "circumvented" was "a more tenderer word" -than "circumscribed," the remark was at least as silly as it -was sublime. It is vain, then, to object to "senseless jokes." -The very definition of a joke is that it need have no sense; except that -one wild and supernatural sense which we call the sense of humour. -Humour is meant, in a literal sense, to make game of man; that is, -to dethrone him from his official dignity and hunt him like game. -It is meant to remind us human beings that we have things about us -as ungainly and ludicrous as the nose of the elephant or the neck -of the giraffe. If laughter does not touch a sort of fundamental folly, -it does not do its duty in bringing us back to an enormous -and original simplicity. Nothing has been worse than the modern -notion that a clever man can make a joke without taking part in it; -without sharing in the general absurdity that such a situation creates. -It is unpardonable conceit not to laugh at your own jokes. -Joking is undignified; that is why it is so good for one's soul. -Do not fancy you can be a detached wit and avoid being a buffoon; -you cannot. If you are the Court Jester you must be the Court Fool. - -Whatever it is, therefore, that wearies us in these wealthy jokes -(like the North Pole Dinner) it is not merely that men make fools -of themselves. When Dickens described Mr. Chuckster, Dickens was, -strictly speaking, making a fool of himself; for he was making -a fool out of himself. And every kind of real lark, from acting -a charade to making a pun, does consist in restraining one's nine -hundred and ninety-nine serious selves and letting the fool loose. -The dullness of the millionaire joke is much deeper. It is not -silly at all; it is solely stupid. It does not consist of -ingenuity limited, but merely of inanity expanded. There is -considerable difference between a wit making a fool of himself -and a fool making a wit of himself. - -The true explanation, I fancy, may be stated thus. We can all remember it -in the case of the really inspiriting parties and fooleries of our youth. -The only real fun is to have limited materials and a good idea. -This explains the perennial popularity of impromptu private theatricals. -These fascinate because they give such a scope for invention -and variety with the most domestic restriction of machinery. -A tea-cosy may have to do for an Admiral's cocked hat; it all -depends on whether the amateur actor can swear like an Admiral. -A hearth-rug may have to do for a bear's fur; it all depends on -whether the wearer is a polished and versatile man of the world -and can grunt like a bear. A clergyman's hat (to my own private -and certain knowledge) can be punched and thumped into the exact -shape of a policeman's helmet; it all depends on the clergyman. -I mean it depends on his permission; his imprimatur; his nihil obstat. -Clergymen can be policemen; rugs can rage like wild animals; -tea-cosies can smell of the sea; if only there is at the back -of them all one bright and amusing idea. What is really funny -about Christmas charades in any average home is that there is -a contrast between commonplace resources and one comic idea. -What is deadly dull about the millionaire-banquets is that there -is a contrast between colossal resources and no idea. - -That is the abyss of inanity in such feasts--it may be literally -called a yawning abyss. The abyss is the vast chasm between -the money power employed and the thing it is employed on. -To make a big joke out of a broomstick, a barrow and an old hat-- -that is great. But to make a small joke out of mountains -of emeralds and tons of gold--surely that is humiliating! -The North Pole is not a very good joke to start with. An icicle -hanging on one's nose is a simple sort of humour in any case. -If a set of spontaneous mummers got the effect cleverly with cut -crystals from the early Victorian chandelier there might really be -something suddenly funny in it. But what should we say of hanging -diamonds on a hundred human noses merely to make that precious -joke about icicles? - -What can be more abject than the union of elaborate and recherche -arrangements with an old and obvious point? The clown with the red-hot -poker and the string of sausages is all very well in his way. -But think of a string of pate de foie gras sausages at a guinea -a piece! Think of a red-hot poker cut out of a single ruby! -Imagine such fantasticalities of expense with such a tameness -and staleness of design. - -We may even admit the practical joke if it is domestic and simple. -We may concede that apple-pie beds and butter-slides are sometimes -useful things for the education of pompous persons living -the Higher Life. But imagine a man making a butter-slide and -telling everybody it was made with the most expensive butter. -Picture an apple-pie bed of purple and cloth of gold. It is -not hard to see that such schemes would lead simultaneously -to a double boredom; weariness of the costly and complex method -and of the meagre and trivial thought. This is the true analysis, -I think of that chill of tedium that strikes to the soul of any -intelligent man when he hears of such elephantine pranks. -That is why we feel that Freak Dinners would not even be freakish. -That is why we feel that expensive Arctic feasts would probably -be a frost. - -If it be said that such things do no harm, I hasten, in one sense, -at least, to agree. Far from it; they do good. They do good -in the most vital matter of modern times; for they prove and print -in huge letters the truth which our society must learn or perish. -They prove that wealth in society as now constituted does -not tend to get into the hands of the thrifty or the capable, -but actually tends to get into the hands of wastrels and imbeciles. -And it proves that the wealthy class of to-day is quite as ignorant -about how to enjoy itself as about how to rule other people. -That it cannot make its government govern or its education educate we -may take as a trifling weakness of oligarchy; but pleasure we do look -to see in such a class; and it has surely come to its decrepitude -when it cannot make its pleasures please. - - - - -The Garden of the Sea - -One sometimes hears from persons of the chillier type of culture -the remark that plain country people do not appreciate the beauty -of the country. This is an error rooted in the intellectual pride -of mediocrity; and is one of the many examples of a truth in the idea -that extremes meet. Thus, to appreciate the virtues of the mob -one must either be on a level with it (as I am) or be really -high up, like the saints. It is roughly the same with aesthetics; -slang and rude dialect can be relished by a really literary taste, -but not by a merely bookish taste. And when these cultivated cranks -say that rustics do not talk of Nature in an appreciative way, -they really mean that they do not talk in a bookish way. -They do not talk bookishly about clouds or stones, or pigs or slugs, -or horses or anything you please. They talk piggishly about pigs; -and sluggishly, I suppose, about slugs; and are refreshingly horsy -about horses. They speak in a stony way of stones; they speak -in a cloudy way of clouds; and this is surely the right way. -And if by any chance a simple intelligent person from the country -comes in contact with any aspect of Nature unfamiliar and arresting, -such a person's comment is always worth remark. It is sometimes -an epigram, and at worst it is never a quotation. - -Consider, for instance, what wastes of wordy imitation and ambiguity -the ordinary educated person in the big towns could pour out on the -subject of the sea. A country girl I know in the county of Buckingham -had never seen the sea in her life until the other day. When she -was asked what she thought of it she said it was like cauliflowers. -Now that is a piece of pure literature--vivid, entirely independent -and original, and perfectly true. I had always been haunted with -an analogous kinship which I could never locate; cabbages always -remind me of the sea and the sea always reminds me of cabbages. -It is partly, perhaps, the veined mingling of violet and green, -as in the sea a purple that is almost dark red may mix with a green -that is almost yellow, and still be the blue sea as a whole. -But it is more the grand curves of the cabbage that curl over -cavernously like waves, and it is partly again that dreamy repetition, -as of a pattern, that made two great poets, Eschylus and Shakespeare, -use a word like "multitudinous" of the ocean. But just where my -fancy halted the Buckinghamshire young woman rushed (so to speak) -to my imaginative rescue. Cauliflowers are twenty times better -than cabbages, for they show the wave breaking as well as curling, -and the efflorescence of the branching foam, blind bubbling, -and opaque. Moreover, the strong lines of life are suggested; -the arches of the rushing waves have all the rigid energy of green stalks, -as if the whole sea were one great green plant with one immense -white flower rooted in the abyss. - -Now, a large number of delicate and superior persons would refuse -to see the force in that kitchen garden comparison, because it is not -connected with any of the ordinary maritime sentiments as stated in books -and songs. The aesthetic amateur would say that he knew what large -and philosophical thoughts he ought to have by the boundless deep. -He would say that he was not a greengrocer who would think first -of greens. To which I should reply, like Hamlet, apropos of -a parallel profession, "I would you were so honest a man." -The mention of "Hamlet" reminds me, by the way, that besides -the girl who had never seen the sea, I knew a girl who had never -seen a stage-play. She was taken to "Hamlet," and she said it -was very sad. There is another case of going to the primordial -point which is overlaid by learning and secondary impressions. -We are so used to thinking of "Hamlet" as a problem that we -sometimes quite forget that it is a tragedy, just as we are so used -to thinking of the sea as vast and vague, that we scarcely notice -when it is white and green. - -But there is another quarrel involved in which the young gentleman -of culture comes into violent collision with the young lady of -the cauliflowers. The first essential of the merely bookish view -of the sea is that it is boundless, and gives a sentiment of infinity. -Now it is quite certain, I think, that the cauliflower simile -was partly created by exactly the opposite impression, the -impression of boundary and of barrier. The girl thought of -it as a field of vegetables, even as a yard of vegetables. -The girl was right. The ocean only suggests infinity when you -cannot see it; a sea mist may seem endless, but not a sea. -So far from being vague and vanishing, the sea is the one -hard straight line in Nature. It is the one plain limit; -the only thing that God has made that really looks like a wall. -Compared to the sea, not only sun and cloud are chaotic and doubtful, -but solid mountains and standing forests may be said to melt -and fade and flee in the presence of that lonely iron line. -The old naval phrase, that the seas are England's bulwarks, -is not a frigid and artificial metaphor; it came into the head -of some genuine sea-dog, when he was genuinely looking at -the sea. For the edge of the sea is like the edge of a sword; -it is sharp, military, and decisive; it really looks like a bolt -or bar, and not like a mere expansion. It hangs in heaven, grey, -or green, or blue, changing in colour, but changeless in form, -behind all the slippery contours of the land and all the savage -softness of the forests, like the scales of God held even. -It hangs, a perpetual reminder of that divine reason and justice -which abides behind all compromises and all legitimate variety; -the one straight line; the limit of the intellect; the dark and -ultimate dogma of the world. - - - - -The Sentimentalist - -"Sentimentalism is the most broken reed on which righteousness can lean"; -these were, I think, the exact words of a distinguished American visitor -at the Guildhall, and may Heaven forgive me if I do him a wrong. -It was spoken in illustration of the folly of supporting Egyptian -and other Oriental nationalism, and it has tempted me to some -reflections on the first word of the sentence. - -The Sentimentalist, roughly speaking, is the man who wants to eat -his cake and have it. He has no sense of honour about ideas; -he will not see that one must pay for an idea as for anything else. -He will not see that any worthy idea, like any honest woman, can only -be won on its own terms, and with its logical chain of loyalty. -One idea attracts him; another idea really inspires him; -a third idea flatters him; a fourth idea pays him. He will -have them all at once in one wild intellectual harem, no -matter how much they quarrel and contradict each other. The -Sentimentalist is a philosophic profligate, who tries to capture -every mental beauty without reference to its rival beauties; -who will not even be off with the old love before he is on with the new. -Thus if a man were to say, "I love this woman, but I may some day -find my affinity in some other woman," he would be a Sentimentalist. -He would be saying, "I will eat my wedding-cake and keep it." -Or if a man should say, "I am a Republican, believing in -the equality of citizens; but when the Government has given -me my peerage I can do infinite good as a kind landlord and a -wise legislator"; then that man would be a Sentimentalist. -He would be trying to keep at the same time the classic austerity -of equality and also the vulgar excitement of an aristocrat. -Or if a man should say, "I am in favour of religious equality; -but I must preserve the Protestant Succession," he would be a -Sentimentalist of a grosser and more improbable kind. - -This is the essence of the Sentimentalist: that he seeks to enjoy every -idea without its sequence, and every pleasure without its consequence. - -Now it would really be hard to find a worse case of this inconsequent -sentimentalism than the theory of the British Empire advanced -by Mr. Roosevelt himself in his attack on Sentimentalists. -For the Imperial theory, the Roosevelt and Kipling theory, of our -relation to Eastern races is simply one of eating the Oriental cake -(I suppose a Sultana Cake) and at the same time leaving it alone. - -Now there are two sane attitudes of a European statesman towards -Eastern peoples, and there are only two. - -First, he may simply say that the less we have to do with them -the better; that whether they are lower than us or higher they -are so catastrophically different that the more we go our way -and they go theirs the better for all parties concerned. -I will confess to some tenderness for this view. There is much -to be said for letting that calm immemorial life of slave -and sultan, temple and palm tree flow on as it has always flowed. -The best reason of all, the reason that affects me most finally, -is that if we left the rest of the world alone we might have -some time for attending to our own affairs, which are urgent -to the point of excruciation. All history points to this; -that intensive cultivation in the long run triumphs over the widest -extensive cultivation; or, in other words, that making one's own -field superior is far more effective than reducing other people's -fields to inferiority. If you cultivate your own garden and grow -a specially large cabbage, people will probably come to see it. -Whereas the life of one selling small cabbages round the whole -district is often forlorn, - -Now, the Imperial Pioneer is essentially a commercial traveller; -and a commercial traveller is essentially a person who goes to see -people because they don't want to see him. As long as empires go -about urging their ideas on others, I always have a notion that the -ideas are no good. If they were really so splendid, they would make -the country preaching them a wonder of the world. That is the -true ideal; a great nation ought not to be a hammer, but a magnet. -Men went to the mediaeval Sorbonne because it was worth going to. -Men went to old Japan because only there could they find the unique -and exquisite old Japanese art. Nobody will ever go to modern Japan -(nobody worth bothering about, I mean), because modern Japan -has made the huge mistake of going to the other people: -becoming a common empire. The mountain has condescended to Mahomet; -and henceforth Mahomet will whistle for it when he wants it. - -That is my political theory: that we should make England worth -copying instead of telling everybody to copy her. - -But it is not the only possible theory. There is another view of our -relations to such places as Egypt and India which is entirely tenable. -It may be said, "We Europeans are the heirs of the Roman Empire; -when all is said we have the largest freedom, the most exact science, -the most solid romance. We have a deep though undefined obligation -to give as we have received from God; because the tribes of men are -truly thirsting for these things as for water. All men really want -clear laws: we can give clear laws. All men really want hygiene: -we can give hygiene. We are not merely imposing Western ideas. -We are simply fulfilling human ideas--for the first time." - -On this line, I think, it is possible to justify the forts of Africa -and the railroads of Asia; but on this line we must go much further. -If it is our duty to give our best, there can be no doubt about what is -our best. The greatest thing our Europe has made is the Citizen: -the idea of the average man, free and full of honour, voluntarily -invoking on his own sin the just vengeance of his city. All -else we have done is mere machinery for that: railways exist -only to carry the Citizen; forts only to defend him; electricity -only to light him, medicine only to heal him. Popularism, the -idea of the people alive and patiently feeding history, that -we cannot give; for it exists everywhere, East and West. But -democracy, the idea of the people fighting and governing--that -is the only thing we have to give. - -Those are the two roads. But between them weakly wavers the -Sentimentalist--that is, the Imperialist of the Roosevelt school. -He wants to have it both ways, to have the splendours of success without -the perils. Europe may enslave Asia, because it is flattering: -but Europe must not free Asia, because that is responsible. -It tickles his Imperial taste that Hindoos should have European hats: -it is too dangerous if they have European heads. He cannot leave -Asia Asiatic: yet he dare not contemplate Asia as European. -Therefore he proposes to have in Egypt railway signals, but not flags; -despatch boxes, but not ballot boxes. - -In short, the Sentimentalist decides to spread the body of Europe -without the soul. - - - - -The White Horses - -It is within my experience, which is very brief and occasional -in this matter, that it is not really at all easy to talk -in a motor-car. This is fortunate; first, because, as a whole, -it prevents me from motoring; and second because, at any given moment, -it prevents me from talking. The difficulty is not wholly due to -the physical conditions, though these are distinctly unconversational. -FitzGerald's Omar, being a pessimist, was probably rich, -and being a lazy fellow, was almost certainly a motorist. -If any doubt could exist on the point, it is enough to say that, -in speaking of the foolish profits, Omar has defined the difficulties -of colloquial motoring with a precision which cannot be accidental. -"Their words to wind are scattered; and their mouths are stopped -with dust." From this follows not (as many of the cut-and-dried -philosophers would say) a savage silence and mutual hostility, -but rather one of those rich silences that make the mass and bulk -of all friendship; the silence of men rowing the same boat or fighting -in the same battle-line. - -It happened that the other day I hired a motor-car, because I wanted -to visit in very rapid succession the battle-places and hiding-places -of Alfred the Great; and for a thing of this sort a motor is -really appropriate. It is not by any means the best way of seeing -the beauty of the country; you see beauty better by walking, and best -of all by sitting still. But it is a good method in any enterprise -that involves a parody of the military or governmental quality-- -anything which needs to know quickly the whole contour of a county -or the rough, relative position of men and towns. On such a journey, -like jagged lightning, I sat from morning till night by the side -of the chauffeur; and we scarcely exchanged a word to the hour. -But by the time the yellow stars came out in the villages and -the white stars in the skies, I think I understood his character; -and I fear he understood mine. - -He was a Cheshire man with a sour, patient, and humorous face; -he was modest, though a north countryman, and genial, though an expert. -He spoke (when he spoke at all) with a strong northland accent; -and he evidently was new to the beautiful south country, -as was clear both from his approval and his complaints. -But though he came from the north he was agricultural and not -commercial in origin; he looked at the land rather than the towns, -even if he looked at it with a somewhat more sharp and utilitarian eye. -His first remark for some hours was uttered when we were crossing -the more coarse and desolate heights of Salisbury Plain. -He remarked that he had always thought that Salisbury Plain was a plain. -This alone showed that he was new to the vicinity. But he also said, -with a critical frown, "A lot of this land ought to be good land enough. -Why don't they use it?" He was then silent for some more hours. - -At an abrupt angle of the slopes that lead down from what is called -(with no little humour) Salisbury Plain, I saw suddenly, as by accident, -something I was looking for--that is, something I did not expect to see. -We are all supposed to be trying to walk into heaven; but we -should be uncommonly astonished if we suddenly walked into it. -As I was leaving Salisbury Plain (to put it roughly) I lifted up -my eyes and saw the White Horse of Britain. - -One or two truly fine poets of the Tory and Protestant type, -such as Swinburne and Mr. Rudyard Kipling, have eulogized -England under the image of white horses, meaning the white-maned -breakers of the Channel. This is right and natural enough. -The true philosophical Tory goes back to ancient things because -he thinks they will be anarchic things. It would startle him very -much to be told that there are white horses of artifice in England -that may be older than those wild white horses of the elements. -Yet it is truly so. Nobody knows how old are those strange green -and white hieroglyphics, those straggling quadrupeds of chalk, -that stand out on the sides of so many of the Southern Downs. -They are possibly older than Saxon and older than Roman times. -They may well be older than British, older than any recorded times. -They may go back, for all we know, to the first faint seeds -of human life on this planet. Men may have picked a horse -out of the grass long before they scratched a horse on a vase -or pot, or messed and massed any horse out of clay. This may -be the oldest human art--before building or graving. And if -so, it may have first happened in another geological age, before -the sea burst through the narrow Straits of Dover. The White -Horse may have begun in Berkshire when there were no white -horses at Folkestone or Newhaven. That rude but evident white -outline that I saw across the valley may have been begun when Britain -was not an island. We forget that there are many places where art -is older than nature. - -We took a long detour through somewhat easier roads, till we came -to a breach or chasm in the valley, from which we saw our friend -the White Horse once more. At least, we thought it was our friend -the White Horse; but after a little inquiry we discovered to our -astonishment that it was another friend and another horse. -Along the leaning flanks of the same fair valley there was (it seemed) -another white horse; as rude and as clean, as ancient and as modern, -as the first. This, at least, I thought must be the aboriginal -White Horse of Alfred, which I had always heard associated with his name. -And yet before we had driven into Wantage and seen King Alfred's -quaint grey statue in the sun, we had seen yet a third white horse. -And the third white horse was so hopelessly unlike a horse that we were -sure that it was genuine. The final and original white horse, the white -horse of the White Horse Vale, has that big, babyish quality that truly -belongs to our remotest ancestors. It really has the prehistoric, -preposterous quality of Zulu or New Zealand native drawings. -This at least was surely made by our fathers when they were barely men; -long before they were civilized men. - -But why was it made? Why did barbarians take so much trouble -to make a horse nearly as big as a hamlet; a horse who could -bear no hunter, who could drag no load? What was this titanic, -sub-conscious instinct for spoiling a beautiful green slope -with a very ugly white quadruped? What (for the matter of that) -is this whole hazardous fancy of humanity ruling the earth, -which may have begun with white horses, which may by no means end -with twenty horse-power cars? As I rolled away out of that country, -I was still cloudily considering how ordinary men ever came -to want to make such strange chalk horses, when my chauffeur -startled me by speaking for the first time for nearly two hours. -He suddenly let go one of the handles and pointed at a gross -green bulk of down that happened to swell above us. "That would -be a good place," he said. - -Naturally I referred to his last speech of some hours before; -and supposed he meant that it would be promising for agriculture. -As a fact, it was quite unpromising; and this made me suddenly understand -the quiet ardour in his eye. All of a sudden I saw what he really meant. -He really meant that this would be a splendid place to pick out another -white horse. He knew no more than I did why it was done; but he was -in some unthinkable prehistoric tradition, because he wanted to do it. -He became so acute in sensibility that he could not bear to pass -any broad breezy hill of grass on which there was not a white horse. -He could hardly keep his hands off the hills. He could hardly -leave any of the living grass alone. - -Then I left off wondering why the primitive man made so many -white horses. I left off troubling in what sense the ordinary -eternal man had sought to scar or deface the hills. I was content -to know that he did want it; for I had seen him wanting it. - - - - -The Long Bow - -I find myself still sitting in front of the last book by Mr. H. G. Wells, -I say stunned with admiration, my family says sleepy with fatigue. -I still feel vaguely all the things in Mr. Wells's book which I -agree with; and I still feel vividly the one thing that I deny. -I deny that biology can destroy the sense of truth, which alone can -even desire biology. No truth which I find can deny that I am seeking -the truth. My mind cannot find anything which denies my mind... -But what is all this? This is no sort of talk for a genial essay. -Let us change the subject; let us have a romance or a fable -or a fairy tale. - -Come, let us tell each other stories. There was once a king who -was very fond of listening to stories, like the king in the -Arabian Nights. The only difference was that, unlike that -cynical Oriental, this king believed all the stories that he -heard. It is hardly necessary to add that he lived in England. -His face had not the swarthy secrecy of the tyrant of the thousand tales; -on the contrary, his eyes were as big and innocent as two blue moons; -and when his yellow beard turned totally white he seemed to be -growing younger. Above him hung still his heavy sword and horn, -to remind men that he had been a tall hunter and warrior in his time: -indeed, with that rusted sword he had wrecked armies. But he was one -of those who will never know the world, even when they conquer it. -Besides his love of this old Chaucerian pastime of the telling of tales, -he was, like many old English kings, specially interested in the art -of the bow. He gathered round him great archers of the stature -of Ulysses and Robin Hood, and to four of these he gave the whole -government of his kingdom. They did not mind governing his kingdom; -but they were sometimes a little bored with the necessity -of telling him stories. None of their stories were true; -but the king believed all of them, and this became very depressing. -They created the most preposterous romances; and could not get -the credit of creating them. Their true ambition was sent empty away. -They were praised as archers; but they desired to be praised as poets. -They were trusted as men, but they would rather have been admired -as literary men. - -At last, in an hour of desperation, they formed themselves into a club -or conspiracy with the object of inventing some story which even -the king could not swallow. They called it The League of the Long Bow; -thus attaching themselves by a double bond to their motherland of England, -which has been steadily celebrated since the Norman Conquest for its -heroic archery and for the extraordinary credulity of its people. - -At last it seemed to the four archers that their hour had come. -The king commonly sat in a green curtained chamber, which opened by -four doors, and was surmounted by four turrets. Summoning his champions -to him on an April evening, he sent out each of them by a separate door, -telling him to return at morning with the tale of his journey. -Every champion bowed low, and, girding on great armour as for awful -adventures, retired to some part of the garden to think of a lie. -They did not want to think of a lie which would deceive the king; -any lie would do that. They wanted to think of a lie so outrageous -that it would not deceive him, and that was a serious matter. - -The first archer who returned was a dark, quiet, clever fellow, -very dexterous in small matters of mechanics. He was more -interested in the science of the bow than in the sport of it. -Also he would only shoot at a mark, for he thought it cruel to kill -beasts and birds, and atrocious to kill men. When he left the king -he had gone out into the wood and tried all sorts of tiresome -experiments about the bending of branches and the impact of arrows; -when even he found it tiresome he returned to the house of the four -turrets and narrated his adventure. "Well," said the king, -"what have you been shooting?" "Arrows," answered the archer. -"So I suppose," said the king smiling; "but I mean, I mean what -wild things have you shot?" "I have shot nothing but arrows," -answered the bowman obstinately. "When I went out on to the plain -I saw in a crescent the black army of the Tartars, the terrible -archers whose bows are of bended steel, and their bolts as big -as javelins. They spied me afar off, and the shower of their -arrows shut out the sun and made a rattling roof above me. -You know, I think it wrong to kill a bird, or worm, or even a Tartar. -But such is the precision and rapidity of perfect science that, -with my own arrows, I split every arrow as it came against me. -I struck every flying shaft as if it were a flying bird. -Therefore, Sire, I may say truly, that I shot nothing but arrows." -The king said, "I know how clever you engineers are with your fingers." -The archer said, "Oh," and went out. - -The second archer, who had curly hair and was pale, poetical, -and rather effeminate, had merely gone out into the garden and stared -at the moon. When the moon had become too wide, blank, and watery, -even for his own wide, blank, and watery eyes, he came in again. -And when the king said "What have you been shooting?" he answered -with great volubility, "I have shot a man; not a man from Tartary, -not a man from Europe, Asia, Africa, or America; not a man on this -earth at all. I have shot the Man in the Moon." "Shot the Man -in the Moon?" repeated the king with something like a mild surprise. -"It is easy to prove it," said the archer with hysterical haste. -"Examine the moon through this particularly powerful telescope, -and you will no longer find any traces of a man there." The king -glued his big blue idiotic eye to the telescope for about ten minutes, -and then said, "You are right: as you have often pointed out, -scientific truth can only be tested by the senses. I believe you." -And the second archer went out, and being of a more emotional -temperament burst into tears. - -The third archer was a savage, brooding sort of man with tangled -hair and dreamy eyes, and he came in without any preface, saying, -"I have lost all my arrows. They have turned into birds." -Then as he saw that they all stared at him, he said "Well, -you know everything changes on the earth; mud turns into marigolds, -eggs turn into chickens; one can even breed dogs into quite -different shapes. Well, I shot my arrows at the awful eagles -that clash their wings round the Himalayas; great golden eagles -as big as elephants, which snap the tall trees by perching on them. -My arrows fled so far over mountain and valley that they turned -slowly into fowls in their flight. See here," and he threw -down a dead bird and laid an arrow beside it. "Can't you see -they are the same structure. The straight shaft is the backbone; -the sharp point is the beak; the feather is the rudimentary plumage. -It is merely modification and evolution." After a silence the king -nodded gravely and said, "Yes; of course everything is evolution." -At this the third archer suddenly and violently left the room, -and was heard in some distant part of the building making extraordinary -noises either of sorrow or of mirth. - -The fourth archer was a stunted man with a face as dead as wood, -but with wicked little eyes close together, and very much alive. -His comrades dissuaded him from going in because they said that they -had soared up into the seventh heaven of living lies, and that there -was literally nothing which the old man would not believe. The face -of the little archer became a little more wooden as he forced his way in, -and when he was inside he looked round with blinking bewilderment. -"Ha, the last," said the king heartily, "welcome back again!" -There was a long pause, and then the stunted archer said, -"What do you mean by 'again'? I have never been here before." -The king stared for a few seconds, and said, "I sent you out from -this room with the four doors last night." After another pause -the little man slowly shook his head. "I never saw you before," -he said simply; "you never sent me out from anywhere. I only saw -your four turrets in the distance, and strayed in here by accident. -I was born in an island in the Greek Archipelago; I am by profession -an auctioneer, and my name is Punk." The king sat on his throne -for seven long instants like a statue; and then there awoke in his mild -and ancient eyes an awful thing; the complete conviction of untruth. -Every one has felt it who has found a child obstinately false. -He rose to his height and took down the heavy sword above him, -plucked it out naked, and then spoke. "I will believe your mad -tales about the exact machinery of arrows; for that is science. -I will believe your mad tales about traces of life in the moon; -for that is science. I will believe your mad tales about jellyfish -turning into gentlemen, and everything turning into anything; -for that is science. But I will not believe you when you tell me -what I know to be untrue. I will not believe you when you say that -you did not all set forth under my authority and out of my house. -The other three may conceivably have told the truth; but this -last man has certainly lied. Therefore I will kill him." -And with that the old and gentle king ran at the man with uplifted sword; -but he was arrested by the roar of happy laughter, which told -the world that there is, after all, something which an Englishman -will not swallow. - - - - -The Modern Scrooge - -Mr. Vernon-Smith, of Trinity, and the Social Settlement, Tooting, -author of "A Higher London" and "The Boyg System at Work," -came to the conclusion, after looking through his select and even -severe library, that Dickens's "Christmas Carol" was a very suitable -thing to be read to charwomen. Had they been men they would have been -forcibly subjected to Browning's "Christmas Eve" with exposition, -but chivalry spared the charwomen, and Dickens was funny, -and could do no harm. His fellow worker Wimpole would read things -like "Three Men in a Boat" to the poor; but Vernon-Smith regarded -this as a sacrifice of principle, or (what was the same thing to him) -of dignity. He would not encourage them in their vulgarity; -they should have nothing from him that was not literature. -Still Dickens was literature after all; not literature of a high order, -of course, not thoughtful or purposeful literature, but literature -quite fitted for charwomen on Christmas Eve. - -He did not, however, let them absorb Dickens without due -antidotes of warning and criticism. He explained that Dickens -was not a writer of the first rank, since he lacked the high -seriousness of Matthew Arnold. He also feared that they -would find the characters of Dickens terribly exaggerated. -But they did not, possibly because they were meeting them every day. -For among the poor there are still exaggerated characters; -they do not go to the Universities to be universified. He -told the charwomen, with progressive brightness, that a mad wicked -old miser like Scrooge would be really quite impossible now; but as -each of the charwomen had an uncle or a grandfather or a father-in-law -who was exactly like Scrooge, his cheerfulness was not shared. -Indeed, the lecture as a whole lacked something of his firm and -elastic touch, and towards the end he found himself rambling, and in -a sort of abstraction, talking to them as if they were his fellows. -He caught himself saying quite mystically that a spiritual plane -(by which he meant his plane) always looked to those on the sensual -or Dickens plane, not merely austere, but desolate. He said, -quoting Bernard Shaw, that we could all go to heaven just as we can -all go to a classical concert, but if we did it would bore us. -Realizing that he was taking his flock far out of their depth, he ended -somewhat hurriedly, and was soon receiving that generous applause -which is a part of the profound ceremonialism of the working classes. -As he made his way to the door three people stopped him, -and he answered them heartily enough, but with an air of hurry which -he would not have dreamed of showing to people of his own class. -One was a little schoolmistress who told him with a sort of feverish -meekness that she was troubled because an Ethical Lecturer -had said that Dickens was not really Progressive; but she -thought he was Progressive; and surely he was Progressive. -Of what being Progressive was she had no more notion than a whale. -The second person implored him for a subscription to some soup -kitchen or cheap meal; and his refined features sharpened; -for this, like literature, was a matter of principle with him. -"Quite the wrong method," he said, shaking his head and pushing past. -"Nothing any good but the Boyg system." The third stranger, who was male, -caught him on the step as he came out into the snow and starlight; -and asked him point blank for money. It was a part of Vernon-Smith's -principles that all such persons are prosperous impostors; -and like a true mystic he held to his principles in defiance of his -five senses, which told him that the night was freezing and the man -very thin and weak. "If you come to the Settlement between four -and five on Friday week," he said, "inquiries will be made." -The man stepped back into the snow with a not ungraceful gesture -as of apology; he had frosty silver hair, and his lean face, -though in shadow, seemed to wear something like a smile. -As Vernon-Smith stepped briskly into the street, the man stooped -down as if to do up his bootlace. He was, however, guiltless of -any such dandyism; and as the young philanthropist stood pulling -on his gloves with some particularity, a heavy snowball was -suddenly smashed into his face. He was blind for a black instant; -then as some of the snow fell, saw faintly, as in a dim mirror -of ice or dreamy crystal, the lean man bowing with the elegance -of a dancing master, and saying amiably, "A Christmas box." -When he had quite cleared his face of snow the man had vanished. - -For three burning minutes Cyril Vernon-Smith was nearer to the people -and more their brother than he had been in his whole high-stepping -pedantic existence; for if he did not love a poor man, he hated one. -And you never really regard a labourer as your equal until you -can quarrel with him. "Dirty cad!" he muttered. "Filthy fool! -Mucking with snow like a beastly baby! When will they be civilized? -Why, the very state of the street is a disgrace and a temptation -to such tomfools. Why isn't all this snow cleared away and the -street made decent?" - -To the eye of efficiency, there was, indeed, something to complain -of in the condition of the road. Snow was banked up on both -sides in white walls and towards the other and darker end -of the street even rose into a chaos of low colourless hills. -By the time he reached them he was nearly knee deep, and was -in a far from philanthropic frame of mind. The solitude of -the little streets was as strange as their white obstruction, -and before he had ploughed his way much further he was convinced -that he had taken a wrong turning, and fallen upon some formless -suburb unvisited before. There was no light in any of the low, -dark houses; no light in anything but the blank emphatic snow. -He was modern and morbid; hellish isolation hit and held him suddenly; -anything human would have relieved the strain, if it had been only -the leap of a garotter. Then the tender human touch came indeed; -for another snowball struck him, and made a star on his back. -He turned with fierce joy, and ran after a boy escaping; -ran with dizzy and violent speed, he knew not for how long. -He wanted the boy; he did not know whether he loved or hated him. -He wanted humanity; he did not know whether he loved or hated it. - -As he ran he realized that the landscape around him was changing -in shape though not in colour. The houses seemed to dwindle and -disappear in hills of snow as if buried; the snow seemed to rise -in tattered outlines of crag and cliff and crest, but he thought -nothing of all these impossibilities until the boy turned to bay. -When he did he saw the child was queerly beautiful, with gold -red hair, and a face as serious as complete happiness. And -when he spoke to the boy his own question surprised him, for -he said for the first time in his life, "What am I doing here?" -And the little boy, with very grave eyes, answered, "I suppose -you are dead." - -He had (also for the first time) a doubt of his spiritual destiny. -He looked round on a towering landscape of frozen peaks and plains, -and said, "Is this hell?" And as the child stared, but did not answer, -he knew it was heaven. - -All over that colossal country, white as the world round -the Pole, little boys were playing, rolling each other down -dreadful slopes, crushing each other under falling cliffs; -for heaven is a place where one can fight for ever without hurting. -Smith suddenly remembered how happy he had been as a child, -rolling about on the safe sandhills around Conway. - -Right above Smith's head, higher than the cross of St. Paul's, -but curving over him like the hanging blossom of a harebell, was a -cavernous crag of snow. A hundred feet below him, like a landscape -seen from a balloon, lay snowy flats as white and as far away. -He saw a little boy stagger, with many catastrophic slides, -to that toppling peak; and seizing another little boy by the leg, -send him flying away down to the distant silver plains. -There he sank and vanished in the snow as if in the sea; -but coming up again like a diver rushed madly up the steep once more, -rolling before him a great gathering snowball, gigantic at last, -which he hurled back at the mountain crest, and brought both the boy -and the mountain down in one avalanche to the level of the vale. -The other boy also sank like a stone, and also rose again like -a bird, but Smith had no leisure to concern himself with this. -For the collapse of that celestial crest had left him standing -solitary in the sky on a peak like a church spire. - -He could see the tiny figures of the boys in the valley below, and he knew -by their attitudes that they were eagerly telling him to jump. -Then for the first time he knew the nature of faith, as he had just -known the fierce nature of charity. Or rather for the second time, -for he remembered one moment when he had known faith before. -It was n when his father had taught him to swim, and he had believed -he could float on water not only against reason, but (what is -so much harder) against instinct. Then he had trusted water; -now he must trust air. - -He jumped. He went through air and then through snow with the same -blinding swiftness. But as he buried himself in solid snow like a bullet -he seemed to learn a million things and to learn them all too fast. -He knew that the whole world is a snowball, and that all the stars -are snowballs. He knew that no man will be fit for heaven till -he loves solid whiteness as a little boy loves a ball of snow. - -He sank and sank and sank... and then, as usually happens in such cases, -woke up, with a start--in the street. True, he was taken up -for a common drunk, but (if you properly appreciate his conversion) -you will realize that he did not mind; since the crime of drunkenness -is infinitely less than that of spiritual pride, of which he had -really been guilty. - - - - -The High Plains - -By high plains I do not mean table-lands; table-lands do not interest -one very much. They seem to involve the bore of a climb without -the pleasure of a peak. Also they arc vaguely associated with Asia -and those enormous armies that eat up everything like locusts, -as did the army of Xerxes; with emperors from nowhere spreading -their battalions everywhere; with the white elephants and the -painted horses, the dark engines and the dreadful mounted bowmen -of the moving empires of the East, with all that evil insolence -in short that rolled into Europe in the youth of Nero, and after -having been battered about and abandoned by one Christian nation -after another, turned up in England with Disraeli and was christened -(or rather paganed) Imperialism. - -Also (it may be necessary to explain) I do not mean "high planes" -such as the Theosophists and the Higher Thought Centres talk about. -They spell theirs differently; but I will not have theirs -in any spelling. They, I know, are always expounding how this -or that person is on a lower plane, while they (the speakers) -are on a higher plane: sometimes they will almost tell you what plane, -as "5994" or "Plane F, sub-plane 304." I do not mean this sort -of height either. My religion says nothing about such planes except -that all men are on one plane and that by no means a high one. -There are saints indeed in my religion: but a saint only means -a man who really knows he is a sinner. - -Why then should I talk of the plains as high? I do it for a -rather singular reason, which I will illustrate by a parallel. -When I was at school learning all the Greek I have ever forgotten, -I was puzzled by the phrase OINON MELAN that is "black wine," -which continually occurred. I asked what it meant, and many most -interesting and convincing answers were given. It was pointed -out that we know little of the actual liquid drunk by the Greeks; -that the analogy of modern Greek wines may suggest that it was -dark and sticky, perhaps a sort of syrup always taken with water; -that archaic language about colour is always a little dubious, -as where Homer speaks of the "wine-dark sea" and so on. I was very -properly satisfied, and never thought of the matter again; until one day, -having a decanter of claret in front of me, I happened to look at it. -I then perceived that they called wine black because it is black. -Very thin, diluted, or held-up abruptly against a flame, red wine is red; -but seen in body in most normal shades and semi-lights red wine -is black, and therefore was called so. - -On the same principles I call the plains high because the -plains always are high; they are always as high as we are. -We talk of climbing a mountain crest and looking down at the plain; -but the phrase is an illusion of our arrogance. It is impossible even -to look down at the plain. For the plain itself rises as we rise. -It is not merely true that the higher we climb the wider and wider -is spread out below us the wealth of the world; it is not merely -that the devil or some other respectable guide for tourists takes us -to the top of an exceeding high mountain and shows us all the kingdoms -of the earth. It is more than that, in our real feeling of it. -It is that in a sense the whole world rises with us roaring, -and accompanies us to the crest like some clanging chorus of eagles. -The plains rise higher and higher like swift grey walls piled up -against invisible invaders. And however high a peak you climb, -the plain is still as high as the peak. - -The mountain tops are only noble because from them we are privileged -to behold the plains. So the only value in any man being superior is -that he may have a superior admiration for the level and the common. -If there is any profit in a place craggy and precipitous it is -only because from the vale it is not easy to see all the beauty -of the vale; because when actually in the flats one cannot -see their sublime and satisfying flatness. If there is any -value in being educated or eminent (which is doubtful enough) -it is only because the best instructed man may feel most swiftly -and certainly the splendour of the ignorant and the simple: -the full magnificence of that mighty human army in the plains. -The general goes up to the hill to look at his soldiers, not to look -down at his soldiers. He withdraws himself not because his regiment -is too small to be touched, but because it is too mighty to be seen. -The chief climbs with submission and goes higher with great humility; -since in order to take a bird's eye view of everything, he must -become small and distant like a bird. - -The most marvellous of those mystical cavaliers who wrote intricate -and exquisite verse in England in the seventeenth century, I mean -Henry Vaughan, put the matter in one line, intrinsically immortal -and practically forgotten-- - -"Oh holy hope and high humility." - -That adjective "high" is not only one of the sudden and stunning -inspirations of literature; it is also one of the greatest and gravest -definitions of moral science. However far aloft a man may go, -he is still looking up, not only at God (which is obvious), -but in a manner at men also: seeing more and more all that is towering -and mysterious in the dignity and destiny of the lonely house of Adam. -I wrote some part of these rambling remarks on a high ridge -of rock and turf overlooking a stretch of the central counties; -the rise was slight enough in reality, but the immediate ascent -had been so steep and sudden that one could not avoid the fancy -that on reaching the summit one would look down at the stars. -But one did not look down at the stars, but rather up at the cities; -seeing as high in heaven the palace town of Alfred like a lit sunset -cloud, and away in the void spaces, like a planet in eclipse, Salisbury. -So, it may be hoped, until we die you and I will always look up -rather than down at the labours and the habitations of our race; -we will lift up our eyes to the valleys from whence cometh our help. -For from every special eminence and beyond every sublime landmark, -it is good for our souls to see only vaster and vaster visions -of that dizzy and divine level; and to behold from our crumbling -turrets the tall plains of equality. - - - - -The Chorus - -One of the most marked instances of the decline of true popular sympathy -is the gradual disappearance in our time of the habit of singing -in chorus. Even when it is done nowadays it is done tentatively -and sometimes inaudibly; apparently upon some preposterous principle -(which I have never clearly grasped) that singing is an art. -In the new aristocracy of the drawing-room a lady is actually -asked whether she sings. In the old democracy of the dinner -table a man was simply told to sing, and he had to do it. -I like the atmosphere of those old banquets. I like to think -of my ancestors, middle-aged or venerable gentlemen, all sitting -round a table and explaining that they would never forget old days -or friends with a rumpty-iddity-iddity, or letting it be known that -they would die for England's glory with their tooral ooral, etc. -Even the vices of that society (which 'sometimes, I fear, -rendered the narrative portions of the song almost as cryptic -and inarticulate as the chorus) were displayed with a more human -softening than the same vices in the saloon bars of our own time. -I greatly prefer Mr. Richard Swiveller to Mr. Stanley Ortheris. -I prefer the man who exceeded in rosy wine in order that the wing -of friendship might never moult a feather to the man who exceeds -quite as much in whiskies and sodas, but declares all the time that -he's for number one, and that you don't catch him paying for other -men's drinks. The old men of pleasure (with their tooral ooral) -got at least some social and communal virtue out of pleasure. -The new men of pleasure (without the slightest vestige of a -tooral ooral) are simply hermits of irreligion instead of religion, -anchorites of atheism, and they might as well be drugging themselves -with hashish or opium in a wilderness. - -But the chorus of the old songs had another use besides this -obvious one of asserting the popular element in the arts. -The chorus of a song, even of a comic song, has the same purpose -as the chorus in a Greek tragedy. It reconciles men to the gods. -It connects this one particular tale with the cosmos and the philosophy -of common things, Thus we constantly find in the old ballads, -especially the pathetic ballads, some refrain about the grass -growing green, or the birds singing, or the woods being merry in spring. -These are windows opened in the house of tragedy; momentary glimpses -of larger and quieter scenes, of more ancient and enduring landscapes. -Many of the country songs describing crime and death have refrains of a -startling joviality like cock crow, just as if the whole company were -coming in with a shout of protest against so sombre a view of existence. -There is a long and gruesome ballad called "The Berkshire Tragedy," -about a murder committed by a jealous sister, for the consummation -of which a wicked miller is hanged, and the chorus (which should -come in a kind of burst) runs: - - "And I'll be true to my love - If my love'll be true to me." - -The very reasonable arrangement here suggested is introduced, -I think, as a kind of throw back to the normal, a reminder that even -"The Berkshire Tragedy" does not fill the whole of Berkshire. -The poor young lady is drowned, and the wicked miller (to whom -we may have been affectionately attached) is hanged; but still -a ruby kindles in the vine, and many a garden by the water blows. -Not that Omar's type of hedonistic resignation is at all the same -as the breezy impatience of the Berkshire refrain; but they are -alike in so far as they gaze out beyond the particular complication -to more open plains of peace. The chorus of the ballad looks past -the drowning maiden and the miller's gibbet, and sees the lanes -full of lovers. - -This use of the chorus to humanize and dilute a dark -story is strongly opposed to the modern view of art. -Modern art has to be what is called "intense." It is not easy -to define being intense; but, roughly speaking, it means saying -only one thing at a time, and saying it wrong. Modern tragic -writers have to write short stories; if they wrote long stories -(as the man said of philosophy) cheerfulness would creep in. -Such stories are like stings; brief, but purely painful. -And doubtless they bore some resemblance to some lives lived -under our successful scientific civilization; lives which tend -in any case to be painful, and in many cases to be brief. -But when the artistic people passed beyond the poignant anecdote -and began to write long books full of poignancy, then the reading -public began to rebel and to demand the recall of romance. The long -books about the black poverty of cities became quite insupportable. -The Berkshire tragedy had a chorus; but the London tragedy has no chorus. -Therefore people welcomed the return of adventurous novels about alien -places and times, the trenchant and swordlike stories of Stevenson. -But I am not narrowly on the side of the romantics. I think that -glimpses of the gloom of our civilization ought to be recorded. -I think that the bewilderments of the solitary and sceptical soul ought -to be preserved, if it be only for the pity (yes, and the admiration) -of a happier time. But I wish that there were some way in -which the chorus could enter. I wish that at the end of each -chapter of stiff agony or insane terror the choir of humanity -could come in with a crash of music and tell both the reader -and the author that this is not the whole of human experience. -Let them go on recording hard scenes or hideous questions, but let -there be a jolly refrain. - -Thus we might read: "As Honoria laid down the volume of Ibsen and went -wearily to her window, she realized that life must be to her not -only harsher, but colder than it was to the comfortable and the weak. -With her tooral ooral, etc.;" or, again: "The young curate smiled -grimly as he listened to his great-grandmother's last words. -He knew only too well that since Phogg's discovery of the -hereditary hairiness of goats religion stood on a very different -basis from that which it had occupied in his childhood. -With his rumpty-iddity, rumpty-iddity;" and so on. Or we might read: -"Uriel Maybloom stared gloomily down at his sandals, as he realized -for the first time how senseless and anti-social are all ties -between man and woman; how each must go his or her way without -any attempt to arrest the head-long separation of their souls." -And then would come in one deafening chorus of everlasting humanity -"But I'll be true to my love, if my love'll be true to me." - -In the records of the first majestic and yet fantastic developments -of the foundation of St. Francis of Assisi is an account of a -certain Blessed Brother Giles. I have forgotten most of it, -but I remember one fact: that certain students of theology came -to ask him whether he believed in free will, and, if so, how he could -reconcile it with necessity. On hearing the question St. Francis's -follower reflected a little while and then seized a fiddle and -began capering and dancing about the garden, playing a wild tune -and generally expressing a violent and invigorating indifference. -The tune is not recorded, but it is the eternal chorus of mankind, -that modifies all the arts and mocks all the individualisms, -like the laughter and thunder of some distant sea. - - - - -A Romance of the Marshes - -In books as a whole marshes are described as desolate and colourless, -great fields of clay or sedge, vast horizons of drab or grey. But this, -like many other literary associations, is a piece of poetical injustice. -Monotony has nothing to do with a place; monotony, either in its -sensation or its infliction, is simply the quality of a person. -There are no dreary sights; there are only dreary sightseers. -It is a matter of taste, that is of personality, whether marshes -are monotonous; but it is a matter of fact and science that they are -not monochrome. The tops of high mountains (I am told) are all white; -the depths of primeval caverns (I am also told) are all dark. -The sea will be grey or blue for weeks together; and the desert, -I have been led to believe, is the colour of sand. The North Pole -(if we found it) would be white with cracks of blue; and Endless Space -(if we went there) would, I suppose, be black with white spots. -If any of these were counted of a monotonous colour I could well -understand it; but on the contrary, they are always spoken of as if -they had the gorgeous and chaotic colours of a cosmic kaleidoscope. -Now exactly where you can find colours like those of a tulip -garden or a stained-glass window, is in those sunken and sodden -lands which are always called dreary. Of course the great tulip -gardens did arise in Holland; which is simply one immense marsh. -There is nothing in Europe so truly tropical as marshes. Also, now I come -to think of it, there are few places so agreeably marshy as tropics. -At any rate swamp and fenlands in England are always especially -rich in gay grasses or gorgeous fungoids; and seem sometimes -as glorious as a transformation scene; but also as unsubstantial. -In these splendid scenes it is always very easy to put your foot -through the scenery. You may sink up to your armpits; but you -will sink up to your armpits in flowers. I do not deny that I -myself am of a sort that sinks--except in the matter of spirits. -I saw in the west counties recently a swampy field of great richness -and promise. If I had stepped on it I have no doubt at all that I -should have vanished; that aeons hence the complete fossil of a fat -Fleet Street journalist would be found in that compressed clay. -I only claim that it would be found in some attitude of energy, -or even of joy. But the last point is the most important of all, -for as I imagined myself sinking up to the neck in what looked -like a solid green field, I suddenly remembered that this very -thing must have happened to certain interesting pirates quite -a thousand years ago. - -For, as it happened, the flat fenland in which I so nearly -sunk was the fenland round the Island of Athelney, which is -now an island in the fields and no longer in the waters. -But on the abrupt hillock a stone still stands to say that this -was that embattled islet in the Parrett where King Alfred held -his last fort against the foreign invaders, in that war that nearly -washed us as far from civilization as the Solomon Islands. -Here he defended the island called Athelney as he afterwards did his -best to defend the island called England. For the hero always defends -an island, a thing beleaguered and surrounded, like the Troy of Hector. -And the highest and largest humanitarian can only rise to defending -the tiny island called the earth. - -One approaches the island of Athelney along a low long road like -an interminable white string stretched across the flats, and lined -with those dwarfish trees that are elvish in their very dullness. -At one point of the journey (I cannot conceive why) one is -arrested by a toll gate at which one has to pay threepence. -Perhaps it is a distorted tradition of those dark ages. -Perhaps Alfred, with the superior science of comparative civilization, -had calculated the economics of Denmark down to a halfpenny. -Perhaps a Dane sometimes came with twopence, sometimes even -with twopence-halfpenny, after the sack of many cities even -with twopence three farthings; but never with threepence. -Whether or no it was a permanent barrier to the barbarians it -was only a temporary barrier to me. I discovered three large -and complete coppers in various parts of my person, and I passed -on along that strangely monotonous and strangely fascinating path. -It is not merely fanciful to feel that the place expresses itself -appropriately as the place where the great Christian King hid -himself from the heathen. Though a marshland is always open it -is still curiously secret. Fens, like deserts, are large things -very apt to be mislaid. These flats feared to be overlooked -in a double sense; the small trees crouched and the whole plain -seemed lying on its face, as men do when shells burst. The little -path ran fearlessly forward; but it seemed to run on all fours. -Everything in that strange countryside seemed to be lying low, -as if to avoid the incessant and rattling rain of the Danish arrows. -There were indeed hills of no inconsiderable height quite within call; -but those pools and flats of the old Parrett seemed to separate -themselves like a central and secret sea; and in the midst of them -stood up the rock of Athelney as isolate as it was to Alfred. -And all across this recumbent and almost crawling country there -ran the glory of the low wet lands; grass lustrous and living -like the plumage of some universal bird; the flowers as gorgeous -as bonfires and the weeds more beautiful than the flowers. -One stooped to stroke the grass, as if the earth were all one kind -beast that could feel. - -Why does no decent person write an historical novel about Alfred -and his fort in Athelney, in the marshes of the Parrett? Not a very -historical novel. Not about his Truth-telling (please) or his founding -the British Empire, or the British Navy, or the Navy League, or whichever -it was he founded. Not about the Treaty of Wedmore and whether it ought -(as an eminent historian says) to be called the Pact of Chippenham. -But an aboriginal romance for boys about the bare, bald, beatific fact -that a great hero held his fort in an island in a river. An island -is fine enough, in all conscience or piratic unconscientiousness, -but an island in a river sounds like the beginning of the greatest -adventure story on earth. "Robinson Crusoe" is really a great tale, -but think of Robinson Crusoe's feelings if he could have actually -seen England and Spain from his inaccessible isle! "Treasure Island" -is a spirit of genius: but what treasure could an island contain to -compare with Alfred? And then consider the further elements of juvenile -romance in an island that was more of an island than it looked. -Athelney was masked with marshes; many a heavy harnessed Viking may -have started bounding across a meadow only to find himself submerged -in a sea. I feel the full fictitious splendour spreading round me; -I see glimpses of a great romance that will never be written. -I see a sudden shaft quivering in one of the short trees. -I see a red-haired man wading madly among the tall gold -flowers of the marsh, leaping onward and lurching lower. -I see another shaft stand quivering in his throat. I cannot see -any more, because, as I have delicately suggested, I am a heavy man. -This mysterious marshland does not sustain me, and I sink into its -depths with a bubbling groan. - - - - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, ALARMS AND DISCURSIONS *** - -This file should be named aldsc10.txt or aldsc10.zip -Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, aldsc11.txt -VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, aldsc10a.txt - -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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