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Tremendous Trifles
By
G. K. Chesterton
Contents
VII. The Advantages of Having One Leg
IX. In the Place de La Bastille.
XV. What I Found in My Pocket.
XVI. The Dragon's Grandmother.
XXV. A Cab Ride Across Country.
XXVII. Some Policemen and a Moral
XXX. The Little Birds Who Won't Sing
XXXII. The Travellers in State.
XXXIII. The Prehistoric Railway Station
XXXV. A Glimpse of My Country.
XXXVI. A Somewhat Improbable Story.
XXXVIII. The Ballade of a Strange Town
XXXIX. The Mystery of a Pageant.
PREFACE=
These fleeting
sketches are all republished by kind permission of the Editor of the DAILY
NEWS, in which paper they appeared. They amount to no more than a sort of
sporadic diary--a diary recording one day in twenty which happened to stick=
in
the fancy--the only kind of diary the author has ever been able to keep. Ev=
en
that diary he could only keep by keeping it in public, for bread and cheese.
But trivial as are the topics they are not utterly without a connecting thr=
ead
of motive. As the reader's eye strays, with hearty relief, from these pages=
, it
probably alights on something, a bed-post or a lamp-post, a window blind or=
a
wall. It is a thousand to one that the reader is looking at something that =
he
has never seen: that is, never realised. He could not write an essay on suc=
h a
post or wall: he does not know what the post or wall mean. He could not even
write the synopsis of an essay; as "The Bed-Post; Its
Significance--Security Essential to Idea of Sleep--Night Felt as Infinite--=
Need
of Monumental Architecture," and so on. He could not sketch in outline=
his
theoretic attitude towards window-blinds, even in the form of a summary.
"The Window-Blind--Its Analogy to the Curtain and Veil--Is Modesty Nat=
ural?--Worship
of and Avoidance of the Sun, etc., etc." None of us think enough of th=
ese
things on which the eye rests. But don't let us let the eye rest. Why should
the eye be so lazy? Let us exercise the eye until it learns to see startling
facts that run across the landscape as plain as a painted fence. Let us be
ocular athletes. Let us learn to write essays on a stray cat or a coloured =
cloud.
I have attempted some such thing in what follows; but anyone else may do it
better, if anyone else will only try.
Once upon a time
there were two little boys who lived chiefly in the front garden, because t=
heir
villa was a model one. The front garden was about the same size as the dinn=
er
table; it consisted of four strips of
gravel, a square =
of
turf with some mysterious pieces of cork standing up in the middle and one
flower bed with a row of red daisies. One morning while they were at play in
these romantic grounds, a passing individual, probably the milkman, leaned =
over
the railing and engaged them in philosophical conversation. The boys, whom =
we
will call Paul and Peter, were at least sharply interested in his remarks. =
For
the milkman (who was, I need say, a fairy) did his duty in that state of li=
fe
by offering them in the regulation manner anything that they chose to ask f=
or.
And Paul closed with the offer with a business-like abruptness, explaining =
that
he had long wished to be a giant that he might stride across continents and
oceans and visit Niagara or the Himalayas in an afternoon dinner stroll. The
milkman producing a wand from his breast pocket, waved it in a hurried and
perfunctory manner; and in an instant the model villa with its front garden=
was
like a tiny doll's house at Paul's colossal feet. He went striding away with
his head above the clouds to visit Niagara and the Himalayas. But when he c=
ame
to the Himalayas, he found they were quite small and silly-looking, like the
little cork rockery in the garden; and when he found Niagara it was no bigg=
er
than the tap turned on in the bathroom. He wandered round the world for sev=
eral
minutes trying to find something really large and finding everything small,
till in sheer boredom he lay down on four or five prairies and fell asleep.
Unfortunately his head was just outside the hut of an intellectual backwood=
sman
who came out of it at that moment with an axe in one hand and a book of
Neo-Catholic Philosophy in the other. The man looked at the book and then at
the giant, and then at the book again. And in the book it said, "It ca=
n be
maintained that the evil of pride consists in being out of proportion to the
universe." So the backwoodsman put down his book, took his axe and,
working eight hours a day for about a week, cut the giant's head off; and t=
here
was an end of him.
Such is the severe
yet salutary history of Paul. But Peter, oddly enough, made exactly the
opposite request; he said he had long wished to be a pigmy about half an in=
ch
high; and of course he immediately became one. When the transformation was =
over
he found himself in the midst of an immense plain, covered with a tall green
jungle and above which, at intervals, rose strange trees each with a head l=
ike
the sun in symbolic pictures, with gigantic rays of silver and a huge heart=
of
gold. Toward the middle of this prairie stood up a mountain of such romantic
and impossible shape, yet of such stony height and dominance, that it looke=
d like
some incident of the end of the world. And far away on the faint horizon he
could see the line of another forest, taller and yet more mystical, of a
terrible crimson colour, like a forest on fire for ever. He set out on his
adventures across that coloured plain; and he has not come to the end of it
yet.
Such is the story=
of
Peter and Paul, which contains all the highest qualities of a modern fairy
tale, including that of being wholly unfit for children; and indeed the mot=
ive
with which I have introduced it is not childish, but rather full of subtlety
and reaction. It is in fact the almost desperate motive of excusing or
palliating the pages that follow. Peter and Paul are the two primary influe=
nces
upon European literature to-day; and I may be permitted to put my own
preference in its most favourable shape, even if I can only do it by what
little girls call telling a story.
I need scarcely s=
ay that
I am the pigmy. The only excuse for the scraps that follow is that they show
what can be achieved with a commonplace existence and the sacred spectacles=
of
exaggeration. The other great literary theory, that which is roughly
represented in England by Mr. Rudyard Kipling, is that we moderns are to re=
gain
the primal zest by sprawling all over the world growing used to travel and
geographical variety, being at home everywhere, that is being at home nowhe=
re.
Let it be granted that a man in a frock coat is a heartrending sight; and t=
he two
alternative methods still remain. Mr. Kipling's school advises us to go to
Central Africa in order to find a man without a frock coat. The school to w=
hich
I belong suggests that we should stare steadily at the man until we see the=
man
inside the frock coat. If we stare at him long enough he may even be moved =
to
take off his coat to us; and that is a far greater compliment than his taki=
ng
off his hat. In other words, we may, by fixing our attention almost fiercel=
y on
the facts actually before us, force them to turn into adventures; force the=
m to
give up their meaning and fulfil their mysterious purpose. The purpose of t=
he Kipling
literature is to show how many extraordinary things a man may see if he is
active and strides from continent to continent like the giant in my tale. B=
ut
the object of my school is to show how many extraordinary things even a lazy
and ordinary man may see if he can spur himself to the single activity of
seeing. For this purpose I have taken the laziest person of my acquaintance,
that is myself; and made an idle diary of such odd things as I have fallen =
over
by accident, in walking in a very limited area at a very indolent pace. If
anyone says that these are very small affairs talked about in very big lang=
uage,
I can only gracefully compliment him upon seeing the joke. If anyone says t=
hat I
am making mountains out of molehills, I confess with pride that it is so. I=
can
imagine no more successful and productive form of manufacture than that of
making mountains out of molehills. But I would add this not unimportant fac=
t,
that molehills are mountains; one has only to become a pigmy like Peter to
discover that.
I have my doubts
about all this real value in mountaineering, in getting to the top of
everything and overlooking everything. Satan was the most celebrated of Alp=
ine
guides, when he took Jesus to the top of an exceeding high mountain and sho=
wed
him all the kingdoms of the earth. But the joy of Satan in standing on a pe=
ak
is not a joy in largeness, but a joy in beholding smallness, in the fact th=
at
all men look like insects at his feet. It is from the valley that things lo=
ok
large; it is from the level that things look high; I am a child of the level
and have no need of that celebrated Alpine guide. I will lift up my eyes to=
the
hills, from whence cometh my help; but I will not lift up my carcass to the
hills, unless it is absolutely necessary. Everything is in an attitude of m=
ind;
and at this moment I am in a comfortable attitude. I will sit still and let=
the
marvels and the adventures settle on me like flies. There are plenty of the=
m, I
assure you. The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for w=
ant
of wonder.
I remember one
splendid morning, all blue and silver, in the summer holidays when I
reluctantly tore myself away from the task of doing nothing in particular, =
and
put on a hat of some sort and picked up a walking-stick, and put six very
bright-coloured chalks in my pocket. I then went into the kitchen (which, a=
long
with the rest of the house, belonged to a very square and sensible old woma=
n in
a Sussex village), and asked the owner and occupant of the kitchen if she h=
ad
any brown paper. She had a great deal; in fact, she had too much; and she
mistook the purpose and the rationale of the existence of brown paper. She =
seemed
to have an idea that if a person wanted brown paper he must be wanting to t=
ie
up parcels; which was the last thing I wanted to do; indeed, it is a thing
which I have found to be beyond my mental capacity. Hence she dwelt very mu=
ch
on the varying qualities of toughness and endurance in the material. I
explained to her that I only wanted to draw pictures on it, and that I did =
not
want them to endure in the least; and that from my point of view, therefore=
, it
was a question, not of tough consistency, but of responsive surface, a thin=
g comparatively
irrelevant in a parcel. When she understood that I wanted to draw she offer=
ed
to overwhelm me with note-paper, apparently supposing that I did my notes a=
nd
correspondence on old brown paper wrappers from motives of economy.
I then tried to
explain the rather delicate logical shade, that I not only liked brown pape=
r,
but liked the quality of brownness in paper, just as I liked the quality of
brownness in October woods, or in beer, or in the peat-streams of the North.
Brown paper represents the primal twilight of the first toil of creation, a=
nd
with a bright-coloured chalk or two you can pick out points of fire in it,
sparks of gold, and blood-red, and sea-green, like the first fierce stars t=
hat
sprang out of divine darkness. All this I said (in an off-hand way) to the =
old
woman; and I put the brown paper in my pocket along with the chalks, and po=
ssibly
other things. I suppose every one must have reflected how primeval and how
poetical are the things that one carries in one's pocket; the pocket-knife,=
for
instance, the type of all human tools, the infant of the sword. Once I plan=
ned
to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pockets. But I fou=
nd
it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.
.....
With my stick and=
my
knife, my chalks and my brown paper, I went out on to the great downs. I
crawled across those colossal contours that express the best quality of
England, because they are at the same time soft and strong. The smoothness =
of
them has the same meaning as the smoothness of great cart-horses, or the
smoothness of the beech-tree; it declares in the teeth of our timid and cru=
el
theories that the mighty are merciful. As my eye swept the landscape, the
landscape was as kindly as any of its cottages, but for power it was like an
earthquake. The villages in the immense valley were safe, one could see, for
centuries; yet the lifting of the whole land was like the lifting of one en=
ormous
wave to wash them all away.
I crossed one swe=
ll
of living turf after another, looking for a place to sit down and draw. Do =
not,
for heaven's sake, imagine I was going to sketch from Nature. I was going to
draw devils and seraphim, and blind old gods that men worshipped before the
dawn of right, and saints in robes of angry crimson, and seas of strange gr=
een,
and all the sacred or monstrous symbols that look so well in bright colours=
on
brown paper. They are much better worth drawing than Nature; also they are =
much
easier to draw. When a cow came slouching by in the field next to me, a mere
artist might have drawn it; but I always get wrong in the hind legs of
quadrupeds. So I drew the soul of the cow; which I saw there plainly walking
before me in the sunlight; and the soul was all purple and silver, and had
seven horns and the mystery that belongs to all the beasts. But though I co=
uld
not with a crayon get the best out of the landscape, it does not follow that
the landscape was not getting the best out of me. And this, I think, is the
mistake that people make about the old poets who lived before Wordsworth, a=
nd
were supposed not to care very much about Nature because they did not descr=
ibe
it much.
They preferred
writing about great men to writing about great hills; but they sat on the g=
reat
hills to write it. They gave out much less about Nature, but they drank in,
perhaps, much more. They painted the white robes of their holy virgins with=
the
blinding snow, at which they had stared all day. They blazoned the shields =
of
their paladins with the purple and gold of many heraldic sunsets. The green=
ness
of a thousand green leaves clustered into the live green figure of Robin Ho=
od.
The blueness of a score of forgotten skies became the blue robes of the Vir=
gin.
The inspiration went in like sunbeams and came out like Apollo.
.....
But as I sat
scrawling these silly figures on the brown paper, it began to dawn on me, t=
o my
great disgust, that I had left one chalk, and that a most exquisite and
essential chalk, behind. I searched all my pockets, but I could not find any
white chalk. Now, those who are acquainted with all the philosophy (nay,
religion) which is typified in the art of drawing on brown paper, know that
white is positive and essential. I cannot avoid remarking here upon a moral
significance. One of the wise and awful truths which this brown-paper art
reveals, is this, that white is a colour. It is not a mere absence of colou=
r;
it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as definite as bla=
ck.
When, so to speak, your pencil grows red-hot, it draws roses; when it grows=
white-hot,
it draws stars. And one of the two or three defiant verities of the best
religious morality, of real Christianity, for example, is exactly this same
thing; the chief assertion of religious morality is that white is a colour.
Virtue is not the absence of vices or the avoidance of moral dangers; virtu=
e is
a vivid and separate thing, like pain or a particular smell. Mercy does not
mean not being cruel or sparing people revenge or punishment; it means a pl=
ain
and positive thing like the sun, which one has either seen or not seen.
Chastity does not
mean abstention from sexual wrong; it means something flaming, like Joan of
Arc. In a word, God paints in many colours; but He never paints so gorgeous=
ly,
I had almost said so gaudily, as when He paints in white. In a sense our age
has realised this fact, and expressed it in our sullen costume. For if it w=
ere
really true that white was a blank and colourless thing, negative and non-c=
ommittal,
then white would be used instead of black and grey for the funeral dress of=
this
pessimistic period. We should see city gentlemen in frock coats of spotless
silver linen, with top hats as white as wonderful arum lilies. Which is not=
the
case.
Meanwhile, I could
not find my chalk.
.....
I sat on the hill=
in
a sort of despair. There was no town nearer than Chichester at which it was
even remotely probable that there would be such a thing as an artist's
colourman. And yet, without white, my absurd little pictures would be as
pointless as the world would be if there were no good people in it. I stared
stupidly round, racking my brain for expedients. Then I suddenly stood up a=
nd
roared with laughter, again and again, so that the cows stared at me and ca=
lled
a committee. Imagine a man in the Sahara regretting that he had no sand for=
his
hour-glass. Imagine a gentleman in mid-ocean wishing that he had brought so=
me
salt water with him for his chemical experiments. I was sitting on an immen=
se warehouse
of white chalk. The landscape was made entirely out of white chalk. White c=
halk
was piled more miles until it met the sky. I stooped and broke a piece off =
the
rock I sat on; it did not mark so well as the shop chalks do; but it gave t=
he
effect. And I stood there in a trance of pleasure, realising that this Sout=
hern
England is not only a grand peninsula, and a tradition and a civilisation; =
it
is something even more admirable. It is a piece of chalk.
All this talk of a
railway mystery has sent my mind back to a loose memory. I will not merely =
say
that this story is true: because, as you will soon see, it is all truth and=
no
story. It has no explanation and no conclusion; it is, like most of the oth=
er
things we encounter in life, a fragment of something else which would be
intensely exciting if it were not too large to be seen. For the perplexity =
of
life arises from there being too many interesting things in it for us to be
interested properly in any of them; what we call its triviality is really t=
he tag-ends
of numberless tales; ordinary and unmeaning existence is like ten thousand
thrilling detective stories mixed up with a spoon. My experience was a frag=
ment
of this nature, and it is, at any rate, not fictitious. Not only am I not
making up the incidents (what there were of them), but I am not making up t=
he
atmosphere of the landscape, which were the whole horror of the thing. I
remember them vividly, and they were as I shall now describe.
.....
About noon of an
ashen autumn day some years ago I was standing outside the station at Oxford
intending to take the train to London. And for some reason, out of idleness=
or
the emptiness of my mind or the emptiness of the pale grey sky, or the cold=
, a
kind of caprice fell upon me that I would not go by that train at all, but
would step out on the road and walk at least some part of the way to London=
. I
do not know if other people are made like me in this matter; but to me it is
always dreary weather, what may be called useless weather, that slings into=
life
a sense of action and romance. On bright blue days I do not want anything to
happen; the world is complete and beautiful, a thing for contemplation. I no
more ask for adventures under that turquoise dome than I ask for adventures=
in
church. But when the background of man's life is a grey background, then, in
the name of man's sacred supremacy, I desire to paint on it in fire and gor=
e.
When the heavens fail man refuses to fail; when the sky seems to have writt=
en
on it, in letters of lead and pale silver, the decree that nothing shall
happen, then the immortal soul, the prince of the creatures, rises up and
decrees that something shall happen, if it be only the slaughter of a
policeman. But this is a digressive way of stating what I have said
already--that the bleak sky awoke in me a hunger for some change of plans, =
that
the monotonous weather seemed to render unbearable the use of the monotonou=
s train,
and that I set out into the country lanes, out of the town of Oxford. It wa=
s,
perhaps, at that moment that a strange curse came upon me out of the city a=
nd
the sky, whereby it was decreed that years afterwards I should, in an artic=
le
in the DAILY NEWS, talk about Sir George Trevelyan in connection with Oxfor=
d,
when I knew perfectly well that he went to Cambridge.
As I crossed the
country everything was ghostly and colourless. The fields that should have =
been
green were as grey as the skies; the tree-tops that should have been green =
were
as grey as the clouds and as cloudy. And when I had walked for some hours t=
he
evening was closing in. A sickly sunset clung weakly to the horizon, as if =
pale
with reluctance to leave the world in the dark. And as it faded more and mo=
re
the skies seemed to come closer and to threaten. The clouds which had been =
merely
sullen became swollen; and then they loosened and let down the dark curtain=
s of
the rain. The rain was blinding and seemed to beat like blows from an enemy=
at
close quarters; the skies seemed bending over and bawling in my ears. I wal=
ked
on many more miles before I met a man, and in that distance my mind had been
made up; and when I met him I asked him if anywhere in the neighbourhood I
could pick up the train for Paddington. He directed me to a small silent
station (I cannot even remember the name of it) which stood well away from =
the
road and looked as lonely as a hut on the Andes. I do not think I have ever
seen such a type of time and sadness and scepticism and everything devilish=
as
that station was: it looked as if it had always been raining there ever sin=
ce the
creation of the world. The water streamed from the soaking wood of it as if=
it
were not water at all, but some loathsome liquid corruption of the wood its=
elf;
as if the solid station were eternally falling to pieces and pouring away in
filth. It took me nearly ten minutes to find a man in the station. When I d=
id
he was a dull one, and when I asked him if there was a train to Paddington =
his
answer was sleepy and vague. As far as I understood him, he said there woul=
d be
a train in half an hour. I sat down and lit a cigar and waited, watching the
last tail of the tattered sunset and listening to the everlasting rain. It =
may
have been in half an hour or less, but a train came rather slowly into the =
station.
It was an unnaturally dark train; I could not see a light anywhere in the l=
ong
black body of it; and I could not see any guard running beside it. I was
reduced to walking up to the engine and calling out to the stoker to ask if=
the
train was going to London. "Well--yes, sir," he said, with an una=
ccountable
kind of reluctance. "It is going to London; but----" It was just
starting, and I jumped into the first carriage; it was pitch dark. I sat th=
ere
smoking and wondering, as we steamed through the continually darkening
landscape, lined with desolate poplars, until we slowed down and stopped,
irrationally, in the middle of a field. I heard a heavy noise as of some one
clambering off the train, and a dark, ragged head suddenly put itself into =
my
window. "Excuse me, sir," said the stoker, "but I think,
perhaps--well, perhaps you ought to know--there's a dead man in this
train."
.....
Had I been a true
artist, a person of exquisite susceptibilities and nothing else, I should h=
ave
been bound, no doubt, to be finally overwhelmed with this sensational touch,
and to have insisted on getting out and walking. As it was, I regret to say=
, I
expressed myself politely, but firmly, to the effect that I didn't care
particularly if the train took me to Paddington. But when the train had sta=
rted
with its unknown burden I did do one thing, and do it quite instinctively, =
without
stopping to think, or to think more than a flash. I threw away my cigar.
Something that is as old as man and has to do with all mourning and ceremon=
ial
told me to do it. There was something unnecessarily horrible, it seemed to =
me,
in the idea of there being only two men in that train, and one of them dead=
and
the other smoking a cigar. And as the red and gold of the butt end of it fa=
ded
like a funeral torch trampled out at some symbolic moment of a procession, I
realised how immortal ritual is. I realised (what is the origin and essence=
of
all ritual) that in the presence of those sacred riddles about which we can=
say
nothing it is more decent merely to do something. And I realised that ritual
will always mean throwing away something; DESTROYING our corn or wine upon =
the
altar of our gods.
When the train pa=
nted
at last into Paddington Station I sprang out of it with a suddenly released
curiosity. There was a barrier and officials guarding the rear part of the
train; no one was allowed to press towards it. They were guarding and hiding
something; perhaps death in some too shocking form, perhaps something like =
the
Merstham matter, so mixed up with human mystery and wickedness that the land
has to give it a sort of sanctity; perhaps something worse than either. I w=
ent
out gladly enough into the streets and saw the lamps shining on the laughing
faces. Nor have I ever known from that day to this into what strange story =
I wandered
or what frightful thing was my companion in the dark.
We have all met t=
he
man who says that some odd things have happened to him, but that he does not
really believe that they were supernatural. My own position is the opposite=
of
this. I believe in the supernatural as a matter of intellect and reason, no=
t as
a matter of personal experience. I do not see ghosts; I only see their inhe=
rent
probability. But it is entirely a matter of the mere intelligence, not even=
of
the motions; my nerves and body are altogether of this earth, very earthy. =
But upon
people of this temperament one weird incident will often leave a peculiar
impression. And the weirdest circumstance that ever occurred to me occurred=
a
little while ago. It consisted in nothing less than my playing a game, and
playing it quite well for some seventeen consecutive minutes. The ghost of =
my
grandfather would have astonished me less.
On one of these b=
lue
and burning afternoons I found myself, to my inexpressible astonishment,
playing a game called croquet. I had imagined that it belonged to the epoch=
of
Leach and Anthony Trollope, and I had neglected to provide myself with those
very long and luxuriant side whiskers which are really essential to such a
scene. I played it with a man whom we will call Parkinson, and with whom I =
had
a semi-philosophical argument which lasted through the entire contest. It is
deeply implanted in my mind that I had the best of the argument; but it is
certain and beyond dispute that I had the worst of the game.
"Oh, Parkins=
on, Parkinson!"
I cried, patting him affectionately on the head with a mallet, "how far
you really are from the pure love of the sport--you who can play. It is onl=
y we
who play badly who love the Game itself. You love glory; you love applause;=
you
love the earthquake voice of victory; you do not love croquet. You do not l=
ove
croquet until you love being beaten at croquet. It is we the bunglers who a=
dore
the occupation in the abstract. It is we to whom it is art for art's sake. =
If
we may see the face of Croquet herself (if I may so express myself) we are
content to see her face turned upon us in anger. Our play is called amateur=
ish;
and we wear proudly the name of amateur, for amateurs is but the French for
Lovers. We accept all adventures from our Lady, the most disastrous or the =
most
dreary. We wait outside her iron gates (I allude to the hoops), vainly essa=
ying
to enter. Our devoted balls, impetuous and full of chivalry, will not be
confined within the pedantic boundaries of the mere croquet ground. Our bal=
ls seek
honour in the ends of the earth; they turn up in the flower-beds and the
conservatory; they are to be found in the front garden and the next street.=
No,
Parkinson! The good painter has skill. It is the bad painter who loves his =
art.
The good musician loves being a musician, the bad musician loves music. Wit=
h such
a pure and hopeless passion do I worship croquet. I love the game itself. I
love the parallelogram of grass marked out with chalk or tape, as if its li=
mits
were the frontiers of my sacred Fatherland, the four seas of Britain. I love
the mere swing of the mallets, and the click of the balls is music. The four
colours are to me sacramental and symbolic, like the red of martyrdom, or t=
he
white of Easter Day. You lose all this, my poor Parkinson. You have to sola=
ce
yourself for the absence of this vision by the paltry consolation of being =
able
to go through hoops and to hit the stick."
And I waved my ma=
llet
in the air with a graceful gaiety.
"Don't be too
sorry for me," said Parkinson, with his simple sarcasm. "I shall =
get
over it in time. But it seems to me that the more a man likes a game the be=
tter
he would want to play it. Granted that the pleasure in the thing itself com=
es
first, does not the pleasure of success come naturally and inevitably after=
wards?
Or, take your own simile of the Knight and his Lady-love. I admit the gentl=
eman
does first and foremost want to be in the lady's presence. But I never yet
heard of a gentleman who wanted to look an utter ass when he was there.&quo=
t;
"Perhaps not;
though he generally looks it," I replied. "But the truth is that
there is a fallacy in the simile, although it was my own. The happiness at
which the lover is aiming is an infinite happiness, which can be extended
without limit. The more he is loved, normally speaking, the jollier he will=
be.
It is definitely true that the stronger the love of both lovers, the strong=
er
will be the happiness. But it is not true that the stronger the play of both
croquet players the stronger will be the game. It is logically possible--(f=
ollow
me closely here, Parkinson!)--it is logically possible, to play croquet too
well to enjoy it at all. If you could put this blue ball through that dista=
nt
hoop as easily as you could pick it up with your hand, then you would not p=
ut
it through that hoop any more than you pick it up with your hand; it would =
not
be worth doing. If you could play unerringly you would not play at all. The
moment the game is perfect the game disappears."
"I do not th=
ink,
however," said Parkinson, "that you are in any immediate danger of
effecting that sort of destruction. I do not think your croquet will vanish
through its own faultless excellence. You are safe for the present."
I again caressed =
him
with the mallet, knocked a ball about, wired myself, and resumed the thread=
of
my discourse.
The long, warm
evening had been gradually closing in, and by this time it was almost twili=
ght.
By the time I had delivered four more fundamental principles, and my compan=
ion
had gone through five more hoops, the dusk was verging upon dark.
"We shall ha=
ve
to give this up," said Parkinson, as he missed a ball almost for the f=
irst
time, "I can't see a thing."
"Nor can
I," I answered, "and it is a comfort to reflect that I could not =
hit
anything if I saw it."
With that I struc=
k a
ball smartly, and sent it away into the darkness towards where the shadowy
figure of Parkinson moved in the hot haze. Parkinson immediately uttered a =
loud
and dramatic cry. The situation, indeed, called for it. I had hit the right
ball.
Stunned with asto=
nishment,
I crossed the gloomy ground, and hit my ball again. It went through a hoop.=
I
could not see the hoop; but it was the right hoop. I shuddered from head to
foot.
Words were wholly
inadequate, so I slouched heavily after that impossible ball. Again I hit it
away into the night, in what I supposed was the vague direction of the quite
invisible stick. And in the dead silence I heard the stick rattle as the ba=
ll
struck it heavily.
I threw down my
mallet. "I can't stand this," I said. "My ball has gone right
three times. These things are not of this world."
"Pick your
mallet up," said Parkinson, "have another go."
"I tell you I
daren't. If I made another hoop like that I should see all the devils danci=
ng
there on the blessed grass."
"Why
devils?" asked Parkinson; "they may be only fairies making fun of=
you.
They are sending you the 'Perfect Game,' which is no game."
I looked about me.
The garden was full of a burning darkness, in which the faint glimmers had =
the
look of fire. I stepped across the grass as if it burnt me, picked up the
mallet, and hit the ball somewhere--somewhere where another ball might be. I
heard the dull click of the balls touching, and ran into the house like one
pursued.
V. The Extraordinary Cabm=
an
From time to time=
I
have introduced into this newspaper column the narration of incidents that =
have
really occurred. I do not mean to insinuate that in this respect it stands
alone among newspaper columns. I mean only that I have found that my meaning
was better expressed by some practical parable out of daily life than by any
other method; therefore I propose to narrate the incident of the extraordin=
ary
cabman, which occurred to me only three days ago, and which, slight as it a=
pparently
is, aroused in me a moment of genuine emotion bordering upon despair.
On the day that I=
met
the strange cabman I had been lunching in a little restaurant in Soho in
company with three or four of my best friends. My best friends are all eith=
er
bottomless sceptics or quite uncontrollable believers, so our discussion at
luncheon turned upon the most ultimate and terrible ideas. And the whole
argument worked out ultimately to this: that the question is whether a man =
can
be certain of anything at all. I think he can be certain, for if (as I said=
to
my friend, furiously brandishing an empty bottle) it is impossible
intellectually to entertain certainty, what is this certainty which it is
impossible to entertain? If I have never experienced such a thing as certai=
nty
I cannot even say that a thing is not certain. Similarly, if I have never e=
xperienced
such a thing as green I cannot even say that my nose is not green. It may b=
e as
green as possible for all I know, if I have really no experience of greenne=
ss.
So we shouted at each other and shook the room; because metaphysics is the =
only
thoroughly emotional thing. And the difference between us was very deep,
because it was a difference as to the object of the whole thing called
broad-mindedness or the opening of the intellect. For my friend said that he
opened his intellect as the sun opens the fans of a palm tree, opening for
opening's sake, opening infinitely for ever. But I said that I opened my
intellect as I opened my mouth, in order to shut it again on something soli=
d. I
was doing it at the moment. And as I truly pointed out, it would look
uncommonly silly if I went on opening my mouth infinitely, for ever and eve=
r.
.....
Now when this
argument was over, or at least when it was cut short (for it will never be
over), I went away with one of my companions, who in the confusion and
comparative insanity of a General Election had somehow become a member of
Parliament, and I drove with him in a cab from the corner of Leicester-squa=
re
to the members' entrance of the House of Commons, where the police received=
me
with a quite unusual tolerance. Whether they thought that he was my keeper =
or
that I was his keeper is a discussion between us which still continues.
It is necessary in
this narrative to preserve the utmost exactitude of detail. After leaving my
friend at the House I took the cab on a few hundred yards to an office in
Victoria-street which I had to visit. I then got out and offered him more t=
han
his fare. He looked at it, but not with the surly doubt and general disposi=
tion
to try it on which is not unknown among normal cabmen. But this was no norm=
al,
perhaps, no human, cabman. He looked at it with a dull and infantile
astonishment, clearly quite genuine. "Do you know, sir," he said,
"you've only given me 1s.8d?" I remarked, with some surprise, tha=
t I
did know it. "Now you know, sir," said he in a kindly, appealing,
reasonable way, "you know that ain't the fare from Euston."
"Euston," I repeated vaguely, for the phrase at that moment sound=
ed
to me like China or Arabia. "What on earth has Euston got to do with i=
t?"
"You hailed me just outside Euston Station," began the man with
astonishing precision, "and then you said----" "What in the =
name
of Tartarus are you talking about?" I said with Christian forbearance;
"I took you at the south-west corner of Leicester-square."
"Leicester-square," he exclaimed, loosening a kind of cataract of
scorn, "why we ain't been near Leicester-square to-day. You hailed me
outside Euston Station, and you said----" "Are you mad, or am I?&=
quot;
I asked with scientific calm.
I looked at the m=
an.
No ordinary dishonest cabman would think of creating so solid and colossal =
and
creative a lie. And this man was not a dishonest cabman. If ever a human fa=
ce
was heavy and simple and humble, and with great big blue eyes protruding li=
ke a
frog's, if ever (in short) a human face was all that a human face should be=
, it
was the face of that resentful and respectful cabman. I looked up and down =
the street;
an unusually dark twilight seemed to be coming on. And for one second the o=
ld
nightmare of the sceptic put its finger on my nerve. What was certainty? Was
anybody certain of anything? Heavens! to think of the dull rut of the scept=
ics
who go on asking whether we possess a future life. The exciting question for
real scepticism is whether we possess a past life. What is a minute ago,
rationalistically considered, except a tradition and a picture? The darkness
grew deeper from the road. The cabman calmly gave me the most elaborate det=
ails
of the gesture, the words, the complex but consistent course of action whic=
h I
had adopted since that remarkable occasion when I had hailed him outside Eu=
ston
Station. How did I know (my sceptical friends would say) that I had not hai=
led
him outside Euston. I was firm about my assertion; he was quite equally firm
about his. He was obviously quite as honest a man as I, and a member of a m=
uch
more respectable profession. In that moment the universe and the stars swung
just a hair's breadth from their balance, and the foundations of the earth =
were
moved. But for the same reason that I believe in Democracy, for the same re=
ason
that I believe in free will, for the same reason that I believe in fixed
character of virtue, the reason that could only be expressed by saying that=
I
do not choose to be a lunatic, I continued to believe that this honest cabm=
an
was wrong, and I repeated to him that I had really taken him at the corner =
of
Leicester-square. He began with the same evident and ponderous sincerity,
"You hailed me outside Euston Station, and you said----"
And at this moment
there came over his features a kind of frightful transfiguration of living
astonishment, as if he had been lit up like a lamp from the inside. "W=
hy,
I beg your pardon, sir," he said. "I beg your pardon. I beg your
pardon. You took me from Leicester-square. I remember now. I beg your
pardon." And with that this astonishing man let out his whip with a sh=
arp
crack at his horse and went trundling away. The whole of which interview,
before the banner of St. George I swear, is strictly true.
.....
I looked at the s=
trange
cabman as he lessened in the distance and the mists. I do not know whether I
was right in fancying that although his face had seemed so honest there was
something unearthly and demoniac about him when seen from behind. Perhaps he
had been sent to tempt me from my adherence to those sanities and certainti=
es
which I had defended earlier in the day. In any case it gave me pleasure to
remember that my sense of reality, though it had rocked for an instant, had
remained erect.
Some time ago I w=
rote
in these columns an article called "The Extraordinary Cabman." I =
am
now in a position to contribute my experience of a still more extraordinary
cab. The extraordinary thing about the cab was that it did not like me; it
threw me out violently in the middle of the Strand. If my friends who read =
the
DAILY NEWS are as romantic (and as rich) as I take them to be, I presume th=
at
this experience is not uncommon. I suppose that they are all being thrown o=
ut of
cabs, all over London. Still, as there are some people, virginal and remote
from the world, who have not yet had this luxurious experience, I will give=
a
short account of the psychology of myself when my hansom cab ran into the s=
ide
of a motor omnibus, and I hope hurt it.
I do not need to
dwell on the essential romance of the hansom cab--that one really noble mod=
ern
thing which our age, when it is judged, will gravely put beside the Parthen=
on.
It is really modern in that it is both secret and swift. My particular hans=
om
cab was modern in these two respects; it was also very modern in the fact t=
hat
it came to grief. But it is also English; it is not to be found abroad; it
belongs to a beautiful, romantic country where nearly everybody is pretendi=
ng
to be richer than they are, and acting as if they were. It is comfortable, =
and yet
it is reckless; and that combination is the very soul of England. But altho=
ugh
I had always realised all these good qualities in a hansom cab, I had not
experienced all the possibilities, or, as the moderns put it, all the aspec=
ts
of that vehicle. My enunciation of the merits of a hansom cab had been alwa=
ys
made when it was the right way up. Let me, therefore, explain how I felt wh=
en I
fell out of a hansom cab for the first and, I am happy to believe, the last
time. Polycrates threw one ring into the sea to propitiate the Fates. I have
thrown one hansom cab into the sea (if you will excuse a rather violent
metaphor) and the Fates are, I am quite sure, propitiated. Though I am told
they do not like to be told so.
I was driving yes=
terday
afternoon in a hansom cab down one of the sloping streets into the Strand,
reading one of my own admirable articles with continual pleasure, and still
more continual surprise, when the horse fell forward, scrambled a moment on=
the
scraping stones, staggered to his feet again, and went forward. The horses =
in
my cabs often do this, and I have learnt to enjoy my own articles at any an=
gle of
the vehicle. So I did not see anything at all odd about the way the horse w=
ent
on again. But I saw it suddenly in the faces of all the people on the pavem=
ent.
They were all turned towards me, and they were all struck with fear suddenl=
y,
as with a white flame out of the sky. And one man half ran out into the road
with a movement of the elbow as if warding off a blow, and tried to stop the
horse. Then I knew that the reins were lost, and the next moment the horse =
was
like a living thunder-bolt. I try to describe things exactly as they seemed=
to
me; many details I may have missed or mis-stated; many details may have, so=
to
speak, gone mad in the race down the road. I remember that I once called on=
e of
my experiences narrated in this paper "A Fragment of Fact." This =
is,
at any rate, a fragment of fact. No fact could possibly be more fragmentary
than the sort of fact that I expected to be at the bottom of that street.
.....
I believe in
preaching to the converted; for I have generally found that the converted do
not understand their own religion. Thus I have always urged in this paper t=
hat
democracy has a deeper meaning than democrats understand; that is, that com=
mon
and popular things, proverbs, and ordinary sayings always have something in
them unrealised by most who repeat them. Here is one. We have all heard abo=
ut
the man who is in momentary danger, and who sees the whole of his life pass
before him in a moment. In the cold, literal, and common sense of words, th=
is
is obviously a thundering lie. Nobody can pretend that in an accident or a
mortal crisis he elaborately remembered all the tickets he had ever taken to
Wimbledon, or all the times that he had ever passed the brown bread and but=
ter.
But in those few
moments, while my cab was tearing towards the traffic of the Strand, I
discovered that there is a truth behind this phrase, as there is behind all
popular phrases. I did really have, in that short and shrieking period, a r=
apid
succession of a number of fundamental points of view. I had, so to speak, a=
bout
five religions in almost as many seconds. My first religion was pure Pagani=
sm,
which among sincere men is more shortly described as extreme fear. Then the=
re
succeeded a state of mind which is quite real, but for which no proper name=
has
ever been found. The ancients called it Stoicism, and I think it must be wh=
at some
German lunatics mean (if they mean anything) when they talk about Pessimism=
. It
was an empty and open acceptance of the thing that happens--as if one had g=
ot
beyond the value of it. And then, curiously enough, came a very strong cont=
rary
feeling--that things mattered very much indeed, and yet that they were
something more than tragic. It was a feeling, not that life was unimportant,
but that life was much too important ever to be anything but life. I hope t=
hat
this was Christianity. At any rate, it occurred at the moment when we went
crash into the omnibus.
It seemed to me t=
hat
the hansom cab simply turned over on top of me, like an enormous hood or ha=
t. I
then found myself crawling out from underneath it in attitudes so undignifi=
ed
that they must have added enormously to that great cause to which the Anti-=
Puritan
League and I have recently dedicated ourselves. I mean the cause of the
pleasures of the people. As to my demeanour when I emerged, I have two
confessions to make, and they are both made merely in the interests of ment=
al
science. The first is that whereas I had been in a quite pious frame of mind
the moment before the collision, when I got to my feet and found I had got =
off
with a cut or two I began (like St. Peter) to curse and to swear. A man off=
ered
me a newspaper or something that I had dropped. I can distinctly remember
consigning the paper to a state of irremediable spiritual ruin. I am very s=
orry
for this now, and I apologise both to the man and to the paper. I have not =
the
least idea what was the meaning of this unnatural anger; I mention it as a
psychological confession. It was immediately followed by extreme hilarity, =
and
I made so many silly jokes to the policeman that he disgraced himself by
continual laughter before all the little boys in the street, who had hither=
to
taken him seriously.
.....
There is one other
odd thing about the matter which I also mention as a curiosity of the human
brain or deficiency of brain. At intervals of about every three minutes I k=
ept
on reminding the policeman that I had not paid the cabman, and that I hoped=
he
would not lose his money. He said it would be all right, and the man would
appear. But it was not until about half an hour afterwards that it suddenly
struck me with a shock intolerable that the man might conceivably have lost
more than half a crown; that he had been in danger as well as I. I had inst=
inctively
regarded the cabman as something uplifted above accidents, a god. I immedia=
tely
made inquiries, and I am happy to say that they seemed to have been
unnecessary.
But henceforward I
shall always understand with a darker and more delicate charity those who t=
ake
tythe of mint, and anise, and cumin, and neglect the weightier matters of t=
he
law; I shall remember how I was once really tortured with owing half a crow=
n to
a man who might have been dead. Some admirable men in white coats at the
Charing Cross Hospital tied up my small injury, and I went out again into t=
he
Strand. I felt upon me even a kind of unnatural youth; I hungered for somet=
hing
untried. So to open a new chapter in my life I got into a hansom cab.
VII. The Advantages of Ha=
ving
One Leg
A friend of mine =
who
was visiting a poor woman in bereavement and casting about for some phrase =
of
consolation that should not be either insolent or weak, said at last, "=
;I
think one can live through these great sorrows and even be the better. What
wears one is the little worries." "That's quite right, mum,"
answered the old woman with emphasis, "and I ought to know, seeing I've
had ten of 'em." It is, perhaps, in this sense that it is most true th=
at
little worries are most wearing. In its vaguer significance the phrase, tho=
ugh
it contains a truth, contains also some possibilities of self-deception and
error. People who have both small troubles and big ones have the right to s=
ay that
they find the small ones the most bitter; and it is undoubtedly true that t=
he
back which is bowed under loads incredible can feel a faint addition to tho=
se
loads; a giant holding up the earth and all its animal creation might still
find the grasshopper a burden. But I am afraid that the maxim that the smal=
lest
worries are the worst is sometimes used or abused by people, because they h=
ave
nothing but the very smallest worries. The lady may excuse herself for revi=
ling
the crumpled rose leaf by reflecting with what extraordinary dignity she wo=
uld
wear the crown of thorns--if she had to. The gentleman may permit himself to
curse the dinner and tell himself that he would behave much better if it we=
re a
mere matter of starvation. We need not deny that the grasshopper on man's
shoulder is a burden; but we need not pay much respect to the gentleman who=
is
always calling out that he would rather have an elephant when he knows there
are no elephants in the country. We may concede that a straw may break the
camel's back, but we like to know that it really is the last straw and not =
the
first.
I grant that those
who have serious wrongs have a real right to grumble, so long as they grumb=
le
about something else. It is a singular fact that if they are sane they almo=
st
always do grumble about something else. To talk quite reasonably about your=
own
quite real wrongs is the quickest way to go off your head. But people with
great troubles talk about little ones, and the man who complains of the
crumpled rose leaf very often has his flesh full of the thorns. But if a man
has commonly a very clear and happy daily life then I think we are justifie=
d in
asking that he shall not make mountains out of molehills. I do no deny that=
molehills
can sometimes be important. Small annoyances have this evil about them, that
they can be more abrupt because they are more invisible; they cast no shadow
before, they have no atmosphere. No one ever had a mystical premonition tha=
t he
was going to tumble over a hassock. William III. died by falling over a
molehill; I do not suppose that with all his varied abilities he could have
managed to fall over a mountain. But when all this is allowed for, I repeat
that we may ask a happy man (not William III.) to put up with pure
inconveniences, and even make them part of his happiness. Of positive pain =
or
positive poverty I do not here speak. I speak of those innumerable accident=
al limitations
that are always falling across our path--bad weather, confinement to this or
that house or room, failure of appointments or arrangements, waiting at rai=
lway
stations, missing posts, finding unpunctuality when we want punctuality, or,
what is worse, finding punctuality when we don't. It is of the poetic pleas=
ures
to be drawn from all these that I sing--I sing with confidence because I ha=
ve recently
been experimenting in the poetic pleasures which arise from having to sit in
one chair with a sprained foot, with the only alternative course of standin=
g on
one leg like a stork--a stork is a poetic simile; therefore I eagerly adopt=
ed
it.
To appreciate any=
thing
we must always isolate it, even if the thing itself symbolise something oth=
er
than isolation. If we wish to see what a house is it must be a house in some
uninhabited landscape. If we wish to depict what a man really is we must de=
pict
a man alone in a desert or on a dark sea sand. So long as he is a single fi=
gure
he means all that humanity means; so long as he is solitary he means human
society; so long as he is solitary he means sociability and comradeship. Add
another figure and the picture is less human--not more so. One is company, =
two is
none. If you wish to symbolise human building draw one dark tower on the
horizon; if you wish to symbolise light let there be no star in the sky.
Indeed, all through that strangely lit season which we call our day there is
but one star in the sky--a large, fierce star which we call the sun. One su=
n is
splendid; six suns would be only vulgar. One Tower Of Giotto is sublime; a =
row
of Towers of Giotto would be only like a row of white posts. The poetry of =
art
is in beholding the single tower; the poetry of nature in seeing the single
tree; the poetry of love in following the single woman; the poetry of relig=
ion
in worshipping the single star. And so, in the same pensive lucidity, I find
the poetry of all human anatomy in standing on a single leg. To express
complete and perfect leggishness the leg must stand in sublime isolation, l=
ike
the tower in the wilderness. As Ibsen so finely says, the strongest leg is =
that
which stands most alone.
This lonely leg on
which I rest has all the simplicity of some Doric column. The students of
architecture tell us that the only legitimate use of a column is to support
weight. This column of mine fulfils its legitimate function. It supports
weight. Being of an animal and organic consistency, it may even improve by =
the
process, and during these few days that I am thus unequally balanced, the
helplessness or dislocation of the one leg may find compensation in the
astonishing strength and classic beauty of the other leg. Mrs. Mountstuart =
Jenkinson
in Mr. George Meredith's novel might pass by at any moment, and seeing me i=
n the
stork-like attitude would exclaim, with equal admiration and a more literal
exactitude, "He has a leg." Notice how this famous literary phrase
supports my contention touching this isolation of any admirable thing. Mrs.
Mountstuart Jenkinson, wishing to make a clear and perfect picture of human
grace, said that Sir Willoughby Patterne had a leg. She delicately glossed =
over
and concealed the clumsy and offensive fact that he had really two legs. Two
legs were superfluous and irrelevant, a reflection, and a confusion. Two le=
gs
would have confused Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson like two Monuments in London.
That having had one good leg he should have another--this would be to use v=
ain
repetitions as the Gentiles do. She would have been as much bewildered by h=
im
as if he had been a centipede.
All pessimism has=
a
secret optimism for its object. All surrender of life, all denial of pleasu=
re,
all darkness, all austerity, all desolation has for its real aim this
separation of something so that it may be poignantly and perfectly enjoyed.=
I
feel grateful for the slight sprain which has introduced this mysterious and
fascinating division between one of my feet and the other. The way to love
anything is to realise that it might be lost. In one of my feet I can feel =
how
strong and splendid a foot is; in the other I can realise how very much oth=
erwise
it might have been. The moral of the thing is wholly exhilarating. This wor=
ld
and all our powers in it are far more awful and beautiful than even we know
until some accident reminds us. If you wish to perceive that limitless
felicity, limit yourself if only for a moment. If you wish to realise how
fearfully and wonderfully God's image is made, stand on one leg. If you wan=
t to
realise the splendid vision of all visible things--wink the other eye.
For some time I h=
ad
been wandering in quiet streets in the curious town of Besançon, whi=
ch
stands like a sort of peninsula in a horse-shoe of river. You may learn from
the guide books that it was the birthplace of Victor Hugo, and that it is a
military station with many forts, near the French frontier. But you will not
learn from guide books that the very tiles on the roofs seem to be of some
quainter and more delicate colour than the tiles of all the other towns of =
the
world; that the tiles look like the little clouds of some strange sunset, or
like the lustrous scales of some strange fish. They will not tell you that =
in
this town the eye cannot rest on anything without finding it in some way at=
tractive
and even elvish, a carved face at a street corner, a gleam of green fields
through a stunted arch, or some unexpected colour for the enamel of a spire=
or
dome.
.....
Evening was comin=
g on
and in the light of it all these colours so simple and yet so subtle seemed
more and more to fit together and make a fairy tale. I sat down for a little
outside a café with a row of little toy trees in front of it, and
presently the driver of a fly (as we should call it) came to the same place=
. He
was one of those very large and dark Frenchmen, a type not common but yet
typical of France; the Rabelaisian Frenchman, huge, swarthy, purple-faced, a
walking wine-barrel; he was a sort of Southern Falstaff, if one can imagine
Falstaff anything but English. And, indeed, there was a vital difference,
typical of two nations. For while Falstaff would have been shaking with
hilarity like a huge jelly, full of the broad farce of the London streets, =
this
Frenchman was rather solemn and dignified than otherwise--as if pleasure we=
re a
kind of pagan religion. After some talk which was full of the admirable
civility and equality of French civilisation, he suggested without either
eagerness or embarrassment that he should take me in his fly for an hour's =
ride
in the hills beyond the town. And though it was growing late I consented; f=
or
there was one long white road under an archway and round a hill that dragge=
d me
like a long white cord. We drove through the strong, squat gateway that was
made by Romans, and I remember the coincidence like a sort of omen that as =
we
passed out of the city I heard simultaneously the three sounds which are the
trinity of France. They make what some poet calls "a tangled
trinity," and I am not going to disentangle it. Whatever those three
things mean, how or why they co-exist; whether they can be reconciled or
perhaps are reconciled already; the three sounds I heard then by an accident
all at once make up the French mystery. For the brass band in the Casino ga=
rdens
behind me was playing with a sort of passionate levity some ramping tune fr=
om a
Parisian comic opera, and while this was going on I heard also the bugles on
the hills above, that told of terrible loyalties and men always arming in t=
he
gate of France; and I heard also, fainter than these sounds and through them
all, the Angelus.
.....
After this
coincidence of symbols I had a curious sense of having left France behind m=
e,
or, perhaps, even the civilised world. And, indeed, there was something in =
the
landscape wild enough to encourage such a fancy. I have seen perhaps higher
mountains, but I have never seen higher rocks; I have never seen height so
near, so abrupt and sensational, splinters of rock that stood up like the
spires of churches, cliffs that fell sudden and straight as Satan fell from=
heaven.
There was also a quality in the ride which was not only astonishing, but ra=
ther
bewildering; a quality which many must have noticed if they have driven or
ridden rapidly up mountain roads. I mean a sense of gigantic gyration, as of
the whole earth turning about one's head. It is quite inadequate to say that
the hills rose and fell like enormous waves. Rather the hills seemed to turn
about me like the enormous sails of a windmill, a vast wheel of monstrous
archangelic wings. As we drove on and up into the gathering purple of the
sunset this dizziness increased, confounding things above with things below=
. Wide
walls of wooded rock stood out above my head like a roof. I stared at them =
until
I fancied that I was staring down at a wooded plain. Below me steeps of gre=
en
swept down to the river. I stared at them until I fancied that they swept u=
p to
the sky. The purple darkened, night drew nearer; it seemed only to cut clea=
rer
the chasms and draw higher the spires of that nightmare landscape. Above me=
in
the twilight was the huge black hulk of the driver, and his broad, blank ba=
ck
was as mysterious as the back of Death in Watts' picture. I felt that I was=
growing
too fantastic, and I sought to speak of ordinary things. I called out to the
driver in French, "Where are you taking me?" and it is a literal =
and
solemn fact that he answered me in the same language without turning around,
"To the end of the world."
I did not answer.=
I
let him drag the vehicle up dark, steep ways, until I saw lights under a low
roof of little trees and two children, one oddly beautiful, playing at ball.
Then we found ourselves filling up the strict main street of a tiny hamlet,=
and
across the wall of its inn was written in large letters, LE BOUT DU MONDE--=
the
end of the world.
The driver and I =
sat
down outside that inn without a word, as if all ceremonies were natural and
understood in that ultimate place. I ordered bread for both of us, and red
wine, that was good but had no name. On the other side of the road was a li=
ttle
plain church with a cross on top of it and a cock on top of the cross. This
seemed to me a very good end of the world; if the story of the world ended =
here
it ended well. Then I wondered whether I myself should really be content to=
end
here, where most certainly there were the best things of Christendom--a chu=
rch
and children's games and decent soil and a tavern for men to talk with men.=
But
as I thought a singular doubt and desire grew slowly in me, and at last I
started up.
"Are you not
satisfied?" asked my companion. "No," I said, "I am not=
satisfied
even at the end of the world."
Then, after a
silence, I said, "Because you see there are two ends of the world. And
this is the wrong end of the world; at least the wrong one for me. This is =
the
French end of the world. I want the other end of the world. Drive me to the
other end of the world."
"The other e=
nd
of the world?" he asked. "Where is that?"
"It is in Wa=
lham
Green," I whispered hoarsely. "You see it on the London omnibuses.
'World's End and Walham Green.' Oh, I know how good this is; I love your
vineyards and your free peasantry, but I want the English end of the world.=
I
love you like a brother, but I want an English cabman, who will be funny and
ask me what his fare 'is.' Your bugles stir my blood, but I want to see a
London policeman. Take, oh, take me to see a London policeman."
He stood quite da=
rk
and still against the end of the sunset, and I could not tell whether he
understood or not. I got back into his carriage.
"You will
understand," I said, "if ever you are an exile even for pleasure.=
The
child to his mother, the man to his country, as a countryman of yours once
said. But since, perhaps, it is rather too long a drive to the English end =
of
the world, we may as well drive back to Besançon."
Only as the stars
came out among those immortal hills I wept for Walham Green.
IX. In the Place de La
Bastille
On the first of M=
ay I
was sitting outside a café in the Place de la Bastille in Paris star=
ing
at the exultant column, crowned with a capering figure, which stands in the
place where the people destroyed a prison and ended an age. The thing is a
curious example of how symbolic is the great part of human history. As a ma=
tter
of mere material fact, the Bastille when it was taken was not a horrible
prison; it was hardly a prison at all. But it was a symbol, and the people
always go by a sure instinct for symbols; for the Chinaman, for instance, at
the last General Election, or for President Kruger's hat in the election
before; their poetic sense is perfect. The Chinaman with his pigtail is not=
an
idle flippancy. He does typify with a compact precision exactly the thing t=
he
people resent in African policy, the alien and grotesque nature of the powe=
r of
wealth, the fact that money has no roots, that it is not a natural and fami=
liar
power, but a sort of airy and evil magic calling monsters from the ends of =
the
earth. The people hate the mine owner who can bring a Chinaman flying across
the sea, exactly as the people hated the wizard who could fetch a flying dr=
agon
through the air. It was the same with Mr. Kruger's hat. His hat (that admir=
able
hat) was not merely a joke. It did symbolise, and symbolise extremely well,=
the
exact thing which our people at that moment regarded with impatience and ve=
nom;
the old-fashioned, dingy, Republican simplicity, the unbeautiful dignity of=
the
bourgeois, and the heavier truisms of political morality. No; the people are
sometimes wrong on the practical side of politics; they are never wrong on =
the
artistic side.
.....
So it was, certai=
nly,
with the Bastille. The destruction of the Bastille was not a reform; it was
something more important than a reform. It was an iconoclasm; it was the
breaking of a stone image. The people saw the building like a giant looking=
at
them with a score of eyes, and they struck at it as at a carved fact. For of
all the shapes in which that immense illusion called materialism can terrify
the soul, perhaps the most oppressive are big buildings. Man feels like a f=
ly,
an accident, in the thing he has himself made. It requires a violent effort=
of
the spirit to remember that man made this confounding thing and man could u=
nmake
it. Therefore the mere act of the ragged people in the street taking and
destroying a huge public building has a spiritual, a ritual meaning far bey=
ond
its immediate political results. It is a religious service. If, for instanc=
e,
the Socialists were numerous or courageous enough to capture and smash up t=
he
Bank of England, you might argue for ever about the inutility of the act, a=
nd
how it really did not touch the root of the economic problem in the correct
manner. But mankind would never forget it. It would change the world.
Architecture is a
very good test of the true strength of a society, for the most valuable thi=
ngs
in a human state are the irrevocable things--marriage, for instance. And
architecture approaches nearer than any other art to being irrevocable, bec=
ause
it is so difficult to get rid of. You can turn a picture with its face to t=
he
wall; it would be a nuisance to turn that Roman cathedral with its face to =
the
wall. You can tear a poem to pieces; it is only in moments of very sincere
emotion that you tear a town-hall to pieces. A building is akin to dogma; i=
t is
insolent, like a dogma. Whether or no it is permanent, it claims permanence
like a dogma. People ask why we have no typical architecture of the modern
world, like impressionism in painting. Surely it is obviously because we ha=
ve
not enough dogmas; we cannot bear to see anything in the sky that is solid =
and
enduring, anything in the sky that does not change like the clouds of the s=
ky.
But along with this decision which is involved in creating a building, there
goes a quite similar decision in the more delightful task of smashing one. =
The
two of necessity go together. In few places have so many fine public buildi=
ngs been
set up as here in Paris, and in few places have so many been destroyed. When
people have finally got into the horrible habit of preserving buildings, th=
ey
have got out of the habit of building them. And in London one mingles, as it
were, one's tears because so few are pulled down.
.....
As I sat staring =
at
the column of the Bastille, inscribed to Liberty and Glory, there came out =
of
one corner of the square (which, like so many such squares, was at once cro=
wded
and quiet) a sudden and silent line of horsemen. Their dress was of a dull
blue, plain and prosaic enough, but the sun set on fire the brass and steel=
of
their helmets; and their helmets were carved like the helmets of the Romans=
. I
had seen them by twos and threes often enough before. I had seen plenty of =
them
in pictures toiling through the snows of Friedland or roaring round the squ=
ares
at Waterloo. But now they came file after file, like an invasion, and somet=
hing
in their numbers, or in the evening light that lit up their faces and their
crests, or something in the reverie into which they broke, made me inclined=
to
spring to my feet and cry out, "The French soldiers!" There were =
the
little men with the brown faces that had so often ridden through the capita=
ls
of Europe as coolly as they now rode through their own. And when I looked
across the square I saw that the two other corners were choked with blue and
red; held by little groups of infantry. The city was garrisoned as against =
a revolution.
Of course, I had
heard all about the strike, chiefly from a baker. He said he was not going =
to
"Chomer." I said, "Qu'est-ce que c'est que le chome?" He
said, "Ils ne veulent pas travailler." I said, "Ni moi non p=
lus,"
and he thought I was a class-conscious collectivist proletarian. The whole
thing was curious, and the true moral of it one not easy for us, as a natio=
n,
to grasp, because our own faults are so deeply and dangerously in the other
direction. To me, as an Englishman (personally steeped in the English optim=
ism
and the English dislike of severity), the whole thing seemed a fuss about
nothing. It looked like turning out one of the best armies in Europe against
ordinary people walking about the street. The cavalry charged us once or tw=
ice,
more or less harmlessly. But, of course, it is hard to say how far in such
criticisms one is assuming the French populace to be (what it is not) as do=
cile
as the English. But the deeper truth of the matter tingled, so to speak, th=
rough
the whole noisy night. This people has a natural faculty for feeling itself=
on
the eve of something--of the Bartholomew or the Revolution or the Commune or
the Day of Judgment. It is this sense of crisis that makes France eternally
young. It is perpetually pulling down and building up, as it pulled down the
prison and put up the column in the Place de La Bastille. France has always
been at the point of dissolution. She has found the only method of immortal=
ity.
She dies daily.
Lying in bed woul=
d be
an altogether perfect and supreme experience if only one had a coloured pen=
cil
long enough to draw on the ceiling. This, however, is not generally a part =
of
the domestic apparatus on the premises. I think myself that the thing might=
be
managed with several pails of Aspinall and a broom. Only if one worked in a
really sweeping and masterly way, and laid on the colour in great washes, it
might drip down again on one's face in floods of rich and mingled colour li=
ke
some strange fairy rain; and that would have its disadvantages. I am afraid=
it
would be necessary to stick to black and white in this form of artistic
composition. To that purpose, indeed, the white ceiling would be of the
greatest possible use; in fact, it is the only use I think of a white ceili=
ng
being put to.
But for the beaut=
iful
experiment of lying in bed I might never have discovered it. For years I ha=
ve
been looking for some blank spaces in a modern house to draw on. Paper is m=
uch
too small for any really allegorical design; as Cyrano de Bergerac says,
"Il me faut des géants." But when I tried to find these fi=
ne
clear spaces in the modern rooms such as we all live in I was continually
disappointed. I found an endless pattern and complication of small objects =
hung
like a curtain of fine links between me and my desire. I examined the walls=
; I
found them to my surprise to be already covered with wallpaper, and I found=
the
wallpaper to be already covered with uninteresting images, all bearing a ri=
diculous
resemblance to each other. I could not understand why one arbitrary symbol =
(a
symbol apparently entirely devoid of any religious or philosophical
significance) should thus be sprinkled all over my nice walls like a sort of
small-pox. The Bible must be referring to wallpapers, I think, when it says,
"Use not vain repetitions, as the Gentiles do." I found the Turkey
carpet a mass of unmeaning colours, rather like the Turkish Empire, or like=
the
sweetmeat called Turkish Delight. I do not exactly know what Turkish Delight
really is; but I suppose it is Macedonian Massacres. Everywhere that I went
forlornly, with my pencil or my paint brush, I found that others had
unaccountably been before me, spoiling the walls, the curtains, and the
furniture with their childish and barbaric designs.
.....
Nowhere did I fin=
d a
really clear space for sketching until this occasion when I prolonged beyond
the proper limit the process of lying on my back in bed. Then the light of =
that
white heaven broke upon my vision, that breadth of mere white which is inde=
ed
almost the definition of Paradise, since it means purity and also means
freedom. But alas! like all heavens, now that it is seen it is found to be
unattainable; it looks more austere and more distant than the blue sky outs=
ide
the window. For my proposal to paint on it with the bristly end of a broom =
has
been discouraged--never mind by whom; by a person debarred from all politic=
al
rights--and even my minor proposal to put the other end of the broom into t=
he
kitchen fire and turn it to charcoal has not been conceded. Yet I am certain
that it was from persons in my position that all the original inspiration c=
ame
for covering the ceilings of palaces and cathedrals with a riot of fallen
angels or victorious gods. I am sure that it was only because Michael Angelo
was engaged in the ancient and honourable occupation of lying in bed that he
ever realized how the roof of the Sistine Chapel might be made into an awful
imitation of a divine drama that could only be acted in the heavens.
The tone now comm=
only
taken toward the practice of lying in bed is hypocritical and unhealthy. Of=
all
the marks of modernity that seem to mean a kind of decadence, there is none
more menacing and dangerous than the exultation of very small and secondary
matters of conduct at the expense of very great and primary ones, at the
expense of eternal ties and tragic human morality. If there is one thing wo=
rse
than the modern weakening of major morals, it is the modern strengthening of
minor morals. Thus it is considered more withering to accuse a man of bad t=
aste
than of bad ethics. Cleanliness is not next to godliness nowadays, for
cleanliness is made essential and godliness is regarded as an offence. A
playwright can attack the institution of marriage so long as he does not
misrepresent the manners of society, and I have met Ibsenite pessimists who
thought it wrong to take beer but right to take prussic acid. Especially th=
is
is so in matters of hygiene; notably such matters as lying in bed. Instead =
of
being regarded, as it ought to be, as a matter of personal convenience and
adjustment, it has come to be regarded by many as if it were a part of
essential morals to get up early in the morning. It is upon the whole part =
of
practical wisdom; but there is nothing good about it or bad about its oppos=
ite.
.....
Misers get up ear=
ly
in the morning; and burglars, I am informed, get up the night before. It is=
the
great peril of our society that all its mechanisms may grow more fixed while
its spirit grows more fickle. A man's minor actions and arrangements ought =
to
be free, flexible, creative; the things that should be unchangeable are his
principles, his ideals. But with us the reverse is true; our views change
constantly; but our lunch does not change. Now, I should like men to have
strong and rooted conceptions, but as for their lunch, let them have it
sometimes in the garden, sometimes in bed, sometimes on the roof, sometimes=
in
the top of a tree. Let them argue from the same first principles, but let t=
hem
do it in a bed, or a boat, or a balloon. This alarming growth of good habits
really means a too great emphasis on those virtues which mere custom can
ensure, it means too little emphasis on those virtues which custom can never
quite ensure, sudden and splendid virtues of inspired pity or of inspired
candour. If ever that abrupt appeal is made to us we may fail. A man can get
use to getting up at five o'clock in the morning. A man cannot very well get
used to being burnt for his opinions; the first experiment is commonly fata=
l.
Let us pay a little more attention to these possibilities of the heroic and
unexpected. I dare say that when I get out of this bed I shall do some deed=
of
an almost terrible virtue.
For those who stu=
dy
the great art of lying in bed there is one emphatic caution to be added. Ev=
en
for those who can do their work in bed (like journalists), still more for t=
hose
whose work cannot be done in bed (as, for example, the professional harpoon=
ers
of whales), it is obvious that the indulgence must be very occasional. But =
that
is not the caution I mean. The caution is this: if you do lie in bed, be su=
re
you do it without any reason or justification at all. I do not speak, of
course, of the seriously sick. But if a healthy man lies in bed, let him do=
it without
a rag of excuse; then he will get up a healthy man. If he does it for some
secondary hygienic reason, if he has some scientific explanation, he may ge=
t up
a hypochondriac.
The other day, wh=
ile
I was meditating on morality and Mr. H. Pitt, I was, so to speak, snatched =
up
and put into a jury box to try people. The snatching took some weeks, but t=
o me
it seemed something sudden and arbitrary. I was put into this box because I
lived in Battersea, and my name began with a C. Looking round me, I saw that
there were also summoned and in attendance in the court whole crowds and
processions of men, all of whom lived in Battersea, and all of whose names
began with a C.
It seems that they
always summon jurymen in this sweeping alphabetical way. At one official bl=
ow,
so to speak, Battersea is denuded of all its C's, and left to get on as bes=
t it
can with the rest of the alphabet. A Cumberpatch is missing from one street=
--a
Chizzolpop from another--three Chucksterfields from Chucksterfield House; t=
he
children are crying out for an absent Cadgerboy; the woman at the street co=
rner
is weeping for her Coffintop, and will not be comforted. We settle down wit=
h a rollicking
ease into our seats (for we are a bold, devil-may-care race, the C's of Bat=
tersea),
and an oath is administered to us in a totally inaudible manner by an
individual resembling an Army surgeon in his second childhood. We understan=
d,
however, that we are to well and truly try the case between our sovereign l=
ord
the King and the prisoner at the bar, neither of whom has put in an appeara=
nce
as yet.
.....
Just when I was
wondering whether the King and the prisoner were, perhaps, coming to an
amicable understanding in some adjoining public house, the prisoner's head
appears above the barrier of the dock; he is accused of stealing bicycles, =
and
he is the living image of a great friend of mine. We go into the matter of =
the
stealing of the bicycles. We do well and truly try the case between the King
and the prisoner in the affair of the bicycles. And we come to the conclusi=
on,
after a brief but reasonable discussion, that the King is not in any way
implicated. Then we pass on to a woman who neglected her children, and who
looks as if somebody or something had neglected her. And I am one of those =
who fancy
that something had.
All the time that=
the
eye took in these light appearances and the brain passed these light
criticisms, there was in the heart a barbaric pity and fear which men have
never been able to utter from the beginning, but which is the power behind =
half
the poems of the world. The mood cannot even adequately be suggested, except
faintly by this statement that tragedy is the highest expression of the
infinite value of human life. Never had I stood so close to pain; and never=
so
far away from pessimism. Ordinarily, I should not have spoken of these dark
emotions at all, for speech about them is too difficult; but I mention them=
now
for a specific and particular reason to the statement of which I will proce=
ed
at once. I speak these feelings because out of the furnace of them there ca=
me a
curious realisation of a political or social truth. I saw with a queer and
indescribable kind of clearness what a jury really is, and why we must never
let it go.
The trend of our
epoch up to this time has been consistently towards specialism and
professionalism. We tend to have trained soldiers because they fight better,
trained singers because they sing better, trained dancers because they dance
better, specially instructed laughers because they laugh better, and so on =
and
so on. The principle has been applied to law and politics by innumerable mo=
dern
writers. Many Fabians have insisted that a greater part of our political wo=
rk
should be performed by experts. Many legalists have declared that the untra=
ined
jury should be altogether supplanted by the trained Judge.
.....
Now, if this worl=
d of
ours were really what is called reasonable, I do not know that there would =
be
any fault to find with this. But the true result of all experience and the =
true
foundation of all religion is this. That the four or five things that it is
most practically essential that a man should know, are all of them what peo=
ple
call paradoxes. That is to say, that though we all find them in life to be =
mere
plain truths, yet we cannot easily state them in words without being guilty=
of
seeming verbal contradictions. One of them, for instance, is the unimpeacha=
ble platitude
that the man who finds most pleasure for himself is often the man who least
hunts for it. Another is the paradox of courage; the fact that the way to a=
void
death is not to have too much aversion to it. Whoever is careless enough of=
his
bones to climb some hopeful cliff above the tide may save his bones by that
carelessness. Whoever will lose his life, the same shall save it; an entire=
ly
practical and prosaic statement.
Now, one of these
four or five paradoxes which should be taught to every infant prattling at =
his
mother's knee is the following: That the more a man looks at a thing, the l=
ess
he can see it, and the more a man learns a thing the less he knows it. The
Fabian argument of the expert, that the man who is trained should be the man
who is trusted would be absolutely unanswerable if it were really true that=
a
man who studied a thing and practiced it every day went on seeing more and =
more
of its significance. But he does not. He goes on seeing less and less of it=
s significance.
In the same way, alas! we all go on every day, unless we are continually
goading ourselves into gratitude and humility, seeing less and less of the
significance of the sky or the stones.
.....
Now it is a terri=
ble
business to mark a man out for the vengeance of men. But it is a thing to w=
hich
a man can grow accustomed, as he can to other terrible things; he can even =
grow
accustomed to the sun. And the horrible thing about all legal officials, ev=
en
the best, about all judges, magistrates, barristers, detectives, and police=
men,
is not that they are wicked (some of them are good), not that they are stup=
id (several
of them are quite intelligent), it is simply that they have got used to it.=
Strictly they do =
not
see the prisoner in the dock; all they see is the usual man in the usual pl=
ace.
They do not see the awful court of judgment; they only see their own worksh=
op.
Therefore, the instinct of Christian civilisation has most wisely declared =
that
into their judgments there shall upon every occasion be infused fresh blood=
and
fresh thoughts from the streets. Men shall come in who can see the court and
the crowd, and coarse faces of the policeman and the professional criminals,
the wasted faces of the wastrels, the unreal faces of the gesticulating
counsel, and see it all as one sees a new picture or a play hitherto unvisi=
ted.
Our civilisation =
has
decided, and very justly decided, that determining the guilt or innocence of
men is a thing too important to be trusted to trained men. It wishes for li=
ght
upon that awful matter, it asks men who know no more law than I know, but w=
ho
can feel the things that I felt in the jury box. When it wants a library
catalogued, or the solar system discovered, or any trifle of that kind, it =
uses
up specialists. But when it wishes anything done which is really serious, it
collects twelve of the ordinary men standing round. The same thing was done=
, if
I remember right, by the Founder of Christianity.
XII. The Wind and the Tre=
es
I am sitting under
tall trees, with a great wind boiling like surf about the tops of them, so =
that
their living load of leaves rocks and roars in something that is at once
exultation and agony. I feel, in fact, as if I were actually sitting at the
bottom of the sea among mere anchors and ropes, while over my head and over=
the
green twilight of water sounded the everlasting rush of waves and the toil =
and
crash and shipwreck of tremendous ships. The wind tugs at the trees as if it
might pluck them root and all out of the earth like tufts of grass. Or, to =
try
yet another desperate figure of speech for this unspeakable energy, the tre=
es
are straining and tearing and lashing as if they were a tribe of dragons ea=
ch
tied by the tail.
As I look at these
top-heavy giants tortured by an invisible and violent witchcraft, a phrase
comes back into my mind. I remember a little boy of my acquaintance who was
once walking in Battersea Park under just such torn skies and tossing trees=
. He
did not like the wind at all; it blew in his face too much; it made him shut
his eyes; and it blew off his hat, of which he was very proud. He was, as f=
ar
as I remember, about four. After complaining repeatedly of the atmospheric
unrest, he said at last to his mother, "Well, why don't you take away =
the
trees, and then it wouldn't wind."
Nothing could be =
more
intelligent or natural than this mistake. Any one looking for the first tim=
e at
the trees might fancy that they were indeed vast and titanic fans, which by
their mere waving agitated the air around them for miles. Nothing, I say, c=
ould
be more human and excusable than the belief that it is the trees which make=
the
wind. Indeed, the belief is so human and excusable that it is, as a matter =
of
fact, the belief of about ninety-nine out of a hundred of the philosophers,
reformers, sociologists, and politicians of the great age in which we live.=
My
small friend was, in fact, very like the principal modern thinkers; only mu=
ch
nicer.
.....
In the little
apologue or parable which he has thus the honour of inventing, the trees st=
and
for all visible things and the wind for the invisible. The wind is the spir=
it
which bloweth where it listeth; the trees are the material things of the wo=
rld
which are blown where the spirit lists. The wind is philosophy, religion,
revolution; the trees are cities and civilisations. We only know that there=
is
a wind because the trees on some distant hill suddenly go mad. We only know
that there is a real revolution because all the chimney-pots go mad on the
whole skyline of the city.
Just as the ragged
outline of a tree grows suddenly more ragged and rises into fantastic crest=
s or
tattered tails, so the human city rises under the wind of the spirit into t=
oppling
temples or sudden spires. No man has ever seen a revolution. Mobs pouring
through the palaces, blood pouring down the gutters, the guillotine lifted
higher than the throne, a prison in ruins, a people in arms--these things a=
re
not revolution, but the results of revolution.
You cannot see a
wind; you can only see that there is a wind. So, also, you cannot see a
revolution; you can only see that there is a revolution. And there never has
been in the history of the world a real revolution, brutally active and
decisive, which was not preceded by unrest and new dogma in the reign of
invisible things. All revolutions began by being abstract. Most revolutions
began by being quite pedantically abstract.
The wind is up ab=
ove
the world before a twig on the tree has moved. So there must always be a ba=
ttle
in the sky before there is a battle on the earth. Since it is lawful to pray
for the coming of the kingdom, it is lawful also to pray for the coming of =
the
revolution that shall restore the kingdom. It is lawful to hope to hear the
wind of Heaven in the trees. It is lawful to pray "Thine anger come on
earth as it is in Heaven."
.....
The great human
dogma, then, is that the wind moves the trees. The great human heresy is th=
at
the trees move the wind. When people begin to say that the material
circumstances have alone created the moral circumstances, then they have
prevented all possibility of serious change. For if my circumstances have m=
ade
me wholly stupid, how can I be certain even that I am right in altering tho=
se
circumstances?
The man who
represents all thought as an accident of environment is simply smashing and
discrediting all his own thoughts--including that one. To treat the human m=
ind
as having an ultimate authority is necessary to any kind of thinking, even =
free
thinking. And nothing will ever be reformed in this age or country unless we
realise that the moral fact comes first.
For example, most=
of
us, I suppose, have seen in print and heard in debating clubs an endless
discussion that goes on between Socialists and total abstainers. The latter=
say
that drink leads to poverty; the former say that poverty leads to drink. I =
can
only wonder at their either of them being content with such simple physical
explanations. Surely it is obvious that the thing which among the English
proletariat leads to poverty is the same as the thing which leads to drink;=
the
absence of strong civic dignity, the absence of an instinct that resists de=
gradation.
When you have
discovered why enormous English estates were not long ago cut up into small
holdings like the land of France, you will have discovered why the Englishm=
an
is more drunken than the Frenchman. The Englishman, among his million
delightful virtues, really has this quality, which may strictly be called
"hand to mouth," because under its influence a man's hand
automatically seeks his own mouth, instead of seeking (as it sometimes shou=
ld
do) his oppressor's nose. And a man who says that the English inequality in
land is due only to economic causes, or that the drunkenness of England is =
due
only to economic causes, is saying something so absurd that he cannot really
have thought what he was saying.
Yet things quite =
as
preposterous as this are said and written under the influence of that great
spectacle of babyish helplessness, the economic theory of history. We have
people who represent that all great historic motives were economic, and then
have to howl at the top of their voices in order to induce the modern democ=
racy
to act on economic motives. The extreme Marxian politicians in England exhi=
bit
themselves as a small, heroic minority, trying vainly to induce the world t=
o do
what, according to their theory, the world always does. The truth is, of
course, that there will be a social revolution the moment the thing has cea=
sed
to be purely economic. You can never have a revolution in order to establis=
h a democracy.
You must have a democracy in order to have a revolution.
.....
I get up from und=
er
the trees, for the wind and the slight rain have ceased. The trees stand up
like golden pillars in a clear sunlight. The tossing of the trees and the
blowing of the wind have ceased simultaneously. So I suppose there are still
modern philosophers who will maintain that the trees make the wind.
He was a quiet ma=
n,
dressed in dark clothes, with a large limp straw hat; with something almost
military in his moustache and whiskers, but with a quite unmilitary stoop a=
nd
very dreamy eyes. He was gazing with a rather gloomy interest at the cluste=
r,
one might almost say the tangle, of small shipping which grew thicker as our
little pleasure boat crawled up into Yarmouth Harbour. A boat entering this
harbour, as every one knows, does not enter in front of the town like a
foreigner, but creeps round at the back like a traitor taking the town in t=
he
rear. The passage of the river seems almost too narrow for traffic, and in =
consequence
the bigger ships look colossal. As we passed under a timber ship from Norwa=
y,
which seemed to block up the heavens like a cathedral, the man in a straw h=
at
pointed to an odd wooden figurehead carved like a woman, and said, like one
continuing a conversation, "Now, why have they left off having them. T=
hey
didn't do any one any harm?"
I replied with so=
me
flippancy about the captain's wife being jealous; but I knew in my heart th=
at
the man had struck a deep note. There has been something in our most recent
civilisation which is mysteriously hostile to such healthy and humane symbo=
ls.
"They hate
anything like that, which is human and pretty," he continued, exactly
echoing my thoughts. "I believe they broke up all the jolly old figure=
heads
with hatchets and enjoyed doing it."
"Like Mr.
Quilp," I answered, "when he battered the wooden Admiral with the
poker."
His whole face
suddenly became alive, and for the first time he stood erect and stared at =
me.
"Do you come=
to
Yarmouth for that?" he asked.
"For what?&q=
uot;
"For
Dickens," he answered, and drummed with his foot on the deck.
"No," I
answered; "I come for fun, though that is much the same thing."
"I always
come," he answered quietly, "to find Peggotty's boat. It isn't he=
re."
And when he said =
that
I understood him perfectly.
There are two
Yarmouths; I daresay there are two hundred to the people who live there. I
myself have never come to the end of the list of Batterseas. But there are =
two
to the stranger and tourist; the poor part, which is dignified, and the
prosperous part, which is savagely vulgar. My new friend haunted the first =
of
these like a ghost; to the latter he would only distantly allude.
"The place is
very much spoilt now... trippers, you know," he would say, not at all
scornfully, but simply sadly. That was the nearest he would go to an admiss=
ion
of the monstrous watering place that lay along the front, outblazing the su=
n,
and more deafening than the sea. But behind--out of earshot of this
uproar--there are lanes so narrow that they seem like secret entrances to s=
ome
hidden place of repose. There are squares so brimful of silence that to plu=
nge
into one of them is like plunging into a pool. In these places the man and I
paced up and down talking about Dickens, or, rather, doing what all true
Dickensians do, telling each other verbatim long passages which both of us =
knew
quite well already. We were really in the atmosphere of the older England.
Fishermen passed us who might well have been characters like Peggotty; we w=
ent
into a musty curiosity shop and bought pipe-stoppers carved into figures fr=
om
Pickwick. The evening was settling down between all the buildings with that
slow gold that seems to soak everything when we went into the church.
In the growing
darkness of the church, my eye caught the coloured windows which on that cl=
ear
golden evening were flaming with all the passionate heraldry of the most fi=
erce
and ecstatic of Christian arts. At length I said to my companion:
"Do you see =
that
angel over there? I think it must be meant for the angel at the
sepulchre."
He saw that I was
somewhat singularly moved, and he raised his eyebrows.
"I
daresay," he said. "What is there odd about that?"
After a pause I s=
aid,
"Do you remember what the angel at the sepulchre said?"
"Not
particularly," he answered; "but where are you off to in such a h=
urry?"
I walked him rapi=
dly
out of the still square, past the fishermen's almshouses, towards the coast=
, he
still inquiring indignantly where I was going.
"I am
going," I said, "to put pennies in automatic machines on the beac=
h. I
am going to listen to the niggers. I am going to have my photograph taken. =
I am
going to drink ginger-beer out of its original bottle. I will buy some pict=
ure
postcards. I do want a boat. I am ready to listen to a concertina, and but =
for
the defects of my education should be ready to play it. I am willing to rid=
e on
a donkey; that is, if the donkey is willing. I am willing to be a donkey; f=
or
all this was commanded me by the angel in the stained-glass window."
"I really
think," said the Dickensian, "that I had better put you in charge=
of
your relations."
"Sir," I
answered, "there are certain writers to whom humanity owes much, whose
talent is yet of so shy or delicate or retrospective a type that we do well=
to
link it with certain quaint places or certain perishing associations. It wo=
uld
not be unnatural to look for the spirit of Horace Walpole at Strawberry Hil=
l,
or even for the shade of Thackeray in Old Kensington. But let us have no
antiquarianism about Dickens, for Dickens is not an antiquity. Dickens looks
not backward, but forward; he might look at our modern mobs with satire, or
with fury, but he would love to look at them. He might lash our democracy, =
but
it would be because, like a democrat, he asked much from it. We will not ha=
ve
all his books bound up under the title of 'The Old Curiosity Shop.' Rather =
we
will have them all bound up under the title of 'Great Expectations.' Wherev=
er
humanity is he would have us face it and make something of it, swallow it w=
ith
a holy cannibalism, and assimilate it with the digestion of a giant. We must
take these trippers as he would have taken them, and tear out of them their=
tragedy
and their farce. Do you remember now what the angel said at the sepulchre? =
'Why
seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here; he is risen.'"
With that we came=
out
suddenly on the wide stretch of the sands, which were black with the knobs =
and
masses of our laughing and quite desperate democracy. And the sunset, which=
was
now in its final glory, flung far over all of them a red flush and glitter =
like
the gigantic firelight of Dickens. In that strange evening light every figu=
re
looked at once grotesque and attractive, as if he had a story to tell. I he=
ard
a little girl (who was being throttled by another little girl) say by way o=
f self-vindication,
"My sister-in-law 'as got four rings aside her weddin' ring!"
I stood and liste=
ned
for more, but my friend went away.
XIV. In Topsy-Turvy Land<=
/span>
Last week, in an =
idle
metaphor, I took the tumbling of trees and the secret energy of the wind as
typical of the visible world moving under the violence of the invisible. I =
took
this metaphor merely because I happened to be writing the article in a wood.
Nevertheless, now that I return to Fleet Street (which seems to me, I confe=
ss,
much better and more poetical than all the wild woods in the world), I am
strangely haunted by this accidental comparison. The people's figures seem =
a forest
and their soul a wind. All the human personalities which speak or signal to=
me
seem to have this fantastic character of the fringe of the forest against t=
he
sky. That man that talks to me, what is he but an articulate tree? That dri=
ver
of a van who waves his hands wildly at me to tell me to get out of the way,
what is he but a bunch of branches stirred and swayed by a spiritual wind, a
sylvan object that I can continue to contemplate with calm? That policeman =
who
lifts his hand to warn three omnibuses of the peril that they run in
encountering my person, what is he but a shrub shaken for a moment with that
blast of human law which is a thing stronger than anarchy? Gradually this i=
mpression
of the woods wears off. But this black-and-white contrast between the visib=
le
and invisible, this deep sense that the one essential belief is belief in t=
he
invisible as against the visible, is suddenly and sensationally brought bac=
k to
my mind. Exactly at the moment when Fleet Street has grown most familiar (t=
hat
is, most bewildering and bright), my eye catches a poster of vivid violet, =
on which
I see written in large black letters these remarkable words: "Should S=
hop
Assistants Marry?"
.....
When I saw those
words everything might just as well have turned upside down. The men in Fle=
et
Street might have been walking about on their hands. The cross of St. Paul's
might have been hanging in the air upside down. For I realise that I have
really come into a topsy-turvy country; I have come into the country where =
men
do definitely believe that the waving of the trees makes the wind. That is =
to
say, they believe that the material circumstances, however black and twiste=
d,
are more important than the spiritual realities, however powerful and pure.=
"Should
Shop Assistants Marry?" I am puzzled to think what some periods and
schools of human history would have made of such a question. The ascetics of
the East or of some periods of the early Church would have thought that the
question meant, "Are not shop assistants too saintly, too much of anot=
her
world, even to feel the emotions of the sexes?" But I suppose that is =
not
what the purple poster means. In some pagan cities it might have meant,
"Shall slaves so vile as shop assistants even be allowed to propagate =
their
abject race?" But I suppose that is not what the purple poster meant. =
We
must face, I fear, the full insanity of what it does mean. It does really m=
ean
that a section of the human race is asking whether the primary relations of=
the
two human sexes are particularly good for modern shops. The human race is
asking whether Adam and Eve are entirely suitable for Marshall and Snelgrov=
e.
If this is not topsy-turvy I cannot imagine what would be. We ask whether t=
he
universal institution will improve our (please God) temporary institution. =
Yet
I have known many such questions. For instance, I have known a man ask
seriously, "Does Democracy help the Empire?" Which is like saying,
"Is art favourable to frescoes?"
I say that there =
are
many such questions asked. But if the world ever runs short of them, I can
suggest a large number of questions of precisely the same kind, based on
precisely the same principle.
"Do Feet Imp=
rove
Boots?"--"Is Bread Better when Eaten?"--"Should Hats ha=
ve
Heads in them?"--"Do People Spoil a Town?"--"Do Walls R=
uin
Wall-papers?"--"Should Neckties enclose Necks?"--"Do Ha=
nds
Hurt Walking-sticks?"--"Does Burning Destroy
Firewood?"--"Is Cleanliness Good for Soap?"--"Can Crick=
et
Really Improve Cricket-bats?"--"Shall We Take Brides with our Wed=
ding
Rings?" and a hundred others.
Not one of these
questions differs at all in intellectual purport or in intellectual value f=
rom
the question which I have quoted from the purple poster, or from any of the
typical questions asked by half of the earnest economists of our times. All=
the
questions they ask are of this character; they are all tinged with this same
initial absurdity. They do not ask if the means is suited to the end; they =
all
ask (with profound and penetrating scepticism) if the end is suited to the
means. They do not ask whether the tail suits the dog. They all ask whether=
a
dog is (by the highest artistic canons) the most ornamental appendage that =
can be
put at the end of a tail. In short, instead of asking whether our modern
arrangements, our streets, trades, bargains, laws, and concrete institutions
are suited to the primal and permanent idea of a healthy human life, they n=
ever
admit that healthy human life into the discussion at all, except suddenly a=
nd
accidentally at odd moments; and then they only ask whether that healthy hu=
man
life is suited to our streets and trades. Perfection may be attainable or
unattainable as an end. It may or may not be possible to talk of imperfecti=
on
as a means to perfection. But surely it passes toleration to talk of perfec=
tion
as a means to imperfection. The New Jerusalem may be a reality. It may be a
dream. But surely it is too outrageous to say that the New Jerusalem is a
reality on the road to Birmingham.
.....
This is the most
enormous and at the same time the most secret of the modern tyrannies of
materialism. In theory the thing ought to be simple enough. A really human
human being would always put the spiritual things first. A walking and spea=
king
statue of God finds himself at one particular moment employed as a shop
assistant. He has in himself a power of terrible love, a promise of paterni=
ty,
a thirst for some loyalty that shall unify life, and in the ordinary course=
of
things he asks himself, "How far do the existing conditions of those
assisting in shops fit in with my evident and epic destiny in the matter of
love and marriage?" But here, as I have said, comes in the quiet and
crushing power of modern materialism. It prevents him rising in rebellion, =
as
he would otherwise do. By perpetually talking about environment and visible=
things,
by perpetually talking about economics and physical necessity, painting and
keeping repainted a perpetual picture of iron machinery and merciless engin=
es,
of rails of steel, and of towers of stone, modern materialism at last produ=
ces
this tremendous impression in which the truth is stated upside down. At last
the result is achieved. The man does not say as he ought to have said,
"Should married men endure being modern shop assistants?" The man
says, "Should shop assistants marry?" Triumph has completed the
immense illusion of materialism. The slave does not say, "Are these ch=
ains
worthy of me?" The slave says scientifically and contentedly, "Am=
I
even worthy of these chains?"
XV. What I Found in My Po=
cket
Once when I was v=
ery
young I met one of those men who have made the Empire what it is--a man in =
an
astracan coat, with an astracan moustache--a tight, black, curly moustache.
Whether he put on the moustache with the coat or whether his Napoleonic will
enabled him not only to grow a moustache in the usual place, but also to gr=
ow
little moustaches all over his clothes, I do not know. I only remember that=
he said
to me the following words: "A man can't get on nowadays by hanging abo=
ut
with his hands in his pockets." I made reply with the quite obvious
flippancy that perhaps a man got on by having his hands in other people's
pockets; whereupon he began to argue about Moral Evolution, so I suppose wh=
at I
said had some truth in it. But the incident now comes back to me, and conne=
cts
itself with another incident--if you can call it an incident--which happene=
d to
me only the other day.
I have only once =
in
my life picked a pocket, and then (perhaps through some absent-mindedness) I
picked my own. My act can really with some reason be so described. For in
taking things out of my own pocket I had at least one of the more tense and
quivering emotions of the thief; I had a complete ignorance and a profound
curiosity as to what I should find there. Perhaps it would be the exaggerat=
ion
of eulogy to call me a tidy person. But I can always pretty satisfactorily
account for all my possessions. I can always tell where they are, and what I
have done with them, so long as I can keep them out of my pockets. If once
anything slips into those unknown abysses, I wave it a sad Virgilian farewe=
ll. I
suppose that the things that I have dropped into my pockets are still there;
the same presumption applies to the things that I have dropped into the sea.
But I regard the riches stored in both these bottomless chasms with the same
reverent ignorance. They tell us that on the last day the sea will give up =
its
dead; and I suppose that on the same occasion long strings of extraordinary
things will come running out of my pockets. But I have quite forgotten what=
any
of them are; and there is really nothing (excepting the money) that I shall=
be
at all surprised at finding among them.
.....
Such at least has
hitherto been my state of innocence. I here only wish briefly to recall the
special, extraordinary, and hitherto unprecedented circumstances which led =
me
in cold blood, and being of sound mind, to turn out my pockets. I was locke=
d up
in a third-class carriage for a rather long journey. The time was towards
evening, but it might have been anything, for everything resembling earth or
sky or light or shade was painted out as if with a great wet brush by an
unshifting sheet of quite colourless rain. I had no books or newspapers. I =
had
not even a pencil and a scrap of paper with which to write a religious epic.
There were no advertisements on the walls of the carriage, otherwise I coul=
d have
plunged into the study, for any collection of printed words is quite enough=
to
suggest infinite complexities of mental ingenuity. When I find myself oppos=
ite
the words "Sunlight Soap" I can exhaust all the aspects of Sun
Worship, Apollo, and Summer poetry before I go on to the less congenial sub=
ject
of soap. But there was no printed word or picture anywhere; there was nothi=
ng
but blank wood inside the carriage and blank wet without. Now I deny most
energetically that anything is, or can be, uninteresting. So I stared at the
joints of the walls and seats, and began thinking hard on the fascinating
subject of wood. Just as I had begun to realise why, perhaps, it was that
Christ was a carpenter, rather than a bricklayer, or a baker, or anything e=
lse,
I suddenly started upright, and remembered my pockets. I was carrying about
with me an unknown treasury. I had a British Museum and a South Kensington =
collection
of unknown curios hung all over me in different places. I began to take the
things out.
.....
The first thing I
came upon consisted of piles and heaps of Battersea tram tickets. There were
enough to equip a paper chase. They shook down in showers like confetti.
Primarily, of course, they touched my patriotic emotions, and brought tears=
to
my eyes; also they provided me with the printed matter I required, for I fo=
und
on the back of them some short but striking little scientific essays about =
some
kind of pill. Comparatively speaking, in my then destitution, those tickets
might be regarded as a small but well-chosen scientific library. Should my =
railway
journey continue (which seemed likely at the time) for a few months longer,=
I
could imagine myself throwing myself into the controversial aspects of the
pill, composing replies and rejoinders pro and con upon the data furnished =
to
me. But after all it was the symbolic quality of the tickets that moved me
most. For as certainly as the cross of St. George means English patriotism,
those scraps of paper meant all that municipal patriotism which is now,
perhaps, the greatest hope of England.
The next thing th=
at I
took out was a pocket-knife. A pocket-knife, I need hardly say, would requi=
re a
thick book full of moral meditations all to itself. A knife typifies one of=
the
most primary of those practical origins upon which as upon low, thick pillo=
ws
all our human civilisation reposes. Metals, the mystery of the thing called
iron and of the thing called steel, led me off half-dazed into a kind of dr=
eam.
I saw into the intrails of dim, damp wood, where the first man among all the
common stones found the strange stone. I saw a vague and violent battle, in
which stone axes broke and stone knives were splintered against something
shining and new in the hand of one desperate man. I heard all the hammers on
all the anvils of the earth. I saw all the swords of Feudal and all the wea=
ls
of Industrial war. For the knife is only a short sword; and the pocket-knif=
e is
a secret sword. I opened it and looked at that brilliant and terrible tongue
which we call a blade; and I thought that perhaps it was the symbol of the
oldest of the needs of man. The next moment I knew that I was wrong; for the
thing that came next out of my pocket was a box of matches. Then I saw fire,
which is stronger even than steel, the old, fierce female thing, the thing =
we
all love, but dare not touch.
The next thing I
found was a piece of chalk; and I saw in it all the art and all the frescoe=
s of
the world. The next was a coin of a very modest value; and I saw in it not =
only
the image and superscription of our own Caesar, but all government and order
since the world began. But I have not space to say what were the items in t=
he
long and splendid procession of poetical symbols that came pouring out. I
cannot tell you all the things that were in my pocket. I can tell you one
thing, however, that I could not find in my pocket. I allude to my railway
ticket.
XVI. The Dragon's Grandmo=
ther
I met a man the o=
ther
day who did not believe in fairy tales. I do not mean that he did not belie=
ve
in the incidents narrated in them--that he did not believe that a pumpkin c=
ould
turn into a coach. He did, indeed, entertain this curious disbelief. And, l=
ike
all the other people I have ever met who entertained it, he was wholly unab=
le
to give me an intelligent reason for it. He tried the laws of nature, but he
soon dropped that. Then he said that pumpkins were unalterable in ordinary =
experience,
and that we all reckoned on their infinitely protracted pumpkinity. But I
pointed out to him that this was not an attitude we adopt specially towards
impossible marvels, but simply the attitude we adopt towards all unusual
occurrences. If we were certain of miracles we should not count on them. Th=
ings
that happen very seldom we all leave out of our calculations, whether they =
are
miraculous or not. I do not expect a glass of water to be turned into wine;=
but
neither do I expect a glass of water to be poisoned with prussic acid. I do=
not
in ordinary business relations act on the assumption that the editor is a
fairy; but neither do I act on the assumption that he is a Russian spy, or =
the
lost heir of the Holy Roman Empire. What we assume in action is not that th=
e natural
order is unalterable, but simply that it is much safer to bet on uncommon
incidents than on common ones. This does not touch the credibility of any
attested tale about a Russian spy or a pumpkin turned into a coach. If I had
seen a pumpkin turned into a Panhard motor-car with my own eyes that would =
not
make me any more inclined to assume that the same thing would happen again.=
I
should not invest largely in pumpkins with an eye to the motor trade.
Cinderella got a ball dress from the fairy; but I do not suppose that she
looked after her own clothes any the less after it.
But the view that
fairy tales cannot really have happened, though crazy, is common. The man I
speak of disbelieved in fairy tales in an even more amazing and perverted
sense. He actually thought that fairy tales ought not to be told to childre=
n.
That is (like a belief in slavery or annexation) one of those intellectual
errors which lie very near to ordinary mortal sins. There are some refusals
which, though they may be done what is called conscientiously, yet carry so
much of their whole horror in the very act of them, that a man must in doing
them not only harden but slightly corrupt his heart. One of them was the
refusal of milk to young mothers when their husbands were in the field agai=
nst
us. Another is the refusal of fairy tales to children.
.....
The man had come =
to
see me in connection with some silly society of which I am an enthusiastic
member; he was a fresh-coloured, short-sighted young man, like a stray cura=
te
who was too helpless even to find his way to the Church of England. He had a
curious green necktie and a very long neck; I am always meeting idealists w=
ith
very long necks. Perhaps it is that their eternal aspiration slowly lifts t=
heir
heads nearer and nearer to the stars. Or perhaps it has something to do with
the fact that so many of them are vegetarians: perhaps they are slowly evol=
ving
the neck of the giraffe so that they can eat all the tops of the trees in
Kensington Gardens. These things are in every sense above me. Such, anyhow,=
was
the young man who did not believe in fairy tales; and by a curious coincide=
nce
he entered the room when I had just finished looking through a pile of
contemporary fiction, and had begun to read "Grimm's Fairy tales"=
as
a natural consequence.
The modern novels
stood before me, however, in a stack; and you can imagine their titles for
yourself. There was "Suburban Sue: A Tale of Psychology," and also
"Psychological Sue: A Tale of Suburbia"; there was "Trixy: A
Temperament," and "Man-Hate: A Monochrome," and all those ni=
ce things.
I read them with real interest, but, curiously enough, I grew tired of them=
at
last, and when I saw "Grimm's Fairy Tales" lying accidentally on =
the
table, I gave a cry of indecent joy. Here at least, here at last, one could
find a little common sense. I opened the book, and my eyes fell on these
splendid and satisfying words, "The Dragon's Grandmother." That at
least was reasonable; that at least was true. "The Dragon's
Grandmother!" While I was rolling this first touch of ordinary human
reality upon my tongue, I looked up suddenly and saw this monster with a gr=
een
tie standing in the doorway.
.....
I listened to wha=
t he
said about the society politely enough, I hope; but when he incidentally
mentioned that he did not believe in fairy tales, I broke out beyond contro=
l.
"Man," I said, "who are you that you should not believe in f=
airy
tales? It is much easier to believe in Blue Beard than to believe in you. A
blue beard is a misfortune; but there are green ties which are sins. It is =
far
easier to believe in a million fairy tales than to believe in one man who d=
oes
not like fairy tales. I would rather kiss Grimm instead of a Bible and swea=
r to
all his stories as if they were thirty-nine articles than say seriously and=
out
of my heart that there can be such a man as you; that you are not some temp=
tation
of the devil or some delusion from the void. Look at these plain, homely,
practical words. 'The Dragon's Grandmother,' that is all right; that is
rational almost to the verge of rationalism. If there was a dragon, he had a
grandmother. But you--you had no grandmother! If you had known one, she wou=
ld
have taught you to love fairy tales. You had no father, you had no mother; =
no
natural causes can explain you. You cannot be. I believe many things which I
have not seen; but of such things as you it may be said, 'Blessed is he that
has seen and yet has disbelieved.'"
.....
It seemed to me t=
hat
he did not follow me with sufficient delicacy, so I moderated my tone.
"Can you not see," I said, "that fairy tales in their essence
are quite solid and straightforward; but that this everlasting fiction about
modern life is in its nature essentially incredible? Folk-lore means that t=
he
soul is sane, but that the universe is wild and full of marvels. Realism me=
ans
that the world is dull and full of routine, but that the soul is sick and
screaming. The problem of the fairy tale is--what will a healthy man do wit=
h a
fantastic world? The problem of the modern novel is--what will a madman do =
with
a dull world? In the fairy tales the cosmos goes mad; but the hero does not=
go
mad. In the modern novels the hero is mad before the book begins, and suffe=
rs
from the harsh steadiness and cruel sanity of the cosmos. In the excellent =
tale
of 'The Dragon's Grandmother,' in all the other tales of Grimm, it is assum=
ed
that the young man setting out on his travels will have all substantial tru=
ths
in him; that he will be brave, full of faith, reasonable, that he will resp=
ect
his parents, keep his word, rescue one kind of people, defy another kind,
'parcere subjectis et debellare,' etc. Then, having assumed this centre of
sanity, the writer entertains himself by fancying what would happen if the
whole world went mad all round it, if the sun turned green and the moon blu=
e,
if horses had six legs and giants had two heads. But your modern literature=
takes
insanity as its centre. Therefore, it loses the interest even of insanity. A
lunatic is not startling to himself, because he is quite serious; that is w=
hat
makes him a lunatic. A man who thinks he is a piece of glass is to himself =
as
dull as a piece of glass. A man who thinks he is a chicken is to himself as
common as a chicken. It is only sanity that can see even a wild poetry in
insanity. Therefore, these wise old tales made the hero ordinary and the ta=
le
extraordinary. But you have made the hero extraordinary and the tale
ordinary--so ordinary--oh, so very ordinary."
I saw him still
gazing at me fixedly. Some nerve snapped in me under the hypnotic stare. I
leapt to my feet and cried, "In the name of God and Democracy and the
Dragon's grandmother--in the name of all good things--I charge you to avaunt
and haunt this house no more." Whether or no it was the result of the
exorcism, there is no doubt that he definitely went away.
I find that there=
really
are human beings who think fairy tales bad for children. I do not speak of =
the
man in the green tie, for him I can never count truly human. But a lady has
written me an earnest letter saying that fairy tales ought not to be taught=
to
children even if they are true. She says that it is cruel to tell children
fairy tales, because it frightens them. You might just as well say that it =
is
cruel to give girls sentimental novels because it makes them cry. All this =
kind
of talk is based on that complete forgetting of what a child is like which =
has
been the firm foundation of so many educational schemes. If you keep bogies=
and
goblins away from children they would make them up for themselves. One small
child in the dark can invent more hells than Swedenborg. One small child can
imagine monsters too big and black to get into any picture, and give them n=
ames
too unearthly and cacophonous to have occurred in the cries of any lunatic.=
The
child, to begin with, commonly likes horrors, and he continues to indulge i=
n them
even when he does not like them. There is just as much difficulty in saying
exactly where pure pain begins in his case, as there is in ours when we wal=
k of
our own free will into the torture-chamber of a great tragedy. The fear does
not come from fairy tales; the fear comes from the universe of the soul.
.....
The timidity of t=
he
child or the savage is entirely reasonable; they are alarmed at this world,
because this world is a very alarming place. They dislike being alone becau=
se
it is verily and indeed an awful idea to be alone. Barbarians fear the unkn=
own
for the same reason that Agnostics worship it--because it is a fact. Fairy
tales, then, are not responsible for producing in children fear, or any of =
the
shapes of fear; fairy tales do not give the child the idea of the evil or t=
he
ugly; that is in the child already, because it is in the world already. Fai=
ry
tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give =
the child
is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known=
the
dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale
provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon.
Exactly what the
fairy tale does is this: it accustoms him for a series of clear pictures to=
the
idea that these limitless terrors had a limit, that these shapeless enemies
have enemies in the knights of God, that there is something in the universe
more mystical than darkness, and stronger than strong fear. When I was a ch=
ild
I have stared at the darkness until the whole black bulk of it turned into =
one
negro giant taller than heaven. If there was one star in the sky it only ma=
de
him a Cyclops. But fairy tales restored my mental health, for next day I re=
ad an
authentic account of how a negro giant with one eye, of quite equal dimensi=
ons,
had been baffled by a little boy like myself (of similar inexperience and e=
ven
lower social status) by means of a sword, some bad riddles, and a brave hea=
rt.
Sometimes the sea at night seemed as dreadful as any dragon. But then I was
acquainted with many youngest sons and little sailors to whom a dragon or t=
wo
was as simple as the sea.
Take the most
horrible of Grimm's tales in incident and imagery, the excellent tale of the
"Boy who Could not Shudder," and you will see what I mean. There =
are
some living shocks in that tale. I remember specially a man's legs which fe=
ll
down the chimney by themselves and walked about the room, until they were
rejoined by the severed head and body which fell down the chimney after the=
m.
That is very good. But the point of the story and the point of the reader's
feelings is not that these things are frightening, but the far more striking
fact that the hero was not frightened at them. The most fearful of all these
fearful wonders was his own absence of fear. He slapped the bogies on the b=
ack
and asked the devils to drink wine with him; many a time in my youth, when
stifled with some modern morbidity, I have prayed for a double portion of h=
is spirit.
If you have not read the end of his story, go and read it; it is the wisest
thing in the world. The hero was at last taught to shudder by taking a wife,
who threw a pail of cold water over him. In that one sentence there is more=
of
the real meaning of marriage than in all the books about sex that cover Eur=
ope
and America.
.....
At the four corne=
rs
of a child's bed stand Perseus and Roland, Sigurd and St. George. If you
withdraw the guard of heroes you are not making him rational; you are only
leaving him to fight the devils alone. For the devils, alas, we have always
believed in. The hopeful element in the universe has in modern times
continually been denied and reasserted; but the hopeless element has never =
for
a moment been denied. As I told "H. N. B." (whom I pause to wish a
Happy Christmas in its most superstitious sense), the one thing modern peop=
le
really do believe in is damnation. The greatest of purely modern poets summ=
ed
up the really modern attitude in that fine Agnostic line--
"There may be
Heaven; there must be Hell."
The gloomy view of
the universe has been a continuous tradition; and the new types of spiritual
investigation or conjecture all begin by being gloomy. A little while ago m=
en
believed in no spirits. Now they are beginning rather slowly to believe in
rather slow spirits.
.....
Some people objec=
ted
to spiritualism, table rappings, and such things, because they were
undignified, because the ghosts cracked jokes or waltzed with dinner-tables=
. I
do not share this objection in the least. I wish the spirits were more farc=
ical
than they are. That they should make more jokes and better ones, would be my
suggestion. For almost all the spiritualism of our time, in so far as it is
new, is solemn and sad. Some Pagan gods were lawless, and some Christian sa=
ints
were a little too serious; but the spirits of modern spiritualism are both
lawless and serious--a disgusting combination. The specially contemporary
spirits are not only devils, they are blue devils. This is, first and last,=
the
real value of Christmas; in so far as the mythology remains at all it is a =
kind
of happy mythology. Personally, of course, I believe in Santa Claus; but it=
is
the season of forgiveness, and I will forgive others for not doing so. But =
if
there is anyone who does not comprehend the defect in our world which I am
civilising, I should recommend him, for instance, to read a story by Mr. He=
nry
James, called "The Turn of the Screw." It is one of the most powe=
rful
things ever written, and it is one of the things about which I doubt most
whether it ought ever to have been written at all. It describes two innocent
children gradually growing at once omniscient and half-witted under the
influence of the foul ghosts of a groom and a governess. As I say, I doubt
whether Mr. Henry James ought to have published it (no, it is not indecent,=
do
not buy it; it is a spiritual matter), but I think the question so doubtful=
that
I will give that truly great man a chance. I will approve the thing as well=
as
admire it if he will write another tale just as powerful about two children=
and
Santa Claus. If he will not, or cannot, then the conclusion is clear; we can
deal strongly with gloomy mystery, but not with happy mystery; we are not
rationalists, but diabolists.
.....
I have thought
vaguely of all this staring at a great red fire that stands up in the room =
like
a great red angel. But, perhaps, you have never heard of a red angel. But y=
ou
have heard of a blue devil. That is exactly what I mean.
I have been stand=
ing
where everybody has stood, opposite the great Belfry Tower of Bruges, and
thinking, as every one has thought (though not, perhaps, said), that it is
built in defiance of all decencies of architecture. It is made in deliberate
disproportion to achieve the one startling effect of height. It is a church=
on
stilts. But this sort of sublime deformity is characteristic of the whole f=
ancy
and energy of these Flemish cities. Flanders has the flattest and most pros=
aic landscapes,
but the most violent and extravagant of buildings. Here Nature is tame; it =
is
civilisation that is untamable. Here the fields are as flat as a paved squa=
re;
but, on the other hand, the streets and roofs are as uproarious as a forest=
in
a great wind. The waters of wood and meadow slide as smoothly and meekly as=
if
they were in the London water-pipes. But the parish pump is carved with all=
the
creatures out of the wilderness. Part of this is true, of course, of all ar=
t.
We talk of wild animals, but the wildest animal is man. There are sounds in
music that are more ancient and awful than the cry of the strangest beast at
night. And so also there are buildings that are shapeless in their strength,
seeming to lift themselves slowly like monsters from the primal mire, and t=
here
are spires that seem to fly up suddenly like a startled bird.
.....
This savagery eve=
n in
stone is the expression of the special spirit in humanity. All the beasts of
the field are respectable; it is only man who has broken loose. All animals=
are
domestic animals; only man is ever undomestic. All animals are tame animals=
; it
is only we who are wild. And doubtless, also, while this queer energy is co=
mmon
to all human art, it is also generally characteristic of Christian art among
the arts of the world. This is what people really mean when they say that C=
hristianity
is barbaric, and arose in ignorance. As a matter of historic fact, it didn'=
t;
it arose in the most equably civilised period the world has ever seen.
But it is true th=
at
there is something in it that breaks the outline of perfect and conventional
beauty, something that dots with anger the blind eyes of the Apollo and las=
hes
to a cavalry charge the horses of the Elgin Marbles. Christianity is savage=
, in
the sense that it is primeval; there is in it a touch of the nigger hymn. I
remember a debate in which I had praised militant music in ritual, and some=
one
asked me if I could imagine Christ walking down the street before a brass b=
and.
I said I could imagine it with the greatest ease; for Christ definitely app=
roved
a natural noisiness at a great moment. When the street children shouted too
loud, certain priggish disciples did begin to rebuke them in the name of go=
od
taste. He said: "If these were silent the very stones would cry out.&q=
uot;
With these words He called up all the wealth of artistic creation that has =
been
founded on this creed. With those words He founded Gothic architecture. For=
in
a town like this, which seems to have grown Gothic as a wood grows leaves,
anywhere and anyhow, any odd brick or moulding may be carved off into a
shouting face. The front of vast buildings is thronged with open mouths, an=
gels
praising God, or devils defying Him. Rock itself is racked and twisted, unt=
il
it seems to scream. The miracle is accomplished; the very stones cry out.
But though this
furious fancy is certainly a specialty of men among creatures, and of Chris=
tian
art among arts, it is still most notable in the art of Flanders. All Gothic
buildings are full of extravagant things in detail; but this is an extravag=
ant
thing in design. All Christian temples worth talking about have gargoyles; =
but
Bruges Belfry is a gargoyle. It is an unnaturally long-necked animal, like a
giraffe. The same impression of exaggeration is forced on the mind at every
corner of a Flemish town. And if any one asks, "Why did the people of
these flat countries instinctively raise these riotous and towering
monuments?" the only answer one can give is, "Because they were t=
he
people of these flat countries." If any one asks, "Why the men of
Bruges sacrificed architecture and everything to the sense of dizzy and div=
ine
heights?" we can only answer, "Because Nature gave them no
encouragement to do so."
.....
As I stare at the
Belfry, I think with a sort of smile of some of my friends in London who are
quite sure of how children will turn out if you give them what they call
"the right environment." It is a troublesome thing, environment, =
for
it sometimes works positively and sometimes negatively, and more often betw=
een
the two. A beautiful environment may make a child love beauty; it may make =
him
bored with beauty; most likely the two effects will mix and neutralise each
other. Most likely, that is, the environment will make hardly any differenc=
e at
all. In the scientific style of history (which was recently fashionable,
and is still
conventional) we always had a list of countries that had owed their
characteristics to their physical conditions.
The Spaniards (it=
was
said) are passionate because their country is hot; Scandinavians adventurous
because their country is cold; Englishmen naval because they are islanders;
Switzers free because they are mountaineers. It is all very nice in its way.
Only unfortunately I am quite certain that I could make up quite as long a =
list
exactly contrary in its argument point-blank against the influence of their
geographical environment. Thus Spaniards have discovered more continents th=
an Scandinavians
because their hot climate discouraged them from exertion. Thus Dutchmen have
fought for their freedom quite as bravely as Switzers because the Dutch hav=
e no
mountains. Thus Pagan Greece and Rome and many Mediterranean peoples have
specially hated the sea because they had the nicest sea to deal with, the
easiest sea to manage. I could extend the list for ever. But however long it
was, two examples would certainly stand up in it as pre-eminent and unquest=
ionable.
The first is that the Swiss, who live under staggering precipices and spire=
s of
eternal snow, have produced no art or literature at all, and are by far the
most mundane, sensible, and business-like people in Europe. The other is th=
at the
people of Belgium, who live in a country like a carpet, have, by an inner
energy, desired to exalt their towers till they struck the stars.
As it is therefore
quite doubtful whether a person will go specially with his environment or
specially against his environment, I cannot comfort myself with the thought
that the modern discussions about environment are of much practical value. =
But
I think I will not write any more about these modern theories, but go on
looking at the Belfry of Bruges. I would give them the greater attention if=
I
were not pretty well convinced that the theories will have disappeared a lo=
ng
time before the Belfry.
XIX. How I Met the Presid=
ent
Several years ago,
when there was a small war going on in South Africa and a great fuss going =
on
in England, when it was by no means so popular and convenient to be a Pro-B=
oer
as it is now, I remember making a bright suggestion to my Pro-Boer friends =
and
allies, which was not, I regret to say, received with the seriousness it
deserved. I suggested that a band of devoted and noble youths, including
ourselves, should express our sense of the pathos of the President's and the
Republic's fate by growing Kruger beards under our chins. I imagined how
abruptly this decoration would alter the appearance of Mr. John Morley; how
startling it would be as it emerged from under the chin of Mr. Lloyd-George.
But the younger men, my own friends, on whom I more particularly urged it, =
men
whose names are in many cases familiar to the readers of this paper--Mr.
Masterman's for instance, and Mr. Conrad Noel--they, I felt, being young and
beautiful, would do even more justice to the Kruger beard, and when walking
down the street with it could not fail to attract attention. The beard would
have been a kind of counterblast to the Rhodes hat. An appropriate
counterblast; for the Rhodesian power in Africa is only an external thing,
placed upon the top like a hat; the Dutch power and tradition is a thing ro=
oted
and growing like a beard; we have shaved it, and it is growing again. The
Kruger beard would represent time and the natural processes. You cannot gro=
w a
beard in a moment of passion.
.....
After making this
proposal to my friends I hurriedly left town. I went down to a West Country
place where there was shortly afterwards an election, at which I enjoyed my=
self
very much canvassing for the Liberal candidate. The extraordinary thing was
that he got in. I sometimes lie awake at night and meditate upon that myste=
ry;
but it must not detain us now. The rather singular incident which happened =
to
me then, and which some recent events have recalled to me, happened while t=
he
canvassing was still going on. It was a burning blue day, and the warm
sunshine, settling everywhere on the high hedges and the low hills, brought=
out
into a kind of heavy bloom that HUMANE quality of the landscape which, as f=
ar
as I know, only exists in England; that sense as if the bushes and the roads
were human, and had kindness like men; as if the tree were a good giant with
one wooden leg; as if the very line of palings were a row of good-tempered
gnomes. On one side of the white, sprawling road a low hill or down showed =
but
a little higher than the hedge, on the other the land tumbled down into a
valley that opened towards the Mendip hills. The road was very erratic, for
every true English road exists in order to lead one a dance; and what could=
be
more beautiful and beneficent than a dance? At an abrupt turn of it I came =
upon
a low white building, with dark doors and dark shuttered windows, evidently=
not
inhabited and scarcely in the ordinary sense inhabitable--a thing more like=
a
toolhouse than a house of any other kind. Made idle by the heat, I paused, =
and,
taking a piece of red chalk out of my pocket, began drawing aimlessly on the
back door--drawing goblins and Mr. Chamberlain, and finally the ideal
Nationalist with the Kruger beard. The materials did not permit of any deli=
cate
rendering of his noble and national expansion of countenance (stoical and y=
et
hopeful, full of tears for man, and yet of an element of humour); but the h=
at
was finely handled. Just as I was adding the finishing touches to the Kruger
fantasy, I was frozen to the spot with terror. The black door, which I thou=
ght
no more of than the lid of an empty box, began slowly to open, impelled fro=
m within
by a human hand. And President Kruger himself came out into the sunlight!
He was a shade mi=
lder
of eye than he was in his portraits, and he did not wear that ceremonial sc=
arf
which was usually, in such pictures, slung across his ponderous form. But t=
here
was the hat which filled the Empire with so much alarm; there were the clum=
sy
dark clothes, there was the heavy, powerful face; there, above all, was the
Kruger beard which I had sought to evoke (if I may use the verb) from under=
the
features of Mr. Masterman. Whether he had the umbrella or not I was too muc=
h emotionally
shaken to observe; he had not the stone lions with him, or Mrs. Kruger; and
what he was doing in that dark shed I cannot imagine, but I suppose he was
oppressing an Outlander.
I was surprised, I
must confess, to meet President Kruger in Somersetshire during the war. I h=
ad
no idea that he was in the neighbourhood. But a yet more arresting surprise
awaited me. Mr. Kruger regarded me for some moments with a dubious grey eye,
and then addressed me with a strong Somersetshire accent. A curious cold sh=
ock
went through me to hear that inappropriate voice coming out of that familiar
form. It was as if you met a Chinaman, with pigtail and yellow jacket, and =
he began
to talk broad Scotch. But the next moment, of course, I understood the
situation. We had much underrated the Boers in supposing that the Boer
education was incomplete. In pursuit of his ruthless plot against our island
home, the terrible President had learnt not only English, but all the diale=
cts
at a moment's notice to win over a Lancashire merchant or seduce a
Northumberland Fusilier. No doubt, if I asked him, this stout old gentleman
could grind out Sussex, Essex, Norfolk, Suffolk, and so on, like the tunes =
in a
barrel organ. I could not wonder if our plain, true-hearted German milliona=
ires
fell before a cunning so penetrated with culture as this.
.....
And now I come to=
the
third and greatest surprise of all that this strange old man gave me. When =
he
asked me, dryly enough, but not without a certain steady civility that belo=
ngs
to old-fashioned country people, what I wanted and what I was doing, I told=
him
the facts of the case, explaining my political mission and the almost angel=
ic
qualities of the Liberal candidate. Whereupon, this old man became suddenly
transfigured in the sunlight into a devil of wrath. It was some time before=
I
could understand a word he said, but the one word that kept on recurring wa=
s the
word "Kruger," and it was invariably accompanied with a volley of=
violent
terms. Was I for old Kruger, was I? Did I come to him and want him to help =
old
Kruger? I ought to be ashamed, I was... and here he became once more obscur=
e.
The one thing that he made quite clear was that he wouldn't do anything for
Kruger.
"But you ARE
Kruger," burst from my lips, in a natural explosion of reasonableness.
"You ARE Kruger, aren't you?"
After this innoce=
nt
CRI DE COEUR of mine, I thought at first there would be a fight, and I
remembered with regret that the President in early life had had a hobby of
killing lions. But really I began to think that I had been mistaken, and th=
at
it was not the President after all. There was a confounding sincerity in the
anger with which he declared that he was Farmer Bowles, and everybody knowed
it. I appeased him eventually and parted from him at the door of his farmho=
use,
where he left me with a few tags of religion, which again raised my suspici=
ons
of his identity. In the coffee-room to which I returned there was an illust=
rated
paper with a picture of President Kruger, and he and Farmer Bowles were as =
like
as two peas. There was a picture also of a group of Outlander leaders, and =
the
faces of them, leering and triumphant, were perhaps unduly darkened by the
photograph, but they seemed to me like the faces of a distant and hostile
people.
I saw the old man
once again on the fierce night of the poll, when he drove down our Liberal
lines in a little cart ablaze with the blue Tory ribbons, for he was a man =
who
would carry his colours everywhere. It was evening, and the warm western li=
ght
was on the grey hair and heavy massive features of that good old man. I kne=
w as
one knows a fact of sense that if Spanish and German stockbrokers had flood=
ed
his farm or country he would have fought them for ever, not fiercely like a=
n Irishman,
but with the ponderous courage and ponderous cunning of the Boer. I knew th=
at
without seeing it, as certainly as I knew without seeing it that when he we=
nt
into the polling room he put his cross against the Conservative name. Then =
he came
out again, having given his vote and looking more like Kruger than ever. An=
d at
the same hour on the same night thousands upon thousands of English Krugers
gave the same vote. And thus Kruger was pulled down and the dark-faced men =
in
the photograph reigned in his stead.
I sometimes fancy
that every great city must have been built by night. At least, it is only at
night that every part of a great city is great. All architecture is great
architecture after sunset; perhaps architecture is really a nocturnal art, =
like
the art of fireworks. At least, I think many people of those nobler trades =
that
work by night (journalists, policemen, burglars, coffee-stall keepers, and =
such
mistaken enthusiasts as refuse to go home till morning) must often have sto=
od
admiring some black bulk of building with a crown of battlements or a crest=
of
spires and then burst into tears at daybreak to discover that it was only a
haberdasher's shop with huge gold letters across the face of it.
.....
I had a sensation=
of
this sort the other day as I happened to be wandering in the Temple Gardens
towards the end of twilight. I sat down on a bench with my back to the rive=
r,
happening to choose such a place that a huge angle and façade of
building jutting out from the Strand sat above me like an incubus. I dare s=
ay
that if I took the same seat to-morrow by daylight I should find the impres=
sion
entirely false. In sunlight the thing might seem almost distant; but in that
half-darkness it seemed as if the walls were almost falling upon me. Never
before have I had so strongly the sense which makes people pessimists in
politics, the sense of the hopeless height of the high places of the earth.
That pile of wealth and power, whatever was its name, went up above and bey=
ond
me like a cliff that no living thing could climb. I had an irrational sense
that this thing had to be fought, that I had to fight it; and that I could
offer nothing to the occasion but an indolent journalist with a walking-sti=
ck.
Almost as I had t=
he
thought, two windows were lit in that black, blind face. It was as if two e=
yes
had opened in the huge face of a sleeping giant; the eyes were too close
together, and gave it the suggestion of a bestial sneer. And either by acci=
dent
of this light or of some other, I could now read the big letters which spac=
ed
themselves across the front; it was the Babylon Hotel. It was the perfect
symbol of everything that I should like to pull down with my hands if I cou=
ld.
Reared by a detected robber, it is framed to be the fashionable and luxurio=
us
home of undetected robbers. In the house of man are many mansions; but ther=
e is
a class of men who feel normal nowhere except in the Babylon Hotel or in
Dartmoor Gaol. That big black face, which was staring at me with its flaming
eyes too close together, that was indeed the giant of all epic and fairy ta=
les.
But, alas! I was not the giant-killer; the hour had come, but not the man. I
sat down on the seat again (I had had one wild impulse to climb up the fron=
t of
the hotel and fall in at one of the windows), and I tried to think, as all
decent people are thinking, what one can really do. And all the time that
oppressive wall went up in front of me, and took hold upon the heavens like=
a
house of the gods.
.....
It is remarkable =
that
in so many great wars it has been the defeated who have won. The people who
were left worst at the end of the war were generally the people who were le=
ft
best at the end of the whole business. For instance, the Crusades ended in =
the
defeat of the Christians. But they did not end in the decline of the
Christians; they ended in the decline of the Saracens. That huge prophetic =
wave
of Moslem power which had hung in the very heavens above the towns of
Christendom, that wave was broken, and never came on again. The Crusaders h=
ad
saved Paris in the act of losing Jerusalem. The same applies to that epic o=
f Republican
war in the eighteenth century to which we Liberals owe our political creed.=
The
French Revolution ended in defeat: the kings came back across a carpet of d=
ead
at Waterloo. The Revolution had lost its last battle; but it had gained its
first object. It had cut a chasm. The world has never been the same since. =
No
one after that has ever been able to treat the poor merely as a pavement.
These jewels of G=
od,
the poor, are still treated as mere stones of the street; but as stones that
may sometimes fly. If it please God, you and I may see some of the stones
flying again before we see death. But here I only remark the interesting fa=
ct
that the conquered almost always conquer. Sparta killed Athens with a final
blow, and she was born again. Sparta went away victorious, and died slowly =
of
her own wounds. The Boers lost the South African War and gained South Afric=
a.
And this is really
all that we can do when we fight something really stronger than ourselves; =
we
can deal it its death-wound one moment; it deals us death in the end. It is
something if we can shock and jar the unthinking impetus and enormous innoc=
ence
of evil; just as a pebble on a railway can stagger the Scotch express. It is
enough for the great martyrs and criminals of the French revolution, that t=
hey
have surprised for all time the secret weakness of the strong. They have
awakened and set leaping and quivering in his crypt for ever the coward in =
the
hearts of kings.
.....
When Jack the
Giant-Killer really first saw the giant his experience was not such as has =
been
generally supposed. If you care to hear it I will tell you the real story of
Jack the Giant-Killer. To begin with, the most awful thing which Jack first
felt about the giant was that he was not a giant. He came striding across an
interminable wooded plain, and against its remote horizon the giant was qui=
te a
small figure, like a figure in a picture--he seemed merely a man walking ac=
ross
the grass. Then Jack was shocked by remembering that the grass which the man
was treading down was one of the tallest forests upon that plain. The man c=
ame
nearer and nearer, growing bigger and bigger, and at the instant when he pa=
ssed
the possible stature of humanity Jack almost screamed. The rest was an
intolerable apocalypse.
The giant had the=
one
frightful quality of a miracle; the more he became incredible the more he
became solid. The less one could believe in him the more plainly one could =
see
him. It was unbearable that so much of the sky should be occupied by one hu=
man
face. His eyes, which had stood out like bow windows, became bigger yet, and
there was no metaphor that could contain their bigness; yet still they were
human eyes. Jack's intellect was utterly gone under that huge hypnotism of =
the
face that filled the sky; his last hope was submerged, his five wits all st=
ill with
terror.
But there stood u=
p in
him still a kind of cold chivalry, a dignity of dead honour that would not
forget the small and futile sword in his hand. He rushed at one of the colo=
ssal
feet of this human tower, and when he came quite close to it the ankle-bone
arched over him like a cave. Then he planted the point of his sword against=
the
foot and leant on it with all his weight, till it went up to the hilt and b=
roke
the hilt, and then snapped just under it. And it was plain that the giant f=
elt
a sort of prick, for he snatched up his great foot into his great hand for =
an
instant; and then, putting it down again, he bent over and stared at the gr=
ound
until he had seen his enemy.
Then he picked up
Jack between a big finger and thumb and threw him away; and as Jack went
through the air he felt as if he were flying from system to system through =
the
universe of stars. But, as the giant had thrown him away carelessly, he did=
not
strike a stone, but struck soft mire by the side of a distant river. There =
he
lay insensible for several hours; but when he awoke again his horrible
conqueror was still in sight. He was striding away across the void and wood=
ed
plain towards where it ended in the sea; and by this time he was only much
higher than any of the hills. He grew less and less indeed; but only as a
really high mountain grows at last less and less when we leave it in a rail=
way train.
Half an hour afterwards he was a bright blue colour, as are the distant hil=
ls;
but his outline was still human and still gigantic. Then the big blue figure
seemed to come to the brink of the big blue sea, and even as it did so it
altered its attitude. Jack, stunned and bleeding, lifted himself laboriously
upon one elbow to stare. The giant once more caught hold of his ankle, wave=
red
twice as in a wind, and then went over into the great sea which washes the
whole world, and which, alone of all things God has made, was big enough to
drown him.
People accuse
journalism of being too personal; but to me it has always seemed far too
impersonal. It is charged with tearing away the veils from private life; bu=
t it
seems to me to be always dropping diaphanous but blinding veils between men=
and
men. The Yellow Press is abused for exposing facts which are private; I wish
the Yellow Press did anything so valuable. It is exactly the decisive
individual touches that it never gives; and a proof of this is that after o=
ne
has met a man a million times in the newspapers it is always a complete sho=
ck
and reversal to meet him in real life. The Yellow Pressman seems to have no
power of catching the first fresh fact about a man that dominates all after=
impressions.
For instance, before I met Bernard Shaw I heard that he spoke with a reckle=
ss
desire for paradox or a sneering hatred of sentiment; but I never knew till=
he
opened his mouth that he spoke with an Irish accent, which is more important
than all the other criticisms put together.
Journalism is not
personal enough. So far from digging out private personalities, it cannot e=
ven
report the obvious personalities on the surface. Now there is one vivid and
even bodily impression of this kind which we have all felt when we met great
poets or politicians, but which never finds its way into the newspapers. I =
mean
the impression that they are much older than we thought they were. We conne=
ct
great men with their great triumphs, which generally happened some years ag=
o,
and many recruits enthusiastic for the thin Napoleon of Marengo must have f=
ound
themselves in the presence of the fat Napoleon of Leipzic.
I remember readin=
g a
newspaper account of how a certain rising politician confronted the House of
Lords with the enthusiasm almost of boyhood. It described how his "bra=
ve
young voice" rang in the rafters. I also remember that I met him some =
days
after, and he was considerably older than my own father. I mention this tru=
th
for only one purpose: all this generalisation leads up to only one fact--the
fact that I once met a great man who was younger than I expected.
.....
I had come over t=
he
wooded wall from the villages about Epsom, and down a stumbling path between
trees towards the valley in which Dorking lies. A warm sunlight was working=
its
way through the leafage; a sunlight which though of saintless gold had take=
n on
the quality of evening. It was such sunlight as reminds a man that the sun
begins to set an instant after noon. It seemed to lessen as the wood
strengthened and the road sank.
I had a sensation
peculiar to such entangled descents; I felt that the treetops that closed a=
bove
me were the fixed and real things, certain as the level of the sea; but that
the solid earth was every instant failing under my feet. In a little while =
that
splendid sunlight showed only in splashes, like flaming stars and suns in t=
he
dome of green sky. Around me in that emerald twilight were trunks of trees =
of
every plain or twisted type; it was like a chapel supported on columns of e=
very
earthly and unearthly style of architecture.
Without intention=
my
mind grew full of fancies on the nature of the forest; on the whole philoso=
phy
of mystery and force. For the meaning of woods is the combination of energy
with complexity. A forest is not in the least rude or barbarous; it is only
dense with delicacy. Unique shapes that an artist would copy or a philosoph=
er
watch for years if he found them in an open plain are here mingled and
confounded; but it is not a darkness of deformity. It is a darkness of life=
; a
darkness of perfection. And I began to think how much of the highest human
obscurity is like this, and how much men have misunderstood it. People will
tell you, for instance, that theology became elaborate because it was dead.=
Believe
me, if it had been dead it would never have become elaborate; it is only the
live tree that grows too many branches.
.....
These trees thinn=
ed
and fell away from each other, and I came out into deep grass and a road. I
remember being surprised that the evening was so far advanced; I had a fancy
that this valley had a sunset all to itself. I went along that road accordi=
ng
to directions that had been given me, and passed the gateway in a slight pa=
ling
beyond which the wood changed only faintly to a garden. It was as if the
curious courtesy and fineness of that character I was to meet went out from=
him
upon the valley; for I felt on all these things the finger of that quality
which the old English called "faërie"; it is the quality whi=
ch
those can never understand who think of the past as merely brutal; it is an
ancient elegance such as there is in trees. I went through the garden and s=
aw an
old man sitting by a table, looking smallish in his big chair. He was alrea=
dy
an invalid, and his hair and beard were both white; not like snow, for snow=
is
cold and heavy, but like something feathery, or even fierce; rather they we=
re
white like the white thistledown. I came up quite close to him; he looked a=
t me
as he put out his frail hand, and I saw of a sudden that his eyes were star=
tlingly
young. He was the one great man of the old world whom I have met who was no=
t a
mere statue over his own grave.
He was deaf and he
talked like a torrent. He did not talk about the books he had written; he w=
as
far too much alive for that. He talked about the books he had not written. =
He
unrolled a purple bundle of romances which he had never had time to sell. He
asked me to write one of the stories for him, as he would have asked the
milkman, if he had been talking to the milkman. It was a splendid and frant=
ic
story, a sort of astronomical farce. It was all about a man who was rushing=
up
to the Royal Society with the only possible way of avoiding an earth-destro=
ying
comet; and it showed how, even on this huge errand, the man was tripped up =
at
every other minute by his own weakness and vanities; how he lost a train by
trifling or was put in gaol for brawling. That is only one of them; there w=
ere
ten or twenty more. Another, I dimly remember, was a version of the fall of
Parnell; the idea that a quite honest man might be secret from a pure love =
of
secrecy, of solitary self-control. I went out of that garden with a blurred
sensation of the million possibilities of creative literature. The feeling
increased as my way fell back into the wood; for a wood is a palace with a
million corridors that cross each other everywhere. I really had the feeling
that I had seen the creative quality; which is supernatural. I had seen what
Virgil calls the Old Man of the Forest: I had seen an elf. The trees throng=
ed
behind my path; I have never seen him again; and now I shall not see him, b=
ecause
he died last Tuesday.
Those thinkers who
cannot believe in any gods often assert that the love of humanity would be =
in
itself sufficient for them; and so, perhaps, it would, if they had it. Ther=
e is
a very real thing which may be called the love of humanity; in our time it
exists almost entirely among what are called uneducated people; and it does=
not
exist at all among the people who talk about it.
A positive pleasu=
re
in being in the presence of any other human being is chiefly remarkable, for
instance, in the masses on Bank Holiday; that is why they are so much nearer
Heaven (despite appearances) than any other part of our population.
I remember seeing=
a
crowd of factory girls getting into an empty train at a wayside country
station. There were about twenty of them; they all got into one carriage; a=
nd
they left all the rest of the train entirely empty. That is the real love of
humanity. That is the definite pleasure in the immediate proximity of one's=
own
kind. Only this coarse, rank, real love of men seems to be entirely lacking=
in
those who propose the love of humanity as a substitute for all other love;
honourable, rationalistic idealists.
I can well rememb=
er
the explosion of human joy which marked the sudden starting of that train; =
all
the factory girls who could not find seats (and they must have been the
majority) relieving their feelings by jumping up and down. Now I have never
seen any rationalistic idealists do this. I have never seen twenty modern
philosophers crowd into one third-class carriage for the mere pleasure of b=
eing
together. I have never seen twenty Mr. McCabes all in one carriage and all
jumping up and down.
Some people expre=
ss a
fear that vulgar trippers will overrun all beautiful places, such as Hampst=
ead
or Burnham Beeches. But their fear is unreasonable; because trippers always
prefer to trip together; they pack as close as they can; they have a
suffocating passion of philanthropy.
.....
But among the min=
or
and milder aspects of the same principle, I have no hesitation in placing t=
he
problem of the colloquial barber. Before any modern man talks with authority
about loving men, I insist (I insist with violence) that he shall always be
very much pleased when his barber tries to talk to him. His barber is human=
ity:
let him love that. If he is not pleased at this, I will not accept any
substitute in the way of interest in the Congo or the future of Japan. If a=
man
cannot love his barber whom he has seen, how shall he love the Japanese who=
m he
has not seen?
It is urged again=
st
the barber that he begins by talking about the weather; so do all dukes and
diplomatists, only that they talk about it with ostentatious fatigue and
indifference, whereas the barber talks about it with an astonishing, nay
incredible, freshness of interest. It is objected to him that he tells peop=
le
that they are going bald. That is to say, his very virtues are cast up agai=
nst
him; he is blamed because, being a specialist, he is a sincere specialist, =
and
because, being a tradesman, he is not entirely a slave. But the only proof =
of such
things is by example; therefore I will prove the excellence of the conversa=
tion
of barbers by a specific case. Lest any one should accuse me of attempting =
to
prove it by fictitious means, I beg to say quite seriously that though I fo=
rget
the exact language employed, the following conversation between me and a hu=
man
(I trust), living barber really took place a few days ago.
.....
I had been invite=
d to
some At Home to meet the Colonial Premiers, and lest I should be mistaken f=
or
some partly reformed bush-ranger out of the interior of Australia I went in=
to a
shop in the Strand to get shaved. While I was undergoing the torture the ma=
n said
to me:
"There seems=
to
be a lot in the papers about this new shaving, sir. It seems you can shave
yourself with anything--with a stick or a stone or a pole or a poker"
(here I began for the first time to detect a sarcastic intonation) "or=
a
shovel or a----"
Here he hesitated=
for
a word, and I, although I knew nothing about the matter, helped him out with
suggestions in the same rhetorical vein.
"Or a
button-hook," I said, "or a blunderbuss or a battering-ram or a p=
iston-rod----"
He resumed, refre=
shed
with this assistance, "Or a curtain rod or a candle-stick, or a----&qu=
ot;
"Cow-catcher=
,"
I suggested eagerly, and we continued in this ecstatic duet for some time. =
Then
I asked him what it was all about, and he told me. He explained the thing
eloquently and at length.
"The funny p=
art
of it is," he said, "that the thing isn't new at all. It's been
talked about ever since I was a boy, and long before. There is always a not=
ion
that the razor might be done without somehow. But none of those schemes ever
came to anything; and I don't believe myself that this will."
"Why, as to
that," I said, rising slowly from the chair and trying to put on my co=
at
inside out, "I don't know how it may be in the case of you and your new
shaving. Shaving, with all respect to you, is a trivial and materialistic
thing, and in such things startling inventions are sometimes made. But what=
you
say reminds me in some dark and dreamy fashion of something else. I recall =
it
especially when you tell me, with such evident experience and sincerity, th=
at
the new shaving is not really new. My friend, the human race is always tryi=
ng
this dodge of making everything entirely easy; but the difficulty which it
shifts off one thing it shifts on to another. If one man has not the toil o=
f preparing
a man's chin, I suppose that some other man has the toil of preparing somet=
hing
very curious to put on a man's chin. It would be nice if we could be shaved
without troubling anybody. It would be nicer still if we could go unshaved
without annoying anybody--
"'But, O wise friend, c=
hief
Barber of the Strand, Brother, no=
r you
nor I have made the world.'
"Whoever made
it, who is wiser, and we hope better than we, made it under strange
limitations, and with painful conditions of pleasure.
"In the first
and darkest of its books it is fiercely written that a man shall not eat his
cake and have it; and though all men talked until the stars were old it wou=
ld
still be true that a man who has lost his razor could not shave with it. But
every now and then men jump up with the new something or other and say that
everything can be had without sacrifice, that bad is good if you are only
enlightened, and that there is no real difference between being shaved and =
not
being shaved. The difference, they say, is only a difference of degree;
everything is evolutionary and relative. Shavedness is immanent in man. Eve=
ry
ten-penny nail is a Potential Razor. The superstitious people of the past (=
they
say) believed that a lot of black bristles standing out at right angles to =
one's
face was a positive affair. But the higher criticism teaches us better.
Bristles are merely negative. They are a Shadow where Shaving should be.
"Well, it all
goes on, and I suppose it all means something. But a baby is the Kingdom of
God, and if you try to kiss a baby he will know whether you are shaved or n=
ot.
Perhaps I am mixing up being shaved and being saved; my democratic sympathi=
es
have always led me to drop my 'h's.' In another moment I may suggest that g=
oats
represent the lost because goats have long beards. This is growing altogeth=
er
too allegorical.
"Nevertheles=
s,"
I added, as I paid the bill, "I have really been profoundly interested=
in
what you told me about the New Shaving. Have you ever heard of a thing call=
ed
the New theology?"
He smiled and said
that he had not.
There is only one
reason why all grown-up people do not play with toys; and it is a fair reas=
on.
The reason is that playing with toys takes so very much more time and troub=
le
than anything else. Playing as children mean playing is the most serious th=
ing
in the world; and as soon as we have small duties or small sorrows we have =
to
abandon to some extent so enormous and ambitious a plan of life. We have en=
ough
strength for politics and commerce and art and philosophy; we have not enou=
gh strength
for play. This is a truth which every one will recognize who, as a child, h=
as
ever played with anything at all; any one who has played with bricks, any o=
ne
who has played with dolls, any one who has played with tin soldiers. My
journalistic work, which earns money, is not pursued with such awful
persistency as that work which earned nothing.
.....
Take the case of
bricks. If you publish a book to-morrow in twelve volumes (it would be just
like you) on "The Theory and Practice of European Architecture," =
your
work may be laborious, but it is fundamentally frivolous. It is not serious=
as
the work of a child piling one brick on the other is serious; for the simple
reason that if your book is a bad book no one will ever be able ultimately =
and
entirely to prove to you that it is a bad book. Whereas if his balance of
bricks is a bad balance of bricks, it will simply tumble down. And if I kno=
w anything
of children, he will set to work solemnly and sadly to build it up again. W=
hereas,
if I know anything of authors, nothing would induce you to write your book
again, or even to think of it again if you could help it.
Take the case of
dolls. It is much easier to care for an educational cause than to care for a
doll. It is as easy to write an article on education as to write an article=
on
toffee or tramcars or anything else. But it is almost as difficult to look
after a doll as to look after a child. The little girls that I meet in the
little streets of Battersea worship their dolls in a way that reminds one n=
ot
so much of play as idolatry. In some cases the love and care of the artistic
symbol has actually become more important than the human reality which it w=
as,
I suppose, originally meant to symbolize.
I remember a
Battersea little girl who wheeled her large baby sister stuffed into a doll=
's
perambulator. When questioned on this course of conduct, she replied: "=
;I
haven't got a dolly, and Baby is pretending to be my dolly." Nature was
indeed imitating art. First a doll had been a substitute for a child;
afterwards a child was a mere substitute for a doll. But that opens other
matters; the point is here that such devotion takes up most of the brain and
most of the life; much as if it were really the thing which it is supposed =
to
symbolize. The point is that the man writing on motherhood is merely an
educationalist; the child playing with a doll is a mother.
Take the case of
soldiers. A man writing an article on military strategy is simply a man wri=
ting
an article; a horrid sight. But a boy making a campaign with tin soldiers is
like a General making a campaign with live soldiers. He must to the limit of
his juvenile powers think about the thing; whereas the war correspondent ne=
ed
not think at all. I remember a war correspondent who remarked after the cap=
ture
of Methuen: "This renewed activity on the part of Delarey is probably =
due
to his being short of stores." The same military critic had mentioned a
few paragraphs before that Delarey was being hard pressed by a column which=
was
pursuing him under the command of Methuen. Methuen chased Delarey; and
Delarey's activity was due to his being short of stores. Otherwise he would
have stood quite still while he was chased. I run after Jones with a hatche=
t,
and if he turns round and tries to get rid of me the only possible explanat=
ion
is that he has a very small balance at his bankers. I cannot believe that a=
ny
boy playing at soldiers would be as idiotic as this. But then any one playi=
ng
at anything has to be serious. Whereas, as I have only too good reason to k=
now,
if you are writing an article you can say anything that comes into your hea=
d.
.....
Broadly, then, wh= at keeps adults from joining in children's games is, generally speaking, not t= hat they have no pleasure in them; it is simply that they have no leisure for t= hem. It is that they cannot afford the expenditure of toil and time and consideration for so grand and grave a scheme. I have been myself attempting for some time past to complete a play in a small toy theatre, the sort of t= oy theatre that used to be called Penny Plain and Twopence Coloured; only that I drew = and coloured the figures and scenes myself. Hence I was free from the degrading= obligation of having to pay either a penny or twopence; I only had to pay a shilling a sheet for good cardboard and a shilling a box for bad water colours. The ki= nd of miniature stage I mean is probably familiar to every one; it is never mo= re than a development of the stage which Skelt made and Stevenson celebrated.<= o:p>
But though I have
worked much harder at the toy theatre than I ever worked at any tale or
article, I cannot finish it; the work seems too heavy for me. I have to bre=
ak
off and betake myself to lighter employments; such as the biographies of gr=
eat
men. The play of "St. George and the Dragon," over which I have b=
urnt
the midnight oil (you must colour the thing by lamplight because that is ho=
w it
will be seen), still lacks most conspicuously, alas! two wings of the Sulta=
n's
Palace, and also some comprehensible and workable way of getting up the
curtain.
All this gives me=
a
feeling touching the real meaning of immortality. In this world we cannot h=
ave
pure pleasure. This is partly because pure pleasure would be dangerous to us
and to our neighbours. But it is partly because pure pleasure is a great de=
al
too much trouble. If I am ever in any other and better world, I hope that I
shall have enough time to play with nothing but toy theatres; and I hope th=
at I
shall have enough divine and superhuman energy to act at least one play in =
them
without a hitch.
.....
Meanwhile the
philosophy of toy theatres is worth any one's consideration. All the essent=
ial
morals which modern men need to learn could be deduced from this toy.
Artistically considered, it reminds us of the main principle of art, the pr=
inciple
which is in most danger of being forgotten in our time. I mean the fact that
art consists of limitation; the fact that art is limitation. Art does not
consist in expanding things. Art consists of cutting things down, as I cut =
down
with a pair of scissors my very ugly figures of St. George and the Dragon.
Plato, who liked definite ideas, would like my cardboard dragon; for though=
the
creature has few other artistic merits he is at least dragonish. The modern
philosopher, who likes infinity, is quite welcome to a sheet of the plain
cardboard. The most artistic thing about the theatrical art is the fact that
the spectator looks at the whole thing through a window. This is true even =
of
theatres inferior to my own; even at the Court Theatre or His Majesty's you=
are
looking through a window; an unusually large window. But the advantage of t=
he
small theatre exactly is that you are looking through a small window. Has n=
ot
every one noticed how sweet and startling any landscape looks when seen thr=
ough
an arch? This strong, square shape, this shutting off of everything else is=
not
only an assistance to beauty; it is the essential of beauty. The most beaut=
iful
part of every picture is the frame.
This especially is
true of the toy theatre; that, by reducing the scale of events it can intro=
duce
much larger events. Because it is small it could easily represent the
earthquake in Jamaica. Because it is small it could easily represent the Da=
y of
Judgment. Exactly in so far as it is limited, so far it could play easily w=
ith
falling cities or with falling stars. Meanwhile the big theatres are oblige=
d to
be economical because they are big. When we have understood this fact we sh=
all
have understood something of the reason why the world has always been first
inspired by small nationalities. The vast Greek philosophy could fit easier
into the small city of Athens than into the immense Empire of Persia. In th=
e narrow
streets of Florence Dante felt that there was room for Purgatory and Heaven=
and
Hell. He would have been stifled by the British Empire. Great empires are
necessarily prosaic; for it is beyond human power to act a great poem upon =
so
great a scale. You can only represent very big ideas in very small spaces. =
My
toy theatre is as philosophical as the drama of Athens.
XXIV. A Tragedy of Twopen=
ce
My relations with=
the
readers of this page have been long and pleasant, but--perhaps for that very
reason--I feel that the time has come when I ought to confess the one great
crime of my life. It happened a long time ago; but it is not uncommon for a
belated burst of remorse to reveal such dark episodes long after they have
occurred. It has nothing to do with the orgies of the Anti-Puritan League. =
That
body is so offensively respectable that a newspaper, in describing it the o=
ther
day, referred to my friend Mr. Edgar Jepson as Canon Edgar Jepson; and it is
believed that similar titles are intended for all of us. No; it is not by t=
he conduct
of Archbishop Crane, of Dean Chesterton, of the Rev. James Douglas, of
Monsignor Bland, and even of that fine and virile old ecclesiastic, Cardinal
Nesbit, that I wish (or rather, am driven by my conscience) to make this
declaration. The crime was committed in solitude and without accomplices. A=
lone
I did it. Let me, with the characteristic thirst of penitents to get the wo=
rst
of the confession over, state it first of all in its most dreadful and
indefensible form. There is at the present moment in a town in Germany (unl=
ess
he has died of rage on discovering his wrong), a restaurant-keeper to whom I
still owe twopence. I last left his open-air restaurant knowing that I owed=
him
twopence. I carried it away under his nose, despite the fact that the nose =
was
a decidedly Jewish one. I have never paid him, and it is highly improbable =
that
I ever shall. How did this villainy come to occur in a life which has been,
generally speaking, deficient in the dexterity necessary for fraud? The sto=
ry
is as follows--and it has a moral, though there may not be room for that.
.....
It is a fair gene=
ral
rule for those travelling on the Continent that the easiest way of talking =
in a
foreign language is to talk philosophy. The most difficult kind of talking =
is
to talk about common necessities. The reason is obvious. The names of common
necessities vary completely with each nation and are generally somewhat odd=
and
quaint. How, for instance, could a Frenchman suppose that a coalbox would be
called a "scuttle"? If he has ever seen the word scuttle it has b=
een
in the
Jingo Press, where
the "policy of scuttle" is used whenever we give up something to a
small Power like Liberals, instead of giving up everything to a great Power,
like Imperialists. What Englishman in Germany would be poet enough to guess
that the Germans call a glove a "hand-shoe." Nations name their
necessities by nicknames, so to speak. They call their tubs and stools by
quaint, elvish, and almost affectionate names, as if they were their own
children! But any one can argue about abstract things in a foreign language=
who
has ever got as far as Exercise IV. in a primer. For as soon as he can put =
a sentence
together at all he finds that the words used in abstract or philosophical
discussions are almost the same in all nations. They are the same, for the
simple reason that they all come from the things that were the roots of our
common civilisation. From Christianity, from the Roman Empire, from the
mediaeval Church, or the French Revolution. "Nation,"
"citizen," "religion," "philosophy,"
"authority," "the Republic," words like these are nearly
the same in all the countries in which we travel. Restrain, therefore, your
exuberant admiration for the young man who can argue with six French atheis=
ts
when he first lands at Dieppe. Even I can do that. But very likely the same
young man does not know the French for a shoe-horn. But to this generalisat=
ion
there are three great exceptions. (1) In the case of countries that are not=
European
at all, and have never had our civic conceptions, or the old Latin scholars=
hip.
I do not pretend that the Patagonian phrase for "citizenship" at =
once
leaps to the mind, or that a Dyak's word for "the Republic" has b=
een
familiar to me from the nursery. (2) In the case of Germany, where, although
the principle does apply to many words such as "nation" and
"philosophy," it does not apply so generally, because Germany has=
had
a special and deliberate policy of encouraging the purely German part of its
language. (3) In the case where one does not know any of the language at al=
l,
as is generally the case with me.
.....
Such at least was=
my
situation on the dark day on which I committed my crime. Two of the excepti=
onal
conditions which I have mentioned were combined. I was walking about a Germ=
an
town, and I knew no German. I knew, however, two or three of those great and
solemn words which hold our European civilisation together--one of which is
"cigar." As it was a hot and dreamy day, I sat down at a table in=
a
sort of beer-garden, and ordered a cigar and a pot of lager. I drank the la=
ger,
and paid for it. I smoked the cigar, forgot to pay for it, and walked away,
gazing rapturously at the royal outline of the Taunus mountains. After abou=
t ten
minutes, I suddenly remembered that I had not paid for the cigar. I went ba=
ck
to the place of refreshment, and put down the money. But the proprietor als=
o had
forgotten the cigar, and he merely said guttural things in a tone of query,
asking me, I suppose, what I wanted. I said "cigar," and he gave =
me a
cigar. I endeavoured while putting down the money to wave away the cigar wi=
th
gestures of refusal. He thought that my rejection was of the nature of a
condemnation of that particular cigar, and brought me another. I whirled my
arms like a windmill, seeking to convey by the sweeping universality of my
gesture that my rejection was a rejection of cigars in general, not of that
particular article. He mistook this for the ordinary impatience of common m=
en,
and rushed forward, his hands filled with miscellaneous cigars, pressing th=
em
upon me. In desperation I tried other kinds of pantomime, but the more ciga=
rs I
refused the more and more rare and precious cigars were brought out of the
deeps and recesses of the establishment. I tried in vain to think of a way =
of
conveying to him the fact that I had already had the cigar. I imitated the
action of a citizen smoking, knocking off and throwing away a cigar. The
watchful proprietor only thought I was rehearsing (as in an ecstasy of
anticipation) the joys of the cigar he was going to give me. At last I reti=
red
baffled: he would not take the money and leave the cigars alone. So that th=
is
restaurant-keeper (in whose face a love of money shone like the sun at noon=
day)
flatly and firmly refused to receive the twopence that I certainly owed him;
and I took that twopence of his away with me and rioted on it for months. I=
hope
that on the last day the angels will break the truth very gently to that
unhappy man.
.....
This is the true =
and
exact account of the Great Cigar Fraud, and the moral of it is this--that
civilisation is founded upon abstractions. The idea of debt is one which ca=
nnot
be conveyed by physical motions at all, because it is an abstract idea. And
civilisation obviously would be nothing without debt. So when hard-headed
fellows who study scientific sociology (which does not exist) come and tell=
you
that civilisation is material or indifferent to the abstract, just ask
yourselves how many of the things that make up our Society, the Law, or the
Stocks and Shares, or the National Debt, you would be able to convey with y=
our
face and your ten fingers by grinning and gesticulating to a German innkeep=
er.
XXV. A Cab Ride Across
Country
Sown somewhere far
off in the shallow dales of Hertfordshire there lies a village of great bea=
uty,
and I doubt not of admirable virtue, but of eccentric and unbalanced litera=
ry
taste, which asked the present writer to come down to it on Sunday afternoon
and give an address.
Now it was very
difficult to get down to it at all on Sunday afternoon, owing to the
indescribable state into which our national laws and customs have fallen in
connection with the seventh day. It is not Puritanism; it is simply anarchy=
. I
should have some sympathy with the Jewish Sabbath, if it were a Jewish Sabb=
ath,
and that for three reasons; first, that religion is an intrinsically
sympathetic thing; second, that I cannot conceive any religion worth callin=
g a
religion without a fixed and material observance; and third, that the
particular observance of sitting still and doing no work is one that suits =
my
temperament down to the ground.
But the absurdity=
of
the modern English convention is that it does not let a man sit still; it o=
nly
perpetually trips him up when it has forced him to walk about. Our
Sabbatarianism does not forbid us to ask a man in Battersea to come and tal=
k in
Hertfordshire; it only prevents his getting there. I can understand that a
deity might be worshipped with joys, with flowers, and fireworks in the old
European style. I can understand that a deity might be worshipped with sorr=
ows.
But I cannot imagine any deity being worshipped with inconveniences. Let the
good Moslem go to Mecca, or let him abide in his tent, according to his fee=
lings
for religious symbols. But surely Allah cannot see anything particularly
dignified in his servant being misled by the time-table, finding that the o=
ld
Mecca express is not running, missing his connection at Bagdad, or having to
wait three hours in a small side station outside Damascus.
So it was with me=
on
this occasion. I found there was no telegraph service at all to this place;=
I
found there was only one weak thread of train-service. Now if this had been=
the
authority of real English religion, I should have submitted to it at once. =
If I
believed that the telegraph clerk could not send the telegram because he wa=
s at
that moment rigid in an ecstasy of prayer, I should think all telegrams uni=
mportant
in comparison. If I could believe that railway porters when relieved from t=
heir
duties rushed with passion to the nearest place of worship, I should say th=
at
all lectures and everything else ought to give way to such a consideration.=
I
should not complain if the national faith forbade me to make any appointmen=
ts
of labour or self-expression on the Sabbath. But, as it is, it only tells me
that I may very probably keep the Sabbath by not keeping the appointment.
.....
But I must resume=
the
real details of my tale. I found that there was only one train in the whole=
of
that Sunday by which I could even get within several hours or several miles=
of
the time or place. I therefore went to the telephone, which is one of my
favourite toys, and down which I have shouted many valuable, but prematurely
arrested, monologues upon art and morals. I remember a mild shock of surpri=
se
when I discovered that one could use the telephone on Sunday; I did not exp=
ect
it to be cut off, but I expected it to buzz more than on ordinary days, to =
the advancement
of our national religion. Through this instrument, in fewer words than usua=
l,
and with a comparative economy of epigram, I ordered a taxi-cab to take me =
to
the railway station. I have not a word to say in general either against
telephones or taxi-cabs; they seem to me two of the purest and most poetic =
of
the creations of modern scientific civilisation. Unfortunately, when the
taxi-cab started, it did exactly what modern scientific civilisation has do=
ne--it
broke down. The result of this was that when I arrived at King's Cross my o=
nly
train was gone; there was a Sabbath calm in the station, a calm in the eyes=
of
the porters, and in my breast, if calm at all, if any calm, a calm despair.=
There was not,
however, very much calm of any sort in my breast on first making the discov=
ery;
and it was turned to blinding horror when I learnt that I could not even se=
nd a
telegram to the organisers of the meeting. To leave my entertainers in the
lurch was sufficiently exasperating; to leave them without any intimation w=
as
simply low. I reasoned with the official. I said: "Do you really mean =
to
say that if my brother were dying and my mother in this place, I could not
communicate with her?" He was a man of literal and laborious mind; he
asked me if my brother was dying. I answered that he was in excellent and e=
ven
offensive health, but that I was inquiring upon a question of principle. Wh=
at
would happen if England were invaded, or if I alone knew how to turn aside =
a comet
or an earthquake. He waved away these hypotheses in the most irresponsible =
spirit,
but he was quite certain that telegrams could not reach this particular
village. Then something exploded in me; that element of the outrageous whic=
h is
the mother of all adventures sprang up ungovernable, and I decided that I w=
ould
not be a cad merely because some of my remote ancestors had been Calvinists=
. I
would keep my appointment if I lost all my money and all my wits. I went out
into the quiet London street, where my quiet London cab was still waiting f=
or
its fare in the cold misty morning. I placed myself comfortably in the Lond=
on
cab and told the London driver to drive me to the other end of Hertfordshir=
e.
And he did.
.....
I shall not forget
that drive. It was doubtful weather, even in a motor-cab, the thing was
possible with any consideration for the driver, not to speak of some slight
consideration for the people in the road. I urged the driver to eat and dri=
nk
something before he started, but he said (with I know not what pride of
profession or delicate sense of adventure) that he would rather do it when =
we
arrived--if we ever did. I was by no means so delicate; I bought a varied
selection of pork-pies at a little shop that was open (why was that shop
open?--it is all a mystery), and ate them as we went along. The beginning w=
as
sombre and irritating. I was annoyed, not with people, but with things, lik=
e a baby;
with the motor for breaking down and with Sunday for being Sunday. And the
sight of the northern slums expanded and ennobled, but did not decrease, my
gloom: Whitechapel has an Oriental gaudiness in its squalor; Battersea and
Camberwell have an indescribable bustle of democracy; but the poor parts of
North London... well, perhaps I saw them wrongly under that ashen morning a=
nd
on that foolish errand.
It was one of tho=
se
days which more than once this year broke the retreat of winter; a winter d=
ay
that began too late to be spring. We were already clear of the obstructing
crowds and quickening our pace through a borderland of market gardens and
isolated public-houses, when the grey showed golden patches and a good light
began to glitter on everything. The cab went quicker and quicker. The open =
land
whirled wider and wider; but I did not lose my sense of being battled with =
and
thwarted that I had felt in the thronged slums. Rather the feeling increase=
d,
because of the great difficulty of space and time. The faster went the car,=
the
fiercer and thicker I felt the fight.
The whole landsca=
pe
seemed charging at me--and just missing me. The tall, shining grass went by
like showers of arrows; the very trees seemed like lances hurled at my hear=
t,
and shaving it by a hair's breadth. Across some vast, smooth valley I saw a
beech-tree by the white road stand up little and defiant. It grew bigger and
bigger with blinding rapidity. It charged me like a tilting knight, seemed =
to
hack at my head, and pass by. Sometimes when we went round a curve of road,=
the
effect was yet more awful. It seemed as if some tree or windmill swung roun=
d to
smite like a boomerang. The sun by this time was a blazing fact; and I saw =
that
all Nature is chivalrous and militant. We do wrong to seek peace in Nature;=
we
should rather seek the nobler sort of war; and see all the trees as green
banners.
.....
I gave my address,
arriving just when everybody was deciding to leave. When my cab came reeling
into the market-place they decided, with evident disappointment, to remain.
Over the lecture I draw a veil. When I came back home I was called to the t=
elephone,
and a meek voice expressed regret for the failure of the motor-cab, and even
said something about any reasonable payment. "Whom can I pay for my ow=
n superb
experience? What is the usual charge for seeing the clouds shattered by the
sun? What is the market price of a tree blue on the sky-line and then blind=
ing
white in the sun? Mention your price for that windmill that stood behind the
hollyhocks in the garden. Let me pay you for..." Here it was, I think,
that we were cut off.
For three days and
three nights the sea had charged England as Napoleon charged her at Waterlo=
o.
The phrase is instinctive, because away to the last grey line of the sea th=
ere
was only the look of galloping squadrons, impetuous, but with a common purp=
ose.
The sea came on like cavalry, and when it touched the shore it opened the
blazing eyes and deafening tongues of the artillery. I saw the worst assaul=
t at
night on a seaside parade where the sea smote on the doors of England with =
the hammers
of earthquake, and a white smoke went up into the black heavens. There one
could thoroughly realise what an awful thing a wave really is. I talk like
other people about the rushing swiftness of a wave. But the horrible thing
about a wave is its hideous slowness. It lifts its load of water laboriousl=
y:
in that style at once slow and slippery in which a Titan might lift a load =
of
rock and then let it slip at last to be shattered into shock of dust. In fr=
ont
of me that night the waves were not like water: they were like falling city
walls. The breaker rose first as if it did not wish to attack the earth; it
wished only to attack the stars. For a time it stood up in the air as natur=
ally
as a tower; then it went a little wrong in its outline, like a tower that m=
ight
some day fall. When it fell it was as if a powder magazine blew up.
.....
I have never seen
such a sea. All the time there blew across the land one of those stiff and
throttling winds that one can lean up against like a wall. One expected
anything to be blown out of shape at any instant; the lamp-post to be snapp=
ed
like a green stalk, the tree to be whirled away like a straw. I myself shou=
ld
certainly have been blown out of shape if I had possessed any shape to be b=
lown
out of; for I walked along the edge of the stone embankment above the black=
and
battering sea and could not rid myself of the idea that it was an invasion =
of
England. But as I walked along this edge I was somewhat surprised to find t=
hat as
I neared a certain spot another noise mingled with the ceaseless cannonade =
of
the sea.
Somewhere at the
back, in some pleasure ground or casino or place of entertainment, an undau=
nted
brass band was playing against the cosmic uproar. I do not know what band it
was. Judging from the boisterous British Imperialism of most of the airs it
played, I should think it was a German band. But there was no doubt about i=
ts
energy, and when I came quite close under it it really drowned the storm. It
was playing such things as "Tommy Atkins" and "You Can Depen=
d on
Young Australia," and many others of which I do not know the words, bu=
t I
should think they would be "John, Pat, and Mac, With the Union Jack,&q=
uot;
or that fine though unwritten poem, "Wait till the Bull Dog gets a bit=
e of
you." Now, I for one detest Imperialism, but I have a great deal of
sympathy with Jingoism. And there seemed something so touching about this
unbroken and innocent bragging under the brutal menace of Nature that it ma=
de,
if I may so put it, two tunes in my mind. It is so obvious and so jolly to =
be
optimistic about England, especially when you are an optimist--and an
Englishman. But through all that glorious brass came the voice of the invas=
ion,
the undertone of that awful sea. I did a foolish thing. As I could not expr=
ess
my meaning in an article, I tried to express it in a poem--a bad one. You c=
an
call it what you like. It might be called "Doubt," or
"Brighton." It might be called "The Patriot," or yet ag=
ain "The
German Band." I would call it "The Two Voices," but that tit=
le
has been taken for a grossly inferior poem. This is how it began--
"They say the sun is on your =
knees A lamp to light your la=
nds
from harm, They s=
ay you
turn the seven seas To
little brooks about your farm. I hear the sea and the =
new
song that calls y=
ou
empress all day long.
"(O fallen and fouled! O you =
that
lie Dying in
swamps--you shall not die, Your rich have secrets,=
and
stronge lust, You=
r poor
are chased about like dust, Emptied of anger and
surprise-- And Go=
d has
gone out of their eyes, Your cohorts break--your
captains lie, I s=
ay to
you, you shall not die.)"
Then I revived a
little, remembering that after all there is an English country that the
Imperialists have never found. The British Empire may annex what it likes, =
it
will never annex England. It has not even discovered the island, let alone
conquered it. I took up the two tunes again with a greater sympathy for the
first--
"I know the bright bapt=
ismal
rains, I lov=
e your
tender troubled skies, I know your little
climbing lanes, Are p=
eering
into Paradise, From open hearth =
to
orchard cool, How
bountiful and beautiful.
"(O throttled and without a c=
ry, O strangled and stabbed=
, you
shall not die, The
frightful word is on your walls, The east sea to the wes=
t sea
calls, The stars =
are
dying in the sky, You
shall not die; you shall not die.)"
Then the two great
noises grew deafening together, the noise of the peril of England and the
louder noise of the placidity of England. It is their fault if the last ver=
se
was written a little rudely and at random--
"I see you how you smil=
e in
state Strai=
ght
from the Peak to Plymouth Bar, You need not tell=
me
you are great, I kno=
w how
more than great you are. I know what Willi=
am
Shakespeare was, I have seen
Gainsborough and the grass.
"(O given to believe a lie, <=
span
style=3D'mso-spacerun:yes'> O my mad mother, do do =
not
die, Whose eyes t=
urn
all ways but within, Whose sin is innocence =
of
sin, Whose eyes,
blinded with beams at noon, Can see the motes upon =
the
moon, You shall y=
our
lover still pursue. To
what last madhouse shelters you I will uphold you, even=
I. You that are dead. You shall not die.)"
But the sea would=
not
stop for me any more than for Canute; and as for the German band, that would
not stop for anybody.
XXVII. Some Policemen and=
a
Moral
The other day I w=
as
nearly arrested by two excited policemen in a wood in Yorkshire. I was on a
holiday, and was engaged in that rich and intricate mass of pleasures, duti=
es,
and discoveries which for the keeping off of the profane, we disguise by the
exoteric name of Nothing. At the moment in question I was throwing a big
Swedish knife at a tree, practising (alas, without success) that useful tri=
ck
of knife-throwing by which men murder each other in Stevenson's romances.
Suddenly the fore=
st
was full of two policemen; there was something about their appearance in and
relation to the greenwood that reminded me, I know not how, of some happy
Elizabethan comedy. They asked what the knife was, who I was, why I was
throwing it, what my address was, trade, religion, opinions on the Japanese
war, name of favourite cat, and so on. They also said I was damaging the tr=
ee;
which was, I am sorry to say, not true, because I could not hit it. The
peculiar philosophical importance, however, of the incident was this. After
some half-hour's animated conversation, the exhibition of an envelope, an
unfinished poem, which was read with great care, and, I trust, with some
profit, and one or two other subtle detective strokes, the elder of the two=
knights
became convinced that I really was what I professed to be, that I was a
journalist, that I was on the DAILY NEWS (this was the real stroke; they we=
re
shaken with a terror common to all tyrants), that I lived in a particular p=
lace
as stated, and that I was stopping with particular people in Yorkshire, who
happened to be wealthy and well-known in the neighbourhood.
In fact the leadi=
ng
constable became so genial and complimentary at last that he ended up by
representing himself as a reader of my work. And when that was said, everyt=
hing
was settled. They acquitted me and let me pass.
"But," I
said, "what of this mangled tree? It was to the rescue of that Dryad,
tethered to the earth, that you rushed like knight-errants. You, the higher
humanitarians, are not deceived by the seeming stillness of the green thing=
s, a
stillness like the stillness of the cataract, a headlong and crashing silen=
ce.
You know that a tree is but a creature tied to the ground by one leg. You w=
ill
not let assassins with their Swedish daggers shed the green blood of such a
being. But if so, why am I not in custody; where are my gyves? Produce, from
some portion of your persons, my mouldy straw and my grated window. The fac=
ts
of which I have just convinced you, that my name is Chesterton, that I am a
journalist, that I am living with the well-known and philanthropic Mr. Blan=
k of
Ilkley, cannot have anything to do with the question of whether I have been
guilty of cruelty to vegetables. The tree is none the less damaged even tho=
ugh
it may reflect with a dark pride that it was wounded by a gentleman connect=
ed
with the Liberal press. Wounds in the bark do not more rapidly close up bec=
ause
they are inflicted by people who are stopping with Mr. Blank of Ilkley. That
tree, the ruin of its former self, the wreck of what was once a giant of the
forest, now splintered and laid low by the brute superiority of a Swedish
knife, that tragedy, constable, cannot be wiped out even by stopping for
several months more with some wealthy person. It is incredible that you hav=
e no
legal claim to arrest even the most august and fashionable persons on this
charge. For if so, why did you interfere with me at all?"
I made the later =
and
larger part of this speech to the silent wood, for the two policemen had
vanished almost as quickly as they came. It is very possible, of course, th=
at
they were fairies. In that case the somewhat illogical character of their v=
iew
of crime, law, and personal responsibility would find a bright and elfish
explanation; perhaps if I had lingered in the glade till moonrise I might h=
ave
seen rings of tiny policemen dancing on the sward; or running about with
glow-worm belts, arresting grasshoppers for damaging blades of grass. But
taking the bolder hypothesis, that they really were policemen, I find mysel=
f in
a certain difficulty. I was certainly accused of something which was either=
an
offence or was not. I was let off because I proved I was a guest at a big
house. The inference seems painfully clear; either it is not a proof of inf=
amy
to throw a knife about in a lonely wood, or else it is a proof of innocence=
to
know a rich man. Suppose a very poor person, poorer even than a journalist,=
a
navvy or unskilled labourer, tramping in search of work, often changing his
lodgings, often, perhaps, failing in his rent. Suppose he had been intoxica=
ted
with the green gaiety of the ancient wood. Suppose he had thrown knives at
trees and could give no description of a dwelling-place except that he had =
been
fired out of the last. As I walked home through a cloudy and purple twiligh=
t I
wondered how he would have got on.
Moral. We English=
are
always boasting that we are very illogical; there is no great harm in that.
There is no subtle spiritual evil in the fact that people always brag about
their vices; it is when they begin to brag about their virtues that they be=
come
insufferable. But there is this to be said, that illogicality in your
constitution or your legal methods may become very dangerous if there happe=
ns
to be some great national vice or national temptation which many take advan=
tage
of the chaos. Similarly, a drunkard ought to have strict rules and hours; a
temperate man may obey his instincts.
Take some absurd
anomaly in the British law--the fact, for instance, that a man ceasing to b=
e an
M. P. has to become Steward of the Chiltern Hundreds, an office which I bel=
ieve
was intended originally to keep down some wild robbers near Chiltern, where=
ver
that is. Obviously this kind of illogicality does not matter very much, for=
the
simple reason that there is no great temptation to take advantage of it. Men
retiring from Parliament do not have any furious impulse to hunt robbers in=
the
hills. But if there were a real danger that wise, white-haired, venerable p=
oliticians
taking leave of public life would desire to do this (if, for instance, there
were any money in it), then clearly, if we went on saying that the illogica=
lity
did not matter, when (as a matter of fact) Sir Michael Hicks-Beach was hang=
ing
Chiltern shop-keepers every day and taking their property, we should be very
silly. The illogicality would matter, for it would have become an excuse for
indulgence. It is only the very good who can live riotous lives.
Now this is exact=
ly
what is present in cases of police investigation such as the one narrated
above. There enters into such things a great national sin, a far greater sin
than drink--the habit of respecting a gentleman. Snobbishness has, like dri=
nk,
a kind of grand poetry. And snobbishness has this peculiar and devilish qua=
lity
of evil, that it is rampant among very kindly people, with open hearts and
houses. But it is our great English vice; to be watched more fiercely than
small-pox. If a man wished to hear the worst and wickedest thing in England
summed up in casual English words, he would not find it in any foul oaths or
ribald quarrelling. He would find it in the fact that the best kind of work=
ing man,
when he wishes to praise any one, calls him "a gentleman." It nev=
er occurs
to him that he might as well call him "a marquis," or "a pri=
vy councillor"--that
he is simply naming a rank or class, not a phrase for a good man. And this
perennial temptation to a shameful admiration, must, and, I think, does,
constantly come in and distort and poison our police methods.
In this case we m=
ust
be logical and exact; for we have to keep watch upon ourselves. The power of
wealth, and that power at its vilest, is increasing in the modern world. A =
very
good and just people, without this temptation, might not need, perhaps, to =
make
clear rules and systems to guard themselves against the power of our great
financiers. But that is because a very just people would have shot them long
ago, from mere native good feeling.
In the town of
Belfort I take a chair and I sit down in the street. We talk in a cant phra=
se
of the Man in the Street, but the Frenchman is the man in the street. Things
quite central for him are connected with these lamp-posts and pavements;
everything from his meals to his martyrdoms. When first an Englishman looks=
at
a French town or village his first feeling is simply that it is uglier than=
an
English town or village; when he looks again he sees that this comparative
absence of the picturesque is chiefly expressed in the plain, precipitous
frontage of the houses standing up hard and flat out of the street like the=
cardboard
houses in a pantomime--a hard angularity allied perhaps to the harshness of
French logic. When he looks a third time he sees quite simply that it is all
because the houses have no front gardens. The vague English spirit loves to
have the entrance to its house softened by bushes and broken by steps. It l=
ikes
to have a little anteroom of hedges half in the house and half out of it; a
green room in a double sense. The Frenchman desires no such little pathetic
ramparts or halting places, for the street itself is a thing natural and
familiar to him.
.....
The French have no
front gardens; but the street is every man's front garden. There are trees =
in
the street, and sometimes fountains. The street is the Frenchman's tavern, =
for
he drinks in the street. It is his dining-room, for he dines in the street.=
It
is his British Museum, for the statues and monuments in French streets are =
not,
as with us, of the worst, but of the best, art of the country, and they are
often actually as historical as the Pyramids. The street again is the
Frenchman's Parliament, for France has never taken its Chamber of Deputies =
so seriously
as we take our House of Commons, and the quibbles of mere elected nonentiti=
es
in an official room seem feeble to a people whose fathers have heard the vo=
ice
of Desmoulins like a trumpet under open heaven, or Victor Hugo shouting from
his carriage amid the wreck of the second Republic. And as the Frenchman dr=
inks
in the street and dines in the street so also he fights in the street and d=
ies
in the street, so that the street can never be commonplace to him.
Take, for instanc=
e,
such a simple object as a lamp-post. In London a lamp-post is a comic thing=
. We
think of the intoxicated gentleman embracing it, and recalling ancient
friendship. But in Paris a lamp-post is a tragic thing. For we think of tyr=
ants
hanged on it, and of an end of the world. There is, or was, a bitter Republ=
ican
paper in Paris called LA LANTERNE. How funny it would be if there were a
Progressive paper in England called THE LAMP POST! We have said, then, that=
the
Frenchman is the man in the street; that he can dine in the street, and die=
in
the street. And if I ever pass through Paris and find him going to bed in t=
he
street, I shall say that he is still true to the genius of his civilisation.
All that is good and all that is evil in France is alike connected with this
open-air element. French democracy and French indecency are alike part of t=
he
desire to have everything out of doors. Compared to a café, a
public-house is a private house.
.....
There were two
reasons why all these fancies should float through the mind in the streets =
of
this especial town of Belfort. First of all, it lies close upon the boundar=
y of
France and Germany, and boundaries are the most beautiful things in the wor=
ld.
To love anything is to love its boundaries; thus children will always play =
on
the edge of anything. They build castles on the edge of the sea, and can on=
ly
be restrained by public proclamation and private violence from walking on t=
he
edge of the grass. For when we have come to the end of a thing we have come=
to
the beginning of it.
Hence this town
seemed all the more French for being on the very margin of Germany, and
although there were many German touches in the place--German names, larger =
pots
of beer, and enormous theatrical barmaids dressed up in outrageous imitatio=
n of
Alsatian peasants--yet the fixed French colour seemed all the stronger for
these specks of something else. All day long and all night long troops of
dusty, swarthy, scornful little soldiers went plodding through the streets =
with
an air of stubborn disgust, for German soldiers look as if they despised yo=
u,
but French soldiers as if they despised you and themselves even more than y=
ou.
It is a part, I suppose, of the realism of the nation which has made it goo=
d at
war and science and other things in which what is necessary is combined with
what is nasty. And the soldiers and the civilians alike had most of them cr=
opped
hair, and that curious kind of head which to an Englishman looks almost bru=
tal,
the kind that we call a bullet-head. Indeed, we are speaking very appropria=
tely
when we call it a bullet-head, for in intellectual history the heads of
Frenchmen have been bullets--yes, and explosive bullets.
.....
But there was a
second reason why in this place one should think particularly of the open-a=
ir
politics and the open-air art of the French. For this town of Belfort is fa=
mous
for one of the most typical and powerful of the public monuments of France.
From the café table at which I sit I can see the hill beyond the tow=
n on
which hangs the high and flat-faced citadel, pierced with many windows, and
warmed in the evening light. On the steep hill below it is a huge stone lio=
n,
itself as large as a hill. It is hacked out of the rock with a sort of giga=
ntic
impression. No trivial attempt has been made to make it like a common statu=
e;
no attempt to carve the mane into curls, or to distinguish the monster minu=
tely
from the earth out of which he rises, shaking the world. The face of the li=
on
has something of the bold conventionality of Assyrian art. The mane of the =
lion
is left like a shapeless cloud of tempest, as if it might literally be said=
of
him that God had clothed his neck with thunder. Even at this distance the t=
hing
looks vast, and in some sense prehistoric. Yet it was carved only a little
while ago. It commemorates the fact that this town was never taken by the
Germans through all the terrible year, but only laid down its arms at last =
at the
command of its own Government. But the spirit of it has been in this land f=
rom
the beginning--the spirit of something defiant and almost defeated.
As I leave this p=
lace
and take the railway into Germany the news comes thicker and thicker up the
streets that Southern France is in a flame, and that there perhaps will be
fought out finally the awful modern battle of the rich and poor. And as I p=
ass
into quieter places for the last sign of France on the sky-line, I see the =
Lion
of Belfort stand at bay, the last sight of that great people which has never
been at peace.
XXIX. Humanity: an Interl=
ude
Except for some f=
ine
works of art, which seem to be there by accident, the City of Brussels is l=
ike
a bad Paris, a Paris with everything noble cut out, and everything nasty le=
ft
in. No one can understand Paris and its history who does not understand that
its fierceness is the balance and justification of its frivolity. It is cal=
led
a city of pleasure; but it may also very specially be called a city of pain.
The crown of roses is also a crown of thorns. Its people are too prone to h=
urt
others, but quite ready also to hurt themselves. They are martyrs for relig=
ion,
they are martyrs for irreligion; they are even martyrs for immorality. For =
the
indecency of many of their books and papers is not of the sort which charms=
and
seduces, but of the sort that horrifies and hurts; they are torturing
themselves. They lash their own patriotism into life with the same whips wh=
ich
most men use to lash foreigners to silence. The enemies of France can never
give an account of her infamy or decay which does not seem insipid and even
polite compared with the things which the Nationalists of France say about
their own nation. They taunt and torment themselves; sometimes they even
deliberately oppress themselves. Thus, when the mob of Paris could make a
Government to please itself, it made a sort of sublime tyranny to order its=
elf
about. The spirit is the same from the Crusades or St. Bartholomew to the
apotheosis of Zola. The old religionists tortured men physically for a moral
truth. The new realists torture men morally for a physical truth.
Now Brussels is P=
aris
without this constant purification of pain. Its indecencies are not regrett=
able
incidents in an everlasting revolution. It has none of the things which make
good Frenchmen love Paris; it has only the things which make unspeakable
Englishmen love it. It has the part which is cosmopolitan--and narrows; not=
the
part which is Parisian--and universal. You can find there (as commonly happ=
ens
in modern centres) the worst things of all nations--the DAILY MAIL from Eng=
land,
the cheap philosophies from Germany, the loose novels of France, and the dr=
inks
of America. But there is no English broad fun, no German kindly ceremony, no
American exhilaration, and, above all, no French tradition of fighting for =
an
idea. Though all the boulevards look like Parisian boulevards, though all t=
he
shops look like Parisian shops, you cannot look at them steadily for two
minutes without feeling the full distance between, let us say, King Leopold=
and
fighters like Clemenceau and Deroulède.
.....
For all these
reasons, and many more, when I had got into Brussels I began to make all
necessary arrangements for getting out of it again; and I had impulsively g=
ot
into a tram which seemed to be going out of the city. In this tram there we=
re
two men talking; one was a little man with a black French beard; the other =
was
a baldish man with bushy whiskers, like the financial foreign count in a th=
ree-act
farce. And about the time that we reached the suburb of the city, and the
traffic grew thinner, and the noises more few, I began to hear what they we=
re saying.
Though they spoke French quickly, their words were fairly easy to follow,
because they were all long words. Anybody can understand long words because
they have in them all the lucidity of Latin.
The man with the
black beard said: "It must that we have the Progress."
The man with the
whiskers parried this smartly by saying: "It must also that we have the
Consolidation International."
This is a sort of
discussion which I like myself, so I listened with some care, and I think I
picked up the thread of it. One of the Belgians was a Little Belgian, as we
speak of a Little Englander. The other was a Belgian Imperialist, for though
Belgium is not quite strong enough to be altogether a nation, she is quite
strong enough to be an empire. Being a nation means standing up to your equ=
als,
whereas being an empire only means kicking your inferiors. The man with
whiskers was the Imperialist, and he was saying: "The science, behold
there the new guide of humanity."
And the man with =
the
beard answered him: "It does not suffice to have progress in the scien=
ce;
one must have it also in the sentiment of the human justice."
This remark I
applauded, as if at a public meeting, but they were much too keen on their
argument to hear me. The views I have often heard in England, but never utt=
ered
so lucidly, and certainly never so fast. Though Belgian by nation they must
both have been essentially French. Whiskers was great on education, which, =
it
seems, is on the march. All the world goes to make itself instructed. It mu=
st
that the more instructed enlighten the less instructed. Eh, well then, the
European must impose upon the savage the science and the light. Also
(apparently) he must impose himself on the savage while he is about it. To-=
day
one travelled quickly. The science had changed all. For our fathers, they w=
ere
religious, and (what was worse) dead. To-day humanity had electricity to the
hand; the machines came from triumphing; all the lines and limits of the gl=
obe
effaced themselves. Soon there would not be but the great Empires and
confederations, guided by the science, always the science.
Here Whiskers sto=
pped
an instant for breath; and the man with the sentiment for human justice had
"la parole" off him in a flash. Without doubt Humanity was on the
march, but towards the sentiments, the ideal, the methods moral and pacific.
Humanity directed itself towards Humanity. For your wars and empires on beh=
alf
of civilisation, what were they in effect? The war, was it not itself an af=
fair
of the barbarism? The Empires were they not things savage? The Humanity had
passed all that; she was now intellectual. Tolstoy had refined all human so=
uls
with the sentiments the most delicate and just. Man was become a spirit; th=
e wings
pushed....
.....
At this important
point of evolution the tram came to a jerky stoppage; and staring around I
found, to my stunned consternation, that it was almost dark, that I was far
away from Brussels, that I could not dream of getting back to dinner; in sh=
ort,
that through the clinging fascination of this great controversy on Humanity=
and
its recent complete alteration by science or Tolstoy, I had landed myself
Heaven knows where. I dropped hastily from the suburban tram and let it go =
on without
me.
I was alone in the
flat fields out of sight of the city. On one side of the road was one of th=
ose
small, thin woods which are common in all countries, but of which, by a
coincidence, the mystical painters of Flanders were very fond. The night was
closing in with cloudy purple and grey; there was one ribbon of silver, the
last rag of the sunset. Through the wood went one little path, and somehow =
it
suggested that it might lead to some sign of life--there was no other sign =
of
life on the horizon. I went along it, and soon sank into a sort of dancing
twilight of all those tiny trees. There is something subtle and bewildering
about that sort of frail and fantastic wood. A forest of big trees seems li=
ke a
bodily barrier; but somehow that mist of thin lines seems like a spiritual
barrier. It is as if one were caught in a fairy cloud or could not pass a
phantom. When I had well lost the last gleam of the high road a curious and
definite feeling came upon me. Now I suddenly felt something much more
practical and extraordinary--the absence of humanity: inhuman loneliness. Of
course, there was nothing really lost in my state; but the mood may hit one
anywhere. I wanted men--any men; and I felt our awful alliance over all the
globe. And at last, when I had walked for what seemed a long time, I saw a
light too near the earth to mean anything except the image of God.
I came out on a c=
lear
space and a low, long cottage, the door of which was open, but was blocked =
by a
big grey horse, who seemed to prefer to eat with his head inside the
sitting-room. I got past him, and found he was being fed by a young man who=
was
sitting down and drinking beer inside, and who saluted me with heavy rustic
courtesy, but in a strange tongue. The room was full of staring faces like
owls, and these I traced at length as belonging to about six small children.
Their father was still working in the fields, but their mother rose when I
entered. She smiled, but she and all the rest spoke some rude language,
Flamand, I suppose; so that we had to be kind to each other by signs. She
fetched me beer, and pointed out my way with her finger; and I drew a pictu=
re to
please the children; and as it was a picture of two men hitting each other =
with
swords, it pleased them very much. Then I gave a Belgian penny to each chil=
d,
for as I said on chance in French, "It must be that we have the econom=
ic
equality." But they had never heard of economic equality, while all
Battersea workmen have heard of economic equality, though it is true that t=
hey
haven't got it.
I found my way ba=
ck
to the city, and some time afterwards I actually saw in the street my two m=
en
talking, no doubt still saying, one that Science had changed all in Humanit=
y,
and the other that Humanity was now pushing the wings of the purely
intellectual. But for me Humanity was hooked on to an accidental picture. I
thought of a low and lonely house in the flats, behind a veil or film of sl=
ight
trees, a man breaking the ground as men have broken from the first morning,=
and
a huge grey horse champing his food within a foot of a child's head, as in =
the
stable where Christ was born.
XXX. The Little Birds Who
Won't Sing
On my last mornin=
g on
the Flemish coast, when I knew that in a few hours I should be in England, =
my
eye fell upon one of the details of Gothic carving of which Flanders is ful=
l. I
do not know whether the thing is old, though it was certainly knocked about=
and
indecipherable, but at least it was certainly in the style and tradition of=
the
early Middle Ages. It seemed to represent men bending themselves (not to say
twisting themselves) to certain primary employments. Some seemed to be sail=
ors
tugging at ropes; others, I think, were reaping; others were energetically
pouring something into something else. This is entirely characteristic of t=
he
pictures and carvings of the early thirteenth century, perhaps the most pur=
ely
vigorous time in all history. The great Greeks preferred to carve their god=
s and
heroes doing nothing. Splendid and philosophic as their composure is there =
is
always about it something that marks the master of many slaves. But if there
was one thing the early mediaevals liked it was representing people doing s=
omething--hunting
or hawking, or rowing boats, or treading grapes, or making shoes, or cooking
something in a pot. "Quicquid agunt homines, votum, timor, ira
voluptas." (I quote from memory.) The Middle Ages is full of that spir=
it
in all its monuments and manuscripts. Chaucer retains it in his jolly
insistence on everybody's type of trade and toil. It was the earliest and
youngest resurrection of Europe, the time when social order was strengtheni=
ng,
but had not yet become oppressive; the time when religious faiths were stro=
ng,
but had not yet been exasperated. For this reason the whole effect of Greek=
and
Gothic carving is different. The figures in the Elgin marbles, though often=
reining
their steeds for an instant in the air, seem frozen for ever at that perfect
instant. But a mass of mediaeval carving seems actually a sort of bustle or
hubbub in stone. Sometimes one cannot help feeling that the groups actually
move and mix, and the whole front of a great cathedral has the hum of a huge
hive.
.....
But about these
particular figures there was a peculiarity of which I could not be sure. Th=
ose
of them that had any heads had very curious heads, and it seemed to me that
they had their mouths open. Whether or no this really meant anything or was=
an
accident of nascent art I do not know; but in the course of wondering I
recalled to my mind the fact that singing was connected with many of the ta=
sks
there suggested, that there were songs for reapers and songs for sailors
hauling ropes. I was still thinking about this small problem when I walked
along the pier at Ostend; and I heard some sailors uttering a measured shou=
t as
they laboured, and I remembered that sailors still sing in chorus while the=
y work,
and even sing different songs according to what part of their work they are
doing. And a little while afterwards, when my sea journey was over, the sig=
ht
of men working in the English fields reminded me again that there are still
songs for harvest and for many agricultural routines. And I suddenly wonder=
ed
why if this were so it should be quite unknown, for any modern trade to hav=
e a
ritual poetry. How did people come to chant rude poems while pulling certain
ropes or gathering certain fruit, and why did nobody do anything of the kind
while producing any of the modern things? Why is a modern newspaper never p=
rinted
by people singing in chorus? Why do shopmen seldom, if ever, sing?
.....
If reapers sing w=
hile
reaping, why should not auditors sing while auditing and bankers while bank=
ing?
If there are songs for all the separate things that have to be done in a bo=
at,
why are there not songs for all the separate things that have to be done in=
a
bank? As the train from Dover flew through the Kentish gardens, I tried to
write a few songs suitable for commercial gentlemen. Thus, the work of bank=
clerks
when casting up columns might begin with a thundering chorus in praise of
Simple Addition.
"Up my lads =
and
lift the ledgers, sleep and ease are o'er. Hear the Stars of Morning shouti=
ng:
'Two and Two are four.' Though the creeds and realms are reeling, though the
sophists roar, Though we weep and pawn our watches, Two and Two are Four.&q=
uot;
"There's a r=
un
upon the Bank--Stand away! For the Manager's a crank and the Secretary dran=
k,
and the
Upper Tooting Bank =
Turns
to bay! Stand clo=
se:
there is a run On=
the
Bank. Of our ship=
, our
royal one, let the ringing legend run, That she fired with eve=
ry gun
=
Ere
she sank."
.....
And as I came into
the cloud of London I met a friend of mine who actually is in a bank, and
submitted these suggestions in rhyme to him for use among his colleagues. B=
ut
he was not very hopeful about the matter. It was not (he assured me) that he
underrated the verses, or in any sense lamented their lack of polish. No; it
was rather, he felt, an indefinable something in the very atmosphere of the
society in which we live that makes it spiritually difficult to sing in ban=
ks.
And I think he must be right; though the matter is very mysterious. I may
observe here that I think there must be some mistake in the calculations of=
the
Socialists. They put down all our distress, not to a moral tone, but to the
chaos of private enterprise. Now, banks are private; but post-offices are
Socialistic: therefore I naturally expected that the post-office would fall
into the collectivist idea of a chorus. Judge of my surprise when the lady =
in
my local post-office (whom I urged to sing) dismissed the idea with far more
coldness than the bank clerk had done. She seemed indeed, to be in a
considerably greater state of depression than he. Should any one suppose th=
at
this was the effect of the verses themselves, it is only fair to say that t=
he
specimen verse of the Post-Office Hymn ran thus:
"O'er Londo=
n our
letters are shaken like snow, Our w=
ires
o'er the world like the thunderbolts go. The n=
ews
that may marry a maiden in Sark, Or ki=
ll an
old lady in Finsbury Park."
Chorus (with a sw=
ing
of joy and energy):
"Or kill an=
old
lady in Finsbury Park."
And the more I
thought about the matter the more painfully certain it seemed that the most
important and typical modern things could not be done with a chorus. One co=
uld
not, for instance, be a great financier and sing; because the essence of be=
ing
a great financier is that you keep quiet. You could not even in many modern
circles be a public man and sing; because in those circles the essence of b=
eing
a public man is that you do nearly everything in private. Nobody would imag=
ine
a chorus of money-lenders. Every one knows the story of the solicitors' cor=
ps
of volunteers who, when the Colonel on the battlefield cried
"Charge!" all said simultaneously, "Six-and-eightpence."
Men can sing while charging in a military, but hardly in a legal sense. And=
at
the end of my reflections I had really got no further than the sub-conscious
feeling of my friend the bank-clerk--that there is something spiritually su=
ffocating
about our life; not about our laws merely, but about our life. Bank-clerks =
are
without songs, not because they are poor, but because they are sad. Sailors=
are
much poorer. As I passed homewards I passed a little tin building of some
religious sort, which was shaken with shouting as a trumpet is torn with its
own tongue. THEY were singing anyhow; and I had for an instant a fancy I had
often had before: that with us the super-human is the only place where you =
can
find the human. Human nature is hunted and has fled into sanctuary.
XXXI. The Riddle of the I=
vy
More than a month
ago, when I was leaving London for a holiday, a friend walked into my flat =
in
Battersea and found me surrounded with half-packed luggage.
"You seem to=
be
off on your travels," he said. "Where are you going?"
With a strap betw=
een
my teeth I replied, "To Battersea."
"The wit of =
your
remark," he said, "wholly escapes me."
"I am going =
to
Battersea," I repeated, "to Battersea viâ Paris, Belfort, H=
eidelberg,
and Frankfort. My remark contained no wit. It contained simply the truth. I=
am
going to wander over the whole world until once more I find Battersea.
Somewhere in the seas of sunset or of sunrise, somewhere in the ultimate
archipelago of the earth, there is one little island which I wish to find: =
an
island with low green hills and great white cliffs. Travellers tell me that=
it
is called England (Scotch travellers tell me that it is called Britain), and
there is a rumour that somewhere in the heart of it there is a beautiful pl=
ace
called Battersea."
"I suppose i=
t is
unnecessary to tell you," said my friend, with an air of intellectual
comparison, "that this is Battersea?"
"It is quite
unnecessary," I said, "and it is spiritually untrue. I cannot see=
any
Battersea here; I cannot see any London or any England. I cannot see that d=
oor.
I cannot see that chair: because a cloud of sleep and custom has come acros=
s my
eyes. The only way to get back to them is to go somewhere else; and that is=
the
real object of travel and the real pleasure of holidays. Do you suppose tha=
t I
go to France in order to see France? Do you suppose that I go to Germany in
order to see Germany? I shall enjoy them both; but it is not them that I am
seeking. I am seeking Battersea. The whole object of travel is not to set f=
oot
on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one's own country as a foreign
land. Now I warn you that this Gladstone bag is compact and heavy, and that=
if
you utter that word 'paradox' I shall hurl it at your head. I did not make =
the
world, and I did not make it paradoxical. It is not my fault, it is the tru=
th,
that the only way to go to England is to go away from it."
But when, after o=
nly
a month's travelling, I did come back to England, I was startled to find th=
at I
had told the exact truth. England did break on me at once beautifully new a=
nd
beautifully old. To land at Dover is the right way to approach England (most
things that are hackneyed are right), for then you see first the full, soft
gardens of Kent, which are, perhaps, an exaggeration, but still a typical
exaggeration, of the rich rusticity of England. As it happened, also, a
fellow-traveller with whom I had fallen into conversation felt the same fre=
shness,
though for another cause. She was an American lady who had seen Europe, and=
had
never yet seen England, and she expressed her enthusiasm in that simple and
splendid way which is natural to Americans, who are the most idealistic peo=
ple
in the whole world. Their only danger is that the idealist can easily become
the idolator. And the American has become so idealistic that he even ideali=
ses
money. But (to quote a very able writer of American short stories) that is
another story.
"I have never
been in England before," said the American lady, "yet it is so pr=
etty
that I feel as if I have been away from it for a long time."
"So you
have," I said; "you have been away for three hundred years."=
"What a lot =
of
ivy you have," she said. "It covers the churches and it buries the
houses. We have ivy; but I have never seen it grow like that."
"I am intere=
sted
to hear it," I replied, "for I am making a little list of all the
things that are really better in England. Even a month on the Continent,
combined with intelligence, will teach you that there are many things that =
are
better abroad. All the things that the DAILY MAIL calls English are better
abroad. But there are things entirely English and entirely good. Kippers, f=
or
instance, and Free Trade, and front gardens, and individual liberty, and the
Elizabethan drama, and hansom cabs, and cricket, and Mr. Will Crooks. Above
all, there is the happy and holy custom of eating a heavy breakfast. I cann=
ot
imagine that Shakespeare began the day with rolls and coffee, like a French=
man
or a German. Surely he began with bacon or bloaters. In fact, a light burst=
s upon
me; for the first time I see the real meaning of Mrs. Gallup and the Great
Cipher. It is merely a mistake in the matter of a capital letter. I withdra=
w my
objections; I accept everything; bacon did write Shakespeare."
"I cannot lo=
ok
at anything but the ivy," she said, "it looks so comfortable.&quo=
t;
While she looked =
at
the ivy I opened for the first time for many weeks an English newspaper, an=
d I
read a speech of Mr. Balfour in which he said that the House of Lords ought=
to
be preserved because it represented something in the nature of permanent pu=
blic
opinion of England, above the ebb and flow of the parties. Now Mr. Balfour =
is a
perfectly sincere patriot, a man who, from his own point of view, thinks lo=
ng
and seriously about the public needs, and he is, moreover, a man of entirely
exceptionable intellectual power. But alas, in spite of all this, when I had
read that speech I thought with a heavy heart that there was one more thing
that I had to add to the list of the specially English things, such as kipp=
ers
and cricket; I had to add the specially English kind of humbug. In France
things are attacked and defended for what they are. The Catholic Church is
attacked because it is Catholic, and defended because it is Catholic. The
Republic is defended because it is Republican, and attacked because it is
Republican. But here is the ablest of English politicians consoling everybo=
dy
by telling them that the House of Lords is not really the House of Lords, b=
ut
something quite different, that the foolish accidental peers whom he meets
every night are in some mysterious way experts upon the psychology of the
democracy; that if you want to know what the very poor want you must ask the
very rich, and that if you want the truth about Hoxton, you must ask for it=
at
Hatfield. If the Conservative defender of the House of Lords were a logical
French politician he would simply be a liar. But being an English politicia=
n he
is simply a poet. The English love of believing that all is as it should be,
the English optimism combined with the strong English imagination, is too m=
uch
even for the obvious facts. In a cold, scientific sense, of course, Mr. Bal=
four
knows that nearly all the Lords who are not Lords by accident are Lords by
bribery. He knows, and (as Mr. Belloc excellently said) everybody in Parlia=
ment
knows the very names of the peers who have purchased their peerages. But the
glamour of comfort, the pleasure of reassuring himself and reassuring other=
s,
is too strong for this original knowledge; at last it fades from him, and he
sincerely and earnestly calls on Englishmen to join with him in admiring an
august and public-spirited Senate, having wholly forgotten that the Senate
really consists of idiots whom he has himself despised; and adventurers who=
m he
has himself ennobled.
"Your ivy is=
so
beautifully soft and thick," said the American lady, "it seems to
cover almost everything. It must be the most poetical thing in England.&quo=
t;
"It is very
beautiful," I said, "and, as you say, it is very English. Charles
Dickens, who was almost more English than England, wrote one of his rare po=
ems
about the beauty of ivy. Yes, by all means let us admire the ivy, so deep, =
so
warm, so full of a genial gloom and a grotesque tenderness. Let us admire t=
he
ivy; and let us pray to God in His mercy that it may not kill the tree.&quo=
t;
XXXII. The Travellers in
State
The other day, to=
my
great astonishment, I caught a train; it was a train going into the Eastern=
Counties,
and I only just caught it. And while I was running along the train (amid
general admiration) I noticed that there were a quite peculiar and unusual
number of carriages marked "Engaged." On five, six, seven, eight,
nine carriages was pasted the little notice: at five, six, seven, eight, ni=
ne
windows were big bland men staring out in the conscious pride of possession.
Their bodies seemed more than usually impenetrable, their faces more than u=
sual
placid. It could not be the Derby, if only for the minor reasons that it was
the opposite direction and the wrong day. It could hardly be the King. It c=
ould
hardly be the French President. For, though these distinguished persons
naturally like to be private for three hours, they are at least public for
three minutes. A crowd can gather to see them step into the train; and there
was no crowd here, or any police ceremonial.
Who were those aw=
ful
persons, who occupied more of the train than a bricklayer's beanfeast, and =
yet
were more fastidious and delicate than the King's own suite? Who were these
that were larger than a mob, yet more mysterious than a monarch? Was it
possible that instead of our Royal House visiting the Tsar, he was really
visiting us? Or does the House of Lords have a breakfast? I waited and wond=
ered
until the train slowed down at some station in the direction of Cambridge. =
Then
the large, impenetrable men got out, and after them got out the distinguish=
ed
holders of the engaged seats. They were all dressed decorously in one colou=
r;
they had neatly cropped hair; and they were chained together.
I looked across t=
he
carriage at its only other occupant, and our eyes met. He was a small,
tired-looking man, and, as I afterwards learnt, a native of Cambridge; by t=
he
look of him, some working tradesman there, such as a journeyman tailor or a
small clock-mender. In order to make conversation I said I wondered where t=
he
convicts were going. His mouth twitched with the instinctive irony of our p=
oor,
and he said: "I don't s'pose they're goin' on an 'oliday at the seaside
with little spades and pails." I was naturally delighted, and, pursuing
the same vein of literary invention, I suggested that perhaps dons were tak=
en
down to Cambridge chained together like this. And as he lived in Cambridge,=
and
had seen several dons, he was pleased with such a scheme. Then when we had
ceased to laugh, we suddenly became quite silent; and the bleak, grey eyes =
of
the little man grew sadder and emptier than an open sea. I knew what he was
thinking, because I was thinking the same, because all modern sophists are =
only
sophists, and there is such a thing as mankind. Then at last (and it fell i=
n as
exactly as the right last note of a tune one is trying to remember) he said:
"Well, I s'pose we 'ave to do it." And in those three things, his
first speech and his silence and his second speech, there were all the three
great fundamental facts of the English democracy, its profound sense of hum=
our,
its profound sense of pathos, and its profound sense of helplessness.
.....
It cannot be too
often repeated that all real democracy is an attempt (like that of a jolly
hostess) to bring the shy people out. For every practical purpose of a
political state, for every practical purpose of a tea-party, he that abaseth
himself must be exalted. At a tea-party it is equally obvious that he that
exalteth himself must be abased, if possible without bodily violence. Now
people talk of democracy as being coarse and turbulent: it is a self-evident
error in mere history. Aristocracy is the thing that is always coarse and
turbulent: for it means appealing to the self-confident people. Democracy m=
eans
appealing to the different people. Democracy means getting those people to =
vote
who would never have the cheek to govern: and (according to Christian ethic=
s)
the precise people who ought to govern are the people who have not the chee=
k to
do it. There is a strong example of this truth in my friend in the train. T=
he
only two types we hear of in this argument about crime and punishment are t=
wo
very rare and abnormal types.
We hear of the st=
ark
sentimentalist, who talks as if there were no problem at all: as if physical
kindness would cure everything: as if one need only pat Nero and stroke Ivan
the Terrible. This mere belief in bodily humanitarianism is not sentimental=
; it
is simply snobbish. For if comfort gives men virtue, the comfortable classes
ought to be virtuous--which is absurd. Then, again, we do hear of the yet
weaker and more watery type of sentimentalists: I mean the sentimentalist w=
ho says,
with a sort of splutter, "Flog the brutes!" or who tells you with
innocent obscenity "what he would do" with a certain man--always =
supposing
the man's hands were tied.
This is the more
effeminate type of the two; but both are weak and unbalanced. And it is only
these two types, the sentimental humanitarian and the sentimental
brutalitarian, whom one hears in the modern babel. Yet you very rarely meet
either of them in a train. You never meet anyone else in a controversy. The=
man
you meet in a train is like this man that I met: he is emotionally decent, =
only
he is intellectually doubtful. So far from luxuriating in the loathsome thi=
ngs
that could be "done" to criminals, he feels bitterly how much bet=
ter
it would be if nothing need be done. But something must be done. "I s'=
pose
we 'ave to do it." In short, he is simply a sane man, and of a sane man
there is only one safe definition. He is a man who can have tragedy in his
heart and comedy in his head.
.....
Now the real
difficulty of discussing decently this problem of the proper treatment of
criminals is that both parties discuss the matter without any direct human
feeling. The denouncers of wrong are as cold as the organisers of wrong.
Humanitarianism is as hard as inhumanity.
Let me take one
practical instance. I think the flogging arranged in our modern prisons is a
filthy torture; all its scientific paraphernalia, the photographing, the
medical attendance, prove that it goes to the last foul limit of the boot a=
nd
rack. The cat is simply the rack without any of its intellectual reasons.
Holding this view strongly, I open the ordinary humanitarian books or papers
and I find a phrase like this, "The lash is a relic of barbarism."=
; So
is the plough. So is the fishing net. So is the horn or the staff or the fi=
re
lit in winter. What an inexpressibly feeble phrase for anything one wants to
attack--a relic of barbarism! It is as if a man walked naked down the street
to-morrow, and we said that his clothes were not quite in the latest fashio=
n.
There is nothing particularly nasty about being a relic of barbarism. Man i=
s a relic
of barbarism. Civilisation is a relic of barbarism.
But torture is no=
t a
relic of barbarism at all. In actuality it is simply a relic of sin; but in
comparative history it may well be called a relic of civilisation. It has
always been most artistic and elaborate when everything else was most artis=
tic
and elaborate. Thus it was detailed exquisite in the late Roman Empire, in =
the
complex and gorgeous sixteenth century, in the centralised French monarchy a
hundred years before the Revolution, and in the great Chinese civilisation =
to
this day. This is, first and last, the frightful thing we must remember. In=
so
far as we grow instructed and refined we are not (in any sense whatever)
naturally moving away from torture. We may be moving towards torture. We mu=
st
know what we are doing, if we are to avoid the enormous secret cruelty which
has crowned every historic civilisation.
The train moves m=
ore
swiftly through the sunny English fields. They have taken the prisoners awa=
y,
and I do not know what they have done with them.
XXXIII. The Prehistoric
Railway Station
A railway station=
is
an admirable place, although Ruskin did not think so; he did not think so
because he himself was even more modern than the railway station. He did not
think so because he was himself feverish, irritable, and snorting like an
engine. He could not value the ancient silence of the railway station.
"In a railway
station," he said, "you are in a hurry, and therefore, miserable&=
quot;;
but you need not be either unless you are as modern as Ruskin. The true
philosopher does not think of coming just in time for his train except as a=
bet
or a joke.
The only way of
catching a train I have ever discovered is to be late for the one before. Do
this, and you will find in a railway station much of the quietude and
consolation of a cathedral. It has many of the characteristics of a great
ecclesiastical building; it has vast arches, void spaces, coloured lights, =
and,
above all, it has recurrence or ritual. It is dedicated to the celebration =
of
water and fire the two prime elements of all human ceremonial. Lastly, a
station resembles the old religions rather than the new religions in this
point, that people go there. In connection with this it should also be reme=
mbered
that all popular places, all sites, actually used by the people, tend to re=
tain
the best routine of antiquity very much more than any localities or machines
used by any privileged class. Things are not altered so quickly or complete=
ly
by common people as they are by fashionable people. Ruskin could have found
more memories of the Middle Ages in the Underground Railway than in the gra=
nd
hotels outside the stations. The great palaces of pleasure which the rich b=
uild
in London all have brazen and vulgar names. Their names are either snobbish,
like the Hotel Cecil, or (worse still) cosmopolitan like the Hotel Metropol=
e.
But when I go in a third-class carriage from the nearest circle station to
Battersea to the nearest circle station to the DAILY NEWS, the names of the
stations are one long litany of solemn and saintly memories. Leaving Victor=
ia I
come to a park belonging especially to St. James the Apostle; thence I go t=
o Westminster
Bridge, whose very name alludes to the awful Abbey; Charing Cross holds up =
the
symbol of Christendom; the next station is called a Temple; and Blackfriars
remembers the mediaeval dream of a Brotherhood.
If you wish to fi=
nd
the past preserved, follow the million feet of the crowd. At the worst the
uneducated only wear down old things by sheer walking. But the educated kick
them down out of sheer culture.
I feel all this
profoundly as I wander about the empty railway station, where I have no
business of any kind. I have extracted a vast number of chocolates from
automatic machines; I have obtained cigarettes, toffee, scent, and other th=
ings
that I dislike by the same machinery; I have weighed myself, with sublime
results; and this sense, not only of the healthiness of popular things, but=
of
their essential antiquity and permanence, is still in possession of my mind=
. I
wander up to the bookstall, and my faith survives even the wild spectacle of
modern literature and journalism. Even in the crudest and most clamorous as=
pects
of the newspaper world I still prefer the popular to the proud and fastidio=
us.
If I had to choose between taking in the DAILY MAIL and taking in the TIMES
(the dilemma reminds one of a nightmare), I should certainly cry out with t=
he
whole of my being for the DAILY MAIL. Even mere bigness preached in a frivo=
lous
way is not so irritating as mere meanness preached in a big and solemn way.
People buy the DAILY MAIL, but they do not believe in it. They do believe in
the TIMES, and (apparently) they do not buy it. But the more the output of
paper upon the modern world is actually studied, the more it will be found =
to
be in all its essentials ancient and human, like the name of Charing Cross.=
Linger
for two or three hours at a station bookstall (as I am doing), and you will
find that it gradually takes on the grandeur and historic allusiveness of t=
he
Vatican or Bodleian Library. The novelty is all superficial; the tradition =
is
all interior and profound. The DAILY MAIL has new editions, but never a new
idea. Everything in a newspaper that is not the old human love of altar or
fatherland is the old human love of gossip. Modern writers have often made =
game
of the old chronicles because they chiefly record accidents and prodigies; a
church struck by lightning, or a calf with six legs. They do not seem to
realise that this old barbaric history is the same as new democratic
journalism. It is not that the savage chronicle has disappeared. It is mere=
ly
that the savage chronicle now appears every morning.
As I moved thus
mildly and vaguely in front of the bookstall, my eye caught a sudden and
scarlet title that for the moment staggered me. On the outside of a book I =
saw
written in large letters, "Get On or Get Out." The title of the b=
ook
recalled to me with a sudden revolt and reaction all that does seem
unquestionably new and nasty; it reminded me that there was in the world of
to-day that utterly idiotic thing, a worship of success; a thing that only
means surpassing anybody in anything; a thing that may mean being the most
successful person in running away from a battle; a thing that may mean being
the most successfully sleepy of the whole row of sleeping men. When I saw t=
hose
words the silence and sanctity of the railway station were for the moment
shadowed. Here, I thought, there is at any rate something anarchic and viol=
ent
and vile. This title, at any rate, means the most disgusting individualism =
of
this individualistic world. In the fury of my bitterness and passion I actu=
ally
bought the book, thereby ensuring that my enemy would get some of my money.=
I
opened it prepared to find some brutality, some blasphemy, which would real=
ly
be an exception to the general silence and sanctity of the railway station.=
I
was prepared to find something in the book that was as infamous as its titl=
e.
I was disappointe=
d.
There was nothing at all corresponding to the furious decisiveness of the
remarks on the cover. After reading it carefully I could not discover wheth=
er I
was really to get on or to get out; but I had a vague feeling that I should
prefer to get out. A considerable part of the book, particularly towards the
end, was concerned with a detailed description of the life of Napoleon
Bonaparte. Undoubtedly Napoleon got on. He also got out. But I could not
discover in any way how the details of his life given here were supposed to
help a person aiming at success. One anecdote described how Napoleon always=
wiped
his pen on his knee-breeches. I suppose the moral is: always wipe your pen =
on
your knee-breeches, and you will win the battle of Wagram. Another story to=
ld
that he let loose a gazelle among the ladies of his Court. Clearly the brut=
al
practical inference is--loose a gazelle among the ladies of your acquaintan=
ce,
and you will be Emperor of the French. Get on with a gazelle or get out. The
book entirely reconciled me to the soft twilight of the station. Then I
suddenly saw that there was a symbolic division which might be paralleled f=
rom
biology. Brave men are vertebrates; they have their softness on the surface=
and
their toughness in the middle. But these modern cowards are all crustaceans;
their hardness is all on the cover and their softness is inside. But the so=
ftness
is there; everything in this twilight temple is soft.
Every now and the=
n I
have introduced into my essays an element of truth. Things that really happ=
ened
have been mentioned, such as meeting President Kruger or being thrown out o=
f a
cab. What I have now to relate really happened; yet there was no element in=
it
of practical politics or of personal danger. It was simply a quiet conversa=
tion
which I had with another man. But that quiet conversation was by far the mo=
st
terrible thing that has ever happened to me in my life. It happened so long=
ago
that I cannot be certain of the exact words of the dialogue, only of its ma=
in
questions and answers; but there is one sentence in it for which I can answ=
er
absolutely and word for word. It was a sentence so awful that I could not
forget it if I would. It was the last sentence spoken; and it was not spoke=
n to
me.
The thing befell =
me
in the days when I was at an art school. An art school is different from al=
most
all other schools or colleges in this respect: that, being of new and crude
creation and of lax discipline, it presents a specially strong contrast bet=
ween
the industrious and the idle. People at an art school either do an atrocious
amount of work or do no work at all. I belonged, along with other charming
people, to the latter class; and this threw me often into the society of men
who were very different from myself, and who were idle for reasons very dif=
ferent
from mine. I was idle because I was very much occupied; I was engaged about
that time in discovering, to my own extreme and lasting astonishment, that I
was not an atheist. But there were others also at loose ends who were engag=
ed
in discovering what Carlyle called (I think with needless delicacy) the fact
that ginger is hot in the mouth.
I value that time=
, in
short, because it made me acquainted with a good representative number of
blackguards. In this connection there are two very curious things which the
critic of human life may observe. The first is the fact that there is one r=
eal
difference between men and women; that women prefer to talk in twos, while =
men
prefer to talk in threes. The second is that when you find (as you often do)
three young cads and idiots going about together and getting drunk together
every day you generally find that one of the three cads and idiots is (for =
some
extraordinary reason) not a cad and not an idiot. In these small groups dev=
oted
to a drivelling dissipation there is almost always one man who seems to have
condescended to his company; one man who, while he can talk a foul triviali=
ty
with his fellows, can also talk politics with a Socialist, or philosophy wi=
th a
Catholic.
It was just such a
man whom I came to know well. It was strange, perhaps, that he liked his di=
rty,
drunken society; it was stranger still, perhaps, that he liked my society. =
For
hours of the day he would talk with me about Milton or Gothic architecture;=
for
hours of the night he would go where I have no wish to follow him, even in
speculation. He was a man with a long, ironical face, and close and red hai=
r;
he was by class a gentleman, and could walk like one, but preferred, for so=
me reason,
to walk like a groom carrying two pails. He looked like a sort of Super-joc=
key;
as if some archangel had gone on the Turf. And I shall never forget the
half-hour in which he and I argued about real things for the first and the =
last
time.
.....
Along the front of
the big building of which our school was a part ran a huge slope of stone
steps, higher, I think, than those that lead up to St. Paul's Cathedral. On=
a
black wintry evening he and I were wandering on these cold heights, which
seemed as dreary as a pyramid under the stars. The one thing visible below =
us
in the blackness was a burning and blowing fire; for some gardener (I suppo=
se)
was burning something in the grounds, and from time to time the red sparks =
went
whirling past us like a swarm of scarlet insects in the dark. Above us also=
it
was gloom; but if one stared long enough at that upper darkness, one saw
vertical stripes of grey in the black and then became conscious of the colo=
ssal
façade of the Doric building, phantasmal, yet filling the sky, as if=
Heaven
were still filled with the gigantic ghost of Paganism.
.....
The man asked me
abruptly why I was becoming orthodox. Until he said it, I really had not kn=
own
that I was; but the moment he had said it I knew it to be literally true. A=
nd
the process had been so long and full that I answered him at once out of
existing stores of explanation.
"I am becomi=
ng
orthodox," I said, "because I have come, rightly or wrongly, after
stretching my brain till it bursts, to the old belief that heresy is worse =
even
than sin. An error is more menacing than a crime, for an error begets crime=
s.
An Imperialist is worse than a pirate. For an Imperialist keeps a school for
pirates; he teaches piracy disinterestedly and without an adequate salary. A
Free Lover is worse than a profligate. For a profligate is serious and reck=
less
even in his shortest love; while a Free Lover is cautious and irresponsible
even in his longest devotion. I hate modern doubt because it is
dangerous."
"You mean
dangerous to morality," he said in a voice of wonderful gentleness.
"I expect you are right. But why do you care about morality?"
I glanced at his =
face
quickly. He had thrust out his neck as he had a trick of doing; and so brou=
ght
his face abruptly into the light of the bonfire from below, like a face in =
the
footlights. His long chin and high cheek-bones were lit up infernally from
underneath; so that he looked like a fiend staring down into the flaming pi=
t. I
had an unmeaning sense of being tempted in a wilderness; and even as I paus=
ed a
burst of red sparks broke past.
"Aren't those
sparks splendid?" I said.
"Yes," =
he
replied.
"That is all
that I ask you to admit," said I. "Give me those few red specks a=
nd I
will deduce Christian morality. Once I thought like you, that one's pleasur=
e in
a flying spark was a thing that could come and go with that spark. Once I
thought that the delight was as free as the fire. Once I thought that red s=
tar
we see was alone in space. But now I know that the red star is only on the =
apex
of an invisible pyramid of virtues. That red fire is only the flower on a s=
talk
of living habits, which you cannot see. Only because your mother made you s=
ay
'Thank you' for a bun are you now able to thank Nature or chaos for those r=
ed
stars of an instant or for the white stars of all time. Only because you we=
re humble
before fireworks on the fifth of November do you now enjoy any fireworks th=
at
you chance to see. You only like them being red because you were told about=
the
blood of the martyrs; you only like them being bright because brightness is=
a
glory. That flame flowered out of virtues, and it will fade with virtues.
Seduce a woman, and that spark will be less bright. Shed blood, and that sp=
ark
will be less red. Be really bad, and they will be to you like the spots on a
wall-paper."
He had a horrible
fairness of the intellect that made me despair of his soul. A common, harml=
ess
atheist would have denied that religion produced humility or humility a sim=
ple
joy: but he admitted both. He only said, "But shall I not find in evil=
a
life of its own? Granted that for every woman I ruin one of those red sparks
will go out: will not the expanding pleasure of ruin..."
"Do you see =
that
fire?" I asked. "If we had a real fighting democracy, some one wo=
uld
burn you in it; like the devil-worshipper that you are."
"Perhaps,&qu=
ot;
he said, in his tired, fair way. "Only what you call evil I call
good."
He went down the
great steps alone, and I felt as if I wanted the steps swept and cleaned. I
followed later, and as I went to find my hat in the low, dark passage where=
it
hung, I suddenly heard his voice again, but the words were inaudible. I
stopped, startled: then I heard the voice of one of the vilest of his
associates saying, "Nobody can possibly know." And then I heard t=
hose
two or three words which I remember in every syllable and cannot forget. I =
heard
the Diabolist say, "I tell you I have done everything else. If I do th=
at I
shan't know the difference between right and wrong." I rushed out with=
out
daring to pause; and as I passed the fire I did not know whether it was hel=
l or
the furious love of God.
I have since heard
that he died: it may be said, I think, that he committed suicide; though he=
did
it with tools of pleasure, not with tools of pain. God help him, I know the
road he went; but I have never known, or even dared to think, what was that=
place
at which he stopped and refrained.
XXXV. A Glimpse of My Cou=
ntry
Whatever is it th=
at
we are all looking for? I fancy that it is really quite close. When I was a=
boy
I had a fancy that Heaven or Fairyland or whatever I called it, was immedia=
tely
behind my own back, and that this was why I could never manage to see it,
however often I twisted and turned to take it by surprise. I had a notion o=
f a
man perpetually spinning round on one foot like a teetotum in the effort to
find that world behind his back which continually fled from him. Perhaps th=
is
is why the world goes round. Perhaps the world is always trying to look over
its shoulder and catch up the world which always escapes it, yet without wh=
ich
it cannot be itself.
In any case, as I
have said, I think that we must always conceive of that which is the goal of
all our endeavours as something which is in some strange way near. Science
boasts of the distance of its stars; of the terrific remoteness of the thin=
gs
of which it has to speak. But poetry and religion always insist upon the
proximity, the almost menacing closeness of the things with which they are
concerned. Always the Kingdom of Heaven is "At Hand"; and
Looking-glass Land is only through the looking-glass. So I for one should n=
ever
be astonished if the next twist of a street led me to the heart of that maz=
e in
which all the mystics are lost. I should not be at all surprised if I turned
one corner in Fleet Street and saw a yet queerer-looking lamp; I should not=
be
surprised if I turned a third corner and found myself in Elfland.
I should not be surprised at this; but I was surprised the other day at something more surprising. I took a turn out of Fleet Street and found myself in England.<= o:p>
.....
The singular shock
experienced perhaps requires explanation. In the darkest or the most inadeq=
uate
moments of England there is one thing that should always be remembered about
the very nature of our country. It may be shortly stated by saying that Eng=
land
is not such a fool as it looks. The types of England, the externals of Engl=
and,
always misrepresent the country. England is an oligarchical country, and it=
prefers
that its oligarchy should be inferior to itself.
The speaking in t=
he
House of Commons, for instance, is not only worse than the speaking was, it=
is
worse than the speaking is, in all or almost all other places in small deba=
ting
clubs or casual dinners. Our countrymen probably prefer this solemn futilit=
y in
the higher places of the national life. It may be a strange sight to see the
blind leading the blind; but England provides a stranger. England shows us =
the
blind leading the people who can see. And this again is an under-statement =
of
the case. For the English political aristocrats not only speak worse than m=
any
other people; they speak worse than themselves. The ignorance of statesmen =
is
like the ignorance of judges, an artificial and affected thing. If you have=
the
good fortune really to talk with a statesman, you will be constantly startl=
ed
with his saying quite intelligent things. It makes one nervous at first. An=
d I
have never been sufficiently intimate with such a man to ask him why it was=
a
rule of his life in Parliament to appear sillier than he was.
It is the same wi=
th
the voters. The average man votes below himself; he votes with half a mind =
or
with a hundredth part of one. A man ought to vote with the whole of himself=
as
he worships or gets married. A man ought to vote with his head and heart, h=
is
soul and stomach, his eye for faces and his ear for music; also (when
sufficiently provoked) with his hands and feet. If he has ever seen a fine
sunset, the crimson colour of it should creep into his vote. If he has ever
heard splendid songs, they should be in his ears when he makes the mystical
cross. But as it is, the difficulty with English democracy at all elections=
is
that it is something less than itself. The question is not so much whether =
only
a minority of the electorate votes. The point is that only a minority of the
voter votes.
.....
This is the trage=
dy
of England; you cannot judge it by its foremost men. Its types do not typif=
y.
And on the occasion of which I speak I found this to be so especially of th=
at
old intelligent middle class which I had imagined had almost vanished from =
the
world. It seemed to me that all the main representatives of the middle class
had gone off in one direction or in the other; they had either set out in
pursuit of the Smart Set or they had set out in pursuit of the Simple Life.=
I
cannot say which I dislike more myself; the people in question are welcome =
to have
either of them, or, as is more likely, to have both, in hideous alternation=
s of
disease and cure. But all the prominent men who plainly represent the middle
class have adopted either the single eye-glass of Mr Chamberlain or the sin=
gle
eye of Mr. Bernard Shaw.
The old class tha=
t I
mean has no representative. Its food was plentiful; but it had no show. Its
food was plain; but it had no fads. It was serious about politics; and when=
it
spoke in public it committed the solecism of trying to speak well. I thought
that this old earnest political England had practically disappeared. And as=
I
say, I took one turn out of Fleet Street and I found a room full of it.
.....
At the top of the
room was a chair in which Johnson had sat. The club was a club in which Wil=
kes
had spoken, in a time when even the ne'er-do-weel was virile. But all these
things by themselves might be merely archaism. The extraordinary thing was =
that
this hall had all the hubbub, the sincerity, the anger, the oratory of the
eighteenth century. The members of this club were of all shades of opinion,=
yet
there was not one speech which gave me that jar of unreality which I often =
have
in listening to the ablest men uttering my own opinion. The Toryism of this=
club
was like the Toryism of Johnson, a Toryism that could use humour and appeal=
ed
to humanity. The democracy of this club was like the democracy of Wilkes, a
democracy that can speak epigrams and fight duels; a democracy that can face
things out and endure slander; the democracy of Wilkes, or, rather, the
democracy of Fox.
One thing especia=
lly
filled my soul with the soul of my fathers. Each man speaking, whether he s=
poke
well or ill, spoke as well as he could from sheer fury against the other ma=
n.
This is the greatest of our modern descents, that nowadays a man does not
become more rhetorical as he becomes more sincere. An eighteenth-century
speaker, when he got really and honestly furious, looked for big words with
which to crush his adversary. The new speaker looks for small words to crush
him with. He looks for little facts and little sneers. In a modern speech t=
he rhetoric
is put into the merely formal part, the opening to which nobody listens. But
when Mr. Chamberlain, or a Moderate, or one of the harder kind of Socialist=
s,
becomes really sincere, he becomes Cockney. "The destiny of the
Empire," or "The destiny of humanity," do well enough for me=
re
ornamental preliminaries, but when the man becomes angry and honest, then i=
t is
a snarl, "Where do we come in?" or "It's your money they
want."
The men in this
eighteenth-century club were entirely different; they were quite eighteenth
century. Each one rose to his feet quivering with passion, and tried to des=
troy
his opponent, not with sniggering, but actually with eloquence. I was argui=
ng
with them about Home Rule; at the end I told them why the English aristocra=
cy
really disliked an Irish Parliament; because it would be like their club.
.....
I came out again =
into
Fleet Street at night, and by a dim lamp I saw pasted up some tawdry nonsen=
se
about Wastrels and how London was rising against something that London had
hardly heard of. Then I suddenly saw, as in one obvious picture, that the
modern world is an immense and tumultuous ocean, full of monstrous and livi=
ng
things. And I saw that across the top of it is spread a thin, a very thin,
sheet of ice, of wicked wealth and of lying journalism.
And as I stood th=
ere
in the darkness I could almost fancy that I heard it crack.
XXXVI. A Somewhat Improba=
ble
Story
I cannot remember
whether this tale is true or not. If I read it through very carefully I hav=
e a
suspicion that I should come to the conclusion that it is not. But,
unfortunately, I cannot read it through very carefully, because, you see, i=
t is
not written yet. The image and the idea of it clung to me through a great p=
art
of my boyhood; I may have dreamt it before I could talk; or told it to myse=
lf
before I could read; or read it before I could remember. On the whole, howe=
ver,
I am certain that I did not read it, for children have very clear memories
about things like that; and of the books which I was really fond I can stil=
l remember,
not only the shape and bulk and binding, but even the position of the print=
ed
words on many of the pages. On the whole, I incline to the opinion that it
happened to me before I was born.
.....
At any rate, let =
us
tell the story now with all the advantages of the atmosphere that has clung=
to
it. You may suppose me, for the sake of argument, sitting at lunch in one of
those quick-lunch restaurants in the City where men take their food so fast
that it has none of the quality of food, and take their half-hour's vacatio=
n so
fast that it has none of the qualities of leisure; to hurry through one's
leisure is the most unbusiness-like of actions. They all wore tall shiny ha=
ts
as if they could not lose an instant even to hang them on a peg, and they a=
ll had
one eye a little off, hypnotised by the huge eye of the clock. In short, th=
ey
were the slaves of the modern bondage, you could hear their fetters clankin=
g. Each
was, in fact, bound by a chain; the heaviest chain ever tied to a man--it is
called a watch-chain.
Now, among these
there entered and sat down opposite to me a man who almost immediately open=
ed
an uninterrupted monologue. He was like all the other men in dress, yet he =
was
startlingly opposite to them in all manner. He wore a high shiny hat and a =
long
frock coat, but he wore them as such solemn things were meant to be worn; he
wore the silk hat as if it were a mitre, and the frock coat as if it were t=
he
ephod of a high priest. He not only hung his hat up on the peg, but he seem=
ed
(such was his stateliness) almost to ask permission of the hat for doing so,
and to apologise to the peg for making use of it. When he had sat down on a
wooden chair with the air of one considering its feelings and given a sort =
of
slight stoop or bow to the wooden table itself, as if it were an altar, I c=
ould
not help some comment springing to my lips. For the man was a big,
sanguine-faced, prosperous-looking man, and yet he treated everything with a
care that almost amounted to nervousness.
For the sake of
saying something to express my interest I said, "This furniture is fai=
rly
solid; but, of course, people do treat it much too carelessly."
As I looked up
doubtfully my eye caught his, and was fixed as his was fixed in an apocalyp=
tic
stare. I had thought him ordinary as he entered, save for his strange, caut=
ious
manner; but if the other people had seen him then they would have screamed =
and
emptied the room. They did not see him, and they went on making a clatter w=
ith
their forks, and a murmur with their conversation. But the man's face was t=
he
face of a maniac.
"Did you mean
anything particular by that remark?" he asked at last, and the blood
crawled back slowly into his face.
"Nothing
whatever," I answered. "One does not mean anything here; it spoils
people's digestions."
He limped back and
wiped his broad forehead with a big handkerchief; and yet there seemed to b=
e a
sort of regret in his relief.
"I thought
perhaps," he said in a low voice, "that another of them had gone
wrong."
"If you mean
another digestion gone wrong," I said, "I never heard of one here
that went right. This is the heart of the Empire, and the other organs are =
in
an equally bad way."
"No, I mean
another street gone wrong," and he said heavily and quietly, "but=
as
I suppose that doesn't explain much to you, I think I shall have to tell you
the story. I do so with all the less responsibility, because I know you won=
't
believe it. For forty years of my life I invariably left my office, which i=
s in
Leadenhall Street, at half-past five in the afternoon, taking with me an
umbrella in the right hand and a bag in the left hand. For forty years two
months and four days I passed out of the side office door, walked down the
street on the left-hand side, took the first turning to the left and the th=
ird
to the right, from where I bought an evening paper, followed the road on the
right-hand side round two obtuse angles, and came out just outside a
Metropolitan station, where I took a train home. For forty years two months=
and
four days I fulfilled this course by accumulated habit: it was not a long
street that I traversed, and it took me about four and a half minutes to do=
it.
After forty years two months and four days, on the fifth day I went out in =
the
same manner, with my umbrella in the right hand and my bag in the left, and=
I
began to notice that walking along the familiar street tired me somewhat mo=
re
than usual; and when I turned it I was convinced that I had turned down the
wrong one. For now the street shot up quite a steep slant, such as one only
sees in the hilly parts of London, and in this part there were no hills at =
all.
Yet it was not the wrong street; the name written on it was the same; the
shuttered shops were the same; the lamp-posts and the whole look of the
perspective was the same; only it was tilted upwards like a lid. Forgetting=
any
trouble about breathlessness or fatigue I ran furiously forward, and reached
the second of my accustomed turnings, which ought to bring me almost within=
sight
of the station. And as I turned that corner I nearly fell on the pavement. =
For
now the street went up straight in front of my face like a steep staircase =
or
the side of a pyramid. There was not for miles round that place so much as a
slope like that of Ludgate Hill. And this was a slope like that of the
Matterhorn. The whole street had lifted itself like a single wave, and yet
every speck and detail of it was the same, and I saw in the high distance, =
as
at the top of an Alpine pass, picked out in pink letters the name over my p=
aper
shop.
"I ran on an=
d on
blindly now, passing all the shops and coming to a part of the road where t=
here
was a long grey row of private houses. I had, I know not why, an irrational
feeling that I was a long iron bridge in empty space. An impulse seized me,=
and
I pulled up the iron trap of a coal-hole. Looking down through it I saw emp=
ty
space and the stairs.
"When I look=
ed
up again a man was standing in his front garden, having apparently come out=
of
his house; he was leaning over the railings and gazing at me. We were all a=
lone
on that nightmare road; his face was in shadow; his dress was dark and
ordinary; but when I saw him standing so perfectly still I knew somehow tha=
t he
was not of this world. And the stars behind his head were larger and fiercer
than ought to be endured by the eyes of men.
"'If you are=
a
kind angel,' I said, 'or a wise devil, or have anything in common with mank=
ind,
tell me what is this street possessed of devils.'
"After a long
silence he said, 'What do you say that it is?'
"'It is Bump=
ton
Street, of course,' I snapped. 'It goes to Oldgate Station.'
"'Yes,' he
admitted gravely; 'it goes there sometimes. Just now, however, it is going =
to
heaven.'
"'To heaven?=
' I
said. 'Why?'
"'It is goin=
g to
heaven for justice,' he replied. 'You must have treated it badly. Remember
always that there is one thing that cannot be endured by anybody or anythin=
g.
That one unendurable thing is to be overworked and also neglected. For inst=
ance,
you can overwork women--everybody does. But you can't neglect women--I defy=
you
to. At the same time, you can neglect tramps and gypsies and all the appare=
nt
refuse of the State so long as you do not overwork it. But no beast of the
field, no horse, no dog can endure long to be asked to do more than his work
and yet have less than his honour. It is the same with streets. You have wo=
rked
this street to death, and yet you have never remembered its existence. If y=
ou
had a healthy democracy, even of pagans, they would have hung this street w=
ith
garlands and given it the name of a god. Then it would have gone quietly. B=
ut
at last the street has grown tired of your tireless insolence; and it is
bucking and rearing its head to heaven. Have you never sat on a bucking hor=
se?'
"I looked at=
the
long grey street, and for a moment it seemed to me to be exactly like the l=
ong
grey neck of a horse flung up to heaven. But in a moment my sanity returned,
and I said, 'But this is all nonsense. Streets go to the place they have to=
go.
A street must always go to its end.'
"'Why do you
think so of a street?' he asked, standing very still.
"'Because I = have always seen it do the same thing,' I replied, in reasonable anger. 'Day aft= er day, year after year, it has always gone to Oldgate Station; day after...'<= o:p>
"I stopped, =
for
he had flung up his head with the fury of the road in revolt.
"'And you?' =
he
cried terribly. 'What do you think the road thinks of you? Does the road th=
ink
you are alive? Are you alive? Day after day, year after year, you have gone=
to
Oldgate Station....' Since then I have respected the things called
inanimate."
And bowing slight=
ly
to the mustard-pot, the man in the restaurant withdrew.
Nearly all the be=
st
and most precious things in the universe you can get for a halfpenny. I mak=
e an
exception, of course, of the sun, the moon, the earth, people, stars,
thunderstorms, and such trifles. You can get them for nothing. Also I make =
an
exception of another thing, which I am not allowed to mention in this paper,
and of which the lowest price is a penny halfpenny. But the general princip=
le
will be at once apparent. In the street behind me, for instance, you can now
get a ride on an electric tram for a halfpenny. To be on an electric tram i=
s to
be on a flying castle in a fairy tale. You can get quite a large number of =
brightly
coloured sweets for a halfpenny. Also you can get the chance of reading this
article for a halfpenny; along, of course, with other and irrelevant matter=
.
But if you want to
see what a vast and bewildering array of valuable things you can get at a
halfpenny each you should do as I was doing last night. I was gluing my nose
against the glass of a very small and dimly lit toy shop in one of the grey=
est
and leanest of the streets of Battersea. But dim as was that square of ligh=
t,
it was filled (as a child once said to me) with all the colours God ever ma=
de.
Those toys of the poor were like the children who buy them; they were all
dirty; but they were all bright. For my part, I think brightness more impor=
tant
than cleanliness; since the first is of the soul, and the second of the bod=
y.
You must excuse me; I am a democrat; I know I am out of fashion in the mode=
rn
world.
.....
As I looked at th=
at
palace of pigmy wonders, at small green omnibuses, at small blue elephants,=
at
small black dolls, and small red Noah's arks, I must have fallen into some =
sort
of unnatural trance. That lit shop-window became like the brilliantly lit s=
tage
when one is watching some highly coloured comedy. I forgot the grey houses =
and
the grimy people behind me as one forgets the dark galleries and the dim cr=
owds
at a theatre. It seemed as if the little objects behind the glass were smal=
l,
not because they were toys, but because they were objects far away. The gre=
en
omnibus was really a green omnibus, a green Bayswater omnibus, passing acro=
ss
some huge desert on its ordinary way to Bayswater. The blue elephant was no
longer blue with paint; he was blue with distance. The black doll was reall=
y a
negro relieved against passionate tropic foliage in the land where every we=
ed
is flaming and only man is black. The red Noah's ark was really the enormous
ship of earthly salvation riding on the rain-swollen sea, red in the first =
morning
of hope.
Every one, I supp=
ose,
knows such stunning instants of abstraction, such brilliant blanks in the m=
ind.
In such moments one can see the face of one's own best friend as an unmeani=
ng
pattern of spectacles or moustaches. They are commonly marked by the two si=
gns
of the slowness of their growth and the suddenness of their termination. The
return to real thinking is often as abrupt as bumping into a man. Very often
indeed (in my case) it is bumping into a man. But in any case the awakening=
is always
emphatic and, generally speaking, it is always complete. Now, in this case,=
I
did come back with a shock of sanity to the consciousness that I was, after
all, only staring into a dingy little toy-shop; but in some strange way the
mental cure did not seem to be final. There was still in my mind an
unmanageable something that told me that I had strayed into some odd
atmosphere, or that I had already done some odd thing. I felt as if I had
worked a miracle or committed a sin. It was as if I had at any rate, stepped
across some border in the soul.
To shake off this
dangerous and dreamy sense I went into the shop and tried to buy wooden
soldiers. The man in the shop was very old and broken, with confused white =
hair
covering his head and half his face, hair so startlingly white that it look=
ed
almost artificial. Yet though he was senile and even sick, there was nothin=
g of
suffering in his eyes; he looked rather as if he were gradually falling asl=
eep
in a not unkindly decay. He gave me the wooden soldiers, but when I put down
the money he did not at first seem to see it; then he blinked at it feebly,=
and
then he pushed it feebly away.
"No, no,&quo=
t;
he said vaguely. "I never have. I never have. We are rather old-fashio=
ned
here."
"Not taking
money," I replied, "seems to me more like an uncommonly new fashi=
on
than an old one."
"I never
have," said the old man, blinking and blowing his nose; "I've alw=
ays
given presents. I'm too old to stop."
"Good
heavens!" I said. "What can you mean? Why, you might be Father Ch=
ristmas."
"I am Father
Christmas," he said apologetically, and blew his nose again.
The lamps could n=
ot
have been lighted yet in the street outside. At any rate, I could see nothi=
ng
against the darkness but the shining shop-window. There were no sounds of s=
teps
or voices in the street; I might have strayed into some new and sunless wor=
ld.
But something had cut the chords of common sense, and I could not feel even
surprise except sleepily. Something made me say, "You look ill, Father=
Christmas."
"I am
dying," he said.
I did not speak, =
and
it was he who spoke again.
"All the new
people have left my shop. I cannot understand it. They seem to object to me=
on
such curious and inconsistent sort of grounds, these scientific men, and th=
ese
innovators. They say that I give people superstitions and make them too
visionary; they say I give people sausages and make them too coarse. They s=
ay
my heavenly parts are too heavenly; they say my earthly parts are too earth=
ly;
I don't know what they want, I'm sure. How can heavenly things be too heave=
nly,
or earthly things too earthly? How can one be too good, or too jolly? I don=
't understand.
But I understand one thing well enough. These modern people are living and =
I am
dead."
"You may be
dead," I replied. "You ought to know. But as for what they are do=
ing,
do not call it living."
.....
A silence fell
suddenly between us which I somehow expected to be unbroken. But it had not
fallen for more than a few seconds when, in the utter stillness, I distinct=
ly
heard a very rapid step coming nearer and nearer along the street. The next
moment a figure flung itself into the shop and stood framed in the doorway.=
He
wore a large white hat tilted back as if in impatience; he had tight black
old-fashioned pantaloons, a gaudy old-fashioned stock and waistcoat, and an=
old
fantastic coat. He had large, wide-open, luminous eyes like those of an
arresting actor; he had a pale, nervous face, and a fringe of beard. He too=
k in
the shop and the old man in a look that seemed literally a flash and uttered
the exclamation of a man utterly staggered.
"Good
lord!" he cried out; "it can't be you! It isn't you! I came to as=
k where
your grave was."
"I'm not dead
yet, Mr. Dickens," said the old gentleman, with a feeble smile; "=
but
I'm dying," he hastened to add reassuringly.
"But, dash i=
t all,
you were dying in my time," said Mr. Charles Dickens with animation;
"and you don't look a day older."
"I've felt l=
ike
this for a long time," said Father Christmas.
Mr. Dickens turned
his back and put his head out of the door into the darkness.
"Dick,"=
he
roared at the top of his voice; "he's still alive."
.....
Another shadow
darkened the doorway, and a much larger and more full-blooded gentleman in =
an
enormous periwig came in, fanning his flushed face with a military hat of t=
he
cut of Queen Anne. He carried his head well back like a soldier, and his hot
face had even a look of arrogance, which was suddenly contradicted by his e=
yes,
which were literally as humble as a dog's. His sword made a great clatter, =
as
if the shop were too small for it.
"Indeed,&quo=
t;
said Sir Richard Steele, "'tis a most prodigious matter, for the man w=
as
dying when I wrote about Sir Roger de Coverley and his Christmas Day."=
My senses were growing dimmer and the room darker. It seemed to be filled with newcomers.<= o:p>
"It hath eve=
r been
understood," said a burly man, who carried his head humorously and
obstinately a little on one side--I think he was Ben Jonson--"It hath =
ever
been understood, consule Jacobo, under our King James and her late Majesty,
that such good and hearty customs were fallen sick, and like to pass from t=
he
world. This grey beard most surely was no lustier when I knew him than
now."
And I also though=
t I
heard a green-clad man, like Robin Hood, say in some mixed Norman French,
"But I saw the man dying."
"I have felt
like this a long time," said Father Christmas, in his feeble way again=
.
Mr. Charles Dicke=
ns
suddenly leant across to him.
"Since
when?" he asked. "Since you were born?"
"Yes," =
said
the old man, and sank shaking into a chair. "I have been always dying.=
"
Mr. Dickens took =
off
his hat with a flourish like a man calling a mob to rise.
"I understan=
d it
now," he cried, "you will never die."
XXXVIII. The Ballade of a
Strange Town
My friend and I, =
in
fooling about Flanders, fell into a fixed affection for the town of Mechlin=
or
Malines. Our rest there was so restful that we almost felt it as a home, and
hardly strayed out of it.
We sat day after =
day
in the market-place, under little trees growing in wooden tubs, and looked =
up
at the noble converging lines of the Cathedral tower, from which the three
riders from Ghent, in the poem, heard the bell which told them they were not
too late. But we took as much pleasure in the people, in the little boys wi=
th
open, flat Flemish faces and fur collars round their necks, making them loo=
k like
burgomasters; or the women, whose prim, oval faces, hair strained tightly o=
ff
the temples, and mouths at once hard, meek, and humorous, exactly reproduced
the late mediaeval faces in Memling and Van Eyck.
But one afternoon=
, as
it happened, my friend rose from under his little tree, and pointing to a s=
ort
of toy train that was puffing smoke in one corner of the clear square,
suggested that we should go by it. We got into the little train, which was
meant really to take the peasants and their vegetables to and fro from their
fields beyond the town, and the official came round to give us tickets. We
asked him what place we should get to if we paid fivepence. The Belgians are
not a romantic people, and he asked us (with a lamentable mixture of Flemish
coarseness and French rationalism) where we wanted to go.
We explained that=
we
wanted to go to fairyland, and the only question was whether we could get t=
here
for fivepence. At last, after a great deal of international misunderstandin=
g (for
he spoke French in the Flemish and we in the English manner), he told us th=
at
fivepence would take us to a place which I have never seen written down, but
which when spoken sounded like the word "Waterloo" pronounced by =
an
intoxicated patriot; I think it was Waerlowe.
We clasped our ha=
nds
and said it was the place we had been seeking from boyhood, and when we had=
got
there we descended with promptitude.
For a moment I ha=
d a
horrible fear that it really was the field of Waterloo; but I was comforted=
by
remembering that it was in quite a different part of Belgium. It was a
cross-roads, with one cottage at the corner, a perspective of tall trees li=
ke
Hobbema's "Avenue," and beyond only the infinite flat chess-board=
of
the little fields. It was the scene of peace and prosperity; but I must con=
fess
that my friend's first action was to ask the man when there would be another
train back to Mechlin. The man stated that there would be a train back in
exactly one hour. We walked up the avenue, and when we were nearly half an
hour's walk away it began to rain.
.....
We arrived back at
the cross-roads sodden and dripping, and, finding the train waiting, climbed
into it with some relief. The officer on this train could speak nothing but
Flemish, but he understood the name Mechlin, and indicated that when we cam=
e to
Mechlin Station he would put us down, which, after the right interval of ti=
me,
he did.
We got down, unde=
r a
steady downpour, evidently on the edge of Mechlin, though the features could
not easily be recognised through the grey screen of the rain. I do not
generally agree with those who find rain depressing. A shower-bath is not
depressing; it is rather startling. And if it is exciting when a man throws=
a
pail of water over you, why should it not also be exciting when the gods th=
row
many pails? But on this soaking afternoon, whether it was the dull sky-line=
of
the Netherlands or the fact that we were returning home without any adventu=
re,
I really did think things a trifle dreary. As soon as we could creep under =
the shelter
of a street we turned into a little café, kept by one woman. She was
incredibly old, and she spoke no French. There we drank black coffee and wh=
at
was called "cognac fine." "Cognac fine" were the only t=
wo French
words used in the establishment, and they were not true. At least, the fine=
ness
(perhaps by its very ethereal delicacy) escaped me. After a little my frien=
d,
who was more restless than I, got up and went out, to see if the rain had
stopped and if we could at once stroll back to our hotel by the station. I =
sat
finishing my coffee in a colourless mood, and listening to the unremitting
rain.
.....
Suddenly the door
burst open, and my friend appeared, transfigured and frantic.
"Get up!&quo=
t;
he cried, waving his hands wildly. "Get up! We're in the wrong town! W=
e're
not in Mechlin at all. Mechlin is ten miles, twenty miles off--God knows wh=
at!
We're somewhere near Antwerp."
"What!"=
I
cried, leaping from my seat, and sending the furniture flying. "Then a=
ll
is well, after all! Poetry only hid her face for an instant behind a cloud.
Positively for a moment I was feeling depressed because we were in the right
town. But if we are in the wrong town--why, we have our adventure after all=
! If
we are in the wrong town, we are in the right place."
I rushed out into=
the
rain, and my friend followed me somewhat more grimly. We discovered we were=
in
a town called Lierre, which seemed to consist chiefly of bankrupt pastry co=
oks,
who sold lemonade.
"This is the
peak of our whole poetic progress!" I cried enthusiastically. "We
must do something, something sacramental and commemorative! We cannot sacri=
fice
an ox, and it would be a bore to build a temple. Let us write a poem."=
With but slight
encouragement, I took out an old envelope and one of those pencils that turn
bright violet in water. There was plenty of water about, and the violet ran
down the paper, symbolising the rich purple of that romantic hour. I began,
choosing the form of an old French ballade; it is the easiest because it is=
the
most restricted--
"Can Man to Mount Olymp=
us
rise, And f=
ancy
Primrose Hill the scene? Can a man walk in
Paradise And t=
hink
he is in Turnham Green? And could I take =
you
for Malines, Not k=
nowing
the nobler thing you were? O Pearl of all the
plain, and queen, The lovely city of
Lierre.
"Through memory's mist =
in
glimmering guise Shall=
shine
your streets of sloppy sheen. And wet shall gro=
w my
dreaming eyes, To th=
ink
how wet my boots have been Now if I die or s=
hoot a
Dean----"
Here I broke off =
to
ask my friend whether he thought it expressed a more wild calamity to shoot=
a
Dean or to be a Dean. But he only turned up his coat collar, and I felt that
for him the muse had folded her wings. I rewrote--
"Now if I die a Rural D=
ean, Or rob a ba=
nk I
do not care, Or
turn a Tory. I have seen The lovely =
city
of Lierre."
"The next
line," I resumed, warming to it; but my friend interrupted me.
"The next
line," he said somewhat harshly, "will be a railway line. We can =
get
back to Mechlin from here, I find, though we have to change twice. I dare s=
ay I
should think this jolly romantic but for the weather. Adventure is the
champagne of life, but I prefer my champagne and my adventures dry. Here is=
the
station."
.....
We did not speak
again until we had left Lierre, in its sacred cloud of rain, and were comin=
g to
Mechlin, under a clearer sky, that even made one think of stars. Then I lea=
nt
forward and said to my friend in a low voice--"I have found out
everything. We have come to the wrong star."
He stared his que=
ry,
and I went on eagerly: "That is what makes life at once so splendid an=
d so
strange. We are in the wrong world. When I thought that was the right town,=
it
bored me; when I knew it was wrong, I was happy. So the false optimism, the
modern happiness, tires us because it tells us we fit into this world. The =
true
happiness is that we don't fit. We come from somewhere else. We have lost o=
ur
way."
He silently nodde=
d,
staring out of the window, but whether I had impressed or only fatigued him=
I
could not tell. "This," I added, "is suggested in the last v=
erse
of a fine poem you have grossly neglected--
"'Happy is he and more than w=
ise Who s=
ees
with wondering eyes and clean The world through=
all
the grey disguise Of sl=
eep
and custom in between. Yes; we may pass =
the
heavenly screen, But s=
hall
we know when we are there? Who know not what=
these
dead stones mean, The l=
ovely
city of Lierre.'"
Here the train
stopped abruptly. And from Mechlin church steeple we heard the half-chime: =
and
Joris broke silence with "No bally HORS D'OEUVRES for me: I shall get =
on
to something solid at once."
=
L'Envoy
Prince, wide your Empire spr=
eads,
I ween, Yet
happier is that moistened Mayor, Who drinks her cognac f=
ar
from fine, The lovely =
city
of Lierre.
XXXIX. The Mystery of a
Pageant
Once upon a time,=
it
seems centuries ago, I was prevailed on to take a small part in one of those
historical processions or pageants which happened to be fashionable in or a=
bout
the year 1909. And since I tend, like all who are growing old, to re-enter =
the
remote past as a paradise or playground, I disinter a memory which may serv=
e to
stand among those memories of small but strange incidents with which I have
sometimes filled this column. The thing has really some of the dark qualiti=
es
of a detective-story; though I suppose that Sherlock Holmes himself could h=
ardly
unravel it now, when the scent is so old and cold and most of the actors,
doubtless, long dead.
This old pageant
included a series of figures from the eighteenth century, and I was told th=
at I
was just like Dr. Johnson. Seeing that Dr. Johnson was heavily seamed with
small-pox, had a waistcoat all over gravy, snorted and rolled as he walked,=
and
was probably the ugliest man in London, I mention this identification as a =
fact
and not as a vaunt. I had nothing to do with the arrangement; and such flee=
ting
suggestions as I made were not taken so seriously as they might have been. I
requested that a row of posts be erected across the lawn, so that I might t=
ouch
all of them but one, and then go back and touch that. Failing this, I felt =
that
the least they could do was to have twenty-five cups of tea stationed at
regular intervals along the course, each held by a Mrs. Thrale in full cost=
ume.
My best constructive suggestion was the most harshly rejected of all. In fr=
ont
of me in the procession walked the great Bishop Berkeley, the man who turned
the tables on the early materialists by maintaining that matter itself poss=
ibly
does not exist. Dr. Johnson, you will remember, did not like such bottomless
fancies as Berkeley's, and kicked a stone with his foot, saying, "I re=
fute
him so!" Now (as I pointed out) kicking a stone would not make the
metaphysical quarrel quite clear; besides, it would hurt. But how picturesq=
ue and
perfect it would be if I moved across the ground in the symbolic attitude of
kicking Bishop Berkeley! How complete an allegoric group; the great
transcendentalist walking with his head among the stars, but behind him the
avenging realist pede claudo, with uplifted foot. But I must not take up sp=
ace
with these forgotten frivolities; we old men grow too garrulous in talking =
of
the distant past.
This story scarce=
ly
concerns me either in my real or my assumed character. Suffice it to say th=
at
the procession took place at night in a large garden and by torchlight (so
remote is the date), that the garden was crowded with Puritans, monks, and
men-at-arms, and especially with early Celtic saints smoking pipes, and with
elegant Renaissance gentlemen talking Cockney. Suffice it to say, or rather=
it
is needless to say, that I got lost. I wandered away into some dim corner of
that dim shrubbery, where there was nothing to do except tumbling over tent=
ropes,
and I began almost to feel like my prototype, and to share his horror of
solitude and hatred of a country life.
In this detachment
and dilemma I saw another man in a white wig advancing across this forsaken
stretch of lawn; a tall, lean man, who stooped in his long black robes like=
a
stooping eagle. When I thought he would pass me, he stopped before my face,=
and
said, "Dr. Johnson, I think. I am Paley."
"Sir," I
said, "you used to guide men to the beginnings of Christianity. If you=
can
guide me now to wherever this infernal thing begins you will perform a yet
higher and harder function."
His costume and s=
tyle
were so perfect that for the instant I really thought he was a ghost. He to=
ok
no notice of my flippancy, but, turning his black-robed back on me, led me
through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways, until we came out into the
glare of gaslight and laughing men in masquerade, and I could easily laugh =
at
myself.
And there, you wi=
ll
say, was an end of the matter. I am (you will say) naturally obtuse, coward=
ly,
and mentally deficient. I was, moreover, unused to pageants; I felt frighte=
ned
in the dark and took a man for a spectre whom, in the light, I could recogn=
ise
as a modern gentleman in a masquerade dress. No; far from it. That spectral
person was my first introduction to a special incident which has never been
explained and which still lays its finger on my nerve.
I mixed with the =
men
of the eighteenth century; and we fooled as one does at a fancy-dress ball.
There was Burke as large as life and a great deal better looking. There was
Cowper much larger than life; he ought to have been a little man in a
night-cap, with a cat under one arm and a spaniel under the other. As it wa=
s,
he was a magnificent person, and looked more like the Master of Ballantrae =
than
Cowper. I persuaded him at last to the night-cap, but never, alas, to the c=
at
and dog. When I came the next night Burke was still the same beautiful
improvement upon himself; Cowper was still weeping for his dog and cat and =
would
not be comforted; Bishop Berkeley was still waiting to be kicked in the int=
erests
of philosophy. In short, I met all my old friends but one. Where was Paley?=
I
had been mystically moved by the man's presence; I was moved more by his
absence. At last I saw advancing towards us across the twilight garden a li=
ttle
man with a large book and a bright attractive face. When he came near enoug=
h he
said, in a small, clear voice, "I'm Paley." The thing was quite
natural, of course; the man was ill and had sent a substitute. Yet somehow =
the
contrast was a shock.
By the next night=
I
had grown quite friendly with my four or five colleagues; I had discovered =
what
is called a mutual friend with Berkeley and several points of difference wi=
th
Burke. Cowper, I think it was, who introduced me to a friend of his, a fresh
face, square and sturdy, framed in a white wig. "This," he explai=
ned,
"is my friend So-and-So. He's Paley." I looked round at all the f=
aces
by this time fixed and familiar; I studied them; I counted them; then I bow=
ed
to the third Paley as one bows to necessity. So far the thing was all withi=
n the
limits of coincidence. It certainly seemed odd that this one particular cle=
ric
should be so varying and elusive. It was singular that Paley, alone among m=
en,
should swell and shrink and alter like a phantom, while all else remained
solid. But the thing was explicable; two men had been ill and there was an =
end
of it; only I went again the next night, and a clear-coloured elegant youth
with powdered hair bounded up to me, and told me with boyish excitement tha=
t he
was Paley.
For the next
twenty-four hours I remained in the mental condition of the modern world. I
mean the condition in which all natural explanations have broken down and no
supernatural explanation has been established. My bewilderment had reached =
to
boredom when I found myself once more in the colour and clatter of the page=
ant,
and I was all the more pleased because I met an old school-fellow, and we
mutually recognised each other under our heavy clothes and hoary wigs. We
talked about all those great things for which literature is too small and o=
nly
life large enough; red-hot memories and those gigantic details which make up
the characters of men. I heard all about the friends he had lost sight of a=
nd
those he had kept in sight; I heard about his profession, and asked at last=
how
he came into the pageant.
"The fact
is," he said, "a friend of mine asked me, just for to-night, to a=
ct a
chap called Paley; I don't know who he was...."
"No, by
thunder!" I said, "nor does anyone."
This was the last
blow, and the next night passed like a dream. I scarcely noticed the slende=
r,
sprightly, and entirely new figure which fell into the ranks in the place of
Paley, so many times deceased. What could it mean? Why was the giddy Paley
unfaithful among the faithful found? Did these perpetual changes prove the
popularity or the unpopularity of being Paley? Was it that no human being c=
ould
support being Paley for one night and live till morning? Or was it that the=
gates
were crowded with eager throngs of the British public thirsting to be Paley,
who could only be let in one at a time? Or is there some ancient vendetta
against Paley? Does some secret society of Deists still assassinate any one=
who
adopts the name?
I cannot conjectu=
re
further about this true tale of mystery; and that for two reasons. First, t=
he
story is so true that I have had to put a lie into it. Every word of this
narrative is veracious, except the one word Paley. And second, because I ha=
ve
got to go into the next room and dress up as Dr. Johnson.