Etext prepared by Michael Pullen globaltraveler5565@yahoo.com
A MISCELLANY OF MEN
By G. K. CHESTERTON
1912
CONTENTS
THE SUFFRAGIST THE POET AND THE CHEESE THE THING THE MAN WHO THINKS BACKWARDS THE NAMELESS MAN THE GARDENER AND THE GUINEA THE VOTER AND THE TWO VOICES THE MAD OFFICIAL THE ENCHANTED MAN THE SUN WORSHIPPER THE WRONG INCENDIARY THE FREE MAN THE HYPOTHETICAL HOUSEHOLDER THE PRIEST OF SPRING THE REAL JOURNALIST THE SENTIMENTAL SCOT THE SECTARIAN OF SOCIETY THE FOOL THE CONSCRIPT AND THE CRISIS THE MISER AND HIS FRIENDS THE MYSTAGOGUE THE RED REACTIONARY THE SEPARATIST AND SACRED THINGS THE MUMMER THE ARISTOCRATIC ‘ARRY THE NEW THEOLOGIAN THE ROMANTIC IN THE RAIN THE FALSE PHOTOGRAPHER THE SULTAN THE ARCHITECT OF SPEARS THE MAN ON TOP THE OTHER KIND OF MAN THE MEDIAEVAL VILLAIN THE DIVINE DETECTIVE THE ELF OF JAPAN THE CHARTERED LIBERTINE THE CONTENTED MAN THE ANGRY AUTHOR: HIS FAREWELL
THE SUFFRAGIST
Rightly or wrongly, it is certain that a man both liberal and chivalric, can and very often does feel a dis-ease and distrust touching those political women we call Suffragettes. Like most other popular sentiments, it is generally wrongly stated even when it is rightly felt. One part of it can be put most shortly thus: that when a woman puts up her fists to a man she is putting herself in the only posture in which he is not afraid of her. He can be afraid of her speech and still more of her silence; but force reminds him of a rusted but very real weapon of which he has grown ashamed. But these crude summaries are never quite accurate in any matter of the instincts. For the things which are the simplest so long as they are undisputed invariably become the subtlest when once they are disputed: which was what Joubert meant, I suppose, when he said, “It is not hard to believe in God if one does not define Him.” When the evil instincts of old Foulon made him say of the poor, “Let them eat grass,” the good and Christian instincts of the poor made them hang him on a lamp-post with his mouth stuffed full of that vegetation. But if a modern vegetarian aristocrat were to say to the poor, “But why don’t you like grass?” their intelligences would be much more taxed to find such an appropriate repartee. And this matter of the functions of the sexes is primarily a matter of the instincts; sex and breathing are about the only two things that generally work best when they are least worried about. That, I suppose, is why the same sophisticated age that has poisoned the world with Feminism is also polluting it with Breathing Exercises. We plunge at once into a forest of false analogies and bad blundering history; while almost any man or woman left to themselves would know at least that sex is quite different from anything else in the world.
There is no kind of comparison possible between a quarrel of man and woman (however right the woman may be) and the other quarrels of slave and master, of rich and poor, or of patriot and invader, with which the Suffragists deluge us every day. The difference is as plain as noon; these other alien groups never came into contact until they came into collision. Races and ranks began with battle, even if they afterwards melted into amity. But the very first fact about the sexes is that they like each other. They seek each other: and awful as are the sins and sorrows that often come of their mating, it was not such things that made them meet. It is utterly astounding to note the way in which modern writers and talkers miss this plain, wide, and overwhelming fact: one would suppose woman a victim and nothing else. By this account ideal, emancipated woman has, age after age, been knocked silly with a stone axe. But really there is no fact to show that ideal, emancipated woman was ever knocked silly; except the fact that she is silly. And that might have arisen in so many other ways. Real responsible woman has never been silly; and any one wishing to knock her would be wise (like the street-boys) to knock and run away. It is ultimately idiotic to compare this prehistoric participation with any royalties or rebellions. Genuine royalties wish to crush rebellions. Genuine rebels wish to destroy kings. The sexes cannot wish to abolish each other; and if we allow them any sort of permanent opposition it will sink into something as base as a party system.
As marriage, therefore, is rooted in an aboriginal unity of instincts, you cannot compare it, even in its quarrels, with any of the mere collisions of separate institutions. You could compare it with the emancipation of negroes from planters— if it were true that a white man in early youth always dreamed of the abstract beauty of a black man. You could compare it with the revolt of tenants against a landlord—if it were true that young landlords wrote sonnets to invisible tenants. You could compare it to the fighting policy of the Fenians-if it were true that every normal Irishman wanted an Englishman to come and live with him. But as we know there are no instincts in any of these directions, these analogies are not only false but false on the cardinal fact. I do not speak of the comparative comfort or merit of these different things: I say they are different. It may be that love turned to hate is terribly common in sexual matters: it may be that hate turned to love is not uncommon in the rivalries of race or class. But any philosophy about the sexes that begins with anything but the mutual attraction of the sexes, begins with a fallacy; and all its historical comparisons are as irrelevant and impertinent as puns.
But to expose such cold negation of the instincts is easy: to express or even half express the instincts is very hard. The instincts are very much concerned with what literary people call “style” in letters or more vulgar people call “style” in dress. They are much concerned with how a thing is done, as well as whether one may do it: and the deepest elements in their attraction or aversion can often only be conveyed by stray examples or sudden images. When Danton was defending himself before the Jacobin tribunal he spoke so loud that his voice was heard across the Seine, in quite remote streets on the other side of the river. He must have bellowed like a bull of Bashan. Yet none of us would think of that prodigy except as something poetical and appropriate. None of us would instinctively feel that Danton was less of a man or even less of a gentleman, for speaking so in such an hour. But suppose we heard that Marie Antoinette, when tried before the same tribunal, had howled so that she could be heard in the Faubourg St. Germain—well, I leave it to the instincts, if there are any left. It is not wrong to howl. Neither is it right. It is simply a question of the instant impression on the artistic and even animal parts of humanity, if the noise were heard suddenly like a gun.
Perhaps the nearest verbal analysis of the instinct may be found in the gestures of the orator addressing a crowd. For the true orator must always be a demagogue: even if the mob be a small mob, like the French committee or the English House of Lords. And “demagogue,” in the good Greek meaning, does not mean one who pleases the populace, but one who leads it: and if you will notice, you will see that all the instinctive gestures of oratory are gestures of military leadership; pointing the people to a path or waving them on to an advance. Notice that long sweep of the arm across the body and outward, which great orators use naturally and cheap orators artificially. It is almost the exact gesture of the drawing of a sword.
The point is not that women are unworthy of votes; it is not even that votes are unworthy of women. It is that votes are unworthy of men, so long as they are merely votes; and have nothing in them of this ancient militarism of democracy. The only crowd worth talking to is the crowd that is ready to go somewhere and do something; the only demagogue worth hearing is he who can point at something to be done: and, if he points with a sword, will only feel it familiar and useful like an elongated finger. Now, except in some mystical exceptions which prove the rule, these are not the gestures, and therefore not the instincts, of women. No honest man dislikes the public woman. He can only dislike the political woman; an entirely different thing. The instinct has nothing to do with any desire to keep women curtained or captive: if such a desire exists. A husband would be pleased if his wife wore a gold crown and proclaimed laws from a throne of marble; or if she uttered oracles from the tripod of a priestess; or if she could walk in mystical motherhood before the procession of some great religious order. But that she should stand on a platform in the exact altitude in which he stands; leaning forward a little more than is graceful and holding her mouth open a little longer and wider than is dignified—well, I only write here of the facts of natural history; and the fact is that it is this, and not publicity or importance, that hurts. It is for the modern world to judge whether such instincts are indeed danger signals; and whether the hurting of moral as of material nerves is a tocsin and a warning of nature.
THE POET AND THE CHEESE
There is something creepy in the flat Eastern Counties; a brush of the white feather. There is a stillness, which is rather of the mind than of the bodily senses. Rapid changes and sudden revelations of scenery, even when they are soundless, have something in them analogous to a movement of music, to a crash or a cry. Mountain hamlets spring out on us with a shout like mountain brigands. Comfortable valleys accept us with open arms and warm words, like comfortable innkeepers. But travelling in the great level lands has a curiously still and lonely quality; lonely even when there are plenty of people on the road and in the market-place. One’s voice seems to break an almost elvish silence, and something unreasonably weird in the phrase of the nursery tales, “And he went a little farther and came to another place,” comes back into the mind.
In some such mood I came along a lean, pale road south of the fens, and found myself in a large, quiet, and seemingly forgotten village. It was one of those places that instantly produce a frame of mind which, it may be, one afterwards decks out with unreal details. I dare say that grass did not really grow in the streets, but I came away with a curious impression that it did. I dare say the marketplace was not literally lonely and without sign of life, but it left the vague impression of being so. The place was large and even loose in design, yet it had the air of something hidden away and always overlooked. It seemed shy, like a big yokel; the low roofs seemed to be ducking behind the hedges and railings; and the chimneys holding their breath. I came into it in that dead hour of the afternoon which is neither after lunch nor before tea, nor anything else even on a half-holiday; and I had a fantastic feeling that I had strayed into a lost and extra hour that is not numbered in the twenty-four.
I entered an inn which stood openly in the market-place yet was almost as private as a private house. Those who talk of “public-houses” as if they were all one problem would have been both puzzled and pleased with such a place. In the front window a stout old lady in black with an elaborate cap sat doing a large piece of needlework. She had a kind of comfortable Puritanism about her; and might have been (perhaps she was) the original Mrs. Grundy. A little more withdrawn into the parlour sat a tall, strong, and serious girl, with a face of beautiful honesty and a pair of scissors stuck in her belt, doing a small piece of needlework. Two feet behind them sat a hulking labourer with a humorous face like wood painted scarlet, with a huge mug of mild beer which he had not touched, and probably would not touch for hours. On the hearthrug there was an equally motionless cat; and on the table a copy of ‘Household Words’.
I was conscious of some atmosphere, still and yet bracing, that I had met somewhere in literature. There was poetry in it as well as piety; and yet it was not poetry after my particular taste. It was somehow at once solid and airy. Then I remembered that it was the atmosphere in some of Wordsworth’s rural poems; which are full of genuine freshness and wonder, and yet are in some incurable way commonplace. This was curious; for Wordsworth’s men were of the rocks and fells, and not of the fenlands or flats. But perhaps it is the clearness of still water and the mirrored skies of meres and pools that produces this crystalline virtue. Perhaps that is why Wordsworth is called a Lake Poet instead of a mountain poet. Perhaps it is the water that does it. Certainly the whole of that town was like a cup of water given at morning.
After a few sentences exchanged at long intervals in the manner of rustic courtesy, I inquired casually what was the name of the town. The old lady answered that its name was Stilton, and composedly continued her needlework. But I had paused with my mug in air, and was gazing at her with a suddenly arrested concern. “I suppose,” I said, “that it has nothing to do with the cheese of that name.” “Oh, yes,” she answered, with a staggering indifference, “they used to make it here.”
I put down my mug with a gravity far greater than her own. “But this place is a Shrine!” I said. “Pilgrims should be pouring into it from wherever the English legend has endured alive. There ought to be a colossal statue in the market-place of the man who invented Stilton cheese. There ought to be another colossal statue of the first cow who provided the foundations of it. There should be a burnished tablet let into the ground on the spot where some courageous man first ate Stilton cheese, and survived. On the top of a neighbouring hill (if there are any neighbouring hills) there should be a huge model of a Stilton cheese, made of some rich green marble and engraven with some haughty motto: I suggest something like ‘Ver non semper viret; sed Stiltonia semper virescit.’” The old lady said, “Yes, sir,” and continued her domestic occupations.
After a strained and emotional silence, I said, “If I take a meal here to-night can you give me any Stilton?”
“No, sir; I’m afraid we haven’t got any Stilton,” said the immovable one, speaking as if it were something thousands of miles away.
“This is awful,” I said: for it seemed to me a strange allegory of England as she is now; this little town that had lost its glory; and forgotten, so to speak, the meaning of its own name. And I thought it yet more symbolic because from all that old and full and virile life, the great cheese was gone; and only the beer remained. And even that will be stolen by the Liberals or adulterated by the Conservatives. Politely disengaging myself, I made my way as quickly as possible to the nearest large, noisy, and nasty town in that neighbourhood, where I sought out the nearest vulgar, tawdry, and avaricious restaurant.
There (after trifling with beef, mutton, puddings, pies, and so on) I got a Stilton cheese. I was so much moved by my memories that I wrote a sonnet to the cheese. Some critical friends have hinted to me that my sonnet is not strictly new; that it contains “echoes” (as they express it) of some other poem that they have read somewhere. Here, at least, are the lines I wrote:-
Stilton, thou shouldst be living at this hour And so thou art. Nor losest grace thereby; England has need of thee, and so have I— She is a Fen. Far as the eye can scour, League after grassy league from Lincoln tower To Stilton in the fields, she is a Fen. Yet this high cheese, by choice of fenland men, Like a tall green volcano rose in power.
Plain living and long drinking are no more, And pure religion reading ‘Household Words’, And sturdy manhood sitting still all day Shrink, like this cheese that crumbles to its core; While my digestion, like the House of Lords, The heaviest burdens on herself doth lay.
I confess I feel myself as if some literary influence, something that has haunted me, were present in this otherwise original poem; but it is hopeless to disentangle it now.
THE THING
The wind awoke last night with so noble a violence that it was like the war in heaven; and I thought for a moment that the Thing had broken free. For wind never seems like empty air. Wind always sounds full and physical, like the big body of something; and I fancied that the Thing itself was walking gigantic along the great roads between the forests of beech.
Let me explain. The vitality and recurrent victory of Christendom have been due to the power of the Thing to break out from time to time from its enveloping words and symbols. Without this power all civilisations tend to perish under a load of language and ritual. One instance of this we hear much in modern discussion: the separation of the form from the spirit of religion. But we hear too little of numberless other cases of the same stiffening and falsification; we are far too seldom reminded that just as church-going is not religion, so reading and writing are not knowledge, and voting is not self-government. It would be easy to find people in the big cities who can read and write quickly enough to be clerks, but who are actually ignorant of the daily movements of the sun and moon.
The case of self-government is even more curious, especially as one watches it for the first time in a country district. Self-government arose among men (probably among the primitive men, certainly among the ancients) out of an idea which seems now too simple to be understood. The notion of self-government was not (as many modern friends and foes of it seem to think) the notion that the ordinary citizen is to be consulted as one consults an Encyclopaedia. He is not there to be asked a lot of fancy questions, to see how he answers them. He and his fellows are to be, within reasonable human limits, masters of their own lives. They shall decide whether they shall be men of the oar or the wheel, of the spade or the spear. The men of the valley shall settle whether the valley shall be devastated for coal or covered with corn and vines; the men of the town shall decide whether it shall be hoary with thatches or splendid with spires. Of their own nature and instinct they shall gather under a patriarchal chief or debate in a political market-place. And in case the word “man” be misunderstood, I may remark that in this moral atmosphere, this original soul of self-government, the women always have quite as much influence as the men. But in modern England neither the men nor the women have any influence at all. In this primary matter, the moulding of the landscape, the creation of a mode of life, the people are utterly impotent. They stand and stare at imperial and economic processes going on, as they might stare at the Lord Mayor’s Show.
Round about where I live, for instance, two changes are taking place which really affect the land and all things that live on it, whether for good or evil. The first is that the urban civilisation (or whatever it is) is advancing; that the clerks come out in black swarms and the villas advance in red battalions. The other is that the vast estates into which England has long been divided are passing out of the hands of the English gentry into the hands of men who are always upstarts and often actually foreigners.
Now, these are just the sort of things with which self-government was really supposed to grapple. People were supposed to be able to indicate whether they wished to live in town or country, to be represented by a gentleman or a cad. I do not presume to prejudge their decision; perhaps they would prefer the cad; perhaps he is really preferable. I say that the filling of a man’s native sky with smoke or the selling of his roof over his head illustrate the sort of things he ought to have some say in, if he is supposed to be governing himself. But owing to the strange trend of recent society, these enormous earthquakes he has to pass over and treat as private trivialities. In theory the building of a villa is as incidental as the buying of a hat. In reality it is as if all Lancashire were laid waste for deer forests; or as if all Belgium were flooded by the sea. In theory the sale of a squire’s land to a money-lender is a minor and exceptional necessity. In reality it is a thing like a German invasion. Sometimes it is a German invasion.
Upon this helpless populace, gazing at these prodigies and fates, comes round about every five years a thing called a General Election. It is believed by antiquarians to be the remains of some system of self-government; but it consists solely in asking the citizen questions about everything except what he understands. The examination paper of the Election generally consists of some such queries as these: “I. Are the green biscuits eaten by the peasants of Eastern Lithuania in your opinion fit for human food? II. Are the religious professions of the President of the Orange Free State hypocritical or sincere? III. Do you think that the savages in Prusso-Portuguese East Bunyipland are as happy and hygienic as the fortunate savages in Franco-British West Bunyipland? IV. Did the lost Latin Charter said to have been exacted from Henry III reserve the right of the Crown to create peers? V. What do you think of what America thinks of what Mr. Roosevelt thinks of what Sir Eldon Gorst thinks of the state of the Nile? VI. Detect some difference between the two persons in frock-coats placed before you at this election.”
Now, it never was supposed in any natural theory of self-government that the ordinary man in my neighbourhood need answer fantastic questions like these. He is a citizen of South Bucks, not an editor of ‘Notes and Queries’. He would be, I seriously believe, the best judge of whether farmsteads or factory chimneys should adorn his own sky-line, of whether stupid squires or clever usurers should govern his own village. But these are precisely the things which the oligarchs will not allow him to touch with his finger. Instead, they allow him an Imperial destiny and divine mission to alter, under their guidance, all the things that he knows nothing about. The name of self-government is noisy everywhere: the Thing is throttled.
The wind sang and split the sky like thunder all the night through; in scraps of sleep it filled my dreams with the divine discordances of martyrdom and revolt; I heard the horn of Roland and the drums of Napoleon and all the tongues of terror with which the Thing has gone forth: the spirit of our race alive. But when I came down in the morning only a branch or two was broken off the tree in my garden; and none of the great country houses in the neighbourhood were blown down, as would have happened if the Thing had really been abroad.
THE MAN WHO THINKS BACKWARDS
The man who thinks backwards is a very powerful person to-day: indeed, if he is not omnipotent, he is at least omnipresent. It is he who writes nearly all the learned books and articles, especially of the scientific or skeptical sort; all the articles on Eugenics and Social Evolution and Prison Reform and the Higher Criticism and all the rest of it. But especially it is this strange and tortuous being who does most of the writing about female emancipation and the reconsidering of marriage. For the man who thinks backwards is very frequently a woman.
Thinking backwards is not quite easy to define abstractedly; and, perhaps, the simplest method is to take some object, as plain as possible, and from it illustrate the two modes of thought: the right mode in which all real results have been rooted; the wrong mode, which is confusing all our current discussions, especially our discussions about the relations of the sexes. Casting my eye round the room, I notice an object which is often mentioned in the higher and subtler of these debates about the sexes: I mean a poker. I will take a poker and think about it; first forwards and then backwards; and so, perhaps, show what I mean.
The sage desiring to think well and wisely about a poker will begin somewhat as follows: Among the live creatures that crawl about this star the queerest is the thing called Man. This plucked and plumeless bird, comic and forlorn, is the butt of all the philosophies. He is the only naked animal; and this quality, once, it is said, his glory, is now his shame. He has to go outside himself for everything that he wants. He might almost be considered as an absent-minded person who had gone bathing and left his clothes everywhere, so that he has hung his hat upon the beaver and his coat upon the sheep. The rabbit has white warmth for a waistcoat, and the glow-worm has a lantern for a head. But man has no heat in his hide, and the light in his body is darkness; and he must look for light and warmth in the wild, cold universe in which he is cast. This is equally true of his soul and of his body; he is the one creature that has lost his heart as much as he has lost his hide. In a spiritual sense he has taken leave of his senses; and even in a literal sense he has been unable to keep his hair on. And just as this external need of his has lit in his dark brain the dreadful star called religion, so it has lit in his hand the only adequate symbol of it: I mean the red flower called Fire. Fire, the most magic and startling of all material things, is a thing known only to man and the expression of his sublime externalism. It embodies all that is human in his hearths and all that is divine on his altars. It is the most human thing in the world; seen across wastes of marsh or medleys of forest, it is veritably the purple and golden flag of the sons of Eve. But there is about this generous and rejoicing thing an alien and awful quality: the quality of torture. Its presence is life; its touch is death. Therefore, it is always necessary to have an intermediary between ourselves and this dreadful deity; to have a priest to intercede for us with the god of life and death; to send an ambassador to the fire. That priest is the poker. Made of a material more merciless and warlike than the other instruments of domesticity, hammered on the anvil and born itself in the flame, the poker is strong enough to enter the burning fiery furnace, and, like the holy children, not be consumed. In this heroic service it is often battered and twisted, but is the more honourable for it, like any other soldier who has been under fire.
Now all this may sound very fanciful and mystical, but it is the right view of pokers, and no one who takes it will ever go in for any wrong view of pokers, such as using them to beat one’s wife or torture one’s children, or even (though that is more excusable) to make a policeman jump, as the clown does in the pantomime. He who has thus gone back to the beginning, and seen everything as quaint and new, will always see things in their right order, the one depending on the other in degree of purpose and importance: the poker for the fire and the fire for the man and the man for the glory of God.
This is thinking forwards. Now our modern discussions about everything, Imperialism, Socialism, or Votes for Women, are all entangled in an opposite train of thought, which runs as follows:- A modern intellectual comes in and sees a poker. He is a positivist; he will not begin with any dogmas about the nature of man, or any day-dreams about the mystery of fire. He will begin with what he can see, the poker; and the first thing he sees about the poker is that it is crooked. He says, “Poor poker; it’s crooked.” Then he asks how it came to be crooked; and is told that there is a thing in the world (with which his temperament has hitherto left him unacquainted)— a thing called fire. He points out, very kindly and clearly, how silly it is of people, if they want a straight poker, to put it into a chemical combustion which will very probably heat and warp it. “Let us abolish fire,” he says, “and then we shall have perfectly straight pokers. Why should you want a fire at all?” They explain to him that a creature called Man wants a fire, because he has no fur or feathers. He gazes dreamily at the embers for a few seconds, and then shakes his head. “I doubt if such an animal is worth preserving,” he says. “He must eventually go under in the cosmic struggle when pitted against well-armoured and warmly protected species, who have wings and trunks and spires and scales and horns and shaggy hair. If Man cannot live without these luxuries, you had better abolish Man.” At this point, as a rule, the crowd is convinced; it heaves up all its clubs and axes, and abolishes him. At least, one of him.
Before we begin discussing our various new plans for the people’s welfare, let us make a kind of agreement that we will argue in a straightforward way, and not in a tail-foremost way. The typical modern movements may be right; but let them be defended because they are right, not because they are typical modern movements. Let us begin with the actual woman or man in the street, who is cold; like mankind before the finding of fire. Do not let us begin with the end of the last red-hot discussion— like the end of a red hot poker. Imperialism may be right. But if it is right, it is right because England has some divine authority like Israel, or some human authority like Rome; not because we have saddled ourselves with South Africa, and don’t know how to get rid of it. Socialism may be true. But if it is true, it is true because the tribe or the city can really declare all land to be common land, not because Harrod’s Stores exist and the commonwealth must copy them. Female suffrage may be just. But if it is just, it is just because women are women, not because women are sweated workers and white slaves and all sorts of things that they ought never to have been. Let not the Imperialist accept a colony because it is there, nor the Suffragist seize a vote because it is lying about, nor the Socialist buy up an industry merely because it is for sale.
Let us ask ourselves first what we really do want, not what recent legal decisions have told us to want, or recent logical philosophies proved that we must want, or recent social prophecies predicted that we shall some day want. If there must be a British Empire, let it be British, and not, in mere panic, American or Prussian. If there ought to be female suffrage, let it be female, and not a mere imitation as coarse as the male blackguard or as dull as the male clerk. If there is to be Socialism, let it be social; that is, as different as possible from all the big commercial departments of to-day. The really good journeyman tailor does not cut his coat according to his cloth; he asks for more cloth. The really practical statesman does not fit himself to existing conditions, he denounces the conditions as unfit. History is like some deeply planted tree which, though gigantic in girth, tapers away at last into tiny twigs; and we are in the topmost branches. Each of us is trying to bend the tree by a twig: to alter England through a distant colony, or to capture the State through a small State department, or to destroy all voting through a vote. In all such bewilderment he is wise who resists this temptation of trivial triumph or surrender, and happy (in an echo of the Roman poet) who remembers the roots of things.
THE NAMELESS MAN
There are only two forms of government the monarchy or personal government, and the republic or impersonal government. England is not a government; England is an anarchy, because there are so many kings. But there is one real advantage (among many real disadvantages) in the method of abstract democracy, and that is this: that under impersonal government politics are so much more personal. In France and America, where the State is an abstraction, political argument is quite full of human details—some might even say of inhuman details. But in England, precisely because we are ruled by personages, these personages do not permit personalities. In England names are honoured, and therefore names are suppressed. But in the republics, in France especially, a man can put his enemies’ names into his article and his own name at the end of it.
This is the essential condition of such candour. If we merely made our anonymous articles more violent, we should be baser than we are now. We should only be arming masked men with daggers instead of cudgels. And I, for one, have always believed in the more general signing of articles, and have signed my own articles on many occasions when, heaven knows, I had little reason to be vain of them. I have heard many arguments for anonymity; but they all seem to amount to the statement that anonymity is safe, which is just what I complain of. In matters of truth the fact that you don’t want to publish something is, nine times out of ten, a proof that you ought to publish it.
But there is one answer to my perpetual plea for a man putting his name to his writing. There is one answer, and there is only one answer, and it is never given. It is that in the modern complexity very often a man’s name is almost as false as his pseudonym. The prominent person to-day is eternally trying to lose a name, and to get a title. For instance, we all read with earnestness and patience the pages of the ‘Daily Mail’, and there are times when we feel moved to cry, “Bring to us the man who thought these strange thoughts! Pursue him, capture him, take great care of him. Bring him back to us tenderly, like some precious bale of silk, that we may look upon the face of the man who desires such things to be printed. Let us know his name; his social and medical pedigree.” But in the modern muddle (it might be said) how little should we gain if those frankly fatuous sheets were indeed subscribed by the man who had inspired them. Suppose that after every article stating that the Premier is a piratical Socialist there were printed the simple word “Northcliffe.” What does that simple word suggest to the simple soul? To my simple soul (uninstructed otherwise) it suggests a lofty and lonely crag somewhere in the wintry seas towards the Orkheys or Norway; and barely clinging to the top of this crag the fortress of some forgotten chieftain. As it happens, of course, I know that the word does not mean this; it means another Fleet Street journalist like myself or only different from myself in so far as he has sought to secure money while I have sought to secure a jolly time.
A title does not now even serve as a distinction: it does not distinguish. A coronet is not merely an extinguisher: it is a hiding-place.
But the really odd thing is this. This false quality in titles does not merely apply to the new and vulgar titles, but to the old and historic titles also. For hundreds of years titles in England have been essentially unmeaning; void of that very weak and very human instinct in which titles originated. In essential nonsense of application there is nothing to choose between Northcliffe and Norfolk. The Duke of Norfolk means (as my exquisite and laborious knowledge of Latin informs me) the Leader of Norfolk. It is idle to talk against representative government or for it. All government is representative government until it begins to decay. Unfortunately (as is also evident) all government begins to decay the instant it begins to govern. All aristocrats were first meant as envoys of democracy; and most envoys of democracy lose no time in becoming aristocrats. By the old essential human notion, the Duke of Norfolk ought simply to be the first or most manifest of Norfolk men.
I see growing and filling out before me the image of an actual Duke of Norfolk. For instance, Norfolk men all make their voices run up very high at the end of a sentence. The Duke of Norfolk’s voice, therefore, ought to end in a perfect shriek. They often (I am told) end sentences with the word “together”; entirely irrespective of its meaning. Thus I shall expect the Duke of Norfolk to say: “I beg to second the motion together”; or “This is a great constitutional question together.” I shall expect him to know much about the Broads and the sluggish rivers above them; to know about the shooting of water-fowl, and not to know too much about anything else. Of mountains he must be wildly and ludicrously ignorant. He must have the freshness of Norfolk; nay, even the flatness of Norfolk. He must remind me of the watery expanses, the great square church towers and the long level sunsets of East England. If he does not do this, I decline to know him.
I need not multiply such cases; the principle applies everywhere. Thus I lose all interest in the Duke of Devonshire unless he can assure me that his soul is filled with that strange warm Puritanism, Puritanism shot with romance, which colours the West Country. He must eat nothing but clotted cream, drink nothing but cider, reading nothing but ‘Lorna Doone’, and be unacquainted with any town larger than Plymouth, which he must regard with some awe, as the Central Babylon of the world. Again, I should expect the Prince of Wales always to be full of the mysticism and dreamy ardour of the Celtic fringe.
Perhaps it may be thought that these demands are a little extreme; and that our fancy is running away with us. Nevertheless, it is not my Duke of Devonshire who is funny; but the real Duke of Devonshire. The point is that the scheme of titles is a misfit throughout: hardly anywhere do we find a modern man whose name and rank represent in any way his type, his locality, or his mode of life. As a mere matter of social comedy, the thing is worth noticing. You will meet a man whose name suggests a gouty admiral, and you will find him exactly like a timid organist: you will hear announced the name of a haughty and almost heathen grande dame, and behold the entrance of a nice, smiling Christian cook. These are light complications of the central fact of the falsification of all names and ranks. Our peers are like a party of mediaeval knights who should have exchanged shields, crests, and pennons. For the present rule seems to be that the Duke of Sussex may lawfully own the whole of Essex; and that the Marquis of Cornwall may own all the hills and valleys so long as they are not Cornish.
The clue to all this tangle is as simple as it is terrible. If England is an aristocracy, England is dying. If this system IS the country, as some say, the country is stiffening into more than the pomp and paralysis of China. It is the final sign of imbecility in a people that it calls cats dogs and describes the sun as the moon— and is very particular about the preciseness of these pseudonyms. To be wrong, and to be carefully wrong, that is the definition of decadence. The disease called aphasia, in which people begin by saying tea when they mean coffee, commonly ends in their silence. Silence of this stiff sort is the chief mark of the powerful parts of modern society. They all seem straining to keep things in rather than to let things out. For the kings of finance speechlessness is counted a way of being strong, though it should rather be counted a way of being sly. By this time the Parliament does not parley any more than the Speaker speaks. Even the newspaper editors and proprietors are more despotic and dangerous by what they do not utter than by what they do. We have all heard the expression “golden silence.” The expression “brazen silence” is the only adequate phrase for our editors. If we wake out of this throttled, gaping, and wordless nightmare, we must awake with a yell. The Revolution that releases England from the fixed falsity of its present position will be not less noisy than other revolutions. It will contain, I fear, a great deal of that rude accomplishment described among little boys as “calling names”; but that will not matter much so long as they are the right names.
THE GARDENER AND THE GUINEA
Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as an English Peasant. Indeed, the type can only exist in community, so much does it depend on co-operation and common laws. One must not think primarily of a French Peasant; any more than of a German Measle. The plural of the word is its proper form; you cannot have a Peasant till you have a peasantry. The essence of the Peasant ideal is equality; and you cannot be equal all by yourself.
Nevertheless, because human nature always craves and half creates the things necessary to its happiness, there are approximations and suggestions of the possibility of such a race even here. The nearest approach I know to the temper of a Peasant in England is that of the country gardener; not, of course, the great scientific gardener attached to the great houses; he is a rich man’s servant like any other. I mean the small jobbing gardener who works for two or three moderate-sized gardens; who works on his own; who sometimes even owns his house; and who frequently owns his tools. This kind of man has really some of the characteristics of the true Peasant—especially the characteristics that people don’t like. He has none of that irresponsible mirth which is the consolation of most poor men in England. The gardener is even disliked sometimes by the owners of the shrubs and flowers; because (like Micaiah) he prophesies not good concerning them, but evil. The English gardener is grim, critical, self-respecting; sometimes even economical. Nor is this (as the reader’s lightning wit will flash back at me) merely because the English gardener is always a Scotch gardener. The type does exist in pure South England blood and speech; I have spoken to the type. I was speaking to the type only the other evening, when a rather odd little incident occurred.
It was one of those wonderful evenings in which the sky was warm and radiant while the earth was still comparatively cold and wet. But it is of the essence of Spring to be unexpected; as in that heroic and hackneyed line about coming “before the swallow dares.” Spring never is Spring unless it comes too soon. And on a day like that one might pray, without any profanity, that Spring might come on earth as it was in heaven. The gardener was gardening. I was not gardening. It is needless to explain the causes of this difference; it would be to tell the tremendous history of two souls. It is needless because there is a more immediate explanation of the case: the gardener and I, if not equal in agreement, were at least equal in difference. It is quite certain that he would not have allowed me to touch the garden if I had gone down on my knees to him. And it is by no means certain that I should have consented to touch the garden if he had gone down on his knees to me. His activity and my idleness, therefore, went on steadily side by side through the long sunset hours.
And all the time I was thinking what a shame it was that he was not sticking his spade into his own garden, instead of mine: he knew about the earth and the underworld of seeds, the resurrection of Spring and the flowers that appear in order like a procession marshalled by a herald. He possessed the garden intellectually and spiritually, while I only possessed it politically. I know more about flowers than coal-owners know about coal; for at least I pay them honour when they are brought above the surface of the earth. I know more about gardens than railway shareholders seem to know about railways: for at least I know that it needs a man to make a garden; a man whose name is Adam. But as I walked on that grass my ignorance overwhelmed me— and yet that phrase is false, because it suggests something like a storm from the sky above. It is truer to say that my ignorance exploded underneath me, like a mine dug long before; and indeed it was dug before the beginning of the ages. Green bombs of bulbs and seeds were bursting underneath me everywhere; and, so far as my knowledge went, they had been laid by a conspirator. I trod quite uneasily on this uprush of the earth; the Spring is always only a fruitful earthquake. With the land all alive under me I began to wonder more and more why this man, who had made the garden, did not own the garden. If I stuck a spade into the ground, I should be astonished at what I found there…and just as I thought this I saw that the gardener was astonished too.
Just as I was wondering why the man who used the spade did not profit by the spade, he brought me something he had found actually in my soil. It was a thin worn gold piece of the Georges, of the sort which are called, I believe, Spade Guineas. Anyhow, a piece of gold.
If you do not see the parable as I saw it just then, I doubt if I can explain it just now. He could make a hundred other round yellow fruits: and this flat yellow one is the only sort that I can make. How it came there I have not a notion—unless Edmund Burke dropped it in his hurry to get back to Butler’s Court. But there it was: this is a cold recital of facts. There may be a whole pirate’s treasure lying under the earth there, for all I know or care; for there is no interest in a treasure without a Treasure Island to sail to. If there is a treasure it will never be found, for I am not interested in wealth beyond the dreams of avarice since I know that avarice has no dreams, but only insomnia. And, for the other party, my gardener would never consent to dig up the garden.
Nevertheless, I was overwhelmed with intellectual emotions when I saw that answer to my question; the question of why the garden did not belong to the gardener. No better epigram could be put in reply than simply putting the Spade Guinea beside the Spade. This was the only underground seed that I could understand. Only by having a little more of that dull, battered yellow substance could I manage to be idle while he was active. I am not altogether idle myself; but the fact remains that the power is in the thin slip of metal we call the Spade Guinea, not in the strong square and curve of metal which we call the Spade. And then I suddenly remembered that as I had found gold on my ground by accident, so richer men in the north and west counties had found coal in their ground, also by accident.
I told the gardener that as he had found the thing he ought to keep it, but that if he cared to sell it to me it could be valued properly, and then sold. He said at first, with characteristic independence, that he would like to keep it. He said it would make a brooch for his wife. But a little later he brought it back to me without explanation. I could not get a ray of light on the reason of his refusal; but he looked lowering and unhappy. Had he some mystical instinct that it is just such accidental and irrational wealth that is the doom of all peasantries? Perhaps he dimly felt that the boy’s pirate tales are true; and that buried treasure is a thing for robbers and not for producers. Perhaps he thought there was a curse on such capital: on the coal of the coal-owners, on the gold of the gold-seekers. Perhaps there is.
THE VOTER AND THE TWO VOICES
The real evil of our Party System is commonly stated wrong. It was stated wrong by Lord Rosebery, when he said that it prevented the best men from devoting themselves to politics, and that it encouraged a fanatical conflict. I doubt whether the best men ever would devote themselves to politics. The best men devote themselves to pigs and babies and things like that. And as for the fanatical conflict in party politics, I wish there was more of it. The real danger of the two parties with their two policies is that they unduly limit the outlook of the ordinary citizen. They make him barren instead of creative, because he is never allowed to do anything except prefer one existing policy to another. We have not got real Democracy when the decision depends upon the people. We shall have real Democracy when the problem depends upon the people. The ordinary man will decide not only how he will vote, but what he is going to vote about.
It is this which involves some weakness in many current aspirations towards the extension of the suffrage; I mean that, apart from all questions of abstract justice, it is not the smallness or largeness of the suffrage that is at present the difficulty of Democracy. It is not the quantity of voters, but the quality of the thing they are voting about. A certain alternative is put before them by the powerful houses and the highest political class. Two roads are opened to them; but they must go down one or the other. They cannot have what they choose, but only which they choose. To follow the process in practice we may put it thus. The Suffragettes—if one may judge by their frequent ringing of his bell— want to do something to Mr. Asquith. I have no notion what it is. Let us say (for the sake of argument) that they want to paint him green. We will suppose that it is entirely for that simple purpose that they are always seeking to have private interviews with him; it seems as profitable as any other end that I can imagine to such an interview. Now, it is possible that the Government of the day might go in for a positive policy of painting Mr. Asquith green; might give that reform a prominent place in their programme. Then the party in opposition would adopt another policy, not a policy of leaving Mr. Asquith alone (which would be considered dangerously revolutionary), but some alternative course of action, as, for instance, painting him red. Then both sides would fling themselves on the people, they would both cry that the appeal was now to the Caesar of Democracy. A dark and dramatic air of conflict and real crisis would arise on both sides; arrows of satire would fly and swords of eloquence flame. The Greens would say that Socialists and free lovers might well want to paint Mr. Asquith red; they wanted to paint the whole town red. Socialists would indignantly reply that Socialism was the reverse of disorder, and that they only wanted to paint Mr. Asquith red so that he might resemble the red pillar-boxes which typified State control. The Greens would passionately deny the charge so often brought against them by the Reds; they would deny that they wished Mr. Asquith green in order that he might be invisible on the green benches of the Commons, as certain terrified animals take the colour of their environment.
There would be fights in the street perhaps, and abundance of ribbons, flags, and badges, of the two colours. One crowd would sing, “Keep the Red Flag Flying,” and the other, “The Wearing of the Green.” But when the last effort had been made and the last moment come, when two crowds were waiting in the dark outside the public building to hear the declaration of the poll, then both sides alike would say that it was now for democracy to do exactly what it chose. England herself, lifting her head in awful loneliness and liberty, must speak and pronounce judgement. Yet this might not be exactly true. England herself, lifting her head in awful loneliness and liberty, might really wish Mr. Asquith to be pale blue. The democracy of England in the abstract, if it had been allowed to make up a policy for itself, might have desired him to be black with pink spots. It might even have liked him as he is now. But a huge apparatus of wealth, power, and printed matter has made it practically impossible for them to bring home these other proposals, even if they would really prefer them. No candidates will stand in the spotted interest; for candidates commonly have to produce money either from their own pockets or the party’s; and in such circles spots are not worn. No man in the social position of a Cabinet Minister, perhaps, will commit himself to the pale-blue theory of Mr. Asquith; therefore it cannot be a Government measure, therefore it cannot pass.
Nearly all the great newspapers, both pompous and frivolous, will declare dogmatically day after day, until every one half believes it, that red and green are the only two colours in the paint-box. THE OBSERVER will say: “No one who knows the solid framework of politics or the emphatic first principles of an Imperial people can suppose for a moment that there is any possible compromise to be made in such a matter; we must either fulfil our manifest racial destiny and crown the edifice of ages with the august figure of a Green Premier, or we must abandon our heritage, break our promise to the Empire, fling ourselves into final anarchy, and allow the flaming and demoniac image of a Red Premier to hover over our dissolution and our doom.” The DAILY MAIL would say: “There is no halfway house in this matter; it must be green or red. We wish to see every honest Englishman one colour or the other.” And then some funny man in the popular Press would star the sentence with a pun, and say that the DAILY MAIL liked its readers to be green and its paper to be read. But no one would even dare to whisper that there is such a thing as yellow.
For the purposes of pure logic it is clearer to argue with silly examples than with sensible ones: because silly examples are simple. But I could give many grave and concrete cases of the kind of thing to which I refer. In the later part of the Boer War both parties perpetually insisted in every speech and pamphlet that annexation was inevitable and that it was only a question of whether Liberals or Tories should do it. It was not inevitable in the least; it would have been perfectly easy to make peace with the Boers as Christian nations commonly make peace with their conquered enemies. Personally I think that it would have been better for us in the most selfish sense, better for our pocket and prestige, if we had never effected the annexation at all; but that is a matter of opinion. What is plain is that it was not inevitable; it was not, as was said, the only possible course; there were plenty of other courses; there were plenty of other colours in the box. Again, in the discussion about Socialism, it is repeatedly rubbed into the public mind that we must choose between Socialism and some horrible thing that they call Individualism. I don’t know what it means, but it seems to mean that anybody who happens to pull out a plum is to adopt the moral philosophy of the young Horner—and say what a good boy he is for helping himself.
It is calmly assumed that the only two possible types of society are a Collectivist type of society and the present society that exists at this moment and is rather like an animated muck-heap. It is quite unnecessary to say that I should prefer Socialism to the present state of things. I should prefer anarchism to the present state of things. But it is simply not the fact that Collectivism is the only other scheme for a more equal order. A Collectivist has a perfect right to think it the only sound scheme; but it is not the only plausible or possible scheme. We might have peasant proprietorship; we might have the compromise of Henry George; we might have a number of tiny communes; we might have co-operation; we might have Anarchist Communism; we might have a hundred things. I am not saying that any of these are right, though I cannot imagine that any of them could be worse than the present social madhouse, with its top-heavy rich and its tortured poor; but I say that it is an evidence of the stiff and narrow alternative offered to the civic mind, that the civic mind is not, generally speaking, conscious of these other possibilities. The civic mind is not free or alert enough to feel how much it has the world before it. There are at least ten solutions of the Education question, and no one knows which Englishmen really want. For Englishmen are only allowed to vote about the two which are at that moment offered by the Premier and the Leader of the Opposition. There are ten solutions of the drink question; and no one knows which the democracy wants; for the democracy is only allowed to fight about one Licensing Bill at a time.
So that the situation comes to this: The democracy has a right to answer questions, but it has no right to ask them. It is still the political aristocracy that asks the questions. And we shall not be unreasonably cynical if we suppose that the political aristocracy will always be rather careful what questions it asks. And if the dangerous comfort and self-flattery of modern England continues much longer there will be less democratic value in an English election than in a Roman saturnalia of slaves. For the powerful class will choose two courses of action, both of them safe for itself, and then give the democracy the gratification of taking one course or the other. The lord will take two things so much alike that he would not mind choosing from them blindfold— and then for a great jest he will allow the slaves to choose.
THE MAD OFFICIAL
Going mad is the slowest and dullest business in the world. I have very nearly done it more than once in my boyhood, and so have nearly all my friends, born under the general doom of mortals, but especially of moderns; I mean the doom that makes a man come almost to the end of thinking before he comes to the first chance of living.
But the process of going mad is dull, for the simple reason that a man does not know that it is going on. Routine and literalism and a certain dry-throated earnestness and mental thirst, these are the very atmosphere of morbidity. If once the man could become conscious of his madness, he would cease to be man. He studies certain texts in Daniel or cryptograms in Shakespeare through monstrously magnifying spectacles, which are on his nose night and day. If once he could take off the spectacles he would smash them. He deduces all his fantasies about the Sixth Seal or the Anglo-Saxon Race from one unexamined and invisible first principle. If he could once see the first principle, he would see that it is not there.
This slow and awful self-hypnotism of error is a process that can occur not only with individuals, but also with whole societies. It is hard to pick out and prove; that is why it is hard to cure. But this mental degeneration may be brought to one test, which I truly believe to be a real test. A nation is not going mad when it does extravagant things, so long as it does them in an extravagant spirit. Crusaders not cutting their beards till they found Jerusalem, Jacobins calling each other Harmodius and Epaminondas when their names were Jacques and Jules, these are wild things, but they were done in wild spirits at a wild moment.
But whenever we see things done wildly, but taken tamely, then the State is growing insane. For instance, I have a gun license. For all I know, this would logically allow me to fire off fifty-nine enormous field-guns day and night in my back garden. I should not be surprised at a man doing it; for it would be great fun. But I should be surprised at the neighbours putting up with it, and regarding it as an ordinary thing merely because it might happen to fulfil the letter of my license.
Or, again, I have a dog license; and I may have the right (for all I know) to turn ten thousand wild dogs loose in Buckinghamshire. I should not be surprised if the law were like that; because in modern England there is practically no law to be surprised at. I should not be surprised even at the man who did it; for a certain kind of man, if he lived long under the English landlord system, might do anything. But I should be surprised at the people who consented to stand it. I should, in other words, think the world a little mad if the incident, were received in silence.
Now things every bit as wild as this are being received in silence every day. All strokes slip on the smoothness of a polished wall. All blows fall soundless on the softness of a padded cell. For madness is a passive as well as an active state: it is a paralysis, a refusal of the nerves to respond to the normal stimuli, as well as an unnatural stimulation. There are commonwealths, plainly to be distinguished here and there in history, which pass from prosperity to squalor, or from glory to insignificance, or from freedom to slavery, not only in silence, but with serenity. The face still smiles while the limbs, literally and loathsomely, are dropping from the body. These are peoples that have lost the power of astonishment at their own actions. When they give birth to a fantastic fashion or a foolish law, they do not start or stare at the monster they have brought forth. They have grown used to their own unreason; chaos is their cosmos; and the whirlwind is the breath of their nostrils. These nations are really in danger of going off their heads en masse; of becoming one vast vision of imbecility, with toppling cities and crazy country-sides, all dotted with industrious lunatics. One of these countries is modern England.
Now here is an actual instance, a small case of how our social conscience really works: tame in spirit, wild in result, blank in realisation; a thing without the light of mind in it. I take this paragraph from a daily paper:- “At Epping, yesterday, Thomas Woolbourne, a Lambourne labourer, and his wife were summoned for neglecting their five children. Dr. Alpin said he was invited by the inspector of the N.S.P.C.C. to visit defendants’ cottage. Both the cottage and the children were dirty. The children looked exceedingly well in health, but the conditions would be serious in case of illness. Defendants were stated to be sober. The man was discharged. The woman, who said she was hampered by the cottage having no water supply and that she was ill, was sentenced to six weeks’ imprisonment. The sentence caused surprise, and the woman was removed crying, ‘Lord save me!’”
I know no name for this but Chinese. It calls up the mental picture of some archaic and changeless Eastern Court, in which men with dried faces and stiff ceremonial costumes perform some atrocious cruelty to the accompaniment of formal proverbs and sentences of which the very meaning has been forgotten. In both cases the only thing in the whole farrago that can be called real is the wrong. If we apply the lightest touch of reason to the whole Epping prosecution it dissolves into nothing.
I here challenge any person in his five wits to tell me what that woman was sent to prison for. Either it was for being poor, or it was for being ill. Nobody could suggest, nobody will suggest, nobody, as a matter of fact, did suggest, that she had committed any other crime. The doctor was called in by a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. Was this woman guilty of cruelty to children? Not in the least. Did the doctor say she was guilty of cruelty to children? Not in the least. Was these any evidence even remotely bearing on the sin of cruelty? Not a rap. The worse that the doctor could work himself up to saying was that though the children were “exceedingly” well, the conditions would be serious in case of illness. If the doctor will tell me any conditions that would be comic in case of illness, I shall attach more weight to his argument.
Now this is the worst effect of modern worry. The mad doctor has gone mad. He is literally and practically mad; and still he is quite literally and practically a doctor. The only question is the old one, Quis docebit ipsum doctorem? Now cruelty to children is an utterly unnatural thing; instinctively accursed of earth and heaven. But neglect of children is a natural thing; like neglect of any other duty, it is a mere difference of degree that divides extending arms and legs in calisthenics and extending them on the rack. It is a mere difference of degree that separates any operation from any torture. The thumb-screw can easily be called Manicure. Being pulled about by wild horses can easily be called Massage. The modern problem is not so much what people will endure as what they will not endure. But I fear I interrupt… The boiling oil is boiling; and the Tenth Mandarin is already reciting the “Seventeen Serious Principles and the Fifty-three Virtues of the Sacred Emperor.”
THE ENCHANTED MAN
When I arrived to see the performance of the Buckinghamshire Players, who acted Miss Gertrude Robins’s POT LUCK at Naphill a short time ago, it is the distressing, if scarcely surprising, truth that I entered very late. This would have mattered little, I hope, to any one, but that late comers had to be forced into front seats. For a real popular English audience always insists on crowding in the back part of the hall; and (as I have found in many an election) will endure the most unendurable taunts rather than come forward. The English are a modest people; that is why they are entirely ruled and run by the few of them that happen to be immodest. In theatrical affairs the fact is strangely notable; and in most playhouses we find the bored people in front and the eager people behind.
As far as the performance went I was quite the reverse of a bored person; but I may have been a boring person, especially as I was thus required to sit in the seats of the scornful. It will be a happy day in the dramatic world when all ladies have to take off their hats and all critics have to take off their heads. The people behind will have a chance then. And as it happens, in this case, I had not so much taken off my head as lost it. I had lost it on the road; on that strange journey that was the cause of my coming in late. I have a troubled recollection of having seen a very good play and made a very bad speech; I have a cloudy recollection of talking to all sorts of nice people afterwards, but talking to them jerkily and with half a head, as a man talks when he has one eye on a clock.
And the truth is that I had one eye on an ancient and timeless clock, hung uselessly in heaven; whose very name has passed into a figure for such bemused folly. In the true sense of an ancient phrase, I was moonstruck. A lunar landscape a scene of winter moonlight had inexplicably got in between me and all other scenes. If any one had asked me I could not have said what it was; I cannot say now. Nothing had occurred to me; except the breakdown of a hired motor on the ridge of a hill. It was not an adventure; it was a vision.
I had started in wintry twilight from my own door; and hired a small car that found its way across the hills towards Naphill. But as night blackened and frost brightened and hardened it I found the way increasingly difficult; especially as the way was an incessant ascent. Whenever we topped a road like a staircase it was only to turn into a yet steeper road like a ladder.
At last, when I began to fancy that I was spirally climbing the Tower of Babel in a dream, I was brought to fact by alarming noises, stoppage, and the driver saying that “it couldn’t be done.” I got out of the car and suddenly forgot that I had ever been in it.
From the edge of that abrupt steep I saw something indescribable, which I am now going to describe. When Mr. Joseph Chamberlain delivered his great patriotic speech on the inferiority of England to the Dutch parts of South Africa, he made use of the expression “the illimitable veldt.” The word “veldt” is Dutch, and the word “illimitable” is Double Dutch. But the meditative statesman probably meant that the new plains gave him a sense of largeness and dreariness which he had never found in England. Well, if he never found it in England it was because he never looked for it in England. In England there is an illimitable number of illimitable veldts. I saw six or seven separate eternities in cresting as many different hills. One cannot find anything more infinite than a finite horizon, free and lonely and innocent. The Dutch veldt may be a little more desolate than Birmingham. But I am sure it is not so desolate as that English hill was, almost within a cannon-shot of High Wycombe.
I looked across a vast and voiceless valley straight at the moon, as if at a round mirror. It may have been the blue moon of the proverb; for on that freezing night the very moon seemed blue with cold. A deathly frost fastened every branch and blade to its place. The sinking and softening forests, powdered with a gray frost, fell away underneath me into an abyss which seemed unfathomable. One fancied the world was soundless only because it was bottomless: it seemed as if all songs and cries had been swallowed in some unresisting stillness under the roots of the hills. I could fancy that if I shouted there would be no echo; that if I hurled huge stones there would be no noise of reply. A dumb devil had bewitched the landscape: but that again does not express the best or worst of it. All those hoary and frosted forests expressed something so inhuman that it has no human name. A horror of unconsciousness lay on them; that is the nearest phrase I know. It was as if one were looking at the back of the world; and the world did not know it. I had taken the universe in the rear. I was behind the scenes. I was eavesdropping upon an unconscious creation.
I shall not express what the place expressed. I am not even sure that it is a thing that ought to be expressed. There was something heathen about its union of beauty and death; sorrow seemed to glitter, as it does in some of the great pagan poems. I understood one of the thousand poetical phrases of the populace, “a God-forsaken place.” Yet something was present there; and I could not yet find the key to my fixed impression. Then suddenly I remembered the right word. It was an enchanted place. It had been put to sleep. In a flash I remembered all the fairy-tales about princes turned to marble and princesses changed to snow. We were in a land where none could strive or cry out; a white nightmare. The moon looked at me across the valley like the enormous eye of a hypnotist; the one white eye of the world.
There was never a better play than POT LUCK; for it tells a tale with a point and a tale that might happen any day among English peasants. There were never better actors than the local Buckinghamshire Players: for they were acting their own life with just that rise into exaggeration which is the transition from life to art. But all the time I was mesmerised by the moon; I saw all these men and women as enchanted things. The poacher shot pheasants; the policeman tracked pheasants; the wife hid pheasants; they were all (especially the policeman) as true as death. But there was something more true to death than true to life about it all: the figures were frozen with a magic frost of sleep or fear or custom such as does not cramp the movements of the poor men of other lands. I looked at the poacher and the policeman and the gun; then at the gun and the policeman and the poacher; and I could find no name for the fancy that haunted and escaped me. The poacher believed in the Game Laws as much as the policeman. The poacher’s wife not only believed in the Game Laws, but protected them as well as him. She got a promise from her husband that he would never shoot another pheasant. Whether he kept it I doubt; I fancy he sometimes shot a pheasant even after that. But I am sure he never shot a policeman. For we live in an enchanted land.
THE SUN WORSHIPPER
There is a shrewd warning to be given to all people who are in revolt. And in the present state of things, I think all men are revolting in that sense; except a few who are revolting in the other sense. But the warning to Socialists and other revolutionaries is this: that as sure as fate, if they use any argument which is atheistic or materialistic, that argument will always be turned against them at last by the tyrant and the slave. To-day I saw one too common Socialist argument turned Tory, so to speak, in a manner quite startling and insane. I mean that modern doctrine, taught, I believe, by most followers of Karl Marx, which is called the materialist theory of history. The theory is, roughly, this: that all the important things in history are rooted in an economic motive. In short, history is a science; a science of the search for food.
Now I desire, in passing only, to point out that this is not merely untrue, but actually the reverse of the truth. It is putting it too feebly to say that the history of man is not only economic. Man would not have any history if he were only economic. The need for food is certainly universal, so universal that it is not even human. Cows have an economic motive, and apparently (I dare not say what ethereal delicacies may be in a cow) only an economic motive. The cow eats grass anywhere and never eats anything else. In short, the cow does fulfil the materialist theory of history: that is why the cow has no history. “A History of Cows” would be one of the simplest and briefest of standard works. But if some cows thought it wicked to eat long grass and persecuted all who did so; if the cow with the crumpled horn were worshipped by some cows and gored to death by others; if cows began to have obvious moral preferences over and above a desire for grass, then cows would begin to have a history. They would also begin to have a highly unpleasant time, which is perhaps the same thing.
The economic motive is not merely not inside all history; it is actually outside all history. It belongs to Biology or the Science of Life; that is, it concerns things like cows, that are not so very much alive. Men are far too much alive to get into the science of anything; for them we have made the art of history. To say that human actions have depended on economic support is like saying that they have depended on having two legs. It accounts for action, but not for such varied action; it is a condition, but not a motive; it is too universal to be useful. Certainly a soldier wins the Victoria Cross on two legs; he also runs away on two legs. But if our object is to discover whether he will become a V.C. or a coward the most careful inspection of his legs will yield us little or no information. In the same way a man will want food if he is a dreamy romantic tramp, and will want food if he is a toiling and sweating millionaire. A man must be supported on food as he must be supported on legs. But cows (who have no history) are not only furnished more generously in the matter of legs, but can see their food on a much grander and more imaginative scale. A cow can lift up her eyes to the hills and see uplands and peaks of pure food. Yet we never see the horizon broken by crags of cake or happy hills of cheese.
So far the cow (who has no history) seems to have every other advantage. But history—the whole point of history— precisely is that some two-legged soldiers ran away while others, of similar anatomical structure, did not. The whole point of history precisely is: some people (like poets and tramps) chance getting money by disregarding it, while others (such as millionaires) will absolutely lose money for the fun of bothering about it. There would be no history if there were only economic history. All the historical events have been due to the twists and turns given to the economic instinct by forces that were not economic. For instance, this theory traces the French war of Edward III to a quarrel about the French wines. Any one who has even smelt the Middle Ages must feel fifty answers spring to his lips; but in this case one will suffice. There would have been no such war, then, if we all drank water like cows. But when one is a man one enters the world of historic choice. The act of drinking wine is one that requires explanation. So is the act of not drinking wine.
But the capitalist can get much more fun out of the doctrine.
When strikes were splitting England right and left a little while ago, an ingenious writer, humorously describing himself as a Liberal, said that they were entirely due to the hot weather. The suggestion was eagerly taken up by other creatures of the same kind, and I really do not see why it was not carried farther and applied to other lamentable uprisings in history. Thus, it is a remarkable fact that the weather is generally rather warm in Egypt; and this cannot but throw a light on the sudden and mysterious impulse of the Israelites to escape from captivity. The English strikers used some barren republican formula (arid as the definitions of the medieval schoolmen), some academic shibboleth about being free men and not being forced to work except for a wage accepted by them. Just in the same way the Israelites in Egypt employed some dry scholastic quibble about the extreme difficulty of making bricks with nothing to make them of. But whatever fantastic intellectual excuses they may have put forward for their strange and unnatural conduct in walking out when the prison door was open, there can be no doubt that the real cause was the warm weather. Such a climate notoriously also produces delusions and horrible fancies, such as Mr. Kipling describes. And it was while their brains were disordered by the heat that the Jews fancied that they were founding a nation, that they were led by a prophet, and, in short, that they were going to be of some importance in the affairs of the world.
Nor can the historical student fail to note that the French monarchy was pulled down in August; and that August is a month in summer.
In spite of all this, however, I have some little difficulty myself in accepting so simple a form of the Materialist Theory of History (at these words all Marxian Socialists will please bow their heads three times), and I rather think that exceptions might be found to the principle. Yet it is not chiefly such exceptions that embarrass my belief in it.
No; my difficulty is rather in accounting for the strange coincidence by which the shafts of Apollo split us exclusively along certain lines of class and of economics. I cannot understand why all solicitors did not leave off soliciting, all doctors leave off doctoring, all judges leave off judging, all benevolent bankers leave off lending money at high interest, and all rising politicians leave off having nothing to add to what their right honourable friend told the House about eight years ago. The quaint theoretic plea of the workers, that they were striking because they were ill paid, seems to receive a sort of wild and hazy confirmation from the fact that, throughout the hottest weather, judges and other persons who are particularly well paid showed no disposition to strike. I have to fall back therefore on metaphysical fancies of my own; and I continue to believe that the anger of the English poor (to steal a phrase from Sir Thomas Browne) came from something in man that is other than the elements and that owes no homage unto the sun.
When comfortable people come to talking stuff of that sort, it is really time that the comfortable classes made a short summary and confession of what they have really done with the very poor Englishman. The dawn of the mediaeval civilisation found him a serf; which is a different thing from a slave. He had security; although the man belonged to the land rather than the land to the man. He could not be evicted; his rent could not be raised. In practice, it came to something like this: that if the lord rode down his cabbages he had not much chance of redress; but he had the chance of growing more cabbages. He had direct access to the means of production.
Since then the centuries in England have achieved something different; and something which, fortunately, is perfectly easy to state. There is no doubt about what we have done. We have kept the inequality, but we have destroyed the security. The man is not tied to the land, as in serfdom; nor is the land tied to the man, as in a peasantry. The rich man has entered into an absolute ownership of farms and fields; and (in the modern industrial phrase) he has locked out the English people. They can only find an acre to dig or a house to sleep in by accepting such competitive and cruel terms as he chooses to impose.
Well, what would happen then, over the larger parts of the planet, parts inhabited by savages? Savages, of course, would hunt and fish. That retreat for the English poor was perceived; and that retreat was cut off. Game laws were made to extend over districts like the Arctic snows or the Sahara. The rich man had property over animals he had no more dreamed of than a governor of Roman Africa had dreamed of a giraffe. He owned all the birds that passed over his land: he might as well have owned all the clouds that passed over it. If a rabbit ran from Smith’s land to Brown’s land, it belonged to Brown, as if it were his pet dog. The logical answer to this would be simple: Any one stung on Brown’s land ought to be able to prosecute Brown for keeping a dangerous wasp without a muzzle.
Thus the poor man was forced to be a tramp along the roads and to sleep in the open. That retreat was perceived; and that retreat was cut off. A landless man in England can be punished for behaving in the only way that a landless man can behave: for sleeping under a hedge in Surrey or on a seat on the Embankment. His sin is described (with a hideous sense of fun) as that of having no visible means of subsistence.
The last possibility, of course, is that upon which all human beings would fall back if they were sinking in a swamp or impaled on a spike or deserted on an island. It is that of calling out for pity to the passer-by. That retreat was perceived; and that retreat was cut off. A man in England can be sent to prison for asking another man for help in the name of God.
You have done all these things, and by so doing you have forced the poor to serve the rich, and to serve them on the terms of the rich. They have still one weapon left against the extremes of insult and unfairness: that weapon is their numbers and the necessity of those numbers to the working of that vast and slavish machine. And because they still had this last retreat (which we call the Strike), because this retreat was also perceived, there was talk of this retreat being also cut off. Whereupon the workmen became suddenly and violently angry; and struck at your Boards and Committees here, there, and wherever they could. And you opened on them the eyes of owls, and said, “It must be the sunshine.” You could only go on saying, “The sun, the sun.” That was what the man in Ibsen said, when he had lost his wits.
THE WRONG INCENDIARY
I stood looking at the Coronation Procession—I mean the one in Beaconsfield; not the rather elephantine imitation of it which, I believe, had some success in London—and I was seriously impressed. Most of my life is passed in discovering with a deathly surprise that I was quite right. Never before have I realised how right I was in maintaining that the small area expresses the real patriotism: the smaller the field the taller the tower. There were things in our local procession that did not (one might even reverently say, could not) occur in the London procession. One of the most prominent citizens in our procession (for instance) had his face blacked. Another rode on a pony which wore pink and blue trousers. I was not present at the Metropolitan affair, and therefore my assertion is subject to such correction as the eyewitness may always offer to the absentee. But I believe with some firmness that no such features occurred in the London pageant.
But it is not of the local celebration that I would speak, but of something that occurred before it. In the field beyond the end of my garden the materials for a bonfire had been heaped; a hill of every kind of rubbish and refuse and things that nobody wants; broken chairs, dead trees, rags, shavings, newspapers, new religions, in pamphlet form, reports of the Eugenic Congress, and so on. All this refuse, material and mental, it was our purpose to purify and change to holy flame on the day when the King was crowned. The following is an account of the rather strange thing that really happened. I do not know whether it was any sort of symbol; but I narrate it just as it befell.
In the middle of the night I woke up slowly and listened to what I supposed to be the heavy crunching of a cart-wheel along a road of loose stones. Then it grew louder, and I thought somebody was shooting out cartloads of stones; then it seemed as if the shock was breaking big stones into pieces. Then I realised that under this sound there was also a strange, sleepy, almost inaudible roar; and that on top of it every now and then came pigmy pops like a battle of penny pistols. Then I knew what it was. I went to the window; and a great firelight flung across two meadows smote me where I stood. “Oh, my holy aunt,” I thought, “they’ve mistaken the Coronation Day.”
And yet when I eyed the transfigured scene it did not seem exactly like a bonfire or any ritual illumination. It was too chaotic, and too close to the houses of the town. All one side of a cottage was painted pink with the giant brush of flame; the next side, by contrast, was painted as black as tar. Along the front of this ran a blackening rim or rampart edged with a restless red ribbon that danced and doubled and devoured like a scarlet snake; and beyond it was nothing but a deathly fulness of light.
I put on some clothes and went down the road; all the dull or startling noises in that din of burning growing louder and louder as I walked. The heaviest sound was that of an incessant cracking and crunching, as if some giant with teeth of stone was breaking up the bones of the world. I had not yet come within sight of the real heart and habitat of the fire; but the strong red light, like an unnatural midnight sunset, powdered the grayest grass with gold and flushed the few tall trees up to the last fingers of their foliage. Behind them the night was black and cavernous; and one could only trace faintly the ashen horizon beyond the dark and magic Wilton Woods. As I went, a workman on a bicycle shot a rood past me; then staggered from his machine and shouted to me to tell him where the fire was. I answered that I was going to see, but thought it was the cottages by the wood-yard. He said, “My God!” and vanished.
A little farther on I found grass and pavement soaking and flooded, and the red and yellow flames repainted in pools and puddles. Beyond were dim huddles of people and a small distant voice shouting out orders. The fire-engines were at work. I went on among the red reflections, which seemed like subterranean fires; I had a singular sensation of being in a very important dream. Oddly enough, this was increased when I found that most of my friends and neighbours were entangled in the crowd. Only in dreams do we see familiar faces so vividly against a black background of midnight. I was glad to find (for the workman cyclist’s sake) that the fire was not in the houses by the wood-yard, but in the wood-yard itself. There was no fear for human life, and the thing was seemingly accidental; though there were the usual ugly whispers about rivalry and revenge. But for all that I could not shake off my dream-drugged soul a swollen, tragic, portentous sort of sensation, that it all had something to do with the crowning of the English King, and the glory or the end of England. It was not till I saw the puddles and the ashes in broad daylight next morning that I was fundamentally certain that my midnight adventure had not happened outside this world.
But I was more arrogant than the ancient Emperors Pharaoh or Nebuchadnezzar; for I attempted to interpret my own dream. The fire was feeding upon solid stacks of unused beech or pine, gray and white piles of virgin wood. It was an orgy of mere waste; thousands of good things were being killed before they had ever existed. Doors, tables, walking-sticks, wheelbarrows, wooden swords for boys, Dutch dolls for girls I could hear the cry of each uncreated thing as it expired in the flames. And then I thought of that other noble tower of needless things that stood in the field beyond my garden; the bonfire, the mountain of vanities, that is meant for burning; and how it stood dark and lonely in the meadow, and the birds hopped on its corners and the dew touched and spangled its twigs. And I remembered that there are two kinds of fires, the Bad Fire and the Good Fire the last must surely be the meaning of Bonfire. And the paradox is that the Good Fire is made of bad things, of things that we do not want; but the Bad Fire is made of good things, of things that we do want; like all that wealth of wood that might have made dolls and chairs and tables, but was only making a hueless ash.
And then I saw, in my vision, that just as there are two fires, so there are two revolutions. And I saw that the whole mad modern world is a race between them. Which will happen first— the revolution in which bad things shall perish, or that other revolution, in which good things shall perish also? One is the riot that all good men, even the most conservative, really dream of, when the sneer shall be struck from the face of the well-fed; when the wine of honour shall be poured down the throat of despair; when we shall, so far as to the sons of flesh is possible, take tyranny and usury and public treason and bind them into bundles and burn them. And the other is the disruption that may come prematurely, negatively, and suddenly in the night; like the fire in my little town.
It may come because the mere strain of modern life is unbearable; and in it even the things that men do desire may break down; marriage and fair ownership and worship and the mysterious worth of man. The two revolutions, white and black, are racing each other like two railway trains; I cannot guess the issue…but even as I thought of it, the tallest turret of the timber stooped and faltered and came down in a cataract of noises. And the fire, finding passage, went up with a spout like a fountain. It stood far up among the stars for an instant, a blazing pillar of brass fit for a pagan conqueror, so high that one could fancy it visible away among the goblin trees of Burnham or along the terraces of the Chiltern Hills.
THE FREE MAN
The idea of liberty has ultimately a religious root; that is why men find it so easy to die for and so difficult to define. It refers finally to the fact that, while the oyster and the palm tree have to save their lives by law, man has to save his soul by choice. Ruskin rebuked Coleridge for praising freedom, and said that no man would wish the sun to be free. It seems enough to answer that no man would wish to be the sun. Speaking as a Liberal, I have much more sympathy with the idea of Joshua stopping the sun in heaven than with the idea of Ruskin trotting his daily round in imitation of its regularity. Joshua was a Radical, and his astronomical act was distinctly revolutionary. For all revolution is the mastering of matter by the spirit of man, the emergence of that human authority within us which, in the noble words of Sir Thomas Browne, “owes no homage unto the sun.”
Generally, the moral substance of liberty is this: that man is not meant merely to receive good laws, good food or good conditions, like a tree in a garden, but is meant to take a certain princely pleasure in selecting and shaping like the gardener. Perhaps that is the meaning of the trade of Adam. And the best popular words for rendering the real idea of liberty are those which speak of man as a creator. We use the word “make” about most of the things in which freedom is essential, as a country walk or a friendship or a love affair. When a man “makes his way” through a wood he has really created, he has built a road, like the Romans. When a man “makes a friend,” he makes a man. And in the third case we talk of a man “making love,” as if he were (as, indeed, he is) creating new masses and colours of that flaming material an awful form of manufacture. In its primary spiritual sense, liberty is the god in man, or, if you like the word, the artist.
In its secondary political sense liberty is the living influence of the citizen on the State in the direction of moulding or deflecting it. Men are the only creatures that evidently possess it. On the one hand, the eagle has no liberty; he only has loneliness. On the other hand, ants, bees, and beavers exhibit the highest miracle of the State influencing the citizen; but no perceptible trace of the citizen influencing the State. You may, if you like, call the ants a democracy as you may call the bees a despotism. But I fancy that the architectural ant who attempted to introduce an art nouveau style of ant-hill would have a career as curt and fruitless as the celebrated bee who wanted to swarm alone. The isolation of this idea in humanity is akin to its religious character; but it is not even in humanity by any means equally distributed. The idea that the State should not only be supported by its children, like the ant-hill, but should be constantly criticised and reconstructed by them, is an idea stronger in Christendom than any other part of the planet; stronger in Western than Eastern Europe. And touching the pure idea of the individual being free to speak and act within limits, the assertion of this idea, we may fairly say, has been the peculiar honour of our own country. For my part I greatly prefer the Jingoism of Rule Britannia to the Imperialism of The Recessional. I have no objection to Britannia ruling the waves. I draw the line when she begins to rule the dry land—and such damnably dry land too—as in Africa. And there was a real old English sincerity in the vulgar chorus that “Britons never shall be slaves.” We had no equality and hardly any justice; but freedom we were really fond of. And I think just now it is worth while to draw attention to the old optimistic prophecy that “Britons never shall be slaves.”
The mere love of liberty has never been at a lower ebb in England than it has been for the last twenty years. Never before has it been so easy to slip small Bills through Parliament for the purpose of locking people up. Never was it so easy to silence awkward questions, or to protect high-placed officials. Two hundred years ago we turned out the Stuarts rather than endanger the Habeas Corpus Act. Two years ago we abolished the Habeas Corpus Act rather than turn out the Home Secretary. We passed a law (which is now in force) that an Englishman’s punishment shall not depend upon judge and jury, but upon the governors and jailers who have got hold of him. But this is not the only case. The scorn of liberty is in the air. A newspaper is seized by the police in Trafalgar Square without a word of accusation or explanation. The Home Secretary says that in his opinion the police are very nice people, and there is an end of the matter. A Member of Parliament attempts to criticise a peerage. The Speaker says he must not criticise a peerage, and there the matter drops.
Political liberty, let us repeat, consists in the power of criticising those flexible parts of the State which constantly require reconsideration, not the basis, but the machinery. In plainer words, it means the power of saying the sort of things that a decent but discontented citizen wants to say. He does not want to spit on the Bible, or to run about without clothes, or to read the worst page in Zola from the pulpit of St. Paul’s. Therefore the forbidding of these things (whether just or not) is only tyranny in a secondary and special sense. It restrains the abnormal, not the normal man. But the normal man, the decent discontented citizen, does want to protest against unfair law courts. He does want to expose brutalities of the police. He does want to make game of a vulgar pawnbroker who is made a Peer. He does want publicly to warn people against unscrupulous capitalists and suspicious finance. If he is run in for doing this (as he will be) he does want to proclaim the character or known prejudices of the magistrate who tries him. If he is sent to prison (as he will be) he does want to have a clear and civilised sentence, telling him when he will come out. And these are literally and exactly the things that he now cannot get. That is the almost cloying humour of the present situation. I can say abnormal things in modern magazines. It is the normal things that I am not allowed to say. I can write in some solemn quarterly an elaborate article explaining that God is the devil; I can write in some cultured weekly an aesthetic fancy describing how I should like to eat boiled baby. The thing I must not write is rational criticism of the men and institutions of my country.
The present condition of England is briefly this: That no Englishman can say in public a twentieth part of what he says in private. One cannot say, for instance, that—But I am afraid I must leave out that instance, because one cannot say it. I cannot prove my case— because it is so true.
THE HYPOTHETICAL HOUSEHOLDER
We have read of some celebrated philosopher who was so absent-minded that he paid a call at his own house. My own absent-mindedness is extreme, and my philosophy, of course, is the marvel of men and angels. But I never quite managed to be so absent-minded as that. Some yards at least from my own door, something vaguely familiar has always caught my eye; and thus the joke has been spoiled. Of course I have quite constantly walked into another man’s house, thinking it was my own house; my visits became almost monotonous. But walking into my own house and thinking it was another man’s house is a flight of poetic detachment still beyond me. Something of the sensations that such an absent-minded man must feel I really felt the other day; and very pleasant sensations they were. The best parts of every proper romance are the first chapter and the last chapter; and to knock at a strange door and find a nice wife would be to concentrate the beginning and end of all romance.
Mine was a milder and slighter experience, but its thrill was of the same kind. For I strolled through a place I had imagined quite virgin and unvisited (as far as I was concerned), and I suddenly found I was treading in my own footprints, and the footprints were nearly twenty years old.
It was one of those stretches of country which always suggests an almost unnatural decay; thickets and heaths that have grown out of what were once great gardens. Garden flowers still grow there as wild flowers, as it says in some good poetic couplet which I forget; and there is something singularly romantic and disastrous about seeing things that were so long a human property and care fighting for their own hand in the thicket. One almost expects to find a decayed dog-kennel; with the dog evolved into a wolf.
This desolate garden-land had been even in my youth scrappily planned out for building. The half-built or empty houses had appeared quite threateningly on the edge of this heath even when I walked over it years ago and almost as a boy. I was astonished that the building had gone no farther; I suppose somebody went bankrupt and somebody else disliked building. But I remember, especially along one side of this tangle or coppice, that there had once been a row of half-built houses. The brick of which they were built was a sort of plain pink; everything else was a blinding white; the houses smoked with white dust and white sawdust; and on many of the windows were rubbed those round rough disks of white which always delighted me as a child. They looked like the white eyes of some blind giant.
I could see the crude, parched pink-and-white villas still; though I had not thought at all of them for a quarter of my life; and had not thought much of them even when I saw them. Then I was an idle, but eager youth walking out from London; now I was a most reluctantly busy middle-aged person, coming in from the country. Youth, I think, seems farther off than childhood, for it made itself more of a secret. Like a prenatal picture, distant, tiny, and quite distinct, I saw this heath on which I stood; and I looked around for the string of bright, half-baked villas. They still stood there; but they were quite russet and weather-stained, as if they had stood for centuries.
I remembered exactly what I had done on that day long ago. I had half slid on a miry descent; it was still there; a little lower I had knocked off the top of a thistle; the thistles had not been discouraged, but were still growing. I recalled it because I had wondered why one knocks off the tops of thistles; and then I had thought of Tarquin; and then I had recited most of Macaulay’s VIRGINIA to myself, for I was young. And then I came to a tattered edge where the very tuft had whitened with the sawdust and brick-dust from the new row of houses; and two or three green stars of dock and thistle grew spasmodically about the blinding road.
I remembered how I had walked up this new one-sided street all those years ago; and I remembered what I had thought. I thought that this red and white glaring terrace at noon was really more creepy and more lonesome than a glimmering churchyard at midnight. The churchyard could only be full of the ghosts of the dead; but these houses were full of the ghosts of the unborn. And a man can never find a home in the future as he can find it in the past. I was always fascinated by that mediaeval notion of erecting a rudely carpentered stage in the street, and acting on it a miracle play of the Holy Family or the Last Judgment. And I thought to myself that each of these glaring, gaping, new jerry-built boxes was indeed a rickety stage erected for the acting of a real miracle play; that human family that is almost the holy one, and that human death that is near to the last judgment.
For some foolish reason the last house but one in that imperfect row especially haunted me with its hollow grin and empty window-eyes. Something in the shape of this brick-and-mortar skeleton was attractive; and there being no workmen about, I strolled into it for curiosity and solitude. I gave, with all the sky-deep gravity of youth, a benediction upon the man who was going to live there. I even remember that for the convenience of meditation I called him James Harrogate.
As I reflected it crawled back into my memory that I had mildly played the fool in that house on that distant day. I had some red chalk in my pocket, I think, and I wrote things on the unpapered plaster walls; things addressed to Mr. Harrogate. A dim memory told me that I had written up in what I supposed to be the dining-room:
James Harrogate, thank God for meat, Then eat and eat and eat and eat,
or something of that kind. I faintly feel that some longer lyric was scrawled on the walls of what looked like a bedroom, something beginning:
When laying what you call your head, O Harrogate, upon your bed,
and there all my memory dislimns and decays. But I could still see quite vividly the plain plastered walls and the rude, irregular writing, and the places where the red chalk broke. I could see them, I mean, in memory; for when I came down that road again after a sixth of a century the house was very different.
I had seen it before at noon, and now I found it in the dusk. But its windows glowed with lights of many artificial sorts; one of its low square windows stood open; from this there escaped up the road a stream of lamplight and a stream of singing. Some sort of girl, at least, was standing at some sort of piano, and singing a song of healthy sentimentalism in that house where long ago my blessing had died on the wind and my poems been covered up by the wallpaper. I stood outside that lamplit house at dusk full of those thoughts that I shall never express if I live to be a million any better than I expressed them in red chalk upon the wall. But after I had hovered a little, and was about to withdraw, a mad impulse seized me. I rang the bell. I said in distinct accents to a very smart suburban maid, “Does Mr. James Harrogate live here?”
She said he didn’t; but that she would inquire, in case I was looking for him in the neighbourhood; but I excused her from such exertion. I had one moment’s impulse to look for him all over the world; and then decided not to look for him at all.
THE PRIEST OF SPRING
The sun has strengthened and the air softened just before Easter Day. But it is a troubled brightness which has a breath not only of novelty but of revolution, There are two great armies of the human intellect who will fight till the end on this vital point, whether Easter is to be congratulated on fitting in with the Spring— or the Spring on fitting in with Easter.
The only two things that can satisfy the soul are a person and a story; and even a story must be about a person. There are indeed very voluptuous appetites and enjoyments in mere abstractions like mathematics, logic, or chess. But these mere pleasures of the mind are like mere pleasures of the body. That is, they are mere pleasures, though they may be gigantic pleasures; they can never by a mere increase of themselves amount to happiness. A man just about to be hanged may enjoy his breakfast; especially if it be his favourite breakfast; and in the same way he may enjoy an argument with the chaplain about heresy, especially if it is his favourite heresy. But whether he can enjoy either of them does not depend on either of them; it depends upon his spiritual attitude towards a subsequent event. And that event is really interesting to the soul; because it is the end of a story and (as some hold) the end of a person.
Now it is this simple truth which, like many others, is too simple for our scientists to see. This is where they go wrong, not only about true religion, but about false religions too; so that their account of mythology is more mythical than the myth itself. I do not confine myself to saying that they are quite incorrect when they state (for instance) that Christ was a legend of dying and reviving vegetation, like Adonis or Persephone. I say that even if Adonis was a god of vegetation, they have got the whole notion of him wrong. Nobody, to begin with, is sufficiently interested in decaying vegetables, as such, to make any particular mystery or disguise about them; and certainly not enough to disguise them under the image of a very handsome young man, which is a vastly more interesting thing. If Adonis was connected with the fall of leaves in autumn and the return of flowers in spring, the process of thought was quite different. It is a process of thought which springs up spontaneously in all children and young artists; it springs up spontaneously in all healthy societies. It is very difficult to explain in a diseased society.
The brain of man is subject to short and strange snatches of sleep. A cloud seals the city of reason or rests upon the sea of imagination; a dream that darkens as much, whether it is a nightmare of atheism or a day-dream of idolatry. And just as we have all sprung from sleep with a start and found ourselves saying some sentence that has no meaning, save in the mad tongues of the midnight; so the human mind starts from its trances of stupidity with some complete phrase upon its lips; a complete phrase which is a complete folly. Unfortunately it is not like the dream sentence, generally forgotten in the putting on of boots or the putting in of breakfast. This senseless aphorism, invented when man’s mind was asleep, still hangs on his tongue and entangles all his relations to rational and daylight things. All our controversies are confused by certain kinds of phrases which are not merely untrue, but were always unmeaning; which are not merely inapplicable, but were always intrinsically useless. We recognise them wherever a man talks of “the survival of the fittest,” meaning only the survival of the survivors; or wherever a man says that the rich “have a stake in the country,” as if the poor could not suffer from misgovernment or military defeat; or where a man talks about “going on towards Progress,” which only means going on towards going on; or when a man talks about “government by the wise few,” as if they could be picked out by their pantaloons. “The wise few” must mean either the few whom the foolish think wise or the very foolish who think themselves wise.
There is one piece of nonsense that modern people still find themselves saying, even after they are more or less awake, by which I am particularly irritated. It arose in the popularised science of the nineteenth century, especially in connection with the study of myths and religions. The fragment of gibberish to which I refer generally takes the form of saying “This god or hero really represents the sun.” Or “Apollo killing the Python MEANS that the summer drives out the winter.” Or “The King dying in a western battle is a SYMBOL of the sun setting in the west.” Now I should really have thought that even the skeptical professors, whose skulls are as shallow as frying-pans, might have reflected that human beings never think or feel like this. Consider what is involved in this supposition. It presumes that primitive man went out for a walk and saw with great interest a big burning spot on the sky. He then said to primitive woman, “My dear, we had better keep this quiet. We mustn’t let it get about. The children and the slaves are so very sharp. They might discover the sun any day, unless we are very careful. So we won’t call it ‘the sun,’ but I will draw a picture of a man killing a snake; and whenever I do that you will know what I mean. The sun doesn’t look at all like a man killing a snake; so nobody can possibly know. It will be a little secret between us; and while the slaves and the children fancy I am quite excited with a grand tale of a writhing dragon and a wrestling demigod, I shall really MEAN this delicious little discovery, that there is a round yellow disc up in the air.” One does not need to know much mythology to know that this is a myth. It is commonly called the Solar Myth.
Quite plainly, of course, the case was just the other way. The god was never a symbol or hieroglyph representing the sun. The sun was a hieroglyph representing the god. Primitive man (with whom my friend Dombey is no doubt well acquainted) went out with his head full of gods and heroes, because that is the chief use of having a head. Then he saw the sun in some glorious crisis of the dominance of noon on the distress of nightfall, and he said, “That is how the face of the god would shine when he had slain the dragon,” or “That is how the whole world would bleed to westward, if the god were slain at last.”
No human being was ever really so unnatural as to worship Nature. No man, however indulgent (as I am) to corpulency, ever worshipped a man as round as the sun or a woman as round as the moon. No man, however attracted to an artistic attenuation, ever really believed that the Dryad was as lean and stiff as the tree. We human beings have never worshipped Nature; and indeed, the reason is very simple. It is that all human beings are superhuman beings. We have printed our own image upon Nature, as God has printed His image upon us. We have told the enormous sun to stand still; we have fixed him on our shields, caring no more for a star than for a starfish. And when there were powers of Nature we could not for the time control, we have conceived great beings in human shape controlling them. Jupiter does not mean thunder. Thunder means the march and victory of Jupiter. Neptune does not mean the sea; the sea is his, and he made it. In other words, what the savage really said about the sea was, “Only my fetish Mumbo could raise such mountains out of mere water.” What the savage really said about the sun was, “Only my great-great-grandfather Jumbo could deserve such a blazing crown.”
About all these myths my own position is utterly and even sadly simple. I say you cannot really understand any myths till you have found that one of them is not a myth. Turnip ghosts mean nothing if there are no real ghosts. Forged bank-notes mean nothing if there are no real bank-notes. Heathen gods mean nothing, and must always mean nothing, to those of us that deny the Christian God. When once a god is admitted, even a false god, the Cosmos begins to know its place: which is the second place. When once it is the real God the Cosmos falls down before Him, offering flowers in spring as flames in winter. “My love is like a red, red rose” does not mean that the poet is praising roses under the allegory of a young lady. “My love is an arbutus” does not mean that the author was a botanist so pleased with a particular arbutus tree that he said he loved it. “Who art the moon and regent of my sky” does not mean that Juliet invented Romeo to account for the roundness of the moon. “Christ is the Sun of Easter” does not mean that the worshipper is praising the sun under the emblem of Christ. Goddess or god can clothe themselves with the spring or summer; but the body is more than raiment. Religion takes almost disdainfully the dress of Nature; and indeed Christianity has done as well with the snows of Christmas as with the snow-drops of spring. And when I look across the sun-struck fields, I know in my inmost bones that my joy is not solely in the spring, for spring alone, being always returning, would be always sad. There is somebody or something walking there, to be crowned with flowers: and my pleasure is in some promise yet possible and in the resurrection of the dead.
THE REAL JOURNALIST
Our age which has boasted of realism will fail chiefly through lack of reality. Never, I fancy, has there been so grave and startling a divorce between the real way a thing is done and the look of it when it is done. I take the nearest and most topical instance to hand a newspaper. Nothing looks more neat and regular than a newspaper, with its parallel columns, its mechanical printing, its detailed facts and figures, its responsible, polysyllabic leading articles. Nothing, as a matter of fact, goes every night through more agonies of adventure, more hairbreadth escapes, desperate expedients, crucial councils, random compromises, or barely averted catastrophes. Seen from the outside, it seems to come round as automatically as the clock and as silently as the dawn. Seen from the inside, it gives all its organisers a gasp of relief every morning to see that it has come out at all; that it has come out without the leading article upside down or the Pope congratulated on discovering the North Pole.
I will give an instance (merely to illustrate my thesis of unreality) from the paper that I know best. Here is a simple story, a little episode in the life of a journalist, which may be amusing and instructive: the tale of how I made a great mistake in quotation. There are really two stories: the story as seen from the outside, by a man reading the paper; and the story seen from the inside, by the journalists shouting and telephoning and taking notes in shorthand through the night.
This is the outside story; and it reads like a dreadful quarrel. The notorious G. K. Chesterton, a reactionary Torquemada whose one gloomy pleasure was in the defence of orthodoxy and the pursuit of heretics, long calculated and at last launched a denunciation of a brilliant leader of the New Theology which he hated with all the furnace of his fanatic soul. In this document Chesterton darkly, deliberately, and not having the fear of God before his eyes, asserted that Shakespeare wrote the line “that wreathes its old fantastic roots so high.” This he said because he had been kept in ignorance by Priests; or, perhaps, because he thought craftily that none of his dupes could discover a curious and forgotten rhyme called ‘Elegy in a Country Churchyard’. Anyhow, that orthodox gentleman made a howling error; and received some twenty-five letters and post-cards from kind correspondents who pointed out the mistake.
But the odd thing is that scarcely any of them could conceive that it was a mistake. The first wrote in the tone of one wearied of epigrams, and cried, “What is the joke NOW?” Another professed (and practised, for all I know, God help him) that he had read through all Shakespeare and failed to find the line. A third wrote in a sort of moral distress, asking, as in confidence, if Gray was really a plagiarist. They were a noble collection; but they all subtly assumed an element of leisure and exactitude in the recipient’s profession and character which is far from the truth. Let us pass on to the next act of the external tragedy.
In Monday’s issue of the same paper appeared a letter from the same culprit. He ingenuously confessed that the line did not belong to Shakespeare, but to a poet whom he called Grey. Which was another cropper—or whopper. This strange and illiterate outbreak was printed by the editor with the justly scornful title, “Mr. Chesterton ‘Explains’?” Any man reading the paper at breakfast saw at once the meaning of the sarcastic quotation marks. They meant, of course, “Here is a man who doesn’t know Gray from Shakespeare; he tries to patch it up and he can’t even spell Gray. And that is what he calls an Explanation.” That is the perfectly natural inference of the reader from the letter, the mistake, and the headline—as seen from the outside. The falsehood was serious; the editorial rebuke was serious. The stern editor and the sombre, baffled contributor confront each other as the curtain falls.
And now I will tell you exactly what really happened. It is honestly rather amusing; it is a story of what journals and journalists really are. A monstrously lazy man lives in South Bucks partly by writing a column in the Saturday Daily News. At the time he usually writes it (which is always at the last moment) his house is unexpectedly invaded by infants of all shapes and sizes. His Secretary is called away; and he has to cope with the invading pigmies. Playing with children is a glorious thing; but the journalist in question has never understood why it was considered a soothing or idyllic one. It reminds him, not of watering little budding flowers, but of wrestling for hours with gigantic angels and devils. Moral problems of the most monstrous complexity besiege him incessantly. He has to decide before the awful eyes of innocence, whether, when a sister has knocked down a brother’s bricks, in revenge for the brother having taken two sweets out of his turn, it is endurable that the brother should retaliate by scribbling on the sister’s picture-book, and whether such conduct does not justify the sister in blowing out the brother’s unlawfully lighted match.
Just as he is solving this problem upon principles of the highest morality, it occurs to him suddenly that he has not written his Saturday article; and that there is only about an hour to do it in. He wildly calls to somebody (probably the gardener) to telephone to somewhere for a messenger; he barricades himself in another room and tears his hair, wondering what on earth he shall write about. A drumming of fists on the door outside and a cheerful bellowing encourage and clarify his thoughts; and he is able to observe some newspapers and circulars in wrappers lying on the table. One is a dingy book catalogue; the second is a shiny pamphlet about petrol; the third is a paper called The Christian Commonwealth. He opens it anyhow, and sees in the middle of a page a sentence with which he honestly disagrees. It says that the sense of beauty in Nature is a new thing, hardly felt before Wordsworth. A stream of images and pictures pour through his head, like skies chasing each other or forests running by. “Not felt before Wordsworth!” he thinks. “Oh, but this won’t do… bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang… night’s candles are burnt out… glowed with living sapphires. leaving their moon-loved maze… antique roots fantastic… antique roots wreathed high… what is it in As You Like It?”
He sits down desperately; the messenger rings at the bell; the children drum on the door; the servants run up from time to time to say the messenger is getting bored; and the pencil staggers along, making the world a present of fifteen hundred unimportant words, and making Shakespeare a present of a portion of Gray’s Elegy; putting “fantastic roots wreathed high” instead of “antique roots peep out.” Then the journalist sends off his copy and turns his attention to the enigma of whether a brother should commandeer a sister’s necklace because the sister pinched him at Littlehampton. That is the first scene; that is how an article is really written.
The scene now changes to the newspaper office. The writer of the article has discovered his mistake and wants to correct it by the next day: but the next day is Sunday. He cannot post a letter, so he rings up the paper and dictates a letter by telephone. He leaves the title to his friends at the other end; he knows that they can spell “Gray,” as no doubt they can: but the letter is put down by journalistic custom in a pencil scribble and the vowel may well be doubtful. The friend writes at the top of the letter “‘G. K. C.’ Explains,” putting the initials in quotation marks. The next man passing it for press is bored with these initials (I am with him there) and crosses them out, substituting with austere civility, “Mr. Chesterton Explains.” But and now he hears the iron laughter of the Fates, for the blind bolt is about to fall— but he neglects to cross out the second “quote” (as we call it) and it goes up to press with a “quote” between the last words. Another quotation mark at the end of “explains” was the work of one merry moment for the printers upstairs. So the inverted commas were lifted entirely off one word on to the other and a totally innocent title suddenly turned into a blasting sneer. But that would have mattered nothing so far, for there was nothing to sneer at. In the same dark hour, however, there was a printer who was (I suppose) so devoted to this Government that he could think of no Gray but Sir Edward Grey. He spelt it “Grey” by a mere misprint, and the whole tale was complete: first blunder, second blunder, and final condemnation.
That is a little tale of journalism as it is; if you call it egotistic and ask what is the use of it I think I could tell you. You might remember it when next some ordinary young workman is going to be hanged by the neck on circumstantial evidence.
THE SENTIMENTAL SCOT
Of all the great nations of Christendom, the Scotch are by far the most romantic. I have just enough Scotch experience and just enough Scotch blood to know this in the only way in which a thing can really be known; that is, when the outer world and the inner world are at one. I know it is always said that the Scotch are practical, prosaic, and puritan; that they have an eye to business. I like that phrase “an eye” to business.
Polyphemus had an eye for business; it was in the middle of his forehead. It served him admirably for the only two duties which are demanded in a modern financier and captain of industry: the two duties of counting sheep and of eating men. But when that one eye was put out he was done for. But the Scotch are not one-eyed practical men, though their best friends must admit that they are occasionally business-like. They are, quite fundamentally, romantic and sentimental, and this is proved by the very economic argument that is used to prove their harshness and hunger for the material. The mass of Scots have accepted the industrial civilisation, with its factory chimneys and its famine prices, with its steam and smoke and steel— and strikes. The mass of the Irish have not accepted it. The mass of the Irish have clung to agriculture with claws of iron; and have succeeded in keeping it. That is because the Irish, though far inferior to the Scotch in art and literature, are hugely superior to them in practical politics. You do need to be very romantic to accept the industrial civilisation. It does really require all the old Gaelic glamour to make men think that Glasgow is a grand place. Yet the miracle is achieved; and while I was in Glasgow I shared the illusion. I have never had the faintest illusion about Leeds or Birmingham. The industrial dream suited the Scots. Here was a really romantic vista, suited to a romantic people; a vision of higher and higher chimneys taking hold upon the heavens, of fiercer and fiercer fires in which adamant could evaporate like dew. Here were taller and taller engines that began already to shriek and gesticulate like giants. Here were thunderbolts of communication which already flashed to and fro like thoughts. It was unreasonable to expect the rapt, dreamy, romantic Scot to stand still in such a whirl of wizardry to ask whether he, the ordinary Scot, would be any the richer.
He, the ordinary Scot, is very much the poorer. Glasgow is not a rich city. It is a particularly poor city ruled by a few particularly rich men. It is not, perhaps, quite so poor a city as Liverpool, London, Manchester, Birmingham, or Bolton. It is vastly poorer than Rome, Rouen, Munich, or Cologne. A certain civic vitality notable in Glasgow may, perhaps, be due to the fact that the high poetic patriotism of the Scots has there been reinforced by the cutting common sense and independence of the Irish. In any case, I think there can be no doubt of the main historical fact. The Scotch were tempted by the enormous but unequal opportunities of industrialism, because the Scotch are romantic. The Irish refused those enormous and unequal opportunities, because the Irish are clear-sighted. They would not need very clear sight by this time to see that in England and Scotland the temptation has been a betrayal. The industrial system has failed.
I was coming the other day along a great valley road that strikes out of the westland counties about Glasgow, more or less towards the east and the widening of the Forth. It may, for all I know (I amused myself with the fancy), be the way along which Wallace came with his crude army, when he gave battle before Stirling Brig; and, in the midst of mediaeval diplomacies, made a new nation possible. Anyhow, the romantic quality of Scotland rolled all about me, as much in the last reek of Glasgow as in the first rain upon the hills. The tall factory chimneys seemed trying to be taller than the mountain peaks; as if this landscape were full (as its history has been full) of the very madness of ambition. The wage-slavery we live in is a wicked thing. But there is nothing in which the Scotch are more piercing and poetical, I might say more perfect, than in their Scotch wickedness. It is what makes the Master of Ballantrae the most thrilling of all fictitious villains. It is what makes the Master of Lovat the most thrilling of all historical villains. It is poetry. It is an intensity which is on the edge of madness or (what is worse) magic. Well, the Scotch have managed to apply something of this fierce romanticism even to the lowest of all lordships and serfdoms; the proletarian inequality of today. You do meet now and then, in Scotland, the man you never meet anywhere else but in novels; I mean the self-made man; the hard, insatiable man, merciless to himself as well as to others. It is not “enterprise”; it is kleptomania. He is quite mad, and a much more obvious public pest than any other kind of kleptomaniac; but though he is a cheat, he is not an illusion. He does exist; I have met quite two of him. Him alone among modern merchants we do not weakly flatter when we call him a bandit. Something of the irresponsibility of the true dark ages really clings about him. Our scientific civilisation is not a civilisation; it is a smoke nuisance. Like smoke it is choking us; like smoke it will pass away. Only of one or two Scotsmen, in my experience, was it true that where there is smoke there is fire.
But there are other kinds of fire; and better. The one great advantage of this strange national temper is that, from the beginning of all chronicles, it has provided resistance as well as cruelty. In Scotland nearly everything has always been in revolt— especially loyalty. If these people are capable of making Glasgow, they are also capable of wrecking it; and the thought of my many good friends in that city makes me really doubtful about which would figure in human memories as the more huge calamity of the two. In Scotland there are many rich men so weak as to call themselves strong. But there are not so many poor men weak enough to believe them.
As I came out of Glasgow I saw men standing about the road. They had little lanterns tied to the fronts of their caps, like the fairies who used to dance in the old fairy pantomimes. They were not, however, strictly speaking, fairies. They might have been called gnomes, since they worked in the chasms of those purple and chaotic hills. They worked in the mines from whence comes the fuel of our fires. Just at the moment when I saw them, moreover, they were not dancing; nor were they working. They were doing nothing. Which, in my opinion (and I trust yours), was the finest thing they could do.
THE SECTARIAN OF SOCIETY
A fixed creed is absolutely indispensable to freedom. For while men are and should be various, there must be some communication between them if they are to get any pleasure out of their variety. And an intellectual formula is the only thing that can create a communication that does not depend on mere blood, class, or capricious sympathy. If we all start with the agreement that the sun and moon exist, we can talk about our different visions of them. The strong-eyed man can boast that he sees the sun as a perfect circle. The shortsighted man may say (or if he is an impressionist, boast) that he sees the moon as a silver blur. The colour-blind man may rejoice in the fairy-trick which enables him to live under a green sun and a blue moon. But if once it be held that there is nothing but a silver blur in one man’s eye or a bright circle (like a monocle) in the other man’s, then neither is free, for each is shut up in the cell of a separate universe.
But, indeed, an even worse fate, practically considered, follows from the denim of the original intellectual formula. Not only does the individual become narrow, but he spreads narrowness across the world like a cloud; he causes narrowness to increase and multiply like a weed. For what happens is this: that all the shortsighted people come together and build a city called Myopia, where they take short-sightedness for granted and paint short-sighted pictures and pursue very short-sighted policies. Meanwhile all the men who can stare at the sun get together on Salisbury Plain and do nothing but stare at the sun; and all the men who see a blue moon band themselves together and assert the blue moon, not once in a blue moon, but incessantly. So that instead of a small and varied group, you have enormous monotonous groups. Instead of the liberty of dogma, you have the tyranny of taste.
Allegory apart, instances of what I mean will occur to every one; perhaps the most obvious is Socialism. Socialism means the ownership by the organ of government (whatever it is) of all things necessary to production. If a man claims to be a Socialist in that sense he can be any kind of man he likes in any other sense—a bookie, a Mahatma, a man about town, an archbishop, a Margate nigger. Without recalling at the moment clear-headed Socialists in all of these capacities, it is obvious that a clear-headed Socialist (that is, a Socialist with a creed) can be a soldier, like Mr. Blatchford, or a Don, like Mr. Ball, or a Bath-chairman like Mr. Meeke, or a clergyman like Mr. Conrad Noel, or an artistic tradesman like the late Mr. William Morris.
But some people call themselves Socialists, and will not be bound by what they call a narrow dogma; they say that Socialism means far, far more than this; all that is high, all that is free, all that is, etc., etc. Now mark their dreadful fate; for they become totally unfit to be tradesmen, or soldiers, or clergymen, or any other stricken human thing, but become a particular sort of person who is always the same. When once it has been discovered that Socialism does not mean a narrow economic formula, it is also discovered that Socialism does mean wearing one particular kind of clothes, reading one particular kind of books, hanging up one particular kind of pictures, and in the majority of cases even eating one particular kind of food. For men must recognise each other somehow. These men will not know each other by a principle, like fellow citizens. They cannot know each other by a smell, like dogs. So they have to fall back on general colouring; on the fact that a man of their sort will have a wife in pale green and Walter Crane’s “Triumph of Labour” hanging in the hall.
There are, of course, many other instances; for modern society is almost made up of these large monochrome patches. Thus I, for one, regret the supersession of the old Puritan unity, founded on theology, but embracing all types from Milton to the grocer, by that newer Puritan unity which is founded rather on certain social habits, certain common notions, both permissive and prohibitive, in connection with Particular social pleasures.
Thus I, for one, regret that (if you are going to have an aristocracy) it did not remain a logical one founded on the science of heraldry; a thing asserting and defending the quite defensible theory that physical genealogy is the test; instead of being, as it is now, a mere machine of Eton and Oxford for varnishing anybody rich enough with one monotonous varnish.
And it is supremely so in the case of religion. As long as you have a creed, which every one in a certain group believes or is supposed to believe, then that group will consist of the old recurring figures of religious history, who can be appealed to by the creed and judged by it; the saint, the hypocrite, the brawler, the weak brother. These people do each other good; or they all join together to do the hypocrite good, with heavy and repeated blows. But once break the bond of doctrine which alone holds these people together and each will gravitate to his own kind outside the group. The hypocrites will all get together and call each other saints; the saints will get lost in a desert and call themselves weak brethren; the weak brethren will get weaker and weaker in a general atmosphere of imbecility; and the brawler will go off looking for somebody else with whom to brawl.
This has very largely happened to modern English religion; I have been in many churches, chapels, and halls where a confident pride in having got beyond creeds was coupled with quite a paralysed incapacity to get beyond catchwords. But wherever the falsity appears it comes from neglect of the same truth: that men should agree on a principle, that they may differ on everything else; that God gave men a law that they might turn it into liberties.
There was hugely more sense in the old people who said that a wife and husband ought to have the same religion than there is in all the contemporary gushing about sister souls and kindred spirits and auras of identical colour. As a matter of fact, the more the sexes are in violent contrast the less likely they are to be in violent collision. The more incompatible their tempers are the better. Obviously a wife’s soul cannot possibly be a sister soul. It is very seldom so much as a first cousin. There are very few marriages of identical taste and temperament; they are generally unhappy. But to have the same fundamental theory, to think the same thing a virtue, whether you practise or neglect it, to think the same thing a sin, whether you punish or pardon or laugh at it, in the last extremity to call the same thing duty and the same thing disgrace—this really is necessary to a tolerably happy marriage; and it is much better represented by a common religion than it is by affinities and auras. And what applies to the family applies to the nation. A nation with a root religion will be tolerant. A nation with no religion will be bigoted. Lastly, the worst effect of all is this: that when men come together to profess a creed, they come courageously, though it is to hide in catacombs and caves. But when they come together in a clique they come sneakishly, eschewing all change or disagreement, though it is to dine to a brass band in a big London hotel. For birds of a feather flock together, but birds of the white feather most of all.
THE FOOL
For many years I had sought him, and at last I found him in a club. I had been told that he was everywhere; but I had almost begun to think that he was nowhere. I had been assured that there were millions of him; but before my late discovery I inclined to think that there were none of him. After my late discovery I am sure that there is one; and I incline to think that there are several, say, a few hundreds; but unfortunately most of them occupying important positions. When I say “him,” I mean the entire idiot.
I have never been able to discover that “stupid public” of which so many literary men complain. The people one actually meets in trains or at tea parties seem to me quite bright and interesting; certainly quite enough so to call for the full exertion of one’s own wits. And even when I have heard brilliant “conversationalists” conversing with other people, the conversation had much more equality and give and take than this age of intellectual snobs will admit. I have sometimes felt tired, like other people; but rather tired with men’s talk and variety than with their stolidity or sameness; therefore it was that I sometimes longed to find the refreshment of a single fool.
But it was denied me. Turn where I would I found this monotonous brilliancy of the general intelligence, this ruthless, ceaseless sparkle of humour and good sense. The “mostly fools” theory has been used in an anti-democratic sense; but when I found at last my priceless ass, I did not find him in what is commonly called the democracy; nor in the aristocracy either. The man of the democracy generally talks quite rationally, sometimes on the anti-democratic side, but always with an idea of giving reasons for what he says and referring to the realities of his experience. Nor is it the aristocracy that is stupid; at least, not that section of the aristocracy which represents it in politics. They are often cynical, especially about money, but even their boredom tends to make them a little eager for any real information or originality. If a man like Mr. Winston Churchill or Mr. Wyndham made up his mind for any reason to attack Syndicalism he would find out what it was first. Not so the man I found in the club.
He was very well dressed; he had a heavy but handsome face; his black clothes suggested the City and his gray moustaches the Army; but the whole suggested that he did not really belong to either, but was one of those who dabble in shares and who play at soldiers. There was some third element about him that was neither mercantile nor military. His manners were a shade too gentlemanly to be quite those of a gentleman. They involved an unction and over-emphasis of the club-man: then I suddenly remembered feeling the same thing in some old actors or old playgoers who had modelled themselves on actors. As I came in he said, “If I was the Government,” and then put a cigar in his mouth which he lit carefully with long intakes of breath. Then he took the cigar out of his mouth again and said, “I’d give it ‘em,” as if it were quite a separate sentence. But even while his mouth was stopped with the cigar his companion or interlocutor leaped to his feet and said with great heartiness, snatching up a hat, “Well, I must be off. Tuesday!”. I dislike these dark suspicions, but I certainly fancied I recognised the sudden geniality with which one takes leave of a bore.
When, therefore, he removed the narcotic stopper from his mouth it was to me that he addressed the belated epigram. “I’d give it ‘em.”
“What would you give them,” I asked, “the minimum wage?”
“I’d give them beans,” he said. “I’d shoot ‘em down shoot ‘em down, every man Jack of them. I lost my best train yesterday, and here’s the whole country paralysed, and here’s a handful of obstinate fellows standing between the country and coal. I’d shoot ‘em down!”
“That would surely be a little harsh,” I pleaded. “After all, they are not under martial law, though I suppose two or three of them have commissions in the Yeomanry.”
“Commissions in the Yeomanry!” he repeated, and his eyes and face, which became startling and separate, like those of a boiled lobster, made me feel sure that he had something of the kind himself.
“Besides,” I continued, “wouldn’t it be quite enough to confiscate their money?”
“Well, I’d send them all to penal servitude, anyhow,” he said, “and I’d confiscate their funds as well.”
“The policy is daring and full of difficulty,” I replied, “but I do not say that it is wholly outside the extreme rights of the republic. But you must remember that though the facts of property have become quite fantastic, yet the sentiment of property still exists. These coal-owners, though they have not earned the mines, though they could not work the mines, do quite honestly feel that they own the mines. Hence your suggestion of shooting them down, or even of confiscating their property, raises very—”
“What do you mean?” asked the man with the cigar, with a bullying eye. “Who yer talking about?”
“I’m talking about what you were talking about,” I replied; “as you put it so perfectly, about the handful of obstinate fellows who are standing between the country and the coal. I mean the men who are selling their own coal for fancy prices, and who, as long as they can get those prices, care as little for national starvation as most merchant princes and pirates have cared for the provinces that were wasted or the peoples that were enslaved just before their ships came home. But though I am a bit of a revolutionist myself, I cannot quite go with you in the extreme violence you suggest. You say—”
“I say,” he cried, bursting through my speech with a really splendid energy like that of some noble beast, “I say I’d take all these blasted miners and—”
I had risen slowly to my feet, for I was profoundly moved; and I stood staring at that mental monster.
“Oh,” I said, “so it is the miners who are all to be sent to penal servitude, so that we may get more coal. It is the miners who are to be shot dead, every man Jack of them; for if once they are all shot dead they will start mining again… You must forgive me, sir; I know I seem somewhat moved… The fact is, I have just found something. something I have been looking for for years.”
“Well,” he asked, with no unfriendly stare, “and what have you found?”
“No,” I answered, shaking my head sadly, “I do not think it would be quite kind to tell you what I have found.”
He had a hundred virtues, including the capital virtue of good humour, and we had no difficulty in changing the subject and forgetting the disagreement. He talked about society, his town friends and his country sports, and I discovered in the course of it that he was a county magistrate, a Member of Parliament, and a director of several important companies. He was also that other thing, which I did not tell him.
The moral is that a certain sort of person does exist, to whose glory this article is dedicated. He is not the ordinary man. He is not the miner, who is sharp enough to ask for the necessities of existence. He is not the mine-owner, who is sharp enough to get a great deal more, by selling his coal at the best possible moment. He is not the aristocratic politician, who has a cynical but a fair sympathy with both economic opportunities. But he is the man who appears in scores of public places open to the upper middle class or (that less known but more powerful section) the lower upper class. Men like this all over the country are really saying whatever comes into their heads in their capacities of justice of the peace, candidate for Parliament, Colonel of the Yeomanry, old family doctor, Poor Law guardian, coroner, or above all, arbiter in trade disputes. He suffers, in the literal sense, from softening of the brain; he has softened it by always taking the view of everything most comfortable for his country, his class, and his private personality. He is a deadly public danger. But as I have given him his name at the beginning of this article there is no need for me to repeat it at the end.
THE CONSCRIPT AND THE CRISIS
Very few of us ever see the history of our own time happening. And I think the best service a modern journalist can do to society is to record as plainly as ever he can exactly what impression was produced on his mind by anything he has actually seen and heard on the outskirts of any modern problem or campaign. Though all he saw of a railway strike was a flat meadow in Essex in which a train was becalmed for an hour or two, he will probably throw more light on the strike by describing this which he has seen than by describing the steely kings of commerce and the bloody leaders of the mob whom he has never seen— nor any one else either. If he comes a day too late for the battle of Waterloo (as happened to a friend of my grandfather) he should still remember that a true account of the day after Waterloo would be a most valuable thing to have. Though he was on the wrong side of the door when Rizzio was being murdered, we should still like to have the wrong side described in the right way. Upon this principle I, who know nothing of diplomacy or military arrangements, and have only held my breath like the rest of the world while France and Germany were bargaining, will tell quite truthfully of a small scene I saw, one of the thousand scenes that were, so to speak, the anterooms of that inmost chamber of debate.
In the course of a certain morning I came into one of the quiet squares of a small French town and found its cathedral. It was one of those gray and rainy days which rather suit the Gothic. The clouds were leaden, like the solid blue-gray lead of the spires and the jewelled windows; the sloping roofs and high-shouldered arches looked like cloaks drooping with damp; and the stiff gargoyles that stood out round the walls were scoured with old rains and new. I went into the round, deep porch with many doors and found two grubby children playing there out of the rain. I also found a notice of services, etc., and among these I found the announcement that at 11.30 (that is about half an hour later) there would be a special service for the Conscripts, that is to say, the draft of young men who were being taken from their homes in that little town and sent to serve in the French Army; sent (as it happened) at an awful moment, when the French Army was encamped at a parting of the ways. There were already a great many people there when I entered, not only of all kinds, but in all attitudes, kneeling, sitting, or standing about. And there was that general sense that strikes every man from a Protestant country, whether he dislikes the Catholic atmosphere or likes it; I mean, the general sense that the thing was “going on all the time”; that it was not an occasion, but a perpetual process, as if it were a sort of mystical inn.
Several tricolours were hung quite near to the altar, and the young men, when they came in, filed up the church and sat right at the front. They were, of course, of every imaginable social grade; for the French conscription is really strict and universal. Some looked like young criminals, some like young priests, some like both. Some were so obviously prosperous and polished that a barrack-room must seem to them like hell; others (by the look of them) had hardly ever been in so decent a place. But it was not so much the mere class variety that most sharply caught an Englishman’s eye. It was the presence of just those one or two kinds of men who would never have become soldiers in any other way.
There are many reasons for becoming a soldier. It may be a matter of hereditary luck or abject hunger or heroic virtue or fugitive vice; it may be an interest in the work or a lack of interest in any other work. But there would always be two or three kinds of people who would never tend to soldiering; all those kinds of people were there. A lad with red hair, large ears, and very careful clothing, somehow conveyed across the church that he had always taken care of his health, not even from thinking about it, but simply because he was told, and that he was one of those who pass from childhood to manhood without any shock of being a man. In the row in front of him there was a very slight and vivid little Jew, of the sort that is a tailor and a Socialist. By one of those accidents that make real life so unlike anything else, he was the one of the company who seemed especially devout. Behind these stiff or sensitive boys were ranged the ranks of their mothers and fathers, with knots and bunches of their little brothers and sisters.
The children kicked their little legs, wriggled about the seats, and gaped at the arched roof while their mothers were on their knees praying their own prayers, and here and there crying. The gray clouds of rain outside gathered, I suppose, more and more; for the deep church continuously darkened. The lads in front began to sing a military hymn in odd, rather strained voices; I could not disentangle the words, but only one perpetual refrain; so that it sounded like
Sacrarterumbrrar pour la patrie, Valdarkararump pour la patrie.
Then this ceased; and silence continued, the coloured windows growing gloomier and gloomier with the clouds. In the dead stillness a child started crying suddenly and incoherently. In a city far to the north a French diplomatist and a German aristocrat were talking.
I will not make any commentary on the thing that could blur the outline of its almost cruel actuality. I will not talk nor allow any one else to talk about “clericalism” and “militarism.” Those who talk like that are made of the same mud as those who call all the angers of the unfortunate “Socialism.” The women who were calling in the gloom around me on God and the Mother of God were not “clericalists”; or, if they were, they had forgotten it. And I will bet my boots the young men were not “militarists”—quite the other way just then. The priest made a short speech; he did not utter any priestly dogmas (whatever they are), he uttered platitudes. In such circumstances platitudes are the only possible things to say; because they are true. He began by saying that he supposed a large number of them would be uncommonly glad not to go. They seemed to assent to this particular priestly dogma with even more than their alleged superstitious credulity. He said that war was hateful, and that we all hated it; but that “in all things reasonable” the law of one’s own commonwealth was the voice of God. He spoke about Joan of Arc; and how she had managed to be a bold and successful soldier while still preserving her virtue and practising her religion; then he gave them each a little paper book. To which they replied (after a brief interval for reflection):
Pongprongperesklang pour la patrie, Tambraugtararronc pour la patrie.
which I feel sure was the best and most pointed reply.
While all this was happening feelings quite indescribable crowded about my own darkening brain, as the clouds crowded above the darkening church. They were so entirely of the elements and the passions that I cannot utter them in an idea, but only in an image. It seemed to me that we were barricaded in this church, but we could not tell what was happening outside the church. The monstrous and terrible jewels of the windows darkened or glistened under moving shadow or light, but the nature of that light and the shapes of those shadows we did not know and hardly dared to guess. The dream began, I think, with a dim fancy that enemies were already in the town, and that the enormous oaken doors were groaning under their hammers. Then I seemed to suppose that the town itself had been destroyed by fire, and effaced, as it may be thousands of years hence, and that if I opened the door I should come out on a wilderness as flat and sterile as the sea. Then the vision behind the veil of stone and slate grew wilder with earthquakes. I seemed to see chasms cloven to the foundations of all things, and letting up an infernal dawn. Huge things happily hidden from us had climbed out of the abyss, and were striding about taller than the clouds. And when the darkness crept from the sapphires of Mary to the sanguine garments of St. John I fancied that some hideous giant was walking round the church and looking in at each window in turn.
Sometimes, again, I thought of that church with coloured windows as a ship carrying many lanterns struggling in a high sea at night. Sometimes I thought of it as a great coloured lantern itself, hung on an iron chain out of heaven and tossed and swung to and fro by strong wings, the wings of the princes of the air. But I never thought of it or the young men inside it save as something precious and in peril, or of the things outside but as something barbaric and enormous.
I know there are some who cannot sympathise with such sentiments of limitation; I know there are some who would feel no touch of the heroic tenderness if some day a young man, with red hair, large ears, and his mother’s lozenges in his pocket, were found dead in uniform in the passes of the Vosges. But on this subject I have heard many philosophies and thought a good deal for myself; and the conclusion I have come to is Sacrarterumbrrar pour la Pattie, and it is not likely that I shall alter it now.
But when I came out of the church there were none of these things, but only a lot of Shops, including a paper-shop, on which the posters announced that the negotiations were proceeding satisfactorily.
THE MISER AND HIS FRIENDS
It is a sign of sharp sickness in a society when it is actually led by some special sort of lunatic. A mild touch of madness may even keep a man sane; for it may keep him modest. So some exaggerations in the State may remind it of its own normal. But it is bad when the head is cracked; when the roof of the commonwealth has a tile loose.
The two or three cases of this that occur in history have always been gibbeted gigantically. Thus Nero has become a black proverb, not merely because he was an oppressor, but because he was also an aesthete— that is, an erotomaniac. He not only tortured other people’s bodies; he tortured his own soul into the same red revolting shapes. Though he came quite early in Roman Imperial history and was followed by many austere and noble emperors, yet for us the Roman Empire was never quite cleansed of that memory of the sexual madman. The populace or barbarians from whom we come could not forget the hour when they came to the highest place of the earth, saw the huge pedestal of the earthly omnipotence, read on it Divus Caesar, and looked up and saw a statue without a head.
It is the same with that ugly entanglement before the Renaissance, from which, alas, most memories of the Middle Ages are derived. Louis XI was a very patient and practical man of the world; but (like many good business men) he was mad. The morbidity of the intriguer and the torturer clung about everything he did, even when it was right. And just as the great Empire of Antoninus and Aurelius never wiped out Nero, so even the silver splendour of the latter saints, such as Vincent de Paul, has never painted out for the British public the crooked shadow of Louis XI. Whenever the unhealthy man has been on top, he has left a horrible savour that humanity finds still in its nostrils. Now in our time the unhealthy man is on top; but he is not the man mad on sex, like Nero; or mad on statecraft, like Louis XI; he is simply the man mad on money. Our tyrant is not the satyr or the torturer; but the miser.
The modern miser has changed much from the miser of legend and anecdote; but only because he has grown yet more insane. The old miser had some touch of the human artist about him in so far that he collected gold—a substance that can really be admired for itself, like ivory or old oak. An old man who picked up yellow pieces had something of the simple ardour, something of the mystical materialism, of a child who picks out yellow flowers. Gold is but one kind of coloured clay, but coloured clay can be very beautiful. The modern idolater of riches is content with far less genuine things. The glitter of guineas is like the glitter of buttercups, the chink of pelf is like the chime of bells, compared with the dreary papers and dead calculations which make the hobby of the modern miser.
The modern millionaire loves nothing so lovable as a coin. He is content sometimes with the dead crackle of notes; but far more often with the mere repetition of noughts in a ledger, all as like each other as eggs to eggs. And as for comfort, the old miser could be comfortable, as many tramps and savages are, when he was once used to being unclean. A man could find some comfort in an unswept attic or an unwashed shirt. But the Yankee millionaire can find no comfort with five telephones at his bed-head and ten minutes for his lunch. The round coins in the miser’s stocking were safe in some sense. The round noughts in the millionaire’s ledger are safe in no sense; the same fluctuation which excites him with their increase depresses him with their diminution. The miser at least collects coins; his hobby is numismatics. The man who collects noughts collects nothings.
It may be admitted that the man amassing millions is a bit of an idiot; but it may be asked in what sense does he rule the modern world. The answer to this is very important and rather curious. The evil enigma for us here is not the rich, but the Very Rich. The distinction is important; because this special problem is separate from the old general quarrel about rich and poor that runs through the Bible and all strong books, old and new. The special problem to-day is that certain powers and privileges have grown so world-wide and unwieldy that they are out of the power of the moderately rich as well as of the moderately poor. They are out of the power of everybody except a few millionaires— that is, misers. In the old normal friction of normal wealth and poverty I am myself on the Radical side. I think that a Berkshire squire has too much power over his tenants; that a Brompton builder has too much power over his workmen; that a West London doctor has too much power over the poor patients in the West London Hospital.
But a Berkshire squire has no power over cosmopolitan finance, for instance. A Brompton builder has not money enough to run a Newspaper Trust. A West End doctor could not make a corner in quinine and freeze everybody out. The merely rich are not rich enough to rule the modern market. The things that change modern history, the big national and international loans, the big educational and philanthropic foundations, the purchase of numberless newspapers, the big prices paid for peerages, the big expenses often incurred in elections— these are getting too big for everybody except the misers; the men with the largest of earthly fortunes and the smallest of earthly aims.
There are two other odd and rather important things to be said about them. The first is this: that with this aristocracy we do not have the chance of a lucky variety in types which belongs to larger and looser aristocracies. The moderately rich include all kinds of people even good people. Even priests are sometimes saints; and even soldiers are sometimes heroes. Some doctors have really grown wealthy by curing their patients and not by flattering them; some brewers have been known to sell beer. But among the Very Rich you will never find a really generous man, even by accident. They may give their money away, but they will never give themselves away; they are egoistic, secretive, dry as old bones. To be smart enough to get all that money you must be dull enough to want it.
Lastly, the most serious point about them is this: that the new miser is flattered for his meanness and the old one never was. It was never called self-denial in the old miser that he lived on bones. It is called self-denial in the new millionaire if he lives on beans. A man like Dancer was never praised as a Christian saint for going in rags. A man like Rockefeller is praised as a sort of pagan stoic for his early rising or his unassuming dress. His “simple” meals, his “simple” clothes, his “simple” funeral, are all extolled as if they were creditable to him. They are disgraceful to him: exactly as disgraceful as the tatters and vermin of the old miser were disgraceful to him. To be in rags for charity would be the condition of a saint; to be in rags for money was that of a filthy old fool. Precisely in the same way, to be “simple” for charity is the state of a saint; to be “simple” for money is that of a filthy old fool. Of the two I have more respect for the old miser, gnawing bones in an attic: if he was not nearer to God, he was at least a little nearer to men. His simple life was a little more like the life of the real poor.
THE MYSTAGOGUE
Whenever you hear much of things being unutterable and indefinable and impalpable and unnamable and subtly indescribable, then elevate your aristocratic nose towards heaven and snuff up the smell of decay. It is perfectly true that there is something in all good things that is beyond all speech or figure of speech. But it is also true that there is in all good things a perpetual desire for expression and concrete embodiment; and though the attempt to embody it is always inadequate, the attempt is always made. If the idea does not seek to be the word, the chances are that it is an evil idea. If the word is not made flesh it is a bad word.
Thus Giotto or Fra Angelico would have at once admitted theologically that God was too good to be painted; but they would always try to paint Him. And they felt (very rightly) that representing Him as a rather quaint old man with a gold crown and a white beard, like a king of the elves, was less profane than resisting the sacred impulse to express Him in some way. That is why the Christian world is full of gaudy pictures and twisted statues which seem, to many refined persons, more blasphemous than the secret volumes of an atheist. The trend of good is always towards Incarnation. But, on the other hand, those refined thinkers who worship the Devil, whether in the swamps of Jamaica or the salons of Paris, always insist upon the shapelessness, the wordlessness, the unutterable character of the abomination. They call him “horror of emptiness,” as did the black witch in Stevenson’s Dynamiter; they worship him as the unspeakable name; as the unbearable silence. They think of him as the void in the heart of the whirlwind; the cloud on the brain of the maniac; the toppling turrets of vertigo or the endless corridors of nightmare. It was the Christians who gave the Devil a grotesque and energetic outline, with sharp horns and spiked tail. It was the saints who drew Satan as comic and even lively. The Satanists never drew him at all.
And as it is with moral good and evil, so it is also with mental clarity and mental confusion. There is one very valid test by which we may separate genuine, if perverse and unbalanced, originality and revolt from mere impudent innovation and bluff. The man who really thinks he has an idea will always try to explain that idea. The charlatan who has no idea will always confine himself to explaining that it is much too subtle to be explained. The first idea may really be very outree or specialist; it may really be very difficult to express to ordinary people. But because the man is trying to express it, it is most probable that there is something in it, after all. The honest man is he who is always trying to utter the unutterable, to describe the indescribable; but the quack lives not by plunging into mystery, but by refusing to come out of it.
Perhaps this distinction is most comically plain in the case of the thing called Art, and the people called Art Critics. It is obvious that an attractive landscape or a living face can only half express the holy cunning that has made them what they are. It is equally obvious that a landscape painter expresses only half of the landscape; a portrait painter only half of the person; they are lucky if they express so much. And again it is yet more obvious that any literary description of the pictures can only express half of them, and that the less important half. Still, it does express something; the thread is not broken that connects God With Nature, or Nature with men, or men with critics. The “Mona Lisa” was in some respects (not all, I fancy) what God meant her to be. Leonardo’s picture was, in some respects, like the lady. And Walter Pater’s rich description was, in some respects, like the picture. Thus we come to the consoling reflection that even literature, in the last resort, can express something other than its own unhappy self.
Now the modern critic is a humbug, because he professes to be entirely inarticulate. Speech is his whole business; and he boasts of being speechless. Before Botticelli he is mute. But if there is any good in Botticelli (there is much good, and much evil too) it is emphatically the critic’s business to explain it: to translate it from terms of painting into terms of diction. Of course, the rendering will be inadequate—but so is Botticelli. It is a fact he would be the first to admit. But anything which has been intelligently received can at least be intelligently suggested. Pater does suggest an intelligent cause for the cadaverous colour of Botticelli’s “Venus Rising from the Sea.” Ruskin does suggest an intelligent motive for Turner destroying forests and falsifying landscapes. These two great critics were far too fastidious for my taste; they urged to excess the idea that a sense of art was a sort of secret; to be patiently taught and slowly learnt. Still, they thought it could be taught: they thought it could be learnt. They constrained themselves, with considerable creative fatigue, to find the exact adjectives which might parallel in English prose what has been clone in Italian painting. The same is true of Whistler and R. A. M. Stevenson and many others in the exposition of Velasquez. They had something to say about the pictures; they knew it was unworthy of the pictures, but they said it.
Now the eulogists of the latest artistic insanities (Cubism and Post-Impressionism and Mr. Picasso) are eulogists and nothing else. They are not critics; least of all creative critics. They do not attempt to translate beauty into language; they merely tell you that it is untranslatable—that is, unutterable, indefinable, indescribable, impalpable, ineffable, and all the rest of it. The cloud is their banner; they cry to chaos and old night. They circulate a piece of paper on which Mr. Picasso has had the misfortune to upset the ink and tried to dry it with his boots, and they seek to terrify democracy by the good old anti-democratic muddlements: that “the public” does not understand these things; that “the likes of us” cannot dare to question the dark decisions of our lords.
I venture to suggest that we resist all this rubbish by the very simple test mentioned above. If there were anything intelligent in such art, something of it at least could be made intelligible in literature. Man is made with one head, not with two or three. No criticism of Rembrandt is as good as Rembrandt; but it can be so written as to make a man go back and look at his pictures. If there is a curious and fantastic art, it is the business of the art critics to create a curious and fantastic literary expression for it; inferior to it, doubtless, but still akin to it. If they cannot do this, as they cannot; if there is nothing in their eulogies, as there is nothing except eulogy— then they are quacks or the high-priests of the unutterable. If the art critics can say nothing about the artists except that they are good it is because the artists are bad. They can explain nothing because they have found nothing; and they have found nothing because there is nothing to be found.
THE RED REACTIONARY
The one case for Revolution is that it is the only quite clean and complete road to anything—even to restoration. Revolution alone can be not merely a revolt of the living, but also a resurrection of the dead.
A friend of mine (one, in fact, who writes prominently on this paper) was once walking down the street in a town of Western France, situated in that area that used to be called La Vendee; which in that great creative crisis about 1790 formed a separate and mystical soul of its own, and made a revolution against a revolution. As my friend went down this street he whistled an old French air which he had found, like Mr. Gandish, “in his researches into ‘istry,” and which had somehow taken his fancy; the song to which those last sincere loyalists went into battle. I think the words ran:-
Monsieur de Charette. Dit au gens d’ici. Le roi va remettre. Le fleur de lys.
My friend was (and is) a Radical, but he was (and is) an Englishman, and it never occurred to him that there could be any harm in singing archaic lyrics out of remote centuries; that one had to be a Catholic to enjoy the “Dies Irae,” or a Protestant to remember “Lillibullero.” Yet he was stopped and gravely warned that things so politically provocative might get him at least into temporary trouble.
A little time after I was helping King George V to get crowned, by walking round a local bonfire and listening to a local band. Just as a bonfire cannot be too big, so (by my theory of music) a band cannot be too loud, and this band was so loud, emphatic, and obvious, that I actually recognised one or two of the tunes. And I noticed that quite a formidable proportion of them were Jacobite tunes; that is, tunes that had been primarily meant to keep George V out of his throne for ever. Some of the real airs of the old Scottish rebellion were played, such as “Charlie is My Darling,” or “What’s a’ the steer, kimmer?” songs that men had sung while marching to destroy and drive out the monarchy under which we live. They were songs in which the very kinsmen of the present King were swept aside as usurpers. They were songs in which the actual words “King George” occurred as a curse and a derision. Yet they were played to celebrate his very Coronation; played as promptly and innocently as if they had been “Grandfather’s Clock” or “Rule Britannia” or “The Honeysuckle and the Bee.”
That contrast is the measure, not only between two nations, but between two modes of historical construction and development. For there is not really very much difference, as European history goes, in the time that has elapsed between us and the Jacobite and between us and the Jacobin. When George III was crowned the gauntlet of the King’s Champion was picked up by a partisan of the Stuarts. When George III was still on the throne the Bourbons were driven out of France as the Stuarts had been driven out of England. Yet the French are just sufficiently aware that the Bourbons might possibly return that they will take a little trouble to discourage it; whereas we are so certain that the Stuarts will never return that we actually play their most passionate tunes as a compliment to their rivals. And we do not even do it tauntingly. I examined the faces of all the bandsmen; and I am sure they were devoid of irony: indeed, it is difficult to blow a wind instrument ironically. We do it quite unconsciously; because we have a huge fundamental dogma, which the French have not. We really believe that the past is past. It is a very doubtful point.
Now the great gift of a revolution (as in France) is that it makes men free in the past as well as free in the future. Those who have cleared away everything could, if they liked, put back everything. But we who have preserved everything—we cannot restore anything. Take, for the sake of argument, the complex and many coloured ritual of the Coronation recently completed. That rite is stratified with the separate centuries; from the first rude need of discipline to the last fine shade of culture or corruption, there is nothing that cannot be detected or even dated. The fierce and childish vow of the lords to serve their lord “against all manner of folk” obviously comes from the real Dark Ages; no longer confused, even by the ignorant, with the Middle Ages. It comes from some chaos of Europe, when there was one old Roman road across four of our counties; and when hostile “folk” might live in the next village. The sacramental separation of one man to be the friend of the fatherless and the nameless belongs to the true Middle Ages; with their great attempt to make a moral and invisible Roman Empire; or (as the Coronation Service says) to set the cross for ever above the ball. Elaborate local tomfooleries, such as that by which the Lord of the Manor of Work-sop is alone allowed to do something or other, these probably belong to the decay of the Middle Ages, when that great civilisation died out in grotesque literalism and entangled heraldry. Things like the presentation of the Bible bear witness to the intellectual outburst at the Reformation; things like the Declaration against the Mass bear witness to the great wars of the Puritans; and things like the allegiance of the Bishops bear witness to the wordy and parenthetical political compromises which (to my deep regret) ended the wars of religion.
But my purpose here is only to point out one particular thing. In all that long list of variations there must be, and there are, things which energetic modern minds would really wish, with the reasonable modification, to restore. Dr. Clifford would probably be glad to see again the great Puritan idealism that forced the Bible into an antique and almost frozen formality. Dr. Horton probably really regrets the old passion that excommunicated Rome. In the same way Mr. Belloc would really prefer the Middle Ages; as Lord Rosebery would prefer the Erastian oligarchy of the eighteenth century. The Dark Ages would probably be disputed (from widely different motives) by Mr. Rudyard Kipling and Mr. Cunninghame Graham. But Mr. Cunninghame Graham would win.
But the black case against Conservative (or Evolutionary) politics is that none of these sincere men can win. Dr. Clifford cannot get back to the Puritans; Mr. Belloc cannot get back to the mediaevals; because (alas) there has been no Revolution to leave them a clear space for building or rebuilding. Frenchmen have all the ages behind them, and can wander back and pick and choose. But Englishmen have all the ages on top of them, and can only lie groaning under that imposing tower, without being able to take so much as a brick out of it. If the French decide that their Republic is bad they can get rid of it; but if we decide that a Republic was good, we should have much more difficulty. If the French democracy actually desired every detail of the mediaeval monarchy, they could have it. I do not think they will or should, but they could. If another Dauphin were actually crowned at Rheims; if another Joan of Arc actually bore a miraculous banner before him; if mediaeval swords shook and blazed in every gauntlet; if the golden lilies glowed from every tapestry; if this were really proved to be the will of France and the purpose of Providence— such a scene would still be the lasting and final justification of the French Revolution.
For no such scene could conceivably have happened under Louis XVI.
THE SEPARATIST AND SACRED THINGS
In the very laudable and fascinating extensions of our interest in Asiatic arts or faiths, there are two incidental injustices which we tend nowadays to do to our own records and our own religion. The first is a tendency to talk as if certain things were not only present in the higher Orientals, but were peculiar to them. Thus our magazines will fall into a habit of wondering praise of Bushido, the Japanese chivalry, as if no Western knights had ever vowed noble vows, or as if no Eastern knights had ever broken them. Or again, our drawing-rooms will be full of the praises of Indian renunciation and Indian unworldliness, as if no Christians had been saints, or as if all Buddhists had been. But if the first injustice is to think of human virtues as peculiarly Eastern, the other injustice is a failure to appreciate what really is peculiarly Eastern. It is too much taken for granted that the Eastern sort of idealism is certainly superior and convincing; whereas in truth it is only separate and peculiar. All that is richest, deepest, and subtlest in the East is rooted in Pantheism; but all that is richest, deepest, and subtlest in us is concerned with denying passionately that Pantheism is either the highest or the purest religion.
Thus, in turning over some excellent books recently written on the spirit of Indian or Chinese art and decoration, I found it quietly and curiously assumed that the artist must be at his best if he flows with the full stream of Nature; and identifies himself with all things; so that the stars are his sleepless eyes and the forests his far-flung arms. Now in this way of talking both the two injustices will be found. In so far as what is claimed is a strong sense of the divine in all things, the Eastern artists have no more monopoly of it than they have of hunger and thirst.
I have no doubt that the painters and poets of the Far East do exhibit this; but I rebel at being asked to admit that we must go to the Far East to find it. Traces of such sentiments can be found, I fancy, even in other painters and poets. I do not question that the poet Wo Wo (that ornament of the eighth dynasty) may have written the words: “Even the most undignified vegetable is for this person capable of producing meditations not to be exhibited by much weeping.” But, I do not therefore admit that a Western gentleman named Wordsworth (who made a somewhat similar remark) had plagiarised from Wo Wo, or was a mere Occidental fable and travesty of that celebrated figure. I do not deny that Tinishona wrote that exquisite example of the short Japanese poem entitled “Honourable Chrysanthemum in Honourable Hole in Wall.” But I do not therefore admit that Tennyson’s little verse about the flower in the cranny was not original and even sincere.
It is recorded (for all I know) of the philanthropic Emperor Bo, that when engaged in cutting his garden lawn with a mower made of alabaster and chrysoberyl, he chanced to cut down a small flower; whereupon, being much affected, he commanded his wise men immediately to take down upon tablets of ivory the lines beginning: “Small and unobtrusive blossom with ruby extremities.” But this incident, touching as it is, does not shake my belief in the incident of Robert Burns and the daisy; and I am left with an impression that poets are pretty much the same everywhere in their poetry—and in their prose.
I have tried to convey my sympathy and admiration for Eastern art and its admirers, and if I have not conveyed them I must give it up and go on to more general considerations. I therefore proceed to say—with the utmost respect, that it is Cheek, a rarefied and etherealised form of Cheek, for this school to speak in this way about the mother that bore them, the great civilisation of the West. The West also has its magic landscapes, only through our incurable materialism they look like landscapes as well as like magic. The West also has its symbolic figures, only they look like men as well as symbols. It will be answered (and most justly) that Oriental art ought to be free to follow its own instinct and tradition; that its artists are concerned to suggest one thing and our artists another; that both should be admired in their difference. Profoundly true; but what is the difference? It is certainly not as the Orientalisers assert, that we must go to the Far East for a sympathetic and transcendental interpretation of Nature. We have paid a long enough toll of mystics and even of madmen to be quit of that disability.
Yet there is a difference, and it is just what I suggested. The Eastern mysticism is an ecstasy of unity; the Christian mysticism is an ecstasy of creation, that is of separation and mutual surprise. The latter says, like St. Francis, “My brother fire and my sister water”; the former says, “Myself fire and myself water.” Whether you call the Eastern attitude an extension of oneself into everything or a contraction of oneself into nothing is a matter of metaphysical definition. The effect is the same, an effect which lives and throbs throughout all the exquisite arts of the East. This effect is the Sing called rhythm, a pulsation of pattern, or of ritual, or of colours, or of cosmic theory, but always suggesting the unification of the individual with the world. But there is quite another kind of sympathy the sympathy with a thing because it is different. No one will say that Rembrandt did not sympathise with an old woman; but no one will say that Rembrandt painted like an old woman. No one will say that Reynolds did not appreciate children; but no one will say he did it childishly. The supreme instance of this divine division is sex, and that explains (what I could never understand in my youth) why Christendom called the soul the bride of God. For real love is an intense realisation of the “separateness” of all our souls. The most heroic and human love-poetry of the world is never mere passion; precisely because mere passion really is a melting back into Nature, a meeting of the waters. And water is plunging and powerful; but it is only powerful downhill. The high and human love-poetry is all about division rather than identity; and in the great love-poems even the man as he embraces the woman sees her, in the same instant, afar off; a virgin and a stranger.
For the first injustice, of which we have spoken, still recurs; and if we grant that the East has a right to its difference, it is not realised in what we differ. That nursery tale from nowhere about St. George and the Dragon really expresses best the relation between the West and the East. There were many other differences, calculated to arrest even the superficial eye, between a saint and a dragon. But the essential difference was simply this: that the Dragon did want to eat St. George; whereas St. George would have felt a strong distaste for eating the Dragon. In most of the stories he killed the Dragon. In many of the stories he not only spared, but baptised it. But in neither case did the Christian have any appetite for cold dragon. The Dragon, however, really has an appetite for cold Christian— and especially for cold Christianity. This blind intention to absorb, to change the shape of everything and digest it in the darkness of a dragon’s stomach; this is what is really meant by the Pantheism and Cosmic Unity of the East. The Cosmos as such is cannibal; as old Time ate his children. The Eastern saints were saints because they wanted to be swallowed up. The Western saint, like St. George, was sainted by the Western Church precisely because he refused to be swallowed. The same process of thought that has prevented nationalities disappearing in Christendom has prevented the complete appearance of Pantheism. All Christian men instinctively resist the idea of being absorbed into an Empire; an Austrian, a Spanish, a British, or a Turkish Empire. But there is one empire, much larger and much more tyrannical, which free men will resist with even stronger passion. The free man violently resists being absorbed into the empire which is called the Universe. He demands Home Rule for his nationality, but still more Home Rule for his home. Most of all he demands Home Rule for himself. He claims the right to be saved, in spite of Moslem fatalism. He claims the right to be damned in spite of theosophical optimism. He refuses to be the Cosmos; because he refuses to forget it.
THE MUMMER
The night before Christmas Eve I heard a burst of musical voices so close that they might as well have been inside the house instead of just outside; so I asked them inside, hoping that they might then seem farther away. Then I realised that they were the Christmas Mummers, who come every year in country parts to enact the rather rigid fragments of the old Christmas play of St. George, the Turkish Knight, and the Very Venal Doctor. I will not describe it; it is indescribable; but I will describe my parallel sentiments as it passed.
One could see something of that half-failure that haunts our artistic revivals of mediaeval dances, carols, or Bethlehem Plays. There are elements in all that has come to us from the more morally simple society of the Middle Ages: elements which moderns, even when they are mediaevalists, find it hard to understand and harder to imitate. The first is the primary idea of Mummery itself. If you will observe a child just able to walk, you will see that his first idea is not to dress up as anybody—but to dress up. Afterwards, of course, the idea of being the King or Uncle William will leap to his lips. But it is generally suggested by the hat he has already let fall over his nose, from far deeper motives. Tommy does not assume the hat primarily because it is Uncle William’s hat, but because it is not Tommy’s hat. It is a ritual investiture; and is akin to those Gorgon masks that stiffened the dances of Greece or those towering mitres that came from the mysteries of Persia. For the essence of such ritual is a profound paradox: the concealment of the personality combined with the exaggeration of the person. The man performing a rite seeks to be at once invisible and conspicuous. It is part of that divine madness which all other creatures wonder at in Man, that he alone parades this pomp of obliteration and anonymity. Man is not, perhaps, the only creature who dresses himself, but he is the only creature who disguises himself. Beasts and birds do indeed take the colours of their environment; but that is not in order to be watched, but in order not to be watched; it is not the formalism of rejoicing, but the formlessness of fear. It is not so with men, whose nature is the unnatural. Ancient Britons did not stain themselves blue because they lived in blue forests; nor did Georgian beaux and belles powder their hair to match an Arctic landscape; the Britons were not dressing up as kingfishers nor the beaux pretending to be polar bears. Nay, even when modern ladies paint their faces a bright mauve, it is doubted by some naturalists whether they do it with the idea of escaping notice. So merry-makers (or Mummers) adopt their costume to heighten and exaggerate their own bodily presence and identity; not to sink it, primarily speaking, in another identity. It is not Acting—that comparatively low profession-comparatively I mean. It is Mummery; and, as Mr. Kensit would truly say, all elaborate religious ritual is Mummery. That is, it is the noble conception of making Man something other and more than himself when he stands at the limit of human things. It is only careful faddists and feeble German philosophers who want to wear no clothes; and be “natural” in their Dionysian revels. Natural men, really vigorous and exultant men, want to wear more and more clothes when they are revelling. They want worlds of waistcoats and forests of trousers and pagodas of tall hats toppling up to the stars.
Thus it is with the lingering Mummers at Christmas in the country. If our more refined revivers of Miracle Plays or Morrice Dances tried to reconstruct the old Mummers’ Play of St. George and the Turkish Knight (I do not know why they do not) they would think at once of picturesque and appropriate dresses. St. George’s panoply would be pictured from the best books of armour and blazonry: the Turkish Knight’s arms and ornaments would be traced from the finest Saracenic arabesques. When my garden door opened on Christmas Eve and St. George of England entered, the appearance of that champion was slightly different. His face was energetically blacked all over with soot, above which he wore an aged and very tall top hat; he wore his shirt outside his coat like a surplice, and he flourished a thick umbrella. Now do not, I beg you, talk about “ignorance”; or suppose that the Mummer in question (he is a very pleasant Ratcatcher, with a tenor voice) did this because he knew no better. Try to realise that even a Ratcatcher knows St. George of England was not black, and did not kill the Dragon with an umbrella. The Rat-catcher is not under this delusion; any more than Paul Veronese thought that very good men have luminous rings round their heads; any more than the Pope thinks that Christ washed the feet of the twelve in a Cathedral; any more than the Duke of Norfolk thinks the lions on a tabard are like the lions at the Zoo. These things are denaturalised because they are symbols; because the extraordinary occasion must hide or even disfigure the ordinary people. Black faces were to mediaeval mummeries what carved masks were to Greek plays: it was called being “vizarded.” My Rat-catcher is not sufficiently arrogant to suppose for a moment that he looks like St. George. But he is sufficiently humble to be convinced that if he looks as little like himself as he can, he will be on the right road.
This is the soul of Mumming; the ostentatious secrecy of men in disguise. There are, of course, other mediaeval elements in it which are also difficult to explain to the fastidious mediaevalists of to-day. There is, for instance, a certain output of violence into the void. It can best be defined as a raging thirst to knock men down without the faintest desire to hurt them. All the rhymes with the old ring have the trick of turning on everything in which the rhymsters most sincerely believed, merely for the pleasure of blowing off steam in startling yet careless phrases. When Tennyson says that King Arthur “drew all the petty princedoms under him,” and “made a realm and ruled,” his grave Royalism is quite modern. Many mediaevals, outside the mediaeval republics, believed in monarchy as solemnly as Tennyson. But that older verse—
When good King Arthur ruled this land He was a goodly King— He stole three pecks of barley-meal To make a bag-pudding.
is far more Arthurian than anything in The Idylls of the King. There are other elements; especially that sacred thing that can perhaps be called Anachronism. All that to us is Anachronism was to mediaevals merely Eternity. But the main excellence of the Mumming Play lies still, I think, in its uproarious secrecy. If we cannot hide our hearts in healthy darkness, at least we can hide our faces in healthy blacking. If you cannot escape like a philosopher into a forest, at least you can carry the forest with you, like a Jack-in-the-Green. It is well to walk under universal ensigns; and there is an old tale of a tyrant to whom a walking forest was the witness of doom. That, indeed, is the very intensity of the notion: a masked man is ominous; but who shall face a mob of masks?
THE ARISTOCRATIC ‘ARRY
The Cheap Tripper, pursued by the curses of the aesthetes and the antiquaries, really is, I suppose, a symptom of the strange and almost unearthly ugliness of our diseased society. The costumes and customs of a hundred peasantries are there to prove that such ugliness does not necessarily follow from mere poverty, or mere democracy, or mere unlettered simplicity of mind.
But though the tripper, artistically considered, is a sign of our decadence, he is not one of its worst signs, but relatively one of its best; one of its most innocent and most sincere. Compared with many of the philosophers and artists who denounce him; he looks like a God fearing fisher or a noble mountaineer. His antics with donkeys and concertinas, crowded charabancs, and exchanged hats, though clumsy, are not so vicious or even so fundamentally vulgar as many of the amusements of the overeducated. People are not more crowded on a char-a-banc than they are at a political “At Home,” or even an artistic soiree; and if the female trippers are overdressed, at least they are not overdressed and underdressed at the same time. It is better to ride a donkey than to be a donkey. It is better to deal with the Cockney festival which asks men and women to change hats, rather than with the modern Utopia that wants them to change heads.
But the truth is that such small, but real, element of vulgarity as there is indeed in the tripper, is part of a certain folly and falsity which is characteristic of much modernity, and especially of the very people who persecute the poor tripper most. There is something in the whole society, and even especially in the cultured part of it, that does things in a clumsy and unbeautiful way.
A case occurs to me in the matter of Stonehenge, which I happened to visit yesterday. Now to a person really capable of feeling the poetry of Stonehenge it is almost a secondary matter whether he sees Stonehenge at all. The vast void roll of the empty land towards Salisbury, the gray tablelands like primeval altars, the trailing rain-clouds, the vapour of primeval sacrifices, would all tell him of a very ancient and very lonely Britain. It would not spoil his Druidic mood if he missed Stonehenge. But it does spoil his mood to find Stonehenge— surrounded by a brand-new fence of barbed wire, with a policeman and a little shop selling picture post-cards.
Now if you protest against this, educated people will instantly answer you, “Oh, it was done to prevent the vulgar trippers who chip stones and carve names and spoil the look of Stonehenge.” It does not seem to occur to them that barbed wire and a policeman rather spoil the look of Stonehenge. The scratching of a name, particularly when performed with blunt penknife or pencil by a person of imperfect School Board education, can be trusted in a little while to be indistinguishable from the grayest hieroglyphic by the grandest Druid of old. But nobody could get a modern policeman into the same picture with a Druid. This really vital piece of vandalism was done by the educated, not the uneducated; it was done by the influence of the artists or antiquaries who wanted to preserve the antique beauty of Stonehenge. It seems to me curious to preserve your lady’s beauty from freckles by blacking her face all over; or to protect the pure whiteness of your wedding garment by dyeing it green.
And if you ask, “But what else could any one have done, what could the most artistic age have done to save the monument?” I reply, “There are hundreds of things that Greeks or Mediaevals might have done; and I have no notion what they would have chosen; but I say that by an instinct in their whole society they would have done something that was decent and serious and suitable to the place. Perhaps some family of knights or warriors would have the hereditary duty of guarding such a place. If so their armour would be appropriate; their tents would be appropriate; not deliberately—they would grow like that. Perhaps some religious order such as normally employ nocturnal watches and the relieving of guard would protect such a place. Perhaps it would be protected by all sorts of rituals, consecrations, or curses, which would seem to you mere raving superstition and silliness. But they do not seem to me one twentieth part so silly, from a purely rationalist point of view, as calmly making a spot hideous in order to keep it beautiful.”
The thing that is really vulgar, the thing that is really vile, is to live in a good place Without living by its life. Any one who settles down in a place without becoming part of it is (barring peculiar personal cases, of course) a tripper or wandering cad. For instance, the Jew is a genuine peculiar case. The Wandering Jew is not a wandering cad. He is a highly civilised man in a highly difficult position; the world being divided, and his own nation being divided, about whether he can do anything else except wander.
The best example of the cultured, but common, tripper is the educated Englishman on the Continent. We can no longer explain the quarrel by calling Englishmen rude and foreigners polite. Hundreds of Englishmen are extremely polite, and thousands of foreigners are extremely rude. The truth of the matter is that foreigners do not resent the rude Englishman. What they do resent, what they do most justly resent, is the polite Englishman. He visits Italy for Botticellis or Flanders for Rembrandts, and he treats the great nations that made these things courteously—as he would treat the custodians of any museum. It does not seem to strike him that the Italian is not the custodian of the pictures, but the creator of them. He can afford to look down on such nations—when he can paint such pictures.
That is, in matters of art and travel, the psychology of the cad. If, living in Italy, you admire Italian art while distrusting Italian character, you are a tourist, or cad. If, living in Italy, you admire Italian art while despising Italian religion, you are a tourist, or cad. It does not matter how many years you have lived there. Tourists will often live a long time in hotels without discovering the nationality of the waiters. Englishmen will often live a long time in Italy without discovering the nationality of the Italians. But the test is simple. If you admire what Italians did without admiring Italians— you are a cheap tripper.
The same, of course, applies much nearer home. I have remarked elsewhere that country shopkeepers are justly offended by London people, who, coming among them, continue to order all their goods from London. It is caddish to wink and squint at the colour of a man’s wine, like a wine taster; and then refuse to drink it. It is equally caddish to wink and squint at the colour of a man’s orchard, like a landscape painter; and then refuse to buy the apples. It is always an insult to admire a thing and not use it. But the main point is that one has no right to see Stonehenge without Salisbury Plain and Salisbury: One has no right to respect the dead Italians without respecting the live ones. One has no right to visit a Christian society like a diver visiting the deep-sea fishes—fed along a lengthy tube by another atmosphere, and seeing the sights without breathing the air. It is very real bad manners.
THE NEW THEOLOGIAN
It is an old story that names do not fit things; it is an old story that the oldest forest is called the New Forest, and that Irish stew is almost peculiar to England. But these are traditional titles that tend, of their nature, to stiffen; it is the tragedy of to-day that even phrases invented for to-day do not fit it. The forest has remained new while it is nearly a thousand years old; but our fashions have grown old while they were still new.
The extreme example of this is that when modern wrongs are attacked, they are almost always attacked wrongly. People seem to have a positive inspiration for finding the inappropriate phrase to apply to an offender; they are always accusing a man of theft when he has been convicted of murder. They must accuse Sir Edward Carson of outrageous rebellion, when his offence has really been a sleek submission to the powers that be. They must describe Mr. Lloyd George as using his eloquence to rouse the mob, whereas he has really shown considerable cleverness in damping it down. It was probably under the same impulse towards a mysterious misfit of names that people denounced Dr. Inge as “the Gloomy Dean.”
Now there is nothing whatever wrong about being a Dean; nor is there anything wrong about being gloomy. The only question is what dark but sincere motives have made you gloomy. What dark but sincere motives have made you a Dean. Now the address of Dr. Inge which gained him this erroneous title was mostly concerned with a defence of the modern capitalists against the modern strikers, from whose protest he appeared to anticipate appalling results. Now if we look at the facts about that gentleman’s depression and also about his Deanery, we shall find a very curious state of things.
When Dr. Inge was called “the Gloomy Dean” a great injustice was done him. He had appeared as the champion of our capitalist community against the forces of revolt; and any one who does that exceeds in optimism rather than pessimism. A man who really thinks that strikers have suffered no wrong, or that employers have done no wrong— such a man is not a Gloomy Dean, but a quite wildly and dangerously happy Dean. A man who can feel satisfied with modern industrialism must be a man with a mysterious fountain of high spirits. And the actual occasion is not less curious; because, as far as I can make out, his title to gloom reposes on his having said that our worker’s demand high wages, while the placid people of the Far East will quite cheerfully work for less.
This is true enough, of course, and there does not seem to be much difficulty about the matter. Men of the Far East will submit to very low wages for the same reason that they will submit to “the punishment known as Li, or Slicing”; for the same reason that they will praise polygamy and suicide; for the same reason that they subject the wife utterly to the husband or his parents; for the same reason that they serve their temples with prostitutes for priests; for the same reason that they sometimes seem to make no distinction between sexual passion and sexual perversion. They do it, that is, because they are Heathens; men with traditions different from ours about the limits of endurance and the gestures of self-respect. They may be very much better than we are in hundreds of other ways; and I can quite understand a man (though hardly a Dean) really preferring their historic virtues to those of Christendom. A man may perhaps feel more comfortable among his Asiatic coolies than among his European comrades: and as we are to allow the Broadest Thought in the Church, Dr. Inge has as much right to his heresy as anybody else. It is true that, as Dr. Inge says, there are numberless Orientals who will do a great deal of work for very little money; and it is most undoubtedly true that there are several high-placed and prosperous Europeans who like to get work done and pay as little as possible for it.
But I cannot make out why, with his enthusiasm for heathen habits and traditions, the Dean should wish to spread in the East the ideas which he has found so dreadfully unsettling in the West. If some thousands of years of paganism have produced the patience and industry that Dean Inge admires, and if some thousand years of Christianity have produced the sentimentality and sensationalism which he regrets, the obvious deduction is that Dean Inge would be much happier if he were a heathen Chinese. Instead of supporting Christian missions to Korea or Japan, he ought to be at the head of a great mission in London for converting the English to Taoism or Buddhism. There his passion for the moral beauties of paganism would have free and natural play; his style would improve; his mind would begin slowly to clear; and he would be free from all sorts of little irritating scrupulosities which must hamper even the most Conservative Christian in his full praise of sweating and the sack.
In Christendom he will never find rest. The perpetual public criticism and public change which is the note of all our history springs from a certain spirit far too deep to be defined. It is deeper than democracy; nay, it may often appear to be non-democratic; for it may often be the special defence of a minority or an individual. It will often leave the ninety-and-nine in the wilderness and go after that which is lost. It will often risk the State itself to right a single wrong; and do justice though the heavens fall. Its highest expression is not even in the formula of the great gentlemen of the French Revolution who said that all men were free and equal. Its highest expression is rather in the formula of the peasant who said that a man’s a man for a’ that. If there were but one slave in England, and he did all the work while the rest of us made merry, this spirit that is in us would still cry aloud to God night and day. Whether or no this spirit was produced by, it clearly works with, a creed which postulates a humanised God and a vividly personal immortality. Men must not be busy merely like a swarm, or even happy merely like a herd; for it is not a question of men, but of a man. A man’s meals may be poor, but they must not be bestial; there must always be that about the meal which permits of its comparison to the sacrament. A man’s bed may be hard, but it must not be abject or unclean: there must always be about the bed something of the decency of the death-bed.
This is the spirit which makes the Christian poor begin their terrible murmur whenever there is a turn of prices or a deadlock of toil that threatens them with vagabondage or pauperisation; and we cannot encourage the Dean with any hope that this spirit can be cast out. Christendom will continue to suffer all the disadvantages of being Christian: it is the Dean who must be gently but firmly altered. He had absent-mindedly strayed into the wrong continent and the wrong creed. I advise him to chuck it.
But the case is more curious still. To connect the Dean with Confucian temples or traditions may have appeared fantastic; but it is not. Dr. Inge is not a stupid old Tory Rector, strict both on Church and State. Such a man might talk nonsense about the Christian Socialists being “court chaplains of King Demos” or about his own superb valour in defying the democracy that rages in the front pews of Anglican churches. We should not expect a mere old-fashioned country clergyman to know that Demos has never been king in England and precious seldom anywhere else; we should not expect him to realise that if King Demos had any chaplains they would be uncommonly poorly paid. But Dr. Inge is not old-fashioned; he considers himself highly progressive and advanced. He is a New Theologian; that is, he is liberal in theology—and nothing else. He is apparently in sober fact, and not as in any fantasy, in sympathy with those who would soften the superior claim of our creed by urging the rival creeds of the East; with those who would absorb the virtues of Buddhism or of Islam. He holds a high seat in that modern Parliament of Religions where all believers respect each other’s unbelief.
Now this has a very sharp moral for modern religious reformers. When next you hear the “liberal” Christian say that we should take what is best in Oriental faiths, make quite sure what are the things that people like Dr. Inge call best; what are the things that people like Dr. Inge propose to take. You will not find them imitating the military valour of the Moslem. You will not find them imitating the miraculous ecstasy of the Hindoo. The more you study the “broad” movement of today, the more you will find that these people want something much less like Chinese metaphysics, and something much more like Chinese Labour. You will find the levelling of creeds quite unexpectedly close to the lowering of wages. Dr. Inge is the typical latitudinarian of to-day; and was never more so than when he appeared not as the apostle of the blacks, but as the apostle of the blacklegs. Preached, as it is, almost entirely among the prosperous and polite, our brotherhood with Buddhism or Mohammedanism practically means this— that the poor must be as meek as Buddhists, while the rich may be as ruthless as Mohammedans. That is what they call the reunion of all religions.
THE ROMANTIC IN THE RAIN
The middle classes of modern England are quite fanatically fond of washing; and are often enthusiastic for teetotalism. I cannot therefore comprehend why it is that they exhibit a mysterious dislike of rain. Rain, that inspiring and delightful thing, surely combines the qualities of these two ideals with quite a curious perfection. Our philanthropists are eager to establish public baths everywhere. Rain surely is a public bath; it might almost be called mixed bathing. The appearance of persons coming fresh from this great natural lustration is not perhaps polished or dignified; but for the matter of that, few people are dignified when coming out of a bath. But the scheme of rain in itself is one of an enormous purification. It realises the dream of some insane hygienist: it scrubs the sky. Its giant brooms and mops seem to reach the starry rafters and Starless corners of the cosmos; it is a cosmic spring-cleaning.
If the Englishman is really fond of cold baths, he ought not to grumble at the English climate for being a cold bath. In these days we are constantly told that we should leave our little special possessions and join in the enjoyment of common social institutions and a common social machinery. I offer the rain as a thoroughly Socialistic institution. It disregards that degraded delicacy which has hitherto led each gentleman to take his shower-bath in private. It is a better shower-bath, because it is public and communal; and, best of all, because somebody else pulls the string.
As for the fascination of rain for the water drinker, it is a fact the neglect of which I simply cannot comprehend. The enthusiastic water drinker must regard a rainstorm as a sort of universal banquet and debauch of his own favourite beverage. Think of the imaginative intoxication of the wine drinker if the crimson clouds sent down claret or the golden clouds hock. Paint upon primitive darkness some such scenes of apocalypse, towering and gorgeous skyscapes in which champagne falls like fire from heaven or the dark skies grow purple and tawny with the terrible colours of port. All this must the wild abstainer feel, as he rolls in the long soaking grass, kicks his ecstatic heels to heaven, and listens to the roaring rain. It is he, the water drinker, who ought to be the true bacchanal of the forests; for all the forests are drinking water. Moreover, the forests are apparently enjoying it: the trees rave and reel to and fro like drunken giants; they clash boughs as revellers clash cups; they roar undying thirst and howl the health of the world.
All around me as I write is a noise of Nature drinking: and Nature makes a noise when she is drinking, being by no means refined. If I count it Christian mercy to give a cup of cold water to a sufferer, shall I complain of these multitudinous cups of cold water handed round to all living things; a cup of water for every shrub; a cup of water for every weed? I would be ashamed to grumble at it. As Sir Philip Sidney said, their need is greater than mine— especially for water.
There is a wild garment that still carries nobly the name of a wild Highland clan: a elan come from those hills where rain is not so much an incident as an atmosphere. Surely every man of imagination must feel a tempestuous flame of Celtic romance spring up within him whenever he puts on a mackintosh. I could never reconcile myself to carrying all umbrella; it is a pompous Eastern business, carried over the heads of despots in the dry, hot lands. Shut up, an umbrella is an unmanageable walking-stick; open, it is an inadequate tent. For my part, I have no taste for pretending to be a walking pavilion; I think nothing of my hat, and precious little of my head. If I am to be protected against wet, it must be by some closer and more careless protection, something that I can forget altogether. It might be a Highland plaid. It might be that yet more Highland thing, a mackintosh.
And there is really something in the mackintosh of the military qualities of the Highlander. The proper cheap mackintosh has a blue and white sheen as of steel or iron; it gleams like armour. I like to think of it as the uniform of that ancient clan in some of its old and misty raids. I like to think of all the Macintoshes, in their mackintoshes, descending on some doomed Lowland village, their wet waterproofs flashing in the sun or moon. For indeed this is one of the real beauties of rainy weather, that while the amount of original and direct light is commonly lessened, the number of things that reflect light is unquestionably increased. There is less sunshine; but there are more shiny things; such beautifully shiny things as pools and puddles and mackintoshes. It is like moving in a world of mirrors.
And indeed this is the last and not the least gracious of the casual works of magic wrought by rain: that while it decreases light, yet it doubles it. If it dims the sky, it brightens the earth. It gives the roads (to the sympathetic eye) something of the beauty of Venice. Shallow lakes of water reiterate every detail of earth and sky; we dwell in a double universe. Sometimes walking upon bare and lustrous pavements, wet under numerous lamps, a man seems a black blot on all that golden looking-glass, and could fancy he was flying in a yellow sky. But wherever trees and towns hang head downwards in a pigmy puddle, the sense of Celestial topsy-turvydom is the same. This bright, wet, dazzling confusion of shape and shadow, of reality and reflection, will appeal strongly to any one with the transcendental instinct about this dreamy and dual life of ours. It will always give a man the strange sense of looking down at the skies.
THE FALSE PHOTOGRAPHER
When, as lately, events have happened that seem (to the fancy, at least) to test if not stagger the force of official government, it is amusing to ask oneself what is the real weakness of civilisation, ours especially, when it contends with the one lawless man. I was reminded of one weakness this morning in turning over an old drawerful of pictures.
This weakness in civilisation is best expressed by saying that it cares more for science than for truth. It prides itself on its “methods” more than its results; it is satisfied with precision, discipline, good communications, rather than with the sense of reality. But there are precise falsehoods as well as precise facts. Discipline may only mean a hundred men making the same mistake at the same minute. And good communications may in practice be very like those evil communications which are said to corrupt good manners. Broadly, we have reached a “scientific age,” which wants to know whether the train is in the time-table, but not whether the train is in the station. I take one instance in our police inquiries that I happen to have come across: the case of photography.
Some years ago a poet of considerable genius tragically disappeared, and the authorities or the newspapers circulated a photograph of him, so that he might be identified. The photograph, as I remember it, depicted or suggested a handsome, haughty, and somewhat pallid man with his head thrown back, with long distinguished features, colourless thin hair and slight moustache, and though conveyed merely by the head and shoulders, a definite impression of height. If I had gone by that photograph I should have gone about looking for a long soldierly but listless man, with a profile rather like the Duke of Connaught’s.
Only, as it happened, I knew the poet personally; I had seen him a great many times, and he had an appearance that nobody could possibly forget, if seen only once. He had the mark of those dark and passionate Westland Scotch, who before Burns and after have given many such dark eyes and dark emotions to the world. But in him the unmistakable strain, Gaelic or whatever it is, was accentuated almost to oddity; and he looked like some swarthy elf. He was small, with a big head and a crescent of coal-black hair round the back of a vast dome of baldness. Immediately under his eyes his cheekbones had so high a colour that they might have been painted scarlet; three black tufts, two on the upper lip and one under the lower, seemed to touch up the face with the fierce moustaches of Mephistopheles. His eyes had that “dancing madness” in them which Stevenson saw in the Gaelic eyes of Alan Breck; but he sometimes distorted the expression by screwing a monstrous monocle into one of them. A man more unmistakable would have been hard to find. You could have picked him out in any crowd—so long as you had not seen his photograph.
But in this scientific picture of him twenty causes, accidental and conventional, had combined to obliterate him altogether. The limits of photography forbade the strong and almost melodramatic colouring of cheek and eyebrow. The accident of the lighting took nearly all the darkness out of the hair and made him look almost like a fair man. The framing and limitation of the shoulders made him look like a big man; and the devastating bore of being photographed when you want to write poetry made him look like a lazy man. Holding his head back, as people do when they are being photographed (or shot), but as he certainly never held it normally, accidentally concealed the bald dome that dominated his slight figure. Here we have a clockwork picture, begun and finished by a button and a box of chemicals, from which every projecting feature has been more delicately and dexterously omitted than they could have been by the most namby-pamby flatterer, painting in the weakest water-colours, on the smoothest ivory.
I happen to possess a book of Mr. Max Beerbohm’s caricatures, one of which depicts the unfortunate poet in question. To say it represents an utterly incredible hobgoblin is to express in faint and inadequate language the license of its sprawling lines. The authorities thought it strictly safe and scientific to circulate the poet’s photograph. They would have clapped me in an asylum if I had asked them to circulate Max’s caricature. But the caricature would have been far more likely to find the man.
This is a small but exact symbol of the failure of scientific civilisation. It is so satisfied in knowing it has a photograph of a man that it never asks whether it has a likeness of him. Thus declarations, seemingly most detailed, have flashed along the wires of the world ever since I was a boy. We were told that in some row Boer policemen had shot an Englishman, a British subject, an English citizen. A long time afterwards we were quite casually informed that the English citizen was quite black. Well, it makes no difference to the moral question; black men should be shot on the same ethical principles as white men. But it makes one distrust scientific communications which permitted so startling an alteration of the photograph. I am sorry we got hold of a photographic negative in which a black man came out white. Later we were told that an Englishman had fought for the Boers against his own flag, which would have been a disgusting thing to do. Later, it was admitted that he was an Irishman; which is exactly as different as if he had been a Pole. Common sense, with all the facts before it, does see that black is not white, and that a nation that has never submitted has a right to moral independence. But why does it so seldom have all the facts before it? Why are the big aggressive features, such as blackness or the Celtic wrath, always left out in such official communications, as they were left out in the photograph? My friend the poet had hair as black as an African and eyes as fierce as an Irishman; why does our civilisation drop all four of the facts? Its error is to omit the arresting thing—which might really arrest the criminal. It strikes first the chilling note of science, demanding a man “above the middle height, chin shaven, with gray moustache,” etc., which might mean Mr. Balfour or Sir Redvers Buller. It does not seize the first fact of impression, as that a man is obviously a sailor or a Jew or a drunkard or a gentleman or a nigger or an albino or a prize-fighter or an imbecile or an American. These are the realities by which the people really recognise each other. They are almost always left out of the inquiry.
THE SULTAN
There is one deep defect in our extension of cosmopolitan and Imperial cultures. That is, that in most human things if you spread your butter far you spread it thin. But there is an odder fact yet: rooted in something dark and irrational in human nature. That is, that when you find your butter thin, you begin to spread it. And it is just when you find your ideas wearing thin in your own mind that you begin to spread them among your fellow-creatures. It is a paradox; but not my paradox. There are numerous cases in history; but I think the strongest case is this. That we have Imperialism in all our clubs at the very time when we have Orientalism in all our drawing-rooms.
I mean that the colonial ideal of such men as Cecil Rhodes did not arise out of any fresh creative idea of the Western genius, it was a fad, and like most fads an imitation. For what was wrong with Rhodes was not that, like Cromwell or Hildebrand, he made huge mistakes, nor even that he committed great crimes. It was that he committed these crimes and errors in order to spread certain ideas. And when one asked for the ideas they could not be found. Cromwell stood for Calvinism, Hildebrand for Catholicism: but Rhodes had no principles whatever to give to the world. He had only a hasty but elaborate machinery for spreading the principles that he hadn’t got. What he called his ideals were the dregs of a Darwinism which had already grown not only stagnant, but poisonous. That the fittest must survive, and that any one like himself must be the fittest; that the weakest must go to the wall, and that any one he could not understand must be the weakest; that was the philosophy which he lumberingly believed through life, like many another agnostic old bachelor of the Victorian era. All his views on religion (reverently quoted in the Review of Reviews) were simply the stalest ideas of his time. It was not his fault, poor fellow, that he called a high hill somewhere in South Africa “his church.” It was not his fault, I mean, that he could not see that a church all to oneself is not a church at all. It is a madman’s cell. It was not his fault that he “figured out that God meant as much of the planet to be Anglo-Saxon as possible.” Many evolutionists much wiser had “figured out” things even more babyish. He was an honest and humble recipient of the plodding popular science of his time; he spread no ideas that any cockney clerk in Streatham could not have spread for him. But it was exactly because he had no ideas to spread that he invoked slaughter, violated justice, and ruined republics to spread them.
But the case is even stronger and stranger. Fashionable Imperialism not only has no ideas of its own to extend; but such ideas as it has are actually borrowed from the brown and black peoples to whom it seeks to extend them. The Crusading kings and knights might be represented as seeking to spread Western ideas in the East. But all that our Imperialist aristocrats could do would be to spread Eastern ideas in the East. For that very governing class which urges Occidental Imperialism has been deeply discoloured with Oriental mysticism and Cosmology.
The same society lady who expects the Hindoos to accept her view of politics has herself accepted their view of religion. She wants first to steal their earth, and then to share their heaven. The same Imperial cynic who wishes the Turks to submit to English science has himself submitted to Turkish philosophy, to a wholly Turkish view of despotism and destiny.
There is an obvious and amusing proof of this in a recent life of Rhodes. The writer admits with proper Imperial gloom the fact that Africa is still chiefly inhabited by Africans. He suggests Rhodes in the South confronting savages and Kitchener in the North facing Turks, Arabs, and Soudanese, and then he quotes this remark of Cecil Rhodes: “It is inevitable fate that all this should be changed; and I should like to be the agent of fate.” That was Cecil Rhodes’s one small genuine idea; and it is an Oriental idea.
Here we have evident all the ultimate idiocy of the present Imperial position. Rhodes and Kitchener are to conquer Moslem bedouins and barbarians, in order to teach them to believe only in inevitable fate. We are to wreck provinces and pour blood like Niagara, all in order to teach a Turk to say “Kismet”; which he has said since his cradle. We are to deny Christian justice and destroy international equality, all in order to teach an Arab to believe he is “an agent of fate,” when he has never believed anything else. If Cecil Rhodes’s vision could come true (which fortunately is increasingly improbable), such countries as Persia or Arabia would simply be filled with ugly and vulgar fatalists in billy-cocks, instead of with graceful and dignified fatalists in turbans. The best Western idea, the idea of spiritual liberty and danger, of a doubtful and romantic future in which all things may happen— this essential Western idea Cecil Rhodes could not spread, because (as he says himself) he did not believe in it.
It was an Oriental who gave to Queen Victoria the crown of an Empress in addition to that of a Queen. He did not understand that the title of King is higher than that of Emperor. For in the East titles are meant to be vast and wild; to be extravagant poems: the Brother of the Sun and Moon, the Caliph who lives for ever. But a King of England (at least in the days of real kings) did not bear a merely poetical title; but rather a religious one. He belonged to his people and not merely they to him. He was not merely a conqueror, but a father—yes, even when he was a bad father. But this sort of solid sanctity always goes with local affections and limits: and the Cecil Rhodes Imperialism set up not the King, but the Sultan; with all the typically Eastern ideas of the magic of money, of luxury without uproar; of prostrate provinces and a chosen race. Indeed Cecil Rhodes illustrated almost every quality essential to the Sultan, from the love of diamonds to the scorn of woman.
THE ARCHITECT OF SPEARS
The other day, in the town of Lincoln, I suffered an optical illusion which accidentally revealed to me the strange greatness of the Gothic architecture. Its secret is not, I think, satisfactorily explained in most of the discussions on the subject. It is said that the Gothic eclipses the classical by a certain richness and complexity, at once lively and mysterious. This is true; but Oriental decoration is equally rich and complex, yet it awakens a widely different sentiment. No man ever got out of a Turkey carpet the emotions that he got from a cathedral tower. Over all the exquisite ornament of Arabia and India there is the presence of something stiff and heartless, of something tortured and silent. Dwarfed trees and crooked serpents, heavy flowers and hunchbacked birds accentuate by the very splendour and contrast of their colour the servility and monotony of their shapes. It is like the vision of a sneering sage, who sees the whole universe as a pattern. Certainly no one ever felt like this about Gothic, even if he happens to dislike it. Or, again, some will say that it is the liberty of the Middle Ages in the use of the comic or even the coarse that makes the Gothic more interesting than the Greek. There is more truth in this; indeed, there is real truth in it. Few of the old Christian cathedrals would have passed the Censor of Plays. We talk of the inimitable grandeur of the old cathedrals; but indeed it is rather their gaiety that we do not dare to imitate. We should be rather surprised if a chorister suddenly began singing “Bill Bailey” in church. Yet that would be only doing in music what the mediaevals did in sculpture. They put into a Miserere seat the very scenes that we put into a music hall song: comic domestic scenes similar to the spilling of the beer and the hanging out of the washing. But though the gaiety of Gothic is one of its features, it also is not the secret of its unique effect. We see a domestic topsy-turvydom in many Japanese sketches. But delightful as these are, with their fairy tree-tops, paper houses, and toddling, infantile inhabitants, the pleasure they give is of a kind quite different from the joy and energy of the gargoyles. Some have even been so shallow and illiterate as to maintain that our pleasure in medieval building is a mere pleasure in what is barbaric, in what is rough, shapeless, or crumbling like the rocks. This can be dismissed after the same fashion; South Sea idols, with painted eyes and radiating bristles, are a delight to the eye; but they do not affect it in at all the same way as Westminster Abbey. Some again (going to another and almost equally foolish extreme) ignore the coarse and comic in mediaevalism; and praise the pointed arch only for its utter purity and simplicity, as of a saint with his hands joined in prayer. Here, again, the uniqueness is missed. There are Renaissance things (such as the ethereal silvery drawings of Raphael), there are even pagan things (such as the Praying Boy) which express as fresh and austere a piety. None of these explanations explain. And I never saw what was the real point about Gothic till I came into the town of Lincoln, and saw it behind a row of furniture-vans.
I did not know they were furniture-vans; at the first glance and in the smoky distance I thought they were a row of cottages. A low stone wall cut off the wheels, and the vans were somewhat of the same colour as the yellowish clay or stone of the buildings around them. I had come across that interminable Eastern plain which is like the open sea, and all the more so because the one small hill and tower of Lincoln stands up in it like a light-house. I had climbed the sharp, crooked streets up to this ecclesiastical citadel; just in front of me was a flourishing and richly coloured kitchen garden; beyond that was the low stone wall; beyond that the row of vans that looked like houses; and beyond and above that, straight and swift and dark, light as a flight of birds, and terrible as the Tower of Babel, Lincoln Cathedral seemed to rise out of human sight.
As I looked at it I asked myself the questions that I have asked here; what was the soul in all those stones? They were varied, but it was not variety; they were solemn, but it was not solemnity; they were farcical, but it was not farce. What is it in them that thrills and soothes a man of our blood and history, that is not there in an Egyptian pyramid or an Indian temple or a Chinese pagoda? All of a sudden the vans I had mistaken for cottages began to move away to the left. In the start this gave to my eye and mind I really fancied that the Cathedral was moving towards the right. The two huge towers seemed to start striding across the plain like the two legs of some giant whose body was covered with the clouds. Then I saw what it was.
The truth about Gothic is, first, that it is alive, and second, that it is on the march. It is the Church Militant; it is the only fighting architecture. All its spires are spears at rest; and all its stones are stones asleep in a catapult. In that instant of illusion, I could hear the arches clash like swords as they crossed each other. The mighty and numberless columns seemed to go swinging by like the huge feet of imperial elephants. The graven foliage wreathed and blew like banners going into battle; the silence was deafening with all the mingled noises of a military march; the great bell shook down, as the organ shook up its thunder. The thirsty-throated gargoyles shouted like trumpets from all the roofs and pinnacles as they passed; and from the lectern in the core of the cathedral the eagle of the awful evangelist clashed his wings of brass.
And amid all the noises I seemed to hear the voice of a man shouting in the midst like one ordering regiments hither and thither in the fight; the voice of the great half-military master-builder; the architect of spears. I could almost fancy he wore armour while he made that church; and I knew indeed that, under a scriptural figure, he had borne in either hand the trowel and the sword.
I could imagine for the moment that the whole of that house of life had marched out of the sacred East, alive and interlocked, like an army. Some Eastern nomad had found it solid and silent in the red circle of the desert. He had slept by it as by a world-forgotten pyramid; and been woke at midnight by the wings of stone and brass, the tramping of the tall pillars, the trumpets of the waterspouts. On such a night every snake or sea-beast must have turned and twisted in every crypt or corner of the architecture. And the fiercely coloured saints marching eternally in the flamboyant windows would have carried their glorioles like torches across dark lands and distant seas; till the whole mountain of music and darkness and lights descended roaring on the lonely Lincoln hill. So for some hundred and sixty seconds I saw the battle-beauty of the Gothic; then the last furniture-van shifted itself away; and I saw only a church tower in a quiet English town, round which the English birds were floating.
THE MAN ON TOP
There is a fact at the root of all realities to-day which cannot be stated too simply. It is that the powers of this world are now not trusted simply because they are not trustworthy. This can be quite clearly seen and said without any reference to our several passions or partisanships. It does not follow that we think such a distrust a wise sentiment to express; it does not even follow that we think it a good sentiment to entertain. But such is the sentiment, simply because such is the fact. The distinction can be quite easily defined in an example. I do not think that private workers owe an indefinite loyalty to their employer. But I do think that patriotic soldiers owe a more or less indefinite loyalty to their leader in battle. But even if they ought to trust their captain, the fact remains that they often do not trust him; and the fact remains that he often is not fit to be trusted.
Most of the employers and many of the Socialists seem to have got a very muddled ethic about the basis of such loyalty; and perpetually try to put employers and officers upon the same disciplinary plane. I should have thought myself that the difference was alphabetical enough. It has nothing to do with the idealising of war or the materialising of trade; it is a distinction in the primary purpose. There might be much more elegance and poetry in a shop under William Morris than in a regiment under Lord Kitchener. But the difference is not in the persons or the atmosphere, but in the aim. The British Army does not exist in order to pay Lord Kitchener. William Morris’s shop, however artistic and philanthropic, did exist to pay William Morris. If it did not pay the shopkeeper it failed as a shop; but Lord Kitchener does not fail if he is underpaid, but only if he is defeated. The object of the Army is the safety of the nation from one particular class of perils; therefore, since all citizens owe loyalty to the nation, all citizens who are soldiers owe loyalty to the Army. But nobody has any obligation to make some particular rich man richer. A man is bound, of course, to consider the indirect results of his action in a strike; but he is bound to consider that in a swing, or a giddy-go-round, or a smoking concert; in his wildest holiday or his most private conversation. But direct responsibility like that of a soldier he has none. He need not aim solely and directly at the good of the shop; for the simple reason that the shop is not aiming solely and directly at the good of the nation. The shopman is, under decent restraints, let us hope, trying to get what he can out of the nation; the shop assistant may, under the same decent restraints, get what he can out of the shopkeeper. All this distinction is very obvious. At least I should have thought so.
But the primary point which I mean is this. That even if we do take the military view of mercantile service, even if we do call the rebellious shop assistant “disloyal”—that leaves exactly where it was the question of whether he is, in point of fact, in a good or bad shop. Granted that all Mr. Poole’s employees are bound to follow for ever the cloven pennon of the Perfect Pair of Trousers, it is all the more true that the pennon may, in point of fact, become imperfect. Granted that all Barney Barnato’s workers ought to have followed him to death or glory, it is still a Perfectly legitimate question to ask which he was likely to lead them to. Granted that Dr. Sawyer’s boy ought to die for his master’s medicines, we may still hold an inquest to find out if he died of them. While we forbid the soldier to shoot the general, we may still wish the general were shot.
The fundamental fact of our time is the failure of the successful man. Somehow we have so arranged the rules of the game that the winners are worthless for other purposes; they can secure nothing except the prize. The very rich are neither aristocrats nor self-made men; they are accidents—or rather calamities. All revolutionary language is a generation behind the times in talking of their futility. A revolutionist would say (with perfect truth) that coal-owners know next to nothing about coal-mining. But we are past that point. Coal-owners know next to nothing about coal-owning. They do not develop and defend the nature of their own monopoly with any consistent and courageous policy, however wicked, as did the old aristocrats with the monopoly of land. They have not the virtues nor even the vices of tyrants; they have only their powers. It is the same with all the powerful of to-day; it is the same, for instance, with the high-placed and high-paid official. Not only is the judge not judicial, but the arbiter is not even arbitrary. The arbiter decides, not by some gust of justice or injustice in his soul like the old despot dooming men under a tree, but by the permanent climate of the class to which he happens to belong. The ancient wig of the judge is often indistinguishable from the old wig of the flunkey.
To judge about success or failure one must see things very simply; one must see them in masses, as the artist, half closing his eyes against details, sees light and shade. That is the only way in which a just judgment can be formed as to whether any departure or development, such as Islam or the American Republic, has been a benefit upon the whole. Seen close, such great erections always abound in ingenious detail and impressive solidity; it is only by seeing them afar off that one can tell if the Tower leans.
Now if we thus take in the whole tilt or posture of our modern state, we shall simply see this fact: that those classes who have on the whole governed, have on the whole failed. If you go to a factory you will see some very wonderful wheels going round; you will be told that the employer often comes there early in the morning; that he has great organising power; that if he works over the colossal accumulation of wealth he also works over its wise distribution. All this may be true of many employers, and it is practically said of all.
But if we shade our eyes from all this dazzle of detail; if we simply ask what has been the main feature, the upshot, the final fruit of the capitalist system, there is no doubt about the answer. The special and solid result of the reign of the employers has been—unemployment. Unemployment not only increasing, but becoming at last the very pivot upon which the whole process turns.
Or, again, if you visit the villages that depend on one of the great squires, you will hear praises, often just, of the landlord’s good sense or good nature; you will hear of whole systems of pensions or of care for the sick, like those of a small and separate nation; you will see much cleanliness, order, and business habits in the offices and accounts of the estate. But if you ask again what has been the upshot, what has been the actual result of the reign of landlords, again the answer is plain. At the end of the reign of landlords men will not live on the land. The practical effect of having landlords is not having tenants. The practical effect of having employers is that men are not employed. The unrest of the populace is therefore more than a murmur against tyranny; it is against a sort of treason. It is the suspicion that even at the top of the tree, even in the seats of the mighty, our very success is unsuccessful.
THE OTHER KIND OF MAN
There are some who are conciliated by Conciliation Boards. There are some who, when they hear of Royal Commissions, breathe again— or snore again. There are those who look forward to Compulsory Arbitration Courts as to the islands of the blest. These men do not understand the day that they look upon or the sights that their eyes have seen.
The almost sacramental idea of representation, by which the few may incarnate the many, arose in the Middle Ages, and has done great things for justice and liberty. It has had its real hours of triumph, as when the States General met to renew France’s youth like the eagle’s; or when all the virtues of the Republic fought and ruled in the figure of Washington. It is not having one of its hours of triumph now. The real democratic unrest at this moment is not an extension of the representative process, but rather a revolt against it. It is no good giving those now in revolt more boards and committees and compulsory regulations. It is against these very things that they are revolting. Men are not only rising against their oppressors, but against their representatives or, as they would say, their misrepresentatives. The inner and actual spirit of workaday England is coming out not in applause, but in anger, as a god who should come out of his tabernacle to rebuke and confound his priests.
There is a certain kind of man whom we see many times in a day, but whom we do not, in general, bother very much about. He is the kind of man of whom his wife says that a better husband when he’s sober you couldn’t have. She sometimes adds that he never is sober; but this is in anger and exaggeration. Really he drinks much less and works much more than the modern legend supposes. But it is quite true that he has not the horror of bodily outbreak, natural to the classes that contain ladies; and it is quite true that he never has that alert and inventive sort of industry natural to the classes from which men can climb into great wealth. He has grown, partly by necessity, but partly also by temper, accustomed to have dirty clothes and dirty hands normally and without discomfort. He regards cleanliness as a kind of separate and special costume; to be put on for great festivals. He has several really curious characteristics, which would attract the eyes of sociologists, if they had any eyes. For instance, his vocabulary is coarse and abusive, in marked contrast to his actual spirit, which is generally patient and civil. He has an odd way of using certain words of really horrible meaning, but using them quite innocently and without the most distant taint of the evils to which they allude. He is rather sentimental; and, like most sentimental people, not devoid of snobbishness. At the same time, he believes the ordinary manly commonplaces of freedom and fraternity as he believes most of the decent traditions of Christian men: he finds it very difficult to act according to them, but this difficulty is not confined to him. He has a strong and individual sense of humour, and not much power of corporate or militant action. He is not a Socialist. Finally, he bears no more resemblance to a Labour Member than he does to a City Alderman or a Die-Hard Duke. This is the Common Labourer of England; and it is he who is on the march at last.
See this man in your mind as you see him in the street, realise that it is his open mind we wish to influence or his empty stomach we wish to cure, and then consider seriously (if you can) the five men, including two of his own alleged oppressors, who were summoned as a Royal Commission to consider his claims when he or his sort went out on strike upon the railways. I knew nothing against, indeed I knew nothing about, any of the gentlemen then summoned, beyond a bare introduction to Mr. Henderson, whom I liked, but whose identity I was in no danger of confusing with that of a railway-porter. I do not think that any old gentleman, however absent-minded, would be likely on arriving at Euston, let us say, to hand his Gladstone-bag to Mr. Henderson or to attempt to reward that politician with twopence. Of the others I can only judge by the facts about their status as set forth in the public Press. The Chairman, Sir David Harrell, appeared to be an ex-official distinguished in (of all things in the world) the Irish Constabulary. I have no earthly reason to doubt that the Chairman meant to be fair; but I am not talking about what men mean to be, but about what they are. The police in Ireland are practically an army of occupation; a man serving in them or directing them is practically a soldier; and, of course, he must do his duty as such. But it seems truly extraordinary to select as one likely to sympathise with the democracy of England a man whose whole business in life it has been to govern against its will the democracy of Ireland. What should we say if Russian strikers were offered the sympathetic arbitration of the head of the Russian Police in Finland or Poland? And if we do not know that the whole civilised world sees Ireland with Poland as a typical oppressed nation, it is time we did. The Chairman, whatever his personal virtues, must be by instinct and habit akin to the capitalists in the dispute. Two more of the Commissioners actually were the capitalists in the dispute. Then came Mr. Henderson (pushing his trolley and cheerily crying, “By your leave.”), and then another less known gentleman who had “corresponded” with the Board of Trade, and had thus gained some strange claim to represent the very poor.
Now people like this might quite possibly produce a rational enough report, and in this or that respect even improve things. Men of that kind are tolerably kind, tolerably patriotic, and tolerably business-like. But if any one supposes that men of that kind can conceivably quiet any real ‘quarrel with the Man of the Other Kind, the man whom I first described, it is frantic. The common worker is angry exactly because he has found out that all these boards consist of the same well-dressed Kind of Man, whether they are called Governmental or Capitalist. If any one hopes that he will reconcile the poor, I say, as I said at the beginning, that such a one has not looked on the light of day or dwelt in the land of the living.
But I do not criticise such a Commission except for one most practical and urgent purpose. It will be answered to me that the first Kind of Man of whom I spoke could not really be on boards and committees, as modern England is managed. His dirt, though necessary and honourable, would be offensive: his speech, though rich and figurative, would be almost incomprehensible. Let us grant, for the moment, that this is so. This Kind of Man, with his sooty hair or sanguinary adjectives, cannot be represented at our committees of arbitration. Therefore, the other Kind of Man, fairly prosperous, fairly plausible, at home at least with the middle class, capable at least of reaching and touching the upper class, he must remain the only Kind of Man for such councils.
Very well. If then, you give at any future time any kind of compulsory powers to such councils to prevent strikes, you will be driving the first Kind of Man to work for a particular master as much as if you drove him with a whip.
THE MEDIAEVAL VILLAIN
I see that there have been more attempts at the whitewashing of King John.
But the gentleman who wrote has a further interest in the matter; for he believes that King John was innocent, not only on this point, but as a whole. He thinks King John has been very badly treated; though I am not sure whether he would attribute to that Plantagenet a saintly merit or merely a humdrum respectability.
I sympathise with the whitewashing of King John, merely because it is a protest against our waxwork style of history. Everybody is in a particular attitude, with particular moral attributes; Rufus is always hunting and Coeur-de-Lion always crusading; Henry VIII always marrying, and Charles I always having his head cut off; Alfred rapidly and in rotation making his people’s clocks and spoiling their cakes; and King John pulling out Jews’ teeth with the celerity and industry of an American dentist. Anything is good that shakes all this stiff simplification, and makes us remember that these men were once alive; that is, mixed, free, flippant, and inconsistent. It gives the mind a healthy kick to know that Alfred had fits, that Charles I prevented enclosures, that Rufus was really interested in architecture, that Henry VIII was really interested in theology.
And as these scraps of reality can startle us into more solid imagination of events, so can even errors and exaggerations if they are on the right side. It does some good to call Alfred a prig, Charles I a Puritan, and John a jolly good fellow; if this makes us feel that they were people whom we might have liked or disliked. I do not myself think that John was a nice gentleman; but for all that the popular picture of him is all wrong. Whether he had any generous qualities or not, he had what commonly makes them possible, dare-devil courage, for instance, and hot-headed decision. But, above all, he had a morality which he broke, but which we misunderstand.
The mediaeval mind turned centrally upon the pivot of Free Will. In their social system the mediaevals were too much PARTI-PER-PALE, as their heralds would say, too rigidly cut up by fences and quarterings of guild or degree. But in their moral philosophy they always thought of man as standing free and doubtful at the cross-roads in a forest. While they clad and bound the body and (to some extent) the mind too stiffly and quaintly for our taste, they had a much stronger sense than we have of the freedom of the soul. For them the soul always hung poised like an eagle in the heavens of liberty. Many of the things that strike a modern as most fantastic came from their keen sense of the power of choice.
For instance, the greatest of the Schoolmen devotes folios to the minute description of what the world would have been like if Adam had refused the apple; what kings, laws, babies, animals, planets would have been in an unfallen world. So intensely does he feel that Adam might have decided the other way that he sees a complete and complex vision of another world, a world that now can never be.
This sense of the stream of life in a man that may turn either way can be felt through all their popular ethics in legend, chronicle, and ballad. It is a feeling which has been weakened among us by two heavy intellectual forces. The Calvinism of the seventeenth century and the physical science of the nineteenth, whatever other truths they may have taught, have darkened this liberty with a sense of doom. We think of bad men as something like black men, a separate and incurable kind of people. The Byronic spirit was really a sort of operatic Calvinism. It brought the villain upon the stage; the lost soul; the modern version of King John. But the contemporaries of King John did not feel like that about him, even when they detested him. They instinctively felt him to be a man of mixed passions like themselves, who was allowing his evil passions to have much too good a time of it. They might have spoken of him as a man in considerable danger of going to hell; but they would have not talked of him as if he had come from there. In the ballads of Percy or Robin Hood it frequently happens that the King comes upon the scene, and his ultimate decision makes the climax of the tale. But we do not feel, as we do in the Byronic or modern romance, that there is a definite stage direction “Enter Tyrant.” Nor do we behold a deus ex machina who is certain to do all that is mild and just. The King in the ballad is in a state of virile indecision. Sometimes he will pass from a towering passion to the most sweeping magnanimity and friendliness; sometimes he will begin an act of vengeance and be turned from it by a jest. Yet this august levity is not moral indifference; it is moral freedom. It is the strong sense in the writer that the King, being the type of man with power, will probably sometimes use it badly and sometimes well. In this sense John is certainly misrepresented, for he is pictured as something that none of his own friends or enemies saw. In that sense he was certainly not so black as he is painted, for he lived in a world where every one was piebald.
King John would be represented in a modern play or novel as a kind of degenerate; a shifty eyed moral maniac with a twist in his soul’s backbone and green blood in his veins. The mediaevals were quite capable of boiling him in melted lead, but they would have been quite incapable of despairing of his soul in the modern fashion. A striking a fortiori case is that of the strange mediaeval legend of Robert the Devil. Robert was represented as a monstrous birth sent to an embittered woman actually in answer to prayers to Satan, and his earlier actions are simply those of the infernal fire let loose upon earth. Yet though he can be called almost literally a child of hell, yet the climax of the story is his repentance at Rome and his great reparation. That is the paradox of mediaeval morals: as it must appear to the moderns. We must try to conceive a race of men who hated John, and sought his blood, and believed every abomination about him, who would have been quite capable of assassinating or torturing him in the extremity of their anger. And yet we must admit that they would not really have been fundamentally surprised if he had shaved his head in humiliation, given all his goods to the poor, embraced the lepers in a lazar-house, and been canonised as a saint in heaven. So strongly did they hold that the pivot of Will should turn freely, which now is rusted, and sticks.
For we, whatever our political opinions, certainly never think of our public men like that. If we hold the opinion that Mr. Lloyd George is a noble tribune of the populace and protector of the poor, we do not admit that he can ever have paltered with the truth or bargained with the powerful. If we hold the equally idiotic opinion that he is a red and rabid Socialist, maddening mobs into mutiny and theft, then we expect him to go on maddening them—and us. We do not expect him, let us say, suddenly to go into a monastery. We have lost the idea of repentance; especially in public things; that is why we cannot really get rid of our great national abuses of economic tyranny and aristocratic avarice. Progress in the modern sense is a very dismal drudge; and mostly consists of being moved on by the police. We move on because we are not allowed to move back. But the really ragged prophets, the real revolutionists who held high language in the palaces of kings, they did not confine themselves to saying, “Onward, Christian soldiers,” still less, “Onward, Futurist soldiers”; what they said to high emperors and to whole empires was, “Turn ye, turn ye, why will ye die?”
THE DIVINE DETECTIVE
Every person of sound education enjoys detective stories, and there are even several points on which they have a hearty superiority to most modern books. A detective story generally describes six living men discussing how it is that a man is dead. A modern philosophic story generally describes six dead men discussing how any man can possibly be alive. But those who have enjoyed the roman policier must have noted one thing, that when the murderer is caught he is hardly ever hanged. “That,” says Sherlock Holmes, “is the advantage of being a private detective”; after he has caught he can set free. The Christian Church can best be defined as an enormous private detective, correcting that official detective— the State. This, indeed, is one of the injustices done to historic Christianity; injustices which arise from looking at complex exceptions and not at the large and simple fact. We are constantly being told that theologians used racks and thumbscrews, and so they did. Theologians used racks and thumbscrews just as they used thimbles and three-legged stools, because everybody else used them. Christianity no more created the mediaeval tortures than it did the Chinese tortures; it inherited them from any empire as heathen as the Chinese.
The Church did, in an evil hour, consent to imitate the commonwealth and employ cruelty. But if we open our eyes and take in the whole picture, if we look at the general shape and colour of the thing, the real difference between the Church and the State is huge and plain. The State, in all lands and ages, has created a machinery of punishment, more bloody and brutal in some places than others, but bloody and brutal everywhere. The Church is the only institution that ever attempted to create a machinery of pardon. The Church is the only thing that ever attempted by system to pursue and discover crimes, not in order to avenge, but in order to forgive them. The stake and rack were merely the weaknesses of the religion; its snobberies, its surrenders to the world. Its speciality—or, if you like, its oddity—was this merciless mercy; the unrelenting sleuthhound who seeks to save and not slay.
I can best illustrate what I mean by referring to two popular plays on somewhat parallel topics, which have been successful here and in America. The Passing of the Third Floor Back is a humane and reverent experiment, dealing with the influence of one unknown but divine figure as he passes through a group of Squalid characters. I have no desire to make cheap fun of the extremely abrupt conversions of all these people; that is a point of art, not of morals; and, after all, many conversions have been abrupt. This saviour’s method of making people good is to tell them how good they are already; and in the case of suicidal outcasts, whose moral backs are broken, and who are soaked with sincere self-contempt, I can imagine that this might be quite the right way. I should not deliver this message to authors or members of Parliament, because they would so heartily agree with it.
Still, it is not altogether here that I differ from the moral of Mr. Jerome’s play. I differ vitally from his story because it is not a detective story. There is in it none of this great Christian idea of tearing their evil out of men; it lacks the realism of the saints. Redemption should bring truth as well as peace; and truth is a fine thing, though the materialists did go mad about it. Things must be faced, even in order to be forgiven; the great objection to “letting sleeping dogs lie” is that they lie in more senses than one. But in Mr. Jerome’s Passing of the Third Floor Back the redeemer is not a divine detective, pitiless in his resolve to know and pardon. Rather he is a sort of divine dupe, who does not pardon at all, because he does not see anything that is going on. It may, or may not, be true to say, “Tout comprendre est tout pardonner.” But it is much more evidently true to say, “Rien comprendre est rien Pardonner,” and the “Third Floor Back” does not seem to comprehend anything. He might, after all, be a quite selfish sentimentalist, who found it comforting to think well of his neighbours. There is nothing very heroic in loving after you have been deceived. The heroic business is to love after you have been undeceived.
When I saw this play it was natural to compare it with another play which I had not seen, but which I have read in its printed version. I mean Mr. Rann Kennedy’s Servant in the House, the success of which sprawls over so many of the American newspapers. This also is concerned with a dim, yet evidently divine, figure changing the destinies of a whole group of persons. It is a better play structurally than the other; in fact, it is a very fine play indeed; but there is nothing aesthetic or fastidious about it. It is as much or more than the other sensational, democratic, and (I use the word in a sound and good sense) Salvationist.
But the difference lies precisely in this—that the Christ of Mr. Kennedy’s play insists on really knowing all the souls that he loves; he declines to conquer by a kind of supernatural stupidity. He pardons evil, but he will not ignore it. In other words, he is a Christian, and not a Christian Scientist. The distinction doubtless is partly explained by the problems severally selected. Mr. Jerome practically supposes Christ to be trying to save disreputable people; and that, of course, is naturally a simple business. Mr. Kennedy supposes Him to be trying to save the reputable people, which is a much larger affair. The chief characters in The Servant in the House are a popular and strenuous vicar, universally respected, and his fashionable and forcible wife. It would have been no good to tell these people they had some good in them—for that was what they were telling themselves all day long. They had to be reminded that they had some bad in them— instinctive idolatries and silent treasons which they always tried to forget. It is in connection with these crimes of wealth and culture that we face the real problem of positive evil. The whole of Mr. Blatchford’s controversy about sin was vitiated throughout by one’s consciousness that whenever he wrote the word “sinner” he thought of a man in rags. But here, again, we can find truth merely by referring to vulgar literature—its unfailing fountain. Whoever read a detective story about poor people? The poor have crimes; but the poor have no secrets. And it is because the proud have secrets that they need to be detected before they are forgiven.
THE ELF OF JAPAN
There are things in this world of which I can say seriously that I love them but I do not like them. The point is not merely verbal, but psychologically quite valid. Cats are the first things that occur to me as examples of the principle. Cats are so beautiful that a creature from another star might fall in love with them, and so incalculable that he might kill them. Some of my friends take quite a high moral line about cats. Some, like Mr. Titterton, I think, admire a cat for its moral independence and readiness to scratch anybody “if he does not behave himself.” Others, like Mr. Belloe, regard the cat as cruel and secret, a fit friend for witches; one who will devour everything, except, indeed, poisoned food, “so utterly lacking is it in Christian simplicity and humility.” For my part, I have neither of these feelings. I admire cats as I admire catkins; those little fluffy things that hang on trees. They are both pretty and both furry, and both declare the glory of God. And this abstract exultation in all living things is truly to be called Love; for it is a higher feeling than mere affectional convenience; it is a vision. It is heroic, and even saintly, in this: that it asks for nothing in return. I love all the eats in the street as St. Francis of Assisi loved all the birds in the wood or all the fishes in the sea; not so much, of course, but then I am not a saint. But he did not wish to bridle a bird and ride on its back, as one bridles and rides on a horse. He did not wish to put a collar round a fish’s neck, marked with the name “Francis,” and the address “Assisi”—as one does with a dog. He did not wish them to belong to him or himself to belong to them; in fact, it would be a very awkward experience to belong to a lot of fishes. But a man does belong to his dog, in another but an equally real sense with that in which the dog belongs to him. The two bonds of obedience and responsibility vary very much with the dogs and the men; but they are both bonds. In other words, a man does not merely love a dog; as he might (in a mystical moment) love any sparrow that perched on his window-sill or any rabbit that ran across his path. A man likes a dog; and that is a serious matter.
To me, unfortunately perhaps (for I speak merely of individual taste), a cat is a wild animal. A cat is Nature personified. Like Nature, it is so mysterious that one cannot quite repose even in its beauty. But like Nature again, it is so beautiful that one cannot believe that it is really cruel. Perhaps it isn’t; and there again it is like Nature. Men of old time worshipped cats as they worshipped crocodiles; and those magnificent old mystics knew what they were about. The moment in which one really loves cats is the same as that in which one (moderately and within reason) loves crocodiles. It is that divine instant when a man feels himself—no, not absorbed into the unity of all things (a loathsome fancy)—but delighting in the difference of all things. At the moment when a man really knows he is a man he will feel, however faintly, a kind of fairy-tale pleasure in the fact that a crocodile is a crocodile. All the more will he exult in the things that are more evidently beautiful than crocodiles, such as flowers and birds and eats— which are more beautiful than either. But it does not follow that he will wish to pick all the flowers or to cage all the birds or to own all the cats.
No one who still believes in democracy and the rights of man will admit that any division between men and men can be anything but a fanciful analogy to the division between men and animals. But in the sphere of such fanciful analogy there are even human beings whom I feel to be like eats in this respect: that I can love them without liking them. I feel it about certain quaint and alien societies, especially about the Japanese. The exquisite old Japanese draughtsmanship (of which we shall see no more, now Japan has gone in for Progress and Imperialism) had a quality that was infinitely attractive and intangible. Japanese pictures were really rather like pictures made by cats. They were full of feathery softness and of sudden and spirited scratches. If any one will wander in some gallery fortunate enough to have a fine collection of those slight water-colour sketches on rice paper which come from the remote East, he will observe many elements in them which a fanciful person might consider feline. There is, for instance, that odd enjoyment of the tops of trees; those airy traceries of forks and fading twigs, up to which certainly no artist, but only a cat could climb. There is that elvish love of the full moon, as large and lucid as a Chinese lantern, hung in these tenuous branches. That moon is so large and luminous that one can imagine a hundred cats howling under it. Then there is the exhaustive treatment of the anatomy of birds and fish; subjects in which cats are said to be interested. Then there is the slanting cat-like eye of all these Eastern gods and men—but this is getting altogether too coincident. We shall have another racial theory in no time (beginning “Are the Japs Cats?”), and though I shall not believe in my theory, somebody else might. There are people among my esteemed correspondents who might believe anything. It is enough for me to say here that in this small respect Japs affect me like cats. I mean that I love them. I love their quaint and native poetry, their instinct of easy civilisation, their unique unreplaceable art, the testimony they bear to the bustling, irrepressible activities of nature and man. If I were a real mystic looking down on them from a real mountain, I am sure I should love them more even than the strong winged and unwearied birds or the fruitful, ever-multiplying fish. But, as for liking them, as one likes a dog—that is quite another matter. That would mean trusting them.
In the old English and Scotch ballads the fairies are regarded very much in the way that I feel inclined to regard Japs and cats. They are not specially spoken of as evil; they are enjoyed as witching and wonderful; but they are not trusted as good. You do not say the wrong words or give the wrong gifts to them; and there is a curious silence about what would happen to you if you did. Now to me, Japan, the Japan of Art, was always a fairyland. What trees as gay as flowers and peaks as white as wedding cakes; what lanterns as large as houses and houses as frail as lanterns!.. . but… but… the missionary explained (I read in the paper) that the assertion and denial about the Japanese use of torture was a mere matter of verbal translation. “The Japanese would not call twisting the thumbs back ‘torture.’”
THE CHARTERED LIBERTINE
I find myself in agreement with Mr. Robert Lynd for his most just remark in connection with the Malatesta case, that the police are becoming a peril to society. I have no attraction to that sort of atheist asceticism to which the purer types of Anarchism tend; but both an atheist and an ascetic are better men than a spy; and it is ignominious to see one’s country thus losing her special point of honour about asylum and liberty. It will be quite a new departure if we begin to protect and whitewash foreign policemen. I always understood it was only English policemen who were absolutely spotless. A good many of us, however, have begun to feel with Mr. Lynd, and on all sides authorities and officials are being questioned. But there is one most graphic and extraordinary fact, which it did not lie in Mr. Lynd’s way to touch upon, but which somebody really must seize and emphasise. It is this: that at the very time when we are all beginning to doubt these authorities, we are letting laws pass to increase their most capricious powers. All our commissions, petitions, and letters to the papers are asking whether these authorities can give an account of their stewardship. And at the same moment all our laws are decreeing that they shall not give any account of their stewardship, but shall become yet more irresponsible stewards. Bills like the Feeble-Minded Bill and the Inebriate Bill (very appropriate names for them) actually arm with scorpions the hand that has chastised the Malatestas and Maleckas with whips. The inspector, the doctor, the police sergeant, the well-paid person who writes certificates and “passes” this, that, or the other; this sort of man is being trusted with more authority, apparently because he is being doubted with more reason. In one room we are asking why the Government and the great experts between them cannot sail a ship. In another room we are deciding that the Government and experts shall be allowed, without trial or discussion, to immure any one’s body, damn any one’s soul, and dispose of unborn generations with the levity of a pagan god. We are putting the official on the throne while he is still in the dock.
The mere meaning of words is now strangely forgotten and falsified; as when people talk of an author’s “message,” without thinking whom it is from; and I have noted in these connections the strange misuse of another word. It is the excellent mediaeval word “charter.” I remember the Act that sought to save gutter-boys from cigarettes was called “The Children’s Charter.” Similarly the Act which seeks to lock up as lunatics people who are not lunatics was actually called a “charter” of the feeble-minded. Now this terminology is insanely wrong, even if the Bills are right. Even were they right in theory they would be applied only to the poor, like many better rules about education and cruelty. A woman was lately punished for cruelty because her children were not washed when it was proved that she had no water. From that it will be an easy step in Advanced Thought to punishing a man for wine-bibbing when it is proved that he had no wine. Rifts in right reason widen down the ages. And when we have begun by shutting up a confessedly kind person for cruelty, we may yet come to shutting up Mr. Tom Mann for feeble-mindedness.
But even if such laws do good to children or idiots, it is wrong to use the word “charter.” A charter does not mean a thing that does good to people. It means a thing that grants people more rights and liberties. It may be a good thing for gutter-boys to be deprived of their cigarettes: it might be a good thing for aldermen to be deprived of their cigars. But I think the Goldsmiths’ Company would be very much surprised if the King granted them a new charter (in place of their mediaeval charter), and it only meant that policemen might pull the cigars out of their mouths. It may be a good thing that all drunkards should be locked up: and many acute statesmen (King John, for instance) would certainly have thought it a good thing if all aristocrats could be locked up. But even that somewhat cynical prince would scarcely have granted to the barons a thing called “the Great Charter” and then locked them all up on the strength of it. If he had, this interpretation of the word “charter” would have struck the barons with considerable surprise. I doubt if their narrow mediaeval minds could have taken it in.
The roots of the real England are in the early Middle Ages, and no Englishman will ever understand his own language (or even his own conscience) till he understands them. And he will never understand them till he understands this word “charter.” I will attempt in a moment to state in older, more suitable terms, what a charter was. In modern, practical, and political terms, it is quite easy to state what a charter was. A charter was the thing that the railway workers wanted last Christmas and did not get; and apparently will never get. It is called in the current jargon “recognition”; the acknowledgment in so many words by society of the immunities or freedoms of a certain set of men. If there had been railways in the Middle Ages there would probably have been a railwaymen’s guild; and it would have had a charter from the King, defining their rights. A charter is the expression of an idea still true and then almost universal: that authority is necessary for nothing so much as for the granting of liberties. Like everything mediaeval, it ramified back to a root in religion; and was a sort of small copy of the Christian idea of man’s creation. Man was free, not because there was no God, but because it needed a God to set him free. By authority he was free. By authority the craftsmen of the guilds were free. Many other great philosophers took and take the other view: the Lucretian pagans, the Moslem fatalists, the modern monists and determinists, all roughly confine themselves to saying that God gave man a law. The mediaeval Christian insisted that God gave man a charter. Modern feeling may not sympathise with its list of liberties, which included the liberty to be damned; but that has nothing to do with the fact that it was a gift of liberties and not of laws. This was mirrored, however dimly, in the whole system. There was a great deal of gross inequality; and in other aspects absolute equality was taken for granted. But the point is that equality and inequality were ranks—or rights. There were not only things one was forbidden to do; but things one was forbidden to forbid. A man was not only definitely responsible, but definitely irresponsible. The holidays of his soul were immovable feasts. All a charter really meant lingers alive in that poetic phrase that calls the wind a “chartered” libertine.
Lie awake at night and hear the wind blowing; hear it knock at every man’s door and shout down every man’s chimney. Feel how it takes liberties with everything, having taken primary liberty for itself; feel that the wind is always a vagabond and sometimes almost a housebreaker. But remember that in the days when free men had charters, they held that the wind itself was wild by authority; and was only free because it had a father.
THE CONTENTED MAN
The word content is not inspiring nowadays; rather it is irritating because it is dull. It prepares the mind for a little sermon in the style of the Vicar of Wakefield about how you and I should be satisfied with our countrified innocence and our simple village sports. The word, however, has two meanings, somewhat singularly connected; the “sweet content” of the poet and the “cubic content” of the mathematician. Some distinguish these by stressing the different syllables. Thus, it might happen to any of us, at some social juncture, to remark gaily, “Of the content of the King of the Cannibal Islands’ Stewpot I am content to be ignorant”; or “Not content with measuring the cubic content of my safe, you are stealing the spoons.” And there really is an analogy between the mathematical and the moral use of the term, for lack of the observation of which the latter has been much weakened and misused.
The preaching of contentment is in disrepute, well deserved in so far that the moral is really quite inapplicable to the anarchy and insane peril of our tall and toppling cities. Content suggests some kind of security; and it is not strange that our workers should often think about rising above their position, since they have so continually to think about sinking below it. The philanthropist who urges the poor to saving and simple pleasures deserves all the derision that he gets. To advise people to be content with what they have got may or may not be sound moral philosophy.
But to urge people to be content with what they haven’t got is a piece of impudence hard for even the English poor to pardon. But though the creed of content is unsuited to certain special riddles and wrongs, it remains true for the normal of mortal life. We speak of divine discontent; discontent may sometimes be a divine thing, but content must always be the human thing. It may be true that a particular man, in his relation to his master or his neighbour, to his country or his enemies, will do well to be fiercely unsatisfied or thirsting for an angry justice. But it is not true, no sane person can call it true, that man as a whole in his general attitude towards the world, in his posture towards death or green fields, towards the weather or the baby, will be wise to cultivate dissatisfaction. In a broad estimate of our earthly experience, the great truism on the tablet remains: he must not covet his neighbour’s ox nor his ass nor anything that is his. In highly complex and scientific civilisations he may sometimes find himself forced into an exceptional vigilance. But, then, in highly complex and scientific civilisations, nine times out of ten, he only wants his own ass back.
But I wish to urge the case for cubic content; in which (even more than in moral content) I take a personal interest. Now, moral content has been undervalued and neglected because of its separation from the other meaning. It has become a negative rather than a positive thing. In some accounts of contentment it seems to be little more than a meek despair.
But this is not the true meaning of the term; it should stand for the idea of a positive and thorough appreciation of the content of anything; for feeling the substance and not merely the surface of experience. “Content” ought to mean in English, as it does in French, being pleased; placidly, perhaps, but still positively pleased. Being contented with bread and cheese ought not to mean not caring what you eat. It ought to mean caring for bread and cheese; handling and enjoying the cubic content of the bread and cheese and adding it to your own. Being content with an attic ought not to mean being unable to move from it and resigned to living in it. It ought to mean appreciating what there is to appreciate in such a position; such as the quaint and elvish slope of the ceiling or the sublime aerial view of the opposite chimney-pots. And in this sense contentment is a real and even an active virtue; it is not only affirmative, but creative. The poet in the attic does not forget the attic in poetic musings; he remembers whatever the attic has of poetry; he realises how high, how starry, how cool, how unadorned and simple—in short, how Attic is the attic.
True contentment is a thing as active as agriculture. It is the power of getting out of any situation all that there is in it. It is arduous and it is rare. The absence of this digestive talent is what makes so cold and incredible the tales of so many people who say they have been “through” things; when it is evident that they have come out on the other side quite unchanged. A man might have gone “through” a plum pudding as a bullet might go through a plum pudding; it depends on the size of the pudding—and the man. But the awful and sacred question is “Has the pudding been through him?” Has he tasted, appreciated, and absorbed the solid pudding, with its three dimensions and its three thousand tastes and smells? Can he offer himself to the eyes of men as one who has cubically conquered and contained a pudding?
In the same way we may ask of those who profess to have passed through trivial or tragic experiences whether they have absorbed the content of them; whether they licked up such living water as there was. It is a pertinent question in connection with many modern problems.
Thus the young genius says, “I have lived in my dreary and squalid village before I found success in Paris or Vienna.” The sound philosopher will answer, “You have never lived in your village, or you would not call it dreary and squalid.”
Thus the Imperialist, the Colonial idealist (who commonly speaks and always thinks with a Yankee accent) will say, “I’ve been right away from these little muddy islands, and seen God’s great seas and prairies.” The sound philosopher will reply, “You have never been in these islands; you have never seen the weald of Sussex or the plain of Salisbury; otherwise you could never have called them either muddy or little.”
Thus the Suffragette will say, “I have passed through the paltry duties of pots and pans, the drudgery of the vulgar kitchen; but I have come out to intellectual liberty.” The sound philosopher will answer, “You have never passed through the kitchen, or you never would call it vulgar. Wiser and stronger women than you have really seen a poetry in pots and pans; naturally, because there is a poetry in them.” It is right for the village violinist to climb into fame in Paris or Vienna; it is right for the stray Englishman to climb across the high shoulder of the world; it is right for the woman to climb into whatever cathedrae or high places she can allow to her sexual dignity. But it is wrong that any of these climbers should kick the ladder by which they have climbed. But indeed these bitter people who record their experiences really record their lack of experiences. It is the countryman who has not succeeded in being a countryman who comes up to London. It is the clerk who has not succeeded in being a clerk who tries (on vegetarian principles) to be a countryman. And the woman with a past is generally a woman angry about the past she never had.
When you have really exhausted an experience you always reverence and love it. The two things that nearly all of us have thoroughly and really been through are childhood and youth. And though we would not have them back again on any account, we feel that they are both beautiful, because we have drunk them dry.
THE ANGRY AUTHOR: HIS FAREWELL
I have republished all these old articles of mine because they cover a very controversial period, in which I was in nearly all the controversies, whether I was visible there or no. And I wish to gather up into this last article a valedictory violence about all such things; and then pass to where, beyond these voices, there is peace—or in other words, to the writing of Penny Dreadfuls; a noble and much-needed work. But before I finally desert the illusions of rationalism for the actualities of romance, I should very much like to write one last roaring, raging book telling all the rationalists not to be so utterly irrational. The book would be simply a string of violent vetoes, like the Ten Commandments. I would call it “Don’ts for Dogmatists; or Things I am Tired Of.”
This book of intellectual etiquette, like most books of etiquette, would begin with superficial things; but there would be, I fancy, a wailing imprecation in the words that could not be called artificial; it might begin thus:- (1) Don’t use a noun and then an adjective that crosses out the noun. An adjective qualifies, it cannot contradict. Don’t say, “Give me a patriotism that is free from all boundaries.” It is like saying, “Give me a pork pie with no pork in it.” Don’t say, “I look forward to that larger religion that shall have no special dogmas.” It is like saying, “I look forward to that larger quadruped who shall have no feet.” A quadruped means something with four feet; and a religion means something that commits a man to some doctrine about the universe. Don’t let the meek substantive be absolutely murdered by the joyful, exuberant adjective.
(2) Don’t say you are not going to say a thing, and then say it. This practice is very flourishing and successful with public speakers. The trick consists of first repudiating a certain view in unfavourable terms, and then repeating the same view in favourable terms. Perhaps the simplest form of it may be found in a landlord of my neighbourhood, who said to his tenants in an election speech, “Of course I’m not going to threaten you, but if this Budget passes the rents will go up.” The thing can be done in many forms besides this. “I am the last man to mention party politics; but when I see the Empire rent in pieces by irresponsible Radicals,” etc. “In this hall we welcome all creeds. We have no hostility against any honest belief; but only against that black priestcraft and superstition which can accept such a doctrine as,” etc. “I would not say one word that could ruffle our relations with Germany. But this I will say; that when I see ceaseless and unscrupulous armament,” etc. Please don’t do it. Decide to make a remark or not to make a remark. But don’t fancy that you have somehow softened the saying of a thing by having just promised not to say it.
(3) Don’t use secondary words as primary words. “Happiness” (let us say) is a primary word. You know when you have the thing, and you jolly well know when you haven’t. “Progress” is a secondary word; it means the degree of one’s approach to happiness, or to some such solid ideal. But modern controversies constantly turn on asking, “Does Happiness help Progress?” Thus, I see in the New Age this week a letter from Mr. Egerton Swann, in which he warns the world against me and my friend Mr. Belloc, on the ground that our democracy is “spasmodic” (whatever that means); while our “reactionism is settled and permanent.” It never strikes Mr. Swann that democracy means something in itself; while “reactionism” means nothing—except in connection with democracy. You cannot react except from something. If Mr. Swann thinks I have ever reacted from the doctrine that the people should rule, I wish he would give me the reference.
(4) Don’t say, “There is no true creed; for each creed believes itself right and the others wrong.” Probably one of the creeds is right and the others are wrong. Diversity does show that most of the views must be wrong. It does not by the faintest logic show that they all must be wrong. I suppose there is no subject on which opinions differ with more desperate sincerity than about which horse will win the Derby. These are certainly solemn convictions; men risk ruin for them. The man who puts his shirt on Potosi must believe in that animal, and each of the other men putting their last garments upon other quadrupeds must believe in them quite as sincerely. They are all serious, and most of them are wrong. But one of them is right. One of the faiths is justified; one of the horses does win; not always even the dark horse which might stand for Agnosticism, but often the obvious and popular horse of Orthodoxy. Democracy has its occasional victories; and even the Favourite has been known to come in first. But the point here is that something comes in first. That there were many beliefs does not destroy the fact that there was one well-founded belief. I believe (merely upon authority) that the world is round. That there may be tribes who believe it to be triangular or oblong does not alter the fact that it is certainly some shape, and therefore not any other shape. Therefore I repeat, with the wail of imprecation, don’t say that the variety of creeds prevents you from accepting any creed. It is an unintelligent remark.
(5) Don’t (if any one calls your doctrine mad, which is likely enough), don’t answer that madmen are only the minority and the sane only the majority. The sane are sane because they are the corporate substance of mankind; the insane are not a minority because they are not a mob. The man who thinks himself a man thinks the next man a man; he reckons his neighbour as himself. But the man who thinks he is a chicken does not try to look through the man who thinks he is glass. The man who thinks himself Jesus Christ does not quarrel with the man who thinks himself Rockefeller; as would certainly happen if the two had ever met. But madmen never meet. It is the only thing they cannot do. They can talk, they can inspire, they can fight, they can found religions; but they cannot meet. Maniacs can never be the majority; for the simple reason that they can never be even a minority. If two madmen had ever agreed they might have conquered the world.
(6) Don’t say that the idea of human equality is absurd, because some men are tall and some short, some clever and some stupid. At the height of the French Revolution it was noticed that Danton was tall and Murat short. In the wildest popular excitement of America it is known that Rockefeller is stupid and that Bryan is clever. The doctrine of human equality reposes upon this: That there is no man really clever who has not found that he is stupid. That there is no big man who has not felt small. Some men never feel small; but these are the few men who are.
(7) Don’t say (O don’t say) that Primitive Man knocked down a woman with a club and carried her away. Why on earth should he? Does the male sparrow knock down the female sparrow with a twig? Does the male giraffe knock down the female giraffe with a palm tree? Why should the male have had to use any violence at any time in order to make the female a female? Why should the woman roll herself in the mire lower than the sow or the she-bear; and profess to have been a slave where all these creatures were creators; where all these beasts were gods? Do not talk such bosh. I implore you, I supplicate you not to talk such bosh. Utterly and absolutely abolish all such bosh—and we may yet begin to discuss these public questions properly. But I fear my list of protests grows too long; and I know it could grow longer for ever. The reader must forgive my elongations and elaborations. I fancied for the moment that I was writing a book.
THE SUFFRAGIST
Rightly or wrongly, it is certain that a man both liberal and chivalric, can and very often does feel a dis-ease and distrust touching those political women we call Suffragettes. Like most other popular sentiments, it is generally wrongly stated even when it is rightly felt. One part of it can be put most shortly thus: that when a woman puts up her fists to a man she is putting herself in the only posture in which he is not afraid of her. He can be afraid of her speech and still more of her silence; but force reminds him of a rusted but very real weapon of which he has grown ashamed. But these crude summaries are never quite accurate in any matter of the instincts. For the things which are the simplest so long as they are undisputed invariably become the subtlest when once they are disputed: which was what Joubert meant, I suppose, when he said, “It is not hard to believe in God if one does not define Him.” When the evil instincts of old Foulon made him say of the poor, “Let them eat grass,” the good and Christian instincts of the poor made them hang him on a lamp-post with his mouth stuffed full of that vegetation. But if a modern vegetarian aristocrat were to say to the poor, “But why don’t you like grass?” their intelligences would be much more taxed to find such an appropriate repartee. And this matter of the functions of the sexes is primarily a matter of the instincts; sex and breathing are about the only two things that generally work best when they are least worried about. That, I suppose, is why the same sophisticated age that has poisoned the world with Feminism is also polluting it with Breathing Exercises. We plunge at once into a forest of false analogies and bad blundering history; while almost any man or woman left to themselves would know at least that sex is quite different from anything else in the world.
There is no kind of comparison possible between a quarrel of man and woman (however right the woman may be) and the other quarrels of slave and master, of rich and poor, or of patriot and invader, with which the Suffragists deluge us every day. The difference is as plain as noon; these other alien groups never came into contact until they came into collision. Races and ranks began with battle, even if they afterwards melted into amity. But the very first fact about the sexes is that they like each other. They seek each other: and awful as are the sins and sorrows that often come of their mating, it was not such things that made them meet. It is utterly astounding to note the way in which modern writers and talkers miss this plain, wide, and overwhelming fact: one would suppose woman a victim and nothing else. By this account ideal, emancipated woman has, age after age, been knocked silly with a stone axe. But really there is no fact to show that ideal, emancipated woman was ever knocked silly; except the fact that she is silly. And that might have arisen in so many other ways. Real responsible woman has never been silly; and any one wishing to knock her would be wise (like the street-boys) to knock and run away. It is ultimately idiotic to compare this prehistoric participation with any royalties or rebellions. Genuine royalties wish to crush rebellions. Genuine rebels wish to destroy kings. The sexes cannot wish to abolish each other; and if we allow them any sort of permanent opposition it will sink into something as base as a party system.
As marriage, therefore, is rooted in an aboriginal unity of instincts, you cannot compare it, even in its quarrels, with any of the mere collisions of separate institutions. You could compare it with the emancipation of negroes from planters— if it were true that a white man in early youth always dreamed of the abstract beauty of a black man. You could compare it with the revolt of tenants against a landlord—if it were true that young landlords wrote sonnets to invisible tenants. You could compare it to the fighting policy of the Fenians-if it were true that every normal Irishman wanted an Englishman to come and live with him. But as we know there are no instincts in any of these directions, these analogies are not only false but false on the cardinal fact. I do not speak of the comparative comfort or merit of these different things: I say they are different. It may be that love turned to hate is terribly common in sexual matters: it may be that hate turned to love is not uncommon in the rivalries of race or class. But any philosophy about the sexes that begins with anything but the mutual attraction of the sexes, begins with a fallacy; and all its historical comparisons are as irrelevant and impertinent as puns.
But to expose such cold negation of the instincts is easy: to express or even half express the instincts is very hard. The instincts are very much concerned with what literary people call “style” in letters or more vulgar people call “style” in dress. They are much concerned with how a thing is done, as well as whether one may do it: and the deepest elements in their attraction or aversion can often only be conveyed by stray examples or sudden images. When Danton was defending himself before the Jacobin tribunal he spoke so loud that his voice was heard across the Seine, in quite remote streets on the other side of the river. He must have bellowed like a bull of Bashan. Yet none of us would think of that prodigy except as something poetical and appropriate. None of us would instinctively feel that Danton was less of a man or even less of a gentleman, for speaking so in such an hour. But suppose we heard that Marie Antoinette, when tried before the same tribunal, had howled so that she could be heard in the Faubourg St. Germain—well, I leave it to the instincts, if there are any left. It is not wrong to howl. Neither is it right. It is simply a question of the instant impression on the artistic and even animal parts of humanity, if the noise were heard suddenly like a gun.
Perhaps the nearest verbal analysis of the instinct may be found in the gestures of the orator addressing a crowd. For the true orator must always be a demagogue: even if the mob be a small mob, like the French committee or the English House of Lords. And “demagogue,” in the good Greek meaning, does not mean one who pleases the populace, but one who leads it: and if you will notice, you will see that all the instinctive gestures of oratory are gestures of military leadership; pointing the people to a path or waving them on to an advance. Notice that long sweep of the arm across the body and outward, which great orators use naturally and cheap orators artificially. It is almost the exact gesture of the drawing of a sword.
The point is not that women are unworthy of votes; it is not even that votes are unworthy of women. It is that votes are unworthy of men, so long as they are merely votes; and have nothing in them of this ancient militarism of democracy. The only crowd worth talking to is the crowd that is ready to go somewhere and do something; the only demagogue worth hearing is he who can point at something to be done: and, if he points with a sword, will only feel it familiar and useful like an elongated finger. Now, except in some mystical exceptions which prove the rule, these are not the gestures, and therefore not the instincts, of women. No honest man dislikes the public woman. He can only dislike the political woman; an entirely different thing. The instinct has nothing to do with any desire to keep women curtained or captive: if such a desire exists. A husband would be pleased if his wife wore a gold crown and proclaimed laws from a throne of marble; or if she uttered oracles from the tripod of a priestess; or if she could walk in mystical motherhood before the procession of some great religious order. But that she should stand on a platform in the exact altitude in which he stands; leaning forward a little more than is graceful and holding her mouth open a little longer and wider than is dignified—well, I only write here of the facts of natural history; and the fact is that it is this, and not publicity or importance, that hurts. It is for the modern world to judge whether such instincts are indeed danger signals; and whether the hurting of moral as of material nerves is a tocsin and a warning of nature.
LA SUFFRAGISTA
Giustamente o non giustamente, è certo che un uomo sia liberale che cavalleresco può e spesso sente una sensazione di disagio e diffidenza verso quelle donne politiche che chiamiamo suffragette. Come la maggior parte dei sentimenti popolari, generalmente viene espresso in modo errato anche quando è giustamente percepito. Una parte di esso può essere espressa brevemente così: quando una donna alza i pugni contro un uomo si mette nell’unica posizione in cui lui non ha paura di lei. Può aver paura delle sue parole e ancora più del suo silenzio; ma la forza gli ricorda un’arma arrugginita ma molto reale della quale si è vergognato. Ma queste sintesi rozze non sono mai del tutto accurate in qualsiasi questione relativa agli istinti. Perché le cose che sono più semplici finché non vengono messe in discussione diventano inevitabilmente le più sottili una volta che lo sono: è ciò a cui Joubert si riferiva, immagino, quando disse: “Non è difficile credere in Dio se non lo si definisce.” Quando i cattivi istinti del vecchio Foulon lo spinsero a dire dei poveri: “Che mangino erba”, i buoni e cristiani istinti dei poveri li portarono ad impiccarlo su un lampione con la bocca piena di quella vegetazione. Ma se un moderno vegetariano aristocratico dovesse dire ai poveri: “Ma perché non vi piace l’erba?”, le loro intelligenze sarebbero molto più impegnate a trovare una risposta altrettanto appropriata. E questa questione delle funzioni dei sessi è innanzitutto una questione degli istinti; il sesso e la respirazione sono circa le uniche due cose che generalmente funzionano meglio quando ci si preoccupa di esse meno possibile. È per questo, immagino, che lo stesso secolo sofisticato che ha avvelenato il mondo con il femminismo lo sta anche inquinando con gli Esercizi Respiratori. Ci tuffiamo subito in una foresta di false analogie e di cattive storie balorde; mentre quasi qualsiasi uomo o donna lasciati a se stessi saprebbero almeno che il sesso è del tutto diverso da qualsiasi altra cosa nel mondo.
Non esiste alcun tipo di paragone possibile tra una lite fra uomo e donna (per quanto la donna possa avere ragione) e le altre liti fra schiavo e padrone, ricco e povero o patriota e invasore con cui i suffragisti inondano ogni giorno. La differenza è chiara come il mezzogiorno; questi altri gruppi estranei non venivano mai a contatto se prima non entravano in collisione. Razze e classi sociali nacquero con la battaglia, anche se poi si fusero nell’amicizia. Ma il primo fatto riguardante i sessi è che si piacciono l’un l’altro. Si cercano: e per quanto spaventosi siano i peccati e le sofferenze che spesso derivano dalla loro unione, non furono queste cose a farli incontrare. È assolutamente sbalorditivo notare come gli scrittori e i parolai moderni perdano di vista questo fatto così evidente, vasto e travolgente: si direbbe che la donna sia una vittima e nient’altro. Secondo questa versione ideale, la donna emancipata è stata, età dopo età, messa fuori combattimento con un’ascia di pietra. Ma in realtà non esiste alcun fatto a dimostrare che la donna ideale e emancipata sia mai stata messa fuori combattimento; se non il fatto che è stupida. E questo potrebbe essere avvenuto in tanti altri modi. La vera donna responsabile non è mai stata stupida, e chiunque volesse metterla fuori gioco farebbe bene (come i ragazzi di strada) a colpire e scappare via. È alla fine idiota paragonare questa partecipazione preistorica con qualsiasi regalità o ribellione. Le vere regalità vogliono schiacciare le ribellioni. I veri ribelli vogliono distruggere i re. I sessi non possono desiderare di abolirsi a vicenda; e se permettiamo loro un qualsiasi tipo di opposizione permanente, essa affonderà in qualcosa di basso come un sistema dei partiti.
Il matrimonio, dunque, è radicato in un’aborigena unità di istinti; non potete paragonarlo, neppure nelle sue discordie, con le semplici collisioni di istituzioni separate. Potreste paragonarlo all’emancipazione dei negri dai piantatori se fosse vero che un uomo bianco nella prima giovinezza sognasse sempre la bellezza astratta di un uomo nero. Potreste paragonarlo alla rivolta degli inquilini contro il proprietario terriero se fosse vero che i giovani proprietari scrivessero sonetti a inquilini invisibili. Potreste paragonarlo alla politica bellicosa dei Feniani, se fosse vero che ogni normale irlandese volesse un inglese per venire ad abitare con lui. Ma poiché sappiamo che non ci sono istinti in nessuna di queste direzioni, queste analogie non sono solo false ma false sul fatto cardinale. Non parlo del comfort o del merito comparativo di queste cose diverse: dico che sono diverse. Può darsi che l’amore trasformato in odio sia terribilmente comune nelle questioni sessuali: può darsi che l’odio trasformatosi in amore non sia raro nelle rivalità di razza o classe. Ma qualsiasi filosofia sui sessi che inizi con qualcosa che non sia l’attrazione reciproca dei sessi, inizia con un errore; e tutti i suoi paragoni storici sono tanto irrilevanti quanto impertinenti come giochi di parole.
Ma smascherare una negazione così fredda degli istinti è facile: esprimerli o anche solo accennarne l’espressione è molto difficile. Gli istinti sono profondamente legati a ciò che gli intellettuali chiamano “stile” nella letteratura, o la gente più volgare chiama “stile” nell’abbigliamento. Sono fortemente interessati al modo in cui si fa una cosa, oltre che alla possibilità di farla: e gli elementi più profondi della loro attrazione o repulsione possono spesso essere trasmessi solo attraverso esempi casuali o immagini improvvise. Quando Danton si difendeva davanti al tribunale giacobino, parlava così forte che la sua voce era udibile dall’altra parte della Senna, in strade lontane sull’altro lato del fiume. Doveva aver ruggito come un toro di Basan. Eppure nessuno di noi penserebbe a quel prodigio se non come a qualcosa di poetico e appropriato. Nessuno di noi sentirebbe istintivamente che Danton fosse meno uomo, o addirittura meno gentiluomo, per aver parlato così in un’ora del genere. Ma supponiamo che avessimo saputo che Maria Antonietta, quando fu processata davanti allo stesso tribunale, aveva ululato tanto da essere udita fino al Faubourg St. Germain: beh, lo lascio agli istinti, se ne sono rimasti. Non è sbagliato urlare. Non è nemmeno giusto. È semplicemente una questione dell’impressione immediata sull’artista e persino sulla parte animale dell’umanità, se il rumore fosse udito all’improvviso come uno sparo.
Forse l’analisi verbale più vicina all’istinto si può trovare nei gesti dell’oratore che si rivolge alla folla. Perché il vero oratore deve sempre essere un demagogo: anche se la massa è una piccola massa, come il comitato francese o la Camera dei Lord inglese. E “demagogo”, nel buon senso greco, non significa colui che compiace il popolo, ma colui che lo guida: e se fate attenzione, vedrete che tutti i gesti istintivi dell’oratoria sono gesti di leadership militare; indicando al popolo un percorso o incitandolo a una avanzata. Notate quella lunga scivolata del braccio attraverso il corpo e verso l’esterno, che i grandi oratori usano naturalmente e gli oratori volgari artificialmente. È quasi lo stesso gesto dell’estrarre una spada.
Il punto non è che le donne siano indegne di votare; non è nemmeno che il voto sia indegno delle donne. È che il voto è indegno degli uomini, finché rimane solo un voto; e non ha in sé nulla di quel militarismo antico della democrazia. L’unica folla con cui vale la pena parlare è quella pronta a andare da qualche parte e fare qualcosa; l’unico demagogo che vale la pena ascoltare è colui che può indicare qualcosa da fare: e, se indica con una spada, la sentirà solo familiare e utile come un dito allungato. Ora, salvo alcune eccezioni mistiche che confermano la regola, questi non sono i gesti, e quindi nemmeno gli istinti, delle donne. Nessun uomo onesto disprezza la donna pubblica. Può solo dispiacergli la donna politica; una cosa del tutto diversa. L’istinto non ha nulla a che fare con il desiderio di tenere le donne velate o prigioniere: se tale desiderio esiste. Un marito sarebbe felice se sua moglie indossasse una corona d’oro e proclamasse leggi da un trono di marmo; o se pronunciasse oracoli dal tripode di una sacerdotessa; o se potesse camminare in mistico maternità davanti alla processione di qualche grande ordine religioso. Ma che lei debba stare su un palco nella stessa altezza in cui sta lui; inclinandosi in avanti un po’ più del dovuto e tenendo la bocca aperta un po’ più a lungo e più larga di quanto sia dignitoso—bene, qui scrivo solo sui fatti della naturale storia; e il fatto è che è questo, e non pubblicità o importanza, a ferire. Spetta al mondo moderno giudicare se tali istinti siano davvero segnali di pericolo; e se il danneggiamento dei nervi morali come di quelli materiali sia un tocsin e un avvertimento della natura.
THE POET AND THE CHEESE
There is something creepy in the flat Eastern Counties; a brush of the white feather. There is a stillness, which is rather of the mind than of the bodily senses. Rapid changes and sudden revelations of scenery, even when they are soundless, have something in them analogous to a movement of music, to a crash or a cry. Mountain hamlets spring out on us with a shout like mountain brigands. Comfortable valleys accept us with open arms and warm words, like comfortable innkeepers. But travelling in the great level lands has a curiously still and lonely quality; lonely even when there are plenty of people on the road and in the market-place. One’s voice seems to break an almost elvish silence, and something unreasonably weird in the phrase of the nursery tales, “And he went a little farther and came to another place,” comes back into the mind.
In some such mood I came along a lean, pale road south of the fens, and found myself in a large, quiet, and seemingly forgotten village. It was one of those places that instantly produce a frame of mind which, it may be, one afterwards decks out with unreal details. I dare say that grass did not really grow in the streets, but I came away with a curious impression that it did. I dare say the marketplace was not literally lonely and without sign of life, but it left the vague impression of being so. The place was large and even loose in design, yet it had the air of something hidden away and always overlooked. It seemed shy, like a big yokel; the low roofs seemed to be ducking behind the hedges and railings; and the chimneys holding their breath. I came into it in that dead hour of the afternoon which is neither after lunch nor before tea, nor anything else even on a half-holiday; and I had a fantastic feeling that I had strayed into a lost and extra hour that is not numbered in the twenty-four.
I entered an inn which stood openly in the market-place yet was almost as private as a private house. Those who talk of “public-houses” as if they were all one problem would have been both puzzled and pleased with such a place. In the front window a stout old lady in black with an elaborate cap sat doing a large piece of needlework. She had a kind of comfortable Puritanism about her; and might have been (perhaps she was) the original Mrs. Grundy. A little more withdrawn into the parlour sat a tall, strong, and serious girl, with a face of beautiful honesty and a pair of scissors stuck in her belt, doing a small piece of needlework. Two feet behind them sat a hulking labourer with a humorous face like wood painted scarlet, with a huge mug of mild beer which he had not touched, and probably would not touch for hours. On the hearthrug there was an equally motionless cat; and on the table a copy of ‘Household Words’.
I was conscious of some atmosphere, still and yet bracing, that I had met somewhere in literature. There was poetry in it as well as piety; and yet it was not poetry after my particular taste. It was somehow at once solid and airy. Then I remembered that it was the atmosphere in some of Wordsworth’s rural poems; which are full of genuine freshness and wonder, and yet are in some incurable way commonplace. This was curious; for Wordsworth’s men were of the rocks and fells, and not of the fenlands or flats. But perhaps it is the clearness of still water and the mirrored skies of meres and pools that produces this crystalline virtue. Perhaps that is why Wordsworth is called a Lake Poet instead of a mountain poet. Perhaps it is the water that does it. Certainly the whole of that town was like a cup of water given at morning.
After a few sentences exchanged at long intervals in the manner of rustic courtesy, I inquired casually what was the name of the town. The old lady answered that its name was Stilton, and composedly continued her needlework. But I had paused with my mug in air, and was gazing at her with a suddenly arrested concern. “I suppose,” I said, “that it has nothing to do with the cheese of that name.” “Oh, yes,” she answered, with a staggering indifference, “they used to make it here.”
I put down my mug with a gravity far greater than her own. “But this place is a Shrine!” I said. “Pilgrims should be pouring into it from wherever the English legend has endured alive. There ought to be a colossal statue in the market-place of the man who invented Stilton cheese. There ought to be another colossal statue of the first cow who provided the foundations of it. There should be a burnished tablet let into the ground on the spot where some courageous man first ate Stilton cheese, and survived. On the top of a neighbouring hill (if there are any neighbouring hills) there should be a huge model of a Stilton cheese, made of some rich green marble and engraven with some haughty motto: I suggest something like ‘Ver non semper viret; sed Stiltonia semper virescit.’” The old lady said, “Yes, sir,” and continued her domestic occupations.
After a strained and emotional silence, I said, “If I take a meal here to-night can you give me any Stilton?”
“No, sir; I’m afraid we haven’t got any Stilton,” said the immovable one, speaking as if it were something thousands of miles away.
“This is awful,” I said: for it seemed to me a strange allegory of England as she is now; this little town that had lost its glory; and forgotten, so to speak, the meaning of its own name. And I thought it yet more symbolic because from all that old and full and virile life, the great cheese was gone; and only the beer remained. And even that will be stolen by the Liberals or adulterated by the Conservatives. Politely disengaging myself, I made my way as quickly as possible to the nearest large, noisy, and nasty town in that neighbourhood, where I sought out the nearest vulgar, tawdry, and avaricious restaurant.
There (after trifling with beef, mutton, puddings, pies, and so on) I got a Stilton cheese. I was so much moved by my memories that I wrote a sonnet to the cheese. Some critical friends have hinted to me that my sonnet is not strictly new; that it contains “echoes” (as they express it) of some other poem that they have read somewhere. Here, at least, are the lines I wrote:-
Stilton, thou shouldst be living at this hour And so thou art. Nor losest grace thereby; England has need of thee, and so have I— She is a Fen. Far as the eye can scour, League after grassy league from Lincoln tower To Stilton in the fields, she is a Fen. Yet this high cheese, by choice of fenland men, Like a tall green volcano rose in power.
Plain living and long drinking are no more, And pure religion reading ‘Household Words’, And sturdy manhood sitting still all day Shrink, like this cheese that crumbles to its core; While my digestion, like the House of Lords, The heaviest burdens on herself doth lay.
I confess I feel myself as if some literary influence, something that has haunted me, were present in this otherwise original poem; but it is hopeless to disentangle it now.
IL POETA E IL FORMAGGIO
C’è qualcosa di inquietante nelle piatte contee orientali; una sfiorata di piuma bianca. Vi è una quiete, che appartiene più alla mente che ai sensi del corpo. I mutamenti rapidi e le rivelazioni improvvise del paesaggio, anche quando sono silenziosi, hanno in sé qualcosa di analogo a un movimento musicale, a un fragore o a un grido. I villaggi montani ci balzano addosso con un urlo, come briganti di montagna. Le valli accoglienti ci ricevono a braccia aperte e con calde parole, come osti premurosi. Ma viaggiare nelle grandi terre pianeggianti ha una qualità curiosamente quieta e solitaria; solitaria persino quando c’è gente in abbondanza sulla strada e nella piazza del mercato. La propria voce sembra rompere un silenzio quasi fatato, e qualcosa di irragionevolmente misterioso nella frase delle fiabe per bambini, «E andò un poco più avanti e giunse in un altro luogo», ritorna alla mente.
In un simile stato d’animo percorsi una strada magra e pallida a sud delle paludi, e mi ritrovai in un villaggio grande, quieto e a quanto pareva dimenticato. Era uno di quei luoghi che producono all’istante uno stato d’animo che, forse, in seguito si adorna di dettagli irreali. Oserei dire che l’erba non cresceva davvero nelle strade, ma ne venni via con la curiosa impressione che così fosse. Oserei dire che la piazza del mercato non era letteralmente solitaria e priva di ogni segno di vita, ma lasciava la vaga impressione di esserlo. Il luogo era ampio e persino sciolto nel disegno, eppure aveva l’aria di qualcosa di nascosto e sempre trascurato. Sembrava timido, come un grosso villano; i tetti bassi parevano abbassarsi dietro le siepi e le ringhiere; e i camini trattenere il fiato. Vi giunsi in quell’ora morta del pomeriggio che non è né dopo il pranzo né prima del tè, né alcunché d’altro, nemmeno in un mezzo giorno di festa; ed ebbi la fantastica sensazione di essermi smarrito in un’ora perduta e sovrannumeraria, che non è contata fra le ventiquattro.
Entrai in una locanda che stava apertamente nella piazza del mercato eppure era quasi privata come una casa privata. Chi parla delle «osterie» come se fossero tutte un solo problema sarebbe stato insieme sconcertato e compiaciuto da un luogo simile. Alla finestra sul davanti una vecchia signora corpulenta, vestita di nero e con un’elaborata cuffia, sedeva intenta a un grosso lavoro di cucito. Aveva in sé una sorta di comodo puritanesimo; e poteva essere stata (forse lo era) l’originale signora Grundy. Un po’ più ritirata nel salottino sedeva una ragazza alta, forte e seria, dal volto di bella onestà e con un paio di forbici infilate alla cintura, intenta a un piccolo lavoro di cucito. Due passi dietro di loro sedeva un manovale corpulento dal volto scherzoso come legno dipinto di scarlatto, con un enorme boccale di birra leggera che non aveva toccato, e che probabilmente non avrebbe toccato per ore. Sul tappeto del focolare c’era un gatto altrettanto immobile; e sul tavolo una copia di ‘Household Words’.
Ero consapevole di una certa atmosfera, quieta eppure tonificante, che avevo incontrato in qualche luogo della letteratura. Vi era poesia oltre che devozione; eppure non era poesia secondo il mio particolare gusto. Era in qualche modo, a un tempo, solida e aerea. Poi ricordai che era l’atmosfera di alcune delle poesie campestri di Wordsworth; che sono piene di genuina freschezza e meraviglia, eppure sono in qualche incurabile modo banali. Ciò era curioso; perché gli uomini di Wordsworth erano delle rocce e delle brughiere, non delle paludi o delle pianure. Ma forse è la limpidezza dell’acqua immobile e i cieli specchiati degli stagni e delle pozze a produrre questa virtù cristallina. Forse è per questo che Wordsworth è chiamato poeta dei laghi anziché poeta delle montagne. Forse è l’acqua a farlo. Certo l’intera cittadina era come una coppa d’acqua offerta al mattino.
Dopo poche frasi scambiate a lunghi intervalli, secondo l’uso della cortesia rustica, chiesi con noncuranza quale fosse il nome della cittadina. La vecchia signora rispose che si chiamava Stilton, e riprese compassata il suo cucito. Ma io mi ero fermato col boccale a mezz’aria, e la fissavo con un’attenzione improvvisamente arrestata. «Suppongo», dissi, «che non abbia nulla a che vedere col formaggio di quel nome.» «Oh, sì», rispose, con sconcertante indifferenza, «un tempo lo facevano qui.»
Posai il boccale con una gravità assai maggiore della sua. «Ma questo luogo è un Santuario!», dissi. «I pellegrini dovrebbero riversarcisi da ovunque la leggenda inglese sia sopravvissuta viva. Dovrebbe esserci una statua colossale, nella piazza del mercato, dell’uomo che inventò il formaggio Stilton. Dovrebbe esserci un’altra statua colossale della prima mucca che ne fornì le fondamenta. Dovrebbe esserci una tavola brunita incastonata nel terreno nel punto in cui qualche uomo coraggioso mangiò per primo il formaggio Stilton, e sopravvisse. In cima a una collina vicina (se vi sono colline vicine) dovrebbe esserci un enorme modello di un formaggio Stilton, fatto di qualche ricco marmo verde e inciso con qualche altero motto: suggerisco qualcosa come ‘Ver non semper viret; sed Stiltonia semper virescit.’» La vecchia signora disse: «Sì, signore», e continuò le sue occupazioni domestiche.
Dopo un teso e commosso silenzio, dissi: «Se prendo un pasto qui questa notte, potete darmi dello Stilton?»
«No, signore; temo che non abbiamo dello Stilton», disse l’imperturbabile, parlando come se si trattasse di qualcosa a migliaia di miglia di distanza.
«È terribile», dissi: perché mi parve una strana allegoria dell’Inghilterra qual è ora; questa cittadina che aveva perduto la sua gloria; e dimenticato, per così dire, il significato del proprio nome. E la trovai ancora più simbolica perché da tutta quella vita antica e piena e virile il grande formaggio era scomparso; e restava solo la birra. E persino quella sarà rubata dai Liberali o adulterata dai Conservatori. Congedandomi con cortesia, mi diressi il più rapidamente possibile verso la più vicina cittadina grande, rumorosa e sgradevole di quelle parti, dove cercai il più vicino ristorante volgare, pacchiano e avaro.
Là (dopo aver trastullato con manzo, montone, budini, torte e via dicendo) ottenni un formaggio Stilton. Fui tanto commosso dai miei ricordi che scrissi un sonetto al formaggio. Alcuni amici critici mi hanno insinuato che il mio sonetto non è propriamente nuovo; che contiene «echi» (come si esprimono loro) di qualche altra poesia che hanno letto da qualche parte. Ecco, almeno, i versi che scrissi:-
SONETTO A UN FORMAGGIO STILTON
Stilton, tu dovresti vivere in quest’ora E così è. Né per questo perdi grazia; l’Inghilterra ha bisogno di te, e anch’io— è una Palude. Fin dove l’occhio spazia, lega dopo verde lega dalla torre di Lincoln a Stilton nei campi, è una Palude. Pure questo alto formaggio, per scelta di uomini palustri, come un alto vulcano verde sorse in potenza.
La vita semplice e il lungo bere non sono più, e la pura religione che legge ‘Household Words’, e la robusta virilità che siede immobile tutto il giorno si ritraggono, come questo formaggio che si sgretola fino al cuore; mentre la mia digestione, come la Camera dei Lord, i fardelli più gravi su di sé va posando.
Confesso di sentire come se qualche influenza letteraria, qualcosa che mi ha perseguitato, fosse presente in questa poesia per il resto originale; ma è ormai disperante districarla.
THE THING
The wind awoke last night with so noble a violence that it was like the war in heaven; and I thought for a moment that the Thing had broken free. For wind never seems like empty air. Wind always sounds full and physical, like the big body of something; and I fancied that the Thing itself was walking gigantic along the great roads between the forests of beech.
Let me explain. The vitality and recurrent victory of Christendom have been due to the power of the Thing to break out from time to time from its enveloping words and symbols. Without this power all civilisations tend to perish under a load of language and ritual. One instance of this we hear much in modern discussion: the separation of the form from the spirit of religion. But we hear too little of numberless other cases of the same stiffening and falsification; we are far too seldom reminded that just as church-going is not religion, so reading and writing are not knowledge, and voting is not self-government. It would be easy to find people in the big cities who can read and write quickly enough to be clerks, but who are actually ignorant of the daily movements of the sun and moon.
The case of self-government is even more curious, especially as one watches it for the first time in a country district. Self-government arose among men (probably among the primitive men, certainly among the ancients) out of an idea which seems now too simple to be understood. The notion of self-government was not (as many modern friends and foes of it seem to think) the notion that the ordinary citizen is to be consulted as one consults an Encyclopaedia. He is not there to be asked a lot of fancy questions, to see how he answers them. He and his fellows are to be, within reasonable human limits, masters of their own lives. They shall decide whether they shall be men of the oar or the wheel, of the spade or the spear. The men of the valley shall settle whether the valley shall be devastated for coal or covered with corn and vines; the men of the town shall decide whether it shall be hoary with thatches or splendid with spires. Of their own nature and instinct they shall gather under a patriarchal chief or debate in a political market-place. And in case the word “man” be misunderstood, I may remark that in this moral atmosphere, this original soul of self-government, the women always have quite as much influence as the men. But in modern England neither the men nor the women have any influence at all. In this primary matter, the moulding of the landscape, the creation of a mode of life, the people are utterly impotent. They stand and stare at imperial and economic processes going on, as they might stare at the Lord Mayor’s Show.
Round about where I live, for instance, two changes are taking place which really affect the land and all things that live on it, whether for good or evil. The first is that the urban civilisation (or whatever it is) is advancing; that the clerks come out in black swarms and the villas advance in red battalions. The other is that the vast estates into which England has long been divided are passing out of the hands of the English gentry into the hands of men who are always upstarts and often actually foreigners.
Now, these are just the sort of things with which self-government was really supposed to grapple. People were supposed to be able to indicate whether they wished to live in town or country, to be represented by a gentleman or a cad. I do not presume to prejudge their decision; perhaps they would prefer the cad; perhaps he is really preferable. I say that the filling of a man’s native sky with smoke or the selling of his roof over his head illustrate the sort of things he ought to have some say in, if he is supposed to be governing himself. But owing to the strange trend of recent society, these enormous earthquakes he has to pass over and treat as private trivialities. In theory the building of a villa is as incidental as the buying of a hat. In reality it is as if all Lancashire were laid waste for deer forests; or as if all Belgium were flooded by the sea. In theory the sale of a squire’s land to a money-lender is a minor and exceptional necessity. In reality it is a thing like a German invasion. Sometimes it is a German invasion.
Upon this helpless populace, gazing at these prodigies and fates, comes round about every five years a thing called a General Election. It is believed by antiquarians to be the remains of some system of self-government; but it consists solely in asking the citizen questions about everything except what he understands. The examination paper of the Election generally consists of some such queries as these: “I. Are the green biscuits eaten by the peasants of Eastern Lithuania in your opinion fit for human food? II. Are the religious professions of the President of the Orange Free State hypocritical or sincere? III. Do you think that the savages in Prusso-Portuguese East Bunyipland are as happy and hygienic as the fortunate savages in Franco-British West Bunyipland? IV. Did the lost Latin Charter said to have been exacted from Henry III reserve the right of the Crown to create peers? V. What do you think of what America thinks of what Mr. Roosevelt thinks of what Sir Eldon Gorst thinks of the state of the Nile? VI. Detect some difference between the two persons in frock-coats placed before you at this election.”
Now, it never was supposed in any natural theory of self-government that the ordinary man in my neighbourhood need answer fantastic questions like these. He is a citizen of South Bucks, not an editor of ‘Notes and Queries’. He would be, I seriously believe, the best judge of whether farmsteads or factory chimneys should adorn his own sky-line, of whether stupid squires or clever usurers should govern his own village. But these are precisely the things which the oligarchs will not allow him to touch with his finger. Instead, they allow him an Imperial destiny and divine mission to alter, under their guidance, all the things that he knows nothing about. The name of self-government is noisy everywhere: the Thing is throttled.
The wind sang and split the sky like thunder all the night through; in scraps of sleep it filled my dreams with the divine discordances of martyrdom and revolt; I heard the horn of Roland and the drums of Napoleon and all the tongues of terror with which the Thing has gone forth: the spirit of our race alive. But when I came down in the morning only a branch or two was broken off the tree in my garden; and none of the great country houses in the neighbourhood were blown down, as would have happened if the Thing had really been abroad.
LA COSA
Il vento si è destato la scorsa notte con una violenza tanto nobile che era come la guerra in cielo; e per un attimo ho pensato che la Cosa si fosse liberata. Perché il vento non sembra mai aria vuota. Il vento suona sempre pieno e fisico, come il grande corpo di qualcosa; e immaginavo che la Cosa stessa camminasse gigantesca lungo le grandi strade tra le foreste di faggi.
Lasciatemi spiegare. La vitalità e la ricorrente vittoria della Cristianità sono dovute al potere della Cosa di irrompere di tempo in tempo fuori dalle parole e dai simboli che la avvolgono. Senza questo potere tutte le civiltà tendono a perire sotto un carico di linguaggio e di rituale. Un esempio di questo lo sentiamo spesso nella discussione moderna: la separazione della forma dallo spirito della religione. Ma sentiamo troppo poco di innumerevoli altri casi dello stesso irrigidimento e falsificazione; troppo di rado ci si rammenta che, così come andare in chiesa non è religione, allo stesso modo il leggere e lo scrivere non sono sapere, e il votare non è auto-governo. Sarebbe facile trovare, nelle grandi città, persone capaci di leggere e scrivere abbastanza in fretta da fare gli impiegati, ma che in realtà ignorano i movimenti quotidiani del sole e della luna.
Il caso dell’auto-governo è ancora più curioso, specie quando lo si osserva per la prima volta in un distretto di campagna. L’auto-governo sorse tra gli uomini (probabilmente tra gli uomini primitivi, certamente tra gli antichi) da un’idea che ora sembra troppo semplice per essere compresa. La nozione di auto-governo non era (come molti amici e nemici moderni sembrano credere) l’idea che il comune cittadino debba essere consultato come si consulta un’Enciclopedia. Non è lì per farsi porre un mucchio di domande stravaganti, per vedere come vi risponde. Egli e i suoi simili devono essere, entro ragionevoli limiti umani, padroni delle proprie vite. Decideranno se essere uomini del remo o della ruota, della vanga o della lancia. Gli uomini della valle stabiliranno se la valle debba essere devastata per il carbone o coperta di grano e di viti; gli uomini della città decideranno se essa debba essere canuta di tetti di paglia o splendida di guglie. Per loro natura e istinto si raccoglieranno sotto un capo patriarcale o dibatteranno in una piazza politica. E nel caso la parola «uomo» sia fraintesa, posso osservare che in questa atmosfera morale, quest’anima originaria dell’auto-governo, le donne hanno sempre altrettanta influenza degli uomini. Ma nell’Inghilterra moderna né gli uomini né le donne hanno alcuna influenza. In questa questione primaria, il plasmare del paesaggio, la creazione di un modo di vita, il popolo è del tutto impotente. Sta a guardare a bocca aperta i processi imperiali ed economici che si svolgono, come potrebbe guardare la sfilata del Lord Mayor.
Nei dintorni di dove abito, per esempio, stanno avvenendo due cambiamenti che davvero toccano la terra e tutte le cose che vi vivono, nel bene o nel male. Il primo è che la civiltà urbana (o qualunque cosa sia) avanza; che gli impiegati escono in neri sciami e le ville avanzano in rossi battaglioni. L’altro è che le vaste tenute in cui l’Inghilterra è stata a lungo divisa stanno passando dalle mani della piccola nobiltà inglese a quelle di uomini che sono sempre arrampicatori sociali e spesso addirittura stranieri.
Ora, queste sono proprio il genere di cose con cui l’auto-governo avrebbe davvero dovuto misurarsi. Ci si aspettava che la gente fosse in grado di indicare se desiderava vivere in città o in campagna, se essere rappresentata da un gentiluomo o da un cafone. Non presumo di pregiudicare la loro decisione; forse preferirebbero il cafone; forse è davvero preferibile. Dico che il riempire di fumo il cielo natio di un uomo o il vendergli il tetto sopra la testa illustrano il genere di cose in cui egli dovrebbe aver voce, se si suppone che governi se stesso. Ma per la strana tendenza della società recente, questi enormi terremoti egli deve lasciarli passare e trattarli come trivialità private. In teoria la costruzione di una villa è accidentale come l’acquisto di un cappello. In realtà è come se tutto il Lancashire fosse devastato per farne foreste da cervi; o come se tutto il Belgio fosse sommerso dal mare. In teoria la vendita della terra di un signorotto a un usuraio è una necessità minore ed eccezionale. In realtà è una cosa come un’invasione tedesca. A volte è un’invasione tedesca.
Su questa popolazione inerme, che contempla questi prodigi e questi destini, cala ogni cinque anni circa una cosa chiamata Elezione Generale. Gli antiquari la credono il residuo di qualche sistema di auto-governo; ma consiste unicamente nel porre al cittadino domande su ogni cosa tranne quella che egli capisce. La prova d’esame dell’Elezione consiste in genere di quesiti di questo tipo: «I. I biscotti verdi mangiati dai contadini della Lituania orientale sono, a vostro avviso, adatti al consumo umano? II. Le professioni religiose del Presidente dello Stato Libero dell’Orange sono ipocrite o sincere? III. Credete che i selvaggi dell’Africa Orientale Prusso-Portoghese siano tanto felici e igienici quanto i fortunati selvaggi dell’Africa Occidentale Franco-Britannica? IV. La perduta Carta latina che si dice fu estorta a Enrico III riservava alla Corona il diritto di creare pari? V. Che ne pensate di ciò che l’America pensa di ciò che il signor Roosevelt pensa di ciò che Sir Eldon Gorst pensa dello stato del Nilo? VI. Individuate una qualche differenza tra le due persone in redingote poste dinanzi a voi in questa elezione.»
Ora, non si è mai supposto, in nessuna teoria naturale dell’auto-governo, che l’uomo comune del mio vicinato dovesse rispondere a domande fantastiche come queste. È un cittadino del South Bucks, non un curatore di ‘Notes and Queries’. Sarebbe, credo seriamente, il miglior giudice di se debbano ornare il suo orizzonte le fattorie o le ciminiere delle fabbriche, di se debbano governare il suo villaggio signorotti stupidi o astuti usurai. Ma queste sono precisamente le cose che gli oligarchi non gli permettono di sfiorare con un dito. Gli concedono invece un destino imperiale e una missione divina di mutare, sotto la loro guida, tutte le cose di cui egli non sa nulla. Il nome di auto-governo risuona ovunque: la Cosa è strozzata.
Il vento cantò e squarciò il cielo come un tuono per tutta la notte; in brandelli di sonno riempì i miei sogni delle divine discordanze del martirio e della rivolta; udii il corno di Orlando e i tamburi di Napoleone e tutte le lingue del terrore con cui la Cosa è andata avanti: lo spirito della nostra stirpe vivo. Ma quando scesi al mattino solo un ramo o due erano stati spezzati dall’albero del mio giardino; e nessuna delle grandi case di campagna dei dintorni era stata abbattuta, come sarebbe accaduto se la Cosa fosse davvero stata in giro.
THE MAN WHO THINKS BACKWARDS
The man who thinks backwards is a very powerful person to-day: indeed, if he is not omnipotent, he is at least omnipresent. It is he who writes nearly all the learned books and articles, especially of the scientific or skeptical sort; all the articles on Eugenics and Social Evolution and Prison Reform and the Higher Criticism and all the rest of it. But especially it is this strange and tortuous being who does most of the writing about female emancipation and the reconsidering of marriage. For the man who thinks backwards is very frequently a woman.
Thinking backwards is not quite easy to define abstractedly; and, perhaps, the simplest method is to take some object, as plain as possible, and from it illustrate the two modes of thought: the right mode in which all real results have been rooted; the wrong mode, which is confusing all our current discussions, especially our discussions about the relations of the sexes. Casting my eye round the room, I notice an object which is often mentioned in the higher and subtler of these debates about the sexes: I mean a poker. I will take a poker and think about it; first forwards and then backwards; and so, perhaps, show what I mean.
The sage desiring to think well and wisely about a poker will begin somewhat as follows: Among the live creatures that crawl about this star the queerest is the thing called Man. This plucked and plumeless bird, comic and forlorn, is the butt of all the philosophies. He is the only naked animal; and this quality, once, it is said, his glory, is now his shame. He has to go outside himself for everything that he wants. He might almost be considered as an absent-minded person who had gone bathing and left his clothes everywhere, so that he has hung his hat upon the beaver and his coat upon the sheep. The rabbit has white warmth for a waistcoat, and the glow-worm has a lantern for a head. But man has no heat in his hide, and the light in his body is darkness; and he must look for light and warmth in the wild, cold universe in which he is cast. This is equally true of his soul and of his body; he is the one creature that has lost his heart as much as he has lost his hide. In a spiritual sense he has taken leave of his senses; and even in a literal sense he has been unable to keep his hair on. And just as this external need of his has lit in his dark brain the dreadful star called religion, so it has lit in his hand the only adequate symbol of it: I mean the red flower called Fire. Fire, the most magic and startling of all material things, is a thing known only to man and the expression of his sublime externalism. It embodies all that is human in his hearths and all that is divine on his altars. It is the most human thing in the world; seen across wastes of marsh or medleys of forest, it is veritably the purple and golden flag of the sons of Eve. But there is about this generous and rejoicing thing an alien and awful quality: the quality of torture. Its presence is life; its touch is death. Therefore, it is always necessary to have an intermediary between ourselves and this dreadful deity; to have a priest to intercede for us with the god of life and death; to send an ambassador to the fire. That priest is the poker. Made of a material more merciless and warlike than the other instruments of domesticity, hammered on the anvil and born itself in the flame, the poker is strong enough to enter the burning fiery furnace, and, like the holy children, not be consumed. In this heroic service it is often battered and twisted, but is the more honourable for it, like any other soldier who has been under fire.
Now all this may sound very fanciful and mystical, but it is the right view of pokers, and no one who takes it will ever go in for any wrong view of pokers, such as using them to beat one’s wife or torture one’s children, or even (though that is more excusable) to make a policeman jump, as the clown does in the pantomime. He who has thus gone back to the beginning, and seen everything as quaint and new, will always see things in their right order, the one depending on the other in degree of purpose and importance: the poker for the fire and the fire for the man and the man for the glory of God.
This is thinking forwards. Now our modern discussions about everything, Imperialism, Socialism, or Votes for Women, are all entangled in an opposite train of thought, which runs as follows:- A modern intellectual comes in and sees a poker. He is a positivist; he will not begin with any dogmas about the nature of man, or any day-dreams about the mystery of fire. He will begin with what he can see, the poker; and the first thing he sees about the poker is that it is crooked. He says, “Poor poker; it’s crooked.” Then he asks how it came to be crooked; and is told that there is a thing in the world (with which his temperament has hitherto left him unacquainted)— a thing called fire. He points out, very kindly and clearly, how silly it is of people, if they want a straight poker, to put it into a chemical combustion which will very probably heat and warp it. “Let us abolish fire,” he says, “and then we shall have perfectly straight pokers. Why should you want a fire at all?” They explain to him that a creature called Man wants a fire, because he has no fur or feathers. He gazes dreamily at the embers for a few seconds, and then shakes his head. “I doubt if such an animal is worth preserving,” he says. “He must eventually go under in the cosmic struggle when pitted against well-armoured and warmly protected species, who have wings and trunks and spires and scales and horns and shaggy hair. If Man cannot live without these luxuries, you had better abolish Man.” At this point, as a rule, the crowd is convinced; it heaves up all its clubs and axes, and abolishes him. At least, one of him.
Before we begin discussing our various new plans for the people’s welfare, let us make a kind of agreement that we will argue in a straightforward way, and not in a tail-foremost way. The typical modern movements may be right; but let them be defended because they are right, not because they are typical modern movements. Let us begin with the actual woman or man in the street, who is cold; like mankind before the finding of fire. Do not let us begin with the end of the last red-hot discussion— like the end of a red hot poker. Imperialism may be right. But if it is right, it is right because England has some divine authority like Israel, or some human authority like Rome; not because we have saddled ourselves with South Africa, and don’t know how to get rid of it. Socialism may be true. But if it is true, it is true because the tribe or the city can really declare all land to be common land, not because Harrod’s Stores exist and the commonwealth must copy them. Female suffrage may be just. But if it is just, it is just because women are women, not because women are sweated workers and white slaves and all sorts of things that they ought never to have been. Let not the Imperialist accept a colony because it is there, nor the Suffragist seize a vote because it is lying about, nor the Socialist buy up an industry merely because it is for sale.
Let us ask ourselves first what we really do want, not what recent legal decisions have told us to want, or recent logical philosophies proved that we must want, or recent social prophecies predicted that we shall some day want. If there must be a British Empire, let it be British, and not, in mere panic, American or Prussian. If there ought to be female suffrage, let it be female, and not a mere imitation as coarse as the male blackguard or as dull as the male clerk. If there is to be Socialism, let it be social; that is, as different as possible from all the big commercial departments of to-day. The really good journeyman tailor does not cut his coat according to his cloth; he asks for more cloth. The really practical statesman does not fit himself to existing conditions, he denounces the conditions as unfit. History is like some deeply planted tree which, though gigantic in girth, tapers away at last into tiny twigs; and we are in the topmost branches. Each of us is trying to bend the tree by a twig: to alter England through a distant colony, or to capture the State through a small State department, or to destroy all voting through a vote. In all such bewilderment he is wise who resists this temptation of trivial triumph or surrender, and happy (in an echo of the Roman poet) who remembers the roots of things.
L’UOMO CHE PENSA A ROVESCIO
L’uomo che pensa a rovescio è una persona molto potente al giorno d’oggi: anzi, se non è onnipotente, è per lo meno onnipresente. È lui che scrive quasi tutti i libri e gli articoli dotti, specie di genere scientifico o scettico; tutti gli articoli sull’Eugenetica e sull’Evoluzione Sociale e sulla riforma delle carceri e sull’Alta Critica e tutto il resto. Ma soprattutto è questo essere strano e tortuoso a fare gran parte degli scritti sull’emancipazione femminile e sul ripensamento del matrimonio. Perché l’uomo che pensa a rovescio è molto spesso una donna.
Pensare a rovescio non è facilissimo da definire in astratto; e, forse, il metodo più semplice è prendere un oggetto, il più ordinario possibile, e da esso illustrare i due modi del pensiero: il modo giusto, in cui si sono radicati tutti i risultati reali; il modo sbagliato, che confonde tutte le nostre discussioni odierne, specialmente quelle sui rapporti fra i sessi. Girando lo sguardo per la stanza, noto un oggetto che è spesso menzionato nelle più alte e sottili di queste dispute sui sessi: intendo un attizzatoio. Prenderò un attizzatoio e ci penserò sopra; prima in avanti e poi a rovescio; e così, forse, mostrerò ciò che intendo.
Il saggio che desidera pensare bene e con senno intorno a un attizzatoio comincerà pressappoco così: Fra le creature vive che strisciano su questo astro, la più bizzarra è quella cosa chiamata Uomo. Questo uccello spennato e implume, comico e derelitto, è il bersaglio di tutte le filosofie. È l’unico animale nudo; e questa qualità, un tempo, si dice, sua gloria, è ora sua vergogna. Deve uscire fuori da sé per tutto ciò di cui ha bisogno. Lo si potrebbe quasi considerare come un distratto che, andato a fare il bagno, avesse lasciato i propri abiti dappertutto, sicché ha appeso il cappello al castoro e la giacca alla pecora. Il coniglio ha un bianco tepore per panciotto, e la lucciola ha una lanterna per testa. Ma l’uomo non ha calore nella pelle, e la luce nel suo corpo è tenebra; ed egli deve cercare luce e calore nel selvaggio, freddo universo in cui è gettato. Questo vale ugualmente per la sua anima e per il suo corpo; è l’unica creatura che ha perduto il cuore tanto quanto ha perduto la pelle. In senso spirituale ha perso il senno; e persino in senso letterale non è riuscito a conservare i capelli. E così come questo suo bisogno esterno ha acceso nel suo cervello oscuro la terribile stella chiamata religione, così ha acceso nella sua mano l’unico simbolo adeguato di essa: intendo il fiore rosso chiamato Fuoco. Il Fuoco, la più magica e sorprendente di tutte le cose materiali, è una cosa nota solo all’uomo e l’espressione del suo sublime esternalismo. Racchiude tutto ciò che è umano nei suoi focolari e tutto ciò che è divino sui suoi altari. È la cosa più umana del mondo; vista attraverso distese di palude o intrichi di foresta, è veramente la bandiera purpurea e dorata dei figli di Eva. Ma in questa cosa generosa ed esultante vi è una qualità estranea e tremenda: la qualità della tortura. La sua presenza è vita; il suo tocco è morte. Perciò è sempre necessario avere un intermediario tra noi e questa terribile divinità; avere un sacerdote che interceda per noi presso il dio della vita e della morte; mandare un ambasciatore al fuoco. Quel sacerdote è l’attizzatoio. Fatto di un materiale più spietato e guerresco degli altri strumenti domestici, martellato sull’incudine e nato esso stesso nella fiamma, l’attizzatoio è abbastanza forte da entrare nella fornace ardente e, come i santi fanciulli, non essere consumato. In questo eroico servizio è spesso ammaccato e ritorto, ma ne è tanto più onorevole, come ogni altro soldato che sia stato sotto il fuoco.
Ora tutto questo può suonare molto fantasioso e mistico, ma è la giusta visione degli attizzatoi, e nessuno che l’adotti cadrà mai in una visione sbagliata degli attizzatoi, come usarli per picchiare la moglie o torturare i figli, o persino (benché ciò sia più scusabile) per far saltare un poliziotto, come fa il pagliaccio nella pantomima. Chi è così tornato all’inizio, e ha visto ogni cosa come strana e nuova, vedrà sempre le cose nel loro giusto ordine, l’una dipendente dall’altra in grado di scopo e importanza: l’attizzatoio per il fuoco e il fuoco per l’uomo e l’uomo per la gloria di Dio.
Questo è pensare in avanti. Ora le nostre moderne discussioni su ogni cosa, Imperialismo, Socialismo, o Voto alle Donne, sono tutte impigliate in un opposto corso di pensiero, che procede così:- Un intellettuale moderno entra e vede un attizzatoio. È un positivista; non vuole cominciare da alcun dogma sulla natura dell’uomo, né da alcuna fantasticheria sul mistero del fuoco. Comincerà da ciò che può vedere, l’attizzatoio; e la prima cosa che nota dell’attizzatoio è che è storto. Dice: «Povero attizzatoio; è storto.» Poi chiede come sia diventato storto; e gli si dice che c’è al mondo una cosa (con cui il suo temperamento finora non l’ha reso familiare)— una cosa chiamata fuoco. Egli fa notare, con molta gentilezza e chiarezza, quanto sia sciocco da parte della gente, se vuole un attizzatoio dritto, metterlo in una combustione chimica che con ogni probabilità lo scalderà e lo deformerà. «Aboliamo il fuoco», dice, «e allora avremo attizzatoi perfettamente dritti. Perché mai dovreste volere un fuoco?» Gli spiegano che una creatura chiamata Uomo vuole un fuoco, perché non ha pelliccia né piume. Egli fissa sognante le braci per qualche secondo, poi scuote il capo. «Dubito che un tale animale valga la pena di essere conservato», dice. «Dovrà alla fine soccombere nella lotta cosmica, se messo contro specie ben corazzate e calorosamente protette, che hanno ali e proboscidi e guglie e squame e corna e ispido pelo. Se l’Uomo non può vivere senza questi lussi, fareste meglio ad abolire l’Uomo.» A questo punto, di regola, la folla è convinta; solleva tutte le sue clave e le sue asce, e lo abolisce. Almeno, uno di lui.
Prima di cominciare a discutere i nostri vari nuovi piani per il benessere del popolo, facciamo una sorta di accordo: che argomenteremo in modo diretto, e non a rovescio. I tipici movimenti moderni possono avere ragione; ma siano difesi perché hanno ragione, non perché sono tipici movimenti moderni. Cominciamo dalla donna o dall’uomo reale per la strada, che ha freddo; come l’umanità prima della scoperta del fuoco. Non cominciamo dalla fine dell’ultima discussione arroventata— come l’estremità di un attizzatoio rovente. L’Imperialismo può avere ragione. Ma se ha ragione, è perché l’Inghilterra ha qualche autorità divina come Israele, o qualche autorità umana come Roma; non perché ci siamo accollati il Sudafrica, e non sappiamo come liberarcene. Il Socialismo può essere vero. Ma se è vero, è perché la tribù o la città può davvero dichiarare tutta la terra terra comune, non perché esistono i magazzini Harrod’s e lo Stato deve copiarli. Il suffragio femminile può essere giusto. Ma se è giusto, è perché le donne sono donne, non perché le donne sono lavoratrici sfruttate e schiave bianche e ogni sorta di cose che non avrebbero mai dovuto essere. Che l’Imperialista non accetti una colonia perché è lì, né il Suffragista afferri un voto perché giace in giro, né il Socialista rilevi un’industria solo perché è in vendita.
Chiediamoci prima che cosa vogliamo davvero, non ciò che recenti decisioni legali ci hanno detto di volere, o recenti filosofie logiche hanno provato che dobbiamo volere, o recenti profezie sociali hanno predetto che un giorno vorremo. Se ci deve essere un Impero Britannico, che sia britannico, e non, per puro panico, americano o prussiano. Se ci deve essere il suffragio femminile, che sia femminile, e non una mera imitazione grossolana come il mascalzone maschio o insulsa come l’impiegato maschio. Se ci deve essere il Socialismo, che sia sociale; cioè, il più diverso possibile da tutti i grandi reparti commerciali di oggi. Il davvero bravo sarto lavorante non taglia la giacca secondo la stoffa; chiede più stoffa. Il davvero pratico uomo di Stato non si adatta alle condizioni esistenti, denuncia le condizioni come inadatte. La Storia è come un albero piantato in profondità che, per quanto gigantesco di circonferenza, si assottiglia infine in minuscoli ramoscelli; e noi siamo sui rami più alti. Ciascuno di noi cerca di piegare l’albero per un ramoscello: di mutare l’Inghilterra attraverso una lontana colonia, o di conquistare lo Stato attraverso un piccolo dicastero statale, o di distruggere ogni voto attraverso un voto. In tutto questo smarrimento è saggio chi resiste a questa tentazione di banale trionfo o resa, e felice (in un’eco del poeta romano) chi ricorda le radici delle cose.
THE NAMELESS MAN
There are only two forms of government the monarchy or personal government, and the republic or impersonal government. England is not a government; England is an anarchy, because there are so many kings. But there is one real advantage (among many real disadvantages) in the method of abstract democracy, and that is this: that under impersonal government politics are so much more personal. In France and America, where the State is an abstraction, political argument is quite full of human details—some might even say of inhuman details. But in England, precisely because we are ruled by personages, these personages do not permit personalities. In England names are honoured, and therefore names are suppressed. But in the republics, in France especially, a man can put his enemies’ names into his article and his own name at the end of it.
This is the essential condition of such candour. If we merely made our anonymous articles more violent, we should be baser than we are now. We should only be arming masked men with daggers instead of cudgels. And I, for one, have always believed in the more general signing of articles, and have signed my own articles on many occasions when, heaven knows, I had little reason to be vain of them. I have heard many arguments for anonymity; but they all seem to amount to the statement that anonymity is safe, which is just what I complain of. In matters of truth the fact that you don’t want to publish something is, nine times out of ten, a proof that you ought to publish it.
But there is one answer to my perpetual plea for a man putting his name to his writing. There is one answer, and there is only one answer, and it is never given. It is that in the modern complexity very often a man’s name is almost as false as his pseudonym. The prominent person to-day is eternally trying to lose a name, and to get a title. For instance, we all read with earnestness and patience the pages of the ‘Daily Mail’, and there are times when we feel moved to cry, “Bring to us the man who thought these strange thoughts! Pursue him, capture him, take great care of him. Bring him back to us tenderly, like some precious bale of silk, that we may look upon the face of the man who desires such things to be printed. Let us know his name; his social and medical pedigree.” But in the modern muddle (it might be said) how little should we gain if those frankly fatuous sheets were indeed subscribed by the man who had inspired them. Suppose that after every article stating that the Premier is a piratical Socialist there were printed the simple word “Northcliffe.” What does that simple word suggest to the simple soul? To my simple soul (uninstructed otherwise) it suggests a lofty and lonely crag somewhere in the wintry seas towards the Orkheys or Norway; and barely clinging to the top of this crag the fortress of some forgotten chieftain. As it happens, of course, I know that the word does not mean this; it means another Fleet Street journalist like myself or only different from myself in so far as he has sought to secure money while I have sought to secure a jolly time.
A title does not now even serve as a distinction: it does not distinguish. A coronet is not merely an extinguisher: it is a hiding-place.
But the really odd thing is this. This false quality in titles does not merely apply to the new and vulgar titles, but to the old and historic titles also. For hundreds of years titles in England have been essentially unmeaning; void of that very weak and very human instinct in which titles originated. In essential nonsense of application there is nothing to choose between Northcliffe and Norfolk. The Duke of Norfolk means (as my exquisite and laborious knowledge of Latin informs me) the Leader of Norfolk. It is idle to talk against representative government or for it. All government is representative government until it begins to decay. Unfortunately (as is also evident) all government begins to decay the instant it begins to govern. All aristocrats were first meant as envoys of democracy; and most envoys of democracy lose no time in becoming aristocrats. By the old essential human notion, the Duke of Norfolk ought simply to be the first or most manifest of Norfolk men.
I see growing and filling out before me the image of an actual Duke of Norfolk. For instance, Norfolk men all make their voices run up very high at the end of a sentence. The Duke of Norfolk’s voice, therefore, ought to end in a perfect shriek. They often (I am told) end sentences with the word “together”; entirely irrespective of its meaning. Thus I shall expect the Duke of Norfolk to say: “I beg to second the motion together”; or “This is a great constitutional question together.” I shall expect him to know much about the Broads and the sluggish rivers above them; to know about the shooting of water-fowl, and not to know too much about anything else. Of mountains he must be wildly and ludicrously ignorant. He must have the freshness of Norfolk; nay, even the flatness of Norfolk. He must remind me of the watery expanses, the great square church towers and the long level sunsets of East England. If he does not do this, I decline to know him.
I need not multiply such cases; the principle applies everywhere. Thus I lose all interest in the Duke of Devonshire unless he can assure me that his soul is filled with that strange warm Puritanism, Puritanism shot with romance, which colours the West Country. He must eat nothing but clotted cream, drink nothing but cider, reading nothing but ‘Lorna Doone’, and be unacquainted with any town larger than Plymouth, which he must regard with some awe, as the Central Babylon of the world. Again, I should expect the Prince of Wales always to be full of the mysticism and dreamy ardour of the Celtic fringe.
Perhaps it may be thought that these demands are a little extreme; and that our fancy is running away with us. Nevertheless, it is not my Duke of Devonshire who is funny; but the real Duke of Devonshire. The point is that the scheme of titles is a misfit throughout: hardly anywhere do we find a modern man whose name and rank represent in any way his type, his locality, or his mode of life. As a mere matter of social comedy, the thing is worth noticing. You will meet a man whose name suggests a gouty admiral, and you will find him exactly like a timid organist: you will hear announced the name of a haughty and almost heathen grande dame, and behold the entrance of a nice, smiling Christian cook. These are light complications of the central fact of the falsification of all names and ranks. Our peers are like a party of mediaeval knights who should have exchanged shields, crests, and pennons. For the present rule seems to be that the Duke of Sussex may lawfully own the whole of Essex; and that the Marquis of Cornwall may own all the hills and valleys so long as they are not Cornish.
The clue to all this tangle is as simple as it is terrible. If England is an aristocracy, England is dying. If this system IS the country, as some say, the country is stiffening into more than the pomp and paralysis of China. It is the final sign of imbecility in a people that it calls cats dogs and describes the sun as the moon— and is very particular about the preciseness of these pseudonyms. To be wrong, and to be carefully wrong, that is the definition of decadence. The disease called aphasia, in which people begin by saying tea when they mean coffee, commonly ends in their silence. Silence of this stiff sort is the chief mark of the powerful parts of modern society. They all seem straining to keep things in rather than to let things out. For the kings of finance speechlessness is counted a way of being strong, though it should rather be counted a way of being sly. By this time the Parliament does not parley any more than the Speaker speaks. Even the newspaper editors and proprietors are more despotic and dangerous by what they do not utter than by what they do. We have all heard the expression “golden silence.” The expression “brazen silence” is the only adequate phrase for our editors. If we wake out of this throttled, gaping, and wordless nightmare, we must awake with a yell. The Revolution that releases England from the fixed falsity of its present position will be not less noisy than other revolutions. It will contain, I fear, a great deal of that rude accomplishment described among little boys as “calling names”; but that will not matter much so long as they are the right names.
L’UOMO SENZA NOME
Vi sono solo due forme di governo: la monarchia, o governo personale, e la repubblica, o governo impersonale. L’Inghilterra non è un governo; l’Inghilterra è un’anarchia, perché vi sono troppi re. Ma c’è un vero vantaggio (fra molti veri svantaggi) nel metodo della democrazia astratta, ed è questo: che sotto un governo impersonale la politica è assai più personale. In Francia e in America, dove lo Stato è un’astrazione, l’argomentazione politica è piena di dettagli umani—alcuni direbbero persino di dettagli disumani. Ma in Inghilterra, proprio perché siamo governati da personaggi, questi personaggi non permettono le personalità. In Inghilterra i nomi sono onorati, e perciò i nomi sono soppressi. Ma nelle repubbliche, in Francia specialmente, un uomo può mettere i nomi dei suoi nemici nel proprio articolo e il proprio nome in fondo ad esso.
Questa è la condizione essenziale di tale franchezza. Se ci limitassimo a rendere più violenti i nostri articoli anonimi, saremmo più vili di quanto siamo ora. Non faremmo che armare uomini mascherati di pugnali invece che di randelli. E io, per parte mia, ho sempre creduto in una più generale firma degli articoli, e ho firmato i miei in molte occasioni in cui, il cielo lo sa, avevo ben poco motivo di esserne fiero. Ho udito molti argomenti a favore dell’anonimato; ma sembrano tutti ridursi all’affermazione che l’anonimato è sicuro, che è appunto ciò di cui mi lamento. In materia di verità il fatto che non si voglia pubblicare qualcosa è, nove volte su dieci, la prova che la si dovrebbe pubblicare.
Ma c’è una risposta alla mia perpetua istanza perché un uomo apponga il proprio nome ai suoi scritti. C’è una risposta, e c’è una sola risposta, e non viene mai data. È che nella complessità moderna assai spesso il nome di un uomo è quasi falso quanto il suo pseudonimo. Il personaggio di spicco d’oggi cerca eternamente di perdere un nome, e di ottenere un titolo. Per esempio, tutti leggiamo con serietà e pazienza le pagine del ‘Daily Mail’, e vi sono momenti in cui ci sentiamo spinti a gridare: «Portateci l’uomo che ha pensato questi strani pensieri! Inseguitelo, catturatelo, abbiatene gran cura. Riportatecelo con tenerezza, come qualche prezioso involto di seta, affinché possiamo contemplare il volto dell’uomo che desidera veder stampate simili cose. Fateci conoscere il suo nome; il suo pedigree sociale e medico.» Ma nella confusione moderna (si potrebbe dire) quanto poco guadagneremmo se quei fogli schiettamente fatui fossero davvero sottoscritti dall’uomo che li ha ispirati. Supponete che dopo ogni articolo in cui si afferma che il Primo Ministro è un piratesco Socialista fosse stampata la semplice parola «Northcliffe». Che cosa suggerisce quella semplice parola all’anima semplice? Alla mia semplice anima (per altro non istruita) suggerisce una rupe alta e solitaria da qualche parte nei mari invernali verso le Orcadi o la Norvegia; e, aggrappata a stento alla cima di questa rupe, la fortezza di qualche dimenticato capoclan. Come accade, naturalmente, io so che la parola non significa questo; significa un altro giornalista di Fleet Street come me, o diverso da me solo in quanto ha cercato di assicurarsi denaro mentre io ho cercato di assicurarmi un bel tempo.
Un titolo non serve più nemmeno come distinzione: non distingue. Una corona nobiliare non è soltanto uno spegnitoio: è un nascondiglio.
Ma la cosa davvero strana è questa. Questa qualità falsa nei titoli non si applica soltanto ai titoli nuovi e volgari, ma anche a quelli antichi e storici. Per centinaia di anni i titoli in Inghilterra sono stati essenzialmente privi di significato; vuoti di quell’ istinto assai debole e assai umano in cui i titoli ebbero origine. In essenziale insensatezza d’applicazione non c’è nulla da scegliere tra Northcliffe e Norfolk. Il Duca di Norfolk significa (come la mia squisita e laboriosa conoscenza del latino m’informa) il Condottiero del Norfolk. È ozioso parlare contro il governo rappresentativo o a suo favore. Ogni governo è governo rappresentativo finché non comincia a decadere. Purtroppo (come pure è evidente) ogni governo comincia a decadere nell’istante in cui comincia a governare. Tutti gli aristocratici furono in origine concepiti come inviati della democrazia; e la maggior parte degli inviati della democrazia non perde tempo nel diventare aristocratica. Secondo l’antica, essenziale nozione umana, il Duca di Norfolk dovrebbe semplicemente essere il primo, o il più manifesto, degli uomini del Norfolk.
Vedo crescere e prender corpo dinanzi a me l’immagine di un vero Duca di Norfolk. Per esempio, gli uomini del Norfolk fanno tutti salire assai in alto la voce alla fine di una frase. La voce del Duca di Norfolk, dunque, dovrebbe terminare in un perfetto strillo. Spesso (mi si dice) concludono le frasi con la parola «insieme»; del tutto a prescindere dal suo significato. Così mi aspetterò che il Duca di Norfolk dica: «Chiedo di appoggiare la mozione insieme»; oppure «Questa è una grande questione costituzionale insieme.» Mi aspetterò che sappia molto delle Broads e dei fiumi lenti che vi stanno sopra; che sappia della caccia agli uccelli acquatici, e che non sappia troppo di ogni altra cosa. Di montagne dev’essere selvaggiamente e ridicolmente ignorante. Deve avere la freschezza del Norfolk; anzi, persino la piattezza del Norfolk. Deve rammentarmi le distese acquose, le grandi torri quadrate delle chiese e i lunghi tramonti piani dell’Inghilterra orientale. Se non fa questo, mi rifiuto di conoscerlo.
Non ho bisogno di moltiplicare simili casi; il principio si applica ovunque. Così perdo ogni interesse per il Duca del Devonshire, a meno che egli non possa assicurarmi che la sua anima è colma di quello strano, caldo puritanesimo, puritanesimo screziato di romanticismo, che colora il West Country. Non deve mangiare altro che panna rappresa, non deve bere altro che sidro, non deve leggere altro che ‘Lorna Doone’, e dev’essere ignaro di ogni città più grande di Plymouth, che deve considerare con un certo timore reverenziale, come la Babilonia Centrale del mondo. E ancora, mi aspetterei che il Principe di Galles fosse sempre colmo del misticismo e del sognante ardore della frangia celtica.
Forse si penserà che queste pretese siano un poco eccessive; e che la nostra fantasia stia prendendo il sopravvento su di noi. Nondimeno, non è il mio Duca del Devonshire a essere buffo; ma il vero Duca del Devonshire. Il punto è che l’intero sistema dei titoli è un abito mal tagliato da cima a fondo: quasi in nessun luogo troviamo un uomo moderno il cui nome e rango rappresentino in qualche modo il suo tipo, la sua località o il suo modo di vita. Anche solo come pura commedia sociale, la cosa merita d’esser notata. Incontrerete un uomo il cui nome suggerisce un ammiraglio gottoso, e lo troverete esattamente simile a un timido organista: udrete annunciare il nome di un’altera e quasi pagana grande dame, ed ecco entrare una simpatica, sorridente cuoca cristiana. Queste sono lievi complicazioni del fatto centrale della falsificazione di tutti i nomi e i ranghi. I nostri pari sono come una brigata di medievali cavalieri che si fossero scambiati scudi, cimieri e pennoni. Perché la regola presente sembra essere che il Duca del Sussex possa lecitamente possedere l’intero Essex; e che il Marchese di Cornovaglia possa possedere tutte le colline e le valli purché non siano cornovagliesi.
La chiave di tutto questo groviglio è tanto semplice quanto terribile. Se l’Inghilterra è un’aristocrazia, l’Inghilterra sta morendo. Se questo sistema È il paese, come alcuni dicono, il paese si sta irrigidendo in qualcosa che va oltre la pompa e la paralisi della Cina. È il segno finale d’imbecillità in un popolo che chiama i gatti cani e descrive il sole come la luna— ed è assai puntiglioso sull’esattezza di questi pseudonimi. Aver torto, e aver torto con cura, ecco la definizione della decadenza. La malattia chiamata afasia, in cui la gente comincia col dire tè quando intende caffè, comunemente finisce nel loro silenzio. Il Silenzio di questa specie rigida è il segno principale delle parti potenti della società moderna. Tutte sembrano sforzarsi di trattenere le cose dentro piuttosto che di lasciarle uscire. Per i re della finanza il mutismo è ritenuto un modo d’essere forti, benché dovrebbe piuttosto essere ritenuto un modo d’essere subdoli. Ormai il Parlamento non parlamenta più di quanto lo Speaker parli. Persino i direttori e i proprietari dei giornali sono più dispotici e pericolosi per ciò che non dicono che per ciò che dicono. Tutti abbiamo udito l’espressione «silenzio d’oro». L’espressione «silenzio di bronzo» è l’unica frase adeguata per i nostri direttori. Se ci destiamo da questo strozzato, spalancato e muto incubo, dovremo destarci con un urlo. La Rivoluzione che libererà l’Inghilterra dalla fissa falsità della sua posizione presente non sarà meno rumorosa delle altre rivoluzioni. Conterrà, temo, una gran dose di quel rude esercizio che tra i ragazzini si chiama «darsi dei nomi»; ma ciò non conterà molto, purché siano i nomi giusti.
THE GARDENER AND THE GUINEA
Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as an English Peasant. Indeed, the type can only exist in community, so much does it depend on co-operation and common laws. One must not think primarily of a French Peasant; any more than of a German Measle. The plural of the word is its proper form; you cannot have a Peasant till you have a peasantry. The essence of the Peasant ideal is equality; and you cannot be equal all by yourself.
Nevertheless, because human nature always craves and half creates the things necessary to its happiness, there are approximations and suggestions of the possibility of such a race even here. The nearest approach I know to the temper of a Peasant in England is that of the country gardener; not, of course, the great scientific gardener attached to the great houses; he is a rich man’s servant like any other. I mean the small jobbing gardener who works for two or three moderate-sized gardens; who works on his own; who sometimes even owns his house; and who frequently owns his tools. This kind of man has really some of the characteristics of the true Peasant—especially the characteristics that people don’t like. He has none of that irresponsible mirth which is the consolation of most poor men in England. The gardener is even disliked sometimes by the owners of the shrubs and flowers; because (like Micaiah) he prophesies not good concerning them, but evil. The English gardener is grim, critical, self-respecting; sometimes even economical. Nor is this (as the reader’s lightning wit will flash back at me) merely because the English gardener is always a Scotch gardener. The type does exist in pure South England blood and speech; I have spoken to the type. I was speaking to the type only the other evening, when a rather odd little incident occurred.
It was one of those wonderful evenings in which the sky was warm and radiant while the earth was still comparatively cold and wet. But it is of the essence of Spring to be unexpected; as in that heroic and hackneyed line about coming “before the swallow dares.” Spring never is Spring unless it comes too soon. And on a day like that one might pray, without any profanity, that Spring might come on earth as it was in heaven. The gardener was gardening. I was not gardening. It is needless to explain the causes of this difference; it would be to tell the tremendous history of two souls. It is needless because there is a more immediate explanation of the case: the gardener and I, if not equal in agreement, were at least equal in difference. It is quite certain that he would not have allowed me to touch the garden if I had gone down on my knees to him. And it is by no means certain that I should have consented to touch the garden if he had gone down on his knees to me. His activity and my idleness, therefore, went on steadily side by side through the long sunset hours.
And all the time I was thinking what a shame it was that he was not sticking his spade into his own garden, instead of mine: he knew about the earth and the underworld of seeds, the resurrection of Spring and the flowers that appear in order like a procession marshalled by a herald. He possessed the garden intellectually and spiritually, while I only possessed it politically. I know more about flowers than coal-owners know about coal; for at least I pay them honour when they are brought above the surface of the earth. I know more about gardens than railway shareholders seem to know about railways: for at least I know that it needs a man to make a garden; a man whose name is Adam. But as I walked on that grass my ignorance overwhelmed me— and yet that phrase is false, because it suggests something like a storm from the sky above. It is truer to say that my ignorance exploded underneath me, like a mine dug long before; and indeed it was dug before the beginning of the ages. Green bombs of bulbs and seeds were bursting underneath me everywhere; and, so far as my knowledge went, they had been laid by a conspirator. I trod quite uneasily on this uprush of the earth; the Spring is always only a fruitful earthquake. With the land all alive under me I began to wonder more and more why this man, who had made the garden, did not own the garden. If I stuck a spade into the ground, I should be astonished at what I found there…and just as I thought this I saw that the gardener was astonished too.
Just as I was wondering why the man who used the spade did not profit by the spade, he brought me something he had found actually in my soil. It was a thin worn gold piece of the Georges, of the sort which are called, I believe, Spade Guineas. Anyhow, a piece of gold.
If you do not see the parable as I saw it just then, I doubt if I can explain it just now. He could make a hundred other round yellow fruits: and this flat yellow one is the only sort that I can make. How it came there I have not a notion—unless Edmund Burke dropped it in his hurry to get back to Butler’s Court. But there it was: this is a cold recital of facts. There may be a whole pirate’s treasure lying under the earth there, for all I know or care; for there is no interest in a treasure without a Treasure Island to sail to. If there is a treasure it will never be found, for I am not interested in wealth beyond the dreams of avarice since I know that avarice has no dreams, but only insomnia. And, for the other party, my gardener would never consent to dig up the garden.
Nevertheless, I was overwhelmed with intellectual emotions when I saw that answer to my question; the question of why the garden did not belong to the gardener. No better epigram could be put in reply than simply putting the Spade Guinea beside the Spade. This was the only underground seed that I could understand. Only by having a little more of that dull, battered yellow substance could I manage to be idle while he was active. I am not altogether idle myself; but the fact remains that the power is in the thin slip of metal we call the Spade Guinea, not in the strong square and curve of metal which we call the Spade. And then I suddenly remembered that as I had found gold on my ground by accident, so richer men in the north and west counties had found coal in their ground, also by accident.
I told the gardener that as he had found the thing he ought to keep it, but that if he cared to sell it to me it could be valued properly, and then sold. He said at first, with characteristic independence, that he would like to keep it. He said it would make a brooch for his wife. But a little later he brought it back to me without explanation. I could not get a ray of light on the reason of his refusal; but he looked lowering and unhappy. Had he some mystical instinct that it is just such accidental and irrational wealth that is the doom of all peasantries? Perhaps he dimly felt that the boy’s pirate tales are true; and that buried treasure is a thing for robbers and not for producers. Perhaps he thought there was a curse on such capital: on the coal of the coal-owners, on the gold of the gold-seekers. Perhaps there is.
IL GIARDINIERE E LA GHINEA
A rigor di termini, non esiste una cosa come il Contadino inglese. Anzi, il tipo può esistere solo in comunità, tanto dipende dalla cooperazione e dalle leggi comuni. Non si deve pensare in primo luogo a un Contadino francese; non più che a un Morbillo tedesco. Il plurale della parola è la sua forma propria; non si può avere un Contadino finché non si ha un contadiname. L’essenza dell’ideale del Contadino è l’uguaglianza; e non si può essere uguali tutti da soli.
Nondimeno, poiché la natura umana sempre brama e a metà crea le cose necessarie alla propria felicità, vi sono approssimazioni e accenni alla possibilità di una simile stirpe persino qui. L’approssimazione più vicina che io conosca al temperamento di un Contadino in Inghilterra è quella del giardiniere di campagna; non, s’intende, il grande scientifico giardiniere legato alle grandi case; costui è il servo di un ricco come ogni altro. Intendo il piccolo giardiniere a giornata che lavora per due o tre giardini di misura moderata; che lavora per conto proprio; che talvolta possiede persino la propria casa; e che spesso possiede i propri attrezzi. Quest’uomo ha davvero alcune delle caratteristiche del vero Contadino—specialmente le caratteristiche che alla gente non piacciono. Non ha nulla di quella spensierata allegria che è la consolazione della maggior parte dei poveri in Inghilterra. Il giardiniere è persino malvisto talvolta dai proprietari degli arbusti e dei fiori; perché (come Michea) profetizza su di loro non il bene, ma il male. Il giardiniere inglese è arcigno, critico, dignitoso; talvolta persino parsimonioso. Né ciò avviene (come l’arguzia fulminea del lettore mi rimbalzerà addosso) solo perché il giardiniere inglese è sempre un giardiniere scozzese. Il tipo esiste anche in puro sangue e in pura parlata dell’Inghilterra meridionale; ho parlato col tipo. Stavo parlando col tipo proprio l’altra sera, quando accadde un piccolo incidente piuttosto singolare.
Era una di quelle serate meravigliose in cui il cielo era caldo e radioso mentre la terra era ancora relativamente fredda e umida. Ma è dell’essenza della Primavera essere inattesa; come in quel eroico e trito verso sul giungere «prima che la rondine osi». La Primavera non è mai Primavera se non giunge troppo presto. E in una giornata così si potrebbe pregare, senza alcuna empietà, che la Primavera venga in terra come è in cielo. Il giardiniere giardinava. Io non giardinavo. È inutile spiegare le cause di questa differenza; sarebbe raccontare la tremenda storia di due anime. È inutile perché c’è una spiegazione più immediata del caso: il giardiniere e io, se non uguali nell’accordo, eravamo almeno uguali nel dissenso. È del tutto certo che egli non mi avrebbe permesso di toccare il giardino neppure se mi fossi messo in ginocchio davanti a lui. E non è affatto certo che io avrei acconsentito a toccare il giardino se egli si fosse messo in ginocchio davanti a me. La sua attività e la mia oziosità, dunque, procedettero costanti fianco a fianco per le lunghe ore del tramonto.
E per tutto il tempo pensavo che peccato fosse che egli non stesse conficcando la vanga nel proprio giardino, invece che nel mio: egli conosceva la terra e il mondo sotterraneo dei semi, la resurrezione della Primavera e i fiori che spuntano in ordine come una processione guidata da un araldo. Egli possedeva il giardino intellettualmente e spiritualmente, mentre io lo possedevo soltanto politicamente. So più cose sui fiori di quante i padroni del carbone ne sappiano sul carbone; perché almeno rendo loro onore quando vengono portati sopra la superficie della terra. So più cose sui giardini di quante gli azionisti delle ferrovie sembrino sapere sulle ferrovie: perché almeno so che ci vuole un uomo per fare un giardino; un uomo il cui nome è Adamo. Ma mentre camminavo su quell’erba la mia ignoranza mi sopraffece— eppure quella frase è falsa, perché suggerisce qualcosa come una tempesta dal cielo lassù. È più vero dire che la mia ignoranza esplose sotto di me, come una mina scavata molto tempo prima; e in verità fu scavata prima dell’inizio delle ere. Verdi bombe di bulbi e di semi scoppiavano sotto di me dappertutto; e, per quanto giungeva la mia conoscenza, erano state deposte da un cospiratore. Camminavo assai a disagio su questo impeto della terra; la Primavera non è mai altro che un fecondo terremoto. Con la terra tutta viva sotto di me cominciai a chiedermi sempre più perché quest’uomo, che aveva fatto il giardino, non possedesse il giardino. Se conficcavo una vanga nel terreno, dovevo stupirmi di ciò che vi trovavo… e proprio mentre pensavo questo vidi che anche il giardiniere era stupito.
Proprio mentre mi domandavo perché l’uomo che usava la vanga non traesse profitto dalla vanga, egli mi portò qualcosa che aveva trovato realmente nel mio suolo. Era una sottile e consunta moneta d’oro dei Giorgi, del tipo che si chiama, credo, Ghinea della Vanga. In ogni caso, un pezzo d’oro.
Se non vedete la parabola come la vidi io in quel momento, dubito di poter spiegarvela ora. Egli può produrre un centinaio di altri rotondi frutti gialli: e questo piatto frutto giallo è l’unica specie che io possa produrre. Come sia finita là non ne ho idea—a meno che Edmund Burke non l’abbia lasciata cadere nella fretta di tornare a Butler’s Court. Ma là stava: questa è una fredda esposizione di fatti. Può esserci un intero tesoro di pirati sotto quella terra, per quel che ne so o me ne importa; perché non c’è alcun interesse in un tesoro senza un’Isola del Tesoro verso cui salpare. Se c’è un tesoro non sarà mai trovato, perché non m’interessa la ricchezza al di là dei sogni dell’avarizia, dacché so che l’avarizia non ha sogni, ma solo insonnia. E, quanto all’altra parte, il mio giardiniere non acconsentirebbe mai a scavare il giardino.
Nondimeno, fui sopraffatto da emozioni intellettuali quando vidi quella risposta alla mia domanda; la domanda del perché il giardino non appartenesse al giardiniere. Nessun epigramma migliore poteva darsi in risposta che semplicemente porre la Ghinea della Vanga accanto alla Vanga. Questo era l’unico sotterraneo seme che io potessi comprendere. Solo avendo un poco più di quella opaca, ammaccata sostanza gialla potevo riuscire a essere ozioso mentre lui era attivo. Non sono del tutto ozioso io stesso; ma resta il fatto che il potere è nella sottile lamina di metallo che chiamiamo Ghinea della Vanga, non nel forte quadrato e nella curva di metallo che chiamiamo Vanga. E allora d’improvviso ricordai che, come io avevo trovato oro nel mio terreno per caso, così più ricchi uomini nelle contee del nord e dell’ovest avevano trovato carbone nel loro terreno, anch’essi per caso.
Dissi al giardiniere che, avendo trovato lui la cosa, doveva tenerla, ma che se gli faceva piacere vendermela, la si poteva far stimare come si deve, e poi vendere. Dapprima disse, con caratteristica indipendenza, che gli sarebbe piaciuto tenerla. Disse che ne avrebbe fatto una spilla per sua moglie. Ma poco dopo me la riportò senza spiegazioni. Non riuscii a strappare un raggio di luce sul motivo del suo rifiuto; ma aveva l’aria cupa e infelice. Aveva forse qualche mistico istinto che è proprio tale accidentale e irrazionale ricchezza la rovina di ogni contadiname? Forse sentiva oscuramente che i racconti di pirati dei ragazzi sono veri; e che il tesoro sepolto è cosa da briganti e non da produttori. Forse pensava che ci fosse una maledizione su un tale capitale: sul carbone dei padroni del carbone, sull’oro dei cercatori d’oro. Forse c’è.
THE VOTER AND THE TWO VOICES
The real evil of our Party System is commonly stated wrong. It was stated wrong by Lord Rosebery, when he said that it prevented the best men from devoting themselves to politics, and that it encouraged a fanatical conflict. I doubt whether the best men ever would devote themselves to politics. The best men devote themselves to pigs and babies and things like that. And as for the fanatical conflict in party politics, I wish there was more of it. The real danger of the two parties with their two policies is that they unduly limit the outlook of the ordinary citizen. They make him barren instead of creative, because he is never allowed to do anything except prefer one existing policy to another. We have not got real Democracy when the decision depends upon the people. We shall have real Democracy when the problem depends upon the people. The ordinary man will decide not only how he will vote, but what he is going to vote about.
It is this which involves some weakness in many current aspirations towards the extension of the suffrage; I mean that, apart from all questions of abstract justice, it is not the smallness or largeness of the suffrage that is at present the difficulty of Democracy. It is not the quantity of voters, but the quality of the thing they are voting about. A certain alternative is put before them by the powerful houses and the highest political class. Two roads are opened to them; but they must go down one or the other. They cannot have what they choose, but only which they choose. To follow the process in practice we may put it thus. The Suffragettes—if one may judge by their frequent ringing of his bell— want to do something to Mr. Asquith. I have no notion what it is. Let us say (for the sake of argument) that they want to paint him green. We will suppose that it is entirely for that simple purpose that they are always seeking to have private interviews with him; it seems as profitable as any other end that I can imagine to such an interview. Now, it is possible that the Government of the day might go in for a positive policy of painting Mr. Asquith green; might give that reform a prominent place in their programme. Then the party in opposition would adopt another policy, not a policy of leaving Mr. Asquith alone (which would be considered dangerously revolutionary), but some alternative course of action, as, for instance, painting him red. Then both sides would fling themselves on the people, they would both cry that the appeal was now to the Caesar of Democracy. A dark and dramatic air of conflict and real crisis would arise on both sides; arrows of satire would fly and swords of eloquence flame. The Greens would say that Socialists and free lovers might well want to paint Mr. Asquith red; they wanted to paint the whole town red. Socialists would indignantly reply that Socialism was the reverse of disorder, and that they only wanted to paint Mr. Asquith red so that he might resemble the red pillar-boxes which typified State control. The Greens would passionately deny the charge so often brought against them by the Reds; they would deny that they wished Mr. Asquith green in order that he might be invisible on the green benches of the Commons, as certain terrified animals take the colour of their environment.
There would be fights in the street perhaps, and abundance of ribbons, flags, and badges, of the two colours. One crowd would sing, “Keep the Red Flag Flying,” and the other, “The Wearing of the Green.” But when the last effort had been made and the last moment come, when two crowds were waiting in the dark outside the public building to hear the declaration of the poll, then both sides alike would say that it was now for democracy to do exactly what it chose. England herself, lifting her head in awful loneliness and liberty, must speak and pronounce judgement. Yet this might not be exactly true. England herself, lifting her head in awful loneliness and liberty, might really wish Mr. Asquith to be pale blue. The democracy of England in the abstract, if it had been allowed to make up a policy for itself, might have desired him to be black with pink spots. It might even have liked him as he is now. But a huge apparatus of wealth, power, and printed matter has made it practically impossible for them to bring home these other proposals, even if they would really prefer them. No candidates will stand in the spotted interest; for candidates commonly have to produce money either from their own pockets or the party’s; and in such circles spots are not worn. No man in the social position of a Cabinet Minister, perhaps, will commit himself to the pale-blue theory of Mr. Asquith; therefore it cannot be a Government measure, therefore it cannot pass.
Nearly all the great newspapers, both pompous and frivolous, will declare dogmatically day after day, until every one half believes it, that red and green are the only two colours in the paint-box. THE OBSERVER will say: “No one who knows the solid framework of politics or the emphatic first principles of an Imperial people can suppose for a moment that there is any possible compromise to be made in such a matter; we must either fulfil our manifest racial destiny and crown the edifice of ages with the august figure of a Green Premier, or we must abandon our heritage, break our promise to the Empire, fling ourselves into final anarchy, and allow the flaming and demoniac image of a Red Premier to hover over our dissolution and our doom.” The DAILY MAIL would say: “There is no halfway house in this matter; it must be green or red. We wish to see every honest Englishman one colour or the other.” And then some funny man in the popular Press would star the sentence with a pun, and say that the DAILY MAIL liked its readers to be green and its paper to be read. But no one would even dare to whisper that there is such a thing as yellow.
For the purposes of pure logic it is clearer to argue with silly examples than with sensible ones: because silly examples are simple. But I could give many grave and concrete cases of the kind of thing to which I refer. In the later part of the Boer War both parties perpetually insisted in every speech and pamphlet that annexation was inevitable and that it was only a question of whether Liberals or Tories should do it. It was not inevitable in the least; it would have been perfectly easy to make peace with the Boers as Christian nations commonly make peace with their conquered enemies. Personally I think that it would have been better for us in the most selfish sense, better for our pocket and prestige, if we had never effected the annexation at all; but that is a matter of opinion. What is plain is that it was not inevitable; it was not, as was said, the only possible course; there were plenty of other courses; there were plenty of other colours in the box. Again, in the discussion about Socialism, it is repeatedly rubbed into the public mind that we must choose between Socialism and some horrible thing that they call Individualism. I don’t know what it means, but it seems to mean that anybody who happens to pull out a plum is to adopt the moral philosophy of the young Horner—and say what a good boy he is for helping himself.
It is calmly assumed that the only two possible types of society are a Collectivist type of society and the present society that exists at this moment and is rather like an animated muck-heap. It is quite unnecessary to say that I should prefer Socialism to the present state of things. I should prefer anarchism to the present state of things. But it is simply not the fact that Collectivism is the only other scheme for a more equal order. A Collectivist has a perfect right to think it the only sound scheme; but it is not the only plausible or possible scheme. We might have peasant proprietorship; we might have the compromise of Henry George; we might have a number of tiny communes; we might have co-operation; we might have Anarchist Communism; we might have a hundred things. I am not saying that any of these are right, though I cannot imagine that any of them could be worse than the present social madhouse, with its top-heavy rich and its tortured poor; but I say that it is an evidence of the stiff and narrow alternative offered to the civic mind, that the civic mind is not, generally speaking, conscious of these other possibilities. The civic mind is not free or alert enough to feel how much it has the world before it. There are at least ten solutions of the Education question, and no one knows which Englishmen really want. For Englishmen are only allowed to vote about the two which are at that moment offered by the Premier and the Leader of the Opposition. There are ten solutions of the drink question; and no one knows which the democracy wants; for the democracy is only allowed to fight about one Licensing Bill at a time.
So that the situation comes to this: The democracy has a right to answer questions, but it has no right to ask them. It is still the political aristocracy that asks the questions. And we shall not be unreasonably cynical if we suppose that the political aristocracy will always be rather careful what questions it asks. And if the dangerous comfort and self-flattery of modern England continues much longer there will be less democratic value in an English election than in a Roman saturnalia of slaves. For the powerful class will choose two courses of action, both of them safe for itself, and then give the democracy the gratification of taking one course or the other. The lord will take two things so much alike that he would not mind choosing from them blindfold— and then for a great jest he will allow the slaves to choose.
L’ELETTORE E LE DUE VOCI
Il vero male del nostro Sistema dei Partiti è comunemente esposto in modo errato. Lo espose in modo errato Lord Rosebery, quando disse che esso impediva ai migliori di dedicarsi alla politica, e che incoraggiava un conflitto fanatico. Dubito che i migliori si sarebbero mai dedicati alla politica. I migliori si dedicano ai maiali e ai bambini e a cose del genere. E quanto al conflitto fanatico nella politica di partito, vorrei che ce ne fosse di più. Il vero pericolo dei due partiti con le loro due politiche è che limitano indebitamente l’orizzonte del cittadino comune. Lo rendono sterile invece che creativo, perché non gli è mai concesso di fare altro che preferire una politica esistente a un’altra. Non abbiamo una vera Democrazia quando la decisione dipende dal popolo. Avremo una vera Democrazia quando il problema dipenderà dal popolo. L’uomo comune deciderà non solo come voterà, ma su che cosa andrà a votare.
È questo che implica una certa debolezza in molte aspirazioni odierne verso l’estensione del suffragio; intendo che, a prescindere da ogni questione di giustizia astratta, non è la piccolezza o la grandezza del suffragio a costituire attualmente la difficoltà della Democrazia. Non è la quantità degli elettori, ma la qualità della cosa su cui votano. Una certa alternativa è posta loro dinanzi dalle casate potenti e dalla più alta classe politica. Due strade sono loro aperte; ma devono percorrere l’una o l’altra. Non possono avere ciò che scelgono, ma solo quale scelgono. Per seguire il processo in pratica, possiamo esprimerlo così. Le Suffragette—se si può giudicare dal loro frequente suonare il suo campanello— vogliono fare qualcosa al signor Asquith. Non ho idea di che cosa. Diciamo (per amor di discussione) che vogliono dipingerlo di verde. Supporremo che sia interamente per quel semplice scopo che esse cercano sempre di avere colloqui privati con lui; mi sembra tanto proficuo quanto ogni altro fine che io possa immaginare per un simile colloquio. Ora, è possibile che il Governo in carica abbracci una politica positiva di dipingere di verde il signor Asquith; che dia a quella riforma un posto di rilievo nel suo programma. Allora il partito all’opposizione adotterebbe un’altra politica, non una politica di lasciar solo il signor Asquith (che sarebbe ritenuta pericolosamente rivoluzionaria), ma qualche linea d’azione alternativa, come, per esempio, dipingerlo di rosso. Allora entrambe le parti si getterebbero sul popolo, entrambe griderebbero che l’appello era ormai al Cesare della Democrazia. Un’aria cupa e drammatica di conflitto e di reale crisi sorgerebbe da entrambe le parti; frecce di satira volerebbero e spade d’eloquenza fiammeggerebbero. I Verdi direbbero che i Socialisti e i liberi amanti potrebbero ben voler dipingere di rosso il signor Asquith; volevano dipingere di rosso l’intera città. I Socialisti replicherebbero indignati che il Socialismo era l’opposto del disordine, e che volevano dipingere di rosso il signor Asquith solo perché rassomigliasse alle rosse cassette postali che simboleggiavano il controllo statale. I Verdi negherebbero appassionatamente l’accusa così spesso mossa loro dai Rossi; negherebbero di voler verde il signor Asquith affinché fosse invisibile sui verdi banchi dei Comuni, come certi impauriti animali assumono il colore del loro ambiente.
Ci sarebbero forse risse per strada, e abbondanza di nastri, bandiere e distintivi dei due colori. Una folla canterebbe «Tenete alta la Rossa Bandiera», e l’altra «L’Indossare del Verde». Ma quando l’ultimo sforzo fosse stato compiuto e giunto l’ultimo momento, quando due folle attendessero nel buio fuori dell’edificio pubblico di udire la proclamazione dello scrutinio, allora entrambe le parti direbbero del pari che spettava ora alla democrazia fare esattamente ciò che scegliesse. L’Inghilterra stessa, levando il capo in tremenda solitudine e libertà, doveva parlare e pronunciare il giudizio. Eppure ciò potrebbe non essere esattamente vero. L’Inghilterra stessa, levando il capo in tremenda solitudine e libertà, potrebbe in realtà desiderare che il signor Asquith fosse azzurro pallido. La democrazia d’Inghilterra, in astratto, se le fosse stato concesso di elaborare una politica per sé, avrebbe potuto desiderarlo nero con macchie rosa. Avrebbe potuto persino apprezzarlo com’è ora. Ma un enorme apparato di ricchezza, potere e carta stampata ha reso praticamente impossibile per loro far valere queste altre proposte, anche se davvero le preferissero. Nessun candidato si presenterà nell’interesse dei pallini; perché i candidati comunemente devono tirar fuori il denaro dalle proprie tasche o da quelle del partito; e in tali ambienti i pallini non si portano. Nessun uomo nella posizione sociale di un Ministro del Gabinetto, forse, s’impegnerà nella teoria dell’azzurro pallido del signor Asquith; perciò non può essere una misura del Governo, perciò non può passare.
Quasi tutti i grandi giornali, tanto pomposi quanto frivoli, dichiareranno dogmaticamente giorno dopo giorno, finché ognuno mezzo lo creda, che il rosso e il verde sono i soli due colori nella scatola dei colori. THE OBSERVER dirà: «Nessuno che conosca la solida ossatura della politica o gli enfatici primi principi di un popolo imperiale può supporre per un istante che vi sia un qualche possibile compromesso da farsi in una simile materia; dobbiamo o adempiere il nostro manifesto destino razziale e coronare l’edificio dei secoli con l’augusta figura di un Premier Verde, oppure dobbiamo abbandonare la nostra eredità, infrangere la nostra promessa all’Impero, gettarci nell’anarchia finale, e lasciare che l’immagine fiammeggiante e demoniaca di un Premier Rosso aleggi sulla nostra dissoluzione e sulla nostra rovina.» Il DAILY MAIL direbbe: «Non c’è alcuna via di mezzo in questa faccenda; dev’essere verde o rosso. Desideriamo vedere ogni onesto inglese dell’uno o dell’altro colore.» E poi qualche buontempone della stampa popolare condirebbe la frase con un gioco di parole, e direbbe che il DAILY MAIL amava che i suoi lettori fossero verdi e la sua carta fosse letta. Ma nessuno oserebbe nemmeno sussurrare che esiste una cosa come il giallo.
Ai fini della pura logica è più chiaro argomentare con sciocchi esempi che con esempi sensati: perché gli esempi sciocchi sono semplici. Ma potrei addurre molti gravi e concreti casi del genere di cosa cui mi riferisco. Nell’ultima parte della Guerra Boera entrambi i partiti insistevano perpetuamente in ogni discorso e opuscolo che l’annessione era inevitabile e che era solo questione di se dovessero compierla i Liberali o i Tory. Non era affatto inevitabile; sarebbe stato perfettamente facile fare la pace con i Boeri come le nazioni cristiane fanno comunemente la pace con i nemici vinti. Personalmente ritengo che sarebbe stato meglio per noi nel senso più egoistico, meglio per la nostra tasca e il nostro prestigio, se non avessimo mai effettuato l’annessione; ma questa è una questione d’opinione. Ciò che è chiaro è che non era inevitabile; non era, come si diceva, l’unica via possibile; c’erano moltissime altre vie; c’erano moltissimi altri colori nella scatola. Di nuovo, nella discussione sul Socialismo, si ribadisce ripetutamente nella mente del pubblico che dobbiamo scegliere tra il Socialismo e qualche orribile cosa che chiamano Individualismo. Non so che cosa significhi, ma sembra significare che chiunque per caso estragga una prugna debba adottare la filosofia morale del giovane Horner—e dire che bravo bambino è a servirsi da sé.
Si assume con calma che i soli due tipi possibili di società siano un tipo Collettivista di società e la presente società che esiste in questo momento ed è piuttosto simile a un letamaio animato. È del tutto superfluo dire che io preferirei il Socialismo al presente stato di cose. Preferirei l’anarchismo al presente stato di cose. Ma semplicemente non è vero che il Collettivismo sia l’unico altro schema per un ordine più equo. Un Collettivista ha pieno diritto di ritenerlo l’unico schema valido; ma non è l’unico schema plausibile o possibile. Potremmo avere la proprietà contadina; potremmo avere il compromesso di Henry George; potremmo avere un numero di minuscoli comuni; potremmo avere la cooperazione; potremmo avere il Comunismo Anarchico; potremmo avere un centinaio di cose. Non dico che alcuna di queste sia giusta, benché non riesca a immaginare che alcuna di esse possa essere peggiore del presente manicomio sociale, coi suoi ricchi traballanti di testa e i suoi poveri torturati; ma dico che è una prova della rigida e angusta alternativa offerta alla mente civica, che la mente civica non sia, in genere, consapevole di queste altre possibilità. La mente civica non è libera o desta abbastanza da sentire quanto abbia il mondo dinanzi a sé. Vi sono almeno dieci soluzioni della questione dell’Istruzione, e nessuno sa quale gli inglesi vogliano davvero. Perché gli inglesi sono lasciati votare solo sulle due che in quel momento sono offerte dal Premier e dal Capo dell’Opposizione. Vi sono dieci soluzioni della questione dell’alcol; e nessuno sa quale la democrazia voglia; perché alla democrazia è concesso di battersi solo su una legge sulle licenze per volta.
Cosicché la situazione si riduce a questo: la democrazia ha il diritto di rispondere alle domande, ma non ha il diritto di porle. È ancora l’aristocrazia politica a porre le domande. E non saremo irragionevolmente cinici se supponiamo che l’aristocrazia politica sarà sempre piuttosto attenta a quali domande pone. E se il pericoloso agio e l’auto-adulazione dell’Inghilterra moderna continueranno ancora a lungo, vi sarà meno valore democratico in un’elezione inglese che in un saturnale romano di schiavi. Perché la classe potente sceglierà due linee d’azione, entrambe sicure per sé, e poi darà alla democrazia la gratificazione di prendere l’una o l’altra via. Il signore prenderà due cose tanto simili che non gli importerebbe di sceglierne una a occhi bendati— e poi, per gran scherzo, permetterà agli schiavi di scegliere.
THE MAD OFFICIAL
Going mad is the slowest and dullest business in the world. I have very nearly done it more than once in my boyhood, and so have nearly all my friends, born under the general doom of mortals, but especially of moderns; I mean the doom that makes a man come almost to the end of thinking before he comes to the first chance of living.
But the process of going mad is dull, for the simple reason that a man does not know that it is going on. Routine and literalism and a certain dry-throated earnestness and mental thirst, these are the very atmosphere of morbidity. If once the man could become conscious of his madness, he would cease to be man. He studies certain texts in Daniel or cryptograms in Shakespeare through monstrously magnifying spectacles, which are on his nose night and day. If once he could take off the spectacles he would smash them. He deduces all his fantasies about the Sixth Seal or the Anglo-Saxon Race from one unexamined and invisible first principle. If he could once see the first principle, he would see that it is not there.
This slow and awful self-hypnotism of error is a process that can occur not only with individuals, but also with whole societies. It is hard to pick out and prove; that is why it is hard to cure. But this mental degeneration may be brought to one test, which I truly believe to be a real test. A nation is not going mad when it does extravagant things, so long as it does them in an extravagant spirit. Crusaders not cutting their beards till they found Jerusalem, Jacobins calling each other Harmodius and Epaminondas when their names were Jacques and Jules, these are wild things, but they were done in wild spirits at a wild moment.
But whenever we see things done wildly, but taken tamely, then the State is growing insane. For instance, I have a gun license. For all I know, this would logically allow me to fire off fifty-nine enormous field-guns day and night in my back garden. I should not be surprised at a man doing it; for it would be great fun. But I should be surprised at the neighbours putting up with it, and regarding it as an ordinary thing merely because it might happen to fulfil the letter of my license.
Or, again, I have a dog license; and I may have the right (for all I know) to turn ten thousand wild dogs loose in Buckinghamshire. I should not be surprised if the law were like that; because in modern England there is practically no law to be surprised at. I should not be surprised even at the man who did it; for a certain kind of man, if he lived long under the English landlord system, might do anything. But I should be surprised at the people who consented to stand it. I should, in other words, think the world a little mad if the incident, were received in silence.
Now things every bit as wild as this are being received in silence every day. All strokes slip on the smoothness of a polished wall. All blows fall soundless on the softness of a padded cell. For madness is a passive as well as an active state: it is a paralysis, a refusal of the nerves to respond to the normal stimuli, as well as an unnatural stimulation. There are commonwealths, plainly to be distinguished here and there in history, which pass from prosperity to squalor, or from glory to insignificance, or from freedom to slavery, not only in silence, but with serenity. The face still smiles while the limbs, literally and loathsomely, are dropping from the body. These are peoples that have lost the power of astonishment at their own actions. When they give birth to a fantastic fashion or a foolish law, they do not start or stare at the monster they have brought forth. They have grown used to their own unreason; chaos is their cosmos; and the whirlwind is the breath of their nostrils. These nations are really in danger of going off their heads en masse; of becoming one vast vision of imbecility, with toppling cities and crazy country-sides, all dotted with industrious lunatics. One of these countries is modern England.
Now here is an actual instance, a small case of how our social conscience really works: tame in spirit, wild in result, blank in realisation; a thing without the light of mind in it. I take this paragraph from a daily paper:- “At Epping, yesterday, Thomas Woolbourne, a Lambourne labourer, and his wife were summoned for neglecting their five children. Dr. Alpin said he was invited by the inspector of the N.S.P.C.C. to visit defendants’ cottage. Both the cottage and the children were dirty. The children looked exceedingly well in health, but the conditions would be serious in case of illness. Defendants were stated to be sober. The man was discharged. The woman, who said she was hampered by the cottage having no water supply and that she was ill, was sentenced to six weeks’ imprisonment. The sentence caused surprise, and the woman was removed crying, ‘Lord save me!’”
I know no name for this but Chinese. It calls up the mental picture of some archaic and changeless Eastern Court, in which men with dried faces and stiff ceremonial costumes perform some atrocious cruelty to the accompaniment of formal proverbs and sentences of which the very meaning has been forgotten. In both cases the only thing in the whole farrago that can be called real is the wrong. If we apply the lightest touch of reason to the whole Epping prosecution it dissolves into nothing.
I here challenge any person in his five wits to tell me what that woman was sent to prison for. Either it was for being poor, or it was for being ill. Nobody could suggest, nobody will suggest, nobody, as a matter of fact, did suggest, that she had committed any other crime. The doctor was called in by a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. Was this woman guilty of cruelty to children? Not in the least. Did the doctor say she was guilty of cruelty to children? Not in the least. Was these any evidence even remotely bearing on the sin of cruelty? Not a rap. The worse that the doctor could work himself up to saying was that though the children were “exceedingly” well, the conditions would be serious in case of illness. If the doctor will tell me any conditions that would be comic in case of illness, I shall attach more weight to his argument.
Now this is the worst effect of modern worry. The mad doctor has gone mad. He is literally and practically mad; and still he is quite literally and practically a doctor. The only question is the old one, Quis docebit ipsum doctorem? Now cruelty to children is an utterly unnatural thing; instinctively accursed of earth and heaven. But neglect of children is a natural thing; like neglect of any other duty, it is a mere difference of degree that divides extending arms and legs in calisthenics and extending them on the rack. It is a mere difference of degree that separates any operation from any torture. The thumb-screw can easily be called Manicure. Being pulled about by wild horses can easily be called Massage. The modern problem is not so much what people will endure as what they will not endure. But I fear I interrupt… The boiling oil is boiling; and the Tenth Mandarin is already reciting the “Seventeen Serious Principles and the Fifty-three Virtues of the Sacred Emperor.”
IL FUNZIONARIO PAZZO
Impazzire è la faccenda più lenta e più tediosa del mondo. C’è mancato assai poco che lo facessi più d’una volta nella mia fanciullezza, e altrettanto è accaduto a quasi tutti i miei amici, nati sotto la generale condanna dei mortali, ma specialmente dei moderni; intendo la condanna che fa sì che un uomo giunga quasi alla fine del pensare prima di giungere alla prima occasione di vivere.
Ma il processo dell’impazzire è tedioso, per la semplice ragione che un uomo non sa che sta avvenendo. La routine e il letteralismo e una certa arida, gutturale serietà e sete mentale, questi sono la vera atmosfera della morbosità. Se una volta l’uomo potesse diventare consapevole della propria follia, cesserebbe d’essere uomo. Egli studia certi testi in Daniele o certi crittogrammi in Shakespeare attraverso mostruosamente ingrandenti occhiali, che porta sul naso notte e giorno. Se una volta potesse togliersi gli occhiali, li fracasserebbe. Deduce tutte le sue fantasie sul Sesto Sigillo o sulla Razza Anglosassone da un unico, inesaminato e invisibile primo principio. Se una volta potesse vedere il primo principio, vedrebbe che non c’è.
Questa lenta e tremenda auto-ipnosi dell’errore è un processo che può avvenire non solo con gli individui, ma anche con intere società. È difficile individuarla e dimostrarla; per questo è difficile guarirla. Ma questa degenerazione mentale può essere sottoposta a una prova, che io davvero credo sia una prova reale. Una nazione non sta impazzendo quando fa cose stravaganti, purché le faccia in uno spirito stravagante. I Crociati che non si tagliavano la barba finché non avessero trovato Gerusalemme, i Giacobini che si chiamavano l’un l’altro Armodio ed Epaminonda quando i loro nomi erano Jacques e Jules, queste sono cose folli, ma erano compiute in folli spiriti, in un folle momento.
Ma ogni volta che vediamo cose fatte follemente, ma prese mansuetamente, allora lo Stato sta impazzendo. Per esempio, io ho una licenza per armi. Per quel che ne so, essa dovrebbe logicamente permettermi di sparare cinquantanove enormi cannoni da campo notte e giorno nel mio giardino sul retro. Non mi stupirei di un uomo che lo facesse; perché sarebbe un gran spasso. Ma mi stupirei che i vicini lo tollerassero, e lo considerassero una cosa ordinaria solo perché per caso potrebbe adempiere alla lettera della mia licenza.
O, di nuovo, io ho una licenza per cani; e posso avere il diritto (per quel che ne so) di sguinzagliare diecimila cani selvaggi nel Buckinghamshire. Non mi stupirei se la legge fosse così; perché nell’Inghilterra moderna non c’è praticamente legge di cui stupirsi. Non mi stupirei nemmeno dell’uomo che lo facesse; perché un certo tipo d’uomo, se vivesse a lungo sotto il sistema dei proprietari terrieri inglesi, potrebbe fare qualsiasi cosa. Ma mi stupirei della gente che acconsentisse a sopportarlo. In altre parole, riterrei il mondo un poco pazzo se l’episodio fosse accolto in silenzio.
Ora cose ogni po’ folli quanto questa vengono accolte in silenzio ogni giorno. Tutti i colpi scivolano sulla levigatezza di un muro lucidato. Tutte le percosse cadono senza suono sulla morbidezza di una cella imbottita. Perché la follia è uno stato passivo oltre che attivo: è una paralisi, un rifiuto dei nervi di rispondere ai normali stimoli, oltre che una stimolazione innaturale. Vi sono comunità, chiaramente distinguibili qua e là nella storia, che passano dalla prosperità allo squallore, o dalla gloria all’insignificanza, o dalla libertà alla schiavitù, non solo in silenzio, ma con serenità. Il volto ancora sorride mentre le membra, letteralmente e ripugnantemente, cadono dal corpo. Questi sono popoli che hanno perduto il potere di stupirsi delle proprie azioni. Quando danno alla luce una moda fantastica o una legge sciocca, non trasaliscono né fissano il mostro che hanno partorito. Si sono abituati alla propria irragionevolezza; il caos è il loro cosmo; e il turbine è il respiro delle loro narici. Queste nazioni corrono davvero il rischio di perdere la testa in massa; di diventare un’unica vasta visione d’imbecillità, con città che crollano e campagne folli, tutte punteggiate di industriosi lunatici. Uno di questi paesi è l’Inghilterra moderna.
Ora ecco un caso concreto, un piccolo esempio di come la nostra sociale coscienza realmente funzioni: mansueta nello spirito, folle nel risultato, vuota nella consapevolezza; una cosa senza la luce della mente in sé. Prendo questo trafiletto da un quotidiano:- «A Epping, ieri, Thomas Woolbourne, un bracciante di Lambourne, e sua moglie sono stati citati in giudizio per aver trascurato i loro cinque figli. Il dottor Alpin ha dichiarato di essere stato invitato dall’ispettore della N.S.P.C.C. a visitare la casa degli imputati. Tanto la casa quanto i bambini erano sporchi. I bambini apparivano eccezionalmente bene in salute, ma le condizioni sarebbero gravi in caso di malattia. Gli imputati sono risultati sobri. L’uomo è stato prosciolto. La donna, che ha detto di essere ostacolata dal fatto che la casa non aveva alcuna fornitura d’acqua e di essere malata, è stata condannata a sei settimane di reclusione. La sentenza ha suscitato sorpresa, e la donna è stata portata via piangendo: ‘Signore, salvami!’»
Non conosco altro nome per questo se non cinese. Evoca l’immagine mentale di qualche arcaica e immutabile Corte orientale, in cui uomini dai volti disseccati e dai rigidi costumi cerimoniali compiono qualche atroce crudeltà all’accompagnamento di formali proverbi e sentenze di cui il significato stesso è stato dimenticato. In entrambi i casi l’unica cosa in tutto il guazzabuglio che possa dirsi reale è il torto. Se applichiamo il più lieve tocco di ragione all’intero processo di Epping, esso si dissolve nel nulla.
Sfido qui chiunque sia in possesso dei suoi cinque sensi a dirmi per che cosa quella donna sia stata mandata in prigione. O era per essere povera, o era per essere malata. Nessuno potrebbe suggerire, nessuno suggerirà, nessuno, di fatto, ha suggerito, che ella avesse commesso alcun altro delitto. Il dottore fu chiamato da una Società per la Prevenzione della Crudeltà verso i Fanciulli. Era colpevole questa donna di crudeltà verso i fanciulli? Niente affatto. Disse il dottore che ella era colpevole di crudeltà verso i fanciulli? Niente affatto. C’era qualche prova anche solo remotamente attinente al peccato di crudeltà? Neanche l’ombra. Il peggio a cui il dottore riuscì a spingersi fu dire che, benché i bambini stessero «eccezionalmente» bene, le condizioni sarebbero gravi in caso di malattia. Se il dottore vorrà indicarmi delle condizioni che sarebbero comiche in caso di malattia, darò maggior peso al suo argomento.
Ora questo è il peggiore effetto dell’affanno moderno. Il medico dei pazzi è impazzito. È letteralmente e praticamente pazzo; eppure è ancora, del tutto letteralmente e praticamente, un medico. L’unica domanda è quella antica: Quis docebit ipsum doctorem? Ora la crudeltà verso i fanciulli è una cosa del tutto innaturale; istintivamente maledetta dalla terra e dal cielo. Ma la trascuratezza dei fanciulli è una cosa naturale; come la trascuratezza di ogni altro dovere, è una mera differenza di grado quella che divide il distendere braccia e gambe nella ginnastica dal distenderle sulla ruota della tortura. È una mera differenza di grado quella che separa una qualsiasi operazione da una qualsiasi tortura. Lo schiacciapollici può facilmente chiamarsi Manicure. L’essere trascinati qua e là da cavalli selvaggi può facilmente chiamarsi Massaggio. Il moderno problema non è tanto ciò che la gente sopporterà quanto ciò che non sopporterà. Ma temo d’interrompere… L’olio bollente bolle; e il Decimo Mandarino sta già recitando i «Diciassette Seri Principi e le Cinquantatré Virtù del Sacro Imperatore.»
THE ENCHANTED MAN
When I arrived to see the performance of the Buckinghamshire Players, who acted Miss Gertrude Robins’s POT LUCK at Naphill a short time ago, it is the distressing, if scarcely surprising, truth that I entered very late. This would have mattered little, I hope, to any one, but that late comers had to be forced into front seats. For a real popular English audience always insists on crowding in the back part of the hall; and (as I have found in many an election) will endure the most unendurable taunts rather than come forward. The English are a modest people; that is why they are entirely ruled and run by the few of them that happen to be immodest. In theatrical affairs the fact is strangely notable; and in most playhouses we find the bored people in front and the eager people behind.
As far as the performance went I was quite the reverse of a bored person; but I may have been a boring person, especially as I was thus required to sit in the seats of the scornful. It will be a happy day in the dramatic world when all ladies have to take off their hats and all critics have to take off their heads. The people behind will have a chance then. And as it happens, in this case, I had not so much taken off my head as lost it. I had lost it on the road; on that strange journey that was the cause of my coming in late. I have a troubled recollection of having seen a very good play and made a very bad speech; I have a cloudy recollection of talking to all sorts of nice people afterwards, but talking to them jerkily and with half a head, as a man talks when he has one eye on a clock.
And the truth is that I had one eye on an ancient and timeless clock, hung uselessly in heaven; whose very name has passed into a figure for such bemused folly. In the true sense of an ancient phrase, I was moonstruck. A lunar landscape a scene of winter moonlight had inexplicably got in between me and all other scenes. If any one had asked me I could not have said what it was; I cannot say now. Nothing had occurred to me; except the breakdown of a hired motor on the ridge of a hill. It was not an adventure; it was a vision.
I had started in wintry twilight from my own door; and hired a small car that found its way across the hills towards Naphill. But as night blackened and frost brightened and hardened it I found the way increasingly difficult; especially as the way was an incessant ascent. Whenever we topped a road like a staircase it was only to turn into a yet steeper road like a ladder.
At last, when I began to fancy that I was spirally climbing the Tower of Babel in a dream, I was brought to fact by alarming noises, stoppage, and the driver saying that “it couldn’t be done.” I got out of the car and suddenly forgot that I had ever been in it.
From the edge of that abrupt steep I saw something indescribable, which I am now going to describe. When Mr. Joseph Chamberlain delivered his great patriotic speech on the inferiority of England to the Dutch parts of South Africa, he made use of the expression “the illimitable veldt.” The word “veldt” is Dutch, and the word “illimitable” is Double Dutch. But the meditative statesman probably meant that the new plains gave him a sense of largeness and dreariness which he had never found in England. Well, if he never found it in England it was because he never looked for it in England. In England there is an illimitable number of illimitable veldts. I saw six or seven separate eternities in cresting as many different hills. One cannot find anything more infinite than a finite horizon, free and lonely and innocent. The Dutch veldt may be a little more desolate than Birmingham. But I am sure it is not so desolate as that English hill was, almost within a cannon-shot of High Wycombe.
I looked across a vast and voiceless valley straight at the moon, as if at a round mirror. It may have been the blue moon of the proverb; for on that freezing night the very moon seemed blue with cold. A deathly frost fastened every branch and blade to its place. The sinking and softening forests, powdered with a gray frost, fell away underneath me into an abyss which seemed unfathomable. One fancied the world was soundless only because it was bottomless: it seemed as if all songs and cries had been swallowed in some unresisting stillness under the roots of the hills. I could fancy that if I shouted there would be no echo; that if I hurled huge stones there would be no noise of reply. A dumb devil had bewitched the landscape: but that again does not express the best or worst of it. All those hoary and frosted forests expressed something so inhuman that it has no human name. A horror of unconsciousness lay on them; that is the nearest phrase I know. It was as if one were looking at the back of the world; and the world did not know it. I had taken the universe in the rear. I was behind the scenes. I was eavesdropping upon an unconscious creation.
I shall not express what the place expressed. I am not even sure that it is a thing that ought to be expressed. There was something heathen about its union of beauty and death; sorrow seemed to glitter, as it does in some of the great pagan poems. I understood one of the thousand poetical phrases of the populace, “a God-forsaken place.” Yet something was present there; and I could not yet find the key to my fixed impression. Then suddenly I remembered the right word. It was an enchanted place. It had been put to sleep. In a flash I remembered all the fairy-tales about princes turned to marble and princesses changed to snow. We were in a land where none could strive or cry out; a white nightmare. The moon looked at me across the valley like the enormous eye of a hypnotist; the one white eye of the world.
There was never a better play than POT LUCK; for it tells a tale with a point and a tale that might happen any day among English peasants. There were never better actors than the local Buckinghamshire Players: for they were acting their own life with just that rise into exaggeration which is the transition from life to art. But all the time I was mesmerised by the moon; I saw all these men and women as enchanted things. The poacher shot pheasants; the policeman tracked pheasants; the wife hid pheasants; they were all (especially the policeman) as true as death. But there was something more true to death than true to life about it all: the figures were frozen with a magic frost of sleep or fear or custom such as does not cramp the movements of the poor men of other lands. I looked at the poacher and the policeman and the gun; then at the gun and the policeman and the poacher; and I could find no name for the fancy that haunted and escaped me. The poacher believed in the Game Laws as much as the policeman. The poacher’s wife not only believed in the Game Laws, but protected them as well as him. She got a promise from her husband that he would never shoot another pheasant. Whether he kept it I doubt; I fancy he sometimes shot a pheasant even after that. But I am sure he never shot a policeman. For we live in an enchanted land.
L’UOMO INCANTATO
Quando arrivai ad assistere alla rappresentazione dei Buckinghamshire Players, che poco tempo fa recitarono POT LUCK della signorina Gertrude Robins a Naphill, è la penosa, per quanto poco sorprendente, verità che entrai molto in ritardo. Ciò avrebbe avuto poca importanza, lo spero, per chiunque, se non fosse che i ritardatari venivano spinti a forza nelle prime file. Poiché un autentico pubblico popolare inglese insiste sempre per accalcarsi nella parte posteriore della sala; e (come ho constatato in più di una elezione) sopporterà i frizzi più insopportabili piuttosto che farsi avanti. Gli inglesi sono un popolo modesto; ecco perché sono interamente governati e diretti da quei pochi tra loro che per caso sono immodesti. Nelle faccende teatrali il fatto è stranamente evidente; e nella maggior parte dei teatri troviamo la gente annoiata davanti e la gente ansiosa dietro.
Per quanto riguarda la rappresentazione, ero tutt’altro che un uomo annoiato; ma posso essere stato un uomo noioso, tanto più che mi si richiedeva così di sedere sui seggi degli schernitori. Sarà un giorno felice nel mondo del teatro quando tutte le signore dovranno togliersi il cappello e tutti i critici dovranno togliersi la testa. La gente dietro avrà allora una possibilità. E si dà il caso, in questo caso, che io non tanto mi fossi tolto la testa quanto l’avessi perduta. L’avevo perduta per strada; in quello strano viaggio che fu la causa del mio arrivo tardivo. Ho un turbato ricordo di aver visto un’ottima commedia e fatto un pessimo discorso; ho un ricordo nebuloso di aver conversato con ogni sorta di gente simpatica in seguito, ma parlando a scatti e con mezza testa, come parla un uomo che tiene un occhio su un orologio.
E la verità è che tenevo un occhio su un antico e senza tempo orologio, sospeso inutilmente in cielo; il cui nome stesso è passato a designare una tale trasognata follia. Nel senso vero di un’antica espressione, ero stordito dalla luna. Un paesaggio lunare, una scena di chiaro di luna invernale, si era inspiegabilmente frapposto tra me e ogni altra scena. Se qualcuno me lo avesse chiesto, non avrei saputo dire di che si trattasse; non so dirlo neppure ora. Nulla mi era accaduto; salvo il guasto di un’automobile a nolo sul crinale di una collina. Non fu un’avventura; fu una visione.
Ero partito in un crepuscolo invernale dalla mia porta; e avevo noleggiato una piccola vettura che si faceva strada tra le colline verso Naphill. Ma mentre la notte si faceva più nera e il gelo più vivo e indurito, trovai la via sempre più difficile; tanto più che la via era una salita incessante. Ogni volta che superavamo una strada simile a una scalinata, era solo per svoltare in una strada ancora più ripida, simile a una scala a pioli.
Alla fine, quando cominciai a immaginare di salire a spirale la Torre di Babele in un sogno, fui ricondotto alla realtà da rumori allarmanti, dall’arresto, e dall’autista che diceva che “non si poteva fare.” Scesi dalla vettura e a un tratto dimenticai di esservi mai stato.
Dall’orlo di quel ripido dirupo vidi qualcosa di indescrivibile, che ora mi accingo a descrivere. Quando il signor Joseph Chamberlain pronunciò il suo grande discorso patriottico sull’inferiorità dell’Inghilterra rispetto alle regioni olandesi del Sudafrica, si servì dell’espressione “l’illimitato veldt.” La parola “veldt” è olandese, e la parola “illimitato” è arabo per turchi. Ma il meditabondo statista probabilmente intendeva che le nuove pianure gli davano un senso di vastità e desolazione che non aveva mai trovato in Inghilterra. Ebbene, se non lo trovò mai in Inghilterra, fu perché non lo cercò mai in Inghilterra. In Inghilterra c’è un numero illimitato di illimitati veldt. Vidi sei o sette distinte eternità valicando altrettante diverse colline. Non si può trovare nulla di più infinito di un orizzonte finito, libero e solitario e innocente. Il veldt olandese sarà forse un po’ più desolato di Birmingham. Ma sono certo che non è così desolato come lo era quella collina inglese, quasi a un tiro di cannone da High Wycombe.
Guardavo attraverso una valle vasta e silenziosa dritto verso la luna, come verso uno specchio rotondo. Poteva essere la luna blu del proverbio; poiché in quella notte gelida la luna stessa pareva blu dal freddo. Un gelo mortale inchiodava ogni ramo e ogni filo d’erba al suo posto. Le foreste che sprofondavano e s’ammorbidivano, incipriate di un grigio gelo, scendevano sotto di me in un abisso che pareva insondabile. Si immaginava che il mondo fosse silenzioso solo perché era senza fondo: pareva che tutti i canti e le grida fossero stati inghiottiti in una qualche immota quiete sotto le radici delle colline. Potevo immaginare che, se avessi gridato, non ci sarebbe stata eco; che, se avessi scagliato enormi macigni, non ci sarebbe stato alcun rumore di risposta. Un demonio muto aveva stregato il paesaggio: ma anche questo non esprime il meglio o il peggio della cosa. Tutte quelle canute e gelate foreste esprimevano qualcosa di così inumano che non ha nome umano. Un orrore d’incoscienza gravava su di esse; è la frase più prossima che io conosca. Era come se si guardasse il retro del mondo; e il mondo non lo sapesse. Avevo colto l’universo alle spalle. Ero dietro le quinte. Origliavo una creazione inconsapevole.
Non esprimerò ciò che quel luogo esprimeva. Non sono neppure sicuro che sia una cosa che debba essere espressa. C’era qualcosa di pagano nella sua unione di bellezza e morte; il dolore pareva scintillare, come accade in alcuni dei grandi poemi pagani. Compresi una delle mille frasi poetiche del popolo, “un luogo abbandonato da Dio.” Eppure qualcosa era presente là; e non riuscivo ancora a trovare la chiave della mia impressione fissa. Poi a un tratto ricordai la parola giusta. Era un luogo incantato. Era stato messo a dormire. In un lampo ricordai tutte le fiabe sui principi mutati in marmo e le principesse trasformate in neve. Eravamo in una terra dove nessuno poteva lottare o gridare; un bianco incubo. La luna mi guardava attraverso la valle come l’enorme occhio di un ipnotizzatore; l’unico occhio bianco del mondo.
Non ci fu mai commedia migliore di POT LUCK; poiché racconta una storia con un senso e una storia che potrebbe accadere ogni giorno tra i contadini inglesi. Non ci furono mai attori migliori dei Buckinghamshire Players del luogo: poiché recitavano la propria vita con proprio quello slancio nell’esagerazione che è il passaggio dalla vita all’arte. Ma per tutto il tempo ero ipnotizzato dalla luna; vedevo tutti quegli uomini e donne come cose incantate. Il bracconiere sparava ai fagiani; il poliziotto seguiva le tracce dei fagiani; la moglie nascondeva i fagiani; erano tutti (specialmente il poliziotto) veri come la morte. Ma c’era in tutto ciò qualcosa di più fedele alla morte che alla vita: le figure erano irrigidite da un magico gelo di sonno o paura o abitudine, quale non intralcia i movimenti dei poveri uomini di altre terre. Guardai il bracconiere e il poliziotto e il fucile; poi il fucile e il poliziotto e il bracconiere; e non riuscivo a trovare un nome per la fantasia che mi ossessionava e mi sfuggiva. Il bracconiere credeva nelle Leggi sulla Caccia tanto quanto il poliziotto. La moglie del bracconiere non solo credeva nelle Leggi sulla Caccia, ma le proteggeva altrettanto bene che lui. Ottenne dal marito la promessa che non avrebbe mai più sparato a un fagiano. Se la mantenne ne dubito; immagino che talvolta sparasse a un fagiano anche dopo di allora. Ma sono certo che non sparò mai a un poliziotto. Poiché viviamo in una terra incantata.
THE SUN WORSHIPPER
There is a shrewd warning to be given to all people who are in revolt. And in the present state of things, I think all men are revolting in that sense; except a few who are revolting in the other sense. But the warning to Socialists and other revolutionaries is this: that as sure as fate, if they use any argument which is atheistic or materialistic, that argument will always be turned against them at last by the tyrant and the slave. To-day I saw one too common Socialist argument turned Tory, so to speak, in a manner quite startling and insane. I mean that modern doctrine, taught, I believe, by most followers of Karl Marx, which is called the materialist theory of history. The theory is, roughly, this: that all the important things in history are rooted in an economic motive. In short, history is a science; a science of the search for food.
Now I desire, in passing only, to point out that this is not merely untrue, but actually the reverse of the truth. It is putting it too feebly to say that the history of man is not only economic. Man would not have any history if he were only economic. The need for food is certainly universal, so universal that it is not even human. Cows have an economic motive, and apparently (I dare not say what ethereal delicacies may be in a cow) only an economic motive. The cow eats grass anywhere and never eats anything else. In short, the cow does fulfil the materialist theory of history: that is why the cow has no history. “A History of Cows” would be one of the simplest and briefest of standard works. But if some cows thought it wicked to eat long grass and persecuted all who did so; if the cow with the crumpled horn were worshipped by some cows and gored to death by others; if cows began to have obvious moral preferences over and above a desire for grass, then cows would begin to have a history. They would also begin to have a highly unpleasant time, which is perhaps the same thing.
The economic motive is not merely not inside all history; it is actually outside all history. It belongs to Biology or the Science of Life; that is, it concerns things like cows, that are not so very much alive. Men are far too much alive to get into the science of anything; for them we have made the art of history. To say that human actions have depended on economic support is like saying that they have depended on having two legs. It accounts for action, but not for such varied action; it is a condition, but not a motive; it is too universal to be useful. Certainly a soldier wins the Victoria Cross on two legs; he also runs away on two legs. But if our object is to discover whether he will become a V.C. or a coward the most careful inspection of his legs will yield us little or no information. In the same way a man will want food if he is a dreamy romantic tramp, and will want food if he is a toiling and sweating millionaire. A man must be supported on food as he must be supported on legs. But cows (who have no history) are not only furnished more generously in the matter of legs, but can see their food on a much grander and more imaginative scale. A cow can lift up her eyes to the hills and see uplands and peaks of pure food. Yet we never see the horizon broken by crags of cake or happy hills of cheese.
So far the cow (who has no history) seems to have every other advantage. But history—the whole point of history— precisely is that some two-legged soldiers ran away while others, of similar anatomical structure, did not. The whole point of history precisely is: some people (like poets and tramps) chance getting money by disregarding it, while others (such as millionaires) will absolutely lose money for the fun of bothering about it. There would be no history if there were only economic history. All the historical events have been due to the twists and turns given to the economic instinct by forces that were not economic. For instance, this theory traces the French war of Edward III to a quarrel about the French wines. Any one who has even smelt the Middle Ages must feel fifty answers spring to his lips; but in this case one will suffice. There would have been no such war, then, if we all drank water like cows. But when one is a man one enters the world of historic choice. The act of drinking wine is one that requires explanation. So is the act of not drinking wine.
But the capitalist can get much more fun out of the doctrine.
When strikes were splitting England right and left a little while ago, an ingenious writer, humorously describing himself as a Liberal, said that they were entirely due to the hot weather. The suggestion was eagerly taken up by other creatures of the same kind, and I really do not see why it was not carried farther and applied to other lamentable uprisings in history. Thus, it is a remarkable fact that the weather is generally rather warm in Egypt; and this cannot but throw a light on the sudden and mysterious impulse of the Israelites to escape from captivity. The English strikers used some barren republican formula (arid as the definitions of the medieval schoolmen), some academic shibboleth about being free men and not being forced to work except for a wage accepted by them. Just in the same way the Israelites in Egypt employed some dry scholastic quibble about the extreme difficulty of making bricks with nothing to make them of. But whatever fantastic intellectual excuses they may have put forward for their strange and unnatural conduct in walking out when the prison door was open, there can be no doubt that the real cause was the warm weather. Such a climate notoriously also produces delusions and horrible fancies, such as Mr. Kipling describes. And it was while their brains were disordered by the heat that the Jews fancied that they were founding a nation, that they were led by a prophet, and, in short, that they were going to be of some importance in the affairs of the world.
Nor can the historical student fail to note that the French monarchy was pulled down in August; and that August is a month in summer.
In spite of all this, however, I have some little difficulty myself in accepting so simple a form of the Materialist Theory of History (at these words all Marxian Socialists will please bow their heads three times), and I rather think that exceptions might be found to the principle. Yet it is not chiefly such exceptions that embarrass my belief in it.
No; my difficulty is rather in accounting for the strange coincidence by which the shafts of Apollo split us exclusively along certain lines of class and of economics. I cannot understand why all solicitors did not leave off soliciting, all doctors leave off doctoring, all judges leave off judging, all benevolent bankers leave off lending money at high interest, and all rising politicians leave off having nothing to add to what their right honourable friend told the House about eight years ago. The quaint theoretic plea of the workers, that they were striking because they were ill paid, seems to receive a sort of wild and hazy confirmation from the fact that, throughout the hottest weather, judges and other persons who are particularly well paid showed no disposition to strike. I have to fall back therefore on metaphysical fancies of my own; and I continue to believe that the anger of the English poor (to steal a phrase from Sir Thomas Browne) came from something in man that is other than the elements and that owes no homage unto the sun.
When comfortable people come to talking stuff of that sort, it is really time that the comfortable classes made a short summary and confession of what they have really done with the very poor Englishman. The dawn of the mediaeval civilisation found him a serf; which is a different thing from a slave. He had security; although the man belonged to the land rather than the land to the man. He could not be evicted; his rent could not be raised. In practice, it came to something like this: that if the lord rode down his cabbages he had not much chance of redress; but he had the chance of growing more cabbages. He had direct access to the means of production.
Since then the centuries in England have achieved something different; and something which, fortunately, is perfectly easy to state. There is no doubt about what we have done. We have kept the inequality, but we have destroyed the security. The man is not tied to the land, as in serfdom; nor is the land tied to the man, as in a peasantry. The rich man has entered into an absolute ownership of farms and fields; and (in the modern industrial phrase) he has locked out the English people. They can only find an acre to dig or a house to sleep in by accepting such competitive and cruel terms as he chooses to impose.
Well, what would happen then, over the larger parts of the planet, parts inhabited by savages? Savages, of course, would hunt and fish. That retreat for the English poor was perceived; and that retreat was cut off. Game laws were made to extend over districts like the Arctic snows or the Sahara. The rich man had property over animals he had no more dreamed of than a governor of Roman Africa had dreamed of a giraffe. He owned all the birds that passed over his land: he might as well have owned all the clouds that passed over it. If a rabbit ran from Smith’s land to Brown’s land, it belonged to Brown, as if it were his pet dog. The logical answer to this would be simple: Any one stung on Brown’s land ought to be able to prosecute Brown for keeping a dangerous wasp without a muzzle.
Thus the poor man was forced to be a tramp along the roads and to sleep in the open. That retreat was perceived; and that retreat was cut off. A landless man in England can be punished for behaving in the only way that a landless man can behave: for sleeping under a hedge in Surrey or on a seat on the Embankment. His sin is described (with a hideous sense of fun) as that of having no visible means of subsistence.
The last possibility, of course, is that upon which all human beings would fall back if they were sinking in a swamp or impaled on a spike or deserted on an island. It is that of calling out for pity to the passer-by. That retreat was perceived; and that retreat was cut off. A man in England can be sent to prison for asking another man for help in the name of God.
You have done all these things, and by so doing you have forced the poor to serve the rich, and to serve them on the terms of the rich. They have still one weapon left against the extremes of insult and unfairness: that weapon is their numbers and the necessity of those numbers to the working of that vast and slavish machine. And because they still had this last retreat (which we call the Strike), because this retreat was also perceived, there was talk of this retreat being also cut off. Whereupon the workmen became suddenly and violently angry; and struck at your Boards and Committees here, there, and wherever they could. And you opened on them the eyes of owls, and said, “It must be the sunshine.” You could only go on saying, “The sun, the sun.” That was what the man in Ibsen said, when he had lost his wits.
L’ADORATORE DEL SOLE
C’è un avvertimento accorto da dare a tutti coloro che sono in rivolta. E nello stato presente delle cose, penso che tutti gli uomini siano in rivolta in quel senso; eccetto quei pochi che sono rivoltanti nell’altro senso. Ma l’avvertimento ai socialisti e agli altri rivoluzionari è questo: che, sicuro come il destino, se essi useranno un qualsiasi argomento che sia ateo o materialista, quell’argomento sarà sempre rivolto contro di loro alla fine dal tiranno e dallo schiavo. Oggi ho visto un argomento socialista fin troppo comune farsi tory, per così dire, in un modo del tutto sconcertante e folle. Intendo quella dottrina moderna, insegnata, credo, dalla maggior parte dei seguaci di Karl Marx, che è chiamata la teoria materialista della storia. La teoria è, grosso modo, questa: che tutte le cose importanti nella storia affondano le radici in un movente economico. In breve, la storia è una scienza; una scienza della ricerca del cibo.
Ora desidero, solo di sfuggita, far notare che questo non è soltanto falso, ma in realtà l’opposto della verità. È dire troppo debolmente affermare che la storia dell’uomo non è soltanto economica. L’uomo non avrebbe alcuna storia se fosse soltanto economico. Il bisogno di cibo è certamente universale, così universale che non è nemmeno umano. Le mucche hanno un movente economico, e a quanto pare (non oso dire quali eteree delicatezze possano esservi in una mucca) soltanto un movente economico. La mucca mangia l’erba dovunque e non mangia mai nient’altro. In breve, la mucca adempie davvero la teoria materialista della storia: ecco perché la mucca non ha storia. “Una Storia delle Mucche” sarebbe una delle opere di consultazione più semplici e più brevi. Ma se alcune mucche pensassero che sia malvagio mangiare l’erba alta e perseguitassero tutte quelle che lo facevano; se la mucca dal corno storto fosse adorata da alcune mucche e incornata a morte da altre; se le mucche cominciassero ad avere evidenti preferenze morali al di sopra di un desiderio d’erba, allora le mucche comincerebbero ad avere una storia. Comincerebbero anche a passare un tempo assai sgradevole, il che è forse la stessa cosa.
Il movente economico non solo non è dentro tutta la storia; è addirittura fuori da tutta la storia. Appartiene alla Biologia o Scienza della Vita; cioè, riguarda cose come le mucche, che non sono poi così tanto vive. Gli uomini sono fin troppo vivi per entrare nella scienza di alcunché; per loro abbiamo fatto l’arte della storia. Dire che le azioni umane sono dipese dal sostentamento economico è come dire che sono dipese dall’avere due gambe. Ciò spiega l’azione, ma non un’azione così varia; è una condizione, ma non un movente; è troppo universale per essere utile. Certo un soldato conquista la Croce della Victoria su due gambe; ma anche scappa via su due gambe. Ma se il nostro scopo è scoprire se egli diventerà un V.C. o un vigliacco, la più attenta ispezione delle sue gambe ci frutterà poca o nessuna informazione. Allo stesso modo un uomo vorrà cibo se è un sognante e romantico vagabondo, e vorrà cibo se è un milionario affaticato e sudato. Un uomo dev’essere sostenuto dal cibo come dev’essere sostenuto dalle gambe. Ma le mucche (che non hanno storia) non solo sono fornite più generosamente in fatto di gambe, ma possono vedere il loro cibo su una scala assai più grandiosa e più fantasiosa. Una mucca può alzare gli occhi ai monti e vedere altopiani e vette di puro cibo. Eppure noi non vediamo mai l’orizzonte spezzato da rupi di torta o felici colline di formaggio.
Fin qui la mucca (che non ha storia) sembra avere ogni altro vantaggio. Ma la storia—il punto essenziale della storia— è precisamente che alcuni soldati a due gambe scapparono via mentre altri, di analoga struttura anatomica, non lo fecero. Il punto essenziale della storia è precisamente questo: che alcuni (come i poeti e i vagabondi) rischiano di avere denaro trascurandolo, mentre altri (come i milionari) perderanno assolutamente denaro per il gusto di darsi pena a suo riguardo. Non ci sarebbe alcuna storia se ci fosse solo una storia economica. Tutti gli eventi storici sono stati dovuti alle torsioni e ai giri impressi all’istinto economico da forze che non erano economiche. Per esempio, questa teoria fa risalire la guerra francese di Edoardo III a una lite sui vini francesi. Chiunque abbia anche solo annusato il Medioevo deve sentire cinquanta risposte balzargli alle labbra; ma in questo caso una sola basterà. Non ci sarebbe stata allora nessuna guerra simile, se avessimo tutti bevuto acqua come le mucche. Ma quando si è uomini si entra nel mondo della scelta storica. L’atto di bere vino è un atto che richiede spiegazione. E così pure l’atto di non bere vino.
Ma il capitalista può ricavare molto più divertimento da questa dottrina.
Quando gli scioperi laceravano l’Inghilterra a destra e a manca poco tempo fa, un ingegnoso scrittore, che scherzosamente si descriveva come Liberale, disse che essi erano interamente dovuti al caldo. Il suggerimento fu avidamente ripreso da altre creature della stessa specie, e davvero non vedo perché non sia stato spinto oltre e applicato ad altre deplorevoli sollevazioni della storia. Così, è un fatto notevole che il clima sia in genere piuttosto caldo in Egitto; e ciò non può che gettar luce sull’impulso improvviso e misterioso degli Israeliti di sfuggire alla schiavitù. Gli scioperanti inglesi usarono qualche sterile formula repubblicana (arida come le definizioni dei dottori scolastici medievali), qualche accademico shibboleth sull’essere uomini liberi e sul non essere costretti a lavorare se non per un salario da loro accettato. Proprio allo stesso modo gli Israeliti in Egitto adoperavano qualche secco cavillo scolastico sull’estrema difficoltà di fare mattoni senza avere nulla con cui farli. Ma quali che siano state le fantastiche scuse intellettuali che possono aver addotto per la loro strana e innaturale condotta nell’andarsene quando la porta della prigione era aperta, non ci può essere alcun dubbio che la vera causa fosse il caldo. Un tale clima notoriamente produce anche deliri e fantasie orribili, come quelle che descrive il signor Kipling. E fu mentre i loro cervelli erano sconvolti dalla calura che gli Ebrei s’immaginarono di fondare una nazione, di essere guidati da un profeta, e, in breve, di essere destinati ad avere una qualche importanza negli affari del mondo.
Né lo studioso di storia può mancare di notare che la monarchia francese fu abbattuta in agosto; e che agosto è un mese d’estate.
Nonostante tutto ciò, tuttavia, io stesso ho qualche piccola difficoltà ad accettare una forma tanto semplice della Teoria Materialista della Storia (a queste parole tutti i socialisti marxisti abbiano la bontà di chinare il capo tre volte), e sono piuttosto incline a pensare che si potrebbero trovare eccezioni al principio. Eppure non sono soprattutto tali eccezioni a mettere in imbarazzo la mia fede in esso.
No; la mia difficoltà sta piuttosto nello spiegare la strana coincidenza per cui le frecce di Apollo ci scindono esclusivamente lungo certe linee di classe e di economia. Non riesco a capire perché tutti i procuratori non abbiano smesso di procurare, tutti i medici di medicare, tutti i giudici di giudicare, tutti i benevoli banchieri di prestare denaro ad alto interesse, e tutti gli emergenti uomini politici di non avere nulla da aggiungere a ciò che il loro onorevole amico disse alla Camera circa otto anni fa. La bizzarra tesi teorica degli operai, che scioperavano perché erano mal pagati, sembra ricevere una sorta di selvaggia e vaga conferma dal fatto che, durante tutto il tempo più caldo, i giudici e altre persone che sono particolarmente ben pagate non mostrarono alcuna disposizione a scioperare. Devo perciò ripiegare su fantasie metafisiche tutte mie; e continuo a credere che la collera dei poveri inglesi (per rubare una frase a Sir Thomas Browne) provenisse da qualcosa nell’uomo che è altro dagli elementi e che non deve alcun omaggio al sole.
Quando le persone agiate arrivano a dire cose di quel genere, è davvero tempo che le classi agiate facciano un breve riepilogo e una confessione di ciò che hanno realmente fatto del poverissimo inglese. L’alba della civiltà medievale lo trovò servo della gleba; il che è cosa diversa da uno schiavo. Egli aveva sicurezza; sebbene l’uomo appartenesse alla terra piuttosto che la terra all’uomo. Non poteva essere sfrattato; il suo affitto non poteva essere aumentato. In pratica, la cosa si riduceva a qualcosa del genere: che se il signore calpestava i suoi cavoli egli non aveva molte probabilità di rifarsi; ma aveva la possibilità di far crescere altri cavoli. Aveva accesso diretto ai mezzi di produzione.
Da allora i secoli in Inghilterra hanno realizzato qualcosa di diverso; e qualcosa che, per fortuna, è perfettamente facile da enunciare. Non c’è alcun dubbio su ciò che abbiamo fatto. Abbiamo conservato la disuguaglianza, ma abbiamo distrutto la sicurezza. L’uomo non è legato alla terra, come nella servitù della gleba; né la terra è legata all’uomo, come in un contadinato. Il ricco è entrato in un possesso assoluto di fattorie e campi; e (nella moderna frase industriale) ha serrato fuori il popolo inglese. Esso può trovare un acro da coltivare o una casa in cui dormire solo accettando termini competitivi e crudeli quali egli sceglie d’imporre.
Ebbene, che cosa accadrebbe allora, nelle parti più vaste del pianeta, parti abitate da selvaggi? I selvaggi, naturalmente, andrebbero a caccia e a pesca. Quel rifugio per i poveri inglesi fu scorto; e quel rifugio fu tagliato via. Furono fatte leggi sulla caccia per estendersi su distretti come le nevi artiche o il Sahara. Il ricco aveva proprietà su animali che non aveva sognato più di quanto un governatore dell’Africa romana avesse sognato una giraffa. Egli possedeva tutti gli uccelli che passavano sopra la sua terra: tanto varrebbe che possedesse tutte le nuvole che vi passavano sopra. Se un coniglio correva dalla terra di Smith a quella di Brown, apparteneva a Brown, come se fosse il suo cane da compagnia. La risposta logica a ciò sarebbe semplice: chiunque venga punto sulla terra di Brown dovrebbe poter perseguire Brown per aver tenuto una vespa pericolosa senza museruola.
Così il povero fu costretto a essere un vagabondo per le strade e a dormire all’aperto. Quel rifugio fu scorto; e quel rifugio fu tagliato via. Un uomo senza terra in Inghilterra può essere punito per essersi comportato nell’unico modo in cui un uomo senza terra può comportarsi: per aver dormito sotto una siepe nel Surrey o su una panchina dell’Embankment. Il suo peccato è descritto (con un orribile gusto per lo scherzo) come quello di non avere alcun visibile mezzo di sussistenza.
L’ultima possibilità, naturalmente, è quella cui tutti gli esseri umani farebbero ricorso se stessero affondando in una palude o impalati su un aculeo o abbandonati su un’isola. È quella d’invocare pietà al passante. Quel rifugio fu scorto; e quel rifugio fu tagliato via. Un uomo in Inghilterra può essere mandato in prigione per aver chiesto aiuto a un altro uomo nel nome di Dio.
Voi avete fatto tutte queste cose, e così facendo avete costretto i poveri a servire i ricchi, e a servirli ai termini dei ricchi. Essi hanno ancora un’arma rimasta contro gli estremi dell’insulto e dell’iniquità: quell’arma è il loro numero e la necessità di quel numero al funzionamento di quella vasta e servile macchina. E poiché avevano ancora quest’ultimo rifugio (che noi chiamiamo lo Sciopero), poiché anche questo rifugio fu scorto, si parlò di tagliar via anche questo rifugio. Al che gli operai divennero improvvisamente e violentemente adirati; e colpirono i vostri Consigli e Comitati qui, là, e dovunque potessero. E voi apriste su di loro gli occhi delle civette, e diceste: “Dev’essere il sole.” Non sapevate far altro che continuare a dire: “Il sole, il sole.” Era quello che diceva l’uomo di Ibsen, quando aveva perso il senno.
THE WRONG INCENDIARY
I stood looking at the Coronation Procession—I mean the one in Beaconsfield; not the rather elephantine imitation of it which, I believe, had some success in London—and I was seriously impressed. Most of my life is passed in discovering with a deathly surprise that I was quite right. Never before have I realised how right I was in maintaining that the small area expresses the real patriotism: the smaller the field the taller the tower. There were things in our local procession that did not (one might even reverently say, could not) occur in the London procession. One of the most prominent citizens in our procession (for instance) had his face blacked. Another rode on a pony which wore pink and blue trousers. I was not present at the Metropolitan affair, and therefore my assertion is subject to such correction as the eyewitness may always offer to the absentee. But I believe with some firmness that no such features occurred in the London pageant.
But it is not of the local celebration that I would speak, but of something that occurred before it. In the field beyond the end of my garden the materials for a bonfire had been heaped; a hill of every kind of rubbish and refuse and things that nobody wants; broken chairs, dead trees, rags, shavings, newspapers, new religions, in pamphlet form, reports of the Eugenic Congress, and so on. All this refuse, material and mental, it was our purpose to purify and change to holy flame on the day when the King was crowned. The following is an account of the rather strange thing that really happened. I do not know whether it was any sort of symbol; but I narrate it just as it befell.
In the middle of the night I woke up slowly and listened to what I supposed to be the heavy crunching of a cart-wheel along a road of loose stones. Then it grew louder, and I thought somebody was shooting out cartloads of stones; then it seemed as if the shock was breaking big stones into pieces. Then I realised that under this sound there was also a strange, sleepy, almost inaudible roar; and that on top of it every now and then came pigmy pops like a battle of penny pistols. Then I knew what it was. I went to the window; and a great firelight flung across two meadows smote me where I stood. “Oh, my holy aunt,” I thought, “they’ve mistaken the Coronation Day.”
And yet when I eyed the transfigured scene it did not seem exactly like a bonfire or any ritual illumination. It was too chaotic, and too close to the houses of the town. All one side of a cottage was painted pink with the giant brush of flame; the next side, by contrast, was painted as black as tar. Along the front of this ran a blackening rim or rampart edged with a restless red ribbon that danced and doubled and devoured like a scarlet snake; and beyond it was nothing but a deathly fulness of light.
I put on some clothes and went down the road; all the dull or startling noises in that din of burning growing louder and louder as I walked. The heaviest sound was that of an incessant cracking and crunching, as if some giant with teeth of stone was breaking up the bones of the world. I had not yet come within sight of the real heart and habitat of the fire; but the strong red light, like an unnatural midnight sunset, powdered the grayest grass with gold and flushed the few tall trees up to the last fingers of their foliage. Behind them the night was black and cavernous; and one could only trace faintly the ashen horizon beyond the dark and magic Wilton Woods. As I went, a workman on a bicycle shot a rood past me; then staggered from his machine and shouted to me to tell him where the fire was. I answered that I was going to see, but thought it was the cottages by the wood-yard. He said, “My God!” and vanished.
A little farther on I found grass and pavement soaking and flooded, and the red and yellow flames repainted in pools and puddles. Beyond were dim huddles of people and a small distant voice shouting out orders. The fire-engines were at work. I went on among the red reflections, which seemed like subterranean fires; I had a singular sensation of being in a very important dream. Oddly enough, this was increased when I found that most of my friends and neighbours were entangled in the crowd. Only in dreams do we see familiar faces so vividly against a black background of midnight. I was glad to find (for the workman cyclist’s sake) that the fire was not in the houses by the wood-yard, but in the wood-yard itself. There was no fear for human life, and the thing was seemingly accidental; though there were the usual ugly whispers about rivalry and revenge. But for all that I could not shake off my dream-drugged soul a swollen, tragic, portentous sort of sensation, that it all had something to do with the crowning of the English King, and the glory or the end of England. It was not till I saw the puddles and the ashes in broad daylight next morning that I was fundamentally certain that my midnight adventure had not happened outside this world.
But I was more arrogant than the ancient Emperors Pharaoh or Nebuchadnezzar; for I attempted to interpret my own dream. The fire was feeding upon solid stacks of unused beech or pine, gray and white piles of virgin wood. It was an orgy of mere waste; thousands of good things were being killed before they had ever existed. Doors, tables, walking-sticks, wheelbarrows, wooden swords for boys, Dutch dolls for girls I could hear the cry of each uncreated thing as it expired in the flames. And then I thought of that other noble tower of needless things that stood in the field beyond my garden; the bonfire, the mountain of vanities, that is meant for burning; and how it stood dark and lonely in the meadow, and the birds hopped on its corners and the dew touched and spangled its twigs. And I remembered that there are two kinds of fires, the Bad Fire and the Good Fire the last must surely be the meaning of Bonfire. And the paradox is that the Good Fire is made of bad things, of things that we do not want; but the Bad Fire is made of good things, of things that we do want; like all that wealth of wood that might have made dolls and chairs and tables, but was only making a hueless ash.
And then I saw, in my vision, that just as there are two fires, so there are two revolutions. And I saw that the whole mad modern world is a race between them. Which will happen first— the revolution in which bad things shall perish, or that other revolution, in which good things shall perish also? One is the riot that all good men, even the most conservative, really dream of, when the sneer shall be struck from the face of the well-fed; when the wine of honour shall be poured down the throat of despair; when we shall, so far as to the sons of flesh is possible, take tyranny and usury and public treason and bind them into bundles and burn them. And the other is the disruption that may come prematurely, negatively, and suddenly in the night; like the fire in my little town.
It may come because the mere strain of modern life is unbearable; and in it even the things that men do desire may break down; marriage and fair ownership and worship and the mysterious worth of man. The two revolutions, white and black, are racing each other like two railway trains; I cannot guess the issue…but even as I thought of it, the tallest turret of the timber stooped and faltered and came down in a cataract of noises. And the fire, finding passage, went up with a spout like a fountain. It stood far up among the stars for an instant, a blazing pillar of brass fit for a pagan conqueror, so high that one could fancy it visible away among the goblin trees of Burnham or along the terraces of the Chiltern Hills.
L’INCENDIARIO SBAGLIATO
Stavo osservando il Corteo dell’Incoronazione—intendo quello di Beaconsfield; non la piuttosto elefantiaca imitazione che, credo, ebbe un certo successo a Londra—e ne rimasi seriamente impressionato. Gran parte della mia vita trascorre nello scoprire con mortale sorpresa di aver avuto pienamente ragione. Mai prima d’ora avevo compreso quanta ragione avessi nel sostenere che è la piccola area a esprimere il vero patriottismo: più angusto il campo, più alta la torre. C’erano cose nel nostro corteo locale che non accadevano (si potrebbe perfino dire, con reverenza, che non potevano accadere) nel corteo di Londra. Uno dei più eminenti cittadini del nostro corteo (per esempio) aveva il volto tinto di nero. Un altro cavalcava un pony che indossava pantaloni rosa e azzurri. Io non ero presente all’evento metropolitano, e perciò la mia asserzione è soggetta a quella correzione che il testimone oculare può sempre offrire all’assente. Ma credo con una certa fermezza che nessun simile tratto si sia verificato nella parata di Londra.
Ma non è della celebrazione locale che vorrei parlare, bensì di qualcosa che accadde prima di essa. Nel campo oltre il fondo del mio giardino erano stati ammucchiati i materiali per un falò; una collina di ogni sorta di rifiuti e scarti e cose che nessuno vuole; sedie rotte, alberi morti, stracci, trucioli, giornali, nuove religioni, in forma di opuscolo, resoconti del Congresso Eugenetico, e così via. Tutta questa spazzatura, materiale e mentale, era nostro intento purificarla e mutarla in sacra fiamma nel giorno in cui il Re fosse stato incoronato. Quel che segue è il resoconto della cosa piuttosto strana che realmente accadde. Non so se fosse una qualche sorta di simbolo; ma la narro proprio come avvenne.
Nel cuore della notte mi svegliai lentamente e ascoltai quello che supposi fosse il pesante scricchiolio della ruota di un carro lungo una strada di pietre sconnesse. Poi crebbe più forte, e pensai che qualcuno stesse scaricando carrettate di pietre; poi parve che l’urto stesse frantumando grosse pietre in pezzi. Poi mi resi conto che sotto quel suono v’era anche uno strano, sonnolento, quasi impercettibile ruggito; e che al di sopra di esso ogni tanto giungevano piccoli scoppi come una battaglia di pistole a un soldo. Allora seppi cos’era. Andai alla finestra; e un grande bagliore di fuoco, scagliato attraverso due prati, mi colpì là dove stavo. “Oh, per la mia santa zia,” pensai, “hanno sbagliato il Giorno dell’Incoronazione.”
Eppure, quando osservai la scena trasfigurata, non sembrava affatto un falò o una qualsiasi illuminazione rituale. Era troppo caotica, e troppo vicina alle case della città. Un intero lato di un cottage era dipinto di rosa dal gigantesco pennello della fiamma; il lato accanto, per contrasto, era dipinto nero come la pece. Lungo la facciata correva un orlo o bastione annerito bordato da un irrequieto nastro rosso che danzava e si ripiegava e divorava come un serpente scarlatto; e oltre esso non v’era che una mortale pienezza di luce.
Mi vestii alla svelta e scesi lungo la strada; tutti i rumori sordi o sorprendenti in quel fragore d’incendio crescevano sempre più forti mentre camminavo. Il suono più greve era quello di un incessante crepitare e scricchiolare, come se qualche gigante dai denti di pietra stesse spezzando le ossa del mondo. Non ero ancora giunto in vista del vero cuore e dimora del fuoco; ma la forte luce rossa, come un innaturale tramonto di mezzanotte, incipriava d’oro l’erba più grigia e arrossava i pochi alti alberi fino alle ultime dita del loro fogliame. Dietro di essi la notte era nera e cavernosa; e si poteva a stento tracciare fioca la cinerea linea dell’orizzonte oltre gli oscuri e magici Boschi di Wilton. Mentre andavo, un operaio in bicicletta mi sfrecciò accanto per una pertica; poi barcollò giù dalla sua macchina e mi gridò di dirgli dove fosse il fuoco. Risposi che andavo a vedere, ma pensavo fossero i cottage presso il deposito di legname. Egli disse: “Mio Dio!” e svanì.
Un poco più oltre trovai l’erba e il selciato zuppi e allagati, e le fiamme rosse e gialle ridipinte in pozze e pozzanghere. Al di là v’erano confusi assembramenti di gente e una piccola voce lontana che gridava ordini. Le pompe antincendio erano all’opera. Proseguii tra i riflessi rossi, che parevano fuochi sotterranei; avevo la singolare sensazione di trovarmi in un sogno molto importante. Cosa abbastanza strana, essa si accrebbe quando scoprii che la maggior parte dei miei amici e vicini era invischiata nella folla. Solo nei sogni vediamo volti familiari così vividamente contro un nero sfondo di mezzanotte. Fui lieto di scoprire (per amore dell’operaio ciclista) che il fuoco non era nelle case presso il deposito di legname, ma nel deposito stesso. Non v’era paura per la vita umana, e la cosa era apparentemente accidentale; benché corressero i soliti brutti bisbigli su rivalità e vendetta. Ma con tutto ciò non riuscivo a scrollare dalla mia anima drogata di sogno una sensazione gonfia, tragica, portentosa, che tutto ciò avesse qualcosa a che fare con l’incoronazione del Re inglese, e con la gloria o la fine dell’Inghilterra. Fu solo quando vidi le pozzanghere e le ceneri alla piena luce del giorno il mattino seguente che ebbi la fondamentale certezza che la mia avventura di mezzanotte non era accaduta fuori di questo mondo.
Ma io fui più arrogante degli antichi Imperatori, del Faraone o di Nabucodonosor; poiché tentai di interpretare il mio stesso sogno. Il fuoco si nutriva di solide cataste di faggio o pino inutilizzati, grigi e bianchi mucchi di legno vergine. Era un’orgia di puro sperpero; migliaia di cose buone venivano uccise prima ancora di aver mai esistito. Porte, tavoli, bastoni da passeggio, carriole, spade di legno per i ragazzi, bambole olandesi per le bambine, potevo udire il grido di ogni cosa non creata mentre spirava tra le fiamme. E allora pensai a quell’altra nobile torre di cose superflue che sorgeva nel campo oltre il mio giardino; il falò, la montagna di vanità, destinata a bruciare; e come essa stesse scura e solitaria nel prato, e gli uccelli saltellassero sui suoi angoli e la rugiada ne sfiorasse e imperlasse i ramoscelli. E ricordai che vi sono due specie di fuochi, il Cattivo Fuoco e il Buon Fuoco, e quest’ultimo deve certamente essere il significato di Falò. E il paradosso è che il Buon Fuoco è fatto di cose cattive, di cose che non vogliamo; mentre il Cattivo Fuoco è fatto di cose buone, di cose che vogliamo; come tutta quella ricchezza di legno che avrebbe potuto fare bambole e sedie e tavoli, ma faceva soltanto una cenere senza colore.
E allora vidi, nella mia visione, che come vi sono due fuochi, così vi sono due rivoluzioni. E vidi che tutto il folle mondo moderno è una corsa tra esse. Quale avverrà per prima— la rivoluzione in cui periranno le cose cattive, o quell’altra rivoluzione, in cui periranno anche le cose buone? L’una è la sommossa che tutti gli uomini buoni, perfino i più conservatori, sognano davvero, quando il ghigno sarà strappato dal volto di chi è ben nutrito; quando il vino dell’onore sarà versato giù per la gola della disperazione; quando, per quanto sia possibile ai figli della carne, prenderemo la tirannia e l’usura e il pubblico tradimento e li legheremo in fasci e li bruceremo. E l’altra è la disgregazione che può giungere prematura, negativa, e improvvisa nella notte; come il fuoco nella mia piccola città.
Può giungere perché la mera tensione della vita moderna è insostenibile; e in essa possono crollare perfino le cose che gli uomini desiderano; il matrimonio e la giusta proprietà e il culto e il misterioso valore dell’uomo. Le due rivoluzioni, bianca e nera, si rincorrono l’un l’altra come due treni ferroviari; non so indovinarne l’esito…ma proprio mentre vi pensavo, la più alta torretta del legname si piegò e vacillò e crollò in una cateratta di rumori. E il fuoco, trovato il passaggio, si levò con uno zampillo come una fontana. Rimase alto tra le stelle per un istante, un fiammeggiante pilastro di bronzo degno di un conquistatore pagano, così alto che si poteva immaginarlo visibile lontano tra gli alberi folletti di Burnham o lungo le terrazze delle Chiltern Hills.
THE FREE MAN
The idea of liberty has ultimately a religious root; that is why men find it so easy to die for and so difficult to define. It refers finally to the fact that, while the oyster and the palm tree have to save their lives by law, man has to save his soul by choice. Ruskin rebuked Coleridge for praising freedom, and said that no man would wish the sun to be free. It seems enough to answer that no man would wish to be the sun. Speaking as a Liberal, I have much more sympathy with the idea of Joshua stopping the sun in heaven than with the idea of Ruskin trotting his daily round in imitation of its regularity. Joshua was a Radical, and his astronomical act was distinctly revolutionary. For all revolution is the mastering of matter by the spirit of man, the emergence of that human authority within us which, in the noble words of Sir Thomas Browne, “owes no homage unto the sun.”
Generally, the moral substance of liberty is this: that man is not meant merely to receive good laws, good food or good conditions, like a tree in a garden, but is meant to take a certain princely pleasure in selecting and shaping like the gardener. Perhaps that is the meaning of the trade of Adam. And the best popular words for rendering the real idea of liberty are those which speak of man as a creator. We use the word “make” about most of the things in which freedom is essential, as a country walk or a friendship or a love affair. When a man “makes his way” through a wood he has really created, he has built a road, like the Romans. When a man “makes a friend,” he makes a man. And in the third case we talk of a man “making love,” as if he were (as, indeed, he is) creating new masses and colours of that flaming material an awful form of manufacture. In its primary spiritual sense, liberty is the god in man, or, if you like the word, the artist.
In its secondary political sense liberty is the living influence of the citizen on the State in the direction of moulding or deflecting it. Men are the only creatures that evidently possess it. On the one hand, the eagle has no liberty; he only has loneliness. On the other hand, ants, bees, and beavers exhibit the highest miracle of the State influencing the citizen; but no perceptible trace of the citizen influencing the State. You may, if you like, call the ants a democracy as you may call the bees a despotism. But I fancy that the architectural ant who attempted to introduce an art nouveau style of ant-hill would have a career as curt and fruitless as the celebrated bee who wanted to swarm alone. The isolation of this idea in humanity is akin to its religious character; but it is not even in humanity by any means equally distributed. The idea that the State should not only be supported by its children, like the ant-hill, but should be constantly criticised and reconstructed by them, is an idea stronger in Christendom than any other part of the planet; stronger in Western than Eastern Europe. And touching the pure idea of the individual being free to speak and act within limits, the assertion of this idea, we may fairly say, has been the peculiar honour of our own country. For my part I greatly prefer the Jingoism of Rule Britannia to the Imperialism of The Recessional. I have no objection to Britannia ruling the waves. I draw the line when she begins to rule the dry land—and such damnably dry land too—as in Africa. And there was a real old English sincerity in the vulgar chorus that “Britons never shall be slaves.” We had no equality and hardly any justice; but freedom we were really fond of. And I think just now it is worth while to draw attention to the old optimistic prophecy that “Britons never shall be slaves.”
The mere love of liberty has never been at a lower ebb in England than it has been for the last twenty years. Never before has it been so easy to slip small Bills through Parliament for the purpose of locking people up. Never was it so easy to silence awkward questions, or to protect high-placed officials. Two hundred years ago we turned out the Stuarts rather than endanger the Habeas Corpus Act. Two years ago we abolished the Habeas Corpus Act rather than turn out the Home Secretary. We passed a law (which is now in force) that an Englishman’s punishment shall not depend upon judge and jury, but upon the governors and jailers who have got hold of him. But this is not the only case. The scorn of liberty is in the air. A newspaper is seized by the police in Trafalgar Square without a word of accusation or explanation. The Home Secretary says that in his opinion the police are very nice people, and there is an end of the matter. A Member of Parliament attempts to criticise a peerage. The Speaker says he must not criticise a peerage, and there the matter drops.
Political liberty, let us repeat, consists in the power of criticising those flexible parts of the State which constantly require reconsideration, not the basis, but the machinery. In plainer words, it means the power of saying the sort of things that a decent but discontented citizen wants to say. He does not want to spit on the Bible, or to run about without clothes, or to read the worst page in Zola from the pulpit of St. Paul’s. Therefore the forbidding of these things (whether just or not) is only tyranny in a secondary and special sense. It restrains the abnormal, not the normal man. But the normal man, the decent discontented citizen, does want to protest against unfair law courts. He does want to expose brutalities of the police. He does want to make game of a vulgar pawnbroker who is made a Peer. He does want publicly to warn people against unscrupulous capitalists and suspicious finance. If he is run in for doing this (as he will be) he does want to proclaim the character or known prejudices of the magistrate who tries him. If he is sent to prison (as he will be) he does want to have a clear and civilised sentence, telling him when he will come out. And these are literally and exactly the things that he now cannot get. That is the almost cloying humour of the present situation. I can say abnormal things in modern magazines. It is the normal things that I am not allowed to say. I can write in some solemn quarterly an elaborate article explaining that God is the devil; I can write in some cultured weekly an aesthetic fancy describing how I should like to eat boiled baby. The thing I must not write is rational criticism of the men and institutions of my country.
The present condition of England is briefly this: That no Englishman can say in public a twentieth part of what he says in private. One cannot say, for instance, that—But I am afraid I must leave out that instance, because one cannot say it. I cannot prove my case— because it is so true.
L’UOMO LIBERO
L’idea di libertà ha in ultima analisi una radice religiosa; ecco perché gli uomini trovano tanto facile morire per essa e tanto difficile definirla. Si riferisce, in fondo, al fatto che, mentre l’ostrica e la palma devono salvare la loro vita per legge, l’uomo deve salvare la propria anima per scelta. Ruskin rimproverò Coleridge per aver lodato la libertà, e disse che nessun uomo desidererebbe che il sole fosse libero. Pare sufficiente rispondere che nessun uomo desidererebbe essere il sole. Parlando da Liberale, ho assai più simpatia per l’idea di Giosuè che ferma il sole in cielo che per l’idea di Ruskin che trotterella nel suo giro quotidiano a imitazione della regolarità di esso. Giosuè era un Radicale, e il suo atto astronomico fu decisamente rivoluzionario. Poiché ogni rivoluzione è il dominio della materia da parte dello spirito dell’uomo, l’emergere di quell’autorità umana dentro di noi che, nelle nobili parole di Sir Thomas Browne, “non deve alcun omaggio al sole”.
In generale, la sostanza morale della libertà è questa: che l’uomo non è fatto soltanto per ricevere buone leggi, buon cibo o buone condizioni, come un albero in un giardino, ma è fatto per provare un certo piacere principesco nello scegliere e nel plasmare, come il giardiniere. Forse è questo il significato del mestiere di Adamo. E le migliori parole popolari per rendere la vera idea di libertà sono quelle che parlano dell’uomo come di un creatore. Usiamo la parola “fare” a proposito della maggior parte delle cose in cui la libertà è essenziale, come una passeggiata in campagna o un’amicizia o una storia d’amore. Quando un uomo “si fa strada” attraverso un bosco, egli ha realmente creato, ha costruito una strada, come i Romani. Quando un uomo “si fa un amico”, fa un uomo. E nel terzo caso parliamo di un uomo che “fa l’amore”, come se egli fosse (come, in effetti, è) creatore di nuove masse e nuovi colori di quel materiale fiammeggiante: una spaventosa forma di manifattura. Nel suo primario senso spirituale, la libertà è il dio nell’uomo o, se preferite la parola, l’artista.
Nel suo senso politico secondario, la libertà è l’influsso vivente del cittadino sullo Stato nella direzione di plasmarlo o deviarlo. Gli uomini sono le uniche creature che evidentemente la possiedono. Da un lato, l’aquila non ha libertà; ha soltanto la solitudine. Dall’altro lato, le formiche, le api e i castori esibiscono il più alto miracolo dello Stato che influenza il cittadino; ma nessuna traccia percettibile del cittadino che influenza lo Stato. Potete, se volete, chiamare le formiche una democrazia così come potete chiamare le api un dispotismo. Ma immagino che la formica architetto che tentasse d’introdurre uno stile art nouveau di formicaio avrebbe una carriera altrettanto breve e infruttuosa della celebre ape che volle sciamare da sola. L’isolamento di questa idea nell’umanità è affine al suo carattere religioso; ma essa non è nemmeno nell’umanità in alcun modo equamente distribuita. L’idea che lo Stato non solo debba essere sostenuto dai suoi figli, come il formicaio, ma debba essere costantemente criticato e ricostruito da essi, è un’idea più forte nella Cristianità che in qualsiasi altra parte del pianeta; più forte nell’Europa occidentale che in quella orientale. E quanto alla pura idea dell’individuo libero di parlare e di agire entro certi limiti, l’affermazione di questa idea, possiamo ben dire, è stato il peculiare onore del nostro stesso paese. Da parte mia, preferisco di gran lunga il Jingoismo di Rule Britannia all’Imperialismo di The Recessional. Non ho nulla da obiettare al fatto che Britannia domini le onde. Traccio la linea quando ella comincia a dominare la terraferma — e per giunta una terra così dannatamente arida — come in Africa. E c’era una vera, antica sincerità inglese nel volgare coro secondo cui “i Britanni non saranno mai schiavi”. Non avevamo eguaglianza e quasi nessuna giustizia; ma della libertà eravamo davvero innamorati. E penso che proprio ora valga la pena di richiamare l’attenzione sull’antica profezia ottimistica secondo cui “i Britanni non saranno mai schiavi”.
Il mero amore della libertà non è mai stato a un livello più basso in Inghilterra di quanto lo sia stato negli ultimi vent’anni. Mai prima d’ora è stato così facile far passare piccole Leggi attraverso il Parlamento allo scopo di rinchiudere la gente. Mai fu così facile far tacere domande scomode, o proteggere funzionari di alto rango. Duecento anni fa cacciammo via gli Stuart piuttosto che mettere in pericolo l’Habeas Corpus Act. Due anni fa abolimmo l’Habeas Corpus Act piuttosto che cacciar via il Ministro degli Interni. Approvammo una legge (che è ora in vigore) per cui la punizione di un inglese non dipenderà dal giudice e dalla giuria, ma dai governatori e dai carcerieri che hanno messo le mani su di lui. Ma non è questo l’unico caso. Il disprezzo della libertà è nell’aria. Un giornale viene sequestrato dalla polizia a Trafalgar Square senza una parola di accusa o di spiegazione. Il Ministro degli Interni dice che, a suo parere, i poliziotti sono persone assai a modo, e la faccenda finisce lì. Un Membro del Parlamento tenta di criticare un titolo nobiliare. Lo Speaker dice che egli non deve criticare un titolo nobiliare, e lì la faccenda cade.
La libertà politica, ripetiamolo, consiste nel potere di criticare quelle parti flessibili dello Stato che richiedono costantemente riconsiderazione, non le fondamenta, ma il meccanismo. In parole più semplici, significa il potere di dire quel genere di cose che un cittadino perbene ma scontento vuole dire. Egli non vuole sputare sulla Bibbia, né correre in giro senza vestiti, né leggere la pagina peggiore di Zola dal pulpito di San Paolo. Perciò il proibire queste cose (a torto o a ragione) è tirannia solo in un senso secondario e speciale. Reprime l’uomo anormale, non quello normale. Ma l’uomo normale, il cittadino perbene e scontento, vuole invece protestare contro tribunali ingiusti. Vuole denunciare le brutalità della polizia. Vuole farsi beffe di un volgare prestatore su pegno che viene fatto Pari del regno. Vuole mettere pubblicamente in guardia la gente contro capitalisti senza scrupoli e finanza sospetta. Se viene arrestato per aver fatto questo (come lo sarà), vuole proclamare il carattere o i noti pregiudizi del magistrato che lo giudica. Se viene mandato in prigione (come lo sarà), vuole avere una sentenza chiara e civile, che gli dica quando ne uscirà. E queste sono letteralmente ed esattamente le cose che ora non può ottenere. Ecco l’umorismo quasi stucchevole della situazione presente. Posso dire cose anormali nelle riviste moderne. Sono le cose normali che non mi è permesso dire. Posso scrivere in qualche solenne trimestrale un elaborato articolo che spiega che Dio è il diavolo; posso scrivere in qualche colto settimanale una fantasia estetica che descrive come mi piacerebbe mangiare un bambino bollito. La cosa che non devo scrivere è una critica razionale degli uomini e delle istituzioni del mio paese.
La presente condizione dell’Inghilterra è, in breve, questa: che nessun inglese può dire in pubblico neppure la ventesima parte di ciò che dice in privato. Non si può dire, per esempio, che… Ma temo di dover tralasciare quell’esempio, perché non lo si può dire. Non posso dimostrare la mia tesi… perché è troppo vera.
THE HYPOTHETICAL HOUSEHOLDER
We have read of some celebrated philosopher who was so absent-minded that he paid a call at his own house. My own absent-mindedness is extreme, and my philosophy, of course, is the marvel of men and angels. But I never quite managed to be so absent-minded as that. Some yards at least from my own door, something vaguely familiar has always caught my eye; and thus the joke has been spoiled. Of course I have quite constantly walked into another man’s house, thinking it was my own house; my visits became almost monotonous. But walking into my own house and thinking it was another man’s house is a flight of poetic detachment still beyond me. Something of the sensations that such an absent-minded man must feel I really felt the other day; and very pleasant sensations they were. The best parts of every proper romance are the first chapter and the last chapter; and to knock at a strange door and find a nice wife would be to concentrate the beginning and end of all romance.
Mine was a milder and slighter experience, but its thrill was of the same kind. For I strolled through a place I had imagined quite virgin and unvisited (as far as I was concerned), and I suddenly found I was treading in my own footprints, and the footprints were nearly twenty years old.
It was one of those stretches of country which always suggests an almost unnatural decay; thickets and heaths that have grown out of what were once great gardens. Garden flowers still grow there as wild flowers, as it says in some good poetic couplet which I forget; and there is something singularly romantic and disastrous about seeing things that were so long a human property and care fighting for their own hand in the thicket. One almost expects to find a decayed dog-kennel; with the dog evolved into a wolf.
This desolate garden-land had been even in my youth scrappily planned out for building. The half-built or empty houses had appeared quite threateningly on the edge of this heath even when I walked over it years ago and almost as a boy. I was astonished that the building had gone no farther; I suppose somebody went bankrupt and somebody else disliked building. But I remember, especially along one side of this tangle or coppice, that there had once been a row of half-built houses. The brick of which they were built was a sort of plain pink; everything else was a blinding white; the houses smoked with white dust and white sawdust; and on many of the windows were rubbed those round rough disks of white which always delighted me as a child. They looked like the white eyes of some blind giant.
I could see the crude, parched pink-and-white villas still; though I had not thought at all of them for a quarter of my life; and had not thought much of them even when I saw them. Then I was an idle, but eager youth walking out from London; now I was a most reluctantly busy middle-aged person, coming in from the country. Youth, I think, seems farther off than childhood, for it made itself more of a secret. Like a prenatal picture, distant, tiny, and quite distinct, I saw this heath on which I stood; and I looked around for the string of bright, half-baked villas. They still stood there; but they were quite russet and weather-stained, as if they had stood for centuries.
I remembered exactly what I had done on that day long ago. I had half slid on a miry descent; it was still there; a little lower I had knocked off the top of a thistle; the thistles had not been discouraged, but were still growing. I recalled it because I had wondered why one knocks off the tops of thistles; and then I had thought of Tarquin; and then I had recited most of Macaulay’s VIRGINIA to myself, for I was young. And then I came to a tattered edge where the very tuft had whitened with the sawdust and brick-dust from the new row of houses; and two or three green stars of dock and thistle grew spasmodically about the blinding road.
I remembered how I had walked up this new one-sided street all those years ago; and I remembered what I had thought. I thought that this red and white glaring terrace at noon was really more creepy and more lonesome than a glimmering churchyard at midnight. The churchyard could only be full of the ghosts of the dead; but these houses were full of the ghosts of the unborn. And a man can never find a home in the future as he can find it in the past. I was always fascinated by that mediaeval notion of erecting a rudely carpentered stage in the street, and acting on it a miracle play of the Holy Family or the Last Judgment. And I thought to myself that each of these glaring, gaping, new jerry-built boxes was indeed a rickety stage erected for the acting of a real miracle play; that human family that is almost the holy one, and that human death that is near to the last judgment.
For some foolish reason the last house but one in that imperfect row especially haunted me with its hollow grin and empty window-eyes. Something in the shape of this brick-and-mortar skeleton was attractive; and there being no workmen about, I strolled into it for curiosity and solitude. I gave, with all the sky-deep gravity of youth, a benediction upon the man who was going to live there. I even remember that for the convenience of meditation I called him James Harrogate.
As I reflected it crawled back into my memory that I had mildly played the fool in that house on that distant day. I had some red chalk in my pocket, I think, and I wrote things on the unpapered plaster walls; things addressed to Mr. Harrogate. A dim memory told me that I had written up in what I supposed to be the dining-room:
James Harrogate, thank God for meat, Then eat and eat and eat and eat,
or something of that kind. I faintly feel that some longer lyric was scrawled on the walls of what looked like a bedroom, something beginning:
When laying what you call your head, O Harrogate, upon your bed,
and there all my memory dislimns and decays. But I could still see quite vividly the plain plastered walls and the rude, irregular writing, and the places where the red chalk broke. I could see them, I mean, in memory; for when I came down that road again after a sixth of a century the house was very different.
I had seen it before at noon, and now I found it in the dusk. But its windows glowed with lights of many artificial sorts; one of its low square windows stood open; from this there escaped up the road a stream of lamplight and a stream of singing. Some sort of girl, at least, was standing at some sort of piano, and singing a song of healthy sentimentalism in that house where long ago my blessing had died on the wind and my poems been covered up by the wallpaper. I stood outside that lamplit house at dusk full of those thoughts that I shall never express if I live to be a million any better than I expressed them in red chalk upon the wall. But after I had hovered a little, and was about to withdraw, a mad impulse seized me. I rang the bell. I said in distinct accents to a very smart suburban maid, “Does Mr. James Harrogate live here?”
She said he didn’t; but that she would inquire, in case I was looking for him in the neighbourhood; but I excused her from such exertion. I had one moment’s impulse to look for him all over the world; and then decided not to look for him at all.
L’INQUILINO IPOTETICO
Abbiamo letto di un celebre filosofo così distratto che fece visita alla propria casa. La mia distrazione è estrema, e la mia filosofia, si capisce, è la meraviglia degli uomini e degli angeli. Ma non sono mai riuscito a essere distratto fino a quel punto. Almeno a qualche metro dalla mia porta, qualcosa di vagamente familiare ha sempre attirato il mio sguardo; e così lo scherzo è andato a monte. Certo, sono entrato di continuo nella casa di un altro, credendola la mia; le mie visite divennero quasi monotone. Ma entrare nella mia casa credendola quella di un altro è un volo di distacco poetico ancora al di là delle mie forze. Qualcosa delle sensazioni che un uomo tanto distratto deve provare l’ho provato davvero l’altro giorno; e furono sensazioni assai piacevoli. Le parti migliori di ogni romanzo che si rispetti sono il primo capitolo e l’ultimo; e bussare a una porta sconosciuta e trovarvi una brava moglie sarebbe concentrare l’inizio e la fine di ogni romanzo.
La mia fu un’esperienza più mite e più tenue, ma il suo brivido era della stessa specie. Perché passeggiavo per un luogo che avevo immaginato del tutto vergine e mai visitato (almeno da me), e d’un tratto mi accorsi di camminare sulle mie stesse orme, e quelle orme avevano quasi vent’anni.
Era uno di quei tratti di campagna che suggeriscono sempre un decadimento quasi innaturale; boscaglie e brughiere cresciute là dove un tempo erano grandi giardini. I fiori da giardino vi crescono ancora come fiori selvatici, come dice un bel distico poetico che mi sfugge; e c’è qualcosa di singolarmente romantico e disastroso nel vedere cose che furono così a lungo proprietà e cura dell’uomo combattere per proprio conto nella boscaglia. Quasi ci si aspetta di trovare un canile in rovina; col cane evoluto in lupo.
Questa desolata terra di giardino era stata, già nella mia giovinezza, frammentariamente lottizzata per costruirvi. Le case a metà o vuote erano apparse in modo assai minaccioso ai margini di questa brughiera già quando vi passavo anni fa, quasi ragazzo. Mi stupii che la costruzione non fosse andata oltre; suppongo che qualcuno sia fallito e a qualcun altro non piacesse edificare. Ma ricordo, specialmente lungo un lato di questo groviglio o bosco ceduo, che un tempo c’era stata una fila di case a metà. Il mattone di cui erano fatte era d’un rosa sobrio; tutto il resto era d’un bianco accecante; le case fumavano di polvere bianca e segatura bianca; e su molte delle finestre erano strofinati quei ruvidi dischi tondi di bianco che da bambino mi deliziavano sempre. Sembravano i bianchi occhi di qualche gigante cieco.
Vedevo ancora le crude, riarse villette rosa e bianche; benché non ci avessi affatto pensato per un quarto della mia vita; e non ci avessi pensato molto neppure quando le vidi. Allora ero un giovane ozioso ma ardente che usciva da Londra; ora ero un uomo di mezza età, affaccendato assai a malincuore, che rientrava dalla campagna. La giovinezza, credo, sembra più lontana dell’infanzia, perché si fece più segreta. Come un’immagine prenatale, lontana, minuscola e ben distinta, vedevo questa brughiera su cui stavo; e mi guardai intorno in cerca della fila di villette luminose e mal cotte. Erano ancora là; ma erano tutte rossicce e macchiate dalle intemperie, come se fossero rimaste in piedi per secoli.
Ricordavo esattamente ciò che avevo fatto in quel giorno lontano. Ero mezzo scivolato su una discesa fangosa; era ancora là; poco più in basso avevo mozzato la cima di un cardo; i cardi non si erano scoraggiati, ma crescevano ancora. Lo rammentavo perché mi ero chiesto perché si mozzino le cime dei cardi; e poi avevo pensato a Tarquin; e poi avevo recitato a me stesso quasi tutta la VIRGINIA di Macaulay, perché ero giovane. E poi giunsi a un margine lacero dove il ciuffo stesso si era imbiancato di segatura e polvere di mattone della nuova fila di case; e due o tre verdi stelle di romice e cardo crescevano a scatti intorno all’accecante strada.
Ricordavo come avessi percorso questa nuova strada a un solo lato tutti quegli anni fa; e ricordavo ciò che avevo pensato. Pensai che questa abbagliante schiera rossa e bianca a mezzogiorno fosse davvero più sinistra e più solitaria di un cimitero scintillante a mezzanotte. Il cimitero non poteva essere pieno se non dei fantasmi dei morti; ma queste case erano piene dei fantasmi dei non nati. E un uomo non può mai trovare una casa nel futuro come può trovarla nel passato. Mi ha sempre affascinato quell’idea medievale di erigere nella strada un palco rozzamente inchiodato, e recitarvi sopra un mistero sacro della Sacra Famiglia o del Giudizio Universale. E pensai fra me che ognuna di queste scatole nuove, abbaglianti, spalancate e mal costruite era davvero un palco traballante eretto per la recita di un vero mistero sacro; quella famiglia umana che è quasi la santa, e quella morte umana che è vicina al giudizio universale.
Per qualche sciocca ragione la penultima casa di quella fila imperfetta mi ossessionava in particolare col suo ghigno vuoto e i suoi vuoti occhi-finestra. C’era qualcosa di attraente nella forma di questo scheletro di mattoni e calce; e non essendovi operai in giro, vi entrai per curiosità e solitudine. Impartii, con tutta la gravità profonda come il cielo della giovinezza, una benedizione all’uomo che sarebbe venuto ad abitarvi. Ricordo perfino che, per comodità di meditazione, lo chiamai James Harrogate.
Mentre riflettevo, mi risalì strisciando nella memoria che in quel giorno lontano avevo fatto un po’ lo sciocco in quella casa. Avevo in tasca del gesso rosso, credo, e scrissi cose sui muri d’intonaco non tappezzati; cose indirizzate al signor Harrogate. Un ricordo confuso mi diceva che avevo scritto in quella che supponevo fosse la sala da pranzo:
James Harrogate, ringrazia Dio per la carne, e poi mangia e mangia e mangia e mangia,
o qualcosa del genere. Ho la vaga sensazione che una lirica più lunga fosse scarabocchiata sui muri di quella che pareva una camera da letto, qualcosa che cominciava:
Quando poserai ciò che chiami la tua testa, o Harrogate, sopra il tuo letto,
e lì tutta la mia memoria si sfoca e si disfa. Ma potevo ancora vedere assai vividamente i nudi muri intonacati e la scrittura rozza e irregolare, e i punti dove il gesso rosso si spezzava. Potevo vederli, intendo, nella memoria; perché quando ripercorsi quella strada dopo un sesto di secolo la casa era assai diversa.
L’avevo vista prima a mezzogiorno, e ora la ritrovavo nel crepuscolo. Ma le sue finestre ardevano di luci di molte specie artificiali; una delle sue basse finestre quadrate era aperta; da questa sfuggiva su per la strada un fiotto di luce di lampada e un fiotto di canto. Una qualche ragazza, almeno, stava in piedi presso un qualche pianoforte, e cantava una canzone di sano sentimentalismo in quella casa dove molto tempo prima la mia benedizione era morta nel vento e le mie poesie erano state coperte dalla carta da parati. Stavo fuori di quella casa illuminata dalla lampada, nel crepuscolo, colmo di quei pensieri che non esprimerò mai, se anche vivessi un milione d’anni, meglio di come li espressi in gesso rosso sul muro. Ma dopo aver indugiato un poco, e mentre stavo per ritrarmi, un folle impulso mi assalì. Suonai il campanello. Dissi con accenti distinti a una cameriera suburbana assai elegante: «Abita qui il signor James Harrogate?»
Rispose di no; ma che si sarebbe informata, caso mai lo cercassi nel vicinato; ma io la dispensai da tale fatica. Ebbi per un istante l’impulso di cercarlo per tutto il mondo; e poi decisi di non cercarlo affatto.
THE PRIEST OF SPRING
The sun has strengthened and the air softened just before Easter Day. But it is a troubled brightness which has a breath not only of novelty but of revolution, There are two great armies of the human intellect who will fight till the end on this vital point, whether Easter is to be congratulated on fitting in with the Spring— or the Spring on fitting in with Easter.
The only two things that can satisfy the soul are a person and a story; and even a story must be about a person. There are indeed very voluptuous appetites and enjoyments in mere abstractions like mathematics, logic, or chess. But these mere pleasures of the mind are like mere pleasures of the body. That is, they are mere pleasures, though they may be gigantic pleasures; they can never by a mere increase of themselves amount to happiness. A man just about to be hanged may enjoy his breakfast; especially if it be his favourite breakfast; and in the same way he may enjoy an argument with the chaplain about heresy, especially if it is his favourite heresy. But whether he can enjoy either of them does not depend on either of them; it depends upon his spiritual attitude towards a subsequent event. And that event is really interesting to the soul; because it is the end of a story and (as some hold) the end of a person.
Now it is this simple truth which, like many others, is too simple for our scientists to see. This is where they go wrong, not only about true religion, but about false religions too; so that their account of mythology is more mythical than the myth itself. I do not confine myself to saying that they are quite incorrect when they state (for instance) that Christ was a legend of dying and reviving vegetation, like Adonis or Persephone. I say that even if Adonis was a god of vegetation, they have got the whole notion of him wrong. Nobody, to begin with, is sufficiently interested in decaying vegetables, as such, to make any particular mystery or disguise about them; and certainly not enough to disguise them under the image of a very handsome young man, which is a vastly more interesting thing. If Adonis was connected with the fall of leaves in autumn and the return of flowers in spring, the process of thought was quite different. It is a process of thought which springs up spontaneously in all children and young artists; it springs up spontaneously in all healthy societies. It is very difficult to explain in a diseased society.
The brain of man is subject to short and strange snatches of sleep. A cloud seals the city of reason or rests upon the sea of imagination; a dream that darkens as much, whether it is a nightmare of atheism or a day-dream of idolatry. And just as we have all sprung from sleep with a start and found ourselves saying some sentence that has no meaning, save in the mad tongues of the midnight; so the human mind starts from its trances of stupidity with some complete phrase upon its lips; a complete phrase which is a complete folly. Unfortunately it is not like the dream sentence, generally forgotten in the putting on of boots or the putting in of breakfast. This senseless aphorism, invented when man’s mind was asleep, still hangs on his tongue and entangles all his relations to rational and daylight things. All our controversies are confused by certain kinds of phrases which are not merely untrue, but were always unmeaning; which are not merely inapplicable, but were always intrinsically useless. We recognise them wherever a man talks of “the survival of the fittest,” meaning only the survival of the survivors; or wherever a man says that the rich “have a stake in the country,” as if the poor could not suffer from misgovernment or military defeat; or where a man talks about “going on towards Progress,” which only means going on towards going on; or when a man talks about “government by the wise few,” as if they could be picked out by their pantaloons. “The wise few” must mean either the few whom the foolish think wise or the very foolish who think themselves wise.
There is one piece of nonsense that modern people still find themselves saying, even after they are more or less awake, by which I am particularly irritated. It arose in the popularised science of the nineteenth century, especially in connection with the study of myths and religions. The fragment of gibberish to which I refer generally takes the form of saying “This god or hero really represents the sun.” Or “Apollo killing the Python MEANS that the summer drives out the winter.” Or “The King dying in a western battle is a SYMBOL of the sun setting in the west.” Now I should really have thought that even the skeptical professors, whose skulls are as shallow as frying-pans, might have reflected that human beings never think or feel like this. Consider what is involved in this supposition. It presumes that primitive man went out for a walk and saw with great interest a big burning spot on the sky. He then said to primitive woman, “My dear, we had better keep this quiet. We mustn’t let it get about. The children and the slaves are so very sharp. They might discover the sun any day, unless we are very careful. So we won’t call it ‘the sun,’ but I will draw a picture of a man killing a snake; and whenever I do that you will know what I mean. The sun doesn’t look at all like a man killing a snake; so nobody can possibly know. It will be a little secret between us; and while the slaves and the children fancy I am quite excited with a grand tale of a writhing dragon and a wrestling demigod, I shall really MEAN this delicious little discovery, that there is a round yellow disc up in the air.” One does not need to know much mythology to know that this is a myth. It is commonly called the Solar Myth.
Quite plainly, of course, the case was just the other way. The god was never a symbol or hieroglyph representing the sun. The sun was a hieroglyph representing the god. Primitive man (with whom my friend Dombey is no doubt well acquainted) went out with his head full of gods and heroes, because that is the chief use of having a head. Then he saw the sun in some glorious crisis of the dominance of noon on the distress of nightfall, and he said, “That is how the face of the god would shine when he had slain the dragon,” or “That is how the whole world would bleed to westward, if the god were slain at last.”
No human being was ever really so unnatural as to worship Nature. No man, however indulgent (as I am) to corpulency, ever worshipped a man as round as the sun or a woman as round as the moon. No man, however attracted to an artistic attenuation, ever really believed that the Dryad was as lean and stiff as the tree. We human beings have never worshipped Nature; and indeed, the reason is very simple. It is that all human beings are superhuman beings. We have printed our own image upon Nature, as God has printed His image upon us. We have told the enormous sun to stand still; we have fixed him on our shields, caring no more for a star than for a starfish. And when there were powers of Nature we could not for the time control, we have conceived great beings in human shape controlling them. Jupiter does not mean thunder. Thunder means the march and victory of Jupiter. Neptune does not mean the sea; the sea is his, and he made it. In other words, what the savage really said about the sea was, “Only my fetish Mumbo could raise such mountains out of mere water.” What the savage really said about the sun was, “Only my great-great-grandfather Jumbo could deserve such a blazing crown.”
About all these myths my own position is utterly and even sadly simple. I say you cannot really understand any myths till you have found that one of them is not a myth. Turnip ghosts mean nothing if there are no real ghosts. Forged bank-notes mean nothing if there are no real bank-notes. Heathen gods mean nothing, and must always mean nothing, to those of us that deny the Christian God. When once a god is admitted, even a false god, the Cosmos begins to know its place: which is the second place. When once it is the real God the Cosmos falls down before Him, offering flowers in spring as flames in winter. “My love is like a red, red rose” does not mean that the poet is praising roses under the allegory of a young lady. “My love is an arbutus” does not mean that the author was a botanist so pleased with a particular arbutus tree that he said he loved it. “Who art the moon and regent of my sky” does not mean that Juliet invented Romeo to account for the roundness of the moon. “Christ is the Sun of Easter” does not mean that the worshipper is praising the sun under the emblem of Christ. Goddess or god can clothe themselves with the spring or summer; but the body is more than raiment. Religion takes almost disdainfully the dress of Nature; and indeed Christianity has done as well with the snows of Christmas as with the snow-drops of spring. And when I look across the sun-struck fields, I know in my inmost bones that my joy is not solely in the spring, for spring alone, being always returning, would be always sad. There is somebody or something walking there, to be crowned with flowers: and my pleasure is in some promise yet possible and in the resurrection of the dead.
IL SACERDOTE DELLA PRIMAVERA
Il sole si è fatto più forte e l’aria più mite proprio prima del giorno di Pasqua. Ma è un chiarore inquieto, che ha un soffio non solo di novità ma di rivoluzione. Vi sono due grandi eserciti dell’intelletto umano che combatteranno fino alla fine su questo punto vitale: se sia la Pasqua a dover essere lodata per accordarsi con la Primavera— o la Primavera per accordarsi con la Pasqua.
Le sole due cose che possono appagare l’anima sono una persona e una storia; e persino una storia deve riguardare una persona. Vi sono, è vero, appetiti e godimenti assai voluttuosi in mere astrazioni come la matematica, la logica o gli scacchi. Ma questi meri piaceri della mente sono come i meri piaceri del corpo. Vale a dire, sono meri piaceri, per quanto possano essere piaceri giganteschi; non possono mai, per un semplice accrescersi di se stessi, giungere alla felicità. Un uomo che sta per essere impiccato può godersi la colazione; specialmente se è la sua colazione prediletta; e allo stesso modo può godersi una disputa col cappellano intorno all’eresia, specialmente se è la sua eresia prediletta. Ma se possa godersi l’una o l’altra non dipende né dall’una né dall’altra; dipende dal suo atteggiamento spirituale verso un evento successivo. E quell’evento è davvero interessante per l’anima; perché è la fine di una storia e (come alcuni sostengono) la fine di una persona.
Ora, è questa semplice verità che, come molte altre, è troppo semplice perché i nostri scienziati la vedano. È qui che sbagliano, non solo intorno alla vera religione, ma anche intorno alle false religioni; sicché il loro resoconto della mitologia è più mitico del mito stesso. Non mi limito a dire che sono del tutto scorretti quando affermano (per esempio) che Cristo fosse una leggenda della vegetazione che muore e rinasce, come Adone o Persefone. Io dico che, anche se Adone fosse stato un dio della vegetazione, hanno frainteso l’intera nozione di lui. Nessuno, tanto per cominciare, si interessa a sufficienza dei vegetali marcescenti, in quanto tali, da farne un particolare mistero o travestimento; e certo non abbastanza da travestirli sotto l’immagine di un giovane assai avvenente, che è cosa incommensurabilmente più interessante. Se Adone era connesso con la caduta delle foglie in autunno e col ritorno dei fiori in primavera, il processo di pensiero era ben diverso. È un processo di pensiero che sorge spontaneamente in tutti i bambini e nei giovani artisti; sorge spontaneamente in tutte le società sane. È assai difficile da spiegare in una società malata.
Il cervello dell’uomo è soggetto a brevi e strani sussulti di sonno. Una nube sigilla la città della ragione o si posa sul mare dell’immaginazione; un sogno che oscura altrettanto, sia esso un incubo di ateismo o una fantasticheria d’idolatria. E proprio come tutti ci siamo destati dal sonno con un soprassalto, trovandoci a pronunciare qualche frase che non ha alcun senso, se non nelle lingue folli della mezzanotte; così la mente umana balza fuori dai suoi torpori di stupidità con qualche frase compiuta sulle labbra; una frase compiuta che è una compiuta follia. Purtroppo non è come la frase del sogno, generalmente dimenticata nell’infilarsi gli stivali o nel mandar giù la colazione. Questo aforisma insensato, inventato quando la mente dell’uomo dormiva, gli pende ancora sulla lingua e ingarbuglia tutte le sue relazioni con le cose razionali e diurne. Tutte le nostre controversie sono confuse da certi tipi di frasi che non sono soltanto false, ma furono sempre prive di senso; che non sono soltanto inapplicabili, ma furono sempre intrinsecamente inutili. Le riconosciamo ogniqualvolta un uomo parla della “sopravvivenza del più adatto”, intendendo solo la sopravvivenza dei sopravvissuti; o ogniqualvolta un uomo dice che i ricchi “hanno una posta nel paese”, come se i poveri non potessero soffrire per il malgoverno o per la disfatta militare; o quando un uomo parla di “andare avanti verso il Progresso”, che significa solo andare avanti verso l’andare avanti; o quando un uomo parla del “governo dei pochi saggi”, come se potessero essere riconosciuti dai loro calzoni. “I pochi saggi” devono significare o i pochi che gli sciocchi ritengono saggi, oppure i grandi sciocchi che ritengono se stessi saggi.
C’è un’assurdità che le persone moderne si sorprendono ancora a dire, persino dopo essersi più o meno destate, dalla quale sono particolarmente irritato. Sorse nella scienza divulgata del diciannovesimo secolo, specialmente in connessione con lo studio dei miti e delle religioni. Il frammento di farfugliamento a cui mi riferisco assume di solito la forma del dire “Questo dio o eroe rappresenta in realtà il sole”. Oppure “Apollo che uccide il Pitone SIGNIFICA che l’estate scaccia l’inverno”. Oppure “Il Re che muore in una battaglia a occidente è un SIMBOLO del sole che tramonta a occidente”. Ora, avrei davvero pensato che persino i professori scettici, i cui crani sono piatti come padelle, potessero aver riflettuto sul fatto che gli esseri umani non pensano né sentono mai così. Considerate ciò che è implicato in questa supposizione. Presume che l’uomo primitivo uscisse a passeggio e scorgesse con grande interesse una gran macchia ardente nel cielo. Egli poi disse alla donna primitiva: “Mia cara, faremmo meglio a tenere la cosa segreta. Non dobbiamo lasciare che si sappia in giro. I bambini e gli schiavi sono così svegli. Potrebbero scoprire il sole da un momento all’altro, se non stiamo bene attenti. Perciò non lo chiameremo ‘il sole’, ma io disegnerò l’immagine di un uomo che uccide un serpente; e ogniqualvolta lo farò tu saprai cosa intendo. Il sole non somiglia affatto a un uomo che uccide un serpente; sicché nessuno potrà mai saperlo. Sarà un piccolo segreto tra noi; e mentre gli schiavi e i bambini immaginano che io sia tutto eccitato da un grandioso racconto di un drago che si contorce e di un semidio lottatore, io in realtà INTENDERÒ questa deliziosa piccola scoperta, che c’è un rotondo disco giallo lassù nell’aria”. Non occorre conoscere molta mitologia per sapere che questo è un mito. Viene comunemente chiamato il Mito Solare.
Con tutta evidenza, naturalmente, il caso era esattamente all’opposto. Il dio non era mai un simbolo o un geroglifico che rappresentava il sole. Il sole era un geroglifico che rappresentava il dio. L’uomo primitivo (con cui il mio amico Dombey ha senza dubbio gran dimestichezza) usciva con la testa piena di dèi ed eroi, perché quello è l’uso principale dell’avere una testa. Poi vedeva il sole in qualche glorioso momento culminante del dominio del meriggio sull’angoscia del calar della notte, e diceva: “Ecco come splenderebbe il volto del dio quando avesse ucciso il drago”, oppure “Ecco come il mondo intero sanguinerebbe verso occidente, se il dio venisse infine ucciso”.
Nessun essere umano fu mai davvero tanto innaturale da adorare la Natura. Nessun uomo, per quanto indulgente (come lo sono io) verso la corpulenza, adorò mai un uomo tondo come il sole o una donna tonda come la luna. Nessun uomo, per quanto attratto da un’artistica magrezza, credette mai davvero che la Driade fosse scarna e rigida come l’albero. Noi esseri umani non abbiamo mai adorato la Natura; e in verità la ragione è assai semplice. È che tutti gli esseri umani sono esseri sovrumani. Abbiamo impresso la nostra immagine sulla Natura, come Dio ha impresso la Sua immagine su di noi. Abbiamo comandato all’enorme sole di fermarsi; l’abbiamo fissato sui nostri scudi, non curandoci di una stella più che di una stella marina. E quando c’erano potenze della Natura che per il momento non potevamo dominare, abbiamo concepito grandi esseri in forma umana che le governavano. Giove non significa tuono. Il tuono significa la marcia e la vittoria di Giove. Nettuno non significa il mare; il mare è suo, e lui lo fece. In altre parole, ciò che il selvaggio disse in realtà del mare fu: “Solo il mio feticcio Mumbo poteva innalzare tali montagne dalla mera acqua”. Ciò che il selvaggio disse in realtà del sole fu: “Solo il mio trisavolo Jumbo poteva meritare una così fiammeggiante corona”.
Intorno a tutti questi miti la mia posizione è del tutto e persino tristemente semplice. Io dico che non si possono davvero comprendere i miti finché non si è scoperto che uno di essi non è un mito. I fantasmi di rapa non significano nulla se non ci sono fantasmi veri. Le banconote contraffatte non significano nulla se non ci sono vere banconote. Gli dèi pagani non significano nulla, e devono sempre significare nulla, per quelli di noi che negano il Dio cristiano. Una volta ammesso un dio, persino un falso dio, il Cosmo comincia a conoscere il suo posto: che è il secondo posto. Una volta che sia il vero Dio, il Cosmo si prostra dinanzi a Lui, offrendo fiori in primavera come fiamme in inverno. “Il mio amore è come una rossa, rossa rosa” non significa che il poeta lodi le rose sotto l’allegoria di una giovane fanciulla. “Il mio amore è un corbezzolo” non significa che l’autore fosse un botanico tanto compiaciuto di un particolare corbezzolo da dire che lo amava. “Tu che sei la luna e reggente del mio cielo” non significa che Giulietta abbia inventato Romeo per render conto della rotondità della luna. “Cristo è il Sole della Pasqua” non significa che l’adoratore stia lodando il sole sotto l’emblema di Cristo. La dea o il dio possono rivestirsi della primavera o dell’estate; ma il corpo è più della veste. La religione prende quasi con disdegno l’abito della Natura; e in verità il Cristianesimo ha fatto tanto bene con le nevi del Natale quanto con i bucaneve della primavera. E quando volgo lo sguardo sui campi percossi dal sole, so nelle mie ossa più intime che la mia gioia non è unicamente nella primavera, poiché la primavera sola, sempre ritornando, sarebbe sempre triste. C’è qualcuno o qualcosa che cammina là, da incoronare con fiori: e il mio piacere è in qualche promessa ancora possibile e nella resurrezione dei morti.
THE REAL JOURNALIST
Our age which has boasted of realism will fail chiefly through lack of reality. Never, I fancy, has there been so grave and startling a divorce between the real way a thing is done and the look of it when it is done. I take the nearest and most topical instance to hand a newspaper. Nothing looks more neat and regular than a newspaper, with its parallel columns, its mechanical printing, its detailed facts and figures, its responsible, polysyllabic leading articles. Nothing, as a matter of fact, goes every night through more agonies of adventure, more hairbreadth escapes, desperate expedients, crucial councils, random compromises, or barely averted catastrophes. Seen from the outside, it seems to come round as automatically as the clock and as silently as the dawn. Seen from the inside, it gives all its organisers a gasp of relief every morning to see that it has come out at all; that it has come out without the leading article upside down or the Pope congratulated on discovering the North Pole.
I will give an instance (merely to illustrate my thesis of unreality) from the paper that I know best. Here is a simple story, a little episode in the life of a journalist, which may be amusing and instructive: the tale of how I made a great mistake in quotation. There are really two stories: the story as seen from the outside, by a man reading the paper; and the story seen from the inside, by the journalists shouting and telephoning and taking notes in shorthand through the night.
This is the outside story; and it reads like a dreadful quarrel. The notorious G. K. Chesterton, a reactionary Torquemada whose one gloomy pleasure was in the defence of orthodoxy and the pursuit of heretics, long calculated and at last launched a denunciation of a brilliant leader of the New Theology which he hated with all the furnace of his fanatic soul. In this document Chesterton darkly, deliberately, and not having the fear of God before his eyes, asserted that Shakespeare wrote the line “that wreathes its old fantastic roots so high.” This he said because he had been kept in ignorance by Priests; or, perhaps, because he thought craftily that none of his dupes could discover a curious and forgotten rhyme called ‘Elegy in a Country Churchyard’. Anyhow, that orthodox gentleman made a howling error; and received some twenty-five letters and post-cards from kind correspondents who pointed out the mistake.
But the odd thing is that scarcely any of them could conceive that it was a mistake. The first wrote in the tone of one wearied of epigrams, and cried, “What is the joke NOW?” Another professed (and practised, for all I know, God help him) that he had read through all Shakespeare and failed to find the line. A third wrote in a sort of moral distress, asking, as in confidence, if Gray was really a plagiarist. They were a noble collection; but they all subtly assumed an element of leisure and exactitude in the recipient’s profession and character which is far from the truth. Let us pass on to the next act of the external tragedy.
In Monday’s issue of the same paper appeared a letter from the same culprit. He ingenuously confessed that the line did not belong to Shakespeare, but to a poet whom he called Grey. Which was another cropper—or whopper. This strange and illiterate outbreak was printed by the editor with the justly scornful title, “Mr. Chesterton ‘Explains’?” Any man reading the paper at breakfast saw at once the meaning of the sarcastic quotation marks. They meant, of course, “Here is a man who doesn’t know Gray from Shakespeare; he tries to patch it up and he can’t even spell Gray. And that is what he calls an Explanation.” That is the perfectly natural inference of the reader from the letter, the mistake, and the headline—as seen from the outside. The falsehood was serious; the editorial rebuke was serious. The stern editor and the sombre, baffled contributor confront each other as the curtain falls.
And now I will tell you exactly what really happened. It is honestly rather amusing; it is a story of what journals and journalists really are. A monstrously lazy man lives in South Bucks partly by writing a column in the Saturday Daily News. At the time he usually writes it (which is always at the last moment) his house is unexpectedly invaded by infants of all shapes and sizes. His Secretary is called away; and he has to cope with the invading pigmies. Playing with children is a glorious thing; but the journalist in question has never understood why it was considered a soothing or idyllic one. It reminds him, not of watering little budding flowers, but of wrestling for hours with gigantic angels and devils. Moral problems of the most monstrous complexity besiege him incessantly. He has to decide before the awful eyes of innocence, whether, when a sister has knocked down a brother’s bricks, in revenge for the brother having taken two sweets out of his turn, it is endurable that the brother should retaliate by scribbling on the sister’s picture-book, and whether such conduct does not justify the sister in blowing out the brother’s unlawfully lighted match.
Just as he is solving this problem upon principles of the highest morality, it occurs to him suddenly that he has not written his Saturday article; and that there is only about an hour to do it in. He wildly calls to somebody (probably the gardener) to telephone to somewhere for a messenger; he barricades himself in another room and tears his hair, wondering what on earth he shall write about. A drumming of fists on the door outside and a cheerful bellowing encourage and clarify his thoughts; and he is able to observe some newspapers and circulars in wrappers lying on the table. One is a dingy book catalogue; the second is a shiny pamphlet about petrol; the third is a paper called The Christian Commonwealth. He opens it anyhow, and sees in the middle of a page a sentence with which he honestly disagrees. It says that the sense of beauty in Nature is a new thing, hardly felt before Wordsworth. A stream of images and pictures pour through his head, like skies chasing each other or forests running by. “Not felt before Wordsworth!” he thinks. “Oh, but this won’t do… bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang… night’s candles are burnt out… glowed with living sapphires. leaving their moon-loved maze… antique roots fantastic… antique roots wreathed high… what is it in As You Like It?”
He sits down desperately; the messenger rings at the bell; the children drum on the door; the servants run up from time to time to say the messenger is getting bored; and the pencil staggers along, making the world a present of fifteen hundred unimportant words, and making Shakespeare a present of a portion of Gray’s Elegy; putting “fantastic roots wreathed high” instead of “antique roots peep out.” Then the journalist sends off his copy and turns his attention to the enigma of whether a brother should commandeer a sister’s necklace because the sister pinched him at Littlehampton. That is the first scene; that is how an article is really written.
The scene now changes to the newspaper office. The writer of the article has discovered his mistake and wants to correct it by the next day: but the next day is Sunday. He cannot post a letter, so he rings up the paper and dictates a letter by telephone. He leaves the title to his friends at the other end; he knows that they can spell “Gray,” as no doubt they can: but the letter is put down by journalistic custom in a pencil scribble and the vowel may well be doubtful. The friend writes at the top of the letter “‘G. K. C.’ Explains,” putting the initials in quotation marks. The next man passing it for press is bored with these initials (I am with him there) and crosses them out, substituting with austere civility, “Mr. Chesterton Explains.” But and now he hears the iron laughter of the Fates, for the blind bolt is about to fall— but he neglects to cross out the second “quote” (as we call it) and it goes up to press with a “quote” between the last words. Another quotation mark at the end of “explains” was the work of one merry moment for the printers upstairs. So the inverted commas were lifted entirely off one word on to the other and a totally innocent title suddenly turned into a blasting sneer. But that would have mattered nothing so far, for there was nothing to sneer at. In the same dark hour, however, there was a printer who was (I suppose) so devoted to this Government that he could think of no Gray but Sir Edward Grey. He spelt it “Grey” by a mere misprint, and the whole tale was complete: first blunder, second blunder, and final condemnation.
That is a little tale of journalism as it is; if you call it egotistic and ask what is the use of it I think I could tell you. You might remember it when next some ordinary young workman is going to be hanged by the neck on circumstantial evidence.
IL VERO GIORNALISTA
La nostra epoca, che si è tanto vantata del suo realismo, fallirà soprattutto per mancanza di realtà. Mai, mi pare, vi è stato un grave e sconcertante divorzio tra il modo reale in cui una cosa viene fatta e l’aspetto che essa ha una volta compiuta. Prendo l’esempio più prossimo e più attuale che mi capiti sottomano: un giornale. Nulla appare più ordinato e regolare di un giornale, con le sue colonne parallele, la sua stampa meccanica, i suoi fatti e le sue cifre minuziose, i suoi articoli di fondo responsabili e polisillabici. Nulla, in realtà, attraversa ogni notte più agonie d’avventura, più fughe per il rotto della cuffia, più espedienti disperati, consigli decisivi, compromessi casuali, o catastrofi scampate per un soffio. Visto dall’esterno, sembra tornare puntuale come l’orologio e silenzioso come l’alba. Visto dall’interno, procura a tutti i suoi organizzatori un sospiro di sollievo ogni mattina, nel constatare che è uscito, tutto sommato; che è uscito senza l’articolo di fondo capovolto o il Papa congratulato per aver scoperto il Polo Nord.
Porterò un esempio (soltanto per illustrare la mia tesi dell’irrealtà) tratto dal giornale che conosco meglio. Ecco una storia semplice, un piccolo episodio nella vita di un giornalista, che potrà riuscire divertente e istruttivo: il racconto di come commisi un grave errore di citazione. In verità le storie sono due: la storia vista dall’esterno, da un uomo che legge il giornale; e la storia vista dall’interno, dai giornalisti che gridano e telefonano e prendono appunti in stenografia per tutta la notte.
Questa è la storia esterna; e si legge come un litigio spaventoso. Il famigerato G. K. Chesterton, un reazionario Torquemada il cui unico tetro piacere consisteva nel difendere l’ortodossia e nel dare la caccia agli eretici, a lungo meditò e infine scagliò una denuncia contro un brillante caposcuola della Nuova Teologia che egli odiava con tutta la fornace della sua anima fanatica. In quel documento Chesterton, oscuramente, deliberatamente, e non avendo il timore di Dio davanti agli occhi, asserì che Shakespeare avesse scritto il verso “che intreccia così in alto le sue vecchie e fantastiche radici.” Ciò egli disse perché era stato tenuto nell’ignoranza dai Preti; o, forse, perché pensava con astuzia che nessuno dei suoi gonzi potesse scoprire una curiosa e dimenticata rima intitolata ‘Elegia scritta in un cimitero di campagna’. Ad ogni modo, quel gentiluomo ortodosso commise un madornale errore; e ricevette una venticinquina di lettere e cartoline da gentili corrispondenti che gli additarono lo sbaglio.
Ma la cosa strana è che quasi nessuno di loro riusciva a concepire che si trattasse di uno sbaglio. Il primo scrisse col tono di chi è stanco degli epigrammi, ed esclamò: “Qual è la battuta STAVOLTA?” Un altro professava (e praticava, per quanto ne so, Dio l’aiuti) di aver letto tutto Shakespeare da cima a fondo e di non essere riuscito a trovare il verso. Un terzo scrisse in una sorta di angoscia morale, chiedendo, come in confidenza, se Gray fosse davvero un plagiario. Erano una nobile collezione; ma tutti sottilmente presupponevano nella professione e nel carattere del destinatario un elemento di agio e di esattezza ben lontano dalla verità. Passiamo al prossimo atto della tragedia esterna.
Nel numero di lunedì dello stesso giornale apparve una lettera del medesimo colpevole. Egli confessava ingenuamente che il verso non apparteneva a Shakespeare, ma a un poeta che chiamava Grey. Il che era un altro capitombolo — o un altro sproposito. Questa strana e illetterata sortita venne stampata dal direttore col titolo giustamente sprezzante: “Il signor Chesterton ‘Spiega’?” Chiunque leggesse il giornale a colazione coglieva immediatamente il senso delle virgolette sarcastiche. Volevano dire, naturalmente: “Ecco un uomo che non sa distinguere Gray da Shakespeare; cerca di rattoppare la cosa e non sa nemmeno scrivere Gray. E questo è ciò che egli chiama una Spiegazione.” Questa è l’inferenza perfettamente naturale che il lettore trae dalla lettera, dall’errore e dal titolo — visti dall’esterno. La falsità era grave; il rimprovero editoriale era grave. Lo severo direttore e il cupo, sconcertato collaboratore si fronteggiano mentre cala il sipario.
E ora vi racconterò esattamente ciò che accadde davvero. È onestamente piuttosto divertente; è una storia di ciò che i giornali e i giornalisti sono realmente. Un uomo mostruosamente pigro vive nel South Bucks in parte scrivendo una rubrica sul Saturday Daily News. Nel momento in cui di solito la scrive (che è sempre all’ultimo minuto) la sua casa viene inaspettatamente invasa da bambini di ogni forma e dimensione. La sua Segretaria è chiamata altrove; ed egli deve vedersela con i pigmei invasori. Giocare con i bambini è una cosa gloriosa; ma il giornalista in questione non ha mai capito perché la si consideri una cosa rilassante o idilliaca. Gli ricorda, non l’innaffiare piccoli fiori in boccio, ma il lottare per ore con angeli e demoni giganteschi. Problemi morali della più mostruosa complessità lo assediano incessantemente. Egli deve decidere, sotto lo sguardo terribile dell’innocenza, se, quando una sorella ha abbattuto i mattoncini di un fratello, per vendetta del fatto che il fratello si è preso due caramelle fuori dal proprio turno, sia tollerabile che il fratello si vendichi scarabocchiando sul libro illustrato della sorella, e se una tale condotta non giustifichi la sorella nello spegnere il fiammifero che il fratello ha illecitamente acceso.
Proprio mentre sta risolvendo questo problema secondo i principi della più alta moralità, gli viene in mente all’improvviso che non ha scritto il suo articolo del sabato; e che gli resta soltanto un’oretta per farlo. Chiama freneticamente qualcuno (probabilmente il giardiniere) perché telefoni da qualche parte per un fattorino; si barrica in un’altra stanza e si strappa i capelli, domandandosi di che diavolo scriverà. Un tamburellare di pugni sulla porta di fuori e un allegro muggito gli incoraggiano e gli chiariscono i pensieri; ed egli riesce a scorgere alcuni giornali e circolari nelle loro fasce, posati sul tavolo. Uno è un logoro catalogo di libri; il secondo è un lucido opuscolo sulla benzina; il terzo è un foglio chiamato The Christian Commonwealth. Lo apre alla rinfusa, e vede in mezzo a una pagina una frase con cui onestamente dissente. Vi si dice che il senso della bellezza nella Natura è cosa nuova, appena avvertita prima di Wordsworth. Un fiume di immagini e di quadri gli scorre per la testa, come cieli che si rincorrono o foreste che sfilano. “Non avvertita prima di Wordsworth!” pensa. “Oh, ma questo non va… nudi cori in rovina dove un tempo cantavano i dolci uccelli… le candele della notte sono consumate… splendeva di vivi zaffiri… lasciando il loro labirinto amato dalla luna… antiche radici fantastiche… antiche radici intrecciate in alto… com’è in Come vi piace?”
Si siede disperato; il fattorino suona il campanello; i bambini tamburellano sulla porta; i domestici salgono di tanto in tanto a dire che il fattorino si sta annoiando; e la matita barcolla avanti, facendo al mondo il dono di millecinquecento parole senza importanza, e facendo a Shakespeare il dono di un brano dell’Elegia di Gray; mettendo “fantastiche radici intrecciate in alto” al posto di “antiche radici che fanno capolino.” Poi il giornalista spedisce il suo pezzo e volge la sua attenzione all’enigma se un fratello debba requisire la collana di una sorella perché la sorella lo ha pizzicato a Littlehampton. Questa è la prima scena; è così che un articolo viene realmente scritto.
La scena ora si sposta nella redazione del giornale. L’autore dell’articolo ha scoperto il suo errore e vuole correggerlo entro il giorno seguente: ma il giorno seguente è domenica. Non può imbucare una lettera, e allora telefona al giornale e detta una lettera per telefono. Lascia il titolo agli amici all’altro capo del filo; sa che essi sanno scrivere “Gray”, come senza dubbio è vero: ma la lettera, per consuetudine giornalistica, viene buttata giù in uno scarabocchio a matita e la vocale può ben restare incerta. L’amico scrive in cima alla lettera “‘G. K. C.’ Spiega”, mettendo le iniziali tra virgolette. L’uomo successivo che la passa in tipografia è annoiato da quelle iniziali (in questo sono con lui) e le cancella, sostituendo con austera cortesia: “Il signor Chesterton Spiega.” Ma — ed ecco che egli ode la risata ferrea delle Parche, poiché il cieco fulmine sta per cadere — trascura di cancellare la seconda “virgoletta” (come la chiamiamo noi) ed essa sale in tipografia con una “virgoletta” tra le ultime parole. Un’altra virgoletta alla fine di “spiega” fu opera di un solo lieto istante per i tipografi al piano di sopra. Così le virgolette furono del tutto sollevate da una parola e trasferite sull’altra, e un titolo assolutamente innocente si mutò d’un tratto in una sferzante beffa. Ma tutto ciò non avrebbe avuto alcuna importanza, perché non c’era nulla da schernire. Nella stessa oscura ora, tuttavia, c’era un tipografo che era (suppongo) tanto devoto a questo Governo da non riuscire a pensare ad altro Gray che a Sir Edward Grey. Lo scrisse “Grey” per un semplice refuso, e l’intera vicenda fu completa: primo errore, secondo errore, e condanna finale.
Questo è un piccolo racconto del giornalismo com’è; se lo giudicherete egotistico e chiederete a che serva, credo che potrei dirvelo. Potreste ricordarvene la prossima volta che un qualsiasi comune giovane operaio starà per essere impiccato per il collo sulla base di prove indiziarie.
THE SENTIMENTAL SCOT
Of all the great nations of Christendom, the Scotch are by far the most romantic. I have just enough Scotch experience and just enough Scotch blood to know this in the only way in which a thing can really be known; that is, when the outer world and the inner world are at one. I know it is always said that the Scotch are practical, prosaic, and puritan; that they have an eye to business. I like that phrase “an eye” to business.
Polyphemus had an eye for business; it was in the middle of his forehead. It served him admirably for the only two duties which are demanded in a modern financier and captain of industry: the two duties of counting sheep and of eating men. But when that one eye was put out he was done for. But the Scotch are not one-eyed practical men, though their best friends must admit that they are occasionally business-like. They are, quite fundamentally, romantic and sentimental, and this is proved by the very economic argument that is used to prove their harshness and hunger for the material. The mass of Scots have accepted the industrial civilisation, with its factory chimneys and its famine prices, with its steam and smoke and steel— and strikes. The mass of the Irish have not accepted it. The mass of the Irish have clung to agriculture with claws of iron; and have succeeded in keeping it. That is because the Irish, though far inferior to the Scotch in art and literature, are hugely superior to them in practical politics. You do need to be very romantic to accept the industrial civilisation. It does really require all the old Gaelic glamour to make men think that Glasgow is a grand place. Yet the miracle is achieved; and while I was in Glasgow I shared the illusion. I have never had the faintest illusion about Leeds or Birmingham. The industrial dream suited the Scots. Here was a really romantic vista, suited to a romantic people; a vision of higher and higher chimneys taking hold upon the heavens, of fiercer and fiercer fires in which adamant could evaporate like dew. Here were taller and taller engines that began already to shriek and gesticulate like giants. Here were thunderbolts of communication which already flashed to and fro like thoughts. It was unreasonable to expect the rapt, dreamy, romantic Scot to stand still in such a whirl of wizardry to ask whether he, the ordinary Scot, would be any the richer.
He, the ordinary Scot, is very much the poorer. Glasgow is not a rich city. It is a particularly poor city ruled by a few particularly rich men. It is not, perhaps, quite so poor a city as Liverpool, London, Manchester, Birmingham, or Bolton. It is vastly poorer than Rome, Rouen, Munich, or Cologne. A certain civic vitality notable in Glasgow may, perhaps, be due to the fact that the high poetic patriotism of the Scots has there been reinforced by the cutting common sense and independence of the Irish. In any case, I think there can be no doubt of the main historical fact. The Scotch were tempted by the enormous but unequal opportunities of industrialism, because the Scotch are romantic. The Irish refused those enormous and unequal opportunities, because the Irish are clear-sighted. They would not need very clear sight by this time to see that in England and Scotland the temptation has been a betrayal. The industrial system has failed.
I was coming the other day along a great valley road that strikes out of the westland counties about Glasgow, more or less towards the east and the widening of the Forth. It may, for all I know (I amused myself with the fancy), be the way along which Wallace came with his crude army, when he gave battle before Stirling Brig; and, in the midst of mediaeval diplomacies, made a new nation possible. Anyhow, the romantic quality of Scotland rolled all about me, as much in the last reek of Glasgow as in the first rain upon the hills. The tall factory chimneys seemed trying to be taller than the mountain peaks; as if this landscape were full (as its history has been full) of the very madness of ambition. The wage-slavery we live in is a wicked thing. But there is nothing in which the Scotch are more piercing and poetical, I might say more perfect, than in their Scotch wickedness. It is what makes the Master of Ballantrae the most thrilling of all fictitious villains. It is what makes the Master of Lovat the most thrilling of all historical villains. It is poetry. It is an intensity which is on the edge of madness or (what is worse) magic. Well, the Scotch have managed to apply something of this fierce romanticism even to the lowest of all lordships and serfdoms; the proletarian inequality of today. You do meet now and then, in Scotland, the man you never meet anywhere else but in novels; I mean the self-made man; the hard, insatiable man, merciless to himself as well as to others. It is not “enterprise”; it is kleptomania. He is quite mad, and a much more obvious public pest than any other kind of kleptomaniac; but though he is a cheat, he is not an illusion. He does exist; I have met quite two of him. Him alone among modern merchants we do not weakly flatter when we call him a bandit. Something of the irresponsibility of the true dark ages really clings about him. Our scientific civilisation is not a civilisation; it is a smoke nuisance. Like smoke it is choking us; like smoke it will pass away. Only of one or two Scotsmen, in my experience, was it true that where there is smoke there is fire.
But there are other kinds of fire; and better. The one great advantage of this strange national temper is that, from the beginning of all chronicles, it has provided resistance as well as cruelty. In Scotland nearly everything has always been in revolt— especially loyalty. If these people are capable of making Glasgow, they are also capable of wrecking it; and the thought of my many good friends in that city makes me really doubtful about which would figure in human memories as the more huge calamity of the two. In Scotland there are many rich men so weak as to call themselves strong. But there are not so many poor men weak enough to believe them.
As I came out of Glasgow I saw men standing about the road. They had little lanterns tied to the fronts of their caps, like the fairies who used to dance in the old fairy pantomimes. They were not, however, strictly speaking, fairies. They might have been called gnomes, since they worked in the chasms of those purple and chaotic hills. They worked in the mines from whence comes the fuel of our fires. Just at the moment when I saw them, moreover, they were not dancing; nor were they working. They were doing nothing. Which, in my opinion (and I trust yours), was the finest thing they could do.
LO SCOZZESE SENTIMENTALE
Di tutte le grandi nazioni della Cristianità, gli Scozzesi sono di gran lunga i più romantici. Ho quel tanto di esperienza scozzese e quel tanto di sangue scozzese da saperlo nell’unico modo in cui una cosa può davvero essere saputa; e cioè quando il mondo esteriore e il mondo interiore fanno tutt’uno. So che si dice sempre che gli Scozzesi siano pratici, prosaici e puritani; che abbiano occhio per gli affari. Mi piace quella frase, avere «occhio» per gli affari.
Polifemo aveva occhio per gli affari; ce l’aveva in mezzo alla fronte. Gli serviva egregiamente per gli unici due compiti che si richiedono a un moderno finanziere e capitano d’industria: i due compiti di contare le pecore e di mangiare gli uomini. Ma quando quell’unico occhio gli fu cavato, era finito. Ma gli Scozzesi non sono uomini pratici con un occhio solo, benché i loro migliori amici debbano ammettere che a volte hanno il senso degli affari. Sono, in modo del tutto fondamentale, romantici e sentimentali, e ciò è dimostrato proprio da quell’argomento economico che si usa per provare la loro durezza e la loro fame di cose materiali. La massa degli Scozzesi ha accettato la civiltà industriale, con le sue ciminiere e i suoi prezzi da carestia, col suo vapore e fumo e acciaio… e scioperi. La massa degli Irlandesi non l’ha accettata. La massa degli Irlandesi si è aggrappata all’agricoltura con artigli di ferro; e sono riusciti a conservarla. Questo perché gli Irlandesi, benché di gran lunga inferiori agli Scozzesi nell’arte e nella letteratura, sono enormemente superiori a loro nella politica pratica. Bisogna essere davvero molto romantici per accettare la civiltà industriale. Ci vuole davvero tutto l’antico incanto gaelico per far credere agli uomini che Glasgow sia un luogo magnifico. Eppure il miracolo si compie; e mentre ero a Glasgow condivisi l’illusione. Non ho mai avuto la più pallida illusione riguardo a Leeds o Birmingham. Il sogno industriale si addiceva agli Scozzesi. Ecco una prospettiva davvero romantica, adatta a un popolo romantico; una visione di ciminiere sempre più alte che si aggrappavano ai cieli, di fuochi sempre più feroci in cui il diamante poteva evaporare come rugiada. Ecco macchine sempre più alte che già cominciavano a stridere e a gesticolare come giganti. Ecco fulmini di comunicazione che già guizzavano avanti e indietro come pensieri. Era irragionevole aspettarsi che lo Scozzese rapito, sognatore, romantico, restasse immobile in un simile turbine di magia a domandarsi se lui, lo Scozzese comune, ne sarebbe stato più ricco.
Lui, lo Scozzese comune, ne è molto più povero. Glasgow non è una città ricca. È una città particolarmente povera governata da pochi uomini particolarmente ricchi. Non è, forse, una città così povera come Liverpool, Londra, Manchester, Birmingham o Bolton. È assai più povera di Roma, Rouen, Monaco o Colonia. Una certa vitalità civica notevole a Glasgow può, forse, essere dovuta al fatto che l’alto patriottismo poetico degli Scozzesi vi è stato rinforzato dal tagliente buon senso e dall’indipendenza degli Irlandesi. In ogni caso, penso che non possa esserci alcun dubbio sul principale fatto storico. Gli Scozzesi furono tentati dalle enormi ma disuguali opportunità dell’industrialismo, perché gli Scozzesi sono romantici. Gli Irlandesi rifiutarono quelle enormi e disuguali opportunità, perché gli Irlandesi hanno la vista chiara. Ormai non servirebbe una vista molto chiara per vedere che in Inghilterra e in Scozia la tentazione è stata un tradimento. Il sistema industriale ha fallito.
L’altro giorno percorrevo una grande strada di valle che si diparte dalle contee occidentali attorno a Glasgow, più o meno verso oriente e verso l’allargarsi del Forth. Può darsi, per quel che ne so (mi divertii con questa fantasia), che sia la via lungo la quale venne Wallace col suo rozzo esercito, quando diede battaglia davanti a Stirling Brig; e, in mezzo alle diplomazie medievali, rese possibile una nuova nazione. Comunque sia, la qualità romantica della Scozia rotolava tutt’intorno a me, tanto nell’ultimo fetore di Glasgow quanto nella prima pioggia sulle colline. Le alte ciminiere sembravano tentare di essere più alte delle vette dei monti; come se questo paesaggio fosse colmo (come ne è stata colma la sua storia) della follia stessa dell’ambizione. La schiavitù salariale in cui viviamo è una cosa malvagia. Ma non c’è nulla in cui gli Scozzesi siano più penetranti e poetici, potrei dire più perfetti, che nella loro malvagità scozzese. È ciò che rende il Signore di Ballantrae il più emozionante di tutti i malvagi immaginari. È ciò che rende il Signore di Lovat il più emozionante di tutti i malvagi storici. È poesia. È un’intensità che è sull’orlo della follia o (ciò che è peggio) della magia. Ebbene, gli Scozzesi sono riusciti ad applicare qualcosa di questo feroce romanticismo perfino alla più bassa di tutte le signorie e servitù: la disuguaglianza proletaria di oggi. Di tanto in tanto, in Scozia, s’incontra l’uomo che non s’incontra mai in nessun altro luogo se non nei romanzi; intendo l’uomo che si è fatto da sé; l’uomo duro, insaziabile, spietato con se stesso non meno che con gli altri. Non è «intraprendenza»; è cleptomania. È del tutto pazzo, e una peste pubblica assai più evidente di qualunque altra specie di cleptomane; ma per quanto sia un imbroglione, non è un’illusione. Esiste davvero; ne ho incontrati ben due. Lui solo tra i mercanti moderni non lo aduliamo debolmente quando lo chiamiamo bandito. Qualcosa dell’irresponsabilità dei veri secoli bui gli aderisce davvero addosso. La nostra civiltà scientifica non è una civiltà; è una molestia di fumo. Come il fumo ci sta soffocando; come il fumo se ne andrà. Solo di uno o due Scozzesi, nella mia esperienza, era vero che dove c’è fumo c’è fuoco.
Ma ci sono altre specie di fuoco; e migliori. L’unico grande vantaggio di questo strano temperamento nazionale è che, dal principio di tutte le cronache, ha fornito resistenza non meno che crudeltà. In Scozia quasi tutto è sempre stato in rivolta… specialmente la fedeltà. Se questa gente è capace di costruire Glasgow, è anche capace di distruggerla; e il pensiero dei miei molti buoni amici in quella città mi rende davvero incerto su quale delle due figurerebbe nelle memorie umane come la più immane calamità. In Scozia ci sono molti uomini ricchi tanto deboli da definirsi forti. Ma non ci sono altrettanti uomini poveri abbastanza deboli da credere loro.
Mentre uscivo da Glasgow vidi degli uomini fermi intorno alla strada. Avevano piccole lanterne legate davanti ai berretti, come le fate che usavano danzare nelle vecchie pantomime fatate. Non erano, tuttavia, a rigor di termini, fate. Avrebbero potuto essere chiamati gnomi, poiché lavoravano negli abissi di quelle colline purpuree e caotiche. Lavoravano nelle miniere donde proviene il combustibile dei nostri fuochi. Proprio nel momento in cui li vidi, per giunta, non stavano danzando; né stavano lavorando. Non facevano nulla. Il che, a mio parere (e confido nel vostro), era la cosa migliore che potessero fare.
THE SECTARIAN OF SOCIETY
A fixed creed is absolutely indispensable to freedom. For while men are and should be various, there must be some communication between them if they are to get any pleasure out of their variety. And an intellectual formula is the only thing that can create a communication that does not depend on mere blood, class, or capricious sympathy. If we all start with the agreement that the sun and moon exist, we can talk about our different visions of them. The strong-eyed man can boast that he sees the sun as a perfect circle. The shortsighted man may say (or if he is an impressionist, boast) that he sees the moon as a silver blur. The colour-blind man may rejoice in the fairy-trick which enables him to live under a green sun and a blue moon. But if once it be held that there is nothing but a silver blur in one man’s eye or a bright circle (like a monocle) in the other man’s, then neither is free, for each is shut up in the cell of a separate universe.
But, indeed, an even worse fate, practically considered, follows from the denim of the original intellectual formula. Not only does the individual become narrow, but he spreads narrowness across the world like a cloud; he causes narrowness to increase and multiply like a weed. For what happens is this: that all the shortsighted people come together and build a city called Myopia, where they take short-sightedness for granted and paint short-sighted pictures and pursue very short-sighted policies. Meanwhile all the men who can stare at the sun get together on Salisbury Plain and do nothing but stare at the sun; and all the men who see a blue moon band themselves together and assert the blue moon, not once in a blue moon, but incessantly. So that instead of a small and varied group, you have enormous monotonous groups. Instead of the liberty of dogma, you have the tyranny of taste.
Allegory apart, instances of what I mean will occur to every one; perhaps the most obvious is Socialism. Socialism means the ownership by the organ of government (whatever it is) of all things necessary to production. If a man claims to be a Socialist in that sense he can be any kind of man he likes in any other sense—a bookie, a Mahatma, a man about town, an archbishop, a Margate nigger. Without recalling at the moment clear-headed Socialists in all of these capacities, it is obvious that a clear-headed Socialist (that is, a Socialist with a creed) can be a soldier, like Mr. Blatchford, or a Don, like Mr. Ball, or a Bath-chairman like Mr. Meeke, or a clergyman like Mr. Conrad Noel, or an artistic tradesman like the late Mr. William Morris.
But some people call themselves Socialists, and will not be bound by what they call a narrow dogma; they say that Socialism means far, far more than this; all that is high, all that is free, all that is, etc., etc. Now mark their dreadful fate; for they become totally unfit to be tradesmen, or soldiers, or clergymen, or any other stricken human thing, but become a particular sort of person who is always the same. When once it has been discovered that Socialism does not mean a narrow economic formula, it is also discovered that Socialism does mean wearing one particular kind of clothes, reading one particular kind of books, hanging up one particular kind of pictures, and in the majority of cases even eating one particular kind of food. For men must recognise each other somehow. These men will not know each other by a principle, like fellow citizens. They cannot know each other by a smell, like dogs. So they have to fall back on general colouring; on the fact that a man of their sort will have a wife in pale green and Walter Crane’s “Triumph of Labour” hanging in the hall.
There are, of course, many other instances; for modern society is almost made up of these large monochrome patches. Thus I, for one, regret the supersession of the old Puritan unity, founded on theology, but embracing all types from Milton to the grocer, by that newer Puritan unity which is founded rather on certain social habits, certain common notions, both permissive and prohibitive, in connection with Particular social pleasures.
Thus I, for one, regret that (if you are going to have an aristocracy) it did not remain a logical one founded on the science of heraldry; a thing asserting and defending the quite defensible theory that physical genealogy is the test; instead of being, as it is now, a mere machine of Eton and Oxford for varnishing anybody rich enough with one monotonous varnish.
And it is supremely so in the case of religion. As long as you have a creed, which every one in a certain group believes or is supposed to believe, then that group will consist of the old recurring figures of religious history, who can be appealed to by the creed and judged by it; the saint, the hypocrite, the brawler, the weak brother. These people do each other good; or they all join together to do the hypocrite good, with heavy and repeated blows. But once break the bond of doctrine which alone holds these people together and each will gravitate to his own kind outside the group. The hypocrites will all get together and call each other saints; the saints will get lost in a desert and call themselves weak brethren; the weak brethren will get weaker and weaker in a general atmosphere of imbecility; and the brawler will go off looking for somebody else with whom to brawl.
This has very largely happened to modern English religion; I have been in many churches, chapels, and halls where a confident pride in having got beyond creeds was coupled with quite a paralysed incapacity to get beyond catchwords. But wherever the falsity appears it comes from neglect of the same truth: that men should agree on a principle, that they may differ on everything else; that God gave men a law that they might turn it into liberties.
There was hugely more sense in the old people who said that a wife and husband ought to have the same religion than there is in all the contemporary gushing about sister souls and kindred spirits and auras of identical colour. As a matter of fact, the more the sexes are in violent contrast the less likely they are to be in violent collision. The more incompatible their tempers are the better. Obviously a wife’s soul cannot possibly be a sister soul. It is very seldom so much as a first cousin. There are very few marriages of identical taste and temperament; they are generally unhappy. But to have the same fundamental theory, to think the same thing a virtue, whether you practise or neglect it, to think the same thing a sin, whether you punish or pardon or laugh at it, in the last extremity to call the same thing duty and the same thing disgrace—this really is necessary to a tolerably happy marriage; and it is much better represented by a common religion than it is by affinities and auras. And what applies to the family applies to the nation. A nation with a root religion will be tolerant. A nation with no religion will be bigoted. Lastly, the worst effect of all is this: that when men come together to profess a creed, they come courageously, though it is to hide in catacombs and caves. But when they come together in a clique they come sneakishly, eschewing all change or disagreement, though it is to dine to a brass band in a big London hotel. For birds of a feather flock together, but birds of the white feather most of all.
IL SETTARIO DELLA SOCIETÀ
Un credo fisso è assolutamente indispensabile alla libertà. Perché mentre gli uomini sono e dovrebbero essere vari, deve esserci una qualche comunicazione tra loro se vogliono trarre piacere dalla loro varietà. E una formula intellettuale è l’unica cosa che può creare una comunicazione che non dipenda da semplice sangue, classe o simpatia capricciosa. Se tutti partiamo dall’accordo che il sole e la luna esistono, possiamo parlare delle nostre diverse visioni di essi. L’uomo dallo sguardo forte può vantarsi di vedere il sole come un cerchio perfetto. L’uomo miope può dire (o se è impressionista, vantarsi) che vede la luna come una macchia d’argento. L’uomo daltonico può rallegrarsi del trucco fatato che gli permette di vivere sotto un sole verde e una luna blu. Ma se si afferma che non c’è altro che una macchia argentea nell’occhio dell’uno o un cerchio luminoso (come un monocolo) in quello dell’altro, allora nessuno dei due è libero, perché ciascuno è rinchiuso nella cella di un universo separato.
Ma, infatti, una sorte ancora peggiore, considerata praticamente, deriva dal diniego della formula intellettuale originaria. Non solo l’individuo diventa ristretto, ma diffonde la ristrettezza nel mondo come una nuvola; fa sì che la ristrettezza aumenti e si moltiplichi come una pianta infestante. Perché ciò che accade è questo: che tutte le persone miope si riuniscono e costruiscono una città chiamata Miopia, dove danno per scontata la miopia e dipingono quadri miopi e perseguono politiche molto miope. Nel frattempo tutti gli uomini che possono fissare il sole si riuniscono sulla Pianura di Salisbury e non fanno altro che fissare il sole; e tutti gli uomini che vedono una luna blu si uniscono e asseriscono la luna blu, non una volta ogni luna blu, ma incessantemente. Così invece di un piccolo gruppo vario, avete enormi gruppi monotoni. Invece della libertà del dogma, avete la tirannia del gusto.
A parte l’allegoria, esempi di ciò che intendo verranno in mente a tutti; forse il più ovvio è il Socialismo. Il Socialismo significa la proprietà, da parte dell’organo del governo (qualunque esso sia), di tutte le cose necessarie alla produzione. Se un uomo si dichiara socialista in questo senso, può essere qualsiasi tipo di uomo voglia essere in ogni altro senso: un bookmaker, un Mahatma, un mondain, un arcivescovo, uno zingaro di Margate. Senza richiamare al momento socialisti lucidi in tutte queste capacità, è ovvio che un socialista lucido (cioè, un socialista con una dottrina) può essere un soldato, come il signor Blatchford, o un Don, come il signor Ball, o un facchino di Bath come il signor Meeke, o un ecclesiastico come il signor Conrad Noel, o un artigiano d’arte come il defunto signor William Morris.
Ma alcune persone si definiscono socialisti e non vogliono essere vincolate da quello che chiamano un dogma ristretto; dicono che il socialismo significa molto, molto di più; tutto ciò che è elevato, tutto ciò che è libero, tutto ciò che è, ecc., ecc. Ora osservate la loro terribile sorte: diventano del tutto inadatti a essere commercianti o soldati o preti o qualsiasi altra cosa umana colpita dalla sventura, ma diventano un tipo particolare di persona che è sempre uguale. Quando si scopre che il socialismo non significa una formula economica ristretta, si scopre anche che il socialismo significa indossare un tipo particolare di abiti, leggere un tipo particolare di libri, appendere un tipo particolare di quadri e nella maggior parte dei casi persino mangiare un tipo particolare di cibo. Perché gli uomini devono riconoscersi in qualche modo. Questi uomini non si conosceranno per un principio, come i concittadini. Non possono conoscere l’altro per odore, come cani. Così devono fare affidamento sul colore generale; sul fatto che un uomo del loro tipo avrà una moglie in verde pallido e il “Trionfo del Lavoro” di Walter Crane appeso nell’atrio.
Ci sono, naturalmente, molti altri esempi; la società moderna è infatti quasi interamente composta da queste grandi macchie monocromatiche. Così io, per uno, rimpiango il superamento dell’antica unità puritana fondata sulla teologia ma che abbracciava tutti i tipi da Milton al droghiere, con quella più recente unità puritana basata piuttosto su certe abitudini sociali, certe nozioni comuni, sia permissive che proibitive, in relazione a particolari piaceri sociali.
Così io, per uno, mi rammarico che (se si deve avere un’aristocrazia) non sia rimasta una logica fondata sulla scienza dell’araldica; una cosa che afferma e difende la teoria tutt’altro che insostenibile che il test è la genealogia fisica; invece di essere, come ora, una mera macchina di Eton e Oxford per verniciare chiunque sia abbastanza ricco con una vernice monotona.
E lo è soprattutto nel caso della religione. Finché si ha un credo, che tutti i membri di un certo gruppo credono o dovrebbero credere, allora quel gruppo sarà composto dalle vecchie figure ricorrenti della storia religiosa, a cui il credo può appellarsi e giudicare; il santo, l’ipocrita, il litigioso, il fratello debole. Queste persone si fanno del bene a vicenda; o si uniscono tutte insieme per fare del bene all’ipocrita, con colpi pesanti e ripetuti. Ma una volta spezzato il vincolo della dottrina che sola tiene unite queste persone, ciascuna graviterà verso la propria specie al di fuori del gruppo. Gli ipocriti si riuniranno tutti e si chiameranno santi; i santi si perderanno in un deserto e si definiranno fratelli deboli; i fratelli deboli diventeranno sempre più deboli in un’atmosfera generale di imbecillità; e il litigioso andrà a cercare qualcun altro con cui bisticciare.
Questo è accaduto in larga misura alla religione inglese moderna; sono stato in molte chiese, cappelle e sale dove un orgoglio sicuro di essersi lasciati alle spalle i credi era accompagnato da una paralizzante incapacità di andare oltre le parole d’ordine. Ma ovunque appaia la falsità essa deriva dal trascurare la stessa verità: che gli uomini dovrebbero essere d’accordo su un principio, affinché possano dissentire su tutto il resto; che Dio ha dato agli uomini una legge affinché potessero trasformarla in libertà.
C’era molto più senso nelle vecchie persone che dicevano che una moglie e un marito avrebbero dovuto avere la stessa religione più di quanto ce ne sia in tutto il contemporaneo scorrere sulle sorelle anime e spiriti affini e aure dello stesso colore. Di fatto, più i sessi sono in violento contrasto meno è probabile che siano in violenta collisione. Più i loro temperamenti sono incompatibili meglio è. Ovviamente l’anima di una moglie non può essere un’anima sorella. È molto raro che sia anche solo cugina di primo grado. Ci sono pochissimi matrimoni con gusti e temperamenti identici; generalmente sono infelici. Ma avere la stessa teoria fondamentale, pensare la stessa cosa una virtù, se la si pratica o la si trascura, pensare la stessa cosa un peccato, se lo si punisce o lo si perdoni o ci si ride sopra, nell’estremo limite chiamare la stessa cosa dovere e la stessa cosa disonore—questo è veramente necessario per un matrimonio tollerabilmente felice; ed è molto meglio rappresentato da una religione comune che non da affinità e aure. E ciò che vale per la famiglia vale anche per la nazione. Una nazione con una religione di base sarà tollerante. Una nazione senza religione sarà bigotta. Infine, il peggior effetto di tutti è questo: che quando gli uomini si riuniscono per professare un credo, vengono coraggiosamente, anche se è per nascondersi in catacombe e caverne. Ma quando si riuniscono in una cricca vengono furtivamente, evitando ogni cambiamento o disaccordo, anche se è per cenare con banda musicale in un grande albergo di Londra. Perché gli uccelli dello stesso piumaggio stanno insieme, ma soprattutto quelli del piumaggio bianco.
THE FOOL
For many years I had sought him, and at last I found him in a club. I had been told that he was everywhere; but I had almost begun to think that he was nowhere. I had been assured that there were millions of him; but before my late discovery I inclined to think that there were none of him. After my late discovery I am sure that there is one; and I incline to think that there are several, say, a few hundreds; but unfortunately most of them occupying important positions. When I say “him,” I mean the entire idiot.
I have never been able to discover that “stupid public” of which so many literary men complain. The people one actually meets in trains or at tea parties seem to me quite bright and interesting; certainly quite enough so to call for the full exertion of one’s own wits. And even when I have heard brilliant “conversationalists” conversing with other people, the conversation had much more equality and give and take than this age of intellectual snobs will admit. I have sometimes felt tired, like other people; but rather tired with men’s talk and variety than with their stolidity or sameness; therefore it was that I sometimes longed to find the refreshment of a single fool.
But it was denied me. Turn where I would I found this monotonous brilliancy of the general intelligence, this ruthless, ceaseless sparkle of humour and good sense. The “mostly fools” theory has been used in an anti-democratic sense; but when I found at last my priceless ass, I did not find him in what is commonly called the democracy; nor in the aristocracy either. The man of the democracy generally talks quite rationally, sometimes on the anti-democratic side, but always with an idea of giving reasons for what he says and referring to the realities of his experience. Nor is it the aristocracy that is stupid; at least, not that section of the aristocracy which represents it in politics. They are often cynical, especially about money, but even their boredom tends to make them a little eager for any real information or originality. If a man like Mr. Winston Churchill or Mr. Wyndham made up his mind for any reason to attack Syndicalism he would find out what it was first. Not so the man I found in the club.
He was very well dressed; he had a heavy but handsome face; his black clothes suggested the City and his gray moustaches the Army; but the whole suggested that he did not really belong to either, but was one of those who dabble in shares and who play at soldiers. There was some third element about him that was neither mercantile nor military. His manners were a shade too gentlemanly to be quite those of a gentleman. They involved an unction and over-emphasis of the club-man: then I suddenly remembered feeling the same thing in some old actors or old playgoers who had modelled themselves on actors. As I came in he said, “If I was the Government,” and then put a cigar in his mouth which he lit carefully with long intakes of breath. Then he took the cigar out of his mouth again and said, “I’d give it ‘em,” as if it were quite a separate sentence. But even while his mouth was stopped with the cigar his companion or interlocutor leaped to his feet and said with great heartiness, snatching up a hat, “Well, I must be off. Tuesday!”. I dislike these dark suspicions, but I certainly fancied I recognised the sudden geniality with which one takes leave of a bore.
When, therefore, he removed the narcotic stopper from his mouth it was to me that he addressed the belated epigram. “I’d give it ‘em.”
“What would you give them,” I asked, “the minimum wage?”
“I’d give them beans,” he said. “I’d shoot ‘em down shoot ‘em down, every man Jack of them. I lost my best train yesterday, and here’s the whole country paralysed, and here’s a handful of obstinate fellows standing between the country and coal. I’d shoot ‘em down!”
“That would surely be a little harsh,” I pleaded. “After all, they are not under martial law, though I suppose two or three of them have commissions in the Yeomanry.”
“Commissions in the Yeomanry!” he repeated, and his eyes and face, which became startling and separate, like those of a boiled lobster, made me feel sure that he had something of the kind himself.
“Besides,” I continued, “wouldn’t it be quite enough to confiscate their money?”
“Well, I’d send them all to penal servitude, anyhow,” he said, “and I’d confiscate their funds as well.”
“The policy is daring and full of difficulty,” I replied, “but I do not say that it is wholly outside the extreme rights of the republic. But you must remember that though the facts of property have become quite fantastic, yet the sentiment of property still exists. These coal-owners, though they have not earned the mines, though they could not work the mines, do quite honestly feel that they own the mines. Hence your suggestion of shooting them down, or even of confiscating their property, raises very—”
“What do you mean?” asked the man with the cigar, with a bullying eye. “Who yer talking about?”
“I’m talking about what you were talking about,” I replied; “as you put it so perfectly, about the handful of obstinate fellows who are standing between the country and the coal. I mean the men who are selling their own coal for fancy prices, and who, as long as they can get those prices, care as little for national starvation as most merchant princes and pirates have cared for the provinces that were wasted or the peoples that were enslaved just before their ships came home. But though I am a bit of a revolutionist myself, I cannot quite go with you in the extreme violence you suggest. You say—”
“I say,” he cried, bursting through my speech with a really splendid energy like that of some noble beast, “I say I’d take all these blasted miners and—”
I had risen slowly to my feet, for I was profoundly moved; and I stood staring at that mental monster.
“Oh,” I said, “so it is the miners who are all to be sent to penal servitude, so that we may get more coal. It is the miners who are to be shot dead, every man Jack of them; for if once they are all shot dead they will start mining again… You must forgive me, sir; I know I seem somewhat moved… The fact is, I have just found something. something I have been looking for for years.”
“Well,” he asked, with no unfriendly stare, “and what have you found?”
“No,” I answered, shaking my head sadly, “I do not think it would be quite kind to tell you what I have found.”
He had a hundred virtues, including the capital virtue of good humour, and we had no difficulty in changing the subject and forgetting the disagreement. He talked about society, his town friends and his country sports, and I discovered in the course of it that he was a county magistrate, a Member of Parliament, and a director of several important companies. He was also that other thing, which I did not tell him.
The moral is that a certain sort of person does exist, to whose glory this article is dedicated. He is not the ordinary man. He is not the miner, who is sharp enough to ask for the necessities of existence. He is not the mine-owner, who is sharp enough to get a great deal more, by selling his coal at the best possible moment. He is not the aristocratic politician, who has a cynical but a fair sympathy with both economic opportunities. But he is the man who appears in scores of public places open to the upper middle class or (that less known but more powerful section) the lower upper class. Men like this all over the country are really saying whatever comes into their heads in their capacities of justice of the peace, candidate for Parliament, Colonel of the Yeomanry, old family doctor, Poor Law guardian, coroner, or above all, arbiter in trade disputes. He suffers, in the literal sense, from softening of the brain; he has softened it by always taking the view of everything most comfortable for his country, his class, and his private personality. He is a deadly public danger. But as I have given him his name at the beginning of this article there is no need for me to repeat it at the end.
Per molti anni l’avevo cercato, e alla fine lo trovai in un club. Mi era stato detto che era dappertutto; ma avevo quasi cominciato a pensare che non fosse da nessuna parte. Mi era stato assicurato che ne esistevano milioni; ma prima della mia recente scoperta ero incline a pensare che non ve ne fosse nessuno. Dopo la mia recente scoperta sono certo che ne esiste uno; e sono incline a pensare che ve ne siano parecchi, diciamo, qualche centinaio; ma purtroppo la maggior parte di essi occupa posizioni importanti. Quando dico «lui», intendo l’idiota completo.
Non sono mai riuscito a scoprire quel «pubblico stupido» di cui tanti letterati si lamentano. Le persone che effettivamente s’incontrano nei treni o ai ricevimenti del tè mi paiono piuttosto sveglie e interessanti; certamente abbastanza da richiedere il pieno esercizio del proprio ingegno. E persino quando ho udito brillanti «conversatori» conversare con altre persone, la conversazione aveva molta più parità e scambio di quanto questa età di snob intellettuali voglia ammettere. A volte mi sono sentito stanco, come le altre persone; ma stanco piuttosto del parlare e della varietà degli uomini che della loro ottusità o monotonia; ed è per questo che talvolta anelavo a trovare il ristoro di un solo sciocco.
Ma mi fu negato. Dovunque mi voltassi trovavo questa monotona brillantezza dell’intelligenza generale, questo spietato, incessante scintillio di umorismo e di buon senso. La teoria dei «per lo più sciocchi» è stata usata in senso antidemocratico; ma quando finalmente trovai il mio impagabile asino, non lo trovai in ciò che comunemente si chiama la democrazia; né tantomeno nell’aristocrazia. L’uomo della democrazia parla in genere in modo abbastanza razionale, talvolta dalla parte antidemocratica, ma sempre con l’intenzione di addurre ragioni per ciò che dice e di riferirsi alle realtà della propria esperienza. Né è l’aristocrazia a essere stupida; almeno, non quella parte dell’aristocrazia che la rappresenta in politica. Sono spesso cinici, specialmente riguardo al denaro, ma perfino la loro noia tende a renderli un poco avidi di qualsiasi informazione reale o originalità. Se un uomo come il signor Winston Churchill o il signor Wyndham decidesse per una qualsiasi ragione di attaccare il Sindacalismo, prima scoprirebbe di che cosa si tratta. Non così l’uomo che trovai nel club.
Era vestito assai bene; aveva un volto pesante ma bello; i suoi abiti neri suggerivano la City e i suoi baffi grigi l’Esercito; ma l’insieme suggeriva che in realtà non apparteneva a nessuno dei due, ma era uno di quelli che si dilettano di azioni e che giocano a fare i soldati. C’era in lui un terzo elemento che non era né mercantile né militare. I suoi modi erano un’ombra troppo signorili per essere davvero quelli di un gentiluomo. Comportavano un’untuosità e un’enfasi eccessiva da uomo di club: poi rammentai d’un tratto di aver provato la stessa cosa con certi vecchi attori o vecchi frequentatori di teatro che si erano modellati sugli attori. Mentre entravo egli disse: «Se io fossi il Governo», e poi si mise in bocca un sigaro che accese con cura con lunghe boccate d’aria. Poi si tolse di nuovo il sigaro dalla bocca e disse: «Gliela farei vedere io», come se fosse una frase del tutto a sé. Ma proprio mentre la sua bocca era tappata dal sigaro il suo compagno o interlocutore balzò in piedi e disse con gran cordialità, afferrando un cappello: «Ebbene, devo andare. Martedì!». Detesto questi oscuri sospetti, ma certamente mi parve di riconoscere l’improvvisa cordialità con cui si prende congedo da un seccatore.
Quando, dunque, egli rimosse il tappo narcotico dalla bocca fu a me che rivolse il tardivo epigramma. «Gliela farei vedere io».
«Che cosa gli daresti,» chiesi, «il salario minimo?»
«Gli darei una bella lezione,» disse. «Li abbatterei a fucilate, li abbatterei a fucilate, tutti quanti fino all’ultimo. Ieri ho perso il mio treno migliore, ed ecco l’intero paese paralizzato, ed ecco una manciata di individui ostinati che si frappongono fra il paese e il carbone. Li abbatterei a fucilate!»
«Sarebbe sicuramente un po’ duro,» perorai. «Dopotutto, non sono sotto la legge marziale, benché suppongo che due o tre di loro abbiano un brevetto d’ufficiale nella Yeomanry.»
«Brevetti nella Yeomanry!» ripeté, e i suoi occhi e il suo volto, che divennero sconcertanti e distinti, come quelli di un’aragosta bollita, mi fecero avere la certezza che egli stesso avesse qualcosa del genere.
«E poi,» proseguii, «non basterebbe forse confiscare il loro denaro?»
«Ebbene, li manderei tutti ai lavori forzati, in ogni caso,» disse, «e confischerei anche i loro fondi.»
«La politica è audace e piena di difficoltà,» risposi, «ma non dico che sia del tutto al di fuori dei diritti estremi della repubblica. Ma dovete ricordare che, benché i fatti della proprietà siano diventati assai fantastici, il sentimento della proprietà esiste tuttora. Questi padroni del carbone, benché non abbiano guadagnato le miniere, benché non sappiano far funzionare le miniere, sentono con tutta onestà di possedere le miniere. Perciò la vostra proposta di abbatterli a fucilate, o anche di confiscare la loro proprietà, solleva questioni assai…»
«Che cosa intendete?» chiese l’uomo col sigaro, con occhio prepotente. «Di chi state parlando?»
«Parlo di ciò di cui parlavate voi,» risposi; «come l’avete espresso così perfettamente, della manciata di individui ostinati che si frappongono fra il paese e il carbone. Intendo gli uomini che vendono il proprio carbone a prezzi esorbitanti, e che, finché possono ottenere quei prezzi, si curano della fame nazionale tanto poco quanto la maggior parte dei principi mercanti e dei pirati si è curata delle province devastate o dei popoli ridotti in schiavitù appena prima che le loro navi tornassero a casa. Ma benché io stesso sia un po’ rivoluzionario, non posso proprio seguirvi nella violenza estrema che proponete. Voi dite…»
«Io dico,» gridò, irrompendo nel mio discorso con un’energia davvero splendida come quella di qualche nobile bestia, «io dico che prenderei tutti questi maledetti minatori e…»
Mi ero alzato lentamente in piedi, perché ero profondamente commosso; e restai a fissare quel mostro mentale.
«Oh,» dissi, «così sono i minatori che vanno tutti mandati ai lavori forzati, affinché possiamo avere più carbone. Sono i minatori che vanno abbattuti a fucilate, tutti quanti fino all’ultimo; perché una volta che saranno tutti abbattuti a fucilate ricominceranno a scavare… Dovete perdonarmi, signore; so di apparire alquanto commosso… Il fatto è che ho appena trovato qualcosa. qualcosa che cercavo da anni.»
«Ebbene,» chiese, con uno sguardo per nulla ostile, «e che cosa avete trovato?»
«No,» risposi, scuotendo tristemente il capo, «non credo sarebbe del tutto gentile dirvi che cosa ho trovato.»
Aveva cento virtù, compresa la virtù capitale del buon umore, e non avemmo alcuna difficoltà a cambiare argomento e a dimenticare il disaccordo. Parlò della società, dei suoi amici di città e dei suoi passatempi di campagna, e nel corso della conversazione scoprii che era magistrato di contea, membro del Parlamento e amministratore di parecchie importanti società. Era anche quell’altra cosa, che non gli dissi.
La morale è che una certa specie di persona esiste davvero, alla cui gloria è dedicato questo articolo. Non è l’uomo comune. Non è il minatore, che è abbastanza sveglio da chiedere le cose necessarie all’esistenza. Non è il proprietario della miniera, che è abbastanza sveglio da ottenere molto di più, vendendo il proprio carbone nel momento più opportuno possibile. Non è il politico aristocratico, che ha una cinica ma equa simpatia per entrambe le opportunità economiche. Ma è l’uomo che compare in decine di luoghi pubblici aperti all’alta borghesia o (quella sezione meno nota ma più potente) alla bassa aristocrazia. Uomini come questo in tutto il paese dicono davvero qualunque cosa passi loro per la testa nelle loro vesti di giudice di pace, candidato al Parlamento, colonnello della Yeomanry, vecchio medico di famiglia, sovrintendente della Legge dei Poveri, magistrato inquirente, o soprattutto arbitro nelle controversie di lavoro. Egli soffre, nel senso letterale, di rammollimento del cervello; lo ha rammollito assumendo sempre di ogni cosa la visione più comoda per il proprio paese, la propria classe e la propria personalità privata. È un pericolo pubblico mortale. Ma poiché gli ho dato il suo nome all’inizio di questo articolo non c’è bisogno che lo ripeta alla fine.
THE CONSCRIPT AND THE CRISIS
Very few of us ever see the history of our own time happening. And I think the best service a modern journalist can do to society is to record as plainly as ever he can exactly what impression was produced on his mind by anything he has actually seen and heard on the outskirts of any modern problem or campaign. Though all he saw of a railway strike was a flat meadow in Essex in which a train was becalmed for an hour or two, he will probably throw more light on the strike by describing this which he has seen than by describing the steely kings of commerce and the bloody leaders of the mob whom he has never seen— nor any one else either. If he comes a day too late for the battle of Waterloo (as happened to a friend of my grandfather) he should still remember that a true account of the day after Waterloo would be a most valuable thing to have. Though he was on the wrong side of the door when Rizzio was being murdered, we should still like to have the wrong side described in the right way. Upon this principle I, who know nothing of diplomacy or military arrangements, and have only held my breath like the rest of the world while France and Germany were bargaining, will tell quite truthfully of a small scene I saw, one of the thousand scenes that were, so to speak, the anterooms of that inmost chamber of debate.
In the course of a certain morning I came into one of the quiet squares of a small French town and found its cathedral. It was one of those gray and rainy days which rather suit the Gothic. The clouds were leaden, like the solid blue-gray lead of the spires and the jewelled windows; the sloping roofs and high-shouldered arches looked like cloaks drooping with damp; and the stiff gargoyles that stood out round the walls were scoured with old rains and new. I went into the round, deep porch with many doors and found two grubby children playing there out of the rain. I also found a notice of services, etc., and among these I found the announcement that at 11.30 (that is about half an hour later) there would be a special service for the Conscripts, that is to say, the draft of young men who were being taken from their homes in that little town and sent to serve in the French Army; sent (as it happened) at an awful moment, when the French Army was encamped at a parting of the ways. There were already a great many people there when I entered, not only of all kinds, but in all attitudes, kneeling, sitting, or standing about. And there was that general sense that strikes every man from a Protestant country, whether he dislikes the Catholic atmosphere or likes it; I mean, the general sense that the thing was “going on all the time”; that it was not an occasion, but a perpetual process, as if it were a sort of mystical inn.
Several tricolours were hung quite near to the altar, and the young men, when they came in, filed up the church and sat right at the front. They were, of course, of every imaginable social grade; for the French conscription is really strict and universal. Some looked like young criminals, some like young priests, some like both. Some were so obviously prosperous and polished that a barrack-room must seem to them like hell; others (by the look of them) had hardly ever been in so decent a place. But it was not so much the mere class variety that most sharply caught an Englishman’s eye. It was the presence of just those one or two kinds of men who would never have become soldiers in any other way.
There are many reasons for becoming a soldier. It may be a matter of hereditary luck or abject hunger or heroic virtue or fugitive vice; it may be an interest in the work or a lack of interest in any other work. But there would always be two or three kinds of people who would never tend to soldiering; all those kinds of people were there. A lad with red hair, large ears, and very careful clothing, somehow conveyed across the church that he had always taken care of his health, not even from thinking about it, but simply because he was told, and that he was one of those who pass from childhood to manhood without any shock of being a man. In the row in front of him there was a very slight and vivid little Jew, of the sort that is a tailor and a Socialist. By one of those accidents that make real life so unlike anything else, he was the one of the company who seemed especially devout. Behind these stiff or sensitive boys were ranged the ranks of their mothers and fathers, with knots and bunches of their little brothers and sisters.
The children kicked their little legs, wriggled about the seats, and gaped at the arched roof while their mothers were on their knees praying their own prayers, and here and there crying. The gray clouds of rain outside gathered, I suppose, more and more; for the deep church continuously darkened. The lads in front began to sing a military hymn in odd, rather strained voices; I could not disentangle the words, but only one perpetual refrain; so that it sounded like
Sacrarterumbrrar pour la patrie, Valdarkararump pour la patrie.
Then this ceased; and silence continued, the coloured windows growing gloomier and gloomier with the clouds. In the dead stillness a child started crying suddenly and incoherently. In a city far to the north a French diplomatist and a German aristocrat were talking.
I will not make any commentary on the thing that could blur the outline of its almost cruel actuality. I will not talk nor allow any one else to talk about “clericalism” and “militarism.” Those who talk like that are made of the same mud as those who call all the angers of the unfortunate “Socialism.” The women who were calling in the gloom around me on God and the Mother of God were not “clericalists”; or, if they were, they had forgotten it. And I will bet my boots the young men were not “militarists”—quite the other way just then. The priest made a short speech; he did not utter any priestly dogmas (whatever they are), he uttered platitudes. In such circumstances platitudes are the only possible things to say; because they are true. He began by saying that he supposed a large number of them would be uncommonly glad not to go. They seemed to assent to this particular priestly dogma with even more than their alleged superstitious credulity. He said that war was hateful, and that we all hated it; but that “in all things reasonable” the law of one’s own commonwealth was the voice of God. He spoke about Joan of Arc; and how she had managed to be a bold and successful soldier while still preserving her virtue and practising her religion; then he gave them each a little paper book. To which they replied (after a brief interval for reflection):
Pongprongperesklang pour la patrie, Tambraugtararronc pour la patrie.
which I feel sure was the best and most pointed reply.
While all this was happening feelings quite indescribable crowded about my own darkening brain, as the clouds crowded above the darkening church. They were so entirely of the elements and the passions that I cannot utter them in an idea, but only in an image. It seemed to me that we were barricaded in this church, but we could not tell what was happening outside the church. The monstrous and terrible jewels of the windows darkened or glistened under moving shadow or light, but the nature of that light and the shapes of those shadows we did not know and hardly dared to guess. The dream began, I think, with a dim fancy that enemies were already in the town, and that the enormous oaken doors were groaning under their hammers. Then I seemed to suppose that the town itself had been destroyed by fire, and effaced, as it may be thousands of years hence, and that if I opened the door I should come out on a wilderness as flat and sterile as the sea. Then the vision behind the veil of stone and slate grew wilder with earthquakes. I seemed to see chasms cloven to the foundations of all things, and letting up an infernal dawn. Huge things happily hidden from us had climbed out of the abyss, and were striding about taller than the clouds. And when the darkness crept from the sapphires of Mary to the sanguine garments of St. John I fancied that some hideous giant was walking round the church and looking in at each window in turn.
Sometimes, again, I thought of that church with coloured windows as a ship carrying many lanterns struggling in a high sea at night. Sometimes I thought of it as a great coloured lantern itself, hung on an iron chain out of heaven and tossed and swung to and fro by strong wings, the wings of the princes of the air. But I never thought of it or the young men inside it save as something precious and in peril, or of the things outside but as something barbaric and enormous.
I know there are some who cannot sympathise with such sentiments of limitation; I know there are some who would feel no touch of the heroic tenderness if some day a young man, with red hair, large ears, and his mother’s lozenges in his pocket, were found dead in uniform in the passes of the Vosges. But on this subject I have heard many philosophies and thought a good deal for myself; and the conclusion I have come to is Sacrarterumbrrar pour la Pattie, and it is not likely that I shall alter it now.
But when I came out of the church there were none of these things, but only a lot of Shops, including a paper-shop, on which the posters announced that the negotiations were proceeding satisfactorily.
IL COSCRITTO E LA CRISI
Ben pochi di noi vedono mai accadere la storia del proprio tempo. E penso che il miglior servizio che un giornalista moderno possa rendere alla società sia registrare nel modo più semplice che gli riesca esattamente quale impressione fu prodotta sulla sua mente da qualsiasi cosa egli abbia effettivamente visto e udito ai margini di un qualsiasi problema o campagna moderni. Anche se tutto ciò che vide di uno sciopero ferroviario fu un piatto prato dell’Essex in cui un treno rimase in bonaccia per un’ora o due, egli probabilmente getterà più luce sullo sciopero descrivendo ciò che ha visto che non descrivendo i re d’acciaio del commercio e i sanguinari capi della folla che non ha mai visto… né ha mai visto nessun altro. Se arriva un giorno troppo tardi per la battaglia di Waterloo (come accadde a un amico di mio nonno) dovrebbe pur ricordare che un resoconto veritiero del giorno dopo Waterloo sarebbe una cosa preziosissima da avere. Anche se si trovava dal lato sbagliato della porta mentre Rizzio veniva assassinato, ci piacerebbe comunque avere il lato sbagliato descritto nel modo giusto. Secondo questo principio io, che non so nulla di diplomazia o di disposizioni militari, e ho solo trattenuto il fiato come il resto del mondo mentre la Francia e la Germania trattavano, racconterò con tutta sincerità di una piccola scena che vidi, una delle mille scene che erano, per così dire, le anticamere di quella più interna camera del dibattito.
Nel corso di una certa mattina giunsi in una delle tranquille piazze di una piccola città francese e ne trovai la cattedrale. Era una di quelle giornate grigie e piovose che si addicono piuttosto al gotico. Le nubi erano plumbee, come il solido piombo grigio-azzurro delle guglie e delle vetrate ingioiellate; i tetti spioventi e gli archi dalle alte spalle parevano mantelli cadenti per l’umidità; e i rigidi gargoyle che sporgevano lungo le mura erano dilavati da vecchie e nuove piogge. Entrai nel portico rotondo e profondo dalle molte porte e vi trovai due bambini lerci che giocavano al riparo dalla pioggia. Trovai anche un avviso delle funzioni, ecc., e fra queste trovai l’annuncio che alle 11.30 (cioè circa mezz’ora più tardi) vi sarebbe stata una funzione speciale per i Coscritti, vale a dire la leva dei giovani che venivano strappati alle loro case in quella cittadina e mandati a servire nell’Esercito francese; mandati (come accadde) in un momento terribile, quando l’Esercito francese era accampato a un bivio. C’era già moltissima gente quando entrai, non solo di ogni sorta, ma in ogni atteggiamento, inginocchiata, seduta, o in piedi qua e là. E c’era quella sensazione generale che colpisce ogni uomo proveniente da un paese protestante, sia che gli dispiaccia l’atmosfera cattolica sia che gli piaccia; intendo, la sensazione generale che la cosa fosse «in corso da sempre»; che non fosse un’occasione, ma un processo perpetuo, come se fosse una specie di locanda mistica.
Parecchi tricolori erano appesi assai vicino all’altare, e i giovani, quando entrarono, sfilarono su per la chiesa e si sedettero proprio in prima fila. Erano, naturalmente, di ogni immaginabile grado sociale; poiché la coscrizione francese è davvero rigorosa e universale. Alcuni sembravano giovani criminali, alcuni giovani preti, alcuni entrambe le cose. Alcuni erano così palesemente prosperi e raffinati che una camerata di caserma doveva sembrar loro un inferno; altri (a giudicare dal loro aspetto) non erano quasi mai stati in un luogo così decoroso. Ma non era tanto la mera varietà di classe a colpire più acutamente l’occhio di un Inglese. Era la presenza proprio di quelle una o due specie di uomini che non sarebbero mai diventati soldati in nessun altro modo.
Vi sono molte ragioni per diventare soldato. Può essere questione di fortuna ereditaria o di abietta fame o di eroica virtù o di vizio fuggitivo; può essere un interesse per quel mestiere o una mancanza d’interesse per qualsiasi altro mestiere. Ma vi sarebbero sempre due o tre specie di persone che non tenderebbero mai al mestiere delle armi; tutte quelle specie di persone erano lì. Un ragazzo dai capelli rossi, dalle grandi orecchie e dagli abiti molto curati, in qualche modo trasmetteva attraverso la chiesa di aver sempre avuto cura della propria salute, non per averci pensato, ma semplicemente perché gli era stato detto, e di essere uno di quelli che passano dalla fanciullezza alla virilità senza alcuno scossone dell’essere uomo. Nella fila davanti a lui c’era un piccolo Ebreo assai esile e vivace, di quella specie che fa il sarto e il socialista. Per uno di quei casi che rendono la vita reale così diversa da ogni altra cosa, era colui, di tutta la compagnia, che sembrava particolarmente devoto. Dietro questi ragazzi rigidi o sensibili erano schierate le file delle loro madri e dei loro padri, con nodi e grappoli dei loro fratellini e sorelline.
I bambini scalciavano con le loro gambette, si dimenavano sui sedili e guardavano a bocca aperta il soffitto ad archi mentre le loro madri erano in ginocchio a recitare le proprie preghiere, e qua e là a piangere. Le grigie nubi di pioggia fuori si addensavano, suppongo, sempre più; poiché la profonda chiesa si oscurava di continuo. I ragazzi davanti cominciarono a cantare un inno militare con voci strane, piuttosto sforzate; non riuscivo a districare le parole, ma solo un perpetuo ritornello; sicché suonava come
Sacrarterumbrrar pour la patrie, Valdarkararump pour la patrie.
Poi ciò cessò; e il silenzio continuò, le vetrate colorate facendosi sempre più cupe con le nubi. Nella morta immobilità un bambino cominciò a piangere all’improvviso e in modo incoerente. In una città lontana a settentrione un diplomatico francese e un aristocratico tedesco stavano parlando.
Non farò alcun commento sulla cosa che possa sfumare il contorno della sua realtà quasi crudele. Non parlerò né permetterò ad altri di parlare di «clericalismo» e «militarismo». Coloro che parlano così sono fatti dello stesso fango di quelli che chiamano «Socialismo» tutte le collere degli sventurati. Le donne che nell’oscurità intorno a me invocavano Dio e la Madre di Dio non erano «clericaliste»; o, se lo erano, se n’erano dimenticate. E scommetterei gli stivali che i giovani non erano «militaristi»… proprio il contrario, in quel momento. Il prete fece un breve discorso; non pronunciò alcun dogma sacerdotale (qualunque cosa siano), pronunciò banalità. In simili circostanze le banalità sono le uniche cose possibili da dire; perché sono vere. Cominciò col dire che supponeva che un gran numero di loro sarebbe stato straordinariamente lieto di non andare. Sembrarono assentire a questo particolare dogma sacerdotale con anche più della loro presunta credulità superstiziosa. Disse che la guerra era odiosa, e che tutti la odiavamo; ma che «in tutte le cose ragionevoli» la legge del proprio stato era la voce di Dio. Parlò di Giovanna d’Arco; e di come fosse riuscita a essere un soldato ardito e vittorioso pur conservando la propria virtù e praticando la propria religione; poi diede a ciascuno di loro un libriccino di carta. Al che essi risposero (dopo un breve intervallo di riflessione):
Pongprongperesklang pour la patrie, Tambraugtararronc pour la patrie.
che sono certo fu la risposta migliore e più calzante.
Mentre tutto questo accadeva sentimenti del tutto indescrivibili si affollavano attorno al mio stesso cervello che si oscurava, come le nubi si affollavano sopra la chiesa che si oscurava. Erano così interamente degli elementi e delle passioni che non posso esprimerli in un’idea, ma solo in un’immagine. Mi pareva che fossimo barricati in questa chiesa, ma non potevamo dire che cosa stesse accadendo fuori della chiesa. I mostruosi e terribili gioielli delle vetrate si oscuravano o luccicavano sotto ombra o luce in movimento, ma la natura di quella luce e le forme di quelle ombre non le conoscevamo e a stento osavamo indovinarle. Il sogno cominciò, credo, con una fioca fantasia che i nemici fossero già nella città, e che le enormi porte di quercia gemessero sotto i loro martelli. Poi mi parve di supporre che la città stessa fosse stata distrutta dal fuoco, e cancellata, come potrà essere fra migliaia d’anni, e che se avessi aperto la porta sarei uscito in una landa desolata piatta e sterile come il mare. Poi la visione dietro il velo di pietra e ardesia si fece più selvaggia con i terremoti. Mi parve di vedere abissi spaccati fino alle fondamenta di ogni cosa, e che lasciavano salire un’infernale alba. Enormi cose per fortuna a noi nascoste erano salite fuori dall’abisso, e incedevano a grandi passi più alte delle nubi. E quando l’oscurità strisciò dagli zaffiri di Maria alle vesti sanguigne di San Giovanni immaginai che qualche orrendo gigante camminasse attorno alla chiesa e sbirciasse dentro a ogni finestra a turno.
Talvolta, di nuovo, pensavo a quella chiesa dalle vetrate colorate come a una nave carica di molte lanterne che lottava in un mare grosso di notte. Talvolta la pensavo come una grande lanterna colorata essa stessa, appesa a una catena di ferro dal cielo e scossa e fatta oscillare avanti e indietro da ali potenti, le ali dei principi dell’aria. Ma non pensai mai a essa o ai giovani al suo interno se non come a qualcosa di prezioso e in pericolo, né alle cose di fuori se non come a qualcosa di barbarico ed enorme.
So che vi sono alcuni che non possono simpatizzare con simili sentimenti di limitazione; so che vi sono alcuni che non proverebbero alcun tocco dell’eroica tenerezza se un giorno un giovane, dai capelli rossi, dalle grandi orecchie, e con le pastiglie di sua madre in tasca, fosse trovato morto in uniforme fra i passi dei Vosgi. Ma su questo argomento ho udito molte filosofie e ho riflettuto parecchio per conto mio; e la conclusione a cui sono giunto è Sacrarterumbrrar pour la Pattie, e non è probabile che io la muti ora.
Ma quando uscii dalla chiesa non c’era nessuna di queste cose, ma solo una quantità di Negozi, tra cui un’edicola, sulla quale i manifesti annunciavano che le trattative procedevano in modo soddisfacente.
THE MISER AND HIS FRIENDS
It is a sign of sharp sickness in a society when it is actually led by some special sort of lunatic. A mild touch of madness may even keep a man sane; for it may keep him modest. So some exaggerations in the State may remind it of its own normal. But it is bad when the head is cracked; when the roof of the commonwealth has a tile loose.
The two or three cases of this that occur in history have always been gibbeted gigantically. Thus Nero has become a black proverb, not merely because he was an oppressor, but because he was also an aesthete— that is, an erotomaniac. He not only tortured other people’s bodies; he tortured his own soul into the same red revolting shapes. Though he came quite early in Roman Imperial history and was followed by many austere and noble emperors, yet for us the Roman Empire was never quite cleansed of that memory of the sexual madman. The populace or barbarians from whom we come could not forget the hour when they came to the highest place of the earth, saw the huge pedestal of the earthly omnipotence, read on it Divus Caesar, and looked up and saw a statue without a head.
It is the same with that ugly entanglement before the Renaissance, from which, alas, most memories of the Middle Ages are derived. Louis XI was a very patient and practical man of the world; but (like many good business men) he was mad. The morbidity of the intriguer and the torturer clung about everything he did, even when it was right. And just as the great Empire of Antoninus and Aurelius never wiped out Nero, so even the silver splendour of the latter saints, such as Vincent de Paul, has never painted out for the British public the crooked shadow of Louis XI. Whenever the unhealthy man has been on top, he has left a horrible savour that humanity finds still in its nostrils. Now in our time the unhealthy man is on top; but he is not the man mad on sex, like Nero; or mad on statecraft, like Louis XI; he is simply the man mad on money. Our tyrant is not the satyr or the torturer; but the miser.
The modern miser has changed much from the miser of legend and anecdote; but only because he has grown yet more insane. The old miser had some touch of the human artist about him in so far that he collected gold—a substance that can really be admired for itself, like ivory or old oak. An old man who picked up yellow pieces had something of the simple ardour, something of the mystical materialism, of a child who picks out yellow flowers. Gold is but one kind of coloured clay, but coloured clay can be very beautiful. The modern idolater of riches is content with far less genuine things. The glitter of guineas is like the glitter of buttercups, the chink of pelf is like the chime of bells, compared with the dreary papers and dead calculations which make the hobby of the modern miser.
The modern millionaire loves nothing so lovable as a coin. He is content sometimes with the dead crackle of notes; but far more often with the mere repetition of noughts in a ledger, all as like each other as eggs to eggs. And as for comfort, the old miser could be comfortable, as many tramps and savages are, when he was once used to being unclean. A man could find some comfort in an unswept attic or an unwashed shirt. But the Yankee millionaire can find no comfort with five telephones at his bed-head and ten minutes for his lunch. The round coins in the miser’s stocking were safe in some sense. The round noughts in the millionaire’s ledger are safe in no sense; the same fluctuation which excites him with their increase depresses him with their diminution. The miser at least collects coins; his hobby is numismatics. The man who collects noughts collects nothings.
It may be admitted that the man amassing millions is a bit of an idiot; but it may be asked in what sense does he rule the modern world. The answer to this is very important and rather curious. The evil enigma for us here is not the rich, but the Very Rich. The distinction is important; because this special problem is separate from the old general quarrel about rich and poor that runs through the Bible and all strong books, old and new. The special problem to-day is that certain powers and privileges have grown so world-wide and unwieldy that they are out of the power of the moderately rich as well as of the moderately poor. They are out of the power of everybody except a few millionaires— that is, misers. In the old normal friction of normal wealth and poverty I am myself on the Radical side. I think that a Berkshire squire has too much power over his tenants; that a Brompton builder has too much power over his workmen; that a West London doctor has too much power over the poor patients in the West London Hospital.
But a Berkshire squire has no power over cosmopolitan finance, for instance. A Brompton builder has not money enough to run a Newspaper Trust. A West End doctor could not make a corner in quinine and freeze everybody out. The merely rich are not rich enough to rule the modern market. The things that change modern history, the big national and international loans, the big educational and philanthropic foundations, the purchase of numberless newspapers, the big prices paid for peerages, the big expenses often incurred in elections— these are getting too big for everybody except the misers; the men with the largest of earthly fortunes and the smallest of earthly aims.
There are two other odd and rather important things to be said about them. The first is this: that with this aristocracy we do not have the chance of a lucky variety in types which belongs to larger and looser aristocracies. The moderately rich include all kinds of people even good people. Even priests are sometimes saints; and even soldiers are sometimes heroes. Some doctors have really grown wealthy by curing their patients and not by flattering them; some brewers have been known to sell beer. But among the Very Rich you will never find a really generous man, even by accident. They may give their money away, but they will never give themselves away; they are egoistic, secretive, dry as old bones. To be smart enough to get all that money you must be dull enough to want it.
Lastly, the most serious point about them is this: that the new miser is flattered for his meanness and the old one never was. It was never called self-denial in the old miser that he lived on bones. It is called self-denial in the new millionaire if he lives on beans. A man like Dancer was never praised as a Christian saint for going in rags. A man like Rockefeller is praised as a sort of pagan stoic for his early rising or his unassuming dress. His “simple” meals, his “simple” clothes, his “simple” funeral, are all extolled as if they were creditable to him. They are disgraceful to him: exactly as disgraceful as the tatters and vermin of the old miser were disgraceful to him. To be in rags for charity would be the condition of a saint; to be in rags for money was that of a filthy old fool. Precisely in the same way, to be “simple” for charity is the state of a saint; to be “simple” for money is that of a filthy old fool. Of the two I have more respect for the old miser, gnawing bones in an attic: if he was not nearer to God, he was at least a little nearer to men. His simple life was a little more like the life of the real poor.
L’AVARO E I SUOI AMICI
È segno di acuta malattia in una società quando essa è effettivamente guidata da qualche particolare specie di folle. Un lieve tocco di follia può addirittura mantenere sano un uomo; poiché può mantenerlo modesto. Così alcune esagerazioni nello Stato possono rammentargli la propria normalità. Ma è cosa cattiva quando la testa è incrinata; quando il tetto dello stato ha una tegola smossa.
I due o tre casi di ciò che ricorrono nella storia sono sempre stati messi alla gogna in modo gigantesco. Così Nerone è diventato un nero proverbio, non semplicemente perché fu un oppressore, ma perché fu anche un esteta… vale a dire un erotomane. Non solo torturò i corpi altrui; torturò la propria anima fino a darle le stesse rosse e rivoltanti forme. Benché sia venuto assai presto nella storia imperiale romana e sia stato seguito da molti austeri e nobili imperatori, tuttavia per noi l’Impero Romano non fu mai del tutto purificato di quella memoria del folle sessuale. Il popolo o i barbari da cui discendiamo non potevano dimenticare l’ora in cui giunsero al luogo più alto della terra, videro l’immenso piedistallo dell’onnipotenza terrena, vi lessero Divus Caesar, alzarono lo sguardo e videro una statua senza testa.
Lo stesso vale per quel brutto groviglio precedente il Rinascimento, dal quale, ahimè, derivano la maggior parte dei ricordi del Medioevo. Luigi XI era un uomo di mondo assai paziente e pratico; ma (come molti bravi uomini d’affari) era pazzo. La morbosità dell’intrigante e del torturatore si attaccava a tutto ciò che faceva, anche quando era giusto. E proprio come il grande Impero di Antonino e di Aurelio non cancellò mai Nerone, così persino lo splendore d’argento dei santi più recenti, come Vincenzo de’ Paoli, non ha mai coperto per il pubblico britannico la storta ombra di Luigi XI. Ogni volta che l’uomo malsano è stato in cima, ha lasciato un orribile sentore che l’umanità ritrova ancora nelle proprie narici. Ora ai nostri giorni l’uomo malsano è in cima; ma non è l’uomo pazzo per il sesso, come Nerone; o pazzo per l’arte di governo, come Luigi XI; è semplicemente l’uomo pazzo per il denaro. Il nostro tiranno non è il satiro o il torturatore; ma l’avaro.
L’avaro moderno è molto cambiato rispetto all’avaro della leggenda e dell’aneddoto; ma solo perché è diventato ancor più folle. Il vecchio avaro aveva in sé qualche tocco dell’artista umano nella misura in cui collezionava oro… una sostanza che può davvero essere ammirata per sé stessa, come l’avorio o la quercia antica. Un vecchio che raccoglieva monete gialle aveva qualcosa del semplice ardore, qualcosa del mistico materialismo, di un bambino che coglie fiori gialli. L’oro non è che una specie di argilla colorata, ma l’argilla colorata può essere bellissima. Il moderno idolatra delle ricchezze si accontenta di cose assai meno genuine. Lo scintillio delle ghinee è come lo scintillio dei ranuncoli, il tintinnio del denaro è come il rintocco delle campane, se paragonati alle tetre carte e ai morti calcoli che costituiscono l’hobby dell’avaro moderno.
Il milionario moderno non ama nulla di tanto amabile quanto una moneta. Si accontenta talvolta del morto fruscio delle banconote; ma assai più spesso della mera ripetizione di zeri in un registro, tutti simili l’uno all’altro come uova a uova. E quanto alla comodità, il vecchio avaro poteva stare comodo, come stanno molti vagabondi e selvaggi, una volta che si era abituato a essere sudicio. Un uomo poteva trovare una qualche comodità in una soffitta non spazzata o in una camicia non lavata. Ma il milionario yankee non riesce a trovare alcuna comodità con cinque telefoni alla testata del letto e dieci minuti per il pranzo. Le tonde monete nella calza dell’avaro erano al sicuro in un certo senso. I tondi zeri nel registro del milionario non sono al sicuro in alcun senso; la stessa fluttuazione che lo eccita col loro aumento lo deprime con la loro diminuzione. L’avaro almeno colleziona monete; il suo hobby è la numismatica. L’uomo che colleziona zeri colleziona nullità.
Si può ammettere che l’uomo che ammassa milioni sia un po’ un idiota; ma ci si può chiedere in che senso egli governi il mondo moderno. La risposta a ciò è molto importante e piuttosto curiosa. Il malvagio enigma per noi qui non sono i ricchi, ma i Ricchissimi. La distinzione è importante; perché questo problema particolare è distinto dall’antica disputa generale su ricchi e poveri che percorre la Bibbia e tutti i libri forti, vecchi e nuovi. Il problema particolare di oggi è che certi poteri e privilegi sono cresciuti tanto mondiali e ingovernabili da essere fuori dalla portata dei moderatamente ricchi non meno che dei moderatamente poveri. Sono fuori dalla portata di tutti tranne che di pochi milionari… vale a dire, avari. Nell’antico normale attrito fra normale ricchezza e povertà io stesso sto dalla parte dei Radicali. Penso che uno squire del Berkshire abbia troppo potere sui propri affittuari; che un costruttore di Brompton abbia troppo potere sui propri operai; che un medico della Londra occidentale abbia troppo potere sui poveri pazienti dell’ospedale della Londra occidentale.
Ma uno squire del Berkshire non ha alcun potere sulla finanza cosmopolita, per esempio. Un costruttore di Brompton non ha denaro sufficiente per gestire un Trust di giornali. Un medico del West End non potrebbe accaparrarsi il chinino e tagliare fuori tutti. I meramente ricchi non sono abbastanza ricchi da governare il mercato moderno. Le cose che cambiano la storia moderna, i grandi prestiti nazionali e internazionali, le grandi fondazioni educative e filantropiche, l’acquisto di innumerevoli giornali, i grandi prezzi pagati per i titoli nobiliari, le grandi spese spesso sostenute nelle elezioni… queste stanno diventando troppo grandi per chiunque tranne che per gli avari; gli uomini con le più grandi fortune terrene e i più piccoli scopi terreni.
Vi sono altre due cose strane e piuttosto importanti da dire su di loro. La prima è questa: che con questa aristocrazia non abbiamo la possibilità di una fortunata varietà di tipi che appartiene alle aristocrazie più ampie e più sciolte. I moderatamente ricchi comprendono ogni genere di persone perfino persone buone. Perfino i preti sono a volte santi; e perfino i soldati sono a volte eroi. Alcuni medici sono davvero diventati ricchi curando i propri pazienti e non adulandoli; è noto che alcuni birrai abbiano venduto birra. Ma fra i Ricchissimi non troverete mai un uomo davvero generoso, neppure per caso. Possono dar via il proprio denaro, ma non daranno mai via sé stessi; sono egoisti, riservati, aridi come vecchie ossa. Per essere abbastanza svegli da ottenere tutto quel denaro bisogna essere abbastanza ottusi da desiderarlo.
Infine, il punto più serio riguardo a loro è questo: che il nuovo avaro è adulato per la sua grettezza e il vecchio non lo era mai. Non fu mai chiamato abnegazione nel vecchio avaro il fatto che vivesse di ossa. È chiamato abnegazione nel nuovo milionario se vive di fagioli. Un uomo come Dancer non fu mai lodato come santo cristiano per l’andare in stracci. Un uomo come Rockefeller è lodato come una sorta di stoico pagano per il suo levarsi presto o per il suo modo di vestire dimesso. I suoi pasti «semplici», i suoi abiti «semplici», il suo funerale «semplice», sono tutti esaltati come se gli facessero onore. Sono per lui una vergogna: esattamente vergognosi quanto i cenci e i vermi del vecchio avaro erano vergognosi per lui. Essere in stracci per carità sarebbe la condizione di un santo; essere in stracci per denaro era quella di un lurido vecchio sciocco. Precisamente allo stesso modo, essere «semplice» per carità è lo stato di un santo; essere «semplice» per denaro è quello di un lurido vecchio sciocco. Dei due ho più rispetto per il vecchio avaro, che rosicchia ossa in una soffitta: se non era più vicino a Dio, era almeno un poco più vicino agli uomini. La sua vita semplice era un poco più simile alla vita dei veri poveri.
THE MYSTAGOGUE
Whenever you hear much of things being unutterable and indefinable and impalpable and unnamable and subtly indescribable, then elevate your aristocratic nose towards heaven and snuff up the smell of decay. It is perfectly true that there is something in all good things that is beyond all speech or figure of speech. But it is also true that there is in all good things a perpetual desire for expression and concrete embodiment; and though the attempt to embody it is always inadequate, the attempt is always made. If the idea does not seek to be the word, the chances are that it is an evil idea. If the word is not made flesh it is a bad word.
Thus Giotto or Fra Angelico would have at once admitted theologically that God was too good to be painted; but they would always try to paint Him. And they felt (very rightly) that representing Him as a rather quaint old man with a gold crown and a white beard, like a king of the elves, was less profane than resisting the sacred impulse to express Him in some way. That is why the Christian world is full of gaudy pictures and twisted statues which seem, to many refined persons, more blasphemous than the secret volumes of an atheist. The trend of good is always towards Incarnation. But, on the other hand, those refined thinkers who worship the Devil, whether in the swamps of Jamaica or the salons of Paris, always insist upon the shapelessness, the wordlessness, the unutterable character of the abomination. They call him “horror of emptiness,” as did the black witch in Stevenson’s Dynamiter; they worship him as the unspeakable name; as the unbearable silence. They think of him as the void in the heart of the whirlwind; the cloud on the brain of the maniac; the toppling turrets of vertigo or the endless corridors of nightmare. It was the Christians who gave the Devil a grotesque and energetic outline, with sharp horns and spiked tail. It was the saints who drew Satan as comic and even lively. The Satanists never drew him at all.
And as it is with moral good and evil, so it is also with mental clarity and mental confusion. There is one very valid test by which we may separate genuine, if perverse and unbalanced, originality and revolt from mere impudent innovation and bluff. The man who really thinks he has an idea will always try to explain that idea. The charlatan who has no idea will always confine himself to explaining that it is much too subtle to be explained. The first idea may really be very outree or specialist; it may really be very difficult to express to ordinary people. But because the man is trying to express it, it is most probable that there is something in it, after all. The honest man is he who is always trying to utter the unutterable, to describe the indescribable; but the quack lives not by plunging into mystery, but by refusing to come out of it.
Perhaps this distinction is most comically plain in the case of the thing called Art, and the people called Art Critics. It is obvious that an attractive landscape or a living face can only half express the holy cunning that has made them what they are. It is equally obvious that a landscape painter expresses only half of the landscape; a portrait painter only half of the person; they are lucky if they express so much. And again it is yet more obvious that any literary description of the pictures can only express half of them, and that the less important half. Still, it does express something; the thread is not broken that connects God With Nature, or Nature with men, or men with critics. The “Mona Lisa” was in some respects (not all, I fancy) what God meant her to be. Leonardo’s picture was, in some respects, like the lady. And Walter Pater’s rich description was, in some respects, like the picture. Thus we come to the consoling reflection that even literature, in the last resort, can express something other than its own unhappy self.
Now the modern critic is a humbug, because he professes to be entirely inarticulate. Speech is his whole business; and he boasts of being speechless. Before Botticelli he is mute. But if there is any good in Botticelli (there is much good, and much evil too) it is emphatically the critic’s business to explain it: to translate it from terms of painting into terms of diction. Of course, the rendering will be inadequate—but so is Botticelli. It is a fact he would be the first to admit. But anything which has been intelligently received can at least be intelligently suggested. Pater does suggest an intelligent cause for the cadaverous colour of Botticelli’s “Venus Rising from the Sea.” Ruskin does suggest an intelligent motive for Turner destroying forests and falsifying landscapes. These two great critics were far too fastidious for my taste; they urged to excess the idea that a sense of art was a sort of secret; to be patiently taught and slowly learnt. Still, they thought it could be taught: they thought it could be learnt. They constrained themselves, with considerable creative fatigue, to find the exact adjectives which might parallel in English prose what has been clone in Italian painting. The same is true of Whistler and R. A. M. Stevenson and many others in the exposition of Velasquez. They had something to say about the pictures; they knew it was unworthy of the pictures, but they said it.
Now the eulogists of the latest artistic insanities (Cubism and Post-Impressionism and Mr. Picasso) are eulogists and nothing else. They are not critics; least of all creative critics. They do not attempt to translate beauty into language; they merely tell you that it is untranslatable—that is, unutterable, indefinable, indescribable, impalpable, ineffable, and all the rest of it. The cloud is their banner; they cry to chaos and old night. They circulate a piece of paper on which Mr. Picasso has had the misfortune to upset the ink and tried to dry it with his boots, and they seek to terrify democracy by the good old anti-democratic muddlements: that “the public” does not understand these things; that “the likes of us” cannot dare to question the dark decisions of our lords.
I venture to suggest that we resist all this rubbish by the very simple test mentioned above. If there were anything intelligent in such art, something of it at least could be made intelligible in literature. Man is made with one head, not with two or three. No criticism of Rembrandt is as good as Rembrandt; but it can be so written as to make a man go back and look at his pictures. If there is a curious and fantastic art, it is the business of the art critics to create a curious and fantastic literary expression for it; inferior to it, doubtless, but still akin to it. If they cannot do this, as they cannot; if there is nothing in their eulogies, as there is nothing except eulogy— then they are quacks or the high-priests of the unutterable. If the art critics can say nothing about the artists except that they are good it is because the artists are bad. They can explain nothing because they have found nothing; and they have found nothing because there is nothing to be found.
IL MISTAGOGO
Ogni volta che sentite parlare molto di cose indicibili e indefinibili e impalpabili e innominabili e sottilmente indescrivibili, allora sollevate il vostro naso aristocratico verso il cielo e fiutate l’odore della corruzione. È perfettamente vero che c’è in tutte le cose buone qualcosa che è al di là di ogni parola o figura retorica. Ma è anche vero che c’è in tutte le cose buone un perpetuo desiderio di espressione e di concreta incarnazione; e benché il tentativo di incarnarla sia sempre inadeguato, il tentativo viene sempre fatto. Se l’idea non cerca di farsi parola, con ogni probabilità è un’idea malvagia. Se la parola non si fa carne è una cattiva parola.
Così Giotto o il Beato Angelico avrebbero subito ammesso teologicamente che Dio era troppo buono per essere dipinto; ma cercavano sempre di dipingerLo. E sentivano (assai giustamente) che rappresentarLo come un vecchio piuttosto bizzarro con una corona d’oro e una barba bianca, come un re degli elfi, era meno profano che resistere al sacro impulso di esprimerLo in qualche modo. Ecco perché il mondo cristiano è pieno di quadri sgargianti e di statue contorte che sembrano, a molte persone raffinate, più blasfemi dei volumi segreti di un ateo. La tendenza del bene è sempre verso l’Incarnazione. Ma, d’altro canto, quei pensatori raffinati che adorano il Diavolo, sia nelle paludi della Giamaica sia nei salotti di Parigi, insistono sempre sull’informità, sull’assenza di parola, sul carattere indicibile dell’abominio. Lo chiamano «orrore del vuoto», come faceva la nera strega nel Dynamiter di Stevenson; lo adorano come il nome indicibile; come l’insopportabile silenzio. Lo pensano come il vuoto nel cuore del turbine; la nube sul cervello del maniaco; le torri vacillanti della vertigine o gli infiniti corridoi dell’incubo. Furono i Cristiani a dare al Diavolo un profilo grottesco ed energico, con corna aguzze e coda irta di punte. Furono i santi a raffigurare Satana come comico e persino vivace. I Satanisti non lo raffigurarono affatto.
E come accade con il bene e il male morale, così accade anche con la chiarezza mentale e la confusione mentale. C’è una prova assai valida con cui possiamo separare l’originalità e la rivolta genuine, per quanto perverse e squilibrate, dalla mera impudente innovazione e dal bluff. L’uomo che crede davvero di avere un’idea cercherà sempre di spiegare quell’idea. Il ciarlatano che non ha alcuna idea si limiterà sempre a spiegare che essa è troppo sottile per essere spiegata. La prima idea può davvero essere assai bizzarra o specialistica; può davvero essere assai difficile da esprimere alla gente comune. Ma poiché l’uomo sta cercando di esprimerla, è assai probabile che vi sia qualcosa in essa, dopotutto. L’uomo onesto è colui che cerca sempre di dire l’indicibile, di descrivere l’indescrivibile; ma il ciarlatano vive non dell’immergersi nel mistero, bensì del rifiutarsi di uscirne.
Forse questa distinzione è più comicamente evidente nel caso della cosa chiamata Arte, e delle persone chiamate Critici d’Arte. È ovvio che un paesaggio attraente o un volto vivo possano esprimere solo per metà la santa astuzia che li ha resi ciò che sono. È altrettanto ovvio che un paesaggista esprima solo metà del paesaggio; un ritrattista solo metà della persona; sono fortunati se esprimono anche solo tanto. E ancora è ancor più ovvio che qualsiasi descrizione letteraria dei quadri possa esprimerne solo metà, e per giunta la metà meno importante. Eppure esprime qualcosa; non è spezzato il filo che collega Dio alla Natura, o la Natura agli uomini, o gli uomini ai critici. La «Monna Lisa» era per certi aspetti (non tutti, immagino) ciò che Dio intendeva che fosse. Il quadro di Leonardo era, per certi aspetti, simile alla dama. E la ricca descrizione di Walter Pater era, per certi aspetti, simile al quadro. Così giungiamo alla consolante riflessione che perfino la letteratura, in ultima istanza, può esprimere qualcosa di diverso dal proprio infelice sé.
Ora il critico moderno è un impostore, perché professa di essere del tutto incapace di articolare parola. La parola è tutto il suo mestiere; e si vanta di essere senza parole. Davanti a Botticelli è muto. Ma se c’è del buono in Botticelli (c’è molto buono, e anche molto male) è enfaticamente compito del critico spiegarlo: tradurlo dai termini della pittura ai termini della dizione. Certo, la resa sarà inadeguata… ma lo è anche Botticelli. È un fatto che egli sarebbe il primo ad ammettere. Ma qualsiasi cosa che sia stata intelligentemente recepita può almeno essere intelligentemente suggerita. Pater suggerisce davvero una causa intelligente per il colore cadaverico della «Venere che sorge dal mare» di Botticelli. Ruskin suggerisce davvero un motivo intelligente per cui Turner distruggeva foreste e falsificava paesaggi. Questi due grandi critici erano fin troppo schizzinosi per i miei gusti; spingevano all’eccesso l’idea che il senso dell’arte fosse una sorta di segreto; da insegnare con pazienza e da apprendere lentamente. Eppure pensavano che potesse essere insegnato: pensavano che potesse essere appreso. Si costringevano, con notevole fatica creativa, a trovare gli aggettivi esatti che potessero rendere in prosa inglese ciò che era stato compiuto nella pittura italiana. Lo stesso vale per Whistler e R. A. M. Stevenson e molti altri nell’esposizione di Velázquez. Avevano qualcosa da dire sui quadri; sapevano che era indegno dei quadri, ma lo dicevano.
Ora gli elogiatori delle ultime follie artistiche (il Cubismo e il Post-Impressionismo e il signor Picasso) sono elogiatori e nient’altro. Non sono critici; men che meno critici creativi. Non tentano di tradurre la bellezza in linguaggio; si limitano a dirvi che è intraducibile… vale a dire, indicibile, indefinibile, indescrivibile, impalpabile, ineffabile, e tutto il resto. La nube è il loro stendardo; invocano il caos e la vecchia Notte. Fanno circolare un pezzo di carta su cui il signor Picasso ha avuto la disgrazia di rovesciare l’inchiostro e ha cercato di asciugarlo con gli stivali, e cercano di terrorizzare la democrazia con le buone vecchie confusioni antidemocratiche: che «il pubblico» non capisce queste cose; che «gente come noi» non può osare mettere in dubbio le oscure decisioni dei nostri signori.
Mi permetto di suggerire che resistiamo a tutte queste sciocchezze con la semplicissima prova menzionata sopra. Se ci fosse qualcosa di intelligente in una simile arte, qualcosa di essa almeno potrebbe essere reso intelligibile nella letteratura. L’uomo è fatto con una sola testa, non con due o tre. Nessuna critica di Rembrandt è buona quanto Rembrandt; ma può essere scritta in modo tale da spingere un uomo a tornare a guardare i suoi quadri. Se esiste un’arte curiosa e fantastica, è compito dei critici d’arte creare per essa un’espressione letteraria curiosa e fantastica; inferiore ad essa, senza dubbio, ma pur sempre affine ad essa. Se non sanno fare questo, come non sanno; se non c’è nulla nei loro elogi, come non c’è nulla se non elogio… allora sono ciarlatani o i sommi sacerdoti dell’indicibile. Se i critici d’arte non sanno dire nulla degli artisti se non che sono buoni, è perché gli artisti sono cattivi. Non sanno spiegare nulla perché non hanno trovato nulla; e non hanno trovato nulla perché non c’è nulla da trovare.
THE RED REACTIONARY
The one case for Revolution is that it is the only quite clean and complete road to anything—even to restoration. Revolution alone can be not merely a revolt of the living, but also a resurrection of the dead.
A friend of mine (one, in fact, who writes prominently on this paper) was once walking down the street in a town of Western France, situated in that area that used to be called La Vendee; which in that great creative crisis about 1790 formed a separate and mystical soul of its own, and made a revolution against a revolution. As my friend went down this street he whistled an old French air which he had found, like Mr. Gandish, “in his researches into ‘istry,” and which had somehow taken his fancy; the song to which those last sincere loyalists went into battle. I think the words ran:-
Monsieur de Charette. Dit au gens d’ici. Le roi va remettre. Le fleur de lys.
My friend was (and is) a Radical, but he was (and is) an Englishman, and it never occurred to him that there could be any harm in singing archaic lyrics out of remote centuries; that one had to be a Catholic to enjoy the “Dies Irae,” or a Protestant to remember “Lillibullero.” Yet he was stopped and gravely warned that things so politically provocative might get him at least into temporary trouble.
A little time after I was helping King George V to get crowned, by walking round a local bonfire and listening to a local band. Just as a bonfire cannot be too big, so (by my theory of music) a band cannot be too loud, and this band was so loud, emphatic, and obvious, that I actually recognised one or two of the tunes. And I noticed that quite a formidable proportion of them were Jacobite tunes; that is, tunes that had been primarily meant to keep George V out of his throne for ever. Some of the real airs of the old Scottish rebellion were played, such as “Charlie is My Darling,” or “What’s a’ the steer, kimmer?” songs that men had sung while marching to destroy and drive out the monarchy under which we live. They were songs in which the very kinsmen of the present King were swept aside as usurpers. They were songs in which the actual words “King George” occurred as a curse and a derision. Yet they were played to celebrate his very Coronation; played as promptly and innocently as if they had been “Grandfather’s Clock” or “Rule Britannia” or “The Honeysuckle and the Bee.”
That contrast is the measure, not only between two nations, but between two modes of historical construction and development. For there is not really very much difference, as European history goes, in the time that has elapsed between us and the Jacobite and between us and the Jacobin. When George III was crowned the gauntlet of the King’s Champion was picked up by a partisan of the Stuarts. When George III was still on the throne the Bourbons were driven out of France as the Stuarts had been driven out of England. Yet the French are just sufficiently aware that the Bourbons might possibly return that they will take a little trouble to discourage it; whereas we are so certain that the Stuarts will never return that we actually play their most passionate tunes as a compliment to their rivals. And we do not even do it tauntingly. I examined the faces of all the bandsmen; and I am sure they were devoid of irony: indeed, it is difficult to blow a wind instrument ironically. We do it quite unconsciously; because we have a huge fundamental dogma, which the French have not. We really believe that the past is past. It is a very doubtful point.
Now the great gift of a revolution (as in France) is that it makes men free in the past as well as free in the future. Those who have cleared away everything could, if they liked, put back everything. But we who have preserved everything—we cannot restore anything. Take, for the sake of argument, the complex and many coloured ritual of the Coronation recently completed. That rite is stratified with the separate centuries; from the first rude need of discipline to the last fine shade of culture or corruption, there is nothing that cannot be detected or even dated. The fierce and childish vow of the lords to serve their lord “against all manner of folk” obviously comes from the real Dark Ages; no longer confused, even by the ignorant, with the Middle Ages. It comes from some chaos of Europe, when there was one old Roman road across four of our counties; and when hostile “folk” might live in the next village. The sacramental separation of one man to be the friend of the fatherless and the nameless belongs to the true Middle Ages; with their great attempt to make a moral and invisible Roman Empire; or (as the Coronation Service says) to set the cross for ever above the ball. Elaborate local tomfooleries, such as that by which the Lord of the Manor of Work-sop is alone allowed to do something or other, these probably belong to the decay of the Middle Ages, when that great civilisation died out in grotesque literalism and entangled heraldry. Things like the presentation of the Bible bear witness to the intellectual outburst at the Reformation; things like the Declaration against the Mass bear witness to the great wars of the Puritans; and things like the allegiance of the Bishops bear witness to the wordy and parenthetical political compromises which (to my deep regret) ended the wars of religion.
But my purpose here is only to point out one particular thing. In all that long list of variations there must be, and there are, things which energetic modern minds would really wish, with the reasonable modification, to restore. Dr. Clifford would probably be glad to see again the great Puritan idealism that forced the Bible into an antique and almost frozen formality. Dr. Horton probably really regrets the old passion that excommunicated Rome. In the same way Mr. Belloc would really prefer the Middle Ages; as Lord Rosebery would prefer the Erastian oligarchy of the eighteenth century. The Dark Ages would probably be disputed (from widely different motives) by Mr. Rudyard Kipling and Mr. Cunninghame Graham. But Mr. Cunninghame Graham would win.
But the black case against Conservative (or Evolutionary) politics is that none of these sincere men can win. Dr. Clifford cannot get back to the Puritans; Mr. Belloc cannot get back to the mediaevals; because (alas) there has been no Revolution to leave them a clear space for building or rebuilding. Frenchmen have all the ages behind them, and can wander back and pick and choose. But Englishmen have all the ages on top of them, and can only lie groaning under that imposing tower, without being able to take so much as a brick out of it. If the French decide that their Republic is bad they can get rid of it; but if we decide that a Republic was good, we should have much more difficulty. If the French democracy actually desired every detail of the mediaeval monarchy, they could have it. I do not think they will or should, but they could. If another Dauphin were actually crowned at Rheims; if another Joan of Arc actually bore a miraculous banner before him; if mediaeval swords shook and blazed in every gauntlet; if the golden lilies glowed from every tapestry; if this were really proved to be the will of France and the purpose of Providence— such a scene would still be the lasting and final justification of the French Revolution.
For no such scene could conceivably have happened under Louis XVI.
IL REAZIONARIO ROSSO
L’unico argomento a favore della Rivoluzione è che essa è l’unica strada del tutto pulita e completa verso qualsiasi cosa… perfino verso la restaurazione. La Rivoluzione sola può essere non soltanto una rivolta dei vivi, ma anche una resurrezione dei morti.
Un mio amico (uno, per la verità, che scrive in posizione di rilievo su questo giornale) camminava una volta lungo la strada in una città della Francia occidentale, situata in quella zona che un tempo si chiamava La Vandea; la quale in quella grande crisi creatrice intorno al 1790 formò una propria anima separata e mistica, e fece una rivoluzione contro una rivoluzione. Mentre il mio amico percorreva questa strada fischiettava una vecchia aria francese che aveva trovato, come il signor Gandish, «nelle sue ricerche di storia», e che in qualche modo gli era piaciuta; la canzone al suono della quale quegli ultimi sinceri lealisti andavano in battaglia. Credo che le parole facessero così:-
Monsieur de Charette. Dit au gens d’ici. Le roi va remettre. Le fleur de lys.
Il mio amico era (ed è) un Radicale, ma era (ed è) un Inglese, e non gli venne mai in mente che potesse esserci alcun male nel cantare liriche arcaiche di secoli remoti; che si dovesse essere Cattolici per apprezzare il «Dies Irae», o Protestanti per ricordare il «Lillibullero». Eppure fu fermato e gravemente ammonito che cose tanto politicamente provocatorie potevano cacciarlo quantomeno in guai temporanei.
Poco tempo dopo io stavo aiutando re Giorgio V a farsi incoronare, girando attorno a un falò locale e ascoltando una banda locale. Proprio come un falò non può essere troppo grande, così (secondo la mia teoria della musica) una banda non può essere troppo fragorosa, e questa banda era così fragorosa, enfatica ed evidente, che riconobbi davvero una o due delle melodie. E notai che una proporzione davvero formidabile di esse erano melodie giacobite; vale a dire, melodie che erano state originariamente intese per tenere Giorgio V fuori dal suo trono per sempre. Vennero suonate alcune delle vere arie della vecchia ribellione scozzese, come «Charlie is My Darling», o «What’s a’ the steer, kimmer?», canzoni che gli uomini avevano cantato mentre marciavano per distruggere e scacciare la monarchia sotto la quale viviamo. Erano canzoni in cui gli stessi consanguinei dell’attuale re venivano spazzati via come usurpatori. Erano canzoni in cui le parole stesse «re Giorgio» comparivano come maledizione e come dileggio. Eppure venivano suonate per celebrare la sua stessa Incoronazione; suonate con tanta prontezza e innocenza come se fossero state «Grandfather’s Clock» o «Rule Britannia» o «The Honeysuckle and the Bee».
Quel contrasto è la misura, non solo fra due nazioni, ma fra due modi di costruzione e di sviluppo storici. Poiché in realtà non c’è molta differenza, per come va la storia europea, nel tempo trascorso fra noi e il Giacobita e fra noi e il Giacobino. Quando Giorgio III fu incoronato il guanto di sfida del Campione del Re fu raccolto da un partigiano degli Stuart. Quando Giorgio III era ancora sul trono i Borboni furono scacciati dalla Francia come gli Stuart erano stati scacciati dall’Inghilterra. Eppure i Francesi sono appena abbastanza consapevoli che i Borboni potrebbero forse tornare da darsi un po’ di pena per scoraggiarlo; mentre noi siamo così certi che gli Stuart non torneranno mai che suoniamo davvero le loro melodie più appassionate come omaggio ai loro rivali. E non lo facciamo nemmeno per scherno. Esaminai i volti di tutti i suonatori della banda; e sono certo che fossero privi d’ironia: in effetti, è difficile soffiare in uno strumento a fiato con ironia. Lo facciamo del tutto inconsciamente; perché abbiamo un enorme dogma fondamentale, che i Francesi non hanno. Crediamo davvero che il passato sia passato. È un punto assai dubbio.
Ora il grande dono di una rivoluzione (come in Francia) è che essa rende gli uomini liberi nel passato non meno che liberi nel futuro. Coloro che hanno spazzato via tutto potrebbero, se volessero, rimettere tutto. Ma noi che abbiamo conservato tutto… noi non possiamo restaurare nulla. Prendete, per amor di discussione, il complesso e variopinto rituale dell’Incoronazione da poco completata. Quel rito è stratificato coi secoli distinti; dal primo rozzo bisogno di disciplina all’ultima raffinata sfumatura di cultura o di corruzione, non c’è nulla che non possa essere individuato o persino datato. Il feroce e puerile voto dei signori di servire il loro signore «contro ogni sorta di gente» proviene ovviamente dai veri Secoli Bui; non più confusi, neppure dagli ignoranti, col Medioevo. Proviene da qualche caos d’Europa, quando c’era una sola vecchia strada romana attraverso quattro delle nostre contee; e quando «gente» ostile poteva vivere nel villaggio accanto. La sacramentale separazione di un uomo affinché sia l’amico degli orfani e dei senza nome appartiene al vero Medioevo; col suo grande tentativo di creare un Impero Romano morale e invisibile; o (come dice il Rito dell’Incoronazione) di porre la croce per sempre al di sopra del globo. Elaborate buffonate locali, come quella per cui al Signore del Maniero di Worksop è solo concesso di fare una qualche cosa, queste appartengono probabilmente al declino del Medioevo, quando quella grande civiltà si estinse in un grottesco letteralismo e in un’araldica aggrovigliata. Cose come la presentazione della Bibbia testimoniano l’esplosione intellettuale della Riforma; cose come la Dichiarazione contro la Messa testimoniano le grandi guerre dei Puritani; e cose come il giuramento di fedeltà dei Vescovi testimoniano i prolissi e parentetici compromessi politici che (con mio profondo rammarico) posero fine alle guerre di religione.
Ma il mio scopo qui è solo di indicare una cosa particolare. In tutto quel lungo elenco di variazioni ci devono essere, e ci sono, cose che menti moderne ed energiche desidererebbero davvero, con le ragionevoli modifiche, restaurare. Il dottor Clifford sarebbe probabilmente lieto di rivedere il grande idealismo puritano che costrinse la Bibbia in una formalità antica e quasi congelata. Il dottor Horton probabilmente rimpiange davvero l’antica passione che scomunicò Roma. Allo stesso modo il signor Belloc preferirebbe davvero il Medioevo; come Lord Rosebery preferirebbe l’oligarchia erastiana del diciottesimo secolo. I Secoli Bui sarebbero probabilmente contesi (per motivi assai diversi) dal signor Rudyard Kipling e dal signor Cunninghame Graham. Ma il signor Cunninghame Graham vincerebbe.
Ma l’accusa nera contro la politica Conservatrice (o Evoluzionista) è che nessuno di questi uomini sinceri può vincere. Il dottor Clifford non può tornare ai Puritani; il signor Belloc non può tornare ai medievali; perché (ahimè) non c’è stata alcuna Rivoluzione a lasciar loro uno spazio libero per costruire o ricostruire. I Francesi hanno tutte le epoche alle loro spalle, e possono vagare all’indietro e scegliere a piacimento. Ma gli Inglesi hanno tutte le epoche addosso, e possono solo giacere gemendo sotto quell’imponente torre, senza poterne cavare nemmeno un mattone. Se i Francesi decidono che la loro Repubblica è cattiva possono liberarsene; ma se noi decidessimo che una Repubblica era buona, avremmo molta più difficoltà. Se la democrazia francese desiderasse davvero ogni dettaglio della monarchia medievale, potrebbe averlo. Non credo che lo faranno o che dovrebbero, ma potrebbero. Se un altro Delfino fosse davvero incoronato a Reims; se un’altra Giovanna d’Arco recasse davvero un vessillo miracoloso davanti a lui; se spade medievali fremessero e balenassero in ogni guanto d’arme; se i gigli d’oro splendessero da ogni arazzo; se ciò fosse davvero dimostrato essere la volontà della Francia e il disegno della Provvidenza… una simile scena sarebbe pur sempre la duratura e definitiva giustificazione della Rivoluzione Francese.
Poiché nessuna simile scena avrebbe potuto concepibilmente accadere sotto Luigi XVI.
THE SEPARATIST AND SACRED THINGS
In the very laudable and fascinating extensions of our interest in Asiatic arts or faiths, there are two incidental injustices which we tend nowadays to do to our own records and our own religion. The first is a tendency to talk as if certain things were not only present in the higher Orientals, but were peculiar to them. Thus our magazines will fall into a habit of wondering praise of Bushido, the Japanese chivalry, as if no Western knights had ever vowed noble vows, or as if no Eastern knights had ever broken them. Or again, our drawing-rooms will be full of the praises of Indian renunciation and Indian unworldliness, as if no Christians had been saints, or as if all Buddhists had been. But if the first injustice is to think of human virtues as peculiarly Eastern, the other injustice is a failure to appreciate what really is peculiarly Eastern. It is too much taken for granted that the Eastern sort of idealism is certainly superior and convincing; whereas in truth it is only separate and peculiar. All that is richest, deepest, and subtlest in the East is rooted in Pantheism; but all that is richest, deepest, and subtlest in us is concerned with denying passionately that Pantheism is either the highest or the purest religion.
Thus, in turning over some excellent books recently written on the spirit of Indian or Chinese art and decoration, I found it quietly and curiously assumed that the artist must be at his best if he flows with the full stream of Nature; and identifies himself with all things; so that the stars are his sleepless eyes and the forests his far-flung arms. Now in this way of talking both the two injustices will be found. In so far as what is claimed is a strong sense of the divine in all things, the Eastern artists have no more monopoly of it than they have of hunger and thirst.
I have no doubt that the painters and poets of the Far East do exhibit this; but I rebel at being asked to admit that we must go to the Far East to find it. Traces of such sentiments can be found, I fancy, even in other painters and poets. I do not question that the poet Wo Wo (that ornament of the eighth dynasty) may have written the words: “Even the most undignified vegetable is for this person capable of producing meditations not to be exhibited by much weeping.” But, I do not therefore admit that a Western gentleman named Wordsworth (who made a somewhat similar remark) had plagiarised from Wo Wo, or was a mere Occidental fable and travesty of that celebrated figure. I do not deny that Tinishona wrote that exquisite example of the short Japanese poem entitled “Honourable Chrysanthemum in Honourable Hole in Wall.” But I do not therefore admit that Tennyson’s little verse about the flower in the cranny was not original and even sincere.
It is recorded (for all I know) of the philanthropic Emperor Bo, that when engaged in cutting his garden lawn with a mower made of alabaster and chrysoberyl, he chanced to cut down a small flower; whereupon, being much affected, he commanded his wise men immediately to take down upon tablets of ivory the lines beginning: “Small and unobtrusive blossom with ruby extremities.” But this incident, touching as it is, does not shake my belief in the incident of Robert Burns and the daisy; and I am left with an impression that poets are pretty much the same everywhere in their poetry—and in their prose.
I have tried to convey my sympathy and admiration for Eastern art and its admirers, and if I have not conveyed them I must give it up and go on to more general considerations. I therefore proceed to say—with the utmost respect, that it is Cheek, a rarefied and etherealised form of Cheek, for this school to speak in this way about the mother that bore them, the great civilisation of the West. The West also has its magic landscapes, only through our incurable materialism they look like landscapes as well as like magic. The West also has its symbolic figures, only they look like men as well as symbols. It will be answered (and most justly) that Oriental art ought to be free to follow its own instinct and tradition; that its artists are concerned to suggest one thing and our artists another; that both should be admired in their difference. Profoundly true; but what is the difference? It is certainly not as the Orientalisers assert, that we must go to the Far East for a sympathetic and transcendental interpretation of Nature. We have paid a long enough toll of mystics and even of madmen to be quit of that disability.
Yet there is a difference, and it is just what I suggested. The Eastern mysticism is an ecstasy of unity; the Christian mysticism is an ecstasy of creation, that is of separation and mutual surprise. The latter says, like St. Francis, “My brother fire and my sister water”; the former says, “Myself fire and myself water.” Whether you call the Eastern attitude an extension of oneself into everything or a contraction of oneself into nothing is a matter of metaphysical definition. The effect is the same, an effect which lives and throbs throughout all the exquisite arts of the East. This effect is the Sing called rhythm, a pulsation of pattern, or of ritual, or of colours, or of cosmic theory, but always suggesting the unification of the individual with the world. But there is quite another kind of sympathy the sympathy with a thing because it is different. No one will say that Rembrandt did not sympathise with an old woman; but no one will say that Rembrandt painted like an old woman. No one will say that Reynolds did not appreciate children; but no one will say he did it childishly. The supreme instance of this divine division is sex, and that explains (what I could never understand in my youth) why Christendom called the soul the bride of God. For real love is an intense realisation of the “separateness” of all our souls. The most heroic and human love-poetry of the world is never mere passion; precisely because mere passion really is a melting back into Nature, a meeting of the waters. And water is plunging and powerful; but it is only powerful downhill. The high and human love-poetry is all about division rather than identity; and in the great love-poems even the man as he embraces the woman sees her, in the same instant, afar off; a virgin and a stranger.
For the first injustice, of which we have spoken, still recurs; and if we grant that the East has a right to its difference, it is not realised in what we differ. That nursery tale from nowhere about St. George and the Dragon really expresses best the relation between the West and the East. There were many other differences, calculated to arrest even the superficial eye, between a saint and a dragon. But the essential difference was simply this: that the Dragon did want to eat St. George; whereas St. George would have felt a strong distaste for eating the Dragon. In most of the stories he killed the Dragon. In many of the stories he not only spared, but baptised it. But in neither case did the Christian have any appetite for cold dragon. The Dragon, however, really has an appetite for cold Christian— and especially for cold Christianity. This blind intention to absorb, to change the shape of everything and digest it in the darkness of a dragon’s stomach; this is what is really meant by the Pantheism and Cosmic Unity of the East. The Cosmos as such is cannibal; as old Time ate his children. The Eastern saints were saints because they wanted to be swallowed up. The Western saint, like St. George, was sainted by the Western Church precisely because he refused to be swallowed. The same process of thought that has prevented nationalities disappearing in Christendom has prevented the complete appearance of Pantheism. All Christian men instinctively resist the idea of being absorbed into an Empire; an Austrian, a Spanish, a British, or a Turkish Empire. But there is one empire, much larger and much more tyrannical, which free men will resist with even stronger passion. The free man violently resists being absorbed into the empire which is called the Universe. He demands Home Rule for his nationality, but still more Home Rule for his home. Most of all he demands Home Rule for himself. He claims the right to be saved, in spite of Moslem fatalism. He claims the right to be damned in spite of theosophical optimism. He refuses to be the Cosmos; because he refuses to forget it.
IL SEPARATISTA E LE COSE SACRE
Nelle assai lodevoli e affascinanti estensioni del nostro interesse per le arti o le fedi asiatiche, ci sono due ingiustizie incidentali che tendiamo oggigiorno a compiere verso le nostre stesse memorie e la nostra stessa religione. La prima è una tendenza a parlare come se certe cose non solo fossero presenti negli Orientali più elevati, ma fossero loro peculiari. Così le nostre riviste cadono nell’abitudine di una stupita lode del Bushido, la cavalleria giapponese, come se nessun cavaliere occidentale avesse mai pronunciato nobili voti, o come se nessun cavaliere orientale li avesse mai infranti. O ancora, i nostri salotti si riempiono delle lodi della rinuncia indiana e del distacco indiano dal mondo, come se nessun Cristiano fosse stato santo, o come se lo fossero stati tutti i Buddhisti. Ma se la prima ingiustizia è pensare alle virtù umane come peculiarmente orientali, l’altra ingiustizia è un’incapacità di apprezzare ciò che è davvero peculiarmente orientale. Si dà troppo per scontato che la specie orientale d’idealismo sia certamente superiore e convincente; mentre in verità essa è soltanto separata e peculiare. Tutto ciò che di più ricco, più profondo e più sottile c’è in Oriente è radicato nel Panteismo; ma tutto ciò che di più ricco, più profondo e più sottile c’è in noi si occupa di negare appassionatamente che il Panteismo sia la religione più alta o più pura.
Così, sfogliando alcuni eccellenti libri scritti di recente sullo spirito dell’arte e della decorazione indiana o cinese, trovai dato per scontato, in modo quieto e curioso, che l’artista dia il meglio di sé se scorre con la piena corrente della Natura; e si identifica con tutte le cose; sicché le stelle sono i suoi occhi insonni e le foreste le sue braccia protese lontano. Ebbene, in questo modo di parlare si ritroveranno entrambe le due ingiustizie. Nella misura in cui ciò che si rivendica è un forte senso del divino in tutte le cose, gli artisti orientali non ne hanno maggior monopolio di quanto ne abbiano della fame e della sete.
Non ho alcun dubbio che i pittori e i poeti dell’Estremo Oriente lo manifestino; ma mi ribello al vedermi chiedere di ammettere che dobbiamo andare in Estremo Oriente per trovarlo. Tracce di simili sentimenti si possono trovare, immagino, anche in altri pittori e poeti. Non metto in dubbio che il poeta Wo Wo (quell’ornamento dell’ottava dinastia) possa aver scritto le parole: «Perfino il più indegno vegetale è per questa persona capace di produrre meditazioni che non si esibiscono con molto pianto». Ma non per questo ammetto che un gentiluomo occidentale di nome Wordsworth (che fece un’osservazione alquanto simile) avesse plagiato Wo Wo, o fosse una mera favola occidentale e una parodia di quella celebre figura. Non nego che Tinishona abbia scritto quello squisito esempio di breve poesia giapponese intitolato «Onorevole Crisantemo nell’Onorevole Buco nel Muro». Ma non per questo ammetto che il breve verso di Tennyson sul fiore nella fessura non fosse originale e persino sincero.
Si narra (per quel che ne so) del filantropico Imperatore Bo, che mentre era intento a tagliare il prato del suo giardino con una falciatrice fatta di alabastro e crisoberillo, gli capitò di recidere un piccolo fiore; al che, essendone molto commosso, ordinò ai suoi saggi di trascrivere immediatamente su tavolette d’avorio i versi che cominciavano: «Piccolo e discreto fiore dalle estremità di rubino». Ma questo episodio, per quanto commovente, non scuote la mia fede nell’episodio di Robert Burns e la margherita; e mi resta l’impressione che i poeti siano più o meno gli stessi dovunque nella loro poesia… e nella loro prosa.
Ho cercato di comunicare la mia simpatia e la mia ammirazione per l’arte orientale e i suoi ammiratori, e se non le ho comunicate devo rinunciarvi e passare a considerazioni più generali. Procedo dunque a dire… col massimo rispetto, che è Sfacciataggine, una forma rarefatta ed eterizzata di Sfacciataggine, che questa scuola parli in questo modo della madre che l’ha generata, la grande civiltà dell’Occidente. Anche l’Occidente ha i suoi paesaggi magici, solo che, per via del nostro inguaribile materialismo, essi sembrano paesaggi non meno che magia. Anche l’Occidente ha le sue figure simboliche, solo che esse sembrano uomini non meno che simboli. Si risponderà (e assai giustamente) che l’arte orientale dovrebbe essere libera di seguire il proprio istinto e la propria tradizione; che i suoi artisti mirano a suggerire una cosa e i nostri artisti un’altra; che entrambe dovrebbero essere ammirate nella loro differenza. Profondamente vero; ma qual è la differenza? Non è certamente, come asseriscono gli orientalizzanti, che dobbiamo andare in Estremo Oriente per un’interpretazione empatica e trascendentale della Natura. Abbiamo pagato un tributo abbastanza lungo di mistici e persino di folli da essere sciolti da quella incapacità.
Eppure c’è una differenza, ed è proprio quella che ho suggerito. Il misticismo orientale è un’estasi di unità; il misticismo cristiano è un’estasi di creazione, ossia di separazione e di reciproca sorpresa. Il secondo dice, come san Francesco: «Il mio fratello fuoco e la mia sorella acqua»; il primo dice: «Io stesso fuoco e io stesso acqua». Che si chiami l’atteggiamento orientale un’estensione di sé in ogni cosa o una contrazione di sé nel nulla è questione di definizione metafisica. L’effetto è lo stesso, un effetto che vive e pulsa attraverso tutte le squisite arti dell’Oriente. Questo effetto è la Cosa chiamata ritmo, una pulsazione di schema, o di rito, o di colori, o di teoria cosmica, ma sempre suggerendo l’unificazione dell’individuo col mondo. Ma c’è tutt’altra specie di simpatia la simpatia per una cosa perché è diversa. Nessuno dirà che Rembrandt non simpatizzasse con una vecchia; ma nessuno dirà che Rembrandt dipingesse come una vecchia. Nessuno dirà che Reynolds non apprezzasse i bambini; ma nessuno dirà che lo facesse puerilmente. L’istanza suprema di questa divina divisione è il sesso, e ciò spiega (quel che non riuscii mai a comprendere in gioventù) perché la Cristianità chiamasse l’anima la sposa di Dio. Poiché il vero amore è un’intensa presa di coscienza della «separatezza» di tutte le nostre anime. La più eroica e umana poesia d’amore del mondo non è mai mera passione; proprio perché la mera passione è davvero un rifondersi nella Natura, un confluire delle acque. E l’acqua è impetuosa e potente; ma è potente solo in discesa. L’alta e umana poesia d’amore parla tutta di divisione piuttosto che di identità; e nelle grandi poesie d’amore perfino l’uomo, mentre abbraccia la donna, la vede, nello stesso istante, lontana; vergine ed estranea.
Poiché la prima ingiustizia, di cui abbiamo parlato, ricorre ancora; e se concediamo che l’Oriente ha diritto alla propria differenza, non si comprende in che cosa differiamo. Quella fiaba da nessun luogo su san Giorgio e il Drago esprime davvero meglio d’ogni altra la relazione fra l’Occidente e l’Oriente. C’erano molte altre differenze, tali da fermare anche l’occhio superficiale, fra un santo e un drago. Ma la differenza essenziale era semplicemente questa: che il Drago voleva davvero mangiare san Giorgio; mentre san Giorgio avrebbe provato un forte disgusto nel mangiare il Drago. Nella maggior parte delle storie egli uccideva il Drago. In molte delle storie non solo lo risparmiava, ma lo battezzava. Ma in nessuno dei due casi il Cristiano aveva alcun appetito per il drago freddo. Il Drago, invece, ha davvero appetito per il Cristiano freddo… e specialmente per il Cristianesimo freddo. Questa cieca intenzione di assorbire, di mutare la forma di ogni cosa e di digerirla nelle tenebre dello stomaco di un drago; questo è ciò che si intende davvero per Panteismo e Unità Cosmica dell’Oriente. Il Cosmo in quanto tale è cannibale; come il vecchio Tempo mangiava i propri figli. I santi orientali erano santi perché volevano essere inghiottiti. Il santo occidentale, come san Giorgio, fu fatto santo dalla Chiesa occidentale proprio perché rifiutò di essere inghiottito. Lo stesso processo di pensiero che ha impedito alle nazionalità di scomparire nella Cristianità ha impedito la completa comparsa del Panteismo. Tutti gli uomini cristiani resistono istintivamente all’idea di essere assorbiti in un Impero; un Impero austriaco, spagnolo, britannico o turco. Ma c’è un impero, molto più vasto e molto più tirannico, a cui gli uomini liberi resisteranno con passione ancora più forte. L’uomo libero resiste violentemente all’essere assorbito nell’impero che si chiama Universo. Egli reclama l’Home Rule per la propria nazionalità, ma ancor più l’Home Rule per la propria casa. Più di tutto reclama l’Home Rule per se stesso. Rivendica il diritto di essere salvato, a dispetto del fatalismo musulmano. Rivendica il diritto di essere dannato a dispetto dell’ottimismo teosofico. Rifiuta di essere il Cosmo; perché rifiuta di dimenticarlo.
THE MUMMER
The night before Christmas Eve I heard a burst of musical voices so close that they might as well have been inside the house instead of just outside; so I asked them inside, hoping that they might then seem farther away. Then I realised that they were the Christmas Mummers, who come every year in country parts to enact the rather rigid fragments of the old Christmas play of St. George, the Turkish Knight, and the Very Venal Doctor. I will not describe it; it is indescribable; but I will describe my parallel sentiments as it passed.
One could see something of that half-failure that haunts our artistic revivals of mediaeval dances, carols, or Bethlehem Plays. There are elements in all that has come to us from the more morally simple society of the Middle Ages: elements which moderns, even when they are mediaevalists, find it hard to understand and harder to imitate. The first is the primary idea of Mummery itself. If you will observe a child just able to walk, you will see that his first idea is not to dress up as anybody—but to dress up. Afterwards, of course, the idea of being the King or Uncle William will leap to his lips. But it is generally suggested by the hat he has already let fall over his nose, from far deeper motives. Tommy does not assume the hat primarily because it is Uncle William’s hat, but because it is not Tommy’s hat. It is a ritual investiture; and is akin to those Gorgon masks that stiffened the dances of Greece or those towering mitres that came from the mysteries of Persia. For the essence of such ritual is a profound paradox: the concealment of the personality combined with the exaggeration of the person. The man performing a rite seeks to be at once invisible and conspicuous. It is part of that divine madness which all other creatures wonder at in Man, that he alone parades this pomp of obliteration and anonymity. Man is not, perhaps, the only creature who dresses himself, but he is the only creature who disguises himself. Beasts and birds do indeed take the colours of their environment; but that is not in order to be watched, but in order not to be watched; it is not the formalism of rejoicing, but the formlessness of fear. It is not so with men, whose nature is the unnatural. Ancient Britons did not stain themselves blue because they lived in blue forests; nor did Georgian beaux and belles powder their hair to match an Arctic landscape; the Britons were not dressing up as kingfishers nor the beaux pretending to be polar bears. Nay, even when modern ladies paint their faces a bright mauve, it is doubted by some naturalists whether they do it with the idea of escaping notice. So merry-makers (or Mummers) adopt their costume to heighten and exaggerate their own bodily presence and identity; not to sink it, primarily speaking, in another identity. It is not Acting—that comparatively low profession-comparatively I mean. It is Mummery; and, as Mr. Kensit would truly say, all elaborate religious ritual is Mummery. That is, it is the noble conception of making Man something other and more than himself when he stands at the limit of human things. It is only careful faddists and feeble German philosophers who want to wear no clothes; and be “natural” in their Dionysian revels. Natural men, really vigorous and exultant men, want to wear more and more clothes when they are revelling. They want worlds of waistcoats and forests of trousers and pagodas of tall hats toppling up to the stars.
Thus it is with the lingering Mummers at Christmas in the country. If our more refined revivers of Miracle Plays or Morrice Dances tried to reconstruct the old Mummers’ Play of St. George and the Turkish Knight (I do not know why they do not) they would think at once of picturesque and appropriate dresses. St. George’s panoply would be pictured from the best books of armour and blazonry: the Turkish Knight’s arms and ornaments would be traced from the finest Saracenic arabesques. When my garden door opened on Christmas Eve and St. George of England entered, the appearance of that champion was slightly different. His face was energetically blacked all over with soot, above which he wore an aged and very tall top hat; he wore his shirt outside his coat like a surplice, and he flourished a thick umbrella. Now do not, I beg you, talk about “ignorance”; or suppose that the Mummer in question (he is a very pleasant Ratcatcher, with a tenor voice) did this because he knew no better. Try to realise that even a Ratcatcher knows St. George of England was not black, and did not kill the Dragon with an umbrella. The Rat-catcher is not under this delusion; any more than Paul Veronese thought that very good men have luminous rings round their heads; any more than the Pope thinks that Christ washed the feet of the twelve in a Cathedral; any more than the Duke of Norfolk thinks the lions on a tabard are like the lions at the Zoo. These things are denaturalised because they are symbols; because the extraordinary occasion must hide or even disfigure the ordinary people. Black faces were to mediaeval mummeries what carved masks were to Greek plays: it was called being “vizarded.” My Rat-catcher is not sufficiently arrogant to suppose for a moment that he looks like St. George. But he is sufficiently humble to be convinced that if he looks as little like himself as he can, he will be on the right road.
This is the soul of Mumming; the ostentatious secrecy of men in disguise. There are, of course, other mediaeval elements in it which are also difficult to explain to the fastidious mediaevalists of to-day. There is, for instance, a certain output of violence into the void. It can best be defined as a raging thirst to knock men down without the faintest desire to hurt them. All the rhymes with the old ring have the trick of turning on everything in which the rhymsters most sincerely believed, merely for the pleasure of blowing off steam in startling yet careless phrases. When Tennyson says that King Arthur “drew all the petty princedoms under him,” and “made a realm and ruled,” his grave Royalism is quite modern. Many mediaevals, outside the mediaeval republics, believed in monarchy as solemnly as Tennyson. But that older verse—
When good King Arthur ruled this land He was a goodly King— He stole three pecks of barley-meal To make a bag-pudding.
is far more Arthurian than anything in The Idylls of the King. There are other elements; especially that sacred thing that can perhaps be called Anachronism. All that to us is Anachronism was to mediaevals merely Eternity. But the main excellence of the Mumming Play lies still, I think, in its uproarious secrecy. If we cannot hide our hearts in healthy darkness, at least we can hide our faces in healthy blacking. If you cannot escape like a philosopher into a forest, at least you can carry the forest with you, like a Jack-in-the-Green. It is well to walk under universal ensigns; and there is an old tale of a tyrant to whom a walking forest was the witness of doom. That, indeed, is the very intensity of the notion: a masked man is ominous; but who shall face a mob of masks?
IL MASCHERATO
La notte prima della vigilia di Natale udii un’esplosione di voci melodiose così vicine che avrebbero potuto benissimo trovarsi dentro la casa anziché appena fuori; sicché le invitai a entrare, sperando che allora potessero sembrare più lontane. Poi mi accorsi che erano i Mascherati di Natale, che ogni anno vengono nelle campagne a rappresentare i frammenti alquanto rigidi dell’antica recita natalizia di San Giorgio, del Cavaliere Turco, e del Dottore Assai Venale. Non la descriverò; è indescrivibile; ma descriverò i sentimenti che in me correvano paralleli mentre si svolgeva.
Vi si poteva scorgere qualcosa di quel mezzo fallimento che perseguita i nostri revival artistici delle danze medievali, dei canti o delle Recite di Betlemme. Vi sono elementi in tutto ciò che ci è giunto dalla società moralmente più semplice del Medioevo: elementi che i moderni, anche quando sono medievalisti, trovano difficile comprendere e più difficile ancora imitare. Il primo è l’idea primaria del Mascheramento stesso. Se osserverete un bambino appena capace di camminare, vedrete che la sua prima idea non è di travestirsi da qualcuno—ma di travestirsi. In seguito, certo, l’idea di essere il Re o lo zio Guglielmo gli balzerà alle labbra. Ma di solito gliela suggerisce il cappello che si è già lasciato scivolare sul naso, da moventi assai più profondi. Tommaso non si mette il cappello anzitutto perché è il cappello dello zio Guglielmo, ma perché non è il cappello di Tommaso. È un’investitura rituale; e s’imparenta con quelle maschere di Gorgone che irrigidivano le danze della Grecia o con quelle mitre svettanti che venivano dai misteri della Persia. Poiché l’essenza di un tale rito è un profondo paradosso: l’occultamento della personalità unito all’esagerazione della persona. L’uomo che compie un rito cerca di essere insieme invisibile e cospicuo. È parte di quella divina follia di cui tutte le altre creature si stupiscono nell’Uomo, che egli solo ostenti questa pompa di cancellazione e anonimato. L’uomo non è, forse, l’unica creatura che si veste, ma è l’unica creatura che si traveste. Le bestie e gli uccelli prendono sì i colori del loro ambiente; ma non per essere guardati, bensì per non essere guardati; non è il formalismo del rallegrarsi, ma l’informe della paura. Non è così con gli uomini, la cui natura è l’innaturale. Gli antichi Britanni non si tingevano di azzurro perché vivevano in foreste azzurre; né i cicisbei e le dame georgiane s’incipriavano i capelli per intonarsi a un paesaggio artico; i Britanni non si travestivano da martin pescatori né i cicisbei fingevano d’essere orsi polari. Anzi, persino quando le dame moderne si dipingono il volto di un vivo malva, alcuni naturalisti dubitano che lo facciano con l’idea di sfuggire allo sguardo. Così i festaioli (o Mascherati) adottano il loro costume per accentuare ed esagerare la propria presenza corporea e la propria identità; non per sommergerla, in prima istanza, in un’altra identità. Non è Recitazione—quel mestiere comparativamente basso—comparativamente, intendo. È Mascheramento; e, come direbbe con verità il signor Kensit, ogni elaborato rituale religioso è Mascheramento. Vale a dire, è la nobile concezione di fare dell’Uomo qualcosa d’altro e di più di se stesso quando egli sta al limite delle cose umane. Sono soltanto i meticolosi fanatici e i fiacchi filosofi tedeschi a voler non portare vesti; ed essere “naturali” nei loro tripudi dionisiaci. Gli uomini naturali, gli uomini davvero vigorosi ed esultanti, vogliono indossare sempre più vesti quando fanno festa. Vogliono mondi di panciotti e foreste di calzoni e pagode di alti cappelli che si accatastano fino alle stelle.
Così è con i Mascherati che ancora indugiano a Natale nelle campagne. Se i nostri più raffinati restauratori di Sacre Rappresentazioni o di Danze Morris tentassero di ricostruire l’antica Recita dei Mascherati di San Giorgio e del Cavaliere Turco (non so perché non lo facciano) penserebbero subito ad abiti pittoreschi e appropriati. L’armatura di San Giorgio verrebbe ritratta dai migliori libri di armature e di blasoni: le armi e gli ornamenti del Cavaliere Turco verrebbero ricalcati dai più fini arabeschi saraceni. Quando la porta del mio giardino si aprì la vigilia di Natale e San Giorgio d’Inghilterra entrò, l’aspetto di quel campione era leggermente diverso. Aveva il volto energicamente annerito tutto di fuliggine, sopra il quale portava un vecchissimo e altissimo cilindro; portava la camicia fuori dalla giacca come una cotta, e brandiva un grosso ombrello. Ora non, vi prego, parlate di “ignoranza”; né supponete che il Mascherato in questione (è un piacevolissimo Acchiappatopi, con voce di tenore) facesse ciò perché non sapeva far di meglio. Cercate di capire che perfino un Acchiappatopi sa che San Giorgio d’Inghilterra non era nero, e non uccise il Drago con un ombrello. L’Acchiappatopi non è vittima di questa illusione; non più di Paolo Veronese, che non credeva che gli uomini assai buoni avessero anelli luminosi attorno al capo; non più del Papa, che non crede che Cristo lavasse i piedi ai dodici in una cattedrale; non più del Duca di Norfolk, che non crede che i leoni su una sopravveste siano come i leoni allo Zoo. Queste cose sono snaturate perché sono simboli; perché l’occasione straordinaria deve nascondere o persino sfigurare la gente ordinaria. I volti neri erano per i mascheramenti medievali ciò che le maschere scolpite erano per le recite greche: si diceva essere “mascherati in visiera.” Il mio Acchiappatopi non è tanto arrogante da supporre per un istante di somigliare a San Giorgio. Ma è abbastanza umile da essere convinto che, se somiglia a se stesso il meno possibile, sarà sulla giusta strada.
Questa è l’anima del Mascheramento; la segretezza ostentata degli uomini travestiti. Vi sono, certo, altri elementi medievali in esso che sono del pari difficili da spiegare ai medievalisti schizzinosi d’oggi. Vi è, per esempio, un certo sfogo di violenza nel vuoto. Lo si può definire al meglio come una sete furiosa di stendere gli uomini a terra senza il minimo desiderio di far loro male. Tutte le rime dall’antico suono hanno il vezzo di rivoltarsi contro ogni cosa in cui i rimatori più sinceramente credevano, unicamente per il piacere di scaricare la pressione in frasi sorprendenti eppure noncuranti. Quando Tennyson dice che Re Artù “trasse a sé tutti i piccoli principati,” e “fondò un regno e regnò,” il suo grave monarchismo è del tutto moderno. Molti medievali, fuori dalle repubbliche medievali, credevano nella monarchia solennemente quanto Tennyson. Ma quel verso più antico—
Quando il buon Re Artù governava questa terra Era un valente Re— Rubò tre stai di farina d’orzo Per farne un budino insaccato.
è assai più arturiano di qualunque cosa negli Idilli del Re. Vi sono altri elementi; specialmente quella cosa sacra che si può forse chiamare Anacronismo. Tutto ciò che per noi è Anacronismo era per i medievali semplicemente eternità. Ma il pregio principale della Recita Mascherata sta ancora, io credo, nella sua chiassosa segretezza. Se non possiamo nascondere i nostri cuori in una salubre oscurità, almeno possiamo nascondere i nostri volti in una salubre fuliggine. Se non potete fuggire come un filosofo in una foresta, almeno potete portare la foresta con voi, come un Jack-in-the-Green. È bene camminare sotto insegne universali; e c’è un’antica storia di un tiranno per il quale una foresta in cammino fu il presagio della rovina. Questa, in verità, è la vera intensità dell’idea: un uomo mascherato è sinistro; ma chi affronterà una folla di maschere?
THE ARISTOCRATIC ‘ARRY
The Cheap Tripper, pursued by the curses of the aesthetes and the antiquaries, really is, I suppose, a symptom of the strange and almost unearthly ugliness of our diseased society. The costumes and customs of a hundred peasantries are there to prove that such ugliness does not necessarily follow from mere poverty, or mere democracy, or mere unlettered simplicity of mind.
But though the tripper, artistically considered, is a sign of our decadence, he is not one of its worst signs, but relatively one of its best; one of its most innocent and most sincere. Compared with many of the philosophers and artists who denounce him; he looks like a God fearing fisher or a noble mountaineer. His antics with donkeys and concertinas, crowded charabancs, and exchanged hats, though clumsy, are not so vicious or even so fundamentally vulgar as many of the amusements of the overeducated. People are not more crowded on a char-a-banc than they are at a political “At Home,” or even an artistic soiree; and if the female trippers are overdressed, at least they are not overdressed and underdressed at the same time. It is better to ride a donkey than to be a donkey. It is better to deal with the Cockney festival which asks men and women to change hats, rather than with the modern Utopia that wants them to change heads.
But the truth is that such small, but real, element of vulgarity as there is indeed in the tripper, is part of a certain folly and falsity which is characteristic of much modernity, and especially of the very people who persecute the poor tripper most. There is something in the whole society, and even especially in the cultured part of it, that does things in a clumsy and unbeautiful way.
A case occurs to me in the matter of Stonehenge, which I happened to visit yesterday. Now to a person really capable of feeling the poetry of Stonehenge it is almost a secondary matter whether he sees Stonehenge at all. The vast void roll of the empty land towards Salisbury, the gray tablelands like primeval altars, the trailing rain-clouds, the vapour of primeval sacrifices, would all tell him of a very ancient and very lonely Britain. It would not spoil his Druidic mood if he missed Stonehenge. But it does spoil his mood to find Stonehenge— surrounded by a brand-new fence of barbed wire, with a policeman and a little shop selling picture post-cards.
Now if you protest against this, educated people will instantly answer you, “Oh, it was done to prevent the vulgar trippers who chip stones and carve names and spoil the look of Stonehenge.” It does not seem to occur to them that barbed wire and a policeman rather spoil the look of Stonehenge. The scratching of a name, particularly when performed with blunt penknife or pencil by a person of imperfect School Board education, can be trusted in a little while to be indistinguishable from the grayest hieroglyphic by the grandest Druid of old. But nobody could get a modern policeman into the same picture with a Druid. This really vital piece of vandalism was done by the educated, not the uneducated; it was done by the influence of the artists or antiquaries who wanted to preserve the antique beauty of Stonehenge. It seems to me curious to preserve your lady’s beauty from freckles by blacking her face all over; or to protect the pure whiteness of your wedding garment by dyeing it green.
And if you ask, “But what else could any one have done, what could the most artistic age have done to save the monument?” I reply, “There are hundreds of things that Greeks or Mediaevals might have done; and I have no notion what they would have chosen; but I say that by an instinct in their whole society they would have done something that was decent and serious and suitable to the place. Perhaps some family of knights or warriors would have the hereditary duty of guarding such a place. If so their armour would be appropriate; their tents would be appropriate; not deliberately—they would grow like that. Perhaps some religious order such as normally employ nocturnal watches and the relieving of guard would protect such a place. Perhaps it would be protected by all sorts of rituals, consecrations, or curses, which would seem to you mere raving superstition and silliness. But they do not seem to me one twentieth part so silly, from a purely rationalist point of view, as calmly making a spot hideous in order to keep it beautiful.”
The thing that is really vulgar, the thing that is really vile, is to live in a good place Without living by its life. Any one who settles down in a place without becoming part of it is (barring peculiar personal cases, of course) a tripper or wandering cad. For instance, the Jew is a genuine peculiar case. The Wandering Jew is not a wandering cad. He is a highly civilised man in a highly difficult position; the world being divided, and his own nation being divided, about whether he can do anything else except wander.
The best example of the cultured, but common, tripper is the educated Englishman on the Continent. We can no longer explain the quarrel by calling Englishmen rude and foreigners polite. Hundreds of Englishmen are extremely polite, and thousands of foreigners are extremely rude. The truth of the matter is that foreigners do not resent the rude Englishman. What they do resent, what they do most justly resent, is the polite Englishman. He visits Italy for Botticellis or Flanders for Rembrandts, and he treats the great nations that made these things courteously—as he would treat the custodians of any museum. It does not seem to strike him that the Italian is not the custodian of the pictures, but the creator of them. He can afford to look down on such nations—when he can paint such pictures.
That is, in matters of art and travel, the psychology of the cad. If, living in Italy, you admire Italian art while distrusting Italian character, you are a tourist, or cad. If, living in Italy, you admire Italian art while despising Italian religion, you are a tourist, or cad. It does not matter how many years you have lived there. Tourists will often live a long time in hotels without discovering the nationality of the waiters. Englishmen will often live a long time in Italy without discovering the nationality of the Italians. But the test is simple. If you admire what Italians did without admiring Italians— you are a cheap tripper.
The same, of course, applies much nearer home. I have remarked elsewhere that country shopkeepers are justly offended by London people, who, coming among them, continue to order all their goods from London. It is caddish to wink and squint at the colour of a man’s wine, like a wine taster; and then refuse to drink it. It is equally caddish to wink and squint at the colour of a man’s orchard, like a landscape painter; and then refuse to buy the apples. It is always an insult to admire a thing and not use it. But the main point is that one has no right to see Stonehenge without Salisbury Plain and Salisbury: One has no right to respect the dead Italians without respecting the live ones. One has no right to visit a Christian society like a diver visiting the deep-sea fishes—fed along a lengthy tube by another atmosphere, and seeing the sights without breathing the air. It is very real bad manners.
L’«ARRY ARISTOCRATICO
Il Gitante Economico, perseguitato dalle maledizioni degli esteti e degli antiquari, è davvero, suppongo, un sintomo della strana e quasi ultraterrena bruttezza della nostra società malata. I costumi e le usanze di cento contadinerie stanno lì a provare che tale bruttezza non discende necessariamente dalla semplice povertà, né dalla semplice democrazia, né dalla semplice illetterata semplicità di spirito.
Ma benché il gitante, considerato dal punto di vista artistico, sia un segno della nostra decadenza, non è uno dei suoi segni peggiori, bensì relativamente uno dei migliori; uno dei più innocenti e dei più sinceri. Paragonato a molti dei filosofi e degli artisti che lo denunciano, egli appare come un pescatore timorato di Dio o un nobile montanaro. Le sue buffonate con asini e concertine, i torpedoni gremiti, e gli scambi di cappelli, per quanto goffi, non sono così viziosi né tantomeno così fondamentalmente volgari come molti degli svaghi dei troppo istruiti. La gente non è più pigiata su un torpedone di quanto non lo sia a un ricevimento politico «in casa», o persino a una serata artistica; e se le gitanti sono troppo agghindate, almeno non sono troppo agghindate e troppo scoperte nello stesso tempo. Meglio cavalcare un asino che essere un asino. Meglio aver a che fare con la festa cockney che chiede a uomini e donne di scambiarsi i cappelli, piuttosto che con la moderna Utopia che vuole invece che si scambino le teste.
Ma la verità è che quel piccolo, ma reale, elemento di volgarità che pure è davvero presente nel gitante, fa parte di una certa follia e falsità che è caratteristica di gran parte della modernità, e specialmente proprio di quelle stesse persone che più accaniscono il povero gitante. C’è qualcosa in tutta la società, e anzi specialmente nella sua parte colta, che fa le cose in maniera goffa e priva di bellezza.
Mi viene in mente un caso a proposito di Stonehenge, che mi è capitato di visitare ieri. Ora, per una persona realmente capace di sentire la poesia di Stonehenge è quasi cosa secondaria che egli veda o no Stonehenge. La vasta distesa vuota della terra deserta verso Salisbury, i grigi altipiani simili ad altari primordiali, le nubi di pioggia trascinate dal vento, il vapore dei sacrifici primordiali, tutto gli parlerebbe di una Britannia molto antica e molto solitaria. Non gli guasterebbe l’umore druidico se non vedesse Stonehenge. Ma gli guasta bensì l’umore il trovare Stonehenge — circondata da una nuovissima recinzione di filo spinato, con un poliziotto e una botteguccia che vende cartoline illustrate.
Ora, se protestate contro questo, le persone istruite vi risponderanno all’istante: «Oh, è stato fatto per impedire ai volgari gitanti di scheggiare le pietre e incidere nomi e rovinare l’aspetto di Stonehenge». Non sembra venir loro in mente che il filo spinato e un poliziotto rovinano piuttosto l’aspetto di Stonehenge. Il graffio di un nome, specie quando eseguito con un temperino spuntato o con una matita da una persona d’imperfetta istruzione scolastica, si può ben confidare che di lì a poco diventi indistinguibile dal più grigio geroglifico del più grandioso Druido d’un tempo. Ma nessuno riuscirebbe a mettere un poliziotto moderno nella stessa immagine con un Druido. Quest’atto di vandalismo davvero vitale è stato compiuto dagli istruiti, non dagli ignoranti; è stato compiuto per l’influenza degli artisti o degli antiquari che volevano preservare l’antica bellezza di Stonehenge. Mi pare curioso preservare la bellezza della propria dama dalle lentiggini annerendole tutto il volto; o proteggere il puro candore della propria veste nuziale tingendola di verde.
E se domandate: «Ma che altro avrebbe potuto fare qualcuno, che cosa avrebbe potuto fare l’età più artistica per salvare il monumento?» io rispondo: «Ci sono centinaia di cose che i Greci o i Medievali avrebbero potuto fare; e non ho idea di quale avrebbero scelto; ma dico che, per un istinto di tutta la loro società, avrebbero fatto qualcosa di dignitoso e serio e adatto al luogo. Forse qualche famiglia di cavalieri o guerrieri avrebbe avuto il dovere ereditario di custodire un luogo simile. In tal caso la loro armatura sarebbe stata appropriata; le loro tende sarebbero state appropriate; non deliberatamente — sarebbero cresciute così. Forse qualche ordine religioso, di quelli che normalmente si servono di veglie notturne e del cambio della guardia, avrebbe protetto un luogo simile. Forse sarebbe stato protetto da ogni sorta di riti, consacrazioni, o maledizioni, che a voi parrebbero mera superstizione delirante e sciocchezza. Ma a me non paiono neppure per un ventesimo altrettanto sciocchi, da un punto di vista puramente razionalista, quanto il rendere freddamente orribile un luogo allo scopo di mantenerlo bello».
La cosa che è davvero volgare, la cosa che è davvero vile, è vivere in un buon luogo senza vivere della sua vita. Chiunque si stabilisca in un luogo senza divenirne parte è (fatti salvi, s’intende, casi personali peculiari) un gitante o un mascalzone errante. Per esempio, l’ebreo è un genuino caso peculiare. L’Ebreo Errante non è un mascalzone errante. È un uomo altamente civile in una posizione altamente difficile; essendo il mondo diviso, ed essendo divisa la sua stessa nazione, sul se egli possa fare qualcos’altro oltre che errare.
Il migliore esempio del gitante colto, ma comune, è l’inglese istruito sul Continente. Non possiamo più spiegare la contesa dicendo gli inglesi sgarbati e gli stranieri gentili. Centinaia di inglesi sono estremamente gentili, e migliaia di stranieri sono estremamente sgarbati. La verità della faccenda è che gli stranieri non si risentono per l’inglese sgarbato. Ciò di cui si risentono, ciò di cui più giustamente si risentono, è l’inglese gentile. Egli visita l’Italia per i Botticelli o le Fiandre per i Rembrandt, e tratta le grandi nazioni che fecero queste cose cortesemente — come tratterebbe i custodi di un qualsiasi museo. Non pare colpirlo il fatto che l’italiano non sia il custode dei quadri, bensì il loro creatore. Egli può permettersi di guardare dall’alto in basso simili nazioni — quando saprà dipingere simili quadri.
Questa, cioè, in materia d’arte e di viaggi, è la psicologia del mascalzone. Se, vivendo in Italia, ammirate l’arte italiana pur diffidando del carattere italiano, siete un turista, o un mascalzone. Se, vivendo in Italia, ammirate l’arte italiana pur disprezzando la religione italiana, siete un turista, o un mascalzone. Non importa quanti anni abbiate vissuto laggiù. I turisti vivranno spesso a lungo tempo negli alberghi senza scoprire la nazionalità dei camerieri. Gli inglesi vivranno spesso a lungo tempo in Italia senza scoprire la nazionalità degli italiani. Ma la prova è semplice. Se ammirate ciò che gli italiani hanno fatto senza ammirare gli italiani — siete un gitante economico.
Lo stesso, naturalmente, vale molto più vicino a casa. Ho osservato altrove che i bottegai di campagna sono giustamente offesi dalla gente di Londra, la quale, venendo tra loro, continua a ordinare tutte le proprie merci da Londra. È da mascalzone strizzare l’occhio e sbirciare il colore del vino di un uomo, come un assaggiatore di vini; e poi rifiutarsi di berlo. È altrettanto da mascalzone strizzare l’occhio e sbirciare il colore del frutteto di un uomo, come un pittore di paesaggi; e poi rifiutarsi di comprarne le mele. È sempre un insulto ammirare una cosa e non usarla. Ma il punto principale è che nessuno ha il diritto di vedere Stonehenge senza la Piana di Salisbury e Salisbury: nessuno ha il diritto di rispettare gli italiani morti senza rispettare quelli vivi. Nessuno ha il diritto di visitare una società cristiana come un palombaro che visita i pesci degli abissi — nutrito lungo un lungo tubo da un’altra atmosfera, e vedendo i panorami senza respirarne l’aria. Sono maniere davvero pessime.
THE NEW THEOLOGIAN
It is an old story that names do not fit things; it is an old story that the oldest forest is called the New Forest, and that Irish stew is almost peculiar to England. But these are traditional titles that tend, of their nature, to stiffen; it is the tragedy of to-day that even phrases invented for to-day do not fit it. The forest has remained new while it is nearly a thousand years old; but our fashions have grown old while they were still new.
The extreme example of this is that when modern wrongs are attacked, they are almost always attacked wrongly. People seem to have a positive inspiration for finding the inappropriate phrase to apply to an offender; they are always accusing a man of theft when he has been convicted of murder. They must accuse Sir Edward Carson of outrageous rebellion, when his offence has really been a sleek submission to the powers that be. They must describe Mr. Lloyd George as using his eloquence to rouse the mob, whereas he has really shown considerable cleverness in damping it down. It was probably under the same impulse towards a mysterious misfit of names that people denounced Dr. Inge as “the Gloomy Dean.”
Now there is nothing whatever wrong about being a Dean; nor is there anything wrong about being gloomy. The only question is what dark but sincere motives have made you gloomy. What dark but sincere motives have made you a Dean. Now the address of Dr. Inge which gained him this erroneous title was mostly concerned with a defence of the modern capitalists against the modern strikers, from whose protest he appeared to anticipate appalling results. Now if we look at the facts about that gentleman’s depression and also about his Deanery, we shall find a very curious state of things.
When Dr. Inge was called “the Gloomy Dean” a great injustice was done him. He had appeared as the champion of our capitalist community against the forces of revolt; and any one who does that exceeds in optimism rather than pessimism. A man who really thinks that strikers have suffered no wrong, or that employers have done no wrong— such a man is not a Gloomy Dean, but a quite wildly and dangerously happy Dean. A man who can feel satisfied with modern industrialism must be a man with a mysterious fountain of high spirits. And the actual occasion is not less curious; because, as far as I can make out, his title to gloom reposes on his having said that our worker’s demand high wages, while the placid people of the Far East will quite cheerfully work for less.
This is true enough, of course, and there does not seem to be much difficulty about the matter. Men of the Far East will submit to very low wages for the same reason that they will submit to “the punishment known as Li, or Slicing”; for the same reason that they will praise polygamy and suicide; for the same reason that they subject the wife utterly to the husband or his parents; for the same reason that they serve their temples with prostitutes for priests; for the same reason that they sometimes seem to make no distinction between sexual passion and sexual perversion. They do it, that is, because they are Heathens; men with traditions different from ours about the limits of endurance and the gestures of self-respect. They may be very much better than we are in hundreds of other ways; and I can quite understand a man (though hardly a Dean) really preferring their historic virtues to those of Christendom. A man may perhaps feel more comfortable among his Asiatic coolies than among his European comrades: and as we are to allow the Broadest Thought in the Church, Dr. Inge has as much right to his heresy as anybody else. It is true that, as Dr. Inge says, there are numberless Orientals who will do a great deal of work for very little money; and it is most undoubtedly true that there are several high-placed and prosperous Europeans who like to get work done and pay as little as possible for it.
But I cannot make out why, with his enthusiasm for heathen habits and traditions, the Dean should wish to spread in the East the ideas which he has found so dreadfully unsettling in the West. If some thousands of years of paganism have produced the patience and industry that Dean Inge admires, and if some thousand years of Christianity have produced the sentimentality and sensationalism which he regrets, the obvious deduction is that Dean Inge would be much happier if he were a heathen Chinese. Instead of supporting Christian missions to Korea or Japan, he ought to be at the head of a great mission in London for converting the English to Taoism or Buddhism. There his passion for the moral beauties of paganism would have free and natural play; his style would improve; his mind would begin slowly to clear; and he would be free from all sorts of little irritating scrupulosities which must hamper even the most Conservative Christian in his full praise of sweating and the sack.
In Christendom he will never find rest. The perpetual public criticism and public change which is the note of all our history springs from a certain spirit far too deep to be defined. It is deeper than democracy; nay, it may often appear to be non-democratic; for it may often be the special defence of a minority or an individual. It will often leave the ninety-and-nine in the wilderness and go after that which is lost. It will often risk the State itself to right a single wrong; and do justice though the heavens fall. Its highest expression is not even in the formula of the great gentlemen of the French Revolution who said that all men were free and equal. Its highest expression is rather in the formula of the peasant who said that a man’s a man for a’ that. If there were but one slave in England, and he did all the work while the rest of us made merry, this spirit that is in us would still cry aloud to God night and day. Whether or no this spirit was produced by, it clearly works with, a creed which postulates a humanised God and a vividly personal immortality. Men must not be busy merely like a swarm, or even happy merely like a herd; for it is not a question of men, but of a man. A man’s meals may be poor, but they must not be bestial; there must always be that about the meal which permits of its comparison to the sacrament. A man’s bed may be hard, but it must not be abject or unclean: there must always be about the bed something of the decency of the death-bed.
This is the spirit which makes the Christian poor begin their terrible murmur whenever there is a turn of prices or a deadlock of toil that threatens them with vagabondage or pauperisation; and we cannot encourage the Dean with any hope that this spirit can be cast out. Christendom will continue to suffer all the disadvantages of being Christian: it is the Dean who must be gently but firmly altered. He had absent-mindedly strayed into the wrong continent and the wrong creed. I advise him to chuck it.
But the case is more curious still. To connect the Dean with Confucian temples or traditions may have appeared fantastic; but it is not. Dr. Inge is not a stupid old Tory Rector, strict both on Church and State. Such a man might talk nonsense about the Christian Socialists being “court chaplains of King Demos” or about his own superb valour in defying the democracy that rages in the front pews of Anglican churches. We should not expect a mere old-fashioned country clergyman to know that Demos has never been king in England and precious seldom anywhere else; we should not expect him to realise that if King Demos had any chaplains they would be uncommonly poorly paid. But Dr. Inge is not old-fashioned; he considers himself highly progressive and advanced. He is a New Theologian; that is, he is liberal in theology—and nothing else. He is apparently in sober fact, and not as in any fantasy, in sympathy with those who would soften the superior claim of our creed by urging the rival creeds of the East; with those who would absorb the virtues of Buddhism or of Islam. He holds a high seat in that modern Parliament of Religions where all believers respect each other’s unbelief.
Now this has a very sharp moral for modern religious reformers. When next you hear the “liberal” Christian say that we should take what is best in Oriental faiths, make quite sure what are the things that people like Dr. Inge call best; what are the things that people like Dr. Inge propose to take. You will not find them imitating the military valour of the Moslem. You will not find them imitating the miraculous ecstasy of the Hindoo. The more you study the “broad” movement of today, the more you will find that these people want something much less like Chinese metaphysics, and something much more like Chinese Labour. You will find the levelling of creeds quite unexpectedly close to the lowering of wages. Dr. Inge is the typical latitudinarian of to-day; and was never more so than when he appeared not as the apostle of the blacks, but as the apostle of the blacklegs. Preached, as it is, almost entirely among the prosperous and polite, our brotherhood with Buddhism or Mohammedanism practically means this— that the poor must be as meek as Buddhists, while the rich may be as ruthless as Mohammedans. That is what they call the reunion of all religions.
IL NUOVO TEOLOGO
È una vecchia storia che i nomi non si accordino con le cose; è una vecchia storia che la più antica foresta si chiami la Nuova Foresta, e che lo spezzatino irlandese sia quasi una specialità dell’Inghilterra. Ma questi sono titoli tradizionali che tendono, per loro natura, a irrigidirsi; è la tragedia del giorno d’oggi che perfino le espressioni coniate per l’oggi non gli si adattino. La foresta è rimasta nuova pur avendo quasi mille anni; ma le nostre mode sono invecchiate mentre erano ancora nuove.
L’esempio estremo di ciò è che, quando si attaccano i torti moderni, quasi sempre li si attacca a torto. Pare che la gente abbia una positiva ispirazione nel trovare la frase inappropriata da applicare a un colpevole; accusano sempre un uomo di furto quando è stato condannato per omicidio. Devono accusare Sir Edward Carson di ribellione scandalosa, quando la sua colpa è stata in realtà una viscida sottomissione ai poteri costituiti. Devono descrivere Mr. Lloyd George come uno che usa la propria eloquenza per sobillare la plebe, mentre in verità ha mostrato una notevole abilità nel raffreddarla. Fu probabilmente sotto il medesimo impulso verso un misterioso disaccordo dei nomi che la gente bollò il Dr. Inge come “il Decano Tetro”.
Ora, non c’è nulla di sbagliato nell’essere Decano; né c’è nulla di sbagliato nell’essere tetri. L’unica questione è quali oscuri ma sinceri motivi ti abbiano reso tetro. Quali oscuri ma sinceri motivi ti abbiano fatto Decano. Ora, il discorso del Dr. Inge che gli valse questo titolo erroneo verteva per lo più su una difesa dei capitalisti moderni contro gli scioperanti moderni, dalla cui protesta egli pareva pronosticare risultati spaventosi. Ora, se guardiamo i fatti riguardo alla depressione di quel signore e anche al suo Decanato, troveremo uno stato di cose assai curioso.
Quando il Dr. Inge fu chiamato “il Decano Tetro” gli si fece una grande ingiustizia. Egli si era presentato come il campione della nostra comunità capitalista contro le forze della rivolta; e chiunque faccia ciò pecca di ottimismo piuttosto che di pessimismo. Un uomo che pensi davvero che gli scioperanti non abbiano subìto alcun torto, o che i datori di lavoro non ne abbiano fatto alcuno— un uomo simile non è un Decano Tetro, ma un Decano ben selvaggiamente e pericolosamente felice. Un uomo che sappia sentirsi soddisfatto dell’industrialismo moderno dev’essere un uomo con una misteriosa fonte di allegria. E l’occasione concreta non è meno curiosa; perché, per quanto io riesca a capire, il suo diritto alla tetraggine riposa sull’aver detto che i nostri operai pretendono salari alti, mentre le placide genti dell’Estremo Oriente lavoreranno ben volentieri per meno.
Questo è abbastanza vero, s’intende, e non pare esserci grande difficoltà nella faccenda. Gli uomini dell’Estremo Oriente si sottometteranno a salari assai bassi per la stessa ragione per cui si sottometteranno “alla punizione detta Li, ossia lo Squartamento”; per la stessa ragione per cui loderanno la poligamia e il suicidio; per la stessa ragione per cui sottomettono la moglie interamente al marito o ai suoi genitori; per la stessa ragione per cui servono i loro templi con prostitute in luogo di sacerdoti; per la stessa ragione per cui talvolta paiono non fare alcuna distinzione tra passione sessuale e perversione sessuale. Lo fanno, cioè, perché sono Pagani; uomini con tradizioni diverse dalle nostre circa i limiti della sopportazione e i gesti del rispetto di sé. Possono forse essere molto migliori di noi in centinaia di altri modi; e posso benissimo capire un uomo (benché a stento un Decano) che preferisca davvero le loro virtù storiche a quelle della Cristianità. Un uomo può forse sentirsi più a suo agio tra i suoi coolie asiatici che tra i suoi compagni europei: e poiché dobbiamo concedere il Pensiero più Ampio nella Chiesa, il Dr. Inge ha tanto diritto alla sua eresia quanto chiunque altro. È vero che, come dice il Dr. Inge, vi sono innumerevoli Orientali che faranno una gran quantità di lavoro per pochissimo denaro; ed è quanto mai indubbiamente vero che vi sono parecchi Europei altolocati e prosperi ai quali piace far fare il lavoro e pagarlo il meno possibile.
Ma non riesco a capire perché, con il suo entusiasmo per le abitudini e le tradizioni pagane, il Decano dovrebbe desiderare di diffondere in Oriente le idee che ha trovato così spaventosamente sconvolgenti in Occidente. Se qualche migliaio d’anni di paganesimo ha prodotto la pazienza e l’operosità che il Decano Inge ammira, e se qualche migliaio d’anni di Cristianesimo ha prodotto il sentimentalismo e il sensazionalismo che egli deplora, la deduzione ovvia è che il Decano Inge sarebbe molto più felice se fosse un pagano Cinese. Invece di sostenere le missioni cristiane in Corea o in Giappone, dovrebbe stare a capo di una grande missione a Londra per convertire gli Inglesi al Taoismo o al Buddhismo. Là la sua passione per le bellezze morali del paganesimo avrebbe libero e naturale gioco; il suo stile migliorerebbe; la sua mente comincerebbe lentamente a schiarirsi; e sarebbe libero da ogni sorta di piccoli, irritanti scrupoli che devono impacciare perfino il più Conservatore dei Cristiani nel suo pieno elogio dello sfruttamento e del licenziamento.
Nella Cristianità egli non troverà mai riposo. La perpetua critica pubblica e il perpetuo mutamento pubblico che sono la nota di tutta la nostra storia scaturiscono da un certo spirito troppo profondo per essere definito. È più profondo della democrazia; anzi, può spesso apparire non democratico; poiché può spesso essere la speciale difesa di una minoranza o di un individuo. Spesso lascerà le novantanove pecore nel deserto per andare in cerca di quella smarrita. Spesso metterà a rischio lo Stato stesso per raddrizzare un solo torto; e farà giustizia dovessero pure crollare i cieli. La sua espressione più alta non sta nemmeno nella formula dei grandi gentiluomini della Rivoluzione francese che dissero che tutti gli uomini erano liberi e uguali. La sua espressione più alta sta piuttosto nella formula del contadino che disse che un uomo è un uomo a dispetto di tutto. Se non ci fosse che un solo schiavo in Inghilterra, ed egli facesse tutto il lavoro mentre noialtri ci davamo alla gioia, questo spirito che è in noi griderebbe ancora ad alta voce a Dio notte e giorno. Che questo spirito sia stato o no prodotto da una fede, di certo esso opera insieme a una fede che postula un Dio umanizzato e una immortalità vividamente personale. Gli uomini non devono affaccendarsi semplicemente come uno sciame, né essere felici semplicemente come una mandria; poiché non è questione di uomini, ma di un uomo. I pasti di un uomo possono essere poveri, ma non devono essere bestiali; ci dev’essere sempre nel pasto qualcosa che ne permetta il paragone col sacramento. Il letto di un uomo può essere duro, ma non dev’essere abietto o immondo: ci dev’essere sempre nel letto qualcosa della decenza del letto di morte.
Questo è lo spirito che fa cominciare ai poveri cristiani il loro terribile mormorio ogniqualvolta un rivolgimento dei prezzi o un punto morto della fatica li minaccia di vagabondaggio o di pauperismo; e non possiamo incoraggiare il Decano con alcuna speranza che questo spirito possa essere esorcizzato. La Cristianità continuerà a soffrire tutti gli svantaggi dell’essere cristiana: è il Decano che dev’essere gentilmente ma fermamente corretto. Egli era distrattamente finito nel continente sbagliato e nella fede sbagliata. Gli consiglio di piantarla.
Ma il caso è ancora più curioso. Collegare il Decano ai templi o alle tradizioni confuciane potrà essere sembrato fantasioso; ma non lo è. Il Dr. Inge non è uno stupido vecchio Rettore Tory, rigido sia sulla Chiesa che sullo Stato. Un uomo simile potrebbe sciorinare sciocchezze sui Socialisti cristiani che sarebbero “cappellani di corte di Re Demos” o sul proprio superbo valore nello sfidare la democrazia che imperversa nei primi banchi delle chiese anglicane. Non ci aspetteremmo che un semplice parroco di campagna all’antica sappia che Demos non è mai stato re in Inghilterra e ben di rado altrove; non ci aspetteremmo che si renda conto che, se Re Demos avesse dei cappellani, questi sarebbero pagati straordinariamente male. Ma il Dr. Inge non è all’antica; egli si considera altamente progressista e avanzato. È un Nuovo Teologo; vale a dire, è liberale in teologia—e in nient’altro. È a quanto pare, in sobria verità e non per fantasia, in simpatia con coloro che vorrebbero ammorbidire la pretesa superiore della nostra fede esaltando le fedi rivali dell’Oriente; con coloro che vorrebbero assorbire le virtù del Buddhismo o dell’Islam. Egli occupa un alto seggio in quel moderno Parlamento delle Religioni dove tutti i credenti rispettano l’incredulità gli uni degli altri.
Ora, ciò ha una morale assai acuta per i moderni riformatori religiosi. La prossima volta che sentirete il Cristiano “liberale” dire che dovremmo prendere ciò che c’è di meglio nelle fedi orientali, assicuratevi bene di quali siano le cose che gente come il Dr. Inge chiama migliori; quali siano le cose che gente come il Dr. Inge si propone di prendere. Non li troverete a imitare il valore militare del Musulmano. Non li troverete a imitare la miracolosa estasi dell’Indù. Più studierete il movimento “ampio” di oggi, più troverete che questa gente vuole qualcosa di assai meno simile alla metafisica cinese, e qualcosa di assai più simile al Lavoro cinese. Troverete il livellamento dei credi inaspettatamente vicino all’abbassamento dei salari. Il Dr. Inge è il tipico latitudinario d’oggi; e non lo fu mai tanto come quando si presentò non come l’apostolo dei negri, ma come l’apostolo dei crumiri. Predicata, com’è, quasi interamente tra i prosperi e i compìti, la nostra fratellanza col Buddhismo o col Maomettanesimo significa in pratica questo—che i poveri devono essere mansueti come Buddhisti, mentre i ricchi possono essere spietati come Maomettani. È questo che essi chiamano la riunione di tutte le religioni.
THE ROMANTIC IN THE RAIN
The middle classes of modern England are quite fanatically fond of washing; and are often enthusiastic for teetotalism. I cannot therefore comprehend why it is that they exhibit a mysterious dislike of rain. Rain, that inspiring and delightful thing, surely combines the qualities of these two ideals with quite a curious perfection. Our philanthropists are eager to establish public baths everywhere. Rain surely is a public bath; it might almost be called mixed bathing. The appearance of persons coming fresh from this great natural lustration is not perhaps polished or dignified; but for the matter of that, few people are dignified when coming out of a bath. But the scheme of rain in itself is one of an enormous purification. It realises the dream of some insane hygienist: it scrubs the sky. Its giant brooms and mops seem to reach the starry rafters and Starless corners of the cosmos; it is a cosmic spring-cleaning.
If the Englishman is really fond of cold baths, he ought not to grumble at the English climate for being a cold bath. In these days we are constantly told that we should leave our little special possessions and join in the enjoyment of common social institutions and a common social machinery. I offer the rain as a thoroughly Socialistic institution. It disregards that degraded delicacy which has hitherto led each gentleman to take his shower-bath in private. It is a better shower-bath, because it is public and communal; and, best of all, because somebody else pulls the string.
As for the fascination of rain for the water drinker, it is a fact the neglect of which I simply cannot comprehend. The enthusiastic water drinker must regard a rainstorm as a sort of universal banquet and debauch of his own favourite beverage. Think of the imaginative intoxication of the wine drinker if the crimson clouds sent down claret or the golden clouds hock. Paint upon primitive darkness some such scenes of apocalypse, towering and gorgeous skyscapes in which champagne falls like fire from heaven or the dark skies grow purple and tawny with the terrible colours of port. All this must the wild abstainer feel, as he rolls in the long soaking grass, kicks his ecstatic heels to heaven, and listens to the roaring rain. It is he, the water drinker, who ought to be the true bacchanal of the forests; for all the forests are drinking water. Moreover, the forests are apparently enjoying it: the trees rave and reel to and fro like drunken giants; they clash boughs as revellers clash cups; they roar undying thirst and howl the health of the world.
All around me as I write is a noise of Nature drinking: and Nature makes a noise when she is drinking, being by no means refined. If I count it Christian mercy to give a cup of cold water to a sufferer, shall I complain of these multitudinous cups of cold water handed round to all living things; a cup of water for every shrub; a cup of water for every weed? I would be ashamed to grumble at it. As Sir Philip Sidney said, their need is greater than mine— especially for water.
There is a wild garment that still carries nobly the name of a wild Highland clan: a elan come from those hills where rain is not so much an incident as an atmosphere. Surely every man of imagination must feel a tempestuous flame of Celtic romance spring up within him whenever he puts on a mackintosh. I could never reconcile myself to carrying all umbrella; it is a pompous Eastern business, carried over the heads of despots in the dry, hot lands. Shut up, an umbrella is an unmanageable walking-stick; open, it is an inadequate tent. For my part, I have no taste for pretending to be a walking pavilion; I think nothing of my hat, and precious little of my head. If I am to be protected against wet, it must be by some closer and more careless protection, something that I can forget altogether. It might be a Highland plaid. It might be that yet more Highland thing, a mackintosh.
And there is really something in the mackintosh of the military qualities of the Highlander. The proper cheap mackintosh has a blue and white sheen as of steel or iron; it gleams like armour. I like to think of it as the uniform of that ancient clan in some of its old and misty raids. I like to think of all the Macintoshes, in their mackintoshes, descending on some doomed Lowland village, their wet waterproofs flashing in the sun or moon. For indeed this is one of the real beauties of rainy weather, that while the amount of original and direct light is commonly lessened, the number of things that reflect light is unquestionably increased. There is less sunshine; but there are more shiny things; such beautifully shiny things as pools and puddles and mackintoshes. It is like moving in a world of mirrors.
And indeed this is the last and not the least gracious of the casual works of magic wrought by rain: that while it decreases light, yet it doubles it. If it dims the sky, it brightens the earth. It gives the roads (to the sympathetic eye) something of the beauty of Venice. Shallow lakes of water reiterate every detail of earth and sky; we dwell in a double universe. Sometimes walking upon bare and lustrous pavements, wet under numerous lamps, a man seems a black blot on all that golden looking-glass, and could fancy he was flying in a yellow sky. But wherever trees and towns hang head downwards in a pigmy puddle, the sense of Celestial topsy-turvydom is the same. This bright, wet, dazzling confusion of shape and shadow, of reality and reflection, will appeal strongly to any one with the transcendental instinct about this dreamy and dual life of ours. It will always give a man the strange sense of looking down at the skies.
IL ROMANTICO SOTTO LA PIOGGIA
Le classi medie dell’Inghilterra moderna amano quasi fanaticamente lavarsi; e spesso sono entusiaste sostenitrici dell’astinenza dagli alcolici. Non riesco perciò a comprendere perché mostrino una misteriosa avversione per la pioggia. La pioggia, cosa ispiratrice e deliziosa, riunisce di certo le qualità di questi due ideali con una perfezione assai curiosa. I nostri filantropi sono ansiosi di istituire bagni pubblici ovunque. La pioggia è di sicuro un bagno pubblico; si potrebbe quasi chiamarla un bagno promiscuo. L’aspetto delle persone che escono fresche da questa grande lustrazione naturale non è forse lucido o dignitoso; ma quanto a ciò, poche persone sono dignitose quando escono da un bagno. Il disegno stesso della pioggia è però quello di un’enorme purificazione. Realizza il sogno di un qualche igienista folle: sfrega il cielo. Le sue giganti scope e i suoi spazzoloni sembrano raggiungere le travi stellate e gli angoli senza stelle del cosmo; è una pulizia di primavera cosmica.
Se l’inglese ama davvero i bagni freddi, non dovrebbe lamentarsi del clima inglese perché è un bagno freddo. In questi giorni ci viene ripetuto di continuo che dovremmo abbandonare i nostri piccoli beni particolari e unirci al godimento di comuni istituzioni sociali e di un comune meccanismo sociale. Io offro la pioggia come un’istituzione perfettamente socialista. Essa ignora quella delicatezza degradata che finora ha indotto ogni gentiluomo a fare la propria doccia in privato. È una doccia migliore, perché è pubblica e comunitaria; e, cosa migliore di tutte, perché è qualcun altro a tirare la cordicella.
Quanto al fascino della pioggia per il bevitore d’acqua, è un fatto la cui trascuratezza semplicemente non riesco a comprendere. L’entusiasta bevitore d’acqua deve considerare un temporale come una sorta di banchetto universale e di orgia della sua bevanda preferita. Si pensi all’ebbrezza immaginifica del bevitore di vino se le nuvole cremisi mandassero giù chiaretto o le nuvole d’oro vino del Reno. Si dipingano sull’oscurità primordiale certe scene d’apocalisse, cieli torreggianti e sfarzosi in cui lo champagne cade come fuoco dal cielo o le tenebre si fanno purpuree e fulve coi terribili colori del porto. Tutto questo deve sentire il selvaggio astemio, mentre si rotola nell’erba lunga e fradicia, scalcia i talloni estatici verso il cielo e ascolta il ruggito della pioggia. È lui, il bevitore d’acqua, che dovrebbe essere il vero baccante delle foreste; poiché tutte le foreste stanno bevendo acqua. Per giunta, le foreste se la stanno palesemente godendo: gli alberi delirano e barcollano avanti e indietro come giganti ubriachi; cozzano i rami come i gozzoviglianti cozzano i calici; ruggiscono una sete immortale e urlano brindisi alla salute del mondo.
Tutt’intorno a me, mentre scrivo, c’è un rumore di Natura che beve: e la Natura fa rumore quando beve, non essendo affatto raffinata. Se ritengo misericordia cristiana dare un bicchiere d’acqua fresca a chi soffre, mi lamenterò forse di questi innumerevoli bicchieri d’acqua fresca porti in giro a tutte le cose viventi; un bicchiere d’acqua per ogni arbusto; un bicchiere d’acqua per ogni erbaccia? Mi vergognerei a brontolarne. Come disse Sir Philip Sidney, il loro bisogno è più grande del mio— specialmente d’acqua.
C’è un indumento selvaggio che porta ancora nobilmente il nome di un selvaggio clan delle Highland: un clan venuto da quei monti dove la pioggia non è tanto un episodio quanto un’atmosfera. Di certo ogni uomo d’immaginazione deve sentire una fiamma tempestosa di romanticismo celtico sgorgargli dentro ogni volta che indossa un impermeabile. Non ho mai potuto riconciliarmi col portare un ombrello; è una faccenda pomposa e orientale, retta sopra le teste dei despoti nelle terre asciutte e calde. Chiuso, un ombrello è un ingovernabile bastone da passeggio; aperto, è una tenda inadeguata. Da parte mia, non ho alcun gusto a fingere di essere un padiglione ambulante; non tengo in nulla il mio cappello, e in ben poco la mia testa. Se devo essere protetto dal bagnato, che sia con qualche protezione più aderente e più noncurante, qualcosa che io possa dimenticare del tutto. Potrebbe essere un plaid delle Highland. Potrebbe essere quella cosa ancor più highlander, un impermeabile.
E c’è davvero qualcosa, nell’impermeabile, delle qualità militari del montanaro delle Highland. Il buon impermeabile a buon mercato ha un lucore azzurro e bianco come d’acciaio o di ferro; brilla come un’armatura. Mi piace pensarlo come l’uniforme di quell’antico clan in qualcuna delle sue vecchie e nebbiose scorrerie. Mi piace pensare a tutti i Macintosh, nei loro impermeabili, che scendono su un qualche condannato villaggio delle Lowland, coi loro incerati bagnati che sfolgorano al sole o alla luna. Poiché questa è davvero una delle vere bellezze del tempo piovoso: che, mentre la quantità di luce originaria e diretta è comunemente ridotta, il numero delle cose che riflettono la luce è indubbiamente accresciuto. C’è meno sole; ma ci sono più cose lucenti; cose tanto splendidamente lucenti come pozze e pozzanghere e impermeabili. È come muoversi in un mondo di specchi.
E questa è davvero l’ultima, e non la meno graziosa, delle occasionali opere di magia compiute dalla pioggia: che, mentre diminuisce la luce, pure la raddoppia. Se offusca il cielo, ravviva la terra. Dona alle strade (all’occhio sensibile) qualcosa della bellezza di Venezia. Bassi laghi d’acqua ripetono ogni dettaglio della terra e del cielo; abitiamo in un universo doppio. Talvolta, camminando su nudi e lustri selciati, bagnati sotto numerosi lampioni, un uomo pare una nera macchia su tutto quel dorato specchio, e potrebbe immaginare di volare in un cielo giallo. Ma ovunque alberi e città pendano a testa in giù in una pigmea pozzanghera, il senso di un capovolgimento celeste è il medesimo. Questa luminosa, umida, abbagliante confusione di forma e ombra, di realtà e riflesso, farà forte presa su chiunque abbia l’istinto trascendentale riguardo a questa nostra vita sognante e duale. Darà sempre a un uomo la strana sensazione di guardare in basso verso i cieli.
THE FALSE PHOTOGRAPHER
When, as lately, events have happened that seem (to the fancy, at least) to test if not stagger the force of official government, it is amusing to ask oneself what is the real weakness of civilisation, ours especially, when it contends with the one lawless man. I was reminded of one weakness this morning in turning over an old drawerful of pictures.
This weakness in civilisation is best expressed by saying that it cares more for science than for truth. It prides itself on its “methods” more than its results; it is satisfied with precision, discipline, good communications, rather than with the sense of reality. But there are precise falsehoods as well as precise facts. Discipline may only mean a hundred men making the same mistake at the same minute. And good communications may in practice be very like those evil communications which are said to corrupt good manners. Broadly, we have reached a “scientific age,” which wants to know whether the train is in the time-table, but not whether the train is in the station. I take one instance in our police inquiries that I happen to have come across: the case of photography.
Some years ago a poet of considerable genius tragically disappeared, and the authorities or the newspapers circulated a photograph of him, so that he might be identified. The photograph, as I remember it, depicted or suggested a handsome, haughty, and somewhat pallid man with his head thrown back, with long distinguished features, colourless thin hair and slight moustache, and though conveyed merely by the head and shoulders, a definite impression of height. If I had gone by that photograph I should have gone about looking for a long soldierly but listless man, with a profile rather like the Duke of Connaught’s.
Only, as it happened, I knew the poet personally; I had seen him a great many times, and he had an appearance that nobody could possibly forget, if seen only once. He had the mark of those dark and passionate Westland Scotch, who before Burns and after have given many such dark eyes and dark emotions to the world. But in him the unmistakable strain, Gaelic or whatever it is, was accentuated almost to oddity; and he looked like some swarthy elf. He was small, with a big head and a crescent of coal-black hair round the back of a vast dome of baldness. Immediately under his eyes his cheekbones had so high a colour that they might have been painted scarlet; three black tufts, two on the upper lip and one under the lower, seemed to touch up the face with the fierce moustaches of Mephistopheles. His eyes had that “dancing madness” in them which Stevenson saw in the Gaelic eyes of Alan Breck; but he sometimes distorted the expression by screwing a monstrous monocle into one of them. A man more unmistakable would have been hard to find. You could have picked him out in any crowd—so long as you had not seen his photograph.
But in this scientific picture of him twenty causes, accidental and conventional, had combined to obliterate him altogether. The limits of photography forbade the strong and almost melodramatic colouring of cheek and eyebrow. The accident of the lighting took nearly all the darkness out of the hair and made him look almost like a fair man. The framing and limitation of the shoulders made him look like a big man; and the devastating bore of being photographed when you want to write poetry made him look like a lazy man. Holding his head back, as people do when they are being photographed (or shot), but as he certainly never held it normally, accidentally concealed the bald dome that dominated his slight figure. Here we have a clockwork picture, begun and finished by a button and a box of chemicals, from which every projecting feature has been more delicately and dexterously omitted than they could have been by the most namby-pamby flatterer, painting in the weakest water-colours, on the smoothest ivory.
I happen to possess a book of Mr. Max Beerbohm’s caricatures, one of which depicts the unfortunate poet in question. To say it represents an utterly incredible hobgoblin is to express in faint and inadequate language the license of its sprawling lines. The authorities thought it strictly safe and scientific to circulate the poet’s photograph. They would have clapped me in an asylum if I had asked them to circulate Max’s caricature. But the caricature would have been far more likely to find the man.
This is a small but exact symbol of the failure of scientific civilisation. It is so satisfied in knowing it has a photograph of a man that it never asks whether it has a likeness of him. Thus declarations, seemingly most detailed, have flashed along the wires of the world ever since I was a boy. We were told that in some row Boer policemen had shot an Englishman, a British subject, an English citizen. A long time afterwards we were quite casually informed that the English citizen was quite black. Well, it makes no difference to the moral question; black men should be shot on the same ethical principles as white men. But it makes one distrust scientific communications which permitted so startling an alteration of the photograph. I am sorry we got hold of a photographic negative in which a black man came out white. Later we were told that an Englishman had fought for the Boers against his own flag, which would have been a disgusting thing to do. Later, it was admitted that he was an Irishman; which is exactly as different as if he had been a Pole. Common sense, with all the facts before it, does see that black is not white, and that a nation that has never submitted has a right to moral independence. But why does it so seldom have all the facts before it? Why are the big aggressive features, such as blackness or the Celtic wrath, always left out in such official communications, as they were left out in the photograph? My friend the poet had hair as black as an African and eyes as fierce as an Irishman; why does our civilisation drop all four of the facts? Its error is to omit the arresting thing—which might really arrest the criminal. It strikes first the chilling note of science, demanding a man “above the middle height, chin shaven, with gray moustache,” etc., which might mean Mr. Balfour or Sir Redvers Buller. It does not seize the first fact of impression, as that a man is obviously a sailor or a Jew or a drunkard or a gentleman or a nigger or an albino or a prize-fighter or an imbecile or an American. These are the realities by which the people really recognise each other. They are almost always left out of the inquiry.
IL FOTOGRAFO FALSO
Quando, come di recente, si verificano eventi che sembrano (almeno all’immaginazione) mettere alla prova se non addirittura vacillare la forza del governo ufficiale, è divertente chiedersi qual è la vera debolezza della civiltà, specialmente della nostra, quando si confronta con l’unico uomo senza legge. Mi sono ricordato di una debolezza questa mattina mentre rovistavo in un vecchio cassetto pieno di fotografie.
Questa debolezza della civiltà si esprime meglio dicendo che essa tiene più alla scienza che alla verità. Si vanta dei suoi “metodi” più che dei risultati; è soddisfatta dalla precisione, dalla disciplina, da buone comunicazioni, piuttosto che dal senso della realtà. Ma ci sono falsità precise così come fatti precisi. La disciplina può significare solo cento uomini che commettono lo stesso errore nello stesso minuto. E le buone comunicazioni possono in pratica essere molto simili a quelle cattive comunicazioni che si dice corrompano i buoni costumi. In generale, abbiamo raggiunto un’età “scientifica”, che vuole sapere se il treno è nell’orario, ma non se il treno è in stazione. Ne prendo un esempio nelle nostre indagini di polizia a cui mi è capitato di imbattermi: il caso della fotografia.
Alcuni anni fa un poeta di notevole genio scomparve tragicamente, e le autorità o i giornali diffusero una sua fotografia, perché potesse essere identificato. La fotografia, come la ricordo io, raffigurava o suggeriva un uomo bello, altero e piuttosto pallido con il capo gettato all’indietro, con lineamenti lunghi ed eleganti, capelli sottili e incolori e un leggero pizzo, e benché trasmettesse soltanto la testa e le spalle, una netta impressione di altezza. Se mi fossi basato su quella fotografia avrei cercato un uomo alto, militaresco ma apatico, con un profilo piuttosto simile a quello del Duca di Connaught.
Solo che, per caso, conoscevo personalmente il poeta; l’avevo visto molte volte e aveva un aspetto che nessuno avrebbe potuto dimenticare, anche solo vistolo una volta. Aveva i tratti di quegli scozzesi del Westland scuri e appassionati, che prima di Burns e dopo hanno donato al mondo molti occhi così scuri e tante emozioni altrettanto oscure. Ma in lui il tratto inequivocabile, gaelico o comunque sia, era accentuato quasi fino alla stranezza; e sembrava una sorta di elfo scuro. Era piccolo, con una grande testa e un mezzaluna di capelli neri come la pece che gli circondavano il retro di una vasta cupola di calvizie. Sotto agli occhi le sue guance avevano un colore così acceso che sembrava dipinto di scarlatto; tre ciuffi neri, due sul labbro superiore e uno sotto quello inferiore, sembravano ritoccare il volto con i baffi feroci del Mefistofele. I suoi occhi avevano quella “pazzia danzante” che Stevenson vide negli occhi gaelici di Alan Breck; ma a volte distorceva l’espressione incastrando un mostruoso monocolo in uno di essi. Un uomo più inequivocabile sarebbe stato difficile da trovare. Avreste potuto riconoscerlo tra qualsiasi folla, purché non aveste visto la sua fotografia.
Ma in questo ritratto scientifico di lui venti cause, accidentali e convenzionali, si erano combinate per cancellarlo del tutto. I limiti della fotografia vietavano la forte e quasi melodrammatica colorazione delle guance e delle sopracciglia. L’incidente dell’illuminazione aveva tolto quasi tutta l’oscurità ai capelli, facendolo sembrare quasi un uomo biondo. Il quadro e il limite delle spalle lo facevano apparire un uomo grande; e la noia devastante di farsi fotografare quando si vuole scrivere poesie lo faceva sembrare un uomo pigro. Tenendo la testa all’indietro, come le persone fanno quando vengono fotografate (o fucilate), ma come lui certamente non l’avrebbe mai tenuta normalmente, nascondeva accidentalmente il cranio calvo che dominava la sua figura esile. Ecco un ritratto a orologeria, iniziato e finito da un pulsante e una scatola di prodotti chimici, dal quale ogni caratteristica sporgente è stata omessa più delicatamente e abilmente di quanto avrebbero potuto farlo i lusingatori più namby-pamby, dipingendo con i colori più deboli a acquerello, su un’avorio levigato.
Per caso possiedo un libro di caricature del signor Max Beerbohm, una delle quali ritrae il sfortunato poeta in questione. Dire che lo rappresenta come uno gnomo assolutamente incredibile è esprimere in linguaggio debole e inadeguato la licenza delle sue linee disordinate. Le autorità pensavano fosse rigorosamente sicuro e scientifico distribuire la fotografia del poeta. Mi avrebbero rinchiuso in un manicomio se gli avessi chiesto di distribuire la caricatura di Max. Ma la caricatura sarebbe stata molto più probabile a trovare l’uomo.
Questo è un piccolo ma esatto simbolo del fallimento della civiltà scientifica. È così soddisfatta di sapere che ha una fotografia di un uomo, che non si chiede mai se ne abbia un ritratto. Così dichiarazioni, apparentemente molto dettagliate, hanno lampeggiato lungo i fili del mondo da quando ero ragazzo. Ci fu detto che in qualche scontro poliziotti boeri avevano sparato a un inglese, un suddito britannico, un cittadino inglese. Dopo molto tempo fummo informati piuttosto casualmente che il cittadino inglese era completamente nero. Beh, non fa differenza per la questione morale; gli uomini di colore dovrebbero essere uccisi secondo i medesimi principi etici degli uomini bianchi. Ma induce a diffidare delle comunicazioni scientifiche che hanno permesso una così sorprendente alterazione della fotografia. Mi dispiace che ci siamo procurati un negativo fotografico in cui un uomo di colore risultava bianco. In seguito fummo informati che un inglese aveva combattuto per i boeri contro la propria bandiera, il che sarebbe stata una cosa disgustosa. Più tardi si ammise che era irlandese; il che è esattamente diverso come se fosse stato polacco. Il buon senso, con tutti i fatti davanti a sé, vede che nero non è bianco e che una nazione che non ha mai ceduto ha diritto all’indipendenza morale. Ma perché così raramente ha tutti i fatti davanti a sé? Perché le grandi caratteristiche aggressive, come il colore scuro o la collera celtica, vengono sempre omesse in tali comunicazioni ufficiali, come furono omessi nella fotografia? Il mio amico poeta aveva capelli neri come un africano e occhi fieri come un irlandese; perché la nostra civiltà omette tutti e quattro i fatti? L’errore è quello di tralasciare l’elemento che colpisce, che potrebbe davvero fermare il criminale. Essa suona prima la nota glaciale della scienza, richiedendo un uomo “di altezza superiore alla media, con barba rasata e baffi grigi”, eccetera, che potrebbe essere Mr Balfour o Sir Redvers Buller. Non coglie il primo fatto dell’impressione, come ad esempio che un uomo è ovviamente un marinaio o un ebreo o un ubriacone o un gentiluomo o uno di colore o un albino o un pugile o un imbecille o un americano. Queste sono le realtà con cui la gente si riconosce davvero a vicenda. Vengono quasi sempre omesse dall’indagine.
THE SULTAN
There is one deep defect in our extension of cosmopolitan and Imperial cultures. That is, that in most human things if you spread your butter far you spread it thin. But there is an odder fact yet: rooted in something dark and irrational in human nature. That is, that when you find your butter thin, you begin to spread it. And it is just when you find your ideas wearing thin in your own mind that you begin to spread them among your fellow-creatures. It is a paradox; but not my paradox. There are numerous cases in history; but I think the strongest case is this. That we have Imperialism in all our clubs at the very time when we have Orientalism in all our drawing-rooms.
I mean that the colonial ideal of such men as Cecil Rhodes did not arise out of any fresh creative idea of the Western genius, it was a fad, and like most fads an imitation. For what was wrong with Rhodes was not that, like Cromwell or Hildebrand, he made huge mistakes, nor even that he committed great crimes. It was that he committed these crimes and errors in order to spread certain ideas. And when one asked for the ideas they could not be found. Cromwell stood for Calvinism, Hildebrand for Catholicism: but Rhodes had no principles whatever to give to the world. He had only a hasty but elaborate machinery for spreading the principles that he hadn’t got. What he called his ideals were the dregs of a Darwinism which had already grown not only stagnant, but poisonous. That the fittest must survive, and that any one like himself must be the fittest; that the weakest must go to the wall, and that any one he could not understand must be the weakest; that was the philosophy which he lumberingly believed through life, like many another agnostic old bachelor of the Victorian era. All his views on religion (reverently quoted in the Review of Reviews) were simply the stalest ideas of his time. It was not his fault, poor fellow, that he called a high hill somewhere in South Africa “his church.” It was not his fault, I mean, that he could not see that a church all to oneself is not a church at all. It is a madman’s cell. It was not his fault that he “figured out that God meant as much of the planet to be Anglo-Saxon as possible.” Many evolutionists much wiser had “figured out” things even more babyish. He was an honest and humble recipient of the plodding popular science of his time; he spread no ideas that any cockney clerk in Streatham could not have spread for him. But it was exactly because he had no ideas to spread that he invoked slaughter, violated justice, and ruined republics to spread them.
But the case is even stronger and stranger. Fashionable Imperialism not only has no ideas of its own to extend; but such ideas as it has are actually borrowed from the brown and black peoples to whom it seeks to extend them. The Crusading kings and knights might be represented as seeking to spread Western ideas in the East. But all that our Imperialist aristocrats could do would be to spread Eastern ideas in the East. For that very governing class which urges Occidental Imperialism has been deeply discoloured with Oriental mysticism and Cosmology.
The same society lady who expects the Hindoos to accept her view of politics has herself accepted their view of religion. She wants first to steal their earth, and then to share their heaven. The same Imperial cynic who wishes the Turks to submit to English science has himself submitted to Turkish philosophy, to a wholly Turkish view of despotism and destiny.
There is an obvious and amusing proof of this in a recent life of Rhodes. The writer admits with proper Imperial gloom the fact that Africa is still chiefly inhabited by Africans. He suggests Rhodes in the South confronting savages and Kitchener in the North facing Turks, Arabs, and Soudanese, and then he quotes this remark of Cecil Rhodes: “It is inevitable fate that all this should be changed; and I should like to be the agent of fate.” That was Cecil Rhodes’s one small genuine idea; and it is an Oriental idea.
Here we have evident all the ultimate idiocy of the present Imperial position. Rhodes and Kitchener are to conquer Moslem bedouins and barbarians, in order to teach them to believe only in inevitable fate. We are to wreck provinces and pour blood like Niagara, all in order to teach a Turk to say “Kismet”; which he has said since his cradle. We are to deny Christian justice and destroy international equality, all in order to teach an Arab to believe he is “an agent of fate,” when he has never believed anything else. If Cecil Rhodes’s vision could come true (which fortunately is increasingly improbable), such countries as Persia or Arabia would simply be filled with ugly and vulgar fatalists in billy-cocks, instead of with graceful and dignified fatalists in turbans. The best Western idea, the idea of spiritual liberty and danger, of a doubtful and romantic future in which all things may happen— this essential Western idea Cecil Rhodes could not spread, because (as he says himself) he did not believe in it.
It was an Oriental who gave to Queen Victoria the crown of an Empress in addition to that of a Queen. He did not understand that the title of King is higher than that of Emperor. For in the East titles are meant to be vast and wild; to be extravagant poems: the Brother of the Sun and Moon, the Caliph who lives for ever. But a King of England (at least in the days of real kings) did not bear a merely poetical title; but rather a religious one. He belonged to his people and not merely they to him. He was not merely a conqueror, but a father—yes, even when he was a bad father. But this sort of solid sanctity always goes with local affections and limits: and the Cecil Rhodes Imperialism set up not the King, but the Sultan; with all the typically Eastern ideas of the magic of money, of luxury without uproar; of prostrate provinces and a chosen race. Indeed Cecil Rhodes illustrated almost every quality essential to the Sultan, from the love of diamonds to the scorn of woman.
IL SULTANO
Vi è un difetto profondo nella nostra estensione delle culture cosmopolite e imperiali. Ed è questo: che nella maggior parte delle cose umane, se spalmi il burro su troppa superficie, lo spalmi sottile. Ma vi è un fatto ancora più curioso: radicato in qualcosa di oscuro e irrazionale nella natura umana. Ed è questo: che quando trovi il tuo burro sottile, cominci a spalmarlo. E proprio quando scopri che le tue idee si assottigliano nella tua mente, cominci a diffonderle tra i tuoi simili. È un paradosso; ma non un mio paradosso. Vi sono numerosi casi nella storia; ma credo che il caso più forte sia questo. Che abbiamo l’Imperialismo in tutti i nostri circoli proprio nel tempo in cui abbiamo l’Orientalismo in tutti i nostri salotti.
Voglio dire che l’ideale coloniale di uomini come Cecil Rhodes non nacque da alcuna fresca idea creativa del genio occidentale, fu una moda, e come la maggior parte delle mode un’imitazione. Poiché ciò che c’era di sbagliato in Rhodes non era che, come Cromwell o Ildebrando, commettesse enormi errori, e neppure che commettesse grandi delitti. Era che commetteva questi delitti ed errori allo scopo di diffondere certe idee. E quando si chiedeva quali fossero le idee, non si riuscivano a trovare. Cromwell rappresentava il Calvinismo, Ildebrando il Cattolicesimo: ma Rhodes non aveva principio alcuno da offrire al mondo. Aveva soltanto un macchinario affrettato ma elaborato per diffondere i principii che non possedeva. Ciò che chiamava i suoi ideali erano le fecce di un Darwinismo che era già divenuto non solo stagnante, ma velenoso. Che il più adatto debba sopravvivere, e che chiunque somigliasse a lui dovesse essere il più adatto; che il più debole debba finire contro il muro, e che chiunque egli non riuscisse a comprendere dovesse essere il più debole; questa era la filosofia in cui goffamente credette per tutta la vita, come tanti altri vecchi scapoli agnostici dell’era vittoriana. Tutte le sue vedute sulla religione (riverentemente citate nella Review of Reviews) erano semplicemente le idee più trite del suo tempo. Non fu colpa sua, pover’uomo, se chiamò un’alta collina da qualche parte in Sud Africa “la sua chiesa.” Non fu colpa sua, voglio dire, se non riuscì a vedere che una chiesa tutta per sé non è affatto una chiesa. È la cella di un pazzo. Non fu colpa sua se “calcolò che Dio volesse anglosassone la maggior parte possibile del pianeta.” Molti evoluzionisti assai più saggi avevano “calcolato” cose ancor più puerili. Egli fu un onesto e umile ricettore della arrancante scienza popolare del suo tempo; non diffuse alcuna idea che qualsiasi scribacchino plebeo di Streatham non avrebbe potuto diffondere al posto suo. Ma fu proprio perché non aveva idee da diffondere che invocò il massacro, violò la giustizia, e rovinò repubbliche per diffonderle.
Ma il caso è ancor più forte e più strano. L’Imperialismo alla moda non solo non ha idee proprie da estendere; ma quelle idee che possiede sono in realtà prese in prestito dai popoli bruni e neri ai quali cerca di estenderle. I re e i cavalieri crociati potrebbero essere rappresentati come intenti a diffondere idee occidentali in Oriente. Ma tutto ciò che i nostri aristocratici imperialisti sanno fare è diffondere idee orientali in Oriente. Poiché quella stessa classe dirigente che sollecita l’Imperialismo occidentale è stata profondamente scolorita di misticismo e Cosmologia orientale.
La stessa dama di società che si aspetta che gli Indù accettino la sua concezione della politica ha lei stessa accettato la loro concezione della religione. Vuole prima rubare la loro terra, e poi condividere il loro cielo. Lo stesso cinico imperiale che desidera che i Turchi si sottomettano alla scienza inglese ha lui stesso sottomesso alla filosofia turca, a una veduta interamente turca del dispotismo e del destino.
Vi è una prova evidente e divertente di questo in una recente biografia di Rhodes. Lo scrittore ammette con la debita cupezza imperiale il fatto che l’Africa è ancora abitata principalmente da Africani. Egli suggerisce Rhodes nel Sud che affronta i selvaggi e Kitchener nel Nord che fronteggia Turchi, Arabi e Sudanesi, e poi cita questa osservazione di Cecil Rhodes: “È fato inevitabile che tutto questo debba mutare; e mi piacerebbe essere l’agente del fato.” Quella fu l’unica piccola idea genuina di Cecil Rhodes; ed è un’idea orientale.
Qui ci è evidente tutta l’estrema idiozia dell’attuale posizione imperiale. Rhodes e Kitchener devono conquistare beduini e barbari musulmani, allo scopo di insegnar loro a credere soltanto nel fato inevitabile. Dobbiamo devastare province e versare sangue come il Niagara, il tutto per insegnare a un Turco a dire “Kismet”; cosa che egli dice fin dalla culla. Dobbiamo negare la giustizia cristiana e distruggere l’eguaglianza internazionale, il tutto per insegnare a un Arabo a credere di essere “un agente del fato,” quando egli non ha mai creduto in nient’altro. Se la visione di Cecil Rhodes potesse avverarsi (cosa che per fortuna è sempre più improbabile), paesi come la Persia o l’Arabia sarebbero semplicemente riempiti di brutti e volgari fatalisti in bombetta, invece che di aggraziati e dignitosi fatalisti in turbante. La migliore idea occidentale, l’idea della libertà e del pericolo spirituali, di un futuro dubbioso e romantico in cui ogni cosa può accadere— questa idea essenzialmente occidentale Cecil Rhodes non poté diffondere, perché (come egli stesso dice) non vi credeva.
Fu un Orientale a dare alla Regina Vittoria la corona di un’Imperatrice in aggiunta a quella di Regina. Non capiva che il titolo di Re è più alto di quello di Imperatore. Poiché in Oriente i titoli sono fatti per essere vasti e selvaggi; per essere poemi stravaganti: il Fratello del Sole e della Luna, il Califfo che vive in eterno. Ma un Re d’Inghilterra (almeno ai tempi dei veri re) non portava un titolo meramente poetico; ma piuttosto uno religioso. Egli apparteneva al suo popolo e non semplicemente esso a lui. Non era soltanto un conquistatore, ma un padre—sì, anche quando era un cattivo padre. Ma questa sorta di solida santità va sempre insieme ad affetti e limiti locali: e l’Imperialismo di Cecil Rhodes eresse non il Re, ma il Sultano; con tutte le idee tipicamente orientali della magia del denaro, del lusso senza clamore; di province prostrate e di una razza eletta. Invero Cecil Rhodes esemplificò quasi ogni qualità essenziale al Sultano, dall’amore per i diamanti al disprezzo per la donna.
THE ARCHITECT OF SPEARS
The other day, in the town of Lincoln, I suffered an optical illusion which accidentally revealed to me the strange greatness of the Gothic architecture. Its secret is not, I think, satisfactorily explained in most of the discussions on the subject. It is said that the Gothic eclipses the classical by a certain richness and complexity, at once lively and mysterious. This is true; but Oriental decoration is equally rich and complex, yet it awakens a widely different sentiment. No man ever got out of a Turkey carpet the emotions that he got from a cathedral tower. Over all the exquisite ornament of Arabia and India there is the presence of something stiff and heartless, of something tortured and silent. Dwarfed trees and crooked serpents, heavy flowers and hunchbacked birds accentuate by the very splendour and contrast of their colour the servility and monotony of their shapes. It is like the vision of a sneering sage, who sees the whole universe as a pattern. Certainly no one ever felt like this about Gothic, even if he happens to dislike it. Or, again, some will say that it is the liberty of the Middle Ages in the use of the comic or even the coarse that makes the Gothic more interesting than the Greek. There is more truth in this; indeed, there is real truth in it. Few of the old Christian cathedrals would have passed the Censor of Plays. We talk of the inimitable grandeur of the old cathedrals; but indeed it is rather their gaiety that we do not dare to imitate. We should be rather surprised if a chorister suddenly began singing “Bill Bailey” in church. Yet that would be only doing in music what the mediaevals did in sculpture. They put into a Miserere seat the very scenes that we put into a music hall song: comic domestic scenes similar to the spilling of the beer and the hanging out of the washing. But though the gaiety of Gothic is one of its features, it also is not the secret of its unique effect. We see a domestic topsy-turvydom in many Japanese sketches. But delightful as these are, with their fairy tree-tops, paper houses, and toddling, infantile inhabitants, the pleasure they give is of a kind quite different from the joy and energy of the gargoyles. Some have even been so shallow and illiterate as to maintain that our pleasure in medieval building is a mere pleasure in what is barbaric, in what is rough, shapeless, or crumbling like the rocks. This can be dismissed after the same fashion; South Sea idols, with painted eyes and radiating bristles, are a delight to the eye; but they do not affect it in at all the same way as Westminster Abbey. Some again (going to another and almost equally foolish extreme) ignore the coarse and comic in mediaevalism; and praise the pointed arch only for its utter purity and simplicity, as of a saint with his hands joined in prayer. Here, again, the uniqueness is missed. There are Renaissance things (such as the ethereal silvery drawings of Raphael), there are even pagan things (such as the Praying Boy) which express as fresh and austere a piety. None of these explanations explain. And I never saw what was the real point about Gothic till I came into the town of Lincoln, and saw it behind a row of furniture-vans.
I did not know they were furniture-vans; at the first glance and in the smoky distance I thought they were a row of cottages. A low stone wall cut off the wheels, and the vans were somewhat of the same colour as the yellowish clay or stone of the buildings around them. I had come across that interminable Eastern plain which is like the open sea, and all the more so because the one small hill and tower of Lincoln stands up in it like a light-house. I had climbed the sharp, crooked streets up to this ecclesiastical citadel; just in front of me was a flourishing and richly coloured kitchen garden; beyond that was the low stone wall; beyond that the row of vans that looked like houses; and beyond and above that, straight and swift and dark, light as a flight of birds, and terrible as the Tower of Babel, Lincoln Cathedral seemed to rise out of human sight.
As I looked at it I asked myself the questions that I have asked here; what was the soul in all those stones? They were varied, but it was not variety; they were solemn, but it was not solemnity; they were farcical, but it was not farce. What is it in them that thrills and soothes a man of our blood and history, that is not there in an Egyptian pyramid or an Indian temple or a Chinese pagoda? All of a sudden the vans I had mistaken for cottages began to move away to the left. In the start this gave to my eye and mind I really fancied that the Cathedral was moving towards the right. The two huge towers seemed to start striding across the plain like the two legs of some giant whose body was covered with the clouds. Then I saw what it was.
The truth about Gothic is, first, that it is alive, and second, that it is on the march. It is the Church Militant; it is the only fighting architecture. All its spires are spears at rest; and all its stones are stones asleep in a catapult. In that instant of illusion, I could hear the arches clash like swords as they crossed each other. The mighty and numberless columns seemed to go swinging by like the huge feet of imperial elephants. The graven foliage wreathed and blew like banners going into battle; the silence was deafening with all the mingled noises of a military march; the great bell shook down, as the organ shook up its thunder. The thirsty-throated gargoyles shouted like trumpets from all the roofs and pinnacles as they passed; and from the lectern in the core of the cathedral the eagle of the awful evangelist clashed his wings of brass.
And amid all the noises I seemed to hear the voice of a man shouting in the midst like one ordering regiments hither and thither in the fight; the voice of the great half-military master-builder; the architect of spears. I could almost fancy he wore armour while he made that church; and I knew indeed that, under a scriptural figure, he had borne in either hand the trowel and the sword.
I could imagine for the moment that the whole of that house of life had marched out of the sacred East, alive and interlocked, like an army. Some Eastern nomad had found it solid and silent in the red circle of the desert. He had slept by it as by a world-forgotten pyramid; and been woke at midnight by the wings of stone and brass, the tramping of the tall pillars, the trumpets of the waterspouts. On such a night every snake or sea-beast must have turned and twisted in every crypt or corner of the architecture. And the fiercely coloured saints marching eternally in the flamboyant windows would have carried their glorioles like torches across dark lands and distant seas; till the whole mountain of music and darkness and lights descended roaring on the lonely Lincoln hill. So for some hundred and sixty seconds I saw the battle-beauty of the Gothic; then the last furniture-van shifted itself away; and I saw only a church tower in a quiet English town, round which the English birds were floating.
L’ARCHITETTO DELLE LANCE
L’altro giorno, nella città di Lincoln, fui vittima di un’illusione ottica che per caso mi rivelò la strana grandezza dell’architettura gotica. Il suo segreto non è, credo, spiegato in modo soddisfacente nella maggior parte delle discussioni sull’argomento. Si dice che il gotico eclissi il classico per una certa ricchezza e complessità, insieme vivace e misteriosa. Questo è vero; ma la decorazione orientale è ugualmente ricca e complessa, eppure risveglia un sentimento assai diverso. Nessuno mai trasse da un tappeto turco le emozioni che gli venivano da una torre di cattedrale. Su tutto lo squisito ornamento dell’Arabia e dell’India grava la presenza di qualcosa di rigido e senza cuore, di qualcosa di torturato e silente. Alberi nani e serpenti tortuosi, fiori pesanti e uccelli gobbi accentuano, proprio con lo splendore e il contrasto del loro colore, la servilità e la monotonia delle loro forme. È come la visione di un saggio sogghignante, che vede l’intero universo come un disegno. Certo nessuno provò mai una simile sensazione dinanzi al gotico, anche qualora gli accada di non amarlo. Oppure, ancora, taluni diranno che è la libertà del Medioevo nell’uso del comico o perfino del grossolano a rendere il gotico più interessante del greco. In questo c’è più verità; anzi, c’è una verità reale. Poche delle antiche cattedrali cristiane sarebbero passate al vaglio del Censore degli Spettacoli. Parliamo dell’inimitabile grandiosità delle vecchie cattedrali; ma in realtà è piuttosto la loro allegria che non osiamo imitare. Ci stupiremmo alquanto se un corista si mettesse d’un tratto a cantare “Bill Bailey” in chiesa. Eppure ciò non sarebbe che fare in musica quel che i medievali fecero nella scultura. Misero in un seggio del Miserere le stesse scene che noi mettiamo in una canzone da caffè-concerto: comiche scene domestiche, simili al versare la birra e allo stendere il bucato. Ma sebbene l’allegria del gotico sia uno dei suoi tratti, neppure essa è il segreto del suo effetto unico. Vediamo un sottosopra domestico in molti schizzi giapponesi. Ma per quanto deliziosi essi siano, con le loro chiome d’albero fatate, le case di carta e gli abitanti infantili dal passo incerto, il piacere che danno è di specie ben diversa dalla gioia e dall’energia delle gargolle. Alcuni sono stati perfino tanto superficiali e incolti da sostenere che il nostro piacere nell’edilizia medievale sia un mero piacere per ciò che è barbarico, per ciò che è rozzo, informe, o sgretolato come le rocce. Anche questo si può liquidare allo stesso modo; gli idoli dei Mari del Sud, con gli occhi dipinti e le setole raggianti, sono una delizia per l’occhio; ma non lo toccano affatto nel medesimo modo dell’abbazia di Westminster. Altri ancora (cadendo in un estremo opposto e quasi altrettanto sciocco) ignorano il grossolano e il comico nel medievalismo; e lodano l’arco a sesto acuto solo per la sua assoluta purezza e semplicità, come di un santo con le mani giunte in preghiera. Anche qui l’unicità sfugge. Vi sono cose del Rinascimento (come gli eterei disegni argentei di Raffaello), vi sono perfino cose pagane (come il Fanciullo Orante) che esprimono una pietà altrettanto fresca e austera. Nessuna di queste spiegazioni spiega. E non vidi mai quale fosse il vero nocciolo del gotico finché non giunsi nella città di Lincoln, e non la vidi dietro una fila di furgoni da trasloco.
Non sapevo che fossero furgoni da trasloco; al primo sguardo e nella distanza fumosa li presi per una fila di casette. Un basso muro di pietra ne tagliava via le ruote, e i furgoni erano press’a poco dello stesso colore dell’argilla giallastra o della pietra degli edifici intorno a loro. Ero giunto attraverso quell’interminabile pianura orientale che è come il mare aperto, e tanto più in quanto l’unico piccolo colle e la torre di Lincoln vi si ergono come un faro. Avevo salito le ripide, tortuose strade fino a questa cittadella ecclesiastica; proprio davanti a me c’era un orto rigoglioso e riccamente colorato; oltre quello c’era il basso muro di pietra; oltre quello la fila di furgoni che parevano case; e oltre e sopra tutto ciò, dritta e rapida e scura, lieve come un volo di uccelli, e terribile come la Torre di Babele, la cattedrale di Lincoln sembrava sollevarsi al di là della vista umana.
Mentre la guardavo, mi ponevo le domande che qui ho posto; quale fosse l’anima in tutte quelle pietre? Erano varie, ma non era varietà; erano solenni, ma non era solennità; erano farsesche, ma non era farsa. Che cosa c’è in esse che elettrizza e insieme placa un uomo del nostro sangue e della nostra storia, e che non c’è in una piramide egizia, in un tempio indiano o in una pagoda cinese? D’un tratto i furgoni che avevo scambiato per casette cominciarono a spostarsi verso sinistra. Nel sussulto che ciò diede al mio occhio e alla mia mente mi parve davvero che la cattedrale si muovesse verso destra. Le due enormi torri sembrarono avviarsi a grandi passi attraverso la pianura come le due gambe di qualche gigante il cui corpo fosse coperto dalle nubi. Poi vidi che cos’era.
La verità sul gotico è, in primo luogo, che è vivo, e in secondo luogo, che è in marcia. È la Chiesa Militante; è la sola architettura che combatte. Tutte le sue guglie sono lance in riposo; e tutte le sue pietre sono pietre addormentate in una catapulta. In quell’istante d’illusione, potei udire gli archi cozzare come spade mentre s’incrociavano tra loro. Le possenti e innumerevoli colonne parvero dondolare in avanti come gli enormi piedi di elefanti imperiali. Il fogliame scolpito si attorcigliava e sventolava come vessilli che vanno in battaglia; il silenzio era assordante di tutti i rumori mescolati di una marcia militare; la grande campana scrollava all’ingiù, mentre l’organo scrollava all’insù il suo tuono. Le gargolle dalla gola assetata gridavano come trombe da tutti i tetti e i pinnacoli mentre passavano; e dal leggio nel cuore della cattedrale l’aquila del tremendo evangelista faceva cozzare le sue ali di bronzo.
E in mezzo a tutti quei rumori mi parve di udire la voce di un uomo che gridava nel folto come chi comanda ai reggimenti di andare di qua e di là nella mischia; la voce del grande capomastro semiguerriero; l’architetto delle lance. Quasi immaginavo che indossasse un’armatura mentre costruiva quella chiesa; e sapevo bene che, secondo una figura scritturale, aveva portato in una mano e nell’altra la cazzuola e la spada.
Potei immaginare per un momento che l’intera dimora di vita fosse uscita in marcia dal sacro Oriente, viva e serrata, come un esercito. Qualche nomade orientale l’aveva trovata solida e silenziosa nel rosso cerchio del deserto. Vi aveva dormito accanto come accanto a una piramide dimenticata dal mondo; ed era stato destato a mezzanotte dalle ali di pietra e di bronzo, dal calpestìo degli alti pilastri, dalle trombe delle gronde. In una notte simile ogni serpe o mostro marino avrà pur dovuto voltarsi e contorcersi in ogni cripta o angolo dell’architettura. E i santi dai colori fieri, in eterna marcia nelle finestre fiammeggianti, avrebbero recato le loro aureole come torce attraverso terre oscure e mari lontani; finché l’intera montagna di musica e tenebra e luci non calasse ruggendo sul solitario colle di Lincoln. Così per un centinaio e sessanta secondi vidi la bellezza guerresca del gotico; poi l’ultimo furgone da trasloco si scostò; e non vidi che una torre di chiesa in una quieta cittadina inglese, intorno alla quale gli uccelli inglesi volteggiavano.
THE MAN ON TOP
There is a fact at the root of all realities to-day which cannot be stated too simply. It is that the powers of this world are now not trusted simply because they are not trustworthy. This can be quite clearly seen and said without any reference to our several passions or partisanships. It does not follow that we think such a distrust a wise sentiment to express; it does not even follow that we think it a good sentiment to entertain. But such is the sentiment, simply because such is the fact. The distinction can be quite easily defined in an example. I do not think that private workers owe an indefinite loyalty to their employer. But I do think that patriotic soldiers owe a more or less indefinite loyalty to their leader in battle. But even if they ought to trust their captain, the fact remains that they often do not trust him; and the fact remains that he often is not fit to be trusted.
Most of the employers and many of the Socialists seem to have got a very muddled ethic about the basis of such loyalty; and perpetually try to put employers and officers upon the same disciplinary plane. I should have thought myself that the difference was alphabetical enough. It has nothing to do with the idealising of war or the materialising of trade; it is a distinction in the primary purpose. There might be much more elegance and poetry in a shop under William Morris than in a regiment under Lord Kitchener. But the difference is not in the persons or the atmosphere, but in the aim. The British Army does not exist in order to pay Lord Kitchener. William Morris’s shop, however artistic and philanthropic, did exist to pay William Morris. If it did not pay the shopkeeper it failed as a shop; but Lord Kitchener does not fail if he is underpaid, but only if he is defeated. The object of the Army is the safety of the nation from one particular class of perils; therefore, since all citizens owe loyalty to the nation, all citizens who are soldiers owe loyalty to the Army. But nobody has any obligation to make some particular rich man richer. A man is bound, of course, to consider the indirect results of his action in a strike; but he is bound to consider that in a swing, or a giddy-go-round, or a smoking concert; in his wildest holiday or his most private conversation. But direct responsibility like that of a soldier he has none. He need not aim solely and directly at the good of the shop; for the simple reason that the shop is not aiming solely and directly at the good of the nation. The shopman is, under decent restraints, let us hope, trying to get what he can out of the nation; the shop assistant may, under the same decent restraints, get what he can out of the shopkeeper. All this distinction is very obvious. At least I should have thought so.
But the primary point which I mean is this. That even if we do take the military view of mercantile service, even if we do call the rebellious shop assistant “disloyal”—that leaves exactly where it was the question of whether he is, in point of fact, in a good or bad shop. Granted that all Mr. Poole’s employees are bound to follow for ever the cloven pennon of the Perfect Pair of Trousers, it is all the more true that the pennon may, in point of fact, become imperfect. Granted that all Barney Barnato’s workers ought to have followed him to death or glory, it is still a Perfectly legitimate question to ask which he was likely to lead them to. Granted that Dr. Sawyer’s boy ought to die for his master’s medicines, we may still hold an inquest to find out if he died of them. While we forbid the soldier to shoot the general, we may still wish the general were shot.
The fundamental fact of our time is the failure of the successful man. Somehow we have so arranged the rules of the game that the winners are worthless for other purposes; they can secure nothing except the prize. The very rich are neither aristocrats nor self-made men; they are accidents—or rather calamities. All revolutionary language is a generation behind the times in talking of their futility. A revolutionist would say (with perfect truth) that coal-owners know next to nothing about coal-mining. But we are past that point. Coal-owners know next to nothing about coal-owning. They do not develop and defend the nature of their own monopoly with any consistent and courageous policy, however wicked, as did the old aristocrats with the monopoly of land. They have not the virtues nor even the vices of tyrants; they have only their powers. It is the same with all the powerful of to-day; it is the same, for instance, with the high-placed and high-paid official. Not only is the judge not judicial, but the arbiter is not even arbitrary. The arbiter decides, not by some gust of justice or injustice in his soul like the old despot dooming men under a tree, but by the permanent climate of the class to which he happens to belong. The ancient wig of the judge is often indistinguishable from the old wig of the flunkey.
To judge about success or failure one must see things very simply; one must see them in masses, as the artist, half closing his eyes against details, sees light and shade. That is the only way in which a just judgment can be formed as to whether any departure or development, such as Islam or the American Republic, has been a benefit upon the whole. Seen close, such great erections always abound in ingenious detail and impressive solidity; it is only by seeing them afar off that one can tell if the Tower leans.
Now if we thus take in the whole tilt or posture of our modern state, we shall simply see this fact: that those classes who have on the whole governed, have on the whole failed. If you go to a factory you will see some very wonderful wheels going round; you will be told that the employer often comes there early in the morning; that he has great organising power; that if he works over the colossal accumulation of wealth he also works over its wise distribution. All this may be true of many employers, and it is practically said of all.
But if we shade our eyes from all this dazzle of detail; if we simply ask what has been the main feature, the upshot, the final fruit of the capitalist system, there is no doubt about the answer. The special and solid result of the reign of the employers has been—unemployment. Unemployment not only increasing, but becoming at last the very pivot upon which the whole process turns.
Or, again, if you visit the villages that depend on one of the great squires, you will hear praises, often just, of the landlord’s good sense or good nature; you will hear of whole systems of pensions or of care for the sick, like those of a small and separate nation; you will see much cleanliness, order, and business habits in the offices and accounts of the estate. But if you ask again what has been the upshot, what has been the actual result of the reign of landlords, again the answer is plain. At the end of the reign of landlords men will not live on the land. The practical effect of having landlords is not having tenants. The practical effect of having employers is that men are not employed. The unrest of the populace is therefore more than a murmur against tyranny; it is against a sort of treason. It is the suspicion that even at the top of the tree, even in the seats of the mighty, our very success is unsuccessful.
L’UOMO IN CIMA
Vi è un fatto alla radice di tutte le realtà di oggi che non può essere enunciato con troppa semplicità. È che i poteri di questo mondo non sono più creduti, semplicemente perché non sono degni di fede. Ciò può essere veduto e detto con tutta chiarezza senza alcun riferimento alle nostre diverse passioni o fazioni. Non ne consegue che riteniamo una tale diffidenza un sentimento saggio da esprimere; e non ne consegue nemmeno che la riteniamo un buon sentimento da nutrire. Ma tale è il sentimento, semplicemente perché tale è il fatto. La distinzione può essere assai facilmente definita con un esempio. Non credo che i lavoratori privati debbano una lealtà indefinita al loro datore di lavoro. Ma credo bensì che i soldati patriottici debbano una lealtà più o meno indefinita al loro comandante in battaglia. Ma anche ammesso che debbano aver fiducia nel loro capitano, il fatto rimane che spesso non l’hanno; e rimane il fatto che egli spesso non è degno che vi si abbia fiducia.
La maggior parte dei datori di lavoro e molti dei socialisti sembrano essersi fatti un’etica assai confusa circa il fondamento di una tale lealtà; e cercano di continuo di porre datori di lavoro e ufficiali sopra il medesimo piano disciplinare. Da parte mia avrei pensato che la differenza fosse abbastanza elementare. Non ha nulla a che vedere con l’idealizzare la guerra o il materializzare il commercio; è una distinzione nel fine primario. Potrebbe esservi assai più eleganza e poesia in una bottega retta da William Morris che in un reggimento retto da Lord Kitchener. Ma la differenza non sta nelle persone o nell’atmosfera, bensì nello scopo. L’esercito britannico non esiste per pagare Lord Kitchener. La bottega di William Morris, per quanto artistica e filantropica, esisteva bensì per pagare William Morris. Se non pagava il bottegaio essa falliva come bottega; ma Lord Kitchener non fallisce se è pagato poco, bensì soltanto se è sconfitto. L’oggetto dell’esercito è la salvezza della nazione da una particolare classe di pericoli; perciò, giacché tutti i cittadini devono lealtà alla nazione, tutti i cittadini che sono soldati devono lealtà all’esercito. Ma nessuno ha alcun obbligo di rendere più ricco un certo ricco in particolare. Un uomo è tenuto, si capisce, a considerare i risultati indiretti della propria azione in uno sciopero; ma è tenuto a considerarli in un’altalena, in una giostra, o in un concerto tra fumatori; nella sua vacanza più sfrenata o nella sua conversazione più privata. Ma una responsabilità diretta come quella d’un soldato egli non ne ha alcuna. Non è tenuto a mirare unicamente e direttamente al bene della bottega; per la semplice ragione che la bottega non mira unicamente e direttamente al bene della nazione. Il bottegaio, entro decorosi freni, speriamo, cerca di cavare dalla nazione ciò che può; il commesso può, entro i medesimi decorosi freni, cavare ciò che può dal bottegaio. Tutta questa distinzione è assai ovvia. Almeno così avrei pensato.
Ma il punto primario che intendo è questo. Che anche se assumiamo la veduta militare del servizio mercantile, anche se chiamiamo il commesso ribelle «sleale», ciò lascia esattamente dov’era la questione se egli sia, di fatto, in una buona o in una cattiva bottega. Ammesso che tutti gli impiegati del signor Poole siano tenuti a seguire in eterno il vessillo biforcuto del Paio di Pantaloni Perfetto, tanto più è vero che il vessillo può, di fatto, diventare imperfetto. Ammesso che tutti gli operai di Barney Barnato dovessero averlo seguito fino alla morte o alla gloria, resta pur sempre una domanda perfettamente legittima chiedersi verso quale delle due fosse probabile che li conducesse. Ammesso che il garzone del dottor Sawyer dovesse morire per le medicine del suo padrone, possiamo pur sempre tenere un’inchiesta per accertare se sia morto a causa di esse. Mentre proibiamo al soldato di sparare al generale, possiamo pur sempre desiderare che il generale fosse fucilato.
Il fatto fondamentale del nostro tempo è il fallimento dell’uomo di successo. In qualche modo abbiamo così disposto le regole del gioco che i vincitori riescono privi di valore per ogni altro scopo; non possono assicurarsi nulla se non il premio. I ricchissimi non sono né aristocratici né uomini che si sono fatti da sé; sono accidenti, o piuttosto calamità. Tutto il linguaggio rivoluzionario è d’una generazione indietro rispetto ai tempi nel parlare della loro inutilità. Un rivoluzionario direbbe (con perfetta verità) che i proprietari di miniere di carbone sanno pressoché nulla di estrazione del carbone. Ma quel punto lo abbiamo oltrepassato. I proprietari di miniere di carbone sanno pressoché nulla del possedere miniere di carbone. Non sviluppano né difendono la natura del proprio monopolio con alcuna politica coerente e coraggiosa, per quanto malvagia, come facevano gli antichi aristocratici col monopolio della terra. Non hanno le virtù né pure i vizi dei tiranni; hanno soltanto i loro poteri. Lo stesso avviene con tutti i potenti d’oggi; lo stesso avviene, per esempio, col funzionario ben collocato e ben pagato. Non solo il giudice non è giudizioso, ma l’arbitro non è nemmeno arbitrario. L’arbitro decide, non per qualche raffica di giustizia o d’ingiustizia nella sua anima come l’antico despota che condannava gli uomini sotto un albero, bensì per il clima permanente della classe cui gli accade di appartenere. L’antica parrucca del giudice è spesso indistinguibile dalla vecchia parrucca del lacchè.
Per giudicare del successo o del fallimento bisogna vedere le cose molto semplicemente; bisogna vederle in masse, come l’artista, socchiudendo gli occhi contro i particolari, vede luce e ombra. È il solo modo in cui si può formare un giusto giudizio sul se una qualsiasi deviazione o sviluppo, quale l’Islam o la Repubblica americana, sia stato nel complesso un beneficio. Vedute da presso, tali grandi costruzioni abbondano sempre d’ingegnosi particolari e d’imponente solidità; è soltanto vedendole di lontano che si può dire se la Torre pende.
Ora, se in tal modo abbracciamo tutta l’inclinazione o postura del nostro stato moderno, vedremo semplicemente questo fatto: che quelle classi che nel complesso hanno governato, nel complesso hanno fallito. Se andate in una fabbrica vedrete ruote assai meravigliose che girano; vi si dirà che il datore di lavoro spesso vi giunge presto la mattina; che ha grande capacità organizzativa; che se lavora sopra la colossale accumulazione della ricchezza lavora anche sopra la sua saggia distribuzione. Tutto ciò può essere vero di molti datori di lavoro, e viene praticamente detto di tutti.
Ma se schermiamo gli occhi da tutto questo abbaglio di particolari; se ci limitiamo a chiedere quale sia stato il tratto principale, l’esito, il frutto ultimo del sistema capitalistico, non v’è alcun dubbio sulla risposta. Il risultato particolare e solido del regno dei datori di lavoro è stato: la disoccupazione. Una disoccupazione non solo crescente, ma divenuta infine il perno stesso su cui gira l’intero processo.
Oppure, di nuovo, se visitate i villaggi che dipendono da uno dei grandi proprietari terrieri, udrete lodi, spesso giuste, del buon senso o del buon carattere del padrone; udrete di interi sistemi di pensioni o di cura per i malati, come quelli d’una piccola e separata nazione; vedrete molta pulizia, ordine e abitudini d’affari negli uffici e nei conti della tenuta. Ma se chiedete di nuovo quale sia stato l’esito, quale sia stato l’effettivo risultato del regno dei proprietari terrieri, di nuovo la risposta è chiara. Alla fine del regno dei proprietari terrieri gli uomini non vivranno sulla terra. L’effetto pratico dell’avere proprietari terrieri è il non avere affittuari. L’effetto pratico dell’avere datori di lavoro è che gli uomini non sono impiegati. L’inquietudine della popolazione è perciò più che un mormorio contro la tirannia; è contro una sorta di tradimento. È il sospetto che perfino in cima all’albero, perfino nei seggi dei potenti, il nostro stesso successo sia infruttuoso.
THE OTHER KIND OF MAN
There are some who are conciliated by Conciliation Boards. There are some who, when they hear of Royal Commissions, breathe again— or snore again. There are those who look forward to Compulsory Arbitration Courts as to the islands of the blest. These men do not understand the day that they look upon or the sights that their eyes have seen.
The almost sacramental idea of representation, by which the few may incarnate the many, arose in the Middle Ages, and has done great things for justice and liberty. It has had its real hours of triumph, as when the States General met to renew France’s youth like the eagle’s; or when all the virtues of the Republic fought and ruled in the figure of Washington. It is not having one of its hours of triumph now. The real democratic unrest at this moment is not an extension of the representative process, but rather a revolt against it. It is no good giving those now in revolt more boards and committees and compulsory regulations. It is against these very things that they are revolting. Men are not only rising against their oppressors, but against their representatives or, as they would say, their misrepresentatives. The inner and actual spirit of workaday England is coming out not in applause, but in anger, as a god who should come out of his tabernacle to rebuke and confound his priests.
There is a certain kind of man whom we see many times in a day, but whom we do not, in general, bother very much about. He is the kind of man of whom his wife says that a better husband when he’s sober you couldn’t have. She sometimes adds that he never is sober; but this is in anger and exaggeration. Really he drinks much less and works much more than the modern legend supposes. But it is quite true that he has not the horror of bodily outbreak, natural to the classes that contain ladies; and it is quite true that he never has that alert and inventive sort of industry natural to the classes from which men can climb into great wealth. He has grown, partly by necessity, but partly also by temper, accustomed to have dirty clothes and dirty hands normally and without discomfort. He regards cleanliness as a kind of separate and special costume; to be put on for great festivals. He has several really curious characteristics, which would attract the eyes of sociologists, if they had any eyes. For instance, his vocabulary is coarse and abusive, in marked contrast to his actual spirit, which is generally patient and civil. He has an odd way of using certain words of really horrible meaning, but using them quite innocently and without the most distant taint of the evils to which they allude. He is rather sentimental; and, like most sentimental people, not devoid of snobbishness. At the same time, he believes the ordinary manly commonplaces of freedom and fraternity as he believes most of the decent traditions of Christian men: he finds it very difficult to act according to them, but this difficulty is not confined to him. He has a strong and individual sense of humour, and not much power of corporate or militant action. He is not a Socialist. Finally, he bears no more resemblance to a Labour Member than he does to a City Alderman or a Die-Hard Duke. This is the Common Labourer of England; and it is he who is on the march at last.
See this man in your mind as you see him in the street, realise that it is his open mind we wish to influence or his empty stomach we wish to cure, and then consider seriously (if you can) the five men, including two of his own alleged oppressors, who were summoned as a Royal Commission to consider his claims when he or his sort went out on strike upon the railways. I knew nothing against, indeed I knew nothing about, any of the gentlemen then summoned, beyond a bare introduction to Mr. Henderson, whom I liked, but whose identity I was in no danger of confusing with that of a railway-porter. I do not think that any old gentleman, however absent-minded, would be likely on arriving at Euston, let us say, to hand his Gladstone-bag to Mr. Henderson or to attempt to reward that politician with twopence. Of the others I can only judge by the facts about their status as set forth in the public Press. The Chairman, Sir David Harrell, appeared to be an ex-official distinguished in (of all things in the world) the Irish Constabulary. I have no earthly reason to doubt that the Chairman meant to be fair; but I am not talking about what men mean to be, but about what they are. The police in Ireland are practically an army of occupation; a man serving in them or directing them is practically a soldier; and, of course, he must do his duty as such. But it seems truly extraordinary to select as one likely to sympathise with the democracy of England a man whose whole business in life it has been to govern against its will the democracy of Ireland. What should we say if Russian strikers were offered the sympathetic arbitration of the head of the Russian Police in Finland or Poland? And if we do not know that the whole civilised world sees Ireland with Poland as a typical oppressed nation, it is time we did. The Chairman, whatever his personal virtues, must be by instinct and habit akin to the capitalists in the dispute. Two more of the Commissioners actually were the capitalists in the dispute. Then came Mr. Henderson (pushing his trolley and cheerily crying, “By your leave.”), and then another less known gentleman who had “corresponded” with the Board of Trade, and had thus gained some strange claim to represent the very poor.
Now people like this might quite possibly produce a rational enough report, and in this or that respect even improve things. Men of that kind are tolerably kind, tolerably patriotic, and tolerably business-like. But if any one supposes that men of that kind can conceivably quiet any real ‘quarrel with the Man of the Other Kind, the man whom I first described, it is frantic. The common worker is angry exactly because he has found out that all these boards consist of the same well-dressed Kind of Man, whether they are called Governmental or Capitalist. If any one hopes that he will reconcile the poor, I say, as I said at the beginning, that such a one has not looked on the light of day or dwelt in the land of the living.
But I do not criticise such a Commission except for one most practical and urgent purpose. It will be answered to me that the first Kind of Man of whom I spoke could not really be on boards and committees, as modern England is managed. His dirt, though necessary and honourable, would be offensive: his speech, though rich and figurative, would be almost incomprehensible. Let us grant, for the moment, that this is so. This Kind of Man, with his sooty hair or sanguinary adjectives, cannot be represented at our committees of arbitration. Therefore, the other Kind of Man, fairly prosperous, fairly plausible, at home at least with the middle class, capable at least of reaching and touching the upper class, he must remain the only Kind of Man for such councils.
Very well. If then, you give at any future time any kind of compulsory powers to such councils to prevent strikes, you will be driving the first Kind of Man to work for a particular master as much as if you drove him with a whip.
L’ALTRO GENERE DI UOMO
Vi sono alcuni che si sentono conciliati dai Consigli di Conciliazione. Vi sono alcuni che, quando sentono parlare di Commissioni Reali, tornano a respirare— o tornano a russare. Vi sono coloro che attendono con ansia i Tribunali di Arbitrato Obbligatorio come le isole dei beati. Questi uomini non comprendono il giorno che hanno davanti agli occhi né gli spettacoli che i loro occhi hanno veduto.
L’idea quasi sacramentale della rappresentanza, per cui i pochi possono incarnare i molti, sorse nel Medioevo, e ha fatto grandi cose per la giustizia e la libertà. Ha avuto le sue ore vere di trionfo, come quando gli Stati Generali si riunirono per rinnovare la giovinezza della Francia come quella dell’aquila; o quando tutte le virtù della Repubblica combatterono e governarono nella figura di Washington. Non è che stia vivendo una delle sue ore di trionfo ora. La vera inquietudine democratica di questo momento non è un’estensione del processo rappresentativo, ma piuttosto una rivolta contro di esso. Non serve a nulla dare a chi ora è in rivolta altri consigli e comitati e regolamenti obbligatori. È proprio contro queste cose che essi si stanno ribellando. Gli uomini non si sollevano soltanto contro i loro oppressori, ma contro i loro rappresentanti o, come essi direbbero, i loro travisatori. Lo spirito interiore e reale dell’Inghilterra dei giorni feriali sta uscendo non in applausi, ma in collera, come un dio che dovesse uscire dal suo tabernacolo per rimproverare e confondere i suoi sacerdoti.
C’è un certo genere di uomo che vediamo molte volte al giorno, ma di cui, in generale, non ci diamo gran pensiero. È il genere d’uomo di cui la moglie dice che, quand’è sobrio, non potresti avere marito migliore. Talvolta aggiunge che non è mai sobrio; ma questo è per collera ed esagerazione. In realtà egli beve molto meno e lavora molto di più di quanto la leggenda moderna supponga. Ma è verissimo che egli non ha l’orrore delle intemperanze corporali, naturale alle classi che contengono signore; ed è verissimo che non ha mai quella sorta di operosità sveglia e inventiva naturale alle classi da cui gli uomini possono arrampicarsi verso la grande ricchezza. È diventato, in parte per necessità, ma in parte anche per indole, avvezzo ad avere abiti sudici e mani sudice normalmente e senza disagio. Considera la pulizia come una specie di costume separato e speciale; da indossare per le grandi feste. Ha parecchie caratteristiche davvero curiose, che attirerebbero gli occhi dei sociologi, se ne avessero. Per esempio, il suo vocabolario è greve e ingiurioso, in marcato contrasto col suo spirito effettivo, che è in genere paziente e cortese. Ha uno strano modo di usare certe parole di significato davvero orribile, ma usandole in modo del tutto innocente e senza la più remota traccia dei mali a cui alludono. È piuttosto sentimentale; e, come la maggior parte delle persone sentimentali, non privo di snobismo. Al tempo stesso, egli crede nei comuni luoghi virili della libertà e della fraternità come crede alla maggior parte delle decorose tradizioni degli uomini cristiani: trova assai difficile agire secondo esse, ma questa difficoltà non è propria soltanto di lui. Ha un forte e individuale senso dell’umorismo, e non molta capacità di azione collettiva o militante. Non è un socialista. Infine, non ha più somiglianza con un Deputato Laburista di quanta ne abbia con un assessore della City o con un Duca Intransigente. Questo è il Comune Manovale d’Inghilterra; ed è lui che finalmente si è messo in marcia.
Vedete quest’uomo nella vostra mente come lo vedete per strada, rendetevi conto che è la sua mente aperta che vogliamo influenzare o il suo stomaco vuoto che vogliamo curare, e poi considerate seriamente (se ci riuscite) i cinque uomini, tra cui due dei suoi presunti oppressori, che furono convocati come Commissione Reale per esaminare le sue rivendicazioni quando lui o quelli della sua specie scesero in sciopero sulle ferrovie. Non sapevo nulla contro, anzi non sapevo nulla di, nessuno dei gentiluomini allora convocati, salvo una nuda presentazione al signor Henderson, che mi era simpatico, ma la cui identità non correvo alcun pericolo di confondere con quella di un facchino di stazione. Non credo che un vecchio gentiluomo, per quanto distratto, avesse probabilità, arrivando a Euston, diciamo, di porgere la sua borsa da viaggio al signor Henderson o di tentare di ricompensare quel politico con due soldi. Degli altri posso giudicare solo dai fatti relativi al loro rango così come esposti sulla stampa pubblica. Il Presidente, Sir David Harrell, risultava essere un ex funzionario distintosi (di tutte le cose al mondo) nella Polizia Reale Irlandese. Non ho alcuna terrena ragione di dubitare che il Presidente intendesse essere giusto; ma io non parlo di ciò che gli uomini intendono essere, bensì di ciò che sono. La polizia in Irlanda è praticamente un esercito di occupazione; un uomo che vi serve o che la dirige è praticamente un soldato; e, naturalmente, deve fare il suo dovere come tale. Ma sembra davvero straordinario scegliere come persona probabilmente incline a simpatizzare con la democrazia d’Inghilterra un uomo la cui intera occupazione nella vita è stata governare contro la sua volontà la democrazia d’Irlanda. Che cosa diremmo se degli scioperanti russi si vedessero offrire l’arbitrato comprensivo del capo della Polizia russa in Finlandia o in Polonia? E se noi non sappiamo che l’intero mondo civile vede l’Irlanda insieme alla Polonia come una tipica nazione oppressa, è tempo che lo sapessimo. Il Presidente, quali che siano le sue virtù personali, dev’essere per istinto e abitudine affine ai capitalisti della vertenza. Altri due dei Commissari erano effettivamente i capitalisti della vertenza. Poi veniva il signor Henderson (che spinge il suo carrello e grida allegro, “Con permesso.”), e poi un altro gentiluomo meno noto che aveva “corrisposto” con la Camera di Commercio, e aveva così acquisito qualche strano titolo a rappresentare i più poveri.
Ora, persone come queste potrebbero benissimo produrre un rapporto abbastanza ragionevole, e sotto questo o quell’aspetto perfino migliorare le cose. Uomini di quel genere sono passabilmente gentili, passabilmente patriottici, e passabilmente concreti negli affari. Ma se qualcuno suppone che uomini di quel genere possano concepibilmente placare una qualsiasi vera lite con l’Uomo dell’Altro Genere, l’uomo che ho descritto per primo, è cosa folle. L’operaio comune è in collera proprio perché ha scoperto che tutti questi consigli constano dello stesso Genere di Uomo ben vestito, che siano chiamati Governativi o Capitalisti. Se qualcuno spera che costui riconcilierà i poveri, io dico, come dissi al principio, che un tale non ha guardato la luce del giorno né dimorato nella terra dei viventi.
Ma io non critico una tale Commissione se non per un unico scopo assai pratico e urgente. Mi si risponderà che il primo Genere di Uomo di cui ho parlato non potrebbe davvero stare nei consigli e nei comitati, per come è gestita l’Inghilterra moderna. La sua sporcizia, per quanto necessaria e onorevole, sarebbe offensiva: il suo linguaggio, per quanto ricco e figurato, sarebbe pressoché incomprensibile. Concediamo, per il momento, che sia così. Questo Genere di Uomo, con i suoi capelli fuligginosi o i suoi aggettivi sanguinari, non può essere rappresentato ai nostri comitati di arbitrato. Perciò, l’altro Genere di Uomo, discretamente prospero, discretamente presentabile, a proprio agio almeno con la classe media, capace almeno di raggiungere e toccare la classe superiore, egli deve restare l’unico Genere di Uomo per simili consigli.
Benissimo. Se allora, in un qualsiasi tempo futuro, darete un qualche genere di poteri coercitivi a tali consigli per impedire gli scioperi, starete costringendo il primo Genere di Uomo a lavorare per un particolare padrone tanto quanto se lo spingeste con la frusta.
THE MEDIAEVAL VILLAIN
I see that there have been more attempts at the whitewashing of King John.
But the gentleman who wrote has a further interest in the matter; for he believes that King John was innocent, not only on this point, but as a whole. He thinks King John has been very badly treated; though I am not sure whether he would attribute to that Plantagenet a saintly merit or merely a humdrum respectability.
I sympathise with the whitewashing of King John, merely because it is a protest against our waxwork style of history. Everybody is in a particular attitude, with particular moral attributes; Rufus is always hunting and Coeur-de-Lion always crusading; Henry VIII always marrying, and Charles I always having his head cut off; Alfred rapidly and in rotation making his people’s clocks and spoiling their cakes; and King John pulling out Jews’ teeth with the celerity and industry of an American dentist. Anything is good that shakes all this stiff simplification, and makes us remember that these men were once alive; that is, mixed, free, flippant, and inconsistent. It gives the mind a healthy kick to know that Alfred had fits, that Charles I prevented enclosures, that Rufus was really interested in architecture, that Henry VIII was really interested in theology.
And as these scraps of reality can startle us into more solid imagination of events, so can even errors and exaggerations if they are on the right side. It does some good to call Alfred a prig, Charles I a Puritan, and John a jolly good fellow; if this makes us feel that they were people whom we might have liked or disliked. I do not myself think that John was a nice gentleman; but for all that the popular picture of him is all wrong. Whether he had any generous qualities or not, he had what commonly makes them possible, dare-devil courage, for instance, and hot-headed decision. But, above all, he had a morality which he broke, but which we misunderstand.
The mediaeval mind turned centrally upon the pivot of Free Will. In their social system the mediaevals were too much PARTI-PER-PALE, as their heralds would say, too rigidly cut up by fences and quarterings of guild or degree. But in their moral philosophy they always thought of man as standing free and doubtful at the cross-roads in a forest. While they clad and bound the body and (to some extent) the mind too stiffly and quaintly for our taste, they had a much stronger sense than we have of the freedom of the soul. For them the soul always hung poised like an eagle in the heavens of liberty. Many of the things that strike a modern as most fantastic came from their keen sense of the power of choice.
For instance, the greatest of the Schoolmen devotes folios to the minute description of what the world would have been like if Adam had refused the apple; what kings, laws, babies, animals, planets would have been in an unfallen world. So intensely does he feel that Adam might have decided the other way that he sees a complete and complex vision of another world, a world that now can never be.
This sense of the stream of life in a man that may turn either way can be felt through all their popular ethics in legend, chronicle, and ballad. It is a feeling which has been weakened among us by two heavy intellectual forces. The Calvinism of the seventeenth century and the physical science of the nineteenth, whatever other truths they may have taught, have darkened this liberty with a sense of doom. We think of bad men as something like black men, a separate and incurable kind of people. The Byronic spirit was really a sort of operatic Calvinism. It brought the villain upon the stage; the lost soul; the modern version of King John. But the contemporaries of King John did not feel like that about him, even when they detested him. They instinctively felt him to be a man of mixed passions like themselves, who was allowing his evil passions to have much too good a time of it. They might have spoken of him as a man in considerable danger of going to hell; but they would have not talked of him as if he had come from there. In the ballads of Percy or Robin Hood it frequently happens that the King comes upon the scene, and his ultimate decision makes the climax of the tale. But we do not feel, as we do in the Byronic or modern romance, that there is a definite stage direction “Enter Tyrant.” Nor do we behold a deus ex machina who is certain to do all that is mild and just. The King in the ballad is in a state of virile indecision. Sometimes he will pass from a towering passion to the most sweeping magnanimity and friendliness; sometimes he will begin an act of vengeance and be turned from it by a jest. Yet this august levity is not moral indifference; it is moral freedom. It is the strong sense in the writer that the King, being the type of man with power, will probably sometimes use it badly and sometimes well. In this sense John is certainly misrepresented, for he is pictured as something that none of his own friends or enemies saw. In that sense he was certainly not so black as he is painted, for he lived in a world where every one was piebald.
King John would be represented in a modern play or novel as a kind of degenerate; a shifty eyed moral maniac with a twist in his soul’s backbone and green blood in his veins. The mediaevals were quite capable of boiling him in melted lead, but they would have been quite incapable of despairing of his soul in the modern fashion. A striking a fortiori case is that of the strange mediaeval legend of Robert the Devil. Robert was represented as a monstrous birth sent to an embittered woman actually in answer to prayers to Satan, and his earlier actions are simply those of the infernal fire let loose upon earth. Yet though he can be called almost literally a child of hell, yet the climax of the story is his repentance at Rome and his great reparation. That is the paradox of mediaeval morals: as it must appear to the moderns. We must try to conceive a race of men who hated John, and sought his blood, and believed every abomination about him, who would have been quite capable of assassinating or torturing him in the extremity of their anger. And yet we must admit that they would not really have been fundamentally surprised if he had shaved his head in humiliation, given all his goods to the poor, embraced the lepers in a lazar-house, and been canonised as a saint in heaven. So strongly did they hold that the pivot of Will should turn freely, which now is rusted, and sticks.
For we, whatever our political opinions, certainly never think of our public men like that. If we hold the opinion that Mr. Lloyd George is a noble tribune of the populace and protector of the poor, we do not admit that he can ever have paltered with the truth or bargained with the powerful. If we hold the equally idiotic opinion that he is a red and rabid Socialist, maddening mobs into mutiny and theft, then we expect him to go on maddening them—and us. We do not expect him, let us say, suddenly to go into a monastery. We have lost the idea of repentance; especially in public things; that is why we cannot really get rid of our great national abuses of economic tyranny and aristocratic avarice. Progress in the modern sense is a very dismal drudge; and mostly consists of being moved on by the police. We move on because we are not allowed to move back. But the really ragged prophets, the real revolutionists who held high language in the palaces of kings, they did not confine themselves to saying, “Onward, Christian soldiers,” still less, “Onward, Futurist soldiers”; what they said to high emperors and to whole empires was, “Turn ye, turn ye, why will ye die?”
IL MALVAGIO MEDIEVALE
Vedo che ci sono stati altri tentativi di riabilitare Re Giovanni.
Ma il gentiluomo che ha scritto ha un ulteriore interesse nella faccenda; poiché ritiene che Re Giovanni fosse innocente, non solo su questo punto, ma nel complesso. Pensa che Re Giovanni sia stato trattato assai male; sebbene non sia certo se attribuirebbe a quel Plantageneto un merito da santo o una semplice, banale rispettabilità.
Io simpatizzo con la riabilitazione di Re Giovanni, semplicemente perché è una protesta contro il nostro stile da museo delle cere nel fare storia. Ognuno sta in un atteggiamento particolare, con particolari attributi morali; Rufo è sempre a caccia e Cuor di Leone sempre in crociata; Enrico VIII sempre a sposarsi, e Carlo I sempre con la testa mozzata; Alfredo che rapidamente e a rotazione costruisce gli orologi del suo popolo e ne guasta le focacce; e Re Giovanni che cava i denti agli ebrei con la celerità e l’operosità di un dentista americano. Ogni cosa è buona che scuota tutta questa rigida semplificazione, e ci faccia ricordare che questi uomini una volta erano vivi; cioè, mescolati, liberi, frivoli e incoerenti. Dà alla mente un salutare calcio sapere che Alfredo aveva le convulsioni, che Carlo I impedì le recinzioni, che Rufo era davvero interessato all’architettura, che Enrico VIII era davvero interessato alla teologia.
E come questi frammenti di realtà possono scuoterci verso una più solida immaginazione degli eventi, così possono farlo anche errori ed esagerazioni, se stanno dalla parte giusta. Fa un po’ di bene chiamare Alfredo un pedante, Carlo I un puritano, e Giovanni un ottimo buontempone; se questo ci fa sentire che erano persone che avremmo potuto amare o detestare. Io personalmente non credo che Giovanni fosse un gentiluomo simpatico; ma malgrado ciò il ritratto popolare che se ne fa è del tutto sbagliato. Che avesse o no qualità generose, egli aveva ciò che comunemente le rende possibili, un coraggio temerario, per esempio, e una decisione impetuosa. Ma, soprattutto, aveva una moralità che infrangeva, ma che noi fraintendiamo.
La mente medievale ruotava centralmente sul perno del Libero Arbitrio. Nel loro sistema sociale i medievali erano troppo PARTI-PER-PALE, come direbbero i loro araldi, troppo rigidamente frazionati da steccati e quartieri di gilda o di grado. Ma nella loro filosofia morale pensavano sempre all’uomo come a chi sta libero e dubbioso al crocevia in una foresta. Mentre vestivano e serravano il corpo e (in una certa misura) anche la mente in modo troppo rigido e bizzarro per il nostro gusto, avevano un senso molto più forte del nostro della libertà dell’anima. Per loro l’anima pendeva sempre librata come un’aquila nei cieli della libertà. Molte delle cose che colpiscono un moderno come più fantastiche venivano dal loro acuto senso del potere di scelta.
Per esempio, il più grande degli Scolastici dedica interi volumi alla minuta descrizione di come sarebbe stato il mondo se Adamo avesse rifiutato la mela; quali re, leggi, bambini, animali, pianeti vi sarebbero stati in un mondo non caduto. Con tanta intensità egli sente che Adamo avrebbe potuto decidere nell’altro senso, che vede una completa e complessa visione di un altro mondo, un mondo che ormai non potrà mai esistere.
Questo senso del fluire della vita in un uomo che può volgersi nell’uno o nell’altro senso può essere avvertito in tutta la loro etica popolare, nella leggenda, nella cronaca e nella ballata. È un sentimento che è stato indebolito tra noi da due pesanti forze intellettuali. Il calvinismo del diciassettesimo secolo e la scienza fisica del diciannovesimo, quali che siano le altre verità che possono aver insegnato, hanno ottenebrato questa libertà con un senso di fatalità. Noi pensiamo agli uomini malvagi come a qualcosa di simile a uomini neri, un genere di gente separato e incurabile. Lo spirito byroniano era in realtà una specie di calvinismo operistico. Portò il malvagio sul palcoscenico; l’anima perduta; la versione moderna di Re Giovanni. Ma i contemporanei di Re Giovanni non provavano un tale sentimento nei suoi confronti, neppure quando lo detestavano. Istintivamente lo sentivano come un uomo di passioni miste come loro, che stava lasciando alle proprie male passioni un tempo fin troppo bello. Avrebbero potuto parlare di lui come di un uomo in considerevole pericolo di andare all’inferno; ma non ne avrebbero parlato come se fosse venuto di là. Nelle ballate di Percy o di Robin Hood accade di frequente che il re compaia in scena, e la sua decisione finale costituisca il culmine del racconto. Ma noi non sentiamo, come sentiamo nel Romanzo byroniano o moderno, che vi sia una precisa didascalia “Entra il Tiranno.” Né scorgiamo un deus ex machina che sicuramente farà tutto ciò che è mite e giusto. Il re nella ballata è in uno stato di virile indecisione. Talvolta passerà da una passione torreggiante alla più travolgente magnanimità e amichevolezza; talvolta comincerà un atto di vendetta e ne sarà distolto da uno scherzo. Eppure questa augusta leggerezza non è indifferenza morale; è libertà morale. È il forte senso, nello scrittore, che il re, essendo il tipo dell’uomo dotato di potere, probabilmente lo userà a volte male e a volte bene. In questo senso Giovanni è certamente travisato, poiché è dipinto come qualcosa che nessuno dei suoi amici o nemici vide mai. In quel senso egli non era certo così nero come lo si dipinge, poiché viveva in un mondo dove ognuno era pezzato.
Re Giovanni sarebbe rappresentato in un dramma o romanzo moderno come una specie di degenerato; un maniaco morale dallo sguardo sfuggente con una torsione nella spina dorsale dell’anima e sangue verde nelle vene. I medievali erano perfettamente capaci di bollirlo nel piombo fuso, ma sarebbero stati del tutto incapaci di disperare della sua anima alla maniera moderna. Un caso a fortiori sorprendente è quello della strana leggenda medievale di Roberto il Diavolo. Roberto era rappresentato come un parto mostruoso mandato a una donna inasprita, proprio in risposta a preghiere rivolte a Satana, e le sue azioni più giovanili sono semplicemente quelle del fuoco infernale scatenato sulla terra. Eppure, sebbene lo si possa chiamare quasi letteralmente un figlio dell’inferno, il culmine della storia è il suo pentimento a Roma e la sua grande riparazione. Ecco il paradosso della morale medievale: quale deve apparire ai moderni. Dobbiamo cercare di concepire una razza di uomini che odiavano Giovanni, e ne cercavano il sangue, e credevano ogni abominio sul suo conto, che sarebbero stati perfettamente capaci di assassinarlo o torturarlo all’estremo della loro collera. Eppure dobbiamo ammettere che non sarebbero stati davvero fondamentalmente sorpresi se egli si fosse rasato il capo in umiliazione, avesse dato tutti i suoi beni ai poveri, abbracciato i lebbrosi in un lazzaretto, e fosse stato canonizzato come santo in cielo. Con tanta forza tenevano che il perno del Volere dovesse girare libero, quel perno che ora è arrugginito, e s’inceppa.
Poiché noi, quali che siano le nostre opinioni politiche, certamente non pensiamo mai così ai nostri uomini pubblici. Se abbiamo l’opinione che il signor Lloyd George sia un nobile tribuno della plebe e protettore dei poveri, non ammettiamo che egli possa mai aver tergiversato con la verità o mercanteggiato con i potenti. Se abbiamo l’opinione altrettanto idiota che egli sia un rosso e rabbioso socialista, che aizza le folle alla rivolta e al furto, allora ci aspettiamo che continui ad aizzarle—e ad aizzare noi. Non ci aspettiamo, diciamo, che a un tratto entri in un monastero. Abbiamo perduto l’idea del pentimento; specialmente nelle cose pubbliche; ecco perché non riusciamo davvero a liberarci dei nostri grandi abusi nazionali della tirannia economica e dell’avarizia aristocratica. Il progresso nel senso moderno è un ben triste sgobbone; e per lo più consiste nell’essere fatti circolare dalla polizia. Circoliamo perché non ci è concesso di tornare indietro. Ma i profeti davvero cenciosi, i veri rivoluzionari che tennero un linguaggio alto nei palazzi dei re, essi non si limitarono a dire: “Avanti, soldati cristiani,” e ancor meno: “Avanti, soldati futuristi”; ciò che dissero ad alti imperatori e a interi imperi fu: “Convertitevi, convertitevi, perché volete morire?”
THE DIVINE DETECTIVE
Every person of sound education enjoys detective stories, and there are even several points on which they have a hearty superiority to most modern books. A detective story generally describes six living men discussing how it is that a man is dead. A modern philosophic story generally describes six dead men discussing how any man can possibly be alive. But those who have enjoyed the roman policier must have noted one thing, that when the murderer is caught he is hardly ever hanged. “That,” says Sherlock Holmes, “is the advantage of being a private detective”; after he has caught he can set free. The Christian Church can best be defined as an enormous private detective, correcting that official detective— the State. This, indeed, is one of the injustices done to historic Christianity; injustices which arise from looking at complex exceptions and not at the large and simple fact. We are constantly being told that theologians used racks and thumbscrews, and so they did. Theologians used racks and thumbscrews just as they used thimbles and three-legged stools, because everybody else used them. Christianity no more created the mediaeval tortures than it did the Chinese tortures; it inherited them from any empire as heathen as the Chinese.
The Church did, in an evil hour, consent to imitate the commonwealth and employ cruelty. But if we open our eyes and take in the whole picture, if we look at the general shape and colour of the thing, the real difference between the Church and the State is huge and plain. The State, in all lands and ages, has created a machinery of punishment, more bloody and brutal in some places than others, but bloody and brutal everywhere. The Church is the only institution that ever attempted to create a machinery of pardon. The Church is the only thing that ever attempted by system to pursue and discover crimes, not in order to avenge, but in order to forgive them. The stake and rack were merely the weaknesses of the religion; its snobberies, its surrenders to the world. Its speciality—or, if you like, its oddity—was this merciless mercy; the unrelenting sleuthhound who seeks to save and not slay.
I can best illustrate what I mean by referring to two popular plays on somewhat parallel topics, which have been successful here and in America. The Passing of the Third Floor Back is a humane and reverent experiment, dealing with the influence of one unknown but divine figure as he passes through a group of Squalid characters. I have no desire to make cheap fun of the extremely abrupt conversions of all these people; that is a point of art, not of morals; and, after all, many conversions have been abrupt. This saviour’s method of making people good is to tell them how good they are already; and in the case of suicidal outcasts, whose moral backs are broken, and who are soaked with sincere self-contempt, I can imagine that this might be quite the right way. I should not deliver this message to authors or members of Parliament, because they would so heartily agree with it.
Still, it is not altogether here that I differ from the moral of Mr. Jerome’s play. I differ vitally from his story because it is not a detective story. There is in it none of this great Christian idea of tearing their evil out of men; it lacks the realism of the saints. Redemption should bring truth as well as peace; and truth is a fine thing, though the materialists did go mad about it. Things must be faced, even in order to be forgiven; the great objection to “letting sleeping dogs lie” is that they lie in more senses than one. But in Mr. Jerome’s Passing of the Third Floor Back the redeemer is not a divine detective, pitiless in his resolve to know and pardon. Rather he is a sort of divine dupe, who does not pardon at all, because he does not see anything that is going on. It may, or may not, be true to say, “Tout comprendre est tout pardonner.” But it is much more evidently true to say, “Rien comprendre est rien Pardonner,” and the “Third Floor Back” does not seem to comprehend anything. He might, after all, be a quite selfish sentimentalist, who found it comforting to think well of his neighbours. There is nothing very heroic in loving after you have been deceived. The heroic business is to love after you have been undeceived.
When I saw this play it was natural to compare it with another play which I had not seen, but which I have read in its printed version. I mean Mr. Rann Kennedy’s Servant in the House, the success of which sprawls over so many of the American newspapers. This also is concerned with a dim, yet evidently divine, figure changing the destinies of a whole group of persons. It is a better play structurally than the other; in fact, it is a very fine play indeed; but there is nothing aesthetic or fastidious about it. It is as much or more than the other sensational, democratic, and (I use the word in a sound and good sense) Salvationist.
But the difference lies precisely in this—that the Christ of Mr. Kennedy’s play insists on really knowing all the souls that he loves; he declines to conquer by a kind of supernatural stupidity. He pardons evil, but he will not ignore it. In other words, he is a Christian, and not a Christian Scientist. The distinction doubtless is partly explained by the problems severally selected. Mr. Jerome practically supposes Christ to be trying to save disreputable people; and that, of course, is naturally a simple business. Mr. Kennedy supposes Him to be trying to save the reputable people, which is a much larger affair. The chief characters in The Servant in the House are a popular and strenuous vicar, universally respected, and his fashionable and forcible wife. It would have been no good to tell these people they had some good in them—for that was what they were telling themselves all day long. They had to be reminded that they had some bad in them— instinctive idolatries and silent treasons which they always tried to forget. It is in connection with these crimes of wealth and culture that we face the real problem of positive evil. The whole of Mr. Blatchford’s controversy about sin was vitiated throughout by one’s consciousness that whenever he wrote the word “sinner” he thought of a man in rags. But here, again, we can find truth merely by referring to vulgar literature—its unfailing fountain. Whoever read a detective story about poor people? The poor have crimes; but the poor have no secrets. And it is because the proud have secrets that they need to be detected before they are forgiven.
IL DIVINO INVESTIGATORE
Ogni persona di sana istruzione si diletta dei racconti polizieschi, e vi sono perfino parecchi punti su cui essi hanno una cordiale superiorità sulla maggior parte dei libri moderni. Un racconto poliziesco in genere descrive sei uomini vivi che discutono su come mai un uomo sia morto. Un moderno racconto filosofico in genere descrive sei uomini morti che discutono su come mai un uomo possa in qualche modo essere vivo. Ma coloro che hanno goduto del roman policier avranno notato una cosa, e cioè che quando l’assassino viene preso, non viene quasi mai impiccato. “Questo,” dice Sherlock Holmes, “è il vantaggio di essere un investigatore privato”; dopo aver preso può liberare. La Chiesa cristiana può definirsi al meglio come un enorme investigatore privato, che corregge quel investigatore ufficiale— lo Stato. Questa, invero, è una delle ingiustizie fatte al Cristianesimo storico; ingiustizie che nascono dal guardare alle complesse eccezioni e non al fatto grande e semplice. Ci vien detto di continuo che i teologi usarono cavalletti e strumenti per schiacciare i pollici, e così fecero. I teologi usarono cavalletti e schiaccia-pollici proprio come usarono ditali e sgabelli a tre gambe, perché tutti gli altri li usavano. Il Cristianesimo non creò le torture medievali più di quanto creasse le torture cinesi; le ereditò da un impero pagano quanto quello cinese.
La Chiesa acconsentì, in un’ora malvagia, a imitare lo Stato e a impiegare la crudeltà. Ma se apriamo gli occhi e cogliamo l’intero quadro, se guardiamo alla forma e al colore generale della cosa, la vera differenza tra la Chiesa e lo Stato è enorme e lampante. Lo Stato, in tutte le terre e in tutte le epoche, ha creato un meccanismo di punizione, più cruento e brutale in certi luoghi che in altri, ma cruento e brutale dappertutto. La Chiesa è l’unica istituzione che abbia mai tentato di creare un meccanismo di perdono. La Chiesa è l’unica cosa che abbia mai tentato per sistema di perseguire e scoprire i delitti, non allo scopo di vendicarli, ma allo scopo di perdonarli. Il rogo e il cavalletto erano soltanto le debolezze della religione; le sue vanaglorie, le sue rese al mondo. La sua specialità—o, se volete, la sua stranezza—era questa misericordia spietata; il segugio implacabile che cerca di salvare e non di uccidere.
Posso illustrare al meglio ciò che intendo riferendomi a due popolari drammi su temi in qualche modo paralleli, che hanno avuto successo qui e in America. Il Ritorno dell’Ospite del Terzo Piano è un esperimento umano e reverente, che tratta dell’influsso di una figura sconosciuta ma divina mentre passa attraverso un gruppo di personaggi squallidi. Non ho alcun desiderio di fare facile ironia sulle conversioni estremamente repentine di tutte queste persone; questo è un punto d’arte, non di morale; e, dopo tutto, molte conversioni sono state repentine. Il metodo di questo salvatore per rendere buona la gente è dirle quanto già sia buona; e nel caso di reietti suicidi, la cui schiena morale è spezzata, e che sono intrisi di sincero disprezzo di sé, posso immaginare che questo possa essere proprio il modo giusto. Io non recapiterei questo messaggio agli autori o ai membri del Parlamento, perché essi vi consentirebbero di tutto cuore.
Eppure, non è del tutto qui che dissento dalla morale del dramma del signor Jerome. Dissento vitalmente dalla sua storia perché non è un racconto poliziesco. In essa non v’è nulla di questa grande idea cristiana di strappare il loro male dagli uomini; le manca il realismo dei santi. La redenzione dovrebbe portare verità non meno che pace; e la verità è una cosa bella, per quanto i materialisti ne siano andati fuori di senno. Le cose vanno affrontate, anche solo per essere perdonate; la grande obiezione al «lasciar dormire i cani» è che essi mentono in più sensi. Ma nel Ritorno dell’Ospite del Terzo Piano del signor Jerome il redentore non è un investigatore divino, spietato nella sua risoluzione di conoscere e perdonare. È piuttosto una specie di divino gonzo, che non perdona affatto, perché non vede nulla di ciò che accade. Può essere vero, o non esserlo, dire “Tout comprendre est tout pardonner.” Ma è molto più evidentemente vero dire “Rien comprendre est rien pardonner,” e l‘“Ospite del Terzo Piano” non pare comprendere nulla. Egli potrebbe, dopo tutto, essere un sentimentale del tutto egoista, che trovava consolante pensare bene del suo prossimo. Non c’è nulla di molto eroico nell’amare dopo che si è stati ingannati. L’impresa eroica è amare dopo che si è stati disingannati.
Quando vidi questo dramma fu naturale confrontarlo con un altro dramma che non avevo visto, ma che ho letto nella sua versione a stampa. Intendo Il Servo nella Casa del signor Rann Kennedy, il cui successo si spande su tanti dei giornali americani. Anch’esso ha per oggetto una figura fioca, eppure evidentemente divina, che muta le sorti di un intero gruppo di persone. È un dramma strutturalmente migliore dell’altro; anzi, è davvero un dramma assai bello; ma non v’è nulla di estetico o di schizzinoso in esso. È tanto o più dell’ altro sensazionale, democratico, e (uso la parola in un senso sano e buono) salvazionista.
Ma la differenza sta precisamente in questo—che il Cristo del dramma del signor Kennedy insiste nel conoscere davvero tutte le anime che ama; rifiuta di conquistare con una specie di stupidità soprannaturale. Egli perdona il male, ma non vuole ignorarlo. In altre parole, è un cristiano, e non uno Scientista Cristiano. La distinzione si spiega senza dubbio in parte con i problemi separatamente scelti. Il signor Jerome suppone in pratica che il Cristo tenti di salvare gente di malaffare; e ciò, naturalmente, è di per sé una faccenda semplice. Il signor Kennedy Lo suppone intento a salvare la gente rispettabile, il che è una faccenda assai più vasta. I personaggi principali de Il Servo nella Casa sono un vicario popolare e zelante, universalmente rispettato, e la sua moglie mondana e risoluta. Non sarebbe servito a nulla dire a queste persone che avevano qualcosa di buono in sé—poiché era proprio quel che dicevano a se stesse tutto il giorno. Bisognava rammentar loro che avevano qualcosa di cattivo in sé— idolatrie istintive e silenziosi tradimenti che sempre cercavano di dimenticare. È in connessione con questi delitti della ricchezza e della cultura che affrontiamo il vero problema del male positivo. L’intera controversia del signor Blatchford sul peccato era viziata da capo a fondo dalla consapevolezza che ogni volta che scriveva la parola “peccatore” egli pensava a un uomo in cenci. Ma anche qui possiamo trovare la verità semplicemente riferendoci alla letteratura volgare—la sua fonte inesauribile. Chi mai lesse un racconto poliziesco sui poveri? I poveri hanno delitti; ma i poveri non hanno segreti. Ed è perché i superbi hanno segreti che essi hanno bisogno di essere scoperti prima di essere perdonati.
THE ELF OF JAPAN
There are things in this world of which I can say seriously that I love them but I do not like them. The point is not merely verbal, but psychologically quite valid. Cats are the first things that occur to me as examples of the principle. Cats are so beautiful that a creature from another star might fall in love with them, and so incalculable that he might kill them. Some of my friends take quite a high moral line about cats. Some, like Mr. Titterton, I think, admire a cat for its moral independence and readiness to scratch anybody “if he does not behave himself.” Others, like Mr. Belloe, regard the cat as cruel and secret, a fit friend for witches; one who will devour everything, except, indeed, poisoned food, “so utterly lacking is it in Christian simplicity and humility.” For my part, I have neither of these feelings. I admire cats as I admire catkins; those little fluffy things that hang on trees. They are both pretty and both furry, and both declare the glory of God. And this abstract exultation in all living things is truly to be called Love; for it is a higher feeling than mere affectional convenience; it is a vision. It is heroic, and even saintly, in this: that it asks for nothing in return. I love all the eats in the street as St. Francis of Assisi loved all the birds in the wood or all the fishes in the sea; not so much, of course, but then I am not a saint. But he did not wish to bridle a bird and ride on its back, as one bridles and rides on a horse. He did not wish to put a collar round a fish’s neck, marked with the name “Francis,” and the address “Assisi”—as one does with a dog. He did not wish them to belong to him or himself to belong to them; in fact, it would be a very awkward experience to belong to a lot of fishes. But a man does belong to his dog, in another but an equally real sense with that in which the dog belongs to him. The two bonds of obedience and responsibility vary very much with the dogs and the men; but they are both bonds. In other words, a man does not merely love a dog; as he might (in a mystical moment) love any sparrow that perched on his window-sill or any rabbit that ran across his path. A man likes a dog; and that is a serious matter.
To me, unfortunately perhaps (for I speak merely of individual taste), a cat is a wild animal. A cat is Nature personified. Like Nature, it is so mysterious that one cannot quite repose even in its beauty. But like Nature again, it is so beautiful that one cannot believe that it is really cruel. Perhaps it isn’t; and there again it is like Nature. Men of old time worshipped cats as they worshipped crocodiles; and those magnificent old mystics knew what they were about. The moment in which one really loves cats is the same as that in which one (moderately and within reason) loves crocodiles. It is that divine instant when a man feels himself—no, not absorbed into the unity of all things (a loathsome fancy)—but delighting in the difference of all things. At the moment when a man really knows he is a man he will feel, however faintly, a kind of fairy-tale pleasure in the fact that a crocodile is a crocodile. All the more will he exult in the things that are more evidently beautiful than crocodiles, such as flowers and birds and eats— which are more beautiful than either. But it does not follow that he will wish to pick all the flowers or to cage all the birds or to own all the cats.
No one who still believes in democracy and the rights of man will admit that any division between men and men can be anything but a fanciful analogy to the division between men and animals. But in the sphere of such fanciful analogy there are even human beings whom I feel to be like eats in this respect: that I can love them without liking them. I feel it about certain quaint and alien societies, especially about the Japanese. The exquisite old Japanese draughtsmanship (of which we shall see no more, now Japan has gone in for Progress and Imperialism) had a quality that was infinitely attractive and intangible. Japanese pictures were really rather like pictures made by cats. They were full of feathery softness and of sudden and spirited scratches. If any one will wander in some gallery fortunate enough to have a fine collection of those slight water-colour sketches on rice paper which come from the remote East, he will observe many elements in them which a fanciful person might consider feline. There is, for instance, that odd enjoyment of the tops of trees; those airy traceries of forks and fading twigs, up to which certainly no artist, but only a cat could climb. There is that elvish love of the full moon, as large and lucid as a Chinese lantern, hung in these tenuous branches. That moon is so large and luminous that one can imagine a hundred cats howling under it. Then there is the exhaustive treatment of the anatomy of birds and fish; subjects in which cats are said to be interested. Then there is the slanting cat-like eye of all these Eastern gods and men—but this is getting altogether too coincident. We shall have another racial theory in no time (beginning “Are the Japs Cats?”), and though I shall not believe in my theory, somebody else might. There are people among my esteemed correspondents who might believe anything. It is enough for me to say here that in this small respect Japs affect me like cats. I mean that I love them. I love their quaint and native poetry, their instinct of easy civilisation, their unique unreplaceable art, the testimony they bear to the bustling, irrepressible activities of nature and man. If I were a real mystic looking down on them from a real mountain, I am sure I should love them more even than the strong winged and unwearied birds or the fruitful, ever-multiplying fish. But, as for liking them, as one likes a dog—that is quite another matter. That would mean trusting them.
In the old English and Scotch ballads the fairies are regarded very much in the way that I feel inclined to regard Japs and cats. They are not specially spoken of as evil; they are enjoyed as witching and wonderful; but they are not trusted as good. You do not say the wrong words or give the wrong gifts to them; and there is a curious silence about what would happen to you if you did. Now to me, Japan, the Japan of Art, was always a fairyland. What trees as gay as flowers and peaks as white as wedding cakes; what lanterns as large as houses and houses as frail as lanterns!.. . but… but… the missionary explained (I read in the paper) that the assertion and denial about the Japanese use of torture was a mere matter of verbal translation. “The Japanese would not call twisting the thumbs back ‘torture.’”
L’ELFO DEL GIAPPONE
Vi sono cose in questo mondo di cui posso dire seriamente che le amo ma non mi piacciono. Il punto non è meramente verbale, ma psicologicamente del tutto valido. I gatti sono la prima cosa che mi viene in mente come esempio del principio. I gatti sono così belli che una creatura di un’altra stella potrebbe innamorarsi di loro, e così incalcolabili che potrebbe ucciderli. Alcuni miei amici assumono una posizione morale piuttosto elevata sui gatti. Alcuni, come il signor Titterton, credo, ammirano il gatto per la sua indipendenza morale e la sua prontezza a graffiare chiunque “se non si comporta bene.” Altri, come il signor Belloe, considerano il gatto crudele e segreto, degno amico delle streghe; uno che divora ogni cosa, tranne, in verità, il cibo avvelenato, “tanto è del tutto privo di semplicità cristiana e di umiltà.” Da parte mia, non provo né l’uno né l’altro di questi sentimenti. Ammiro i gatti come ammiro i gattici; quelle piccole cose lanuginose che pendono dagli alberi. Sono entrambi graziosi ed entrambi pelosi, ed entrambi proclamano la gloria di Dio. E questo astratto esultare in tutte le cose viventi va davvero chiamato Amore; poiché è un sentimento più alto della mera convenienza affettiva; è una visione. È eroico, e perfino santo, in questo: che non chiede nulla in cambio. Io amo tutti i gatti della strada come san Francesco d’Assisi amava tutti gli uccelli del bosco o tutti i pesci del mare; non altrettanto, s’intende, ma d’altronde io non sono un santo. Egli però non desiderava imbrigliare un uccello e cavalcargli in groppa, come si imbriglia e si cavalca un cavallo. Non desiderava mettere un collare al collo di un pesce, con inciso il nome “Francesco,” e l’indirizzo “Assisi”—come si fa con un cane. Non desiderava che appartenessero a lui né che egli appartenesse a loro; anzi, sarebbe un’esperienza assai imbarazzante appartenere a un branco di pesci. Ma un uomo appartiene sì al suo cane, in un senso diverso ma altrettanto reale di quello in cui il cane appartiene a lui. I due vincoli dell’obbedienza e della responsabilità variano moltissimo a seconda dei cani e degli uomini; ma sono entrambi vincoli. In altre parole, un uomo non si limita ad amare un cane; come potrebbe (in un momento mistico) amare un passero qualsiasi che si posi sul davanzale della sua finestra o un coniglio qualsiasi che gli attraversi il cammino. A un uomo un cane piace; e questa è una faccenda seria.
Per me, forse purtroppo (poiché parlo solo di gusto individuale), il gatto è un animale selvatico. Il gatto è la Natura personificata. Come la Natura, è così misterioso che non ci si può del tutto riposare neppure nella sua bellezza. Ma, ancora come la Natura, è così bello che non si può credere che sia davvero crudele. Forse non lo è; e anche in questo è come la Natura. Gli uomini del tempo antico adoravano i gatti come adoravano i coccodrilli; e quei magnifici vecchi mistici sapevano quel che facevano. Il momento in cui uno ama davvero i gatti è lo stesso in cui uno (con moderazione e ragionevolezza) ama i coccodrilli. È quell’istante divino in cui un uomo si sente—no, non assorbito nell’unità di tutte le cose (fantasia ripugnante)—bensì rallegrato dalla differenza di tutte le cose. Nel momento in cui un uomo sa davvero di essere un uomo egli sentirà, per quanto fiocamente, una specie di piacere da fiaba nel fatto che un coccodrillo è un coccodrillo. Tanto più esulterà nelle cose che sono più evidentemente belle dei coccodrilli, come i fiori e gli uccelli e i gatti— che sono più belli degli uni e degli altri. Ma non ne consegue che vorrà cogliere tutti i fiori o ingabbiare tutti gli uccelli o possedere tutti i gatti.
Nessuno che creda ancora nella democrazia e nei diritti dell’uomo ammetterà che una qualsiasi divisione tra uomo e uomo possa essere altro che una fantasiosa analogia della divisione tra uomini e animali. Ma nella sfera di tale fantasiosa analogia vi sono perfino esseri umani che sento essere come i gatti sotto questo aspetto: che posso amarli senza che mi piacciano. Lo sento riguardo a certe bizzarre e aliene società, specialmente riguardo ai giapponesi. Lo squisito antico disegno giapponese (di cui non vedremo più nulla, ora che il Giappone si è dato al Progresso e all’Imperialismo) aveva una qualità infinitamente attraente e intangibile. I quadri giapponesi somigliavano davvero piuttosto a quadri fatti dai gatti. Erano pieni di piumosa morbidezza e di improvvisi e vivaci graffi. Se qualcuno vagherà per una galleria abbastanza fortunata da possedere una bella collezione di quei tenui schizzi ad acquarello su carta di riso che vengono dal remoto Oriente, vi osserverà molti elementi che una persona fantasiosa potrebbe giudicare felini. V’è, per esempio, quel curioso gusto per le cime degli alberi; quei aerei intrecci di forcelle e ramoscelli sfumati, fin lassù dove certamente nessun artista, ma solo un gatto potrebbe arrampicarsi. V’è quel folletto amore per la luna piena, grande e lucida come una lanterna cinese, appesa fra questi tenui rami. Quella luna è così grande e luminosa che si può immaginare un centinaio di gatti che vi ululano sotto. Poi v’è la trattazione esaustiva dell’anatomia degli uccelli e dei pesci; soggetti a cui si dice che i gatti siano interessati. Poi v’è l’occhio sbieco e felino di tutti questi dèi e uomini orientali—ma questo sta diventando fin troppo coincidente. Avremo un’altra teoria razziale in men che non si dica (che comincia “I giapponesi sono gatti?”), e sebbene io non crederei alla mia teoria, qualcun altro potrebbe. Vi sono persone, tra i miei stimati corrispondenti, che potrebbero credere a qualsiasi cosa. Mi basta dire qui che sotto questo piccolo aspetto i giapponesi mi fanno l’effetto dei gatti. Voglio dire che li amo. Amo la loro bizzarra e nativa poesia, il loro istinto di facile civiltà, la loro arte unica e insostituibile, la testimonianza che essi recano alle brulicanti, irreprimibili attività della natura e dell’uomo. Se fossi un vero mistico che li guarda dall’alto di una vera montagna, son certo che li amerei ancor più dei forti, alati e instancabili uccelli o dei fecondi, sempre moltiplicantisi pesci. Ma, quanto a provarne simpatia, come si prova per un cane—questa è tutt’altra faccenda. Ciò significherebbe fidarmi di loro.
Nelle antiche ballate inglesi e scozzesi le fate sono considerate molto nel modo in cui io mi sento incline a considerare i giapponesi e i gatti. Non se ne parla in modo particolare come di esseri malvagi; le si gode come stregate e meravigliose; ma non ci si fida di loro come di esseri buoni. Non pronunci le parole sbagliate né offri i doni sbagliati alle fate; e c’è un curioso silenzio su ciò che ti accadrebbe se lo facessi. Ora, per me, il Giappone, il Giappone dell’Arte, fu sempre un paese delle fate. Che alberi gai come fiori e picchi bianchi come torte nuziali; che lanterne grandi come case e case fragili come lanterne!.. . ma… ma… il missionario spiegò (lessi sul giornale) che l’affermazione e la negazione circa l’uso giapponese della tortura erano una semplice questione di traduzione verbale. “I giapponesi non chiamerebbero ‘tortura’ il torcere all’indietro i pollici.”
THE CHARTERED LIBERTINE
I find myself in agreement with Mr. Robert Lynd for his most just remark in connection with the Malatesta case, that the police are becoming a peril to society. I have no attraction to that sort of atheist asceticism to which the purer types of Anarchism tend; but both an atheist and an ascetic are better men than a spy; and it is ignominious to see one’s country thus losing her special point of honour about asylum and liberty. It will be quite a new departure if we begin to protect and whitewash foreign policemen. I always understood it was only English policemen who were absolutely spotless. A good many of us, however, have begun to feel with Mr. Lynd, and on all sides authorities and officials are being questioned. But there is one most graphic and extraordinary fact, which it did not lie in Mr. Lynd’s way to touch upon, but which somebody really must seize and emphasise. It is this: that at the very time when we are all beginning to doubt these authorities, we are letting laws pass to increase their most capricious powers. All our commissions, petitions, and letters to the papers are asking whether these authorities can give an account of their stewardship. And at the same moment all our laws are decreeing that they shall not give any account of their stewardship, but shall become yet more irresponsible stewards. Bills like the Feeble-Minded Bill and the Inebriate Bill (very appropriate names for them) actually arm with scorpions the hand that has chastised the Malatestas and Maleckas with whips. The inspector, the doctor, the police sergeant, the well-paid person who writes certificates and “passes” this, that, or the other; this sort of man is being trusted with more authority, apparently because he is being doubted with more reason. In one room we are asking why the Government and the great experts between them cannot sail a ship. In another room we are deciding that the Government and experts shall be allowed, without trial or discussion, to immure any one’s body, damn any one’s soul, and dispose of unborn generations with the levity of a pagan god. We are putting the official on the throne while he is still in the dock.
The mere meaning of words is now strangely forgotten and falsified; as when people talk of an author’s “message,” without thinking whom it is from; and I have noted in these connections the strange misuse of another word. It is the excellent mediaeval word “charter.” I remember the Act that sought to save gutter-boys from cigarettes was called “The Children’s Charter.” Similarly the Act which seeks to lock up as lunatics people who are not lunatics was actually called a “charter” of the feeble-minded. Now this terminology is insanely wrong, even if the Bills are right. Even were they right in theory they would be applied only to the poor, like many better rules about education and cruelty. A woman was lately punished for cruelty because her children were not washed when it was proved that she had no water. From that it will be an easy step in Advanced Thought to punishing a man for wine-bibbing when it is proved that he had no wine. Rifts in right reason widen down the ages. And when we have begun by shutting up a confessedly kind person for cruelty, we may yet come to shutting up Mr. Tom Mann for feeble-mindedness.
But even if such laws do good to children or idiots, it is wrong to use the word “charter.” A charter does not mean a thing that does good to people. It means a thing that grants people more rights and liberties. It may be a good thing for gutter-boys to be deprived of their cigarettes: it might be a good thing for aldermen to be deprived of their cigars. But I think the Goldsmiths’ Company would be very much surprised if the King granted them a new charter (in place of their mediaeval charter), and it only meant that policemen might pull the cigars out of their mouths. It may be a good thing that all drunkards should be locked up: and many acute statesmen (King John, for instance) would certainly have thought it a good thing if all aristocrats could be locked up. But even that somewhat cynical prince would scarcely have granted to the barons a thing called “the Great Charter” and then locked them all up on the strength of it. If he had, this interpretation of the word “charter” would have struck the barons with considerable surprise. I doubt if their narrow mediaeval minds could have taken it in.
The roots of the real England are in the early Middle Ages, and no Englishman will ever understand his own language (or even his own conscience) till he understands them. And he will never understand them till he understands this word “charter.” I will attempt in a moment to state in older, more suitable terms, what a charter was. In modern, practical, and political terms, it is quite easy to state what a charter was. A charter was the thing that the railway workers wanted last Christmas and did not get; and apparently will never get. It is called in the current jargon “recognition”; the acknowledgment in so many words by society of the immunities or freedoms of a certain set of men. If there had been railways in the Middle Ages there would probably have been a railwaymen’s guild; and it would have had a charter from the King, defining their rights. A charter is the expression of an idea still true and then almost universal: that authority is necessary for nothing so much as for the granting of liberties. Like everything mediaeval, it ramified back to a root in religion; and was a sort of small copy of the Christian idea of man’s creation. Man was free, not because there was no God, but because it needed a God to set him free. By authority he was free. By authority the craftsmen of the guilds were free. Many other great philosophers took and take the other view: the Lucretian pagans, the Moslem fatalists, the modern monists and determinists, all roughly confine themselves to saying that God gave man a law. The mediaeval Christian insisted that God gave man a charter. Modern feeling may not sympathise with its list of liberties, which included the liberty to be damned; but that has nothing to do with the fact that it was a gift of liberties and not of laws. This was mirrored, however dimly, in the whole system. There was a great deal of gross inequality; and in other aspects absolute equality was taken for granted. But the point is that equality and inequality were ranks—or rights. There were not only things one was forbidden to do; but things one was forbidden to forbid. A man was not only definitely responsible, but definitely irresponsible. The holidays of his soul were immovable feasts. All a charter really meant lingers alive in that poetic phrase that calls the wind a “chartered” libertine.
Lie awake at night and hear the wind blowing; hear it knock at every man’s door and shout down every man’s chimney. Feel how it takes liberties with everything, having taken primary liberty for itself; feel that the wind is always a vagabond and sometimes almost a housebreaker. But remember that in the days when free men had charters, they held that the wind itself was wild by authority; and was only free because it had a father.
IL LIBERTINO PATENTATO
Mi trovo d’accordo con il signor Robert Lynd per la sua giustissima osservazione a proposito del caso Malatesta, e cioè che la polizia sta diventando un pericolo per la società. Non provo alcuna attrazione per quella specie di ascetismo ateo verso cui tendono i tipi più puri di Anarchismo; ma tanto un ateo quanto un asceta sono uomini migliori di una spia; ed è ignominioso vedere il proprio paese perdere in tal modo il suo particolare punto d’onore riguardo all’asilo e alla libertà. Sarà davvero una novità se cominciamo a proteggere e riabilitare i poliziotti stranieri. Avevo sempre inteso che solo i poliziotti inglesi fossero assolutamente immacolati. Parecchi di noi, tuttavia, hanno cominciato a sentire come il signor Lynd, e da ogni parte autorità e funzionari vengono messi in discussione. Ma c’è un fatto assai eloquente e straordinario, che non rientrava nel discorso del signor Lynd toccare, ma che qualcuno davvero deve afferrare e sottolineare. È questo: che proprio nel tempo in cui tutti cominciamo a dubitare di queste autorità, lasciamo passare leggi che accrescono i loro poteri più capricciosi. Tutte le nostre commissioni, petizioni e lettere ai giornali chiedono se queste autorità sappiano rendere conto della loro amministrazione. E nello stesso momento tutte le nostre leggi decretano che esse non rendano alcun conto della loro amministrazione, ma diventino amministratori ancor più irresponsabili. Progetti di legge come il Feeble-Minded Bill e l’Inebriate Bill (nomi assai appropriati per essi) armano addirittura di scorpioni la mano che ha flagellato con la frusta i Malatesta e i Malecka. L’ispettore, il medico, il sergente di polizia, la persona ben pagata che scrive certificati e “approva” questo, quello o quell’altro; questa specie d’uomo viene investita di maggiore autorità, apparentemente perché viene messa in dubbio con maggior ragione. In una stanza ci chiediamo perché il Governo e i grandi esperti messi insieme non sappiano governare una nave. In un’altra stanza decidiamo che al Governo e agli esperti sia consentito, senza processo né discussione, di murare il corpo di chiunque, dannare l’anima di chiunque, e disporre delle generazioni non ancora nate con la leggerezza di un dio pagano. Stiamo mettendo il funzionario sul trono mentre è ancora sul banco degli imputati.
Il mero significato delle parole è ormai stranamente dimenticato e falsato; come quando si parla del “messaggio” di un autore, senza pensare da chi provenga; e ho notato, in questi contesti, lo strano abuso di un’altra parola. È l’eccellente parola medievale “carta”. Ricordo che l’Atto che cercava di salvare i monelli di strada dalle sigarette fu chiamato “La Carta dei Fanciulli”. Similmente l’Atto che cerca di rinchiudere come pazze persone che non sono pazze fu addirittura chiamato una “carta” dei deboli di mente. Ora, questa terminologia è follemente sbagliata, anche se i disegni di legge fossero giusti. Anche fossero giusti in teoria, verrebbero applicati soltanto ai poveri, come molte migliori norme sull’istruzione e sulla crudeltà. Una donna fu di recente punita per crudeltà perché i suoi figli non erano lavati, quando fu provato che ella non aveva acqua. Da ciò sarà un facile passo, nel Pensiero Avanzato, punire un uomo per ubriachezza quando sia provato che non aveva vino. Le fenditure nella retta ragione si allargano lungo i secoli. E quando avremo cominciato col rinchiudere per crudeltà una persona notoriamente buona, potremo pure arrivare a rinchiudere il signor Tom Mann per debolezza di mente.
Ma anche se tali leggi fanno del bene ai bambini o agli idioti, è sbagliato usare la parola “carta”. Una carta non significa una cosa che fa del bene alla gente. Significa una cosa che concede alla gente più diritti e libertà. Può essere una buona cosa che i monelli di strada siano privati delle loro sigarette: potrebbe essere una buona cosa che gli assessori siano privati dei loro sigari. Ma penso che la Compagnia degli Orefici sarebbe assai sorpresa se il re concedesse loro una nuova carta (al posto della loro carta medievale), e ciò significasse soltanto che i poliziotti possono strappar loro i sigari di bocca. Può essere una buona cosa che tutti gli ubriaconi siano rinchiusi: e molti acuti statisti (Re Giovanni, per esempio) avrebbero certamente pensato che fosse una buona cosa se tutti gli aristocratici potessero essere rinchiusi. Ma persino quel principe alquanto cinico avrebbe difficilmente concesso ai baroni una cosa chiamata “la Grande Carta” per poi rinchiuderli tutti sulla forza di essa. Se l’avesse fatto, questa interpretazione della parola “carta” avrebbe colpito i baroni con considerevole sorpresa. Dubito che le loro anguste menti medievali avrebbero potuto capirla.
Le radici della vera Inghilterra affondano nel primo Medioevo, e nessun inglese comprenderà mai la propria lingua (o anche la propria coscienza) finché non le comprenderà. E non le comprenderà mai finché non comprenderà questa parola “carta”. Tenterò tra un momento di enunciare in termini più antichi e più adatti che cosa fosse una carta. In termini moderni, pratici e politici, è assai facile enunciare che cosa fosse una carta. Una carta era la cosa che i ferrovieri volevano lo scorso Natale e non ottennero; e che a quanto pare non otterranno mai. Nel gergo corrente è chiamata “riconoscimento”; l’ammissione a chiare lettere da parte della società delle immunità o libertà di un certo insieme di uomini. Se ci fossero state ferrovie nel Medioevo, probabilmente ci sarebbe stata una gilda dei ferrovieri; e avrebbe avuto una carta dal re, che ne definiva i diritti. Una carta è l’espressione di un’idea ancora vera e allora quasi universale: che l’autorità per nulla è così necessaria quanto per la concessione delle libertà. Come ogni cosa medievale, si ramificava a ritroso fino a una radice nella religione; ed era una sorta di piccola copia dell’idea cristiana della creazione dell’uomo. L’uomo era libero, non perché non ci fosse Dio, ma perché occorreva un Dio per renderlo libero. Per autorità egli era libero. Per autorità gli artigiani delle gilde erano liberi. Molti altri grandi filosofi presero e prendono l’altra veduta: i pagani lucreziani, i fatalisti musulmani, i moderni monisti e deterministi, tutti in linea di massima si limitano a dire che Dio diede all’uomo una legge. Il cristiano medievale insisteva che Dio aveva dato all’uomo una carta. Il sentimento moderno può non simpatizzare con il suo elenco di libertà, che includeva la libertà di dannarsi; ma questo nulla ha a che fare col fatto che era un dono di libertà e non di leggi. Questo si rispecchiava, per quanto fiocamente, nell’intero sistema. V’era una gran quantità di grossolana disuguaglianza; e sotto altri aspetti l’assoluta uguaglianza era data per scontata. Ma il punto è che uguaglianza e disuguaglianza erano ranghi—o diritti. Non c’erano soltanto cose che era proibito fare; ma cose che era proibito proibire. Un uomo non era soltanto definitamente responsabile, ma definitamente irresponsabile. Le vacanze della sua anima erano feste immobili. Tutto ciò che una carta davvero significava sopravvive ancora vivo in quella frase poetica che chiama il vento un libertino “patentato”.
Giaci sveglio nella notte e odi il vento che soffia; odilo bussare alla porta di ogni uomo e gridare giù per il camino di ogni uomo. Senti come si prende libertà con ogni cosa, avendo preso per sé la libertà primaria; senti che il vento è sempre un vagabondo e talvolta quasi uno scassinatore. Ma ricorda che nei giorni in cui gli uomini liberi avevano le carte, essi tenevano che il vento stesso fosse selvaggio per autorità; ed era libero soltanto perché aveva un padre.
THE CONTENTED MAN
The word content is not inspiring nowadays; rather it is irritating because it is dull. It prepares the mind for a little sermon in the style of the Vicar of Wakefield about how you and I should be satisfied with our countrified innocence and our simple village sports. The word, however, has two meanings, somewhat singularly connected; the “sweet content” of the poet and the “cubic content” of the mathematician. Some distinguish these by stressing the different syllables. Thus, it might happen to any of us, at some social juncture, to remark gaily, “Of the content of the King of the Cannibal Islands’ Stewpot I am content to be ignorant”; or “Not content with measuring the cubic content of my safe, you are stealing the spoons.” And there really is an analogy between the mathematical and the moral use of the term, for lack of the observation of which the latter has been much weakened and misused.
The preaching of contentment is in disrepute, well deserved in so far that the moral is really quite inapplicable to the anarchy and insane peril of our tall and toppling cities. Content suggests some kind of security; and it is not strange that our workers should often think about rising above their position, since they have so continually to think about sinking below it. The philanthropist who urges the poor to saving and simple pleasures deserves all the derision that he gets. To advise people to be content with what they have got may or may not be sound moral philosophy.
But to urge people to be content with what they haven’t got is a piece of impudence hard for even the English poor to pardon. But though the creed of content is unsuited to certain special riddles and wrongs, it remains true for the normal of mortal life. We speak of divine discontent; discontent may sometimes be a divine thing, but content must always be the human thing. It may be true that a particular man, in his relation to his master or his neighbour, to his country or his enemies, will do well to be fiercely unsatisfied or thirsting for an angry justice. But it is not true, no sane person can call it true, that man as a whole in his general attitude towards the world, in his posture towards death or green fields, towards the weather or the baby, will be wise to cultivate dissatisfaction. In a broad estimate of our earthly experience, the great truism on the tablet remains: he must not covet his neighbour’s ox nor his ass nor anything that is his. In highly complex and scientific civilisations he may sometimes find himself forced into an exceptional vigilance. But, then, in highly complex and scientific civilisations, nine times out of ten, he only wants his own ass back.
But I wish to urge the case for cubic content; in which (even more than in moral content) I take a personal interest. Now, moral content has been undervalued and neglected because of its separation from the other meaning. It has become a negative rather than a positive thing. In some accounts of contentment it seems to be little more than a meek despair.
But this is not the true meaning of the term; it should stand for the idea of a positive and thorough appreciation of the content of anything; for feeling the substance and not merely the surface of experience. “Content” ought to mean in English, as it does in French, being pleased; placidly, perhaps, but still positively pleased. Being contented with bread and cheese ought not to mean not caring what you eat. It ought to mean caring for bread and cheese; handling and enjoying the cubic content of the bread and cheese and adding it to your own. Being content with an attic ought not to mean being unable to move from it and resigned to living in it. It ought to mean appreciating what there is to appreciate in such a position; such as the quaint and elvish slope of the ceiling or the sublime aerial view of the opposite chimney-pots. And in this sense contentment is a real and even an active virtue; it is not only affirmative, but creative. The poet in the attic does not forget the attic in poetic musings; he remembers whatever the attic has of poetry; he realises how high, how starry, how cool, how unadorned and simple—in short, how Attic is the attic.
True contentment is a thing as active as agriculture. It is the power of getting out of any situation all that there is in it. It is arduous and it is rare. The absence of this digestive talent is what makes so cold and incredible the tales of so many people who say they have been “through” things; when it is evident that they have come out on the other side quite unchanged. A man might have gone “through” a plum pudding as a bullet might go through a plum pudding; it depends on the size of the pudding—and the man. But the awful and sacred question is “Has the pudding been through him?” Has he tasted, appreciated, and absorbed the solid pudding, with its three dimensions and its three thousand tastes and smells? Can he offer himself to the eyes of men as one who has cubically conquered and contained a pudding?
In the same way we may ask of those who profess to have passed through trivial or tragic experiences whether they have absorbed the content of them; whether they licked up such living water as there was. It is a pertinent question in connection with many modern problems.
Thus the young genius says, “I have lived in my dreary and squalid village before I found success in Paris or Vienna.” The sound philosopher will answer, “You have never lived in your village, or you would not call it dreary and squalid.”
Thus the Imperialist, the Colonial idealist (who commonly speaks and always thinks with a Yankee accent) will say, “I’ve been right away from these little muddy islands, and seen God’s great seas and prairies.” The sound philosopher will reply, “You have never been in these islands; you have never seen the weald of Sussex or the plain of Salisbury; otherwise you could never have called them either muddy or little.”
Thus the Suffragette will say, “I have passed through the paltry duties of pots and pans, the drudgery of the vulgar kitchen; but I have come out to intellectual liberty.” The sound philosopher will answer, “You have never passed through the kitchen, or you never would call it vulgar. Wiser and stronger women than you have really seen a poetry in pots and pans; naturally, because there is a poetry in them.” It is right for the village violinist to climb into fame in Paris or Vienna; it is right for the stray Englishman to climb across the high shoulder of the world; it is right for the woman to climb into whatever cathedrae or high places she can allow to her sexual dignity. But it is wrong that any of these climbers should kick the ladder by which they have climbed. But indeed these bitter people who record their experiences really record their lack of experiences. It is the countryman who has not succeeded in being a countryman who comes up to London. It is the clerk who has not succeeded in being a clerk who tries (on vegetarian principles) to be a countryman. And the woman with a past is generally a woman angry about the past she never had.
When you have really exhausted an experience you always reverence and love it. The two things that nearly all of us have thoroughly and really been through are childhood and youth. And though we would not have them back again on any account, we feel that they are both beautiful, because we have drunk them dry.
L’UOMO CONTENTO
La parola «contento» non è ispiratrice al giorno d’oggi; è piuttosto irritante perché è insulsa. Predispone la mente a un piccolo sermone sullo stile del Vicario di Wakefield, su come io e voi dovremmo essere soddisfatti della nostra campagnola innocenza e dei nostri semplici svaghi paesani. La parola, tuttavia, ha due significati, in modo alquanto singolare connessi; il «dolce contento» del poeta e il «contenuto cubico» del matematico. Alcuni li distinguono accentando sillabe diverse. Così, potrebbe capitare a chiunque di noi, in qualche frangente mondano, di osservare gaiamente: «Del contenuto della pentola del re delle Isole dei Cannibali son contento di restare ignaro»; oppure «Non contento di misurare il contenuto cubico della mia cassaforte, mi stai rubando i cucchiai». E c’è davvero un’analogia tra l’uso matematico e l’uso morale del termine, per la mancata osservazione della quale quest’ultimo è stato assai indebolito e adoperato a sproposito.
La predicazione della contentezza è in discredito, ben meritato in quanto la morale è davvero del tutto inapplicabile all’anarchia e all’insano pericolo delle nostre città alte e vacillanti. La contentezza suggerisce una qualche sicurezza; e non è strano che i nostri lavoratori pensino spesso a salire al di sopra della propria condizione, dovendo così di continuo pensare a non sprofondare al di sotto di essa. Il filantropo che esorta i poveri al risparmio e ai semplici piaceri merita tutta la derisione che riceve. Consigliare alla gente di essere contenta di ciò che ha può essere o non essere sana filosofia morale.
Ma esortare la gente a essere contenta di ciò che non ha è un’impudenza difficile da perdonare persino per i poveri d’Inghilterra. Ma sebbene il credo della contentezza sia inadatto a certi particolari enigmi e torti, esso resta vero per la normalità della vita mortale. Parliamo di divino scontento; lo scontento può talvolta essere una cosa divina, ma la contentezza dev’essere sempre la cosa umana. Può esser vero che un uomo particolare, nel suo rapporto col padrone o col vicino, con la patria o con i nemici, farà bene a essere fieramente insoddisfatto o assetato di una giustizia irata. Ma non è vero, nessuna persona sana può dirlo vero, che l’uomo nel suo insieme, nel suo atteggiamento generale verso il mondo, nel suo contegno verso la morte o i verdi campi, verso il tempo atmosferico o il bambino, farà saggezza a coltivare l’insoddisfazione. In un’ampia stima della nostra esperienza terrena, resta la grande verità lapidaria della tavola: egli non deve bramare il bue del suo prossimo né il suo asino né nulla di ciò che gli appartiene. In civiltà altamente complesse e scientifiche egli può talvolta trovarsi costretto a un’eccezionale vigilanza. Ma, allora, in civiltà altamente complesse e scientifiche, nove volte su dieci, egli vuole soltanto riavere il proprio asino.
Ma desidero perorare la causa del contenuto cubico; nel quale (ancor più che nel contenuto morale) nutro un interesse personale. Ora, il contenuto morale è stato svalutato e trascurato a causa della sua separazione dall’altro significato. È divenuto una cosa negativa piuttosto che positiva. In certe descrizioni della contentezza esso pare essere poco più di una mite disperazione.
Ma questo non è il vero significato del termine; esso dovrebbe rappresentare l’idea di un positivo e profondo apprezzamento del contenuto di qualsiasi cosa; del sentire la sostanza e non semplicemente la superficie dell’esperienza. «Contento» dovrebbe significare in inglese, come significa in francese, essere lieti; placidamente, forse, ma pur sempre positivamente lieti. Essere contenti di pane e formaggio non dovrebbe significare non curarsi di ciò che si mangia. Dovrebbe significare aver cura del pane e del formaggio; maneggiare e godere il contenuto cubico del pane e del formaggio e aggiungerlo al proprio. Essere contenti di una soffitta non dovrebbe significare essere incapaci di muoversene e rassegnati a viverci. Dovrebbe significare apprezzare ciò che di apprezzabile v’è in tale posizione; come la bizzarra e folletta inclinazione del soffitto o la sublime veduta aerea dei comignoli di fronte. E in questo senso la contentezza è una virtù reale e perfino attiva; non è soltanto affermativa, ma creativa. Il poeta in soffitta non dimentica la soffitta in fantasticherie poetiche; egli ricorda tutto ciò che la soffitta ha di poesia; si rende conto di quanto alta, quanto stellata, quanto fresca, quanto disadorna e semplice—in breve, quanto attica sia la soffitta.
La vera contentezza è una cosa attiva quanto l’agricoltura. È il potere di trarre da qualsiasi situazione tutto ciò che vi si trova. È ardua ed è rara. L’assenza di questo talento digestivo è ciò che rende così fredde e incredibili le storie di tante persone che dicono di essere «passate attraverso» le cose; quando è evidente che ne sono uscite dall’altra parte del tutto immutate. Un uomo potrebbe essere «passato attraverso» un budino di prugne come una pallottola può passare attraverso un budino di prugne; dipende dalla dimensione del budino—e dell’uomo. Ma la domanda tremenda e sacra è: «Il budino è passato attraverso di lui?» Ha egli assaggiato, apprezzato e assorbito il solido budino, con le sue tre dimensioni e i suoi tremila sapori e odori? Può offrirsi agli occhi degli uomini come uno che ha cubicamente conquistato e contenuto un budino?
Allo stesso modo possiamo chiedere a coloro che dichiarano di essere passati attraverso esperienze banali o tragiche se ne abbiano assorbito il contenuto; se abbiano leccato tutta quell’acqua viva che c’era. È una domanda pertinente in connessione con molti problemi moderni.
Così il giovane genio dice: «Ho vissuto nel mio squallido e tetro villaggio prima di trovare il successo a Parigi o a Vienna». Il sano filosofo risponderà: «Tu non hai mai vissuto nel tuo villaggio, o non lo chiameresti tetro e squallido».
Così l’imperialista, l’idealista coloniale (che comunemente parla e sempre pensa con accento yankee) dirà: «Me ne sono andato ben lontano da queste piccole isole fangose, e ho veduto i grandi mari e le grandi praterie di Dio». Il sano filosofo replicherà: «Tu non sei mai stato in queste isole; non hai mai veduto la brughiera del Sussex né la piana di Salisbury; altrimenti non avresti mai potuto chiamarle né fangose né piccole».
Così la suffragetta dirà: «Sono passata attraverso i meschini doveri delle pentole e delle padelle, la fatica della volgare cucina; ma ne sono uscita alla libertà intellettuale». Il sano filosofo risponderà: «Tu non sei mai passata attraverso la cucina, o non la chiameresti mai volgare. Donne più sagge e più forti di te hanno davvero veduto una poesia nelle pentole e nelle padelle; naturalmente, perché una poesia vi è». È giusto che il violinista di villaggio salga alla fama a Parigi o a Vienna; è giusto che l’inglese randagio scavalchi l’alta spalla del mondo; è giusto che la donna salga verso qualunque cattedra o alto luogo che possa concedere alla sua dignità sessuale. Ma è sbagliato che uno qualsiasi di questi scalatori dia un calcio alla scala per cui è salito. Ma in verità queste persone amareggiate che registrano le proprie esperienze registrano in realtà la propria mancanza di esperienze. È il campagnolo che non è riuscito a essere un campagnolo quello che sale a Londra. È l’impiegato che non è riuscito a essere un impiegato quello che cerca (secondo principi vegetariani) di essere un campagnolo. E la donna con un passato è generalmente una donna adirata per il passato che non ha mai avuto.
Quando hai davvero esaurito un’esperienza, sempre la veneri e la ami. Le due cose attraverso cui quasi tutti noi siamo passati appieno e davvero sono l’infanzia e la giovinezza. E benché non le vorremmo indietro per nulla al mondo, sentiamo che sono entrambe belle, perché le abbiamo bevute fino all’ultima goccia.
THE ANGRY AUTHOR: HIS FAREWELL
I have republished all these old articles of mine because they cover a very controversial period, in which I was in nearly all the controversies, whether I was visible there or no. And I wish to gather up into this last article a valedictory violence about all such things; and then pass to where, beyond these voices, there is peace—or in other words, to the writing of Penny Dreadfuls; a noble and much-needed work. But before I finally desert the illusions of rationalism for the actualities of romance, I should very much like to write one last roaring, raging book telling all the rationalists not to be so utterly irrational. The book would be simply a string of violent vetoes, like the Ten Commandments. I would call it “Don’ts for Dogmatists; or Things I am Tired Of.”
This book of intellectual etiquette, like most books of etiquette, would begin with superficial things; but there would be, I fancy, a wailing imprecation in the words that could not be called artificial; it might begin thus:- (1) Don’t use a noun and then an adjective that crosses out the noun. An adjective qualifies, it cannot contradict. Don’t say, “Give me a patriotism that is free from all boundaries.” It is like saying, “Give me a pork pie with no pork in it.” Don’t say, “I look forward to that larger religion that shall have no special dogmas.” It is like saying, “I look forward to that larger quadruped who shall have no feet.” A quadruped means something with four feet; and a religion means something that commits a man to some doctrine about the universe. Don’t let the meek substantive be absolutely murdered by the joyful, exuberant adjective.
(2) Don’t say you are not going to say a thing, and then say it. This practice is very flourishing and successful with public speakers. The trick consists of first repudiating a certain view in unfavourable terms, and then repeating the same view in favourable terms. Perhaps the simplest form of it may be found in a landlord of my neighbourhood, who said to his tenants in an election speech, “Of course I’m not going to threaten you, but if this Budget passes the rents will go up.” The thing can be done in many forms besides this. “I am the last man to mention party politics; but when I see the Empire rent in pieces by irresponsible Radicals,” etc. “In this hall we welcome all creeds. We have no hostility against any honest belief; but only against that black priestcraft and superstition which can accept such a doctrine as,” etc. “I would not say one word that could ruffle our relations with Germany. But this I will say; that when I see ceaseless and unscrupulous armament,” etc. Please don’t do it. Decide to make a remark or not to make a remark. But don’t fancy that you have somehow softened the saying of a thing by having just promised not to say it.
(3) Don’t use secondary words as primary words. “Happiness” (let us say) is a primary word. You know when you have the thing, and you jolly well know when you haven’t. “Progress” is a secondary word; it means the degree of one’s approach to happiness, or to some such solid ideal. But modern controversies constantly turn on asking, “Does Happiness help Progress?” Thus, I see in the New Age this week a letter from Mr. Egerton Swann, in which he warns the world against me and my friend Mr. Belloc, on the ground that our democracy is “spasmodic” (whatever that means); while our “reactionism is settled and permanent.” It never strikes Mr. Swann that democracy means something in itself; while “reactionism” means nothing—except in connection with democracy. You cannot react except from something. If Mr. Swann thinks I have ever reacted from the doctrine that the people should rule, I wish he would give me the reference.
(4) Don’t say, “There is no true creed; for each creed believes itself right and the others wrong.” Probably one of the creeds is right and the others are wrong. Diversity does show that most of the views must be wrong. It does not by the faintest logic show that they all must be wrong. I suppose there is no subject on which opinions differ with more desperate sincerity than about which horse will win the Derby. These are certainly solemn convictions; men risk ruin for them. The man who puts his shirt on Potosi must believe in that animal, and each of the other men putting their last garments upon other quadrupeds must believe in them quite as sincerely. They are all serious, and most of them are wrong. But one of them is right. One of the faiths is justified; one of the horses does win; not always even the dark horse which might stand for Agnosticism, but often the obvious and popular horse of Orthodoxy. Democracy has its occasional victories; and even the Favourite has been known to come in first. But the point here is that something comes in first. That there were many beliefs does not destroy the fact that there was one well-founded belief. I believe (merely upon authority) that the world is round. That there may be tribes who believe it to be triangular or oblong does not alter the fact that it is certainly some shape, and therefore not any other shape. Therefore I repeat, with the wail of imprecation, don’t say that the variety of creeds prevents you from accepting any creed. It is an unintelligent remark.
(5) Don’t (if any one calls your doctrine mad, which is likely enough), don’t answer that madmen are only the minority and the sane only the majority. The sane are sane because they are the corporate substance of mankind; the insane are not a minority because they are not a mob. The man who thinks himself a man thinks the next man a man; he reckons his neighbour as himself. But the man who thinks he is a chicken does not try to look through the man who thinks he is glass. The man who thinks himself Jesus Christ does not quarrel with the man who thinks himself Rockefeller; as would certainly happen if the two had ever met. But madmen never meet. It is the only thing they cannot do. They can talk, they can inspire, they can fight, they can found religions; but they cannot meet. Maniacs can never be the majority; for the simple reason that they can never be even a minority. If two madmen had ever agreed they might have conquered the world.
(6) Don’t say that the idea of human equality is absurd, because some men are tall and some short, some clever and some stupid. At the height of the French Revolution it was noticed that Danton was tall and Murat short. In the wildest popular excitement of America it is known that Rockefeller is stupid and that Bryan is clever. The doctrine of human equality reposes upon this: That there is no man really clever who has not found that he is stupid. That there is no big man who has not felt small. Some men never feel small; but these are the few men who are.
(7) Don’t say (O don’t say) that Primitive Man knocked down a woman with a club and carried her away. Why on earth should he? Does the male sparrow knock down the female sparrow with a twig? Does the male giraffe knock down the female giraffe with a palm tree? Why should the male have had to use any violence at any time in order to make the female a female? Why should the woman roll herself in the mire lower than the sow or the she-bear; and profess to have been a slave where all these creatures were creators; where all these beasts were gods? Do not talk such bosh. I implore you, I supplicate you not to talk such bosh. Utterly and absolutely abolish all such bosh—and we may yet begin to discuss these public questions properly. But I fear my list of protests grows too long; and I know it could grow longer for ever. The reader must forgive my elongations and elaborations. I fancied for the moment that I was writing a book.
L’AUTORE ADIRATO: IL SUO CONGEDO
Ho ripubblicato tutti questi miei vecchi articoli perché coprono un periodo assai controverso, in cui io ero in quasi tutte le controversie, che vi fossi visibile o no. E desidero raccogliere in quest’ultimo articolo una violenza d’addio su tutte queste cose; e poi passare là dove, al di là di queste voci, c’è pace—o in altre parole, alla scrittura di Penny Dreadfuls; opera nobile e assai necessaria. Ma prima che io abbandoni finalmente le illusioni del razionalismo per le realtà del Romanzo, mi piacerebbe moltissimo scrivere un ultimo libro ruggente e furioso che dica a tutti i razionalisti di non essere così del tutto irrazionali. Il libro sarebbe semplicemente un rosario di violenti veti, come i Dieci Comandamenti. Lo intitolerei «Divieti per Dogmatici; ovvero Cose di cui Sono Stanco».
Questo libro di galateo intellettuale, come la maggior parte dei libri di galateo, comincerebbe con cose superficiali; ma vi sarebbe, immagino, un’imprecazione lamentosa nelle parole che non si potrebbe dire artificiosa; potrebbe cominciare così:- (1) Non usare un sostantivo e poi un aggettivo che cancella il sostantivo. Un aggettivo qualifica, non può contraddire. Non dire: «Dammi un patriottismo libero da ogni confine». È come dire: «Dammi un pasticcio di maiale senza maiale dentro». Non dire: «Attendo con ansia quella più ampia religione che non abbia dogmi particolari». È come dire: «Attendo con ansia quel più ampio quadrupede che non abbia piedi». Un quadrupede significa qualcosa con quattro piedi; e una religione significa qualcosa che impegna un uomo a qualche dottrina sull’universo. Non lasciare che il mite sostantivo sia assolutamente assassinato dal gioioso, esuberante aggettivo.
(2) Non dire che non stai per dire una cosa, e poi dirla. Questa pratica è assai fiorente e riuscita presso gli oratori pubblici. Il trucco consiste nel ripudiare dapprima una certa veduta in termini sfavorevoli, e poi nel ripetere la stessa veduta in termini favorevoli. Forse la forma più semplice di ciò si può trovare in un proprietario del mio vicinato, che disse ai suoi affittuari in un discorso elettorale: «Certo che non ho intenzione di minacciarvi, ma se questa Finanziaria passa gli affitti saliranno». La cosa si può fare in molte forme oltre a questa. «Sono l’ultimo uomo a nominare la politica di partito; ma quando vedo l’Impero lacerato in pezzi da Radicali irresponsabili», ecc. «In questa sala diamo il benvenuto a tutti i credi. Non abbiamo alcuna ostilità verso alcuna onesta fede; ma solo verso quella nera arte sacerdotale e superstizione che sa accettare una dottrina come», ecc. «Non direi una sola parola che potesse turbare le nostre relazioni con la Germania. Ma questo dirò; che quando vedo un incessante e spregiudicato armamento», ecc. Vi prego, non fatelo. Decidete di fare un’osservazione o di non farla. Ma non illudetevi di avere in qualche modo addolcito il dire una cosa per aver appena promesso di non dirla.
(3) Non usare le parole secondarie come parole primarie. «Felicità» (diciamo) è una parola primaria. Sai quando possiedi la cosa, e sai maledettamente bene quando non la possiedi. «Progresso» è una parola secondaria; significa il grado del proprio avvicinamento alla felicità, o a qualche solido ideale simile. Ma le controversie moderne vertono di continuo sul chiedere: «La felicità aiuta il Progresso?» Così, vedo questa settimana nel New Age una lettera del signor Egerton Swann, in cui mette in guardia il mondo contro di me e il mio amico signor Belloc, sulla base del fatto che la nostra democrazia è «spasmodica» (qualunque cosa ciò significhi); mentre il nostro «reazionarismo è stabile e permanente». Al signor Swann non viene mai in mente che la democrazia significa qualcosa in sé; mentre «reazionarismo» non significa nulla—se non in connessione con la democrazia. Non puoi reagire se non da qualcosa. Se il signor Swann pensa che io abbia mai reagito dalla dottrina secondo cui il popolo deve governare, vorrei che me ne fornisse il riferimento.
(4) Non dire: «Non esiste alcun credo vero; poiché ogni credo crede se stesso giusto e gli altri sbagliati». Probabilmente uno dei credi è giusto e gli altri sono sbagliati. La diversità mostra sì che la maggior parte delle vedute dev’essere sbagliata. Non mostra, con la più fioca logica, che tutte debbano essere sbagliate. Suppongo che non vi sia argomento su cui le opinioni divergano con più disperata sincerità di quello su quale cavallo vincerà il Derby. Queste sono di certo convinzioni solenni; gli uomini rischiano la rovina per esse. L’uomo che punta la camicia su Potosí deve credere in quell’animale, e ciascuno degli altri uomini che puntano il loro ultimo indumento su altri quadrupedi deve credere in essi con altrettanta sincerità. Sono tutti seri, e la maggior parte di loro ha torto. Ma uno di loro ha ragione. Una delle fedi è giustificata; uno dei cavalli vince davvero; non sempre nemmeno il cavallo oscuro che potrebbe stare per l’Agnosticismo, ma spesso l’ovvio e popolare cavallo dell’Ortodossia. La Democrazia ha le sue vittorie occasionali; e persino il Favorito è noto per essere arrivato primo. Ma il punto qui è che qualcosa arriva primo. Che vi fossero molte credenze non distrugge il fatto che vi fosse una credenza ben fondata. Io credo (meramente per autorità) che il mondo sia rotondo. Che possano esservi tribù che lo credono triangolare o oblungo non altera il fatto che esso ha certamente qualche forma, e perciò non una qualsiasi altra forma. Perciò ripeto, con il lamento dell’imprecazione, non dire che la varietà dei credi ti impedisce di accettarne alcuno. È un’osservazione priva d’intelligenza.
(5) Non (se qualcuno chiama pazza la tua dottrina, cosa assai probabile), non rispondere che i pazzi sono soltanto la minoranza e i sani soltanto la maggioranza. I sani sono sani perché sono la sostanza corporativa dell’umanità; i folli non sono una minoranza perché non sono una folla. L’uomo che pensa di essere un uomo pensa che il prossimo sia un uomo; egli conta il suo vicino come se stesso. Ma l’uomo che pensa di essere un pollo non cerca di vedere attraverso l’uomo che pensa di essere di vetro. L’uomo che si crede Gesù Cristo non litiga con l’uomo che si crede Rockefeller; come certamente accadrebbe se i due si fossero mai incontrati. Ma i pazzi non s’incontrano mai. È l’unica cosa che non sanno fare. Sanno parlare, sanno ispirare, sanno combattere, sanno fondare religioni; ma non sanno incontrarsi. I maniaci non possono mai essere la maggioranza; per la semplice ragione che non possono mai essere nemmeno una minoranza. Se due pazzi si fossero mai accordati, avrebbero potuto conquistare il mondo.
(6) Non dire che l’idea dell’uguaglianza umana è assurda, perché alcuni uomini sono alti e altri bassi, alcuni intelligenti e altri stupidi. Al culmine della Rivoluzione francese si notò che Danton era alto e Murat basso. Nella più sfrenata eccitazione popolare d’America è noto che Rockefeller è stupido e che Bryan è intelligente. La dottrina dell’uguaglianza umana riposa su questo: che non v’è uomo davvero intelligente che non abbia scoperto di essere stupido. Che non v’è grand’uomo che non si sia sentito piccolo. Alcuni uomini non si sentono mai piccoli; ma questi sono i pochi uomini che lo sono.
(7) Non dire (oh, non dire) che l’Uomo Primitivo abbatteva una donna con una clava e la portava via. E perché mai avrebbe dovuto? Forse il passero maschio abbatte la femmina del passero con un ramoscello? Forse la giraffa maschio abbatte la femmina della giraffa con una palma? Perché il maschio avrebbe dovuto usare una qualche violenza in un qualsiasi tempo per fare della femmina una femmina? Perché la donna dovrebbe rotolarsi nel fango più in basso della scrofa o dell’orsa; e professare di essere stata schiava là dove tutte queste creature erano creatrici; là dove tutte queste bestie erano dèi? Non dire simili sciocchezze. Ti imploro, ti supplico di non dire simili sciocchezze. Abolisci del tutto e assolutamente tutte queste sciocchezze—e potremo forse cominciare a discutere per bene queste questioni pubbliche. Ma temo che la mia lista di proteste diventi troppo lunga; e so che potrebbe allungarsi in eterno. Il lettore mi perdoni le mie dilatazioni ed elaborazioni. Per un momento mi sono immaginato di star scrivendo un libro.