The Uses of Diversity

The Uses of Diversity

G. K. Chesterton

A Book of Essays

1920

Table of Contents

On Seriousness Lamp-Posts The Spirits Tennyson The Domesticity of Detectives George Meredith The Irishman Ireland and the Domestic Drama The Japanese Christian Science The Lawlessness of Lawyers Our Latin Relations On Pigs as Pets The Romance of Rostand Wishes The Futurists The Evolution of Emma The Pseudo-Scientific Books The Humour of King Herod The Silver Goblets The Duty of the Historian Questions of Divorce Mormonism Pageants and Dress On Stage Costume The Yule Log and the Democrat More Thoughts on Christmas Dickens Again Taffy “Ego et Shavius Meus” The Plan for a New Universe George Wyndham Four Stupidities On Historical Novels On Monsters

On Seriousness

I DO not like seriousness. I think it is irreligious. Or, if you prefer the phrase, it is the fashion of all false religions. The man who takes everything seriously is the man who makes an idol of everything: he bows down to wood and stone until his limbs are as rooted as the roots of the tree or his head as fallen as the stone sunken by the roadside. It has often been discussed whether animals can laugh. The hyena is said to laugh: but it is rather in the sense in which the M.P. is said to utter “an ironical cheer.” At the best, the hyena utters an ironical laugh. Broadly, it is true that all animals except Man are serious. And I think it is further demonstrated by the fact that all human beings who concern themselves in a concentrated way with animals are also serious; serious in a sense far beyond that of human beings concerned with anything else. Horses are serious; they have long, solemn faces. But horsey men are also serious—jockeys or trainers or grooms: they also have long, solemn faces. Dogs are serious: they have exactly that combination of moderate conscientiousness with monstrous conceit which is the make-up of most modern religions. But, however serious dogs may be, they can hardly be more serious than dog-fanciers—or dog-stealers. Dog-stealers, indeed, have to be particularly serious, because they have to come back and say they have found the dog. The faintest shade of irony, not to say levity, on their features, would evidently be fatal to their plans. I will not carry the comparison through all the kingdoms of natural history: but it is true of all who fix their affection or intelligence on the lower animals. Cats are as serious as the Sphinx, who must have been some kind of cat, to judge by the attitude. But the rich old ladies who love cats are quite equally serious, about cats and about themselves. So also the ancient Egyptians worshipped cat, also crocodiles and beetles and all kinds of things; but they were all serious and made their worshippers serious. Egyptian art was intentionally harsh, clear, and conventional; but it could very vividly represent men driving, hunting, fighting, feasting, praying. Yet I think you will pass along many corridors of that coloured and almost cruel art before you see a man laughing. Their gods did not encourage them to laugh. I am told by housewives that beetles seldom laugh. Cats do not laugh—except the Cheshire Cat (which is not found in Egypt); and even he can only grin. And crocodiles do not laugh. They weep.

This comparison between the sacred animals of Egypt and the pet animals of to-day is not so far-fetched as it may seem to some people. There is a healthy and an unhealthy love of animals: and the nearest definition of the difference is that the unhealthy love of animals is serious. I am quite prepared to love a rhinoceros, with reasonable precautions: he is, doubtless, a delightful father to the young rhinoceroses. But I will not promise not to laugh at a rhinoceros. I will not worship the beast with the little horn. I will not adore the Golden Calf; still less will I adore the Fatted Calf. On the contrary, I will eat him. There is some sort of joke about eating an animal, or even about an animal eating you. Let us hope we shall perceive it at the proper moment, if it ever occurs. But I will not worship an animal. That is, I will not take an animal quite seriously: and I know why.

Wherever there is Animal Worship there is Human Sacrifice. That is, both symbolically and literally, a real truth of historical experience. Suppose a thousand black slaves were sacrificed to the black-beetle; suppose a million maidens were flung into the Nile to feed the crocodile; suppose the cat could eat men instead of mice—it could still be no more than that sacrifice of humanity that so often makes the horse more important than the groom, or the lap-dog more important even than the lap. The only right view of the animal is the comic view. Because the view is comic it is naturally affectionate. And because it is affectionate, it is never respectful.

I know no place where the true contrast has been more candidly, clearly, and (for all I know) unconsciously expressed than in an excellent little book of verse calledBread and Circuses by Helen Parry Eden, the daughter of Judge Parry, who has inherited both the humour and the humanity in spite of which her father succeeded as a modern magistrate. There are a great many other things that might be praised in the book, but I should select for praise the sane love of animals. There is, for instance, a little poem on a cat from the country who has come to live in a flat in Battersea (everybody at some time of their lives has lived or will live in a flat in Battersea, except, perhaps, the “prisoner of the Vatican”), and the verses have a tenderness, with a twist of the grotesque, which seems to me the exactly appropriate tone about domestic pets:

And now you’re here. Well, it may be The sundoes rise in Battersea Although to-day be dark; Life is not shorn of loves and hates While there are sparrows on the slates And keepers in the Park. And you yourself will come to learn The ways of London; and in turn Assume your Cockney cares Like other folk that live in flats, Chasing your purely abstract rats Upon the concrete stairs.

That is like Hood at his best; but it is, moreover, penetrated with a profound and true appreciation of the fundamental idea that all love of the cat must be founded on theabsurdity of the cat, and only thus can a morbid idolatry be avoided. Perhaps those who appeared to be witches were those old ladies who took their cats too seriously. The cat in this book is called “Four-Paws,” which is as jolly as a gargoyle. But the name of the cat must be something familiar and even jeering, if it be only Tom or Tabby or Topsy: something that shows man is not afraid of it. Otherwise the name of the cat will be Pasht.

But when the same poet comes accidentally across an example of the insane seriousness about animals that some modern “humanitarians” exhibit, she turns against the animal-lover as naturally and instinctively as she turns to the animal. A writer on a society paper had mentioned some rich woman who had appeared on Cup Day “gowned” in some way or other, and inserted the tearful parenthesis that “she has just lost a dear dog in London.” The real animal-lover instantly recognizes the wrong note, and dances on the dog’s grave with a derision as unsympathetic as Swift:

Dear are my friends, and yet my heart still light is, Undimmed the eyes that see our set depart, Snatched from the Season by appendicitis Or something quite as smart. But when my Chin-Chin drew his latest breath On Marie’s outspread apron, slow and wheezily, I simply sniffed, I could not take his death So Pekineasily… … . Grief courts these ovations, And many press my sable-sueded hand, Noting the blackest of Lucile’s creations Inquire, and understand.

It is that balance of instincts that is the essence of all satire: however fantastic satire may be, it must always be potentially rational and fundamentally moderate, for it must be ready to hit both to right and to left at opposite extravagances. And the two extravagances which exist on the edges of our harassed and secretive society to-day are cruelty to animals and worship of animals. They both come from taking animals too seriously: the cruel man must hate the animal; the crank must worship the animal, and perhaps fear it. Neither knows how to love it.

Lamp-Posts

IN contemplating some common object of the modern street, such as an omnibus or a lamp-post, it is sometimes well worth while to stop and think about why such common objects are regarded as commonplace. It is well worth while to try to grasp what is the significance of them—or rather, the quality in modernity which makes them so often seem not so much significant as insignificant. If you stop the omnibus while you stop to think about it, you will be unpopular. Even if you try to grasp the lamp-post in your effort to grasp its significance, you will almost certainly be misunderstood. Nevertheless, the problem is a real one, and not without bearing upon the most poignant politics and ethics of to-day. It is certainly not the things themselves, the idea and upshot of them, that are remote from poetry or even mysticism. The idea of a crowd of human strangers turned into comrades for a journey is full of the oldest pathos and piety of human life. That profound feeling of mortal fraternity and frailty, which tells us we are indeed all in the same boat, is not the less true if expressed in the formula that we are all in the same bus. As for the idea of the lamp-post, the idea of the fixed beacon of the branching thoroughfares, the terrestrial star of the terrestrial traveller, it not only could be, but actually is, the subject of countless songs.

Nor is it even true that there is something so trivial or ugly about the names of the things as to make them commonplace in all connexions. The word “lamp” is especially beloved by the more decorative and poetic writers; it is a symbol, and very frequently a title. It is true that if Ruskin had called his eloquent work “The Seven Lamp-Posts of Architecture” the effect, to a delicate ear, would not have been quite the same. But even the word “post” is in no sense impossible in poetry; it can be found with a fine military ring in phrases like “The Last Post” or “Dying at his Post.” I remember, indeed, hearing, when a small child, the line in Macaulay’s “Armada” about “with loose rein and bloody spur rode inland many a post,” and being puzzled at the picture of a pillar-box or a lamp-post displaying so much activity. But certainly it is not the mere sound of the word that makes it unworkable in the literature of wonder or beauty. “Omnibus” may seem at first sight a more difficult thing to swallow—if I may be allowed a somewhat gigantesque figure of speech. This, it may be said, is a Cockney and ungainly modern word, as it is certainly a Cockney and ungainly modern thing. But even this is not true. The word “omnibus” is a very noble word with a very noble meaning and even tradition. It is derived from an ancient and adamantine tongue which has rolled it with very authoritative thunders: quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus. It is a word really more human and universal than republic or democracy. A man might very consistently build a temple for all the tribes of men, a temple of the largest pattern and the loveliest design, and then call it an omnibus. It is true that the dignity of this description has really been somewhat diminished by the illogical habit of clipping the word down to the last and least important part of it. But that is only one of many modern examples in which real vulgarity is not in democracy, but rather in the loss of democracy. It is about as democratic to call an omnibus a bus as it would be to call a democrat a rat.

Another way of explaining the cloud of commonplace interpretation upon modern things is to trace it to that spirit which often calls itself science but which is more often mere repetition. It is proverbial that a child, looking out of the nursery window, regards the lamp-post as part of a fairy-tale of which the lamplighter is the fairy. That lamp-post can be to a baby all that the moon could possibly be to a lover or a poet. Now, it is perfectly true that there is nowadays a spirit of cheap information which imagines that it shoots beyond this shining point, when it merely tells us that there are nine hundred lamp-posts in the town, all exactly alike. It is equally true that there is a spirit of cheap science, which is equally cocksure of its conclusiveness when it tells us that there are so many thousand moons and suns, all much more alike than we might have been disposed to fancy. And we can say of both these calculations that there is nothing really commonplace except the mind of the calculator. The baby is much more right about the flaming lamp than the statistician who counts the posts in the street; and the lover is much more really right about the moon than the astronomer. Here the part is certainly greater than the whole, for it is much better to be tied to one wonderful thing than to allow a mere catalogue of wonderful things to deprive you of the capacity to wonder. It is doubtless true, to a definite extent, that a certain sameness in the mechanical modern creations makes them actually less attractive than the freer recurrences of nature; or, in other words, that twenty lamp-posts really are much more like each other than twenty trees. Nevertheless, even this character will not cover the whole ground, for men do not cease to feel the mystery of natural things even when they reproduce themselves almost completely, as in the ease of pitch darkness or a very heavy sleep. The mere fact that we have seen a lamp-post very often, and that it generally looked very much the same as before, would not of itself prevent us from appreciating its elfin fire, any more than it prevents the child.

Finally, there is a neglected side of this psychological problem which is, I think, one aspect of the mystery of the morality of war. It is not altogether an accident that, while the London lamp-post has always been mild and undistinguished, the Paris lamp-post has been more historic because it has been more horrible. It has been a yet more revolutionary substitute for the guillotine— yet more revolutionary, because it was the guillotine of the mob, as distinct even from the guillotine of the Republic. They hanged aristocrats upon it, including (unless my memory misleads me) that exceedingly unpleasant aristocrat who promulgated the measure of war economy known as “Let them eat grass.” Hence it happened that there has been in Paris a fanatical and flamboyant political newspaper actually calledLa Lanterne, a paper for extreme Jacobins. If there were a paper in London called theLamp-Post, I can only imagine it as a paper for children. As for my other example, I do not know whether even the French Revolution could manage to do anything with the omnibus; but the Jacobins were quite capable of using it as a tumbril.

In short, I suspect that Cockney things have become commonplace because there has been so long lacking in them a certain savour of sacrifice and peril, which there has been in the nursery tale, for all its innocence, and which there has been in the Parisian street, for all its iniquity.

The new wonder that has changed the world before our eyes is that all this crude and vulgar modern clockwork is most truly being used for a heroic end. It is most emphatically being used for the slaying of a dragon. It is being used, much more unquestionably than the lantern of Paris, to make an end of a tyrant. It was a cant phrase in our cheaper literature of late to say that the new time will make the romance of war mechanical. Is it not more probable that it will make the mechanism of war romantic? As I said at the beginning, the things themselves are not repulsively prosaic; it was their associations that made them so; and to-day their associations are as splendid as any that ever blazoned a shield or embroidered a banner. Much of what made the violation of Belgium so violent a challenge to every conscience lay unconsciously in the fact that the country which had thus become tragic had often been regarded as commonplace. The unpardonable sin was committed in a place of lamp-posts and omnibuses. In similar places has been prepared the just wrath and reparation; and a legend of it will surely linger even in the omnibus that has carried heroes to the mouth of hell, and even in the lamp-post whose lamp has been darkened against the dragon of the sky.

The Spirits

THE magazines continue to abound in articles about Spiritualism. Those articles which expose and explode Spiritualism are certainly calculated to make converts to that novel creed; but fortunately the balance is redressed by the articles which defend and expound Spiritualism, which will probably make any thoughtful convert hastily recant his conversion. I believe myself that nothing but advantage can accrue to Spiritualism from all criticisms founded on Materialism. I think there is a mystical minimum in human history and experience, which is at once too obscure to be explained and too obvious to be explained away. It may be admitted that a miracle is rarer than a murder; but they are made obscure by somewhat similar causes. Thus a medium will insist on a dark room; and a murderer is said to have a slight preference for a dark night. A medium is criticized for not submitting to a sufficient number of scientific and impartial judges; and a murderer seldom collects any considerable number of impartial witnesses to testify to his performance. Many supernatural stories rest on the evidence of rough unlettered men, like fishermen and peasants; and most criminal trials depend on the detailed testimony of quite uneducated people. It may be remarked that we never throw a doubt on the value of ignorant evidence when it is a question of a judge hanging a man, but only when it is a question of a saint healing him. Morbid and hysterical people imagine all sorts of ghosts and demons that do not exist. Morbid and hysterical people also imagine all sorts of crimes and conspiracies that do not exist. A great many spiritual communications may be auto-suggestions; and a great many apparent murders may be suicides. But there is a limit to the probability of self-destruction; so there is of self-deception.

Now I think it well worth while to concentrate our common sense, not on where these messages come from, or why they come, but simply on the messages. Let us consider the thing itself about which there is no doubt at all. Let us consider, not whether spirits can speak to us, or how they speak, but simply what they say, or are supposed to say. If spirits in heaven, or scoundrels on earth, or fiends somewhere else, have brought us a new religion, let us look at the new religion on its own merits. Well, this is the sort of thing the spirits are supposed to write down, and very possibly do write down:

“You make death an impenetrable fog, while it is a mere golden mist, torn easily aside by the shafts of faith, and revealing life as not only continuous but as not cut in two by a great change. I cannot express myself as I wish… It is more like leaving prison for freedom and happiness. Not that your present life lacks joy; it is all joy, but you have to fight with imperfections. Here, we have to struggle only with lack of development. There is no evil—only different degrees of spirit.”

The interrogator, Mr. Basil King, who narrates his experiences in an interesting article inNash’s Magazine, proceeds to ask whether the lack of development is due to the highly practical thing we call sin. To this the spirit replies: “They come over with the evil, as it were, cut out, and leaving blanks in their souls. These have by degrees to be filled with good.”

Now I will waive the point whether death is a mist or a fog or a front door or a fire-escape or any other physical metaphor; being satisfied with the fact that it is there, and not to be removed by metaphors. But what amuses me about the spirit is that for him it is both there and not there. Death is non-existent in one sentence, and of the most startling importance six sentences afterwards. The spirit is positive that our existence isnot cut in two by a great change, at the moment of death. But the spirit is equally positive, a little lower down, that the whole of our human evil is instantly and utterly cut out of us, and all at the moment of death. If a man suddenly and supernaturally loses about three-quarters of his ordinary character, might it not be described as “a great change”? Why does so enormous a convulsion happen at the exact moment of death, if death is non-existent and not to be considered? The Spiritualist is here contradicting himself, not only by making death very decidedly a great change, but by actually making it a greater change than Dante or St. Francis thought it was. A Christian who thinks the soul carries its sins to Purgatory makes life much more “continuous” than this Spiritualist, who says that death, and death alone, alters a man as by a blast of magic. The article bears the modest title of “The Abolishing of Death ”; and the spirit does say that this is possible, except when he forgets and says the opposite. He seldom contradicts himself more than twice in a paragraph. But since he says clearly that death abolishes sin, and equally clearly that he abolishes death, it becomes an interesting speculation what happens next, and especially what happens to sin: a subject of interest to many of us.

Mr. Basil King asked the spirit, who had told him that animals are human, whether it is wrong to destroy animal life. It may be remarked that the questions Mr. King asks are always much more acute than the answers he gets. The answer about the killing of animals is this:

“You can never destroy life. Life is the absolute power which overrules all else. There can be no cessation. It is impossible.” And that is all; and for a man considering whether he shall or shall not kill a tom-cat, it does not seem very helpful. Logically, if it means anything, it would seem to mean that you may do anything to the cat, for its nine lives are really an infinite series. In short, you can kill it because you cannot kill it. But it is obvious that if a man relies on this reason for killing his cat, it is an equally good reason for killing his creditor. Creditors also are immortal (a solemn thought); creditors also pass through a golden mist torn easily aside by the shafts of faith, and have all the evil of their souls (including, let us hope, their avarice) cut out of them with the axe of death, without noticing anything in particular. In short, Mr. Basil King, when he asks a reasonable question about a real moral question, the relations of man and the animals, gets no reply except a hotch-potch of words which might mean anarchy and may mean anything. From beginning to end the spirit never answers any real question on which the real religions of mankind have been obliged to legislate and to teach. The only practical deduction would be that it is no disadvantage to have sinned in this life; as in the other case that it is no disgrace to kill either a creditor or a cat. If it means anything, it means that; and if it is spirits and not spifflications, the spirits mean that: and I do not desire their further acquaintance.

Tennyson

I HAVE been glancing over two or three of the appreciations of Tennyson appropriate to his centenary, and have been struck with a curious tone of coldness towards him in almost all quarters. Now this is really a very peculiar thing. For it is a case of coldness to quite brilliant and unquestionable literary merit. Whether Tennyson was a great poet I shall not discuss. I understand that one has to wait about eight hundred years before discussing that; and my only complaint against the printers of my articles is that they will not wait even for much shorter periods. But that Tennyson was a poet is as solid and certain as that Roberts is a billiard-player. That Tennyson was an astonishingly good poet is as solid and certain as that Roberts is an astonishingly good billiard-player. Even in these matters of art there are some things analogous to matters of fact. It is no good disputing about tastes—partly because some tastes are beyond dispute. If anyone tells me that

There is fallen a splendid tear From the passion-flower at the gate;

or that

Tears from the depth of some divine despair

is not fine poetry, I am quite prepared to treat him as I would one who said that grass was not green or that I was not corpulent. And by all common chances Tennyson ought to be preserved as a pleasure—a sensuous pleasure if you like, but certainly a genuine one. There is no more reason for dropping Tennyson than for dropping Virgil. We do not mind Virgil’s view of Augustus, nor need we mind Tennyson’s view of Queen Victoria. Beauty is unanswerable, in a poem as much as in a woman. There were Victorian writers whose art is not perfectly appreciable apart from their enthusiasm. Kingsley’sYeast is a fine book, but not quite so fine a book as it seemed when one’s own social passions were still yeasty. Browning and Coventry Patmore are justly admired, but they are most admired where they are most agreed with. But “St. Agnes’ Eve” is an unimpeachably beautiful poem, whether one believes in St. Agnes or detests her. One would think that a man who had thus left indubitably good verse would receive natural and steady gratitude, like a man who left indubitably good wine to his nephew, or indubitably good pictures to the National Portrait Gallery. Nevertheless, as I have said, the tone of all the papers, modernist or old-fashioned, has been mainly frigid. What is the meaning of this?

I will ask permission to answer this question by abruptly and even brutally changing the subject. My remarks must, first of all, seem irrelevant even to effrontery; they shall prove their relevance later on. In turning the pages of one of the papers containing such a light and unsympathetic treatment of Tennyson, my eye catches the following sentence:

“By the light of modern science and thought, we are in a position to see that each normal human being in some way repeats historically the life of the human race.” This is a very typical modern assertion; that is, it is an assertion for which there is not and never has been a single spot or speck of proof. We know precious little about what the life of the human race has been; and none of our scientific conjectures about it bear the remotest resemblance to the actual growth of a child. According to this theory, a baby begins by chipping flints and rubbing sticks together to find fire. One so often sees babies doing this. About the age of five the child, before the delighted eyes of his parents, founds a village community. By the time he is eleven it has become a small city state, the replica of ancient Athens. Encouraged by this, the boy proceeds, and before he is fourteen has founded the Roman Empire. But now his parents have a serious set-back. Having watched him so far, not only with pleasure, but with a very natural surprise, they must strengthen themselves to endure the spectacle of decay. They have now to watch their child going through the decline of the Western Empire and the Dark Ages. They see the invasion of the Huns and that of the Norsemen chasing each other across his expressive face. He seems a little happier after he has “repeated” the Battle of Chalons and the unsuccessful Siege of Paris; and by the time he comes to the twelfth century, his boyish face is as bright as it was of old when he was “repeating “Pericles or Camillus. I have no space to follow this remarkable demonstration of how history repeats itself in the youth; how he grows dismal at twenty-three to represent the end of Mediaevalism, brightens because the Renaissance is coming, darkens again with the disputes of the later Reformation, broadens placidly through the thirties as the rational eighteenth century, till at last, about forty-three, he gives a great yell and begins to burn the house down, as a symbol of the French Revolution. Such (we shall all agree) is the ordinary development of a boy.

Now, seriously, does anyone believe a word of such bosh? Does anyone think that a child will repeat the periods of human history? Does anyone ever allow for a daughter in the Stone Age, or excuse a son because he is in the fourth century B.C. Yet the writer who lays down this splendid and staggering lie calmly says that “by the light of modern science and thought we are in a position tosee ” that it is true. “Seeing” is a strong word to use of our conviction that icebergs are in the north, or that the earth goes round the sun. Yet anybody can use it of any casual or crazy biological fancy seen in some newspaper or suggested in some debating club. This is the rooted weakness of our time. Science, which means exactitude, has become the mother of all inexactitude.

This is the failure of the epoch, and this explains the partial failure of Tennyson. He waspar excellence the poet of popular science—that is, of all such cloudy and ill-considered assertions as the above. He was the perfectly educated man of classics and the half-educated man of science. No one did more to encourage the colossal blunder that the survival of the fittest means the survival of the best. One might as well say that the survival of the fittest means the survival of the fattest. Tennyson’s position has grown shaky because it rested not on any clear dogmas old or new, but on two or three temporary, we might say desperate, compromises of his own day. He grasped at Evolution, not because it was definite, but because it was indefinite; not because it was daring, but because it was safe. It gave him the hope that man might one day be an angel, and England a free democracy; but it soothed him with the assurance that neither of these alarming things would happen just yet. Virgil used his verbal felicities to describe the eternal idea of the Roman Imperium. Tennyson used his verbal felicities for the accidental equilibrium of the British Constitution. “To spare the humble and war down the proud,” is a permanent idea for the policing of this planet. But that freedom should “slowly broaden down from precedent to precedent” merely happens to be the policy of the English upper class; it has no vital sanction; it might be much better to broaden quickly. One can write great poetry about a truth or even about a falsehood, but hardly about a legal fiction.

The misanthropic idea, as in Byron, is not a truth, but it is one of the immortal lies. As long as humanity exists, humanity can be hated. Wherever one shall gather by himself, Byron is in the midst of him. It is a common and recurrent mood to regard man as a hopeless Yahoo. But it is not a natural mood to regard man as a hopeful Yahoo, as the Evolutionists did, as a creature changing before one’s eyes from bestial to beautiful, a creature whose tail has just dropped off while he is staring at a far-off divine event.

This particular compromise between contempt and hope was an accident of Tennyson’s time, and, like his liberal conservatism, will probably never be found again. His weakness was not being old-fashioned or new-fashioned, but being fashionable. His feet were set on things transitory and untenable, compromises and compacts of silence. Yet he was so perfect a poet that I fancy he will still be able to stand, even upon such clouds.

The Domesticity of Detectives

I HAVE just been entertaining myself with the last sensational story by the author ofThe Yellow Room, which was probably the best detective tale of our time, except Mr. Bentley’s admirable novel, Trent’s Last Case. The name of the author ofThe Yellow Room is Gaston Leroux; I have sometimes wondered whether it is the alternativenom de plume of the writer called Maurice Leblanc who gives us the stories about Arsene Lupin, the gentleman burglar. There would be something very symmetrical in the inversion by which the red gentleman always writes about a detective, and the white gentleman always writes about a criminal. But I have no serious reason to suppose the red and white combination to be anything but a coincidence; and the tales are of two rather different types. Those of Gaston the Red are more strictly of the type of the mystery story, in the sense of resolving a single and central mystery. Those of Maurice the White are more properly adventure stories, in the sense of resolving a rapid succession of immediate difficulties. This is inherent in the position of the hero; the detective is always outside the event, while the criminal is inside the event. Some would express it by saying that the policeman is always outside the house when the burglar is inside the house. But there is one very French quality which both these French writers share, even when their writing is very far from their best. It is a spirit of definition which is itself not easy to define. To say it is scientific will only suggest that it is slow. It is much truer to say it is military; that is, it is something that has to be both scientific and swift. It can be seen in much greater Frenchmen, as compared with men still greater who were not Frenchmen. Jules Verne and H. G. Wells, for instance, both wrote fairy-tales of science; Mr. Wells has much the larger mind and interest in life; but he often lacks one power which Jules Verne possesses supremely—the power of going to the point. Verne is very French in his rigid relevancy; Wells is very English in his rich irrelevance. He is there as English as Dickens, the best passages in whose stories are the stoppages, and even stopgaps. In a truly French tale there are no stoppages; every word, however dull, is deliberate, or directed towards the end. The comparison could be carried further back among the classics. The romance of Dumas may seem a mere riot of swords and feathers; it is often spoken of as a mere revel in adventure and variety; the madness of romance. But it is not a mere riot, but rather a military revolution, and even a disciplined revolution; certainly, a very French revolution. It is not a mere mad revel, but a very gorgeous and elaborate banquet planned by a great cook; a very French cook. Scott was a greater man than Dumas; and a greater novelist on the note of the serious humours of humanity. But he was not so great a story-teller, because he had less of something that can only be called the strategy of the soldier. The Three Musketeers advance like an army; with their three servants and their one ally, they march, manoeuvre, deploy, wheeling into positions and almost making patterns. They are always present wherever their author wants them; which is by no means true of all the characters of all the novelists. Dumas, and not Scott, ought to have written the life of Napoleon; Dumas was much nearer to Napoleon, in the fact that there was most emphatically method in his madness. Nobody ever called Scott mad; and certainly nobody could ever call him methodical. He was as incapable of the conspiracy which carried off General Monk in a box as Dumas was incapable of the curse of Meg Merrilies or the benediction of Di Vernon. But there is eternally present in the Frenchman something which may truly be called presence of mind. There to be an artist is not to be absent-minded, however harmless or happy the holidays of the mind may be. Art is to have the intellect and all its instruments on the spot and ready to go to the point; as when, but a little while ago, a great artist stood by the banks of the Marne and saved the world with one gesture of living logic—the sword-thrust of the Latin.

But though the strategy of the French story is allied to the strategy by which the French army has always affected the larger matters of mankind, I doubt whether such a story ought to deal with such matters. I mentioned at the beginning M. Gaston Leroux’s last mystery story because I think I know why it is not anything like so good as his first mystery story. The truth is that there are two types of sensational romance between which our wilder sensationalists seem to waver; and I think they are generally at their strongest in dealing with the first type, and at their weakest in dealing with the second. For the sake of a convenient symbol, I may call them respectively the romance of the Yellow Room and the romance of the Yellow Peril. We might say that the great detective story deals with small things; while the small or silly detective story generally deals with great things. It deals with diabolical diplomatists darting about between Vienna and Paris and Petrograd; with vast cosmopolitan conspiracies ramifying through all the cellars of Europe; or worse and most widespread of all, occult and mystical secret societies from China or Tibet; the vast and vague Oriental terrorism which I call for convenience here the Yellow Peril.

On the other hand, the good detective story is in its nature a good domestic story. It is steeped in the sentiment that an Englishman’s house is his castle; even if, like other castles, it is the scene of a few quiet tortures or assassinations. In other words, it is concerned with an enclosure, a plan or problem set within certain defined limits. And that is where the French writer’s first story was a model for all such writers; and where it ought to have been, but has not been a model for himself. The point about the Yellow Room is that it was a room; that is, it was a box, like the box in which Dumas kidnapped General Monk. The writer dealt with the quadrate or square which Mrs. Battle loved; the very plan of the problem looked like a problem in the Fourth Book of Euclid. He posted four men on four sides of a space and a murder was done in the middle of them; to all appearance, in spite of them; in reality, by one of them. Now a sensational novelist of the more cosmopolitan sort could, of course, have filled the story with a swarm of Chinese magicians who had the power of walking through brick walls, or of Indian mesmerists who could murder a man merely by meditating about him on the peaks of the Himalayas; or merely by so human and humdrum a trifle as a secret society of German spies which had made a labyrinth of secret tunnels under all the private houses in the world. These romantic possibilities are infinite; and because they are infinite they are really unromantic. The real romance of detection works inwards towards the household gods, even if they are household devils. One of the best of the Sherlock Holmes stories turns entirely on a trivial point of housekeeping: the provision of curry for the domestic dinner. Curry is, I believe, connected with the East; and could have been made the excuse for infinities of sham occultism and Oriental torments. The author could have brought in a million yellow cooks to poison a yellow condiment. But the author knew his business much better; and did not let what is called infinity, and should rather be called anarchy, invade the quiet seclusion of the British criminal’s home. He did not let the logic of the Yellow Room be destroyed by the philosophy of the Yellow Peril. That is why I lament the fact that the ingenious French architect of the original Yellow Room seems to have made an outward step in this direction; not, indeed, towards the plains of Tibet, but towards the hardly less barbaric plains of Germany. His last book, Rouletabille Chez Krupp, concerns the manufacture of a torpedo big enough to smash a town; and an object of that size may be a sensation, but will not long be a secret. It may be inevitable that a French patriot should now write even his detective stories about the war; but I do not think this method will ever make the French mystery story what the war itself has been—a French masterpiece; Gesta Dei per Francos.

George Meredith

THE death of George Meredith was the real end of the Nineteenth Century, not that empty date that came at the close of 1899. The last bond was broken between us and the pride and peace of the Victorian age. Our fathers were all dead. We were suddenly orphans: we all felt strangely and sadly young. A cold, enormous dawn opened in front of us; we had to go on to tasks which our fathers, fine as they were, did not know, and our first sensation was that of cold and undefended youth. Swinburne was the penultimate, Meredith the ultimate end.

It is not a phrase to call him the last of the Victorians: he really is the last. No doubt this final phrase has been used about each of the great Victorians one after another from Matthew Arnold and Browning to Swinburne and Meredith. No doubt the public has grown a little tired of the positively last appearance of the Nineteenth Century. But the end of George Meredith really was the end of that great epoch. No great man now alive has its peculiar powers or its peculiar limits. Like all great epochs, like all great things, it is not easy to define. We can see it, touch it, smell it, eat it; but we cannot state it. It was a time when faith was firm without being definite. It was a time when we saw the necessity of reform without once seeing the possibility of revolution. It was a sort of exquisite interlude in the intellectual disputes: a beautiful, accidental truce in the eternal war of mankind. Things could mix in a mellow atmosphere. Its great men were so religious that they could do without a religion. They were so hopefully and happily republican that they could do without a republic. They are all dead and deified; and it is well with them. But we cannot get back into that well-poised pantheism and liberalism. We cannot be content to be merely broad: for us the dilemma sharpens and the ways divide.

Of the men left alive there are many who can be admired beyond expression; but none who can be admired in this way. The name of that powerful writer, Mr. Thomas Hardy, was often mentioned in company with that of Meredith; but the coupling of the two names is a philosophical and chronological mistake. Mr. Hardy is wholly of our own generation, which is a very unpleasant thing to be. He is shrill and not mellow. He does not worship the unknown God: he knows the God (or thinks he knows the God), and dislikes Him. He is not a pantheist: he is a pandiabolist. The great agnostics of the Victorian age said there was no purpose in Nature. Mr. Hardy is a mystic; he says there is an evil purpose. All this is as far as possible from the plenitude and rational optimism of Meredith. And when we have disposed of Mr. Hardy, what other name is there that can even pretend to recall the heroic Victorian age? The Roman curse lies upon Meredith like a blessing: “Ultimus suorum moriatur”—he has died the last of his own.

The greatness of George Meredith exhibits the same paradox or difficulty as the greatness of Browning; the fact that simplicity was the centre, while the utmost luxuriance and complexity was the expression. He was as human as Shakespeare, and also as affected as Shakespeare. It may generally be remarked (I do not know the cause of it) that the men who have an odd or mad point of view express it in plain or bald language. The men who have a genial and everyday point of view express it in ornate and complicated language. Swinburne and Thomas Hardy talk almost in words of one syllable; but the philosophical upshot can be expressed in the most famous of all words of one syllable—damn. Their words are common words; but their view (thank God) is not a common view. They denounce in the style of a spelling-book; while people like Meredith are unpopular through the very richness of their popular sympathies. Men like Browning or like Francis Thompson praise God in such a way sometimes that God alone could possibly understand the praise. But they mean all men to understand it: they wish every beast and fish and flying thing to take part in the applauding chorus of the cosmos. On the other hand, those who have bad news to tell are much more explicit, and the poets whose object it is to depress the people take care that they do it. I will not write any more about those poets, because I do not profess to be impartial or even to be good-tempered on the subject. To my thinking, the oppression of the people is a terrible sin; but the depression of the people is a far worse one.

But the glory of George Meredith is that he combined subtlety with primal energy: he criticized life without losing his appetite for it. In him alone, being a man of the world did not mean being a man disgusted with the world. As a rule, there is no difference between the critic and ascetic except that the ascetic sorrows with a hope and the critic without a hope. But George Meredith loved straightness even when he praised it crookedly: he adored innocence even when he analysed it tortuously: he cared only for unconsciousness, even when he was unduly conscious of it. He was never so good as he was about virgins and schoolboys. In one curious poem, containing many fine lines, he actually rebukes people for being quaint or eccentric, and rebukes them quaintly and eccentrically. He says of Nature, the great earth-mother, whom he worshipped:

… She by one sure sign can read, Have they but held her laws and nature dear; They mouth no sentence of inverted wit. More prizes she her beasts than this high breed Wry in the shape she wastes her milk to rear.

That is the mark of the truly great man: that he sees the common man afar off, and worships him. The great man tries to be ordinary, and becomes extraordinary in the process. But the small man tries to be mysterious, and becomes lucid in an awful sense for we can all see through him.

The Irishman

THE other day I went to see the Irish plays, recently acted by real Irishmen-peasants and poor folk-under the inspiration of Lady Gregory and Mr. W. B. Yeats. Over and above the excellence of the acting and the abstract merit of the plays (both of which were considerable), there emerged the strange and ironic interest which has been the source of so much fun and sin and sorrow—the interest of the Irishman in England. Since we have sinned by creating the Stage Irishman, it is fitting enough that we should all be rebuked by Irishmen on the stage. We have all seen some obvious Englishman performing a Paddy. It was, perhaps, a just punishment to see an obvious Paddy performing the comic and contemptible part of an English gentleman. I have now seen both, and I can lay my hand on my heart (though my knowledge of physiology is shaky about its position) and declare that the Irish English gentleman was an even more abject and crawling figure than the English Irish servant. The Comic Irishman in the English plays was at least given credit for a kind of chaotic courage. The Comic Englishman in the Irish plays was represented not only as a fool, but as a nervous fool; a fussy and spasmodic prig, who could not be loved either for strength or weakness. But all this only illustrates the fundamental fact that both the national views are wrong; both the versions are perversions. The rollicking Irishman and the priggish Englishman are alike the mere myths generated by a misunderstanding. It would be rather nearer the truth if we spoke of the rollicking Englishman and the priggish Irishman. But even that would be wrong too.

Unless people are near in soul they had better not be near in neighbourhood. The Bible tells us to love our neighbours, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people… And there is a real human reason for this. You think of a remote man merely as a man; that is, you think of him in the right way. Suppose I say to you suddenly—“Oblige me by brooding on the soul of the man who lives at 351 High Street, Islington.” Perhaps (now I come to think of it) you are the man who lives at 351 High Street, Islington. In that case substitute some other unknown address and pursue the intellectual sport. Now you will probably be broadly right about the man in Islington whom you have never seen or heard of, because you will begin at the right end—the human end. The man in Islington is at least a man. The soul of the man in Islington is certainly a soul. He also has been bewildered and broadened by youth; he also has been tortured and intoxicated by love; he also is sublimely doubtful about death. You can think about the soul of that nameless man who is a mere number in Islington High Street. But you do not think about the soul of your next-door neighbour. He is not a man; he is an environment. He is the barking of a dog; he is the noise of a pianola; he is a dispute about a party wall; he is drains that are worse than yours, or roses that are better than yours. Now, all these are the wrong ends of a man; and a man, like many other things in this world, such as a cat-o’-nine-tails, has a large number of wrong ends, and only one right one. These adjuncts are all tails, so to speak. A dog is a sort of curly tail to a man; a substitute for that which man so tragically lost at an early stage of evolution. And though I would rather myself go about trailing a dog behind me than tugging a pianola or towing a rose-garden, yet this is a matter of taste, and they are all alike appendages or things dependent upon man. But besides his twenty tails, every man really has a head, a centre of identity, a soul. And the head of a man is even harder to find than the head of a Skye terrier, for man has nine hundred and ninety-nine wrong ends instead of one. It is no question of getting hold of the sow by the right ear; it is a question of getting hold of the hedgehog by the right quill, of the bird by the right feather, of the forest by the right leaf. If we have never known the forest we shall know at least that it is a forest, a thing grown grandly out of the earth; we shall realize the roots toiling in the terrestrial darkness, the trunks reared in the sylvan twilight.

But to find the forest is to find the fringe of the forest. To approach it from without is to see its mere accidental outline ragged against the sky. It is to come close enough to be superficial. The remote man, therefore, may stand for manhood; for the glory of birth or the dignity of death. But it is difficult to get Mr. Brown next door (with whom you have quarrelled about the creepers) to stand for these things in any satisfactorily symbolic attitude. You do not feel the glory of his birth; you are more likely to hint heatedly at its ingloriousness. You do not, on purple and silver evenings, dwell on the dignity and quietude of his death; you think of it, if at all, rather as sudden. And the same is true of historical separation and proximity. I look forward to the same death as a Chinaman; barring one or two Chinese tortures, perhaps. I look back to the same babyhood as an ancient Phoenician; unless, indeed, it were one of that special Confirmation class of Sunday-school babies who were passed through the fire to Moloch. But these distant or antique terrors seem merely tied on to the life: they are not part of its texture. Babylonian mothers (however they yielded to etiquette) probably loved their children; and Chinamen unquestionably reverenced their dead. It is far different when two peoples are close enough to each other to mistake all the acts and gestures of everyday life. It is far different when the Baptist baker in Islington thinks of Irish infancy, passed amid Popish priests and impossible fairies. It is far different when the tramp from Tipperary thinks of Irish death, coming often in dying hamlets, in distant colonies, in English prisons or on English gibbets. There childhood and death have lost all their reconciling qualities; the very details of them do not unite, but divide. Hence England and Ireland see the facts of each other without guessing the meaning of the facts. For instance, we may see the fact that an Irish house-wife is careless. But we fancy falsely that this is because she is scatter-brained; whereas it is, on the contrary, because she is concentrated— on religion, or conspiracy, or tea. You may call her inefficient, but you certainly must not call her weak. In the same way, the Irish see the fact that the Englishman is unsociable; they do not see the reason, which is that he is romantic.

This seems to me the real value of such striking national sketches as those by Lady Gregory and Mr. Synge, which I saw last week. Here is a case where mere accidental realism, the thing written on the spot, the “slice of life,” may, for once in a way, do some good. All the signals, all the flags, all the declaratory externals of Ireland we are almost certain to mistake. If the Irishman speaks to us, we are sure to misunderstand him. But if we hear the Irishman talking to himself, it may begin to dawn on us that he is a man.

Ireland and the Domestic Drama

IN a sense so gigantic that it would have staggered the statesman who once used the phrase, we have called in the new world to redress the balance of the old. The new world has found new worlds to conquer; it has new tasks not only drastic but delicate, not only political but psychological. Among the things which America may yet help us to achieve is one about which I feel strongly and even painfully—the reconciliation, a thousand times thwarted but now a thousand times more necessary, between the English and the Irish. The triangular table of such a peace conference need not, and perhaps had better not, be found in any public building. Rather it should be found in every public house and even in every private house. The change should come through something which is far nobler and more eternal than diplomacy or politics; talk. It should come through the only real public opinion, which is always uttered in private; the public opinion that is a mass of private opinions. A famous Irishman said of the Irish that they were too poetical to be poets, but that they were the greatest talkers since the Greeks. My personal memory does not stretch back to the greatest period of Greece; and perhaps the best talker I ever knew was an Irishman, who is now living in America and (I will confidently affirm) talking in America. It may be true that he is too poetical to be a poet; anyhow, he is not too poetical to be the father of a poet. He is Mr. J. B. Yeats, the father of Mr. W. B. Yeats; and he has lately been persuaded to write and print some of the good things he has said all his life—first in the form of a book of letters, and later of a book of essays, Essays Irish and American, published by Mr. Fisher Unwin. But my real satisfaction, in the social and political sense, is to know not that he has written a little, but that he has spoken much; for out of such seemingly lost and wasted words come the real international understandings.

There was a type of detachment during the late war, not to be confused with what I can only call the view of the vulgar peacemonger. It was not the patronizing pacifism of the gentleman who took a holiday in the Alps and said he was “above the struggle”; as if there were any Alp from which the soul can look down on Calvary. There is, indeed, one mountain among them that might be very appropriate to so detached an observer—the mountain named after Pilate, the man who washed his hands. The isolation I mean is far removed fron1 such impudence. The defence of this detachment is that it is not really detached; it was not indifference, but indignation. It was not without foundation; it was only without proportion. Indeed, the real case against it was that while its expression was largely cynical, its motive was largely sentimental. Such was the irritation of Mr. Bernard Shaw; such was the irritation of many Irishmen much more national than Mr. Bernard Shaw. Their irritation can be analysed in a simple phrase; it annoyed them that the men who were wrong should be right. It annoyed them that all the snobs and sneaks of our corrupt parliamentarianism should free the world by accident. In the quarrel with Prussia, they could not really doubt—they did not really doubt—that England was right. But they did doubt whether England had any right to be right.

It is a view I think self-stultifying and even suicidal. For the great work will be remembered and the meaner workers forgotten; and it is madness to praise the Persians on the eve of Marathon because one has quarrelled with some silly archon at Athens, whose very name will be lost in a few years. But it is not a treasonable, far less a treacherous view; and its anger is the same as the popular anger it arouses. This is the Irish mood which common sense and common sympathy must deal with; and this is the peculiar value of real Irish intellectual detachment like that of Mr. Yeats. First of all, a man like Mr. Yeats is so genuinely detached that he can be definite and clear in his sympathy with the Allies. He would be capable of the supreme impartiality of seeing that England could be right although she had been wrong; and even that Ireland could be wrong although she had been wronged. But all the time he would play with a perennial fount of satire and insight on the fundamental spiritual facts that falsify the English position in Ireland. He would make us feel that we were only right in one thing because we were so wrong in many things. There are many examples of this in his little book of essays; but the one I would emphasize here especially is his very vital point about the domestic nature of the whole sociology of Ireland. Here again he is all the more impressive for being in a sense impartial, or even what some would call indifferent. He is not what is called orthodox; he might well be called sceptical. He has cultivated rather Continental aesthetics than Catholic apologetics. It is solely by a serene insight into what his French teachers would call the “vraie verite” that he sees the way the world ought to go; and pauses upon the phrase, “the return to the home.”

Irish education, he declares, must always depend on the fact that the child’s mind is full of “the drama of the home.” It marks his judicial emancipation that he contrasts this domestic drama favourably with two other types of teaching, one of which would be called conventional and conservative, while the other would be called unconventional and advanced. He criticizes the old English public-school boy; he also criticizes (I grieve to state) the new American woman.

The two things called in England the “public school” and the “high school” are counted almost contraries, merely because one is old and the other new. But the critic sees them to be essentially the same; because in both cases the school overshadows the home. Here is a profound practical instance of the root realities of the Irish national claim. Here is a case in which Home Rule literally means the rule of the home. It will never be possible to establish the English fashion in Ireland, and I for one should not pretend to be sorry if it were possible to spread the Irish fashion to England.

For the drama of the home is really very dramatic. It is one of those facts that are confused and hidden by the modern fuss about social machinery, which is the mere scene-shifting and stage-carpentering of the domestic drama. The household is the lighted stage, on which the actors appeal literally to the gods. It is in private life that things happen. A human being is born at home; he generally dies at home, and the social philosophy that can deal with nothing but his coffin carried out of the house is merely a philosophy of boxes and parcels, a philosophy of luggage and labels. Half our human effort is now wasted on mere transit, transport, and exchange; the commonwealth is a clearing-house of cases we never open and presents we never enjoy. Rulers and reformers are a race of rather pedantic porters, always carrying an unknown present to an unknown person, not unfrequently (I fancy) the wrong present to the wrong person. Some of our strenuous social organizers may be content to spend Christmas at Charing Cross Station for the pride of controlling the traffic and the luggage. But I confess I find it more exciting to be at the end of the journey where the Christmas gifts can be seen.

The Japanese

IS it not time that we western people protested against being perpetually browbeaten with the high morality of the Orient— especially of Japan? I remember a curious occasion some years ago when certain able journalists on a Socialist paper in Fleet Street suddenly burst into a blazing excitement about King Asoka. Their relations with this prince could not be called intimate; in point of fact, he died some thousands of years ago somewhere in the middle of Asia. But it seemed that in him we had lost our only reliable moral guide. Religion was a failure, and human life, on the whole, a tragedy; but King Asoka was all right. He was faultlessly just, infinitely merciful, the mirror of the virtues, the prop of the poor. Outsiders were naturally interested in the sources of this revelation. And after some discussion it was discovered and mildly pointed out that this description of the King’s virtues is only found on a few of the King’s own official inscriptions. Old Asoka may have been a very nice man, but we have only his own word for it that he was so nice as all that. And even in the benighted West it might not be impossible to find monarchs who were very just and mighty according to their own proclamations; and courts that were quite exemplary in theCourt Circular. It had never struck these simple Asokites in Fleet Street that the pompous enunciation of ideals probably meant no more in Bengal than in Birmingham, in the ancient East than in the modern West. It is as if a Hindoo should say that under the sublime French monarchy every King had to be a good Christian; for he was called on coins and parchments “the most Christian King.” It is as if an Arab said that honour was so high and sensitive among English M.P.’s that they constantly called each other, with a burst of admiration, “The Honourable Member for Tooting.” It could hardly be more absurd if the Japanese declared that an English Duke must have an elegant figure, for they had seen an allusion to “His Grace.” And yet it is with just this comic solemnity that we are asked to accept the moral pretensions of the East to-day, and especially the moral pretensions of Japan. My eye has just fallen upon two newspaper paragraphs, each of which exclaimed mournfully what a pity it was that we had not the high conception of chivalric devotion which the Japanese call “Bushido,” or some such name. As if we had no chivalrous principles in Europe! And as if they had no unchivalrous practices in the Far East! If we see no beauty in Excalibur, are we likely to take more seriously the two swords of some outlandish Daimio? If we are truly dumb after the death of Roland, are we likely to shout with enthusiasm at the sight of ahara-kiri?

Here is, perhaps, the queerest case of all. Many of these Orientalists have lately been filled with horror at finding that Young Turks still propose to be Turkish, and that advanced Japan is still unaccountably Japanese. Dr. Parker damned Abdul Hamid. These modern humanitarians cannot understand any people wishing to get rid of Abdul Hamid without also wishing to become exactly like Dr. Parker. In the same way they are horrified that the Japanese Government has very abruptly condemned some criminals said to be conspiring against the sacred person of the Mikado. It never seems to occur to them that you can take off a Turk’s turban without taking off his head; and that, under a Brixton bowler, the head would go on thinking the same thoughts. It never seems to strike them that the man of the Far East still has a yellow skin, even when you have also given him a yellow press. But the most astounding version of the thing I found in the following paragraph, the opening paragraph of an article on the Japanese condemnations in an influential weekly paper:

“Japan has followed Western ways in a great many respects, but it is saddening to learn that she is adopting the most reprehensible methods of Russia and Spain in dealing with men and women who have the intelligence to be ahead of their time and have the courage to avow their opinions.”

This really strikes me as colossal. I quite agree that Japan has imitated many Western things; I also think that Japan has mostly imitated the worst Western things. That is the cause of my very defective sympathy with Japan. If the Japanese had imitated Dante or mediaeval architecture, if they had imitated Michelangelo or Italian painting, if they had imitated Rousseau and the French Revolution—then I—as a European, should have felt at least flattered.

But the Japanese have only imitated the worst things of our worst period: the inhuman commercialism of Birmingham; the inhuman militarism of Berlin. I feel as if I had looked in a mirror and seen a monkey. Or, if this metaphor be counted uncharitable, I feel just as some coarse but kindly man might feel if a little brother began to imitate only his vices. I say this to show how easily I embrace the idea that Japan might borrow from us bad things as well as good; and then I turn with astonishment—nay, consternation—to the paragraph I have quoted. Japan (it seems) has borrowed from Russia and Spain the reprehensible habit of executing people without adequate trial. Trial by jury, with complete reports in the newspapers next day, was the common practice all over the Far East until the dreadful example of Spain somehow crept across two continents and destroyed it. Such a thing as autocratic execution was unknown in the East. Such a notion as that of despotism had never occurred to the Japanese. Up to that last lost moment when they heard of Russia, County Councils had been buzzing in every town, republics established in every island of the East. Before the European came, polling-booths were at the end of every street and ballot-boxes rattled over all Asia. But, alas! they heard of Spain. They heard that in Spain the trials of rebels in arms had occasionally been conducted in secret; and this was enough to destroy the long and famous tradition of free democracy in the Far East.

Now I do think that, compared with this amazing bosh, Gilbert’sMikado, with his punishment “lingering, with boiling oil in it,” might be called a good, solid, sensible picture of Japan. Eastern despotism has many advantages; and I do not doubt that many of its decisions were not “lingering,” but as rough and rapid as they were just. But to what mental state have people come if they cannot see that Europe has been, upon the whole, the home of democracy, and Asia, upon the whole, the home of despotism? Really, Japan is not so barren of resource as this writer supposes. The Far East really has no need to go to Russia for autocracy, or to Spain for torture. It has done very artistic things in that way itself. And if Spain and Russia have indeed terrorized and tortured, it is much more historically likely that they got it from Asia than that Asia ever had the slightest need to borrow it from them.

The plain facts, of course, are perfectly simple. Japan has borrowed our guns and telephones, but she has not borrowed our morality; and, morally speaking, I really do not see why she should. Under all Japan’s elaborate armour-plating she is still the same strange, heathen, sinister, and heroic thing: she has still the two deep Oriental habits, prostration before despotism and ferocity of punishment. She still thinks, in the Eastern style, that a king is infinitely sublime: the brother of the sun and moon. She still thinks, in the Eastern style, that a criminal is infinitely punishable; “something with boiling oil in it.” Why on earth should Japan abandon the adoration of the Mikado and the destruction of his enemies, merely because a scientific apparatus has made the Mikado more victorious and the destruction of his enemies more easy?

Christian Science

I HAVE read recently, within a short period of each other, two books that stand in an odd relation, and illustrate the two ways of dealing with the same truth. The first was Mrs. Eddy’sScience and Health, and the other a very interesting collection of medical and ecclesiastical opinion calledMedicine and the Church. It is edited by Mr. Geoffrey Rhodes, and published by Kegan Paul. Of the first work, the Christian Science Bible, my recollections are somewhat wild and whirling. My most vivid impression is of one appalling passage to the effect that the continued perusal of this book through the crisis of an illness had always been followed by recovery. The idea of reading any book “through the crisis of an illness” is rather alarming. But I incline to agree that anyone who could readScience and Health through the crisis of an illness must be made of an adamant which no malady could dissolve. Nevertheless, it is a mistake to oppose Christian Science on the impossibility or even the improbability of its cures. There is always this tendency for normal men to attack abnormalities on the wrong ground; their arguments are as wrong as their antagonism is right. Thus the only sensible argument against Female Suffrage is that, with her social and domestic powers, woman is as strong as man. But silly people will attack Female Suffrage on the ground that she is weaker than man. Or, again, the only sensible argument against Socialism is that every man ought to have private property. But the wretched Anti-Socialists will give themselves away by trying to maintain that only a few people ought to have property, and even that only in the shape of monstrous American trusts. In the same way, there is great danger that the modern world may give battle to Mrs. Eddy upon the wrongterrain, and give her the opportunity (or, rather, her more clear-headed lieutenants) of claiming some popular success. There is such a thing as spiritual healing. no one has ever doubted it except one dingy generation of materialists in chimney-pot hats. If we seem to stand with the materialists, and Mrs. Eddy seems to stand for the healing, she will have a chance of success. The man whose toothache has left off will think with gratitude of the healer, and with some indifference of the scientist explaining the difference between functional and organic toothaches. I will grant what Mrs. Eddy does to people’s bodies. It is what she does to their souls that I object to.

Mrs. Eddy summarizes the substance of her creed in the characteristic sentence: “But in order to enter into the kingdom, the anchor of Hope must be east beyond the veil of matter into the Shekinah into which Jesus has passed before us.” Now personally I should prefer to sow the anchor of Hope in the furrows of primeval earth; or to fill the anchor to the brim with the wine of human passion; or to urge the anchor of hope to a gallop with the spurs of moral energy; or simply to pluck the anchor, petal by petal, or spell it out letter by letter. But, whatever slightly entangled metaphor we take to express our meaning, the essential difference between Mrs. Eddy’s creed and mine is that she anchors in the air, while I put an anchor where the groping race of men have generally put it, in the ground. And this very fact, that we have always thought of hope under so rooted and realistic a figure, is a good working example of how the popular religious sense of mankind has always flowed in the opposite direction to Christian Science. It has flowed from spirit to flesh, and not from flesh to spirit. Hope has not been thought of as something light and fanciful, but as something wrought in iron and fixed in rock.

In short, the first and last blunder of Christian Science is that it is a religion claiming to be purely spiritual. Now, being purely spiritual is opposed to the very essence of religion. All religions, high and low, true and false, have always had one enemy, which is the purely spiritual. Faith-healing has existed from the beginning of the world; but faith-healing without a material act or sacrament—never. It may be the ancient priest, curing with holy water, or the modern doctor curing with coloured water. In either case you cannot do without the water. It may be the upper religion with its bread and wine, or the under religion with its eye of newt and toe of frog: in both cases what is essential is the right materials. Savages may invoke their demons over the dying, but they do something else as well. To do them justice, they dance round the dying, or yell, or do something with their bodies. The Quakers (I mean the really admirable, old-fashioned Quakers) were far more ritualistic than any Ritualists. The only difference between a Ritualist curate and a Quaker was that the Quaker wore his queer vestments all the time. The Peculiar People do without doctors; but they do not do without oil. They are not so peculiar as all that.

The book which Mr. Geoffrey Rhodes has edited is just what was wanted for the fixing of these facts of flesh and spirit. When I was a boy, people used to talk about something which they called the quarrel between religion and science. It would be very tedious to recount the quarrel now; the rough upshot of it was something like this: that some traditions too old to be traced came in vague conflict with some theories much too new to be tested. Many things three thousand years old had forgotten their reason for existing; many things a few years old had not yet discovered theirs. To this day this remains roughly true of all the relations between science and religion. The truths of religion are unprovable; the facts of science are unproved.

It really looks just now as if a reconciliation would be made between religion and science, a reconciliation well embodied in Mr. Rhodes’s work. I will not any longer dispute the divine mission of Mrs. Eddy. I think she was supernaturally sent on earth to reconcile all the parsons and all the doctors in a healthy hatred of herself. Hereis the reconciliation of science and religion; you will find it inMedicine and the Church. In this interesting book all the clerics become as medical as they can, and all the doctors become as clerical as they can, with the one honourable object of keeping out the healer. The chaplain sits on one side of the bed and the physician on the other, while the healer hovers around, baffled and furious. And they do well; for there really is a great link between them. It is the link of the union of flesh and spirit, which the heresy of the healer blasphemes. The priest may have taken his spirit with a little flesh, or the doctor his flesh with a little spirit; but the union was essential to both. With the religious there might be much prayer and a little oil; with the scientific there might be much oil (castor oil) and precious little prayer. But no religion disowned sacraments and no doctors disowned sympathy. And they are right to combine together against the great and horrible heresy—the horrible heresy that there can be such a thing as a purely spiritual religion.

The Lawlessness of Lawyers

JUDGE PARRY is one of the men who have done mountains of good merely by being alive; while many judges act as if they were already dead, not to say … but Judge Parry might misunderstand a misuse of theological imagery. He is somewhat anticlerical; which seems a waste of talent in a country where there is no clericalism. In his last book, Law and the Woman, I find much with which I do not agree, yet nothing which is not agreeable. Not only does he say everything with a disarming humour and candour; but even in error he never loses sight of the large fact: that sex relations do not depend on the exceptional action of law, but on the normal action of creed and custom. Alone among such lawyers he understands that the poor live on laughter as on a fairy-tale; and can be more scientifically studied in the fictions of Jacobs than the facts of Webb. I might pursue the view further than he on some points; as when he would infer the mere enslavement of women from some stories about the selling of wives. He is doubtless correct in detail; but the rhyme he gives to prove his point may almost be said to disprove it. He quotes a jolly ballad about a man who tried to sell his wife with a halter round her neck and, failing to do so, tried to hang himself in the halter rather than go on living with her. Obviously this is simply the fable of the grey mare; and does not mean that the man ruled his wife, but rather that she ruled him. I do not agree about divorce; but I am not going to argue about it here, or about any such problem of the sexes. This is partly because I should have to begin about the nature of a vow, and it feels like talking to a judge about the nature of an oath, and might almost be contempt of court. But it is more, I hope, for the manlier reason that I do want to argue about something else.

I think this delightful book might really mislead by a view of progress which over-simplifies history: the view that “the thoughts of men are widened by the process of the suns”—a monotonous process which cannot even widen itself. He begins his story of the subjection of women from the Bible story of Adam and Eve. He then proceeds at once to quote, not the Bible, but John Milton, and says it is almost exactly in the form “in which mediaeval man was wont to explain to mediaeval woman the kind of thing she really was.” Now whatever Milton was, he was not mediaeval. He was, in his own opinion and in real though relative truth, highly modern and rationalistic. And he would have regarded his somewhat contemptuous view of woman as part of his emancipation from mediaevalism. Probably the very same attitude made him approve of divorce; and makes the difference between woman’s place in his epic and her place in Dante’s. On either side of that Gothic gateway of the Middle Ages out of which he had emerged (as he would have said) into the daylight, there had stood two symbolic statues of women, at least of equal importance in the scheme. One represented the weak woman by whom Satan had entered the world; the other the strong woman by whom God had entered the world. Milton and his Puritans deliberately battered and obliterated the image of the good woman and carefully preserved the bad woman, to be a standing reproach to womanhood. But they unquestionably thought their anti-feminist iconoclasm was a great step in progress; and the fact illustrates what an uncommonly crooked and even backward path the path called progress has really been. Nor is it difficult to discover, even in the writer’s own account, whence this anti-feminism iconoclasm drew its force; which was certainly not merely from the Book of Genesis. Judge Parry says, perhaps disputably, that the rude Saxons had more legal regard for women than the Romans. But assuming for the sake of argument that the heathen Romans did give a low status to woman, they clearly cannot have got it either from the Hebrew Scriptures or the mediaeval Church. If he will ask where they did get it, he will probably also find where Milton got it. The truth is that there was an element of intellectual brutality in the Renaissance and revival of the pagan world. The very worship of power and reason embodied itself in a preference for the sex that was supposed superior in them. New tyrannies as well as new liberties were encouraged by the New Learning; and Cervantes was laughing at the unreal adventurer who fancied he was unchaining captives, at the very time when Hawkins, the real adventurer, was first leading negroes in chains.

Those chains may be linked up again presently in the chain of nay own argument: here I use the matter merely to show the danger of trusting each ethical fashion as it comes. There is one matter on which I would respectfully and seriously differ from Judge Parry; and that does not concern laws about women, but rather law itself. In praising the judgment in the Jackson Case, despite its technical irregularity, he speaks of a fine example of our judge-made law, and says: “But that is one of the sane and healthy attributes of our judicial system. There comes a breaking-point where a great judge recognizes that the precedents in the books are obsolete, and what has to be stated is the justice of the case according to the now existing standard of human righteousness.” Now it is surely as plain as a pikestaff that this doctrine makes a small number of very wealthy old gentlemen in wigs absolute despots over the whole commonwealth. The Emperor of China was supposed to state the justice of the case. The Sultan of the Indies was supposed to judge by the existing standard of human righteousness. If the judges are not restrained by the law, what are they restrained by, which every autocrat on earth has not claimed to be restrained by?

Now there is certainly a case for personal and arbitrary government; and as there are good sultans, so there are good judges. I should not be afraid to appear before Judge Parry (if I may presume to imagine myself innocent) though he were surrounded with janissaries in a secret divan, or delivering dooms under an oak tree in a wild, prehistoric forest. I should not mind his having the power to skin me or boil me in oil; for I feel sure he would “recognize that these precedents were obsolete” and not do it. But it is by no means true that the confidence I should feel in Judge Parry would be extended to any judge who talked about obsolete precedents and human righteousness. Quite the contrary, if anything. I trust him because he often takes the side of the under-dog. I should not trust a man who always took the side of the opinion which happened to be top-dog. He understood, for instance, the case for “Pro-Boers”; but in the mafficking time a dozen great judges would have strained any law to make a case against Pro-Boers. Feminism was the fashion and may have produced some acts of justice; but Imperialism was also the fashion and might have produced any acts of any injustice. There is, let us suppose, an old statute that certain prisoners may be tortured for evidence; but the judges disregard it, and Judge Parry is satisfied. But there are three very vital reasons why he should not be satisfied. First, it encourages legislators to be lazy and leave a bad statute they ought to repeal. Second, they leave it so that it can be resharpened in some reaction or panic against particular people, whowill be tortured. And third, and most important of all, the same judge who has said that prisoners must not be tortured for evidence may say some fine morning that prisoners may be vivisected for scientific inquiry; and he may have the same reason for saying the one as the other, the simple reason that such talk is fashionable in his set. And the set is very small and very rich; we are dealing strictly with fashion and not even, in any large sense, with public opinion. The standards of that world are often special and sometimes rather secretive. Judge Parry even quotes a “paradox” of Lord Reading to the effect that persons like himself should administer justice and not law. Law is narrow and national, and might possibly lead a British Minister to look no further than the British Parliament as an appropriate place for telling the truth. But justice, being international and surveying the world from China to Peru, perceives without difficulty the office of the one particular Parisian newspaper which has the right to insist on an explanation.

But the vital point is this. Judge Parry gives the instance of a judgment in which Mansfield, overriding certain remote precedents and quaint survivals, declared that there cannot be slaves in England. I am sorry to mention such a detail, but the fact is that the same judge made law is now declaring in the same way that therecan be slaves in England. A magistrate has forbidden men to leave an employer, though the contract had admittedly terminated. Practical courts are overriding the obsolete and remote precedent of some man, far in the mists of mediaevalism, who is said to have made a free contract with a wealthier fellow-creature. They are disregarding the quaint survivals in our language, whereby the hand holding the tool is described as “his” hand. Our more vivid modern speech calls the man himself a hand; merely one of the many hands of his Briarean master. “There comes a breaking-point”; and it is liberty that is broken.

Whether the silent millions approve this judgment, or the other judgments, liberal or servile, feminist or anti-feminist, which Judge Parry quotes, I will not debate, but I leave the query to his very fair consideration. For if those silent millions spoke, I fancy they would surprise us in many matters, but most of all in the discovery of how little they think of all of us, judges, lawyers, literary fellows, and the rest. But I am very certain that Judge Parry would be found among the few, among the very few, who amid all the insolence of our inconsistencies have never lost that rare and even awful thing, the respect of the poor.

Our Latin Relations

IT is odd how often one may hear, in the middle of a very old and genuine English town, the remark, that it looks like a foreign town. I heard it only yesterday, standing on the ramparts of the noble hill of Rye, which overlooks the flats like a Mount of St. Michael left inland. Most people know that Rye contains a mediaeval monument which might almost be called a mediaeval prophecy—a prophecy of modern things more awful than anything mediaeval. It is an ancient tower, which has not only always been marked on maps with the name of Ypres, but has always been actually pronounced by the name of Wipers. Nothing could mark a thing as more continuously national than that Englishmen sundered by vast centuries should actually make the same mistake and should mispronounce the same word in the same way.

There is in this small point a paradox we must understand, especially just now, if we are to have a really patriotic foreign policy. It is very unlucky that for some time our teaching of history has been rather the unteaching of history, because it has been the unteaching of tradition. Our histories told us we were Teuton; our legends told us we were Roman—and, as usual, the legends were right. It is not only true that England is nowhere more really English than where she is Roman—it is even true that she is nowhere more really English than where she is French. To take only the chance example, with which I began above, you could find nothing more national, more typical, more traditional, as a real piece of English history, than the very phrase “The Cinq Ports.” And it is all the more English because the word “cinq” is French and the word “port” is Latin. A Teutonist professor, full of some folly about “folk-speech,” might insist on our calling them “The Five Harbours,” or (for all I know) “The Five Holes.” But his version would be less popular, and only more pedantic. The Latin was always the popular element, which may not sound so odd if we happen to remember that the very word “popular” is Latin.

Thus our alliance with the French and the Italians is not something to be supported for the sake of the last five years. It is something to be solidified for the sake of more than a thousand. The fact has been hidden by the historical accident that we have often been the antagonists of the French in particular rivalries for particular things. But we were always much nearer to the French when we were their antagonists than to the Germans when we were their Allies. There was much more resemblance between a knight like the Black Prince and a knight like Bertrand du Guesclin than there ever was between a sailor like Nelson and a soldier like Blucher. A town like Rye is full of memories of fighting with the French, especially in the Middle Ages; of raids to and fro across the narrow seas, in which the bells of the coast-town churches were captured and recaptured; and there are spirited stories about the Abbot of Battle, worthy to be turned into ballads. But the very fact of these coast-town raids suggests that it was coast against coast, and even seaman against seaman. But the whole point of Prussian war was that it was an inland thing; the whole point of English war that it was an island thing. The alliance with Prussia was never either popular or natural; it was wholly aristocratic and artificial. Compared with that, the mediaeval war was as friendly as a mediaeval tournament. Nor was it peculiar to the case of France; it was true of all we call Latin—all that remains of the Roman Empire. The Latins, even when treated as foes in politics, were treated almost as friends in popular tradition. The English sailors sang in their idle moments “Farewell and adieu to you, fine Spanish ladies,” even when they had devoted their working hours to singeing the beards of the fine Spanish gentlemen. The children in the nurseries sang in imaginative triumph “The King of Spain’s daughter came to visit me,” though their Elizabethan parents might have been lighting the beacons and calling out the train-bands to prevent the King of Spain’s son, the noble Don John of Austria, from paying them such a visit. A thousand nursery rhymes and nonsense tags testify to a vast popular tradition that Southern Europe was the world to which we belonged. We belonged to a system of which Rome was the sun, and of which the old Roman provinces were planets. We were never meant to pursue a meteor out of empty space, the comet of Teutonism. Our place was in an order and a watch of stars, though one star might differ from another in glory. Our place was with that red star of Gaul which might well bear the name of Mars; or that morning and evening star which the Latins themselves named Lucifer, last to fade and first to return in every twilight of history; Italy, the light of the world.

A Latin alliance is founded on our history, though not on our historians. The French and English who fought each other round these southern harbours were also ready to help each other, and often did help each other. Not only did they frequently go crusading together against the Turks, but they would have been ready at any moment to go crusading against the Prussians. Chaucer was exceedingly English, and therefore partly French; and he sends his ideal knight to fight the heathen in Prussia. Froissart was highly French, and therefore respectful to the English; and he says that the French and English always do courtesy, but the Germans never. The truth is that all the old English traditions, scholarly and legendary, chivalric and vulgar, were at one in referring back to Roman culture, until we come to a new crop of very crude pedants in the nineteenth century.

Most of them were prigs, and many of them were snobs—for it was largely a Court fashion, spread by Court poets and Court chaplains. It was like a huge, hideous, gilded German monument; and, fortunately, it has already fallen down. But I think it undesirable that the mere discredited litter and lumber of it, left lying about, should for ever prevent us from building anything else.

Even after the ghastly enlightenment of the war there are people who cannot clear their minds of the notion that the Prussian is the Progressive. They think he is progressing now, because he is picking up new things. Picking up new things is not the way to progress, any more than picking up grass by the roots is the way to make it grow. The northern barbarian always has picked up new things, especially when they were other people’s things. It was still only picking up new things, whether it was picking pockets or picking brains. And there was always one other note about the new things—that they never lived to be old. The barbarians followed the creed of Arius as they followed the ensign of Attila. But nobody remembers Attila as everybody remembered Alfred; and, though some modern people object to hearing the Athanasian Creed, they have no opportunity of objecting to hearing the Arian Creed. The enthusiasms of semi-savages do not last.

On Pigs as Pets

A DREAM of my pure and aspiring boyhood has been realized in the following paragraph, which I quote exactly as it stands:

A complaint by the Epping Rural District Council against a spinster keeping a pig in her house has evoked the following reply: “I received your letter, and felt very much cut up, as I am laying in the pig’s room. I have not been able to stand up or get on my legs; when I can, I will get him in his own room, that was built for him. As to getting him off the premises, I shall do no such thing, as he is no nuisance to anyone. We have had to be in the pig’s room now for three years. I am not going to get rid of my pet. We must all live together. I will move him as soon as God gives me strength to do so.”

The Rev. T. C. Spurgin observed: “The lady will require a good deal of strength to move her pet, which weighs forty stone.”

It appears to me that the Rev. T. C. Spurgin ought, as a matter of chivalry, to assist the lady to move the pig, if it is indeed too heavy for her strength; no gentleman should permit a lady, who is already very much cut up, to lift forty stone of still animated and recalcitrant pork; he should himself escort the animal downstairs. It is an unusual situation, I admit. In the normal life of humanity the gentleman gives his arm to the lady, and not to the pig; and it is the pig who is very much cut up. But the situation seems to be exceptional in every way. It is all very well for the lady to say that the pig is no nuisance to anyone: as it seems that she has established herself in the pig’s private suite of apartments, the question rather is whether she is a nuisance to the pig. But indeed I do not think that this poor woman’s fad is an inch more fantastic than many such oddities indulged in by rich and reputable people; and, as I say, I have from my boyhood entertained the dream. I never could imagine why pigs should not be kept as pets. To begin with, pigs are very beautiful animals. Those who think otherwise are those who do not look at anything with their own eyes, but only through other people’s eyeglasses. The actual lines of a pig (I mean of a really fat pig) are among the loveliest and most luxuriant in nature; the pig has the same great curves, swift and yet heavy, which we see in rushing water or in rolling cloud. Compared to him, the horse, for instance, is a bony, angular, and abrupt animal. I remember that Mr. H. G. Wells, in arguing for the relativity of things (a subject over which even the Greek philosophers went to sleep until Christianity woke them up), pointed out that, while a horse is commonly beautiful if seen in profile, he is excessively ugly if seen from the top of a dogcart, having a long, lean neck, and a body like a fiddle. Now, there is no point of view from which a really corpulent pig is not full of sumptuous and satisfying curves. You can look down on a pig from the top of the most unnaturally lofty dogcart; you can (if not pressed for time) allow the pig to draw the dogcart; and I suppose a dogcart has as much to do with pigs as it has with dogs. You can examine the pig from the top of an omnibus, from the top of the Monument, from a balloon, or an airship; and as long as he is visible he will be beautiful. In short, he has that fuller, subtler, and more universal kind of shapeliness which the unthinking (gazing at pigs and distinguished journalists) mistake for a mere absence of shape. For fatness itself is a valuable quality. While it creates admiration in the onlookers, it creates modesty in the possessor. If there is anything on which I differ from the monastic institutions of the past, it is that they sometimes sought to achieve humility by means of emaciation. It may be that the thin monks were holy, but I am sure it was the fat monks who were humble. Falstaff said that to be fat is not to be hated; but it certainly is to be laughed at, and that is a more wholesome experience for the soul of man.

I do not urge that it is effective upon the soul of a pig, who, indeed, seems somewhat indifferent to public opinion on this point. Nor do I mean that mere fatness is the only beauty of the pig. The beauty of the best pigs lies in a certain sleepy perfection of contour which links them especially to the smooth strength of our south English land in which they live. There are two other things in which one can see this perfect and piggish quality: one is in the silent and smooth swell of the Sussex downs, so enormous and yet so innocent. The other is in the sleek, strong limbs of those beech trees that grow so thick in their valleys. These three holy symbols, the pig, the beech tree, and the chalk down, stand for ever as expressing the one thing that England as England has to say—that power is not inconsistent with kindness. Tears of regret come into my eyes when I remember that three lions or leopards, or whatever they are, sprawl in a fantastic, foreign way across the arms of England. We ought to have three pigs passant, gardant, or on gules. It breaks my heart to think that four commonplace lions are couched around the base of the Nelson Column. There ought to be four colossal Hampshire hogs to keep watch over so national a spot. Perhaps some of our sculptors will attack the conception; perhaps the lady’s pig, which weighs forty stone and seems to be something of a domestic problem, might begin to earn its living as an artist’s model.

Again, we do not know what fascinating variations might happen in the pig if once the pig were a pet. The dog has been domesticated—that is, destroyed. Nobody now in London can form the faintest idea of what a dog would look like. You know a Dachshund in the street; you know a St. Bernard in the street. But if you saw a Dog in the street you would run from him screaming. For hundreds, if not thousands, of years no one has looked at the horrible hairy original thing called Dog. Why, then, should we be hopeless about the substantial and satisfying thing called Pig? Types of Pig may also be differentiated: delicate shades of Pig may also be produced. a monstrous pig as big as a pony may perambulate the streets like a St. Bernard without attracting attention. . An elegant and unnaturally attenuated pig may have all the appearance of a greyhound. There may be little, frisky, fighting pigs like Irish or Scotch terriers; there may be little pathetic pigs like King Charles spaniels. Artificial breeding might reproduce the awful original pig, tusks and all, the terror of the forests—something bigger, more mysterious, and more bloody than the bloodhound. Those interested in hairdressing might amuse themselves by arranging the bristles like those of a poodle. Those fascinated by the Celtic mystery of the Western Highlands might see if they could train the bristles to be a veil or curtain for the eye, like those of a Skye terrier; that sensitive and invisible Celtic spirit. With elaborate training one might have a sheep-pig instead of a sheep-dog, a lap-pig instead of a lap-dog.

What is it that makes you look so incredulous? Why do you still feel slightly superior to the poor lady who would not be parted from her pig? Why do you not at once take the hog to your heart? Reason suggests his evident beauty. Evolution suggests his probable improvement. Is it, perhaps, some instinct, some tradition…? Well, apply that to women, children, animals, and we will argue again.

The Romance of Rostand

ROSTAND, the romantic dramatist of France, and a very national poet, died almost on the day of the great national triumph. He had lived, to use his own imaginative heraldry, to see the golden eagles of Gaul and Rome drive back the black eagles of Prussia and Austria. He was too much of an earlier generation to take the precise part of Pequy or Claudel in the process which banished the birds of barbaric night from the land of the Eagles of the sun. But the part he had played in that earlier time might well merit the use of a kindred metaphor, drawn from his own fairyland of ornithology. He had a special claim to use as one of his titles the noble mediaeval name of Chantecler. He might well be called the Gallic cock in that earlier twilight of vultures and bats. The end of the nineteenth century was a time of pessimism for Europe, and especially of pessimism for France; for pessimism was the shadow of Prussianism. Rostand was really a cock that crowed before the coming of sunrise. When it came it was red as blood; but the sun rose.

But that mediaeval nickname of the cock contains. a still more appropriate criticism. The word “clear” is always a clue to Rostand’s country, and to Rostand’s work. He suffered in the decadent days, he suffers to some extent still, from a strange blunder which supposes that what is clear must be shallow. It is chiefly founded on false figures of speech; and is akin to the mysteriously meaningless saying that still waters run deep. It is repeated without the least reference to the evident fact that the stillest of all waters do not run at all. They lie about in puddles, which are none the less shallow because they are covered with scum. Such were the North German philosophies fashionable at the end of the nineteenth century; men believed in the puddle’s profundity solely because of its opacity. When the decadent critics sneered at Rostand’s popularity, they were simply sneering at his lucidity. They were protesting against his power of conveying what he meant in the most direct and telling fashion. They were complaining bitterly because he did not think with a German accent, which is nearly the same thing as an impediment in the speech. The wit with which all his dialogues blazed was also a positive disadvantage in that muddle-headed modern world, which even now will only begin to realize gradually the greatness of France. Nothing has been so senselessly underrated as wit, even when it seems to be the mere wit of words. It is dismissed as merely verbal; but, in fact, it is more solemn writing that is merely verbal, or rather merely verbose. A joke is always a thought; it is grave and formal writing that can be quite literally thoughtless. This applies to jokes when they are not only quite verbal but quite vulgar. A good pun, or even a bad pun, is more intellectual than mere polysyllables. The man, the presumably prehistoric man, who invented the phrase, “When is a door not a door; when it’s ajar,” made a serious and successful mental effort of selection and combination. But a Prussian professor might begin on the same problem, “When is a door not a door; when its doorishness is a becoming rather than a being, and when the relativity of doorishness is co-ordinated with the evolution of doors from windows and skylights, of which approximation to new function, etc. etc.”—and the Prussian professor might go on like that for ever, and never come to the end because he would never come to the point. A pun or a riddle can never be in that sense a fraud. Real wisdom may be better than real wit, but there is much more sham wisdom than there is sham wit.

This is the immediate point about Rostand, who had very real wit, but wit of a very poetic and sometimes epic order. It is very characteristic of him, and very puzzling to his critics, that he was witty even in repudiating wit. In the scene ofCyrano de Bergerac, in which the hero pleads in his friend’s name against the preciosity of the heroine, he quite naturally uses the phrase touching the evaporation of truth in artificial terminology, “Et que le fin du fin ne soit la fin des fins.” That involves a pun and also involves a point; and it is a subject on which it would be quite easy to be earnest and pointless. A philosopher need never come to an end in talking about ends; precisely because he is not required to amuse anybody, he is not really required to mean anything. Every page, every paragraph, almost every line of Rostand’s plays bristles with these points, which are both verbal and vital. If any critic thinks it was easy to produce them by the hundred, there is an exceedingly easy test; let him try to produce one. In attempting to joke in this fashion, he will probably find himself thinking for the first time. For that matter, merely to make one of the better puns ofPunch orHood’s Annual would be enough to stump most of the sceptics who have been taught in the Teutonic schools to think a thing creative because it is chaotic, and vast because it is vague. A modern “thinker” will find it easier to make up a hundred problems than to make up one riddle. For in the case of the riddle he has to make up the answer.

The drama of Rostand was full of answers, if they seem to the superficial merely to be ringing repartees. In the ballade of the duel the hero says that the sword-thrust shall come at the end of the envoi, but something like it seems to come continually at the end of the line. But these retorts are really much more than superficial, because they have the ring of dogma, of affirmation and certainty, and therefore of triumph. The wit is heroic wit; and his sub-title was strictly correct when he calledCyrano a heroic comedy. It was written in a literary period which was far too pessimistic to rise even to heroic Tragedy. It will grow in value in a more virile time, when the air has been cleared by a great crusade. Rostand’s poetry will certainly remain. It may not remain among the very greatest poetry, for the very reason that he fulfilled the office rather of the trumpet than the lyre. But he himself may well have shared the spirited taste of his own hero, and have preferred that something even more noble than the laurel should remain as a feather in his cap.

Wishes

MOST of us, I suppose, have amused ourselves with the old and flippant fancy of what poets or orators would feel like if their wild wishes came true. The poet would be not a little surprised if the (somewhat inadequate) wings of a dove suddenly sprouted from his shoulder-blades. And I suspect that even the baby who cries for the moon would be rather frightened if it fell out of the sky, crushing forests and cities like a colossal snowball, shutting out the stars and darkening the earth it had illuminated. Shelley was magnificently moved when he wished to be a cloud driven before the wild West Wind: but even Shelley would have been not a little disconcerted if he had found himself turning head-over-heels in mid-air the instant he had written the line. He would even be somewhat relieved, I fancy, to fall upon the thorns of life and bleed a little more. When Keats, the human nightingale, lay listening to the feathered one, he expressed a strong desire for a long drink of red wine. In this I believe him to have accurately analysed his own sentiments. But when he proceeds to explain that he is strongly inclined at that moment to wish himself dead, I entertain strong doubts as to whether he is equally exact, and am by no means certain that he would really like “to cease upon the midnight” even “with no pain.” Such sceptical fantasies, I say, have occurred to most of us; they do not spoil fine poetry for those who really like it; they only salt it with humour and human fellowship. Things seriously beautiful are, perhaps, the only things that we can jest about with complete spiritual safety. One cannot insult the poem except by being afraid of the parody.

But I think there is another and more curious cause for this common human fancy of a wild wish which is disappointed by being fulfilled. The idea is very common, of course, in popular tradition: in the tale of King Midas; in the tale of the Black Pudding; in the tale of the Goloshes of Fortune. My own personal feeling about it, I think, is that a world in which all one’s wishes were fulfilled would, quite apart from disappointments, be an unpleasant world to live in. The world would be too like a dream, and the dream too like a nightmare. The Ego would be too big for the Cosmos; it would be a bore to be so important as that. I believe a great part of such poetic pleasure as I have comes from a certain disdainful indifference in actual things. Demeter withered up the cornfields: I like the cornfields because they grow in spite of me. At least, I can lay my hand on my heart and say that no cornfield ever grew with my assistance. Ajax defied the lightning; but I like the lightning because it defies me. I enjoy stars and the sun or trees and the sea, because they exist in spite of me; and I believe the sentiment to be at the root of all that real kind of romance which makes life not a delusion of the night, but an adventure of the morning. It is, indeed, in the clash of circumstances that men are most alive. When we break a lance with an opponent the whole romance is in the fact that the lance does break. It breaks because it is real: it does not vanish like an elfin spear. And even when there is an element of the marvellous or impossible in true poetry, there is always also this element of resistance, of actuality and shock. The most really poetical impossibility is an irresistible force colliding with an immovable post. When that happens it will be the end of the world.

It is true, of course, that marvels, even marvels of transformation, illustrate the noblest histories and traditions. But we should notice a rather curious difference which the instinct of popular legend has in almost all cases kept. The wonder-working done by good people, saints and friends of man, is almost always represented in the form of restoring things or people to their proper shapes. St. Nicholas, the Patron Saint of Children, finds a boiling pot in which two children have been reduced to a sort of Irish stew. He restores them miraculously to life; because they ought to be children and ought not to be Irish stew. But he does not turn them into angels; and I can remember no case in hagiology of such an official promotion. If a woman were blind, the good wonder-workers would give her back her eyes; if a man were halt, they would give him back his leg. But they did not, I think, say to the man: “You are so good that you really ought to be a woman”; or to the woman: “You are so bothered it is time you had a holiday as a man.” I do not say there are no exceptions; but this is the general tone of the tales about good magic. But, on the other hand, the popular tales about bad magic are specially full of the idea that evil alters and destroys the personality. The black witch turns a child into a cat or a dog; the bad magician keeps the Prince captive in the form of a parrot, or the Princess in the form of a hind; in the gardens of the evil spirits human beings are frozen into statues or tied to the earth as trees. In all such instinctive literature the denial of identity is the very signature of Satan. In that sense it is true that the true God is the God of things as they are—or, at least, as they were meant to be. And I think that something of this healthy fear of losing self through the supernatural is behind the widespread sentiment of the Three Wishes; the sentiment which says, in the words of Thackeray:

Fairy roses, fairy rings Turn out sometimes troublesome things.

Now the transition may seem queer; but this power of seeing that a tree isthere, in spite of you and me, that it holds of God and its own treeishness, is of great importance just now in practical politics. We are in sharp collision with a large number of things, some of which are real facts and all of which are real faiths. We must see these things objectively, as we do a tree; and understand that they exist whether we like them or not. We must not try and turn them into something different by the mere exercise of our own minds, as if we were witches. I happen to think, for instance, that it is silly of Orangemen to think they would be persecuted under Home Rule. But I think it is sillier to think that the Orangemen do not think so. It is sillier not to see that a man can fire off a gun for a prejudice as well as he can for an ideal. I disagree with the Orangemen; I don’t disagree with the Nationalists; but I deny neither. I sympathize with the Labour revolt; I don’t sympathize with the Feminist revolt; but I deny neither. Then, again, both these latter tendencies have succeeded in colliding violently with another reality, the priests of the ancient popular creed of Ireland. They achieved that catastrophe, not because they did not believe the creed, but because they could not even believe that it was believed.

Now you can, if you choose, pass your life in a wizard dream, in which all your enemies are turned into something else. You can insist that a priest is only a parrot, or a Suffragette always a wandering hind: but if you do, you will sooner or later get into your head what is meant by an immovable post.

The Futurists

THERE are still people talking about Futurism, though I should have thought it was now a thing of the past, exploded by its own silly gunpowder train of progressive theory. If a man only believed the world was round because his grandmother said it was flat, another man had only to say it was spiral in order to be a more advanced idiot than either of them. But, after all, the world is one shape and not another (I don’t care which myself, but certainly one), and will be when we all die, and would have been if no worm or weed had ever lived. And it amuses me to notice that the very Agnostics who still quote Galileo’s phrase about the earth, “And yet it moves!” are the very people who talk as if truth could be different from age to age—as if the whole world was a different shape when you or I were in a different frame of mind. Progressives of this kindcannot say “And yet it moves” save in the sense that their own foot can roll it about like a football, or that their own finger can stop it as Joshua’s stopped the moon. They may control Nature like witches; but they cannot appeal to Nature like Galileo. They have no abiding objective fact to which to appeal. On the mere progressive theory there is no more immortality about the astronomy of Galileo than the medicine of Galen.

But one or two interesting ideas can be found in Futurist speculations, essays, lectures, books, etc.—indeed, the Futurists can be interesting everywhere but in their pictures. And this is the difficulty of all such movements—the lack of the final fulfilment. I will not put it offensively, as by saying that they write a beautiful prospectus, but there are no funds. I do not mean it like that. I will put it poetically by saying that there are beautiful leaves and flowers, but there is no fruit. There are leaves of learning enough to fill a library; there are flowers of rhetoric enough to last a session. They are all about a picture: and there is no picture. Thus Mr. Nevinson, the eminent English Futurist, has explained that pictorial art should be as independent of natural facts as music is: it should not imitate, but utter. Of music, of course, the remark is true, and fairly familiar. Certainly three notes on a piano can bring tears to the eyes by reminding us of a dead friend: though certainly the first noise is not the noise he made when whistling to his dog, nor the second the noise he made when kicking his boots off, nor the third the noise he made when blowing his nose. Perhaps the three notes are noises he could never have made: perhaps he was unmusical, like many magnificent people— I am unmusical myself. Perhaps, I say, he was unmusical: yet music can express him. This is an interesting fact; but it is only one fact, and the examination of a few others would have shown Mr. Nevinson the shallowness of his artistic philosophy.

But Mr. Nevinson and the Futurists, having never seen a fact before in their lives, clutch hold of this one and rush after the car of progress like poor baby-laden charwomen after a motor-bus. Their deduction is this: As his favourite song recalls the friend, though it contains none of his grunts, snorts, or sneezes, so his portrait would better recall his appearance if it contained no trace of his eyes, nose, mouth, hair (if any), masculine sex, anthropoid or erect posture, or any other oddity by which his friends were in the habit of distinguishing him from a lamp-post or a large whale, or from the works of Creation in general. Mr. Nevinson says that the most pungent and passionate emotions (such, presumably, as we have about friendship and even about love) can be conveyed by planes, mathematical proportions, arbitrary or abstract colours, arrangements of line, and all the things we most of us instinctively associate with carpets, if not with oilcloth. “It is possible,” he says. It is. It is not a contradiction in terms. But if I say, “It is possible by arranging a tomato, ten pearl buttons, a copy of the second and last number of a Tariff Reform weekly, one wooden leg, three odd boots, and a bag with a hole in it, to induce your worst enemy to burst into tears and give you a million pounds in conscience money,” then, if you are a Monist and a fool, you will answer that it could not happen. But if you are an Agnostic and a Christian, you will answer that you tried it on with your worst creditor, and it didn’t work with him. Nor would the planes, angles, abstract colours work with him. They don’t work with you; they don’t work with me; they don’t work with anybody. And the reason simply is that these philosophers, like so many modern philosophers, do not possess the patience to see what they are taking for granted. Have you ever seen a fellow fail at the high jump because he had not gone far enough back for his run? That is Modern Thought. It is so confident of where it is going to that it does not know where it comes from.

The quite simple fallacy is this. The only thing we know about the things we call the Arts is that when they are good they all stir the soul in a somewhat similar way. Their roots in savagery or civilization are so different and so dark, their relations to utility or practical life are so prodigiously contrasted, the mere time or space they occupy is so unequal in every case, the psychological explanations of their very existence are so inconsistent and anarchic, that we simply do not know whether in one single point we can argue from one art to another. We do not know enough about it, and there is an end of the matter. For instance, many have compared classic poetry with classic architecture; and anyone who has ever felt the virginity and dignity of either will know what such a comparison means. Milton spoke of “building” a line of poetry; and nobody seems able to talk about sonnets without talking about marble. But in technical fact the analogy is only a fancy, after all. Treat it for one moment as Mr. Nevinson treats the analogy between music and painting, and it is pure, preposterous nonsense—like Futurism.

Who will deny that height, or the appearance of height, is one of the effects of architecture? Who has not read or said or felt that some wall seemed too enormous for any mortals to have made, that some domes seemed to occupy heaven, or that some spire seemed to strike him out of the sky? But who, on the other hand, ever said that his sonnet was printed higher up on the page than somebody else’s sonnet? Who ever either praised or disliked a piece of verse according to its vertical longitude? Who ever said, “My sonnet occupied five volumes of theTimes, but youshould see it pasted all in one piece ”? Who ever said, “I have written the tallest triolet on earth”?

Mr. Nevinson will bring a tear to my eye by exhibiting a pattern and calling it a picture on the same day when he induces me to read two hundred leading articles in theTimes simply by calling them a tower. They have many of the qualities of a tower: they are long; they are symmetrical; they are all built out of the same old bricks; they sometimes stand upright, like the Tower of Giotto; they more often lean very much, like the Tower of Pisa; they most frequently fall down altogether, and fall on the wrong people, like the Tower of Siloam. One could pursue such abstract fancies for ever, but the simple fact remains—and it is a fact of the senses. The thing is not a tower, because it does not tower. And the Futurist picture is not a picture, because it does not depict. Why one art can do without shapes, and another without words, and another without movement, and another without massiveness, and why each of these is necessary to one or other of them separately—all this we shall know when we know what art means. And I cannot say that the Futurists have helped us much in finding out.

The Evolution of Emma

AMONG the many good critical tributes to the genius of Jane Austen, to the fine distinction of her humour, the sympathetic intimacy of her satire, the easy exactitude of her unpretentious style, which have appeared in celebration of her centenary, there is one criticism that is naturally recurrent: the remark that she was quite untouched by the towering politics of her time. This is intrinsically true; nevertheless it may easily be used to imply the reverse of the truth. It is true that Jane Austen did not attempt to teach any history or politics; but it is not true that we cannot learn any history or politics from Jane Austen. Any work so piercingly intelligent of its own kind, and especially any work of so wise and humane a kind, is sure to tell us much more than shallower studies covering a larger surface. I will not say much of the mere formality of some of the conventions and conversational forms; for in such things it is not only not certain that change is important, but it is not even certain that it is final. The view that a thing is old-fashioned is itself a fashion; and may soon be an old fashion. We have seen this in many recurrences of female dress; but it has a deeper basis in human nature. The truth is that a phrase can be falsified by use without being false in fact; it can seem stale without being really stilted. Those who see a word as merely worn out, fail to look forward as well as back. I know of two poems by two Irish poets of two different centuries, essentially on the same theme; the lover declaring that his love will outlast the mere popularity of the beauty. One is by Mr. Yeats and begins: “Though you are in your shining days.” The other is by Tom Moore and begins. “Believe me, if all those endearing young charms.” The latter language strikes us as ridiculously florid and over-ripe; but Moore was far from being ridiculous. Believe me (as he would say), it was no poetaster who wrote those hackneyed words about the silent harp and the heart that breaks for liberty. And if English were read some day by strangers as a classic language, I am not sure that “endearing” would not endure as a better word than “shining”; or even that (after some repetition and reaction) it might not seem as strained to say “shining” as to say “shiny.” Yet Mr. Yeats also is a great poet, as I called him last week; only the printer or somebody altered it to a “good” one—a mysteriously moderate emendation. Similarly, when one of Jane Austen’s heroines wants to say that the hero is a good fellow, she expresses confidence in what she calls “his worth.” This goads her younger modern readers to madness; yet in truth the term is far more philosophic and eternal than the terms they would use themselves. They would probably say he was “nice,” and Jane Austen would indeed be avenged. For the best of her heroes, Henry Tilney, himself foresaw and fulminated against the unmeaning ubiquity of that word, a prophet of the pure reason of his age, seeing in a vision of the future the fall of the human mind.

Negatively, of course, the historic lesson from Jane Austen is enormous. She is perhaps most typical of her time in being supremely irreligious. Her very virtues glitter with the cold sunlight of the great secular epoch between mediaeval and modern mysticism. In that small masterpiece, Northanger Abbey, her unconsciousness of history is itself a piece of history. For Catherine Morland was right, as young and romantic people often are. A real crime had been committed in Northanger Abbey. It is implied in the very name of Northanger Abbey. It was the crucial crime of the sixteenth century, when all the institutions of the poor were savagely seized to be the private possessions of the rich. It is strange that the name remains; it is stranger still that it remains unrealized. We should think it odd to go to tea at a man’s house and find it was still called a church. We should be surprised if a gentleman’s shooting box at Claybury were referred to as Claybury Cathedral. But the irony of the eighteenth century is that Catherine was healthily interested in crimes and yet never found the real crime; and that she never really thought of it as an abbey, even when she thought of it most as an antiquity.

But there is a positive as well as a negative way in which her greatness, like Shakespeare’s, illuminates history and polities, because it illuminates everything. She understood every intricacy of the upper middle class and the minor gentry, which were to make so much of the mental life of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It is said that she ignored the poor and disregarded their opinions. She did, but not more than all our Governments and all our Acts of Parliaments have done. And at least she did consistently ignore them; she ignored where she was ignorant. Well it would have been for the world if others had ignored the working-class until they understood it as well as she did the middle class. She was not a student of sociology; she did not study the poor. But she did study the students—or at least the social types which were to become the students of the poor. She knew her own class, and knew it without illusions; and there is much light on later problems to be found in her delicate delineation of vanities and snobberies and patronage. She had to do with the human heart; and it is that which cometh out of the heart that defileth a nation, philanthropy, efficiency, organization, social reform. And if the weaker brethren still wonder why we should find in Baby Week or Welfare Work a dangerous spirit, from which its best adherents find it hard to free themselves, if they doubt how such a danger can be reconciled with the personal delicacy and idealism of many of the women who work such things, if they think that fine words or even fine feelings will guarantee a respect for the personality of the poor, I really do not know that they could do better than sit down, I trust not for the first time, to the reading ofEmma.

For all this that has happened since might well be called the Evolution of Emma. That unique and formidable institution, the English Lady, has, indeed, become much more of a public institution; that is, she has made the same mistakes on a much larger scale. The softer fastidiousness and finer pride of the more gracious eighteenth-century heroine may seem to make her a shadow by comparison. It seems cruel to say that the breaking off of Harriet’s humbler engagement foreshadows the indiscriminate development of Divorce for the Poor. It seems horrible to say that Emma’s small matchmaking has in it the seed of the pestilence of Eugenics. But it is true. With a gentleness and justice and sympathy with good intentions, which clear her from the charge of common cynicism, the great novelist does find the spring of her heroine’s errors, and of many of ours. That spring is a philanthropy, and even a generosity, secretly founded on gentility. Emma Woodhouse was a wit, she was a good woman, she was an individual with a right to her own opinion; but it was because she was a lady that she acted as she did, and thought she had a right to act as she did. She is the type in fiction of a whole race of English ladies, in fact, for whom refinement is religion. Her claim to oversee and order the social things about her consisted in being refined; she would not have admitted that being rich had anything to do with it; but as a fact it had everything to do with it. If she had been very much richer, if she had had one of the great modern fortunes, if she had had the wider modern opportunities (for the rich) she would have thought it her duty to act on the wider modern scale; she would have had public spirit and political grasp. She would have dealt with a thousand Robert Martins and a thousand Harriet Smiths, and made the same muddle about all of them. That is what we mean about things like Baby Week—and if there had been a baby in the story, Miss Woodhouse would certainly have seen all its educational needs with a brilliant clearness. And we do not mean that the work is done entirely by Mrs. Pardiggle; we mean that much of it is done by Miss Woodhouse. But it is done because sheis Miss Woodhouse and not Martha Muggins or Jemina Jones; because the Lady Bountiful is a lady first, and will bestow every bounty but freedom.

It is noted that there are few traces of the French Revolution in Miss Austen’s novels; but, indeed, there have been few traces of it in Miss Austen’s country. The peculiarity which has produced the situation I describe is really this: that the new sentiment of humanitarianism has come, when the old sentiment of aristocracy has not gone. Social superiors have not really lost any old privileges; they have gained new privileges, including that of being superior in philosophy and philanthropy as well as in riches and refinement. No revolution has shaken their secret security or menaced them with the awful peril of becoming no more than men. Therefore their social reform is but their social refinement grown restless. And in this old teacup comedy can be found, far more clearly appreciated than in more ambitious books about problems and politics, the psychology of this mere restlessness in the rich, when it first stirred upon its cushions. Jane Austen described a narrow class, but so truthfully that she has much to teach about its after adventures, when it remained narrow as a class and broadened only as a sect.

The Pseudo-Scientific Books

THERE is a certain kind of modern book which must, if possible, be destroyed. It ought to be blown to pieces with the dynamite of some great satirist like Swift or Dickens. As it is, it must be patiently hacked into pieces even by some plodding person like myself. I will do it, as George Washington said, with my little hatchet; though it might take a long time to do it properly. The kind of book I mean is the pseudo-scientific book. And by this I do not mean that the man who writes it is a conscious quack or that he knows nothing; I mean that he proves nothing; he simply gives you all his cocksure, and yet shaky, modern opinions and calls it science. Books are coming out with so-called scientific conclusions— books in which there is actually no scientific argument at all. They simply affirm all the notions that happen to be fashionable in loose “intellectual” clubs, and call them the conclusions of research. But I am no more awed by the flying fashions among prigs than I am by the flying fashions among snobs. Snobs say they have the right kind of hat; prigs say they have the right kind of head. But in both cases I should like some evidence beyond their own habit of staring at themselves in the glass. Suppose I were to write about the current fashions in dress something like this: “Our ignorant and superstitious ancestors had straight hat-brims; but the advance of reason and equality has taught us to have curly hat-brims; in early times shirt-fronts are triangular, but science has shown that they ought to be round; barbaric peoples had loose trousers, but enlightened and humane peoples have tight trousers,” and so on, and so on. You would naturally rebel at this simple style of argument. You would say—“But, hang it all, give us some facts. Prove that the new fashions are more enlightened. Prove that men think better in the new hats. Prove that men run faster in the new trousers.”

I have just read a book which has been widely recommended, which is introduced to the public by Dr. Saleeby, and which is, I understand, written by a Swiss scientist of great distinction. It is calledSexual Ethics, by Professor Forel. I began to read the book, therefore, with respect. I finished reading it with stupefaction. The Swiss Professor is obviously an honest man, though too Puritanical to my taste, and I am told that he does really know an enormous lot about insects. But as for the conception of proving a case, as for any notion that a “new” opinion needs proof, and that it is not enough, when you knock down great institutions, to say that you don’t like them—it is clear that no such conceptions have ever crossed his mind. Science says that man has no conscience. Science says that man and woman must have the same political powers. Science says that sterile unions are morally free and without rule. Science says that it is wrong to drink fermented liquor. And all this with a splendid indifference to the two facts— first, that “Science” does not say these things at all, for numbers of great scientists say exactly the opposite; and second, that if Science did say these things, a person reading a book of rationalistic ethics might be permitted to ask why. Professor Forel may have mountains of evidence which he has no space to exhibit. We will give him the benefit of that doubt, and pass on to points where any thinking man is capable of judging him.

Where this sort of scientific writer is seen in all his glory is in his first abstract arguments about the nature of morality. He is immense; he is at once simple and monstrous, like a whale. He always has one dim principle or prejudice: to prove that there is nothing separate or sacred about the moral sense. Professor Forel holds this prejudice with all possible decorum and propriety. He always trots out three arguments to prove it; like three old broken-kneed elephants. Professor Forel duly trots them out. They are supposed to show that there is no such thing positively existing as the conscience; and they might just as easily be used to show that there are no such things as wings or whiskers, or toes or teeth, or boots or books, or Swiss Professors.

The first argument is that man has no conscience because some men are quite mad, and therefore not particularly conscientious. The second argument is that man has no conscience because some men are more conscientious than others. And the third is that man has no conscience because conscientious men in different countries and quite different circumstances often do very different things. Professor Forel applies these arguments eloquently to the question of human consciences; and I really cannot see why I should not apply them to the question of human noses. Man has no nose because now and then a man has no nose—I believe that Sir William Davenant, the poet, had none. Man has no nose because some noses are longer than others or can smell better than others. Man has no nose because not only are noses of different shapes, but (oh, piercing sword of scepticism!) some men use their noses and find the smell of incense nice, while some use their noses and find it nasty. Science therefore declares that man is normally noseless; and will take this for granted for the next four or five hundred pages, and will treat all the alleged noses of history as the quaint legends of a credulous age.

I do not mention these views because they are original, but exactly because they are not. They are only dangerous in Professor Forel’s book because they can be found in a thousand books of our epoch. This writer solemnly asserts that Kant’s idea of an ultimate conscience is a fable because Mohammedans think it wrong to drink wine, while English officers think it right. Really he might just as well say that the instinct of self-preservation is a fable because some people avoid brandy in order to live long, and some people drink brandy in order to save their lives. Does Professor Forel believe that Kant, or anybody else, thought that our consciences gave us direct commands about the details of diet or social etiquette? Did Kant maintain that, when we had reached a certain stage of dinner, a supernatural voice whispered in our ear “Asparagus”; or that the marriage between almonds and raisins was a marriage that was made in heaven? Surely it is plain enough that all these social duties are deduced from primary moral duties—and may be deduced wrong. Conscience does not suggest “asparagus,” but it does suggest amiability, and it is thought by some to be an amiable act to accept asparagus when it is offered to you. Conscience does not respect fish and sherry; but it does respect any innocent ritual that will make men feel alike. Conscience does not tell you not to drink your hock after your port. But it does tell you not to commit suicide; and your mere naturalistic reason tells you that the first act may easily approximate to the second.

Christians encourage wine as something which will benefit men. Teetotallers discourage wine as something that will destroy men. Their conscientious conclusions are different, but their consciences are just the same. Teetotallers say that wine is bad because they think it moral to say what they think. Christians will not say that wine is bad because they think it immoral to say what they don’t think. And a triangle is a three-sided figure. And a dog is a four-legged animal. And Queen Anne is dead. We have, indeed, come back to alphabetical truths. But Professor Forel has not yet even come to them. He goes on laboriously repeating that there cannot be a fixed moral sense, because some people drink wine and some people don’t. I cannot imagine how it was that he forgot to mention that France and England cannot have the same moral sense, because Frenchmen drive cabs on the right side of the road and Englishmen on the left.

The Humour of King Herod

IF I say that I have just been very much amused with a Nativity play of the fourteenth century it is still possible that I may be misunderstood. What is more important, some thousand years of very heroic history will be misunderstood too. It was one of the Coventry cycle of mediaeval plays, loosely called the Coventry Mysteries, similar to the Chester Mysteries and the Towneley Mysteries.

And I was not amused at the blasphemy of something badly done, but at a buffoonery uncommonly well done. But, as I said at the time, the educated seem to be very ignorant of this fine mediaeval fun. When I mentioned the Coventry Mystery many ladies and gentlemen thought it was a murder in the police news. At the best, they supposed it to be the title of a detective story. Even upon a hint of history they could only recall the story of Godiva; which might be called rather a revelation than a mystery.

Now I always read police news and I sometimes write detective stories; nor am I at all ashamed of doing either. But I think the popular art of the past was perhaps a little more cheerful than that of the present. And in seeing this Bethlehem drama I felt that good news might perhaps be as dramatic as bad news; and that it was possibly as thrilling to hear that a child is born as to hear that a man is murdered.

Doubtless there are some sentimental people who like these old plays merely because they are old. My own sentiment could be more truly stated by saying that I like them because they are new. They are new in the imaginative sense, making us feel as if the first star were leading us to the first child.

But they are also new in the historical sense, to most people, owing to that break in our history which makes the Elizabethans seem not merely to have discovered the new world but invented the old one. Nobody could see this mediaeval play without realizing that the Elizabethan was rather the end than the beginning of a tradition; the crown and not the cradle of the drama.

Many things that modern critics call peculiarly Elizabethan are in fact peculiarly mediaeval. For instance, that the same stage could be the place where meet the extremes of tragedy and comedy, or rather farce. That daring mixture is always made a point of contrast between the Shakespearean play and the Greek play or the French classical play. But it is a point of similarity, or rather identity, between the Shakespearean play and the miracle play.

Nothing could be more bitterly tragic than the scene in this Nativity drama, in which the mothers sing a lullaby to the children they think they have brought into safety the moment before the soldiers of Herod rush in and butcher them screaming on the stage. Nothing could be more broadly farcical than the scene in which King Herod himself pretends that he has manufactured the thunderstorm.

In one sense, indeed, the old religious play was far bolder in its burlesque than the more modern play. Shakespeare did not express the unrest of King Claudius by making him fall over his own cloak. He did not convey his disdain for tyranny by letting Macbeth appear with his crown on one side. This was partly no doubt an improvement in dramatic art; but it was partly also, I think, a weakening of democratic satire.

Shakespeare’s clowns are philosophers, geniuses, demigods; but Shakespeare’s clowns are clowns. Shakespeare’s kings may be usurpers, murderers, monsters; but Shakespeare’s kings are kings. But in this old devotional drama the king is the clown. He is treated not so much with disdain as with derision; not so much with a bitter smile as with a broad grin. A cat may not only look at a king but laugh at a king; like the mythical Cheshire cat, an ancient cat as terrible as a tiger and grinning like a gargoyle. But that Cheshire cat has presumably vanished with the Chester Mysteries, the counterpart of these Coventry Mysteries; it has vanished with the age and art of gargoyles.

In other words, that popular simplicity that could see wrongful power as something pantomimically absurd, a thing for practical jokes, has since been sophisticated by a process none the less sad because it is slow and subtle. It begins in the Elizabethans in an innocent and indefinable form. It is merely the sense that, though Macbeth may get his crown crookedly, he must not actually wear it crooked. It is the sense that, though Claudius may fall from his throne, he must not actually fall over his footstool.

It ended in the nineteenth century in many refined and ingenuous forms; in a tendency to find all fun in the ignorant or criminal classes; in dialect or the dropping of aitches. It was a sort of satirical slumming. There was a new shade in the comparison of the coster with the cat; a coster could look at a king and might conceivably laugh at a king; but most contemporary art and literature, was occupied in laughing at the coster.

Even in the long lifetime of a good comic paper likePunch we can trace the change from jokes against the palace to jokes against the public-house. The difference is perhaps more delicate; it is rather that the refined classes are a subject for refined comedy; and only the con1mon people a subject for common farce. It is correct to call this refinement modern; yet it is not quite correct to call it contemporary. All through the Victorian time the joke was pointed more against the poor and less against the powerful; but the revolution which ended the long Victorian peace has shaken this Victorian patronage. The great war which has brought so many ancient realities to the surface has re-enacted before our eyes the Miracle Play of Coventry.

We have seen a real King Herod claiming the thunders of the throne of God, and answered by the thunder not merely of human wrath but of primitive human laughter. He has done murder by proclamations, and he has been answered by caricatures. He has made a massacre of children, and been made a figure of fun in a Christmas pantomime for the pleasure of other children. Precisely because his crime is tragic, his punishment is comic; the old popular paradox has returned.

The Silver Goblets

IT was reported that at the sumptuous performance ofHenry VIII at His Majesty’s Theatre, the urns and goblets of the banquet were specially wrought in real and solid silver and in the style of the sixteenth century. This bombastic literalism is at least very much the fashion in our modern theatricals. Mr. Vincent Crummles considered it a splendid piece of thoroughness on the part of an actor that he should black himself all over to perform Othello. But Mr. Crummles’s ideal falls far short of the theoretic thoroughness of the late Sir Herbert Tree; who would consider blacking oneself all over as comparatively a mere sham, compromise, and veneer. Sir Herbert Tree would, I suppose, send for a real negro to act Othello; and perhaps for a real Jew to act Shylock—though that, in the present condition of the English stage, might possibly be easier. The strict principle of the silver goblets might be a little more arduous and unpleasant if applied, let us say, to The Arabian Nights, if the manager of His Majesty’s Theatre presented Aladdin, and had to produce not one real negro but a hundred real negroes, carrying a hundred baskets of gigantic and genuine jewels. In the presence of this proposal even Sir Herbert might fall back on a simpler philosophy of the drama. For the principle in itself admits of no limit. If once it be allowed that what looks like silver behind the footlights is better also for really being silver, there seems no reason why the wildest developments should not ensue. The priests in Henry VIII might be specially ordained in the green-room before they come on. Nay, if it comes to that, the head of Buckingham might really be cut off; as in the glad old days lamented by Swinburne, before the coming of an emasculate mysticism removed real death from the arena. We might re-establish the goriness as well as the gorgeousness of the amphitheatre. If real wine-cups, why not real wine? If real wine, why not real blood?

Nor is this an illegitimate or irrelevant deduction. This and a hundred other fantasies might follow if once we adu1it the first principle that we need to realize on the stage not merely the beauty of silver, but the value of silver. Shakespeare’s famous phrase that art should hold the mirror up to nature is always taken as wholly realistic; but it is really idealistic and symbolic—at least, compared with the realisn1 of His Majesty’s. Art is a mirror not because it is the same as the object, but because it is different. A mirror selects as much as art selects; it gives the light of flames, but not their heat; the colour of flowers, but not their fragrance; the faces of women, but not their voices; the proportions of stockbrokers, but not their solidity. A mirror is a vision of things, not a working model of then). And the silver seen in a mirror is not for sale.

But the results of the thing in practice are worse than its wildest results in theory. This Arabian extravagance in the furniture and decoration of a play has one very practical disadvantage— that it narrows the number of experiments, confines them to a small and wealthy class, and makes those which are made exceptional, erratic, and unrepresentative of any general dramatic activity. One or two insanely expensive works prove nothing about the general state of art in a country. To take the parallel of a performance somewhat less dignified, perhaps, than Sir Herbert Tree’s, there has lately been in America an exhibition not unanalogous to a conflict in the arena, and one for which a real negro actually was procured by the management. The negro happened to beat the white man, and both before and after this event people went about wildly talking of “the White Man’s champion” and “the representative of the Black Race.” All black men were supposed to have triumphed over all white men in a sort of mysterious Armageddon because one specialist met another specialist and tapped his claret or punched him in the bread-basket.

Now the fact is, of course, that these two prize-fighters were so specially picked and trained—the business of producing such men is so elaborate, artificial, and expensive—that the result proves nothing whatever about the general condition of white men or black. If you go in for heroes or monsters it is obvious that they may be born anywhere. If you took the two tallest men on earth, one might be born in Corea and the other in Camberwell, but this would not make Camberwell a land of giants inheriting the blood of Anak. If you took the two thinnest men in the world, one might be a Parisian and the other a Red Indian. And if you take the two most scientifically developed pugilists, it is not surprising that one of them should happen to be white and the other black. Experiments of so special and profuse a kind have the character of monstrosities, like black tulips or blue roses. It is absurd to make them representative of races and causes that they do not represent. You might as well say that the Bearded Lady at a fair represents the masculine advance of modern woman; or that all Europe was shaking under the banded armies of Asia, because of the co-operation of the Siamese Twins.

So the plutocratic tendency of such performances asHenry VIII is to prevent rather than to embody any movement of historical or theatrical imagination. If the standard of expenditure is set so high by custom, the number of competitors must necessarily be small, and will probably be of a restricted and unsatisfactory type. Instead of English history and English literature being as cheap as silver paper, they will be as dear as silver plate. The national culture, instead of being spread out everywhere like gold leaf, will be hardened into a few costly lumps of gold—and kept in very few pockets. The modern world is full of things that are theoretically open and popular, but practically private and even corrupt. In theory any tinker can be chosen to speak for his fellow-citizens among the English Commons. In practice he may have to spend a thousand pounds on getting elected—a sum which many tinkers do not happen to have to spare. In theory it ought to be possible for any moderately successful actor with a sincere and interesting conception of Wolsey to put that conception on the stage. In practice it looks as if he would have to ask himself, not whether he was as clever as Wolsey, but whether he was as rich. He has to reflect, not whether he can enter into Wolsey’s soul, but whether he can pay Wolsey’s servants, purchase Wolsey’s plate, and own Wolsey’s palaces.

Now people with Wolsey’s money and people with Wolsey’s mind are both rare; and even with him the mind came before the money. The chance of their being combined a second time is manifestly small and decreasing. The result will obviously be that thousands and millions may be spent on a theatrical misfit, and inappropriate and unconvincing impersonation; and all the time there may be a man outside who could have put on a red dressing-gown and made us feel in the presence of the most terrible of the Tudor statesmen. The modern method is to sell Shakespeare for thirty pieces of silver.

The Duty of the Historian

WE most of us suffer much from having learnt all our lessons in history from those little abridged history-books in use in most public and private schools. These lessons are insufficient—especially when you don’t learn them. The latter was indeed my own case; and the little history I know I have picked up since by rambling about in authentic books and countrysides. But the bald summaries of the small history-books still master and, in many cases, mislead us. The root of the difficulty is this: that there are two quite distinct purposes of history—the superior purpose, which is its use for children, and the secondary or inferior purpose, which is its use for historians. The highest and noblest thing that history can be is a good story. Then it appeals to the heroic heart of all generations, the eternal infancy of mankind. Such a story as that of William Tell could literally be told of any epoch; no barbarian implements could be too rude, no scientific instruments could be too elaborate for the pride and terror of the tale. It might be told of the first flint-headed arrow or the last model machine-gun; the point of it is the same: it is as eternal as tyranny and fatherhood. Now, wherever there is this function of the fine story in history we tell it to children only because it is a fine story. David and the cup of water, Regulus and theatque sciebat, Jeanne d’Arc kissing the cross of spear-wood, or Nelson shot with all his stars—these stir in every child the ancient heart of his race; and that is all that they need do. Changes of costume and local colour are nothing: it did not matter that in the illustrated Bibles of our youth David was dressed rather like Regulus, in a Roman cuirass and sandals, any more than it mattered that in the illuminated Bibles of the Middle Ages he was dressed rather like Jeanne d’Arc, in a hood or a visored helmet. It will not matter to future ages if the pictures represent Jeanne d’Arc cremated in an asbestos stove or Nelson dying in a top-hat. For the childish and eternal use of history, the history will still be heroic.

But the historians have quite a different business. It is their affair, not merely to remember that humanity has been wise and great, but to understand the special ways in which it has been weak and foolish. Historians have to explain the horrible mystery of how fashions were ever fashionable. They have to analyse that statuesque instinct of the South that moulds the Roman cuirass to the muscles of the human torso, or that element of symbolic extravagance in the later Middle Ages which let loose a menagerie upon breast and casque and shield. They have to explain, as best they can, how anyone ever came to have a top-hat, how anyone ever endured an asbestos stove.

Now the mere tales of the heroes are a part of religious education; they are meant to teach us that we have souls. But the inquiries of the historians into the eccentricities of every epoch are merely a part of political education; they are meant to teach us to avoid certain perils or solve certain problems in the complexity of practical affairs. It is the first duty of a boy to admire the glory of Trafalgar. It is the first duty of a grown man to question its utility. It is one question whether it was a good thing as an episode in the struggle between Pitt and the French Revolution. It is quite another matter that it was certainly a good thing in that immortal struggle between the son of man and all the unclean spirits of sloth and cowardice and despair. For the wisdom of man alters with every age; his prudence has to fit perpetually shifting shapes of inconvenience or dilemma. But his folly is immortal: a fire stolen from heaven.

Now, the little histories that we learnt as children were partly meant simply as inspiring stories. They largely consisted of tales like Alfred and the cakes or Eleanor and the poisoned wound. They ought to have entirely consisted of them. Little children ought to learn nothing but legends; they are the beginnings of all sound morals and manners would not be severe on the point: I would not exclude a story solely because it was true. But the essential on which I should insist would be, not that the tale must be true, but that the tale must be fine.

The attempts in the little school-histories to introduce older and subtler elements, to talk of the atmosphere of Puritanism or the evolution of our Constitution, is quite irrelevant and vain. It is impossible to convey to a barely breeched imp who does not yet know his own community, the exquisite divergence between it and some other community. What is the good of talking about the Constitution carefully balanced on three estates to a creature only quite recently balanced on two legs? What is the sense of explaining the Puritan shade of morality to a creature who is still learning with difficulty that there is any morality at all? We may put on one side the possibility that some of us may think the Puritan atmosphere an unpleasant one or the Constitution a trifle rickety on its three legs. The general truth remains that we should teach, to the young, men’s enduring truths, and let the learned amuse themselves with their passing errors.

It is often said nowadays that in great crises and moral revolutions we need one strong man to decide; but it seems to me that that is exactly when we do not need him. We do not need a great man for a revolution, for a true revolution is a time when all men are great. Where despotism really is successful is in very small matters. Every one must have noticed how essential a despot is to arranging the things in which every one is doubtful, because every one is indifferent: the boats in a water picnic or the seats at a dinner-party. Here the man who knows his own mind is really wanted, for no one else ever thinks his own mind worth knowing. No one knows where to go to precisely, because no one cares where he goes. It is for trivialities that the great tyrant is meant.

But when the depths are stirred in a society, and all men’s souls grow taller in a transfiguring anger or desire, then I am by no means so certain that the great man has been a benefit even when he has appeared. I am sure that Cromwell and Napoleon managed the mere pikes and bayonets, boots and knapsacks better than most other people could have managed them. But I am by no means sure that Napoleon gave a better turn to the whole French Revolution. I am by no means so sure that Cromwell has really improved the religion of England. As it is in politics with the specially potent man, so it is in history with the specially learned. We do not need the learned man to teach us the important things. We all know the important things, though we all violate and neglect them. Gigantic industry, abysmal knowledge, are needed for the discovery of the tiny things—the things that seem hardly worth the trouble. Generally speaking, the ordinary man should be content with the terrible secret that men are men—which is another way of saying that they are brothers. He had better think of Caesar as a man and not as a Roman, for he will probably think of a Roman as a statue and not as a man. He had better think of Coeur-de-Lion as a man and not as a Crusader, or he will think of him as a stage Crusader. For every man knows the inmost core of every other man. It is the trappings and externals erected for an age and a fashion that are forgotten and unknown. It is all the curtains that are curtained, all the masks that are masked, all the disguises that are now disguised in dust and featureless decay. But though we cannot reach the outside of history, we all start from the inside. Some day, if I ransack whole libraries, I may know the outermost aspects of King Stephen, and almost see him in his habit as he lived but the inmost I know already. The symbols are mouldered and the manner of the oath forgotten; the secret society may even be dissolved; but we all know the secret.

Questions of Divorce

I HAVE just picked up a little book that is not only brightly and suggestively written, but is somewhat unique, in this sense—that it enunciates the modern and advanced view of Woman in such language as a sane person can stand. It is written by Miss Florence Farr, is calledModern Woman: her Intentions, and is published by Mr. Frank Palmer. This style of book I confess to commonly finding foolish and vain. The New Woman’s monologue wearies, not because it is unwomanly, but because it is inhuman. It exhibits the most exhausting of combinations: the union of fanaticism of speech with frigidity of soul—the things that made Robespierre seem a monster. The worst example I remember was once trumpeted in a Review: a lady doctor, who has ever afterwards haunted me as a sort of nightmare of spiritual imbecility. I forget her exact words, but they were to the effect that sex and motherhood should be treated neither with ribaldry nor reverence: “It is too serious a subject for ribaldry, and I myself cannot understand reverence towards anything that is physical.” There, in a few words, is the whole twisted and tortured priggishness which poisons the present age. The person who cannot laugh at sex ought to be kicked; and the person who cannot reverence pain ought to be killed. Until that lady doctor gets a little ribaldry and a little reverence into her soul, she has no right to have any opinion at all about the affairs of humanity. I remember there was another lady, trumpeted in the same Review, a French lady who broke off her engagement with the excellent gentleman to whom she was attached on the ground that affection interrupted the flow of her thoughts. It was a thin sort of flow in any case, to judge by the samples; and no doubt it was easily interrupted.

The author ofModern Woman is bitten a little by the mad dog of modernity, the habit of dwelling disproportionally on the abnormal and the diseased; but she writes rationally and humorously, like a human being; she sees that there are two sides to the case; and she even puts in a fruitful suggestion that, with its subconsciousness and its virtues of the vegetable, the new psychology may turn up on the side of the old womanhood. One may say indeed that in such a book as this our amateur philosophizing of to-day is seen at its fairest; and even at its fairest it exhibits certain qualities of bewilderment and disproportion which are somewhat curious to note.

I think the oddest thing about the advanced people is that, while they are always talking of things as problems, they have hardly any notion of what a real problem is. A real problem only occurs when there are admittedly disadvantages in all courses that can be pursued. If it is discovered just before a fashionable wedding that the Bishop is locked up in the coal-cellar, that is not a problem. It is obvious to anyone but an extreme anti-clerical or practical joker that the Bishop must be let out of the coal-cellar. But suppose the Bishop has been locked up in the wine-cellar, and from the obscure noises, sounds as of song and dance, etc., it is guessed that he has indiscreetly tested the vintages round him; then, indeed, we may properly say that there has arisen a problem; for, upon the one hand, it is awkward to keep the wedding waiting, while, upon the other, any hasty opening of the door might mean an episcopal rush and scenes of the most unforeseen description.

An incident like this (which must constantly happen in our gay and varied social life) is a true problem because there are in it incompatible advantages. Now if woman is simply the domestic slave that many of these writers represent, if man has bound her by brute force, if he has simply knocked her down and sat on her—then there is no problem about the matter. She has been locked in the kitchen, like the Bishop in the coal-cellar; and they both of them ought to be let out. If there is any problem of sex, it must be because the ease is not so simple as that; because there is something to be said for the man as well as for the woman; and because there are evils in unlocking the kitchen door, in addition to the obvious good of it. Now, I will take two instances from Miss Farr’s own book of problems that are really problems, and which she entirely misses because she will not admit that they are problematical.

The writer asks the substantial question squarely enough: “Is indissoluble marriage good for mankind?” and she answers it squarely enough: “For the great mass of mankind, yes.” To those like myself, who move in the old-world dream of Democracy, that admission ends the whole question. There may be exceptional people who would be happier without Civil Government; sensitive souls who really feel unwell when they see a policeman. But we have surely the fight to impose the State on everybody if it suits nearly everybody; and if so, we have the right to impose the Family on everybody if it suits nearly everybody. But the queer and cogent point is this; that Miss Farr does not see the real difficulty about allowing exceptions—the real difficulty that has made most legislators reluctant to allow them. I do not say there should be no exceptions, but I do say that the author has not seen the painful problem of permitting any.

The difficulty is simply this: that if it comes to claiming exceptional treatment, the very people who will claim it will be those who least deserve it. The people who are quite convinced they are superior are the very inferior people; the men who really think themselves extraordinary are the most ordinary rotters on earth. If you say, “Nobody must steal the Crown of England,” then probably it will not be stolen. After that, probably the next best thing would be to say, “Anybody may steal the Crown of England,” for then the Crown might find its way to some honest and modest fellow. But if you say, “Those who feel themselves to have Wild and Wondrous Souls, and they only, may steal the Crown of England,” then you may be sure there will be a rush for it of all the rag, tag, and bobtail of the universe, all the quack doctors, all the sham artists, all the demireps and drunken egotists, all the nationless adventurers and criminal monomaniacs of the world.

So, if you say that marriage is for common people, but divorce for free and noble spirits, all the weak and selfish people will dash for the divorce; while the few free and noble spirits you wish to help will very probably (because they are free and noble) go on wrestling with the marriage. For it is one of the marks of real dignity of character not to wish to separate oneself from the honour and tragedy of the whole tribe. All men are ordinary men; the extraordinary men are those who know it.

The weakness of the proposition that marriage is good for the common herd, but can be advantageously violated by special “experimenters” and pioneers, is that it takes no account of the problem of the disease of pride. It is easy enough to say that weaker souls had better be guarded, but that we must give freedom to Georges Sand or make exceptions for George Eliot. The practical puzzle is this: that it is precisely the weakest sort of lady novelist who thinks she is Georges Sand; it is precisely the silliest woman who is sure she is George Eliot. It is the small soul that is sure it is an exception; the large soul is only too proud to be the rule. To advertise for exceptional people is to collect all the sulks and sick fancies and futile ambitions of the earth. The good artist is he who can be understood; it is the bad artist who is always “misunderstood.” In short, the great man is a man; it is always the tenth-rate man who is the Superman.

Miss Farr disposes of the difficult question of vows and bonds in love by leaving out altogether the one extraordinary fact of experience on which the whole matter turns. She again solves the problem by assuming that it is not a problem. Concerning oaths of fidelity, etc., she writes: “We cannot trust ourselves to make a real love-knot unless money or custom forces us to ‘bear and forbear.’ There is always the lurking fear that we shall not be able to keep faith unless we swear upon the Book. This is, of course, not true of young lovers. Every first love is born free of tradition; indeed, not only is first love innocent and valiant, but it sweeps aside all the wise laws it has been taught, and burns away experience in its own light. The revelation is so extraordinary, so unlike anything told by the poets, so absorbing, that it is impossible to believe that the feeling can die out.”

Now this is exactly as if some old naturalist settled the bat’s place in nature by saying boldly, “Bats do not fly.” It is as if he solved the problem of whales by bluntly declaring that whales live on land. There is a problem of vows, as of bats and whales. What Miss Farr says about it is quite lucid and explanatory; it simply happens to be flatly untrue. It is not the fact that young lovers have no desire to swear on the Book. They are always at it. It is not the fact that every young love is born free of traditions about binding and promising, about bonds and signatures and seals. On the contrary, lovers wallow in the wildest pedantry and precision about these matters. They do the craziest things to make their love legal and irrevocable. They tattoo each other with promises; they cut into rocks and oaks with their names and vows; they bury ridiculous things in ridiculous places to be a witness against them; they bind each other with rings, and inscribe each other in Bibles; if they are raving lunatics (which is not untenable), they are mad solely on this idea of binding and on nothing else. It is quite true that the tradition of their fathers and mothers is in favour of fidelity; but it is emphatically not true that the lovers merely follow it; they invent it anew. It is quite true that the lovers feel their love eternal, and independent of oaths; but it is emphatically not true that they do not desire to take the oaths. They have a ravening thirst to take as many oaths as possible. Now this is the paradox; this is the whole problem. It is not true, as Miss Farr would have it, that young people feel free of vows, being confident of constancy; while old people invent vows, having lost that confidence. That would be much too simple; if that were so there would be no problem at all. The startling but quite solid fact is that young people are especially fierce in making fetters and final ties at the very moment when they think them unnecessary. The time when they want the vow is exactly the time when they do not need it. That is worth thinking about.

Nearly all the fundamental facts of mankind are to be found in its fables. And there is a singularly sane truth in all the old stories of the monsters—such as centaurs, mermaids, sphinxes, and the rest. It will be noted that in each of these the humanity, though imperfect in its extent, is perfect in its quality. The mermaid is half a lady and half a fish; but there is nothing fishy about the lady. A centaur is half a gentleman and half a horse. But there is nothing horsey about the gentleman. The centaur is a manly sort of man—up to a certain point. The mermaid is a womanly woman—so far as she goes. The human parts of these monsters are handsome, like heroes, or lovely, like nymphs; their bestial appendages do not affect the full perfection of their humanity—what there is of it. There is nothing humanly wrong with the centaur, except that he rides a horse without a head. There is nothing humanly wrong with the mermaid; Hood put a good comic motto to his picture of a mermaid: “All’s well that ends well.” It is, perhaps, quite true; it all depends which end. Those old wild images included a crucial truth. Man is a monster. And he is all the more a monster because one part of him is perfect. It is not true, as the evolutionists say, that man moves perpetually up a slope from imperfection to perfection, changing ceaselessly, so as to be suitable. The immortal part of a man and the deadly part are jarringly distinct, and have always been. And the best proof of this is in such a case as we have considered— the case of the oaths of love.

A man’s soul is as full of voices as a forest; there are ten thousand tongues there like all the tongues of the trees: fancies, follies, memories, madnesses, mysterious fears, and more mysterious hopes. All the settlement and sane government of life consists in coming to the conclusion that some of those voices have authority and others not. You may have an impulse to fight your enemy or an impulse to run away from him; a reason to serve your country or a reason to betray it; a good idea for making sweets or a better idea for poisoning them. The only test I know by which to judge one argument or inspiration from another is ultimately this: that all the noble necessities of man talk the language of eternity. When man is doing the three or four things that he was sent on this earth to do, then he speaks like one who shall live for ever. A man dying for his country does not talk as if local preferences could change. Leonidas does not say, “In my present mood, I prefer Sparta to Persia.” William Tell does not remark, “The Swiss civilization, so far as I can yet see, is superior to the Austrian.” When men are making commonwealths, they talk in terms of the absolute, and so they do when they are making (however unconsciously) those smaller commonwealths which are called families. There are in life certain immortal moments, moments that have authority. Lovers are right to tattoo each other’s skins and cut each other’s names about the world; they do belong to each other, in a more awful sense than they know.

Mormonism

THERE is inevitably something comic (comic in the broad and vulgar style which all men ought to appreciate in its place) about the panic aroused by the presence of the Mormons and their supposed polygamous campaign in this country. It calls up the absurd image of an enormous omnibus, packed inside with captive English ladies, with an Elder on the box, controlling his horses with the same patriarchal gravity as his wives, and another Elder as conductor calling out “Higher up,” with an exalted and allegorical intonation. And there is something highly fantastic to the ordinary healthy mind in the idea of any precaution being proposed; in the idea of locking the Duchess in the boudoir and the governess in the nursery, lest they should make a dash for Utah, and become the ninety-third Mrs. Abraham Nye, or the hundredth Mrs. Hiram Boke. But these frankly vulgar jokes, like most vulgar jokes, cover a popular prejudice which is but the bristly hide of a living principle. Elder Ward, recently speaking at Nottingham, strongly protested against these rumours, and asserted absolutely that polygamy had never been practised with the consent of the Mormon Church since 1890. I think it only just that this disclaimer should be circulated; but though it is most probably sincere, I do not find it very soothing. The year 1890 is not very long ago, and a society that could have practised so recently a custom so alien to Christendom must surely have a moral attitude which might be repellent to us in many other respects. Moreover, the phrase about the consent of the Church (if correctly reported) has a little the air of an official repudiating responsibility for unofficial excesses. It sounds almost as if Mr. Abraham Nye might, on his own account, come into church with a hundred and fourteen wives, but people were supposed not to notice them. It might amount to little more than this, that the chief Elder may allow the hundred and fourteen wives to walk down the street like a girls’ school, but he is not officially expected to take off his hat to each of them in turn. Seriously speaking, however, I have little doubt that Elder Ward speaks the substantial truth, and that polygamy is dying, or has died, among the Mormons. My reason for thinking this is simple: it is that polygamy always tends to die out. Even in the East I believe that, counting heads, it is by this time the exception rather than the rule. Like slavery, it is always being started, because of its obvious conveniences. It has only one small inconvenience, which is that it is intolerable.

Our real error in such a case is that we do not know or care about the creed itself, from which a people’s customs, good or bad, will necessarily flow. We talk much about “respecting” this or that person’s religion; but the way to respect a religion is to treat it as a religion: to ask what are its tenets and what are their consequences. But modern tolerance is deafer than intolerance. The old religious authorities, at least, defined a heresy before they condemned it, and read a book before they burned it. But we are always saying to a Mormon or a Moslem—“Never mind about your religion, come to my arms.” To which he naturally replies—“But I do mind about my religion, and I advise you to mind your eye.”

About half the history now taught in schools and colleges is made windy and barren by this narrow notion of leaving out the theological theories. The wars and Parliaments of the Puritans made absolutely no sense if we leave out the fact that Calvinism appeared to them to be the absolute metaphysical truth, unanswerable, unreplaceable, and the only thing worth having in the world. The Crusades and dynastic quarrels of the Norman and Angevin Kings make absolutely no sense if we leave out the fact that these men (with all their vices) were enthusiastic for the doctrine, discipline, and endowment of Catholicism. Yet I have read a history of the Puritans by a modern Nonconformist in which the name of Calvin was not even mentioned, which is like writing a history of the Jews without mentioning either Abraham or Moses. And I have never read any popular or educational history of England that gave the slightest hint of the motives in the human mind that covered England with abbeys and Palestine with banners. Historians seem to have completely forgotten the two facts—first, that men act from ideas; and second, that it might, therefore, be as well to discover which ideas. The mediaevals did not believe primarily in “chivalry,” but in Catholicism, as producing chivalry among other things. The Puritans did not believe primarily in “righteousness,” but in Calvinism, as producing righteousness among other things. It was the creed that held the coarse or cunning men of the world at both epochs. William the Conqueror was in some ways a cynical and brutal soldier, but he did attach importance to the fact that the Church upheld his enterprise; that Harold had sworn falsely on the bones of saints, and that the banner above his own lances had been blessed by the Pope. Cromwell was in some ways a cynical and brutal soldier; but he did attach importance to the fact that he had gained assurance from on high in the Calvinistic scheme; that the Bible seemed to support him—in short, the most important moment in his own life, for him, was not when Charles I lost his head, but when Oliver Cromwell did not lose his soul. If you leave these things out of the story, you are leaving out the story itself. If William Rufus was only a red-haired man who liked hunting, why did he force Anselm’s head under a mitre, instead of forcing his head under a headsman’s axe? If John Bunyan only cared for “righteousness,” why was he in terror of being damned, when he knew he was rationally righteous? We shall never make anything of moral and religious movements in history until we begin to look at their theory as well as their practice. For their practice (as in the case of the Mormons) is often so unfamiliar and frantic that it is quite unintelligible without their theory.

I have not the space, even if I had the knowledge, to describe the fundamental theories of Mormonism about the universe. But they are extraordinarily interesting; and a proper understanding of them would certainly enable us to see daylight through the more perplexing or menacing customs of this community; and therefore to judge how far polygamy was in their scheme a permanent and self-renewing principle or (as is quite probable) a personal and unscrupulous accident. The basic Mormon belief is one that comes out of the morning of the earth, from the most primitive and even infantile attitude. Their chief dogma is that God is material, not that He was materialized once, as all Christians believe; nor that He is materialized specially, as all Catholics believe; but that He was materially embodied from all time; that He has a local habitation as well as a name. Under the influence of this barbaric but violently vivid conception, these people crossed a great desert with their guns and oxen, patiently, persistently, and courageously, as if they were following a vast and visible giant who was striding across the plains. In other words, this strange sect, by soaking itself solely in the Hebrew Scriptures, had really managed to reproduce the atmosphere of those Scriptures as they are felt by Hebrews rather than by Christians. A number of dull, earnest, ignorant, black-coated men with chimney-pot hats, chin beards or mutton-chop whiskers, managed to reproduce in their own souls the richness and the peril of an ancient Oriental experience. If we think from this end we may possibly guess how it was that they added polygamy.

Pageants and Dress

THE only objection to the excellent series of Pageants that has adorned England of late is that they are made too expensive. The mass of the common people cannot afford to see the Pageant; so they are obliged to put up with the inferior function of acting in it. I myself got in with the rabble in this way. It was to the Church Pageant; and I was much impressed with certain illuminations which such an experience makes possible. A Pageant exhibits all the fun of a Fancy Dress Ball, with this great difference: that its motive is reverent instead of irreverent. In the one case a man dresses up as his great-grandfather in order to make game of his great-grandfather; in the other case, in order to do him honour. What the great-grandfather himself would think of either of them we fortunately have not to conjecture. The alteration is important and satisfactory. All natural men regard their ancestors as dignified because they are dead; it was a great pity and folly that we had fallen into the habit of regarding the Middle Ages as a mere second-hand shop for comic costumes. Mediaeval costume and heraldry had been meant as the very manifestation of courage and publicity and a decent pride. Colours were worn that they might be conspicuous across a battle-field; an animal was rampant on a helmet that he might stand up evident against the sky. The mediaeval time has been talked of too much as if it were full of twilight and secrecies. It was a time of avowal and of what many modern people call vulgarity. A man’s dress was that of his family or his trade or his religion; and these are exactly the three things which we now think it bad taste to discuss. Imagine a modern man being dressed in green and orange because he was a Robinson. Or imagine him dressed in blue and gold because he was an auctioneer. Or imagine him dressed in purple and silver because he was an agnostic. He is now dressed only in the ridiculous disguise of a gentleman; which tells one nothing at all, not even whether he is one. If ever he dresses up as a cavalier or a monk it is only as a joke-very often as a disreputable and craven joke, a joke in a mask. That vivid and heraldic costume which was meant to show everybody who a man was is now chiefly worn by people at Covent Garden masquerades who wish to conceal who they are. The clerk dresses up as a monk in order to be absurd. If the monk dressed up as a clerk in order to be absurd I could understand it; though the escapade might disturb his monastic superiors. A man in a sensible gown and hood might possibly put on a top-hat and a pair of trousers in order to cover himself with derision, in some extravagance of mystical humility. But that a man who calmly shows himself to the startled sky every morning in a top-hat and trousers should think it comic to put on a simple and dignified robe and hood is a situation which almost splits the brain. Things like the Church Pageant may do something towards snubbing this silly and derisive view of the past. Hitherto the young stockbroker, when he wanted to make a fool of himself, dressed up as Cardinal Wolsey. It may now begin to dawn on him that he ought rather to make a wise man of himself before attempting the impersonation.

Nevertheless, the truth which the Pageant has to tell the British public is rather more special and curious than one might at first assume. It is easy enough to say in the rough that modern dress is dingy, and that the dress of our fathers was more bright and picturesque. But that is not really the point. At Fulham Palace one can compare the huge crowd of people acting in the Pageant with the huge crowd of people looking at it. There is a startling difference, but it is not a mere difference between gaiety and gloom. There is many a respectable young woman in the audience who has on her own hat more colours than the whole Pageant put together. There are belts of brown and black in the Pageant itself: the Puritans round the scaffold of Laud, or the black-robed doctors of the eighteenth century. There are patches of purple and yellow in the audience: the more select young ladies and the less select young gentlemen. It is not that our age has no appetite for the gay or the gaudy—it is a very hedonistic age. It is not that past ages—even the rich symbolic Middle Ages— did not feel any sense of safety in what is sombre or restrained. A friar in a brown coat is much more severe than an ‘Arry in a brown bowler. Why is it that he is also much more pleasant?

I think the whole difference is in this: that the first man is brown with a reason and the second without a reason. If a hundred monks wore one brown habit it was because they felt that their toil and brotherhood were well expressed in being clad in the coarse, dark colour of the earth. I do not say that they said so, or even clearly thought so; but their artistic instinct went straight when they chose the mud-colour for laborious brethren or the flame-colour for the first princes of the Church. But when ‘Arry puts on a brown bowler he does not either with his consciousness or his subconsciousness (that rich soil) feel that he is crowning his brows with the brown earth, clasping round his temples a strange crown of clay. He does not wear a dust-coloured hat as a form of strewing dust upon his head. He wears a dust-coloured hat because the nobility and gentry who are his models discourage him from wearing a crimson hat or a golden hat or a peacock-green hat. He is not thinking of the brownness of brown. It is not to him a symbol of the roots, of realism, or of autochthonous humility; on the contrary, he thinks it looks rather “classy.”

The modern trouble is not that the people do not see splendid colours or striking effects. The trouble is that they see too much of them and see them divorced from all reason. It is a misfortune of modern language that the word “insignificant” is vaguely associated with the words “small” or “slight.” But a thing is insignificant when we do not know what it signifies. An African elephant lying dead in Ludgate Circus would be insignificant. That is, one could not recognize it as the sign or message of anything. One could not regard it as an allegory or a love-token. One could not even call it a hint. In the same way the solar system is insignificant. Unless you have some special religious theory of what it means, it is merely big and silly, like the elephant in Ludgate Circus. And similarly, modern life, with its vastness, its energy, its elaboration, its wealth, is, in the exact sense, insignificant. Nobody knows what we mean; we do not know ourselves. Nobody could explain intelligently why a coat is black, why a waistcoat is white, why asparagus is eaten with the fingers, or why Hammersmith omnibuses are painted red. The mediaevals had a much stronger idea of crowding all possible significance into things. If they had consented to waste red paint on a large and ugly Hammersmith omnibus it would have been in order to suggest that there was some sort of gory magnanimity about Hammersmith. A heraldic lion is no more like a real lion than a chimney-pot hat is like a chimney-pot. But the lion was meant to be a lion. And the chimney-pot hat was not meant to be like a chimney-pot or like anything else. The resemblance only struck certain philosophers (probably gutter-boys) afterwards. The top-hat was not intended as a high uncastellated tower; it was not intended at all. This is the real baseness of modernity. This is, for example, the only real vulgarity of advertisements. It is not that the colours on the posters are bad. It is that they are much too good for the meaningless work which they serve. When at last people see—as at the Pageant-crosses and dragons, leopards and lilies, there is scarcely one of the things that they now see as a symbol which they have not already seen as a trade-mark. If the great “Assumption of the Virgin” were painted in front of them they might remember Blank’s Blue. If the Emperor of China were buried before them, the yellow robes might remind them of Dash’s Mustard. We have not the task of preaching colour and gaiety to a people that has never had it, to Puritans who have neither seen nor appreciated it. We have a harder task. We have to teach those to appreciate it who have always seen it.

On Stage Costume

WHILE watching the other evening a very well-managed reproduction ofA Midsummer Night’s Dream, I had the sudden conviction that the play would be much better if it were acted in modern costume, or, at any rate, in English costume. We all remember hearing in our boyhood about the absurd conventionality of Garrick and Mrs. Siddons, when he acted Macbeth in a tie-wig and a tail-coat, and she acted Lady Macbeth in a crinoline as big and stiff as a cartwheel. This has always been talked of as a piece of comic ignorance or impudent modernity; as if Rosalind appeared in rational dress with a bicycle; as if Portia appeared with a horsehair wig and side-whiskers. But I am not so sure that the great men and women who founded the English stage in the eighteenth century were quite such fools as they looked; especially as they looked to the romantic historians and eager archaeologists of the nineteenth century. I have a queer suspicion that Garrick and Siddons knew nearly as much about dressing as they did about acting.

One distinction can at least be called obvious. Garrick did not care much for the historical costume of Macbeth; but he cared as much as Shakespeare did. He did not know much about that prehistoric and partly mythical Celtic chief; but he knew more than Shakespeare; and he could not conceivably have cared less. Now the Victorian age was honestly interested in the dark and epic origins of Europe; was honestly interested in Picts and Scots, in Celts and Saxons; in the blind drift of the races and the blind drive of the religions. Ossian and the Arthurian revival had interested people in distant dark-headed men who probably never existed. Freeman, Carlyle, and the other Teutonists had interested them in distant fair-headed men who almost certainly never existed. Pusey and Pugin and the first High Churchmen had interested them in shaven-headed men, dark or fair, men who did undoubtedly exist, but whose real merits and defects would have startled their modern admirers very considerably.

Under these circumstances it is not strange that our age should have felt a curiosity about the solid but mysterious Macbeth of the Dark Ages. But all this does not alter the ultimate fact: that the only Macbeth that mankind will ever care about is the Macbeth of Shakespeare, and not the Macbeth of history. When England was romantic it was interested in Macbeth’s kilt and claymore. In the same way, if England becomes a Republic, it will be specially interested in the Republicans inJulius Caesar. If England becomes Roman Catholic, it will be specially interested in the theory of chastity inMeasure for Measure. But being interested in these things will never be the same as being interested in Shakespeare. And for a man interested in Shakespeare, a man merely concerned about what Shakespeare meant, a Macbeth in powdered hair and knee-breeches is perfectly satisfactory. For Macbeth, as Shakespeare shows him, is much more like a man in knee-breeches than a man in a kilt. His subtle hesitations and his suicidal impenitence belong to the bottomless speculations of a highly civilized society. The “Out, out, brief candle” is far more appropriate to the last wax taper after a ball of powder and patches than to the smoky but sustained fires in iron baskets which probably flared and smouldered over the swift crimes of the eleventh century. The real Macbeth probably killed Duncan with the nearest weapon, and then confessed it to the nearest priest. Certainly, he may never have had any such doubts about the normal satisfaction of being alive. However regrettably negligent of the importance of Duncan’s life, he had, I fancy, few philosophical troubles about the importance of his own. The men of the Dark Ages were all optimists, as all children and all animals are. The madness of Shakespeare’s Macbeth goes along with candles and silk stockings. That madness only appears in the age of reason.

So far, then, from Garrick’s anachronism being despised, I should like to see it imitated. Shakespeare got the tale of Theseus from Athens, as he got the tale of Macbeth from Scotland; and having reluctantly seen the names of those two countries in the record, I am convinced that he never gave them another thought. Macbeth is not a Scotchman; he is a man. But Theseus is not only not an Athenian; he is actually and unmistakably an Englishman. He is the Super-Squire; the best version of the English country gentleman; better than Wardle in Pickwick.

The Duke of Athens is a duke (that is, a dook), but not of Athens. That free city is thousands of miles away.

If Theseus came on the stage in gaiters or a shooting-jacket, if Bottom the Weaver wore a smock-frock, if Hermia and Helena were dressed as two modern English schoolgirls, we should not be departing from Shakespeare, but rather returning to him. The cold, classical draperies (of which he probably never dreamed, but with which we drape Aegisthus or Hippolyta) are not only a nuisance, but a falsehood. They misrepresent the whole meaning of the play. For he meaning of the play is that the little things of life as well as the great things stray on the borderland of the unknown. That as a man may fall among devils for a morbid crime, or fall among angels for a small piece of piety or pity, so also he may fall among fairies through an amiable flirtation or a fanciful jealousy. The fact that a back door opens into Elfland is all the more reason for keeping the foregound familiar, and even prosaic. For even the fairies are very neighbourly and firelight fairies; therefore the human beings ought to be very human in order to effect the fantastic contrast. And in Shakespeare they are very human. Hermia the vixen and Helena the maypole are obviously only two excitable and quite modern girls. Hippolyta has never been an Amazon; she may perhaps have once been a Suffragette. Theseus is a gentleman, a thing entirely different from a Greek oligarch. That golden good-nature which employs culture itself to excuse the clumsiness of the uncultured is: thing quite peculiar to those lazier Christian countries where the Christian gentleman has been evolved:

For nothing in this world can be amiss When simpleness and duty tender it.

Or, again, in that noble scrap of sceptical magnanimity which was unaccountably cut out in the last performance:

The best in this kind are but shadows; and the worst are no worse if imagination amend them.

These are obviously the easy and reconciling comments of some kindly but cultivated squire, who will not pretend to his guests that the play is good, but who will not let the actors see that he thinks it bad. But this is certainly not the way in which an Athenian Tory like Aristophanes would have talked about a bad play.

But as the play is dressed and acted at present, the whole idea is inverted. We do not seem to creep out of a human house into a natural wood and find the superhuman and supernatural. The mortals, in their tunics and togas, seem more distant from us than the fairies in their hoods and peaked caps. It is an anticlimax to meet the English elves when we have already encountered the Greek gods. The same mistake, oddly enough, was made in the only modern play worth mentioning in the same street withA Midsummer Night’s Dream, Peter Pan. Sir James Barrie ought to have left out the fairy dog who puts the children to bed. If children had such dogs as that they would never wish to go to fairyland.

This fault or falsity inPeter Pan is, of course repeated in the strange and ungainly incident of the father being chained up in the dog’s kennel. Here, indeed, it is much worse: for the manlike dog was pretty and touching: the doglike man was ignominious and repulsive. But the fallacy is the same; it is the fallacy that weakens the otherwise triumphant poetry and wit of Sir James Barrie’s play; and weakens all our treatment of fairy plays at present. Fairyland is a place of positive realities, plain laws, and a decisive story. The actors ofA Midsummer Night’s Dream seemed to think that the play was meant to be chaotic. The clowns thought they must be always clowning. But in reality it is the solemnity—nay, the conscientiousness— of the yokels that is akin to the mystery of the landscape and the tale.

The Yule Log and the Democrat

A BLASTING sneer has stricken me from time to time, to the effect that I believe in the Fireside Woman. For that matter, in the present season, I believe very much in the Fireside Man. But the very word selected for this withering insinuation shows the shallowness of the philosophy which prompts it. Surely there could not be a more stunted stupidity than the suggestion that a thing must be mild and monotonous because it has to do with fire. Why should the woman be tame because she is nearest to the wildest thing in the world? It is much more absurd to say it is prosaic to live by the fireside, than to say it is prosaic to live upon the edge of a precipice. It is tenable that some people would be prosaic anywhere; but it is not the fault of the precipice. It would sound paradoxical even in a fairy-tale to say that a princess was always yawning with ennui because she was introduced to a golden griffin or a crimson dragon; and in the round of daily fact, fire is about the nearest thing to a dragon that we know. Those who cannot get a fairy-tale out of the fire will not get it out of anything else. It may be affirmed, with fair certainty, that the people who talk most scornfully about the Fireside Woman do not get it at all, and do not wish her to get it at all. Herein lies all the absurdity of the alternatives to domesticity paraded by our progressive friends.

I am not speaking, of course, of work that must be done, especially in abnormal times; I am speaking of the psychology of tedium and of the romance of life. It is apparently demanded that the fire should be concealed in the entrails of an engine; that it should work through a labyrinth of bolts and bars; that it should litter around it numberless dreary offices, and leave behind it a train of indirect and mechanical servants, each further than the last from the least faint vibration of the original energy. Then, if in some outlying shed a woman has to stand counting tickets, or tying up parcels from morning till night, that woman is supposed to be free. She has Burst the Fetters. She is Living Her Own Life. But there is supposed to be nothing but dullness for the woman who is face to face with that elemental fury which drives and fashions the whole. There is nothing poetical (as compared with the tickets and labels) in the woman who repeats the primordial adventure of Prometheus. And there is nothing artistic (as compared with the shed) about the terrestrial light which turns the greyest room to gold; which reclothes the woman’s raggedest children round the hearth with the colours of a company of Fra Angelico, so that the mere reflections of the flame can conquer the solid hues of drab and dust, and all her household is clothed with scarlet.

The fire is in this, perhaps, the finest and simplest symbol of a truth persistently misunderstood. These elementary things, the land, the roof, the family, may seem mean and miserable; and in a cynical civilization very probably will seem mean and miserable. But the things themselves are not mean or miserable; and any reformer who says they are is not only taking hold of the stick by the wrong end, he is cutting off the branch by which he is hanging. The stamp of social failure is not that men have these simple things, but, rather, that they do not have them; or even when they do, do not know that they have them. If the Fireside Woman is dull, it is because she never looks at the fire. It is because she is not, in the wise and philosophical sense, enough of a fire-worshipper. And she lacks this faculty because the whole drift of the modern world discourages that creative concentration, that intensive cultivation of the fancy, which filled the lives of our fathers with crowds of little household gods, and which created all the lesser and lighter sanctities that surround Christmas.

Amid the wild and wandering adventures of the fireside are some which made possible the very scientific progress which is prone to carp at it. The engine, of which I spoke recently, was (we have all been told) suggested because James Watt looked at the kettle. I will not conceal a suspicion that our society might have evolved better if he had looked at the fire. I mean, of course, if he had not only looked at it, but seen it, which is not always the same thing. If he had seen what there is to be seen, he might possibly have done many things. He might, for instance, have revived the Trade Guilds of Glasgow, which failed to grasp his discovery; he might have taught them to take hold of the new energy and turn it towards democracy, instead of going off and handing over his invention to the Capitalists. For the defect which betrayed all Watt’s school and generation, full as it was of a virile and thrifty Radicalism, was precisely that it did not draw from these primal sources of piety and poetry. It was not sufficiently religious, and, therefore, not sufficiently domestic; and the rich rode it down at last. For the hearth is the only possible altar of insurrection, as even the pagans knew; from that fire alone are taken the flaming brands which can really lay waste the wicked cities. The truth can be told well enough by saying that James Watt would not really have comprehended the word Christmas; and would have been much annoyed if told to consider the Yule log instead of the kettle. He was the Fireside Man; but he was not domestic enough to be dangerous. For it is the domestic man and not the wild man, just as it is the domestic dog and not the wild dog, who really fights with thieves and dies at his post. There has not been a genuine popular war in England since the war of Wat Tyler, and the origin of that, it will be remembered, was strictly domestic. It was so domestic that it would not happen at all in the modern world: War Tyler would simply be automatically shot into prison for resisting a rational and necessary scientific inspection. It was the growth of an unhuman and unhomelike philosophy that made all the difference between the War of the fourteenth century and the Watt of the nineteenth. And the spirit of real democracy will not re-emerge until it rises from the fireside and comes forth in the red reality of fire; the giant of Christmas brandishing the Yule log tor a club.

But there is another feature in the flaming hearth which illustrates its natural kinship with Christmas. It is aplace, as Christmas is a time; and these vivid limitations are vital to man as a mystic. It is not merely that the idea of everything being in its right place makes all the difference between a fire in a house and a house on fire. It is that the fireplace is a frame; and it is the frame that creates the picture. By being tied to a special spot the sacred dragon becomes more powerful and, in the high imaginative sense, more free. This is that link between hearths and altars which the heathen felt, and of which I have already spoken. If the household be the heart of politics, the fire is the heart of the household; and the vital organ is spread equally everywhere only in the very low organisms. The universe of the mere universalist is one of the very low organisms. The theosophic generalizations about Nirvana and the All may be compared to the American fashion of abolishing the fireplace altogether and heating the whole house artificially to the same temperature—a depressing habit. I can imagine that a system of hot-water pipes might satisfy a Pantheist; the notion suggests a rather dreary parody of Pan and his pipes. I can imagine that a Buddhist might want his whole house warmed like the palm-house at Kew; but, I think, a limited and localized fire will always be as much associated with Christians as it has always been associated with Christmas.

Shakespeare, himself like a large and liberal fire round which winter tales are told, has hit the mark in this matter exactly, as it concerns the poet or maker of fictive things. Shakespeare does not say that the poet loses himself in the All, that he dissipates concrete things into a cloudy twilight, that he turns this home of ours into a vista or any vaguer thing. He says the exact opposite. It is “a local habitation and a name” that the poet gives to what would otherwise be nothing. This seeming narrowness which men complain of in the altar and the hearth is as broad as Shakespeare and the whole human imagination, and should command the respect even of those who think the cult of Christmas really is all imagination. Even those who can only regard the great story of Bethlehem as a fairy-tale told by the fire will yet agree that such narrowness is the first artistic necessity even of a good fairy-tale. But there are others who think, at least, that their thought strikes deeper and pierces to a more subtle truth in the mind. There are others for whom all our fairy-tales, and even all our appetite for fairy-tales, draw their fire from one central fairy-tale, as all forgeries draw their significance from a signature. They believe that this fable is a fact, and that the other fables cannot really be appreciated even as fables until we know it is a fact. For them, personality is a step beyond universality; one might almost call it an escape from universality. And what they follow is as much something more than Pantheism as a flame is something more than a temperature. For them, God is not bound down and limited by being merely everything; He is also at liberty to be something. And for them Christmas will always deal with a reality exactly as Shakespeare’s poetry deals with an unreality; it will give, not to airy nothing, but to the enormous and overwhelming everything, a local habitation and a Name.

More Thoughts on Christmas

MOST sensible people say that adults cannot be expected to appreciate Christmas as much as children appreciate it. At least, Mr. G. S. Street said so, who is the most sensible man now writing in the English language. But I am not sure that even sensible people are always right; and this has been my principal reason for deciding to be silly—a decision that is now irrevocable. It may be only because I am silly, but I rather think that, relatively to the rest of the year, I enjoy Christmas more than I did when I was a child. Of course, children do enjoy Christmas—they enjoy almost everything except actually being smacked: from which truth the custom no doubt arose. But the real point is not whether a schoolboy would enjoy Christmas. The point is that he would also enjoy No Christmas. Now I say most emphatically that I should denounce, detest, abominate, and abjure the insolent institution of No Christmas. The child is glad to find a new ball, let us say, which Uncle William (dressed as St. Nicholas in everything except the halo) has put in his stocking. But if he had no new ball, he would make a hundred new balls out of the snow. And for them he would be indebted not to Christmas, but to winter. I suppose snowballing is being put down by the police, like every other Christian custom. No more will a prosperous and serious City man have a large silver star splashed suddenly on his waistcoat, veritably investing him with the Order of the Star of Bethlehem. For it is the star of innocence and novelty, and should remind him that a child can still be born. But indeed, in one sense, we may truly say the children enjoy no seasons, because they enjoy all. I myself am of the physical type that greatly prefers cold weather to hot; and I could more easily believe that Eden was at the North Pole than anywhere in the Tropics. It is hard to define the effect of weather: I can only say that all the rest of the year I am untidy, but in summer I feel untidy. Yet although (according to the modern biologists) my hereditary human body must have been of the same essential type in my boyhood as in my present decrepitude, I can distinctly remember hailing the idea of freedom and even energy on days that were quite horribly hot. It was the excellent custom at my school to give the boys a half-holiday when it seemed too hot for working. And I can well remember the gigantic joy with which I left off reading Virgil and began to run round and round a field. My tastes in this matter have changed. Nay, they have been reversed. If I now found myself (by some process I cannot easily conjecture) on a burning summer day running round and round a field, I hope I shall not appear pedantic if I say I should prefer to be reading Virgil.

And thus it is really possible, from one point of view, for elderly gentlemen to frolic at Christmas more than children can. They may really come to find Christmas more entertaining, as they have come to find Virgil more entertaining. And, in spite of all the talk about the coldness of classicism, the poet who wrote about the man who in his own country home fears neither King nor crowd was not by any means incapable of understanding Mr. Wardle. And it is exactly those sentiments, and similar ones, that the adult does appreciate better than the child. The adult, for instance, appreciates domesticity better than the child. And one of the pillars and first principles of domesticity, as Mr. Belloc has rightly pointed out, is the institution of private property. The Christmas pudding represents the mature mystery of property; and the proof of it is in the eating.

I have always held that Peter Pan was wrong. He was a charming boy, and sincere in his adventurousness; but though he was brave like a boy, he was also a coward—like a boy. He admitted it would be a great adventure to die; but it did not seem to occur to him that it would be a great adventure to live. If he had consented to march with the fraternity of his fellow-creatures, he would have found that there were solid experiences and important revelations even in growing up. They are realities which could not possibly have been made real to him without wrecking the real good in his own juvenile point of view. But that is exactly why he ought to have done as he was told. That is the only argument for parental authority. In dealing with childhood, we have a right to command it—because we should kill the childhood if we convinced it.

Now the mistake of Peter Pan is the mistake of the new theory of life. I might call it Peter Pantheism. It is the notion that there isno advantage in striking root. Yet, if you talk intelligently to the nearest tree, the tree will tell you that you are an unobservant ass. There is an advantage in root; and the name of it is fruit. It is not true that the nomad is even freer than the peasant. The Bedouin may rush past on his camel, leaving a whirl of dust; but dust is not free because it flies. Neither is the nomad free because he flies. You cannot grow cabbages on a camel, any more than in a condemned cell. Moreover, I believe camels commonly walk in a comparatively leisurely manner. Anyhow, most merely nomadic creatures do, for it is a great nuisance to “carry one’s house with one.” Gipsies do it; so do snails; but neither of them travel very fast. I inhabit one of the smallest houses that can be conceived by the cultivated classes; but I frankly confess I should be sorry to carry it with me whenever I went out for a walk. It is true that some motorists almost live in their motor-cars. But it gratifies me to state that these motorists generally die in their motor-cars too. They perish, I am pleased to say, in a startling and horrible manner, as a judgment on them for trying to outstrip creatures higher than themselves—such as the gipsy and the snail. But, broadly speaking, a house is a thing that stands still. And a thing that stands still is a thing that strikes root. One of the things that strike root is Christmas: and another is middle-age. The other great pillar of private life besides property is marriage; but I will not deal with it here. Suppose a man has neither wife nor child: suppose he has only a good servant, or only a small garden, or only a small house, or only a small dog. He will still find he has struck unintentional root.

He realizes there is something in his own garden that was not even in the Garden of Eden; and therefore is not (I kiss my hand to the Socialists) in Kew Gardens or in Kensington Gardens. He realizes, what Peter Pan could not be made to realize, that a plain human house of one’s own, standing in one’s own backyard, is really quite as romantic as a rather cloudy house at the top of a tree or a highly conspiratorial house underneath the roots of it. But this is because he has explored his own house, which Peter Pan and such discontented children seldom do. All the same, the children ought to think of the Never-Never Land—the world that is outside. But we ought to think of the Ever-Ever Land—the world which is inside, and the world which will last. And that is why, wicked as we are, we know most about Christmas.

Dickens Again

I AM sorry that the comic costume festival which was organized for Christmas by one of the chief Dickensian societies has unavoidably fallen through. It is not for me to reproach those traitors who found it impossible to turn up: for I was one of those traitors myself. Whatever character it was that I was expected to appear in—Jingle, I suppose, or possibly Uriah Heep—was, under a final press of business, refused by me. These Dickensian enthusiasts were going to have a Christmas party at Rochester, where they would brew punch and drink punch, and drive coaches and fall off coaches, and do all the proper Pickwickian things. How many of them were ready to make a hole in the ice, to be wheeled about in a wheelbarrow, or to wait all night outside a ladies’ school, the official documents have not informed me. But I would gladly take a moderate part. I could not brew punch for the Pickwick Club; but I could drink it. I could not drive the coach for the Pickwick Club—or, indeed, for any club except the Suicide Club; but I could fall off the coach amid repeated applause and enthusiastic encores. 1 should be only too proud if it could be said of me, as of Sam’s hyperbolical old gentleman who was tipped into the hyperbolical canal, that “‘is ‘at was found, but I can’t be certain ‘is ‘ead was in it.” It seems to me like a euthanasia: more beautiful than the passing of Arthur.

But though the failure of this particular festivity was merely accidental (like my own unfortunate fall off the coach), it is not without its parallel in the present position of Dickensians and Christmas. For the truth is that we simply cannot recreate the Pickwick Club— unless we have a moral basis as sturdy as that of Dickens, and even a religious basis as sturdy as that of Christmas. Men at such a time turn their backs to the solemn thing they are celebrating, as the horses turn their backs to the coach. But they are pulling the coach. And the best of it is this: that so long as the Christmas feast had some kind of assumed and admitted meaning, it was praised, and praised sympathetically, by the great men whom we should call most unsympathetic with it. That Shakespeare and Dickens and Walter Scott should write of it seems quite natural. They were people who would be as welcome at Christmas as Santa Claus. But I do not think many people have ever wished they could ask Milton to eat the Christmas pudding. Nevertheless, it is quite certain that his Christmas ode is not only one of the richest but one of the most human of his masterpieces. I do not think that anyone specially wanting a rollicking article on Christmas would desire, by mere instinct, the literary style of Addison. Yet it is quite certain that the somewhat difficult task of really liking Addison is rendered easier by his account of the Coverley Christmas than by anything else he wrote. I even go so far as to doubt whether one of the little Cratchits (who stuffed their spoons in their mouths lest they should scream for goose) would have removed the spoon to say, “Oh, that Tennyson were here!” Yet certainly Tennyson’s spirits do seem to revive in a more or less real way at the ringing of the Christmas bells in the most melancholy part ofIn Memoriam. These great men were not trying to be merry: some of them, indeed, were trying to be miserable. But the day itself was too strong for them; the time was more than their temperaments; the tradition was alive. The festival was roaring in the streets, so that prigs and even prophets (who are sometimes worse still) were honestly carried off their feet.

The difficulty with Dickens is not any failure in Dickens, nor even in the popularity of Dickens. On the contrary, he has recaptured his creative reputation and fascination far more than any of the other great Victorians. Macaulay, who was really great in his way, is rejected; Cobbett, who was much greater, is forgotten. Dickens is not merely alive: he is risen from the dead. But the difficulty is in the failing under his feet, as it were, of that firm historic platform on which he had performed his Christmas pantomimes: a platform of which he was quite as unconscious as we, most of us, are of the floor we walk about on. The fact is that the fun of Christmas is founded on the seriousness of Christmas; and to pull away the latter support even from under a Christmas clown is to let him down through a trap-door. And even clowns do not like the trap-doors true that so glorious a thing as a Pickwick party tends to lose the splendid quality of a mere Mummery, and become that much more dull and conventional thing, a Covent Garden Ball. We are not ourselves living in the proper spirit of Pickwick. We are pretending to be old Dickens characters, when we ought to be new Dickens characters in reality.

The conditions are further complicated by the fact that while reading Dickens may make a man Dickensian, studying Dickens makes him quite the reverse. One might as well expect the aged custodian of a museum of sculpture to look (and dress) like the Apollo Belvedere, as expect the Pickwickian qualities in those literary critics who are attracted by the Dickens fiction as the materials for a biography or the subject of a controversy; as a mass of detail; as a record and a riddle. Those who study such things are a most valuable class of the community, and they do good service to Dickens in their own way. But their type and temperament are not, in the nature of things, likely to be full of the festive magic of their master. Take, for example, these endless discussions about the proper ending ofEdwin Drood. I thought Mr. William Archer’s contributions to the query some time ago were particularly able and interesting; but I could not, with my hand on my heart, call Mr. William Archer a festive gentleman, or one supremely fitted to follow Mr. Swiveller as Perpetual Grand of the Glorious Apollos. Or again, I see that Sir William Robertson Nicoll has been writing on the same Drood mystery; and I know that his knowledge of Victorian literature is both vast and exact. But I hardly think that a Puritan Scot with a sharp individualistic philosophy would be the right person to fall off the coach. Sir William Nicoll, if I remember right, once forcibly described his individualist philosophy as “firing out the fools.” And certainly the spirit of Dickens could be best described as the delight in firing them in. It is exactly because Christmas is not only a feast of children, but in some sense a feast of fools, that Dickens is in touch with its mystery.

Taffy

I DO not understand Welshmen. When we say we do not understand such-and-such a person, we usually mean that he has been making himself a nuisance. He has been bothering us in some way; and the puzzle of his motives and further intentions has become a practical one. I do not mean anything of the kind here: I mean barely what I say. The distant Trojans never injured me. Taffy never came to my house or stole any part of the provisions. On the contrary, historically speaking, I went to Taffy’s house and took away a good deal of what belonged to him. I do not think that Taffy is a thief; I do not even know enough about him to be sure of the preliminary statement that he is a Welshman. I mean, quite simply and ingenuously, that I know nothing about Wales—not even (for certain) that there is such a place. I went, indeed, a few weeks ago to a curious place full of rocks; and the people there said it was Wales. But, then, other people said that these people were very sly, and that you could not believe anything they said. But, then, as I did not believe the second people who did not believe the first people, it all came back to the same comfortable condition as before, which is one of blank and disinterested nescience. It is a condition I am in with regard to a large number of things in this world. I keep my faith for the things of another world. About this world I am a complete agnostic.

But in this particular case of ignorance I rather fancy that I am not alone. I think that the great majority of Englishmen have no real notion of the Welsh type or spirit, whatever it is. They have conceptions of the Scot and the Irishman, false conceptions, but always containing some lines of a true tradition. The Englishman does, so to speak, understand the Scotchman even when he misunderstands him. The Englishman does know what the Irish are, even while he demands indignantly of heaven why they are. The stingy Puritan in plaid trousers is a very crude and unjust version of that queer blend that makes the Scot—the combination of a certain coarseness of fibre with great intellectual keenness for abstract and even mystical things. Still, it is a version; the prose and poetry of the Scot remain in the caricature. The picture of Paddy at Donnybrook leaves out all the subtlety and self-tormenting irony that are mixed up with the pugnacity of the Irish. Still, the Irish are pugnacious; the Englishman has got the leading feature right. He knows that, for all his economics, the Scotchman often has a bee in his bonnet, and he knows that the Irishman generally has a wasp in his—a thing that will sting itself or anyone else merely for fun or glory.

In these cases, the caricature, though stiff, highly coloured, antiquated, and largely false, tells the remains of several truths. But who on earth has ever seen a caricature of a Welshman? In Punch and such papers we never see anything but pictures of a Welshwoman— as if there were no males in that peculiar country with the rocks. Even the woman is only marked as Welsh by wearing an extraordinary costume, rather like that of Cinderella’s supernatural godmother. Without the artist suggesting any costume at all, one would recognize the very silly portraits of Irishmen with long upper lips, in the style of apes. Without any plaid trousers to assist the mind, one could spot the stiff beards and rocky cheek-bones of the Scotchmen of Charles Keene. But if you took away the Welshwoman’s extraordinary hat, there would be nothing whatever to show that she was a Welshwoman. We have not in our minds a Welsh type to make fun of. It is interesting to remember that apparently Shakespeare had.

This state of entire non-understanding (as distinct from misunderstanding) of the Welsh seems to me just now to be not only unique, but important and rather serious. For, unless I am very much mistaken, Wales is going to play some peculiar, and perhaps dominant, part in the developments of our extraordinary time. If the Welsh begin to influence us without our having yet even begun to imagine them, we shall have the whole Irish business over again; the gradual or imperfect understanding of a thing in the process of wrestling with it in the dark. The indications of such a movement in Wales (wherever it is), the suggestion of the growing influence of Welshmen (whoever they may be), is something that comes to us rather by widely distributed happenings and hints than in any theatrical example. Some, however, would call Mr. Lloyd George a theatrical example; he has been called even more extraordinary things. And in that degree the thing is true. Mr. Lloyd George is very much more genuine and sincere and formidable in his capacity as leader of the little Welsh nation than he is in any of the other capacities in which he is foolishly praised and ridiculously reviled. But to anyone who really has an eye for history in action, the smallest strike secretary in a Welsh railway or colliery bulks much bigger in the present picture than Mr. Lloyd George. And it has been in Wales that many of the most dramatic and effective labour revolts have happened: above all it was in Wales that they presented peculiar features of their own, bad or good, which marked them out from the whole temper and habit of England in recent times. The modern theory of animals was challenged in the episode of the ponies in the mines. The modern theory of Jews was challenged in the violent Anti-Semite riots of the last few weeks. Things fierce and unfamiliar, things lost since the Middle Ages, are coming upon us out of the West.

As the curious incident of the quarrels between Welshmen and Jews has been mentioned, I will take the opportunity here of correcting a curious mistake that clings to the minds of numbers of my correspondents. There is in particular a gloomy gentleman in America who keeps on asking me how my Anti-Semite prejudice is getting on, and generally displaying a curiosity about how many Hebrew teeth I have pulled out this week, and how often a Pogrom is held in front of my house. He appears to base it all on some statement of mine that Jews were tyrants and traitors. Upon this basis his indignation is eloquent, lengthy and (in my opinion) just. The only weakness affecting this superstructure is the curious detail that I never did say that Jews were tyrants and traitors. I said that a particular kind of Jew tended to be a tyrant and another particular kind of Jew tended to be a traitor. I say it again. Patent facts of this kind are permitted in the criticism of every other nation on the planet: it is not counted illiberal to say that a certain kind of Frenchman tends to be sensual. It is as plain as a pikestaff that the Parisian tradition of life and letters has a marked element of sensuality. It is also as plain as a pikestaff that those who are creditors will always have a temptation to be tyrants, and that those who are cosmopolitans will always have a temptation to be spies. This has nothing to do with alleging that the majority of any people falls into its typical temptations. In this respect I should imagine that Jews varied in their moral proportions as much as the rest of mankind. Rehoboam was a tyrant; Jehoshaphat was not. In what is perhaps the most celebrated collection of Jews in human history, the proportion of traitors was one in twelve. But I cannot see why the tyrants should not be called tyrants and the traitors traitors; why Rehoboam should not cause a rebellion or Judas become an object of dislike, merely because they happen to be members of a race persecuted for other reasons and on other occasions. Those are my views on Jews. They are more reasonable than those of the people that wreck their shops; and much more reasonable than those of the people who justify them on all occasions.

“Ego et Shavius Meus”

ACCIDENT has cut me off this week from many current publications; and left me much to my own devices. It is therefore my immutable purpose to write an article about myself, under the thin pretence of noticing a book about Mr. Bernard Shaw.

This is all the more fun because it is exactly what Mr. Bernard Shaw would do himself; nor should I blame him. I like Mr. Shaw’s type of Egoism; because, if he talks big, it is at least about big things; things bound to be bigger than himself.

I revolt, not against the loud egoist, but the gentle egoist; who talks tenderly of trifles; who says, “A sunbeam gilds the amber of my cigarette-holder; I find I cannot live without a cigarette-holder.” I resist this arrogance simply because it is more arrogant. For even so complete a fool cannot really suppose we are interested in his cigarette-holder; and therefore must suppose that we are interested in him. But I defend a dogmatic egoist precisely because he deals in dogmas.

The Apostles’ Creed is not regarded as a pose of foppish vanity; yet the word “I” comes before even the word “God.” The believer comes first; but he is soon dwarfed by his beliefs, swallowed in the creative whirlwind and the trumpets of the resurrection. And if a man says he believes in the Superman or the Socialist State, I think him equally modest; only not so sensible. Mr. Herbert Skimpole’s book, Bernard Shaw: the Man and His Work, contains many suggestive and valuable things to which I cannot do justice, including allusions to myself mostly only too flattering, and in one case both amusing and mystifying. The passage suggests that all the active figures in my idle fictions are made as fat as I am; though I cannot recall that any of them are fat at all; except a semi-supernatural monster in a nightmare calledThe Man Who Was Thursday.

Let there be no alarm, however, that I shall talk about such nightmares, or any of my own tales; like Shaw, I am egoistic about things that matter. Mr. Skimpole says that while Shaw and I agree that the world should be adapted to the man, “Chesterton includes our present institutions among the parts of a man’s soul which cannot be altered.” Now there is here a potential mistake, which I will not apologize for taking more seriously than any fancy about the figures in my very amateurish romances. I need not say I do not mind being called fat; for deprived of that jest, I should be almost a serious writer. I do not even mind being supposed to mind being called fat. But being supposed to be contented, and contented with the present institutions of modern society, is a mortal slander I will not take from any man.

Whatever are the institutions I defend, they are not primarily those of the present. They have been attempted in the past; and I hope they may be achieved in the future; but they are not present, but conspicuous by their absence. Mr. Skimpole truly says that I defend domesticity and piety and patriotism, but these are not the typical institutions of to-day.

The typical institutions of to-day are a Divorce Court cutting up families with the speed of a sausage machine; a Science which preaches the destiny without the divinity of Calvinism; and a Finance that crosses all frontiers with the same enlightened indifference that is shown by cholera.

These are the institutions of the instant, and even Mr. Skimpole has realized them as those of the immediate future. In a somewhat innocent passage he says that “it is of no use for Shaw to point out” to me the hope of a cosmopolitan future; “that Internationalism, social class-feeling, and Imperialism all point the same way he refuses to see.”

It is indeed useless for Shaw to point out to me that I should follow the lead of these things; since I happen to detest Imperialism, disbelieve in Internationalism and distrust “social class-feeling,” so far as I know what it means. I am well aware that an Imperial Chancellor in Berlin, an international money-lender in Johannesburg, and an anarchist spy in Petrograd, are “all pointing the same way”; and that is why I feel pretty safe in going the other.

I warmly apologize to Mr. Skimpole for writing a personal explanation instead of a review of his book, which contains many things well worth writing and reviewing; notably the shrewd remark about Shaw’s style; in which what is a paradox in spirit is seldom an epigram in form. It takes our breath away rather by taking itself for granted than by defining itself like a defiance. But I fancy Mr. Skimpole will sympathize with me if I am primarily concerned with his convictions, as he is with mine, and as we both are with Shaw’s.

And he has gone to the vital point in emphasizing this matter of the things permanent in man. When I say that religion and marriage and local loyalty are permanent in humanity, I mean that they recur when humanity is most human; and only comparatively decline when society is comparatively inhuman. They have declined in the modern world. They may return through the war; but anyhow, where we have the small farm and the free man and the fighting spirit, there we shall have the salute to the soil and the roof and to the altar.

To take a more casual case: I believe that when men are happy, they sing; not only at the piano but at the plough, or at least in the intervals of ploughing; at their work and in their walks abroad. I am well aware that modern men do not sing in the street very much. I am well aware that cosmopolitan money-lenders never sing, but die with all their music in them. I know that the Song of the Happy Meat-Contractor is not one of “our present institutions.”

I know that one can seldom come at dawn upon some solitary London banker carolling more sweetly than the lark; and even his clerks do not often sing in chorus over their ledgers. But I still think it is more human to sing than not to sing; and that, being more human, it is more permanent in humanity.

Some righteous revolution will teach the bankers and contractors that little birds who can sing and won’t sing must be made to sing— or at any rate made to squeal. In the interlude, the instinct of song takes refuge in the lesser thing called poetry, or even prose; and to-morrow the fever of personal sincerity may have passed; and I shall return, with a lowly air, to literature.

The Plan for a New Universe

THERE is one theory of the Origin of Species which I have never seen suggested. Probably this is because I have never read the numberless and voluminous works in which it has been suggested. For I have read much madder things, and nothing mad is likely to have been missed by the modern mind. But since it shocked the respectability of agnostics to suggest that all creatures had been made different by God, why did nobody suggest that they had been made different by Man? Why not trace the vast variety of animals as we can really trace the vast variety of dogs? The dog is already almost a world in himself, with all the appearance of distinct orders and types. A St. Bernard approaches the size and surpasses the legendary virtues of a lion; while there is a sort of Pekinese which a man might almost tread on as a somewhat unpleasing insect. Yet all this world of evolution has presumably had Man for its god.

Suppose our sphere in space has itself been the Island of Dr. Moreau. Suppose Man had some prehistoric civilization so colossal and complete that all beasts were beasts of burden, or all animals were domestic animals; that all rabbits were pet rabbits or all fleas performing fleas. Suppose the tame bird came first, and what we know as the wild bird afterwards. Mr. Bernard Shaw, in one of his early anti-domestic diatribes, compared a woman in the home to a parrot in the cage, saying that mere custom made us think the connexion natural.

The answer, it has always seemed to me, is strangely obvious. It is surely plain that the housewife is not the bird in the cage, but the bird in the nest. But if, in that age of wild sceptics, anyone had wished to outdo Mr. Shaw in paradox, he could have done it brilliantly by this hypothesis that the colours of a parrot were actually produced in a cage; and that an exiled bird only built himself a rude den of sticks and mud as an outlaw does when driven from his home. Suppose, in short, that Man has not only been a dog-fancier, but a wolf-fancier and a hyena-fancier. Suppose he really fancied a rhinoceros. Suppose some pre-historic squire kept a stud of giraffes; or his money-lender got a peerage on the plea that he had improved the breed of crocodiles. Then we have only to suppose this universal Zoo broken up like the Roman Empire; and all we see is its neglect and riot. The tiger is a stray cat; a specially large and handsome cat who took the prize (and the prize-giver)and escaped to the jungle. A whale was some sort of hornless cow sent into the sea like a Newfoundland dog, who suddenly refused to come back again.

This thesis accounts for the comparative rapidity of the differentiations, over which the geologists fight with the biologists. It accounts rationalistically for those evidences of a creative purpose which are so distressing to a refined mind. It accounts for the camel, who seems always to have been in captivity; and accounting for a camel is something. Above all, it accounts for that very vivid impression of something in various species at once outrageous and exact. Jefferies found in the farcical outlines of fish or bird the notion that they must have been produced without design. To me this sounds like saying that the caricatures of Max Beerbohm must have been produced without design. I could as easily believe, so far as this mere aesthetic impression goes, that the face on a gargoyle was merely moulded by the pouring rain. Artistically, the sun-fish or the hornbill do not look in the least like accidents; but it might be maintained that they look like fashions. There are some tropical birds and fruits that really have the cut and colours of novelties in a shop window. We might fancy that an elephant was designed in the same taste as Babylonian architecture; or the leopard and the tiger to match the tapestries of the East. There is probably somewhere a bird as sinister and terrifying as a top-hat; and in some luxuriant jungle a plant as preposterous as a pair of trousers. The monsters may be only antiquated fashion-plates. For this is one of the numberless neglected fallacies in the clotted folly of Eugenics. Even if we could in the abstract breed humanity well, there would be a flutter of modes and crazes about what was considered well-bred. The dog is bred with design; but surely not always with discretion. The dachshund appears to have been pulled out on the rack of some demoniac vivisectionist; and somebody seems to have cut off the bull-dog’s nose, most emphatically to spite his face. On the analogy of the things we do breed, the Eugenist may be expected to produce a brood of hunchbacks or a pure race of Albinos.

It is, I hope, unnecessary to remark that I do not believe in this theory; but there have been people who might well have believed in it. There were people who could believe in Swinburne’s sentiment, “Glory to Man in the highest; for Man is the master of things”; and it would surely have completed this consciousness in the poet if he could have thought that the birds of Putney Heath, where he walked, or the fishes in the sea, where he was so fond of swimming, were doing tricks taught to them as to performing dogs. Suppose that such a fancy had fitted in with one of the humanitarian religions of that time, how far would it have satisfied what was often called the religious sentiment? It would not have satisfied any religious sentiment, not even Swinburne’s. He would have cared as little as Shelley to claim the birds when he could not claim the sky. He certainly would have been much annoyed with the notion of loving the fishes, if he were not allowed to go on loving the sea. And though he poisoned paganism with pessimism, a thing not only more false but more frivolous, though he tried to love the sea as a wanton or admire the sky as a tyrant, though this morbidity weakened his love of Nature not only as compared with Virgil or Dante, but as compared with Wordsworth or Whitman, yet he was like every poet elemental, and what he loved were the elementary things. And this is an essential of any poetry and any religion. It must appeal to the origins and deal with the first things, however much or little it may say about them. It must be at home in the homeless void, before the first star was made. The one thing every man knows about the unknowable is that it is the Indispensable.

Now, if any reader thinks that the scientific heresy I sketched above is too irrational for moderns to have held, I have the pleasure of informing him that moderns are now about to announce, or have already announced, a new heresy somewhat analogous but much less rationalistic and much less rational. There is a new religion; that is a new fault being found with the old religion. There is a new plan for a new universe, which may be expected to last for many a long month to come. It is the view that seems to have satisfied Mr. Wells, or, at any rate, Mr. Britling. It is the view which has been more than once suggested by Mr. Shaw, and is repeated in the skeleton of certain lectures he is delivering. It is much more supernatural and even superstitious than my imaginary thesis; for instead of giving to man more of the powers of God, it arbitrarily imagines a God and then limits him with the impotence of man. He is not limited, as in the theologies, by his own reason or justice or desire for the freedom of man. He is limited by unreason and injustice and the impossibility of freedom even for himself. But I do not make this note upon the new development with any intention of discussing it thoroughly in its theological aspect; though there is one aspect of that aspect which may respectfully be called amusing. When I was a boy, Christianity was blamed by the freethinkers for its anthropomorphic demigod, substituted by savages for the Unknown God who made all things. Now Christianity is blamed for the flat contrary; because its God is unknown and not anthropomorphic enough. Thirty years ago we only needed the First Person of the Trinity; and thirty years later we have discovered that we only need the Second. This sort of fashion-plate philosophy will no doubt go on as usual. In a few decades we may be told that our fathers were profoundly right when they believed in the Archangel Gabriel, but made an inexplicable mistake when they believed in the Archangel Raphael. We shall learn that the Seraphim are an exploded superstition, but the Cherubim a most valuable and novel discovery. And as my note is not concerned with the theological, neither is it directly concerned with the purely logical side of it.

Here again, it seems obvious that all the doubts which legitimately attach to the idea of a progressive humanity are absolutely fatal to the idea of a progressive divinity. A man may be progressing towards God; but what is a God progressing towards? And how does he know which of two developments in consciousness is the better (e.g., an imaginative compassion or an imaginative cruelty) if there be no aboriginal standard in his own nature? I am here only concerned to note the failure of this fancy where it is parallel to the failure of the fancy I mentioned first. And it is the weakness which would instantly be discovered in both of them, not only by every poet but by every child. It is that unless the sky is beautiful, nothing is beautiful. Unless the background of all things is good, it is no substitute to make the foreground better: it may be right to do so for other reasons, but not for the reason that is the root of religion. Materialism says the universe is mindless; and faith says it is ruled by the highest mind. Neither will be satisfied with the new progressive creed, which declares hopefully that the universe is half-witted.

George Wyndham

I BELIEVE more and more that there are no trivialities but only truths neglected; but the things I myself neglect accumulate in mountains. I have made a note of one of them found in turning over the recent files of theNation. Elsewhere was a reminder about a book I had long admired and enjoyed, but which had been crowded out of my mind by less pleasant things; the book of recollections about George Wyndham, recently written by Mr. Charles Gatty and published by Mr. Murray. [George Wyndham Recognita, by C. T. Gatty. Murray. 7s. 6d. net.] Even now I cannot do justice to the book; but I know Mr. Gatty will approve of my saying a word to correct an injustice to the subject of the book. Some time ago theNation dismissed Mr. Gatty’s volume, not with disrespect, but with a certain distance and indifference evidently founded on a very mistaken idea. It implied that Wyndham was after all an intellectual aristocrat, whose culture was that of a c1ique, and who did not test it enough in popular and practical politics. The point is interesting; chiefly because it is the precise reverse of the truth. If anything could narrow a man like Wyndham, it was being political like theNation: what broadened him to a universal brotherhood was getting far from politics—like the nation. His private life was much larger than his public life; though that in turn was larger than most public lives in the parliamentary decline. Being a politician, he had to be a parliamentarian; and being a parliamentarian, he had to be an oligarch. In so far as he did hold the aristocratic theory, it was exactly that aristocratic theory that forced him into political practice. He knew well enough, I think, that the English parliament is an aristocracy. He took the high ground of the responsibility of privilege; but he was far too sincere to deny that it was privilege. He said to a friend of mine, who thus lamented his laborious parliamentary botherations, “You see, I was born paid.”

It was the aristocracy theNation reproves that necessitated the parliamentarism theNation desires or demands. Personally, I should not desire either; and I think the real Wyndham was in a larger world outside both. It was precisely where he was most domestic that he was most democratic. He was a poet among poets exactly as he might have been a pedestrian among pedestrians or, as he would have preferred to put it, a tramp among tramps. The sympathy with tramps might be taken literally; for I remember him defending the gipsies, when a more modern spirit wanted them taught the meaning of progress by being moved on by the police. He may have been right to work in cabinets and committees; but it was there, if anywhere, that he was in a clique. He may have been right not to follow his tastes, but it was his tastes that were popular and what many cliques would call vulgar. He may have been right not to be one of the idle rich, but he might have been even more superior to the limits of the rich, if he had been idler.

The beauty of Mr. Gatty’s book is that it is a brilliant scrap-book, the very variegated nature of which expresses this almost vagabond liberality. Even when it merely notes down such things as single lines of Shakespeare over which Wyndham lingered, or reproduces corners of carving or painting which arrested his eye, the method seems to me to work rightly; it seems somehow natural to talk of every other subject besides the subject himself; as he was always ready to talk of every other subject. And this aspect, by itself, accentuates the feeling that his holidays were his most useful days. In this mood one may well wish that he had never been near what he himself called the cesspool of politics; and one might well accept theNation’s suggestion of his aloofness from its own favourite parliamentary business with a somewhat dry assent. Wyndham certainly had little to do with the internal constructive legislation praised in progressive papers. He can claim none of the glory of the great social reforms of the period just before the War. He is not responsible for the permission to drag away a poor man’s child as a raving maniac, if his teacher thinks he is a little too stupid to learn, or his teacher is a little too stupid to teach him. He has not the honour of having abolished the Habeas Corpus Act, in order to allow amateur criminologists to keep a tramp in prison until they have invented a science of criminology. He did not establish the Labour Exchanges, and probably did not want to establish them, any more than the Labour Exchanges vividly described inUncle Tom’s Cabin. It was not he who created by statute a servant class, of men made to spend their own wages on doctors they might never want, instead of on tools or tram-tickets they urgently wanted. He was largely detached from all this; and when reading a real record like Mr. Gatty’s one is moved to wish that he had been even more detached from it. Considering the liberty of his philosophical friendships, one respects but regrets the loyalty of his political friendships; and is sorry that common sense must be sacrificed to practical politics.

But when a book like Mr. Gatty’s has moved a reviewer to this mood of mere regret for a poet wasted in politics, there returns upon him after all one answer which is itself unanswerable. Judged by one ultimate test, he was after all right to remain in politics; even in the last putrefaction of parliamentary politics. At the price of nobody knows what pain and patience and contempt and concessions, he alone among modern politicians did leave not merely a name but a thing, that will remain after him as a scientific engine or a geographical discovery remains. He achieved a work which has changed the whole destiny of Western Europe; the resurrection of Ireland. There he established the free peasant; a work organically different from all the modern reforms that are merely imposed, whether right or wrong, whether servile or socialist. It is the difference between planting a tree and building a tower; once planted, the tree lives by its own life. He and his admirers, myself among the number, might well be content to contemplate such a work without afterthoughts; if there were not laid upon us like a load of memories, and almost like a living chain, the love of England.

For England, alas! has made to-day the worst possible compromise between aristocracy and democracy. It has kept the aristocracy and lost the aristocrats. The country is still as much ruled by squires, but not so much by country gentlemen; and the reform of the House of Lords seems to mean eliminating gentlemen and carefully preserving noblemen. It is as if there were a complaint of martial law; and it were met by keeping the whole machinery of militarism, but giving the arbitrary power to spies instead of soldiers. Or it is as if reactionaries erected a despotism, and then called themselves reformers because they did not care what dirty fellow was despot. But remote as Wyndham was from the sham gentry of the twentieth century, it would also be an error merely to merge him with the genuine gentry of the eighteenth. It would be to mark the type so as to miss the man. What distinguished him, as an individual, from good and bad squires, was something far older than squirarchy; the true sense of the squire expectant, eager to spring into the saddle of knighthood. His courage was far less static than that of a country gentleman. It was the thing in which a philologist might recognize that “courage” really means rushing; or from which a professor will probably some day prove that courage really means running away. He had that spiritual ambition which is itself the ascending flame of humility; and which has been wanting to the English since the squire grew greater than the knight. He seemed to await an adventure that never quite came to him on earth; and his life and death were swift, as if he were struck by lightning as with an accolade, or had won spurs that were wings upon the wind.

Four Stupidities

I HAVE just seen a newspaper paragraph which, whether it refers to a fact or merely a suggestion, seems to me to go down pretty well into that depth of mindlessness which calls itself the modern mind. It is said that influence is being brought to bear on the American Government to induce them to break a bottle of water instead of a bottle of champagne when they christen a battleship. Now it is not easy to deal adequately with the rich stupidity of that. It is about five follies thick, stupidity obscuring stupidity until one reader can hardly see more than one of the jokes at a time. There is something almost fascinating in the idea of trying to disentangle them.

First Stupidity. Note the notion that there is something so intrinsically and supernaturally evil about an intoxicant that the pure temperance man will not touch it even when it cannot intoxicate anybody. It is as if a man were to insist on having a teetotal boot-polish or a teetotal printing-ink. A cup of tea, or even of hot milk, becomes diabolic if you have boiled the kettle with methylated spirit. Eau-de-Cologne is a blackguard indulgence, though you use it only to scent your handkerchief. A liquor containing alcohol (such as ginger-beer) is simply and superstitiously an accursed thing, which is not only not to be touched with the lips, but not to be touched with the hands. After this case, the more intemperate “Temperance” people cannot pretend any longer that their proposal is merely a social reform; it is obviously and literally a mystical taboo. I do not see what right such people have to mock at the savage’s fear of a fetish, still less at the peasant’s respect for the relic of a saint. There might surely be such a thing as holy water, if it be so certain that there is such a thing as unholy water.

Second Stupidity. The extraordinary confusion by which it becomes not only wicked to possess wine (though you never drink it), but becomes wicked even to destroy it. This goes, I think, much further than this queer materialist madness has yet gone. If a champagne bottle is smashed to smithereens over the prow of a ship, I should have thought the most logical teetotaller would merely have been glad that there was one champagne bottle less in the world. As he would probably not be a person with any special sympathy with the old ceremonials of revelry, that is the only possible way in which I can imagine the thing affecting him. We in England used to think we could trace a slight streak of fanaticism in good Mrs. Carrie Nation, who used to go about breaking other people’s wine and spirit bottles with her little hatchet. But now it would appear that Mrs. Carrie Nation was a wobbler, one weakly compromising with the fiend of fermented drink, perhaps nobbled by the Liquor Trade—or, worse still, verging on the loathly state of a moderate drinker. She ought to have been summoned before a tribunal of these New Teetotallers and having gone near enough to a bottle to touch it, even with a hatchet; condemned for having so much as hung about the hellish tavern, where the very fumes of its fiery poisons might have mounted to her head. The principle is an interesting one, and might be extended to many cases. Thus, when the common hangman burned a book of treason or heresy, he may be supposed to have been infected by the intellectual errors it contained. Thus when a censor blacks out a paragraph in a newspaper, he may be held to have sinned even in looking to see where the paragraph was. This, apparently, is the new barbaric fancy: that certain vegetable drinks are so demonic that we not only are wrong when we drink them, but are wrong when we do our best to render them undrinkable.

Third Stupidity. The curious deadness of the mind in such men is illustrated at the next stage; that of clinging convulsively to a mere form; and not only not knowing, but not so much as wondering—first, whether the idea is worth preserving; and, secondly, whether they are preserving it. The mark of this dead and broken traditionalism is always two-fold. It can be seen in these two facts: that men alter a thing as if it had no sense in it; and yet they never have the sense to abolish what is for them is a senseless thing.

I can see much dignity in absolute austerity and the refusal of symbol; I can see some dignity even in dingy utilitarianism and the refusal of art. I could respect the perfect plainness of an early Quaker like Penn when he would not take his hat off in the palace, because it was an idle form. I do not despise him because he came afterwards (I believe) to see that keeping your hat on is just as much of a form as taking it off; and took off his hat like other people. But if Penn had strictly confined himself, say, to taking off his hatband with laborious care, every time he entered the Royal presence, I should say that he had lost both his Quakerism and his sociability. He would have lost the independence that refuses recognition to the world, and he would not have gained the disputable substitute of good manners. Similarly, I could respect (though I could not envy) the flinty old Manchester manufacturers who regarded all expenditure on arms, especially on drums, flags, or trumpets, as so much babyish waste of money. But I should not even have respected them if they had proposed that the British Army should fly the White Flag in every battle because it was cheaper than a coloured one. Why have a flag at all, if it comes to that? Or, again, I can understand the unconverted Scrooge with his bowl of gruel; and I like the converted Scrooge with his bowl of punch. But if Scrooge had insisted every Christmas on having a punch-bowl with no punch in it, I should not understand at all.

Fourth Stupidity. Besides this general deadness, there is a strange special deadness to the human sentiment behind that special sort of ceremony. Don’t express the sentiment if you think it a silly sentiment; but don’t so express it as to prove that you haven’t got it. That sentiment is the ancient sentiment of sacrifice. The thing sacrificed may be anything: wine, as on the battleship; gold, as when the Doge threw his ring into the sea; an ox or a sheep, as among the ancient pagans; and very occasionally, when tribes savage or civilized are seized with Satanist panic, a man. But it must be somethingvaluable, or the particular thrill, wholesome or unwholesome, is not obtained. It was generally the best sheep or the best ox; and in the rare cases of human sacrifice, generally somebody like the King’s daughter. Like all human appetites, it is both good and evil; it has many roots, a gesture of generosity, an appeal to the unknown, a guarantee against arrogance, a dim idea of not taking all one’s advantage from fortune: but they all depend on the value, and these men evidently understand none of them, when they fill the bottle with water.

On Historical Novels

IT is very easy, of course) to smile at such schoolboy fiction as the novels of Mr. Henty, in which the same very English and modern young gentleman from Rugby or Harrow turns up again and again as a Young Greek, a Young Carthaginian, a Young Scandinavian, a Young Gaul, a Young Visigoth, a Young Ancient Briton, and al1nost everything short of a Young Negro. But Mr. Henty had the merits of his industry and fecundity; and one of them was that he did take a boy’s imagination into many and varied parts of human history, however conventional the figure he followed through them might be. The English boy will not find out as much about the soul of Carthage from theYoung Carthaginian as a lover of letters may from Salammbo; but at least he will know that Carthage was conquered—and that is (for various reasons) a good thing for English people to know. And since the Henty period our historical novels have fallen with terrible sameness into two or three grooves. We might almost say that a man is not allowed to write an historical novel except about four different historical periods, about six different historical characters; and even about them he is not allowed to take any view except that taken by the other romances on the same subject. Now, considering the countless millions of marvellous, amusing, unique, and picturesque things that have thronged on top of each other through all our wonderful three thousand years of European history, this state of affairs is as Byzantine and benighted as if no landscape painter ever painted anything but a larch tree, or as if none of our sculptors could model anything except the left leg.

You may write a novel about the time of Henry of Navarre—in fact, it might almost be said that you must write a novel about the time of Henry of Navarre. If you go in for writing historical novels at all, somebody—the publisher or the office-boy—makes you do this. In this novel, Huguenots must be gallant gentlemen, with a touch of bluffness; Catholics must also be gallant gentlemen, with a touch of slyness. All important political questions must be settled by duels fought with long rapiers at wayside inns. You must stick to one side of the quarrel; but even in that you must not bring any of the charges that a person of the period might really have brought. For instance, the Court must be perpetually engaged in plotting to stab the bluff Huguenot: but you must not insist that the Huguenot was a Puritan, and his objection to the Court would largely be that it was a Renaissance Court. You must not, however delicately, bring in that presence of florid pagan sensuality and princely indecorum which we feel in Brantome or the Tales of the Queen of Navarre. The Latins must stick to assassination. There must be no people to speak of in Paris, though it was the people of Paris who, for good or evil, changed the whole course of the history. Men like Sully may be introduced; but their talents must be entirely occupied in serving the Prince in his personal love-affairs and in his duels in inns. Above all, slap in the very middle of the Wars of Religion, nobody must seem to have any clear idea of what his own religion is about.

You may also write a novel about the time of Richelieu. But it must be governed by the same principles. Richelieu must be a sinister yet magnanimous enemy of the hero. He must try to kill the hero, and unaccountably fail. At this stage of the writing of historical novels, it is important to be an imitator of Dumas. There are critics who maintain that Dumas was largely written by imitators of Dumas. This is an exaggeration; but, at the worst, they were good imitators. There are chapters in the triple tale of the Musketeers of which I can only say that, if anyone but he wrote them, he could hire hearts and heads as well as hands. But my warning to the young writer of entirely useless historical novels is this: He must not go outside France, or treat that country otherwise than as an insulated elfland. He must not carry off General Monk in a box. Think what a frightful mistake would have been made from the English Puritan point of view—if d’Artagnan had carried off General Cromwell by mistake! All this happened in the time of Mazarin and not Richelieu, but the principle will be found reliable. The principle is that neither Richelieu nor anybody else should show the faintest interest in the future of France.

You may write a novel about the French Revolution. You may do it on your head, as the jolly habitual criminals say. The essential principles of this sort of novel are: (1) That the populace of Paris from 1790 to 1794 never had any meals, nor even sat down in a cafe. They stood about in the street all night and all day, sufficiently sustained by the sight of Blood, especially Blue Blood. (2) All power during the Terror was in the hands of the public executioner and of Robespierre; and these persons were subject to abrupt changes of mind, and frequently redeemed their habit of killing people for no apparent reason by letting them off at the last moment, for no apparent reason either. (3) Aristocrats are of two kinds— the very wicked and the entirely blameless; and both are invariably good-looking. Both also appear rather to prefer being guillotined. (4) Such things as the invasion of France, the idea of a Republic, the influence of Rousseau, the nearness of national bankruptcy, the work of Carnot with the armies, the policy of Pitt, the policy of Austria, the ineradicable habit of protecting one’s property against foreigners, and the presence of persons carrying guns at the Battle of Valmy—all these things had nothing to do with the French Revolution, and should be omitted.

Now, considering the number of picturesque struggles there have been in the world, it seems to me that these subjects might be given a rest. There has been next to nothing written, for instance, about the other Wars of Religion, those that accompanied the construction of Catholic Europe, rather than its breaking up. There was the Iconoclast invasion of Italy, which ends with the entrance of Charlemagne. There has been next to nothing written about riots other than the Parisian; the many riots of Edinburgh, especially of those few days when it was almost as dangerous to be a doctor as to be a mad dog. Another advantage would be that, coming fresh to his historical problem, the writer might even read a little history.

On Monsters

I ONCE saw in the newspapers this paragraph, of which I made a note:

“LEPRECHAUN” CAUGHT

Great excitement has been caused in Mullingar, in the west of Ireland, by the report that the supposed “Leprechaun,” which several children stated they had seen at Killough, near Delvin, during the past two months, was captured. Two policemen found a creature of dwarfish proportions in a wood near the town, and brought the little man to Mullingar Workhouse, where he is now an inmate. He eats greedily, but all attempts to interview him have failed, his only reply being a peculiar sound between a growl and a squeal. The inmates regard him with interest mixed with awe.

This seems like the beginning of an important era of research; it seems as if the world of experiments had at last touched the world of reality. It is as if one read: “Great excitement has been caused in Rotten Row, in the west of London, by the fact that the centaur, previously seen by several colonels and young ladies, has at last been stopped in his lawless gallop.” Or it is as if one saw in a newspaper: “Slight perturbation has been caused at the west end of Margate by the capture of a mermaid,” or “A daring fowler, climbing the crags of the Black Mountains for a nest of eagles, found, somewhat unexpectedly, that it was a nest of angels.” It is wonderful to have the calm admission in cold print of such links between the human world and other worlds. It is interesting to know that they took the Leprechaun to a workhouse. It settles, and settles with a very sound instinct, the claim of humanity in such sublime curiosities. If a centaur were really found in Rotten Row, would they take him to a workhouse or to a stable? If a mermaid were really fished up at Margate, would they take her to a workhouse or to an aquarium? If people caught an angel unawares, would they put the angel in a workhouse? Or in an aviary?

The idea of the Missing Link was not at all new with Darwin; it was not invented merely by those vague but imaginative minor poets to whom we owe most of our ideas about evolution. Men had always played about with the idea of a possible link between human and bestial life; and the very existence—or, if you will, the very non-existence— of the centaur or the mermaid proves it. All the mythologies had dreamed of a half-human monster. The only objection to the centaur and the mermaid was that they could not be found. In every other respect their merits were of the most solid sort. So it is with the Darwinian ideal of a link between man and the brutes. There is no objection to it except that there is no evidence for it. The only objection to the Missing Link is that he is apparently fabulous, like the centaur and the mermaid, and all the other images under which man has imagined a bridge between himself and brutality. In short, the only objection to the Missing Link is that he is missing.

But there is also another very elementary difference. The Greeks and the Mediaevals invented monstrosities. But they treated them as monstrosities—that is, they treated them as exceptions. They did not deduce any law from such lawless things as the centaur or the merman, the griffin or the hippogriff. But modern people did try to make a law out of the Missing Link. They made him a lawgiver, though they were hunting for him like a criminal. They built on the foundation of him before he was found. They made this unknown monster, the mixture of the man and ape, the founder of society and the accepted father of mankind. The ancients had a fancy that there was a mongrel of horse and man, a mongrel of fish and man. But they did not make it the father of anything; they did not ask the mad mongrel to breed. The ancients did not draw up a system of ethics based upon the centaur, showing how man in a civilized society must take care of his hands, but must not wholly forget his hooves. They never reminded woman that, although she had the golden hair of a goddess, she had the tail of a fish. But the moderns did talk to man as if he were the Missing Link; they did remind him that he must allow for apish imbecility and bestial tricks. The moderns did tell the woman that she was half a brute, for all her beauty; you can find the thing said again and again in Schopenhauer and other prophets of the modern spirit. That is the real difference between the two monsters. The Missing Link is still missing and so is the merman.

On the top of all this we have the Leprechaun, apparently an actual monster at present in the charge of the police. It is unnecessary to say that numbers of learned people have proved again and again that it could not exist. It is equally unnecessary to say that numbers of unlearned people—children, mothers of children, workers, common people who grow corn or catch fish—had seen them existing. Almost every other simple type of our working population had seen a Leprechaun. A fisherman had seen a Leprechaun. A farmer had seen a Leprechaun. Even a postman had probably seen one. But there was one simple son of the people whose path had never before been crossed by the prodigy. Never until then had a policeman seen a Leprechaun. It was only a question of whether the monster should take the policeman away with him into Elfland (where such a policeman as he would certainly have been fettered by the fatal love of the fairy queen), or whether the policeman should take away the monster to the police-station. The forces of this earth prevailed; the constable captured the elf, instead of the elf capturing the constable. The officer took him to the workhouse, and opened a new epoch in the study of tradition and folk-lore.

What will the modern world do if it finds (as very likely it will) that the wildest fables have had a basis in fact; that there are creatures of the border land, that there are oddities on the fringe of fixed laws, that there are things so unnatural as easily to be called preternatural? I do not know what the modern world will do about these things; I only know what I hope. I hope the modern world will be as sane about these things as the mediaeval world was about them. Because I believe that an ogre can have two heads, that is no reason why I should lose the only head that I have. Because the mediaeval man thought that some man had the head of a dog, that was no reason why he himself should have the head of a donkey. The mediaeval man was never essentially weak or stupid about any of his beliefs, however unfounded they were. He did not lack judgement; he only lacked the opportunities of judgment. He had superstitions; but he was not superstitious about them. He was wrong about Africa; but then, to do him justice, he did not care whether he was right. He had got that particular thing which some modern people call “the love of truth,” but which is really simply the power of taking one’s own mistakes seriously. He thought that ordinary men were a serious matter; as they are. He thought that extraordinary men were a fantastic fairy-tale; and he thought (very rightly) that the fairy-tale was all the more fantastic if it was true. He did not let dog-faced men affect his conception of mankind; he regarded them as a joke, the best as a practical joke.

But in our time, I am sorry to say, we have seen some signs of the possibility that such aberrations or monstrosities as spiritual science may discover will be taken as real tests of, or keys to, the human lot. For instance, the psychological phenomenon called “dual personality” is certainly a thing so extraordinary that any old-fashioned rationalist or agnostic would simply have called it a miracle and disbelieved it. But nowadays those who do believe it will not treat it as a miracle—that is, as an exception. They try to make deductions from it, theories about identity and metempsychosis and psychical evolution, and God knows what. If it is true that one particular body has two souls, it is a joke, as if it had two noses. It must not be permitted to upset the actualities of our human happiness. If some one says, “Jones blew his nose,” and Jones is of so peculiar a formation that one may with logical propriety ask, “Which nose?” that is no reason why the ordinary formula should lose its ordinary human utility. This is, I think, one of the most real dangers that lie in front of the civilization that has just discovered the Leprechaun. We are going to find all the gods and fairies all over again, all the spiritual hybrids and all the jests of eternity. But we are not going to find them, as the pagans found them, in our youth, in an atmosphere in which gods can be jested with or giants slapped on the back. We are going to find them, in the old age of our society, in a mood dangerously morbid, in a spirit only too ready to take the exception instead of the rule. If we find creatures that are half human, we may only too possibly make them an excuse for being half-human ourselves.

I should not be very painfully concerned about the Leprechaun if people had thrown stones at him as a bad fairy, or given him milk and fire as a good one. But there is something menacing about taking away a monster in order to study him. There is something sinister about putting a Leprechaun in the workhouse. The only solid comfort is that he certainly will not work.

THE END

On Seriousness

I DO not like seriousness. I think it is irreligious. Or, if you prefer the phrase, it is the fashion of all false religions. The man who takes everything seriously is the man who makes an idol of everything: he bows down to wood and stone until his limbs are as rooted as the roots of the tree or his head as fallen as the stone sunken by the roadside. It has often been discussed whether animals can laugh. The hyena is said to laugh: but it is rather in the sense in which the M.P. is said to utter “an ironical cheer.” At the best, the hyena utters an ironical laugh. Broadly, it is true that all animals except Man are serious. And I think it is further demonstrated by the fact that all human beings who concern themselves in a concentrated way with animals are also serious; serious in a sense far beyond that of human beings concerned with anything else. Horses are serious; they have long, solemn faces. But horsey men are also serious—jockeys or trainers or grooms: they also have long, solemn faces. Dogs are serious: they have exactly that combination of moderate conscientiousness with monstrous conceit which is the make-up of most modern religions. But, however serious dogs may be, they can hardly be more serious than dog-fanciers—or dog-stealers. Dog-stealers, indeed, have to be particularly serious, because they have to come back and say they have found the dog. The faintest shade of irony, not to say levity, on their features, would evidently be fatal to their plans. I will not carry the comparison through all the kingdoms of natural history: but it is true of all who fix their affection or intelligence on the lower animals. Cats are as serious as the Sphinx, who must have been some kind of cat, to judge by the attitude. But the rich old ladies who love cats are quite equally serious, about cats and about themselves. So also the ancient Egyptians worshipped cat, also crocodiles and beetles and all kinds of things; but they were all serious and made their worshippers serious. Egyptian art was intentionally harsh, clear, and conventional; but it could very vividly represent men driving, hunting, fighting, feasting, praying. Yet I think you will pass along many corridors of that coloured and almost cruel art before you see a man laughing. Their gods did not encourage them to laugh. I am told by housewives that beetles seldom laugh. Cats do not laugh—except the Cheshire Cat (which is not found in Egypt); and even he can only grin. And crocodiles do not laugh. They weep.

This comparison between the sacred animals of Egypt and the pet animals of to-day is not so far-fetched as it may seem to some people. There is a healthy and an unhealthy love of animals: and the nearest definition of the difference is that the unhealthy love of animals is serious. I am quite prepared to love a rhinoceros, with reasonable precautions: he is, doubtless, a delightful father to the young rhinoceroses. But I will not promise not to laugh at a rhinoceros. I will not worship the beast with the little horn. I will not adore the Golden Calf; still less will I adore the Fatted Calf. On the contrary, I will eat him. There is some sort of joke about eating an animal, or even about an animal eating you. Let us hope we shall perceive it at the proper moment, if it ever occurs. But I will not worship an animal. That is, I will not take an animal quite seriously: and I know why.

Wherever there is Animal Worship there is Human Sacrifice. That is, both symbolically and literally, a real truth of historical experience. Suppose a thousand black slaves were sacrificed to the black-beetle; suppose a million maidens were flung into the Nile to feed the crocodile; suppose the cat could eat men instead of mice—it could still be no more than that sacrifice of humanity that so often makes the horse more important than the groom, or the lap-dog more important even than the lap. The only right view of the animal is the comic view. Because the view is comic it is naturally affectionate. And because it is affectionate, it is never respectful.

I know no place where the true contrast has been more candidly, clearly, and (for all I know) unconsciously expressed than in an excellent little book of verse calledBread and Circuses by Helen Parry Eden, the daughter of Judge Parry, who has inherited both the humour and the humanity in spite of which her father succeeded as a modern magistrate. There are a great many other things that might be praised in the book, but I should select for praise the sane love of animals. There is, for instance, a little poem on a cat from the country who has come to live in a flat in Battersea (everybody at some time of their lives has lived or will live in a flat in Battersea, except, perhaps, the “prisoner of the Vatican”), and the verses have a tenderness, with a twist of the grotesque, which seems to me the exactly appropriate tone about domestic pets:

And now you’re here. Well, it may be The sundoes rise in Battersea Although to-day be dark; Life is not shorn of loves and hates While there are sparrows on the slates And keepers in the Park. And you yourself will come to learn The ways of London; and in turn Assume your Cockney cares Like other folk that live in flats, Chasing your purely abstract rats Upon the concrete stairs.

That is like Hood at his best; but it is, moreover, penetrated with a profound and true appreciation of the fundamental idea that all love of the cat must be founded on theabsurdity of the cat, and only thus can a morbid idolatry be avoided. Perhaps those who appeared to be witches were those old ladies who took their cats too seriously. The cat in this book is called “Four-Paws,” which is as jolly as a gargoyle. But the name of the cat must be something familiar and even jeering, if it be only Tom or Tabby or Topsy: something that shows man is not afraid of it. Otherwise the name of the cat will be Pasht.

But when the same poet comes accidentally across an example of the insane seriousness about animals that some modern “humanitarians” exhibit, she turns against the animal-lover as naturally and instinctively as she turns to the animal. A writer on a society paper had mentioned some rich woman who had appeared on Cup Day “gowned” in some way or other, and inserted the tearful parenthesis that “she has just lost a dear dog in London.” The real animal-lover instantly recognizes the wrong note, and dances on the dog’s grave with a derision as unsympathetic as Swift:

Dear are my friends, and yet my heart still light is, Undimmed the eyes that see our set depart, Snatched from the Season by appendicitis Or something quite as smart. But when my Chin-Chin drew his latest breath On Marie’s outspread apron, slow and wheezily, I simply sniffed, I could not take his death So Pekineasily… … . Grief courts these ovations, And many press my sable-sueded hand, Noting the blackest of Lucile’s creations Inquire, and understand.

It is that balance of instincts that is the essence of all satire: however fantastic satire may be, it must always be potentially rational and fundamentally moderate, for it must be ready to hit both to right and to left at opposite extravagances. And the two extravagances which exist on the edges of our harassed and secretive society to-day are cruelty to animals and worship of animals. They both come from taking animals too seriously: the cruel man must hate the animal; the crank must worship the animal, and perhaps fear it. Neither knows how to love it.

Sulla serietà

NON mi piace la serietà. Penso che sia irreligiosa. O, se preferite la frase, è la moda di tutte le false religioni. L’uomo che prende ogni cosa sul serio è l’uomo che fa di ogni cosa un idolo: si prostra dinanzi al legno e alla pietra finché le sue membra sono radicate come le radici dell’albero o il suo capo è caduto come la pietra affondata lungo la strada. Si è spesso discusso se gli animali possano ridere. Si dice che la iena rida: ma è piuttosto nel senso in cui si dice che il deputato emetta «un applauso ironico». Nel migliore dei casi, la iena emette una risata ironica. In generale, è vero che tutti gli animali tranne l’Uomo sono seri. E penso che ciò sia ulteriormente dimostrato dal fatto che tutti gli esseri umani che si occupano in modo concentrato di animali sono anch’essi seri; seri in un senso di gran lunga oltre quello degli esseri umani occupati in qualsiasi altra cosa. I cavalli sono seri; hanno lunghe, solenni facce. Ma anche gli uomini di cavalli sono seri — fantini o addestratori o stallieri: anch’essi hanno lunghe, solenni facce. I Cani sono seri: hanno esattamente quella combinazione di moderata coscienziosità con mostruosa presunzione che è la costituzione della maggior parte delle religioni moderne. Ma, per quanto seri i cani possano essere, difficilmente possono essere più seri degli appassionati di cani — o dei ladri di cani. I ladri di cani, invero, devono essere particolarmente seri, perché devono tornare e dire di aver trovato il cane. La più tenue ombra di ironia, per non dire di leggerezza, sui loro volti, sarebbe evidentemente fatale ai loro piani. Non condurrò il paragone attraverso tutti i regni della storia naturale: ma è vero di tutti coloro che fissano il loro affetto o la loro intelligenza sugli animali inferiori. I gatti sono seri come la Sfinge, che dev’essere stata una qualche sorta di gatto, a giudicare dall’atteggiamento. Ma anche le ricche vecchie signore che amano i gatti sono del tutto ugualmente serie, sui gatti e su se stesse. Così anche gli antichi Egizi adoravano il gatto, e anche i coccodrilli e gli scarabei e ogni sorta di cose; ma erano tutti seri e rendevano seri i loro adoratori. L’arte egizia era intenzionalmente aspra, chiara e convenzionale; ma poteva rappresentare assai vividamente uomini che guidavano, cacciavano, combattevano, banchettavano, pregavano. Eppure penso che passerete lungo molti corridoi di quell’arte colorata e quasi crudele prima di vedere un uomo che ride. I loro dèi non li incoraggiavano a ridere. Le casalinghe mi dicono che gli scarabei di rado ridono. I gatti non ridono — tranne il Gatto del Cheshire (che non si trova in Egitto); e persino lui sa solo ghignare. E i coccodrilli non ridono. Piangono.

Questo paragone fra gli animali sacri dell’Egitto e gli animali domestici d’oggi non è così stiracchiato come può sembrare ad alcuni. C’è un amore sano e uno malsano per gli animali: e la definizione più prossima della differenza è che l’amore malsano per gli animali è serio. Sono del tutto pronto ad amare un rinoceronte, con ragionevoli precauzioni: egli è, senza dubbio, un delizioso padre per i giovani rinoceronti. Ma non prometto di non ridere di un rinoceronte. Non adorerò la bestia dal piccolo corno. Non adorerò il Vitello d’Oro; ancor meno adorerò il Vitello Grasso. Al contrario, lo mangerò. C’è una sorta di comicità nel mangiare un animale, o persino in un animale che mangia te. Speriamo di percepirla al momento opportuno, se mai accadrà. Ma non adorerò un animale. Cioè, non prenderò un animale del tutto sul serio: e so perché.

Ovunque vi sia Adorazione dell’Animale vi è Sacrificio Umano. Questa è, sia simbolicamente sia letteralmente, una reale verità dell’esperienza storica. Supponiamo che mille schiavi neri fossero sacrificati allo scarabeo nero; supponiamo che un milione di fanciulle fossero gettate nel Nilo a nutrire il coccodrillo; supponiamo che il gatto potesse mangiare uomini invece di topi — non sarebbe comunque nulla di più di quel sacrificio dell’umanità che così spesso rende il cavallo più importante dello stalliere, o il cane da grembo più importante persino del grembo. L’unica giusta visione dell’animale è la visione comica. Poiché la visione è comica essa è naturalmente affettuosa. E poiché è affettuosa, non è mai rispettosa.

Non conosco luogo in cui il vero contrasto sia stato espresso più candidamente, chiaramente, e (per quanto ne so) inconsciamente che in un eccellente libretto di versi intitolato Bread and Circuses di Helen Parry Eden, la figlia del Giudice Parry, che ha ereditato tanto l’umorismo quanto l’umanità nonostante le quali suo padre riuscì come magistrato moderno. Vi sono moltissime altre cose che potrebbero essere lodate nel libro, ma sceglierei per la lode il sano amore per gli animali. Vi è, per esempio, una piccola poesia su un gatto venuto dalla campagna a vivere in un appartamento a Battersea (chiunque a un certo momento della propria vita ha vissuto o vivrà in un appartamento a Battersea, tranne, forse, il «prigioniero del Vaticano»), e i versi hanno una tenerezza, con una vena di grottesco, che mi pare esattamente il tono appropriato riguardo agli animali domestici:

E ora sei qui. Ebbene, può darsi che i soli sorgano a Battersea benché oggi sia buio; la vita non è priva di amori e odî finché vi sono passeri sulle tegole e guardiani nel Parco. E tu stessa verrai a imparare le vie di Londra; e a tua volta assumerai le tue pene da Cockney come le altre genti che vivono in appartamenti, inseguendo i tuoi ratti puramente astratti su per le scale di cemento.

Questo è come Hood al suo meglio; ma è, per di più, penetrato da una profonda e vera comprensione dell’idea fondamentale che ogni amore per il gatto deve essere fondato sull’assurdità del gatto, e solo così può evitarsi una morbosa idolatria. Forse coloro che apparivano streghe erano quelle vecchie signore che prendevano i loro gatti troppo sul serio. Il gatto in questo libro è chiamato «Quattro-Zampe», che è allegro come un gargoyle. Ma il nome del gatto dev’essere qualcosa di familiare e persino canzonatorio, non fosse che Tom o Tabby o Topsy: qualcosa che mostri che l’uomo non ne ha paura. Altrimenti il nome del gatto sarà Pasht.

Ma quando la stessa poetessa s’imbatte accidentalmente in un esempio della folle serietà riguardo agli animali che alcuni «umanitari» moderni esibiscono, ella si volge contro l’amante degli animali con la stessa naturalezza e istintività con cui si volge all’animale. Uno scrittore di un giornale mondano aveva menzionato una ricca donna che era comparsa al Cup Day «agghindata» in un modo o nell’altro, e aveva inserito la lacrimosa parentesi che «ella ha appena perduto un caro cane a Londra». Il vero amante degli animali riconosce all’istante la nota falsa, e danza sulla tomba del cane con una derisione tanto priva di simpatia quanto quella di Swift:

Cari mi sono gli amici, eppure lieve è ancora il mio cuore, non offuscati gli occhi che vedono partire la nostra cerchia, strappata dalla Stagione da un’appendicite o da qualcosa di altrettanto elegante. Ma quando il mio Chin-Chin trasse l’ultimo respiro sul grembiule spiegato di Marie, lento e ansimante, io semplicemente tirai su col naso, non seppi prendere la sua morte così pechinesemente… … . Il dolore corteggia queste ovazioni, e molti stringono la mia mano guantata di zibellino, notando la più nera delle creazioni di Lucile s’informano, e comprendono.

È quell’equilibrio di istinti che è l’essenza di ogni satira: per quanto fantastica la satira possa essere, essa deve sempre essere potenzialmente razionale e fondamentalmente moderata, poiché deve essere pronta a colpire tanto a destra quanto a sinistra le opposte stravaganze. E le due stravaganze che esistono ai margini della nostra assillata e riservata società odierna sono la crudeltà verso gli animali e l’adorazione degli animali. Entrambe vengono dal prendere gli animali troppo sul serio: l’uomo crudele deve odiare l’animale; il fanatico deve adorare l’animale, e forse temerlo. Nessuno dei due sa come amarlo.

Lamp-Posts

IN contemplating some common object of the modern street, such as an omnibus or a lamp-post, it is sometimes well worth while to stop and think about why such common objects are regarded as commonplace. It is well worth while to try to grasp what is the significance of them—or rather, the quality in modernity which makes them so often seem not so much significant as insignificant. If you stop the omnibus while you stop to think about it, you will be unpopular. Even if you try to grasp the lamp-post in your effort to grasp its significance, you will almost certainly be misunderstood. Nevertheless, the problem is a real one, and not without bearing upon the most poignant politics and ethics of to-day. It is certainly not the things themselves, the idea and upshot of them, that are remote from poetry or even mysticism. The idea of a crowd of human strangers turned into comrades for a journey is full of the oldest pathos and piety of human life. That profound feeling of mortal fraternity and frailty, which tells us we are indeed all in the same boat, is not the less true if expressed in the formula that we are all in the same bus. As for the idea of the lamp-post, the idea of the fixed beacon of the branching thoroughfares, the terrestrial star of the terrestrial traveller, it not only could be, but actually is, the subject of countless songs.

Nor is it even true that there is something so trivial or ugly about the names of the things as to make them commonplace in all connexions. The word “lamp” is especially beloved by the more decorative and poetic writers; it is a symbol, and very frequently a title. It is true that if Ruskin had called his eloquent work “The Seven Lamp-Posts of Architecture” the effect, to a delicate ear, would not have been quite the same. But even the word “post” is in no sense impossible in poetry; it can be found with a fine military ring in phrases like “The Last Post” or “Dying at his Post.” I remember, indeed, hearing, when a small child, the line in Macaulay’s “Armada” about “with loose rein and bloody spur rode inland many a post,” and being puzzled at the picture of a pillar-box or a lamp-post displaying so much activity. But certainly it is not the mere sound of the word that makes it unworkable in the literature of wonder or beauty. “Omnibus” may seem at first sight a more difficult thing to swallow—if I may be allowed a somewhat gigantesque figure of speech. This, it may be said, is a Cockney and ungainly modern word, as it is certainly a Cockney and ungainly modern thing. But even this is not true. The word “omnibus” is a very noble word with a very noble meaning and even tradition. It is derived from an ancient and adamantine tongue which has rolled it with very authoritative thunders: quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus. It is a word really more human and universal than republic or democracy. A man might very consistently build a temple for all the tribes of men, a temple of the largest pattern and the loveliest design, and then call it an omnibus. It is true that the dignity of this description has really been somewhat diminished by the illogical habit of clipping the word down to the last and least important part of it. But that is only one of many modern examples in which real vulgarity is not in democracy, but rather in the loss of democracy. It is about as democratic to call an omnibus a bus as it would be to call a democrat a rat.

Another way of explaining the cloud of commonplace interpretation upon modern things is to trace it to that spirit which often calls itself science but which is more often mere repetition. It is proverbial that a child, looking out of the nursery window, regards the lamp-post as part of a fairy-tale of which the lamplighter is the fairy. That lamp-post can be to a baby all that the moon could possibly be to a lover or a poet. Now, it is perfectly true that there is nowadays a spirit of cheap information which imagines that it shoots beyond this shining point, when it merely tells us that there are nine hundred lamp-posts in the town, all exactly alike. It is equally true that there is a spirit of cheap science, which is equally cocksure of its conclusiveness when it tells us that there are so many thousand moons and suns, all much more alike than we might have been disposed to fancy. And we can say of both these calculations that there is nothing really commonplace except the mind of the calculator. The baby is much more right about the flaming lamp than the statistician who counts the posts in the street; and the lover is much more really right about the moon than the astronomer. Here the part is certainly greater than the whole, for it is much better to be tied to one wonderful thing than to allow a mere catalogue of wonderful things to deprive you of the capacity to wonder. It is doubtless true, to a definite extent, that a certain sameness in the mechanical modern creations makes them actually less attractive than the freer recurrences of nature; or, in other words, that twenty lamp-posts really are much more like each other than twenty trees. Nevertheless, even this character will not cover the whole ground, for men do not cease to feel the mystery of natural things even when they reproduce themselves almost completely, as in the ease of pitch darkness or a very heavy sleep. The mere fact that we have seen a lamp-post very often, and that it generally looked very much the same as before, would not of itself prevent us from appreciating its elfin fire, any more than it prevents the child.

Finally, there is a neglected side of this psychological problem which is, I think, one aspect of the mystery of the morality of war. It is not altogether an accident that, while the London lamp-post has always been mild and undistinguished, the Paris lamp-post has been more historic because it has been more horrible. It has been a yet more revolutionary substitute for the guillotine— yet more revolutionary, because it was the guillotine of the mob, as distinct even from the guillotine of the Republic. They hanged aristocrats upon it, including (unless my memory misleads me) that exceedingly unpleasant aristocrat who promulgated the measure of war economy known as “Let them eat grass.” Hence it happened that there has been in Paris a fanatical and flamboyant political newspaper actually calledLa Lanterne, a paper for extreme Jacobins. If there were a paper in London called theLamp-Post, I can only imagine it as a paper for children. As for my other example, I do not know whether even the French Revolution could manage to do anything with the omnibus; but the Jacobins were quite capable of using it as a tumbril.

In short, I suspect that Cockney things have become commonplace because there has been so long lacking in them a certain savour of sacrifice and peril, which there has been in the nursery tale, for all its innocence, and which there has been in the Parisian street, for all its iniquity.

The new wonder that has changed the world before our eyes is that all this crude and vulgar modern clockwork is most truly being used for a heroic end. It is most emphatically being used for the slaying of a dragon. It is being used, much more unquestionably than the lantern of Paris, to make an end of a tyrant. It was a cant phrase in our cheaper literature of late to say that the new time will make the romance of war mechanical. Is it not more probable that it will make the mechanism of war romantic? As I said at the beginning, the things themselves are not repulsively prosaic; it was their associations that made them so; and to-day their associations are as splendid as any that ever blazoned a shield or embroidered a banner. Much of what made the violation of Belgium so violent a challenge to every conscience lay unconsciously in the fact that the country which had thus become tragic had often been regarded as commonplace. The unpardonable sin was committed in a place of lamp-posts and omnibuses. In similar places has been prepared the just wrath and reparation; and a legend of it will surely linger even in the omnibus that has carried heroes to the mouth of hell, and even in the lamp-post whose lamp has been darkened against the dragon of the sky.

Lampioni

NEL contemplare qualche oggetto comune della strada moderna, come un omnibus o un lampione, talvolta vale bene la pena di fermarsi e riflettere sul perché tali oggetti comuni siano considerati banali. Vale bene la pena di cercare di afferrare quale sia il loro significato — o piuttosto, quella qualità della modernità che così spesso li fa apparire non tanto significativi quanto insignificanti. Se fermate l’omnibus mentre vi fermate a pensarci su, sarete impopolari. Persino se cercate di afferrare il lampione nel vostro sforzo di afferrarne il significato, sarete quasi certamente fraintesi. Nondimeno, il problema è reale, e non privo di attinenza con la più struggente politica ed etica dei nostri giorni. Non sono certo le cose in sé, l’idea e l’esito di esse, a essere remote dalla poesia o persino dal misticismo. L’idea di una folla di estranei umani trasformati in compagni per un viaggio è colma del più antico pathos e della più antica pietà della vita umana. Quel profondo sentimento di fraternità e fragilità mortale, che ci dice che siamo davvero tutti sulla stessa barca, non è meno vero se espresso nella formula che siamo tutti sullo stesso bus. Quanto all’idea del lampione, l’idea del faro fisso delle vie che si diramano, la stella terrestre del viaggiatore terrestre, essa non solo potrebbe essere, ma è di fatto, il soggetto di innumerevoli canzoni.

Né è nemmeno vero che vi sia qualcosa di così banale o brutto nei nomi delle cose da renderle comuni in ogni contesto. La parola «lampada» è particolarmente cara agli scrittori più decorativi e poetici; è un simbolo, e assai di frequente un titolo. È vero che se Ruskin avesse intitolato la sua eloquente opera «I sette lampioni dell’architettura» l’effetto, per un orecchio delicato, non sarebbe stato del tutto lo stesso. Ma persino la parola «palo» non è in alcun senso impossibile in poesia; la si può trovare con una bella risonanza militare in frasi come «L’ultimo squillo» o «Morire al proprio posto». Ricordo, in verità, di aver udito, quando ero un piccolo fanciullo, il verso dell’«Armada» di Macaulay su «con redini sciolte e sprone insanguinato cavalcò nell’entroterra più d’una posta», e di essere rimasto perplesso all’immagine di una cassetta delle lettere o di un lampione che mostrasse tanta attività. Ma certo non è il mero suono della parola a renderla inservibile nella letteratura della meraviglia o della bellezza. «Omnibus» può sembrare a prima vista una cosa più difficile da inghiottire — se mi si concede una figura retorica alquanto gigantesca. Questa, si potrà dire, è una parola moderna, cockney e sgraziata, come è certamente una cosa moderna, cockney e sgraziata. Ma persino questo non è vero. La parola «omnibus» è una parola nobilissima con un significato nobilissimo e persino una tradizione. Deriva da una lingua antica e adamantina che l’ha fatta rotolare con tuoni assai autorevoli: quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus. È una parola davvero più umana e universale di repubblica o democrazia. Un uomo potrebbe con perfetta coerenza edificare un tempio per tutte le tribù degli uomini, un tempio del più ampio modello e del più bel disegno, e poi chiamarlo omnibus. È vero che la dignità di questa descrizione è stata in realtà alquanto diminuita dall’illogica abitudine di ridurre la parola alla sua ultima e meno importante parte. Ma questo è solo uno dei molti esempi moderni in cui la vera volgarità non sta nella democrazia, bensì nella perdita della democrazia. Chiamare «bus» un omnibus è press’a poco democratico quanto lo sarebbe chiamare «ratto» un democratico.

Un altro modo di spiegare la nube di interpretazione banale che grava sulle cose moderne è ricondurla a quello spirito che spesso si autodefinisce scienza ma che è più spesso mera ripetizione. È proverbiale che un fanciullo, guardando dalla finestra della cameretta, consideri il lampione parte di una fiaba di cui il lampionaio è la fata. Quel lampione può essere per un bimbo tutto ciò che la luna potrebbe mai essere per un innamorato o un poeta. Ora, è perfettamente vero che oggigiorno esiste uno spirito di dozzinale informazione che si immagina di superare con un balzo questo punto luminoso, quando si limita a dirci che vi sono novecento lampioni in città, tutti esattamente uguali. È altrettanto vero che esiste uno spirito di dozzinale scienza, ugualmente sicuro della propria conclusività quando ci dice che vi sono tante migliaia di lune e di soli, tutti assai più simili tra loro di quanto fossimo disposti a immaginare. E di entrambi questi calcoli possiamo dire che non v’è nulla di veramente banale se non la mente del calcolatore. Il bimbo ha assai più ragione a proposito della lampada fiammeggiante di quanta ne abbia lo statistico che conta i pali nella strada; e l’innamorato ha assai più ragione a proposito della luna dell’astronomo. Qui la parte è certamente maggiore del tutto, poiché è molto meglio essere legati a una sola cosa meravigliosa che permettere a un mero catalogo di cose meravigliose di privarvi della capacità di meravigliarvi. È indubbiamente vero, in una certa misura, che una certa uniformità nelle meccaniche creazioni moderne le rende in effetti meno attraenti delle più libere ricorrenze della natura; o, in altre parole, che venti lampioni sono davvero assai più simili l’uno all’altro di venti alberi. Nondimeno, neppure questo carattere copre l’intero terreno, poiché gli uomini non cessano di sentire il mistero delle cose naturali anche quando esse si riproducono in modo quasi identico, come nel caso del buio pesto o di un sonno molto profondo. Il mero fatto che abbiamo visto un lampione molto spesso, e che esso in genere appariva assai simile a prima, non ci impedirebbe di per sé di apprezzarne il fuoco fatato, non più di quanto lo impedisca al fanciullo.

Infine, vi è un lato trascurato di questo problema psicologico che è, credo, un aspetto del mistero della moralità della guerra. Non è del tutto un caso che, mentre il lampione di Londra è sempre stato mite e indistinto, il lampione di Parigi sia stato più storico perché è stato più orribile. È stato un sostituto ancor più rivoluzionario della ghigliottina — ancor più rivoluzionario, perché era la ghigliottina della plebe, distinta persino dalla ghigliottina della Repubblica. Vi impiccavano gli aristocratici, compreso (se la memoria non m’inganna) quell’oltremodo sgradevole aristocratico che promulgò la misura di economia di guerra nota come «Che mangino l’erba». Così accadde che a Parigi vi fu un fanatico e sgargiante giornale politico chiamato per l’appunto La Lanterne, un foglio per giacobini estremisti. Se ci fosse a Londra un foglio chiamato Il Lampione, non potrei che immaginarlo come un foglio per bambini. Quanto all’altro mio esempio, non so se persino la Rivoluzione francese riuscirebbe a far qualcosa con l’omnibus; ma i giacobini erano ben capaci di usarlo come una carretta dei condannati.

In breve, sospetto che le cose cockney siano divenute banali perché a lungo è mancato in esse un certo sapore di sacrificio e di pericolo, che invece c’è stato nella fiaba della cameretta, con tutta la sua innocenza, e che c’è stato nella strada parigina, con tutta la sua iniquità.

La nuova meraviglia che ha mutato il mondo sotto i nostri occhi è che tutto questo greggio e volgare meccanismo moderno viene davvero usato per un fine eroico. Viene usato, con la massima enfasi, per l’uccisione di un drago. Viene usato, assai più indubitabilmente della lanterna di Parigi, per farla finita con un tiranno. Era una frase fatta nella nostra più dozzinale letteratura di questi ultimi tempi dire che il nuovo tempo renderà meccanico il romanticismo della guerra. Non è forse più probabile che renderà romantico il meccanismo della guerra? Come ho detto al principio, le cose in sé non sono ripugnantemente prosaiche; erano le loro associazioni a renderle tali; e oggi le loro associazioni sono splendide quanto ogni altra che mai abbia blasonato uno scudo o ricamato uno stendardo. Molto di ciò che rese la violazione del Belgio una sfida così violenta a ogni coscienza risiedeva inconsciamente nel fatto che il paese così divenuto tragico era stato spesso considerato banale. Il peccato imperdonabile fu commesso in un luogo di lampioni e omnibus. In luoghi simili è stata preparata la giusta ira e riparazione; e una leggenda di ciò indugerà certamente persino nell’omnibus che ha portato eroi alla bocca dell’inferno, e persino nel lampione la cui lampada è stata oscurata contro il drago del cielo.

The Spirits

THE magazines continue to abound in articles about Spiritualism. Those articles which expose and explode Spiritualism are certainly calculated to make converts to that novel creed; but fortunately the balance is redressed by the articles which defend and expound Spiritualism, which will probably make any thoughtful convert hastily recant his conversion. I believe myself that nothing but advantage can accrue to Spiritualism from all criticisms founded on Materialism. I think there is a mystical minimum in human history and experience, which is at once too obscure to be explained and too obvious to be explained away. It may be admitted that a miracle is rarer than a murder; but they are made obscure by somewhat similar causes. Thus a medium will insist on a dark room; and a murderer is said to have a slight preference for a dark night. A medium is criticized for not submitting to a sufficient number of scientific and impartial judges; and a murderer seldom collects any considerable number of impartial witnesses to testify to his performance. Many supernatural stories rest on the evidence of rough unlettered men, like fishermen and peasants; and most criminal trials depend on the detailed testimony of quite uneducated people. It may be remarked that we never throw a doubt on the value of ignorant evidence when it is a question of a judge hanging a man, but only when it is a question of a saint healing him. Morbid and hysterical people imagine all sorts of ghosts and demons that do not exist. Morbid and hysterical people also imagine all sorts of crimes and conspiracies that do not exist. A great many spiritual communications may be auto-suggestions; and a great many apparent murders may be suicides. But there is a limit to the probability of self-destruction; so there is of self-deception.

Now I think it well worth while to concentrate our common sense, not on where these messages come from, or why they come, but simply on the messages. Let us consider the thing itself about which there is no doubt at all. Let us consider, not whether spirits can speak to us, or how they speak, but simply what they say, or are supposed to say. If spirits in heaven, or scoundrels on earth, or fiends somewhere else, have brought us a new religion, let us look at the new religion on its own merits. Well, this is the sort of thing the spirits are supposed to write down, and very possibly do write down:

“You make death an impenetrable fog, while it is a mere golden mist, torn easily aside by the shafts of faith, and revealing life as not only continuous but as not cut in two by a great change. I cannot express myself as I wish… It is more like leaving prison for freedom and happiness. Not that your present life lacks joy; it is all joy, but you have to fight with imperfections. Here, we have to struggle only with lack of development. There is no evil—only different degrees of spirit.”

The interrogator, Mr. Basil King, who narrates his experiences in an interesting article inNash’s Magazine, proceeds to ask whether the lack of development is due to the highly practical thing we call sin. To this the spirit replies: “They come over with the evil, as it were, cut out, and leaving blanks in their souls. These have by degrees to be filled with good.”

Now I will waive the point whether death is a mist or a fog or a front door or a fire-escape or any other physical metaphor; being satisfied with the fact that it is there, and not to be removed by metaphors. But what amuses me about the spirit is that for him it is both there and not there. Death is non-existent in one sentence, and of the most startling importance six sentences afterwards. The spirit is positive that our existence isnot cut in two by a great change, at the moment of death. But the spirit is equally positive, a little lower down, that the whole of our human evil is instantly and utterly cut out of us, and all at the moment of death. If a man suddenly and supernaturally loses about three-quarters of his ordinary character, might it not be described as “a great change”? Why does so enormous a convulsion happen at the exact moment of death, if death is non-existent and not to be considered? The Spiritualist is here contradicting himself, not only by making death very decidedly a great change, but by actually making it a greater change than Dante or St. Francis thought it was. A Christian who thinks the soul carries its sins to Purgatory makes life much more “continuous” than this Spiritualist, who says that death, and death alone, alters a man as by a blast of magic. The article bears the modest title of “The Abolishing of Death ”; and the spirit does say that this is possible, except when he forgets and says the opposite. He seldom contradicts himself more than twice in a paragraph. But since he says clearly that death abolishes sin, and equally clearly that he abolishes death, it becomes an interesting speculation what happens next, and especially what happens to sin: a subject of interest to many of us.

Mr. Basil King asked the spirit, who had told him that animals are human, whether it is wrong to destroy animal life. It may be remarked that the questions Mr. King asks are always much more acute than the answers he gets. The answer about the killing of animals is this:

“You can never destroy life. Life is the absolute power which overrules all else. There can be no cessation. It is impossible.” And that is all; and for a man considering whether he shall or shall not kill a tom-cat, it does not seem very helpful. Logically, if it means anything, it would seem to mean that you may do anything to the cat, for its nine lives are really an infinite series. In short, you can kill it because you cannot kill it. But it is obvious that if a man relies on this reason for killing his cat, it is an equally good reason for killing his creditor. Creditors also are immortal (a solemn thought); creditors also pass through a golden mist torn easily aside by the shafts of faith, and have all the evil of their souls (including, let us hope, their avarice) cut out of them with the axe of death, without noticing anything in particular. In short, Mr. Basil King, when he asks a reasonable question about a real moral question, the relations of man and the animals, gets no reply except a hotch-potch of words which might mean anarchy and may mean anything. From beginning to end the spirit never answers any real question on which the real religions of mankind have been obliged to legislate and to teach. The only practical deduction would be that it is no disadvantage to have sinned in this life; as in the other case that it is no disgrace to kill either a creditor or a cat. If it means anything, it means that; and if it is spirits and not spifflications, the spirits mean that: and I do not desire their further acquaintance.

Gli spiriti

LE riviste continuano ad abbondare di articoli sullo Spiritismo. Quegli articoli che smascherano e demoliscono lo Spiritismo sono certamente atti a procurare adepti a quel nuovo credo; ma per fortuna l’equilibrio è ristabilito dagli articoli che difendono ed espongono lo Spiritismo, i quali probabilmente indurranno ogni convertito assennato a ritrattare frettolosamente la propria conversione. Da parte mia credo che allo Spiritismo non possa derivare che vantaggio da tutte le critiche fondate sul Materialismo. Penso che vi sia un minimo mistico nella storia e nell’esperienza umana, che è a un tempo troppo oscuro per essere spiegato e troppo ovvio per essere spiegato via. Si può ammettere che un miracolo sia più raro di un omicidio; ma sono resi oscuri da cause alquanto simili. Così un medium insisterà per una stanza buia; e di un assassino si dice che abbia una lieve preferenza per una notte buia. Un medium è criticato per non sottoporsi a un numero sufficiente di giudici scientifici e imparziali; e un assassino di rado raccoglie un numero considerevole di testimoni imparziali che attestino la sua prestazione. Molte storie soprannaturali poggiano sulla testimonianza di uomini rozzi e illetterati, come pescatori e contadini; e la maggior parte dei processi penali dipende dalla dettagliata testimonianza di persone del tutto incolte. Si può osservare che non gettiamo mai un dubbio sul valore della testimonianza ignorante quando si tratta di un giudice che impicca un uomo, ma solo quando si tratta di un santo che lo guarisce. Le persone morbose e isteriche immaginano ogni sorta di fantasmi e di demoni che non esistono. Le persone morbose e isteriche immaginano altresì ogni sorta di delitti e cospirazioni che non esistono. Moltissime comunicazioni spiritiche possono essere autosuggestioni; e moltissimi apparenti omicidi possono essere suicidi. Ma vi è un limite alla probabilità dell’autodistruzione; e così pure dell’autoinganno.

Ora penso che valga bene la pena di concentrare il nostro buon senso, non su da dove provengano questi messaggi, o perché vengano, ma semplicemente sui messaggi. Consideriamo la cosa in sé su cui non v’è alcun dubbio. Consideriamo, non se gli spiriti possano parlarci, o come parlino, ma semplicemente ciò che dicono, o si suppone dicano. Se spiriti in cielo, o furfanti in terra, o demoni altrove, ci hanno recato una nuova religione, guardiamo la nuova religione secondo i suoi propri meriti. Ebbene, ecco il genere di cose che gli spiriti dovrebbero scrivere, e assai probabilmente scrivono davvero:

«Voi fate della morte una nebbia impenetrabile, mentre essa non è che una dorata foschia, facilmente squarciata dai dardi della fede, e che rivela la vita come non solo continua ma come non spezzata in due da un grande mutamento. Non riesco a esprimermi come vorrei… È più come lasciare la prigione per la libertà e la felicità. Non che la vostra vita presente manchi di gioia; è tutta gioia, ma dovete lottare con le imperfezioni. Qui, dobbiamo lottare solo con la mancanza di sviluppo. Non v’è alcun male — solo diversi gradi di spirito.»

L’interrogante, il signor Basil King, che narra le proprie esperienze in un interessante articolo sulla Nash’s Magazine, prosegue chiedendo se la mancanza di sviluppo sia dovuta a quella cosa altamente pratica che chiamiamo peccato. A ciò lo spirito replica: «Essi giungono di qua con il male, per così dire, asportato, lasciando vuoti nelle loro anime. Questi devono a poco a poco essere colmati di bene.»

Ora lascerò da parte la questione se la morte sia una foschia o una nebbia o una porta d’ingresso o una scala antincendio o qualsiasi altra metafora fisica; paga del fatto che essa è là, e non è rimovibile con metafore. Ma ciò che mi diverte dello spirito è che per lui essa è insieme là e non là. La morte è inesistente in una frase, e della più sconcertante importanza sei frasi dopo. Lo spirito è certo che la nostra esistenza non sia spezzata in due da un grande mutamento, nel momento della morte. Ma lo spirito è ugualmente certo, poco più sotto, che l’intero nostro male umano sia istantaneamente e totalmente asportato da noi, e tutto nel momento della morte. Se un uomo perdesse d’un tratto e soprannaturalmente circa tre quarti del proprio carattere ordinario, non lo si potrebbe forse descrivere come «un grande mutamento»? Perché una convulsione così enorme dovrebbe accadere nell’esatto momento della morte, se la morte è inesistente e non va presa in considerazione? Lo Spiritista qui contraddice se stesso, non solo facendo della morte assai decisamente un grande mutamento, ma facendone in realtà un mutamento più grande di quanto lo credessero Dante o san Francesco. Un cristiano che pensa che l’anima porti i propri peccati in Purgatorio rende la vita assai più «continua» di questo Spiritista, il quale dice che la morte, e la morte soltanto, altera un uomo come per un soffio di magia. L’articolo reca il modesto titolo di «L’abolizione della morte»; e lo spirito afferma che ciò è possibile, salvo quando dimentica e dice l’opposto. Di rado si contraddice più di due volte in un paragrafo. Ma poiché egli dice chiaramente che la morte abolisce il peccato, e altrettanto chiaramente che egli abolisce la morte, diviene un’interessante congettura ciò che accade dopo, e specialmente ciò che accade al peccato: argomento d’interesse per molti di noi.

Il signor Basil King chiese allo spirito, che gli aveva detto che gli animali sono umani, se sia sbagliato distruggere la vita animale. Si può osservare che le domande che il signor King pone sono sempre assai più acute delle risposte che ottiene. La risposta sull’uccisione degli animali è questa:

«Non potete mai distruggere la vita. La vita è la potenza assoluta che governa ogni altra cosa. Non vi può essere cessazione. È impossibile.» E questo è tutto; e per un uomo che si domandi se debba o non debba uccidere un gattaccio, non sembra molto utile. Logicamente, se significa qualcosa, sembrerebbe significare che potete fare qualsiasi cosa al gatto, poiché le sue nove vite sono in realtà una serie infinita. In breve, potete ucciderlo perché non potete ucciderlo. Ma è ovvio che se un uomo si affida a questa ragione per uccidere il proprio gatto, essa è una ragione altrettanto buona per uccidere il proprio creditore. Anche i creditori sono immortali (solenne pensiero); anche i creditori passano attraverso una dorata foschia facilmente squarciata dai dardi della fede, e si vedono asportare tutto il male delle loro anime (compresa, speriamo, la loro avarizia) con la scure della morte, senza accorgersi di nulla in particolare. In breve, il signor Basil King, quando pone una domanda ragionevole su una vera questione morale, i rapporti tra l’uomo e gli animali, non riceve altra risposta che un guazzabuglio di parole che potrebbero significare anarchia e possono significare qualsiasi cosa. Dal principio alla fine lo spirito non risponde mai ad alcuna vera domanda sulla quale le vere religioni dell’umanità sono state obbligate a legiferare e a insegnare. L’unica deduzione pratica sarebbe che non è uno svantaggio aver peccato in questa vita; come nell’altro caso che non è un’onta uccidere un creditore o un gatto. Se significa qualcosa, significa questo; e se sono spiriti e non chiacchiere sconclusionate, gli spiriti intendono questo: e io non desidero ulteriormente la loro conoscenza.

Tennyson

I HAVE been glancing over two or three of the appreciations of Tennyson appropriate to his centenary, and have been struck with a curious tone of coldness towards him in almost all quarters. Now this is really a very peculiar thing. For it is a case of coldness to quite brilliant and unquestionable literary merit. Whether Tennyson was a great poet I shall not discuss. I understand that one has to wait about eight hundred years before discussing that; and my only complaint against the printers of my articles is that they will not wait even for much shorter periods. But that Tennyson was a poet is as solid and certain as that Roberts is a billiard-player. That Tennyson was an astonishingly good poet is as solid and certain as that Roberts is an astonishingly good billiard-player. Even in these matters of art there are some things analogous to matters of fact. It is no good disputing about tastes—partly because some tastes are beyond dispute. If anyone tells me that

There is fallen a splendid tear From the passion-flower at the gate;

or that

Tears from the depth of some divine despair

is not fine poetry, I am quite prepared to treat him as I would one who said that grass was not green or that I was not corpulent. And by all common chances Tennyson ought to be preserved as a pleasure—a sensuous pleasure if you like, but certainly a genuine one. There is no more reason for dropping Tennyson than for dropping Virgil. We do not mind Virgil’s view of Augustus, nor need we mind Tennyson’s view of Queen Victoria. Beauty is unanswerable, in a poem as much as in a woman. There were Victorian writers whose art is not perfectly appreciable apart from their enthusiasm. Kingsley’sYeast is a fine book, but not quite so fine a book as it seemed when one’s own social passions were still yeasty. Browning and Coventry Patmore are justly admired, but they are most admired where they are most agreed with. But “St. Agnes’ Eve” is an unimpeachably beautiful poem, whether one believes in St. Agnes or detests her. One would think that a man who had thus left indubitably good verse would receive natural and steady gratitude, like a man who left indubitably good wine to his nephew, or indubitably good pictures to the National Portrait Gallery. Nevertheless, as I have said, the tone of all the papers, modernist or old-fashioned, has been mainly frigid. What is the meaning of this?

I will ask permission to answer this question by abruptly and even brutally changing the subject. My remarks must, first of all, seem irrelevant even to effrontery; they shall prove their relevance later on. In turning the pages of one of the papers containing such a light and unsympathetic treatment of Tennyson, my eye catches the following sentence:

“By the light of modern science and thought, we are in a position to see that each normal human being in some way repeats historically the life of the human race.” This is a very typical modern assertion; that is, it is an assertion for which there is not and never has been a single spot or speck of proof. We know precious little about what the life of the human race has been; and none of our scientific conjectures about it bear the remotest resemblance to the actual growth of a child. According to this theory, a baby begins by chipping flints and rubbing sticks together to find fire. One so often sees babies doing this. About the age of five the child, before the delighted eyes of his parents, founds a village community. By the time he is eleven it has become a small city state, the replica of ancient Athens. Encouraged by this, the boy proceeds, and before he is fourteen has founded the Roman Empire. But now his parents have a serious set-back. Having watched him so far, not only with pleasure, but with a very natural surprise, they must strengthen themselves to endure the spectacle of decay. They have now to watch their child going through the decline of the Western Empire and the Dark Ages. They see the invasion of the Huns and that of the Norsemen chasing each other across his expressive face. He seems a little happier after he has “repeated” the Battle of Chalons and the unsuccessful Siege of Paris; and by the time he comes to the twelfth century, his boyish face is as bright as it was of old when he was “repeating “Pericles or Camillus. I have no space to follow this remarkable demonstration of how history repeats itself in the youth; how he grows dismal at twenty-three to represent the end of Mediaevalism, brightens because the Renaissance is coming, darkens again with the disputes of the later Reformation, broadens placidly through the thirties as the rational eighteenth century, till at last, about forty-three, he gives a great yell and begins to burn the house down, as a symbol of the French Revolution. Such (we shall all agree) is the ordinary development of a boy.

Now, seriously, does anyone believe a word of such bosh? Does anyone think that a child will repeat the periods of human history? Does anyone ever allow for a daughter in the Stone Age, or excuse a son because he is in the fourth century B.C. Yet the writer who lays down this splendid and staggering lie calmly says that “by the light of modern science and thought we are in a position tosee ” that it is true. “Seeing” is a strong word to use of our conviction that icebergs are in the north, or that the earth goes round the sun. Yet anybody can use it of any casual or crazy biological fancy seen in some newspaper or suggested in some debating club. This is the rooted weakness of our time. Science, which means exactitude, has become the mother of all inexactitude.

This is the failure of the epoch, and this explains the partial failure of Tennyson. He waspar excellence the poet of popular science—that is, of all such cloudy and ill-considered assertions as the above. He was the perfectly educated man of classics and the half-educated man of science. No one did more to encourage the colossal blunder that the survival of the fittest means the survival of the best. One might as well say that the survival of the fittest means the survival of the fattest. Tennyson’s position has grown shaky because it rested not on any clear dogmas old or new, but on two or three temporary, we might say desperate, compromises of his own day. He grasped at Evolution, not because it was definite, but because it was indefinite; not because it was daring, but because it was safe. It gave him the hope that man might one day be an angel, and England a free democracy; but it soothed him with the assurance that neither of these alarming things would happen just yet. Virgil used his verbal felicities to describe the eternal idea of the Roman Imperium. Tennyson used his verbal felicities for the accidental equilibrium of the British Constitution. “To spare the humble and war down the proud,” is a permanent idea for the policing of this planet. But that freedom should “slowly broaden down from precedent to precedent” merely happens to be the policy of the English upper class; it has no vital sanction; it might be much better to broaden quickly. One can write great poetry about a truth or even about a falsehood, but hardly about a legal fiction.

The misanthropic idea, as in Byron, is not a truth, but it is one of the immortal lies. As long as humanity exists, humanity can be hated. Wherever one shall gather by himself, Byron is in the midst of him. It is a common and recurrent mood to regard man as a hopeless Yahoo. But it is not a natural mood to regard man as a hopeful Yahoo, as the Evolutionists did, as a creature changing before one’s eyes from bestial to beautiful, a creature whose tail has just dropped off while he is staring at a far-off divine event.

This particular compromise between contempt and hope was an accident of Tennyson’s time, and, like his liberal conservatism, will probably never be found again. His weakness was not being old-fashioned or new-fashioned, but being fashionable. His feet were set on things transitory and untenable, compromises and compacts of silence. Yet he was so perfect a poet that I fancy he will still be able to stand, even upon such clouds.

Tennyson

HO dato una scorsa a due o tre degli apprezzamenti su Tennyson consoni al suo centenario, e sono rimasto colpito da un curioso tono di freddezza nei suoi confronti in quasi tutti gli ambienti. Ora, questa è davvero una cosa assai singolare. Poiché è un caso di freddezza verso un merito letterario del tutto brillante e incontestabile. Se Tennyson sia stato un grande poeta non lo discuterò. Comprendo che bisogna attendere circa ottocento anni prima di discuterne; e la mia unica lagnanza contro i tipografi dei miei articoli è che non attendono nemmeno per periodi assai più brevi. Ma che Tennyson fosse un poeta è tanto solido e certo quanto che Roberts è un giocatore di biliardo. Che Tennyson fosse un poeta straordinariamente bravo è tanto solido e certo quanto che Roberts è un giocatore di biliardo straordinariamente bravo. Persino in queste faccende d’arte vi sono alcune cose analoghe alle faccende di fatto. È inutile disputare sui gusti — in parte perché alcuni gusti sono al di là di ogni disputa. Se qualcuno mi dice che

È caduta una splendida lacrima dal fiore della passione presso il cancello;

o che

Lacrime dal fondo di qualche divina disperazione

non è buona poesia, sono ben disposto a trattarlo come tratterei chi dicesse che l’erba non è verde o che io non sono corpulento. E per ogni comune probabilità Tennyson dovrebbe essere conservato come un piacere — un piacere sensuale se volete, ma certamente genuino. Non v’è più ragione di abbandonare Tennyson di quanta ve ne sia di abbandonare Virgilio. Non ci turba la veduta di Virgilio su Augusto, né dobbiamo turbarci per la veduta di Tennyson sulla regina Vittoria. La bellezza è irrefutabile, in una poesia non meno che in una donna. Vi furono scrittori vittoriani la cui arte non è perfettamente apprezzabile a prescindere dal loro entusiasmo. Yeast di Kingsley è un bel libro, ma non un libro così bello come sembrava quando le proprie passioni sociali erano ancora in fermento. Browning e Coventry Patmore sono giustamente ammirati, ma sono ammirati soprattutto là dove si è più d’accordo con loro. Ma «La vigilia di sant’Agnese» è una poesia incontestabilmente bella, sia che si creda in sant’Agnese sia che la si detesti. Si penserebbe che un uomo che ha così lasciato versi indubbiamente buoni riceverebbe una naturale e costante gratitudine, come un uomo che ha lasciato vino indubbiamente buono al nipote, o quadri indubbiamente buoni alla National Portrait Gallery. Nondimeno, come ho detto, il tono di tutti i giornali, modernisti o all’antica, è stato per lo più glaciale. Qual è il significato di ciò?

Chiederò il permesso di rispondere a questa domanda cambiando argomento in modo brusco e persino brutale. Le mie osservazioni devono, anzitutto, sembrare irrilevanti fino alla sfrontatezza; proveranno la loro pertinenza più tardi. Nello sfogliare le pagine di uno dei giornali contenenti un trattamento così leggero e poco benevolo di Tennyson, il mio occhio coglie la seguente frase:

«Alla luce della scienza e del pensiero moderni, siamo in condizione di vedere che ogni normale essere umano in qualche modo ripete storicamente la vita della razza umana.» Questa è un’affermazione modernissima assai tipica; vale a dire, è un’affermazione per la quale non v’è e non v’è mai stata una sola macchia o particella di prova. Sappiamo pochissimo di che cosa sia stata la vita della razza umana; e nessuna delle nostre congetture scientifiche a riguardo reca la più remota somiglianza con l’effettiva crescita di un fanciullo. Secondo questa teoria, un neonato comincia scheggiando selci e sfregando bastoncini per trarne il fuoco. Quanto spesso si vedono neonati fare questo. Verso l’età di cinque anni il fanciullo, dinanzi agli occhi estasiati dei genitori, fonda una comunità di villaggio. Quando ha undici anni essa è divenuta un piccolo Stato-città, la replica dell’antica Atene. Incoraggiato da ciò, il ragazzo procede, e prima dei quattordici ha fondato l’Impero romano. Ma ora i suoi genitori subiscono un serio contraccolpo. Avendolo osservato fin qui, non solo con piacere, ma con una sorpresa assai naturale, devono farsi forza per sopportare lo spettacolo della decadenza. Devono ora osservare il loro fanciullo attraversare il declino dell’Impero d’Occidente e i Secoli Bui. Vedono l’invasione degli Unni e quella dei Normanni rincorrersi sul suo espressivo volto. Sembra un poco più felice dopo aver «ripetuto» la battaglia di Châlons e l’infruttuoso assedio di Parigi; e quando giunge al dodicesimo secolo, il suo volto fanciullesco è luminoso come lo era un tempo quando «ripeteva» Pericle o Camillo. Non ho spazio per seguire questa notevole dimostrazione di come la storia si ripeta nel giovane; come egli si rattristi a ventitré anni per rappresentare la fine del Medioevo, si rischiari perché sta giungendo il Rinascimento, si oscuri di nuovo con le dispute della successiva Riforma, si allarghi placidamente lungo la trentina come il razionale diciottesimo secolo, finché infine, verso i quarantatré, dà un gran urlo e comincia a incendiare la casa, come simbolo della Rivoluzione francese. Tale (converremo tutti) è l’ordinario sviluppo di un ragazzo.

Ora, sul serio, qualcuno crede una sola parola di simili sciocchezze? Qualcuno pensa che un fanciullo ripeterà i periodi della storia umana? Qualcuno tiene mai conto di una figlia nell’Età della Pietra, o scusa un figlio perché si trova nel quarto secolo a.C.? Eppure lo scrittore che stabilisce questa splendida e sbalorditiva menzogna dice tranquillamente che «alla luce della scienza e del pensiero moderni siamo in condizione di vedere» che è vera. «Vedere» è una parola forte da usare per la nostra convinzione che gli iceberg stiano a nord, o che la terra giri intorno al sole. Eppure chiunque può usarla per una qualsiasi casuale o folle fantasia biologica vista in qualche giornale o suggerita in qualche circolo di dibattito. Questa è la radicata debolezza del nostro tempo. La scienza, che significa esattezza, è divenuta la madre di ogni inesattezza.

Questo è il fallimento dell’epoca, e questo spiega il parziale fallimento di Tennyson. Egli fu par excellence il poeta della scienza divulgata — vale a dire, di tutte quelle nebulose e sconsiderate affermazioni come quella suddetta. Era l’uomo perfettamente istruito dei classici e l’uomo mezzo istruito della scienza. Nessuno fece di più per incoraggiare il colossale abbaglio che la sopravvivenza del più adatto significhi la sopravvivenza del migliore. Tanto varrebbe altrettanto dire che la sopravvivenza del più adatto significhi la sopravvivenza del più grasso. La posizione di Tennyson si è fatta malferma perché poggiava non su chiari dogmi vecchi o nuovi, ma su due o tre compromessi temporanei, potremmo dire disperati, del suo tempo. Egli si aggrappò all’Evoluzione, non perché fosse definita, ma perché era indefinita; non perché fosse ardita, ma perché era sicura. Gli dava la speranza che l’uomo potesse un giorno essere un angelo, e l’Inghilterra una libera democrazia; ma lo rasserenava con l’assicurazione che nessuna di queste allarmanti cose sarebbe accaduta tanto presto. Virgilio usò le sue felicità verbali per descrivere l’eterna idea dell’Imperium romano. Tennyson usò le sue felicità verbali per l’accidentale equilibrio della Costituzione britannica. «Risparmiare gli umili e abbattere in guerra i superbi» è un’idea permanente per il buon governo di questo pianeta. Ma che la libertà debba «lentamente allargarsi di precedente in precedente» si dà il caso che sia semplicemente la politica dell’alta classe inglese; non ha alcuna sanzione vitale; potrebbe essere assai meglio allargarsi in fretta. Si può scrivere grande poesia su una verità o persino su una menzogna, ma difficilmente su una finzione giuridica.

L’idea misantropica, come in Byron, non è una verità, ma è una delle menzogne immortali. Finché l’umanità esiste, l’umanità può essere odiata. Ovunque uno si raduni con se stesso, Byron è in mezzo a lui. È uno stato d’animo comune e ricorrente considerare l’uomo uno Yahoo senza speranza. Ma non è uno stato d’animo naturale considerare l’uomo uno Yahoo pieno di speranza, come facevano gli Evoluzionisti, come una creatura che muta sotto i propri occhi da bestiale a bella, una creatura la cui coda è appena caduta mentre egli fissa un lontano evento divino.

Questo particolare compromesso tra disprezzo e speranza fu un accidente del tempo di Tennyson, e, come il suo conservatorismo liberale, probabilmente non si ritroverà mai più. La sua debolezza non era l’essere all’antica o alla moda nuova, bensì l’essere alla moda. I suoi piedi poggiavano su cose transitorie e insostenibili, compromessi e patti di silenzio. Eppure era un poeta così perfetto che immagino sarà ancora capace di reggersi, persino su tali nuvole.

The Domesticity of Detectives

I HAVE just been entertaining myself with the last sensational story by the author ofThe Yellow Room, which was probably the best detective tale of our time, except Mr. Bentley’s admirable novel, Trent’s Last Case. The name of the author ofThe Yellow Room is Gaston Leroux; I have sometimes wondered whether it is the alternativenom de plume of the writer called Maurice Leblanc who gives us the stories about Arsene Lupin, the gentleman burglar. There would be something very symmetrical in the inversion by which the red gentleman always writes about a detective, and the white gentleman always writes about a criminal. But I have no serious reason to suppose the red and white combination to be anything but a coincidence; and the tales are of two rather different types. Those of Gaston the Red are more strictly of the type of the mystery story, in the sense of resolving a single and central mystery. Those of Maurice the White are more properly adventure stories, in the sense of resolving a rapid succession of immediate difficulties. This is inherent in the position of the hero; the detective is always outside the event, while the criminal is inside the event. Some would express it by saying that the policeman is always outside the house when the burglar is inside the house. But there is one very French quality which both these French writers share, even when their writing is very far from their best. It is a spirit of definition which is itself not easy to define. To say it is scientific will only suggest that it is slow. It is much truer to say it is military; that is, it is something that has to be both scientific and swift. It can be seen in much greater Frenchmen, as compared with men still greater who were not Frenchmen. Jules Verne and H. G. Wells, for instance, both wrote fairy-tales of science; Mr. Wells has much the larger mind and interest in life; but he often lacks one power which Jules Verne possesses supremely—the power of going to the point. Verne is very French in his rigid relevancy; Wells is very English in his rich irrelevance. He is there as English as Dickens, the best passages in whose stories are the stoppages, and even stopgaps. In a truly French tale there are no stoppages; every word, however dull, is deliberate, or directed towards the end. The comparison could be carried further back among the classics. The romance of Dumas may seem a mere riot of swords and feathers; it is often spoken of as a mere revel in adventure and variety; the madness of romance. But it is not a mere riot, but rather a military revolution, and even a disciplined revolution; certainly, a very French revolution. It is not a mere mad revel, but a very gorgeous and elaborate banquet planned by a great cook; a very French cook. Scott was a greater man than Dumas; and a greater novelist on the note of the serious humours of humanity. But he was not so great a story-teller, because he had less of something that can only be called the strategy of the soldier. The Three Musketeers advance like an army; with their three servants and their one ally, they march, manoeuvre, deploy, wheeling into positions and almost making patterns. They are always present wherever their author wants them; which is by no means true of all the characters of all the novelists. Dumas, and not Scott, ought to have written the life of Napoleon; Dumas was much nearer to Napoleon, in the fact that there was most emphatically method in his madness. Nobody ever called Scott mad; and certainly nobody could ever call him methodical. He was as incapable of the conspiracy which carried off General Monk in a box as Dumas was incapable of the curse of Meg Merrilies or the benediction of Di Vernon. But there is eternally present in the Frenchman something which may truly be called presence of mind. There to be an artist is not to be absent-minded, however harmless or happy the holidays of the mind may be. Art is to have the intellect and all its instruments on the spot and ready to go to the point; as when, but a little while ago, a great artist stood by the banks of the Marne and saved the world with one gesture of living logic—the sword-thrust of the Latin.

But though the strategy of the French story is allied to the strategy by which the French army has always affected the larger matters of mankind, I doubt whether such a story ought to deal with such matters. I mentioned at the beginning M. Gaston Leroux’s last mystery story because I think I know why it is not anything like so good as his first mystery story. The truth is that there are two types of sensational romance between which our wilder sensationalists seem to waver; and I think they are generally at their strongest in dealing with the first type, and at their weakest in dealing with the second. For the sake of a convenient symbol, I may call them respectively the romance of the Yellow Room and the romance of the Yellow Peril. We might say that the great detective story deals with small things; while the small or silly detective story generally deals with great things. It deals with diabolical diplomatists darting about between Vienna and Paris and Petrograd; with vast cosmopolitan conspiracies ramifying through all the cellars of Europe; or worse and most widespread of all, occult and mystical secret societies from China or Tibet; the vast and vague Oriental terrorism which I call for convenience here the Yellow Peril.

On the other hand, the good detective story is in its nature a good domestic story. It is steeped in the sentiment that an Englishman’s house is his castle; even if, like other castles, it is the scene of a few quiet tortures or assassinations. In other words, it is concerned with an enclosure, a plan or problem set within certain defined limits. And that is where the French writer’s first story was a model for all such writers; and where it ought to have been, but has not been a model for himself. The point about the Yellow Room is that it was a room; that is, it was a box, like the box in which Dumas kidnapped General Monk. The writer dealt with the quadrate or square which Mrs. Battle loved; the very plan of the problem looked like a problem in the Fourth Book of Euclid. He posted four men on four sides of a space and a murder was done in the middle of them; to all appearance, in spite of them; in reality, by one of them. Now a sensational novelist of the more cosmopolitan sort could, of course, have filled the story with a swarm of Chinese magicians who had the power of walking through brick walls, or of Indian mesmerists who could murder a man merely by meditating about him on the peaks of the Himalayas; or merely by so human and humdrum a trifle as a secret society of German spies which had made a labyrinth of secret tunnels under all the private houses in the world. These romantic possibilities are infinite; and because they are infinite they are really unromantic. The real romance of detection works inwards towards the household gods, even if they are household devils. One of the best of the Sherlock Holmes stories turns entirely on a trivial point of housekeeping: the provision of curry for the domestic dinner. Curry is, I believe, connected with the East; and could have been made the excuse for infinities of sham occultism and Oriental torments. The author could have brought in a million yellow cooks to poison a yellow condiment. But the author knew his business much better; and did not let what is called infinity, and should rather be called anarchy, invade the quiet seclusion of the British criminal’s home. He did not let the logic of the Yellow Room be destroyed by the philosophy of the Yellow Peril. That is why I lament the fact that the ingenious French architect of the original Yellow Room seems to have made an outward step in this direction; not, indeed, towards the plains of Tibet, but towards the hardly less barbaric plains of Germany. His last book, Rouletabille Chez Krupp, concerns the manufacture of a torpedo big enough to smash a town; and an object of that size may be a sensation, but will not long be a secret. It may be inevitable that a French patriot should now write even his detective stories about the war; but I do not think this method will ever make the French mystery story what the war itself has been—a French masterpiece; Gesta Dei per Francos.

La domesticità dei detective

MI sono appena divertito con l’ultima storia sensazionale dell’autore de La stanza gialla, che era probabilmente il miglior racconto poliziesco del nostro tempo, a parte l’amabile romanzo di Mr. Bentley, L’ultimo caso di Trent. Il nome dell’autore de La stanza gialla è Gaston Leroux; ho talvolta pensato se sia il nom de plume alternativo dello scrittore chiamato Maurice Leblanc che ci dà le storie su Arsène Lupin, il gentiluomo ladro. Ci sarebbe qualcosa di molto simmetrico nell’inversione per cui il signore rosso scrive sempre di un investigatore, e il signore bianco scrive sempre di un criminale. Ma non ho alcuna seria ragione di supporre che la combinazione rossa e bianca sia altro che una coincidenza; e i racconti sono di due tipi piuttosto diversi. Quelli del Gaston Rosso sono più strettamente del tipo della storia mistero, nel senso di risolvere un singolo e centrale mistero. Quelli del Maurice Bianco sono più propriamente storie d’avventura, nel senso di risolvere una rapida successione di difficoltà immediate. Questo è insito nella posizione dell’eroe; l’investigatore è sempre fuori dall’evento, mentre il criminale è dentro l’evento. Alcuni lo esprimerebbero dicendo che il poliziotto è sempre fuori dalla casa quando il ladro è dentro la casa. Ma c’è una qualità molto francese che entrambi questi scrittori francesi condividono, anche quando la loro scrittura è ben lontana dal loro meglio. È uno spirito di definizione che non è facile da definire. Dire che è scientifico suggerirà solo che è lento. È molto più vero dire che è militare; cioè, è qualcosa che deve essere sia scientifico che rapido. Può essere visto in uomini francesi molto maggiori, rispetto a uomini ancora più grandi che non erano francesi. Jules Verne e H.G. Wells, per esempio, hanno scritto entrambi fiabe di scienza; Mr. Wells ha una mente molto più ampia e un interesse per la vita; ma gli manca spesso un potere che Jules Verne possiede in modo supremo—il potere di andare al dunque. Verne è molto francese nella sua rigida rilevanza; Wells è molto inglese nella sua ricca irrilevanza. È lì tanto inglese quanto Dickens, i cui migliori passaggi nelle storie sono le interruzioni, e persino i tappabuchi. In un racconto veramente francese non ci sono interruzioni; ogni parola, per quanto noiosa, è deliberata o diretta verso la fine. Il confronto potrebbe essere portato più indietro tra i classici. Il romanzo di Dumas può sembrare una semplice rivolta di spade e piume; viene spesso descritto come un semplice divertimento nell’avventura e nella varietà; la pazzia del romanzo. Ma non è una semplice rivolta, bensì una rivoluzione militare, e persino una rivoluzione disciplinata; certamente, una molto francese rivoluzione. Non è un semplice festoso divertimento, ma un sontuoso e elaborato banchetto pianificato da un grande cuoco; un cuoco molto francese. Scott era un uomo più grande di Dumas; ed un romanziere migliore sulla nota degli umori seri dell’umanità. Ma non era un narratore così grande, perché aveva meno di qualcosa che può essere chiamato solo la strategia del soldato. I tre moschettieri avanzano come un esercito; con i loro tre servi e il loro unico alleato, marciando, manovrando, dispiegandosi, ruotando in posizioni e quasi facendo schemi. Sono sempre presenti dove il loro autore li vuole; il che non è vero di tutti i personaggi di tutti i romanzieri. Dumas, e non Scott, avrebbe dovuto scrivere la vita di Napoleone; Dumas era molto più vicino a Napoleone, nel fatto che c’era un metodo molto enfatico nella sua pazzia. Nessuno ha mai chiamato pazzo Scott; e certamente nessuno potrebbe mai chiamare lui metodico. Era incapace della cospirazione che portò via il generale Monk in una scatola quanto Dumas era incapace dell’imprecazione di Meg Merrilies o della benedizione di Di Vernon. Ma c’è eternamente presente nel francese qualcosa che può veramente essere chiamato presenza di spirito. Essere un artista non è essere distratti, per quanto innocue o felici possano essere le vacanze della mente. L’arte è avere l’intelletto e tutti i suoi strumenti sul posto e pronti ad andare al dunque; come quando, solo un po’ di tempo fa, un grande artista si fermò sulle rive della Marna e salvò il mondo con un gesto di vivente logica—il colpo di spada del latino.

Ma sebbene la strategia della storia francese sia affine alla strategia con cui l’esercito francese ha sempre influenzato le grandi questioni dell’umanità, dubito che una tale storia debba occuparsi di tali questioni. Ho menzionato all’inizio l’ultimo romanzo giallo di Gaston Leroux perché credo di sapere perché non è neanche lontanamente così buono come il suo primo romanzo giallo. La verità è che esistono due tipi di romanzo sensazionale tra i quali sembrano oscillare i nostri più sfrenati sostenitori del sensazionalismo; e credo che generalmente siano al meglio quando trattano il primo tipo, e al peggio quando si occupano del secondo. Per comodità di simbolo, posso chiamarli rispettivamente il romanzo della Stanza Gialla e il romanzo del Pericolo Giallo. Potremmo dire che la grande storia del detective si occupa di piccole cose; mentre la piccola o sciocca storia del detective generalmente tratta di grandi cose. Tratta di diplomatici diabolici che si muovono tra Vienna e Parigi e Pietrogrado; di vasti complotti cosmopoliti che si ramificano in tutte le cantine d’Europa; o, peggio e più diffuso di tutti, di società segrete occulte e mistiche dalla Cina o dal Tibet; il vasto e vago terrorismo orientale che per comodità chiamo qui il Pericolo Giallo.

D’altra parte, la buona storia del investigatore è nella sua natura una buona storia domestica. È intrisa del sentimento che la casa di un inglese sia il suo castello; anche se, come altri castelli, è teatro di poche torture o assassinii tranquilli. In altre parole, riguarda un recinto, un piano o problema posto entro certi limiti definiti. E qui sta il motivo per cui la prima storia dello scrittore francese è stata modello per tutti tali autori; e dove avrebbe dovuto essere, ma non lo è stato, modello per lui stesso. Il punto sul La Stanza Gialla è che era una stanza; cioè, era un contenitore, come il contenitore in cui Dumas rapì il generale Monk. Lo scrittore si occupò del quadrato o della piazza che la signora Battle amava; il piano stesso del problema sembrava un problema del Quarto Libro di Euclide. Egli mise quattro uomini sui quattro lati di uno spazio e fu commesso un omicidio nel mezzo di loro; a prima vista, nonostante loro; in realtà, da parte di uno di loro. Ora un romanziere sensazionale del tipo più cosmopolita avrebbe potuto, naturalmente, riempire la storia con una folla di maghi cinesi che avevano il potere di camminare attraverso i muri di mattoni, o di mesmeristi indiani che potevano uccidere un uomo semplicemente meditando su di lui sulle vette dell’Himalaya; o semplicemente da una cosa così umana e banale come una società segreta di spie tedesche che aveva creato un labirinto di tunnel segreti sotto tutte le case private del mondo. Queste possibilità romantiche sono infinite; e perché lo sono sono in realtà non romantiche. Il vero romanzo dell’indagine opera verso l’interno, verso gli dei domestici, anche se sono demoni domestici. Una delle migliori storie di Sherlock Holmes si basa interamente su un punto banale della gestione domestica: la fornitura di curry per la cena in famiglia. Il curry è, credo, collegato con l’Oriente; e avrebbe potuto essere usato come scusa per infinite finte occultismi e torture orientali. L’autore avrebbe potuto introdurre un milione di cuochi gialli per avvelenare un condimento giallo. Ma l’autore conosceva molto meglio il suo mestiere; e non lasciò che ciò che viene chiamato infinito, e dovrebbe piuttosto essere chiamata anarchia, invadesse la tranquilla reclusione della casa del criminale britannico. Non lasciò che la logica della Stanza Gialla venisse distrutta dalla filosofia del Pericolo Giallo. Ecco perché deploro il fatto che l’ingegnoso architetto francese della Stanza Gialla originale sembri aver compiuto un passo esterno in questa direzione; non, in effetti, verso le pianure del Tibet, ma verso le pianure a malapena meno barbare della Germania. Il suo ultimo libro, Rouletabille Chez Krupp, riguarda la fabbricazione di un siluro abbastanza grande da distruggere una città; e un oggetto di quella dimensione può essere una sensazione, ma non rimarrà a lungo un segreto. Può essere inevitabile che un patriota francese scriva ora anche le sue storie di investigatori sulla guerra; ma non credo che questo metodo renderà mai la storia del mistero francese ciò che la guerra stessa è stata—un capolavoro francese; Gesta Dei per Francos.

George Meredith

THE death of George Meredith was the real end of the Nineteenth Century, not that empty date that came at the close of 1899. The last bond was broken between us and the pride and peace of the Victorian age. Our fathers were all dead. We were suddenly orphans: we all felt strangely and sadly young. A cold, enormous dawn opened in front of us; we had to go on to tasks which our fathers, fine as they were, did not know, and our first sensation was that of cold and undefended youth. Swinburne was the penultimate, Meredith the ultimate end.

It is not a phrase to call him the last of the Victorians: he really is the last. No doubt this final phrase has been used about each of the great Victorians one after another from Matthew Arnold and Browning to Swinburne and Meredith. No doubt the public has grown a little tired of the positively last appearance of the Nineteenth Century. But the end of George Meredith really was the end of that great epoch. No great man now alive has its peculiar powers or its peculiar limits. Like all great epochs, like all great things, it is not easy to define. We can see it, touch it, smell it, eat it; but we cannot state it. It was a time when faith was firm without being definite. It was a time when we saw the necessity of reform without once seeing the possibility of revolution. It was a sort of exquisite interlude in the intellectual disputes: a beautiful, accidental truce in the eternal war of mankind. Things could mix in a mellow atmosphere. Its great men were so religious that they could do without a religion. They were so hopefully and happily republican that they could do without a republic. They are all dead and deified; and it is well with them. But we cannot get back into that well-poised pantheism and liberalism. We cannot be content to be merely broad: for us the dilemma sharpens and the ways divide.

Of the men left alive there are many who can be admired beyond expression; but none who can be admired in this way. The name of that powerful writer, Mr. Thomas Hardy, was often mentioned in company with that of Meredith; but the coupling of the two names is a philosophical and chronological mistake. Mr. Hardy is wholly of our own generation, which is a very unpleasant thing to be. He is shrill and not mellow. He does not worship the unknown God: he knows the God (or thinks he knows the God), and dislikes Him. He is not a pantheist: he is a pandiabolist. The great agnostics of the Victorian age said there was no purpose in Nature. Mr. Hardy is a mystic; he says there is an evil purpose. All this is as far as possible from the plenitude and rational optimism of Meredith. And when we have disposed of Mr. Hardy, what other name is there that can even pretend to recall the heroic Victorian age? The Roman curse lies upon Meredith like a blessing: “Ultimus suorum moriatur”—he has died the last of his own.

The greatness of George Meredith exhibits the same paradox or difficulty as the greatness of Browning; the fact that simplicity was the centre, while the utmost luxuriance and complexity was the expression. He was as human as Shakespeare, and also as affected as Shakespeare. It may generally be remarked (I do not know the cause of it) that the men who have an odd or mad point of view express it in plain or bald language. The men who have a genial and everyday point of view express it in ornate and complicated language. Swinburne and Thomas Hardy talk almost in words of one syllable; but the philosophical upshot can be expressed in the most famous of all words of one syllable—damn. Their words are common words; but their view (thank God) is not a common view. They denounce in the style of a spelling-book; while people like Meredith are unpopular through the very richness of their popular sympathies. Men like Browning or like Francis Thompson praise God in such a way sometimes that God alone could possibly understand the praise. But they mean all men to understand it: they wish every beast and fish and flying thing to take part in the applauding chorus of the cosmos. On the other hand, those who have bad news to tell are much more explicit, and the poets whose object it is to depress the people take care that they do it. I will not write any more about those poets, because I do not profess to be impartial or even to be good-tempered on the subject. To my thinking, the oppression of the people is a terrible sin; but the depression of the people is a far worse one.

But the glory of George Meredith is that he combined subtlety with primal energy: he criticized life without losing his appetite for it. In him alone, being a man of the world did not mean being a man disgusted with the world. As a rule, there is no difference between the critic and ascetic except that the ascetic sorrows with a hope and the critic without a hope. But George Meredith loved straightness even when he praised it crookedly: he adored innocence even when he analysed it tortuously: he cared only for unconsciousness, even when he was unduly conscious of it. He was never so good as he was about virgins and schoolboys. In one curious poem, containing many fine lines, he actually rebukes people for being quaint or eccentric, and rebukes them quaintly and eccentrically. He says of Nature, the great earth-mother, whom he worshipped:

… She by one sure sign can read, Have they but held her laws and nature dear; They mouth no sentence of inverted wit. More prizes she her beasts than this high breed Wry in the shape she wastes her milk to rear.

That is the mark of the truly great man: that he sees the common man afar off, and worships him. The great man tries to be ordinary, and becomes extraordinary in the process. But the small man tries to be mysterious, and becomes lucid in an awful sense for we can all see through him.

George Meredith

LA morte di George Meredith fu la vera fine del diciannovesimo secolo, non quella vuota data che giunse al termine del 1899. L’ultimo vincolo fu spezzato tra noi e l’orgoglio e la pace dell’età vittoriana. I nostri padri erano tutti morti. Fummo d’improvviso orfani: ci sentimmo tutti stranamente e tristemente giovani. Una fredda, enorme alba si aprì dinanzi a noi; dovemmo proseguire verso compiti che i nostri padri, per quanto egregi, non conoscevano, e la nostra prima sensazione fu quella di una giovinezza fredda e indifesa. Swinburne fu il penultimo, Meredith l’ultima fine.

Non è una frase fatta chiamarlo l’ultimo dei vittoriani: egli è davvero l’ultimo. Senza dubbio questa frase conclusiva è stata usata per ciascuno dei grandi vittoriani l’uno dopo l’altro, da Matthew Arnold e Browning fino a Swinburne e Meredith. Senza dubbio il pubblico si è un poco stancato della positivamente ultima apparizione del diciannovesimo secolo. Ma la fine di George Meredith fu davvero la fine di quella grande epoca. Nessun grand’uomo ora in vita possiede i suoi peculiari poteri o i suoi peculiari limiti. Come tutte le grandi epoche, come tutte le grandi cose, non è facile da definire. Possiamo vederla, toccarla, annusarla, mangiarla; ma non possiamo enunciarla. Era un tempo in cui la fede era salda senza essere definita. Era un tempo in cui vedevamo la necessità della riforma senza mai vedere la possibilità della rivoluzione. Era una sorta di squisito interludio nelle dispute intellettuali: una bella, accidentale tregua nell’eterna guerra dell’umanità. Le cose potevano mescolarsi in un’atmosfera pastosa. I suoi grandi uomini erano così religiosi da poter fare a meno di una religione. Erano così fiduciosamente e felicemente repubblicani da poter fare a meno di una repubblica. Sono tutti morti e deificati; ed è bene per loro. Ma noi non possiamo tornare in quel ben bilanciato panteismo e liberalismo. Non possiamo accontentarci di essere semplicemente ampi: per noi il dilemma si affila e le vie si dividono.

Degli uomini rimasti in vita ve ne sono molti che possono essere ammirati oltre ogni dire; ma nessuno che possa essere ammirato in questo modo. Il nome di quel potente scrittore, il signor Thomas Hardy, era spesso menzionato in compagnia di quello di Meredith; ma l’accoppiamento dei due nomi è un errore filosofico e cronologico. Il signor Hardy è interamente della nostra stessa generazione, il che è cosa assai sgradevole da essere. È stridulo e non pastoso. Egli non adora il Dio ignoto: conosce il Dio (o crede di conoscerlo), e Lo detesta. Non è un panteista: è un pandiabolista. I grandi agnostici dell’età vittoriana dicevano che non v’era alcuno scopo nella Natura. Il signor Hardy è un mistico; egli dice che v’è uno scopo malvagio. Tutto questo è quanto più lontano possibile dalla pienezza e dal razionale ottimismo di Meredith. E quando ci siamo sbarazzati del signor Hardy, quale altro nome vi è che possa anche solo pretendere di richiamare l’eroica età vittoriana? La maledizione romana grava su Meredith come una benedizione: «Ultimus suorum moriatur» — è morto l’ultimo dei suoi.

La grandezza di George Meredith mostra lo stesso paradosso o la stessa difficoltà della grandezza di Browning; il fatto che la semplicità fosse il centro, mentre la più estrema esuberanza e complessità ne era l’espressione. Egli era umano quanto Shakespeare, e anche affettato quanto Shakespeare. Si può in genere osservare (non ne conosco la causa) che gli uomini che hanno un punto di vista bizzarro o folle lo esprimono in un linguaggio piano o spoglio. Gli uomini che hanno un punto di vista geniale e quotidiano lo esprimono in un linguaggio ornato e complicato. Swinburne e Thomas Hardy parlano quasi con parole di una sillaba; ma l’esito filosofico può essere espresso nella più famosa di tutte le parole di una sillaba — «dannazione». Le loro parole sono parole comuni; ma la loro veduta (grazie a Dio) non è una veduta comune. Essi denunciano nello stile di un sillabario; mentre persone come Meredith sono impopolari proprio per la ricchezza delle loro simpatie popolari. Uomini come Browning o come Francis Thompson lodano Dio talvolta in un modo tale che Dio soltanto potrebbe comprendere la lode. Ma essi vogliono che tutti gli uomini la comprendano: desiderano che ogni bestia e pesce e creatura alata prenda parte al plaudente coro del cosmo. D’altra parte, coloro che hanno cattive notizie da annunciare sono assai più espliciti, e i poeti il cui scopo è deprimere il popolo badano bene a farlo. Non scriverò altro su quei poeti, perché non pretendo di essere imparziale né di essere di buon umore sull’argomento. A mio parere, l’oppressione del popolo è un peccato terribile; ma la depressione del popolo ne è uno assai peggiore.

Ma la gloria di George Meredith è che egli univa la sottigliezza all’energia primordiale: criticava la vita senza perderne l’appetito. In lui soltanto, essere un uomo di mondo non significava essere un uomo disgustato del mondo. Di regola, non v’è differenza tra il critico e l’asceta tranne che l’asceta si affligge con una speranza e il critico senza una speranza. Ma George Meredith amava la rettitudine anche quando la lodava in modo storto: adorava l’innocenza anche quando la analizzava tortuosamente: si curava soltanto dell’inconsapevolezza, anche quando ne era indebitamente consapevole. Non era mai così bravo come quando trattava di vergini e di scolaretti. In una curiosa poesia, contenente molti bei versi, egli rimprovera addirittura la gente di essere strana o eccentrica, e la rimprovera stranamente ed eccentricamente. Egli dice della Natura, la grande madre-terra, che venerava:

… Ella da un solo segno sicuro sa leggere, se abbiano avuto care le sue leggi e la natura cara; non pronunciano sentenza di arguzia rovesciata. Più pregia le sue bestie che questa alta stirpe storta nella forma ch’ella spreca il suo latte a nutrire.

Questo è il segno dell’uomo veramente grande: che egli scorge da lontano l’uomo comune, e lo venera. Il grande uomo cerca di essere ordinario, e diviene straordinario nel farlo. Ma l’uomo piccolo cerca di essere misterioso, e diviene lucido in un senso spaventoso, poiché tutti possiamo vedere attraverso di lui.

The Irishman

THE other day I went to see the Irish plays, recently acted by real Irishmen-peasants and poor folk-under the inspiration of Lady Gregory and Mr. W. B. Yeats. Over and above the excellence of the acting and the abstract merit of the plays (both of which were considerable), there emerged the strange and ironic interest which has been the source of so much fun and sin and sorrow—the interest of the Irishman in England. Since we have sinned by creating the Stage Irishman, it is fitting enough that we should all be rebuked by Irishmen on the stage. We have all seen some obvious Englishman performing a Paddy. It was, perhaps, a just punishment to see an obvious Paddy performing the comic and contemptible part of an English gentleman. I have now seen both, and I can lay my hand on my heart (though my knowledge of physiology is shaky about its position) and declare that the Irish English gentleman was an even more abject and crawling figure than the English Irish servant. The Comic Irishman in the English plays was at least given credit for a kind of chaotic courage. The Comic Englishman in the Irish plays was represented not only as a fool, but as a nervous fool; a fussy and spasmodic prig, who could not be loved either for strength or weakness. But all this only illustrates the fundamental fact that both the national views are wrong; both the versions are perversions. The rollicking Irishman and the priggish Englishman are alike the mere myths generated by a misunderstanding. It would be rather nearer the truth if we spoke of the rollicking Englishman and the priggish Irishman. But even that would be wrong too.

Unless people are near in soul they had better not be near in neighbourhood. The Bible tells us to love our neighbours, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people… And there is a real human reason for this. You think of a remote man merely as a man; that is, you think of him in the right way. Suppose I say to you suddenly—“Oblige me by brooding on the soul of the man who lives at 351 High Street, Islington.” Perhaps (now I come to think of it) you are the man who lives at 351 High Street, Islington. In that case substitute some other unknown address and pursue the intellectual sport. Now you will probably be broadly right about the man in Islington whom you have never seen or heard of, because you will begin at the right end—the human end. The man in Islington is at least a man. The soul of the man in Islington is certainly a soul. He also has been bewildered and broadened by youth; he also has been tortured and intoxicated by love; he also is sublimely doubtful about death. You can think about the soul of that nameless man who is a mere number in Islington High Street. But you do not think about the soul of your next-door neighbour. He is not a man; he is an environment. He is the barking of a dog; he is the noise of a pianola; he is a dispute about a party wall; he is drains that are worse than yours, or roses that are better than yours. Now, all these are the wrong ends of a man; and a man, like many other things in this world, such as a cat-o’-nine-tails, has a large number of wrong ends, and only one right one. These adjuncts are all tails, so to speak. A dog is a sort of curly tail to a man; a substitute for that which man so tragically lost at an early stage of evolution. And though I would rather myself go about trailing a dog behind me than tugging a pianola or towing a rose-garden, yet this is a matter of taste, and they are all alike appendages or things dependent upon man. But besides his twenty tails, every man really has a head, a centre of identity, a soul. And the head of a man is even harder to find than the head of a Skye terrier, for man has nine hundred and ninety-nine wrong ends instead of one. It is no question of getting hold of the sow by the right ear; it is a question of getting hold of the hedgehog by the right quill, of the bird by the right feather, of the forest by the right leaf. If we have never known the forest we shall know at least that it is a forest, a thing grown grandly out of the earth; we shall realize the roots toiling in the terrestrial darkness, the trunks reared in the sylvan twilight.

But to find the forest is to find the fringe of the forest. To approach it from without is to see its mere accidental outline ragged against the sky. It is to come close enough to be superficial. The remote man, therefore, may stand for manhood; for the glory of birth or the dignity of death. But it is difficult to get Mr. Brown next door (with whom you have quarrelled about the creepers) to stand for these things in any satisfactorily symbolic attitude. You do not feel the glory of his birth; you are more likely to hint heatedly at its ingloriousness. You do not, on purple and silver evenings, dwell on the dignity and quietude of his death; you think of it, if at all, rather as sudden. And the same is true of historical separation and proximity. I look forward to the same death as a Chinaman; barring one or two Chinese tortures, perhaps. I look back to the same babyhood as an ancient Phoenician; unless, indeed, it were one of that special Confirmation class of Sunday-school babies who were passed through the fire to Moloch. But these distant or antique terrors seem merely tied on to the life: they are not part of its texture. Babylonian mothers (however they yielded to etiquette) probably loved their children; and Chinamen unquestionably reverenced their dead. It is far different when two peoples are close enough to each other to mistake all the acts and gestures of everyday life. It is far different when the Baptist baker in Islington thinks of Irish infancy, passed amid Popish priests and impossible fairies. It is far different when the tramp from Tipperary thinks of Irish death, coming often in dying hamlets, in distant colonies, in English prisons or on English gibbets. There childhood and death have lost all their reconciling qualities; the very details of them do not unite, but divide. Hence England and Ireland see the facts of each other without guessing the meaning of the facts. For instance, we may see the fact that an Irish house-wife is careless. But we fancy falsely that this is because she is scatter-brained; whereas it is, on the contrary, because she is concentrated— on religion, or conspiracy, or tea. You may call her inefficient, but you certainly must not call her weak. In the same way, the Irish see the fact that the Englishman is unsociable; they do not see the reason, which is that he is romantic.

This seems to me the real value of such striking national sketches as those by Lady Gregory and Mr. Synge, which I saw last week. Here is a case where mere accidental realism, the thing written on the spot, the “slice of life,” may, for once in a way, do some good. All the signals, all the flags, all the declaratory externals of Ireland we are almost certain to mistake. If the Irishman speaks to us, we are sure to misunderstand him. But if we hear the Irishman talking to himself, it may begin to dawn on us that he is a man.

L’Irlandese

L’altro giorno sono andato a vedere le opere irlandesi, recitate di recente da veri irlandesi - contadini e gente povera - sotto l’ispirazione della Lady Gregory e del signor W.B. Yeats. Oltre all’eccellenza dell’interpretazione e al merito astratto delle opere (entrambi notevoli), è emerso lo strano ed ironico interesse che è stato fonte di tanta allegria, peccato e dolore: l’interesse degli irlandesi per l’Inghilterra. Dato che abbiamo peccato creando il tipo dell’irlandese da palcoscenico, è giusto che tutti noi siamo rimproverati da irlandesi sul palco. Abbiamo visto tutti qualche evidente inglese interpretare un Paddy. Forse era una giusta punizione vedere un evidente Paddy recitare la parte comica e spregevole di un gentiluomo inglese. Ne ho visti entrambi, e posso mettere la mano sul cuore (anche se la mia conoscenza della fisiologia è incerta sulla sua posizione) e dichiarare che il gentiluomo inglese irlandese era una figura ancora più meschina e servile del servo irlandese inglese. Il tipo comico dell’irlandese nelle opere inglesi aveva almeno il merito di essere ritenuto un tipo di coraggio caotico. Il tipo comico dell’inglese nelle opere irlandesi era rappresentato non solo come uno stupido, ma come uno stupido nervoso; un prigione frivolo e spasmodico, che non poteva essere amato né per la sua forza né per la sua debolezza. Ma tutto questo illustra solo il fatto fondamentale che entrambe le visioni nazionali sono sbagliate; entrambe le versioni sono distorsioni. L’irlandese allegra e l’inglese prigione sono allo stesso modo semplici miti generati da un fraintendimento. Saremmo più vicini alla verità se parlassimo di l’inglese allegra e dell’irlandese prigione. Ma anche questo sarebbe sbagliato.

A meno che le persone non siano vicine nell’anima, è meglio che non lo siano nel quartiere. La Bibbia ci dice di amare il nostro prossimo, e anche di amare i nostri nemici; probabilmente perché sono generalmente le stesse persone… E c’è una vera ragione umana per questo. Pensi a un uomo lontano semplicemente come a un uomo; cioè, lo pensi nel modo giusto. Supponiamo che io ti dica all’improvviso: “Fammi il favore di meditare sull’anima dell’uomo che vive al 351 di High Street, Islington”. Forse (ora che ci penso) sei tu l’uomo che vive al 351 di High Street, Islington. In tal caso sostituisci un altro indirizzo sconosciuto e prosegui questo sport intellettuale. Ora probabilmente avrai ragione in linea generale riguardo all’uomo di Islington che non hai mai visto né sentito nominare, perché comincerai dalla parte giusta - la parte umana. L’uomo di Islington è almeno un uomo. L’anima dell’uomo di Islington è certamente un’anima. Anche lui è stato sconcertato e arricchito dalla giovinezza; anche lui è stato torturato ed inebriato dall’amore; anche lui ha dei dubbi sublimi riguardo alla morte. Puoi pensare all’anima di quell’uomo senza nome che è un semplice numero a Islington High Street. Ma non pensi all’anima del tuo vicino di casa. Lui non è un uomo; lui è un ambiente. È l’abbaiare di un cane; è il rumore di una pianola; è una disputa riguardo a un muro divisorio; sono scarichi che sono peggiori dei tuoi, o rose che sono migliori delle tue. Ora, tutte queste sono le parti sbagliate di un uomo; e un uomo, come molte altre cose in questo mondo, come la frusta a nove code, ha un gran numero di estremità sbagliate, e solo una giusta. Questi accessori sono tutti code, per così dire. Un cane è una specie di coda riccia di un uomo; un sostituto di ciò che l’uomo perse tragicamente in uno stadio precoce dell’evoluzione. E sebbene io preferirei personalmente andarmene in giro trainando dietro di me un cane piuttosto che tirare una pianola o rimorchiare un rosa-giardino, tuttavia si tratta di questione di gusto, e sono tutti simili appendici o cose dipendenti dall’uomo. Ma oltre alle sue venti code, ogni uomo ha realmente una testa, un centro di identità, un’anima. E la testa di un uomo è ancora più difficile da trovare di quella di un Skye terrier, perché l’uomo ha novecentonovantanove estremità sbagliate invece di una. Non si tratta di afferrare la scrofa per l’orecchio giusto; si tratta di afferrare il riccio per lo spino giusto, l’uccello per la piuma giusta, la foresta per la foglia giusta. Se non abbiamo mai conosciuto la foresta sapremo almeno che è una foresta, una cosa cresciuta grandiosamente dalla terra; ci renderemo conto delle radici che faticano nell’oscurità terrestre, dei tronchi innalzati nel crepuscolo boschivo.

Ma trovare la foresta significa trovare il suo orlo. Avvicinarsisi dall’esterno è vedere solo il suo contorno accidentale, frastagliato contro il cielo. È avvicinarsi abbastanza da essere superficiali. L’uomo lontano, quindi, può rappresentare l’umanità; la gloria della nascita o la dignità della morte. Ma è difficile che il signor Brown di casa accanto (con cui avete litigato per le edere) possa rappresentare queste cose in un atteggiamento simbolico soddisfacente. Non sentite la gloria della sua nascita; siete più propensi ad alludere con calore alla sua ignominia. Non soffermatevi, nelle serate violacee e argentee, sulla dignità e la quiete della sua morte; se ci pensate, piuttosto come improvvisa. E lo stesso vale per la separazione storica e la vicinanza. Aspetto la stessa morte di un cinese; salvo una o due torture cinesi, forse. Ricordo la mia infanzia come quella di un antico fenicio; a meno che non fosse uno di quegli speciali bambini della scuola domenicale passati attraverso il fuoco per Moloch. Ma queste paure lontane o antiche sembrano solo attaccate alla vita: non ne fanno parte. Le madri babilonesi (per quanto cedessero all’etichetta) probabilmente amavano i loro figli; e i cinesi senza dubbio riverivano i loro morti. È ben diverso quando due popoli sono abbastanza vicini da fraintendere tutti gli atti e i gesti della vita quotidiana. È ben diverso quando il fornaio battista di Islington pensa all’infanzia irlandese, trascorsa tra preti papisti e fate impossibili. È ben diverso quando lo scacciamucchio di Tipperary pensa alla morte irlandese, che spesso arriva in villaggi morenti, in colonie lontane, in prigioni inglesi o su forche inglesi. Lì infanzia e morte hanno perso tutte le loro qualità riconciliatrici; i dettagli stessi non uniscono, ma dividono. Perciò Inghilterra e Irlanda vedono i fatti dell’altra senza indovinare il significato dei fatti. Per esempio, possiamo vedere che una casalinga irlandese è disattenta. Ma ci illudiamo che sia perché è distratta; mentre al contrario è concentrata — sulla religione, o sulla cospirazione, o sul tè. Potete chiamarla inefficiente, ma certamente non potete chiamarla debole. Allo stesso modo, gli irlandesi vedono che l’inglese è asociale; non vedono la ragione, che è il suo romanticismo.

Questo mi sembra il vero valore di schizzi nazionali così vividi come quelli di Lady Gregory e del signor Synge che ho visto la scorsa settimana. Ecco un caso in cui il semplice realismo accidentale, la cosa scritta sul posto, la “fetta di vita”, può, per una volta tanto, fare qualcosa di buono. Tutti i segnali, tutte le bandiere, tutti gli esterni dichiarativi dell’Irlanda siamo quasi certi di fraintendere. Se l’irlandese ci parla, siamo sicuri di non capirlo. Ma se sentiamo l’irlandese parlare da solo, può cominciare a spuntare in noi la consapevolezza che è un uomo.

Ireland and the Domestic Drama

IN a sense so gigantic that it would have staggered the statesman who once used the phrase, we have called in the new world to redress the balance of the old. The new world has found new worlds to conquer; it has new tasks not only drastic but delicate, not only political but psychological. Among the things which America may yet help us to achieve is one about which I feel strongly and even painfully—the reconciliation, a thousand times thwarted but now a thousand times more necessary, between the English and the Irish. The triangular table of such a peace conference need not, and perhaps had better not, be found in any public building. Rather it should be found in every public house and even in every private house. The change should come through something which is far nobler and more eternal than diplomacy or politics; talk. It should come through the only real public opinion, which is always uttered in private; the public opinion that is a mass of private opinions. A famous Irishman said of the Irish that they were too poetical to be poets, but that they were the greatest talkers since the Greeks. My personal memory does not stretch back to the greatest period of Greece; and perhaps the best talker I ever knew was an Irishman, who is now living in America and (I will confidently affirm) talking in America. It may be true that he is too poetical to be a poet; anyhow, he is not too poetical to be the father of a poet. He is Mr. J. B. Yeats, the father of Mr. W. B. Yeats; and he has lately been persuaded to write and print some of the good things he has said all his life—first in the form of a book of letters, and later of a book of essays, Essays Irish and American, published by Mr. Fisher Unwin. But my real satisfaction, in the social and political sense, is to know not that he has written a little, but that he has spoken much; for out of such seemingly lost and wasted words come the real international understandings.

There was a type of detachment during the late war, not to be confused with what I can only call the view of the vulgar peacemonger. It was not the patronizing pacifism of the gentleman who took a holiday in the Alps and said he was “above the struggle”; as if there were any Alp from which the soul can look down on Calvary. There is, indeed, one mountain among them that might be very appropriate to so detached an observer—the mountain named after Pilate, the man who washed his hands. The isolation I mean is far removed fron1 such impudence. The defence of this detachment is that it is not really detached; it was not indifference, but indignation. It was not without foundation; it was only without proportion. Indeed, the real case against it was that while its expression was largely cynical, its motive was largely sentimental. Such was the irritation of Mr. Bernard Shaw; such was the irritation of many Irishmen much more national than Mr. Bernard Shaw. Their irritation can be analysed in a simple phrase; it annoyed them that the men who were wrong should be right. It annoyed them that all the snobs and sneaks of our corrupt parliamentarianism should free the world by accident. In the quarrel with Prussia, they could not really doubt—they did not really doubt—that England was right. But they did doubt whether England had any right to be right.

It is a view I think self-stultifying and even suicidal. For the great work will be remembered and the meaner workers forgotten; and it is madness to praise the Persians on the eve of Marathon because one has quarrelled with some silly archon at Athens, whose very name will be lost in a few years. But it is not a treasonable, far less a treacherous view; and its anger is the same as the popular anger it arouses. This is the Irish mood which common sense and common sympathy must deal with; and this is the peculiar value of real Irish intellectual detachment like that of Mr. Yeats. First of all, a man like Mr. Yeats is so genuinely detached that he can be definite and clear in his sympathy with the Allies. He would be capable of the supreme impartiality of seeing that England could be right although she had been wrong; and even that Ireland could be wrong although she had been wronged. But all the time he would play with a perennial fount of satire and insight on the fundamental spiritual facts that falsify the English position in Ireland. He would make us feel that we were only right in one thing because we were so wrong in many things. There are many examples of this in his little book of essays; but the one I would emphasize here especially is his very vital point about the domestic nature of the whole sociology of Ireland. Here again he is all the more impressive for being in a sense impartial, or even what some would call indifferent. He is not what is called orthodox; he might well be called sceptical. He has cultivated rather Continental aesthetics than Catholic apologetics. It is solely by a serene insight into what his French teachers would call the “vraie verite” that he sees the way the world ought to go; and pauses upon the phrase, “the return to the home.”

Irish education, he declares, must always depend on the fact that the child’s mind is full of “the drama of the home.” It marks his judicial emancipation that he contrasts this domestic drama favourably with two other types of teaching, one of which would be called conventional and conservative, while the other would be called unconventional and advanced. He criticizes the old English public-school boy; he also criticizes (I grieve to state) the new American woman.

The two things called in England the “public school” and the “high school” are counted almost contraries, merely because one is old and the other new. But the critic sees them to be essentially the same; because in both cases the school overshadows the home. Here is a profound practical instance of the root realities of the Irish national claim. Here is a case in which Home Rule literally means the rule of the home. It will never be possible to establish the English fashion in Ireland, and I for one should not pretend to be sorry if it were possible to spread the Irish fashion to England.

For the drama of the home is really very dramatic. It is one of those facts that are confused and hidden by the modern fuss about social machinery, which is the mere scene-shifting and stage-carpentering of the domestic drama. The household is the lighted stage, on which the actors appeal literally to the gods. It is in private life that things happen. A human being is born at home; he generally dies at home, and the social philosophy that can deal with nothing but his coffin carried out of the house is merely a philosophy of boxes and parcels, a philosophy of luggage and labels. Half our human effort is now wasted on mere transit, transport, and exchange; the commonwealth is a clearing-house of cases we never open and presents we never enjoy. Rulers and reformers are a race of rather pedantic porters, always carrying an unknown present to an unknown person, not unfrequently (I fancy) the wrong present to the wrong person. Some of our strenuous social organizers may be content to spend Christmas at Charing Cross Station for the pride of controlling the traffic and the luggage. But I confess I find it more exciting to be at the end of the journey where the Christmas gifts can be seen.

L’Irlanda e il dramma domestico

IN un senso così gigantesco da aver sbalordito lo statista che un tempo usò la frase, abbiamo chiamato in causa il nuovo mondo per raddrizzare l’equilibrio del vecchio. Il nuovo mondo ha trovato nuovi mondi da conquistare; ha nuovi compiti non solo drastici ma delicati, non solo politici ma psicologici. Tra le cose che l’America può ancora aiutarci a compiere ve n’è una che mi sta a cuore intensamente e persino dolorosamente — la riconciliazione, mille volte contrastata ma ora mille volte più necessaria, tra gli inglesi e gli irlandesi. Il tavolo triangolare di una simile conferenza di pace non deve, e forse è meglio che non si trovi, in alcun edificio pubblico. Piuttosto dovrebbe trovarsi in ogni pubblica osteria e persino in ogni privata dimora. Il mutamento dovrebbe venire attraverso qualcosa di assai più nobile e più eterno della diplomazia o della politica: la conversazione. Dovrebbe venire attraverso l’unica vera opinione pubblica, che è sempre pronunciata in privato; l’opinione pubblica che è una massa di opinioni private. Un famoso irlandese disse degli irlandesi che erano troppo poetici per essere poeti, ma che erano i più grandi conversatori dai tempi dei greci. La mia personale memoria non risale al più grande periodo della Grecia; e forse il miglior conversatore che io abbia mai conosciuto era un irlandese, che ora vive in America e (lo affermerò con sicurezza) conversa in America. Può darsi che sia troppo poetico per essere un poeta; comunque, non è troppo poetico per essere il padre di un poeta. Egli è il signor J. B. Yeats, il padre del signor W. B. Yeats; ed è stato di recente persuaso a scrivere e stampare alcune delle belle cose che ha detto per tutta la vita — dapprima nella forma di un libro di lettere, e più tardi di un libro di saggi, Essays Irish and American, pubblicato dal signor Fisher Unwin. Ma la mia vera soddisfazione, nel senso sociale e politico, è sapere non che egli abbia scritto poco, ma che abbia parlato molto; poiché da tali parole apparentemente perdute e sprecate nascono le vere intese internazionali.

Vi fu un tipo di distacco durante l’ultima guerra, da non confondere con ciò che posso solo chiamare la veduta del volgare pacifondaio. Non era il pacifismo condiscendente del gentiluomo che si prendeva una vacanza sulle Alpi e diceva di essere «al di sopra della lotta»; come se vi fosse un’Alpe da cui l’anima possa guardare dall’alto il Calvario. V’è, in verità, una montagna tra esse che potrebbe essere assai appropriata a un osservatore così distaccato — la montagna che porta il nome di Pilato, l’uomo che si lavò le mani. L’isolamento cui mi riferisco è ben lontano da tale impudenza. La difesa di questo distacco è che esso non è davvero distaccato; non era indifferenza, ma indignazione. Non era senza fondamento; era soltanto senza proporzione. In verità, la vera accusa contro di esso era che, mentre la sua espressione era in gran parte cinica, il suo movente era in gran parte sentimentale. Tale era l’irritazione del signor Bernard Shaw; tale era l’irritazione di molti irlandesi assai più nazionali del signor Bernard Shaw. La loro irritazione si può analizzare in una semplice frase; li infastidiva che gli uomini che avevano torto avessero ragione. Li infastidiva che tutti gli snob e i vigliacchi del nostro corrotto parlamentarismo liberassero il mondo per caso. Nella contesa con la Prussia, essi non potevano davvero dubitare — non dubitavano davvero — che l’Inghilterra avesse ragione. Ma dubitavano bensì che l’Inghilterra avesse alcun diritto di aver ragione.

È una veduta che ritengo autovanificante e persino suicida. Poiché la grande opera sarà ricordata e i più meschini operai dimenticati; ed è follia lodare i persiani alla vigilia di Maratona perché si è litigato con qualche sciocco arconte ad Atene, il cui stesso nome andrà perduto in pochi anni. Ma non è una veduta traditrice, tanto meno perfida; e la sua ira è la stessa dell’ira popolare che suscita. Questo è l’umore irlandese con cui il buon senso e la comune simpatia devono fare i conti; e questo è il peculiare valore di un vero distacco intellettuale irlandese come quello del signor Yeats. Anzitutto, un uomo come il signor Yeats è così genuinamente distaccato da poter essere netto e chiaro nella sua simpatia per gli Alleati. Egli sarebbe capace della suprema imparzialità di vedere che l’Inghilterra poteva aver ragione benché avesse avuto torto; e persino che l’Irlanda poteva aver torto benché fosse stata offesa. Ma per tutto il tempo giocherebbe con una perenne fonte di satira e di acume sui fondamentali fatti spirituali che falsificano la posizione inglese in Irlanda. Ci farebbe sentire che avevamo ragione in una sola cosa perché avevamo così torto in molte cose. Vi sono molti esempi di ciò nel suo piccolo libro di saggi; ma quello che qui vorrei sottolineare in particolare è il suo punto assai vitale sulla natura domestica dell’intera sociologia dell’Irlanda. Anche qui egli è tanto più impressionante per essere in un certo senso imparziale, o persino ciò che alcuni chiamerebbero indifferente. Non è ciò che si dice ortodosso; potrebbe bene essere detto scettico. Ha coltivato l’estetica continentale piuttosto che l’apologetica cattolica. È unicamente per una serena penetrazione di ciò che i suoi maestri francesi chiamerebbero la «vraie verite» che egli vede la via per cui il mondo dovrebbe andare; e si sofferma sulla frase: «il ritorno alla casa.»

L’educazione irlandese, egli dichiara, deve sempre dipendere dal fatto che la mente del fanciullo è colma del «dramma della casa.» Segna la sua giudiziosa emancipazione il fatto che egli contrapponga favorevolmente questo dramma domestico ad altri due tipi di insegnamento, uno dei quali sarebbe detto convenzionale e conservatore, mentre l’altro sarebbe detto anticonvenzionale e avanzato. Egli critica il vecchio ragazzo inglese della public school; critica altresì (mi duole affermarlo) la nuova donna americana.

Le due cose chiamate in Inghilterra «public school» e «high school» sono considerate quasi contrarie, semplicemente perché una è vecchia e l’altra nuova. Ma il critico le vede come essenzialmente identiche; perché in entrambi i casi la scuola mette in ombra la casa. Ecco un profondo esempio pratico delle realtà radicali della rivendicazione nazionale irlandese. Ecco un caso in cui il Home Rule significa letteralmente il governo della casa. Non sarà mai possibile stabilire la moda inglese in Irlanda, e io per primo non fingerei di dispiacermi se fosse possibile diffondere la moda irlandese in Inghilterra.

Poiché il dramma della casa è davvero assai drammatico. È uno di quei fatti che vengono confusi e occultati dal moderno trambusto intorno al macchinario sociale, che non è se non il cambio di scena e la falegnameria di palcoscenico del dramma domestico. La famiglia è il palcoscenico illuminato, su cui gli attori si appellano letteralmente agli dèi. È nella vita privata che le cose accadono. Un essere umano nasce in casa; generalmente muore in casa, e la filosofia sociale che non sa occuparsi d’altro che della sua bara portata fuori dalla casa non è se non una filosofia di scatole e pacchi, una filosofia di bagagli ed etichette. Metà del nostro sforzo umano è ora sprecata nel mero transito, trasporto e scambio; il commonwealth è una stanza di compensazione di casse che non apriamo mai e di doni di cui non godiamo mai. I governanti e i riformatori sono una razza di facchini piuttosto pedanti, sempre intenti a portare un dono ignoto a una persona ignota, non di rado (immagino) il dono sbagliato alla persona sbagliata. Alcuni dei nostri strenui organizzatori sociali possono accontentarsi di trascorrere il Natale alla stazione di Charing Cross per l’orgoglio di controllare il traffico e i bagagli. Ma confesso che trovo più eccitante essere al termine del viaggio dove i doni di Natale si possono vedere.

The Japanese

IS it not time that we western people protested against being perpetually browbeaten with the high morality of the Orient— especially of Japan? I remember a curious occasion some years ago when certain able journalists on a Socialist paper in Fleet Street suddenly burst into a blazing excitement about King Asoka. Their relations with this prince could not be called intimate; in point of fact, he died some thousands of years ago somewhere in the middle of Asia. But it seemed that in him we had lost our only reliable moral guide. Religion was a failure, and human life, on the whole, a tragedy; but King Asoka was all right. He was faultlessly just, infinitely merciful, the mirror of the virtues, the prop of the poor. Outsiders were naturally interested in the sources of this revelation. And after some discussion it was discovered and mildly pointed out that this description of the King’s virtues is only found on a few of the King’s own official inscriptions. Old Asoka may have been a very nice man, but we have only his own word for it that he was so nice as all that. And even in the benighted West it might not be impossible to find monarchs who were very just and mighty according to their own proclamations; and courts that were quite exemplary in theCourt Circular. It had never struck these simple Asokites in Fleet Street that the pompous enunciation of ideals probably meant no more in Bengal than in Birmingham, in the ancient East than in the modern West. It is as if a Hindoo should say that under the sublime French monarchy every King had to be a good Christian; for he was called on coins and parchments “the most Christian King.” It is as if an Arab said that honour was so high and sensitive among English M.P.’s that they constantly called each other, with a burst of admiration, “The Honourable Member for Tooting.” It could hardly be more absurd if the Japanese declared that an English Duke must have an elegant figure, for they had seen an allusion to “His Grace.” And yet it is with just this comic solemnity that we are asked to accept the moral pretensions of the East to-day, and especially the moral pretensions of Japan. My eye has just fallen upon two newspaper paragraphs, each of which exclaimed mournfully what a pity it was that we had not the high conception of chivalric devotion which the Japanese call “Bushido,” or some such name. As if we had no chivalrous principles in Europe! And as if they had no unchivalrous practices in the Far East! If we see no beauty in Excalibur, are we likely to take more seriously the two swords of some outlandish Daimio? If we are truly dumb after the death of Roland, are we likely to shout with enthusiasm at the sight of ahara-kiri?

Here is, perhaps, the queerest case of all. Many of these Orientalists have lately been filled with horror at finding that Young Turks still propose to be Turkish, and that advanced Japan is still unaccountably Japanese. Dr. Parker damned Abdul Hamid. These modern humanitarians cannot understand any people wishing to get rid of Abdul Hamid without also wishing to become exactly like Dr. Parker. In the same way they are horrified that the Japanese Government has very abruptly condemned some criminals said to be conspiring against the sacred person of the Mikado. It never seems to occur to them that you can take off a Turk’s turban without taking off his head; and that, under a Brixton bowler, the head would go on thinking the same thoughts. It never seems to strike them that the man of the Far East still has a yellow skin, even when you have also given him a yellow press. But the most astounding version of the thing I found in the following paragraph, the opening paragraph of an article on the Japanese condemnations in an influential weekly paper:

“Japan has followed Western ways in a great many respects, but it is saddening to learn that she is adopting the most reprehensible methods of Russia and Spain in dealing with men and women who have the intelligence to be ahead of their time and have the courage to avow their opinions.”

This really strikes me as colossal. I quite agree that Japan has imitated many Western things; I also think that Japan has mostly imitated the worst Western things. That is the cause of my very defective sympathy with Japan. If the Japanese had imitated Dante or mediaeval architecture, if they had imitated Michelangelo or Italian painting, if they had imitated Rousseau and the French Revolution—then I—as a European, should have felt at least flattered.

But the Japanese have only imitated the worst things of our worst period: the inhuman commercialism of Birmingham; the inhuman militarism of Berlin. I feel as if I had looked in a mirror and seen a monkey. Or, if this metaphor be counted uncharitable, I feel just as some coarse but kindly man might feel if a little brother began to imitate only his vices. I say this to show how easily I embrace the idea that Japan might borrow from us bad things as well as good; and then I turn with astonishment—nay, consternation—to the paragraph I have quoted. Japan (it seems) has borrowed from Russia and Spain the reprehensible habit of executing people without adequate trial. Trial by jury, with complete reports in the newspapers next day, was the common practice all over the Far East until the dreadful example of Spain somehow crept across two continents and destroyed it. Such a thing as autocratic execution was unknown in the East. Such a notion as that of despotism had never occurred to the Japanese. Up to that last lost moment when they heard of Russia, County Councils had been buzzing in every town, republics established in every island of the East. Before the European came, polling-booths were at the end of every street and ballot-boxes rattled over all Asia. But, alas! they heard of Spain. They heard that in Spain the trials of rebels in arms had occasionally been conducted in secret; and this was enough to destroy the long and famous tradition of free democracy in the Far East.

Now I do think that, compared with this amazing bosh, Gilbert’sMikado, with his punishment “lingering, with boiling oil in it,” might be called a good, solid, sensible picture of Japan. Eastern despotism has many advantages; and I do not doubt that many of its decisions were not “lingering,” but as rough and rapid as they were just. But to what mental state have people come if they cannot see that Europe has been, upon the whole, the home of democracy, and Asia, upon the whole, the home of despotism? Really, Japan is not so barren of resource as this writer supposes. The Far East really has no need to go to Russia for autocracy, or to Spain for torture. It has done very artistic things in that way itself. And if Spain and Russia have indeed terrorized and tortured, it is much more historically likely that they got it from Asia than that Asia ever had the slightest need to borrow it from them.

The plain facts, of course, are perfectly simple. Japan has borrowed our guns and telephones, but she has not borrowed our morality; and, morally speaking, I really do not see why she should. Under all Japan’s elaborate armour-plating she is still the same strange, heathen, sinister, and heroic thing: she has still the two deep Oriental habits, prostration before despotism and ferocity of punishment. She still thinks, in the Eastern style, that a king is infinitely sublime: the brother of the sun and moon. She still thinks, in the Eastern style, that a criminal is infinitely punishable; “something with boiling oil in it.” Why on earth should Japan abandon the adoration of the Mikado and the destruction of his enemies, merely because a scientific apparatus has made the Mikado more victorious and the destruction of his enemies more easy?

I giapponesi

NON è forse tempo che noi occidentali protestiamo contro l’essere perpetuamente intimoriti dall’alta moralità dell’Oriente — specialmente del Giappone? Ricordo una curiosa circostanza di alcuni anni fa, quando certi abili giornalisti di un foglio socialista di Fleet Street esplosero d’un tratto in un ardente entusiasmo per il re Asoka. I loro rapporti con questo principe non si potevano dire intimi; di fatto, egli morì alcune migliaia di anni or sono da qualche parte nel mezzo dell’Asia. Ma pareva che in lui avessimo perduto la nostra unica affidabile guida morale. La religione era un fallimento, e la vita umana, nel complesso, una tragedia; ma il re Asoka era a posto. Era impeccabilmente giusto, infinitamente misericordioso, lo specchio delle virtù, il sostegno dei poveri. Gli estranei erano naturalmente interessati alle fonti di questa rivelazione. E dopo qualche discussione si scoprì e si fece blandamente notare che questa descrizione delle virtù del re si trova soltanto su alcune delle iscrizioni ufficiali del re stesso. Il vecchio Asoka può essere stato un uomo assai simpatico, ma abbiamo soltanto la sua parola che fosse simpatico fino a tal punto. E persino nell’ottenebrato Occidente potrebbe non essere impossibile trovare monarchi che erano assai giusti e potenti secondo i loro propri proclami; e corti che erano del tutto esemplari nel Court Circular. Non era mai balenato a questi ingenui asochiti di Fleet Street che la pomposa enunciazione di ideali probabilmente non significava più nel Bengala che a Birmingham, nell’antico Oriente che nel moderno Occidente. È come se un indù dicesse che sotto la sublime monarchia francese ogni re doveva essere un buon cristiano; poiché era chiamato su monete e pergamene «il re cristianissimo». È come se un arabo dicesse che l’onore era così alto e sensibile tra i deputati inglesi che essi si chiamavano di continuo l’un l’altro, con uno slancio d’ammirazione, «l’Onorevole membro per Tooting». Non sarebbe molto più assurdo se i giapponesi dichiarassero che un duca inglese deve avere una figura elegante, per aver visto un’allusione a «Sua Grazia». Eppure è proprio con questa comica solennità che ci si chiede oggi di accettare le pretese morali dell’Oriente, e specialmente le pretese morali del Giappone. Il mio occhio è appena caduto su due paragrafi di giornale, ciascuno dei quali esclamava mestamente che peccato fosse che noi non avessimo l’alta concezione di devozione cavalleresca che i giapponesi chiamano «Bushido», o qualche nome simile. Come se non avessimo principi cavallereschi in Europa! E come se essi non avessero pratiche incavalleresche nell’Estremo Oriente! Se non vediamo alcuna bellezza in Excalibur, è probabile che prendiamo più sul serio le due spade di qualche esotico Daimio? Se siamo davvero muti dopo la morte di Orlando, è probabile che gridiamo con entusiasmo alla vista di un hara-kiri?

Ecco, forse, il caso più bizzarro di tutti. Molti di questi orientalisti sono stati di recente colmati di orrore nello scoprire che i Giovani Turchi si propongono ancora di essere turchi, e che il progredito Giappone è ancora inspiegabilmente giapponese. Il dottor Parker maledì Abdul Hamid. Questi moderni umanitari non riescono a comprendere che un popolo possa desiderare di sbarazzarsi di Abdul Hamid senza anche desiderare di divenire esattamente come il dottor Parker. Allo stesso modo sono inorriditi che il governo giapponese abbia assai bruscamente condannato alcuni criminali che si dice cospirassero contro la sacra persona del Mikado. Non sembra mai venir loro in mente che si può togliere il turbante a un turco senza togliergli la testa; e che, sotto una bombetta di Brixton, la testa continuerebbe a pensare gli stessi pensieri. Non sembra mai colpirli che l’uomo dell’Estremo Oriente ha ancora una pelle gialla, anche quando gli si è pure data una stampa gialla. Ma la versione più sbalorditiva della cosa la trovai nel paragrafo seguente, il paragrafo d’apertura di un articolo sulle condanne giapponesi in un influente settimanale:

«Il Giappone ha seguito le vie occidentali sotto moltissimi aspetti, ma è rattristante apprendere che sta adottando i metodi più riprovevoli della Russia e della Spagna nel trattare uomini e donne che hanno l’intelligenza di essere in anticipo sul loro tempo e hanno il coraggio di professare le loro opinioni.»

Questo mi colpisce davvero come qualcosa di colossale. Sono pienamente d’accordo che il Giappone abbia imitato molte cose occidentali; penso altresì che il Giappone abbia per lo più imitato le peggiori cose occidentali. Questa è la causa della mia assai difettosa simpatia per il Giappone. Se i giapponesi avessero imitato Dante o l’architettura medievale, se avessero imitato Michelangelo o la pittura italiana, se avessero imitato Rousseau e la Rivoluzione francese — allora io, come europeo, mi sarei sentito almeno lusingato.

Ma i giapponesi hanno imitato soltanto le cose peggiori del nostro peggior periodo: l’inumano mercantilismo di Birmingham; l’inumano militarismo di Berlino. Mi sento come se avessi guardato in uno specchio e avessi visto una scimmia. Oppure, se questa metafora si vuol dire poco caritatevole, mi sento proprio come si sentirebbe un uomo rozzo ma benevolo se un fratellino cominciasse a imitare soltanto i suoi vizi. Dico questo per mostrare con quanta facilità abbraccio l’idea che il Giappone possa prendere in prestito da noi cose cattive tanto quanto buone; e poi mi volgo con stupore — anzi, con costernazione — al paragrafo che ho citato. Il Giappone (a quanto pare) ha preso in prestito dalla Russia e dalla Spagna la riprovevole abitudine di giustiziare le persone senza adeguato processo. Il processo con giuria, con resoconti completi sui giornali il giorno dopo, era la pratica comune in tutto l’Estremo Oriente finché il terribile esempio della Spagna in qualche modo strisciò attraverso due continenti e lo distrusse. Una cosa come l’esecuzione autocratica era sconosciuta in Oriente. Una nozione come quella del dispotismo non era mai venuta in mente ai giapponesi. Fino a quell’ultimo momento perduto in cui sentirono parlare della Russia, i Consigli di Contea avevano ronzato in ogni città, repubbliche erano state fondate in ogni isola dell’Oriente. Prima che venisse l’europeo, i seggi elettorali erano al termine di ogni strada e le urne tintinnavano per tutta l’Asia. Ma, ahimè! sentirono parlare della Spagna. Sentirono che in Spagna i processi ai ribelli in armi erano stati talvolta condotti in segreto; e questo fu sufficiente a distruggere la lunga e famosa tradizione della libera democrazia nell’Estremo Oriente.

Ora io penso davvero che, a paragone di queste sbalorditive sciocchezze, il Mikado di Gilbert, con la sua punizione «indugiante, con dentro dell’olio bollente», potrebbe dirsi un buon, solido, sensato ritratto del Giappone. Il dispotismo orientale ha molti vantaggi; e non dubito che molte delle sue decisioni non fossero «indugianti», ma tanto rudi e rapide quanto erano giuste. Ma a quale stato mentale è giunta la gente se non riesce a vedere che l’Europa è stata, nel complesso, la patria della democrazia, e l’Asia, nel complesso, la patria del dispotismo? Davvero, il Giappone non è così privo di risorse come questo scrittore suppone. L’Estremo Oriente non ha proprio bisogno di rivolgersi alla Russia per l’autocrazia, o alla Spagna per la tortura. Ha fatto cose assai artistiche in quel campo da sé. E se la Spagna e la Russia hanno davvero terrorizzato e torturato, è assai più probabile storicamente che l’abbiano preso dall’Asia di quanto l’Asia abbia mai avuto il minimo bisogno di prenderlo in prestito da loro.

I fatti nudi e crudi, naturalmente, sono perfettamente semplici. Il Giappone ha preso in prestito i nostri cannoni e telefoni, ma non ha preso in prestito la nostra moralità; e, moralmente parlando, davvero non vedo perché dovrebbe. Sotto tutta l’elaborata corazzatura del Giappone essa è ancora la stessa strana, pagana, sinistra ed eroica cosa: ha ancora le due profonde abitudini orientali, la prostrazione dinanzi al dispotismo e la ferocia del castigo. Essa pensa ancora, alla maniera orientale, che un re sia infinitamente sublime: il fratello del sole e della luna. Essa pensa ancora, alla maniera orientale, che un criminale sia infinitamente punibile; «qualcosa con dentro dell’olio bollente». Perché mai il Giappone dovrebbe abbandonare l’adorazione del Mikado e la distruzione dei suoi nemici, solo perché un apparato scientifico ha reso il Mikado più vittorioso e la distruzione dei suoi nemici più facile?

Christian Science

I HAVE read recently, within a short period of each other, two books that stand in an odd relation, and illustrate the two ways of dealing with the same truth. The first was Mrs. Eddy’sScience and Health, and the other a very interesting collection of medical and ecclesiastical opinion calledMedicine and the Church. It is edited by Mr. Geoffrey Rhodes, and published by Kegan Paul. Of the first work, the Christian Science Bible, my recollections are somewhat wild and whirling. My most vivid impression is of one appalling passage to the effect that the continued perusal of this book through the crisis of an illness had always been followed by recovery. The idea of reading any book “through the crisis of an illness” is rather alarming. But I incline to agree that anyone who could readScience and Health through the crisis of an illness must be made of an adamant which no malady could dissolve. Nevertheless, it is a mistake to oppose Christian Science on the impossibility or even the improbability of its cures. There is always this tendency for normal men to attack abnormalities on the wrong ground; their arguments are as wrong as their antagonism is right. Thus the only sensible argument against Female Suffrage is that, with her social and domestic powers, woman is as strong as man. But silly people will attack Female Suffrage on the ground that she is weaker than man. Or, again, the only sensible argument against Socialism is that every man ought to have private property. But the wretched Anti-Socialists will give themselves away by trying to maintain that only a few people ought to have property, and even that only in the shape of monstrous American trusts. In the same way, there is great danger that the modern world may give battle to Mrs. Eddy upon the wrongterrain, and give her the opportunity (or, rather, her more clear-headed lieutenants) of claiming some popular success. There is such a thing as spiritual healing. no one has ever doubted it except one dingy generation of materialists in chimney-pot hats. If we seem to stand with the materialists, and Mrs. Eddy seems to stand for the healing, she will have a chance of success. The man whose toothache has left off will think with gratitude of the healer, and with some indifference of the scientist explaining the difference between functional and organic toothaches. I will grant what Mrs. Eddy does to people’s bodies. It is what she does to their souls that I object to.

Mrs. Eddy summarizes the substance of her creed in the characteristic sentence: “But in order to enter into the kingdom, the anchor of Hope must be east beyond the veil of matter into the Shekinah into which Jesus has passed before us.” Now personally I should prefer to sow the anchor of Hope in the furrows of primeval earth; or to fill the anchor to the brim with the wine of human passion; or to urge the anchor of hope to a gallop with the spurs of moral energy; or simply to pluck the anchor, petal by petal, or spell it out letter by letter. But, whatever slightly entangled metaphor we take to express our meaning, the essential difference between Mrs. Eddy’s creed and mine is that she anchors in the air, while I put an anchor where the groping race of men have generally put it, in the ground. And this very fact, that we have always thought of hope under so rooted and realistic a figure, is a good working example of how the popular religious sense of mankind has always flowed in the opposite direction to Christian Science. It has flowed from spirit to flesh, and not from flesh to spirit. Hope has not been thought of as something light and fanciful, but as something wrought in iron and fixed in rock.

In short, the first and last blunder of Christian Science is that it is a religion claiming to be purely spiritual. Now, being purely spiritual is opposed to the very essence of religion. All religions, high and low, true and false, have always had one enemy, which is the purely spiritual. Faith-healing has existed from the beginning of the world; but faith-healing without a material act or sacrament—never. It may be the ancient priest, curing with holy water, or the modern doctor curing with coloured water. In either case you cannot do without the water. It may be the upper religion with its bread and wine, or the under religion with its eye of newt and toe of frog: in both cases what is essential is the right materials. Savages may invoke their demons over the dying, but they do something else as well. To do them justice, they dance round the dying, or yell, or do something with their bodies. The Quakers (I mean the really admirable, old-fashioned Quakers) were far more ritualistic than any Ritualists. The only difference between a Ritualist curate and a Quaker was that the Quaker wore his queer vestments all the time. The Peculiar People do without doctors; but they do not do without oil. They are not so peculiar as all that.

The book which Mr. Geoffrey Rhodes has edited is just what was wanted for the fixing of these facts of flesh and spirit. When I was a boy, people used to talk about something which they called the quarrel between religion and science. It would be very tedious to recount the quarrel now; the rough upshot of it was something like this: that some traditions too old to be traced came in vague conflict with some theories much too new to be tested. Many things three thousand years old had forgotten their reason for existing; many things a few years old had not yet discovered theirs. To this day this remains roughly true of all the relations between science and religion. The truths of religion are unprovable; the facts of science are unproved.

It really looks just now as if a reconciliation would be made between religion and science, a reconciliation well embodied in Mr. Rhodes’s work. I will not any longer dispute the divine mission of Mrs. Eddy. I think she was supernaturally sent on earth to reconcile all the parsons and all the doctors in a healthy hatred of herself. Hereis the reconciliation of science and religion; you will find it inMedicine and the Church. In this interesting book all the clerics become as medical as they can, and all the doctors become as clerical as they can, with the one honourable object of keeping out the healer. The chaplain sits on one side of the bed and the physician on the other, while the healer hovers around, baffled and furious. And they do well; for there really is a great link between them. It is the link of the union of flesh and spirit, which the heresy of the healer blasphemes. The priest may have taken his spirit with a little flesh, or the doctor his flesh with a little spirit; but the union was essential to both. With the religious there might be much prayer and a little oil; with the scientific there might be much oil (castor oil) and precious little prayer. But no religion disowned sacraments and no doctors disowned sympathy. And they are right to combine together against the great and horrible heresy—the horrible heresy that there can be such a thing as a purely spiritual religion.

Scienza Cristiana

Ho letto di recente, a breve distanza l’uno dall’altro, due libri che stanno in un curioso rapporto e illustrano i due modi di trattare una medesima verità. Il primo era Science and Health della signora Eddy, e l’altro un’assai interessante raccolta di opinioni mediche ed ecclesiastiche intitolata Medicine and the Church. È curata dal signor Geoffrey Rhodes e pubblicata da Kegan Paul. Della prima opera, la Bibbia della Scienza Cristiana, i miei ricordi sono alquanto confusi e vorticosi. La mia impressione più viva è di un passo spaventoso secondo cui la lettura ininterrotta di questo libro durante la crisi di una malattia era sempre stata seguita dalla guarigione. L’idea di leggere un qualsiasi libro «durante la crisi di una malattia» è piuttosto allarmante. Ma sono incline a convenire che chiunque riuscisse a leggere Science and Health durante la crisi di una malattia dev’essere fatto di un adamante che nessun morbo potrebbe dissolvere. Nondimeno, è un errore opporsi alla Scienza Cristiana adducendo l’impossibilità o persino l’improbabilità delle sue guarigioni. Vi è sempre questa tendenza, negli uomini normali, ad attaccare le anomalie sul terreno sbagliato; i loro argomenti sono altrettanto errati quanto è giusta la loro avversione. Così, l’unico argomento sensato contro il suffragio femminile è che, con i suoi poteri sociali e domestici, la donna è forte quanto l’uomo. Ma la gente sciocca attaccherà il suffragio femminile con l’argomento che essa è più debole dell’uomo. Oppure, ancora, l’unico argomento sensato contro il socialismo è che ogni uomo dovrebbe possedere una proprietà privata. Ma gli sciagurati antisocialisti si tradiranno tentando di sostenere che solo pochi dovrebbero possedere proprietà, e per giunta solo nella forma di mostruosi trust americani. Allo stesso modo, vi è grande pericolo che il mondo moderno dia battaglia alla signora Eddy sul terreno sbagliato, offrendo a lei (o piuttosto ai suoi luogotenenti più lucidi) l’occasione di rivendicare qualche successo popolare. Esiste una cosa quale la guarigione spirituale; nessuno ne ha mai dubitato, salvo una squallida generazione di materialisti in cilindro. Se noi sembriamo stare con i materialisti, e la signora Eddy sembra stare per la guarigione, ella avrà una possibilità di successo. L’uomo il cui mal di denti è cessato penserà con gratitudine al guaritore, e con una certa indifferenza allo scienziato che gli spiega la differenza fra mal di denti funzionali e organici. Concedo ciò che la signora Eddy fa ai corpi della gente. È ciò che ella fa alle loro anime che io biasimo.

La signora Eddy riassume la sostanza del suo credo nella frase caratteristica: «Ma per entrare nel regno, l’àncora della Speranza deve essere gettata al di là del velo della materia, nella Shekinah in cui Gesù è passato prima di noi.» Ora, personalmente, preferirei seminare l’àncora della Speranza nei solchi della terra primeva; o colmare l’àncora fino all’orlo col vino dell’umana passione; o spronare al galoppo l’àncora della speranza con gli sproni dell’energia morale; o semplicemente sfogliare l’àncora, petalo per petalo, o compitarla lettera per lettera. Ma, qualunque metafora lievemente aggrovigliata prendiamo per esprimere il nostro significato, la differenza essenziale fra il credo della signora Eddy e il mio è che ella getta l’àncora nell’aria, mentre io la getto dove la brancolante stirpe degli uomini l’ha generalmente gettata, nel suolo. E questo stesso fatto, che abbiamo sempre pensato la speranza sotto una figura tanto radicata e realistica, è un buon esempio pratico di come il senso religioso popolare dell’umanità sia sempre fluito nella direzione opposta alla Scienza Cristiana. È fluito dallo spirito alla carne, e non dalla carne allo spirito. La Speranza non è stata pensata come qualcosa di lieve e fantasioso, ma come qualcosa forgiato nel ferro e fissato nella roccia.

In breve, il primo e ultimo abbaglio della Scienza Cristiana è che essa è una religione che pretende di essere puramente spirituale. Ora, l’essere puramente spirituale è opposto all’essenza stessa della religione. Tutte le religioni, alte e basse, vere e false, hanno sempre avuto un solo nemico, che è il puramente spirituale. La guarigione per la Fede è esistita fin dal principio del mondo; ma la guarigione per la fede senza un atto materiale o un sacramento—mai. Può essere l’antico sacerdote, che guarisce con l’acqua santa, o il medico moderno che guarisce con l’acqua colorata. In entrambi i casi non si può fare a meno dell’acqua. Può essere la religione superiore col suo pane e vino, o la religione inferiore col suo occhio di tritone e dito di rana: in entrambi i casi ciò che è essenziale sono i materiali giusti. I selvaggi possono invocare i loro demoni sul morente, ma fanno anche qualcos’altro, e lo fanno bene. Per rendere loro giustizia, essi danzano intorno al morente, o urlano, o fanno qualcosa col corpo. I Quaccheri (intendo i Quaccheri davvero ammirevoli, all’antica) erano ben più ritualisti di qualsiasi Ritualista. L’unica differenza fra un curato Ritualista e un Quacchero era che il Quacchero portava le sue bizzarre vesti tutto il tempo. I Peculiar People fanno a meno dei medici; ma non fanno a meno dell’olio. Non sono poi così peculiari.

Il libro che il signor Geoffrey Rhodes ha curato è proprio ciò che occorreva per fissare questi fatti della carne e dello spirito. Quando ero ragazzo, la gente soleva parlare di qualcosa che chiamava il conflitto fra religione e scienza. Sarebbe assai tedioso ora raccontare quel conflitto; il suo esito approssimativo era qualcosa di simile a questo: che alcune tradizioni troppo antiche per essere rintracciate vennero in vago conflitto con alcune teorie fin troppo nuove per essere collaudate. Molte cose vecchie tremila anni avevano dimenticato la ragione della loro esistenza; molte cose vecchie di pochi anni non avevano ancora scoperto la propria. A tutt’oggi ciò resta grosso modo vero di ogni rapporto fra scienza e religione. Le verità della religione sono indimostrabili; i fatti della scienza sono indimostrati.

Sembra proprio, in questo momento, che stia per farsi una riconciliazione fra religione e scienza, una riconciliazione ben incarnata nell’opera del signor Rhodes. Non contesterò più a lungo la missione divina della signora Eddy. Credo che ella sia stata mandata soprannaturalmente sulla terra per riconciliare tutti i pastori e tutti i medici in un sano odio verso se stessa. Ecco la riconciliazione di scienza e religione; la troverete in Medicine and the Church. In questo interessante libro tutti i chierici si fanno quanto più medici possono, e tutti i medici si fanno quanto più clericali possono, con l’unico onorevole scopo di tenere fuori il guaritore. Il cappellano siede da un lato del letto e il medico dall’altro, mentre il guaritore aleggia intorno, sconcertato e furibondo. E fanno bene; poiché vi è davvero un grande legame fra loro. È il legame dell’unione di carne e spirito, che l’eresia del guaritore bestemmia. Il sacerdote può aver preso il suo spirito con un poco di carne, o il medico la sua carne con un poco di spirito; ma l’unione era essenziale a entrambi. Coi religiosi vi poteva essere molta preghiera e un poco d’olio; con gli scientifici vi poteva essere molto olio (olio di ricino) e ben poca preghiera. Ma nessuna religione ha rinnegato i sacramenti e nessun medico ha rinnegato la compassione. E fanno bene a coalizzarsi contro la grande e orribile eresia—l’orribile eresia che possa esistere una cosa quale una religione puramente spirituale.

The Lawlessness of Lawyers

JUDGE PARRY is one of the men who have done mountains of good merely by being alive; while many judges act as if they were already dead, not to say … but Judge Parry might misunderstand a misuse of theological imagery. He is somewhat anticlerical; which seems a waste of talent in a country where there is no clericalism. In his last book, Law and the Woman, I find much with which I do not agree, yet nothing which is not agreeable. Not only does he say everything with a disarming humour and candour; but even in error he never loses sight of the large fact: that sex relations do not depend on the exceptional action of law, but on the normal action of creed and custom. Alone among such lawyers he understands that the poor live on laughter as on a fairy-tale; and can be more scientifically studied in the fictions of Jacobs than the facts of Webb. I might pursue the view further than he on some points; as when he would infer the mere enslavement of women from some stories about the selling of wives. He is doubtless correct in detail; but the rhyme he gives to prove his point may almost be said to disprove it. He quotes a jolly ballad about a man who tried to sell his wife with a halter round her neck and, failing to do so, tried to hang himself in the halter rather than go on living with her. Obviously this is simply the fable of the grey mare; and does not mean that the man ruled his wife, but rather that she ruled him. I do not agree about divorce; but I am not going to argue about it here, or about any such problem of the sexes. This is partly because I should have to begin about the nature of a vow, and it feels like talking to a judge about the nature of an oath, and might almost be contempt of court. But it is more, I hope, for the manlier reason that I do want to argue about something else.

I think this delightful book might really mislead by a view of progress which over-simplifies history: the view that “the thoughts of men are widened by the process of the suns”—a monotonous process which cannot even widen itself. He begins his story of the subjection of women from the Bible story of Adam and Eve. He then proceeds at once to quote, not the Bible, but John Milton, and says it is almost exactly in the form “in which mediaeval man was wont to explain to mediaeval woman the kind of thing she really was.” Now whatever Milton was, he was not mediaeval. He was, in his own opinion and in real though relative truth, highly modern and rationalistic. And he would have regarded his somewhat contemptuous view of woman as part of his emancipation from mediaevalism. Probably the very same attitude made him approve of divorce; and makes the difference between woman’s place in his epic and her place in Dante’s. On either side of that Gothic gateway of the Middle Ages out of which he had emerged (as he would have said) into the daylight, there had stood two symbolic statues of women, at least of equal importance in the scheme. One represented the weak woman by whom Satan had entered the world; the other the strong woman by whom God had entered the world. Milton and his Puritans deliberately battered and obliterated the image of the good woman and carefully preserved the bad woman, to be a standing reproach to womanhood. But they unquestionably thought their anti-feminist iconoclasm was a great step in progress; and the fact illustrates what an uncommonly crooked and even backward path the path called progress has really been. Nor is it difficult to discover, even in the writer’s own account, whence this anti-feminism iconoclasm drew its force; which was certainly not merely from the Book of Genesis. Judge Parry says, perhaps disputably, that the rude Saxons had more legal regard for women than the Romans. But assuming for the sake of argument that the heathen Romans did give a low status to woman, they clearly cannot have got it either from the Hebrew Scriptures or the mediaeval Church. If he will ask where they did get it, he will probably also find where Milton got it. The truth is that there was an element of intellectual brutality in the Renaissance and revival of the pagan world. The very worship of power and reason embodied itself in a preference for the sex that was supposed superior in them. New tyrannies as well as new liberties were encouraged by the New Learning; and Cervantes was laughing at the unreal adventurer who fancied he was unchaining captives, at the very time when Hawkins, the real adventurer, was first leading negroes in chains.

Those chains may be linked up again presently in the chain of nay own argument: here I use the matter merely to show the danger of trusting each ethical fashion as it comes. There is one matter on which I would respectfully and seriously differ from Judge Parry; and that does not concern laws about women, but rather law itself. In praising the judgment in the Jackson Case, despite its technical irregularity, he speaks of a fine example of our judge-made law, and says: “But that is one of the sane and healthy attributes of our judicial system. There comes a breaking-point where a great judge recognizes that the precedents in the books are obsolete, and what has to be stated is the justice of the case according to the now existing standard of human righteousness.” Now it is surely as plain as a pikestaff that this doctrine makes a small number of very wealthy old gentlemen in wigs absolute despots over the whole commonwealth. The Emperor of China was supposed to state the justice of the case. The Sultan of the Indies was supposed to judge by the existing standard of human righteousness. If the judges are not restrained by the law, what are they restrained by, which every autocrat on earth has not claimed to be restrained by?

Now there is certainly a case for personal and arbitrary government; and as there are good sultans, so there are good judges. I should not be afraid to appear before Judge Parry (if I may presume to imagine myself innocent) though he were surrounded with janissaries in a secret divan, or delivering dooms under an oak tree in a wild, prehistoric forest. I should not mind his having the power to skin me or boil me in oil; for I feel sure he would “recognize that these precedents were obsolete” and not do it. But it is by no means true that the confidence I should feel in Judge Parry would be extended to any judge who talked about obsolete precedents and human righteousness. Quite the contrary, if anything. I trust him because he often takes the side of the under-dog. I should not trust a man who always took the side of the opinion which happened to be top-dog. He understood, for instance, the case for “Pro-Boers”; but in the mafficking time a dozen great judges would have strained any law to make a case against Pro-Boers. Feminism was the fashion and may have produced some acts of justice; but Imperialism was also the fashion and might have produced any acts of any injustice. There is, let us suppose, an old statute that certain prisoners may be tortured for evidence; but the judges disregard it, and Judge Parry is satisfied. But there are three very vital reasons why he should not be satisfied. First, it encourages legislators to be lazy and leave a bad statute they ought to repeal. Second, they leave it so that it can be resharpened in some reaction or panic against particular people, whowill be tortured. And third, and most important of all, the same judge who has said that prisoners must not be tortured for evidence may say some fine morning that prisoners may be vivisected for scientific inquiry; and he may have the same reason for saying the one as the other, the simple reason that such talk is fashionable in his set. And the set is very small and very rich; we are dealing strictly with fashion and not even, in any large sense, with public opinion. The standards of that world are often special and sometimes rather secretive. Judge Parry even quotes a “paradox” of Lord Reading to the effect that persons like himself should administer justice and not law. Law is narrow and national, and might possibly lead a British Minister to look no further than the British Parliament as an appropriate place for telling the truth. But justice, being international and surveying the world from China to Peru, perceives without difficulty the office of the one particular Parisian newspaper which has the right to insist on an explanation.

But the vital point is this. Judge Parry gives the instance of a judgment in which Mansfield, overriding certain remote precedents and quaint survivals, declared that there cannot be slaves in England. I am sorry to mention such a detail, but the fact is that the same judge made law is now declaring in the same way that therecan be slaves in England. A magistrate has forbidden men to leave an employer, though the contract had admittedly terminated. Practical courts are overriding the obsolete and remote precedent of some man, far in the mists of mediaevalism, who is said to have made a free contract with a wealthier fellow-creature. They are disregarding the quaint survivals in our language, whereby the hand holding the tool is described as “his” hand. Our more vivid modern speech calls the man himself a hand; merely one of the many hands of his Briarean master. “There comes a breaking-point”; and it is liberty that is broken.

Whether the silent millions approve this judgment, or the other judgments, liberal or servile, feminist or anti-feminist, which Judge Parry quotes, I will not debate, but I leave the query to his very fair consideration. For if those silent millions spoke, I fancy they would surprise us in many matters, but most of all in the discovery of how little they think of all of us, judges, lawyers, literary fellows, and the rest. But I am very certain that Judge Parry would be found among the few, among the very few, who amid all the insolence of our inconsistencies have never lost that rare and even awful thing, the respect of the poor.

L’illegalità degli avvocati

IL GIUDICE PARRY è uno di quegli uomini che hanno fatto montagne di bene semplicemente per il fatto di essere vivi; mentre molti giudici si comportano come se fossero già morti, non dico … ma il Giudice Parry potrebbe fraintendere un uso improprio dell’immaginario teologico. È in parte anticlericale; cosa che sembra uno spreco di talento in un paese dove non c’è clericalismo. Nel suo ultimo libro, Law and the Woman, trovo molto con cui non sono d’accordo, eppure nulla che non sia piacevole. Non solo dice tutto con un umorismo disarmante e candore; ma anche in errore non perde mai di vista il fatto importante: che le relazioni sessuali non dipendono dall’azione eccezionale della legge, ma dall’azione normale del credo e delle consuetudini. Solo tra gli avvocati egli capisce che i poveri vivono di risate come se fossero fiabe; e possono essere studiati più scientificamente nelle finzioni di Jacobs che nei fatti dei Webb. Potrei spingere la visione oltre il suo punto su alcuni aspetti; come quando deduce lo schiavismo delle donne da alcune storie sulla vendita delle mogli. Senza dubbio ha ragione nei dettagli; ma la rima che cita per provare il suo punto quasi potrebbe essere detta confutarlo. Cita una ballata allegra su un uomo che cercò di vendere sua moglie con un laccio al collo e, non riuscendoci, tentò di impiccarsi nel laccio piuttosto che continuare a vivere con lei. Ovviamente questa è semplicemente la favola della cavalla grigia; e non significa che l’uomo governasse sua moglie, ma piuttosto che fosse lei a governarlo. Non sono d’accordo sul divorzio; ma non intendo discuterne qui, né di alcun altro problema tra i sessi. Questo in parte perché dovrei cominciare parlando della natura di un voto, e mi sembrerebbe parlare a un giudice della natura di un giuramento, e potrebbe quasi essere disprezzo per il tribunale. Ma spero sia più per la ragione più virile che voglio discutere di qualcos’altro.

Penso che questo delizioso libro potrebbe davvero trarre in inganno con una visione del progresso che semplifica eccessivamente la storia: la visione secondo cui “i pensieri degli uomini si allargano col processo dei soli”—un processo monotono che non può nemmeno allargarsi da sé. Egli inizia la sua storia della soggezione delle donne dalla storia della Bibbia di Adamo ed Eva. Poi procede subito a citare, non la Bibbia, ma John Milton, e dice che è quasi esattamente nella forma “in cui l’uomo medievale era solito spiegare alla donna medievale che cosa fosse veramente”. Ora, qualunque cosa fosse Milton, non era medievale. Era, secondo la sua opinione e in una reale benché relativa verità, altamente moderno e razionalistico. E avrebbe considerato il suo punto di vista piuttosto disprezzante della donna come parte della sua emancipazione dal medioevo. Probabilmente la stessa identica attitudine lo portò ad approvare il divorzio; e fa la differenza tra il posto della donna nel suo poema epico e quello in Dante. Su entrambi i lati di quel portale gotico del Medioevo da cui era emerso (come avrebbe detto lui) alla luce del giorno, c’erano due statue simboliche di donne, almeno di uguale importanza nello schema. Una rappresentava la donna debole per mezzo della quale Satana era entrato nel mondo; l’altra la donna forte per mezzo della quale Dio era entrato nel mondo. Milton e i suoi Puritani hanno deliberatamente distrutto e cancellato l’immagine della buona donna e accuratamente conservato quella cattiva, per farne un rimprovero permanente alla femminilità. Ma senza dubbio pensavano che il loro iconoclastismo anti-femminista fosse un grande passo in avanti; e il fatto illustra quanto sia stato stranamente tortuoso e persino arretrato il cammino chiamato progresso. Né è difficile scoprire, anche nel racconto dello scrittore, da dove questo iconoclastismo anti-femminista traesse la sua forza; che certamente non era solo dal Libro della Genesi. Il giudice Parry dice, forse in modo discutibile, che i rozzi Sassoni avevano più riguardo legale per le donne dei Romani. Ma ammettendo per amore di discussione che i pagani Romani dessero uno status basso alla donna, non possono certamente averlo preso né dalle Scritture Ebraiche né dalla Chiesa medievale. Se si chiede dove l’abbiano preso, probabilmente troverà anche da dove l’abbia preso Milton. La verità è che c’era un elemento di brutalità intellettuale nel Rinascimento e nel risveglio del mondo pagano. Il culto stesso del potere e della ragione si incarnava in una preferenza per il sesso che si supponeva superiore in essi. Nuove tirannie come pure nuove libertà erano incoraggiate dal Nuovo Sapere; e Cervantes stava ridendo dell’avventuriero irrealistico che immaginava di liberare i prigionieri, proprio nel tempo in cui Hawkins, il vero avventuriero, conduceva per la prima volta negri in catene.

Questi catene potrebbero essere presto ricollegati nella catena del mio stesso ragionamento: qui uso la questione solo per mostrare il pericolo di fidarsi di ogni moda etica che si presenta. C’è un punto su cui divergerei rispettosamente e seriamente dal giudice Parry; e questo non riguarda le leggi sulle donne, ma piuttosto la legge stessa. Nell’esaltare la sentenza nel caso Jackson, nonostante la sua irregolarità tecnica, egli parla di un bellissimo esempio della nostra giurisprudenza e dice: “Ma questo è uno degli attributi sani e salutari del nostro sistema giudiziario. Arriva un punto di rottura in cui un grande giudice riconosce che le precedenti sentenze nei libri sono obsolete, e ciò che deve essere dichiarato è la giustizia del caso secondo l’attuale standard di rettitudine umana.” Ora è certamente chiaro come il sole che questa dottrina rende un piccolo numero di signori anziani molto ricchi in parrucca assoluti tiranni su tutto lo stato. L’imperatore della Cina era tenuto a dichiarare la giustizia del caso. Il sultano delle Indie doveva giudicare secondo l’attuale standard di rettitudine umana. Se i giudici non sono vincolati dalla legge, da cosa sono vincolati, che ogni autocrate sulla terra non ha rivendicato di essere vincolato?

Ora c’è certamente un caso a favore di un governo personale e arbitrario; e come ci sono buoni sultani, così ci sono buoni giudici. Non avrei paura di comparire davanti al Giudice Parry (se posso permettermi di immaginarmi innocente) anche se fosse circondato da giannizzeri in un divano segreto, o pronunciando sentenze sotto una quercia in una foresta selvaggia e preistorica. Non mi importerebbe che abbia il potere di scorticarmi o bollirmi nell’olio; perché sono sicuro che “riconoscerebbe che questi precedenti sono obsoleti” e non lo farebbe. Ma non è affatto vero che la fiducia che avrei nel Giudice Parry si estenderebbe a qualsiasi giudice che parli di precedenti obsoleti e di giustizia umana. Tutt’altro, anzi. Gli do fiducia perché spesso prende le parti del più debole. Non darei fiducia a un uomo che prende sempre le parti dell’opinione che per caso è la dominante. Ha capito, per esempio, il caso dei “Pro-Boeri”; ma nel periodo di maficking una dozzina di grandi giudici avrebbero forzato qualsiasi legge per fare un caso contro i Pro-Boeri. Il femminismo era alla moda e potrebbe aver prodotto alcuni atti di giustizia; ma anche l’imperialismo era alla moda e poteva aver prodotto qualsiasi atto di ingiustizia. Supponiamo che ci sia una vecchia legge secondo cui certi prigionieri possono essere torturati per ottenere prove; ma i giudici la ignorano, e il Giudice Parry è soddisfatto. Ma ci sono tre ragioni molto importanti per cui non dovrebbe esserlo. Primo, incoraggia i legislatori a essere pigri e lasciare una cattiva legge che dovrebbero abrogare. Secondo, la lasciano così che può essere riaffilata in qualche reazione o panico contro persone particolari, che verranno torturate. E terzo, e più importante di tutti, lo stesso giudice che ha detto che i prigionieri non devono essere torturati per ottenere prove potrebbe dire un bel mattino che i prigionieri possono essere vivisezionati per indagini scientifiche; e potrebbe avere la stessa ragione per dire l’una e l’altra cosa, la semplice ragione che questo tipo di discorsi è alla moda nel suo ambiente. E l’ambiente è molto ristretto e molto ricco; ci occupiamo rigorosamente della moda e non neppure, in senso ampio, dell’opinione pubblica. Gli standard di quel mondo sono spesso speciali e talvolta piuttosto segreti. Il Giudice Parry cita persino un “paradosso” del Lord Reading nel senso che persone come lui dovrebbero amministrare la giustizia e non la legge. La legge è ristretta e nazionale, e potrebbe portare un Ministro britannico a guardare oltre il Parlamento britannico come luogo appropriato per dire la verità. Ma la giustizia, essendo internazionale e osservando il mondo da Cina al Perù, percepisce senza difficoltà l’ufficio di quel singolo giornale parigino che ha il diritto di insistere per una spiegazione.

Ma il punto vitale è questo: il giudice Parry cita l’esempio di una sentenza in cui Mansfield, ignorando certi precedenti remoti e sopravvivenze pittoresche, dichiarò che non possono esserci schiavi in Inghilterra. Mi dispiace dover menzionare un tale dettaglio, ma il fatto è che lo stesso giudice ora sta dichiarando nello stesso modo che possono esserci schiavi in Inghilterra. Un magistrato ha proibito agli uomini di lasciare un datore di lavoro, anche se il contratto era palesemente terminato. I tribunali pratici stanno ignorando il precedente obsoleto e remoto di qualche uomo, lontano nella nebbia del medioevo, che si dice abbia stipulato un contratto libero con una creatura più ricca. Stanno trascurando le sopravvivenze pittoresche nel nostro linguaggio, per cui la mano che tiene lo strumento è descritta come “sua” mano. Il nostro vivace linguaggio moderno chiama l’uomo stesso una mano; semplicemente una delle molte mani del suo padrone briareo. “C’è un punto di rottura”; ed è la libertà che si rompe.

Non voglio discutere se i milioni silenziosi approvino questo giudizio o gli altri, liberali o servili, femministi o antifemministi, che il Giudice Parry cita, ma lascio la questione alla sua equa considerazione. Perché se quei milioni silenziosi parlassero, immagino che ci sorprenderebbero in molte cose, ma soprattutto nello scoprire quanto poco pensano di noi tutti, giudici, avvocati, letterati e quant’altro. Ma sono certo che il Giudice Parry si troverebbe tra i pochi, tra i veri pochi, che in mezzo a tutta l’insolenza delle nostre incongruenze non hanno mai perso quella cosa rara e persino terribile, il rispetto dei poveri.

Our Latin Relations

IT is odd how often one may hear, in the middle of a very old and genuine English town, the remark, that it looks like a foreign town. I heard it only yesterday, standing on the ramparts of the noble hill of Rye, which overlooks the flats like a Mount of St. Michael left inland. Most people know that Rye contains a mediaeval monument which might almost be called a mediaeval prophecy—a prophecy of modern things more awful than anything mediaeval. It is an ancient tower, which has not only always been marked on maps with the name of Ypres, but has always been actually pronounced by the name of Wipers. Nothing could mark a thing as more continuously national than that Englishmen sundered by vast centuries should actually make the same mistake and should mispronounce the same word in the same way.

There is in this small point a paradox we must understand, especially just now, if we are to have a really patriotic foreign policy. It is very unlucky that for some time our teaching of history has been rather the unteaching of history, because it has been the unteaching of tradition. Our histories told us we were Teuton; our legends told us we were Roman—and, as usual, the legends were right. It is not only true that England is nowhere more really English than where she is Roman—it is even true that she is nowhere more really English than where she is French. To take only the chance example, with which I began above, you could find nothing more national, more typical, more traditional, as a real piece of English history, than the very phrase “The Cinq Ports.” And it is all the more English because the word “cinq” is French and the word “port” is Latin. A Teutonist professor, full of some folly about “folk-speech,” might insist on our calling them “The Five Harbours,” or (for all I know) “The Five Holes.” But his version would be less popular, and only more pedantic. The Latin was always the popular element, which may not sound so odd if we happen to remember that the very word “popular” is Latin.

Thus our alliance with the French and the Italians is not something to be supported for the sake of the last five years. It is something to be solidified for the sake of more than a thousand. The fact has been hidden by the historical accident that we have often been the antagonists of the French in particular rivalries for particular things. But we were always much nearer to the French when we were their antagonists than to the Germans when we were their Allies. There was much more resemblance between a knight like the Black Prince and a knight like Bertrand du Guesclin than there ever was between a sailor like Nelson and a soldier like Blucher. A town like Rye is full of memories of fighting with the French, especially in the Middle Ages; of raids to and fro across the narrow seas, in which the bells of the coast-town churches were captured and recaptured; and there are spirited stories about the Abbot of Battle, worthy to be turned into ballads. But the very fact of these coast-town raids suggests that it was coast against coast, and even seaman against seaman. But the whole point of Prussian war was that it was an inland thing; the whole point of English war that it was an island thing. The alliance with Prussia was never either popular or natural; it was wholly aristocratic and artificial. Compared with that, the mediaeval war was as friendly as a mediaeval tournament. Nor was it peculiar to the case of France; it was true of all we call Latin—all that remains of the Roman Empire. The Latins, even when treated as foes in politics, were treated almost as friends in popular tradition. The English sailors sang in their idle moments “Farewell and adieu to you, fine Spanish ladies,” even when they had devoted their working hours to singeing the beards of the fine Spanish gentlemen. The children in the nurseries sang in imaginative triumph “The King of Spain’s daughter came to visit me,” though their Elizabethan parents might have been lighting the beacons and calling out the train-bands to prevent the King of Spain’s son, the noble Don John of Austria, from paying them such a visit. A thousand nursery rhymes and nonsense tags testify to a vast popular tradition that Southern Europe was the world to which we belonged. We belonged to a system of which Rome was the sun, and of which the old Roman provinces were planets. We were never meant to pursue a meteor out of empty space, the comet of Teutonism. Our place was in an order and a watch of stars, though one star might differ from another in glory. Our place was with that red star of Gaul which might well bear the name of Mars; or that morning and evening star which the Latins themselves named Lucifer, last to fade and first to return in every twilight of history; Italy, the light of the world.

A Latin alliance is founded on our history, though not on our historians. The French and English who fought each other round these southern harbours were also ready to help each other, and often did help each other. Not only did they frequently go crusading together against the Turks, but they would have been ready at any moment to go crusading against the Prussians. Chaucer was exceedingly English, and therefore partly French; and he sends his ideal knight to fight the heathen in Prussia. Froissart was highly French, and therefore respectful to the English; and he says that the French and English always do courtesy, but the Germans never. The truth is that all the old English traditions, scholarly and legendary, chivalric and vulgar, were at one in referring back to Roman culture, until we come to a new crop of very crude pedants in the nineteenth century.

Most of them were prigs, and many of them were snobs—for it was largely a Court fashion, spread by Court poets and Court chaplains. It was like a huge, hideous, gilded German monument; and, fortunately, it has already fallen down. But I think it undesirable that the mere discredited litter and lumber of it, left lying about, should for ever prevent us from building anything else.

Even after the ghastly enlightenment of the war there are people who cannot clear their minds of the notion that the Prussian is the Progressive. They think he is progressing now, because he is picking up new things. Picking up new things is not the way to progress, any more than picking up grass by the roots is the way to make it grow. The northern barbarian always has picked up new things, especially when they were other people’s things. It was still only picking up new things, whether it was picking pockets or picking brains. And there was always one other note about the new things—that they never lived to be old. The barbarians followed the creed of Arius as they followed the ensign of Attila. But nobody remembers Attila as everybody remembered Alfred; and, though some modern people object to hearing the Athanasian Creed, they have no opportunity of objecting to hearing the Arian Creed. The enthusiasms of semi-savages do not last.

Le nostre parentele latine

È curioso quanto spesso capiti di sentire, nel bel mezzo di una città inglese antichissima e genuina, l’osservazione che essa somiglia a una città straniera. L’ho udita non più tardi di ieri, mentre me ne stavo sui bastioni del nobile colle di Rye, che sovrasta le pianure come un Monte di San Michele rimasto abbandonato nell’entroterra. Molti sanno che Rye racchiude un monumento medievale che quasi si potrebbe definire una profezia medievale — una profezia di cose moderne più tremende di qualunque cosa medievale. È un’antica torre, che non solo è sempre stata segnata sulle mappe col nome di Ypres, ma è sempre stata effettivamente pronunciata col nome di Wipers. Nulla potrebbe segnare una cosa come più ininterrottamente nazionale del fatto che Inglesi separati da vasti secoli commettano davvero lo stesso errore e storpino la stessa parola nello stesso modo.

In questo piccolo particolare si cela un paradosso che dobbiamo comprendere, specialmente proprio ora, se vogliamo avere una politica estera davvero patriottica. È assai sfortunato che da qualche tempo il nostro insegnamento della storia sia stato piuttosto il disinsegnamento della storia, perché è stato il disinsegnamento della tradizione. Le nostre storie ci dicevano che eravamo Teutoni; le nostre leggende ci dicevano che eravamo Romani — e, come al solito, avevano ragione le leggende. Non è soltanto vero che l’Inghilterra non è mai più realmente inglese di quando è romana — è persino vero che non è mai più realmente inglese di quando è francese. Per prendere solo l’esempio casuale con cui ho cominciato più sopra, non si potrebbe trovare nulla di più nazionale, più tipico, più tradizionale, come autentico frammento di storia inglese, della locuzione stessa «The Cinq Ports». Ed è tanto più inglese perché la parola «cinq» è francese e la parola «port» è latina. Un professore teutonista, pieno di qualche follia sul «parlare del popolo», potrebbe insistere che li chiamassimo «I Cinque Porti», o (per quel che ne so) «I Cinque Buchi». Ma la sua versione sarebbe meno popolare, e soltanto più pedante. Il latino fu sempre l’elemento popolare, il che può non suonare tanto strano se ci ricordiamo che la parola stessa «popolare» è latina.

Così la nostra alleanza con i Francesi e gli Italiani non è qualcosa da sostenere per amore degli ultimi cinque anni. È qualcosa da consolidare per amore di più di mille. Il fatto è stato occultato dall’accidente storico che siamo stati spesso gli antagonisti dei Francesi in rivalità particolari per cose particolari. Ma eravamo sempre molto più vicini ai Francesi quando eravamo loro antagonisti che ai Tedeschi quando eravamo loro Alleati. C’era molta più somiglianza tra un cavaliere come il Principe Nero e un cavaliere come Bertrand du Guesclin di quanta non ce ne fu mai tra un marinaio come Nelson e un soldato come Blücher. Una città come Rye è piena di memorie di battaglie con i Francesi, specialmente nel Medioevo; di scorrerie avanti e indietro attraverso i mari stretti, in cui le campane delle chiese delle città costiere venivano catturate e riconquistate; e vi sono spiritose storie sull’Abate di Battle, degne di essere volte in ballate. Ma il fatto stesso di queste scorrerie tra città costiere suggerisce che si trattava di costa contro costa, e persino di marinaio contro marinaio. Ma tutto il punto della guerra prussiana era che essa era una cosa dell’entroterra; tutto il punto della guerra inglese che essa era una cosa dell’isola. L’alleanza con la Prussia non fu mai né popolare né naturale; fu del tutto aristocratica e artificiosa. In confronto a quella, la guerra medievale era amichevole quanto un torneo medievale. Né ciò era peculiare al caso della Francia; era vero di tutto ciò che chiamiamo latino — tutto ciò che rimane dell’Impero Romano. I Latini, anche quando trattati da nemici in politica, erano trattati quasi da amici nella tradizione popolare. I marinai inglesi cantavano nei loro momenti d’ozio «Addio e arrivederci a voi, belle dame spagnole», anche quando avevano dedicato le loro ore di lavoro a bruciacchiare le barbe dei bei gentiluomini spagnoli. I bambini nelle stanze dei piccoli cantavano in immaginario trionfo «La figlia del Re di Spagna venne a farmi visita», sebbene i loro genitori elisabettiani potessero aver acceso i fuochi di segnalazione e chiamato a raccolta le milizie territoriali per impedire che il figlio del Re di Spagna, il nobile Don Giovanni d’Austria, facesse loro una simile visita. Mille filastrocche e ritornelli senza senso testimoniano una vasta tradizione popolare secondo cui l’Europa meridionale era il mondo cui appartenevamo. Appartenevamo a un sistema di cui Roma era il sole, e di cui le antiche province romane erano i pianeti. Non fummo mai destinati a inseguire una meteora fuori dallo spazio vuoto, la cometa del Teutonismo. Il nostro posto era in un ordine e in una veglia di stelle, sebbene una stella potesse differire dall’altra in gloria. Il nostro posto era con quella rossa stella della Gallia che poteva bene portare il nome di Marte; o con quella stella del mattino e della stella della sera che i Latini stessi chiamarono Lucifero, ultima a svanire e prima a ritornare in ogni crepuscolo della storia; l’Italia, luce del mondo.

Un’alleanza latina si fonda sulla nostra storia, sebbene non sui nostri storici. I Francesi e gli Inglesi che combatterono gli uni contro gli altri intorno a questi porti meridionali erano anche pronti ad aiutarsi a vicenda, e spesso si aiutarono a vicenda. Non solo andarono di frequente insieme alle crociate contro i Turchi, ma sarebbero stati pronti in qualunque momento ad andare in crociata contro i Prussiani. Chaucer era straordinariamente inglese, e perciò in parte francese; e manda il suo cavaliere ideale a combattere gli infedeli in Prussia. Froissart era altamente francese, e perciò rispettoso verso gli Inglesi; e dice che i Francesi e gli Inglesi si fanno sempre cortesia, ma i Tedeschi mai. La verità è che tutte le antiche tradizioni inglesi, dotte e leggendarie, cavalleresche e volgari, erano concordi nel rifarsi alla cultura romana, finché non giungiamo a un nuovo raccolto di pedanti assai rozzi nell’Ottocento.

La maggior parte di essi erano saccenti, e molti di essi erano snob — poiché era in larga misura una moda di Corte, diffusa da poeti di Corte e cappellani di Corte. Era come un enorme, orrendo, dorato monumento tedesco; e, per fortuna, è già crollato. Ma ritengo indesiderabile che il semplice cascame screditato e il ciarpame di esso, lasciato a giacere in giro, ci impedisca per sempre di costruire qualcos’altro.

Persino dopo lo spettrale illuminarsi della guerra vi sono persone che non riescono a liberare la mente dall’idea che il Prussiano sia il Progressista. Pensano che egli stia progredendo ora, perché sta raccattando cose nuove. Raccattare cose nuove non è il modo di progredire, non più di quanto raccattare l’erba per le radici sia il modo di farla crescere. Il barbaro settentrionale ha sempre raccattato cose nuove, specialmente quando erano cose altrui. Era pur sempre soltanto un raccattare cose nuove, che si trattasse di sfilare portafogli o di sfilare cervelli. E c’era sempre un’altra nota riguardo alle cose nuove — che non vivevano mai abbastanza da diventare vecchie. I barbari seguirono il credo di Ario come seguirono l’insegna di Attila. Ma nessuno ricorda Attila come tutti ricordavano Alfredo; e, sebbene alcune persone moderne obiettino all’udire il Credo Atanasiano, non hanno occasione di obiettare all’udire il Credo Ariano. Gli entusiasmi dei semi-selvaggi non durano.

On Pigs as Pets

A DREAM of my pure and aspiring boyhood has been realized in the following paragraph, which I quote exactly as it stands:

A complaint by the Epping Rural District Council against a spinster keeping a pig in her house has evoked the following reply: “I received your letter, and felt very much cut up, as I am laying in the pig’s room. I have not been able to stand up or get on my legs; when I can, I will get him in his own room, that was built for him. As to getting him off the premises, I shall do no such thing, as he is no nuisance to anyone. We have had to be in the pig’s room now for three years. I am not going to get rid of my pet. We must all live together. I will move him as soon as God gives me strength to do so.”

The Rev. T. C. Spurgin observed: “The lady will require a good deal of strength to move her pet, which weighs forty stone.”

It appears to me that the Rev. T. C. Spurgin ought, as a matter of chivalry, to assist the lady to move the pig, if it is indeed too heavy for her strength; no gentleman should permit a lady, who is already very much cut up, to lift forty stone of still animated and recalcitrant pork; he should himself escort the animal downstairs. It is an unusual situation, I admit. In the normal life of humanity the gentleman gives his arm to the lady, and not to the pig; and it is the pig who is very much cut up. But the situation seems to be exceptional in every way. It is all very well for the lady to say that the pig is no nuisance to anyone: as it seems that she has established herself in the pig’s private suite of apartments, the question rather is whether she is a nuisance to the pig. But indeed I do not think that this poor woman’s fad is an inch more fantastic than many such oddities indulged in by rich and reputable people; and, as I say, I have from my boyhood entertained the dream. I never could imagine why pigs should not be kept as pets. To begin with, pigs are very beautiful animals. Those who think otherwise are those who do not look at anything with their own eyes, but only through other people’s eyeglasses. The actual lines of a pig (I mean of a really fat pig) are among the loveliest and most luxuriant in nature; the pig has the same great curves, swift and yet heavy, which we see in rushing water or in rolling cloud. Compared to him, the horse, for instance, is a bony, angular, and abrupt animal. I remember that Mr. H. G. Wells, in arguing for the relativity of things (a subject over which even the Greek philosophers went to sleep until Christianity woke them up), pointed out that, while a horse is commonly beautiful if seen in profile, he is excessively ugly if seen from the top of a dogcart, having a long, lean neck, and a body like a fiddle. Now, there is no point of view from which a really corpulent pig is not full of sumptuous and satisfying curves. You can look down on a pig from the top of the most unnaturally lofty dogcart; you can (if not pressed for time) allow the pig to draw the dogcart; and I suppose a dogcart has as much to do with pigs as it has with dogs. You can examine the pig from the top of an omnibus, from the top of the Monument, from a balloon, or an airship; and as long as he is visible he will be beautiful. In short, he has that fuller, subtler, and more universal kind of shapeliness which the unthinking (gazing at pigs and distinguished journalists) mistake for a mere absence of shape. For fatness itself is a valuable quality. While it creates admiration in the onlookers, it creates modesty in the possessor. If there is anything on which I differ from the monastic institutions of the past, it is that they sometimes sought to achieve humility by means of emaciation. It may be that the thin monks were holy, but I am sure it was the fat monks who were humble. Falstaff said that to be fat is not to be hated; but it certainly is to be laughed at, and that is a more wholesome experience for the soul of man.

I do not urge that it is effective upon the soul of a pig, who, indeed, seems somewhat indifferent to public opinion on this point. Nor do I mean that mere fatness is the only beauty of the pig. The beauty of the best pigs lies in a certain sleepy perfection of contour which links them especially to the smooth strength of our south English land in which they live. There are two other things in which one can see this perfect and piggish quality: one is in the silent and smooth swell of the Sussex downs, so enormous and yet so innocent. The other is in the sleek, strong limbs of those beech trees that grow so thick in their valleys. These three holy symbols, the pig, the beech tree, and the chalk down, stand for ever as expressing the one thing that England as England has to say—that power is not inconsistent with kindness. Tears of regret come into my eyes when I remember that three lions or leopards, or whatever they are, sprawl in a fantastic, foreign way across the arms of England. We ought to have three pigs passant, gardant, or on gules. It breaks my heart to think that four commonplace lions are couched around the base of the Nelson Column. There ought to be four colossal Hampshire hogs to keep watch over so national a spot. Perhaps some of our sculptors will attack the conception; perhaps the lady’s pig, which weighs forty stone and seems to be something of a domestic problem, might begin to earn its living as an artist’s model.

Again, we do not know what fascinating variations might happen in the pig if once the pig were a pet. The dog has been domesticated—that is, destroyed. Nobody now in London can form the faintest idea of what a dog would look like. You know a Dachshund in the street; you know a St. Bernard in the street. But if you saw a Dog in the street you would run from him screaming. For hundreds, if not thousands, of years no one has looked at the horrible hairy original thing called Dog. Why, then, should we be hopeless about the substantial and satisfying thing called Pig? Types of Pig may also be differentiated: delicate shades of Pig may also be produced. a monstrous pig as big as a pony may perambulate the streets like a St. Bernard without attracting attention. . An elegant and unnaturally attenuated pig may have all the appearance of a greyhound. There may be little, frisky, fighting pigs like Irish or Scotch terriers; there may be little pathetic pigs like King Charles spaniels. Artificial breeding might reproduce the awful original pig, tusks and all, the terror of the forests—something bigger, more mysterious, and more bloody than the bloodhound. Those interested in hairdressing might amuse themselves by arranging the bristles like those of a poodle. Those fascinated by the Celtic mystery of the Western Highlands might see if they could train the bristles to be a veil or curtain for the eye, like those of a Skye terrier; that sensitive and invisible Celtic spirit. With elaborate training one might have a sheep-pig instead of a sheep-dog, a lap-pig instead of a lap-dog.

What is it that makes you look so incredulous? Why do you still feel slightly superior to the poor lady who would not be parted from her pig? Why do you not at once take the hog to your heart? Reason suggests his evident beauty. Evolution suggests his probable improvement. Is it, perhaps, some instinct, some tradition…? Well, apply that to women, children, animals, and we will argue again.

I maiali come animali da compagnia

UN SOGNO della mia pura e aspirante fanciullezza si è realizzato nel paragrafo seguente, che cito esattamente com’è:

Una lagnanza del Consiglio del Distretto Rurale di Epping contro una zitella che tiene un maiale in casa ha suscitato la seguente risposta: «Ho ricevuto la vostra lettera, e mi son sentita molto abbattuta, giacché giaccio nella stanza del maiale. Non sono stata in grado di alzarmi in piedi né di reggermi sulle gambe; quando lo potrò, lo metterò nella sua propria stanza, che fu costruita per lui. Quanto a portarlo via dalla proprietà, non farò cosa alcuna del genere, poiché egli non reca fastidio a nessuno. Abbiamo dovuto stare nella stanza del maiale ormai per tre anni. Non ho intenzione di sbarazzarmi del mio beniamino. Dobbiamo vivere tutti insieme. Lo sposterò non appena Dio mi darà la forza di farlo.»

Il Rev. T. C. Spurgin osservò: «La signora avrà bisogno di parecchia forza per spostare il suo beniamino, che pesa quaranta stone.»

Mi pare che il Rev. T. C. Spurgin dovrebbe, per una questione di cavalleria, aiutare la signora a spostare il maiale, se davvero esso è troppo pesante per le sue forze; nessun gentiluomo dovrebbe permettere a una signora, già molto abbattuta, di sollevare quaranta stone di ancora animato e recalcitrante suino; egli dovrebbe egli stesso scortare l’animale al piano di sotto. È una situazione insolita, lo ammetto. Nella normale vita dell’umanità il gentiluomo offre il braccio alla signora, e non al maiale; ed è il maiale a essere molto abbattuto. Ma la situazione sembra essere eccezionale sotto ogni aspetto. Sta pur bene che la signora dica che il maiale non reca fastidio a nessuno: dato che pare essersi stabilita nell’appartamento privato del maiale, la questione è piuttosto se sia lei a recare fastidio al maiale. Ma in verità non credo che la fissazione di questa povera donna sia di un pollice più fantastica di molte simili bizzarrie coltivate da persone ricche e rispettabili; e, come dico, ho fin dalla fanciullezza accarezzato il sogno. Non ho mai potuto immaginare perché i maiali non dovrebbero essere tenuti come animali da compagnia. Per cominciare, i maiali sono animali bellissimi. Coloro che pensano altrimenti sono quelli che non guardano nulla con i propri occhi, ma solo attraverso gli occhiali altrui. Le linee reali di un maiale (intendo di un maiale davvero grasso) sono tra le più incantevoli e lussureggianti della natura; il maiale ha le medesime grandi curve, rapide eppure pesanti, che vediamo nell’acqua impetuosa o nella nube che si rotola. In confronto a lui, il cavallo, per esempio, è un animale ossuto, angoloso e brusco. Ricordo che il signor H. G. Wells, argomentando a favore della relatività delle cose (un tema sul quale persino i filosofi greci si mettevano a dormire finché il Cristianesimo non li svegliò), fece notare che, mentre un cavallo è comunemente bello se visto di profilo, è eccessivamente brutto se visto dall’alto di un calessino, avendo un lungo, magro collo, e un corpo come un violino. Ora, non c’è punto di vista dal quale un maiale davvero corpulento non sia pieno di curve sontuose e appaganti. Potete guardare un maiale dall’alto del calessino più innaturalmente elevato; potete (se non siete pressati dal tempo) permettere al maiale di tirare il calessino; e suppongo che un calessino abbia a che fare coi maiali tanto quanto coi cani. Potete esaminare il maiale dall’alto di un omnibus, dalla cima del Monumento, da un pallone aerostatico, o da un dirigibile; e finché sarà visibile sarà bello. In breve, egli possiede quella più piena, più sottile e più universale specie di armonia di forme che gli sconsiderati (fissando maiali e illustri giornalisti) scambiano per una mera assenza di forma. Poiché la grassezza stessa è una qualità pregevole. Mentre suscita ammirazione negli osservatori, suscita modestia nel possessore. Se c’è qualcosa su cui dissento dalle istituzioni monastiche del passato, è che esse talvolta cercavano di conseguire l’umiltà per mezzo dell’emaciazione. Può darsi che i monaci magri fossero santi, ma sono certo che furono i monaci grassi a essere umili. Falstaff disse che essere grasso non è essere odiato; ma di certo è essere deriso, e questa è un’esperienza più salutare per l’anima dell’uomo.

Non sostengo che ciò sia efficace sull’anima di un maiale, il quale, in verità, sembra alquanto indifferente all’opinione pubblica su questo punto. Né intendo che la mera grassezza sia l’unica bellezza del maiale. La bellezza dei migliori maiali sta in una certa sonnolenta perfezione di contorno che li lega specialmente alla liscia forza della nostra terra dell’Inghilterra meridionale in cui vivono. Vi sono altre due cose in cui si può scorgere questa qualità perfetta e porcina: una è nel silenzioso e liscio ondulare delle colline del Sussex, così enormi eppure così innocenti. L’altra è nelle levigate, robuste membra di quei faggi che crescono così folti nelle loro valli. Questi tre santi simboli, il maiale, il faggio e la collina di creta, stanno per sempre a esprimere l’unica cosa che l’Inghilterra in quanto Inghilterra ha da dire — che la potenza non è incompatibile con la bontà. Lacrime di rimpianto mi salgono agli occhi quando ricordo che tre leoni o leopardi, o qualunque cosa siano, si sdraiano in modo fantastico e straniero sullo stemma dell’Inghilterra. Dovremmo avere tre maiali passanti, guardanti, o in campo di rosso. Mi si spezza il cuore a pensare che quattro banali leoni siano accucciati intorno alla base della Colonna di Nelson. Dovrebbero esserci quattro colossali verri dell’Hampshire a vegliare su un luogo tanto nazionale. Forse qualcuno dei nostri scultori si accingerà a tale concezione; forse il maiale della signora, che pesa quaranta stone e sembra costituire qualcosa come un problema domestico, potrebbe cominciare a guadagnarsi da vivere come modello d’artista.

Ancora, non sappiamo quali affascinanti variazioni potrebbero prodursi nel maiale una volta che il maiale fosse un animale da compagnia. Il cane è stato addomesticato — cioè, distrutto. Nessuno oggi a Londra è capace di formarsi la più flebile idea di come apparirebbe un cane. Riconoscete un bassotto per strada; riconoscete un San Bernardo per strada. Ma se vedeste un Cane per strada fuggireste da lui strillando. Da centinaia, se non migliaia, di anni nessuno ha guardato l’orribile pelosa cosa originaria chiamata Cane. Perché, dunque, dovremmo disperare della sostanziale e appagante cosa chiamata Maiale? Anche i tipi di Maiale possono essere differenziati: anche delicate sfumature di Maiale possono essere prodotte. Un mostruoso maiale grande come un pony potrebbe deambulare per le strade come un San Bernardo senza attirare l’attenzione. Un elegante e innaturalmente affusolato maiale potrebbe avere tutta l’apparenza di un levriero. Potrebbero esserci piccoli, vivaci, battaglieri maiali come i terrier irlandesi o scozzesi; potrebbero esserci piccoli patetici maiali come gli spaniel di Re Carlo. L’allevamento artificiale potrebbe riprodurre il tremendo maiale originario, zanne e tutto, il terrore delle foreste — qualcosa di più grande, più misterioso e più sanguinario del segugio. Coloro che si interessano di acconciature potrebbero divertirsi disponendo le setole come quelle di un barboncino. Coloro che sono affascinati dal mistero celtico delle Highlands occidentali potrebbero vedere se riescono ad addestrare le setole a fare da velo o cortina all’occhio, come quelle di uno Skye terrier; quel sensibile e invisibile spirito celtico. Con un elaborato addestramento si potrebbe avere un maiale-pastore invece di un cane-pastore, un maiale da grembo invece di un cane da grembo.

Che cos’è che vi fa sembrare così increduli? Perché vi sentite ancora leggermente superiori alla povera signora che non voleva separarsi dal suo maiale? Perché non accogliete subito il porco nel vostro cuore? La ragione ne suggerisce l’evidente bellezza. L’evoluzione ne suggerisce il probabile miglioramento. È forse qualche istinto, qualche tradizione…? Bene, applicate ciò alle donne, ai bambini, agli animali, e torneremo a discuterne.

The Romance of Rostand

ROSTAND, the romantic dramatist of France, and a very national poet, died almost on the day of the great national triumph. He had lived, to use his own imaginative heraldry, to see the golden eagles of Gaul and Rome drive back the black eagles of Prussia and Austria. He was too much of an earlier generation to take the precise part of Pequy or Claudel in the process which banished the birds of barbaric night from the land of the Eagles of the sun. But the part he had played in that earlier time might well merit the use of a kindred metaphor, drawn from his own fairyland of ornithology. He had a special claim to use as one of his titles the noble mediaeval name of Chantecler. He might well be called the Gallic cock in that earlier twilight of vultures and bats. The end of the nineteenth century was a time of pessimism for Europe, and especially of pessimism for France; for pessimism was the shadow of Prussianism. Rostand was really a cock that crowed before the coming of sunrise. When it came it was red as blood; but the sun rose.

But that mediaeval nickname of the cock contains. a still more appropriate criticism. The word “clear” is always a clue to Rostand’s country, and to Rostand’s work. He suffered in the decadent days, he suffers to some extent still, from a strange blunder which supposes that what is clear must be shallow. It is chiefly founded on false figures of speech; and is akin to the mysteriously meaningless saying that still waters run deep. It is repeated without the least reference to the evident fact that the stillest of all waters do not run at all. They lie about in puddles, which are none the less shallow because they are covered with scum. Such were the North German philosophies fashionable at the end of the nineteenth century; men believed in the puddle’s profundity solely because of its opacity. When the decadent critics sneered at Rostand’s popularity, they were simply sneering at his lucidity. They were protesting against his power of conveying what he meant in the most direct and telling fashion. They were complaining bitterly because he did not think with a German accent, which is nearly the same thing as an impediment in the speech. The wit with which all his dialogues blazed was also a positive disadvantage in that muddle-headed modern world, which even now will only begin to realize gradually the greatness of France. Nothing has been so senselessly underrated as wit, even when it seems to be the mere wit of words. It is dismissed as merely verbal; but, in fact, it is more solemn writing that is merely verbal, or rather merely verbose. A joke is always a thought; it is grave and formal writing that can be quite literally thoughtless. This applies to jokes when they are not only quite verbal but quite vulgar. A good pun, or even a bad pun, is more intellectual than mere polysyllables. The man, the presumably prehistoric man, who invented the phrase, “When is a door not a door; when it’s ajar,” made a serious and successful mental effort of selection and combination. But a Prussian professor might begin on the same problem, “When is a door not a door; when its doorishness is a becoming rather than a being, and when the relativity of doorishness is co-ordinated with the evolution of doors from windows and skylights, of which approximation to new function, etc. etc.”—and the Prussian professor might go on like that for ever, and never come to the end because he would never come to the point. A pun or a riddle can never be in that sense a fraud. Real wisdom may be better than real wit, but there is much more sham wisdom than there is sham wit.

This is the immediate point about Rostand, who had very real wit, but wit of a very poetic and sometimes epic order. It is very characteristic of him, and very puzzling to his critics, that he was witty even in repudiating wit. In the scene ofCyrano de Bergerac, in which the hero pleads in his friend’s name against the preciosity of the heroine, he quite naturally uses the phrase touching the evaporation of truth in artificial terminology, “Et que le fin du fin ne soit la fin des fins.” That involves a pun and also involves a point; and it is a subject on which it would be quite easy to be earnest and pointless. A philosopher need never come to an end in talking about ends; precisely because he is not required to amuse anybody, he is not really required to mean anything. Every page, every paragraph, almost every line of Rostand’s plays bristles with these points, which are both verbal and vital. If any critic thinks it was easy to produce them by the hundred, there is an exceedingly easy test; let him try to produce one. In attempting to joke in this fashion, he will probably find himself thinking for the first time. For that matter, merely to make one of the better puns ofPunch orHood’s Annual would be enough to stump most of the sceptics who have been taught in the Teutonic schools to think a thing creative because it is chaotic, and vast because it is vague. A modern “thinker” will find it easier to make up a hundred problems than to make up one riddle. For in the case of the riddle he has to make up the answer.

The drama of Rostand was full of answers, if they seem to the superficial merely to be ringing repartees. In the ballade of the duel the hero says that the sword-thrust shall come at the end of the envoi, but something like it seems to come continually at the end of the line. But these retorts are really much more than superficial, because they have the ring of dogma, of affirmation and certainty, and therefore of triumph. The wit is heroic wit; and his sub-title was strictly correct when he calledCyrano a heroic comedy. It was written in a literary period which was far too pessimistic to rise even to heroic Tragedy. It will grow in value in a more virile time, when the air has been cleared by a great crusade. Rostand’s poetry will certainly remain. It may not remain among the very greatest poetry, for the very reason that he fulfilled the office rather of the trumpet than the lyre. But he himself may well have shared the spirited taste of his own hero, and have preferred that something even more noble than the laurel should remain as a feather in his cap.

Il romanticismo di Rostand

Rostand, il drammaturgo romantico di Francia, e poeta assai nazionale, morì quasi nel giorno del grande trionfo nazionale. Egli era vissuto, per usare la sua immaginifica araldica, fino a vedere le aquile d’oro della Gallia e di Roma ricacciare indietro le aquile nere della Prussia e dell’Austria. Apparteneva troppo a una generazione anteriore per prendere precisamente la parte di Péguy o di Claudel nel processo che bandì gli uccelli della barbarica notte dalla terra delle Aquile del sole. Ma la parte che aveva recitato in quel tempo anteriore potrebbe bene meritare l’uso di una metafora affine, tratta dal suo stesso paese fatato dell’ornitologia. Egli aveva uno speciale diritto a usare come uno dei suoi titoli il nobile nome medievale di Chantecler. Poteva bene essere chiamato il gallo gallico in quell’anteriore crepuscolo di avvoltoi e pipistrelli. La fine dell’Ottocento fu un tempo di pessimismo per l’Europa, e specialmente di pessimismo per la Francia; poiché il pessimismo era l’ombra del prussianesimo. Rostand fu davvero un gallo che cantò prima del sorgere del sole. Quando esso venne era rosso come il sangue; ma il sole sorse.

Ma quel soprannome medievale del gallo contiene una critica ancor più appropriata. La parola «chiaro» è sempre una chiave del paese di Rostand, e dell’opera di Rostand. Egli soffrì, nei giorni decadenti, e soffre in qualche misura tuttora, di uno strano equivoco che suppone che ciò che è chiaro debba essere superficiale. Esso si fonda principalmente su false figure retoriche; ed è affine al detto misteriosamente insensato secondo cui le acque quiete sono profonde. Lo si ripete senza il minimo riguardo al fatto evidente che le più quiete di tutte le acque non scorrono affatto. Giacciono in pozzanghere, che non sono meno basse per il fatto di essere coperte di schiuma. Tali erano le filosofie della Germania settentrionale di moda alla fine dell’Ottocento; gli uomini credevano nella profondità della pozzanghera unicamente a causa della sua opacità. Quando i critici decadenti sogghignavano alla popolarità di Rostand, sogghignavano semplicemente alla sua lucidità. Protestavano contro la sua capacità di trasmettere ciò che intendeva nel modo più diretto ed efficace. Si lamentavano amaramente perché egli non pensava con accento tedesco, il che è quasi la stessa cosa di un impedimento nel parlare. L’arguzia di cui tutti i suoi dialoghi fiammeggiavano era anch’essa un positivo svantaggio in quel confuso mondo moderno, che persino ora comincerà a rendersi conto solo gradualmente della grandezza della Francia. Nulla è stato tanto insensatamente sottovalutato quanto l’arguzia, anche quando sembra essere il mero gioco di parole. La si liquida come meramente verbale; ma, in realtà, è la scrittura più solenne a essere meramente verbale, o piuttosto meramente verbosa. Una battuta è sempre un pensiero; è la scrittura grave e formale a poter essere del tutto letteralmente irriflessiva. Ciò vale per le battute quando non sono solo del tutto verbali ma del tutto volgari. Un buon gioco di parole, o persino un cattivo gioco di parole, è più intellettuale delle mere parole polisillabiche. L’uomo, il presumibilmente preistorico uomo, che inventò la frase «Quando una porta non è una porta; quando è socchiusa», compì un serio e riuscito sforzo mentale di selezione e combinazione. Ma un professore prussiano potrebbe attaccare lo stesso problema, «Quando una porta non è una porta; quando la sua portità è un divenire piuttosto che un essere, e quando la relatività della portità è coordinata con l’evoluzione delle porte a partire dalle finestre e dai lucernari, di quale approssimazione a una nuova funzione, ecc. ecc.» — e il professore prussiano potrebbe andare avanti così in eterno, e non giungere mai alla fine perché non giungerebbe mai al punto. Un gioco di parole o un indovinello non può mai in quel senso essere un imbroglio. La vera saggezza può essere migliore della vera arguzia, ma vi è assai più saggezza fittizia di quanta ve ne sia arguzia fittizia.

Questo è il punto immediato riguardo a Rostand, che aveva un’arguzia assai reale, ma un’arguzia di ordine assai poetico e talvolta epico. È molto caratteristico di lui, e assai sconcertante per i suoi critici, che egli fosse arguto persino nel ripudiare l’arguzia. Nella scena del Cyrano de Bergerac, in cui l’eroe perora in nome del suo amico contro la preziosità dell’eroina, egli usa in modo del tutto naturale la frase che tocca l’evaporazione della verità nella terminologia artificiosa, «Et que le fin du fin ne soit la fin des fins». Ciò comporta un gioco di parole e comporta anche un punto; ed è un argomento su cui sarebbe assai facile essere seri e insulsi. Un filosofo non ha mai bisogno di giungere a una fine nel parlare di fini; proprio perché non gli si richiede di divertire nessuno, non gli si richiede davvero di significare alcunché. Ogni pagina, ogni paragrafo, quasi ogni verso delle opere di Rostand pullula di questi punti, che sono al contempo verbali e vitali. Se qualche critico pensa che fosse facile produrli a centinaia, c’è una prova straordinariamente facile; provi a produrne uno. Nel tentativo di scherzare in questa maniera, probabilmente si ritroverà a pensare per la prima volta. Del resto, il solo comporre uno dei migliori giochi di parole del Punch o dell’Hood’s Annual basterebbe a mettere in scacco la maggior parte degli scettici cui, nelle scuole teutoniche, è stato insegnato a ritenere una cosa creativa perché è caotica, e vasta perché è vaga. Un «pensatore» moderno troverà più facile inventare cento problemi che inventare un solo indovinello. Poiché nel caso dell’indovinello deve inventare la risposta.

Il teatro di Rostand era pieno di risposte, per quanto ai superficiali possano sembrare mere squillanti battute di rimando. Nella ballata del duello l’eroe dice che il colpo di spada giungerà alla fine dell’invio, ma qualcosa di simile sembra giungere di continuo alla fine del verso. Ma queste repliche sono in realtà molto più che superficiali, perché hanno il suono del dogma, dell’affermazione e della certezza, e perciò del trionfo. L’arguzia è arguzia eroica; e il suo sottotitolo era rigorosamente corretto quando chiamò Cyrano una commedia eroica. Fu scritta in un periodo letterario che era troppo pessimista per innalzarsi persino alla Tragedia eroica. Crescerà di valore in un tempo più virile, quando l’aria sarà stata purificata da una grande crociata. La poesia di Rostand certamente rimarrà. Può non rimanere tra la poesia più grande in assoluto, proprio per la ragione che egli adempì l’ufficio piuttosto della tromba che della lira. Ma egli stesso può bene aver condiviso il gusto spavaldo del suo proprio eroe, e aver preferito che qualcosa di ancor più nobile dell’alloro rimanesse come piuma sul suo cappello.

Wishes

MOST of us, I suppose, have amused ourselves with the old and flippant fancy of what poets or orators would feel like if their wild wishes came true. The poet would be not a little surprised if the (somewhat inadequate) wings of a dove suddenly sprouted from his shoulder-blades. And I suspect that even the baby who cries for the moon would be rather frightened if it fell out of the sky, crushing forests and cities like a colossal snowball, shutting out the stars and darkening the earth it had illuminated. Shelley was magnificently moved when he wished to be a cloud driven before the wild West Wind: but even Shelley would have been not a little disconcerted if he had found himself turning head-over-heels in mid-air the instant he had written the line. He would even be somewhat relieved, I fancy, to fall upon the thorns of life and bleed a little more. When Keats, the human nightingale, lay listening to the feathered one, he expressed a strong desire for a long drink of red wine. In this I believe him to have accurately analysed his own sentiments. But when he proceeds to explain that he is strongly inclined at that moment to wish himself dead, I entertain strong doubts as to whether he is equally exact, and am by no means certain that he would really like “to cease upon the midnight” even “with no pain.” Such sceptical fantasies, I say, have occurred to most of us; they do not spoil fine poetry for those who really like it; they only salt it with humour and human fellowship. Things seriously beautiful are, perhaps, the only things that we can jest about with complete spiritual safety. One cannot insult the poem except by being afraid of the parody.

But I think there is another and more curious cause for this common human fancy of a wild wish which is disappointed by being fulfilled. The idea is very common, of course, in popular tradition: in the tale of King Midas; in the tale of the Black Pudding; in the tale of the Goloshes of Fortune. My own personal feeling about it, I think, is that a world in which all one’s wishes were fulfilled would, quite apart from disappointments, be an unpleasant world to live in. The world would be too like a dream, and the dream too like a nightmare. The Ego would be too big for the Cosmos; it would be a bore to be so important as that. I believe a great part of such poetic pleasure as I have comes from a certain disdainful indifference in actual things. Demeter withered up the cornfields: I like the cornfields because they grow in spite of me. At least, I can lay my hand on my heart and say that no cornfield ever grew with my assistance. Ajax defied the lightning; but I like the lightning because it defies me. I enjoy stars and the sun or trees and the sea, because they exist in spite of me; and I believe the sentiment to be at the root of all that real kind of romance which makes life not a delusion of the night, but an adventure of the morning. It is, indeed, in the clash of circumstances that men are most alive. When we break a lance with an opponent the whole romance is in the fact that the lance does break. It breaks because it is real: it does not vanish like an elfin spear. And even when there is an element of the marvellous or impossible in true poetry, there is always also this element of resistance, of actuality and shock. The most really poetical impossibility is an irresistible force colliding with an immovable post. When that happens it will be the end of the world.

It is true, of course, that marvels, even marvels of transformation, illustrate the noblest histories and traditions. But we should notice a rather curious difference which the instinct of popular legend has in almost all cases kept. The wonder-working done by good people, saints and friends of man, is almost always represented in the form of restoring things or people to their proper shapes. St. Nicholas, the Patron Saint of Children, finds a boiling pot in which two children have been reduced to a sort of Irish stew. He restores them miraculously to life; because they ought to be children and ought not to be Irish stew. But he does not turn them into angels; and I can remember no case in hagiology of such an official promotion. If a woman were blind, the good wonder-workers would give her back her eyes; if a man were halt, they would give him back his leg. But they did not, I think, say to the man: “You are so good that you really ought to be a woman”; or to the woman: “You are so bothered it is time you had a holiday as a man.” I do not say there are no exceptions; but this is the general tone of the tales about good magic. But, on the other hand, the popular tales about bad magic are specially full of the idea that evil alters and destroys the personality. The black witch turns a child into a cat or a dog; the bad magician keeps the Prince captive in the form of a parrot, or the Princess in the form of a hind; in the gardens of the evil spirits human beings are frozen into statues or tied to the earth as trees. In all such instinctive literature the denial of identity is the very signature of Satan. In that sense it is true that the true God is the God of things as they are—or, at least, as they were meant to be. And I think that something of this healthy fear of losing self through the supernatural is behind the widespread sentiment of the Three Wishes; the sentiment which says, in the words of Thackeray:

Fairy roses, fairy rings Turn out sometimes troublesome things.

Now the transition may seem queer; but this power of seeing that a tree isthere, in spite of you and me, that it holds of God and its own treeishness, is of great importance just now in practical politics. We are in sharp collision with a large number of things, some of which are real facts and all of which are real faiths. We must see these things objectively, as we do a tree; and understand that they exist whether we like them or not. We must not try and turn them into something different by the mere exercise of our own minds, as if we were witches. I happen to think, for instance, that it is silly of Orangemen to think they would be persecuted under Home Rule. But I think it is sillier to think that the Orangemen do not think so. It is sillier not to see that a man can fire off a gun for a prejudice as well as he can for an ideal. I disagree with the Orangemen; I don’t disagree with the Nationalists; but I deny neither. I sympathize with the Labour revolt; I don’t sympathize with the Feminist revolt; but I deny neither. Then, again, both these latter tendencies have succeeded in colliding violently with another reality, the priests of the ancient popular creed of Ireland. They achieved that catastrophe, not because they did not believe the creed, but because they could not even believe that it was believed.

Now you can, if you choose, pass your life in a wizard dream, in which all your enemies are turned into something else. You can insist that a priest is only a parrot, or a Suffragette always a wandering hind: but if you do, you will sooner or later get into your head what is meant by an immovable post.

Desideri

La maggior parte di noi, suppongo, si è divertita con la vecchia e frivola fantasia di ciò che i poeti o gli oratori proverebbero se i loro selvaggi desideri si avverassero. Il poeta rimarrebbe non poco sorpreso se le (alquanto inadeguate) ali di una colomba gli spuntassero d’un tratto dalle scapole. E sospetto che persino il bimbo che piange per la luna si spaventerebbe piuttosto se essa cadesse dal cielo, schiacciando foreste e città come una colossale palla di neve, oscurando le stelle e ottenebrando la terra che aveva illuminato. Shelley fu magnificamente commosso quando desiderò essere una nube sospinta dinanzi al selvaggio Vento dell’Ovest: ma persino Shelley sarebbe rimasto non poco sconcertato se si fosse ritrovato a capitombolare a mezz’aria nell’istante in cui ebbe scritto il verso. Sarebbe persino stato alquanto sollevato, immagino, di cadere sulle spine della vita e sanguinare un poco di più. Quando Keats, l’umano usignolo, giaceva ascoltando quello pennuto, espresse un forte desiderio di una lunga bevuta di vino rosso. In questo credo che abbia analizzato con precisione i propri sentimenti. Ma quando prosegue spiegando che in quel momento è fortemente incline a desiderarsi morto, nutro forti dubbi sul fatto che sia altrettanto esatto, e non sono affatto certo che vorrebbe davvero «cessare a mezzanotte» sia pure «senza alcun dolore». Simili fantasie scettiche, dico, sono venute in mente alla maggior parte di noi; non guastano la bella poesia per coloro che davvero la amano; la salano soltanto con umorismo e umana fratellanza. Le cose seriamente belle sono, forse, le sole cose su cui possiamo scherzare con completa sicurezza spirituale. Non si può insultare la poesia se non temendo la parodia.

Ma penso che vi sia un’altra e più curiosa causa di questa comune fantasia umana di un selvaggio desiderio deluso dall’essere esaudito. L’idea è assai comune, naturalmente, nella tradizione popolare: nella storia di Re Mida; nella storia del Sanguinaccio; nella storia delle Galosce della Fortuna. La mia personale sensazione al riguardo, credo, è che un mondo in cui tutti i propri desideri fossero esauditi sarebbe, del tutto a prescindere dalle delusioni, un mondo sgradevole in cui vivere. Il mondo sarebbe troppo simile a un sogno, e il sogno troppo simile a un incubo. L’Io sarebbe troppo grande per il Cosmo; sarebbe una noia essere tanto importanti. Credo che gran parte del piacere poetico che provo derivi da una certa sdegnosa indifferenza nelle cose reali. Demetra inaridì i campi di grano: mi piacciono i campi di grano perché crescono a mio dispetto. Almeno, posso mettermi la mano sul cuore e dire che nessun campo di grano è mai cresciuto col mio aiuto. Aiace sfidò il fulmine; ma a me piace il fulmine perché sfida me. Godo delle stelle e del sole o degli alberi e del mare, perché esistono a mio dispetto; e credo che questo sentimento stia alla radice di tutto quel genere autentico di romanticismo che fa della vita non un’illusione della notte, ma un’avventura del mattino. È, in verità, nel cozzo delle circostanze che gli uomini sono più vivi. Quando spezziamo una lancia con un avversario tutto il romanticismo sta nel fatto che la lancia si spezza. Si spezza perché è reale: non svanisce come una lancia elfica. E persino quando vi è un elemento del meraviglioso o dell’impossibile nella vera poesia, vi è sempre anche questo elemento di resistenza, di realtà e d’urto. La più autenticamente poetica impossibilità è una forza irresistibile che collide con un palo inamovibile. Quando ciò accadrà sarà la fine del mondo.

È vero, naturalmente, che i prodigi, persino i prodigi di trasformazione, illustrano le più nobili storie e tradizioni. Ma dovremmo notare una differenza piuttosto curiosa che l’istinto della leggenda popolare ha in quasi tutti i casi conservato. L’operare-prodigi compiuto dalle persone buone, dai santi e dagli amici dell’uomo, è quasi sempre rappresentato nella forma del restituire cose o persone alla loro forma propria. San Nicola, il Santo Patrono dei Bambini, trova una pentola bollente in cui due bambini sono stati ridotti a una sorta di spezzatino all’irlandese. Li ripristina miracolosamente in vita; perché dovrebbero essere bambini e non dovrebbero essere spezzatino all’irlandese. Ma non li tramuta in angeli; e non ricordo alcun caso, nell’agiografia, di una simile promozione ufficiale. Se una donna fosse cieca, i buoni operatori di prodigi le renderebbero gli occhi; se un uomo fosse zoppo, gli renderebbero la gamba. Ma non dicevano, credo, all’uomo: «Sei così buono che davvero dovresti essere una donna»; o alla donna: «Sei così tormentata che è tempo di prenderti una vacanza come uomo». Non dico che non vi siano eccezioni; ma questo è il tono generale dei racconti sulla buona magia. Ma, d’altra parte, i racconti popolari sulla cattiva magia sono specialmente pieni dell’idea che il male alteri e distrugga la personalità. La nera strega tramuta un bambino in gatto o in cane; il malvagio mago tiene prigioniero il Principe nella forma di un pappagallo, o la Principessa nella forma di una cerva; nei giardini degli spiriti maligni gli esseri umani vengono congelati in statue o legati alla terra come alberi. In tutta questa letteratura istintiva la negazione dell’identità è la vera firma di Satana. In quel senso è vero che il vero Dio è il Dio delle cose come sono — o, almeno, come erano destinate a essere. E penso che qualcosa di questa salutare paura di perdere il sé attraverso il soprannaturale stia dietro il diffuso sentimento dei Tre Desideri; il sentimento che dice, con le parole di Thackeray:

Rose fatate, fatati anelli Si rivelano talora fastidiosi grovigli.

Ora la transizione può sembrare bizzarra; ma questo potere di vedere che un albero è lì, a dispetto di me e di te, che appartiene a Dio e alla sua propria alberità, è di grande importanza proprio ora nella politica pratica. Siamo in netta collisione con un gran numero di cose, alcune delle quali sono fatti reali e tutte sono fedi reali. Dobbiamo vedere queste cose oggettivamente, come facciamo con un albero; e comprendere che esistono che ci piacciano o no. Non dobbiamo cercare di trasformarle in qualcosa di diverso col mero esercizio delle nostre menti, come se fossimo streghe. A me capita di pensare, per esempio, che sia sciocco da parte degli Orangisti credere che sarebbero perseguitati sotto l’Autonomia Rule. Ma penso che sia più sciocco pensare che gli Orangisti non lo pensino. È più sciocco non vedere che un uomo può sparare un colpo di fucile per un pregiudizio tanto bene quanto per un ideale. Dissento dagli Orangisti; non dissento dai Nazionalisti; ma non nego né gli uni né gli altri. Simpatizzo con la rivolta operaia; non simpatizzo con la rivolta femminista; ma non nego né l’una né l’altra. Poi, ancora, entrambe queste ultime tendenze sono riuscite a collidere violentemente con un’altra realtà, i sacerdoti dell’antico credo popolare d’Irlanda. Raggiunsero quella catastrofe, non perché non credessero al credo, ma perché non riuscivano nemmeno a credere che vi si credesse.

Ora potete, se scegliete così, trascorrere la vostra vita in un sogno stregato, in cui tutti i vostri nemici sono tramutati in qualcos’altro. Potete insistere che un sacerdote è soltanto un pappagallo, o una Suffragetta sempre una cerva errante: ma se lo fate, presto o tardi vi ficcherete in testa che cosa si intenda per palo inamovibile.

The Futurists

THERE are still people talking about Futurism, though I should have thought it was now a thing of the past, exploded by its own silly gunpowder train of progressive theory. If a man only believed the world was round because his grandmother said it was flat, another man had only to say it was spiral in order to be a more advanced idiot than either of them. But, after all, the world is one shape and not another (I don’t care which myself, but certainly one), and will be when we all die, and would have been if no worm or weed had ever lived. And it amuses me to notice that the very Agnostics who still quote Galileo’s phrase about the earth, “And yet it moves!” are the very people who talk as if truth could be different from age to age—as if the whole world was a different shape when you or I were in a different frame of mind. Progressives of this kindcannot say “And yet it moves” save in the sense that their own foot can roll it about like a football, or that their own finger can stop it as Joshua’s stopped the moon. They may control Nature like witches; but they cannot appeal to Nature like Galileo. They have no abiding objective fact to which to appeal. On the mere progressive theory there is no more immortality about the astronomy of Galileo than the medicine of Galen.

But one or two interesting ideas can be found in Futurist speculations, essays, lectures, books, etc.—indeed, the Futurists can be interesting everywhere but in their pictures. And this is the difficulty of all such movements—the lack of the final fulfilment. I will not put it offensively, as by saying that they write a beautiful prospectus, but there are no funds. I do not mean it like that. I will put it poetically by saying that there are beautiful leaves and flowers, but there is no fruit. There are leaves of learning enough to fill a library; there are flowers of rhetoric enough to last a session. They are all about a picture: and there is no picture. Thus Mr. Nevinson, the eminent English Futurist, has explained that pictorial art should be as independent of natural facts as music is: it should not imitate, but utter. Of music, of course, the remark is true, and fairly familiar. Certainly three notes on a piano can bring tears to the eyes by reminding us of a dead friend: though certainly the first noise is not the noise he made when whistling to his dog, nor the second the noise he made when kicking his boots off, nor the third the noise he made when blowing his nose. Perhaps the three notes are noises he could never have made: perhaps he was unmusical, like many magnificent people— I am unmusical myself. Perhaps, I say, he was unmusical: yet music can express him. This is an interesting fact; but it is only one fact, and the examination of a few others would have shown Mr. Nevinson the shallowness of his artistic philosophy.

But Mr. Nevinson and the Futurists, having never seen a fact before in their lives, clutch hold of this one and rush after the car of progress like poor baby-laden charwomen after a motor-bus. Their deduction is this: As his favourite song recalls the friend, though it contains none of his grunts, snorts, or sneezes, so his portrait would better recall his appearance if it contained no trace of his eyes, nose, mouth, hair (if any), masculine sex, anthropoid or erect posture, or any other oddity by which his friends were in the habit of distinguishing him from a lamp-post or a large whale, or from the works of Creation in general. Mr. Nevinson says that the most pungent and passionate emotions (such, presumably, as we have about friendship and even about love) can be conveyed by planes, mathematical proportions, arbitrary or abstract colours, arrangements of line, and all the things we most of us instinctively associate with carpets, if not with oilcloth. “It is possible,” he says. It is. It is not a contradiction in terms. But if I say, “It is possible by arranging a tomato, ten pearl buttons, a copy of the second and last number of a Tariff Reform weekly, one wooden leg, three odd boots, and a bag with a hole in it, to induce your worst enemy to burst into tears and give you a million pounds in conscience money,” then, if you are a Monist and a fool, you will answer that it could not happen. But if you are an Agnostic and a Christian, you will answer that you tried it on with your worst creditor, and it didn’t work with him. Nor would the planes, angles, abstract colours work with him. They don’t work with you; they don’t work with me; they don’t work with anybody. And the reason simply is that these philosophers, like so many modern philosophers, do not possess the patience to see what they are taking for granted. Have you ever seen a fellow fail at the high jump because he had not gone far enough back for his run? That is Modern Thought. It is so confident of where it is going to that it does not know where it comes from.

The quite simple fallacy is this. The only thing we know about the things we call the Arts is that when they are good they all stir the soul in a somewhat similar way. Their roots in savagery or civilization are so different and so dark, their relations to utility or practical life are so prodigiously contrasted, the mere time or space they occupy is so unequal in every case, the psychological explanations of their very existence are so inconsistent and anarchic, that we simply do not know whether in one single point we can argue from one art to another. We do not know enough about it, and there is an end of the matter. For instance, many have compared classic poetry with classic architecture; and anyone who has ever felt the virginity and dignity of either will know what such a comparison means. Milton spoke of “building” a line of poetry; and nobody seems able to talk about sonnets without talking about marble. But in technical fact the analogy is only a fancy, after all. Treat it for one moment as Mr. Nevinson treats the analogy between music and painting, and it is pure, preposterous nonsense—like Futurism.

Who will deny that height, or the appearance of height, is one of the effects of architecture? Who has not read or said or felt that some wall seemed too enormous for any mortals to have made, that some domes seemed to occupy heaven, or that some spire seemed to strike him out of the sky? But who, on the other hand, ever said that his sonnet was printed higher up on the page than somebody else’s sonnet? Who ever either praised or disliked a piece of verse according to its vertical longitude? Who ever said, “My sonnet occupied five volumes of theTimes, but youshould see it pasted all in one piece ”? Who ever said, “I have written the tallest triolet on earth”?

Mr. Nevinson will bring a tear to my eye by exhibiting a pattern and calling it a picture on the same day when he induces me to read two hundred leading articles in theTimes simply by calling them a tower. They have many of the qualities of a tower: they are long; they are symmetrical; they are all built out of the same old bricks; they sometimes stand upright, like the Tower of Giotto; they more often lean very much, like the Tower of Pisa; they most frequently fall down altogether, and fall on the wrong people, like the Tower of Siloam. One could pursue such abstract fancies for ever, but the simple fact remains—and it is a fact of the senses. The thing is not a tower, because it does not tower. And the Futurist picture is not a picture, because it does not depict. Why one art can do without shapes, and another without words, and another without movement, and another without massiveness, and why each of these is necessary to one or other of them separately—all this we shall know when we know what art means. And I cannot say that the Futurists have helped us much in finding out.

I Futuristi

Vi sono ancora persone che parlano di Futurismo, sebbene avrei pensato che ormai fosse una cosa del passato, fatta esplodere dalla sua stessa sciocca miccia di teoria progressista. Se un uomo credesse che il mondo è rotondo solo perché sua nonna diceva che era piatto, a un altro uomo basterebbe dire che è a spirale per essere un idiota più avanzato di entrambi. Ma, dopotutto, il mondo ha una forma e non un’altra (a me non importa quale, ma certamente una), e l’avrà quando saremo tutti morti, e l’avrebbe avuta se nessun verme o erbaccia fosse mai vissuto. E mi diverte notare che proprio gli Agnostici che ancora citano la frase di Galileo sulla terra, «Eppur si muove!», sono proprio le persone che parlano come se la verità potesse essere diversa di epoca in epoca — come se il mondo intero avesse una forma diversa a seconda che tu o io fossimo in una diversa disposizione d’animo. I progressisti di questa specie non possono dire «Eppur si muove» se non nel senso che il loro stesso piede può farla rotolare come un pallone, o che il loro stesso dito può fermarla come quello di Giosuè fermò la luna. Possono controllare la Natura come streghe; ma non possono appellarsi alla Natura come Galileo. Non hanno alcun fatto oggettivo permanente a cui appellarsi. Sulla mera teoria progressista non c’è più immortalità nell’astronomia di Galileo che nella medicina di Galeno.

Ma una o due idee interessanti si possono trovare nelle speculazioni, negli saggi, nelle conferenze, nei libri futuristi, ecc. — anzi, i Futuristi possono essere interessanti dappertutto tranne che nei loro quadri. E questa è la difficoltà di tutti i movimenti del genere — la mancanza del compimento finale. Non lo esprimerò in modo offensivo, dicendo che scrivono un bel prospetto, ma non ci sono i fondi. Non intendo dirlo così. Lo esprimerò poeticamente dicendo che vi sono belle foglie e fiori, ma non c’è frutto. Vi sono foglie di dottrina abbastanza da riempire una biblioteca; vi sono fiori di retorica abbastanza da durare una sessione. Riguardano tutti un quadro: e non c’è quadro. Così il signor Nevinson, l’eminente Futurista inglese, ha spiegato che l’arte pittorica dovrebbe essere indipendente dai fatti naturali quanto lo è la musica: non dovrebbe imitare, ma proferire. Della musica, naturalmente, l’osservazione è vera, e piuttosto familiare. Certamente tre note su un pianoforte possono far salire le lacrime agli occhi ricordandoci un amico morto: benché certamente il primo suono non sia il suono che egli faceva quando fischiava al suo cane, né il secondo il suono che faceva quando si sfilava gli stivali a calci, né il terzo il suono che faceva quando si soffiava il naso. Forse le tre note sono suoni che egli non avrebbe mai potuto fare: forse era stonato, come molte magnifiche persone — io stesso sono stonato. Forse, dico, era stonato: eppure la musica può esprimerlo. Questo è un fatto interessante; ma è soltanto un fatto, e l’esame di qualche altro avrebbe mostrato al signor Nevinson la superficialità della sua filosofia artistica.

Ma il signor Nevinson e i Futuristi, non avendo mai visto un fatto prima in vita loro, afferrano questo e corrono dietro al carro del progresso come povere donne delle pulizie cariche di neonati dietro a un autobus. La loro deduzione è questa: come la sua canzone preferita richiama l’amico, benché non contenga nessuno dei suoi grugniti, sbuffi o starnuti, così il suo ritratto ne richiamerebbe meglio l’aspetto se non contenesse alcuna traccia dei suoi occhi, del naso, della bocca, dei capelli (se ne aveva), del sesso maschile, della postura antropoide o eretta, o di qualunque altra stranezza per cui i suoi amici erano soliti distinguerlo da un lampione o da una grossa balena, o dalle opere della Creazione in generale. Il signor Nevinson dice che le emozioni più pungenti e appassionate (quali, presumibilmente, quelle che abbiamo riguardo all’amicizia e persino all’amore) possono essere trasmesse da piani, proporzioni matematiche, colori arbitrari o astratti, disposizioni di linee, e tutte le cose che la maggior parte di noi associa istintivamente ai tappeti, se non alla tela cerata. «È possibile», egli dice. Lo è. Non è una contraddizione in termini. Ma se io dico: «È possibile, disponendo un pomodoro, dieci bottoni di madreperla, una copia del secondo e ultimo numero di un settimanale della Riforma Tariffaria, una gamba di legno, tre stivali spaiati e una borsa con un buco, indurre il vostro peggior nemico a scoppiare in lacrime e a darvi un milione di sterline in denaro della coscienza», allora, se siete un Monista e uno sciocco, risponderete che non potrebbe accadere. Ma se siete un Agnostico e un Cristiano, risponderete che l’avete provato col vostro peggior creditore, e con lui non ha funzionato. Né i piani, gli angoli, i colori astratti funzionerebbero con lui. Non funzionano con voi; non funzionano con me; non funzionano con nessuno. E la ragione è semplicemente che questi filosofi, come tanti filosofi moderni, non possiedono la pazienza di vedere ciò che danno per scontato. Avete mai visto un tale mancare il salto in alto perché non era andato abbastanza indietro per la rincorsa? Quello è il Pensiero Moderno. È così sicuro di dove sta andando che non sa da dove viene.

La fallacia, del tutto semplice, è questa. L’unica cosa che sappiamo delle cose che chiamiamo le Arti è che, quando sono buone, esse tutte smuovono l’anima in un modo alquanto simile. Le loro radici nella selvatichezza o nella civiltà sono così diverse e così oscure, le loro relazioni con l’utilità o la vita pratica sono così prodigiosamente contrastanti, il mero tempo o spazio che occupano è così ineguale in ogni caso, le spiegazioni psicologiche della loro stessa esistenza sono così incoerenti e anarchiche, che semplicemente non sappiamo se in un solo punto possiamo argomentare da un’arte a un’altra. Non ne sappiamo abbastanza, e la faccenda finisce lì. Per esempio, molti hanno paragonato la poesia classica all’architettura classica; e chiunque abbia mai sentito la verginità e la dignità dell’una o dell’altra saprà che cosa significhi un simile paragone. Milton parlava di «costruire» un verso di poesia; e nessuno pare capace di parlare di sonetti senza parlare di marmo. Ma nel fatto tecnico l’analogia è solo una fantasticheria, dopotutto. Trattatela per un momento come il signor Nevinson tratta l’analogia tra musica e pittura, ed è puro, mostruoso nonsenso — come il Futurismo.

Chi negherà che l’altezza, o l’apparenza dell’altezza, sia uno degli effetti dell’architettura? Chi non ha letto o detto o sentito che qualche muro sembrava troppo enorme perché mortali l’avessero costruito, che certe cupole sembravano occupare il cielo, o che certe guglie sembravano scagliarlo fuori dal firmamento? Ma chi, d’altra parte, ha mai detto che il suo sonetto era stampato più in alto sulla pagina rispetto al sonetto di qualcun altro? Chi ha mai lodato o disprezzato un componimento in versi secondo la sua longitudine verticale? Chi ha mai detto: «Il mio sonetto occupava cinque volumi del Times, ma dovreste vederlo incollato tutto in un pezzo»? Chi ha mai detto: «Ho scritto il più alto trioletto della terra»?

Il signor Nevinson mi strapperà una lacrima esibendo un motivo decorativo e chiamandolo quadro il giorno stesso in cui mi indurrà a leggere duecento articoli di fondo del Times semplicemente chiamandoli una torre. Essi hanno molte delle qualità di una torre: sono lunghi; sono simmetrici; sono tutti costruiti con gli stessi vecchi mattoni; talvolta stanno diritti, come la Torre di Giotto; più spesso pendono molto, come la Torre di Pisa; più frequentemente crollano del tutto, e cadono sulle persone sbagliate, come la Torre di Siloe. Si potrebbero perseguire simili fantasie astratte in eterno, ma il semplice fatto rimane — ed è un fatto dei sensi. La cosa non è una torre, perché non torreggia. E il quadro futurista non è un quadro, perché non raffigura. Perché un’arte possa fare a meno delle forme, e un’altra delle parole, e un’altra del movimento, e un’altra della massività, e perché ciascuna di queste sia necessaria all’una o all’altra di esse separatamente — tutto ciò lo sapremo quando sapremo che cosa significhi arte. E non posso dire che i Futuristi ci abbiano molto aiutato a scoprirlo.

The Evolution of Emma

AMONG the many good critical tributes to the genius of Jane Austen, to the fine distinction of her humour, the sympathetic intimacy of her satire, the easy exactitude of her unpretentious style, which have appeared in celebration of her centenary, there is one criticism that is naturally recurrent: the remark that she was quite untouched by the towering politics of her time. This is intrinsically true; nevertheless it may easily be used to imply the reverse of the truth. It is true that Jane Austen did not attempt to teach any history or politics; but it is not true that we cannot learn any history or politics from Jane Austen. Any work so piercingly intelligent of its own kind, and especially any work of so wise and humane a kind, is sure to tell us much more than shallower studies covering a larger surface. I will not say much of the mere formality of some of the conventions and conversational forms; for in such things it is not only not certain that change is important, but it is not even certain that it is final. The view that a thing is old-fashioned is itself a fashion; and may soon be an old fashion. We have seen this in many recurrences of female dress; but it has a deeper basis in human nature. The truth is that a phrase can be falsified by use without being false in fact; it can seem stale without being really stilted. Those who see a word as merely worn out, fail to look forward as well as back. I know of two poems by two Irish poets of two different centuries, essentially on the same theme; the lover declaring that his love will outlast the mere popularity of the beauty. One is by Mr. Yeats and begins: “Though you are in your shining days.” The other is by Tom Moore and begins. “Believe me, if all those endearing young charms.” The latter language strikes us as ridiculously florid and over-ripe; but Moore was far from being ridiculous. Believe me (as he would say), it was no poetaster who wrote those hackneyed words about the silent harp and the heart that breaks for liberty. And if English were read some day by strangers as a classic language, I am not sure that “endearing” would not endure as a better word than “shining”; or even that (after some repetition and reaction) it might not seem as strained to say “shining” as to say “shiny.” Yet Mr. Yeats also is a great poet, as I called him last week; only the printer or somebody altered it to a “good” one—a mysteriously moderate emendation. Similarly, when one of Jane Austen’s heroines wants to say that the hero is a good fellow, she expresses confidence in what she calls “his worth.” This goads her younger modern readers to madness; yet in truth the term is far more philosophic and eternal than the terms they would use themselves. They would probably say he was “nice,” and Jane Austen would indeed be avenged. For the best of her heroes, Henry Tilney, himself foresaw and fulminated against the unmeaning ubiquity of that word, a prophet of the pure reason of his age, seeing in a vision of the future the fall of the human mind.

Negatively, of course, the historic lesson from Jane Austen is enormous. She is perhaps most typical of her time in being supremely irreligious. Her very virtues glitter with the cold sunlight of the great secular epoch between mediaeval and modern mysticism. In that small masterpiece, Northanger Abbey, her unconsciousness of history is itself a piece of history. For Catherine Morland was right, as young and romantic people often are. A real crime had been committed in Northanger Abbey. It is implied in the very name of Northanger Abbey. It was the crucial crime of the sixteenth century, when all the institutions of the poor were savagely seized to be the private possessions of the rich. It is strange that the name remains; it is stranger still that it remains unrealized. We should think it odd to go to tea at a man’s house and find it was still called a church. We should be surprised if a gentleman’s shooting box at Claybury were referred to as Claybury Cathedral. But the irony of the eighteenth century is that Catherine was healthily interested in crimes and yet never found the real crime; and that she never really thought of it as an abbey, even when she thought of it most as an antiquity.

But there is a positive as well as a negative way in which her greatness, like Shakespeare’s, illuminates history and polities, because it illuminates everything. She understood every intricacy of the upper middle class and the minor gentry, which were to make so much of the mental life of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It is said that she ignored the poor and disregarded their opinions. She did, but not more than all our Governments and all our Acts of Parliaments have done. And at least she did consistently ignore them; she ignored where she was ignorant. Well it would have been for the world if others had ignored the working-class until they understood it as well as she did the middle class. She was not a student of sociology; she did not study the poor. But she did study the students—or at least the social types which were to become the students of the poor. She knew her own class, and knew it without illusions; and there is much light on later problems to be found in her delicate delineation of vanities and snobberies and patronage. She had to do with the human heart; and it is that which cometh out of the heart that defileth a nation, philanthropy, efficiency, organization, social reform. And if the weaker brethren still wonder why we should find in Baby Week or Welfare Work a dangerous spirit, from which its best adherents find it hard to free themselves, if they doubt how such a danger can be reconciled with the personal delicacy and idealism of many of the women who work such things, if they think that fine words or even fine feelings will guarantee a respect for the personality of the poor, I really do not know that they could do better than sit down, I trust not for the first time, to the reading ofEmma.

For all this that has happened since might well be called the Evolution of Emma. That unique and formidable institution, the English Lady, has, indeed, become much more of a public institution; that is, she has made the same mistakes on a much larger scale. The softer fastidiousness and finer pride of the more gracious eighteenth-century heroine may seem to make her a shadow by comparison. It seems cruel to say that the breaking off of Harriet’s humbler engagement foreshadows the indiscriminate development of Divorce for the Poor. It seems horrible to say that Emma’s small matchmaking has in it the seed of the pestilence of Eugenics. But it is true. With a gentleness and justice and sympathy with good intentions, which clear her from the charge of common cynicism, the great novelist does find the spring of her heroine’s errors, and of many of ours. That spring is a philanthropy, and even a generosity, secretly founded on gentility. Emma Woodhouse was a wit, she was a good woman, she was an individual with a right to her own opinion; but it was because she was a lady that she acted as she did, and thought she had a right to act as she did. She is the type in fiction of a whole race of English ladies, in fact, for whom refinement is religion. Her claim to oversee and order the social things about her consisted in being refined; she would not have admitted that being rich had anything to do with it; but as a fact it had everything to do with it. If she had been very much richer, if she had had one of the great modern fortunes, if she had had the wider modern opportunities (for the rich) she would have thought it her duty to act on the wider modern scale; she would have had public spirit and political grasp. She would have dealt with a thousand Robert Martins and a thousand Harriet Smiths, and made the same muddle about all of them. That is what we mean about things like Baby Week—and if there had been a baby in the story, Miss Woodhouse would certainly have seen all its educational needs with a brilliant clearness. And we do not mean that the work is done entirely by Mrs. Pardiggle; we mean that much of it is done by Miss Woodhouse. But it is done because sheis Miss Woodhouse and not Martha Muggins or Jemina Jones; because the Lady Bountiful is a lady first, and will bestow every bounty but freedom.

It is noted that there are few traces of the French Revolution in Miss Austen’s novels; but, indeed, there have been few traces of it in Miss Austen’s country. The peculiarity which has produced the situation I describe is really this: that the new sentiment of humanitarianism has come, when the old sentiment of aristocracy has not gone. Social superiors have not really lost any old privileges; they have gained new privileges, including that of being superior in philosophy and philanthropy as well as in riches and refinement. No revolution has shaken their secret security or menaced them with the awful peril of becoming no more than men. Therefore their social reform is but their social refinement grown restless. And in this old teacup comedy can be found, far more clearly appreciated than in more ambitious books about problems and politics, the psychology of this mere restlessness in the rich, when it first stirred upon its cushions. Jane Austen described a narrow class, but so truthfully that she has much to teach about its after adventures, when it remained narrow as a class and broadened only as a sect.

L’evoluzione di Emma

Tra i molti pregevoli tributi critici al genio di Jane Austen, alla fine finezza del suo umorismo, all’intimità partecipe della sua satira, all’agevole esattezza del suo stile senza pretese, che sono apparsi in celebrazione del suo centenario, ve n’è una critica che ricorre naturalmente: l’osservazione che ella fu del tutto intoccata dalle imponenti vicende politiche del suo tempo. Ciò è intrinsecamente vero; ciononostante può facilmente essere usato per insinuare il contrario del vero. È vero che Jane Austen non tentò di insegnare alcuna storia o politica; ma non è vero che non possiamo apprendere alcuna storia o politica da Jane Austen. Qualunque opera così acutamente intelligente nel suo genere, e specialmente qualunque opera di un genere così saggio e umano, è certa di dirci molto più di studi più superficiali che coprono una superficie più ampia. Non dirò molto della mera formalità di alcune delle convenzioni e forme di conversazione; poiché in tali cose non solo non è certo che il mutamento sia importante, ma non è nemmeno certo che sia definitivo. L’idea che una cosa sia fuori moda è essa stessa una moda; e può presto essere una vecchia moda. L’abbiamo visto in molti ritorni dell’abbigliamento femminile; ma ha una base più profonda nella natura umana. La verità è che una frase può essere falsata dall’uso senza essere falsa nei fatti; può sembrare stantia senza essere davvero ampollosa. Coloro che vedono una parola come meramente logora, mancano di guardare avanti tanto bene quanto indietro. Conosco due poesie di due poeti irlandesi di due secoli diversi, essenzialmente sul medesimo tema; l’amante che dichiara che il suo amore durerà più a lungo della mera popolarità della bellezza. Una è del signor Yeats e comincia: «Though you are in your shining days». L’altra è di Tom Moore e comincia: «Believe me, if all those endearing young charms». Quest’ultima lingua ci colpisce come ridicolmente florida e troppo matura; ma Moore era ben lungi dall’essere ridicolo. Credetemi (come direbbe lui), non fu un poetastro a scrivere quelle trite parole sull’arpa silenziosa e sul cuore che si spezza per la libertà. E se un giorno l’inglese venisse letto da stranieri come lingua classica, non sono sicuro che «endearing» non durerebbe come parola migliore di «shining»; o persino che (dopo qualche ripetizione e reazione) non potrebbe sembrare tanto forzato dire «shining» quanto dire «shiny». Eppure anche il signor Yeats è un grande poeta, come lo chiamai la settimana scorsa; solo che il tipografo o qualcuno lo mutò in un «buon» poeta — una misteriosamente moderata correzione. Similmente, quando una delle eroine di Jane Austen vuole dire che l’eroe è un bravo ragazzo, esprime fiducia in ciò che ella chiama il suo «valore». Questo esaspera fino alla follia i suoi giovani lettori moderni; eppure in verità il termine è assai più filosofico ed eterno dei termini che essi userebbero da sé. Direbbero probabilmente che era «carino», e Jane Austen sarebbe davvero vendicata. Poiché il migliore dei suoi eroi, Henry Tilney, egli stesso previde e fulminò contro l’insensata ubiquità di quella parola, un profeta della pura ragione della sua epoca, vedendo in una visione del futuro la caduta della mente umana.

Negativamente, naturalmente, la lezione storica di Jane Austen è enorme. Ella è forse più tipica del suo tempo nell’essere supremamente irreligiosa. Le sue stesse virtù scintillano della fredda luce solare della grande epoca secolare tra il misticismo medievale e quello moderno. In quel piccolo capolavoro, Northanger Abbey, la sua inconsapevolezza della storia è essa stessa un pezzo di storia. Poiché Catherine Morland aveva ragione, come spesso hanno le persone giovani e romantiche. Un vero delitto era stato commesso a Northanger Abbey. Esso è implicito nel nome stesso di Northanger Abbey. Fu il delitto cruciale del sedicesimo secolo, quando tutte le istituzioni dei poveri furono selvaggiamente sequestrate per diventare i possedimenti privati dei ricchi. È strano che il nome rimanga; è più strano ancora che rimanga inconsapevole. Ci parrebbe curioso andare a prendere il tè a casa di un uomo e trovarla ancora chiamata una chiesa. Ci sorprenderebbe se il capanno di caccia di un gentiluomo a Claybury venisse indicato come la Cattedrale di Claybury. Ma l’ironia del diciottesimo secolo è che Catherine era sanamente interessata ai delitti eppure non trovò mai il vero delitto; e che non pensò mai davvero al luogo come a un’abbazia, nemmeno quando vi pensava più che mai come a un’antichità.

Ma c’è un modo positivo tanto bene quanto negativo in cui la sua grandezza, come quella di Shakespeare, illumina la storia e la politica, perché illumina ogni cosa. Ella comprendeva ogni intricatezza della media borghesia superiore e della piccola nobiltà, che dovevano costituire tanta parte della vita mentale del diciannovesimo e ventesimo secolo. Si dice che ella ignorasse i poveri e trascurasse le loro opinioni. Lo fece, ma non più di quanto abbiano fatto tutti i nostri Governi e tutti i nostri Atti del Parlamento. E almeno li ignorò coerentemente; ignorò là dove era ignorante. Bene sarebbe stato per il mondo se altri avessero ignorato la classe operaia finché non la comprendessero tanto bene quanto ella comprese la classe media. Non era una studiosa di sociologia; non studiò i poveri. Ma studiò gli studiosi — o almeno i tipi sociali che sarebbero diventati gli studiosi dei poveri. Conosceva la propria classe, e la conosceva senza illusioni; e c’è molta luce sui problemi successivi da trovare nella sua delicata delineazione di vanità e snobismi e paternalismo. Ella aveva a che fare col cuore umano; ed è ciò che esce dal cuore che contamina una nazione, filantropia, efficienza, organizzazione, riforma sociale. E se i fratelli più deboli ancora si chiedono perché dovremmo trovare nella Settimana del Bambino o nelle Opere Assistenziali uno spirito pericoloso, dal quale i suoi migliori aderenti trovano arduo affrancarsi, se dubitano di come un tale pericolo possa conciliarsi con la delicatezza personale e l’idealismo di molte delle donne che compiono tali opere, se pensano che belle parole o persino bei sentimenti garantiranno un rispetto per la personalità dei poveri, davvero non so che potrebbero far di meglio che sedersi, confido non per la prima volta, a leggere Emma.

Poiché tutto questo che è accaduto da allora ben si potrebbe chiamare l’evoluzione di Emma. Quell’unica e formidabile istituzione, la Signora Inglese, è, in verità, divenuta assai più un’istituzione pubblica; cioè, ha commesso i medesimi errori su scala assai più ampia. La più tenera schizzinosità e il più fine orgoglio della più graziosa eroina settecentesca possono sembrare farne un’ombra al confronto. Sembra crudele dire che la rottura del più umile fidanzamento di Harriet prefiguri l’indiscriminato sviluppo del Divorzio per i Poveri. Sembra orribile dire che il piccolo combinar matrimoni di Emma contenga in sé il seme della pestilenza dell’Eugenetica. Ma è vero. Con una gentilezza e giustizia e simpatia per le buone intenzioni, che la scagionano dall’accusa di comune cinismo, la grande romanziera trova davvero la sorgente degli errori della sua eroina, e di molti dei nostri. Quella sorgente è una filantropia, e persino una generosità, segretamente fondata sulla gentilezza di nascita. Emma Woodhouse era spiritosa, era una brava donna, era un individuo con diritto a una propria opinione; ma fu perché era una signora che agì come agì, e pensò di avere il diritto di agire come agì. Ella è il tipo, nella narrativa, di un’intera schiera di signore inglesi, in realtà, per le quali la raffinatezza è religione. La sua pretesa di sovrintendere e ordinare le cose sociali intorno a sé consisteva nell’essere raffinata; non avrebbe ammesso che l’essere ricca avesse alcunché a che vederci; ma in realtà aveva tutto a che vederci. Se fosse stata molto più ricca, se avesse avuto una delle grandi fortune moderne, se avesse avuto le più ampie opportunità moderne (per i ricchi) avrebbe ritenuto suo dovere agire su scala moderna più ampia; avrebbe avuto spirito pubblico e presa politica. Avrebbe avuto a che fare con mille Robert Martin e mille Harriet Smith, e avrebbe fatto lo stesso pasticcio con tutti loro. Questo è ciò che intendiamo riguardo a cose come la Settimana del Bambino — e se ci fosse stato un bambino nella storia, Miss Woodhouse ne avrebbe certamente scorto tutti i bisogni educativi con una brillante chiarezza. E non intendiamo che l’opera sia compiuta interamente dalla signora Pardiggle; intendiamo che molta di essa è compiuta da Miss Woodhouse. Ma è compiuta perché ella è Miss Woodhouse e non Martha Muggins o Jemina Jones; perché la Lady Benefattrice è anzitutto una signora, ed elargirà ogni beneficio tranne la libertà.

Si nota che vi sono poche tracce della Rivoluzione Francese nei romanzi di Miss Austen; ma, in verità, ve ne sono state poche tracce nel paese di Miss Austen. La peculiarità che ha prodotto la situazione che descrivo è in realtà questa: che il nuovo sentimento dell’umanitarismo è giunto, quando il vecchio sentimento dell’aristocrazia non se n’era andato. I superiori sociali non hanno realmente perduto alcun vecchio privilegio; hanno guadagnato nuovi privilegi, incluso quello di essere superiori in filosofia e filantropia tanto bene quanto in ricchezza e raffinatezza. Nessuna rivoluzione ha scosso la loro segreta sicurezza né li ha minacciati con il tremendo pericolo di divenire nient’altro che uomini. Perciò la loro riforma sociale non è che la loro raffinatezza sociale divenuta irrequieta. E in questa vecchia commedia da tazza di tè si può trovare, apprezzata assai più chiaramente che in libri più ambiziosi su problemi e politica, la psicologia di questa mera irrequietezza nei ricchi, quando essa si mosse per la prima volta sui suoi cuscini. Jane Austen descrisse una classe ristretta, ma così veritieramente che ha molto da insegnare sulle sue successive avventure, quando rimase ristretta come classe e si allargò soltanto come setta.

The Pseudo-Scientific Books

THERE is a certain kind of modern book which must, if possible, be destroyed. It ought to be blown to pieces with the dynamite of some great satirist like Swift or Dickens. As it is, it must be patiently hacked into pieces even by some plodding person like myself. I will do it, as George Washington said, with my little hatchet; though it might take a long time to do it properly. The kind of book I mean is the pseudo-scientific book. And by this I do not mean that the man who writes it is a conscious quack or that he knows nothing; I mean that he proves nothing; he simply gives you all his cocksure, and yet shaky, modern opinions and calls it science. Books are coming out with so-called scientific conclusions— books in which there is actually no scientific argument at all. They simply affirm all the notions that happen to be fashionable in loose “intellectual” clubs, and call them the conclusions of research. But I am no more awed by the flying fashions among prigs than I am by the flying fashions among snobs. Snobs say they have the right kind of hat; prigs say they have the right kind of head. But in both cases I should like some evidence beyond their own habit of staring at themselves in the glass. Suppose I were to write about the current fashions in dress something like this: “Our ignorant and superstitious ancestors had straight hat-brims; but the advance of reason and equality has taught us to have curly hat-brims; in early times shirt-fronts are triangular, but science has shown that they ought to be round; barbaric peoples had loose trousers, but enlightened and humane peoples have tight trousers,” and so on, and so on. You would naturally rebel at this simple style of argument. You would say—“But, hang it all, give us some facts. Prove that the new fashions are more enlightened. Prove that men think better in the new hats. Prove that men run faster in the new trousers.”

I have just read a book which has been widely recommended, which is introduced to the public by Dr. Saleeby, and which is, I understand, written by a Swiss scientist of great distinction. It is calledSexual Ethics, by Professor Forel. I began to read the book, therefore, with respect. I finished reading it with stupefaction. The Swiss Professor is obviously an honest man, though too Puritanical to my taste, and I am told that he does really know an enormous lot about insects. But as for the conception of proving a case, as for any notion that a “new” opinion needs proof, and that it is not enough, when you knock down great institutions, to say that you don’t like them—it is clear that no such conceptions have ever crossed his mind. Science says that man has no conscience. Science says that man and woman must have the same political powers. Science says that sterile unions are morally free and without rule. Science says that it is wrong to drink fermented liquor. And all this with a splendid indifference to the two facts— first, that “Science” does not say these things at all, for numbers of great scientists say exactly the opposite; and second, that if Science did say these things, a person reading a book of rationalistic ethics might be permitted to ask why. Professor Forel may have mountains of evidence which he has no space to exhibit. We will give him the benefit of that doubt, and pass on to points where any thinking man is capable of judging him.

Where this sort of scientific writer is seen in all his glory is in his first abstract arguments about the nature of morality. He is immense; he is at once simple and monstrous, like a whale. He always has one dim principle or prejudice: to prove that there is nothing separate or sacred about the moral sense. Professor Forel holds this prejudice with all possible decorum and propriety. He always trots out three arguments to prove it; like three old broken-kneed elephants. Professor Forel duly trots them out. They are supposed to show that there is no such thing positively existing as the conscience; and they might just as easily be used to show that there are no such things as wings or whiskers, or toes or teeth, or boots or books, or Swiss Professors.

The first argument is that man has no conscience because some men are quite mad, and therefore not particularly conscientious. The second argument is that man has no conscience because some men are more conscientious than others. And the third is that man has no conscience because conscientious men in different countries and quite different circumstances often do very different things. Professor Forel applies these arguments eloquently to the question of human consciences; and I really cannot see why I should not apply them to the question of human noses. Man has no nose because now and then a man has no nose—I believe that Sir William Davenant, the poet, had none. Man has no nose because some noses are longer than others or can smell better than others. Man has no nose because not only are noses of different shapes, but (oh, piercing sword of scepticism!) some men use their noses and find the smell of incense nice, while some use their noses and find it nasty. Science therefore declares that man is normally noseless; and will take this for granted for the next four or five hundred pages, and will treat all the alleged noses of history as the quaint legends of a credulous age.

I do not mention these views because they are original, but exactly because they are not. They are only dangerous in Professor Forel’s book because they can be found in a thousand books of our epoch. This writer solemnly asserts that Kant’s idea of an ultimate conscience is a fable because Mohammedans think it wrong to drink wine, while English officers think it right. Really he might just as well say that the instinct of self-preservation is a fable because some people avoid brandy in order to live long, and some people drink brandy in order to save their lives. Does Professor Forel believe that Kant, or anybody else, thought that our consciences gave us direct commands about the details of diet or social etiquette? Did Kant maintain that, when we had reached a certain stage of dinner, a supernatural voice whispered in our ear “Asparagus”; or that the marriage between almonds and raisins was a marriage that was made in heaven? Surely it is plain enough that all these social duties are deduced from primary moral duties—and may be deduced wrong. Conscience does not suggest “asparagus,” but it does suggest amiability, and it is thought by some to be an amiable act to accept asparagus when it is offered to you. Conscience does not respect fish and sherry; but it does respect any innocent ritual that will make men feel alike. Conscience does not tell you not to drink your hock after your port. But it does tell you not to commit suicide; and your mere naturalistic reason tells you that the first act may easily approximate to the second.

Christians encourage wine as something which will benefit men. Teetotallers discourage wine as something that will destroy men. Their conscientious conclusions are different, but their consciences are just the same. Teetotallers say that wine is bad because they think it moral to say what they think. Christians will not say that wine is bad because they think it immoral to say what they don’t think. And a triangle is a three-sided figure. And a dog is a four-legged animal. And Queen Anne is dead. We have, indeed, come back to alphabetical truths. But Professor Forel has not yet even come to them. He goes on laboriously repeating that there cannot be a fixed moral sense, because some people drink wine and some people don’t. I cannot imagine how it was that he forgot to mention that France and England cannot have the same moral sense, because Frenchmen drive cabs on the right side of the road and Englishmen on the left.

I libri pseudo-scientifici

Vi è un certo tipo di libro moderno che deve, se possibile, essere distrutto. Dovrebbe essere fatto a pezzi con la dinamite di qualche grande satirista come Swift o Dickens. Così com’è, deve essere pazientemente ridotto a pezzi persino da qualche sgobbone come me. Lo farò, come disse George Washington, con la mia piccola accetta; per quanto possa richiedere un lungo tempo farlo a dovere. Il tipo di libro che intendo è il libro pseudo-scientifico. E con ciò non intendo che l’uomo che lo scrive sia un consapevole ciarlatano o che non sappia nulla; intendo che non prova nulla; egli si limita a darvi tutte le sue sicumere, e tuttavia malferme, opinioni moderne e le chiama scienza. Escono libri con cosiddette conclusioni scientifiche — libri in cui non c’è in realtà alcun argomento scientifico. Essi si limitano ad affermare tutte le nozioni che capita siano di moda nei lassi club «intellettuali», e le chiamano le conclusioni della ricerca. Ma io non sono più intimorito dalle mode volanti tra i saccenti di quanto lo sia dalle mode volanti tra gli snob. Gli snob dicono di avere il giusto tipo di cappello; i saccenti dicono di avere il giusto tipo di testa. Ma in entrambi i casi vorrei qualche prova al di là della loro stessa abitudine di fissarsi allo specchio. Supponiamo che io scrivessi sulle mode correnti nell’abbigliamento qualcosa del genere: «I nostri ignoranti e superstiziosi antenati avevano tese di cappello diritte; ma l’avanzamento della ragione e dell’uguaglianza ci ha insegnato ad avere tese di cappello ricurve; nei tempi antichi gli sparati delle camicie sono triangolari, ma la scienza ha mostrato che dovrebbero essere rotondi; i popoli barbarici avevano pantaloni larghi, ma i popoli illuminati e umani hanno pantaloni stretti», e così via, e così via. Vi ribellereste naturalmente a questo semplice stile di argomentazione. Direste: «Ma, accidenti, dateci qualche fatto. Provate che le nuove mode sono più illuminate. Provate che gli uomini pensano meglio con i nuovi cappelli. Provate che gli uomini corrono più veloci con i nuovi pantaloni.»

Ho appena letto un libro che è stato ampiamente raccomandato, che è presentato al pubblico dal Dott. Saleeby, e che è, a quanto intendo, scritto da uno scienziato svizzero di grande distinzione. Si intitola Etica sessuale, del Professor Forel. Cominciai dunque a leggere il libro con rispetto. Finii di leggerlo con stupefazione. Il Professore svizzero è evidentemente un uomo onesto, benché troppo puritano per i miei gusti, e mi si dice che egli conosca davvero una quantità enorme di cose sugli insetti. Ma quanto alla concezione di dimostrare una tesi, quanto a una qualche nozione che un’opinione «nuova» abbia bisogno di prova, e che non basti, quando si abbattono grandi istituzioni, dire che non ci piacciono — è chiaro che nessuna simile concezione gli ha mai attraversato la mente. La scienza dice che l’uomo non ha coscienza. La scienza dice che l’uomo e la donna devono avere gli stessi poteri politici. La scienza dice che le unioni sterili sono moralmente libere e senza regola. La scienza dice che è sbagliato bere liquore fermentato. E tutto questo con una splendida indifferenza verso i due fatti — primo, che la «Scienza» non dice affatto queste cose, poiché numerosi grandi scienziati dicono esattamente il contrario; e secondo, che se la Scienza dicesse queste cose, a una persona che legge un libro di etica razionalistica potrebbe essere permesso di chiedere perché. Il Professor Forel può avere montagne di prove che non ha spazio per esibire. Gli concederemo il beneficio di quel dubbio, e passeremo a punti in cui qualunque uomo pensante è in grado di giudicarlo.

Dove questo genere di scrittore scientifico si vede in tutta la sua gloria è nei suoi primi argomenti astratti sulla natura della moralità. È immenso; è al contempo semplice e mostruoso, come una balena. Ha sempre un principio o pregiudizio confuso: provare che non c’è nulla di separato o sacro riguardo al senso morale. Il Professor Forel sostiene questo pregiudizio con tutto il decoro e la proprietà possibili. Tira sempre fuori tre argomenti per provarlo; come tre vecchi elefanti dalle ginocchia spezzate. Il Professor Forel debitamente li tira fuori. Si suppone che essi mostrino che non c’è nulla di positivamente esistente come la coscienza; e potrebbero altrettanto facilmente essere usati per mostrare che non esistono cose come ali o baffi, o dita dei piedi o denti, o stivali o libri, o Professori svizzeri.

Il primo argomento è che l’uomo non ha coscienza perché alcuni uomini sono del tutto matti, e perciò non particolarmente coscienziosi. Il secondo argomento è che l’uomo non ha coscienza perché alcuni uomini sono più coscienziosi di altri. E il terzo è che l’uomo non ha coscienza perché uomini coscienziosi in paesi diversi e in circostanze del tutto diverse spesso fanno cose molto diverse. Il Professor Forel applica eloquentemente questi argomenti alla questione delle coscienze umane; e davvero non vedo perché non dovrei applicarli alla questione dei nasi umani. L’uomo non ha naso perché di tanto in tanto un uomo non ha naso — credo che Sir William Davenant, il poeta, non ne avesse. L’uomo non ha naso perché alcuni nasi sono più lunghi di altri o sanno odorare meglio di altri. L’uomo non ha naso perché non solo i nasi sono di forme diverse, ma (oh, penetrante spada dello scetticismo!) alcuni uomini usano il naso e trovano gradevole l’odore dell’incenso, mentre altri usano il naso e lo trovano sgradevole. La scienza dichiara perciò che l’uomo è normalmente privo di naso; e darà ciò per scontato per le prossime quattrocento o cinquecento pagine, e tratterà tutti i presunti nasi della storia come le bizzarre leggende di un’epoca credulona.

Non menziono queste vedute perché siano originali, ma proprio perché non lo sono. Sono pericolose nel libro del Professor Forel soltanto perché si possono trovare in mille libri della nostra epoca. Questo scrittore asserisce solennemente che l’idea kantiana di una coscienza ultima è una favola perché i Maomettani ritengono sbagliato bere vino, mentre gli ufficiali inglesi lo ritengono giusto. Davvero potrebbe altrettanto bene dire che l’istinto di auto-conservazione è una favola perché alcune persone evitano l’acquavite per vivere a lungo, e alcune persone bevono l’acquavite per salvarsi la vita. Crede il Professor Forel che Kant, o chiunque altro, pensasse che le nostre coscienze ci dessero comandi diretti sui dettagli della dieta o dell’etichetta sociale? Sostenne Kant che, quando avessimo raggiunto un certo stadio del pranzo, una voce soprannaturale ci sussurrasse all’orecchio «Asparagi»; o che il matrimonio tra mandorle e uvetta fosse un matrimonio combinato in cielo? Certo è abbastanza chiaro che tutti questi doveri sociali sono dedotti da doveri morali primari — e possono essere dedotti in modo sbagliato. La coscienza non suggerisce «asparagi», ma suggerisce sì l’amabilità, ed è ritenuto da alcuni un atto amabile accettare gli asparagi quando vi vengono offerti. La coscienza non rispetta il pesce e lo sherry; ma rispetta sì qualunque innocente rito che faccia sentire gli uomini simili. La coscienza non vi dice di non bere il vostro hock dopo il vostro porto. Ma vi dice sì di non commettere suicidio; e la vostra mera ragione naturalistica vi dice che il primo atto può facilmente avvicinarsi al secondo.

I Cristiani incoraggiano il vino come qualcosa che gioverà agli uomini. Gli astemi scoraggiano il vino come qualcosa che distruggerà gli uomini. Le loro conclusioni coscienziose sono diverse, ma le loro coscienze sono esattamente le stesse. Gli astemi dicono che il vino è cattivo perché ritengono morale dire ciò che pensano. I Cristiani non diranno che il vino è cattivo perché ritengono immorale dire ciò che non pensano. E un triangolo è una figura a tre lati. E un cane è un animale a quattro zampe. E la Regina Anna è morta. Siamo, in verità, tornati alle verità dell’abbecedario. Ma il Professor Forel non è ancora nemmeno giunto ad esse. Continua a ripetere laboriosamente che non può esservi un senso morale fisso, perché alcune persone bevono vino e alcune no. Non riesco a immaginare come mai si sia dimenticato di menzionare che la Francia e l’Inghilterra non possono avere lo stesso senso morale, perché i Francesi guidano le carrozze sul lato destro della strada e gli Inglesi sul sinistro.

The Humour of King Herod

IF I say that I have just been very much amused with a Nativity play of the fourteenth century it is still possible that I may be misunderstood. What is more important, some thousand years of very heroic history will be misunderstood too. It was one of the Coventry cycle of mediaeval plays, loosely called the Coventry Mysteries, similar to the Chester Mysteries and the Towneley Mysteries.

And I was not amused at the blasphemy of something badly done, but at a buffoonery uncommonly well done. But, as I said at the time, the educated seem to be very ignorant of this fine mediaeval fun. When I mentioned the Coventry Mystery many ladies and gentlemen thought it was a murder in the police news. At the best, they supposed it to be the title of a detective story. Even upon a hint of history they could only recall the story of Godiva; which might be called rather a revelation than a mystery.

Now I always read police news and I sometimes write detective stories; nor am I at all ashamed of doing either. But I think the popular art of the past was perhaps a little more cheerful than that of the present. And in seeing this Bethlehem drama I felt that good news might perhaps be as dramatic as bad news; and that it was possibly as thrilling to hear that a child is born as to hear that a man is murdered.

Doubtless there are some sentimental people who like these old plays merely because they are old. My own sentiment could be more truly stated by saying that I like them because they are new. They are new in the imaginative sense, making us feel as if the first star were leading us to the first child.

But they are also new in the historical sense, to most people, owing to that break in our history which makes the Elizabethans seem not merely to have discovered the new world but invented the old one. Nobody could see this mediaeval play without realizing that the Elizabethan was rather the end than the beginning of a tradition; the crown and not the cradle of the drama.

Many things that modern critics call peculiarly Elizabethan are in fact peculiarly mediaeval. For instance, that the same stage could be the place where meet the extremes of tragedy and comedy, or rather farce. That daring mixture is always made a point of contrast between the Shakespearean play and the Greek play or the French classical play. But it is a point of similarity, or rather identity, between the Shakespearean play and the miracle play.

Nothing could be more bitterly tragic than the scene in this Nativity drama, in which the mothers sing a lullaby to the children they think they have brought into safety the moment before the soldiers of Herod rush in and butcher them screaming on the stage. Nothing could be more broadly farcical than the scene in which King Herod himself pretends that he has manufactured the thunderstorm.

In one sense, indeed, the old religious play was far bolder in its burlesque than the more modern play. Shakespeare did not express the unrest of King Claudius by making him fall over his own cloak. He did not convey his disdain for tyranny by letting Macbeth appear with his crown on one side. This was partly no doubt an improvement in dramatic art; but it was partly also, I think, a weakening of democratic satire.

Shakespeare’s clowns are philosophers, geniuses, demigods; but Shakespeare’s clowns are clowns. Shakespeare’s kings may be usurpers, murderers, monsters; but Shakespeare’s kings are kings. But in this old devotional drama the king is the clown. He is treated not so much with disdain as with derision; not so much with a bitter smile as with a broad grin. A cat may not only look at a king but laugh at a king; like the mythical Cheshire cat, an ancient cat as terrible as a tiger and grinning like a gargoyle. But that Cheshire cat has presumably vanished with the Chester Mysteries, the counterpart of these Coventry Mysteries; it has vanished with the age and art of gargoyles.

In other words, that popular simplicity that could see wrongful power as something pantomimically absurd, a thing for practical jokes, has since been sophisticated by a process none the less sad because it is slow and subtle. It begins in the Elizabethans in an innocent and indefinable form. It is merely the sense that, though Macbeth may get his crown crookedly, he must not actually wear it crooked. It is the sense that, though Claudius may fall from his throne, he must not actually fall over his footstool.

It ended in the nineteenth century in many refined and ingenuous forms; in a tendency to find all fun in the ignorant or criminal classes; in dialect or the dropping of aitches. It was a sort of satirical slumming. There was a new shade in the comparison of the coster with the cat; a coster could look at a king and might conceivably laugh at a king; but most contemporary art and literature, was occupied in laughing at the coster.

Even in the long lifetime of a good comic paper likePunch we can trace the change from jokes against the palace to jokes against the public-house. The difference is perhaps more delicate; it is rather that the refined classes are a subject for refined comedy; and only the con1mon people a subject for common farce. It is correct to call this refinement modern; yet it is not quite correct to call it contemporary. All through the Victorian time the joke was pointed more against the poor and less against the powerful; but the revolution which ended the long Victorian peace has shaken this Victorian patronage. The great war which has brought so many ancient realities to the surface has re-enacted before our eyes the Miracle Play of Coventry.

We have seen a real King Herod claiming the thunders of the throne of God, and answered by the thunder not merely of human wrath but of primitive human laughter. He has done murder by proclamations, and he has been answered by caricatures. He has made a massacre of children, and been made a figure of fun in a Christmas pantomime for the pleasure of other children. Precisely because his crime is tragic, his punishment is comic; the old popular paradox has returned.

L’Umorismo di Re Erode

SE dico di essermi appena molto divertito con una sacra rappresentazione della Natività del quattordicesimo secolo, è ancora possibile che io venga frainteso. E, cosa più importante, verranno fraintesi anche alcune migliaia di anni di storia assai eroica. Si trattava di una delle rappresentazioni medievali del ciclo di Coventry, chiamate genericamente i Misteri di Coventry, simili ai Misteri di Chester e ai Misteri di Towneley.

E non mi divertiva la blasfemia di qualcosa fatto male, ma una buffoneria insolitamente ben fatta. Ma, come dissi all’epoca, le persone colte sembrano assai ignoranti di questo bel divertimento medievale. Quando menzionai il Mistero di Coventry, molte dame e molti signori pensarono che si trattasse di un omicidio nella cronaca nera. Nel migliore dei casi, supponevano fosse il titolo di un racconto poliziesco. Persino a un accenno di storia riuscivano a ricordare soltanto la storia di Godiva; che potrebbe dirsi più una rivelazione che un mistero.

Ora, io leggo sempre la cronaca nera e talvolta scrivo racconti polizieschi; né mi vergogno affatto di fare l’una o l’altra cosa. Ma credo che l’arte popolare del passato fosse forse un po’ più allegra di quella odierna. E nel vedere questo dramma di Betlemme sentii che una buona notizia potrebbe forse essere drammatica quanto una cattiva; e che era forse altrettanto emozionante udire che un bambino è nato quanto udire che un uomo è stato assassinato.

Senza dubbio vi sono alcune persone sentimentali a cui piacciono queste vecchie rappresentazioni semplicemente perché sono vecchie. Il mio sentimento potrebbe essere espresso più fedelmente dicendo che esse mi piacciono perché sono nuove. Sono nuove in senso immaginativo, e ci fanno sentire come se la prima stella ci conducesse al primo bambino.

Ma sono anche nuove in senso storico, per la maggior parte delle persone, a causa di quella frattura nella nostra storia che fa apparire gli elisabettiani non solo scopritori del nuovo mondo ma inventori di quello antico. Nessuno potrebbe vedere questa rappresentazione medievale senza rendersi conto che l’età elisabettiana fu piuttosto la fine che l’inizio di una tradizione; la corona e non la culla del dramma.

Molte cose che i critici moderni definiscono peculiarmente elisabettiane sono in realtà peculiarmente medievali. Per esempio, che il medesimo palcoscenico potesse essere il luogo in cui si incontrano gli estremi della tragedia e della commedia, o piuttosto della farsa. Quella audace mescolanza viene sempre addotta come punto di contrasto tra il dramma shakespeariano e il dramma greco o il dramma classico francese. Ma è un punto di somiglianza, o piuttosto di identità, tra il dramma shakespeariano e la sacra rappresentazione.

Nulla potrebbe essere più amaramente tragico della scena, in questo dramma della Natività, in cui le madri cantano una ninnananna ai figli che credono di aver messo in salvo un attimo prima che i soldati di Erode irrompano e li massacrino urlanti sul palcoscenico. Nulla potrebbe essere più ampiamente farsesco della scena in cui Re Erode in persona finge di aver fabbricato lui il temporale.

In un certo senso, in effetti, la vecchia rappresentazione religiosa era assai più audace nel suo burlesco della rappresentazione più moderna. Shakespeare non esprimeva l’inquietudine di re Claudio facendolo inciampare nel proprio mantello. Non trasmetteva il suo disprezzo per la tirannia lasciando comparire Macbeth con la corona tutta di traverso. Questo fu in parte, senza dubbio, un progresso dell’arte drammatica; ma fu anche in parte, credo, un indebolimento della satira democratica.

I buffoni di Shakespeare sono filosofi, geni, semidei; ma i buffoni di Shakespeare sono buffoni. I re di Shakespeare possono essere usurpatori, assassini, mostri; ma i re di Shakespeare sono re. In questo vecchio dramma devozionale, invece, il re è il buffone. Egli è trattato non tanto con disprezzo quanto con derisione; non tanto con un amaro sorriso quanto con un ampio ghigno. Un gatto non solo può guardare un re, ma può ridere di un re; come il mitico gatto del Cheshire, un antico gatto terribile come una tigre e ghignante come un doccione. Ma quel gatto del Cheshire è presumibilmente svanito insieme ai Misteri di Chester, la controparte di questi Misteri di Coventry; è svanito insieme all’età e all’arte delle gargolle.

In altre parole, quella popolare semplicità che sapeva vedere il potere ingiusto come qualcosa di pantomimicamente assurdo, materia da burle, è stata da allora sofisticata da un processo non meno triste perché lento e sottile. Comincia negli elisabettiani in una forma innocente e indefinibile. È soltanto la sensazione che, per quanto Macbeth possa procurarsi la corona in modo storto, non debba poi portarla di traverso. È la sensazione che, per quanto Claudio possa cadere dal trono, non debba poi inciampare nel suo sgabello.

Si è concluso nel diciannovesimo secolo in molte forme raffinate e ingenue; in una tendenza a trovare tutto il divertimento nelle classi ignoranti o criminali; nel dialetto o nell’omissione delle acca. Era una sorta di slumming satirico. Vi era una sfumatura nuova nel paragone tra il venditore ambulante e il gatto; un venditore ambulante poteva guardare un re e magari, plausibilmente, ridere di un re; ma la maggior parte dell’arte e della letteratura contemporanea era occupata a ridere del venditore ambulante.

Persino nel lungo arco di vita di un buon giornale umoristico come Punch possiamo rintracciare il passaggio dalle facezie contro il palazzo alle facezie contro l’osteria. La differenza è forse più sottile; è piuttosto che le classi raffinate sono materia di commedia raffinata, e solo la gente comune è materia di farsa volgare. È corretto chiamare moderno questo raffinamento; e tuttavia non è del tutto corretto chiamarlo contemporaneo. Per tutta l’epoca vittoriana la facezia era rivolta più contro i poveri e meno contro i potenti; ma la rivoluzione che ha posto fine alla lunga pace vittoriana ha scosso questo paternalismo vittoriano. La grande guerra, che ha portato in superficie tante antiche realtà, ha rimesso in scena davanti ai nostri occhi la Sacra Rappresentazione di Coventry.

Abbiamo visto un vero re Erode reclamare i tuoni del trono di Dio, e ricevere in risposta il tuono non solo dell’ira umana ma della primitiva risata umana. Ha commesso omicidio a colpi di proclami, e gli si è risposto con caricature. Ha compiuto una strage di bambini, ed è stato reso oggetto di scherno in una pantomima natalizia per il piacere di altri bambini. Proprio perché il suo delitto è tragico, la sua punizione è comica; l’antico paradosso popolare è tornato.

The Silver Goblets

IT was reported that at the sumptuous performance ofHenry VIII at His Majesty’s Theatre, the urns and goblets of the banquet were specially wrought in real and solid silver and in the style of the sixteenth century. This bombastic literalism is at least very much the fashion in our modern theatricals. Mr. Vincent Crummles considered it a splendid piece of thoroughness on the part of an actor that he should black himself all over to perform Othello. But Mr. Crummles’s ideal falls far short of the theoretic thoroughness of the late Sir Herbert Tree; who would consider blacking oneself all over as comparatively a mere sham, compromise, and veneer. Sir Herbert Tree would, I suppose, send for a real negro to act Othello; and perhaps for a real Jew to act Shylock—though that, in the present condition of the English stage, might possibly be easier. The strict principle of the silver goblets might be a little more arduous and unpleasant if applied, let us say, to The Arabian Nights, if the manager of His Majesty’s Theatre presented Aladdin, and had to produce not one real negro but a hundred real negroes, carrying a hundred baskets of gigantic and genuine jewels. In the presence of this proposal even Sir Herbert might fall back on a simpler philosophy of the drama. For the principle in itself admits of no limit. If once it be allowed that what looks like silver behind the footlights is better also for really being silver, there seems no reason why the wildest developments should not ensue. The priests in Henry VIII might be specially ordained in the green-room before they come on. Nay, if it comes to that, the head of Buckingham might really be cut off; as in the glad old days lamented by Swinburne, before the coming of an emasculate mysticism removed real death from the arena. We might re-establish the goriness as well as the gorgeousness of the amphitheatre. If real wine-cups, why not real wine? If real wine, why not real blood?

Nor is this an illegitimate or irrelevant deduction. This and a hundred other fantasies might follow if once we adu1it the first principle that we need to realize on the stage not merely the beauty of silver, but the value of silver. Shakespeare’s famous phrase that art should hold the mirror up to nature is always taken as wholly realistic; but it is really idealistic and symbolic—at least, compared with the realisn1 of His Majesty’s. Art is a mirror not because it is the same as the object, but because it is different. A mirror selects as much as art selects; it gives the light of flames, but not their heat; the colour of flowers, but not their fragrance; the faces of women, but not their voices; the proportions of stockbrokers, but not their solidity. A mirror is a vision of things, not a working model of then). And the silver seen in a mirror is not for sale.

But the results of the thing in practice are worse than its wildest results in theory. This Arabian extravagance in the furniture and decoration of a play has one very practical disadvantage— that it narrows the number of experiments, confines them to a small and wealthy class, and makes those which are made exceptional, erratic, and unrepresentative of any general dramatic activity. One or two insanely expensive works prove nothing about the general state of art in a country. To take the parallel of a performance somewhat less dignified, perhaps, than Sir Herbert Tree’s, there has lately been in America an exhibition not unanalogous to a conflict in the arena, and one for which a real negro actually was procured by the management. The negro happened to beat the white man, and both before and after this event people went about wildly talking of “the White Man’s champion” and “the representative of the Black Race.” All black men were supposed to have triumphed over all white men in a sort of mysterious Armageddon because one specialist met another specialist and tapped his claret or punched him in the bread-basket.

Now the fact is, of course, that these two prize-fighters were so specially picked and trained—the business of producing such men is so elaborate, artificial, and expensive—that the result proves nothing whatever about the general condition of white men or black. If you go in for heroes or monsters it is obvious that they may be born anywhere. If you took the two tallest men on earth, one might be born in Corea and the other in Camberwell, but this would not make Camberwell a land of giants inheriting the blood of Anak. If you took the two thinnest men in the world, one might be a Parisian and the other a Red Indian. And if you take the two most scientifically developed pugilists, it is not surprising that one of them should happen to be white and the other black. Experiments of so special and profuse a kind have the character of monstrosities, like black tulips or blue roses. It is absurd to make them representative of races and causes that they do not represent. You might as well say that the Bearded Lady at a fair represents the masculine advance of modern woman; or that all Europe was shaking under the banded armies of Asia, because of the co-operation of the Siamese Twins.

So the plutocratic tendency of such performances asHenry VIII is to prevent rather than to embody any movement of historical or theatrical imagination. If the standard of expenditure is set so high by custom, the number of competitors must necessarily be small, and will probably be of a restricted and unsatisfactory type. Instead of English history and English literature being as cheap as silver paper, they will be as dear as silver plate. The national culture, instead of being spread out everywhere like gold leaf, will be hardened into a few costly lumps of gold—and kept in very few pockets. The modern world is full of things that are theoretically open and popular, but practically private and even corrupt. In theory any tinker can be chosen to speak for his fellow-citizens among the English Commons. In practice he may have to spend a thousand pounds on getting elected—a sum which many tinkers do not happen to have to spare. In theory it ought to be possible for any moderately successful actor with a sincere and interesting conception of Wolsey to put that conception on the stage. In practice it looks as if he would have to ask himself, not whether he was as clever as Wolsey, but whether he was as rich. He has to reflect, not whether he can enter into Wolsey’s soul, but whether he can pay Wolsey’s servants, purchase Wolsey’s plate, and own Wolsey’s palaces.

Now people with Wolsey’s money and people with Wolsey’s mind are both rare; and even with him the mind came before the money. The chance of their being combined a second time is manifestly small and decreasing. The result will obviously be that thousands and millions may be spent on a theatrical misfit, and inappropriate and unconvincing impersonation; and all the time there may be a man outside who could have put on a red dressing-gown and made us feel in the presence of the most terrible of the Tudor statesmen. The modern method is to sell Shakespeare for thirty pieces of silver.

I calici d’argento

Si diceva che nella sontuosa rappresentazione di Enrico VIII al Teatro del Sua Maestà le urne e i calici del banchetto fossero stati appositamente fatti in vero argento massiccio, nello stile del sedicesimo secolo. Questo letteralismo bombastico è almeno molto alla moda nelle nostre moderne rappresentazioni teatrali. Il signor Vincent Crummles lo considerava un magnifico esempio di scrupolosità da parte di un attore il fatto che si dipingesse tutto nero per interpretare Otello. Ma l’ideale del signor Crummles è ben lontano dalla teorica scrupolosità del defunto Sir Herbert Tree, che avrebbe considerato la pittura nera su tutto il corpo come un mero trucco, compromesso e vernice. Sir Herbert Tree, immagino, chiamerebbe un vero negro per interpretare Otello; e forse anche un vero ebreo per interpretare Shylock — sebbene in quest’ultimo caso, data la situazione attuale del teatro inglese, potrebbe essere più facile. Il rigido principio dei calici d’argento sarebbe un po’ più arduo e sgradevole se applicato, diciamo, alle Mille e una notte, se il direttore del Teatro del Sua Maestà presentasse Aladino e dovesse mettere in scena non un vero negro ma cento veri negri che portano cento cesti di enormi e autentici gioielli. Di fronte a questa proposta anche Sir Herbert potrebbe tornare a una più semplice filosofia del dramma. Perché il principio in sé non ammette limiti. Se si accetta che ciò che sembra argento dietro i riflettori è meglio perché è davvero argento, non c’è ragione per cui non debbano seguire le evoluzioni più stravaganti. I preti in Enrico VIII potrebbero essere ordinati appositamente nel camerino prima di entrare in scena. Anzi, se si arriva a questo punto, la testa del duca di Buckingham potrebbe davvero essere tagliata; come nei buoni vecchi tempi che Swinburne deplora, prima che un misticismo emascolato allontanasse la vera morte dall’arena. Potremmo ristabilire non solo lo sfarzo ma anche il sangue dell’anfiteatro. Se calici veri, perché non vino vero? E se vino vero, perché non sangue vero?

Né questa è una deduzione illegittima o irrilevante. Questa e cento altre fantasie potrebbero seguire se solo ammettessimo il primo principio che dobbiamo realizzare sul palcoscenico non solamente la bellezza dell’argento, ma anche il suo valore. La famosa frase di Shakespeare secondo cui l’arte dovrebbe tenere lo specchio davanti alla natura è sempre interpretata come del tutto realistica; in realtà è idealistica e simbolica — almeno, rispetto al realismo di Sua Maestà. L’arte è uno specchio non perché è uguale all’oggetto, ma perché è diversa. Uno specchio seleziona tanto quanto l’arte; dà la luce delle fiamme, ma non il loro calore; il colore dei fiori, ma non il loro profumo; i volti delle donne, ma non le loro voci; le proporzioni degli agenti di cambio, ma non la loro solidità. Uno specchio è una visione delle cose, non un modello funzionante. E l’argento visto in uno specchio non è in vendita.

Ma i risultati pratici della cosa sono peggiori dei suoi più estremi risultati teorici. Questa stravaganza araba nell’arredamento e nella decorazione di uno spettacolo ha un grave svantaggio pratico: restringe il numero degli esperimenti, li confina a una piccola classe agiata, e rende quelli che vengono fatti eccezionali, erratici e non rappresentativi di alcuna attività drammatica generale. Uno o due lavori insensatamente costosi non dimostrano nulla sullo stato generale dell’arte in un paese. Per fare il parallelo con uno spettacolo forse meno dignitoso di quello del Sir Herbert Tree, ultimamente negli Stati Uniti c’è stata una mostra non dissimile da un conflitto nell’anfiteatro, e per la quale la direzione ha effettivamente procurato un vero negro. Il negro è riuscito a battere l’uomo bianco, e sia prima che dopo questo evento la gente andava in giro parlando selvaggiamente del “campione dell’Uomo Bianco” e del “rappresentante della Razza Nera”. Si supponeva che tutti gli uomini neri avessero trionfato su tutti gli uomini bianchi in una sorta di misterioso Armageddon perché uno specialista aveva incontrato un altro specialista e gli aveva versato il suo vino o dato un pugno allo stomaco.

Ora, è ovvio che questi due pugili professionisti erano stati scelti e addestrati in modo così particolare - la produzione di uomini del genere è un’operazione così elaborata, artificiosa e costosa - che il risultato non dimostra nulla sulla condizione generale degli uomini bianchi o neri. Se ci si interessa a eroi o mostri è ovvio che possono nascere in qualsiasi luogo. Se prendeste i due uomini più alti del mondo, uno potrebbe essere nato in Corea e l’altro a Camberwell, ma questo non farebbe di Camberwell una terra di giganti ereditando il sangue di Anak. Se prendeste gli due uomini più magri del mondo, uno potrebbe essere un parigino e l’altro un indiano d’America. E se scegliete i due pugili più sviluppati scientificamente, non è sorprendente che uno sia bianco e l’altro nero. Esperimenti di una natura così particolare e profusa hanno il carattere di mostruosità, come tulipani neri o rose blu. È assurdo farli rappresentare razze e cause che non rappresentano. Potreste altrettanto bene dire che la Donna Barbuta in una fiera rappresenta l’avanzata maschile della donna moderna; oppure che tutta Europa tremava sotto gli eserciti uniti dell’Asia, a causa della cooperazione dei Gemelli Siamesi.

Così la tendenza plutocratica di spettacoli come Enrico VIII è quella di impedire piuttosto che incarnare qualsiasi movimento di immaginazione storica o teatrale. Se lo standard della spesa viene fissato così in alto per consuetudine, il numero dei concorrenti dovrà necessariamente essere piccolo e probabilmente sarà di un tipo ristretto e insoddisfacente. Invece che la storia inglese e la letteratura inglese siano a buon mercato come la carta stagnola, saranno costose come l’argenteria. La cultura nazionale, invece di essere diffusa ovunque come foglia d’oro, si indurirà in pochi costosi grumi d’oro - e sarà conservata in pochissime tasche. Il mondo moderno è pieno di cose che sono teoricamente aperte e popolari ma praticamente private e persino corrotte. In teoria qualsiasi maniscalco può essere scelto per parlare a nome dei suoi concittadini tra i Comuni inglesi. Nella pratica potrebbe dover spendere mille sterline per farsi eleggere - una somma che molti maniscalchi non hanno la fortuna di avere da parte. In teoria dovrebbe essere possibile per qualsiasi attore moderatamente riuscito con una concezione sincera e interessante di Wolsey mettere in scena quella concezione. Nella pratica sembra che dovrà chiedersi non se è intelligente quanto Wolsey, ma se è ricco quanto lui. Deve riflettere, non se può entrare nell’anima di Wolsey, ma se può pagare i servi di Wolsey, acquistare la sua argenteria e possedere i suoi palazzi.

Ora, le persone con i soldi di Wolsey e quelle con la mente di Wolsey sono entrambe rare; e anche in lui la mente veniva prima dei soldi. La possibilità che si combinino una seconda volta è manifestamente piccola e sempre più rara. Il risultato sarà ovviamente che migliaia e milioni verranno spesi per un attore sbagliato, inadatto e poco convincente; e tutto il tempo potrebbe esserci fuori un uomo che avrebbe potuto indossare una veste rossa e farci sentire davanti al più terribile degli uomini di stato Tudor. Il metodo moderno è vendere Shakespeare per trenta pezzi d’argento.

The Duty of the Historian

WE most of us suffer much from having learnt all our lessons in history from those little abridged history-books in use in most public and private schools. These lessons are insufficient—especially when you don’t learn them. The latter was indeed my own case; and the little history I know I have picked up since by rambling about in authentic books and countrysides. But the bald summaries of the small history-books still master and, in many cases, mislead us. The root of the difficulty is this: that there are two quite distinct purposes of history—the superior purpose, which is its use for children, and the secondary or inferior purpose, which is its use for historians. The highest and noblest thing that history can be is a good story. Then it appeals to the heroic heart of all generations, the eternal infancy of mankind. Such a story as that of William Tell could literally be told of any epoch; no barbarian implements could be too rude, no scientific instruments could be too elaborate for the pride and terror of the tale. It might be told of the first flint-headed arrow or the last model machine-gun; the point of it is the same: it is as eternal as tyranny and fatherhood. Now, wherever there is this function of the fine story in history we tell it to children only because it is a fine story. David and the cup of water, Regulus and theatque sciebat, Jeanne d’Arc kissing the cross of spear-wood, or Nelson shot with all his stars—these stir in every child the ancient heart of his race; and that is all that they need do. Changes of costume and local colour are nothing: it did not matter that in the illustrated Bibles of our youth David was dressed rather like Regulus, in a Roman cuirass and sandals, any more than it mattered that in the illuminated Bibles of the Middle Ages he was dressed rather like Jeanne d’Arc, in a hood or a visored helmet. It will not matter to future ages if the pictures represent Jeanne d’Arc cremated in an asbestos stove or Nelson dying in a top-hat. For the childish and eternal use of history, the history will still be heroic.

But the historians have quite a different business. It is their affair, not merely to remember that humanity has been wise and great, but to understand the special ways in which it has been weak and foolish. Historians have to explain the horrible mystery of how fashions were ever fashionable. They have to analyse that statuesque instinct of the South that moulds the Roman cuirass to the muscles of the human torso, or that element of symbolic extravagance in the later Middle Ages which let loose a menagerie upon breast and casque and shield. They have to explain, as best they can, how anyone ever came to have a top-hat, how anyone ever endured an asbestos stove.

Now the mere tales of the heroes are a part of religious education; they are meant to teach us that we have souls. But the inquiries of the historians into the eccentricities of every epoch are merely a part of political education; they are meant to teach us to avoid certain perils or solve certain problems in the complexity of practical affairs. It is the first duty of a boy to admire the glory of Trafalgar. It is the first duty of a grown man to question its utility. It is one question whether it was a good thing as an episode in the struggle between Pitt and the French Revolution. It is quite another matter that it was certainly a good thing in that immortal struggle between the son of man and all the unclean spirits of sloth and cowardice and despair. For the wisdom of man alters with every age; his prudence has to fit perpetually shifting shapes of inconvenience or dilemma. But his folly is immortal: a fire stolen from heaven.

Now, the little histories that we learnt as children were partly meant simply as inspiring stories. They largely consisted of tales like Alfred and the cakes or Eleanor and the poisoned wound. They ought to have entirely consisted of them. Little children ought to learn nothing but legends; they are the beginnings of all sound morals and manners would not be severe on the point: I would not exclude a story solely because it was true. But the essential on which I should insist would be, not that the tale must be true, but that the tale must be fine.

The attempts in the little school-histories to introduce older and subtler elements, to talk of the atmosphere of Puritanism or the evolution of our Constitution, is quite irrelevant and vain. It is impossible to convey to a barely breeched imp who does not yet know his own community, the exquisite divergence between it and some other community. What is the good of talking about the Constitution carefully balanced on three estates to a creature only quite recently balanced on two legs? What is the sense of explaining the Puritan shade of morality to a creature who is still learning with difficulty that there is any morality at all? We may put on one side the possibility that some of us may think the Puritan atmosphere an unpleasant one or the Constitution a trifle rickety on its three legs. The general truth remains that we should teach, to the young, men’s enduring truths, and let the learned amuse themselves with their passing errors.

It is often said nowadays that in great crises and moral revolutions we need one strong man to decide; but it seems to me that that is exactly when we do not need him. We do not need a great man for a revolution, for a true revolution is a time when all men are great. Where despotism really is successful is in very small matters. Every one must have noticed how essential a despot is to arranging the things in which every one is doubtful, because every one is indifferent: the boats in a water picnic or the seats at a dinner-party. Here the man who knows his own mind is really wanted, for no one else ever thinks his own mind worth knowing. No one knows where to go to precisely, because no one cares where he goes. It is for trivialities that the great tyrant is meant.

But when the depths are stirred in a society, and all men’s souls grow taller in a transfiguring anger or desire, then I am by no means so certain that the great man has been a benefit even when he has appeared. I am sure that Cromwell and Napoleon managed the mere pikes and bayonets, boots and knapsacks better than most other people could have managed them. But I am by no means sure that Napoleon gave a better turn to the whole French Revolution. I am by no means so sure that Cromwell has really improved the religion of England. As it is in politics with the specially potent man, so it is in history with the specially learned. We do not need the learned man to teach us the important things. We all know the important things, though we all violate and neglect them. Gigantic industry, abysmal knowledge, are needed for the discovery of the tiny things—the things that seem hardly worth the trouble. Generally speaking, the ordinary man should be content with the terrible secret that men are men—which is another way of saying that they are brothers. He had better think of Caesar as a man and not as a Roman, for he will probably think of a Roman as a statue and not as a man. He had better think of Coeur-de-Lion as a man and not as a Crusader, or he will think of him as a stage Crusader. For every man knows the inmost core of every other man. It is the trappings and externals erected for an age and a fashion that are forgotten and unknown. It is all the curtains that are curtained, all the masks that are masked, all the disguises that are now disguised in dust and featureless decay. But though we cannot reach the outside of history, we all start from the inside. Some day, if I ransack whole libraries, I may know the outermost aspects of King Stephen, and almost see him in his habit as he lived but the inmost I know already. The symbols are mouldered and the manner of the oath forgotten; the secret society may even be dissolved; but we all know the secret.

Il dovere dello storico

LA maggior parte di noi soffre molto per aver imparato tutte le nostre lezioni di storia da quei piccoli manuali di storia ridotti in uso nella maggior parte delle scuole pubbliche e private. Queste lezioni sono insufficienti — specialmente quando non le si impara. Quest’ultimo fu appunto il mio caso; e la poca storia che conosco l’ho raccolta in seguito vagando tra libri autentici e campagne. Ma i nudi riassunti dei piccoli manuali di storia ancora ci dominano e, in molti casi, ci traggono in inganno. La radice della difficoltà è questa: che vi sono due scopi del tutto distinti della storia — lo scopo superiore, che è il suo uso per i bambini, e lo scopo secondario o inferiore, che è il suo uso per gli storici. La cosa più alta e nobile che la storia possa essere è una bella storia. Allora essa parla al cuore eroico di tutte le generazioni, all’eterna infanzia dell’umanità. Un racconto come quello di Guglielmo Tell potrebbe letteralmente essere ambientato in qualsiasi epoca; nessun arnese barbarico sarebbe troppo rozzo, nessuno strumento scientifico troppo elaborato per l’orgoglio e il terrore del racconto. Potrebbe essere narrato della prima freccia dalla punta di selce o dell’ultima mitragliatrice modello; il suo nocciolo è il medesimo: è eterno quanto la tirannia e la paternità. Ora, ovunque vi sia questa funzione del bel racconto nella storia, lo raccontiamo ai bambini solo perché è un bel racconto. Davide e la coppa d’acqua, Regolo e il suo atque sciebat, Giovanna d’Arco che bacia la croce di legno di lancia, o Nelson colpito con tutte le sue stelle — questi ridestano in ogni bambino l’antico cuore della sua stirpe; ed è tutto ciò che devono fare. I mutamenti di costume e di colore locale nulla contano: non importava che nelle Bibbie illustrate della nostra giovinezza Davide fosse vestito piuttosto come Regolo, con corazza e sandali romani, così come non importava che nelle Bibbie miniate del Medioevo egli fosse vestito piuttosto come Giovanna d’Arco, con un cappuccio o un elmo visierato. Non importerà alle epoche future se le immagini raffigureranno Giovanna d’Arco cremata in una stufa d’amianto o Nelson morente con un cilindro in testa. Per l’uso infantile ed eterno della storia, la storia resterà eroica.

Ma gli storici hanno tutt’altro compito. È affar loro non solo ricordare che l’umanità è stata saggia e grande, ma comprendere i modi particolari in cui è stata debole e sciocca. Gli storici devono spiegare l’orribile mistero di come le mode siano mai state di moda. Devono analizzare quell’istinto statuario del Sud che modella la corazza romana sui muscoli del torso umano, o quell’elemento di stravaganza simbolica del tardo Medioevo che scatenò un serraglio su petto, elmo e scudo. Devono spiegare, come meglio possono, come mai qualcuno sia giunto ad avere un cilindro, come mai qualcuno abbia mai sopportato una stufa d’amianto.

Ora, i semplici racconti degli eroi sono parte dell’educazione religiosa; sono fatti per insegnarci che abbiamo un’anima. Ma le indagini degli storici sulle eccentricità di ogni epoca sono soltanto parte dell’educazione politica; sono fatte per insegnarci a evitare certi pericoli o a risolvere certi problemi nella complessità delle faccende pratiche. È il primo dovere di un ragazzo ammirare la gloria di Trafalgar. È il primo dovere di un uomo adulto mettere in dubbio la sua utilità. Una cosa è chiedersi se fu una cosa buona come episodio nella lotta tra Pitt e la Rivoluzione francese. Tutt’altra cosa è che fu certamente una cosa buona in quell’immortale lotta tra il figlio dell’uomo e tutti gli spiriti immondi dell’accidia, della viltà e della disperazione. Poiché la saggezza dell’uomo muta con ogni epoca; la sua prudenza deve adattarsi a forme di inconveniente o di dilemma perpetuamente cangianti. Ma la sua follia è immortale: un fuoco rubato al cielo.

Ora, le piccole storie che imparammo da bambini erano in parte pensate semplicemente come racconti ispiratori. Consistevano in gran parte di storie come quella di Alfredo e le focacce o di Eleonora e la ferita avvelenata. Avrebbero dovuto consistere interamente di esse. I bambini piccoli non dovrebbero imparare nulla se non leggende; esse sono i princìpi di ogni sana morale e di ogni buona maniera; e non sarei severo sul punto: non escluderei un racconto soltanto perché è vero. Ma l’essenziale su cui insisterei sarebbe non che il racconto debba essere vero, ma che il racconto debba essere bello.

Il tentativo, nei piccoli manuali scolastici, di introdurre elementi più antichi e più sottili, di parlare dell’atmosfera del Puritanesimo o dell’evoluzione della nostra Costituzione, è del tutto irrilevante e vano. È impossibile trasmettere a un marmocchio appena messo in braghe, che non conosce ancora la propria comunità, la squisita divergenza tra essa e qualche altra comunità. A che serve parlare della Costituzione accuratamente bilanciata su tre ordini a una creatura che solo di recente si è bilanciata su due gambe? Che senso ha spiegare la sfumatura puritana della moralità a una creatura che ancora sta imparando a fatica che esiste una qualche moralità? Possiamo mettere da parte la possibilità che alcuni di noi ritengano l’atmosfera puritana sgradevole o la Costituzione un po’ traballante sulle sue tre gambe. La verità generale resta che dovremmo insegnare ai giovani le verità durevoli degli uomini, e lasciare che i dotti si divertano con i loro errori passeggeri.

Si dice spesso oggigiorno che nelle grandi crisi e rivoluzioni morali abbiamo bisogno di un uomo forte che decida; ma mi pare che sia esattamente allora che non ne abbiamo bisogno. Non abbiamo bisogno di un grande uomo per una rivoluzione, poiché una vera rivoluzione è un tempo in cui tutti gli uomini sono grandi. Dove il dispotismo ha davvero successo è nelle cose piccolissime. Ognuno avrà notato quanto un despota sia essenziale per organizzare le cose su cui tutti sono incerti, perché tutti sono indifferenti: le barche in una gita sull’acqua o i posti a una cena. Qui l’uomo che sa quel che vuole è davvero necessario, poiché nessun altro ritiene mai che la propria volontà valga la pena di essere conosciuta. Nessuno sa dove andare esattamente, perché a nessuno importa dove va. È per le banalità che è fatto il grande tiranno.

Ma quando le profondità vengono smosse in una società, e le anime di tutti gli uomini si fanno più alte in un’ira o un desiderio trasfigurante, allora non sono affatto così certo che il grande uomo sia stato un beneficio, anche quando è apparso. Sono sicuro che Cromwell e Napoleone abbiano gestito le semplici picche e baionette, gli stivali e gli zaini, meglio di quanto la maggior parte degli altri avrebbe saputo fare. Ma non sono affatto sicuro che Napoleone abbia dato una piega migliore all’intera Rivoluzione francese. Non sono affatto così sicuro che Cromwell abbia davvero migliorato la religione d’Inghilterra. Come è in politica con l’uomo particolarmente potente, così è nella storia con l’uomo particolarmente dotto. Non abbiamo bisogno del dotto per farci insegnare le cose importanti. Le cose importanti le conosciamo tutti, benché tutti le violiamo e le trascuriamo. Un’industria gigantesca, una conoscenza abissale sono necessarie per la scoperta delle cose minime — le cose che paiono a malapena valere la fatica. In generale, l’uomo comune dovrebbe accontentarsi del terribile segreto che gli uomini sono uomini — il che è un altro modo di dire che sono fratelli. Farebbe meglio a pensare a Cesare come a un uomo e non come a un Romano, poiché probabilmente penserà a un Romano come a una statua e non come a un uomo. Farebbe meglio a pensare a Cuor di Leone come a un uomo e non come a un Crociato, altrimenti penserà a lui come a un Crociato da palcoscenico. Poiché ogni uomo conosce il nucleo più intimo di ogni altro uomo. Sono i fronzoli e le cose esteriori, eretti per un’epoca e per una moda, che vengono dimenticati e restano sconosciuti. Sono tutte le tende che vengono tenute nascoste, tutte le maschere che sono mascherate, tutti i travestimenti ora travestiti nella polvere e in un disfacimento senza volto. Ma benché non possiamo raggiungere l’esterno della storia, partiamo tutti dall’interno. Un giorno, se saccheggerò intere biblioteche, potrò conoscere gli aspetti più esteriori di Re Stefano, e quasi vederlo nel suo abito così come visse — ma l’intimo lo conosco già. I simboli sono ammuffiti e il modo del giuramento dimenticato; la società segreta può persino essere sciolta; ma tutti noi conosciamo il segreto.

Questions of Divorce

I HAVE just picked up a little book that is not only brightly and suggestively written, but is somewhat unique, in this sense—that it enunciates the modern and advanced view of Woman in such language as a sane person can stand. It is written by Miss Florence Farr, is calledModern Woman: her Intentions, and is published by Mr. Frank Palmer. This style of book I confess to commonly finding foolish and vain. The New Woman’s monologue wearies, not because it is unwomanly, but because it is inhuman. It exhibits the most exhausting of combinations: the union of fanaticism of speech with frigidity of soul—the things that made Robespierre seem a monster. The worst example I remember was once trumpeted in a Review: a lady doctor, who has ever afterwards haunted me as a sort of nightmare of spiritual imbecility. I forget her exact words, but they were to the effect that sex and motherhood should be treated neither with ribaldry nor reverence: “It is too serious a subject for ribaldry, and I myself cannot understand reverence towards anything that is physical.” There, in a few words, is the whole twisted and tortured priggishness which poisons the present age. The person who cannot laugh at sex ought to be kicked; and the person who cannot reverence pain ought to be killed. Until that lady doctor gets a little ribaldry and a little reverence into her soul, she has no right to have any opinion at all about the affairs of humanity. I remember there was another lady, trumpeted in the same Review, a French lady who broke off her engagement with the excellent gentleman to whom she was attached on the ground that affection interrupted the flow of her thoughts. It was a thin sort of flow in any case, to judge by the samples; and no doubt it was easily interrupted.

The author ofModern Woman is bitten a little by the mad dog of modernity, the habit of dwelling disproportionally on the abnormal and the diseased; but she writes rationally and humorously, like a human being; she sees that there are two sides to the case; and she even puts in a fruitful suggestion that, with its subconsciousness and its virtues of the vegetable, the new psychology may turn up on the side of the old womanhood. One may say indeed that in such a book as this our amateur philosophizing of to-day is seen at its fairest; and even at its fairest it exhibits certain qualities of bewilderment and disproportion which are somewhat curious to note.

I think the oddest thing about the advanced people is that, while they are always talking of things as problems, they have hardly any notion of what a real problem is. A real problem only occurs when there are admittedly disadvantages in all courses that can be pursued. If it is discovered just before a fashionable wedding that the Bishop is locked up in the coal-cellar, that is not a problem. It is obvious to anyone but an extreme anti-clerical or practical joker that the Bishop must be let out of the coal-cellar. But suppose the Bishop has been locked up in the wine-cellar, and from the obscure noises, sounds as of song and dance, etc., it is guessed that he has indiscreetly tested the vintages round him; then, indeed, we may properly say that there has arisen a problem; for, upon the one hand, it is awkward to keep the wedding waiting, while, upon the other, any hasty opening of the door might mean an episcopal rush and scenes of the most unforeseen description.

An incident like this (which must constantly happen in our gay and varied social life) is a true problem because there are in it incompatible advantages. Now if woman is simply the domestic slave that many of these writers represent, if man has bound her by brute force, if he has simply knocked her down and sat on her—then there is no problem about the matter. She has been locked in the kitchen, like the Bishop in the coal-cellar; and they both of them ought to be let out. If there is any problem of sex, it must be because the ease is not so simple as that; because there is something to be said for the man as well as for the woman; and because there are evils in unlocking the kitchen door, in addition to the obvious good of it. Now, I will take two instances from Miss Farr’s own book of problems that are really problems, and which she entirely misses because she will not admit that they are problematical.

The writer asks the substantial question squarely enough: “Is indissoluble marriage good for mankind?” and she answers it squarely enough: “For the great mass of mankind, yes.” To those like myself, who move in the old-world dream of Democracy, that admission ends the whole question. There may be exceptional people who would be happier without Civil Government; sensitive souls who really feel unwell when they see a policeman. But we have surely the fight to impose the State on everybody if it suits nearly everybody; and if so, we have the right to impose the Family on everybody if it suits nearly everybody. But the queer and cogent point is this; that Miss Farr does not see the real difficulty about allowing exceptions—the real difficulty that has made most legislators reluctant to allow them. I do not say there should be no exceptions, but I do say that the author has not seen the painful problem of permitting any.

The difficulty is simply this: that if it comes to claiming exceptional treatment, the very people who will claim it will be those who least deserve it. The people who are quite convinced they are superior are the very inferior people; the men who really think themselves extraordinary are the most ordinary rotters on earth. If you say, “Nobody must steal the Crown of England,” then probably it will not be stolen. After that, probably the next best thing would be to say, “Anybody may steal the Crown of England,” for then the Crown might find its way to some honest and modest fellow. But if you say, “Those who feel themselves to have Wild and Wondrous Souls, and they only, may steal the Crown of England,” then you may be sure there will be a rush for it of all the rag, tag, and bobtail of the universe, all the quack doctors, all the sham artists, all the demireps and drunken egotists, all the nationless adventurers and criminal monomaniacs of the world.

Questioni di Divorzio

HO appena preso in mano un libretto che non solo è scritto in modo brillante e stimolante, ma è in qualche modo singolare, in questo senso: che enuncia la visione moderna e avanzata della Donna in un linguaggio che una persona sana di mente può tollerare. È scritto dalla signorina Florence Farr, s’intitola Modern Woman: her Intentions, ed è pubblicato dal signor Frank Palmer. Questo genere di libro confesso di trovarlo comunemente sciocco e vano. Il monologo della Donna Nuova stanca, non perché sia poco femminile, ma perché è disumano. Esibisce la più estenuante delle combinazioni: l’unione del fanatismo della parola con la freddezza dell’anima — le cose che facevano apparire Robespierre un mostro. Il peggior esempio che ricordi fu una volta strombazzato in una Rivista: una dottoressa, che da allora mi ha perseguitato come una sorta di incubo di imbecillità spirituale. Ho dimenticato le sue parole esatte, ma erano nel senso che il sesso e la maternità non dovrebbero essere trattati né con scurrilità né con reverenza: «È un argomento troppo serio per la scurrilità, e io stessa non riesco a comprendere la reverenza verso qualcosa che è fisico.» Ecco, in poche parole, tutta la contorta e tormentata saccenteria che avvelena l’età presente. La persona che non sa ridere del sesso dovrebbe essere presa a calci; e la persona che non sa riverire il dolore dovrebbe essere uccisa. Finché quella dottoressa non si mette un po’ di scurrilità e un po’ di reverenza nell’anima, non ha alcun diritto di avere una qualsiasi opinione sulle faccende dell’umanità. Ricordo che c’era un’altra signora, strombazzata nella stessa Rivista, una signora francese che ruppe il fidanzamento con l’eccellente gentiluomo a cui era legata con la motivazione che l’affetto interrompeva il flusso dei suoi pensieri. Era comunque un flusso piuttosto esile, a giudicare dai campioni; e senza dubbio era facilmente interrotto.

L’autrice di Modern Woman è morsa un poco dal cane rabbioso della modernità, l’abitudine di soffermarsi in modo sproporzionato sull’anormale e sul malato; ma scrive in modo razionale e spiritoso, come un essere umano; vede che vi sono due lati della questione; e inserisce persino un suggerimento fecondo, e cioè che, con la sua subconscienza e le sue virtù del vegetale, la nuova psicologia potrebbe schierarsi dalla parte dell’antica femminilità. Si può dire, in effetti, che in un libro come questo il nostro dilettantesco filosofeggiare odierno si vede nella sua veste migliore; e persino nella sua veste migliore esso esibisce certe qualità di smarrimento e di sproporzione che sono alquanto curiose da notare.

Credo che la cosa più strana riguardo alle persone avanzate sia che, mentre parlano continuamente delle cose come problemi, non hanno quasi alcuna nozione di che cosa sia un vero problema. Un vero problema si presenta solo quando vi sono, per ammissione generale, svantaggi in tutte le vie che si possono seguire. Se, poco prima di un matrimonio mondano, si scopre che il Vescovo è rinchiuso nella carbonaia, quello non è un problema. È ovvio a chiunque, tranne a un anticlericale estremo o a un burlone, che il Vescovo deve essere fatto uscire dalla carbonaia. Ma supponiamo che il Vescovo sia stato rinchiuso nella cantina dei vini e che, da rumori oscuri, suoni come di canto e di danza, ecc., si intuisca che egli ha indiscretamente saggiato le annate intorno a sé; allora, in verità, possiamo propriamente dire che è sorto un problema; poiché, da un lato, è imbarazzante far attendere il matrimonio, mentre, dall’altro, qualsiasi frettolosa apertura della porta potrebbe significare un’irruzione episcopale e scene della più imprevista descrizione.

Un incidente come questo (che deve accadere di continuo nella nostra gaia e variegata vita sociale) è un vero problema perché in esso vi sono vantaggi incompatibili. Ora, se la donna è semplicemente la schiava domestica che molti di questi scrittori rappresentano, se l’uomo l’ha soggiogata con la forza bruta, se l’ha semplicemente atterrata e le si è seduto sopra — allora non vi è alcun problema nella faccenda. Ella è stata rinchiusa in cucina, come il Vescovo nella carbonaia; ed entrambi dovrebbero essere fatti uscire. Se vi è un qualche problema del sesso, dev’essere perché il caso non è così semplice; perché c’è qualcosa da dire in favore dell’uomo così bene come della donna; e perché vi sono mali nell’aprire la porta della cucina, oltre all’ovvio bene di ciò. Ora prenderò due esempi, dal libro stesso della signorina Farr, di problemi che sono davvero problemi, e che ella manca del tutto perché non vuole ammettere che siano problematici.

L’autrice pone la questione sostanziale in modo abbastanza netto: «Il matrimonio indissolubile è un bene per l’umanità?» e vi risponde in modo abbastanza netto: «Per la grande massa dell’umanità, sì.» Per quelli come me, che si muovono nel sogno d’altri tempi della Democrazia, quell’ammissione chiude l’intera questione. Vi possono essere persone eccezionali che sarebbero più felici senza un Governo civile; anime sensibili che si sentono davvero male alla vista di un poliziotto. Ma abbiamo sicuramente il diritto di imporre lo Stato a tutti se conviene a quasi tutti; e se è così, abbiamo il diritto di imporre la Famiglia a tutti se conviene a quasi tutti. Ma il punto strano e cogente è questo: che la signorina Farr non vede la vera difficoltà del permettere eccezioni — la vera difficoltà che ha reso la maggior parte dei legislatori riluttanti a consentirle. Non dico che non vi debbano essere eccezioni, ma dico che l’autrice non ha visto il penoso problema del permetterne alcuna.

La difficoltà è semplicemente questa: che, quando si tratta di reclamare un trattamento eccezionale, proprio coloro che lo reclameranno saranno quelli che meno lo meritano. Le persone del tutto convinte di essere superiori sono proprio le persone inferiori; gli uomini che davvero si credono straordinari sono i più ordinari mascalzoni della terra. Se dite: «Nessuno deve rubare la Corona d’Inghilterra», allora probabilmente non verrà rubata. Dopodiché, forse la cosa migliore sarebbe dire: «Chiunque può rubare la Corona d’Inghilterra», poiché allora la Corona potrebbe trovare la sua strada verso qualche onesto e modesto individuo. Ma se dite: «Coloro che sentono di avere Anime Selvagge e Meravigliose, e loro soltanto, possono rubare la Corona d’Inghilterra», allora potete star certi che vi sarà una corsa a essa da parte di tutta la marmaglia e la ciurmaglia dell’universo, tutti i ciarlatani, tutti i falsi artisti, tutte le donnacce e gli egotisti ubriaconi, tutti gli avventurieri senza patria e i monomani criminali del mondo.

So, if you say that marriage is for common people, but divorce for free and noble spirits, all the weak and selfish people will dash for the divorce; while the few free and noble spirits you wish to help will very probably (because they are free and noble) go on wrestling with the marriage. For it is one of the marks of real dignity of character not to wish to separate oneself from the honour and tragedy of the whole tribe. All men are ordinary men; the extraordinary men are those who know it.

The weakness of the proposition that marriage is good for the common herd, but can be advantageously violated by special “experimenters” and pioneers, is that it takes no account of the problem of the disease of pride. It is easy enough to say that weaker souls had better be guarded, but that we must give freedom to Georges Sand or make exceptions for George Eliot. The practical puzzle is this: that it is precisely the weakest sort of lady novelist who thinks she is Georges Sand; it is precisely the silliest woman who is sure she is George Eliot. It is the small soul that is sure it is an exception; the large soul is only too proud to be the rule. To advertise for exceptional people is to collect all the sulks and sick fancies and futile ambitions of the earth. The good artist is he who can be understood; it is the bad artist who is always “misunderstood.” In short, the great man is a man; it is always the tenth-rate man who is the Superman.

Miss Farr disposes of the difficult question of vows and bonds in love by leaving out altogether the one extraordinary fact of experience on which the whole matter turns. She again solves the problem by assuming that it is not a problem. Concerning oaths of fidelity, etc., she writes: “We cannot trust ourselves to make a real love-knot unless money or custom forces us to ‘bear and forbear.’ There is always the lurking fear that we shall not be able to keep faith unless we swear upon the Book. This is, of course, not true of young lovers. Every first love is born free of tradition; indeed, not only is first love innocent and valiant, but it sweeps aside all the wise laws it has been taught, and burns away experience in its own light. The revelation is so extraordinary, so unlike anything told by the poets, so absorbing, that it is impossible to believe that the feeling can die out.”

Now this is exactly as if some old naturalist settled the bat’s place in nature by saying boldly, “Bats do not fly.” It is as if he solved the problem of whales by bluntly declaring that whales live on land. There is a problem of vows, as of bats and whales. What Miss Farr says about it is quite lucid and explanatory; it simply happens to be flatly untrue. It is not the fact that young lovers have no desire to swear on the Book. They are always at it. It is not the fact that every young love is born free of traditions about binding and promising, about bonds and signatures and seals. On the contrary, lovers wallow in the wildest pedantry and precision about these matters. They do the craziest things to make their love legal and irrevocable. They tattoo each other with promises; they cut into rocks and oaks with their names and vows; they bury ridiculous things in ridiculous places to be a witness against them; they bind each other with rings, and inscribe each other in Bibles; if they are raving lunatics (which is not untenable), they are mad solely on this idea of binding and on nothing else. It is quite true that the tradition of their fathers and mothers is in favour of fidelity; but it is emphatically not true that the lovers merely follow it; they invent it anew. It is quite true that the lovers feel their love eternal, and independent of oaths; but it is emphatically not true that they do not desire to take the oaths. They have a ravening thirst to take as many oaths as possible. Now this is the paradox; this is the whole problem. It is not true, as Miss Farr would have it, that young people feel free of vows, being confident of constancy; while old people invent vows, having lost that confidence. That would be much too simple; if that were so there would be no problem at all. The startling but quite solid fact is that young people are especially fierce in making fetters and final ties at the very moment when they think them unnecessary. The time when they want the vow is exactly the time when they do not need it. That is worth thinking about.

Nearly all the fundamental facts of mankind are to be found in its fables. And there is a singularly sane truth in all the old stories of the monsters—such as centaurs, mermaids, sphinxes, and the rest. It will be noted that in each of these the humanity, though imperfect in its extent, is perfect in its quality. The mermaid is half a lady and half a fish; but there is nothing fishy about the lady. A centaur is half a gentleman and half a horse. But there is nothing horsey about the gentleman. The centaur is a manly sort of man—up to a certain point. The mermaid is a womanly woman—so far as she goes. The human parts of these monsters are handsome, like heroes, or lovely, like nymphs; their bestial appendages do not affect the full perfection of their humanity—what there is of it. There is nothing humanly wrong with the centaur, except that he rides a horse without a head. There is nothing humanly wrong with the mermaid; Hood put a good comic motto to his picture of a mermaid: “All’s well that ends well.” It is, perhaps, quite true; it all depends which end. Those old wild images included a crucial truth. Man is a monster. And he is all the more a monster because one part of him is perfect. It is not true, as the evolutionists say, that man moves perpetually up a slope from imperfection to perfection, changing ceaselessly, so as to be suitable. The immortal part of a man and the deadly part are jarringly distinct, and have always been. And the best proof of this is in such a case as we have considered— the case of the oaths of love.

A man’s soul is as full of voices as a forest; there are ten thousand tongues there like all the tongues of the trees: fancies, follies, memories, madnesses, mysterious fears, and more mysterious hopes. All the settlement and sane government of life consists in coming to the conclusion that some of those voices have authority and others not. You may have an impulse to fight your enemy or an impulse to run away from him; a reason to serve your country or a reason to betray it; a good idea for making sweets or a better idea for poisoning them. The only test I know by which to judge one argument or inspiration from another is ultimately this: that all the noble necessities of man talk the language of eternity. When man is doing the three or four things that he was sent on this earth to do, then he speaks like one who shall live for ever. A man dying for his country does not talk as if local preferences could change. Leonidas does not say, “In my present mood, I prefer Sparta to Persia.” William Tell does not remark, “The Swiss civilization, so far as I can yet see, is superior to the Austrian.” When men are making commonwealths, they talk in terms of the absolute, and so they do when they are making (however unconsciously) those smaller commonwealths which are called families. There are in life certain immortal moments, moments that have authority. Lovers are right to tattoo each other’s skins and cut each other’s names about the world; they do belong to each other, in a more awful sense than they know.

Così, se dite che il matrimonio è per la gente comune, ma il divorzio per gli spiriti liberi e nobili, tutte le persone deboli ed egoiste si precipiteranno verso il divorzio; mentre i pochi spiriti liberi e nobili che desiderate aiutare, molto probabilmente (proprio perché sono liberi e nobili) continueranno a lottare con il matrimonio. Poiché è uno dei segni della vera dignità di carattere il non voler separarsi dall’onore e dalla tragedia dell’intera tribù. Tutti gli uomini sono uomini comuni; gli uomini straordinari sono quelli che lo sanno.

La debolezza della proposizione che il matrimonio è un bene per il gregge comune, ma può essere vantaggiosamente violato da speciali «sperimentatori» e pionieri, sta nel fatto che essa non tiene conto del problema della malattia dell’orgoglio. È abbastanza facile dire che le anime più deboli farebbero meglio a essere sorvegliate, ma che dobbiamo concedere la libertà a George Sand o fare eccezioni per George Eliot. L’enigma pratico è questo: che è precisamente la più debole specie di romanziera che si crede George Sand; è precisamente la donna più sciocca che è sicura di essere George Eliot. È l’anima piccola che è sicura di essere un’eccezione; l’anima grande è fin troppo fiera di essere la regola. Fare pubblicità per persone eccezionali significa raccogliere tutti i musi lunghi, tutte le fantasie malate e tutte le futili ambizioni della terra. Il buon artista è colui che può essere compreso; è il cattivo artista che è sempre «frainteso». In breve, il grande uomo è un uomo; è sempre l’uomo di decima categoria a essere il Superuomo.

La signorina Farr liquida la difficile questione dei voti e dei vincoli nell’amore tralasciando del tutto l’unico fatto straordinario dell’esperienza su cui l’intera faccenda ruota. Ella risolve di nuovo il problema assumendo che non sia un problema. Riguardo ai giuramenti di fedeltà, ecc., ella scrive: «Non possiamo fidarci di noi stessi nel fare un vero nodo d’amore a meno che il denaro o la consuetudine non ci costringano a “sopportare e tollerare”. C’è sempre il timore latente di non essere capaci di mantenere la fede a meno di non giurare sul Libro. Questo, naturalmente, non è vero dei giovani innamorati. Ogni primo amore nasce libero dalla tradizione; anzi, non solo il primo amore è innocente e valoroso, ma spazza via tutte le sagge leggi che gli sono state insegnate, e brucia l’esperienza nella propria luce. La rivelazione è così straordinaria, così diversa da tutto ciò che i poeti raccontano, così assorbente, che è impossibile credere che quel sentimento possa spegnersi.»

Ora, questo è esattamente come se qualche vecchio naturalista stabilisse il posto del pipistrello nella natura dicendo baldanzosamente: «I pipistrelli non volano.» È come se risolvesse il problema delle balene dichiarando bruscamente che le balene vivono sulla terraferma. C’è un problema dei voti, come dei pipistrelli e delle balene. Ciò che la signorina Farr dice al riguardo è del tutto lucido ed esplicativo; si dà soltanto il caso che sia piattamente falso. Non è vero che i giovani innamorati non abbiano alcun desiderio di giurare sul Libro. Ci sono sempre dietro. Non è vero che ogni giovane amore nasca libero dalle tradizioni sul vincolare e sul promettere, sui legami, sulle firme e sui sigilli. Al contrario, gli innamorati si crogiolano nella più sfrenata pedanteria e precisione su queste materie. Fanno le cose più folli per rendere il loro amore legale e irrevocabile. Si tatuano l’un l’altro con promesse; incidono nelle rocce e nelle querce i loro nomi e i loro voti; seppelliscono cose ridicole in luoghi ridicoli perché testimonino contro di loro; si legano l’un l’altro con anelli, e si iscrivono l’un l’altro nelle Bibbie; se sono forsennati (il che non è insostenibile), sono pazzi unicamente su questa idea del vincolarsi e su nient’altro. È del tutto vero che la tradizione dei loro padri e delle loro madri è in favore della fedeltà; ma è enfaticamente falso che gli innamorati la seguano soltanto; la inventano di nuovo. È del tutto vero che gli innamorati sentono il loro amore eterno e indipendente dai giuramenti; ma è enfaticamente falso che essi non desiderino prestare i giuramenti. Hanno una sete vorace di prestare quanti più giuramenti possibile. Ora, questo è il paradosso; questo è l’intero problema. Non è vero, come vorrebbe la signorina Farr, che i giovani si sentano liberi dai voti, essendo sicuri della costanza; mentre i vecchi inventano i voti, avendo perduto quella sicurezza. Sarebbe troppo semplice; se fosse così non ci sarebbe alcun problema. Il fatto sorprendente ma del tutto solido è che i giovani sono particolarmente feroci nel forgiare catene e vincoli definitivi proprio nel momento in cui li ritengono superflui. Il momento in cui vogliono il voto è esattamente il momento in cui non ne hanno bisogno. Vale la pena rifletterci.

Quasi tutti i fatti fondamentali dell’umanità si trovano nelle sue favole. E c’è una verità singolarmente sana in tutte le vecchie storie dei mostri — come i centauri, le sirene, le sfingi e il resto. Si noterà che in ciascuno di essi l’umanità, benché imperfetta nella sua estensione, è perfetta nella sua qualità. La sirena è per metà dama e per metà pesce; ma non c’è nulla di pesciolino nella dama. Un centauro è per metà gentiluomo e per metà cavallo. Ma non c’è nulla di cavallino nel gentiluomo. Il centauro è una specie virile d’uomo — fino a un certo punto. La sirena è una donna femminile — per quanto arriva. Le parti umane di questi mostri sono avvenenti, come eroi, o incantevoli, come ninfe; le loro appendici bestiali non intaccano la piena perfezione della loro umanità — per quel poco che ce n’è. Non c’è nulla di umanamente sbagliato nel centauro, tranne che cavalca un cavallo senza testa. Non c’è nulla di umanamente sbagliato nella sirena; Hood mise un buon motto comico alla sua immagine di una sirena: «Tutto è bene quel che finisce bene.» È, forse, del tutto vero; dipende tutto da quale estremità. Quelle antiche immagini selvagge racchiudevano una verità cruciale. L’uomo è un mostro. Ed è tanto più un mostro in quanto una parte di lui è perfetta. Non è vero, come dicono gli evoluzionisti, che l’uomo salga perpetuamente per un pendio dall’imperfezione alla perfezione, mutando incessantemente, così da rendersi adatto. La parte immortale di un uomo e la parte mortale sono stridentemente distinte, e lo sono sempre state. E la miglior prova di ciò è in un caso come quello che abbiamo considerato — il caso dei giuramenti d’amore.

L’anima di un uomo è piena di voci come una foresta; vi sono là diecimila lingue come tutte le lingue degli alberi: fantasie, follie, ricordi, pazzie, timori misteriosi e speranze ancor più misteriose. Tutto l’assetto e il sano governo della vita consiste nel giungere alla conclusione che alcune di quelle voci hanno autorità e altre no. Potete avere l’impulso di combattere il vostro nemico o l’impulso di fuggirlo; una ragione per servire il vostro paese o una ragione per tradirlo; una buona idea per fare dolci o un’idea migliore per avvelenarli. L’unica prova che io conosca per giudicare un argomento o un’ispirazione dall’altro è in ultima analisi questa: che tutte le nobili necessità dell’uomo parlano il linguaggio dell’eternità. Quando l’uomo compie le tre o quattro cose per cui fu mandato su questa terra, allora parla come uno che vivrà in eterno. Un uomo che muore per il suo paese non parla come se le preferenze locali potessero mutare. Leonida non dice: «Nel mio stato d’animo attuale, preferisco Sparta alla Persia.» Guglielmo Tell non osserva: «La civiltà svizzera, per quanto finora posso vedere, è superiore a quella austriaca.» Quando gli uomini fondano repubbliche, parlano in termini di assoluto, e così fanno quando fondano (per quanto inconsciamente) quelle repubbliche più piccole che si chiamano famiglie. Vi sono nella vita certi momenti immortali, momenti che hanno autorità. Gli innamorati hanno ragione a tatuarsi la pelle a vicenda e a incidere per il mondo i nomi l’uno dell’altro; essi appartengono davvero l’uno all’altro, in un senso più tremendo di quanto sappiano.

Mormonism

THERE is inevitably something comic (comic in the broad and vulgar style which all men ought to appreciate in its place) about the panic aroused by the presence of the Mormons and their supposed polygamous campaign in this country. It calls up the absurd image of an enormous omnibus, packed inside with captive English ladies, with an Elder on the box, controlling his horses with the same patriarchal gravity as his wives, and another Elder as conductor calling out “Higher up,” with an exalted and allegorical intonation. And there is something highly fantastic to the ordinary healthy mind in the idea of any precaution being proposed; in the idea of locking the Duchess in the boudoir and the governess in the nursery, lest they should make a dash for Utah, and become the ninety-third Mrs. Abraham Nye, or the hundredth Mrs. Hiram Boke. But these frankly vulgar jokes, like most vulgar jokes, cover a popular prejudice which is but the bristly hide of a living principle. Elder Ward, recently speaking at Nottingham, strongly protested against these rumours, and asserted absolutely that polygamy had never been practised with the consent of the Mormon Church since 1890. I think it only just that this disclaimer should be circulated; but though it is most probably sincere, I do not find it very soothing. The year 1890 is not very long ago, and a society that could have practised so recently a custom so alien to Christendom must surely have a moral attitude which might be repellent to us in many other respects. Moreover, the phrase about the consent of the Church (if correctly reported) has a little the air of an official repudiating responsibility for unofficial excesses. It sounds almost as if Mr. Abraham Nye might, on his own account, come into church with a hundred and fourteen wives, but people were supposed not to notice them. It might amount to little more than this, that the chief Elder may allow the hundred and fourteen wives to walk down the street like a girls’ school, but he is not officially expected to take off his hat to each of them in turn. Seriously speaking, however, I have little doubt that Elder Ward speaks the substantial truth, and that polygamy is dying, or has died, among the Mormons. My reason for thinking this is simple: it is that polygamy always tends to die out. Even in the East I believe that, counting heads, it is by this time the exception rather than the rule. Like slavery, it is always being started, because of its obvious conveniences. It has only one small inconvenience, which is that it is intolerable.

Our real error in such a case is that we do not know or care about the creed itself, from which a people’s customs, good or bad, will necessarily flow. We talk much about “respecting” this or that person’s religion; but the way to respect a religion is to treat it as a religion: to ask what are its tenets and what are their consequences. But modern tolerance is deafer than intolerance. The old religious authorities, at least, defined a heresy before they condemned it, and read a book before they burned it. But we are always saying to a Mormon or a Moslem—“Never mind about your religion, come to my arms.” To which he naturally replies—“But I do mind about my religion, and I advise you to mind your eye.”

About half the history now taught in schools and colleges is made windy and barren by this narrow notion of leaving out the theological theories. The wars and Parliaments of the Puritans made absolutely no sense if we leave out the fact that Calvinism appeared to them to be the absolute metaphysical truth, unanswerable, unreplaceable, and the only thing worth having in the world. The Crusades and dynastic quarrels of the Norman and Angevin Kings make absolutely no sense if we leave out the fact that these men (with all their vices) were enthusiastic for the doctrine, discipline, and endowment of Catholicism. Yet I have read a history of the Puritans by a modern Nonconformist in which the name of Calvin was not even mentioned, which is like writing a history of the Jews without mentioning either Abraham or Moses. And I have never read any popular or educational history of England that gave the slightest hint of the motives in the human mind that covered England with abbeys and Palestine with banners. Historians seem to have completely forgotten the two facts—first, that men act from ideas; and second, that it might, therefore, be as well to discover which ideas. The mediaevals did not believe primarily in “chivalry,” but in Catholicism, as producing chivalry among other things. The Puritans did not believe primarily in “righteousness,” but in Calvinism, as producing righteousness among other things. It was the creed that held the coarse or cunning men of the world at both epochs. William the Conqueror was in some ways a cynical and brutal soldier, but he did attach importance to the fact that the Church upheld his enterprise; that Harold had sworn falsely on the bones of saints, and that the banner above his own lances had been blessed by the Pope. Cromwell was in some ways a cynical and brutal soldier; but he did attach importance to the fact that he had gained assurance from on high in the Calvinistic scheme; that the Bible seemed to support him—in short, the most important moment in his own life, for him, was not when Charles I lost his head, but when Oliver Cromwell did not lose his soul. If you leave these things out of the story, you are leaving out the story itself. If William Rufus was only a red-haired man who liked hunting, why did he force Anselm’s head under a mitre, instead of forcing his head under a headsman’s axe? If John Bunyan only cared for “righteousness,” why was he in terror of being damned, when he knew he was rationally righteous? We shall never make anything of moral and religious movements in history until we begin to look at their theory as well as their practice. For their practice (as in the case of the Mormons) is often so unfamiliar and frantic that it is quite unintelligible without their theory.

I have not the space, even if I had the knowledge, to describe the fundamental theories of Mormonism about the universe. But they are extraordinarily interesting; and a proper understanding of them would certainly enable us to see daylight through the more perplexing or menacing customs of this community; and therefore to judge how far polygamy was in their scheme a permanent and self-renewing principle or (as is quite probable) a personal and unscrupulous accident. The basic Mormon belief is one that comes out of the morning of the earth, from the most primitive and even infantile attitude. Their chief dogma is that God is material, not that He was materialized once, as all Christians believe; nor that He is materialized specially, as all Catholics believe; but that He was materially embodied from all time; that He has a local habitation as well as a name. Under the influence of this barbaric but violently vivid conception, these people crossed a great desert with their guns and oxen, patiently, persistently, and courageously, as if they were following a vast and visible giant who was striding across the plains. In other words, this strange sect, by soaking itself solely in the Hebrew Scriptures, had really managed to reproduce the atmosphere of those Scriptures as they are felt by Hebrews rather than by Christians. A number of dull, earnest, ignorant, black-coated men with chimney-pot hats, chin beards or mutton-chop whiskers, managed to reproduce in their own souls the richness and the peril of an ancient Oriental experience. If we think from this end we may possibly guess how it was that they added polygamy.

Mormonismo

C’È inevitabilmente qualcosa di comico (comico nello stile ampio e volgare che tutti gli uomini dovrebbero apprezzare al posto giusto) nel panico suscitato dalla presenza dei mormoni e dalla loro presunta campagna poligamica in questo paese. Evoca l’assurda immagine di un enorme omnibus, stipato all’interno di prigioniere signore inglesi, con un Anziano a cassetta, che governa i suoi cavalli con la stessa patriarcale gravità delle sue mogli, e un altro Anziano che, da bigliettaio, grida «Più in alto», con un’intonazione esaltata e allegorica. E c’è qualcosa di sommamente fantastico, per la mente comune e sana, nell’idea che si proponga una qualche precauzione; nell’idea di chiudere a chiave la Duchessa nel boudoir e la governante nella stanza dei bambini, per timore che si slancino verso lo Utah e diventino la novantatreesima signora Abraham Nye, o la centesima signora Hiram Boke. Ma queste franche battute volgari, come la maggior parte delle battute volgari, celano un pregiudizio popolare che non è se non la ruvida scorza di un principio vivo. L’Anziano Ward, parlando di recente a Nottingham, ha protestato con forza contro queste voci, e ha asserito nel modo più assoluto che la poligamia non è mai stata praticata col consenso della Chiesa mormone dal 1890. Ritengo solo giusto che questa smentita venga fatta circolare; ma per quanto sia con ogni probabilità sincera, non la trovo molto rassicurante. Il 1890 non è poi così lontano, e una società che poteva praticare così di recente un costume tanto estraneo alla cristianità deve pur avere un atteggiamento morale che potrebbe risultarci ripugnante sotto molti altri aspetti. Inoltre, la frase sul consenso della Chiesa (se riferita esattamente) ha un po’ l’aria di un funzionario che ripudia la responsabilità di eccessi ufficiosi. Suona quasi come se il signor Abraham Nye potesse, per proprio conto, entrare in chiesa con centoquattordici mogli, ma si supponesse che la gente non le notasse. Potrebbe risolversi in poco più di questo: che l’Anziano capo permetta alle centoquattordici mogli di scendere per la strada come un collegio di ragazze, ma non ci si aspetta ufficialmente che egli si tolga il cappello a ciascuna di esse a turno. Sul serio, però, ho pochi dubbi che l’Anziano Ward dica la sostanziale verità, e che la poligamia stia morendo, o sia morta, tra i mormoni. La mia ragione per pensarlo è semplice: è che la poligamia tende sempre a estinguersi. Persino in Oriente credo che, contando le teste, sia ormai a questo tempo l’eccezione piuttosto che la regola. Come la schiavitù, la si avvia sempre, per via delle sue ovvie comodità. Ha solo un piccolo inconveniente, cioè che è intollerabile.

Il nostro vero errore in un caso simile è che non conosciamo né ci curiamo del credo stesso, da cui necessariamente scaturiscono i costumi di un popolo, buoni o cattivi. Parliamo molto di “rispettare” la religione di questa o quella persona; ma il modo di rispettare una religione è trattarla come una religione: chiederci quali siano i suoi dogmi e quali le loro conseguenze. Ma la tolleranza moderna è più sorda dell’intolleranza. Le antiche autorità religiose, almeno, definivano un’eresia prima di condannarla, e leggevano un libro prima di bruciarlo. Ma noi diciamo sempre a un Mormone o a un Musulmano: “Non badare alla tua religione, vieni tra le mie braccia.” Al che egli naturalmente risponde: “Ma io bado eccome alla mia religione, e ti consiglio di badare all’occhio tuo.”

Circa metà della storia che oggi s’insegna nelle scuole e nei collegi è resa vacua e sterile da questa angusta idea di tralasciare le teorie teologiche. Le guerre e i parlamenti dei puritani non hanno alcun senso se tralasciamo il fatto che il calvinismo appariva loro come l’assoluta verità metafisica, inconfutabile, insostituibile, e l’unica cosa al mondo che valesse la pena avere. Le Crociate e le liti dinastiche dei re normanni e angioini non hanno alcun senso se tralasciamo il fatto che quegli uomini (con tutti i loro vizi) erano entusiasti della dottrina, della disciplina e delle dotazioni del cattolicesimo. Eppure ho letto una storia dei puritani di un moderno anticonformista in cui il nome di Calvino non era nemmeno menzionato, il che è come scrivere una storia degli ebrei senza menzionare né Abramo né Mosè. E non ho mai letto una storia popolare o scolastica dell’Inghilterra che desse il minimo cenno dei moventi della mente umana che coprirono l’Inghilterra di abbazie e la Palestina di vessilli. Gli storici paiono aver del tutto dimenticato i due fatti — primo, che gli uomini agiscono in base a idee; e secondo, che sarebbe perciò bene scoprire quali idee. Gli uomini del Medioevo non credevano anzitutto nella «cavalleria», ma nel cattolicesimo, come produttore, fra l’altro, di cavalleria. I puritani non credevano anzitutto nella «rettitudine», ma nel calvinismo, come produttore, fra l’altro, di rettitudine. Era il credo a tenere avvinti gli uomini rozzi o astuti del mondo in entrambe le epoche. Guglielmo il Conquistatore era per certi versi un soldato cinico e brutale, ma attribuiva importanza al fatto che la Chiesa sostenesse la sua impresa; che Aroldo avesse giurato il falso sulle ossa dei santi, e che il vessillo sopra le sue stesse lance fosse stato benedetto dal Papa. Cromwell era per certi versi un soldato cinico e brutale; ma attribuiva importanza al fatto di aver ottenuto certezza dall’alto nello schema calvinista; che la Bibbia paresse sostenerlo — in breve, il momento più importante della sua vita, per lui, non fu quando Carlo I perse la testa, ma quando Oliver Cromwell non perse l’anima. Se togliete queste cose dalla storia, togliete la storia stessa. Se Guglielmo il Rosso era soltanto un uomo dai capelli rossi a cui piaceva la caccia, perché costrinse il capo di Anselmo sotto una mitra, invece di costringere il suo capo sotto la scure del boia? Se a John Bunyan importava solo della «rettitudine», perché era terrorizzato d’essere dannato, quando sapeva d’essere razionalmente retto? Non caveremo mai nulla dai movimenti morali e religiosi nella storia finché non cominceremo a guardare tanto alla loro teoria quanto alla loro pratica. Perché la loro pratica (come nel caso dei mormoni) è spesso così insolita e frenetica da risultare del tutto inintelligibile senza la loro teoria.

Non ho lo spazio, anche se ne avessi la conoscenza, per descrivere le teorie fondamentali del Mormonismo sull’universo. Ma sono straordinariamente interessanti; e una giusta comprensione di esse ci consentirebbe di certo di veder chiaro attraverso i costumi più sconcertanti o minacciosi di questa comunità; e quindi di giudicare fino a che punto la poligamia fosse, nel loro schema, un principio permanente e autorinnovantesi o (com’è assai probabile) un accidente personale e senza scrupoli. La credenza mormone fondamentale è una di quelle che vengono dal mattino della terra, dall’atteggiamento più primitivo e persino infantile. Il loro dogma principale è che Dio è materiale — non che Egli si materializzò una volta, come credono tutti i cristiani; né che si materializzi in modo speciale, come credono tutti i cattolici; ma che Egli fu materialmente incarnato da ogni tempo; che ha tanto una dimora locale quanto un nome. Sotto l’influenza di questa concezione barbara ma violentemente vivida, questa gente attraversò un grande deserto coi propri fucili e buoi, pazientemente, ostinatamente e coraggiosamente, come se stesse seguendo un vasto e visibile gigante che avanzava a grandi passi per le pianure. In altre parole, questa strana setta, immergendosi unicamente nelle Scritture ebraiche, era davvero riuscita a riprodurre l’atmosfera di quelle Scritture come sono sentite dagli ebrei piuttosto che dai cristiani. Un certo numero di uomini ottusi, seri, ignoranti, dalle finanziere nere, con cappelli a cilindro, barbe al mento o basette a costoletta, riuscì a riprodurre nella propria anima la ricchezza e il pericolo di un’antica esperienza orientale. Se pensiamo partendo da questo capo, forse possiamo indovinare come mai vi aggiunsero la poligamia.

Pageants and Dress

THE only objection to the excellent series of Pageants that has adorned England of late is that they are made too expensive. The mass of the common people cannot afford to see the Pageant; so they are obliged to put up with the inferior function of acting in it. I myself got in with the rabble in this way. It was to the Church Pageant; and I was much impressed with certain illuminations which such an experience makes possible. A Pageant exhibits all the fun of a Fancy Dress Ball, with this great difference: that its motive is reverent instead of irreverent. In the one case a man dresses up as his great-grandfather in order to make game of his great-grandfather; in the other case, in order to do him honour. What the great-grandfather himself would think of either of them we fortunately have not to conjecture. The alteration is important and satisfactory. All natural men regard their ancestors as dignified because they are dead; it was a great pity and folly that we had fallen into the habit of regarding the Middle Ages as a mere second-hand shop for comic costumes. Mediaeval costume and heraldry had been meant as the very manifestation of courage and publicity and a decent pride. Colours were worn that they might be conspicuous across a battle-field; an animal was rampant on a helmet that he might stand up evident against the sky. The mediaeval time has been talked of too much as if it were full of twilight and secrecies. It was a time of avowal and of what many modern people call vulgarity. A man’s dress was that of his family or his trade or his religion; and these are exactly the three things which we now think it bad taste to discuss. Imagine a modern man being dressed in green and orange because he was a Robinson. Or imagine him dressed in blue and gold because he was an auctioneer. Or imagine him dressed in purple and silver because he was an agnostic. He is now dressed only in the ridiculous disguise of a gentleman; which tells one nothing at all, not even whether he is one. If ever he dresses up as a cavalier or a monk it is only as a joke-very often as a disreputable and craven joke, a joke in a mask. That vivid and heraldic costume which was meant to show everybody who a man was is now chiefly worn by people at Covent Garden masquerades who wish to conceal who they are. The clerk dresses up as a monk in order to be absurd. If the monk dressed up as a clerk in order to be absurd I could understand it; though the escapade might disturb his monastic superiors. A man in a sensible gown and hood might possibly put on a top-hat and a pair of trousers in order to cover himself with derision, in some extravagance of mystical humility. But that a man who calmly shows himself to the startled sky every morning in a top-hat and trousers should think it comic to put on a simple and dignified robe and hood is a situation which almost splits the brain. Things like the Church Pageant may do something towards snubbing this silly and derisive view of the past. Hitherto the young stockbroker, when he wanted to make a fool of himself, dressed up as Cardinal Wolsey. It may now begin to dawn on him that he ought rather to make a wise man of himself before attempting the impersonation.

Nevertheless, the truth which the Pageant has to tell the British public is rather more special and curious than one might at first assume. It is easy enough to say in the rough that modern dress is dingy, and that the dress of our fathers was more bright and picturesque. But that is not really the point. At Fulham Palace one can compare the huge crowd of people acting in the Pageant with the huge crowd of people looking at it. There is a startling difference, but it is not a mere difference between gaiety and gloom. There is many a respectable young woman in the audience who has on her own hat more colours than the whole Pageant put together. There are belts of brown and black in the Pageant itself: the Puritans round the scaffold of Laud, or the black-robed doctors of the eighteenth century. There are patches of purple and yellow in the audience: the more select young ladies and the less select young gentlemen. It is not that our age has no appetite for the gay or the gaudy—it is a very hedonistic age. It is not that past ages—even the rich symbolic Middle Ages— did not feel any sense of safety in what is sombre or restrained. A friar in a brown coat is much more severe than an ‘Arry in a brown bowler. Why is it that he is also much more pleasant?

I think the whole difference is in this: that the first man is brown with a reason and the second without a reason. If a hundred monks wore one brown habit it was because they felt that their toil and brotherhood were well expressed in being clad in the coarse, dark colour of the earth. I do not say that they said so, or even clearly thought so; but their artistic instinct went straight when they chose the mud-colour for laborious brethren or the flame-colour for the first princes of the Church. But when ‘Arry puts on a brown bowler he does not either with his consciousness or his subconsciousness (that rich soil) feel that he is crowning his brows with the brown earth, clasping round his temples a strange crown of clay. He does not wear a dust-coloured hat as a form of strewing dust upon his head. He wears a dust-coloured hat because the nobility and gentry who are his models discourage him from wearing a crimson hat or a golden hat or a peacock-green hat. He is not thinking of the brownness of brown. It is not to him a symbol of the roots, of realism, or of autochthonous humility; on the contrary, he thinks it looks rather “classy.”

The modern trouble is not that the people do not see splendid colours or striking effects. The trouble is that they see too much of them and see them divorced from all reason. It is a misfortune of modern language that the word “insignificant” is vaguely associated with the words “small” or “slight.” But a thing is insignificant when we do not know what it signifies. An African elephant lying dead in Ludgate Circus would be insignificant. That is, one could not recognize it as the sign or message of anything. One could not regard it as an allegory or a love-token. One could not even call it a hint. In the same way the solar system is insignificant. Unless you have some special religious theory of what it means, it is merely big and silly, like the elephant in Ludgate Circus. And similarly, modern life, with its vastness, its energy, its elaboration, its wealth, is, in the exact sense, insignificant. Nobody knows what we mean; we do not know ourselves. Nobody could explain intelligently why a coat is black, why a waistcoat is white, why asparagus is eaten with the fingers, or why Hammersmith omnibuses are painted red. The mediaevals had a much stronger idea of crowding all possible significance into things. If they had consented to waste red paint on a large and ugly Hammersmith omnibus it would have been in order to suggest that there was some sort of gory magnanimity about Hammersmith. A heraldic lion is no more like a real lion than a chimney-pot hat is like a chimney-pot. But the lion was meant to be a lion. And the chimney-pot hat was not meant to be like a chimney-pot or like anything else. The resemblance only struck certain philosophers (probably gutter-boys) afterwards. The top-hat was not intended as a high uncastellated tower; it was not intended at all. This is the real baseness of modernity. This is, for example, the only real vulgarity of advertisements. It is not that the colours on the posters are bad. It is that they are much too good for the meaningless work which they serve. When at last people see—as at the Pageant-crosses and dragons, leopards and lilies, there is scarcely one of the things that they now see as a symbol which they have not already seen as a trade-mark. If the great “Assumption of the Virgin” were painted in front of them they might remember Blank’s Blue. If the Emperor of China were buried before them, the yellow robes might remind them of Dash’s Mustard. We have not the task of preaching colour and gaiety to a people that has never had it, to Puritans who have neither seen nor appreciated it. We have a harder task. We have to teach those to appreciate it who have always seen it.

Cortei e abbigliamento

L’UNICA obiezione all’eccellente serie di Cortei che ha adornato l’Inghilterra di recente è che li si rende troppo costosi. La massa della gente comune non può permettersi di vedere il Corteo; sicché è costretta ad accontentarsi della funzione inferiore di recitarvi. Io stesso mi ci sono introdotto con la plebaglia in questo modo. Era il Corteo della Chiesa; e rimasi assai colpito da certe illuminazioni che una simile esperienza rende possibili. Un Corteo esibisce tutto il divertimento di un Ballo in Maschera, con questa grande differenza: che il suo intento è reverente anziché irriverente. Nell’un caso un uomo si traveste da bisnonno per farsi beffe del bisnonno; nell’altro, per rendergli onore. Che cosa il bisnonno stesso penserebbe dell’uno o dell’altro, fortunatamente non dobbiamo indovinarlo. La differenza è importante e soddisfacente. Tutti gli uomini naturali considerano dignitosi i propri antenati perché sono morti; fu un gran peccato e una gran follia che fossimo caduti nell’abitudine di considerare il Medioevo come un mero magazzino d’occasione di costumi comici. Il costume medievale e l’araldica erano stati concepiti come la vera e propria manifestazione del coraggio, della pubblicità e di un decoroso orgoglio. Si indossavano colori affinché fossero cospicui attraverso un campo di battaglia; un animale era rampante su un elmo affinché stesse dritto e visibile contro il cielo. Del tempo medievale si è parlato troppo come se fosse pieno di penombra e di segreti. Era un tempo di dichiarazione aperta e di ciò che molti moderni chiamano volgarità. L’abito di un uomo era quello della sua famiglia o del suo mestiere o della sua religione; e queste sono esattamente le tre cose che oggi riteniamo di cattivo gusto discutere. Immaginate un uomo moderno vestito di verde e arancione perché era un Robinson. Oppure immaginatelo vestito di blu e oro perché era un banditore d’aste. Oppure immaginatelo vestito di porpora e argento perché era un agnostico. Egli ora è vestito soltanto del ridicolo travestimento del gentiluomo; il che non dice nulla, nemmeno se lo sia. Se mai si traveste da cavaliere o da monaco, è solo per scherzo — molto spesso come uno scherzo disonorevole e vile, uno scherzo in maschera. Quel vivido e araldico costume, concepito per mostrare a tutti chi un uomo fosse, oggi è indossato principalmente da persone alle mascherate del Covent Garden che desiderano nascondere chi sono. L’impiegato si traveste da monaco per essere assurdo. Se il monaco si travestisse da impiegato per essere assurdo potrei capirlo; benché la bravata potrebbe turbare i suoi superiori monastici. Un uomo con una sensata tonaca e un cappuccio potrebbe forse mettersi un cilindro e un paio di pantaloni per coprirsi di derisione, in qualche stravaganza di mistica umiltà. Ma che un uomo il quale ogni mattina si mostra tranquillamente al cielo attonito in cilindro e pantaloni ritenga comico indossare una veste e un cappuccio semplici e dignitosi è una situazione che quasi spacca il cervello. Cose come il Corteo della Chiesa possono fare qualcosa per mortificare questa sciocca e derisoria visione del passato. Finora il giovane agente di cambio, quando voleva fare lo sciocco, si travestiva da Cardinale Wolsey. Ora potrebbe cominciare a balenargli che dovrebbe piuttosto fare di sé un uomo saggio prima di tentare l’impersonificazione.

Nondimeno, la verità che il Corteo deve dire al pubblico britannico è piuttosto più speciale e curiosa di quanto si potrebbe dapprima supporre. È abbastanza facile dire, grosso modo, che l’abbigliamento moderno è tetro, e che l’abito dei nostri padri era più brillante e pittoresco. Ma non è questo il vero punto. A Fulham Palace si può confrontare l’enorme folla di persone che recitano nel Corteo con l’enorme folla di persone che lo guardano. C’è una differenza sorprendente, ma non è una mera differenza tra gaiezza e tetraggine. C’è più di una rispettabile giovane donna tra il pubblico che porta sul proprio cappello più colori dell’intero Corteo messo insieme. Ci sono fasce di bruno e di nero nel Corteo stesso: i Puritani attorno al patibolo di Laud, o i dottori in veste nera del diciottesimo secolo. Ci sono macchie di porpora e di giallo tra il pubblico: le signorine più scelte e i giovani signori meno scelti. Non è che la nostra epoca non abbia appetito per il gaio o lo sgargiante — è un’epoca assai edonistica. Non è che le epoche passate — persino il ricco e simbolico Medioevo — non provassero alcun senso di sicurezza in ciò che è cupo o sobrio. Un frate in una tonaca bruna è assai più severo di un ‘Arry in una bombetta bruna. Perché mai egli è anche assai più piacevole?

Credo che tutta la differenza stia in questo: che il primo uomo è bruno con una ragione e il secondo senza una ragione. Se cento monaci indossavano un’unica tonaca bruna, era perché sentivano che la loro fatica e la loro fratellanza erano bene espresse nell’essere vestiti del colore grezzo e scuro della terra. Non dico che lo dicessero, o anche che lo pensassero chiaramente; ma il loro istinto artistico andò dritto quando scelsero il color fango per i confratelli laboriosi o il color fiamma per i primi principi della Chiesa. Ma quando ‘Arry si mette una bombetta bruna non sente, né con la sua coscienza né con la sua subcoscienza (quel ricco terreno), di cingersi la fronte con la bruna terra, di stringersi attorno alle tempie una strana corona d’argilla. Non porta un cappello color polvere come una forma di spargersi la polvere sul capo. Porta un cappello color polvere perché la nobiltà e i gentiluomini che sono i suoi modelli lo scoraggiano dall’indossare un cappello cremisi o un cappello dorato o un cappello verde pavone. Non pensa affatto alla brunezza del bruno. Per lui non è un simbolo delle radici, del realismo o di un’autoctona umiltà; al contrario, pensa che abbia un’aria piuttosto «di classe».

Il guaio moderno non è che la gente non veda colori splendidi o effetti sorprendenti. Il guaio è che ne vede troppi e li vede divorziati da ogni ragione. È una sventura del linguaggio moderno che la parola «insignificante» sia vagamente associata alle parole «piccolo» o «lieve». Ma una cosa è insignificante quando non sappiamo che cosa significhi. Un elefante africano che giacesse morto a Ludgate Circus sarebbe insignificante. Vale a dire, non lo si potrebbe riconoscere come il segno o il messaggio di alcunché. Non lo si potrebbe considerare un’allegoria o un pegno d’amore. Non lo si potrebbe nemmeno chiamare un indizio. Allo stesso modo il sistema solare è insignificante. A meno che non abbiate qualche speciale teoria religiosa su ciò che significa, è semplicemente grande e sciocco, come l’elefante a Ludgate Circus. E similmente la vita moderna, con la sua vastità, la sua energia, la sua elaborazione, la sua ricchezza, è, nel senso esatto, insignificante. Nessuno sa che cosa intendiamo; non lo sappiamo neppure noi. Nessuno saprebbe spiegare intelligentemente perché una giacca sia nera, perché un panciotto sia bianco, perché gli asparagi si mangino con le dita, o perché gli omnibus di Hammersmith siano dipinti di rosso. I medievali avevano un’idea assai più forte di stipare in ogni cosa tutto il significato possibile. Se avessero acconsentito a sprecare vernice rossa su un grande e brutto omnibus di Hammersmith, sarebbe stato per suggerire che vi fosse una sorta di sanguinaria magnanimità in Hammersmith. Un leone araldico non assomiglia a un vero leone più di quanto un cappello a cilindro assomigli a un fumaiolo. Ma il leone era inteso come un leone. E il cappello a cilindro non era inteso come un fumaiolo o come alcun’altra cosa. La somiglianza colpì solo certi filosofi (probabilmente monelli di strada) in seguito. Il cilindro non era inteso come un’alta torre non merlata; non era inteso affatto. Questa è la vera bassezza della modernità. Questa è, per esempio, l’unica vera volgarità delle pubblicità. Non è che i colori sui manifesti siano brutti. È che sono fin troppo buoni per l’insignificante lavoro cui servono. Quando finalmente la gente vede — come al Corteo — croci e draghi, leopardi e gigli, non c’è quasi una delle cose che ora vede come simbolo che non abbia già visto come marchio di fabbrica. Se la grande «Assunzione della Vergine» fosse dipinta davanti a loro, potrebbero ricordarsi del Blu della Tal-dei-Tali. Se l’Imperatore della Cina fosse sepolto davanti a loro, le vesti gialle potrebbero ricordare loro la Senape del Tal-dei-Tali. Non abbiamo il compito di predicare il colore e la gaiezza a un popolo che non li ha mai avuti, a Puritani che non li hanno né visti né apprezzati. Abbiamo un compito più arduo. Dobbiamo insegnare ad apprezzarli a coloro che li hanno sempre visti.

On Stage Costume

WHILE watching the other evening a very well-managed reproduction ofA Midsummer Night’s Dream, I had the sudden conviction that the play would be much better if it were acted in modern costume, or, at any rate, in English costume. We all remember hearing in our boyhood about the absurd conventionality of Garrick and Mrs. Siddons, when he acted Macbeth in a tie-wig and a tail-coat, and she acted Lady Macbeth in a crinoline as big and stiff as a cartwheel. This has always been talked of as a piece of comic ignorance or impudent modernity; as if Rosalind appeared in rational dress with a bicycle; as if Portia appeared with a horsehair wig and side-whiskers. But I am not so sure that the great men and women who founded the English stage in the eighteenth century were quite such fools as they looked; especially as they looked to the romantic historians and eager archaeologists of the nineteenth century. I have a queer suspicion that Garrick and Siddons knew nearly as much about dressing as they did about acting.

One distinction can at least be called obvious. Garrick did not care much for the historical costume of Macbeth; but he cared as much as Shakespeare did. He did not know much about that prehistoric and partly mythical Celtic chief; but he knew more than Shakespeare; and he could not conceivably have cared less. Now the Victorian age was honestly interested in the dark and epic origins of Europe; was honestly interested in Picts and Scots, in Celts and Saxons; in the blind drift of the races and the blind drive of the religions. Ossian and the Arthurian revival had interested people in distant dark-headed men who probably never existed. Freeman, Carlyle, and the other Teutonists had interested them in distant fair-headed men who almost certainly never existed. Pusey and Pugin and the first High Churchmen had interested them in shaven-headed men, dark or fair, men who did undoubtedly exist, but whose real merits and defects would have startled their modern admirers very considerably.

Under these circumstances it is not strange that our age should have felt a curiosity about the solid but mysterious Macbeth of the Dark Ages. But all this does not alter the ultimate fact: that the only Macbeth that mankind will ever care about is the Macbeth of Shakespeare, and not the Macbeth of history. When England was romantic it was interested in Macbeth’s kilt and claymore. In the same way, if England becomes a Republic, it will be specially interested in the Republicans inJulius Caesar. If England becomes Roman Catholic, it will be specially interested in the theory of chastity inMeasure for Measure. But being interested in these things will never be the same as being interested in Shakespeare. And for a man interested in Shakespeare, a man merely concerned about what Shakespeare meant, a Macbeth in powdered hair and knee-breeches is perfectly satisfactory. For Macbeth, as Shakespeare shows him, is much more like a man in knee-breeches than a man in a kilt. His subtle hesitations and his suicidal impenitence belong to the bottomless speculations of a highly civilized society. The “Out, out, brief candle” is far more appropriate to the last wax taper after a ball of powder and patches than to the smoky but sustained fires in iron baskets which probably flared and smouldered over the swift crimes of the eleventh century. The real Macbeth probably killed Duncan with the nearest weapon, and then confessed it to the nearest priest. Certainly, he may never have had any such doubts about the normal satisfaction of being alive. However regrettably negligent of the importance of Duncan’s life, he had, I fancy, few philosophical troubles about the importance of his own. The men of the Dark Ages were all optimists, as all children and all animals are. The madness of Shakespeare’s Macbeth goes along with candles and silk stockings. That madness only appears in the age of reason.

So far, then, from Garrick’s anachronism being despised, I should like to see it imitated. Shakespeare got the tale of Theseus from Athens, as he got the tale of Macbeth from Scotland; and having reluctantly seen the names of those two countries in the record, I am convinced that he never gave them another thought. Macbeth is not a Scotchman; he is a man. But Theseus is not only not an Athenian; he is actually and unmistakably an Englishman. He is the Super-Squire; the best version of the English country gentleman; better than Wardle in Pickwick.

The Duke of Athens is a duke (that is, a dook), but not of Athens. That free city is thousands of miles away.

If Theseus came on the stage in gaiters or a shooting-jacket, if Bottom the Weaver wore a smock-frock, if Hermia and Helena were dressed as two modern English schoolgirls, we should not be departing from Shakespeare, but rather returning to him. The cold, classical draperies (of which he probably never dreamed, but with which we drape Aegisthus or Hippolyta) are not only a nuisance, but a falsehood. They misrepresent the whole meaning of the play. For he meaning of the play is that the little things of life as well as the great things stray on the borderland of the unknown. That as a man may fall among devils for a morbid crime, or fall among angels for a small piece of piety or pity, so also he may fall among fairies through an amiable flirtation or a fanciful jealousy. The fact that a back door opens into Elfland is all the more reason for keeping the foregound familiar, and even prosaic. For even the fairies are very neighbourly and firelight fairies; therefore the human beings ought to be very human in order to effect the fantastic contrast. And in Shakespeare they are very human. Hermia the vixen and Helena the maypole are obviously only two excitable and quite modern girls. Hippolyta has never been an Amazon; she may perhaps have once been a Suffragette. Theseus is a gentleman, a thing entirely different from a Greek oligarch. That golden good-nature which employs culture itself to excuse the clumsiness of the uncultured is: thing quite peculiar to those lazier Christian countries where the Christian gentleman has been evolved:

For nothing in this world can be amiss When simpleness and duty tender it.

Or, again, in that noble scrap of sceptical magnanimity which was unaccountably cut out in the last performance:

The best in this kind are but shadows; and the worst are no worse if imagination amend them.

These are obviously the easy and reconciling comments of some kindly but cultivated squire, who will not pretend to his guests that the play is good, but who will not let the actors see that he thinks it bad. But this is certainly not the way in which an Athenian Tory like Aristophanes would have talked about a bad play.

But as the play is dressed and acted at present, the whole idea is inverted. We do not seem to creep out of a human house into a natural wood and find the superhuman and supernatural. The mortals, in their tunics and togas, seem more distant from us than the fairies in their hoods and peaked caps. It is an anticlimax to meet the English elves when we have already encountered the Greek gods. The same mistake, oddly enough, was made in the only modern play worth mentioning in the same street withA Midsummer Night’s Dream, Peter Pan. Sir James Barrie ought to have left out the fairy dog who puts the children to bed. If children had such dogs as that they would never wish to go to fairyland.

This fault or falsity inPeter Pan is, of course repeated in the strange and ungainly incident of the father being chained up in the dog’s kennel. Here, indeed, it is much worse: for the manlike dog was pretty and touching: the doglike man was ignominious and repulsive. But the fallacy is the same; it is the fallacy that weakens the otherwise triumphant poetry and wit of Sir James Barrie’s play; and weakens all our treatment of fairy plays at present. Fairyland is a place of positive realities, plain laws, and a decisive story. The actors ofA Midsummer Night’s Dream seemed to think that the play was meant to be chaotic. The clowns thought they must be always clowning. But in reality it is the solemnity—nay, the conscientiousness— of the yokels that is akin to the mystery of the landscape and the tale.

Il costume di scena

MENTRE l’altra sera guardavo una riproduzione assai ben curata di A Midsummer Night’s Dream, ebbi l’improvvisa convinzione che la commedia sarebbe molto migliore se fosse recitata in costume moderno, o, per lo meno, in costume inglese. Tutti ricordiamo di aver udito nella nostra fanciullezza dell’assurda convenzionalità di Garrick e della signora Siddons, quando egli recitava Macbeth con una parrucca a codino e una marsina, ed ella recitava Lady Macbeth con una crinolina grande e rigida come la ruota di un carro. Di ciò si è sempre parlato come di un pezzo di comica ignoranza o di sfacciata modernità; come se Rosalind apparisse in abito razionale con una bicicletta; come se Portia apparisse con una parrucca di crine e le fedine. Ma non sono così sicuro che i grandi uomini e le grandi donne che fondarono il palcoscenico inglese nel diciottesimo secolo fossero proprio gli sciocchi che parevano; specialmente come parvero agli storici romantici e agli ansiosi archeologi del diciannovesimo secolo. Ho la bizzarra sospetto che Garrick e la Siddons ne sapessero quasi tanto sul vestire quanto sul recitare.

Una distinzione, almeno, può dirsi ovvia. A Garrick non importava granché del costume storico di Macbeth; ma gliene importava tanto quanto ne importava a Shakespeare. Egli non sapeva molto di quel capo celtico preistorico e in parte mitico; ma ne sapeva più di Shakespeare; e non avrebbe potuto concepibilmente importargliene di meno. Ora, l’età vittoriana era onestamente interessata alle oscure ed epiche origini d’Europa; era onestamente interessata ai Pitti e agli Scoti, ai Celti e ai Sassoni; alla cieca deriva delle razze e alla cieca spinta delle religioni. Ossian e il revival arturiano avevano interessato la gente a lontani uomini dai capelli scuri che probabilmente non erano mai esistiti. Freeman, Carlyle e gli altri teutonisti li avevano interessati a lontani uomini dai capelli biondi che quasi certamente non erano mai esistiti. Pusey e Pugin e i primi uomini dell’Alta Chiesa li avevano interessati a uomini dal capo rasato, scuri o biondi, uomini che indubbiamente erano esistiti, ma i cui reali meriti e difetti avrebbero considerevolmente sconcertato i loro moderni ammiratori.

In queste circostanze non è strano che la nostra epoca abbia provato una curiosità per il solido ma misterioso Macbeth dell’Alto Medioevo. Ma tutto ciò non altera il fatto ultimo: che l’unico Macbeth a cui l’umanità mai terrà è il Macbeth di Shakespeare, e non il Macbeth della storia. Quando l’Inghilterra era romantica, s’interessava al kilt e alla claymore di Macbeth. Allo stesso modo, se l’Inghilterra diventasse una Repubblica, s’interesserebbe in modo particolare ai Repubblicani del Julius Caesar. Se l’Inghilterra diventasse cattolica romana, s’interesserebbe in modo particolare alla teoria della castità in Measure for Measure. Ma essere interessati a queste cose non sarà mai la stessa cosa che essere interessati a Shakespeare. E per un uomo interessato a Shakespeare, un uomo che si preoccupi soltanto di ciò che Shakespeare intendeva, un Macbeth con parrucca incipriata e calzoni al ginocchio è perfettamente soddisfacente. Poiché Macbeth, come Shakespeare lo mostra, assomiglia molto più a un uomo in calzoni al ginocchio che a un uomo in kilt. Le sue sottili esitazioni e la sua suicida impenitenza appartengono alle speculazioni senza fondo di una società altamente civilizzata. L’«Out, out, brief candle» è assai più appropriato all’ultima candela di cera dopo un ballo di ciprie e nèi che ai fumosi ma sostenuti fuochi in ceste di ferro che probabilmente divamparono e covarono sui rapidi delitti dell’undicesimo secolo. Il vero Macbeth probabilmente uccise Duncan con l’arma più vicina, e poi lo confessò al prete più vicino. Certamente, egli può non aver mai nutrito simili dubbi sulla normale soddisfazione di essere vivo. Per quanto rammaricabilmente noncurante dell’importanza della vita di Duncan, aveva, immagino, pochi crucci filosofici sull’importanza della propria. Gli uomini dell’Alto Medioevo erano tutti ottimisti, come lo sono tutti i bambini e tutti gli animali. La follia del Macbeth di Shakespeare va di pari passo con le candele e le calze di seta. Quella follia appare solo nell’età della ragione.

Lungi, dunque, dal disprezzare l’anacronismo di Garrick, vorrei vederlo imitato. Shakespeare prese il racconto di Teseo da Atene, così come prese il racconto di Macbeth dalla Scozia; e avendo di malavoglia visto i nomi di quei due paesi nella fonte, sono convinto che non vi abbia mai più ripensato. Macbeth non è uno scozzese; è un uomo. Ma Teseo non solo non è un ateniese; è concretamente e inequivocabilmente un inglese. È il Super-Squire; la miglior versione del gentiluomo di campagna inglese; migliore di Wardle nel Pickwick.

Il Duca d’Atene è un duca (cioè, un dook), ma non d’Atene. Quella libera città è a migliaia di miglia di distanza.

Se Teseo entrasse in scena con le ghette o con una giacca da caccia, se Bottom il Tessitore indossasse un camiciotto da lavoro, se Hermia ed Elena fossero vestite come due moderne scolarette inglesi, non ci staremmo allontanando da Shakespeare, bensì tornando a lui. I freddi drappeggi classici (che egli probabilmente non sognò mai, ma con cui noi drappeggiamo Egisto o Ippolita) non solo sono una seccatura, ma una menzogna. Travisano l’intero significato della commedia. Poiché il significato della commedia è che le piccole cose della vita, così bene come le grandi, vagano sulla frontiera dell’ignoto. Che, come un uomo può cadere tra i demoni per un delitto morboso, o cadere tra gli angeli per un piccolo atto di pietà o di compassione, così anche può cadere tra le fate attraverso un’amabile civetteria o una fantasiosa gelosia. Il fatto che una porta sul retro si apra sul Regno degli Elfi è una ragione di più per mantenere il primo piano familiare, e persino prosaico. Poiché anche le fate sono fate assai vicine e casalinghe, del focolare; perciò gli esseri umani dovrebbero essere assai umani per ottenere il fantastico contrasto. E in Shakespeare essi sono assai umani. Hermia la bisbetica ed Elena la pertica sono ovviamente solo due ragazze eccitabili e del tutto moderne. Ippolita non è mai stata un’Amazzone; può forse essere stata un tempo una Suffragetta. Teseo è un gentiluomo, cosa del tutto diversa da un oligarca greco. Quella dorata bontà d’animo che impiega la cultura stessa per scusare la goffaggine degli incolti è cosa del tutto peculiare a quei più pigri paesi cristiani dove si è evoluto il gentiluomo cristiano:

Poiché nulla in questo mondo può essere sbagliato quando la semplicità e il dovere lo offrono.

Oppure, di nuovo, in quel nobile frammento di scettica magnanimità che fu inspiegabilmente tagliato nell’ultima rappresentazione:

I migliori di questo genere non sono che ombre; e i peggiori non sono peggiori se l’immaginazione li corregge.

Questi sono ovviamente i facili e concilianti commenti di qualche gentile ma colto possidente, che non fingerà con i suoi ospiti che la recita sia buona, ma che non lascerà vedere agli attori che la ritiene cattiva. Ma questo non è certo il modo in cui un Tory ateniese come Aristofane avrebbe parlato di una cattiva recita.

Ma come la commedia è vestita e recitata attualmente, l’intera idea è capovolta. Non sembra che strisciamo fuori da una casa umana in un bosco naturale e vi troviamo il sovrumano e il soprannaturale. I mortali, nelle loro tuniche e toghe, sembrano più distanti da noi delle fate nei loro cappucci e nei loro berretti a punta. È un anticlimax incontrare gli elfi inglesi quando abbiamo già incontrato gli dèi greci. Lo stesso errore, abbastanza stranamente, fu commesso nell’unica commedia moderna che valga la pena di menzionare accanto ad A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Peter Pan. Sir James Barrie avrebbe dovuto tralasciare il cane fatato che mette a letto i bambini. Se i bambini avessero cani simili non desidererebbero mai andare nel paese delle fate.

Questo difetto o falsità in Peter Pan è, naturalmente, ripetuto nello strano e sgraziato episodio del padre incatenato nella cuccia del cane. Qui, in verità, è assai peggio: poiché il cane simile a un uomo era grazioso e commovente; l’uomo simile a un cane era ignominioso e ripugnante. Ma la fallacia è la stessa; è la fallacia che indebolisce l’altrimenti trionfante poesia e arguzia della commedia di Sir James Barrie; e indebolisce tutto il nostro trattamento delle commedie di fate al presente. Il paese delle fate è un luogo di realtà positive, di leggi chiare e di una storia decisa. Gli attori di A Midsummer Night’s Dream sembravano pensare che la commedia dovesse essere caotica. I buffoni pensavano di dover sempre fare i buffoni. Ma in realtà è la solennità — anzi, la scrupolosità — dei villani che è affine al mistero del paesaggio e del racconto.

The Yule Log and the Democrat

A BLASTING sneer has stricken me from time to time, to the effect that I believe in the Fireside Woman. For that matter, in the present season, I believe very much in the Fireside Man. But the very word selected for this withering insinuation shows the shallowness of the philosophy which prompts it. Surely there could not be a more stunted stupidity than the suggestion that a thing must be mild and monotonous because it has to do with fire. Why should the woman be tame because she is nearest to the wildest thing in the world? It is much more absurd to say it is prosaic to live by the fireside, than to say it is prosaic to live upon the edge of a precipice. It is tenable that some people would be prosaic anywhere; but it is not the fault of the precipice. It would sound paradoxical even in a fairy-tale to say that a princess was always yawning with ennui because she was introduced to a golden griffin or a crimson dragon; and in the round of daily fact, fire is about the nearest thing to a dragon that we know. Those who cannot get a fairy-tale out of the fire will not get it out of anything else. It may be affirmed, with fair certainty, that the people who talk most scornfully about the Fireside Woman do not get it at all, and do not wish her to get it at all. Herein lies all the absurdity of the alternatives to domesticity paraded by our progressive friends.

I am not speaking, of course, of work that must be done, especially in abnormal times; I am speaking of the psychology of tedium and of the romance of life. It is apparently demanded that the fire should be concealed in the entrails of an engine; that it should work through a labyrinth of bolts and bars; that it should litter around it numberless dreary offices, and leave behind it a train of indirect and mechanical servants, each further than the last from the least faint vibration of the original energy. Then, if in some outlying shed a woman has to stand counting tickets, or tying up parcels from morning till night, that woman is supposed to be free. She has Burst the Fetters. She is Living Her Own Life. But there is supposed to be nothing but dullness for the woman who is face to face with that elemental fury which drives and fashions the whole. There is nothing poetical (as compared with the tickets and labels) in the woman who repeats the primordial adventure of Prometheus. And there is nothing artistic (as compared with the shed) about the terrestrial light which turns the greyest room to gold; which reclothes the woman’s raggedest children round the hearth with the colours of a company of Fra Angelico, so that the mere reflections of the flame can conquer the solid hues of drab and dust, and all her household is clothed with scarlet.

The fire is in this, perhaps, the finest and simplest symbol of a truth persistently misunderstood. These elementary things, the land, the roof, the family, may seem mean and miserable; and in a cynical civilization very probably will seem mean and miserable. But the things themselves are not mean or miserable; and any reformer who says they are is not only taking hold of the stick by the wrong end, he is cutting off the branch by which he is hanging. The stamp of social failure is not that men have these simple things, but, rather, that they do not have them; or even when they do, do not know that they have them. If the Fireside Woman is dull, it is because she never looks at the fire. It is because she is not, in the wise and philosophical sense, enough of a fire-worshipper. And she lacks this faculty because the whole drift of the modern world discourages that creative concentration, that intensive cultivation of the fancy, which filled the lives of our fathers with crowds of little household gods, and which created all the lesser and lighter sanctities that surround Christmas.

Amid the wild and wandering adventures of the fireside are some which made possible the very scientific progress which is prone to carp at it. The engine, of which I spoke recently, was (we have all been told) suggested because James Watt looked at the kettle. I will not conceal a suspicion that our society might have evolved better if he had looked at the fire. I mean, of course, if he had not only looked at it, but seen it, which is not always the same thing. If he had seen what there is to be seen, he might possibly have done many things. He might, for instance, have revived the Trade Guilds of Glasgow, which failed to grasp his discovery; he might have taught them to take hold of the new energy and turn it towards democracy, instead of going off and handing over his invention to the Capitalists. For the defect which betrayed all Watt’s school and generation, full as it was of a virile and thrifty Radicalism, was precisely that it did not draw from these primal sources of piety and poetry. It was not sufficiently religious, and, therefore, not sufficiently domestic; and the rich rode it down at last. For the hearth is the only possible altar of insurrection, as even the pagans knew; from that fire alone are taken the flaming brands which can really lay waste the wicked cities. The truth can be told well enough by saying that James Watt would not really have comprehended the word Christmas; and would have been much annoyed if told to consider the Yule log instead of the kettle. He was the Fireside Man; but he was not domestic enough to be dangerous. For it is the domestic man and not the wild man, just as it is the domestic dog and not the wild dog, who really fights with thieves and dies at his post. There has not been a genuine popular war in England since the war of Wat Tyler, and the origin of that, it will be remembered, was strictly domestic. It was so domestic that it would not happen at all in the modern world: War Tyler would simply be automatically shot into prison for resisting a rational and necessary scientific inspection. It was the growth of an unhuman and unhomelike philosophy that made all the difference between the War of the fourteenth century and the Watt of the nineteenth. And the spirit of real democracy will not re-emerge until it rises from the fireside and comes forth in the red reality of fire; the giant of Christmas brandishing the Yule log tor a club.

But there is another feature in the flaming hearth which illustrates its natural kinship with Christmas. It is aplace, as Christmas is a time; and these vivid limitations are vital to man as a mystic. It is not merely that the idea of everything being in its right place makes all the difference between a fire in a house and a house on fire. It is that the fireplace is a frame; and it is the frame that creates the picture. By being tied to a special spot the sacred dragon becomes more powerful and, in the high imaginative sense, more free. This is that link between hearths and altars which the heathen felt, and of which I have already spoken. If the household be the heart of politics, the fire is the heart of the household; and the vital organ is spread equally everywhere only in the very low organisms. The universe of the mere universalist is one of the very low organisms. The theosophic generalizations about Nirvana and the All may be compared to the American fashion of abolishing the fireplace altogether and heating the whole house artificially to the same temperature—a depressing habit. I can imagine that a system of hot-water pipes might satisfy a Pantheist; the notion suggests a rather dreary parody of Pan and his pipes. I can imagine that a Buddhist might want his whole house warmed like the palm-house at Kew; but, I think, a limited and localized fire will always be as much associated with Christians as it has always been associated with Christmas.

Shakespeare, himself like a large and liberal fire round which winter tales are told, has hit the mark in this matter exactly, as it concerns the poet or maker of fictive things. Shakespeare does not say that the poet loses himself in the All, that he dissipates concrete things into a cloudy twilight, that he turns this home of ours into a vista or any vaguer thing. He says the exact opposite. It is “a local habitation and a name” that the poet gives to what would otherwise be nothing. This seeming narrowness which men complain of in the altar and the hearth is as broad as Shakespeare and the whole human imagination, and should command the respect even of those who think the cult of Christmas really is all imagination. Even those who can only regard the great story of Bethlehem as a fairy-tale told by the fire will yet agree that such narrowness is the first artistic necessity even of a good fairy-tale. But there are others who think, at least, that their thought strikes deeper and pierces to a more subtle truth in the mind. There are others for whom all our fairy-tales, and even all our appetite for fairy-tales, draw their fire from one central fairy-tale, as all forgeries draw their significance from a signature. They believe that this fable is a fact, and that the other fables cannot really be appreciated even as fables until we know it is a fact. For them, personality is a step beyond universality; one might almost call it an escape from universality. And what they follow is as much something more than Pantheism as a flame is something more than a temperature. For them, God is not bound down and limited by being merely everything; He is also at liberty to be something. And for them Christmas will always deal with a reality exactly as Shakespeare’s poetry deals with an unreality; it will give, not to airy nothing, but to the enormous and overwhelming everything, a local habitation and a Name.

Il ceppo natalizio e il democratico

UN sarcasmo devastante mi ha colpito di tempo in tempo, nel senso che io crederei nella Donna del Focolare. Del resto, in questa stagione, credo assai nell’Uomo del Focolare. Ma la parola stessa scelta per questa micidiale insinuazione mostra la superficialità della filosofia che la ispira. Di certo non potrebbe esservi stupidità più striminzita del suggerimento che una cosa debba essere mite e monotona perché ha a che fare con il fuoco. Perché mai la donna dovrebbe essere docile perché è la più vicina alla cosa più selvaggia del mondo? È assai più assurdo dire che è prosaico vivere accanto al focolare, che dire che è prosaico vivere sull’orlo di un precipizio. È sostenibile che alcune persone sarebbero prosaiche ovunque; ma non è colpa del precipizio. Suonerebbe paradossale persino in una fiaba dire che una principessa sbadigliava sempre per la noia perché le veniva presentato un grifone d’oro o un drago cremisi; e nel giro del fatto quotidiano, il fuoco è quasi la cosa più prossima a un drago che conosciamo. Coloro che non sanno trarre una fiaba dal fuoco non la trarranno da nient’altro. Si può affermare, con discreta certezza, che le persone che parlano con più disprezzo della Donna del Focolare non la traggono affatto, e non desiderano affatto che ella la tragga. In ciò sta tutta l’assurdità delle alternative alla domesticità sbandierate dai nostri amici progressisti.

Non sto parlando, naturalmente, del lavoro che deve essere fatto, specialmente in tempi anormali; sto parlando della psicologia del tedio e del romanzesco della vita. Si pretende, a quanto pare, che il fuoco sia celato nelle viscere di un motore; che lavori attraverso un labirinto di bulloni e sbarre; che sparpaglii intorno a sé innumerevoli tetri uffici, e si lasci dietro un séguito di servitori indiretti e meccanici, ciascuno più lontano del precedente dalla più fioca vibrazione dell’energia originaria. Allora, se in qualche capanno periferico una donna deve stare a contare biglietti, o a legare pacchi da mattina a sera, quella donna si suppone sia libera. Ella ha Spezzato le Catene. Sta Vivendo la Sua Vita. Ma si suppone che non vi sia nient’altro che noia per la donna che si trova faccia a faccia con quella furia elementare che spinge e plasma il tutto. Non c’è nulla di poetico (in confronto ai biglietti e alle etichette) nella donna che ripete la primordiale avventura di Prometeo. E non c’è nulla di artistico (in confronto al capanno) nella luce terrestre che tramuta in oro la stanza più grigia; che riveste i figli più cenciosi della donna, attorno al focolare, dei colori di una compagnia di Fra Angelico, così che i meri riflessi della fiamma possono vincere le tinte solide del grigiore e della polvere, e tutta la sua famiglia è vestita di scarlatto.

Il fuoco è forse, in questo, il più bello e semplice simbolo di una verità persistentemente fraintesa. Queste cose elementari — la terra, il tetto, la famiglia — possono sembrare meschine e miserabili; e in una civiltà cinica assai probabilmente sembreranno meschine e miserabili. Ma le cose in sé non sono meschine o miserabili; e ogni riformatore che dice che lo sono non solo afferra il bastone dalla parte sbagliata, ma taglia il ramo a cui è appeso. Il marchio del fallimento sociale non è che gli uomini abbiano queste cose semplici, ma piuttosto che non le abbiano; o che, anche quando le hanno, non sappiano di averle. Se la Donna del Focolare è insulsa, è perché non guarda mai il fuoco. È perché non è, nel senso saggio e filosofico, abbastanza adoratrice del fuoco. E le manca questa facoltà perché tutta la deriva del mondo moderno scoraggia quella creativa concentrazione, quella intensiva coltivazione della fantasia, che riempiva le vite dei nostri padri di schiere di piccoli dèi domestici, e che creava tutte le minori e più lievi sacralità che circondano il Natale.

Tra le selvagge ed erranti avventure del focolare ve ne sono alcune che resero possibile proprio quel progresso scientifico che è incline a criticarlo. Il motore, di cui ho parlato poc’anzi, fu (ci è stato detto a tutti) suggerito perché James Watt guardò il bollitore. Non celerò il sospetto che la nostra società si sarebbe forse evoluta meglio se egli avesse guardato il fuoco. Intendo, naturalmente, se non solo l’avesse guardato, ma l’avesse visto, il che non è sempre la stessa cosa. Se avesse visto ciò che c’è da vedere, avrebbe forse potuto fare molte cose. Avrebbe potuto, per esempio, far rivivere le Corporazioni di Mestiere di Glasgow, che non seppero cogliere la sua scoperta; avrebbe potuto insegnar loro a impadronirsi della nuova energia e volgerla verso la democrazia, invece di andarsene e consegnare la sua invenzione ai Capitalisti. Poiché il difetto che tradì tutta la scuola e la generazione di Watt, per quanto piena di un virile e parsimonioso Radicalismo, fu precisamente che essa non attinse a queste sorgenti primordiali di pietà e di poesia. Non era sufficientemente religiosa, e, perciò, non sufficientemente domestica; e i ricchi alla fine la calpestarono. Poiché il focolare è l’unico possibile altare dell’insurrezione, come persino i pagani sapevano; da quel fuoco soltanto sono tratti i tizzoni fiammeggianti che possono davvero devastare le città malvagie. La verità può essere detta abbastanza bene dicendo che James Watt non avrebbe realmente compreso la parola Natale; e sarebbe stato assai infastidito se gli fosse stato detto di considerare il ceppo natalizio invece del bollitore. Egli era l’Uomo del Focolare; ma non era abbastanza domestico da essere pericoloso. Poiché è l’uomo domestico e non l’uomo selvaggio, proprio come è il cane domestico e non il cane selvaggio, che davvero combatte con i ladri e muore al suo posto. Non c’è stata una genuina guerra popolare in Inghilterra dalla guerra di Wat Tyler, e l’origine di quella, si ricorderà, fu strettamente domestica. Era così domestica che non accadrebbe affatto nel mondo moderno: Wat Tyler verrebbe semplicemente e automaticamente sbattuto in prigione per aver resistito a una razionale e necessaria ispezione scientifica. Fu la crescita di una filosofia disumana e non casalinga a fare tutta la differenza tra la Guerra del quattordicesimo secolo e il Watt del diciannovesimo. E lo spirito della vera democrazia non riemergerà finché non si leverà dal focolare e verrà avanti nella rossa realtà del fuoco; il gigante del Natale che brandisce il ceppo natalizio come una clava.

Ma vi è un altro tratto nel focolare fiammeggiante che illustra la sua naturale parentela col Natale. Esso è un luogo, come il Natale è un tempo; e queste vivide limitazioni sono vitali per l’uomo in quanto mistico. Non è soltanto che l’idea che ogni cosa sia al proprio giusto posto fa tutta la differenza tra un fuoco in una casa e una casa in fiamme. È che il focolare è una cornice; ed è la cornice che crea il quadro. Con l’essere legato a un punto speciale, il sacro drago diventa più potente e, in senso altamente immaginativo, più libero. Questo è quel legame tra focolari e altari che il pagano sentiva, e di cui ho già parlato. Se la famiglia è il cuore della politica, il fuoco è il cuore della famiglia; e l’organo vitale è diffuso egualmente ovunque soltanto negli organismi molto bassi. L’universo del mero universalista è uno degli organismi molto bassi. Le generalizzazioni teosofiche sul Nirvana e sul Tutto possono essere paragonate all’usanza americana di abolire del tutto il focolare e riscaldare l’intera casa artificialmente alla medesima temperatura — un’abitudine deprimente. Posso immaginare che un sistema di tubi d’acqua calda possa soddisfare un Panteista; l’idea suggerisce una parodia piuttosto tetra di Pan e delle sue zampogne. Posso immaginare che un Buddhista possa volere l’intera sua casa riscaldata come la serra delle palme a Kew; ma, credo, un fuoco limitato e localizzato sarà sempre associato ai Cristiani tanto quanto è sempre stato associato al Natale.

Shakespeare, egli stesso simile a un grande e liberale fuoco attorno al quale si narrano i racconti d’inverno, ha colto nel segno esattamente in questa faccenda, per quanto concerne il poeta o creatore di cose fittizie. Shakespeare non dice che il poeta si perde nel Tutto, che dissolve le cose concrete in un nebuloso crepuscolo, che tramuta questa nostra dimora in una prospettiva o in qualcosa di più vago. Egli dice l’esatto contrario. È «una locale abitazione e un nome» che il poeta dà a ciò che altrimenti sarebbe nulla. Questa apparente angustia di cui gli uomini si lamentano nell’altare e nel focolare è vasta quanto Shakespeare e l’intera immaginazione umana, e dovrebbe imporre il rispetto persino di coloro che pensano che il culto del Natale sia davvero tutta immaginazione. Persino coloro che possono considerare la grande storia di Betlemme soltanto come una fiaba narrata accanto al fuoco converranno tuttavia che una simile angustia è la prima necessità artistica anche di una buona fiaba. Ma vi sono altri che pensano, per lo meno, che il loro pensiero affondi più a fondo e penetri fino a una più sottile verità nella mente. Vi sono altri per i quali tutte le nostre fiabe, e persino tutto il nostro appetito di fiabe, traggono il loro fuoco da una fiaba centrale, come tutte le falsificazioni traggono il loro significato da una firma. Essi credono che questa favola sia un fatto, e che le altre favole non possano essere realmente apprezzate nemmeno come favole finché non sappiamo che essa è un fatto. Per loro, la personalità è un passo oltre l’universalità; la si potrebbe quasi chiamare una fuga dall’universalità. E ciò che essi seguono è tanto più qualcosa che va oltre il Panteismo quanto una fiamma è qualcosa che va oltre una temperatura. Per loro, Dio non è vincolato e limitato dall’essere semplicemente ogni cosa; è anche libero di essere qualcosa. E per loro il Natale avrà sempre a che fare con una realtà esattamente come la poesia di Shakespeare ha a che fare con un’irrealtà; darà, non a un aereo nulla, ma all’enorme e travolgente tutto, una locale abitazione e un Nome.

More Thoughts on Christmas

MOST sensible people say that adults cannot be expected to appreciate Christmas as much as children appreciate it. At least, Mr. G. S. Street said so, who is the most sensible man now writing in the English language. But I am not sure that even sensible people are always right; and this has been my principal reason for deciding to be silly—a decision that is now irrevocable. It may be only because I am silly, but I rather think that, relatively to the rest of the year, I enjoy Christmas more than I did when I was a child. Of course, children do enjoy Christmas—they enjoy almost everything except actually being smacked: from which truth the custom no doubt arose. But the real point is not whether a schoolboy would enjoy Christmas. The point is that he would also enjoy No Christmas. Now I say most emphatically that I should denounce, detest, abominate, and abjure the insolent institution of No Christmas. The child is glad to find a new ball, let us say, which Uncle William (dressed as St. Nicholas in everything except the halo) has put in his stocking. But if he had no new ball, he would make a hundred new balls out of the snow. And for them he would be indebted not to Christmas, but to winter. I suppose snowballing is being put down by the police, like every other Christian custom. No more will a prosperous and serious City man have a large silver star splashed suddenly on his waistcoat, veritably investing him with the Order of the Star of Bethlehem. For it is the star of innocence and novelty, and should remind him that a child can still be born. But indeed, in one sense, we may truly say the children enjoy no seasons, because they enjoy all. I myself am of the physical type that greatly prefers cold weather to hot; and I could more easily believe that Eden was at the North Pole than anywhere in the Tropics. It is hard to define the effect of weather: I can only say that all the rest of the year I am untidy, but in summer I feel untidy. Yet although (according to the modern biologists) my hereditary human body must have been of the same essential type in my boyhood as in my present decrepitude, I can distinctly remember hailing the idea of freedom and even energy on days that were quite horribly hot. It was the excellent custom at my school to give the boys a half-holiday when it seemed too hot for working. And I can well remember the gigantic joy with which I left off reading Virgil and began to run round and round a field. My tastes in this matter have changed. Nay, they have been reversed. If I now found myself (by some process I cannot easily conjecture) on a burning summer day running round and round a field, I hope I shall not appear pedantic if I say I should prefer to be reading Virgil.

And thus it is really possible, from one point of view, for elderly gentlemen to frolic at Christmas more than children can. They may really come to find Christmas more entertaining, as they have come to find Virgil more entertaining. And, in spite of all the talk about the coldness of classicism, the poet who wrote about the man who in his own country home fears neither King nor crowd was not by any means incapable of understanding Mr. Wardle. And it is exactly those sentiments, and similar ones, that the adult does appreciate better than the child. The adult, for instance, appreciates domesticity better than the child. And one of the pillars and first principles of domesticity, as Mr. Belloc has rightly pointed out, is the institution of private property. The Christmas pudding represents the mature mystery of property; and the proof of it is in the eating.

I have always held that Peter Pan was wrong. He was a charming boy, and sincere in his adventurousness; but though he was brave like a boy, he was also a coward—like a boy. He admitted it would be a great adventure to die; but it did not seem to occur to him that it would be a great adventure to live. If he had consented to march with the fraternity of his fellow-creatures, he would have found that there were solid experiences and important revelations even in growing up. They are realities which could not possibly have been made real to him without wrecking the real good in his own juvenile point of view. But that is exactly why he ought to have done as he was told. That is the only argument for parental authority. In dealing with childhood, we have a right to command it—because we should kill the childhood if we convinced it.

Now the mistake of Peter Pan is the mistake of the new theory of life. I might call it Peter Pantheism. It is the notion that there isno advantage in striking root. Yet, if you talk intelligently to the nearest tree, the tree will tell you that you are an unobservant ass. There is an advantage in root; and the name of it is fruit. It is not true that the nomad is even freer than the peasant. The Bedouin may rush past on his camel, leaving a whirl of dust; but dust is not free because it flies. Neither is the nomad free because he flies. You cannot grow cabbages on a camel, any more than in a condemned cell. Moreover, I believe camels commonly walk in a comparatively leisurely manner. Anyhow, most merely nomadic creatures do, for it is a great nuisance to “carry one’s house with one.” Gipsies do it; so do snails; but neither of them travel very fast. I inhabit one of the smallest houses that can be conceived by the cultivated classes; but I frankly confess I should be sorry to carry it with me whenever I went out for a walk. It is true that some motorists almost live in their motor-cars. But it gratifies me to state that these motorists generally die in their motor-cars too. They perish, I am pleased to say, in a startling and horrible manner, as a judgment on them for trying to outstrip creatures higher than themselves—such as the gipsy and the snail. But, broadly speaking, a house is a thing that stands still. And a thing that stands still is a thing that strikes root. One of the things that strike root is Christmas: and another is middle-age. The other great pillar of private life besides property is marriage; but I will not deal with it here. Suppose a man has neither wife nor child: suppose he has only a good servant, or only a small garden, or only a small house, or only a small dog. He will still find he has struck unintentional root.

He realizes there is something in his own garden that was not even in the Garden of Eden; and therefore is not (I kiss my hand to the Socialists) in Kew Gardens or in Kensington Gardens. He realizes, what Peter Pan could not be made to realize, that a plain human house of one’s own, standing in one’s own backyard, is really quite as romantic as a rather cloudy house at the top of a tree or a highly conspiratorial house underneath the roots of it. But this is because he has explored his own house, which Peter Pan and such discontented children seldom do. All the same, the children ought to think of the Never-Never Land—the world that is outside. But we ought to think of the Ever-Ever Land—the world which is inside, and the world which will last. And that is why, wicked as we are, we know most about Christmas.

Altri pensieri sul Natale

La maggior parte delle persone assennate dice che non ci si può aspettare che gli adulti apprezzino il Natale quanto lo apprezzano i bambini. Almeno così ha detto Mr. G. S. Street, che è l’uomo più assennato che oggi scriva in lingua inglese. Ma non sono sicuro che perfino le persone assennate abbiano sempre ragione; e questa è stata la mia ragione principale per decidere di essere sciocco — decisione ormai irrevocabile. Sarà forse solo perché sono sciocco, ma sono piuttosto propenso a credere che, rispetto al resto dell’anno, io goda del Natale più di quanto ne godessi quando ero bambino. Certo, i bambini godono del Natale — godono di quasi tutto, tranne che di essere effettivamente sculacciati: da quale verità senza dubbio nacque l’usanza. Ma il punto vero non è se uno scolaretto goda del Natale. Il punto è che godrebbe anche del Non-Natale. Ora io dico con la massima enfasi che dovrei denunciare, detestare, aborrire e abiurare l’insolente istituzione del Non-Natale. Il bambino è lieto di trovare, poniamo, una palla nuova che lo zio William (vestito da san Nicola in tutto tranne che nell’aureola) gli ha messo nella calza. Ma se non avesse una palla nuova, ne farebbe cento di nuove con la neve. E per quelle sarebbe debitore non al Natale, ma all’inverno. Suppongo che le battaglie a palle di neve vengano proibite dalla polizia, come ogni altra usanza cristiana. Mai più un prospero e serio uomo di città si vedrà schizzare all’improvviso una grande stella d’argento sul panciotto, che davvero lo investa dell’Ordine della Stella di Betlemme. Poiché è la stella dell’innocenza e della novità, e dovrebbe ricordargli che un bambino può ancora nascere. Ma in verità, in un certo senso, possiamo dire davvero che i bambini non godono di nessuna stagione, perché godono di tutte. Io stesso sono di quel tipo fisico che preferisce di gran lunga il freddo al caldo; e potrei credere più facilmente che l’Eden fosse al Polo Nord piuttosto che in qualche luogo dei Tropici. È difficile definire l’effetto del tempo atmosferico: posso solo dire che per tutto il resto dell’anno sono in disordine, ma d’estate mi sento in disordine. Eppure, benché (secondo i moderni biologi) il mio ereditario corpo umano dovesse essere essenzialmente dello stesso tipo nella mia fanciullezza come nella mia presente decrepitezza, ricordo distintamente di aver salutato l’idea della libertà e perfino dell’energia in giorni orribilmente caldi. Era l’eccellente usanza della mia scuola concedere ai ragazzi un mezzo giorno di vacanza quando pareva troppo caldo per lavorare. E ricordo bene la gigantesca gioia con cui smettevo di leggere Virgilio e cominciavo a correre in tondo per un campo. I miei gusti in questa faccenda sono cambiati. Anzi, si sono capovolti. Se ora mi ritrovassi (per un qualche procedimento che non riesco facilmente a congetturare), in un ardente giorno d’estate, a correre in tondo per un campo, spero di non apparire pedante se dico che preferirei leggere Virgilio.

E così è davvero possibile, da un certo punto di vista, che gli anziani gentiluomini facciano baldoria a Natale più di quanto possano i bambini. Possono davvero arrivare a trovare il Natale più divertente, così come sono arrivati a trovare Virgilio più divertente. E, nonostante tutte le chiacchiere sulla freddezza del classicismo, il poeta che scrisse dell’uomo che nella propria casa in patria non teme né re né folla non era affatto incapace di comprendere Mr. Wardle. Ed è precisamente quei sentimenti, e altri simili, che l’adulto apprezza meglio del bambino. L’adulto, per esempio, apprezza la domesticità meglio del bambino. E uno dei pilastri e primi principii della domesticità, come Mr. Belloc ha giustamente indicato, è l’istituto della proprietà privata. Il budino di Natale rappresenta il maturo mistero della proprietà; e la prova ne è nel mangiarlo.

Ho sempre sostenuto che Peter Pan aveva torto. Era un ragazzo affascinante, e sincero nella sua avventurosità; ma benché fosse coraggioso come un ragazzo, era anche vigliacco — come un ragazzo. Ammetteva che sarebbe stata una grande avventura morire; ma non pareva venirgli in mente che sarebbe stata una grande avventura vivere. Se avesse acconsentito a marciare con la fratellanza dei suoi simili, avrebbe scoperto che vi erano solide esperienze e importanti rivelazioni perfino nel crescere. Sono realtà che non avrebbero potuto in alcun modo essergli rese reali senza mandare in rovina il vero bene del suo giovanile punto di vista. Ma è esattamente per questo che avrebbe dovuto fare come gli si diceva. È l’unico argomento a favore dell’autorità dei genitori. Nel trattare con l’infanzia, abbiamo il diritto di comandarla — perché ne uccideremmo l’infanzia se la convincessimo.

Ora l’errore di Peter Pan è l’errore della nuova teoria della vita. Potrei chiamarlo Peter Panteismo. È la nozione che non vi sia alcun vantaggio nel mettere radici. Eppure, se parlate con intelligenza all’albero più vicino, l’albero vi dirà che siete un asino privo di osservazione. C’è un vantaggio nella radice; e il suo nome è frutto. Non è vero che il nomade sia perfino più libero del contadino. Il beduino può passare in corsa sul suo cammello, lasciando un turbine di polvere; ma la polvere non è libera perché vola. Né il nomade è libero perché vola. Non si possono coltivare cavoli su un cammello, non più che in una cella di condannato. Del resto, credo che i cammelli comunemente camminino in modo relativamente tranquillo. Comunque sia, la maggior parte delle creature meramente nomadi lo fa, poiché è un gran fastidio “portarsi appresso la propria casa”. Lo fanno gli zingari; così le lumache; ma né gli uni né le altre viaggiano molto veloci. Io abito una delle più piccole case che le classi colte possano concepire; ma confesso francamente che mi dispiacerebbe portarmela dietro ogni volta che esco a passeggio. È vero che certi automobilisti vivono quasi nelle loro automobili. Ma mi compiaccio di constatare che questi automobilisti generalmente muoiono anche nelle loro automobili. Periscono, sono lieto di dire, in maniera sorprendente e orribile, come giudizio per aver tentato di sopravanzare creature più alte di loro — come lo zingaro e la lumaca. Ma, in linea di massima, una casa è una cosa che sta ferma. E una cosa che sta ferma è una cosa che mette radici. Una delle cose che mettono radici è il Natale: e un’altra è la mezza età. L’altro grande pilastro della vita privata, oltre alla proprietà, è il matrimonio; ma non me ne occuperò qui. Supponete che un uomo non abbia né moglie né figlio: supponete che abbia solo un buon domestico, o solo un piccolo giardino, o solo una piccola casa, o solo un piccolo cane. Scoprirà comunque di aver messo radici senza volerlo.

Egli si rende conto che c’è qualcosa nel suo stesso giardino che non era nemmeno nel Giardino dell’Eden; e perciò non è (mando un bacio ai socialisti) nei Kew Gardens o nei Kensington Gardens. Si rende conto, ciò che a Peter Pan non si poteva far capire, che una semplice casa umana propria, che si erge nel proprio cortile, è davvero tanto romantica quanto una piuttosto nuvolosa casa in cima a un albero o una assai cospiratoria casa sotto le sue radici. Ma questo perché egli ha esplorato la propria casa, cosa che Peter Pan e simili bambini scontenti fanno di rado. Nondimeno, i bambini dovrebbero pensare all’Isola-che-non-c’è — il mondo che è di fuori. Ma noi dovremmo pensare alla Terra-che-sempre-sarà — il mondo che è dentro, e il mondo che durerà. Ed è per questo che, malvagi come siamo, sappiamo più di ogni altro cosa sia il Natale.

Dickens Again

I AM sorry that the comic costume festival which was organized for Christmas by one of the chief Dickensian societies has unavoidably fallen through. It is not for me to reproach those traitors who found it impossible to turn up: for I was one of those traitors myself. Whatever character it was that I was expected to appear in—Jingle, I suppose, or possibly Uriah Heep—was, under a final press of business, refused by me. These Dickensian enthusiasts were going to have a Christmas party at Rochester, where they would brew punch and drink punch, and drive coaches and fall off coaches, and do all the proper Pickwickian things. How many of them were ready to make a hole in the ice, to be wheeled about in a wheelbarrow, or to wait all night outside a ladies’ school, the official documents have not informed me. But I would gladly take a moderate part. I could not brew punch for the Pickwick Club; but I could drink it. I could not drive the coach for the Pickwick Club—or, indeed, for any club except the Suicide Club; but I could fall off the coach amid repeated applause and enthusiastic encores. 1 should be only too proud if it could be said of me, as of Sam’s hyperbolical old gentleman who was tipped into the hyperbolical canal, that “‘is ‘at was found, but I can’t be certain ‘is ‘ead was in it.” It seems to me like a euthanasia: more beautiful than the passing of Arthur.

But though the failure of this particular festivity was merely accidental (like my own unfortunate fall off the coach), it is not without its parallel in the present position of Dickensians and Christmas. For the truth is that we simply cannot recreate the Pickwick Club— unless we have a moral basis as sturdy as that of Dickens, and even a religious basis as sturdy as that of Christmas. Men at such a time turn their backs to the solemn thing they are celebrating, as the horses turn their backs to the coach. But they are pulling the coach. And the best of it is this: that so long as the Christmas feast had some kind of assumed and admitted meaning, it was praised, and praised sympathetically, by the great men whom we should call most unsympathetic with it. That Shakespeare and Dickens and Walter Scott should write of it seems quite natural. They were people who would be as welcome at Christmas as Santa Claus. But I do not think many people have ever wished they could ask Milton to eat the Christmas pudding. Nevertheless, it is quite certain that his Christmas ode is not only one of the richest but one of the most human of his masterpieces. I do not think that anyone specially wanting a rollicking article on Christmas would desire, by mere instinct, the literary style of Addison. Yet it is quite certain that the somewhat difficult task of really liking Addison is rendered easier by his account of the Coverley Christmas than by anything else he wrote. I even go so far as to doubt whether one of the little Cratchits (who stuffed their spoons in their mouths lest they should scream for goose) would have removed the spoon to say, “Oh, that Tennyson were here!” Yet certainly Tennyson’s spirits do seem to revive in a more or less real way at the ringing of the Christmas bells in the most melancholy part ofIn Memoriam. These great men were not trying to be merry: some of them, indeed, were trying to be miserable. But the day itself was too strong for them; the time was more than their temperaments; the tradition was alive. The festival was roaring in the streets, so that prigs and even prophets (who are sometimes worse still) were honestly carried off their feet.

The difficulty with Dickens is not any failure in Dickens, nor even in the popularity of Dickens. On the contrary, he has recaptured his creative reputation and fascination far more than any of the other great Victorians. Macaulay, who was really great in his way, is rejected; Cobbett, who was much greater, is forgotten. Dickens is not merely alive: he is risen from the dead. But the difficulty is in the failing under his feet, as it were, of that firm historic platform on which he had performed his Christmas pantomimes: a platform of which he was quite as unconscious as we, most of us, are of the floor we walk about on. The fact is that the fun of Christmas is founded on the seriousness of Christmas; and to pull away the latter support even from under a Christmas clown is to let him down through a trap-door. And even clowns do not like the trap-doors true that so glorious a thing as a Pickwick party tends to lose the splendid quality of a mere Mummery, and become that much more dull and conventional thing, a Covent Garden Ball. We are not ourselves living in the proper spirit of Pickwick. We are pretending to be old Dickens characters, when we ought to be new Dickens characters in reality.

The conditions are further complicated by the fact that while reading Dickens may make a man Dickensian, studying Dickens makes him quite the reverse. One might as well expect the aged custodian of a museum of sculpture to look (and dress) like the Apollo Belvedere, as expect the Pickwickian qualities in those literary critics who are attracted by the Dickens fiction as the materials for a biography or the subject of a controversy; as a mass of detail; as a record and a riddle. Those who study such things are a most valuable class of the community, and they do good service to Dickens in their own way. But their type and temperament are not, in the nature of things, likely to be full of the festive magic of their master. Take, for example, these endless discussions about the proper ending ofEdwin Drood. I thought Mr. William Archer’s contributions to the query some time ago were particularly able and interesting; but I could not, with my hand on my heart, call Mr. William Archer a festive gentleman, or one supremely fitted to follow Mr. Swiveller as Perpetual Grand of the Glorious Apollos. Or again, I see that Sir William Robertson Nicoll has been writing on the same Drood mystery; and I know that his knowledge of Victorian literature is both vast and exact. But I hardly think that a Puritan Scot with a sharp individualistic philosophy would be the right person to fall off the coach. Sir William Nicoll, if I remember right, once forcibly described his individualist philosophy as “firing out the fools.” And certainly the spirit of Dickens could be best described as the delight in firing them in. It is exactly because Christmas is not only a feast of children, but in some sense a feast of fools, that Dickens is in touch with its mystery.

Dickens ancora

Mi dispiace che la comica festa in costume organizzata per il Natale da una delle principali società dickensiane sia inevitabilmente andata a monte. Non tocca a me rimproverare quei traditori che trovarono impossibile presentarsi: poiché io stesso ero uno di quei traditori. Qualunque personaggio dovessi impersonare — Jingle, suppongo, o forse Uriah Heep — l’ho rifiutato, sotto una definitiva pressione di impegni. Questi entusiasti dickensiani stavano per tenere una festa di Natale a Rochester, dove avrebbero preparato il punch e bevuto il punch, e guidato carrozze e sarebbero caduti dalle carrozze, e avrebbero fatto tutte le debite cose pickwickiane. Quanti di loro fossero pronti a fare un buco nel ghiaccio, a farsi trasportare in una carriola, o ad aspettare tutta la notte fuori da un collegio femminile, i documenti ufficiali non me l’hanno riferito. Ma io prenderei volentieri una parte moderata. Non saprei preparare il punch per il Club Pickwick; ma potrei berlo. Non saprei guidare la carrozza per il Club Pickwick — né, in verità, per alcun club tranne il Club dei Suicidi; ma potrei cadere dalla carrozza tra ripetuti applausi ed entusiastici bis. Sarei fin troppo fiero se si potesse dire di me, come del vecchio gentiluomo iperbolico di Sam che fu rovesciato nel canale iperbolico, che «‘l suo cappello fu ritrovato, ma non posso esser certo che ci fosse dentro ‘la testa». Mi sembra una specie di eutanasia: più bella del trapasso di Arthur.

Ma benché il fallimento di questa particolare festa fosse meramente accidentale (come la mia stessa sventurata caduta dalla carrozza), esso non è privo di paralleli nell’attuale posizione dei dickensiani e del Natale. Poiché la verità è che semplicemente non possiamo ricreare il Club Pickwick — a meno di non avere una base morale salda quanto quella di Dickens, e perfino una base religiosa salda quanto quella del Natale. Gli uomini, in un tale momento, voltano le spalle alla cosa solenne che stanno celebrando, come i cavalli voltano le spalle alla carrozza. Ma stanno tirando la carrozza. E il bello è questo: che finché la festa di Natale ebbe una qualche sorta di significato presupposto e ammesso, essa fu lodata, e lodata con simpatia, dai grandi uomini che diremmo i meno inclini alla simpatia verso di essa. Che Shakespeare e Dickens e Walter Scott ne scrivessero pare del tutto naturale. Erano gente che a Natale sarebbe stata gradita quanto Babbo Natale. Ma non credo che molti abbiano mai desiderato di poter chiedere a Milton di mangiare il budino di Natale. Ciò nondimeno, è del tutto certo che la sua ode natalizia è non solo una delle più ricche ma una delle più umane fra le sue opere maggiori. Non credo che qualcuno il quale volesse in modo particolare un articolo gioioso sul Natale desidererebbe, per puro istinto, lo stile letterario di Addison. Eppure è del tutto certo che il compito alquanto arduo di apprezzare davvero Addison è reso più facile dal suo resoconto del Natale a Coverley che da qualsiasi altra cosa egli abbia scritto. Mi spingo perfino a dubitare che uno dei piccoli Cratchit (che si cacciavano i cucchiai in bocca per non mettersi a strillare per l’oca) avrebbe tolto il cucchiaio per dire: «Oh, se solo Tennyson fosse qui!». Eppure di certo gli spiriti di Tennyson paiono ravvivarsi in maniera più o meno reale al suono delle campane di Natale nella parte più malinconica di In Memoriam. Questi grandi uomini non cercavano di essere allegri: alcuni di loro, anzi, cercavano di essere infelici. Ma il giorno stesso era troppo forte per loro; il momento era più dei loro temperamenti; la tradizione era viva. La festa ruggiva per le strade, sicché i saccenti e perfino i profeti (che talora sono anche peggio) venivano onestamente travolti.

La difficoltà con Dickens non è un qualche difetto di Dickens, e nemmeno della popolarità di Dickens. Al contrario, egli ha riconquistato la sua reputazione e il suo fascino di creatore assai più di qualsiasi altro dei grandi vittoriani. Macaulay, che a suo modo era davvero grande, è respinto; Cobbett, che era assai più grande, è dimenticato. Dickens non è semplicemente vivo: è risorto dai morti. Ma la difficoltà sta nel venir meno, per così dire, sotto i suoi piedi, di quella salda piattaforma storica su cui aveva eseguito le sue pantomime natalizie: una piattaforma della quale egli era tanto inconsapevole quanto la maggior parte di noi lo è del pavimento su cui cammina. Il fatto è che l’allegria del Natale è fondata sulla serietà del Natale; e togliere quest’ultimo sostegno perfino da sotto un pagliaccio natalizio significa farlo precipitare attraverso una botola. E persino i pagliacci non amano le botole; sicché una cosa tanto gloriosa quanto una festa Pickwick tende a perdere la splendida qualità di una semplice mascherata, e a diventare quella cosa assai più scialba e convenzionale che è un ballo di Covent Garden. Noi stessi non viviamo nel giusto spirito di Pickwick. Fingiamo di essere vecchi personaggi di Dickens, quando dovremmo essere in realtà nuovi personaggi di Dickens.

Le condizioni sono ulteriormente complicate dal fatto che, mentre leggere Dickens può rendere un uomo dickensiano, studiare Dickens lo rende tutto il contrario. Tanto bene potrebbe aspettarsi che l’anziano custode di un museo di scultura assomigliasse (e si vestisse) come l’Apollo del Belvedere, quanto aspettarsi le qualità pickwickiane in quei critici letterari che sono attratti dalla narrativa di Dickens come materiale per una biografia o come oggetto di una controversia; come una massa di dettagli; come un documento e un enigma. Coloro che studiano tali cose sono una classe assai preziosa della comunità, e rendono un buon servizio a Dickens a modo loro. Ma il loro tipo e temperamento non è, per la natura delle cose, verosimilmente colmo della festosa magia del loro maestro. Si prendano, per esempio, queste interminabili discussioni sul giusto finale di Edwin Drood. Trovai i contributi di Mr. William Archer alla questione, qualche tempo fa, particolarmente abili e interessanti; ma non potrei, con la mano sul cuore, definire Mr. William Archer un gentiluomo festoso, o uno supremamente adatto a succedere a Mr. Swiveller quale Gran Perpetuo dei Gloriosi Apolli. O ancora, vedo che Sir William Robertson Nicoll ha scritto sullo stesso mistero di Drood; e so che la sua conoscenza della letteratura vittoriana è al tempo stesso vasta ed esatta. Ma non credo affatto che uno scozzese puritano con una tagliente filosofia individualistica sarebbe la persona giusta per cadere dalla carrozza. Sir William Nicoll, se ben ricordo, una volta descrisse energicamente la sua filosofia individualista come «il buttar fuori gli sciocchi». E di certo lo spirito di Dickens potrebbe essere descritto nel migliore dei modi come il diletto nel buttarli dentro. È esattamente perché il Natale non è solo una festa di bambini, ma in un certo senso una festa di folli, che Dickens è in contatto col suo mistero.

Taffy

I DO not understand Welshmen. When we say we do not understand such-and-such a person, we usually mean that he has been making himself a nuisance. He has been bothering us in some way; and the puzzle of his motives and further intentions has become a practical one. I do not mean anything of the kind here: I mean barely what I say. The distant Trojans never injured me. Taffy never came to my house or stole any part of the provisions. On the contrary, historically speaking, I went to Taffy’s house and took away a good deal of what belonged to him. I do not think that Taffy is a thief; I do not even know enough about him to be sure of the preliminary statement that he is a Welshman. I mean, quite simply and ingenuously, that I know nothing about Wales—not even (for certain) that there is such a place. I went, indeed, a few weeks ago to a curious place full of rocks; and the people there said it was Wales. But, then, other people said that these people were very sly, and that you could not believe anything they said. But, then, as I did not believe the second people who did not believe the first people, it all came back to the same comfortable condition as before, which is one of blank and disinterested nescience. It is a condition I am in with regard to a large number of things in this world. I keep my faith for the things of another world. About this world I am a complete agnostic.

But in this particular case of ignorance I rather fancy that I am not alone. I think that the great majority of Englishmen have no real notion of the Welsh type or spirit, whatever it is. They have conceptions of the Scot and the Irishman, false conceptions, but always containing some lines of a true tradition. The Englishman does, so to speak, understand the Scotchman even when he misunderstands him. The Englishman does know what the Irish are, even while he demands indignantly of heaven why they are. The stingy Puritan in plaid trousers is a very crude and unjust version of that queer blend that makes the Scot—the combination of a certain coarseness of fibre with great intellectual keenness for abstract and even mystical things. Still, it is a version; the prose and poetry of the Scot remain in the caricature. The picture of Paddy at Donnybrook leaves out all the subtlety and self-tormenting irony that are mixed up with the pugnacity of the Irish. Still, the Irish are pugnacious; the Englishman has got the leading feature right. He knows that, for all his economics, the Scotchman often has a bee in his bonnet, and he knows that the Irishman generally has a wasp in his—a thing that will sting itself or anyone else merely for fun or glory.

In these cases, the caricature, though stiff, highly coloured, antiquated, and largely false, tells the remains of several truths. But who on earth has ever seen a caricature of a Welshman? In Punch and such papers we never see anything but pictures of a Welshwoman— as if there were no males in that peculiar country with the rocks. Even the woman is only marked as Welsh by wearing an extraordinary costume, rather like that of Cinderella’s supernatural godmother. Without the artist suggesting any costume at all, one would recognize the very silly portraits of Irishmen with long upper lips, in the style of apes. Without any plaid trousers to assist the mind, one could spot the stiff beards and rocky cheek-bones of the Scotchmen of Charles Keene. But if you took away the Welshwoman’s extraordinary hat, there would be nothing whatever to show that she was a Welshwoman. We have not in our minds a Welsh type to make fun of. It is interesting to remember that apparently Shakespeare had.

This state of entire non-understanding (as distinct from misunderstanding) of the Welsh seems to me just now to be not only unique, but important and rather serious. For, unless I am very much mistaken, Wales is going to play some peculiar, and perhaps dominant, part in the developments of our extraordinary time. If the Welsh begin to influence us without our having yet even begun to imagine them, we shall have the whole Irish business over again; the gradual or imperfect understanding of a thing in the process of wrestling with it in the dark. The indications of such a movement in Wales (wherever it is), the suggestion of the growing influence of Welshmen (whoever they may be), is something that comes to us rather by widely distributed happenings and hints than in any theatrical example. Some, however, would call Mr. Lloyd George a theatrical example; he has been called even more extraordinary things. And in that degree the thing is true. Mr. Lloyd George is very much more genuine and sincere and formidable in his capacity as leader of the little Welsh nation than he is in any of the other capacities in which he is foolishly praised and ridiculously reviled. But to anyone who really has an eye for history in action, the smallest strike secretary in a Welsh railway or colliery bulks much bigger in the present picture than Mr. Lloyd George. And it has been in Wales that many of the most dramatic and effective labour revolts have happened: above all it was in Wales that they presented peculiar features of their own, bad or good, which marked them out from the whole temper and habit of England in recent times. The modern theory of animals was challenged in the episode of the ponies in the mines. The modern theory of Jews was challenged in the violent Anti-Semite riots of the last few weeks. Things fierce and unfamiliar, things lost since the Middle Ages, are coming upon us out of the West.

As the curious incident of the quarrels between Welshmen and Jews has been mentioned, I will take the opportunity here of correcting a curious mistake that clings to the minds of numbers of my correspondents. There is in particular a gloomy gentleman in America who keeps on asking me how my Anti-Semite prejudice is getting on, and generally displaying a curiosity about how many Hebrew teeth I have pulled out this week, and how often a Pogrom is held in front of my house. He appears to base it all on some statement of mine that Jews were tyrants and traitors. Upon this basis his indignation is eloquent, lengthy and (in my opinion) just. The only weakness affecting this superstructure is the curious detail that I never did say that Jews were tyrants and traitors. I said that a particular kind of Jew tended to be a tyrant and another particular kind of Jew tended to be a traitor. I say it again. Patent facts of this kind are permitted in the criticism of every other nation on the planet: it is not counted illiberal to say that a certain kind of Frenchman tends to be sensual. It is as plain as a pikestaff that the Parisian tradition of life and letters has a marked element of sensuality. It is also as plain as a pikestaff that those who are creditors will always have a temptation to be tyrants, and that those who are cosmopolitans will always have a temptation to be spies. This has nothing to do with alleging that the majority of any people falls into its typical temptations. In this respect I should imagine that Jews varied in their moral proportions as much as the rest of mankind. Rehoboam was a tyrant; Jehoshaphat was not. In what is perhaps the most celebrated collection of Jews in human history, the proportion of traitors was one in twelve. But I cannot see why the tyrants should not be called tyrants and the traitors traitors; why Rehoboam should not cause a rebellion or Judas become an object of dislike, merely because they happen to be members of a race persecuted for other reasons and on other occasions. Those are my views on Jews. They are more reasonable than those of the people that wreck their shops; and much more reasonable than those of the people who justify them on all occasions.

Taffy

NON capisco i gallesi. Quando diciamo di non capire questa o quella persona, di solito intendiamo che ci ha dato fastidio. Ci ha molestati in qualche modo; e l’enigma dei suoi moventi e delle sue ulteriori intenzioni è diventato un problema pratico. Qui non intendo nulla del genere: intendo appena ciò che dico. I lontani troiani non mi hanno mai fatto alcun torto. Taffy non venne mai a casa mia né rubò parte alcuna delle provviste. Al contrario, storicamente parlando, sono io che sono andato a casa di Taffy e ho portato via una buona parte di ciò che gli apparteneva. Non credo che Taffy sia un ladro; non so nemmeno abbastanza su di lui per essere certo della premessa che sia un gallese. Voglio dire, molto semplicemente e ingenuamente, che non so nulla del Galles — nemmeno (con certezza) che un luogo simile esista. È vero, poche settimane fa mi recai in un curioso posto pieno di rocce; e la gente del luogo diceva che era il Galles. Ma poi altri dicevano che quella gente era assai scaltra, e che non si poteva credere a nulla di ciò che diceva. Ma poi, non credendo io alla seconda gente che non credeva alla prima, tutto tornava alla medesima comoda condizione di prima, che è quella di una vuota e disinteressata ignoranza. È una condizione in cui mi trovo riguardo a un gran numero di cose in questo mondo. Serbo la mia fede per le cose di un altro mondo. Riguardo a questo mondo sono un completo agnostico.

Ma in questo particolare caso d’ignoranza sono propenso a credere di non essere solo. Penso che la grande maggioranza degli inglesi non abbia una vera nozione del tipo o dello spirito gallese, qualunque esso sia. Hanno concezioni dello scozzese e dell’irlandese, concezioni false, ma sempre contenenti qualche linea di una vera tradizione. L’inglese, per così dire, capisce lo scozzese anche quando lo fraintende. L’inglese sa bene che cosa siano gli irlandesi, anche mentre domanda indignato al cielo perché siano. Il gretto puritano dai calzoni scozzesi è una versione assai rozza e ingiusta di quella bizzarra mescolanza che fa lo scozzese — la combinazione di una certa grossolanità di fibra con una grande acutezza intellettuale per le cose astratte e persino mistiche. Eppure è una versione; la prosa e la poesia dello scozzese restano nella caricatura. Il ritratto di Paddy a Donnybrook tralascia tutta la sottigliezza e l’ironia autotormentatrice che si mescolano alla combattività degli irlandesi. Eppure gli irlandesi sono combattivi; l’inglese ha colto bene il tratto principale. Sa che, con tutta la sua economia, lo scozzese ha spesso un grillo per la testa, e sa che l’irlandese ne ha in genere una vespa — una cosa che punge sé stessa o chiunque altro solo per gusto o per gloria.

In questi casi, la caricatura, benché rigida, dai colori accesi, antiquata e in gran parte falsa, racconta i resti di parecchie verità. Ma chi mai al mondo ha visto una caricatura di un gallese? Nel Punch e in simili giornali non vediamo mai altro che immagini di una gallese — come se non ci fossero maschi in quel peculiare paese delle rocce. Persino la donna è contrassegnata come gallese solo perché indossa un costume straordinario, piuttosto simile a quello della soprannaturale madrina di Cenerentola. Senza che l’artista suggerisca alcun costume, si riconoscerebbero gli sciocchissimi ritratti di irlandesi dal lungo labbro superiore, nello stile delle scimmie. Senza alcun calzone scozzese a soccorrere la mente, si individuerebbero le barbe rigide e gli zigomi rocciosi degli scozzesi di Charles Keene. Ma se toglieste lo straordinario cappello della gallese, non ci sarebbe proprio nulla a mostrare che è una gallese. Non abbiamo nella mente un tipo gallese di cui ridere. È interessante ricordare che a quanto pare Shakespeare ce l’aveva.

Questo stato di totale non-comprensione (distinto dal fraintendimento) dei gallesi mi pare in questo momento non solo unico, ma importante e piuttosto serio. Perché, se non mi sbaglio di molto, il Galles sta per recitare una parte peculiare, e forse dominante, negli sviluppi del nostro straordinario tempo. Se i gallesi cominciano a influenzarci senza che noi abbiamo ancora nemmeno cominciato a immaginarli, ci ritroveremo con tutta la faccenda irlandese daccapo; la graduale o imperfetta comprensione di una cosa nell’atto di lottare con essa al buio. Le indicazioni di un simile movimento nel Galles (ovunque esso sia), il sentore della crescente influenza dei gallesi (chiunque essi siano), è qualcosa che ci giunge più per fatti e indizi ampiamente disseminati che in qualche esempio teatrale. Alcuni, tuttavia, definirebbero il signor Lloyd George un esempio teatrale; lo si è chiamato con nomi anche più straordinari. E in quella misura la cosa è vera. Il signor Lloyd George è assai più genuino, sincero e temibile nella sua veste di leader della piccola nazione gallese di quanto non lo sia in alcuna delle altre vesti in cui è scioccamente lodato e ridicolmente vilipeso. Ma per chiunque abbia davvero occhio per la storia in azione, il più insignificante segretario di sciopero in una ferrovia o miniera gallese pesa nel quadro presente assai più del signor Lloyd George. Ed è stato nel Galles che sono avvenute molte delle più drammatiche ed efficaci rivolte operaie: soprattutto è stato nel Galles che esse presentarono tratti peculiari e propri, cattivi o buoni, che le distinsero dall’intero temperamento e costume dell’Inghilterra dei tempi recenti. La moderna teoria degli animali fu messa in discussione nell’episodio dei pony nelle miniere. La moderna teoria degli ebrei fu messa in discussione nei violenti tumulti antisemiti delle ultime settimane. Cose feroci e insolite, cose perdute fin dal Medioevo, ci vengono incontro da Occidente.

Poiché si è fatto cenno al curioso episodio delle liti tra gallesi ed ebrei, colgo qui l’occasione per correggere un curioso errore che si aggrappa alla mente di numerosi miei corrispondenti. C’è in particolare un tetro signore in America che continua a domandarmi come proceda il mio pregiudizio antisemita, e in genere manifesta curiosità su quanti denti ebraici io abbia strappato questa settimana, e su quanto spesso si tenga un pogrom davanti a casa mia. Pare che fondi tutto questo su una mia dichiarazione secondo cui gli ebrei sarebbero tiranni e traditori. Su questa base la sua indignazione è eloquente, prolissa e (a mio parere) giusta. L’unica debolezza che affligge questa sovrastruttura è il curioso particolare che io non ho mai detto che gli ebrei fossero tiranni e traditori. Ho detto che un particolare tipo di ebreo tendeva a essere un tiranno e un altro particolare tipo di ebreo tendeva a essere un traditore. Lo ripeto. Fatti lampanti di questo genere sono ammessi nella critica di ogni altra nazione del pianeta: non è considerato illiberale dire che un certo tipo di francese tende a essere sensuale. È chiaro come il sole che la tradizione parigina della vita e delle lettere ha un marcato elemento di sensualità. È altrettanto chiaro come il sole che coloro che sono creditori avranno sempre la tentazione di essere tiranni, e che coloro che sono cosmopoliti avranno sempre la tentazione di essere spie. Ciò non ha nulla a che vedere col sostenere che la maggioranza di un qualsiasi popolo cada nelle sue tentazioni tipiche. A questo riguardo immaginerei che gli ebrei variassero nelle loro proporzioni morali tanto quanto il resto del genere umano. Roboamo fu un tiranno; Giosafat no. In quella che è forse la più celebre raccolta di ebrei della storia umana, la proporzione dei traditori fu di uno su dodici. Ma non vedo perché i tiranni non debbano essere chiamati tiranni e i traditori traditori; perché Roboamo non debba provocare una ribellione o Giuda divenire oggetto d’avversione, solo perché si dà il caso che siano membri di una razza perseguitata per altre ragioni e in altre occasioni. Queste sono le mie opinioni sugli ebrei. Sono più ragionevoli di quelle della gente che devasta i loro negozi; e assai più ragionevoli di quelle della gente che li giustifica in ogni occasione.

“Ego et Shavius Meus”

ACCIDENT has cut me off this week from many current publications; and left me much to my own devices. It is therefore my immutable purpose to write an article about myself, under the thin pretence of noticing a book about Mr. Bernard Shaw.

This is all the more fun because it is exactly what Mr. Bernard Shaw would do himself; nor should I blame him. I like Mr. Shaw’s type of Egoism; because, if he talks big, it is at least about big things; things bound to be bigger than himself.

I revolt, not against the loud egoist, but the gentle egoist; who talks tenderly of trifles; who says, “A sunbeam gilds the amber of my cigarette-holder; I find I cannot live without a cigarette-holder.” I resist this arrogance simply because it is more arrogant. For even so complete a fool cannot really suppose we are interested in his cigarette-holder; and therefore must suppose that we are interested in him. But I defend a dogmatic egoist precisely because he deals in dogmas.

The Apostles’ Creed is not regarded as a pose of foppish vanity; yet the word “I” comes before even the word “God.” The believer comes first; but he is soon dwarfed by his beliefs, swallowed in the creative whirlwind and the trumpets of the resurrection. And if a man says he believes in the Superman or the Socialist State, I think him equally modest; only not so sensible. Mr. Herbert Skimpole’s book, Bernard Shaw: the Man and His Work, contains many suggestive and valuable things to which I cannot do justice, including allusions to myself mostly only too flattering, and in one case both amusing and mystifying. The passage suggests that all the active figures in my idle fictions are made as fat as I am; though I cannot recall that any of them are fat at all; except a semi-supernatural monster in a nightmare calledThe Man Who Was Thursday.

Let there be no alarm, however, that I shall talk about such nightmares, or any of my own tales; like Shaw, I am egoistic about things that matter. Mr. Skimpole says that while Shaw and I agree that the world should be adapted to the man, “Chesterton includes our present institutions among the parts of a man’s soul which cannot be altered.” Now there is here a potential mistake, which I will not apologize for taking more seriously than any fancy about the figures in my very amateurish romances. I need not say I do not mind being called fat; for deprived of that jest, I should be almost a serious writer. I do not even mind being supposed to mind being called fat. But being supposed to be contented, and contented with the present institutions of modern society, is a mortal slander I will not take from any man.

Whatever are the institutions I defend, they are not primarily those of the present. They have been attempted in the past; and I hope they may be achieved in the future; but they are not present, but conspicuous by their absence. Mr. Skimpole truly says that I defend domesticity and piety and patriotism, but these are not the typical institutions of to-day.

The typical institutions of to-day are a Divorce Court cutting up families with the speed of a sausage machine; a Science which preaches the destiny without the divinity of Calvinism; and a Finance that crosses all frontiers with the same enlightened indifference that is shown by cholera.

These are the institutions of the instant, and even Mr. Skimpole has realized them as those of the immediate future. In a somewhat innocent passage he says that “it is of no use for Shaw to point out” to me the hope of a cosmopolitan future; “that Internationalism, social class-feeling, and Imperialism all point the same way he refuses to see.”

It is indeed useless for Shaw to point out to me that I should follow the lead of these things; since I happen to detest Imperialism, disbelieve in Internationalism and distrust “social class-feeling,” so far as I know what it means. I am well aware that an Imperial Chancellor in Berlin, an international money-lender in Johannesburg, and an anarchist spy in Petrograd, are “all pointing the same way”; and that is why I feel pretty safe in going the other.

I warmly apologize to Mr. Skimpole for writing a personal explanation instead of a review of his book, which contains many things well worth writing and reviewing; notably the shrewd remark about Shaw’s style; in which what is a paradox in spirit is seldom an epigram in form. It takes our breath away rather by taking itself for granted than by defining itself like a defiance. But I fancy Mr. Skimpole will sympathize with me if I am primarily concerned with his convictions, as he is with mine, and as we both are with Shaw’s.

And he has gone to the vital point in emphasizing this matter of the things permanent in man. When I say that religion and marriage and local loyalty are permanent in humanity, I mean that they recur when humanity is most human; and only comparatively decline when society is comparatively inhuman. They have declined in the modern world. They may return through the war; but anyhow, where we have the small farm and the free man and the fighting spirit, there we shall have the salute to the soil and the roof and to the altar.

To take a more casual case: I believe that when men are happy, they sing; not only at the piano but at the plough, or at least in the intervals of ploughing; at their work and in their walks abroad. I am well aware that modern men do not sing in the street very much. I am well aware that cosmopolitan money-lenders never sing, but die with all their music in them. I know that the Song of the Happy Meat-Contractor is not one of “our present institutions.”

I know that one can seldom come at dawn upon some solitary London banker carolling more sweetly than the lark; and even his clerks do not often sing in chorus over their ledgers. But I still think it is more human to sing than not to sing; and that, being more human, it is more permanent in humanity.

Some righteous revolution will teach the bankers and contractors that little birds who can sing and won’t sing must be made to sing— or at any rate made to squeal. In the interlude, the instinct of song takes refuge in the lesser thing called poetry, or even prose; and to-morrow the fever of personal sincerity may have passed; and I shall return, with a lowly air, to literature.

«Ego et Shavius Meus»

Un incidente mi ha tagliato fuori questa settimana da molte pubblicazioni correnti, lasciandomi in gran parte alle mie sole risorse. È dunque mio immutabile proposito scrivere un articolo su me stesso, sotto il sottile pretesto di recensire un libro su Mr. Bernard Shaw.

Questo è tanto più divertente in quanto è esattamente ciò che Mr. Bernard Shaw farebbe egli stesso; né glielo rimprovererei. Mi piace il tipo di egoismo di Mr. Shaw; perché, se parla in grande, è almeno di grandi cose; cose destinate a essere più grandi di lui.

Io mi ribello non contro l’egoista chiassoso, ma contro l’egoista mite; colui che parla teneramente di inezie; che dice: «Un raggio di sole indora l’ambra del mio bocchino; scopro che non posso vivere senza un bocchino». Resisto a questa arroganza semplicemente perché è più arrogante. Poiché anche un così completo sciocco non può davvero supporre che ci interessi il suo bocchino; e perciò deve supporre che interessiamo a lui. Ma io difendo un egoista dogmatico proprio perché tratta di dogmi.

Il Credo degli Apostoli non è considerato una posa di vanità da bellimbusto; eppure la parola «Io» viene prima perfino della parola «Dio». Il credente viene per primo; ma è ben presto rimpicciolito dalle sue credenze, inghiottito nel turbine creativo e nelle trombe della resurrezione. E se un uomo dice di credere nel Superuomo o nello Stato socialista, lo giudico ugualmente modesto; solo, non altrettanto assennato. Il libro di Mr. Herbert Skimpole, Bernard Shaw: l’uomo e la sua opera, contiene molte cose suggestive e preziose alle quali non posso rendere giustizia, comprese allusioni a me stesso per lo più fin troppo lusinghiere, e in un caso al tempo stesso divertenti e sconcertanti. Il passo suggerisce che tutte le figure attive delle mie oziose finzioni siano rese grasse quanto lo sono io; benché non ricordi che alcuna di esse sia grassa affatto; salvo un semi-soprannaturale mostro in un incubo intitolato L’uomo che fu Giovedì.

Non vi sia allarme, tuttavia, che io parli di simili incubi, o di alcuno dei miei racconti; come Shaw, sono egoista riguardo alle cose che contano. Mr. Skimpole dice che, mentre Shaw e io conveniamo che il mondo dovrebbe essere adattato all’uomo, «Chesterton include le nostre presenti istituzioni fra le parti dell’anima di un uomo che non possono essere mutate». Ora c’è qui un potenziale errore, che non mi scuserò di prendere più sul serio di qualsiasi fantasticheria sulle figure dei miei assai dilettanteschi romanzi. Non ho bisogno di dire che non mi dispiace essere chiamato grasso; poiché, privato di quella facezia, sarei quasi uno scrittore serio. Non mi dispiace nemmeno che si supponga che mi dispiaccia essere chiamato grasso. Ma che si supponga che io sia contento, e contento delle presenti istituzioni della società moderna, è una calunnia mortale che non accetterò da alcun uomo.

Qualunque siano le istituzioni che difendo, esse non sono primariamente quelle del presente. Sono state tentate nel passato; e spero che possano essere realizzate nel futuro; ma non sono presenti, bensì cospicue per la loro assenza. Mr. Skimpole dice con verità che io difendo la domesticità e la pietà e il patriottismo, ma queste non sono le tipiche istituzioni di oggi.

Le tipiche istituzioni di oggi sono un Divorzio amministrato da una Corte che taglia a pezzi le famiglie con la velocità di una macchina per salsicce; una Scienza che predica il destino senza la divinità del calvinismo; e una Finanza che attraversa tutte le frontiere con la stessa illuminata indifferenza che mostra il colera.

Queste sono le istituzioni dell’istante, e perfino Mr. Skimpole le ha riconosciute come quelle dell’immediato futuro. In un passo alquanto innocente egli dice che «è inutile che Shaw faccia notare» a me la speranza di un futuro cosmopolita; «che l’Internazionalismo, il sentimento di classe sociale e l’Imperialismo indicano tutti la stessa direzione egli si rifiuta di vederlo».

È davvero inutile che Shaw mi faccia notare che dovrei seguire la guida di queste cose; giacché mi accade di detestare l’Imperialismo, di non credere all’Internazionalismo e di diffidare del «sentimento di classe sociale», per quanto io ne comprenda il significato. So bene che un Cancelliere imperiale a Berlino, un prestatore di denaro internazionale a Johannesburg e una spia anarchica a Pietrogrado «indicano tutti la stessa direzione»; ed è per questo che mi sento abbastanza al sicuro nell’andare nella direzione opposta.

Mi scuso calorosamente con Mr. Skimpole per aver scritto una spiegazione personale invece di una recensione del suo libro, che contiene molte cose ben degne di essere scritte e recensite; in particolare l’acuta osservazione sullo stile di Shaw; nel quale ciò che è un paradosso nello spirito è di rado un epigramma nella forma. Ci toglie il fiato piuttosto dandosi per scontato che definendosi come una sfida. Ma immagino che Mr. Skimpole simpatizzerà con me se mi occupo primariamente delle sue convinzioni, come egli fa delle mie, e come entrambi facciamo di quelle di Shaw.

Ed è andato al punto vitale nel porre in risalto questa faccenda delle cose permanenti nell’uomo. Quando dico che la religione e il matrimonio e la lealtà locale sono permanenti nell’umanità, intendo che essi ritornano quando l’umanità è più umana; e declinano solo comparativamente quando la società è comparativamente disumana. Sono declinati nel mondo moderno. Possono ritornare attraverso la guerra; ma comunque, dove abbiamo la piccola fattoria e l’uomo libero e lo spirito combattivo, là avremo il saluto alla terra e al tetto e all’altare.

Per prendere un caso più casuale: credo che quando gli uomini sono felici, cantino; non solo al pianoforte ma all’aratro, o almeno negli intervalli dell’arare; al loro lavoro e nelle loro passeggiate all’aperto. So bene che gli uomini moderni non cantano molto per strada. So bene che i cosmopoliti prestatori di denaro non cantano mai, ma muoiono con tutta la loro musica dentro. So che il Canto del Felice Fornitore di Carne non è una delle «nostre presenti istituzioni».

So che di rado ci si può imbattere all’alba in qualche solitario banchiere di Londra che gorgheggi più dolcemente dell’allodola; e nemmeno i suoi impiegati cantano spesso in coro sui loro libri mastri. Ma continuo a pensare che sia più umano cantare che non cantare; e che, essendo più umano, ciò sia più permanente nell’umanità.

Qualche giusta rivoluzione insegnerà ai banchieri e ai fornitori che i piccoli uccelli che sanno cantare e non vogliono cantare devono essere costretti a cantare — o comunque costretti a squittire. Nell’interludio, l’istinto del canto si rifugia nella cosa minore chiamata poesia, o perfino prosa; e domani la febbre della sincerità personale potrà essere passata; e io ritornerò, con aria umile, alla letteratura.

The Plan for a New Universe

THERE is one theory of the Origin of Species which I have never seen suggested. Probably this is because I have never read the numberless and voluminous works in which it has been suggested. For I have read much madder things, and nothing mad is likely to have been missed by the modern mind. But since it shocked the respectability of agnostics to suggest that all creatures had been made different by God, why did nobody suggest that they had been made different by Man? Why not trace the vast variety of animals as we can really trace the vast variety of dogs? The dog is already almost a world in himself, with all the appearance of distinct orders and types. A St. Bernard approaches the size and surpasses the legendary virtues of a lion; while there is a sort of Pekinese which a man might almost tread on as a somewhat unpleasing insect. Yet all this world of evolution has presumably had Man for its god.

Suppose our sphere in space has itself been the Island of Dr. Moreau. Suppose Man had some prehistoric civilization so colossal and complete that all beasts were beasts of burden, or all animals were domestic animals; that all rabbits were pet rabbits or all fleas performing fleas. Suppose the tame bird came first, and what we know as the wild bird afterwards. Mr. Bernard Shaw, in one of his early anti-domestic diatribes, compared a woman in the home to a parrot in the cage, saying that mere custom made us think the connexion natural.

The answer, it has always seemed to me, is strangely obvious. It is surely plain that the housewife is not the bird in the cage, but the bird in the nest. But if, in that age of wild sceptics, anyone had wished to outdo Mr. Shaw in paradox, he could have done it brilliantly by this hypothesis that the colours of a parrot were actually produced in a cage; and that an exiled bird only built himself a rude den of sticks and mud as an outlaw does when driven from his home. Suppose, in short, that Man has not only been a dog-fancier, but a wolf-fancier and a hyena-fancier. Suppose he really fancied a rhinoceros. Suppose some pre-historic squire kept a stud of giraffes; or his money-lender got a peerage on the plea that he had improved the breed of crocodiles. Then we have only to suppose this universal Zoo broken up like the Roman Empire; and all we see is its neglect and riot. The tiger is a stray cat; a specially large and handsome cat who took the prize (and the prize-giver)and escaped to the jungle. A whale was some sort of hornless cow sent into the sea like a Newfoundland dog, who suddenly refused to come back again.

This thesis accounts for the comparative rapidity of the differentiations, over which the geologists fight with the biologists. It accounts rationalistically for those evidences of a creative purpose which are so distressing to a refined mind. It accounts for the camel, who seems always to have been in captivity; and accounting for a camel is something. Above all, it accounts for that very vivid impression of something in various species at once outrageous and exact. Jefferies found in the farcical outlines of fish or bird the notion that they must have been produced without design. To me this sounds like saying that the caricatures of Max Beerbohm must have been produced without design. I could as easily believe, so far as this mere aesthetic impression goes, that the face on a gargoyle was merely moulded by the pouring rain. Artistically, the sun-fish or the hornbill do not look in the least like accidents; but it might be maintained that they look like fashions. There are some tropical birds and fruits that really have the cut and colours of novelties in a shop window. We might fancy that an elephant was designed in the same taste as Babylonian architecture; or the leopard and the tiger to match the tapestries of the East. There is probably somewhere a bird as sinister and terrifying as a top-hat; and in some luxuriant jungle a plant as preposterous as a pair of trousers. The monsters may be only antiquated fashion-plates. For this is one of the numberless neglected fallacies in the clotted folly of Eugenics. Even if we could in the abstract breed humanity well, there would be a flutter of modes and crazes about what was considered well-bred. The dog is bred with design; but surely not always with discretion. The dachshund appears to have been pulled out on the rack of some demoniac vivisectionist; and somebody seems to have cut off the bull-dog’s nose, most emphatically to spite his face. On the analogy of the things we do breed, the Eugenist may be expected to produce a brood of hunchbacks or a pure race of Albinos.

It is, I hope, unnecessary to remark that I do not believe in this theory; but there have been people who might well have believed in it. There were people who could believe in Swinburne’s sentiment, “Glory to Man in the highest; for Man is the master of things”; and it would surely have completed this consciousness in the poet if he could have thought that the birds of Putney Heath, where he walked, or the fishes in the sea, where he was so fond of swimming, were doing tricks taught to them as to performing dogs. Suppose that such a fancy had fitted in with one of the humanitarian religions of that time, how far would it have satisfied what was often called the religious sentiment? It would not have satisfied any religious sentiment, not even Swinburne’s. He would have cared as little as Shelley to claim the birds when he could not claim the sky. He certainly would have been much annoyed with the notion of loving the fishes, if he were not allowed to go on loving the sea. And though he poisoned paganism with pessimism, a thing not only more false but more frivolous, though he tried to love the sea as a wanton or admire the sky as a tyrant, though this morbidity weakened his love of Nature not only as compared with Virgil or Dante, but as compared with Wordsworth or Whitman, yet he was like every poet elemental, and what he loved were the elementary things. And this is an essential of any poetry and any religion. It must appeal to the origins and deal with the first things, however much or little it may say about them. It must be at home in the homeless void, before the first star was made. The one thing every man knows about the unknowable is that it is the Indispensable.

Now, if any reader thinks that the scientific heresy I sketched above is too irrational for moderns to have held, I have the pleasure of informing him that moderns are now about to announce, or have already announced, a new heresy somewhat analogous but much less rationalistic and much less rational. There is a new religion; that is a new fault being found with the old religion. There is a new plan for a new universe, which may be expected to last for many a long month to come. It is the view that seems to have satisfied Mr. Wells, or, at any rate, Mr. Britling. It is the view which has been more than once suggested by Mr. Shaw, and is repeated in the skeleton of certain lectures he is delivering. It is much more supernatural and even superstitious than my imaginary thesis; for instead of giving to man more of the powers of God, it arbitrarily imagines a God and then limits him with the impotence of man. He is not limited, as in the theologies, by his own reason or justice or desire for the freedom of man. He is limited by unreason and injustice and the impossibility of freedom even for himself. But I do not make this note upon the new development with any intention of discussing it thoroughly in its theological aspect; though there is one aspect of that aspect which may respectfully be called amusing. When I was a boy, Christianity was blamed by the freethinkers for its anthropomorphic demigod, substituted by savages for the Unknown God who made all things. Now Christianity is blamed for the flat contrary; because its God is unknown and not anthropomorphic enough. Thirty years ago we only needed the First Person of the Trinity; and thirty years later we have discovered that we only need the Second. This sort of fashion-plate philosophy will no doubt go on as usual. In a few decades we may be told that our fathers were profoundly right when they believed in the Archangel Gabriel, but made an inexplicable mistake when they believed in the Archangel Raphael. We shall learn that the Seraphim are an exploded superstition, but the Cherubim a most valuable and novel discovery. And as my note is not concerned with the theological, neither is it directly concerned with the purely logical side of it.

Here again, it seems obvious that all the doubts which legitimately attach to the idea of a progressive humanity are absolutely fatal to the idea of a progressive divinity. A man may be progressing towards God; but what is a God progressing towards? And how does he know which of two developments in consciousness is the better (e.g., an imaginative compassion or an imaginative cruelty) if there be no aboriginal standard in his own nature? I am here only concerned to note the failure of this fancy where it is parallel to the failure of the fancy I mentioned first. And it is the weakness which would instantly be discovered in both of them, not only by every poet but by every child. It is that unless the sky is beautiful, nothing is beautiful. Unless the background of all things is good, it is no substitute to make the foreground better: it may be right to do so for other reasons, but not for the reason that is the root of religion. Materialism says the universe is mindless; and faith says it is ruled by the highest mind. Neither will be satisfied with the new progressive creed, which declares hopefully that the universe is half-witted.

Il piano per un nuovo universo

C’è una teoria dell’Origine delle Specie che non ho mai visto proporre. Probabilmente ciò accade perché non ho mai letto le innumerevoli e voluminose opere in cui è stata proposta. Poiché ho letto cose ben più folli, e nulla di folle è verosimilmente sfuggito alla mente moderna. Ma poiché urtava la rispettabilità degli agnostici suggerire che tutte le creature fossero state rese diverse da Dio, perché nessuno suggerì che fossero state rese diverse dall’Uomo? Perché non far risalire la vasta varietà degli animali come possiamo davvero far risalire la vasta varietà dei cani? Il cane è già quasi un mondo in sé, con tutta l’apparenza di ordini e tipi distinti. Un san Bernardo si avvicina alla mole e supera le leggendarie virtù di un leone; mentre esiste una sorta di pechinese che un uomo potrebbe quasi calpestare come un insetto alquanto sgradevole. Eppure tutto questo mondo dell’evoluzione ha presumibilmente avuto l’Uomo per suo dio.

Supponete che la nostra sfera nello spazio sia stata essa stessa l’Isola del Dottor Moreau. Supponete che l’Uomo abbia avuto una qualche civiltà preistorica tanto colossale e completa che tutte le bestie fossero bestie da soma, o tutti gli animali fossero animali domestici; che tutti i conigli fossero conigli da compagnia o tutte le pulci pulci ammaestrate. Supponete che l’uccello addomesticato sia venuto per primo, e ciò che conosciamo come uccello selvatico soltanto dopo. Mr. Bernard Shaw, in una delle sue prime diatribe anti-domestiche, paragonò una donna nella casa a un pappagallo in gabbia, dicendo che la mera consuetudine ci faceva ritenere naturale il nesso.

La risposta, mi è sempre parso, è stranamente ovvia. È di certo evidente che la massaia non è l’uccello nella gabbia, ma l’uccello nel nido. Ma se, in quell’età di scettici sfrenati, qualcuno avesse voluto superare Mr. Shaw nel paradosso, avrebbe potuto farlo brillantemente con questa ipotesi: che i colori di un pappagallo fossero effettivamente prodotti in una gabbia; e che un uccello esiliato si costruisse soltanto una rozza tana di rametti e fango come fa un fuorilegge quando è scacciato dalla propria casa. Supponete, in breve, che l’Uomo non sia stato soltanto un allevatore di cani, ma un allevatore di lupi e un allevatore di iene. Supponete che egli abbia davvero avuto una passione per un rinoceronte. Supponete che qualche preistorico signorotto tenesse una scuderia di giraffe; o che il suo prestatore di denaro ottenesse un titolo nobiliare col pretesto di aver migliorato la razza dei coccodrilli. Allora dobbiamo soltanto supporre che questo universale Zoo si sia disgregato come l’Impero Romano; e tutto ciò che vediamo è il suo abbandono e il suo tumulto. La tigre è un gatto randagio; un gatto particolarmente grande e bello che si prese il premio (e chi lo assegnava) e fuggì nella giungla. Una balena era una sorta di mucca senza corna mandata in mare come un cane di Terranova, la quale si rifiutò all’improvviso di tornare indietro.

Questa tesi rende conto della relativa rapidità delle differenziazioni, sulla quale i geologi si accapigliano con i biologi. Rende conto in modo razionalistico di quelle prove di un intento creativo che sono tanto sgradevoli per una mente raffinata. Rende conto del cammello, che pare essere sempre stato in cattività; e render conto di un cammello è qualcosa. Soprattutto, rende conto di quella vivissima impressione di qualcosa, in varie specie, al tempo stesso oltraggioso ed esatto. Jefferies trovava nei profili farseschi di pesci o uccelli la nozione che dovessero essere stati prodotti senza disegno. A me questo suona come dire che le caricature di Max Beerbohm devono essere state prodotte senza disegno. Potrei con altrettanta facilità credere, per quanto riguarda questa mera impressione estetica, che il volto di un gargoyle sia stato semplicemente modellato dalla pioggia scrosciante. Artisticamente, il pesce luna o il bucero non hanno affatto l’aria di incidenti; ma si potrebbe sostenere che abbiano l’aria di mode. Vi sono certi uccelli e frutti tropicali che hanno davvero il taglio e i colori delle novità in una vetrina di negozio. Potremmo immaginare che un elefante sia stato disegnato nello stesso gusto dell’architettura babilonese; o il leopardo e la tigre in tono con gli arazzi d’Oriente. Vi è probabilmente da qualche parte un uccello sinistro e terrificante come un cilindro; e in qualche lussureggiante giungla una pianta assurda come un paio di pantaloni. I mostri potrebbero essere soltanto antiquate tavole di moda. Poiché questa è una delle innumerevoli fallacie trascurate nella grumosa follia dell’Eugenetica. Anche se potessimo in astratto allevare bene l’umanità, vi sarebbe uno svolazzare di mode e manie su ciò che si considerava di buona razza. Il cane è allevato con disegno; ma di certo non sempre con discrezione. Il bassotto pare essere stato stirato sul cavalletto di qualche demoniaco vivisettore; e qualcuno pare aver tagliato il naso al bulldog, con la più risoluta intenzione di fargli dispetto. Sull’analogia delle cose che alleviamo davvero, ci si può aspettare che l’Eugenista produca una nidiata di gobbi o una pura razza di Albini.

È, spero, superfluo osservare che io non credo in questa teoria; ma vi sono state persone che avrebbero ben potuto crederci. Vi furono persone capaci di credere al sentimento di Swinburne, «Gloria all’Uomo nel più alto dei cieli; poiché l’Uomo è il padrone delle cose»; e avrebbe di certo completato questa coscienza nel poeta se egli avesse potuto pensare che gli uccelli di Putney Heath, dove passeggiava, o i pesci nel mare, dove tanto amava nuotare, stessero eseguendo trucchi loro insegnati come a cani ammaestrati. Supponete che una simile fantasticheria si fosse accordata con una delle religioni umanitarie di quel tempo, quanto avrebbe appagato ciò che spesso si chiamava il sentimento religioso? Non avrebbe appagato alcun sentimento religioso, nemmeno quello di Swinburne. A lui sarebbe importato tanto poco quanto a Shelley reclamare gli uccelli se non poteva reclamare il cielo. Di certo si sarebbe assai irritato all’idea di amare i pesci, se non gli fosse stato concesso di continuare ad amare il mare. E benché egli avvelenasse il paganesimo col pessimismo, cosa non solo più falsa ma più frivola, benché tentasse di amare il mare come una sgualdrina o di ammirare il cielo come un tiranno, benché questa morbosità indebolisse il suo amore della Natura non solo rispetto a Virgilio o a Dante, ma rispetto a Wordsworth o a Whitman, pure egli era, come ogni poeta, elementare, e ciò che amava erano le cose elementari. E questo è essenziale a ogni poesia e a ogni religione. Deve fare appello alle origini e trattare delle prime cose, per quanto molto o poco possa dirne. Deve essere a casa nel vuoto senza dimora, prima che fosse fatta la prima stella. L’unica cosa che ogni uomo sa dell’inconoscibile è che esso è l’Indispensabile.

Ora, se qualche lettore pensa che l’eresia scientifica che ho abbozzato sopra sia troppo irrazionale perché dei moderni l’abbiano sostenuta, ho il piacere di informarlo che i moderni stanno ora per annunciare, o hanno già annunciato, una nuova eresia in qualche modo analoga ma assai meno razionalistica e assai meno razionale. C’è una nuova religione; cioè un nuovo difetto che si trova nella vecchia religione. C’è un nuovo piano per un nuovo universo, che ci si può aspettare duri per molti e molti lunghi mesi a venire. È la veduta che pare aver appagato Mr. Wells, o, in ogni caso, Mr. Britling. È la veduta che è stata più di una volta suggerita da Mr. Shaw, ed è ripetuta nell’ossatura di certe conferenze che egli sta tenendo. È assai più soprannaturale e perfino superstiziosa della mia immaginaria tesi; poiché, invece di dare all’uomo più dei poteri di Dio, immagina arbitrariamente un Dio e poi lo limita con l’impotenza dell’uomo. Egli non è limitato, come nelle teologie, dalla propria ragione o giustizia o desiderio della libertà dell’uomo. È limitato dall’irragionevolezza e dall’ingiustizia e dall’impossibilità della libertà perfino per se stesso. Ma non faccio questa nota sul nuovo sviluppo con l’intenzione di discuterlo a fondo nel suo aspetto teologico; benché vi sia un aspetto di quell’aspetto che può rispettosamente dirsi divertente. Quando ero ragazzo, il Cristianesimo era biasimato dai liberi pensatori per il suo antropomorfico semidio, sostituito dai selvaggi al Dio Ignoto che fece tutte le cose. Ora il Cristianesimo è biasimato per l’esatto contrario; perché il suo Dio è ignoto e non abbastanza antropomorfico. Trent’anni fa avevamo bisogno soltanto della Prima Persona della Trinità; e trent’anni dopo abbiamo scoperto che ci occorre soltanto la Seconda. Questa sorta di filosofia da tavola di moda andrà senza dubbio avanti come al solito. Fra qualche decennio potrà esserci detto che i nostri padri avevano profondamente ragione a credere nell’Arcangelo Gabriele, ma commisero un errore inspiegabile a credere nell’Arcangelo Raffaele. Impareremo che i Serafini sono una superstizione screditata, ma i Cherubini una preziosissima e nuova scoperta. E poiché la mia nota non riguarda il teologico, così non riguarda direttamente nemmeno il lato puramente logico della faccenda.

Anche qui, sembra ovvio che tutti i dubbi che legittimamente si annettono all’idea di un’umanità progressiva siano assolutamente fatali all’idea di una divinità progressiva. Un uomo può progredire verso Dio; ma verso che cosa progredisce un Dio? E come sa egli quale di due sviluppi nella coscienza sia il migliore (per esempio, una compassione immaginativa o una crudeltà immaginativa) se non vi è alcuno standard aborigeno nella sua stessa natura? Qui mi limito soltanto a notare il fallimento di questa fantasticheria là dove essa è parallela al fallimento della fantasticheria che ho menzionato per prima. Ed è la debolezza che sarebbe istantaneamente scoperta in entrambe, non solo da ogni poeta ma da ogni bambino. È che, a meno che il cielo non sia bello, nulla è bello. A meno che lo sfondo di tutte le cose non sia buono, non serve a nulla rendere migliore il primo piano: può essere giusto farlo per altre ragioni, ma non per la ragione che è la radice della religione. Il materialismo dice che l’universo è privo di mente; e la Fede dice che è governato dalla mente più alta. Nessuno dei due sarà appagato dal nuovo credo progressivo, che dichiara speranzosamente che l’universo è mezzo scemo.

George Wyndham

I BELIEVE more and more that there are no trivialities but only truths neglected; but the things I myself neglect accumulate in mountains. I have made a note of one of them found in turning over the recent files of theNation. Elsewhere was a reminder about a book I had long admired and enjoyed, but which had been crowded out of my mind by less pleasant things; the book of recollections about George Wyndham, recently written by Mr. Charles Gatty and published by Mr. Murray. [George Wyndham Recognita, by C. T. Gatty. Murray. 7s. 6d. net.] Even now I cannot do justice to the book; but I know Mr. Gatty will approve of my saying a word to correct an injustice to the subject of the book. Some time ago theNation dismissed Mr. Gatty’s volume, not with disrespect, but with a certain distance and indifference evidently founded on a very mistaken idea. It implied that Wyndham was after all an intellectual aristocrat, whose culture was that of a c1ique, and who did not test it enough in popular and practical politics. The point is interesting; chiefly because it is the precise reverse of the truth. If anything could narrow a man like Wyndham, it was being political like theNation: what broadened him to a universal brotherhood was getting far from politics—like the nation. His private life was much larger than his public life; though that in turn was larger than most public lives in the parliamentary decline. Being a politician, he had to be a parliamentarian; and being a parliamentarian, he had to be an oligarch. In so far as he did hold the aristocratic theory, it was exactly that aristocratic theory that forced him into political practice. He knew well enough, I think, that the English parliament is an aristocracy. He took the high ground of the responsibility of privilege; but he was far too sincere to deny that it was privilege. He said to a friend of mine, who thus lamented his laborious parliamentary botherations, “You see, I was born paid.”

It was the aristocracy theNation reproves that necessitated the parliamentarism theNation desires or demands. Personally, I should not desire either; and I think the real Wyndham was in a larger world outside both. It was precisely where he was most domestic that he was most democratic. He was a poet among poets exactly as he might have been a pedestrian among pedestrians or, as he would have preferred to put it, a tramp among tramps. The sympathy with tramps might be taken literally; for I remember him defending the gipsies, when a more modern spirit wanted them taught the meaning of progress by being moved on by the police. He may have been right to work in cabinets and committees; but it was there, if anywhere, that he was in a clique. He may have been right not to follow his tastes, but it was his tastes that were popular and what many cliques would call vulgar. He may have been right not to be one of the idle rich, but he might have been even more superior to the limits of the rich, if he had been idler.

The beauty of Mr. Gatty’s book is that it is a brilliant scrap-book, the very variegated nature of which expresses this almost vagabond liberality. Even when it merely notes down such things as single lines of Shakespeare over which Wyndham lingered, or reproduces corners of carving or painting which arrested his eye, the method seems to me to work rightly; it seems somehow natural to talk of every other subject besides the subject himself; as he was always ready to talk of every other subject. And this aspect, by itself, accentuates the feeling that his holidays were his most useful days. In this mood one may well wish that he had never been near what he himself called the cesspool of politics; and one might well accept theNation’s suggestion of his aloofness from its own favourite parliamentary business with a somewhat dry assent. Wyndham certainly had little to do with the internal constructive legislation praised in progressive papers. He can claim none of the glory of the great social reforms of the period just before the War. He is not responsible for the permission to drag away a poor man’s child as a raving maniac, if his teacher thinks he is a little too stupid to learn, or his teacher is a little too stupid to teach him. He has not the honour of having abolished the Habeas Corpus Act, in order to allow amateur criminologists to keep a tramp in prison until they have invented a science of criminology. He did not establish the Labour Exchanges, and probably did not want to establish them, any more than the Labour Exchanges vividly described inUncle Tom’s Cabin. It was not he who created by statute a servant class, of men made to spend their own wages on doctors they might never want, instead of on tools or tram-tickets they urgently wanted. He was largely detached from all this; and when reading a real record like Mr. Gatty’s one is moved to wish that he had been even more detached from it. Considering the liberty of his philosophical friendships, one respects but regrets the loyalty of his political friendships; and is sorry that common sense must be sacrificed to practical politics.

But when a book like Mr. Gatty’s has moved a reviewer to this mood of mere regret for a poet wasted in politics, there returns upon him after all one answer which is itself unanswerable. Judged by one ultimate test, he was after all right to remain in politics; even in the last putrefaction of parliamentary politics. At the price of nobody knows what pain and patience and contempt and concessions, he alone among modern politicians did leave not merely a name but a thing, that will remain after him as a scientific engine or a geographical discovery remains. He achieved a work which has changed the whole destiny of Western Europe; the resurrection of Ireland. There he established the free peasant; a work organically different from all the modern reforms that are merely imposed, whether right or wrong, whether servile or socialist. It is the difference between planting a tree and building a tower; once planted, the tree lives by its own life. He and his admirers, myself among the number, might well be content to contemplate such a work without afterthoughts; if there were not laid upon us like a load of memories, and almost like a living chain, the love of England.

For England, alas! has made to-day the worst possible compromise between aristocracy and democracy. It has kept the aristocracy and lost the aristocrats. The country is still as much ruled by squires, but not so much by country gentlemen; and the reform of the House of Lords seems to mean eliminating gentlemen and carefully preserving noblemen. It is as if there were a complaint of martial law; and it were met by keeping the whole machinery of militarism, but giving the arbitrary power to spies instead of soldiers. Or it is as if reactionaries erected a despotism, and then called themselves reformers because they did not care what dirty fellow was despot. But remote as Wyndham was from the sham gentry of the twentieth century, it would also be an error merely to merge him with the genuine gentry of the eighteenth. It would be to mark the type so as to miss the man. What distinguished him, as an individual, from good and bad squires, was something far older than squirarchy; the true sense of the squire expectant, eager to spring into the saddle of knighthood. His courage was far less static than that of a country gentleman. It was the thing in which a philologist might recognize that “courage” really means rushing; or from which a professor will probably some day prove that courage really means running away. He had that spiritual ambition which is itself the ascending flame of humility; and which has been wanting to the English since the squire grew greater than the knight. He seemed to await an adventure that never quite came to him on earth; and his life and death were swift, as if he were struck by lightning as with an accolade, or had won spurs that were wings upon the wind.

George Wyndham

Credo sempre più che non esistano banalità ma solo verità trascurate; eppure le cose che io stesso trascuro si accumulano in montagne. Ho preso nota di una di esse, trovata sfogliando i recenti numeri della Nation. Altrove vi era un richiamo a un libro che avevo a lungo ammirato e apprezzato, ma che era stato scacciato dalla mia mente da cose meno piacevoli; il libro di ricordi su George Wyndham, scritto di recente da Mr. Charles Gatty e pubblicato da Mr. Murray. [George Wyndham Recognita, di C. T. Gatty. Murray. 7s. 6d. netti.] Nemmeno ora posso rendere giustizia al libro; ma so che Mr. Gatty approverà che io dica una parola per correggere un’ingiustizia verso il soggetto del libro. Qualche tempo fa la Nation liquidò il volume di Mr. Gatty, non con mancanza di rispetto, ma con una certa distanza e indifferenza evidentemente fondate su un’idea assai errata. Lasciava intendere che Wyndham fosse dopotutto un aristocratico intellettuale, la cui cultura era quella di una cricca, e che non la mettesse abbastanza alla prova nella politica popolare e pratica. Il punto è interessante; soprattutto perché è l’esatto rovescio della verità. Se qualcosa poteva restringere un uomo come Wyndham, era l’essere politico come la Nation: ciò che lo allargava a una fratellanza universale era l’allontanarsi dalla politica — come la nazione. La sua vita privata era assai più grande della sua vita pubblica; benché questa a sua volta fosse più grande della maggior parte delle vite pubbliche nel declino parlamentare. Essendo un politico, doveva essere un parlamentare; ed essendo un parlamentare, doveva essere un oligarca. Nella misura in cui davvero sosteneva la teoria aristocratica, era esattamente quella teoria aristocratica che lo costringeva alla pratica politica. Sapeva bene, credo, che il parlamento inglese è un’aristocrazia. Assumeva l’alto terreno della responsabilità del privilegio; ma era troppo sincero per negare che fosse privilegio. Disse a un mio amico, che così deplorava le sue laboriose seccature parlamentari: «Vedete, sono nato pagato».

Era l’aristocrazia che la Nation rimprovera a rendere necessario il parlamentarismo che la Nation desidera o esige. Personalmente, non desidererei né l’una né l’altro; e credo che il vero Wyndham fosse in un mondo più vasto, al di fuori di entrambi. Era precisamente là dove era più domestico che egli era più democratico. Era un poeta tra i poeti esattamente come sarebbe potuto essere un pedone tra i pedoni o, come avrebbe preferito dirlo, un vagabondo tra i vagabondi. La simpatia per i vagabondi si potrebbe prendere alla lettera; poiché lo ricordo difendere gli zingari, quando uno spirito più moderno voleva insegnar loro il significato del progresso facendoli sloggiare dalla polizia. Può aver avuto ragione a lavorare in gabinetti e comitati; ma era là, semmai, che egli era in una cricca. Può aver avuto ragione a non seguire i propri gusti, ma erano i suoi gusti a essere popolari e ciò che molte cricche chiamerebbero volgare. Può aver avuto ragione a non essere uno dei ricchi oziosi, ma avrebbe potuto essere ancora più superiore ai limiti dei ricchi, se fosse stato più ozioso.

La bellezza del libro di Mr. Gatty è che è un brillante album di ritagli, la cui natura assai variopinta esprime questa quasi vagabonda liberalità. Persino quando si limita ad annotare cose come singoli versi di Shakespeare sui quali Wyndham indugiava, o riproduce angoli di intagli o dipinti che colpivano il suo occhio, il metodo mi pare funzionare a dovere; sembra in qualche modo naturale parlare di ogni altro soggetto tranne il soggetto stesso; così com’egli era sempre pronto a parlare di ogni altro soggetto. E questo aspetto, di per sé, accentua la sensazione che le sue vacanze fossero i suoi giorni più utili. In questo stato d’animo si può ben desiderare che egli non si fosse mai avvicinato a ciò che egli stesso chiamava il pozzo nero della politica; e si potrebbe ben accogliere il suggerimento della Nation sulla sua estraneità ai suoi prediletti affari parlamentari con un assenso alquanto asciutto. Wyndham certamente ebbe poco a che fare con la legislazione costruttiva interna lodata nei giornali progressisti. Non può reclamare nulla della gloria delle grandi riforme sociali del periodo appena precedente la Guerra. Non è responsabile del permesso di trascinar via il figlio di un pover’uomo come un maniaco delirante, se il suo insegnante lo ritiene un po’ troppo stupido per imparare, o se il suo insegnante è un po’ troppo stupido per insegnargli. Non ha l’onore di aver abolito l’Habeas Corpus Act, per consentire ai criminologi dilettanti di tenere un vagabondo in prigione finché non abbiano inventato una scienza della criminologia. Non istituì gli Uffici di Collocamento, e probabilmente non voleva istituirli, non più degli Uffici di Collocamento vividamente descritti ne La capanna dello zio Tom. Non fu lui a creare per statuto una classe servile, di uomini costretti a spendere i propri salari in medici di cui potrebbero non aver mai bisogno, invece che in attrezzi o biglietti del tram di cui avevano urgente bisogno. Egli era in gran parte distaccato da tutto ciò; e leggendo un vero documento come quello di Mr. Gatty si è mossi a desiderare che ne fosse stato ancora più distaccato. Considerando la libertà delle sue amicizie filosofiche, si rispetta ma si rimpiange la lealtà delle sue amicizie politiche; e ci si rammarica che il buon senso debba essere sacrificato alla politica pratica.

Ma quando un libro come quello di Mr. Gatty ha mosso un recensore a questo stato d’animo di mero rimpianto per un poeta sprecato nella politica, gli ritorna dopotutto una risposta che è essa stessa inconfutabile. Giudicato con un’ultima prova, egli aveva dopotutto ragione a rimanere nella politica; perfino nell’ultima putrefazione della politica parlamentare. Al prezzo di chissà quale pena e pazienza e disprezzo e concessioni, egli solo fra i politici moderni lasciò non semplicemente un nome ma una cosa, che rimarrà dopo di lui come rimane una macchina scientifica o una scoperta geografica. Compì un’opera che ha mutato l’intero destino dell’Europa Occidentale: la resurrezione dell’Irlanda. Là egli stabilì il contadino libero; un’opera organicamente diversa da tutte le riforme moderne che sono meramente imposte, siano esse giuste o sbagliate, servili o socialiste. È la differenza tra piantare un albero e costruire una torre; una volta piantato, l’albero vive di vita propria. Egli e i suoi ammiratori, io stesso fra il numero, potrebbero ben accontentarsi di contemplare una simile opera senza secondi pensieri; se non fosse posto su di noi, come un carico di ricordi, e quasi come una catena vivente, l’amore dell’Inghilterra.

Poiché l’Inghilterra, ahimè!, ha fatto oggi il peggior compromesso possibile tra aristocrazia e democrazia. Ha tenuto l’aristocrazia e perduto gli aristocratici. Il paese è ancora tanto governato da signorotti, ma non altrettanto da gentiluomini di campagna; e la riforma della Camera dei Lord pare significare eliminare i gentiluomini e conservare accuratamente i nobili. È come se vi fosse una lagnanza contro la legge marziale; e vi si ponesse rimedio mantenendo l’intero apparato del militarismo, ma dando il potere arbitrario alle spie invece che ai soldati. O è come se dei reazionari erigessero un dispotismo, e poi si chiamassero riformatori perché non si curavano di quale sudicio individuo fosse despota. Ma per quanto Wyndham fosse remoto dalla falsa nobiltà del ventesimo secolo, sarebbe anche un errore fonderlo semplicemente con la genuina nobiltà del diciottesimo. Sarebbe marcare il tipo così da mancare l’uomo. Ciò che lo distingueva, come individuo, dai signorotti buoni e cattivi, era qualcosa di assai più antico della signoria: il vero senso dello scudiero in attesa, ansioso di balzare in sella al cavalierato. Il suo coraggio era assai meno statico di quello di un gentiluomo di campagna. Era la cosa in cui un filologo potrebbe riconoscere che «coraggio» significa davvero slanciarsi; o dalla quale un professore un giorno probabilmente proverà che coraggio significa davvero fuggire. Egli aveva quella spirituale ambizione che è essa stessa la fiamma ascendente dell’umiltà; e che è mancata agli inglesi da quando lo scudiero divenne più grande del cavaliere. Pareva attendere un’avventura che non gli giunse mai del tutto sulla terra; e la sua vita e la sua morte furono rapide, come se fosse stato colpito da un fulmine come da un’investitura, o avesse conquistato speroni che erano ali sul vento.

Four Stupidities

I HAVE just seen a newspaper paragraph which, whether it refers to a fact or merely a suggestion, seems to me to go down pretty well into that depth of mindlessness which calls itself the modern mind. It is said that influence is being brought to bear on the American Government to induce them to break a bottle of water instead of a bottle of champagne when they christen a battleship. Now it is not easy to deal adequately with the rich stupidity of that. It is about five follies thick, stupidity obscuring stupidity until one reader can hardly see more than one of the jokes at a time. There is something almost fascinating in the idea of trying to disentangle them.

First Stupidity. Note the notion that there is something so intrinsically and supernaturally evil about an intoxicant that the pure temperance man will not touch it even when it cannot intoxicate anybody. It is as if a man were to insist on having a teetotal boot-polish or a teetotal printing-ink. A cup of tea, or even of hot milk, becomes diabolic if you have boiled the kettle with methylated spirit. Eau-de-Cologne is a blackguard indulgence, though you use it only to scent your handkerchief. A liquor containing alcohol (such as ginger-beer) is simply and superstitiously an accursed thing, which is not only not to be touched with the lips, but not to be touched with the hands. After this case, the more intemperate “Temperance” people cannot pretend any longer that their proposal is merely a social reform; it is obviously and literally a mystical taboo. I do not see what right such people have to mock at the savage’s fear of a fetish, still less at the peasant’s respect for the relic of a saint. There might surely be such a thing as holy water, if it be so certain that there is such a thing as unholy water.

Second Stupidity. The extraordinary confusion by which it becomes not only wicked to possess wine (though you never drink it), but becomes wicked even to destroy it. This goes, I think, much further than this queer materialist madness has yet gone. If a champagne bottle is smashed to smithereens over the prow of a ship, I should have thought the most logical teetotaller would merely have been glad that there was one champagne bottle less in the world. As he would probably not be a person with any special sympathy with the old ceremonials of revelry, that is the only possible way in which I can imagine the thing affecting him. We in England used to think we could trace a slight streak of fanaticism in good Mrs. Carrie Nation, who used to go about breaking other people’s wine and spirit bottles with her little hatchet. But now it would appear that Mrs. Carrie Nation was a wobbler, one weakly compromising with the fiend of fermented drink, perhaps nobbled by the Liquor Trade—or, worse still, verging on the loathly state of a moderate drinker. She ought to have been summoned before a tribunal of these New Teetotallers and having gone near enough to a bottle to touch it, even with a hatchet; condemned for having so much as hung about the hellish tavern, where the very fumes of its fiery poisons might have mounted to her head. The principle is an interesting one, and might be extended to many cases. Thus, when the common hangman burned a book of treason or heresy, he may be supposed to have been infected by the intellectual errors it contained. Thus when a censor blacks out a paragraph in a newspaper, he may be held to have sinned even in looking to see where the paragraph was. This, apparently, is the new barbaric fancy: that certain vegetable drinks are so demonic that we not only are wrong when we drink them, but are wrong when we do our best to render them undrinkable.

Third Stupidity. The curious deadness of the mind in such men is illustrated at the next stage; that of clinging convulsively to a mere form; and not only not knowing, but not so much as wondering—first, whether the idea is worth preserving; and, secondly, whether they are preserving it. The mark of this dead and broken traditionalism is always two-fold. It can be seen in these two facts: that men alter a thing as if it had no sense in it; and yet they never have the sense to abolish what is for them is a senseless thing.

I can see much dignity in absolute austerity and the refusal of symbol; I can see some dignity even in dingy utilitarianism and the refusal of art. I could respect the perfect plainness of an early Quaker like Penn when he would not take his hat off in the palace, because it was an idle form. I do not despise him because he came afterwards (I believe) to see that keeping your hat on is just as much of a form as taking it off; and took off his hat like other people. But if Penn had strictly confined himself, say, to taking off his hatband with laborious care, every time he entered the Royal presence, I should say that he had lost both his Quakerism and his sociability. He would have lost the independence that refuses recognition to the world, and he would not have gained the disputable substitute of good manners. Similarly, I could respect (though I could not envy) the flinty old Manchester manufacturers who regarded all expenditure on arms, especially on drums, flags, or trumpets, as so much babyish waste of money. But I should not even have respected them if they had proposed that the British Army should fly the White Flag in every battle because it was cheaper than a coloured one. Why have a flag at all, if it comes to that? Or, again, I can understand the unconverted Scrooge with his bowl of gruel; and I like the converted Scrooge with his bowl of punch. But if Scrooge had insisted every Christmas on having a punch-bowl with no punch in it, I should not understand at all.

Fourth Stupidity. Besides this general deadness, there is a strange special deadness to the human sentiment behind that special sort of ceremony. Don’t express the sentiment if you think it a silly sentiment; but don’t so express it as to prove that you haven’t got it. That sentiment is the ancient sentiment of sacrifice. The thing sacrificed may be anything: wine, as on the battleship; gold, as when the Doge threw his ring into the sea; an ox or a sheep, as among the ancient pagans; and very occasionally, when tribes savage or civilized are seized with Satanist panic, a man. But it must be somethingvaluable, or the particular thrill, wholesome or unwholesome, is not obtained. It was generally the best sheep or the best ox; and in the rare cases of human sacrifice, generally somebody like the King’s daughter. Like all human appetites, it is both good and evil; it has many roots, a gesture of generosity, an appeal to the unknown, a guarantee against arrogance, a dim idea of not taking all one’s advantage from fortune: but they all depend on the value, and these men evidently understand none of them, when they fill the bottle with water.

Quattro stupidità

Ho appena visto un trafiletto di giornale che, sia che si riferisca a un fatto o a una mera proposta, mi sembra scendere piuttosto bene in quella profondità di sconsideratezza che si autodefinisce mente moderna. Si dice che si stiano facendo pressioni sul Governo americano per indurlo a rompere una bottiglia d’acqua invece di una bottiglia di champagne quando battezza una nave da guerra. Ora non è facile trattare adeguatamente la ricca stupidità di ciò. È spessa circa cinque follie, stupidità che oscura stupidità finché un lettore riesce a stento a vedere più di uno degli scherzi per volta. C’è qualcosa di quasi affascinante nell’idea di tentare di districarli.

Prima Stupidità. Si noti la nozione che vi sia qualcosa di così intrinsecamente e soprannaturalmente malvagio in un inebriante che il puro uomo della temperanza non lo toccherà nemmeno quando non può inebriare nessuno. È come se un uomo insistesse ad avere un lucido da scarpe astemio o un inchiostro da stampa astemio. Una tazza di tè, o perfino di latte caldo, diventa diabolica se avete fatto bollire il bricco con spirito metilato. L’acqua di Colonia è un’indulgenza da mascalzone, benché la usiate solo per profumarvi il fazzoletto. Un liquore contenente alcol (come la birra allo zenzero) è semplicemente e superstiziosamente una cosa maledetta, che non solo non va toccata con le labbra, ma non va toccata con le mani. Dopo questo caso, i più intemperanti fra i sostenitori della «Temperanza» non possono più fingere che la loro proposta sia una mera riforma sociale; è ovviamente e letteralmente un tabù mistico. Non vedo quale diritto abbia simile gente di schernire la paura del selvaggio per un feticcio, e ancor meno il rispetto del contadino per la reliquia di un santo. Vi potrebbe di certo essere una cosa come l’acqua santa, se è tanto certo che vi è una cosa come l’acqua empia.

Seconda Stupidità. La straordinaria confusione per cui diventa non solo malvagio possedere vino (benché non lo si beva mai), ma diventa malvagio perfino distruggerlo. Ciò va, credo, assai più in là di quanto questa bizzarra follia materialista sia finora andata. Se una bottiglia di champagne è ridotta in mille pezzi contro la prua di una nave, avrei pensato che il più logico degli astemi sarebbe stato semplicemente lieto che ci fosse una bottiglia di champagne in meno al mondo. Poiché egli probabilmente non sarebbe una persona con alcuna speciale simpatia per gli antichi cerimoniali della baldoria, quello è l’unico modo possibile in cui riesco a immaginare che la cosa lo tocchi. Noi in Inghilterra eravamo soliti pensare di poter rintracciare una lieve vena di fanatismo nella buona Mrs. Carrie Nation, che andava in giro a rompere le bottiglie di vino e di liquori altrui con la sua piccola accetta. Ma ora parrebbe che Mrs. Carrie Nation fosse una tentennante, che debolmente scendeva a compromessi col demonio della bevanda fermentata, forse corrotta dal Commercio dei Liquori — o, peggio ancora, sull’orlo del ripugnante stato del bevitore moderato. Avrebbe dovuto essere citata dinanzi a un tribunale di questi Nuovi Astemi e, essendosi avvicinata abbastanza a una bottiglia da toccarla, sia pure con un’accetta, condannata per essersi anche solo attardata presso l’infernale taverna, dove i fumi stessi dei suoi ardenti veleni potevano esserle saliti alla testa. Il principio è interessante, e si potrebbe estendere a molti casi. Così, quando il comune boia bruciava un libro di tradimento o di eresia, si può supporre che fosse contagiato dagli errori intellettuali in esso contenuti. Così, quando un censore cancella un paragrafo in un giornale, lo si può ritenere aver peccato perfino nel guardare dove fosse il paragrafo. Questa, a quanto pare, è la nuova fantasia barbara: che certe bevande vegetali siano tanto demoniache che non solo abbiamo torto quando le beviamo, ma abbiamo torto quando facciamo del nostro meglio per renderle imbevibili.

Terza Stupidità. La curiosa mortezza della mente in tali uomini è illustrata alla tappa seguente; quella dell’aggrapparsi convulsamente a una mera forma; e non solo non sapere, ma nemmeno domandarsi — primo, se l’idea valga la pena di essere conservata; e, secondo, se la stiano conservando. Il marchio di questo tradizionalismo morto e spezzato è sempre duplice. Lo si può vedere in questi due fatti: che gli uomini alterano una cosa come se non avesse alcun senso; eppure non hanno mai il senno di abolire ciò che per loro è una cosa priva di senso.

Posso vedere molta dignità nell’austerità assoluta e nel rifiuto del simbolo; posso vedere una certa dignità perfino nel tetro utilitarismo e nel rifiuto dell’arte. Potrei rispettare la perfetta semplicità di un antico quacchero come Penn quando non voleva togliersi il cappello nel palazzo, perché era una forma oziosa. Non lo disprezzo perché in seguito giunse (credo) a vedere che tenere il cappello in testa è una forma tanto quanto toglierlo; e si tolse il cappello come gli altri. Ma se Penn si fosse strettamente limitato, poniamo, a togliersi la fascia del cappello con laboriosa cura, ogni volta che entrava alla Regale presenza, direi che aveva perduto tanto il suo quaccherismo quanto la sua socievolezza. Avrebbe perduto l’indipendenza che rifiuta il riconoscimento al mondo, e non avrebbe guadagnato il discutibile surrogato delle buone maniere. Similmente, potrei rispettare (benché non invidiare) i selciosi vecchi industriali di Manchester che consideravano ogni spesa in armi, specialmente in tamburi, bandiere o trombe, come tanto puerile spreco di denaro. Ma non li avrei nemmeno rispettati se avessero proposto che l’Esercito Britannico issasse la Bandiera Bianca in ogni battaglia perché costava meno di una colorata. Perché avere una bandiera del resto? O, di nuovo, posso capire lo Scrooge non convertito con la sua scodella di pappa d’avena; e mi piace lo Scrooge convertito con la sua scodella di punch. Ma se Scrooge avesse insistito ogni Natale ad avere una scodella da punch senza punch dentro, non capirei affatto.

Quarta Stupidità. Oltre a questa generale mortezza, vi è una strana speciale mortezza al sentimento umano che sta dietro quel particolare genere di cerimonia. Non esprimete il sentimento se lo ritenete un sentimento sciocco; ma non esprimetelo in modo tale da provare che non lo provate. Quel sentimento è l’antico sentimento del sacrificio. La cosa sacrificata può essere qualsiasi cosa: vino, come sulla nave da guerra; oro, come quando il Doge gettò il suo anello nel mare; un bue o una pecora, come tra gli antichi pagani; e assai occasionalmente, quando tribù selvagge o civili sono colte da panico satanico, un uomo. Ma dev’essere qualcosa di prezioso, altrimenti il particolare brivido, salubre o malsano, non si ottiene. Era generalmente la miglior pecora o il miglior bue; e nei rari casi di sacrificio umano, generalmente qualcuno come la figlia del Re. Come tutti gli appetiti umani, esso è al tempo stesso buono e cattivo; ha molte radici, un gesto di generosità, un appello all’ignoto, una garanzia contro l’arroganza, una vaga idea di non prendere tutto il proprio vantaggio dalla fortuna: ma esse dipendono tutte dal valore, e questi uomini evidentemente non ne comprendono nessuna, quando riempiono la bottiglia d’acqua.

On Historical Novels

IT is very easy, of course) to smile at such schoolboy fiction as the novels of Mr. Henty, in which the same very English and modern young gentleman from Rugby or Harrow turns up again and again as a Young Greek, a Young Carthaginian, a Young Scandinavian, a Young Gaul, a Young Visigoth, a Young Ancient Briton, and al1nost everything short of a Young Negro. But Mr. Henty had the merits of his industry and fecundity; and one of them was that he did take a boy’s imagination into many and varied parts of human history, however conventional the figure he followed through them might be. The English boy will not find out as much about the soul of Carthage from theYoung Carthaginian as a lover of letters may from Salammbo; but at least he will know that Carthage was conquered—and that is (for various reasons) a good thing for English people to know. And since the Henty period our historical novels have fallen with terrible sameness into two or three grooves. We might almost say that a man is not allowed to write an historical novel except about four different historical periods, about six different historical characters; and even about them he is not allowed to take any view except that taken by the other romances on the same subject. Now, considering the countless millions of marvellous, amusing, unique, and picturesque things that have thronged on top of each other through all our wonderful three thousand years of European history, this state of affairs is as Byzantine and benighted as if no landscape painter ever painted anything but a larch tree, or as if none of our sculptors could model anything except the left leg.

You may write a novel about the time of Henry of Navarre—in fact, it might almost be said that you must write a novel about the time of Henry of Navarre. If you go in for writing historical novels at all, somebody—the publisher or the office-boy—makes you do this. In this novel, Huguenots must be gallant gentlemen, with a touch of bluffness; Catholics must also be gallant gentlemen, with a touch of slyness. All important political questions must be settled by duels fought with long rapiers at wayside inns. You must stick to one side of the quarrel; but even in that you must not bring any of the charges that a person of the period might really have brought. For instance, the Court must be perpetually engaged in plotting to stab the bluff Huguenot: but you must not insist that the Huguenot was a Puritan, and his objection to the Court would largely be that it was a Renaissance Court. You must not, however delicately, bring in that presence of florid pagan sensuality and princely indecorum which we feel in Brantome or the Tales of the Queen of Navarre. The Latins must stick to assassination. There must be no people to speak of in Paris, though it was the people of Paris who, for good or evil, changed the whole course of the history. Men like Sully may be introduced; but their talents must be entirely occupied in serving the Prince in his personal love-affairs and in his duels in inns. Above all, slap in the very middle of the Wars of Religion, nobody must seem to have any clear idea of what his own religion is about.

You may also write a novel about the time of Richelieu. But it must be governed by the same principles. Richelieu must be a sinister yet magnanimous enemy of the hero. He must try to kill the hero, and unaccountably fail. At this stage of the writing of historical novels, it is important to be an imitator of Dumas. There are critics who maintain that Dumas was largely written by imitators of Dumas. This is an exaggeration; but, at the worst, they were good imitators. There are chapters in the triple tale of the Musketeers of which I can only say that, if anyone but he wrote them, he could hire hearts and heads as well as hands. But my warning to the young writer of entirely useless historical novels is this: He must not go outside France, or treat that country otherwise than as an insulated elfland. He must not carry off General Monk in a box. Think what a frightful mistake would have been made from the English Puritan point of view—if d’Artagnan had carried off General Cromwell by mistake! All this happened in the time of Mazarin and not Richelieu, but the principle will be found reliable. The principle is that neither Richelieu nor anybody else should show the faintest interest in the future of France.

You may write a novel about the French Revolution. You may do it on your head, as the jolly habitual criminals say. The essential principles of this sort of novel are: (1) That the populace of Paris from 1790 to 1794 never had any meals, nor even sat down in a cafe. They stood about in the street all night and all day, sufficiently sustained by the sight of Blood, especially Blue Blood. (2) All power during the Terror was in the hands of the public executioner and of Robespierre; and these persons were subject to abrupt changes of mind, and frequently redeemed their habit of killing people for no apparent reason by letting them off at the last moment, for no apparent reason either. (3) Aristocrats are of two kinds— the very wicked and the entirely blameless; and both are invariably good-looking. Both also appear rather to prefer being guillotined. (4) Such things as the invasion of France, the idea of a Republic, the influence of Rousseau, the nearness of national bankruptcy, the work of Carnot with the armies, the policy of Pitt, the policy of Austria, the ineradicable habit of protecting one’s property against foreigners, and the presence of persons carrying guns at the Battle of Valmy—all these things had nothing to do with the French Revolution, and should be omitted.

Now, considering the number of picturesque struggles there have been in the world, it seems to me that these subjects might be given a rest. There has been next to nothing written, for instance, about the other Wars of Religion, those that accompanied the construction of Catholic Europe, rather than its breaking up. There was the Iconoclast invasion of Italy, which ends with the entrance of Charlemagne. There has been next to nothing written about riots other than the Parisian; the many riots of Edinburgh, especially of those few days when it was almost as dangerous to be a doctor as to be a mad dog. Another advantage would be that, coming fresh to his historical problem, the writer might even read a little history.

Sui romanzi storici

È molto facile, naturalmente, sorridere di quelle storie scolastiche come i romanzi del signor Henty, in cui lo stesso giovane gentiluomo inglese e moderno proveniente da Rugby o Harrow ricompare più e più volte come un Giovane Greco, un Giovane Cartaginese, un Giovane Scandinavo, un Giovane Gallo, un Giovane Visigoto, un Giovane Antico Britannico, e quasi tutto tranne che un Giovane Nero. Ma il signor Henty aveva i meriti della sua industriosità e fecondità; e uno di questi era che riusciva a portare l’immaginazione di un ragazzo in molte e varie parti della storia umana, per quanto convenzionale potesse essere la figura che seguiva attraverso di esse. Il ragazzo inglese non scoprirà tanto sulla anima di Cartagine dal Giovane Cartaginese quanto un amante delle lettere può fare da Salammbo; ma almeno saprà che Cartagine fu conquistata, e questo è (per vari motivi) una buona cosa per gli inglesi da sapere. E da quando il periodo Henty i nostri romanzi storici sono caduti con terribile monotonia in due o tre solchi. Potremmo quasi dire che a un uomo non è permesso scrivere un romanzo storico se non su quattro diversi periodi storici, su sei diversi personaggi storici; e anche riguardo a questi non gli è permesso prendere nessun punto di vista tranne quello preso dagli altri romanzi sullo stesso argomento. Ora, considerando le innumerevoli milioni di cose meravigliose, divertenti, uniche e pittoresche che si sono accavallate l’una sull’altra attraverso tutti i nostri incredibili tremila anni di storia europea, questa situazione è tanto bizantina e arretrata quanto se nessun pittore di paesaggi avesse mai dipinto altro che un larice, o come se nessuno dei nostri scultori potesse modellare nient’altro che la gamba sinistra.

Potete scrivere un romanzo ambientato nel tempo di Enrico di Navarra: anzi, si potrebbe quasi dire che dovete scrivere un romanzo ambientato nel tempo di Enrico di Navarra. Se vi cimentate nella scrittura di romanzi storici in generale, qualcuno - l’editore o il fattorino - vi costringe a farlo. In questo romanzo, gli Ugonotti devono essere gentiluomini coraggiosi, con un pizzico di spavalderia; anche i cattolici devono essere gentiluomini coraggiosi, con una punta di astuzia. Tutte le importanti questioni politiche devono essere risolte tramite duelli combattuti con lunghe rapiere presso locande ai bordi della strada. Dovete schierarvi da una parte del contendere; ma anche in questo non dovete avanzare nessuna delle accuse che un personaggio dell’epoca avrebbe potuto davvero muovere. Ad esempio, la Corte deve essere perennemente impegnata a tramare per pugnalare l’Ugonotto spavaldo: ma non dovete insistere sul fatto che l’Ugonotto era un Puritano e che la sua obiezione alla Corte sarebbe stata in gran parte il fatto che si trattava di una Rinascimentale Corte. Non dovete, per quanto delicatamente, introdurre quella presenza di fiorita sensualità pagana e indecoro principesco che sentiamo in Brantôme o nei Racconti della Regina di Navarra. I Latini devono limitarsi all’assassinio. Non ci deve essere nessun popolo a Parigi, anche se fu il popolo di Parigi che, per bene o per male, cambiò il corso intero della storia. Si possono introdurre personaggi come Sully; ma i loro talenti devono essere completamente assorbiti nel servire il Principe nei suoi affari di amore personali e nei suoi duelli nelle locande. Soprattutto, proprio nel bel mezzo delle Guerre di Religione, nessuno deve sembrare avere un’idea chiara di cosa sia la propria religione.

Potete anche scrivere un romanzo ambientato nel periodo di Richelieu. Ma deve essere governato dagli stessi principi. Richelieu deve essere un nemico sinistro ma magnanimo dell’eroe. Deve cercare di uccidere l’eroe, e fallire in modo inspiegabile. A questo punto della scrittura dei romanzi storici, è importante essere imitatori di Dumas. Ci sono critici che sostengono che gran parte delle opere di Dumas siano state scritte da imitatori di Dumas. Questa è un’esagerazione; ma, nel peggiore dei casi, erano buoni imitatori. Ci sono capitoli nella tripla storia dei Moschettieri di cui posso solo dire che, se non fossero stati scritti da lui, avrebbe potuto assumere cuori e menti così come mani. Ma il mio avvertimento al giovane scrittore di romanzi storici del tutto inutili è questo: Non deve uscire dalla Francia, o trattare quel paese diversamente da un elfico mondo isolato. Non deve portar via il Generale Monk in una scatola. Pensate quale terribile errore sarebbe stato dal punto di vista puritano inglese—se d’Artagnan avesse portato via per errore il Generale Cromwell! Tutto ciò accadde nel periodo di Mazzarino e non di Richelieu, ma il principio si rivelerà affidabile. Il principio è che né Richelieu né chicchessia dovrebbe mostrare il minimo interesse per il futuro della Francia.

Potete scrivere un romanzo sulla Rivoluzione Francese. Potete farlo a testa in giù, come dicono i gioviali criminali abituali. I principi essenziali di questo tipo di romanzo sono: (1) Che la popolazione di Parigi dal 1790 al 1794 non ha mai fatto pasti, né si è seduta in un caffè. Si sono tenuti in piedi per strada tutta la notte e tutto il giorno, sufficientemente sostenuti dalla vista del Sangue, specialmente dal Sangue Blu sangue. (2) Tutti i poteri durante il Terrore erano nelle mani dell’esecutore pubblico e di Robespierre; e queste persone erano soggette a bruschi cambiamenti d’umore, e frequentemente riscattavano la loro abitudine di uccidere le persone senza motivo apparente lasciandole andare all’ultimo momento, senza un motivo apparente neanche in questo caso. (3) Gli aristocratici sono di due tipi: il molto malvagio e il del tutto irreprensibile; e tutti e due sono sempre di bell’aspetto. Entrambi sembrano preferire piuttosto di essere ghigliottinati. (4) Cose come l’invasione della Francia, l’idea di una Repubblica, l’influenza di Rousseau, la prossima bancarotta nazionale, il lavoro di Carnot con gli eserciti, la politica di Pitt, la politica dell’Austria, l’abitudine radicata di proteggere i propri beni contro gli stranieri e la presenza di persone che portano armi alla Battaglia di Valmy—tutte queste cose non hanno nulla a che fare con la Rivoluzione Francese, e dovrebbero essere omesse.

Ora, considerando il numero di pittoresche lotte che ci sono state nel mondo, mi sembra che questi argomenti potrebbero essere messi da parte. Non è stato scritto quasi nulla, per esempio, sulle altre Guerre di Religione, quelle che accompagnarono la costruzione dell’Europa cattolica, piuttosto che il suo smembramento. Ci fu l’invasione iconoclasta in Italia, che si conclude con l’entrata di Carlo Magno. Non è stato scritto quasi nulla su rivolte diverse da quelle parigine; le numerose rivolte di Edimburgo, specialmente in quei pochi giorni quando era quasi altrettanto pericoloso essere un medico che essere un cane rabbioso. Un altro vantaggio sarebbe che, affrontando il suo problema storico con occhio fresco, lo scrittore potrebbe persino leggere un po’ di storia.

On Monsters

I ONCE saw in the newspapers this paragraph, of which I made a note:

“LEPRECHAUN” CAUGHT

Great excitement has been caused in Mullingar, in the west of Ireland, by the report that the supposed “Leprechaun,” which several children stated they had seen at Killough, near Delvin, during the past two months, was captured. Two policemen found a creature of dwarfish proportions in a wood near the town, and brought the little man to Mullingar Workhouse, where he is now an inmate. He eats greedily, but all attempts to interview him have failed, his only reply being a peculiar sound between a growl and a squeal. The inmates regard him with interest mixed with awe.

This seems like the beginning of an important era of research; it seems as if the world of experiments had at last touched the world of reality. It is as if one read: “Great excitement has been caused in Rotten Row, in the west of London, by the fact that the centaur, previously seen by several colonels and young ladies, has at last been stopped in his lawless gallop.” Or it is as if one saw in a newspaper: “Slight perturbation has been caused at the west end of Margate by the capture of a mermaid,” or “A daring fowler, climbing the crags of the Black Mountains for a nest of eagles, found, somewhat unexpectedly, that it was a nest of angels.” It is wonderful to have the calm admission in cold print of such links between the human world and other worlds. It is interesting to know that they took the Leprechaun to a workhouse. It settles, and settles with a very sound instinct, the claim of humanity in such sublime curiosities. If a centaur were really found in Rotten Row, would they take him to a workhouse or to a stable? If a mermaid were really fished up at Margate, would they take her to a workhouse or to an aquarium? If people caught an angel unawares, would they put the angel in a workhouse? Or in an aviary?

The idea of the Missing Link was not at all new with Darwin; it was not invented merely by those vague but imaginative minor poets to whom we owe most of our ideas about evolution. Men had always played about with the idea of a possible link between human and bestial life; and the very existence—or, if you will, the very non-existence— of the centaur or the mermaid proves it. All the mythologies had dreamed of a half-human monster. The only objection to the centaur and the mermaid was that they could not be found. In every other respect their merits were of the most solid sort. So it is with the Darwinian ideal of a link between man and the brutes. There is no objection to it except that there is no evidence for it. The only objection to the Missing Link is that he is apparently fabulous, like the centaur and the mermaid, and all the other images under which man has imagined a bridge between himself and brutality. In short, the only objection to the Missing Link is that he is missing.

But there is also another very elementary difference. The Greeks and the Mediaevals invented monstrosities. But they treated them as monstrosities—that is, they treated them as exceptions. They did not deduce any law from such lawless things as the centaur or the merman, the griffin or the hippogriff. But modern people did try to make a law out of the Missing Link. They made him a lawgiver, though they were hunting for him like a criminal. They built on the foundation of him before he was found. They made this unknown monster, the mixture of the man and ape, the founder of society and the accepted father of mankind. The ancients had a fancy that there was a mongrel of horse and man, a mongrel of fish and man. But they did not make it the father of anything; they did not ask the mad mongrel to breed. The ancients did not draw up a system of ethics based upon the centaur, showing how man in a civilized society must take care of his hands, but must not wholly forget his hooves. They never reminded woman that, although she had the golden hair of a goddess, she had the tail of a fish. But the moderns did talk to man as if he were the Missing Link; they did remind him that he must allow for apish imbecility and bestial tricks. The moderns did tell the woman that she was half a brute, for all her beauty; you can find the thing said again and again in Schopenhauer and other prophets of the modern spirit. That is the real difference between the two monsters. The Missing Link is still missing and so is the merman.

On the top of all this we have the Leprechaun, apparently an actual monster at present in the charge of the police. It is unnecessary to say that numbers of learned people have proved again and again that it could not exist. It is equally unnecessary to say that numbers of unlearned people—children, mothers of children, workers, common people who grow corn or catch fish—had seen them existing. Almost every other simple type of our working population had seen a Leprechaun. A fisherman had seen a Leprechaun. A farmer had seen a Leprechaun. Even a postman had probably seen one. But there was one simple son of the people whose path had never before been crossed by the prodigy. Never until then had a policeman seen a Leprechaun. It was only a question of whether the monster should take the policeman away with him into Elfland (where such a policeman as he would certainly have been fettered by the fatal love of the fairy queen), or whether the policeman should take away the monster to the police-station. The forces of this earth prevailed; the constable captured the elf, instead of the elf capturing the constable. The officer took him to the workhouse, and opened a new epoch in the study of tradition and folk-lore.

What will the modern world do if it finds (as very likely it will) that the wildest fables have had a basis in fact; that there are creatures of the border land, that there are oddities on the fringe of fixed laws, that there are things so unnatural as easily to be called preternatural? I do not know what the modern world will do about these things; I only know what I hope. I hope the modern world will be as sane about these things as the mediaeval world was about them. Because I believe that an ogre can have two heads, that is no reason why I should lose the only head that I have. Because the mediaeval man thought that some man had the head of a dog, that was no reason why he himself should have the head of a donkey. The mediaeval man was never essentially weak or stupid about any of his beliefs, however unfounded they were. He did not lack judgement; he only lacked the opportunities of judgment. He had superstitions; but he was not superstitious about them. He was wrong about Africa; but then, to do him justice, he did not care whether he was right. He had got that particular thing which some modern people call “the love of truth,” but which is really simply the power of taking one’s own mistakes seriously. He thought that ordinary men were a serious matter; as they are. He thought that extraordinary men were a fantastic fairy-tale; and he thought (very rightly) that the fairy-tale was all the more fantastic if it was true. He did not let dog-faced men affect his conception of mankind; he regarded them as a joke, the best as a practical joke.

But in our time, I am sorry to say, we have seen some signs of the possibility that such aberrations or monstrosities as spiritual science may discover will be taken as real tests of, or keys to, the human lot. For instance, the psychological phenomenon called “dual personality” is certainly a thing so extraordinary that any old-fashioned rationalist or agnostic would simply have called it a miracle and disbelieved it. But nowadays those who do believe it will not treat it as a miracle—that is, as an exception. They try to make deductions from it, theories about identity and metempsychosis and psychical evolution, and God knows what. If it is true that one particular body has two souls, it is a joke, as if it had two noses. It must not be permitted to upset the actualities of our human happiness. If some one says, “Jones blew his nose,” and Jones is of so peculiar a formation that one may with logical propriety ask, “Which nose?” that is no reason why the ordinary formula should lose its ordinary human utility. This is, I think, one of the most real dangers that lie in front of the civilization that has just discovered the Leprechaun. We are going to find all the gods and fairies all over again, all the spiritual hybrids and all the jests of eternity. But we are not going to find them, as the pagans found them, in our youth, in an atmosphere in which gods can be jested with or giants slapped on the back. We are going to find them, in the old age of our society, in a mood dangerously morbid, in a spirit only too ready to take the exception instead of the rule. If we find creatures that are half human, we may only too possibly make them an excuse for being half-human ourselves.

I should not be very painfully concerned about the Leprechaun if people had thrown stones at him as a bad fairy, or given him milk and fire as a good one. But there is something menacing about taking away a monster in order to study him. There is something sinister about putting a Leprechaun in the workhouse. The only solid comfort is that he certainly will not work.

THE END

Sui mostri

Vidi una volta sui giornali questo trafiletto, del quale presi nota:

«LEPRECHAUN» CATTURATO

Grande eccitazione è stata suscitata a Mullingar, nell’ovest dell’Irlanda, dalla notizia che il presunto «Leprechaun», che parecchi bambini affermavano di aver visto a Killough, presso Delvin, nel corso degli ultimi due mesi, è stato catturato. Due poliziotti hanno trovato una creatura di proporzioni nane in un bosco vicino alla città, e hanno condotto il piccolo uomo all’Ospizio di Mullingar, dove ora è ricoverato. Mangia avidamente, ma tutti i tentativi di intervistarlo sono falliti, essendo la sua unica risposta uno strano suono a metà tra un ringhio e uno strillo. I ricoverati lo osservano con interesse misto a soggezione.

Questo pare l’inizio di un’importante era di ricerca; pare come se il mondo degli esperimenti avesse finalmente toccato il mondo della realtà. È come se si leggesse: «Grande eccitazione è stata suscitata a Rotten Row, nell’ovest di Londra, dal fatto che il centauro, precedentemente visto da parecchi colonnelli e signorine, è stato finalmente fermato nel suo sfrenato galoppo». O è come se si vedesse in un giornale: «Lieve perturbazione è stata causata all’estremità occidentale di Margate dalla cattura di una sirena», oppure «Un ardito uccellatore, arrampicandosi sulle rupi delle Montagne Nere in cerca di un nido di aquile, ha scoperto, alquanto inaspettatamente, che si trattava di un nido di angeli». È meraviglioso avere la calma ammissione, in freddo carattere di stampa, di simili legami tra il mondo umano e altri mondi. È interessante sapere che hanno portato il Leprechaun a un ospizio. Ciò risolve, e risolve con un istinto assai sano, la pretesa dell’umanità in tali sublimi curiosità. Se un centauro fosse davvero trovato a Rotten Row, lo porterebbero a un ospizio o a una stalla? Se una sirena fosse davvero pescata a Margate, la porterebbero a un ospizio o a un acquario? Se qualcuno catturasse alla sprovvista un angelo, metterebbe l’angelo in un ospizio? O in una voliera?

L’idea dell’Anello Mancante non era affatto nuova con Darwin; non fu inventata soltanto da quei vaghi ma fantasiosi poeti minori ai quali dobbiamo la maggior parte delle nostre idee sull’evoluzione. Gli uomini avevano sempre giocato con l’idea di un possibile legame tra la vita umana e quella bestiale; e l’esistenza stessa — o, se volete, l’inesistenza stessa — del centauro o della sirena lo prova. Tutte le mitologie avevano sognato un mostro semiumano. L’unica obiezione al centauro e alla sirena era che non si potevano trovare. Sotto ogni altro riguardo i loro meriti erano del genere più solido. Così è con l’ideale darwiniano di un legame tra l’uomo e i bruti. Non vi è obiezione a esso, salvo che non vi è alcuna prova a suo favore. L’unica obiezione all’Anello Mancante è che è a quanto pare favoloso, come il centauro e la sirena, e tutte le altre immagini sotto le quali l’uomo ha immaginato un ponte tra se stesso e la brutalità. In breve, l’unica obiezione all’Anello Mancante è che manca.

Ma vi è anche un’altra differenza assai elementare. I Greci e i Medievali inventarono mostruosità. Ma le trattavano come mostruosità — cioè, le trattavano come eccezioni. Non deducevano alcuna legge da cose tanto illegali come il centauro o il tritone, il grifone o l’ippogrifo. Ma i moderni tentarono davvero di ricavare una legge dall’Anello Mancante. Ne fecero un legislatore, benché gli dessero la caccia come a un criminale. Costruirono sul suo fondamento prima che fosse trovato. Fecero di questo ignoto mostro, la mescolanza dell’uomo e della scimmia, il fondatore della società e il padre accettato del genere umano. Gli antichi ebbero la fantasia che vi fosse un ibrido di cavallo e uomo, un ibrido di pesce e uomo. Ma non ne fecero il padre di alcunché; non chiesero al folle ibrido di riprodursi. Gli antichi non stilarono un sistema di etica basato sul centauro, mostrando come l’uomo in una società civile debba aver cura delle proprie mani, ma non debba dimenticare del tutto i propri zoccoli. Non ricordarono mai alla donna che, benché avesse la chioma d’oro di una dea, aveva la coda di un pesce. Ma i moderni parlarono davvero all’uomo come se egli fosse l’Anello Mancante; gli ricordarono davvero che doveva tener conto di una scimmiesca imbecillità e di trucchi bestiali. I moderni dissero davvero alla donna che era metà bruto, con tutta la sua bellezza; potete trovare la cosa detta più e più volte in Schopenhauer e in altri profeti dello spirito moderno. Questa è la vera differenza tra i due mostri. L’Anello Mancante manca ancora e così pure il tritone.

In cima a tutto ciò abbiamo il Leprechaun, a quanto pare un mostro reale attualmente in custodia della polizia. È superfluo dire che numerose persone dotte hanno dimostrato più e più volte che non poteva esistere. È ugualmente superfluo dire che numerose persone indotte — bambini, madri di bambini, lavoratori, gente comune che coltiva il grano o pesca — li avevano visti esistere. Quasi ogni altro semplice tipo della nostra popolazione lavoratrice aveva visto un Leprechaun. Un pescatore aveva visto un Leprechaun. Un contadino aveva visto un Leprechaun. Perfino un postino ne aveva probabilmente visto uno. Ma vi era un semplice figlio del popolo il cui cammino non era mai stato prima attraversato dal prodigio. Mai fino ad allora un poliziotto aveva visto un Leprechaun. Era solo questione di stabilire se il mostro dovesse portar via con sé il poliziotto nella Terra degli Elfi (dove un poliziotto come lui sarebbe stato certamente incatenato dal fatale amore della Regina delle fate), o se il poliziotto dovesse portar via il mostro alla stazione di polizia. Le forze di questa terra prevalsero; l’agente catturò l’elfo, invece che l’elfo l’agente. L’ufficiale lo condusse all’ospizio, e aprì una nuova epoca nello studio della tradizione e del folclore.

Che cosa farà il mondo moderno se scopre (come molto probabilmente scoprirà) che le più fantastiche favole hanno avuto un fondamento di fatto; che vi sono creature della terra di confine, che vi sono stranezze ai margini delle leggi fisse, che vi sono cose tanto innaturali da poter facilmente esser dette preternaturali? Non so che cosa farà il mondo moderno riguardo a queste cose; so soltanto ciò che spero. Spero che il mondo moderno sarà tanto assennato su queste cose quanto lo era il mondo medievale. Poiché credo che un orco possa avere due teste, non vi è ragione per cui io debba perdere l’unica testa che ho. Poiché l’uomo medievale pensava che qualche uomo avesse la testa di un cane, non vi era ragione per cui egli stesso dovesse avere la testa di un asino. L’uomo medievale non fu mai essenzialmente debole o stupido riguardo ad alcuna delle sue credenze, per quanto infondate fossero. Non gli mancava il giudizio; gli mancavano solo le occasioni di giudizio. Aveva superstizioni; ma non era superstizioso riguardo a esse. Si sbagliava sull’Africa; ma poi, a rendergli giustizia, non gli importava se avesse ragione. Aveva ottenuto quella particolare cosa che alcuni moderni chiamano «l’amore della verità», ma che è in realtà semplicemente il potere di prendere sul serio i propri errori. Pensava che gli uomini ordinari fossero una cosa seria; come sono. Pensava che gli uomini straordinari fossero una fantastica fiaba; e pensava (assai giustamente) che la fiaba fosse tanto più fantastica se era vera. Non lasciava che gli uomini dalla faccia di cane influenzassero la sua concezione del genere umano; li considerava uno scherzo, nel migliore dei casi uno scherzo pratico.

Ma nel nostro tempo, mi dispiace dirlo, abbiamo visto alcuni segni della possibilità che tali aberrazioni o mostruosità, quali la scienza spirituale può scoprire, vengano prese come veri banchi di prova, o chiavi, della sorte umana. Per esempio, il fenomeno psicologico chiamato «doppia personalità» è certamente una cosa tanto straordinaria che qualsiasi razionalista o agnostico all’antica l’avrebbe semplicemente chiamata un miracolo e l’avrebbe screduta. Ma oggigiorno coloro che vi credono non la tratteranno come un miracolo — cioè, come un’eccezione. Tentano di trarne deduzioni, teorie sull’identità e sulla metempsicosi e sull’evoluzione psichica, e Dio sa cos’altro. Se è vero che un particolare corpo ha due anime, è uno scherzo, come se avesse due nasi. Non gli si deve permettere di sconvolgere le realtà della nostra felicità umana. Se qualcuno dice: «Jones si è soffiato il naso», e Jones è di così peculiare conformazione che si può con logica proprietà chiedere: «Quale naso?», non vi è ragione per cui la formula ordinaria debba perdere la sua ordinaria utilità umana. Questo è, credo, uno dei più reali pericoli che stanno dinanzi alla civiltà che ha appena scoperto il Leprechaun. Torneremo a trovare tutti gli dèi e le fate, tutti gli ibridi spirituali e tutte le facezie dell’Eternità. Ma non li troveremo, come li trovarono i pagani, nella nostra giovinezza, in un’atmosfera in cui si può scherzare con gli dèi o dare una pacca sulla schiena ai giganti. Li troveremo, nella vecchiaia della nostra società, in uno stato d’animo pericolosamente morboso, in uno spirito fin troppo pronto a prendere l’eccezione invece della regola. Se troviamo creature che sono metà umane, potremmo fin troppo probabilmente farne una scusa per essere metà umani noi stessi.

Non sarei molto dolorosamente preoccupato per il Leprechaun se le persone gli avessero gettato pietre come a una cattiva fata, o gli avessero dato latte e fuoco come a una buona. Ma vi è qualcosa di minaccioso nel portar via un mostro per studiarlo. Vi è qualcosa di sinistro nel mettere un Leprechaun nell’ospizio. L’unico solido conforto è che di certo non lavorerà.

FINE