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LEAVSS 
IN  THE' 
WIND 

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by 

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COPYRIGHT  DEPOSm 


«^M«*)k^^^jMiiA 


LEAVES   IN 
THE  WIND 


BY  THE  SAME  AUTHOR 


PEBBLES  ON  THE  SHORE 

With  go  Illustrations 

BY  C.   E.   BROCK 

Net  $2.00 


Also  published  in 

THE  wayfarer's  LIBRARY 

at  75  cents  net 


E.  P.  BUTTON  &  COMPANY 


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Copyright,  1919. 
by  e.  p.  button  &  company 

All  Rights  Reserved 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 


J"L1''>I9I9     Q^,^^. 


529  226 


3 

0 


TO  MY  CHILDREN 


AUTHOR'S  NOTE 

The  welcome  given  to  "Pebbles  on  the  Shore"  is 
the  excuse  for  this  volume,  collected  for  the  most 
part  from  the  same  source,  the  columns  of  The  Star 
and  other  papers,  in  which  the  articles  appeared 
from  week  to  week.  Some  of  them  have  been  ex- 
tended and  a  few  are  now  published  for  the  first 
time.  The  leaves  are  slight,  and  if  they  have  any 
collective  value  it  is  as  symptoms  of  the  wind  that 
blows  them.  They  were  written  during  the  third 
and  fourth  years  of  the  War,  and  in  some  measure 
reflect,  incidentally  rather  than  intentionally,  the 
emotional  experiences  of  the  most  disquieting  period 
of  the  struggle. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

A  Fellow  Traveller i 

On  a  Famous  Sermon 6 

On  Pockets  and  Things 12 

On  a  Country  Platform 20 

On  a  Distant  View  of  a  Pig 25 

In  Defence  of  Ignorance 3' 

On  a  Shiny  Night 37 

On  Giving  Up  Tobacco 42 

The  Great  God  Gun 49 

On  a  Legend  of  the  War 58 

On  Talk  and  Talkers 64 

On  a  Vision  of  Eden 7° 

On  a  Comic  Genius 75 

On  a  Vanished  Garden 80 

All  About  a  Dog 9^ 

ix 


X  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

On  the  American  Soldier 97 

'Appy  'Einrich 103 

On  Fear 108 

On  Being  Called  Thompson 113 

On  Thinking  FOR  One's  Self 118 

On  Sawing  Wood 123 

Variations  on  an  Old  Theme        .     .     .     .  128 

On  Clothes 147 

The  Duel  That  Failed 153 

On  Early  Rising 158 

On  Being  Known 163 

On  a  Map  of  the  Oberland 168 

On  a  Talk  in  a  Bus 181 

On  Virtues  That  Don't  Count    .     .     .     .  186 

On  Hate  and  the  Soldier 192 

On  Taking  the  Call 199 

A  Dithyramb  on  a  Dog 204 

On  Happy  Faces  in  the  Strand    ....  209 

On  Word-Magic 223 

Odin  Grown  Old 229 

On  a  Smile  in  a  Shaving  Glass    ....  235 

On  the  Rule  of  the  Road 241 

On  the  Indifference  of  Nature       .     .     .  250 

If  Jeremy  Came  Back 257 

On  Sleep  and  Thought 264 

On  Mowing 269 


LIST  OF  FULL-PAGE  ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

Frontispiece 

Meeting  of  the  S.  P.  R.  A.  W 17  - 

"The  art  of  diplomacy  ..." AS 

Whose  tassels  the  bold  militiamen  .  .  .  would 
gaily  pluck  as  they  passed 89 

This  generation  has  companioned  Death  too 
closely  to  see  him  again  quite  as  the  hooded 
terror  of  old 130  ^ 

Wherever  he  turned  he  was  baulked 175 

"A  real  smile  ..." 221  l>^ 


LEAVES  IN  THE  WIND 


A  FELLOW  TRAVELLER 

I  DO  not  know  which  of  us  got  into  the  carriage  first. 
Indeed  I  did  not  know  he  was  in  the  carriage  at  all 
for  some  time.  It  was  the  last  train  from  London 
to  a  Midland  town — a  stopping  train,  an  infinitely 
leisurely  train,  one  of  those  trains  which  give  you  an 
understanding  of  eternity.  It  was  tolerably  full  when 
it  started,  but  as  we  stopped  at  the  suburban  stations 
the  travellers  alighted  in  ones  and  twos,  and  by  the 
time  we  had  left  the  outer  ring  of  London  behind  I 
was  alone — or,  rather,  I  thought  I  was  alone. 

There  is  a  pleasant  sense  of  freedom  about  being 
alone  in  a  carriage  that  is  jolting  noisily  through  the 
night.  It  is  liberty  and  unrestraint  in  a  very  agree- 
able form.  You  can  do  anything  you  like.  You  can 
talk  to  yourself  as  loud  as  you  please  and  no  one  will 
hear  you.  You  can  have  that  argument  out  with  Jones 
and  roll  him  triumphantly  in  the  dust  without  fear  of 
a  counterstroke.  You  can  stand  on  your  head  and  no 
one  will  see  you.    You  can  sing,  or  dance  a  two-step, 


2  A  FELLOW  TRAVELLER 

or  practise  a  golf  stroke,  or  play  marbles  on  the  floor 
without  let  or  hindrance.  You  can  open  the  window 
or  shut  it  without  provoking  a  protest.  You  can  open 
both  windows  or  shut  both.  Indeed,  you  can  go  on 
opening  them  and  shutting  them  as  a  sort  of  festival  of 
freedom.  You  can  have  any  corner  you  choose  and  try 
all  of  them  in  turn.  You  can  lie  at  full  length  on  the 
cushions  and  enjoy  the  luxury  of  breaking  the  regu- 
lations and  possibly  the  heart  of  D.O.R.A.  herself. 
Only  D.O.R.A.  will  not  know  that  her  heart  is  broken. 
You  have  escaped  even  D.O.R.A. 

On  this  night  I  did  not  do  any  of  these  things. 
They  did  not  happen  to  occur  to  me.  What  I  did 
was  much  more  ordinary.  When  the  last  of  my  fellow- 
passengers  had  gone  I  put  down  my  paper,  stretched 
my  arms  and  my  legs,  stood  up  and  looked  out  of  the 
window  on  the  calm  summer  night  through  which  I 
was  journeying,  noting  the  pale  reminiscence  of  day 
that  still  lingered  in  the  northern  sky ;  crossed  the  car- 
riage and  looked  out  of  the  other  window;  lit  a  cig- 
arette, sat  down,  and  began  to  read  again.  It  was  then 
that  I  became  aware  of  my  fellow  traveller.  He  came 
and  sat  on  my  nose.  .  .  .  He  was  one  of  those  wingy, 
nippy.  Intrepid  insects  that  we  call,  vaguely,  mosquitoes. 
I  flicked  him  off  my  nose,  and  he  made  a  tour  of  the 
compartment,  investigated  its  three  dimensions,  visited 
each  window,  fluttered  round  the  light,  decided  that 
there  was  nothing  so  interesting  as  that  large  animal 
in  the  corner,  came  and  had  a  look  at  my  neck. 

I  flicked  him  off  again.  He  skipped  away,  took 
another  jaunt  round  the  compartment,  returned,  and 


A  FELLOW  TRAVELLER  3 

seated  himself  impudently  on  the  back  of  my  hand.  It 
is  enough,  I  said;  magnanimity  has  its  limits.  Twice 
you  have  been  warned  that  I  am  someone  in  particular, 
that  my  august  person  resents  the  tickling  imperti- 
nences of  strangers.  I  assume  the  black  cap.  I  con- 
demn you  to  death.  Justice  demands  it,  and  the  court 
awards  it.  The  counts  against  you  are  many.  You 
are  a  vagrant;  you  are  a  public  nuisance;  you  are 
travelling  without  a  ticket ;  you  have  no  meat  coupon. 
For  these  and  many  other  misdemeanours  you  are  about 
to  die.  I  struck  a  swift,  lethal  blow  with  my  right 
hand.  He  dodged  the  attack  with  an  insolent  ease  that 
humiliated  me.  My  personal  vanity  was  aroused.  I 
lunged  at  him  with  my  hand,  with  my  paper;  I  jumped 
on  the  seat  and  pursued  him  round  the  lamp ;  I  adopted 
tactics  of  feline  cunning,  waiting  till  he  had  alighted, 
approaching  with  a  horrible  stealthiness,  striking  with 
a  sudden  and  terrible  swiftness. 

It  was  all  in  vain.  He  played  with  me,  openly  and 
ostentatiously,  like  a  skilful  matador  finessing  round 
an  infuriated  bull.  It  was  obvious  that  he  was  en- 
joying himself,  that  it  was  for  this  that  he  had  dis- 
turbed my  repose.  He  wanted  a  little  sport,  and  what 
sport  like  being  chased  by  this  huge,  lumbering  wind- 
mill of  a  creature,  who  tasted  so  good  and  seemed  so 
helpless  and  so  stupid  ?  I  began  to  enter  into  the  spirit 
of  the  fellow.  He  was  no  longer  a  mere  insect.  He 
was  developing  into  a  personality,  an  intelligence  that 
challenged  the  possession  of  this  compartment  with  me 
on  equal  terms.  I  felt  my  heart  warming  towards 
him  and  the  sense  of  superiority  fading.    How  could  I 


4  A  FELLOW  TRAVELLER 

feel  superior  to  a  creature  who  was  so  manifestly  my 
master  in  the  only  competition  in  which  we  had  ever 
engaged?  Why  not  be  magnanimous  again?  Mag- 
nanimity and  mercy  were  the  noblest  attributes  of  man. 
In  the  exercise  of  these  high  qualities  I  could  recover 
my  prestige.  At  present  I  was  a  ridiculous  figure,  a 
thing  for  laughter  and  derision.  By  being  merciful  I 
could  reassert  the  moral  dignity  of  man  and  go  back 
to  my  corner  with  honour.  I  withdraw  the  sentence 
of  death,  I  said,  returning  to  my  seat.  I  cannot  kill 
you,  but  I  can  reprieve  you,    I  do  it. 

I  took  up  my  paper  and  he  came  and  sat  on  it. 
Foolish  fellow,  I  said,  you  have  delivered  yourself  into 
my  hands.  I  have  but  to  give  this  respectable  weekly 
organ  of  opinion  a  smack  on  both  covers  and  you  are 
a  corpse,  neatly  sandwiched  between  an  article  on 
"Peace  Traps"  and  another  on  "The  Modesty  of  Mr. 
Hughes."  But  I  shall  not  do  it.  I  have  reprieved  you, 
and  I  will  satisfy  you  that  when  this  large  animal  says 
a  thing  he  means  it.  Moreover,  I  no  longer  desire  to 
kill  you.  Through  knowing  you  better  I  have  come 
to  feel — shall  I  say? — a  sort  of  affection  for  you.  I 
fancy  that  St.  Francis  would  have  called  you  "little 
brother."  I  cannot  go  so  far  as  that  in  Christian 
charity  and  civility.  But  I  recognise  a  more  distant 
relationship.  Fortune  has  made  us  fellow-travellers  on 
this  summer  night.  I  have  interested  you  and  you 
have  entertained  me.  The  obligation  is  mutual  and 
it  is  founded  on  the  fundamental  fact  that  we  are  fel- 
low mortals.  The  miracle  of  life  is  ours  in  common 
and  its  mystery  too.     I  suppose  you  don't  know  any- 


A  FELLOW  TRAVELLER  5 

thing  about  your  journey.  I'm  not  sure  that  I  know 
much  about  mine.  We  are  really,  when  you  come  to 
think  of  it,  a  good  deal  alike — ^just  apparitions  that 
are  and  then  are  not,  coming  out  of  the  night  into  the 
lighted  carriage,  fluttering  about  the  lamp  for  a  while 
and  going  out  into  the  night  again.    Perhaps.  .  .  . 

"Going  on  to-night,  sir?"  said  a  voice  at  the  win- 
dow. It  was  a  friendly  porter  giving  me  a  hint  that 
this  was  my  station.  I  thanked  him  and  said  I  must 
have  been  dozing.  And  seizing  my  hat  and  stick  I 
went  out  into  the  cool  summer  night.  As  I  closed  the 
door  of  the  compartment  I  saw  my  fellow  traveller 
fluttering  round  the  lamp.  .  .  . 


ON  A  FAMOUS  SERMON 


I  SEE  that  Queen  Alexandra  has  made  a  further  dis- 
tribution among  charities  of  the  profits  from  the  sale 
of  the  late  Canon  Fleming's  sermon,  "On  Recognition 
in  Eternity."  The  sermon  was  preached  on  the  occa- 
sion of  the  death  of  the  Duke  of  Clarence,  and  judging 
from  its  popularity  I  have  no  doubt  it  is  a  good  ser- 
mon. But  I  am  tempted  to  write  on  the  subject  by  a 
mischievous  thought  suggested  by  the  authorship  of 
this  famous  sermon.  There  is  no  idea  which  makes 
so  universal  an  appeal  to  the  deepest  instincts  of  hu- 
manity as  the  idea  that  when  we  awake  from  the  dream 
of  life  we  shall  pass  into  the  companionship  of  those 
who  have  shared  and  lightened  our  pilgrimage  here. 
The  intellect  may  dismiss  the  idea  as  unscientific,  but, 
as  Newman  says,  the  finite  can  tell  us  nothing  about 

6 


ON  A  FAMOUS  SERMON  7 

the  infinite  Creator,  and  the  Quaker  poet's  serene  as- 
surance— 

Yet  love  will  hope  and  faith  will  trust 
(Since  He  Who  knows  our  needs  is  just) 
That   somehow,   sonaewhere,   meet  we  must — 

defies  all  the  bufifetings  of  reason. 

Even  Shelley,  for  all  his  aggressive  Atheism,  could 
not,  as  Francis  Thompson  points  out,  escape  the  in- 
stinct of  personal  immortality.  In  his  glorious  elegy 
on  Keats  he  implicitly  assumes  the  personal  immortal- 
ity vi^hich  the  poem  explicitly  denies,  as  when,  to  greet 
the  dead  youth, 

The   inheritors  of  unfulfilled   renown 

Rose   from   their   thrones,   built  beyond   mortal   thought 

Far  in  the   unapparent. 

And  it  is  on  the  same  note  that  the  poem  reaches  its 
sublime  and  prophetic  close: — 

I  am  borne  darkly,   fearfully  afar; 

Whilst,  burning  through  the  inmost  veil  of  heaven, 

The  soul  of  Adonais  like  a  star 

Beacons  from  the  abode  where  the  eternal   are. 

The  ink  of  that  immortal  strain  was  hardly  dry  upon 
the  page  when  the  vision  was  fulfilled,  for  only  a  few 
months  elapsed  between  the  death  of  Keats  and  the 
drowning  of  Shelley,  and  in  the  interval  the  great 
monody  had  been  written. 

I  refuse,  for  the  sake  of  the  feelings  of  Mr.  J. 


8  ON  A  FAMOUS  SERMON 

M.  Robertson  and  Mr.  Foote  and  the  other  stern  old 
dogmatists  of  Rationalism,  to  deny  myself  the  pleasure 
of  imagining  the  meeting  of  Shelley  and  Keats  in  the 
Elysian  Fields.  If  Shelley,  "borne  darkly,  fearfully 
afar"  beyond  the  confines  of  reason,  could  feel  that 
grand  assurance  why  should  I,  who  dislike  the  dog- 
matists of  Rationalism  as  much  as  the  dogmatists  of 
Orthodoxy,  deny  myself  that  beautiful  solace?  I  like 
to  think  of  those  passionate  spirits  in  eternal  comrade- 
ship, pausing  in  their  eager  talk  to  salute  deep-browed 
Homer  as,  perchance,  he  passes  in  grave  discourse  with 
the  "mighty-mouthed  inventor  of  harmonies."  I  like  to 
think  of  Dante  meeting  Beatrice  by  some  crystal  stream, 
of  Lincoln  wandering  side  by  side  with  Lee,  of  poor 
Mary  Lamb  reunited  to  the  mother  she  loved  and 
whom  she  slew  in  one  of  her  fits  of  insanity,  and  of  an 
innumerable  host  of  humbler  recognitions  no  less 
sweet. 

But  Canon  Fleming's  name  reminds  me  that  all 
the  recognitions  will  not  be  agreeable.  I  cannot  im- 
agine that  eminent  Court  preacher  showing  any  eager- 
ness to  recognise  or  be  recognised  by  that  other  emi- 
nent preacher,  Dr.  Talmage.  For  it  was  Talmage's 
sermon  on  the  wickedness  of  great  cities  that  Fleming 
so  unblushingly  preached  and  published  as  his  own, 
simply  altering  the  names  of  American  cities  to  those 
of  European  cities.  Some  cruel  editor  printed  the  two 
sermons  side  by  side,  I  think  in  the  old  St.  James's 
Gazette,  and  the  poor  Canon's  excuse  only  made  mat- 
ters rather  worse.  The  incident  did  not  prevent  him 
securing  preferment,  and  his  sermon  on  "Recognition 


ON  A  FAMOUS  SERMON  9 

in  Eternity"  still  goes  on  selling.  But  he  will  not  be 
comfortable  when  he  sees  Talmage  coming  his  way 
across  the  Elysian  Fields.  I  do  not  think  he  will  offer 
him  the  very  unconvincing  explanation  he  offered  to 
the  British  public.  He  will  make  a  frank  confession 
and  Talmage  will  no  doubt  give  him  absolution.  There 
will  be  many  such  awkward  meetings.  With  what 
emotions  of  shame,  for  example,  will  Charles  I.  see 
Strafford  approaching.  "Not  a  hair  of  your  head  shall 
be  touched  by  Parliament"  was  his  promise  to  that  in- 
strument of  his  despotic  rule,  but  when  Parliament  de- 
manded the  head  itself  he  endorsed  the  verdict  that 
sent  Strafford  to  the  scaffold.  And  I  can  imagine  there 
will  be  a  little  coldness  between  Cromwell  and  Charles 
when  they  pass,  though  in  the  larger  understanding  of 
that  world  Charles,  I  fancy,  will  see  that  he  was  quite 
impossible,  and  that  he  left  the  grim  old  Puritan  no 
other  way. 

It  is  this  thought  of  the  larger  understanding  that 
will  come  when  we  have  put  off  the  coarse  vesture  of 
things  that  makes  this  speculation  reasonable.  That 
admirable  woman,  Mrs.  Berry,  in  "Richard  Feverel," 
had  the  recognitions  of  eternity  in  her  mind  when  she 
declared  that  widows  ought  not  to  remarry.  "And  to 
think,"  she  said,  "o'  two  (husbands)  claimin'  o'  me 
then,  it  makes  me  hot  all  over."  Mrs.  Berry's  mis- 
take was  in  thinking  of  Elysium  in  the  terms  of  earth. 
It  is  precisely  because  we  shall  have  escaped  from  the 
encumbering  flesh  and  all  the  bewilderments  of  this 
clumsy  world  that  we  cannot  merely  tolerate  the  idea, 


lo  ON  A  FAMOUS  SERMON 

but  can  find  in  it  a  promised  explanation  of  the  inex- 
plicable. 

It  is  the  same  mistake  that  I  find  in  Mr.  Belloc, 
who,  I  see  from  yesterday's  paper,  has  been  denounc- 
ing the  "tomfoolery"  of  spiritualism,  and  describing 
the  miracles  of  Lourdes  as  "a.  special  providential  act 
designed  to  convert,  change,  upset,  and  disintegrate  the 
materialism  of  the  nineteenth  century."  I  want  to  see 
the  materialism  of  the  nineteenth  century  converted, 
changed,  upset  and  disintegrated,  as  much  as  Mr.  Bel- 
loc does,  but  I  have  as  little  regard  for  the  instrument 
he  trusts  in  as  for  the  "tomfoolery"  of  spiritualism. 
And  when  he  goes  on  to  denounce  a  Miss  Posthle- 
thwaite,  a  Catholic  spiritualist,  for  having  declared 
that  in  the  next  world  she  found  people  of  all  religions 
and  did  not  find  that  Mohammedans  suffered  more 
than  others  I  feel  that  he  is  as  materialistic  as  Mrs. 
Berry.  He  sees  heaven  in  the  terms  of  the  trouble- 
some little  sectarianisms  of  the  earth,  with  an  as- 
cendency party  in  possession,  and  no  non-alcoholic  Puri- 
tans, Jews,  or  Mohammedans  visible  to  his  august  eye. 
They  will  all  be  in  another  place,  and  very  uncom- 
fortable indeed.  He  really  has  not  advanced  beyond 
that  infantile  partisanship  satirised,  I  think,  by  Swift: — 

We  are  God's  chosen  few. 

All   others   will   be   damned. 

There   is  no   place   in   heaven   for  you; 

We  can't  have  heaven  crammed. 

No,  no,  Mr.  Belloc.  The  judgments  of  eternity  will 
not  be  so  vulgar  as  this,  nor  the  companionship  so 


ON  A  FAMOUS  SERMON  ii 

painfully  exclusive.  You  will  not  walk  the  infinite 
meadows  of  heaven  alone  with  the  sect  you  adorned 
on  earth.  You  will  find  all  sorts  of  people  there  re- 
gardless of  the  quaint  little  creeds  they  professed  in 
the  elementary  school  of  life.  I  am  sure  you  will  find 
Mrs.  Berry  there,  for  that  simple  woman  had  the  root 
of  the  true  gospel  in  her.  "I  think  it's  al'ays  the  plan 
in  a  dielemma,"  she  said  "to  pray  God  and  walk  for- 
ward." I  think  it  is  possible  that  in  the  larger  atmos- 
phere you  will  discover  that  she  was  a  wiser  pupil  in 
the  elementary  school  than  you  were. 


ON  POCKETS  AND  THINGS 


I  SUPPOSE  most  men  felt,  as  I  felt,  the  reasonable- 
ness of  Mr.  Justice  Bray's  remarks  the  other  day  on 
the  preference  of  women  for  bags  instead  of  pockets. 
A  case  was  before  him  in  which  a  woman  had  gone 
into  a  shop,  had  put  down  her  satchel  containing  her 
money  and  valuables,  turned  to  pick  it  up  a  little 
later,  found  it  had  been  stolen,  and  thereupon  brought 
an  action  against  the  owners  of  the  shop  for  the  re- 
covery of  her  losses.  The  jury  were  unsympathetic, 
found  that  in  the  circumstances  the  woman  was  re- 
sponsible, and  gave  a  verdict  against  her. 

12 


ON  POCKETS  AND  THINGS  13 

Of  course  the  jury  were  men,  all  of  them  prejudiced 
on  this  subject  of  pockets.  At  a  guess  I  should  say 
that  there  were  not  fewer  than  150  pockets  in  that 
jury-box,  and  not  one  satchel.  You,  madam,  may  re- 
tort that  this  is  only  another  instance  of  the  scandal 
of  this  man-ridden  world.  Why  were  there  no  women 
in  that  jury-box?  Why  are  all  the  decisions  of  the 
courts,  from  the  High  Court  to  the  coroner's  court,  left 
to  the  judgment  of  men?  Madam,  I  share  your  in- 
dignation. I  would  "comb-out"  the  jury-box.  I  would 
send  half  the  jurymen,  if  not  into  the  trenches,  at 
least  to  hoe  turnips,  and  fill  their  places  with  a  row 
of  women.  Women  are  just  as  capable  as  men  of 
forming  an  opinion  about  facts,  they  have  at  least  as 
much  time  to  spare,  and  their  point  of  view  is  as  es- 
sential to  justice.  What  can  there  be  more  ridiculous, 
for  example,  than  a  jury  of  men  sitting  for  a  whole 
day  to  decide  the  question  of  the  cut  of  a  gown  with- 
out a  single  woman's  expert  opinion  to  guide  them,  or 
more  unjust  than  to  leave  an  issue  between  a  man  and 
a  woman  entirely  in  the  hands  of  men?  Yes,  cer- 
tainly, madam,  I  am  with  you  on  the  general  question. 

But  when  we  come  to  the  subject  of  pockets,  I  am 
bound  to  confess  that  I  am  with  the  jury.  If  I  had 
been  on  that  jury  I  should  have  voted  with  fervour 
for  making  the  woman  responsible  for  her  own  loss. 
If  it  were  possible  for  women  to  put  their  satchels 
down  on  counters,  or  the  seats  of  buses,  or  any  odd 
place  they  thought  of,  and  then  to  make  some  innocent 
person  responsible  because  they  were  stolen,  there 
would  be  no  security  for  anybody.     It  would  be  a 


14  ON  POCKETS  AND  THINGS 

travesty  of  justice — a  premium  upon  recklessness  and 
even  fraud.  Moreover,  people  who  won't  wear  pockets 
deserve  to  be  punished.  They  ask  for  trouble  and 
ought  not  to  complain  when  they  get  it. 

I  have  never  been  able  to  fathom  the  obduracy  of 
women  in  this  matter  of  pockets.  It  is  not  the  only 
reflection  upon  their  common-sense  which  is  implicit 
in  their  dress.  If  we  were  to  pass  judgment  on  the 
relative  intelligence  of  the  sexes  by  their  codes  of  cos- 
tume, sanity  would  pronounce  overwhelmingly  in  fa- 
vour of  men.  Imagine  a  man  who  buttoned  his  coat 
and  waistcoat  <lown  the  back,  so  that  he  was  dependent 
on  someone  else  to  help  him  to  help  to  dress  him  in 
the  morning  and  unfasten  him  at  night,  or  who  relied 
on  such  abominations  as  hooks-and-eyes  scattered  over 
unattainable  places,  in  order  to  keep  his  garments  in 
position.  You  cannot  imagine  such  a  man.  Yet 
women  submit  to  these  incredible  tyrannies  of  fashion 
without  a  murmur,  and  talk  about  them  as  though  it 
was  the  hand  of  fate  upon  them.  I  have  a  good  deal 
of  sympathy  with  the  view  of  a  friend  of  mine  who 
says  that  no  woman  ought  to  have  the  vote  until  she 
has  won  the  enfranchisement  of  her  own  buttons. 

Or  take  high-heeled  boots.  Is  there  any  sight  more 
ludicrous  than  the  spectacle  of  a  woman  stumbling 
along  on  a  pair  of  high  heels,  flung  out  of  the  per- 
pendicular and  painfully  struggling  to  preserve  her 
equilibrium,  condemned  to  take  finnicking  little  steps 
lest  she  should  topple  over,  all  the  grace  and  freedom 
of  movement  lost  in  an  ugly  acrobatic  feat?  And 
when  the  feet  turn  in,  and  the  high  heels  turn  over 


ON  POCKETS  AND  THINGS  15 

— heavens!  I  confess  I  never  see  high  heels  without 
looking  for  a  mindless  face,  and  I  rarely  look  in  vain. 
But  the  puzzle  about  the  pockets  is  that  quite  sen- 
sible vv^omen  go  about  in  a  pocketless  condition.  I 
turned  to  Mrs.  Alpha  just  now^ — she  was  sitting  by  the 
fire  knitting — and  asked  how  many  pockets  she  had 
when  she  was  fully  dressed.  "None,"  she  said. 
"Pockets  haven't  been  worn  for  years  and  years,  but 
now  they  are  coming  in — in  an  ornamental  way."  "In 
an  ornamental  way,"  said  I.  "Won't  they  carry  any- 
thing?" "Well,  you  can  trust  a  handkerchief  to 
them."  "Not  a  purse?"  "Good  gracious,  no.  It 
would  simply  ask  to  be  stolen,  and  if  it  wasn't  stolen 
in  five  minutes  it  would  fall  out  in  ten."  The  case  was 
stranger  than  I  had  thought.  Not  to  have  pockets  was 
bad  enough;  but  to  have  sham  pockets!  Think  of  it! 
We  have  been  at  war  for  three  and  a  half  years,  and 
women  are  now  beginning  to  wear  pockets  "in  an  orna- 
mental way,"  not  for  use  but  as  a  pretty  fal-lal,  much 
as  they  might  put  on  another  row  of  useless  buttons 
to  button  nothing.  And  what  is  the  result?  Mrs. 
Alpha  (I  have  full  permission  to  mention  her  in  order 
to  give  actuality  to  this  moral  discourse,)  spends  hours 
looking  for  her  glasses,  for  her  keys,  for  the  letter  that 
came  this  morning,  for  her  purse,  for  her  bag,  for  all 
that  is  hers.  And  we,  the  devoted  members  of  her  fam- 
ily, spend  hours  in  looking  for  them  too,  exploring 
dark  corners,  probing  the  interstices  of  sofas  and  chairs, 
rummaging  the  dishevelled  drawers  anew,  discovering 
the  thing  that  disappeared  so  mysteriously  last  week  or 
last  month  and  that  we  no  longer  want,  but  rarely  the 


i6  ON  POCKETS  AND  THINGS 

article  that  is  the  very  hub  of  the  immediate  wheel  of 
things. 

Now,  I  am  different,  I  am  pockets  all  over.  I  am 
simply  agape  with  pockets.  I  am  like  a  pillar-box 
walking  about,  waiting  for  the  postman  to  come  and 
collect  things.  All  told,  I  carry  sixteen  pockets — none 
of  them  ornamental,  every  one  as  practical  as  a  time- 
table— pockets  for  letters,  for  watch,  for  keys,  for 
handkerchiefs,  for  tickets,  for  spectacles  (two  pairs, 
long  and  short  distance),  for  loose  money,  for  note- 
wallet,  for  diary  and  pocket-book — why,  bless  me,  you 
can  hardly  mention  a  thing  I  haven't  a  pocket  for. 
And  I  would  not  do  without  one  of  them,  madam — 
not  one.  Do  I  ever  lose  things?  Of  course  I  lose 
things.  I  lose  them  in  my  pockets.  You  can't  pos- 
sibly have  as  many  pockets  as  I  have  got  without  losing 
things  in  them.     But  then  you  have  them  all  the  time. 

That  is  the  splendid  thing  about  losing  your  prop- 
erty in  your  own  pockets.  It  always  turns  up  in  the 
end,  and  that  lady's  satchel  left  on  the  counter  will 
never  turn  up.  And  think  of  the  surprises  you  get 
when  rummaging  in  your  pockets — the  letters  you 
haven't  answered,  the  bills  you  haven't  paid,  the  odd 
money  that  has  somehow  got  into  the  wrong  pocket. 
When  I  have  nothing  else  to  do  I  just  search  my 
pockets — all  my  pockets,  those  in  the  brown  suit,  and 
the  grey  suit,  and  the  serge  suit,  and  my  "Sunday  best" 
— there  must  be  fifty  pockets  in  all,  and  every  one  of 
them  full  of  something,  of  ghosts  of  engagements  I 
haven't  kept,  and  duties  I  haven't  performed,  and 
friends  I  have  neglected,  of  pipes  that  I  have  mourned 


Meeting  of  the  S.  P.  P.  A.  W. 


i8  ON  POCKETS  AND  THINGS 

a$  lost,  and  half  packets  of  cigarettes  that  by  some 
miracle  I  have  not  smoked,  and  all  the  litter  of  a 
casual  and  disorderly  life,  I  would  not  part  with 
these  secrecies  for  all  the  satchels  in  Oxford  Street. 
I  am  my  own  book  of  mysteries.  I  bulge  with  mys- 
teries. I  can  surprise  myself  at  any  moment  I  like 
by  simply  exploring  my  pockets.  If  I  avoid  exploring 
them  I  know  I  am  not  very  well.  I  know  I  am  not 
in  a  condition  to  face  the  things  that  I  might  find 
there.  I  just  leave  them  there  till  I  am  stronger — not 
lost,  madam,  as  they  would  be  in  your  satchel,  but 
just  forgotten,  comfortably  forgotten.  Why  should  one 
always  be  disturbing  the  sleeping  dogs  in  the  kennels 
of  one's  pockets  ?  Why  not  let  them  sleep  ?  Are  there 
not  enough  troubles  in  life  that  one  must  go  seeking 
them  in  one's  own  pockets?  And  I  have  a  precedent, 
look  you.  Did  not  Napoleon  say  that  if  you  did  not 
look  at  your  letters  for  a  fortnight  you  generally  found 
that  they  had  answered  themselves? 

And  may  I  not  in  this  connection  recall  the  practice 
of  Sir  Andrew  Clarke,  the  physician  of  Mr.  Gladstone, 
as  recorded  in  the  reminiscences  of  Mr.  Henry  Holi- 
day? At  dinner  one  night  Sir  Andrew  was  observed 
to  be  drinking  champagne  and  was  asked  why  he  al- 
lowed himself  an  indulgence  which  he  so  rigorously 
denied  to  his  patients.  "Yes,"  he  said,  "but  you  do  not 
understand  my  case.  When  I  go  from  there  I  shall 
find  a  pile  of  fifty  or  sixty  letters  awaiting  answers." 
"But  will  champagne  help  you  to  answer  them?"  asked 
the  other.  "Not  at  all,"  said  Sir  Andrew,  "not  at 
all ;  but  it  puts  you  in  the  frame  of  mind  in  which  you 


ON  POCKETS  AND  THINGS  19 

don't  care  a  damn  whether  they  are  answered  or  not." 
I  do  not  offer  this  story  for  the  imitation  of  youth  but 
for  the  solace  of  people  like  myself  who  have  long 
reached  the  years  of  discretion  without  becoming  dis- 
creet and  who  like  to  feel  that  their  weaknesses  have 
been  shared  by  the  eminent  and  the  wise. 

And,  to  conclude,  the  wisdom  of  the  pocket  habit 
is  not  to  be  judged  by  its  abuse,  but  by  its  obvious 
convenience  and  safety.  I  trust  that  some  energetic 
woman  will  be  moved  to  inaugurate  a  crusade  for  the 
redemption  of  her  sex  from  its  pocketless  condition. 
A  Society  for  the  Propagation  of  Pockets  Among 
Women  (S.P.P.A.W.)  is  a  real  need  of  the  time. 
It  should  be  a  part  of  the  great  work  of  after-the-war 
reconstruction.  It  should  organise  opinion,  distribute 
leaflets  and  hold  meetings,  with  the  Mayor  in  the 
chair  and  experts,  rich  in  pockets  and  the  lore  of  the 
subject,  to  light  the  fire  of  rebellion  throughout  the 
land.  Women  have  won  the  vote  from  the  tyrant  man. 
Let  them  win  their  pockets  from  the  tyrant  dress- 
maker. 


ON  A  COUNTRY  PLATFORM 


The  fields  lie  cheek-by-jowl  with  the  station,  and  a 
group  of  high  elms,  in  which  dwells  a  colony  of  rooks, 
throws  its  ample  shadow  over  the  "down"  platform. 

From  the  cornfield  that  marches  side  by  side  with 
the  station  there  comes  the  cheerful  music  of  the 
reaper  and  the  sound  of  the  voices  of  the  harvesters, 
old  men,  some  women  and  more  children — for  half 
of  the  field  has  been  reaped  and  is  being  gathered 
and  gleaned.  They  are  so  near  that  the  engine- 
driver  of  the  "local"  train  exchanges  gossip  with  them 
in  the  intervals  of  oiling  his  engine.  They  talk  of 
the  crops  and  the  bad  weather  there  has  been  and  the 
change  that  has  come  with  September,  and  the  news 
of  boys  who  are  fighting  or  have  fallen.  .  .  . 

A  dozen  youths  march,  two  by  two,  on  to  the 
"up"  platform.  They  are  in  civilian  dress,  but  behind 
them  walks  a  sergeant  who  ejaculates  "left — left — 
left"  like  the  flick  of  a  whip.  They  are  the  latest 
trickle  from  this  countryside  to  the  great  whirlpool, 

20 


ON  A  COUNTRY  PLATFORM  21 

most  of  them  mere  boys.  They  have  the  self-conscious- 
ness of  obscure  country  youths  who  have  suddenly  been 
thrust  into  the  public  eye  and  are  aware  that  all 
glances  are  turned  critically  upon  their  awkward 
movements.  They  shamble  along  with  a  grotesque 
caricature  of  a  dare-devil  swagger,  and  laugh  loud 
and  vacantly  to  show  how  much  they  are  at  ease  with 
themselves  and  the  world.  It  is  hollow  gaiety  and 
suggests  the  animation  of  a  trout  with  a  hook  in  its 
throat. 

The  booking-clerk,  lounging  at  the  door  of  the 
booking-office,  passes  a  half-contemptuous  remark 
upon  them  to  a  companion. 

"Wait  till  they  come  for  you,  Jimmy,"  says  the 
other.    "You  won't  find  it  so  funny  then." 

Jimmy's  face  falls  at  the  reminder,  for  he  is  nearly 
ripe  for  the  great  harvest,  and  the  reaper  will  soon 
come  his  way.  .  .  . 

A  few  people  drift  in  from  outside  as  the  time 
for  the  departure  of  the  London  train  approaches. 
Among  them,  a  young  woman,  hot  and  flushed  and 
carrying  a  country  basket,  is  greeted  by  an  acquaint- 
ance with  surprise. 

"What  are  you  doing  here?" 

"I'm  going  to  London — ^just  as  I  am — a  telegram 
from  Tom — he's  got  leave — isn't  it  glorious — and  all 
so  unexpected — couldn't  change,  or  even  drop  my 
basket — the  messenger  met  me  in  the  street — hadn't  a 
moment  to  lose  to  catch  the  train,"  .  .  . 

A  little  group  brushes  by  her  with  far  other  emotions. 
A  stalwart  soldier,  a  bronzed,  good-looking  fellow, 


22  ON  A  COUNTRY  PLATFORM 

with  three  stripes,  who  has  evidently  seen  much 
service,  is  returning  from  leave.  His  wife,  neatly 
dressed  and  with  head  down,  wheels  a  perambulator 
beside  him.  Inside  the  perambulator  is  a  child  of 
three  years  or  so.  Two  other  children,  of  perhaps 
five  and  six,  walk  with  the  soldier,  each  clasping  a 
hand.  The  little  procession  passes  in  silence  to  the 
end  of  the  platform,  full  of  that  misery  which  seeks 
to  be  alone  with  itself.  .  .  . 

Over  the  wooden  bridge  that  connects  the  two 
platforms  comes  a  solitary  soldier,  laden  with  his 
belongings.  He  has  come  in  from  some  other  village 
by  the  local  train.  He  flings  himself  down  on  the 
form  and  stares  gloomily  at  the  elms  and  the  cornfield 
and  the  sunshine.  A  comfortable-looking,  elderly 
man,  who  has  a  copy  of  the  London  Corn  Circular  in 
his  hand,  turns  to  him  with  that  amiable  desire  to  be 
friendly  which  elderly  people  have  in  the  presence  of 
soldiers. 

"And  how  long  have  you  been  out  at  the  war, 
sonny?"  he  asks,  much  as  he  might  ask  how  long 
holiday  he  had  had, 

"I'm  sick  of  the  bloody  war,"  says  the  soldier, 
without  even  turning  his  head. 

The  comfortable,  elderly  man  collapses  into  silence 
and  the  Corn  Circular.  .  .  . 

A  young  officer  who  has  been  driven  up  in  a  dog- 
cart comes  on  the  platform  accompanied  by  a  dog 
with  tongue  lolling  from  its  mouth  and  with  the  large, 
brown,  affectionate  eyes  of  the  Airedale. 

The  train   thunders   in,  and  the  officer    opens    a 


ON  A  COUNTRY  PLATFORM         23 

carriage  door.    The  dog  tries  to  enter  with  his  master. 

"No,  no,  old  chap,"  says  the  latter,  gently  patting 
him  and  pulling  him  back.  "Go  home.  They  don't 
want  you  where  I'm  going." 

The  dog  stands  for  a  moment  on  the  platform, 
panting  and  gazing  at  his  master  as  if  hoping  that 
he  will  relent.  Then  he  turns  and  trots  away,  throw- 
ing occasional  glances  back  on  the  off-chance  of  a 
whistle  of  recall.  .  .  . 

The  moment  has  come  for  the  separation  of  the 
little  family  at  the  end  of  the  platform.  The  soldier 
leans  from  the  carriage  window  and  his  wife  clings 
about  his  neck.  The  two  children  stand  by  the 
perambulator.  They  are  brave  little  girls  and  re- 
member that  they  have  not  to  cry.  The  train  begins 
to  move  and  the  woman  unclasps  herself,  leaving  her 
husband  at  the  window,  smiling  his  hardest  and 
throwing  kisses  to  the  children.  The  train  gathers 
speed  and  takes  a  curve  and  the  soldier  has  vanished. 
The  mother  turns  to  the  perambulator  and  seeks  to 
hide  her  face  as  she  hurries  with  her  little  charges 
along  the  platform  and  through  the  gate.  The  two 
little  girls  stifle  their  sobs  in  their  aprons,  but  the 
child  in  the  carriage  knows  nothing  of  public  behaviour. 
He  knows  in  that  dim  way  that  is  the  affliction  of 
childhood  that  something  terrible  is  happening,  and 
as  the  forlorn  little  group  hurries  by  to  escape  into 
the  lane  hard  by  where  grief  can  have  its  fill  he  rends 
the  air  with  his  sobs  and  cries  of  "Poor  dada,  poor 
dada!" 


24 


ON  A  COUNTRY  PLATFORM 


Poor  little  mite,  he  is  beginning  his  apprenticeship 
to  this  rough,  insane  world  betimes.  .  .  . 

And  now  the  platform  is  empty,  and  the  only  sound 
of  life  is  the  whirr  of  the  reaping  machine  and  the 
voices  from  the  harvest  field.  Through  the  meadow 
that  leads  to  the  village  the  dog  is  slowly  trotting 
home,  still  casting  occasional  glances  backwards  on  the 
chance.     .    .    . 


%4r 


ON  A  DISTANT  VIEW  OF  A  PIG 


Yes,  I  would  ceftainly  keep  a  pig.  The  idea  came 
to  me  while  I  was  digging.  I  find  that  there  is  no 
occupation  that  stimulates  thought  more  than  digging 
if  you  choose  your  soil  well.  Digging  in  the  London 
clay  does  not  stimulate  thought;  it  deadens  thought. 
It  is  good  exercise  for  the  body,  but  it  is  no  exercise 
for  the  mind.  You  can't  play  with  your  fancies  as 
you  plunge  your  spade  into  this  stiff  and  stubborn 
medium.  But  in  the  light,  porous  soil  of  my  garden 
on  the  chalk  hills  digging  goes  with  a  swing  and  a 
rhythm  that  set  the  thoughts  singing  like  the  birds. 
I  feel  I  could  win  battles  when  I'm  digging,  or  write 
plays  or  lyrics  that  would  stun  the  world,  or  make 

25 


26      ON  A  DISTANT  VIEW  OF  A  PIG 

speeches  that  wculd  stir  a  post  to  action.  Ideas  seem 
as  plentiful  as  blackberries  in  autumn,  and  if  only  I 
could  put  down  the  spade  and  capture  them  red-hot 
I  feel  that  I  could  make  The  Star  simply  blaze  with 
glory. 

It  was  in  one  of  these  prolific  moments  that  I 
thought  of  the  pig.  Like  all  great  ideas  there  was 
something  inevitable  about  it.  The  calculations  of  Le 
Verrier  and  Adams  proved  the  existence  of  Neptune 
before  that  orb  was  discovered.  They  knew  it  was 
there  before  they  found  it.  My  pig  was  born  with- 
out my  knowledge.  In  the  furnace  of  my  mind  he 
took  shape  merely  by  the  friction  of  facts.  He  was  a 
sort  of  pig  by  divine  right.  It  was  like  this.  In  the 
midst  of  my  digging  Jim  Squire,  passing  up  the  lane, 
had  paused  on  the  other  side  of  the  hedge  to  discuss 
last  night's  frost.  I  straightened  my  back  for  a  talk, 
and  naturally  we  talked  about  potatoes.  If  you  want 
to  get  the  best  out  of  Jim  Squire  you  must  touch  him 
on  potatoes.  There  are  some  people  who  find  Jim 
an  unresponsive  and  suspicious  yokel.  That  is  because 
they  do  not  know  how  to  draw  him  out.  Mention 
potatoes,  or  carrots,  or  the  best  way  of  dealing  with 
slugs,  or  the  right  manure  for  a  hot-bed,  or  any  sen- 
sible subject  like  these,  and  he  simply  flows  with  wis- 
dom and  urbanity. 

He  observed  that  I  should  have  a  tidy  few  potatoes, 
what  with  the  garden  I  was  digging,  and  the  piece  I'd 
turned  over  in  the  orchard,  and  that  there  bit  o'  waste 
land  on  the  hillside  which  he  had  heard  as  I  was  get- 
ting Mestur  Wistock  to  plough   up  for  me.     Yes, 


ON  A  DISTANT  VIEW  OF  A  PIG      27 

there'd  be  a  niceish  lot.  And  he  did  hear  I  was  going 
to  set  King  Edwards  and  Arran  Chiefs.  Rare  and 
fine  potatoes  they  were  too.  He  had  some  King  Ed- 
wards last  year — turned  out  wonderful,  they  did.  One 
root  he  pulled  up  weighed  12  lb.  Yes,  Miss  Mary 
weighed  'em  for  him  in  the  scale  at  the  farm — just 
for  a  hobby  like  as  you  might  say.  It  was  like  this. 
He'd  seen  a  bit  in  the  paper  about  a  man  as  had  8  lb. 
on  a  root,  and  he  (Jim)  said  to  himself,  "This  root 
beats  that  by  a  long  chalk  /  know."  And  Miss  Mary 
come  by  and  she  said  she'd  weigh  'em.  And  she  did. 
And  it  was  12  lb.  full,  she  said.  If  anything,  she  said, 
'twas  a  shade  over.  She  said  as  they'd  have  took  a 
prize  anywhere — that's  what  she  said.  .  .  .  Well,  you 
couldn't  have  too  many  potatoes  these  days.  Wonder- 
ful good  food  they  were,  for  man  and  pig.  .  •  . 

As  he  went  on  up  the  lane  my  spade  took  up  that 
word  like  a  refrain.  At  every  rhythmic  stroke  it 
seemed  to  cry  "pig"  with  increasing  vehemence. 

Then    felt   I    like    some   watcher   of   the    skies 
When  a  new  planet  swims  into  his  ken. 

A  pig?  Why  not? — and  I  straightened  my  back  again. 
I  felt  that  something  prodigious  was  taking  shape. 
My  eye  wandered  across  the  orchard.  There  were 
the  hives  standing  in  a  row — three  of  them,  to  be  in- 
creased to  twelve  as  fast  as  the  expert,  who  has  set 
up  her  carpenter's  shop  in  the  barn,  can  get  the  parts 
to  put  together.  And  beyond  the  hives  three  sheds — 
one  for  poultry,  one  for  the  hotbed  for  mushrooms, 


28      ON  A  DISTANT  VIEW  OF  A  PIG 

the  third — why,  the  very  thing  .  .  .  Concrete  the 
floor  and  it  would  be  a  very  palace  for  a  pig. 

I  took  a  turn  up  the  garden  to  look  this  thing 
squarely  in  the  face,  and  at  the  gate  I  saw  the  farmer's 
wife  coming  down  the  lane.  We  stopped,  and  she 
talked  about  her  cows  and  about  an  order  she  had 
got  from  the  Government  to  plough  up  more  pasture, 
and  then — as  if  echoing  the  very  thought  that  was 
drumming  in  my  head — about  the  litter  of  pigs  she 
was  expecting  and  of  her  wish  to  get  the  cottagers 
to  keep  pigs.  Why,  this  was  a  very  conspiracy  of 
circumstance,  thought  I.  It  seemed  as  though  man 
and  events  alike  were  engaged  in  a  plot  to  make  me 
keep  a  pig. 

With  an  air  of  idle  curiosity  I  encouraged  the 
farmer's  wife  to  talk  on  the  thrilling  theme,  and  she 
responded  with  enthusiasm.  The  pig,  I  found,  was 
a  grossly  maligned  animal.  It  had  lain  uncomplain- 
ingly under  imputations  that  were  foul  slanders  on 
its  innocent  and  lovable  character.  Yes,  lovable.  She 
had  had  pigs  who  were  as  affectionate  as  any  dog — 
pigs  that  followed  her  about  in  sheer  friendliness.  And 
as  for  the  charge  of  filthiness,  who  was  to  blame  ?  We 
gave  them  dirty  styes  and  then  called  them  dirty  pigs. 
But  the  pig  was  a  clean  animal,  loved  cleanliness, 
thrived  on  cleanliness.  It  was  man  the  dirty  who 
kept  the  pig  foul  and  then  called  him  unclean.  And 
what  a  profitable  animal.  She  had  had  a  sow  which 
in  four  and  a  half  years  had  produced  io8  pigs  and 
102  of  them  came  to  maturity.    What  an  example  to 


ON  A  DISTANT  VIEW  OF  A  PIG      29 

Shoreditch,  I  said.  Perhaps  they  don't  give  them  clean 
styes  in  Shoreditch,  she  said.  No,  I  replied,  they  give 
them   dirty  styes.  .  .  . 

I  went  indoors,  suffused  with  the  vision  of  the  trans- 
figured pig,  the  affectionate,  cleanly,  intelligent  pig, 
and  took  up  a  paper,  and  the  first  thing  my  eye  en- 
countered was  an  article  on  "The  Cottager's  Pig."  1 
read  it  with  the  frenzy  of  a  new  religion  and  rose 
filled  to  the  brim  with  lore  about  the  animal  to  whose 
existence  (except  in  the  shape  of  bacon)  I  had  been 
indifferent  so  long.  And  now,  fully  seized  with  the 
idea,  it  seemed  that  the  world  talked  of  nothing  but 
pig.  It  was  only  that  my  ears  were  unstopped  and 
my  eyes  unsealed  by  an  awakened  curiosity;  but  it 
seemed  to  me  that  the  pig  had  suddenly  been  born 
into  the  universe,  and  that  the  air  was  filled  with  the 
rumour  of  his  coming.  I  encountered  the  subject  at 
every  turn.  In  the  Times  I  read  a  touching  lament 
over  the  disappearance  of  the  little  black  pig.  Else- 
where I  saw  a  facsimile  letter  from  Lord  Rhondda, 
in  which  he  declared  his  loyalty  to  the  pig  and  denied 
that  he  had  ever  spoken  evil  of  him. 

It  was  a  patriotic  duty  to  keep  a  pig.  He  was  an 
ally  in  the  war.  I  saw  the  whole  German  General 
Staff  turning  pale  at  his  name,  as  Mazarin  was  said 
to  turn  pale  at  the  name  of  Cromwell.     Arriving  in 

town  I  met  that  eminent  politician  Mr.  R and 

he  began  to  tell  me  how  he  had  started  all  his  cottagers 
in  the  North  growing  pig.  By  nightfall  I  could  have 
held  my  own  without  shame  or  discredit  in  any  com- 


30      ON  A  DISTANT  VIEW  OF  A  PIG 

pany  of  pig  dealers,  and  in  my  dreams  I  saw  the  great 
globe  itself  resting  on  the  back,  not  of  an  elephant,  but 
of  a  pig  with  a  beautiful  curly  tail. 

Later:  I  have  ordered  the  pig. 


IN  DEFENCE  OF  IGNORANCE 


A  YOUNG  man  wrote  to  me  the  other  day  lamenting 
his  ignorance  and  requesting  me  to  tell  him  what  books 
to  read  and  what  to  do  in  order  to  become  learned  and 
wise.  I  sent  him  a  civil  answer  and  such  advice  as 
occurred  to  me.  But  I  confess  that  the  more  I  thought 
of  the  matter  the  less  assured  I  felt  of  my  competence 
for  the  task.  I  ceased  to  be  flattered  by  the  implied 
tribute  to  my  omniscience,  and  felt  rather  like  a  per- 
son who  gives  up  a  third-class  ticket  after  he  has 
ridden  in  a  first-class  carriage  might  feel.  I  surveyed 
my  title  to  this  reputation  for  learning,  and  was  shocked 
at  the  poverty  of  my  estate.  As  I  contrasted  the  moun- 
tain of  things  I  didn't  know  with  the  molehill  of  things 
I  did  know,  my  self-esteem  shrank  to  zero.  Why,  my 
dear  young  sir,  thought  I,  I  cannot  pay  twopence  in 
the  pound.  I  am  nothing  but  the  possessor  of  a  wide- 
spread ignorance.  Why  should  you  come  to  me  for  a 
loan? 

I  begin  with  myself — this  body  of  me  that  is  carried 
about  on  a  pair  of  cunningly  devised  stilts  and  waves 
a  couple  of  branches  with  five  flexible  twigs  at  the  end 
of  each,  and  is  surmounted  by  a  large  round  knob  with 

31 


32         IN  DEFENCE  OF  IGNORANCE 

wonderful  little  orifices,  and  glittering  jewels,  and  a 
sort  of  mat  for  a  covering,  and  which  utters  strange 
noises  and  speaks  and  sings  and  laughs  and  cries.  Bless 
me,  said  I,  what  do  I  know  about  it?  I  am  a  mere 
bundle  of  mysteries  in  coat  and  breeches.  I  couldn't 
tell  you  where  my  epiglottis  is  or  what  it  does  without 
looking  in  a  dictionary.  I  have  been  told,  but  I  always 
forget.  I  am  little  better  than  the  boy  in  the  class. 
"Where  is  the  diaphragm?"  asked  the  teacher.  "Please, 
sir,  in  North  Staffordshire,"  said  the  boy,  I  may  laugh 
at  the  boy,  but  any  young  medical  student  would  laugh 
just  as  much  at  me  if  I  told  him  honestly  what  I  do 
not  know  about  the  diaphragm.  And  when  it  comes 
to  the  ultimate  mysteries  of  this  aggregation  of  atoms 
which  we  call  the  human  body  the  medical  student  and, 
indeed,  the  whole  Medical  Faculty  would  be  found  to 
be  nearly  as  ignorant  as  the  boy  was  about  the  dia- 
phragm. 

From  myself  I  pass  to  all  the  phenomena  of  life, 
and  wherever  I  turn  I  find  myself  exploring  what 
Carlyle  calls  the  "great,  deep  sea  of  Nescience  on 
which  we  float  like  exhalations  that  are  and  then  are 
not."  I  see  Orion  striding  across  the  southern  heavens, 
and  feel  the  wonder  and  the  majesty  of  that  stupendous 
spectacle,  but  if  I  ask  myself  what  I  know  about  it 
I  have  no  answer.  And  even  the  knowledge  of  the 
most  learned  astronomer  only  touches  the  fringe  of  the 
immensity.  What  is  beyond — beyond — beyond?  His 
mind  is  balked,  as  mine  is,  almost  at  the  threshold  of 
the  mighty  paradox  of  a  universe  which  we  can  con- 
ceive neither  as  finite  nor  as  infinite,  which  is  unthink- 


IN  DEFENCE  OF  IGNORANCE         33 

able  as  having  limits  and  unthinkable  as  having  no  lim- 
its. As  the  flowers  come  on  in  summer  I  alw^ays  learn 
their  names,  but  I  know  that  I  shall  have  to  learn  them 
again  next  year.  And  as  to  the  mystery  of  their  being, 
by  what  miracle  they  grow  and  transmute  the  secre- 
tions of  the  earth  and  air  into  life  and  beauty — why, 
my  dear  young  sir,  I  am  no  more  communicative  than 
the  needy  knife-grinder.  "Story?  God  bless  you,  I 
have  none  to  tell,  sir." 

I  cannot  put  my  hand  to  anything  outside  my  little 
routine  without  finding  myself  meddling  with  things 
I  don't  understand.  I  was  digging  in  the  garden  just 
now  and  came  upon  a  patch  of  ground  with  roots  deep 
down.  Some  villainous  pest,  said  I,  some  enemy  of 
my  carrots  and  potatoes.  Have  at  them!  I  felt  like 
a  knight  charging  to  the  rescue  of  innocence.  I 
plunged  the  fork  deeper  and  deeper  and  tore  at  the 
roots,  and  grew  breathless  and  perspiring.  Even  now 
I  ache  with  the  agonies  of  that  titanic  combat.  And 
the  more  I  fought  the  more  infinite  became  the  rami- 
fications of  those  roots.  And  so  I  called  for  the  expert 
advice  of  the  young  person  who  was  giving  some  candy 
to  her  bees  in  the  orchard.  She  came,  took  a  glance 
into  the  depths,  and  said:  "Yes,  you  are  pulling  up 
that  tree."  And  she  pointed  to  an  ivy-grown  tree  in 
the  hedge  a  dozen  yards  away.  Did  I  feel  foolish, 
young  sir?  Of  course  I  felt  foolish,  but  not  more 
foolish  than  I  have  felt  on  a  thousand  other  occasions. 
And  you  ask  me  for  advice. 

I  recall  one  among  many  of  these  occasions  for  my 
chastening.     When  I  was  young  I  was  being  driven 


34         IN  DEFENCE  OF  IGNORANCE 

one  day  through  a  woodland  country  by  an  old  fellow 
who  kept  an  inn  and  let  out  a  pony  and  chaise  for 
hire.  As  we  went  along  I  made  some  remark  about 
a  tree  by  the  wayside  and  he  spoke  of  it  as  a  poplar. 
"Not  a  poplar,"  said  I  with  the  easy  assurance  of 
youth,  and  I  described  to  him  for  his  information  the 
characters  of  what  I  conceived  to  be  the  poplar.  "Ah," 
he  said,  "you  are  thinking  of  the  Lombardy  poplar. 
That  tree  is  the  Egyptian  poplar."  And  then  he  went 
on  to  tell  me  of  a  score  of  other  poplars — their  appear- 
ance, their  habits,  and  their  origins — quite  kindly  and 
without  any  knowledge  of  the  withering  blight  that 
had  fallen  upon  my  cocksure  ignorance.  I  found  that 
he  had  spent  his  life  in  tree  culture  and  had  been 
forester  to  a  Scotch  duke.  And  I  had  explained  to 
him  what  a  poplar  was  like!  But  I  think  he  did  me 
good,  and  I  often  recall  him  to  mind  when  I  feel  dis- 
posed to  give  other  people  information  that  they  pos- 
sibly do  not  need. 

And  the  books  I  haven't  read,  and  the  sciences  I 
don't  know,  and  the  languages  I  don't  speak,  and  the 
things  I  can't  do — young  man,  if  you  knew  all  this 
you  would  be  amazed.  But  it  does  not  make  me  un- 
happy. On  the  contrary  I  find  myself  growing  cheer- 
ful in  the  contemplation  of  these  vast  undeveloped  es- 
tates. I  feel  like  a  fellow  who  has  inherited  a  conti- 
nent and,  so  far,  has  only  had  time  to  cultivate  a  tiny 
corner  of  the  inheritance.  The  rest  I  just  wander 
through  like  a  boy  in  wonderland.  Some  day  I  will 
know  about  all  these  things.  I  will  develop  all  these 
immensities.    I  will  search  out  all  these  mysteries.    In 


IN  DEFENCE  OF  IGNORANCE         35 

my  heart  I  know  I  shall  do  nothing  of  the  sort.  I 
know  that  when  the  curtain  rings  down  I  shall  be 
digging  the  same  tiny  plot.  But  it  is  pleasant  to  dream 
of  future  conquests  that  you  won't  make. 

And,  after  all,  aren't  we  all  allotment  holders  of 
the  mind,  cultivating  our  own  little  patch  and  sur- 
rounded by  the  wonderland  of  the  unknown?  Even 
the  most  learned  of  us  is  ignorant  when  his  knowl- 
edge is  measured  by  the  infinite  sum  of  things.  And 
the  riches  of  knowledge  themselves  are  much  more 
widely  diffused  than  we  are  apt  to  think.  There  are 
few  people  who  are  not  better  informed  about  some- 
thing than  we  are,  who  have  not  gathered  their  own 
peculiar  sheaf  of  wisdom  or  knowledge  in  this  vast 
harvest  field  of  experience.  That  is  at  once  a  com- 
fortable and  a  humbling  thought.  It  checks  a  too 
soaring  vanity  on  the  one  hand  and  a  too  tragic  abase- 
ment on  the  other.  The  fund  of  knowledge  is  a  col- 
lective sum.  No  one  has  all  the  items,  nor  a  fraction 
of  the  items,  and  there  are  few  of  us  so  poor  as  not 
to  have  some.  If  I  were  to  walk  out  into  the  street 
now  I  fancy  I  should  not  meet  a  soul,  man  or  woman, 
who  could  not  fill  in  some  blank  of  my  mind.  And  I 
think — for  I  must  not  let  humility  go  too  far — I  think 
I  could  fill  some  blank  in  theirs.  Our  carrying  capac- 
ity varies  infinitely,  but  we  all  carry  something,  and  it 
differs  from  the  store  of  any  one  else  on  earth.  And, 
moreover,  the  mere  knowledge  of  things  is  not  necessary 
to  their  enjoyment,  nor  necessary  even  to  wisdom. 
There  are  things  that  every  ploughboy  knows  to-day 
which  were  hidden  from  Plato  and  Csesar  and  Dante, 


36         IN  DEFENCE  OF  IGNORANCE 

but  the  ploughboy  is  not  wiser  than  they.  Sir  Thomas 
Browne,  in  his  book  on  Vulgar  Errors,  declared  that 
the  idea  that  the  earth  went  round  the  sun  was  too 
foolish  to  be  controverted.  I  know  better,  but  that 
doesn't  make  me  a  wiser  man  than  Browne.  Wisdom 
does  not  depend  on  these  things.  I  suppose  that,  on  the 
whole,  Lincoln  was  the  wisest  and  most  fundamentally 
sane  man  who  ever  took  a  great  part  in  the  affairs  of 
this  planet.  Yet  compared  with  the  average  under- 
graduate he  was  utterly  unlearned. 

Do  not,  my  young  friend,  suppose  I  am  decrying 
your  eagerness  to  know.  Learn  all  you  can,  my  boy, 
about  this  wonderful  caravan  on  which  we  make 
our  annual  tour  round  the  sun,  and  on  which  we  quar- 
rel and  fight  with  such  crazy  ferocity  as  we  go.  But 
at  the  end  of  all  your  learning  you  will  be  astonished 
at  how  little  you  know,  and  will  rejoice  that  the  pleas- 
ure of  living  is  in  healthy  feeling  rather  than  in  the  ac- 
cumulation of  facts.  There  was  a  good  deal  of  truth 
in  that  saying  of  Savonarola  that  "a  little  old  woman 
who  kept  the  faith  knew  more  than  Plato  or  Aristotle." 


ON  A  SHINY  NIGHT 


The  pleasantest  hour  of  my  day  is  the  hour  about 
midnight.  It  is  then  that  I  leave  the  throbbing  heart 
of  Fleet  Street  behind  me,  jump  on  to  the  last  bus 
bound  for  a  distant  suburb,  and  commandeer  <■'  e  back 
corner  seat.  If  the  back  seat  is  not  vacant  I  sit  as  near 
as  I  can  and  v^^atch  the  enemy  who  possesses  it  with 
a  vigilant  eye.  When  he  rises  I  pounce  on  the  quarry 
like  a  kestrel  on  its  prey.  I  love  the  back  seat,  not  only 
because  it  is  the  most  comfortable,  but  also  because 
it  gives  you  the  sense  of  solitude  in  the  midst  of  a 
crowd,  which  is  one  of  the  most  enjoyable  sensations 
I  know.  To  see  and  not  be  seen,  to  watch  the  human 
comedy  unobserved,  save  by  the  friendly  stars  who 
look  down  very  searchingly  but  never  blab,  to  have  the 
advantages  of  both  solitude  and  society  in  one  breath, 
as  it  were — this  is  my  idea  of  enjoyment. 

But  most  of  all  I  love  the  back  seat  on  such  a 
37 


38  ON  A  SHINY  NIGHT 

night  as  last  night,  when  the  crescent  moon  is  sailing 
high  in  a  cloudless  sky  and  making  all  the  earth  a 
wonder  of  romance.  The  garish  day  is  of  the  earth, 
"the  huge  and  thoughtful  night"  when  no  moon  is 
seen  and  the  constellations  blaze  in  unimaginable  space 
is  of  the  eternal;  but  here  in  this  magic  glamour  of 
the  moon  where  night  and  day  are  wedded  is  the  realm 
of  romance.  You  may  wander  all  day  in  the  beech 
woods  and  never  catch  a  glimpse  of  Tristan  and  Iseult 
coming  down  the  glades  or  hear  an  echo  of  Robin 
Hood's  horn ;  but  walk  in  the  woods  by  moonlight  and 
every  shadow  will  have  its  mystery  and  will  talk  to 
you  of  the  legends  of  long  ago. 

That  was  why  Sir  Walter  Scott  had  such  a  passion 
for  "Cumnor  Hall."  "After  the  labours  of  the  day 
were  over,"  said  Irving,  "we  often  walked  in  the 
meadows,  especially  in  the  moonlight  nights;  and  he 
seemed  never  weary  of  repeating  the  first  stanza: — 

The  dews  of  summer  night  did  fall — 
The  moon,  sweet  regent  of  the  sky. 

Silvered  the  walls  of  Cumnor  Hall, 
And  many  an  oak  that  stood  thereby." 

There  you  have  the  key  to  all  the  world  of  Sir  Walter. 
He  was  the  King  of  the  Moonlighters.  He  was  a 
man  who  would  have  been  my  most  dreaded  rival 
on  the  midnight  bus.  He  would  have  wanted  the 
back  seat,  I  know,  and  there  he  would  have  sat  and 
chanted  "Cumnor  Hall"  to  himself  and  watched  the 
moonlight  touching  the  suburban  streets  to  poetry  and 


ON  A  SHINY  NIGHT  39 

turning  every  suburban  garden  into  a  twilight  mystery. 

There  are,  of  course,  quite  prosaic  and  even  wicked 
people  who  love  "a  shiny  night."  There  is,  for  ex- 
ample, the  gentleman  from  "famous  Lincolnshire" 
whose  refrain  is: — 

Oh,   'tis  my   delight 

On   a   shiny  night. 

In    the    season    of    the    year. 

I  love  his  song  because  it  is  about  the  moonlight,  and 
I  am  not  sure  that  I  am  much  outraged  by  the  fact 
that  he  liked  the  shiny  night  because  he  was  a  poacher. 
I  never  could  affect  any  indignation  about  poachers. 
I  suspect  that  I  rather  like  them.  Anyhow,  there  is  no 
stanza  of  that  jolly  song  which  I  sing  with  more 
heartiness  than : — 

Success  to  every  gentleman  that  lives  in  Lincolnshire, 
Success  to  every  poacher  that  wants  to  sell  a  hare. 
Bad  luck  to  every  gamekeeper  that  will  not  sell  his  deer. 
Oh,    'tis   my   delight,   etc. 

And  there  was  Dick  Turpin.  He,  too,  loved  the 
moonlight  for  very  practical  reasons.  He  loved  it  not 
because  it  silvered  the  oak,  but  because  of  that  deep 
shadow  of  the  oak  in  which  he  could  stand  with  Black 
Bess  and  await  the  coming  of  his  victim. 

And  it  is  that  shadow  which  is  the  real  secret  of 
the  magic  of  moonlight.  The  shadows  of  the  day 
have  beauty  but  no  secrecy.  The  sunlight  is  too  strong 
to  be  wholly  or  even  very  materially  denied.     Even 


40  ON  A  SHINY  NIGHT 

its  shadows  are  luminous  and  full  of  colour,  and  the 
contrast  between  light  and  shade  is  not  the  contrast 
between  the  visible  and  the  invisible,  between  the  light 
and  the  dark:  it  is  only  a  contrast  between  degrees  of 
brightness.  Everything  is  bright,  but  some  things  are 
more  bright  than  others.  But  in  the  moonlight  the 
world  is  etched  in  black  and  white.  The  shadows  are 
flat  and  unrevealing.  They  have  none  of  the  colour 
values  produced  by  the  reflected  lights  in  the  shadows 
of  the  day.  They  are  as  secret  as  the  grave ;  distinct 
personalities,  sharply  figured  against  the  encompassing 
light,  not  mere  passages  of  colour  tuned  to  a  lower  key. 
And  the  quality  of  the  encompassing  light  itself  em- 
phasises the  contrast.  The  moon  does  not  bring  out 
the  colour  of  things,  but  touches  them  with  a  glacial 
pallor — 

....  Strange  she  is,  and  secret. 
Strange  her  eyes ;   her  cheeks   are  cold  as  cold  sea-shells. 

See  the  moonlight  fall  upon  your  house-front  and 
mark  the  wonderful  effect  of  black  and  white  that 
it  creates.  Under  the  play  of  the  moonbeams  it  be- 
comes a  house  of  mysteries.  The  lights  seem  lighter 
than  by  day,  but  that  is  only  because  the  darks  are  so 
much  darker.  That  shadow  cast  by  the  gable  makes 
a  blackness  in  which  anything  may  lurk,  and  it  is  the 
secrecy  of  the  shadow  in  a  world  of  light  that  is  the 
soul  of  romance. 

Take  a  walk  in  the  woods  in  the  bright  moonlight 
over  tracks  that  you  think  you  could  follow  blindfold, 
and  you  will  marvel  at  the  tricks  which  those  black 


ON  A  SHINY  NIGHT  41 

shadows  of  the  trees  can  play  with  the  most  familiar 
scenes.  Keats,  who  was  as  much  of  a  moonlighter  in 
spirit  as  Scott,  knew  those  impenetrable  shadows 
well : — 

....  tender   is  the  night, 

And   haply  the   Queen-moon   Is  on  her  throne, 

Cluster'd  around  by  all  her  starry  Fays; 

But  here  there  is  no  light, 
Save  what  from  heaven   is  with  the  breezes  blown 
Through  verdurous  glooms  and  winding  mossy  ways. 

In  this  moonlight  world  you  may  skip  at  will  from 
the  known  to  the  unknown,  have  pu-blicity  on  one  side 
of  the  way  and  secrecy  on  the  other,  walk  in  the  light 
to  see  Jessica's  face,  and  in  the  shadow  to  escape  the 
prying  eyes  of  Shylock.  Hence  through  all  time  it  has 
been  the  elysium  of  lovers,  and  "Astarte,  queen  of 
heaven,  with  crescent  horns,"  has  been  the  goddess 
whom  they  serve, 

To  whose  bright  image  nightly  by  the  moon, 
Sidonian  virgins  paid  their  vows  and  songs. 

Perhaps  it  is  the  eternal  lover  in  us  that  responds  so 
unfailingly  to  the  magic  of  the  moonlight. 


ON  GIVING  UP  TOBACCO 


This  evening  I  am  morally  a  little  unapproachable 
I  feel  too  good  to  be  true.  Perhaps  it  would  be  pos- 
sible for  me  to  endure  the  company  of  Mr.  Pecksniff; 
but  that  good  man  is  dead,  and  I  am  lonely  in  a  world 
that  is  not  quite  up  to  my  moral  handicap.  For 
I  have  given  up  tobacco.  For  a  whole  day  not  a 
wreath  of  smoke  has  issued  from  my  lips,  not  a  pipe, 
or  a  cigar,  or  a  cigarette  has  had  the  victory  over  me. 
.  .  .  For  a  whole  day !  I  had  not  realised  how  long  a 
day  could  be.  It  is  as  though  I  have  ceased  to  live  in 
time  and  have  gone  into  eternity.  I  once  heard  a  man 
say:  "Dear  me!  How  time  flies!"  It  struck  me  at  the 
moment  as  a  true  and  penetrating  remark,  and  I  have 
often  repeated  it  since.  But  now  I  know  it  to  be  false. 
I  know  that  that  man  must  have  been  a  slave  to  to- 
bacco, that  subtle  narcotic  that  gives  the  illusion  of  the 
flight  of  time.  If  he  had  the  moral  courage  to  fol- 
low my  example,  he  would  not  say  "How  times  flies!" 
He  would  say,  as  I  do  (with  tears  in  his  voice,  and 
with  a  glance  at  his  pipe  on  the  mantelpiece),  "How 

42 


ON  GIVING  UP  TOBACCO  43 

time  stands  still!"  He  would  find  that  a  day  can 
seem  as  long  as  a  year;  that  he  can  lengthen  his  life 
until  he  is  terrified  at  the  prospect  of  its  endless- 
ness. 

I  have  been  contemplating  this  thing  for  years. 
Some  day,  I  have  said  to  myself,  I  will  have  a  real 
trial  of  strength  with  this  Giant  Nicotine  who  has 
held  me  thrall  to  his  service.  Long  have  I  borne  his 
yoke — ever  since  that  far-off  day  when  I  burned  a  hole 
in  my  jacket  pocket  with  a  lighted  cigar  that  I  hid 
at  the  approach  of  danger.  (How  well  I  remember 
that  day:  the  hot  sunshine,  the  walk  in  the  fields,  the 
sense  of  forbidden  joys,  the  tragedy  of  the  burnt  hole, 
the  miserable  feeling  of  physical  nausea.)  I  have 
kicked  against  the  tyranny  of  a  habit  that  I  knew  had 
become  my  master.  It  was  not  the  tobacco  I  disliked. 
Far  from  it.  I  liked  the  tobacco ;  but  disliked  the  habit 
of  tobacco.  The  tendency  of  most  of  us  is  to  become 
creatures  of  habit  and  to  lose  our  freedom — to  cease 
to  be  masters  of  our  own  actions.  "Take  away  his 
habits,  and  there  is  nothing  of  him  left,"  says  a  char- 
acter in  some  play,  and  the  saying  has  a  wide  appli- 
cation. I  did  not  possess  a  pipe:  it  was  the  pipe  that 
possessed  me.  I  did  not  say  with  easy,  masterful  as- 
surance, "Come,  I  have  had  a  hard  day  (or  a  good 
dinner)  ;  I  will  indulge  myself  with  a  pipe  of  tobacco." 
It  was  the  pipe  which  said,  "Come,  slave,  to  your  de- 
votions." And  though  as  the  result  of  one  of  my  spirit- 
ual conflicts  I  threw  away  my  pipe  and  resolved  to 
break  the  fall  with  an  occasional  cigarette,  I  found  it 


44  ON  GIVING  UP  TOBACCO 

was  only  the  old  tyrannous  habit  in  a  new  disguise. 
The  old  dog  in  a  new  coat,  as  Johnson  used  to 
say. 

There  are  some  people  who  approach  this  question 
frivolously.  The  young  man  called  John  in  the 
"Breakfast  Table"  is  an  example.  When  the  lady 
in  bombazine  denounced  tobacco  and  said  it  ought  all 
to  be  burned,  the  young  man  John  agreed.  Someone 
had  given  him  a  box  of  cigars,  he  said,  and  he  was 
going  to  burn  them  all.  The  lady  in  bombazine  re- 
joiced. Let  him  make  a  bonfire  of  them  in  the  back- 
yard, she  said.  "That  ain't  my  way,"  replied  the  young 
man  called  John.  "I  burn  'em  one  at  a  time — little 
end  in  my  mouth,  big  end  outside."  Similarly  want- 
ing in  seriousness  was  the  defence  of  tobacco  set  up  by 
the  wit  who  declared  that  it  prolonged  life.  "Look  at 
the  ancient  Egyptians,"  he  said.  "None  of  them 
smoked,  and  they  are  all  dead."  Others  again  discover 
virtues  to  conceal  the  tyranny.  Lord  Clarendon,  when 
he  was  Foreign  Minister,  excused  the  fact  that  his  room 
always  reeked  with  tobacco  smoke  on  the  ground  that 
it  was  necessary  to  his  work.  "The  art  of  diplomacy," 
he  said,  "is  the  judicious  administration  of  tobacco." 
No  one  knew  better  how  to  handle  a  cigar  case  than 
Bismarck,  and  it  is  no  very  extravagant  fancy  to  see 
in  the  events  of  to-day  the  enormous  fruit  of  an  inter- 
lude of  tobacco  between  him  and  Disraeli  in  the  coun- 
cil chamber  at  Berlin. 

There  are  some  who  say  they  smoke  because  it 
soothes  their  nerves,  and  others  who  say  they  smoke 


"The  art  of  diplomacy.  .  .  . 


46  ON  GIVING  UP  TOBACCO 

because  it  is  an  aid  to  social  intercourse.  It  is  true 
that  you  can  sit  and  smoke  and  say  nothing  without 
feeling  that  the  spirit  of  communion  is  broken.  That 
was  the  case  of  Carlyle  and  his  mother  and  of  Carlyle 
and  Tennyson,  brave  smokers  all  and  silent  to  boot. 
They  let  their  pipes  carry  on  a  conversation  too  deep 
for  words.  And  lesser  people,  as  Cowper  knew,  con- 
ceal their  bankruptcy  of  words  in  wreaths  of  smoke : — 

The  pipe,  with  solemn,  interposing  puflf, 
Makes  half  a  sentence  at  a  time  enough; 
The  dozing  sages   drop  the  drowsy  strain, 
Then  pause,  and  puff,  and  speak,  and  puff  again. 

And,  while  some  say  they  smoke  for  company,  others 
claim  to  smoke  for  thought  and  inspiration.  "Tobacco 
is  the  sister  of  Literature,"  says  Sir  Walter  Raleigh, 
loyal  in  this  to  his  great  namesake  who  brought  the 
good  gift  to  our  shores.  Heaven  forbid  that  I  should 
deny  the  debt  we  who  write  owe  to  tobacco,  but  I  am 
bound  to  confess  that  brother  Literature  did  some  hand- 
some things  before  he  found  his  sister.  Homer  and 
Euripides,  Virgil  and  Horace  wrote  quite  tolerably 
without  the  help  of  tobacco,  though  no  one  can  read 
Horace  without  feeling  that  he  had  the  true  spirit  of 
the  tobacco  cult.  Had  he  been  born  a  couple  of  thou- 
sand years  later  what  praises  of  the  weed  of  Havana  he 
would  have  mingled  with  his  praises  of  Falernian. 

But  if  we  are  honest  with  ourselves  we  shall  admit 
that  we  smoke  not  for  this  or  that  respectable  reason 


ON  GIVING  UP  TOBACCO  47 

— not  always  even  because  we  enjoy  it — but  because 
we  have  got  into  the  habit  and  can't  get  out  of  it. 
And  in  this,  as  in  other  cases,  it  is  the  surrender  of 
the  will  more  than  the  thing  yielded  to  that  is  the 
mischief.  All  the  great  systems  of  religion  have  pro- 
vided against  the. enslavement  of  the  individual  to  his 
habits.  The  ordinances  of  abstinence  are  designed,  in 
part  at  all  events,  to  keep  the  will  master  of  the 
appetites.  They  are  intended — altogether  apart  from 
the  question  of  salvation  by  works — to  serve  as 
a  breach  with  habits  which,  if  allowed  uninter- 
rupted sway,  reduce  the  soul  to  a  sort  of  bondage  to 
the  body. 

It  is  against  that  bondage  of  habit  that  I  have 
warred  to-day.  I  shall  not  describe  the  incidents  of 
the  struggle :  the  allurements  of  the  tobacconists'  shops 
— and  what  a  lot  of  tobacconists'  shops  there  are! — 
the  insidious  temptation  of  a  company  of  men  smoking 
contentedly  after  lunch,  the  heroism  of  waving  away 
the  offered  cigarette  or  cigar  as  though  it  were  a  mat- 
ter of  no  importance,  the  constant  act  of  refusal.  For 
this  is  no  case  of  one  splendid  deed  of  heroism.  You 
do  not  slay  Apollyon  with  a  thrust  of  your  sword  and 
march  triumphantly  on  your  way.  You  have  to  go  on 
fighting  every  inch  of  the  journey,  deaf  to  the  appeals 
of  Gold  Flake  and  Capstan  and  Navy  Cut  and  the 
other  syrens  that  beckon  you  from  the  shop  windows. 
And  now  evening  has  come  and  the  victory  is  mine.  I 
have  singed  the  beard  of  the  giant.  I  am  no  longer  his 
thrall.     To-morrow  I  shall  be  able  to  smoke  with  a 


48 


ON  GIVING  UP  TOBACCO 


clear  conscience — with  the  feeling  that  it  is  an  act  of 
my  own  free  choice,  and  not  an  act  of  a  slavish  obedi- 
ence to  an  old  habit.  .  .  . 
How  I  shall  enjoy  to-morrow! 


THE  GREAT  GOD  GUN 


A  FEW  days  ago  I  saw  the  Advent  of  the  Great  God 
Gun.  The  goddess  Aphrodite,  according  to  ancient 
mythology,  rose  out  of  the  foam  of  the  sea,  and  the 
Great  God  Gun,  too,  emerged  from  a  bath,  but  it  was 
a  bath  of  fire — fire  so  white  and  intense  that  the  eyes 
were  blinded  by  it  as  they  are  blinded  by  the  light  of 
the  unclouded  sun  at  mid-day. 

Our  presence  had  been  timed  for  the  moment  of  his 
coming.  We  stood  in  a  great  chamber  higher  than  a 
cathedral  nave,  and  with  something  even  less  than  the 
dim  religious  light  of  a  cathedral  nave.  The  exterior 
of  the  temple  was  plain  even  to  ugliness,  a  tower  of 
high,  windowless  walls  faced  with  corrugated  iron. 
Within  was  a  maze  of  immense  mysteries,  mighty 
cylinders  towering  into  the  gloom  above,  great  pits 
descending  into  the  gloom  below,  gigantic  cranes  show- 
ing against  the  dim  skylight,  with  here  and  there  a 

49 


50  THE  GREAT  GOD  GUN 

Cyclopean  figure  clad  in  oily  overalls  and  with  a  face 
grimy  and  perspiring. 

The  signal  was  given.  Two  shadowy  figures  that 
appeared  in  the  darkness  above  one  of  the  cylinders 
began  their  incantations.  A  giant  crane  towered 
above  them  and  one  saw  its  mighty  claw  descend  into 
the  orifice  of  the  cylinder  as  if  to  drag  some  Eurydice 
out  of  the  hell  within.  Then  the  word  was  spoken  and 
somewhere  a  lever,  or  perhaps  only  an  electric  button, 
was  touched.  But  at  that  touch  the  whole  front  of 
the  mighty  cylinder  from  top  to  bottom  opened  and 
swung  back  slowly  and  majestically,  and  one  stood 
before  a  pillar  of  flame  forty  feet  high,  pure  and  white, 
an  infinity  of  intolerable  light,  from  whence  a  wave 
of  heat  came  forth  like  a  living  thing.  And  as  the 
door  opened  the  Cyclops  above — strange  Dantesque 
figures  now  swallowed  up  in  the  gloom,  now  caught 
in  the  light  of  the  furnace — ^set  the  crane  in  motion, 
and  through  the  open  door  of  the  cylinder  came  the 
god,  suspended  from  the  claw  of  the  crane  that  gripped 
it  like  the  fingers  of  a  hand. 

It  emerged  slowly  like  a  column  of  solid  light — 
mystic,  wonderful.  All  night  it  had  stood  imprisoned 
in  the  cylinder  enveloped  by  that  bath  of  incalculable 
hotness,  and  as  it  came  out  from  the  ordeal,  it  was 
as  white  as  the  furnace  within.  The  great  hand  of  the 
crane  bore  it  forward  with  a  solemn  slowness  until 
it  paused  over  the  mouth  of  one  of  the  pits.  I 
had  looked  into  this  pit  and  seen  that  it  was  filled 
nearly  to  the  brim  with  a  slimy  liquid.     It  was  a  pit 


THE  GREAT  GOD  GUN  51 

of  oil — tens  of  thousands  of  gallons  of  highflash  rape 
oil.     It  was  the  second  bath  of  the  god. 

The  monster,  the  whiteness  of  his  heat  now  flushing 
to  pink,  paused  above  the  pit.  Then  gravely,  under 
the  direction  of  the  iron  hand  that  held  him  suspended 
in  mid-air,  he  began  to  descend  into  the  oil.  The 
breech  end  of  the  incandescent  column  touched  the 
surface  of  the  liquid,  and  at  that  touch  there  leapt 
out  of  the  mouth  of  the  pit  great  tongues  of  flame. 
As  the  red  pillar  sank  deeper  and  deeper  in  the  pit 
the  flames  burst  up  through  the  muzzle  and  licked 
with  fury  about  the  ruthless  claw  as  if  to  tear  it  to 
pieces.  But  it  would  not  let  go.  Lower  and  lower 
sank  the  god  until  even  his  head  was  submerged 
and  he  stood  invisible  beneath  us,  robed  in  his  cloak 
of  oil. 

And  there  we  will  leave  him  to  toughen  and  harden 
as  he  drinks  in  the  oil  hungrily  through  his  burning 
pores.  Soon  he  will  be  caught  up  in  the  claw  of  the 
crane  again,  lifted  out  of  his  bath  and  lowered  into 
an  empty  pit  near  by.  And  upon  him  will  descend 
another  tube,  that  has  passed  through  the  same  trials, 
and  that  will  fit  him  as  the  skin  fits  the  body.  And 
then  in  due  course  he  will  be  provided  with  yet 
another  coat.  Round  and  round  him  will  be  wound 
miles  of  flattened  wire,  put  on  at  a  tension  of  un- 
thinkable resistance.  And  even  then  there  remains 
his  outer  garment,  his  jacket,  to  swell  still  further 
his  mighty  bulk.  After  that  he  will  be  equipped 
with  his  brain — all  the  wonderful  mechanism  of 
breech   and   cradle — and    then   one   day   he   will   be 


52  THE  GREAT  GOD  GUN 

carried  to  the  huge  structure  near  by,  where  the 
Great  God  Gun,  in  all  his  manifestations,  from  the 
little  mountain  ten-pounder  to  the  leviathan  fifteen- 
inch,  rests  shining  and  wonderful,  to  be  sent  forth 
with  his  message  of  death  and  destruction. 

The  savage,  we  are  told,  is  misguided  enough  to 
"bow  down  to  wood  and  stone."  Poor  savage!  If 
we  could  only  take  him,  with  his  childlike  intelligence, 
into  our  temple  to  see  the  god  that  the  genius  and 
industry  of  civilised  man  has  created,  a  god  so  vast 
that  a  hundred  men  could  not  lift  him,  of  such  in- 
credible delicacy  that  his  myriad  parts  are  fitted 
together  to  the  thousandth,  the  ten-thousandth,  and 
even  the  hundred-thousandth  of  an  inch,  and  out  of 
whose  throat  there  issue  thunders  and  lightnings  that 
carry  ruin  for  tens  of  miles.  How  ashamed  the  poor 
savage  would  be  of  his  idols  of  wood  and  stone!  How 
he  would  abase  himself  before  the  god  of  the  Christian 
nations! 

And  what  a  voracious  deity  he  is!  Here  in  the  great 
arsenal  of  Woolwich  one  passes  through  miles  and 
miles  of  bewildering  activities,  foundries  where  the 
forty-ton  hammer  falls  with  the  softness  of  a  caress 
upon  the  great  column  of  molten  metal,  and  gives 
it  the  first  crude  likeness  of  the  god,  where  vast  con- 
verters are  sending  out  flames  of  an  unearthly  hue  and 
brightness  or  where  men  clothed  in  grime  and  per- 
spiration are  swinging  about  billets  of  steel  that  scorch 
you  as  they  pass  from  the  furnace  to  the  steam-press 
in  which  they  are  stamped  like  putty  into  the  rough 
shape  of  great  shells;  shops  where  the  roar  of  thou- 


THE  GREAT  GOD  GUN  53 

sands  of  lathes  drowns  the  voice  and  where  the  food 
of  the  god  is  passing  through  a  multitude  of  prepara- 
tions more  delicate  than  any  known  to  the  kitchens  of 
Lucullus;  pools  of  silence  where  grave  scientific  men 
are  at  their  calculations  and  their  tests,  and  where 
mechanics  who  are  the  princes  of  their  trade  show  you 
delicate  instruments  gauged  to  the  hundred-thousandth 
of  an  inch  that  are  so  precious  that  they  will  scarcely 
let  you  handle  them;  mysterious  chambers  where  the 
high  explosives  are  handled  and  where  the  shells  are 
filled,  where  you  walk  in  felt  slippers  upon  padded 
floors  and  dare  not  drop  a  pin  lest  you  wake  an 
earthquake,  and  where  you  see  men  working  ( for  what 
pay  I  know  not)  with  materials  more  terrible  than 
lightnings,  themselves  partitioned  off  from  eternity  only 
by  the  scrupulous  observance  of  the  meticulous  laws  of 
this  realm  of  the  sleeping  Furies. 

A  great  town — a  town  whose  activities  alone  are 
equal  to  all  the  labour  of  a  city  like  Leeds — all  de- 
voted to  the  service  of  the  god  who  lies  there,  mystic, 
wonderful,  waiting  to  speak  his  oracles  to  men.  I 
see  the  poor  savage  growing  more  and  more  ashamed 
of  his  wood  and  stone.  And  this,  good  savage,  is 
only  a  trifling  part  of  our  devotions.  All  over  the 
land  wherever  you  go  you  shall  find  furnaces  blazing 
to  his  glory,  mountains  shattered  to  make  his  ribs, 
factories  throbbing  day  and  night  to  feed  his  gigantic 
maw  and  to  clothe  his  servants. 

You  shall  go  down  to  the  great  rivers  and  hear  a 
thousand  hammers  beating  their  music  out  of  the 
hulls  of  mighty  ships  that  are  to  be  the  chariots  of 


54  THE  GREAT  GOD  GUN 

the  god,  in  which  he  will  go  forth  to  preach  his 
gospel.  You  shall  go  down  into  the  bowels  of  the 
earth  and  see  half-naked  men  toiling  in  the  black- 
ness by  the  dim  light  of  the  safety  lamp  to  win  that 
wonderful  food  which  is  the  ultimate  food  of  the 
god,  power  to  forge  his  frame,  power  to  drive  his 
chariots,  power  to  wing  his  bolts.  You  shall  go  to 
our  temples  of  learning  and  the  laboratories  of  oui 
universities  and  see  the  miracles  of  destruction  that 
science,  the  proudest  achievement  of  man,  can  wring 
out  of  that  astonishing  mystery  coal-tar.  You  shall 
go  to  our  ports  and  watch  the  ships  riding  in  proudly 
from  the  seas  with  their  tributes  from  afar  to  the 
god.  And  behind  all  this  activity  you  shall  see  a 
nation  working  day  and  night  to  pay  for  the  food 
of  the  god,  throwing  all  its  accumulated  wealth  into 
the  furnace  to  keep  the  engines  going,  pawning  its- 
future  to  the  uttermost  farthing  and  to  the  remotest 
generation. 

And  wherever  the  white  man  dwells,  good  savage, 
the  same  vision  awaits  you — 

....  where  Rhine   unto  the  sea, 
And  Thames  and  Tiber,   Seine  and  Danube  run, 
And  where  great  armies  glitter  in  the  sun. 
And  great  kings  rule  and  men  are  boasted  free. 

Everywhere  the  hammers  are  ringing,  the  forests  are 
falling,  the  harvests  are  being  gathered,  and  men  and 
women  toil  like  galley  slaves  chained  to  the  oar  to 
build  more  and  more  of  the  image  and  feed  him  more 
lavishly  with  the  food  of  death.     You  cannot  escape 


THE  GREAT  GOD  GUN  55 

the  great  traffic  of  the  god  though  you  go  to  the  out- 
posts of  the  earth.  The  horses  of  the  pampas  are 
being  rounded  up  to  drag  his  waggons,  the  sheep  of 
Australia  are  being  sheared  to  clothe  his  slaves,  the 
pine  trees  of  Lapland  are  being  split  for  his  service, 
the  silence  of  the  Arctic  seas  is  broken  by  the  throb- 
bing of  his  chariots.  As  a  neutral,  good  savage,  you 
shall  be  free  to  go  to  Essen  and  see  marvels  no  less 
wonderful  than  these  you  have  seen  at  Woolwich, 
and  all  through  Europe  from  Bremen  to  the  Golden 
Horn  the  same  infinite  toil  in  the  service  of  the  Great 
God  Gun  will  greet  your  astonished  eyes. 

Then,  it  may  be,  you  will  pass  to  where  the  god 
delivers  his  message;  on  sea  where  one  word  from 
his  mouth  sends  a  thousand  men  and  twenty  thou- 
sand tons  of  metal  in  one  huge  dust  storm  to  the 
skies;  on  land  where  over  hundreds  of  miles  of 
battle  front  the  towns  and  villages  are  mounds  of 
rubbish,  where  the  desolate  earth  is  riven  and 
shattered  by  that  treacly  stuff  you  saw  being  ladled 
into  the  shells  in  the  danger  rooms  at  Woolwich  or 
Essen,  where  the  dead  lie  thick  as  leaves  in  autumn, 
and  where  in  every  wood  you  will  come  upon  the 
secret  shrines  of  the  god.  At  one  light  touch  of  the 
lever  he  lifts  his  head,  coughs  his  mighty  guttural 
speech  and  sinks  back  as  if  convulsed.  He  has 
spoken,  the  earth  trembles,  the  trees  about  him 
shudder  at  the  shock.  And  standing  in  the  observa- 
tory you  will  see  far  off  a  great  black,  billoviy  mass 
rise  in  the  clear  sky  and  you  will  know  that  the  god 
has  blowa  another  god  like  unto  him  into  fragments. 


56 


THE  GREAT  GOD  GUN 


and  that  in  that  mass  that  rises  and  falls  is  the  wreck- 
age of  many  a  man  who  has  looked  his  last  upon  the 
sun  and  will  never  till  the  home  fields  again  or  gladden 
the  eyes  of  those  he  has  left  in  some  distant  land. 

And  then,  to  complete  your  experience,  you  shall 
hear  from  the  prophets  of  the  Great  God  Gun  the 
praises  of  his  gospel,  how  that  gospel  is  an  abiding 
part  of  the  white  man's  faith,  how  it  acts  as  a  moral 
medicine  to  humanity,  purging  it  of  its  vices  and 
teaching  it  the  higher  virtues  (a  visit  to  the  music 
halls  and  the  Strand  at  midnight  will  help  your  simple 
mind  to  realise  this),  and  how  the  words  of  the  poet, 
uttered  in  satii 


That  civilisation   doos  git  forrad 
Sometimes  upon  a  powder  cart — 

were  in  truth  the  words  of  eternal  wisdom. 


THE  GREAT  GOD  GUN  57 

I  see  the  poor  savage  returning  sadly  to  his  home 
and  gazing  with  mingled  scorn  and  humiliation  at 
his  futile  image  of  wood  and  stone.  Perhaps  another 
feeling  will  mingle  with  his  sadness.  Perhaps  he 
will  be  perplexed  and  puzzled.  For  he  may  have 
heard  of  another  religion  that  the  white  man  serves, 
and  it  may  be  difficult  for  his  simple  mind  to  reconcile 
that  religion  with  the  gospel  of  the  Great  God  Gun. 


<=^==-   ■"  "       '     '    "»ii"''n —      III""  '  '^■- — —^ — i> ■«-       ■  I'   ''^^ 

sssSSUHKJ^^^?^^i^<9B*iriiiBSiS^£S^^!^^HR^9 

-^    -^"^si^^^i::^..  S"'-^"      'W}!^^imimmm\\mmimki:^ 

ON  A  LEGEND  OF  THE  WAR 

I  WAS  going  down  to  the  country  the  other  night 
when  I  fell  into  conversation  with  a  soldier  who  was 
going  home  on  leave.  He  was  a  reservist,  who,  after 
leaving  the  Army,  had  taken  to  gardening,  and  who 
had  been  called  up  at  the  beginning  of  the  war.  He 
had  many  interesting  things  to  tell,  w^hich  he  told 
in  that  unromantic,  matter-of-fact  fashion  peculiar  to 
the  British  soldier.  But  something  he  said  about  his 
cousin  led  him  to  make  a  reference  to  Lord  Kitchener, 
and  I  noticed  that  he  spoke  of  the  great  soldier  as  if 
he  were  living. 

"But,"  said  I,  "do  you  think  Kitchener  wasn't 
drowned  ?" 

"Yes,"  he  replied,  "I  can't  never  believe  he  was 
drowned." 

"But  why?" 

"Well,  he  hadn't  no  escort.  You're  not  going  to 
58 


ON  A  LEGEND  OF  THE  WAR         59 

make  me  believe  he  didn't  know  what  he  was  doing 
when  he  went  off  and  didn't  have  no  escort.  It 
stands  to  reason.  He  wasn't  no  stick  of  rhubub,  as 
you  might  say.  He  was  a  hard  man  on  the  soldier, 
but  he  had  foresight,  he  had.  He  could  look  ahead. 
That's  what  he  could  do.  He  could  look  ahead.  What 
did  he  say  about  the  war?  Three  years,  he  said,  or 
the  duration,  and  he  was  about  right.  He  wasn't  the 
man  to  get  drowned  by  an  oversight — not  him.  Stands 
to  reason." 

"Same  with  Hector  Macdonald,"  he  said,  warming 
to  his  theme.  "He's  alive  right  enough.  He's  fighting 
for  the  Germans.  Why,  I  know  a  man  who  seen  him 
in  a  German  uniform  before  the  war  began.  I  should 
know  him  if  I  see  him.  He  inspected  me  often.  He 
made  a  fool  of  himself  at  Monte  Carlo  and  that  sort 
o'  thing,  and  just  went  off  to  get  a  new  start,  as 
you  might  say. 

"And  look  at  Hamel.  He  ain't  dead — course  not. 
He  went  to  Germany — that's  what  he  did.  Stands 
to  reason." 

"And  what  has  become  of  Kitchener?"  I  asked.  "Is 
he  fighting  for  the  Germans  too?" 

Well,  no.  That  was  too  tall  an  order  even  for  his 
credulity.  He  boggled  a  bit  at  the  hedge  and  then 
proceeded : 

"He's  laying  by — that's  what  he's  doing.  He's  lay- 
ing by.  You  see,  he'd  done  his  job.  He  raised  his 
army  and  made  the  whole  job,  as  you  may  say,  safe, 
and  he  wasn't  going  to  take  a  back  seat  and  be  put 
in  a  corner.      Not  him.     Stands  to   reason.     Why 


6o         ON  A  LEGEND  OF  THE  WAR 

should  he?  And  him  done  all  what  he  had  done.  So 
he  just  goes  off  and  lays  by  until  he's  wanted  again. 
Then  he'll  turn  up  all  right.     You'll  see." 

"But  the  ship  was  blown  up,"  I  said,  "and  only 
one  boatload  of  survivors  came  to  shore.  There  were 
800  men  who  perished  with  Lord  Kitchener.  Not 
one  has  been  heard  of.  Are  they  all  'laying  by'? 
And  where  are  they  hiding?  And  why?  And  were 
they  all  in  Lord  Kitchener's  secret?" 

He  seemed  a  little  gravelled  by  these  considerations, 
but  unmoved. 

"I  can't  never  believe  that  he's  dead,"  he  said  with 
the  air  of  a  man  who  didn't  want  to  be  awkward  and 
would  oblige  if  he  possibly  could.  "I  can't  do  it.  .  .  . 
With  his  foresight  and  all.  .  .  .  And  no  escort,  mind 
you.  .  .  ,  No,  I  can't  believe  it.  .  .  .  Stands  to 
reason." 

And  as  he  sank  back  in  his  seat  and  lit  a  cigarette 
I  realised  that  the  legend  of  Kitchener  had  passed 
beyond  the  challenge  of  death.  I  had  heard  much  of 
that  legend,  much  of  mysterious  letters  from  prisoners 
in  Germany  who  had  seen  a  very  tall  and  formidable- 
looking  man  and  hinted  that  that  man's  name  was 
— well,  whose  would  you  think?  Why,  of  course.  .  .  . 
But  here  was  the  popular  legend  in  all  its  naked 
simplicity  and  absoluteness. 

It  did  not  rest  upon  fact.  It  defied  all  facts  and  all 
evidence.  It  was  an  act  of  tyrannic  faith.  He  was 
not  dead,  because  the  mind  simply  refused  to  believe 
that  he  was  dead.  And  so  he  was  alive.  And  there 
vou  are. 


ON  A  LEGEND  OF  THE  WAR         6i 

No  doubt  there  was  much  in  the  circumstances  of 
the  great  soldier's  end  that  helped  the  growth  of  the 
myth.  He  filled  so  vast  a  place  in  the  public  mind 
and  vanished  so  swiftly  that  his  total  disappearance 
seemed  unthinkable.  No  living  man  had  seen  him 
die  and  no  man  had  seen  his  body  in  death.  He  had 
just  walked  out  into  the  night,  and  from  the  night 
he  would  return. 

But,  apart  from  the  mystery  of  circumstance,  the 
legend  is  a  tribute  to  the  strange  fascination  which 
this  remarkable  man  exercised  over  the  popular  mind. 
It  endowed  him  with  qualities  which  were  super- 
natural. In  a  world  filled  with  the  tragedy  of  mor- 
tality, here  was  a  man  who  could  daunt  death  itself. 
And  when  death  stabbed  him  suddenly  in  the  dark 
of  that  wild  night  off  the  Orkneys  and  flung  his  body 
to  the  wandering  seas,  the  popular  mind  rejected  the 
thought  as  a  sort  of  blasphemy  and  insisted  on  his 
victory  over  the  enemy.  "Stands  to  reason."  That's 
all.     It  just  "stands  to  reason." 

It  seems  a  childish  superstition,  and  yet  if  we  could 
probe  this  belief  to  the  bottom  we  might  find  that 
there  is  a  truth  beneath  the  apparent  foolishness.  It 
is  that  truth  which  Whitman,  in  his  "Drum  Taps," 
expresses  over  his  fallen  comrade — 

O   the  bullet  could   never  kill   what  you   really   are,   dear 

friend. 
Nor  the  bayonet  stab  what  you  really  are! 

There  is  something  in  the  heroic  soul  that  defies  death, 
and  the  simple  mind  only  translates  that  faith  in  the 


62         ON  A  LEGEND  OF  THE  WAR 

deathlessness  of  the  spirit  into  material  terms.  Drake 
lies  in  his  hammock  in  Nombre  Dios  Bay,  but  he 
lies  "listening  for  the  drum  and  dreamin'  arl  the  time 
of  Plymouth  Hoe." 

Call  him  on  the  deep  sea,  call  him  up  the  Sound, 
Call    him   when   your   powder's   running   low — 
"If   the    Dons    sight   Devon 
I'll   leave  the  port  of  Heaven, 

And    we'll    drum    them    up    the   Channel    as   we   drummed 
them    long    ago." 

And  so  the  legend  of  Drake's  drum  lives  on,  and  long 
centuries  after,  in  the  midst  of  another  and  fiercer 
storm,  men  sail  the  seas  and  hear  that  ghostly  inspira- 
tion to  brave  deeds  and  brave  death.  The  torch  of  a 
great  spirit  never  goes  out.  It  is  handed  on  from  gen- 
eration to  generation  and  flames  brightest  when  the 
night  is  darkest.  And  that  I  think  is  the  truth  that 
dwells  at  the  back  of  my  companion's  obstinate  cre- 
dulity. Kitchener  has  become  to  him  a  symbol  of 
something  that  cannot  die  and  his  non-metaphysical 
mind  must  have  some  material  immortality  to  give  his 
faith  an  anchorage.  And  so,  out  in  the  vague  shad- 
ows of  the  borderland  he  sees  the  stalwart  figure  still 
at  his  post — "laying  by,"  it  is  true,  but  watching  and 
waiting  and  "listening  for  the  drum"  that  shall  sum- 
mon him  back  to  the  field  of  action. 

As  the  train  slowed  down  at  a  country  station  and 
he  prepared  to  go  out  into  the  night,  he  repeated  in 
firm  but  friendly  accents:     "No,  I  can't  never  believe 


ON  A  LEGEND  OF  THE  WAR         63 

that  he's  dead.  .  .  .  Stands  to  reason."  And  as  he 
bade  me  "Good-night,"  I  said,  "I  think  you  are  right. 
I  think  he  is  living,  too."  And  as  the  door  closed,  I 
added  to  myself,   "Stands  to  reason." 


ON  TALK  AND  TALKERS 


The  other  day  I  went  to  dine  at  a  house  known  for 
the  brilliancy  of  the  conversation.  I  confess  that  I 
found  the  experience  a  little  trying.  In  conversa- 
tion I  am  naturally  rather  a  pedestrian  person.  The 
talk  I  like  is  the  talk  which  Washington  Irving 
had  in  mind  when  he  said  that  "that  is  the  best  com- 
pany in  which  the  jokes  are  rather  small  and  the 
laughter  abundant."  I  do  not  want  to  be  expected 
to  be  brilliant  or  to  be  dazzled  by  verbal  pyrotechnics. 
I  like  to  talk  in  my  slippers  as  it  were,  with  my  legs 
at  full  stretch,  my  mind  at  ease,  and  with  all  the 
evening  before  me.  Above  all,  I  like  the  company 
of  people  who  talk  for  enjoyment  and  not  for  admira- 
tion. "I  am  none  of  those  who  sing  for  meat,  but  for 
company,"  says  Izaak  Walton,  and  therein  is  the  se- 
cret of  good  talk  as  well  as  of  cheerful  song. 

64 


ON  TALK  AND  TALKERS  65 

But  at  this  dinner  table  the  conversation  flashed 
around  me  like  forked  lightning.  It  was  so  staccato 
and  elusive  that  it  seemed  like  talking  in  shorthand. 
It  was  a  very  fencing  match  of  wit  and  epigram,  a 
sort  of  game  of  touch-and-go,  or  tip-and-run,  or  catch- 
as-catch-can,  or  battledore  and  shuttlecock,  or  demon 
patience,  or  anything  you  like  that  is  intellectually  and 
physically  breathless  and  baffling.  I  thought  of  a 
bright  thing  to  say  now  and  then,  but  I  was  always 
so  slow  in  getting  away  from  the  mark  that  I  never 
got  it  out.  It  had  grown  stale  and  out  of  date  before 
I  could  invest  it  with  the  artistic  merit  that  would 
enable  it  to  appear  in  such  brilliant  company.  And 
so,  mentally  out  of  breath,  I  just  sat  and  felt  old- 
fashioned  and  slow,  and  tried  to  catch  the  drift  of  the 
sparkling  dialogue.  But  I  looked  as  wise  as  possible, 
just  to  give  the  impression  that  nothing  was  escaping 
me,  and  that  the  things  I  did  not  say  were  quite  worth 
saying.  That  was  Henry  Irving's  way  when  the  con- 
versation got  beyond  him.  He  just  looked  wise  and 
said  nothing. 

There  are  few  things  more  enviable  than  the  qual- 
ity of  good  talk,  but  this  was  not  good  talk.  It  was 
clever  talk,  which  is  quite  a  different  thing.  There 
was  no  "stuff"  in  it.  It  was  like  trying  to  make  a 
meal  off  the  east  wind,  which  it  resembled  in  its  hard 
brilliancy  and  lack  of  geniality.  It  reminded  me  of 
the  tiresome  witticisms  of  Mr.  Justice  Darling,  who 
always  gives  the  impression  of  having  just  come  into 
court  from  the  study  of  some  jest  book  or  a  volume 
of  appropriate  quotations.  The  foundation  of  good  talk 


66  ON  TALK  AND  TALKERS 

is  good  sense,  good  nature,  and  the  gift  of  fellowship. 
Given  these  things  you  may  serve  them  up  w^ith  the 
sauce  of  vv^it,  but  wit  alone  never  made  good  conver- 
sation.    It  is  like  mint-sauce  without  the  lamb. 

Fluent  talkers  are  not  necessarily  good  conversation- 
alists. Macaulay  talked  as  though  he  were  address- 
ing a  public  meeting,  and  Coleridge  as  though  he  were 
engaged  in  an  argument  with  space  and  eternity.  "If 
any  of  you  have  got  anything  to  say,"  said  Samuel 
Rogers  to  his  guests  at  breakfast  one  morning,  "you 
had  better  say  it  now  you  have  got  a  chance.  Ma- 
caulay is  coming."  And  you  remember  that  whimsical 
story  of  Lamb  cutting  oliE  the  coat  button  that  Cole- 
ridge held  him  by  in  the  garden  at  Highgate,  going 
for  his  day's  work  into  the  City,  returning  in  the 
evening,  hearing  Coleridge's  voice,  looking  over  the 
hedge  and  seeing  the  poet  with  the  button  between 
forefinger  and  thumb  still  talking  into  space.  His  life 
was  an  unending  monologue.  "I  think,  Charles,  that 
you  never  heard  me  preach,"  said  Coleridge  once,  speak- 
ing of  his  pulpit  days.  "My  dear  boy,"  answered 
Lamb,  "I  never  heard  you  do  anything  else." 

Johnson's  talk  had  the  quality  of  conversation,  be- 
cause, being  a  clubbable  man,  he  enjoyed  the  give-and- 
take  and  the  cut-and-thrust  of  the  encounter.  He  liked 
to  "lay  his  mind  to  yours"  as  he  said  of  Thurlow, 
and  though  he  was  more  than  a  little  "huiify"  on  oc- 
casion he  had  that  wealth  of  humanity  which  is  the 
soul  of  hearty  conversation.  He  quarrelled  heartily  and 
forgave  heartily — as  in  that  heated  scene  at  Sir 
Joshua's  when  a  young  stranger  had  been  too  talkative 


ON  TALK  AND  TALKERS  67 

and  knowing  and  had  come  under  his  sledge  hammer. 
Then,  proceeds  Boswell,  "after  a  short  pause,  during 
which  we  were  somewhat  uneasy; — Johnson:  Give  me 
your  hand,  Sir.  You  were  too  tedious  and  I  was  too 
short. —  Mr. :  Sir,  I  am  honoured  by  your  atten- 
tion in  any  way. — Johnson :  Come,  Sir,  let's  have  no 
more  of  it.  We  offended  one  another  by  our  conten- 
tion ;  let  us  not  offend  the  company  by  our  compli- 
ments." He  always  had  the  company  in  mind.  He 
no  more  thought  of  talking  alone  than  a  boxer  would 
think  of  boxing  alone,  or  the  tennis  player  would  think 
of  rushing  up  to  the  net  for  a  rally  alone.  He  wanted 
something  to  hit  and  something  to  parry,  and  the 
harder  he  hit  and  the  quicker  he  parried  the  more  he 
loved  the  other  fellow.  That  is  the  way  with  all 
the  good  talkers  of  our  own  time.  Perhaps  Mr.  Bel- 
loc  is  too  cyclonic  and  scornful  for  perfect  conversa- 
tion, but  his  energy  and  wit  are  irresistible.  I  find 
Mr.  Bernard  Shaw  far  more  tolerant  and  much  less 
aggressive  in  conversation  than  on  paper  or  on  the 
platform.  But  the  princes  of  the  art,  in  my  experi- 
ence, are  Mr.  Birrell,  Lord  Morley,  and  Mr.  Richard 
Whiteing,  the  first  for  the  rich  wine  of  his  humour, 
the  second  for  the  sensitiveness  and  delicacy  of  his 
thought,  the  third  for  the  deep  love  of  his  kind  that 
warms  the  generous  current  of  his  talk.  I  would  add 
Mr.  John  Burns,  but  he  is  really  a  soloist.  He  is 
too  interesting  to  himself  to  be  sufficiently  interested 
in  others.  When  he  is  well  under  way  you  simply 
sit  round  and  listen.  It  is  capital  amusement,  but  it 
is  not  conversation. 


68  ON  TALK  AND  TALKERS 

It  is  not  the  man  who  talks  abundantly  who  alone 
keeps  the  pot  of  conversation  boiling.  Some  of  the 
best  talkers  talk  little.  They  save  their  shots  for  criti- 
cal moments  and  come  in  with  sudden  and  devastating 
effect.  Lamb  had  that  art,  and  his  stammer  was  the 
perfect  vehicle  of  his  brilliant  sallies.  Mr.  Arnold 
Bennett  in  our  time  uses  the  same  hesitation  with  de- 
lightful effect — sometimes  with  a  shattering  truthful- 
ness that  seems  to  gain  immensely  from  the  prelimi- 
nary obstruction  that  has  to  be  overcome.  And  I  like 
in  my  company  of  talkers  the  good  listener,  the  man 
who  contributes  an  eloquent  silence  which  envelops  con- 
versation in  an  atmosphere  of  vigilant  but  friendly 
criticism.  Addison  had  this  quality  of  eloquent  si- 
lence. Goldsmith,  on  the  other  hand,  would  have  liked 
to  shine,  but  had  not  the  gift  of  talk.  Among  the 
eloquent  listeners  of  our  day  I  place  that  fine  writer 
and  critic,  Mr.  Robert  Lynd,  whose  quiet  has  a  cer- 
tain benignant  graciousness,  a  tolerant  yet  vigilant 
watchfulness,  that  adds  its  flavour  to  the  more  eager 
talk  of  others. 

It  was  a  favourite  fancy  of  Samuel  Rogers  that 
"perhaps  in  the  next  world  the  use  of  words  may  be 
dispensed  with — that  our  thoughts  may  stream  into 
each  other's  minds  without  any  verbal  communication." 
It  is  an  idea  which  has  its  attractions.  It  would  save 
time  and  effort,  and  would  preserve  us  from  the  mis- 
understandings which  the  clumsy  instrument  of  speech 
involves.  I  think  as  I  sit  here  in  the  orchard  by  the 
beehive  and  watch  the  bees  carrying  out  their  myriad 
functions  with   such   disciplined   certainty   that   there 


ON  TALK  AND  TALKERS  69 

must  be  the  possibility  of  mutual  understanding  with- 
out speech — an  understanding  such  as  that  which 
Coleridge  believed  humanity  would  have  discovered 
and  exploited  if  it  had  been  created  mute. 

And  yet  I  do  not  share  Rogers's  hope.  I  fancy 
the  next  world  will  be  like  this,  only  better.  I  think 
it  will  resound  with  the  familiar  speech  of  our  earthly 
pilgrimage,  and  that  in  any  shady  walk  or  among  any 
of  the  fields  of  asphodel  over  which  we  wander  we 
may  light  upon  the  great  talkers  of  history,  and  share 
in  their  eternal  disputation.  There,  under  some  spread- 
ing oak  or  beech,  I  shall  hope  to  see  Carlyle  and  Tenny- 
son, or  Lamb  and  Hazlitt  and  Coleridge,  or  Johnson 
laying  down  the  law  to  Langton  and  Burke  and  Beau- 
clerk,  with  Bozzy  taking  notes,  or  Ben  Jonson  and 
Shakespeare  continuing  those  combats  of  the  Mermaid 
Tavern  described  by  Fuller — the  one  mighty  and  lum- 
bering like  a  Spanish  galleon,  the  other  swift  and 
supple  of  movement  like  an  English  frigate — or 
Chaucer  and  his  Canterbury  pilgrims  still  telling  tales 
on  an  eternal  May  morning.  It  is  a  comfortable 
thought,  but  I  cannot  conceive  it  without  the  old,  cheer- 
ful din  of  contending  tongues.  I  fancy  edging  myself 
into  those  enchanted  circles,  and  having  a  modest  share 
in  the  glorious  pow-wows  of  the  masters.  I  hope  they 
won't  vote  me  a  bore  and  scatter  at  my  approach. 


ON  A  VISION  OF  EDEN 


I  HAD  a  glimpse  of  Eden  last  night.  It  came,  as  visions 
should  come,  out  of  the  misery  of  things.  In  all 
these  tragic  years  no  night  spent  in  a  newspaper  office 
had  been  more  depressing  than  this,  with  its  sense  of 
impending  peril,  its  disquieting  communique,  Wyt- 
schaate  lost,  won,  lost  again;  the  eager  study  of  the 
map  with  its  ever  retreating  British  line;  the  struggle 
to  write  cheerfully  in  spite  of  a  sick  and  forboding 
heart — and  then  out  into  the  night  with  the  burden 
of  it  all  hanging  like  a  blight  upon  the  soul.  And  as 
I  stood  in  the  dark  and  the  slush  and  the  snow  by  the 
Law  Courts  I  saw  careering  towards  me  a  motor-bus 
with  great  head-lights  that  shone  like  blast  furnaces  on 
a  dark  hillside.  It  seemed  to  me  like  a  magic  bus 
pounding  through  the  gloom  with  good  tidings,  jolly 
tidings,   and   scattering   the   darkness  with   its  jovial 

70 


ON  A  VISION  OF  EDEN  71 

lamps.  Heavens,  thought  I,  what  strangers  we  are  to 
good  tidings;  but  here  surely  they  come,  breathless  and 
radiant,  for  such  a  glow  never  sat  on  the  brow  of  fear. 
The  bus  stopped  and  I  got  inside,  and  inside  it  was 
radiant  too — so  brilliant  that  you  could  not  only  see 
that  your  fellow-passengers  were  real  people  of  flesh 
and  blood  and  not  mere  phantoms  in  the  darkness,  but 
that  you  could  read  the  paper  with  luxurious  ease. 

But  I  did  not  read  the  paper.  I  didn't  want  to 
read  the  paper.  I  only  wanted  just  to  sit  back  and 
enjoy  the  forgotten  sensation  of  a  well-lit  bus.  It  was 
as  though  at  one  stride  I  had  passed  out  of  the  long 
and  bitter  night  of  the  black  years  into  the  careless  past, 
or  forward  into  the  future  when  all  the  agony  would 
be  a  tale  that  was  told.  One  day,  I  said  to  myself,  we 
shall  think  nothing  of  a  bus  like  this.  All  the  buses 
will  be  like  this,  and  we  shall  go  galumphing  home  at 
midnight  through  streets  as  bright  as  day.  The  gloom 
will  have  vanished  from  Trafalgar  Square  and  the 
fairyland  of  Piccadilly  Circus  will  glitter  once  more 
with  ten  thousand  lights  singing  the  praises  of  Oxo  and 
Bovril  and  Somebody's  cigarettes  and  Somebody  else's 
pills.  We  shall  look  up  at  the  stars  and  not  fear  them 
and  at  the  moon  and  not  be  afraid.  The  newspaper 
will  no  longer  be  a  chronicle  of  hell,  nor  slaughter 
the  tyrannical  occupation  of  our  thoughts. 

And  as  I  sat  in  the  magic  bus  and  saturated  myself 
with  this  intoxicating  vision  of  the  Eden  that  will 
come  when  the  madness  is  past,  I  wondered  what  I 
should  do  on  entering  that  blessed  realm  that  was 
lost  and  that  we  yearn  to  regain.     Yes,   I  think  I 


72  ON  A  VISION  OF  EDEN 

should  fall  on  my  knees.  I  think  we  shall  all  want  to 
fall  on  our  knees.  What  other  attitude  will  there 
be  for  us?  Even  my  barber  will  fall  on  his  knees. 
"If  I  thought  peace  was  coming  to-morrow,"  he  said 
firmly  the  other  day,  "I'd  fall  on  my  knees  this  very 
night."  He  spoke  as  though  nothing  but  peace  would 
induce  him  to  do  such  a  desperate,  unheard-of  thing. 
I  tried  to  puzzle  out  his  scheme  of  faith,  but  found 
it  beyond  me.  It  rather  resembled  the  naked  com- 
mercialism of  King  Theebaw  who  when  his  favourite 
wife  lay  ill  promised  his  gods  most  splendid  gifts  if  she 
recovered,  and  when  she  died  brought  up  a  park  of 
artillery  and  blew  their  temple  down.  But  my  bar- 
ber, nevertheless,  had  the  root  of  the  matter  in  him, 
and  I  would  certainly  follow  his  example. 

But  then — what  then?  Well  I  should  want  to 
get  on  to  some  high  and  solitary  place — alone,  or 
with  just  one  companion  who  knows  when  to  be  silent 
and  when  to  talk — there  to  cleanse  my  soul  of  this 
debauch  of  horror.  I  would  take  the  midnight  train 
and  ho!  for  Keswick.  And  in  the  dawn  of  a  golden 
day — it  must  be  a  golden  day — I  would  see  the  sun 

Flatter  the  mountain  tops  with  sovran  eye 

and  set  out  by  the  lapping  waves  of  Derwentwater 
for  glorious  Sty  Head  and  hear  the  murmurs  from 
Glaramara's  inmost  caves  and  scramble  up  Great  Gable 
and  over  by  Eskhause  and  Scafell  and  down  into  the 
green  pastures  of  Langdale.    And  there  in  that  sane- 


ON  A  VISION  OF  EDEN  73 

tuary  with  its  starry  dome  and  its  encompassing  hills 
I  should  find  the  thing  I  sought.  -* 

Then,  like  the  barber,  I  shall  be  moved  to  do  some- 
thing desperate.  I  shall  want  some  oblation  to  lay 
on  the  altar,  and  if  I  know  my  companion  he  will  not 
have  forgotten  his  hundred  foot  of  rope  or  his  craft 
of  the  mountains  and  together  we  will 

Leave   our    rags   on   Pavey   Ark, 
Our  cards  on  Pillar  grim. 

And  then,  the  consecration  and  the  offering  complete, 
back  to  the  world  that  is  shuddering,  white-faced  and 
wondering,  into  its  Paradise  Regained.  .  .  .  Why, 
here  is  St.  John's  Wood  already.  And  Lord's!  Of 
course  I  must  have  a  day  at  Lord's.  It  will  be  a  part 
of  the  ritual  of  reconciliation.  The  old  players  will 
not  be  there,  for  the  gulf  with  the  past  is  wide  and 
the  bones  of  many  a  great  artist  lie  on  distant  fields. 
But  we  must  recapture  their  music  and  pay  homage 
to  their  memory.  Yes,  I  will  take  my  lunch  to  Lord's 
— or  perchance  the  Oval — and  sit  in  the  sunshine  and 
hear  the  merry  tune  of  bat  and  ball,  and  walk  over 
the  greensward  in  the  interval  and  look  at  the  wicket, 
and  talk  for  a  whole  day  with  my  companion  of  the 
giants  of  old  and  of  the  doughty  things  we  have  seen 
them  do.  Haig  and  Hindenburg,  Tirpitz  and  Jellicoe, 
all  the  names  that  have  filled  our  nightmare  shall  be 
forgotten:  there  shall  fall  from  our  lips  none  but  the 
names  of  the  goodly  game — "W.  G."  and  Ranji, 
Johnny  Briggs  and  Lohmann,  Spofforth  and  Bonnor, 


74  ON  A  VISION  OF  EDEN 

Ulyett  and  Barnes  (a  brace  of  them)  and  all  the  jolly 
host.  We'll  not  forget  one  of  them.  Not  one.  For 
a  whole  day  we  will  go  it,  hammer  and  tongs. 

And  there  are  ever  so  many  more  things  I  shall 
want  to  do.  I  shall  want  to  go  and  see  the  chestnuts 
at  Bushey  Park  on  Chestnut  Sunday.  I  shall  want 
to  send  Christmas  cards,  and  light  bonfires  on  the 
Fifth,  and  make  my  young  friends  April  fools  on  the 
First,  and  feel  what  a  tennis  racket  is  like,  and  have 
hot  cross  buns  on  Good  Friday  and  pancakes  on  Shrove 
Tuesday.  I  shall  want  to  go  and  sit  on  the  sands  and 
hear  nigger  minstrels  again,  and  talk  about  the  pros- 
pects of  the  Boat  Race,  and  take  up  all  the  pleasant 
threads  of  life  that  fell  from  our  hands  nearly  four 
years  ago.  In  short,  I  shall  plunge  into  all  the  old 
harmless  gaieties  that  we  have  forgotten,  have  no  time 
for,  no  heart  for,  no  use  for  to-day. 

But  the  bus  has  stopped  and  I  am  turned  out  of 
Eden  into  the  snow  and  the  slush  and  the  never- 
ending  night.  The  magic  chariot  goes  on  with  its 
blazing  lights  and  a  bend  in  the  road  quenches  the 
pleasant  vision  in  darkness. 


ON  A  COMIC  GENIUS 

"Like  to  see  Harry  Lauder?  Of  course  I  should  like 
to  see  Harry  Lauder.  But  how  can  I  decently  go  and 
see  Harry  Lauder  with  Lord  Devonport  putting  us 
on  rations,  with  every  hoarding  telling  me  that  ex- 
travagance is  a  crime,  and  with  Trafalgar  Square 
aflame  with  commands  to  me  to  go  to  the  bank  or  the 
post-office  and  put  every  copper  I  have,  as  well  as 
every  copper  I  can  borrow,  into  the  War  Loan?  Do 
you  realise  that  the  five  shillings  I  should  pay  for  a 
seat  to  see  Harry  Lauder  would,  according  to  the  esti- 
mate of  the  placards  on  the  walls,  buy  thirty-one  and 
a  half  bullets  to  send  to  the  Germans?  Now,  on  a 
conservative  estimate,  those  thirty-one  and  a  half  bul- 
lets ought  to " 

"My  dear  fellow,  Harry  Lauder  has  subscribed 
£52,000  to  the  War  Loan.  In  going  to  see  him,  there- 
fore, you  are  subscribing  to  the  War  Loan.  You  are 
making  him  your  agent.  You  pass  the  cash  on  to  him 
and  he  passes  the  bullets  on  to  the  Germans.  It  is  a 
patriotic  duty  to  go  to  see  Harry  Lauder." 

I  fancy  the  reasoning  was  more  ingenious  than  sound, 
but  it  seemed  a  good  enough  answer  to  the  hoard- 

75 


76  ON  A  COMIC  GENIUS 

ings,  and  I  went.  It  was  a  poor  setting  for  the  great 
man — one  of  those  dismal  things  called  revues,  that 
are  neither  comedies  nor  farces,  nor  anything  but  sham- 
bling, hugger-mugger  contraptions  into  which  you  fling 
anything  that  comes  handy,  especially  anything  that  is 
suggestive  of  night-clubs,  fast  young  men  and  faster 
young  women.  I  confess  that  I  prefer  my  Harry  with- 
out these  accompaniments.  I  like  him  to  have  the 
stage  to  himself.  I  like  Miss  Ethel  Levy  to  be  some- 
where else  when  he  is  about.  I  do  not  want  anything 
to  come  between  me  and  the  incomparable  Harry  any 
more  than  I  want  anyone  to  help  me  to  appreciate  the 
Fifth  Symphony  by  beating  time  with  his  foot  and 
humming  the  melody. 

And  for  the  same  reason.  The  Fifth  Symphony  or 
any  other  great  work  of  art  creates  a  state  of  mind,  a 
spiritual  atmosphere,  that  is  destroyed  by  any  intrusive 
and  alien  note.  And  it  is  this  faculty  of  creating  a 
state  of  feeling,  an  authentic  atmosphere  of  his  own, 
that  is  the  characteristic  of  the  art  of  Harry  Lauder, 
and  the  secret  of  the  extraordinary  influence  he  exer- 
cises over  his  public.  If  you  are  susceptible  to  that  in- 
fluence the  entrance  of  the  quaint  figure  in  the  Scotch 
cap,  the  kilt  and  the  tartan  gives  you  a  sensation  un- 
like anything  else  on  the  stage  or  in  life.  Like  Bottom, 
you  are  translated.  Your  defences  are  carried  by  storm, 
your  severities  disperse  like  the  mist  before  the  sun, 
you  are  no  longer  the  man  the  world  knows;  you  are 
a  boy,  trooping  out  from  Hamelin  town  with  other 
boys  to  the  piping  of  the  magician.  The  burden  has 
fallen  off  your  back,  the  dark  mountain  has  opened  like 


ON  A  COMIC  GENIUS  77 

a  gateway  into  the  realms  of  light  and  laughter,  and 
you  go  through,  dancing  happy,  to  meet  the  sunshine. 

This  atmosphere  is  not  the  result  of  conscious  art 
or  of  acting  in  the  professional  sense.  It  would  even 
be  true  to  say  that  Harry  Lauder  is  not  an  actor  at 
all.  Contrast  him  with  the  other  great  figure  of  the 
music-hall  stage  in  this  generation,  Albert  Chevalier, 
and  you  will  understand  what  I  mean.  Chevalier  is 
never  himself,  but  always  somebody  else,  and  that  some- 
body else  is  astonishingly  real — an  incomparable  coster, 
a  serio-comic  decayed  actor,  a  simple  old  man  celebrat- 
ing the  virtues  of  his  "Old  Dutch."  With  his  great 
powers  of  observation  and  imitativeness  he  gives  you 
a  subtle  study  of  a  type.  He  is  so  much  of  an  artist 
that  his  own  personality  never  occurs  to  you.  If  Chev- 
alier came  on  as  Chevalier  you  would  not  know  him. 

But  Harry  Lauder  is  the  most  personal  thing  on 
the  stage.  You  do  not  want  him  to  imitate  someone 
else:  you  want  him  to  be  just  himself.  It  doesn't 
much  matter  what  he  does,  and  it  doesn't  much  mat- 
ter how  often  you  have  seen  him  do  it.  In  fact,  the 
oftener  you  have  seen  him  do  it  the  better  you  like  it. 
His  jokes  may  be  old,  but  they  are  never  stale.  They 
ripen  and  mellow  with  time;  they  are  like  old  friends 
and  old  port  that  grow  better  with  age.  His  songs 
may  be  simple  and  threadbare.  You  don't  care.  You 
just  want  him  to  go  on  singing  them,  singing  about 
the  bluebells  in  the  dells  and  the  bonnie  lassie,  and  the 
heather-r,  the  bonnie  pur-r-ple  heather-r,  and  pausing 
to  explain  to  you  the  thrifty  terms  on  which  he  has 
bought  "the  ring."    You  want  to  see  him  walk,  you 


78  ON  A  COMIC  GENIUS 

want  to  see  him  skip — oh,  the  incomparable  drollery 
of  that  demure  little  step! — you  want  to  hear  him 
talk,  you  want  to  hear  him  laugh.  In  short,  you  just 
want  him  to  be  there  doing  anything  he  likes  and 
making  you  happy  and  idyllic  and  childlike  and  for- 
getful of  all  the  burden  and  the  mystery  of  this  inex- 
plicable world. 

He  has  art,  of  course — great  art;  a  tuneful  voice; 
a  rare  gift  of  voice-production,  every  word  coming 
full  and  true,  and  with  a  delicate  sense  of  value;  a 
shrewd  understanding  of  the  limits  of  his  medium; 
a  sly,  dry  humour  which  makes  his  simple  rusticity 
the  vehicle  of  a  genial  satire.  And  his  figure  and  his 
face  add  to  his  equipment.  His  walk  is  priceless. 
His  legs — oh,  who  shall  describe  those  legs,  those 
exiguous  legs,  so  brief  and  yet  so  expressive?  Clothed 
in  his  kilt  and  his  tartan,  he  is  grotesque  and  yet  not 
grotesque,  but  whimsical,  droll,  a  strange  mixture  of 
dignity  and  buffoonery.  Your  first  impulse  is  to  laugh 
at  him,  your  next  and  enduring  impulse  is  to  laugh 
with  him.  You  cannot  help  laughing  with  him  if  you 
have  a  laugh  in  you,  for  his  laugh  is  irresistible.  It  is 
so  friendly  and  companionable,  so  full  of  intimacies,  so 
open  and  sunny. 

He  comes  to  the  footlights  and  talks,  turns  out  his 
pockets  and  tells  you  the  history  of  the  contents,  or 
gossips  of  the  ways  of  sailors,  and  you  gather  round 
like  children  at  a  fair.  The  sense  of  the  theatre  has 
vanished.  You  are  not  listening  to  an  actor,  but  to 
an  old  friend  who  is  getting  nearer  and  nearer  to  you 
all  the  time,  until  he  seems  to  have  got  you  by  the  but- 


ON  A  COMIC  GENIUS 


79 


ton  and  to  be  telling  his  drolleries  to  you  personally 
and  chuckling  in  your  own  private  ear.  There  is  noth- 
ing comparable  to  this  intimacy  between  the  man  and 
his  audience.  It  is  the  triumph  of  a  personality,  so 
expansive,  so  rich  in  the  humanities,  so  near  to  the 
general  heart,  that  it  seems  a  natural  element,  a  sort  of 
spirit  of  happiness,  embodied  and  yet  all  pervasive. 

But  perhaps  you,  sir,  have  not  fallen  under  the 
spell.  If  so,  be  not  scornful  of  us  v/ho  have.  Be 
sorry  for  yourself.  Believe  me,  you  have  missed  one 
of  the  cheerful  experiences  of  a  rather  drab  world. 


ON  A  VANISHED  GARDEN 


I  WAS  walking  with  a  friend  along  the  Spaniards  Road 
the  other  evening,  talking  on  the  inexhaustible  theme 
of  these  days,  when  he  asked:  "What  is  the  biggest 
thing  that  has  happened  to  this  country  as  the  out- 
come of  the  war?" 

"It  is  within  two  or  three  hundred  yards  from  here," 
I  replied.     "Come  this  way  and  I'll  show  it  to  you." 

He  seemed  a  little  surprised,  but  accompanied  me 
cheerfully  enough  as  I  turned  from  the  road  and  led 
him  through  the  gorse  and  the  trees  towards  Parlia- 
ment Fields,  until  we  came  upon  a  large  expanse  of 
allotments,  carved  out  of  the  great  playground,  and 
alive  with  figures,  men,  women,  and  children,  some 
earthing  up  potatoes,  some  weeding  onion  beds,  some 

80 


ON  A  VANISHED  GARDEN  8i 

thinning  out  carrots,  some  merely  walking  along  the 
patches  and  looking  at  the  fruits  of  their  labour  spring- 
ing from  the  soil.  "There,"  I  said,  "is  the  most  im- 
portant result  of  the  war." 

He  laughed,  but  not  contemptuously.  He  knew 
what  I  meant,  and  I  think  he  more  than  half  agreed. 

And  I  think  you  will  agree,  too,  if  you  will  consider 
what  that  stretch  of  allotments  means.  It  is  the  symp- 
tom of  the  most  important  revival,  the  greatest  spirit- 
ual awakening  this  country  has  seen  for  generations. 
Wherever  you  go  that  symptom  meets  you.  Here  in 
Hampstead  allotments  are  as  plentiful  as  blackberries 
in  autumn.  A  friend  of  mine  who  lives  in  Beckenham 
tells  me  there  are  fifteen  hundred  in  his  parish.  In  the 
neighbourhood  of  London  there  must  be  many  thou- 
sands. In  the  country  as  a  whole  there  must  be  hun- 
dreds of  thousands.  If  dear  old  Joseph  Fels  could 
revisit  the  glimpses  of  the  moon  and  see  what  is  hap- 
pening, see  the  vacant  lots  and  waste  spaces  bursting 
into  onion  beds  and  potato  patches,  what  joy  would  be 
his!  He  was  the  forerunner  of  the  revival,  the  pas- 
sionate pilgrim  of  the  Vacant  Lot;  but  his  hot  gospel 
fell  on  deaf  ears,  and  he  died  just  before  the  trumpet 
of  war  awakened  the  sleeper. 

Do  not  suppose  that  the  greatness  of  this  thing  that 
is  happening  can  be  measured  in  terms  of  food.  That 
is  important,  but  it  is  not  the  most  important  thing. 
The  allotment  movement  will  add  appreciably  to  our 
food  supplies,  but  it  will  add  far  more  to  the  spiritual 
resources  of  the  nation.  It  is  the  beginning  of  a  war 
on  the  disease  that  is  blighting  our  people.     What  is 


8a  ON  A  VANISHED  GARDEN 

wrong  with  us?  What  is  the  root  of  our  social  and 
spirtual  ailment?  Is  it  not  the  divorce  of  the  people 
from  the  soil?  For  generations  the  wholesome  red 
blood  of  the  country  has  been  sucked  into  the  great 
towns,  and  we  have  seen  grow  up  a  vast  machine  of 
industry  that  has  made  slaves  of  us,  shut  out  the  light 
of  the  fields  from  our  lives,  left  our  children  to  grow 
like  weeds  in  the  slums,  rootless  and  waterless,  poisoned 
the  healthy  instincts  of  nature  implanted  in  us,  and  put 
in  their  place  the  rank  growths  of  the  streets.  Can 
you  walk  through  a  London  working-class  district  or  a 
Lancashire  cotton  town,  with  their  huddle  of  airless 
streets,  without  a  feeling  of  despair  coming  over  you 
at  the  sense  of  this  enormous  perversion  of  life  into  the 
arid  channels  of  death  ?  Can  you  take  pride  in  an  Em- 
pire on  which  the  sun  never  sets  when  you  think  of 
the  courts  in  which,  as  Will  Crooks  says,  the  sun  never 
rises  ? 

And  now  the  sun  is  going  to  rise.  We  have  started 
a  revolution  that  will  not  end  until  the  breath  of 
the  earth  has  come  back  to  the  soul  of  the  people. 
The  tyranny  of  the  machine  is  going  to  be  broken. 
The  dead  hand  is  going  to  be  lifted  from  the  land. 
Yes,  you  say,  but  these  people  that  I  see  working  on 
the  allotments  are  not  the  people  from  the  courts  and 
the  slums;  but  professional  men,  the  superior  artisan, 
and  so  on.  That  is  true.  But  the  movement  must 
get  hold  of  the  intelligenzia  first.  The  important  thing 
is  that  the  breach  in  the  prison  is  made:  the  fresh  air 
is  filtering  in;  the  idea  is  born — not  still-born,  but 


ON  A  VANISHED  GARDEN  83 

born  a  living  thing.  It  is  a  way  of  salvation  that  will 
not  be  lost,  and  that  all  will  traverse. 

This  is  not  mere  dithyrambic  enthusiasm.  Take  a 
man  out  of  the  street  and  put  him  in  a  garden,  and 
you  have  made  a  new  creature  of  him.  I  have  seen 
the  miracle  again  and  again.  I  know  a  bus  conductor, 
for  example,  outwardly  the  most  ordinary  of  his  kind. 
But  one  night  I  touched  the  key  of  his  soul,  mentioned 
allotments,  and  discovered  that  this  man  was  going 
about  his  daily  work  irradiated  by  the  thought  of  his 
garden  triumphs.  He  had  got  a  new  purpose  in  life. 
He  had  got  the  spirit  of  the  earth  in  his  bones.  It  is 
not  only  the  humanising  influence  of  the  garden,  it  is 
its  democratising  influence  too. 

When    Adam    delved    and   Eve    span, 
Where  was  then  the  gentleman? 

You  can  get  on  terms  with  anybody  if  you  will  discuss 
gardens.  I  know  a  distinguished  public  servant  and 
scholar  whose  allotment  is  next  to  that  of  a  bricklayer. 
They  have  become  fast  friends,  and  the  bricklayer,  be- 
ing the  better  man  at  the  job,  has  unconsciously  as- 
sumed the  role  of  a  kindly  master  encouraging  a  well- 
meaning  but  not  very  competent  pupil. 

And  think  of  the  cleansing  influence  of  all  this. 
Light  and  air  and  labour — these  are  the  medicines  not 
of  the  body  only,  but  of  the  soul.  It  is  not  ponderable 
things  alone  that  are  found  in  gardens,  but  the  great 
wonder  of  life,  the  peace  of  nature,  the  influences  of 
sunsets  and  seasons  and  of  all  the  intangible  things  to 
which  we  can  give  no  name,  not  because  they  are  small. 


84  ON  A  VANISHED  GARDEN 

but  because  they  are  outside  the  compass  of  our  speech. 
In  the  great  legend  of  the  Fall,  the  spiritual  disaster 
of  Man  is  symbolised  by  his  exclusion  from  a  garden, 
and  the  moral  tragedy  of  modern  industrialism  is  only 
the  repetition  of  that  ancient  fable.  Man  lost  his 
garden  and  with  it  that  tranquillity  of  soul  that  is 
found  in  gardens.  He  must  find  his  way  back  to  Eden 
if  he  is  to  recover  his  spiritual  heritage,  and  though 
Eden  is  but  a  twenty-pole  allotment  in  the  midst  of  a 
hundred  other  twenty-pole  allotments,  he  will  find  it 
as  full  of  wonder  and  refreshment  as  the  garden  of 
Epicurus.  He  will  not  find  much  help  from  the  God 
that  Mr.  Wells  has  discovered,  or  invented,  but  the 
God  that  dwells  in  gardens  is  sufficient  for  all  our 
needs — let  the  theologians  say  what  they  will. 

Not  God  in  gardens?    When  the  eve  is  cool? 

Nay,  but  I  have  a  sign — 

Tis  very  sure  God  walks  in  mine. 

No  one  who  has  been  a  child  in  a  garden  will  doubt 
the  sign,  or  lose  its  impress  through  all  his  days.  I 
know,  for  I  was  once  a  child  whose  world  was  a  gar- 
den. 

It  lay  a  mile  away  from  the  little  country  town, 
shut  out  from  the  road  by  a  noble  hedge,  so  high  that 
even  Jim  Berry,  the  giant  coal-heaver,  the  wonder  and 
the  terror  of  my  childhood,  could  not  see  over,  so 
thick  that  no  eye  could  peer  through.  It  was  a  garden 
of  plenty,  but  also  a  garden  of  the  fancy,  with  neglected 
corners,  rich  in  tangled  growths  and  full  of  romantic 


ON  A  VANISHED  GARDEN  85 

possibilities.  It  was  in  this  wilder  terrain  that  I  had 
found  the  hedgehog,  here,  too,  had  seen  the  glow- 
worm's delicate  light,  and  here,  with  my  brain  excited 
by  "The  Story  of  the  Hundred  Days,"  that  I  knew  the 
Frenchmen  lurked  in  ambush  while  I  at  the  head  of  my 
gallant  troop  of  the  Black  Watch  was  careering  with 
magnificent  courage  across  the  open  country  where  the 
potatoes  and  the  rhubarb  and  the  celery  grew. 

It  was  ever  the  Black  Watch.  Something  in  the 
name  thrilled  me.  And  when  one  day  I  packed  a 
little  handbag  with  a  nightgown  and  started  out  to 
the  town  where  the  railway  station  was  it  was  to 
Scotland  I  was  bound  and  the  Black  Watch  in  which 
I  meant  to  enlist.  It  occurred  to  me  on  the  road  that 
I  needed  money  and  I  returned  gravely  and  asked  my 
mother  for  half  a  crown.  She  was  a  practical  woman 
and  brought  me  back  to  the  prose  of  things  with 
arguments  suitable  to  a  very  youthful  mind. 

The  side  windows  of  the  house  commanded  the 
whole  length  of  the  garden  to  where  at  the  end  stood 
the  pump  whence  issued  delicious  ice-cold  water 
brought  up  from  a  well  so  deep  that  you  could  imagine 
Australia  to  be  not  far  from  the  bottom. 

If  only  I  could  get  to  Australia!  I  knew  it  lay 
there  under  my  feet  with  people  walking  along  head 
downwards  and  kangaroos  hopping  about  with  their 
young  in  their  pockets.  It  was  merely  a  question  of 
digging  to  get  there.  I  chose  a  sequestered  corner  and 
worked  all  a  summer  morning  with  a  heavy  spade  in 
the  fury  of  this  high  emprise,  but  I  only  got  the  length 


86  ON  A  VANISHED  GARDEN 

of  the  spade  on  the  journey  and  retired  from  the  task 
with  a  sense  of  the  bitter  futility  of  life. 

Never  was  there  a  garden  more  rich  in  fruit. 
Around  the  western  wall  of  the  house  was  trained  a 
noble  pear  tree  that  flung  its  arms  with  engaging  con- 
fidence right  up  to  my  bedroom  window.  They  were 
hard  pears  that  ripened  only  in  keeping,  and  at  Christ- 
mas melted  rich  and  luscious  in  the  mouth.  They  were 
kept  locked  up  in  the  tool  shed,  but  love  laughs  at  lock- 
smiths, and  my  brother  found  it  possible  to  remove  the 
lock  without  unlocking  it  by  tearing  out  the  whole 
staple  from  its  socket.  My  father  was  greatly  puz- 
zled by  the  tendency  of  the  pears  to  diminish,  but  he 
was  a  kindly,  unsuspecting  man  who  made  no  dis- 
agreeable inquiries. 

Over  the  tool  shed  grew  a  grape  vine.  The  roof 
of  the  shed  was  accessible  by  a  filbert  tree,  the  first 
of  half  a  dozen  that  lined  the  garden  on  the  side 
remote  from  the  road.  On  sunny  days  there  was  no 
pleasanter  place  to  lie  than  the  top  of  the  shed,  with 
the  grapes,  small  but  pleasant  to  the  thirsty  palate, 
ripening  thick  around  you.  A  point  in  favour  of  the 
spot  was  that  it  was  visible  from  no  window.  One 
could  lie  there  and  eat  the  fruit  without  annoying  in- 
terruptions. 

Equally  retired  was  the  little  grass-grown  path  that 
branched  off  from  the  central  gravelled  path  which 
divided  the  vegetable  from  the  fruit  garden.  Here, 
by  stooping  down,  one  was  hidden  from  prying  eyes 
that  looked  from  the  windows  by  the  thick  rows  of 
gooseberry  bushes  and  raspberry  canes  that  lined  the 


ON  A  VANISHED  GARDEN  87 

path.  It  was  my  favourite  spot,  for  there  grew  a  de- 
licious gooseberry  that  I  counted  above  all  gooseberries, 
small  and  hairy  and  yellow,  with  a  delicate  flavour 
that  is  as  vivid  to-day  as  if  the  forty  years  that  lie 
between  now  and  then  were  but  a  day.  By  this  path, 
too,  grew  the  greengage  trees.  With  caution,  one 
could  safely  sample  the  fruit,  and  at  the  worst  one 
was  sure  to  find  some  windfalls  among  the  straw- 
berry beds  beyond  the  gooseberry  bushes. 

I  loved  that  little  grass-grown  path  for  its  seclusion 
as  well  as  for  its  fruit.  Here,  with  "Monte  Cristo" 
or  "Hereward  the  Wake,"  or  "The  Yellow  Frigate," 
or  a  drawing-board,  one  could  forget  the  tyrannies  of 
school  and  all  the  buffets  of  the  world.  Here  was  the 
place  to  take  one's  griefs.  Here  it  was  that  I  wept 
hot  tears  at  the  news  of  Landseer's  death — Landseer, 
the  god  of  my  young  idolatry,  whose  dogs  and  horses, 
deer  and  birds  I  knew  line  by  line  through  delighted 
imitation.  It  seemed  on  that  day  as  though  the  sun 
had  gone  out  of  the  heavens,  as  though  the  pillars  of 
the  firmament  had  suddenly  given  way.  Landseer 
dead !  What  then  was  the  worth  of  living?  But  the  wave 
of  grief  passed.  I  realised  that  the  path  was  now  clear 
before  me.  While  Landseer  lived  I  was  cribbed,  cab- 
ined, confined;  but  now My  eyes  cleared   as   I 

surveyed  the  magnificent  horizon  opening  out  before 
me.  I  must  have  room  to  live  with  this  revelation. 
The  garden  was  too  narrow  for  such  limitless  thoughts 
to  breathe  in.  I  stole  from  the  gate  that  led  to  the 
road  by  the  pump  and  sought  the  wide  meadows  and 
the  riverside  to  look  this  vast  business  squarely  in  the 


88  ON  A  VANISHED  GARDEN 

face.  And  for  days  the  great  secret  of  my  future  that 
I  carried  with  me  made  the  burden  of  a  dull,  unap- 
preciative  world  light.  Little  did  those  who  treated 
me  as  an  ordinary  idle  boy  know.  Little  did  my  elder 
brother,  who  ruled  me  with  a  rod  of  iron,  realise  that 
one  day,  when  I  was  knighted  and  my  pictures  hung 
thick  on  the  Academy  walls,  he  would  regret  his  harsh 
treatment ! 

But  to  return  to  the  garden.  The  egg-plum  tree 
had  no  favour  in  my  sight.  Its  position  was  too  open 
and  palpable.  And  indeed  I  cared  not  for  the  fruit. 
It  was  too  large  and  fleshy  for  my  taste.  But  the  ap- 
ple trees!  These  were  the  chief  glory  of  the  garden. 
Winter  apple  trees  with  fruit  that  ripened  in  secret; 
paysin  trees  with  fruit  that  ripened  on  the  branches, 
fruit  small  with  rich  crimson  splashes  on  the  dark 
green  ground;  hawthorndean  trees  with  fruit  large 
yellow-green  into  which  the  teeth  crunched  with  crisp 
and  juicy  joy.  There  was  one  hawthorndean  most 
thoughtfully  situated  behind  the  tool  shed.  And  near 
by  stood  some  props  providentially  placed  there  for 
domestic  purposes.  They  were  the  keys  with  which 
I  unlocked  the  treasure  house. 

A  large  quince  tree  grew  on  the  other  side  of  the 
hedge  at  the  end  of  the  garden.  It  threw  its  arms 
in  a  generous,  neighbourly  way  over  the  hedge,  and 
I  knew  its  austere  fruit  well.  Some  of  it  came  to  me 
from  its  owner,  an  ancient  man,  "old  Mr.  Lake,"  who 
on  summer  days  used  to  toss  me  largess  from  his  abun- 
dance.   The  odour  of  a  quince  always  brings  back  to 


Whose  tassels  the  bold  militiamen.  .  .  .  would  gaily  pluck 
as  they  passed. 


90  ON  A  VANISHED  GARDEN 

me  the  memory  of  a  sunny  garden  and  a  little  old  man 
over  the  hedge  crying,  "Here,  my  boy,  catch!" 

I  have  said  nothing  of  that  side  of  the  garden 
where  the  vegetables  grew.  It  was  dull  prose,  re- 
lieved only  by  an  occasional  apple  tree.  The  flowers 
in  the  fruit  garden  and  by  the  paths  were  old-fashioned 
favourites,  wallflowers  and  mignonette,  stocks  and 
roses.  And  over  the  garden  gate  grew  a  spreading 
lilac  whose  tassels  the  bold  militiamen,  who  camped  not 
far  away,  would  gaily  pluck  as  they  passed  on  the 
bright  May  days.  I  did  not  resent  it.  I  was  proud 
that  these  brave  fellows  in  their  red  coats  should  levy 
tribute  on  our  garden.  It  seemed  somehow  to  link 
me  up  with  the  romance  of  war.  By  the  kitchen  door 
grew  an  elderberry  tree,  whose  heavy  and  unpleasant 
odour  was  borne  for  the  sake  of  the  coming  winter 
nights,  when  around  the  fire  we  sat  with  our  hot  el- 
derberry wine  and  dipped  our  toast  into  the  rich, 
steaming  product  of  that  odorous  tree — nights  when 
the  winter  apples  came  out  from  the  chest,  no  longer 
hard  and  sour,  but  mellow  and  luscious  as  a  King 
William  pear  in  August,  and  when  out  in  the  garden 
all  was  dark  and  mysterious,  gaunt  trees  standing  out 
against  the  sky,  where  in  the  far  distance  a  thin  lumi- 
nance told  of  the  vast  city  beneath. 

I  passed  by  the  old  road  recently,  and  sought  the 
garden  of  my  childhood.  I  sought  in  vain.  A  big 
factory  had  come  into  the  little  town,  and  workmen's 
dwellings  had  sprung  up  in  its  train.  Where  the 
garden  had  been  there  was  now  a  school  surrounded 
by  cottages,  and  children  played  on  the  doorsteps  or 


ON  A  VANISHED  GARDEN 


91 


in  the  little  back  yards,  which  looked  on  to  other 
little  back  yards  and  cottages  beyond.  My  garden 
with  its  noble  hedge  and  its  solitude,  its  companion- 
able trees  and  grass-grown  paths,  had  vanished.  It 
was  the  garden  of  a  dream. 


ALL  ABOUT  A  DOG 


It  was  a  bitterly  cold  night,  and  even  at  the  far  end 
of  the  bus  the  east  wind  that  raved  along  the  street 
cut  like  a  knife.  The  bus  stopped,  and  two  women 
and  a  man  got  in  together  and  filled  the  vacant  places. 
The  younger  woman  was  dressed  in  sealskin,  and  car- 
ried one  of  those  little  Pekinese  dogs  that  women  in 
sealskin  like  to  carry  in  their  laps.  The  conductor 
came  in  and  took  the  fares.  Then  his  eye  rested  with 
cold  malice  on  the  beady-eyed  toy  dog.  I  saw  trouble 
brewing.  This  was  the  opportunity  for  which  he  had 
been  waiting,  and  he  intended  to  make  the  most  of  it. 
I  had  marked  him  as  the  type  of  what  Mr.  Wells  has 
called  the  Resentful  Employe,  the  man  with  a  gen- 
eral vague  grievance  against  everything  and  a  particular 
grievance  against  passengers  who  came  and  sat  in  his 
bus  while  he  shivered  at  the  door. 

"You  must  take  that  dog  out,"  he  said  with  sour 
venom. 

"I  shall  certainly  do  nothing  of  the  kind.  You  can 
take  my  name  and  address,"  said  the  woman,  who 

92 


ALL  ABOUT  A  DOG  93 

had  evidently  expected  the  challenge  and  knew  the 
reply. 

"You  must  take  that  dog  out — that's  my  orders." 
"I  won't  go  on  the  top  in  such  weather.     It  would 
kill  me,"  said  the  woman. 

"Certainly  not,"  said  her  lady  companion.    "You've 
got  a  cough  as  it  is." 

"It's  nonsense,"  said  her  male  companion. 
The  conductor  pulled  the  bell  and  the  bus  stopped. 
"This  bus  doesn't  go  on  until  that  dog  is  brought 
out."  And  he  stepped  on  to  the  pavement  and  waited. 
It  was  his  moment  of  triumph.  He  had  the  law  on 
his  side  and  a  whole  busful  of  angry  people  under  the 
harrow.  His  embittered  soul  was  having  a  real  holi- 
day. 

The  storm  inside  rose  high.  "Shameful" ;  "He's  no 
better  than  a  German" ;  "Why  isn't  he  in  the  Army?"  ; 
"Call  the  police";  "Let's  all  report  him";  "Let's  make 
him  give  us  our  fares  back" ;  "Yes,  that's  it,  let's  make 
him  give  us  our  fares  back."  For  everybody  was  on 
the  side  of  the  lady  and  the  dog. 

That  little  animal  sat  blinking  at  the  dim  lights  in 
happy  unconsciousness  of  the  rumpus  of  which  he  was 
the  cause. 

The  conductor  came  to  the  door.  "What's  your 
number?"  said  one,  taking  out  a  pocket-book  with  a 
gesture  of  terrible  things.  "There's  my  number,"  said 
the  conductor  imperturbably.  "Give  us  our  fares  back 
— ^you've  engaged  to  carry  us — you  can't  leave  us  here 
all  night."  "No  fares  back,"  said  the  conductor. 
Two  or  three  passengers  got  out  and  disappeared 


94  ALL  ABOUT  A  DOG 

into  the  night.  The  conductor  took  another  turn  on 
the  pavement,  then  went  and  had  a  talk  with  the 
driver.  Another  bus,  the  last  on  the  road,  sailed  by 
indifferent  to  the  shouts  of  the  passengers  to  stop. 
"They  stick  by  each  other — the  villains,"  was  the 
comment. 

Someone  pulled  the  bell  violently.  That  brought 
the  driver  round  to  the  door.  "Who's  conductor  of 
this  bus  ?"  he  said,  and  paused  for  a  reply.  None  com- 
ing, he  returned  to  his  seat  and  resumed  beating  his 
arms  across  his  chest.  There  was  no  hope  in  that  quar- 
ter. A  policeman  strolled  up  and  looked  in  at  the 
door.  An  avalanche  of  indignant  protests  and  appeals 
burst  on  him.  "Well,  he's  got  his  rules,  you  know," 
he  said  genially.  "Give  your  name  and  address." 
"That's  what  he's  been  offered,  and  he  won't  take 
it."  "Oh,"  said  the  policeman,  and  he  went  away  and 
took  his  stand  a  few  yards  down  the  street,  where  he 
was  joined  by  two  more  constables. 

And  still  the  little  dog  blinked  at  the  lights,  and 
the  conductor  walked  to  and  fro  on  the  pavement,  like 
a  captain  on  the  quarter-deck  in  the  hour  of  victory.  A 
young  woman,  whose  voice  had  risen  high  above  the 
gale  inside,  descended  on  him  with  an  air  of  threaten- 
ing and  slaughter.  He  was  immovable — as  cold  as  the 
night  and  hard  as  the  pavement.  She  passed  on  in  a 
fury  of  impotence  to  the  three  policemen,  who  stood 
like  a  group  of  statuary  up  the  street  watching  the 
drama.  Then  she  came  back,  imperiously  beckoned  to 
her  "young  man"  who  had  sat  a  silent  witness  of  her 
rage,  and  vanished.     Others  followed.    The  bus  was 


ALL  ABOUT  A  DOG  95 

emptying.  Even  the  dashing  young  fellow  who  had 
demanded  the  number,  and  who  had  declared  he  would 
see  this  thing  through  if  he  sat  there  all  night,  had 
taken  an  opportunity  to  slip  away. 

Meanwhile  the  Pekinese  party  were  passing  through 
every  stage  of  resistance  to  abject  surrender.  "I'll 
go  on  the  top,"  said  the  sealskin  lady  at  last.  "You 
mustn't."  "I  will."  "You'll  have  pneumonia."  "Let 
me  take  it."  (This  from  the  man.)  "Certainly  not" 
— she  would  die  with  her  dog.  When  she  had  disap- 
peared up  the  stairs,  the  conductor  came  back,  pulled 
the  bell,  and  the  bus  went  on.  He  stood  sourly  tri- 
umphant while  his  conduct  was  savagely  discussed  in 
his  face  by  the  remnant  of  the  party. 

Then  the  engine  struck  work,  and  the  conductor 
went  to  the  help  of  the  driver.  It  was  a  long  job, 
and  presently  the  lady  with  the  dog  stole  down  the 
stairs  and  re-entered  the  bus.  When  the  engine  was 
put  right  the  conductor  came  back  and  pulled  the  bell. 
Then  his  eye  fell  on  the  dog,  and  his  hand  went  to  the 
bell-rope  again.  The  driver  looked  round,  the  con- 
ductor pointed  to  the  dog,  the  bus  stopped,  and  the 
struggle  recommenced  with  all  the  original  features, 
the  conductor  walking  the  pavement,  the  driver  smack- 
ing his  arm  on  the  box,  the  little  dog  blinking  at  the 
lights,  the  sealskin  lady  declaring  that  she  would  not 
go  on  the  top — and  finally  going.  .  ,  . 

"I've  got  my  rules,"  said  the  conductor  to  me  when 
I  was  the  last  passenger  left  behind.  He  had  won  his 
victory,  but  felt  that  he  would  like  to  justify  himself 
to  somebody. 


96  ALL  ABOUT  A  DOG 

"Rules,"  I  said,  "are  necessary  things,  but  there  are 
rules  and  rules.  Some  are  hard  and  fast  rules,  like 
the  rule  of  the  road,  which  cannot  be  broken  without 
danger  to  life  and  limb.  But  some  are  only  rules  for 
your  guidance,  which  you  can  apply  or  wink  at,  as 
common  sense  dictates — like  that  rule  about  the  dogs. 
They  are  not  a  whip  put  in  your  hand  to  scourge  your 
passengers  with,  but  an  authority  for  an  emergency. 
They  are  meant  to  be  observed  in  the  spirit,  not  in 
the  letter — for  the  comfort  and  not  the  discomfort  of 
the  passengers.  You  have  kept  the  rule  and  broken  its 
spirit.  You  want  to  mix  your  rules  with  a  little  good- 
will and  good  temper." 

He  took  it  very  well,  and  when  I  got  of?  the  bus  he 
said  "Good  night"  quite  amiably. 


ON  THE  AMERICAN  SOLDIER 


I  HOPE  the  young  American  soldier,  with  whom  we 
are  becoming  so  familiar  in  the  street,  the  tube  and 
the  omnibus,  has  found  us  as  agreeable  as  we  have 
found  him.  We  were  not  quite  sure  whether  we 
should  like  him,  but  the  verdict  is  very  decisively  in 
the  affirmative.  It  has  been  my  fortune  to  know  many 
Americans  in  the  past,  but  they  were  for  the  most  part 
selected  Americans,  elderly  persons,  statesmen,  writers, 
diplomatists,  journalists,  and  so  on.  Not  having  been 
in  America  I  had  not  realised  what  the  plain,  average 
citizen,  especially  the  young  citizen,  was  like.  Now 
he  is  here  walking  our  streets  and  rubbing  shoulders 
with  us  in  sufficient  numbers  for  a  general  impression 
to  be  taken.  It  is  a  pleasant  impression.  I  like  the 
air  of  plenty  that  he  carries  with  him,  the  well-nour- 
ished body,  the  sense  of  ease  with  himself  and  the 
world,  the  fund  of  good  nature  that  he  seems  to  have 
at  command,  the  frankness  of  bearing,  and,  what  was 
least  expected,  the  touch  of  self-conscious  modesty  that 
is  rarely  absent. 

If  I  may  say  so  without  offending  him,  he  seems 
extraordinarily  English.    Physically  he  is  rather  bulkier 

97 


98        ON  THE  AMERICAN  SOLDIER 

than  the  average  English  youth,  and  his  accent  dis- 
tinguishes him;  but  these  differences  only  serve  to 
sharpen  the  impression  that  he  is  one  of  ourselves  who 
has  been  away  somewhere — in  a  civilised  land,  where 
the  larder  is  full,  the  schools  plenty,  and  the  family 
life  homely  and  cordial.  It  is  very  rare  that  you  see 
what  you  would  call  a  foreign  face  in  the  uniform. 
This  is  singular  in  view  of  the  mighty  stream  of  im- 
migration from  Continental  countries  that  has  been 
flowing  for  three-quarters  of  a  century  into  the  melt- 
ing pot  of  the  United  States;  but  I  do  not  think  the 
fact  can  be  doubted.  The  blood  is  more  mixed  than 
ours,  but  the  main  current  is  emphatically  British. 

Perhaps  the  difference  that  is  observable  could  be 
expressed  by  saying  that  the  American  is  not  so  much 
reminiscent  of  ourselves  as  of  our  forebears.  He  sug- 
gests a  former  generation  rather  than  this.  We  have 
grown  sophisticated,  urban,  and  cynical;  he  still  has 
the  note  of  the  country  and  of  the  older  fashions  that 
persist  in  the  country.  Lowell  long  ago  pointed  out 
that  many  of  the  phrases  which  we  regarded  as  Amer- 
ican slang  were  good  old  East  Anglian  words  which 
had  been  taken  out  by  the  early  settlers  in  New  Eng- 
land and  persisted  there  after  they  had  been  forgotten 
by  us.  And  in  the  same  way  the  moral  tone  of  the 
American  to-day  is  like  an  echo  from  our  past.  He 
preserves  the  fervour  for  ideals  which  we  seem  to  have 
lost.  There  is  something  of  the  revivalist  in  him,  some- 
thing elemental  and  primitive  that  responds  to  a  moral 
appeal. 

It  is  this  abiding  strain  of  English  Puritanism  which 


ON  THE  AMERICAN  SOLDIER         99 

is  responsible  for  the  tidal  wave  of  temperance  that 
has  swept  the  United  States,  Already  nearly  half  the 
States  have  gone  "bone  dry,"  and  it  is  calculated  that, 
perhaps  in  two  years,  certainly  in  five,  with  the  pres- 
ent temper  in  being,  the  whole  of  the  Union  will  have 
banished  the  liquor  traffic.  A  moral  phenomenon  of 
this  sort  might  have  been  possible  in  the  England  of 
two  or  three  generations  ago;  it  is  unthinkable  in  the 
moral  atmosphere  of  to-day.  The  industrial  machine 
has  dried  up  the  spring  of  moral  enthusiasm.  It  will 
only  return  by  a  new  way  of  life.  Perhaps  the  new 
way  of  life  is  beginning  in  the  allotment  movement 
which  is  restoring  to  us  the  primal  sanities  of  nature. 
We  may  find  salvation  in  digging. 

It  is  sometimes  said  that  the  American  is  crude.  It 
would  be  truer  to  say  that  he  is  young.  He  has  not 
suffered  the  disenchantment  of  an  old  and  thoroughly 
exploited  society.  We  have  the  qualities  of  a  middle- 
aged  people  who  have  lost  our  visions  and  are  rather 
ashamed  to  be  reminded  that  we  ever  had  any.  But  a 
youthful  ardour  and  buoyancy  is  the  note  of  the  Amer- 
ican. He  may  think  too  much  in  the  terms  of  dollars, 
but  he  has  freshness  and  vitality,  faith  in  himself,  a 
boyish  belief  in  his  future  and  a  boyish  zest  in  living. 
His  good  temper  is  inexhaustible,  and  he  has  the  easy- 
going manner  of  one  who  has  plenty  of  time  and 
plenty  of  elbow-room  in  the  world. 

For  contrary  to  the  common  conception  of  him  as 
a  hurrying,  bustling,  get-on-or-get-out  young  man,  he 
is  leisurely  both  in  speech  and  action,  cool  and  un- 
worried,  equable  of  mood,   little  subject  to  the  ex- 


loo      ON  THE  AMERICAN  SOLDIER 

tremes  of  emotion,  bearing  himself  with  a  solid  de- 
liberateness  that  suggests  confidence  in  himself  and  in- 
spires confidence  in  him.  You  feel  that  he  will  neither 
surprise  you,  nor  let  you  down. 

Not  the  least  noticeable  of  his  qualities  is  his  ac- 
cessibility. The  common  language,  of  course,  is  a  great 
help,  and  the  common  traditions  also.  You  are  rarely 
quite  at  home  with  a  man  who  thinks  in  another  lan- 
guage than  your  own.  The  Tower  of  Babel  was  a 
great  misfortune  for  humanity.  But  it  is  not  these 
things  which  give  the  American  his  quality  of  imme- 
diate and  easy  intercourse.  There  is  no  ice  to  break 
before  you  get  at  him.  There  is  no  baffling  atmosphere 
of  doubt  and  hesitancy  to  get  through ;  no  fencing  nec- 
essary to  find  out  on  what  social  footing  you  are  to 
stand.  You  are  on  him  at  once — or  rather  he  is  on 
you.  He  comes  out  into  the  open,  without  reserves  of 
manner,  and  talks  "right  ahead"  with  the  candour  and 
ease  of  a  man  who  is  at  home  in  the  world  and  at  home 
with  you.  He  is  free  alike  from  intellectual  priggish- 
ness  and  social  aloofness.  He  is  just  a  plain  man  talk- 
ing to  a  plain  man  on  equal  terms. 

It  is  the  manner  of  the  New  World  and  of  a  demo- 
cratic society  in  which  the  Chief  of  the  State  is  plain 
Mr.  President,  who  may  be  the  ruler  of  a  continent 
this  year  and  may  go  back  to  his  business  as  a  private 
citizen  next  year.  It  is  illustrated  by  the  tribute  which 
Frederick  Douglass,  the  negro  preacher,  paid  to  Lin- 
coln. "He  treated  me  as  a  man,"  said  Douglass  after 
his  visit  to  the  President.  "He  did  not  let  me  feel 
for  a  moment  that  there  was  any  difference  in  the 


ON  THE  AMERICAN  SOLDIER       loi 

colour  of  our  skins."  It  is  a  fine  testimony,  but  I  do 
not  suppose  that  Lincoln  had  to  make  any  effort  to 
achieve  such  a  triumph  of  good  manners.  He  treated 
Douglass  as  a  man  and  an  equal  because  he  was  a  man 
and  an  equal,  and  because  the  difference  in  the  colour 
of  their  skins  had  no  more  to  do  with  their  essential 
relationship  than  the  difference  in  the  colour  of  their 
ties  or  the  shape  of  their  boots. 

The  directness  and  naturalness  of  the  American  is 
the  most  enviable  of  his  traits.  It  gives  the  sense  of 
a  man  who  is  born  free — free  from  the  irritating  re- 
straints, embarrassments  and  artificialities  of  a  society 
in  which  social  caste  and  feudal  considerations  prevail 
as  they  still  prevail  in  most  European  countries.  Per- 
haps Germany  is  the  most  flagrant  example.  It  used 
to  be  said  by  Goethe  that  there  were  twenty-seven  dif- 
ferent social  castes  in  Germany  and  that  none  of  them 
would  speak  to  the  caste  below.  And  Mr.  Gerard's 
description  of  the  Rat  system  suggests  that  the  strati- 
fication of  society  has  increased  rather  than  dimin- 
ished since  the  days  of  Goethe. 

The  disease  is  not  so  bad  in  this  country;  but  we 
cannot  pretend  that  we  have  the  pure  milk  of  democ- 
racy. No  people  which  tolerates  titles,  and  so  de- 
liberately sets  up  social  discriminations  in  its  midst  and 
false  idols  for  its  worship,  can  hope  for  the  free,  un- 
obstructed intercourse  of  a  real  democracy  like  that  of 
America.  It  was  said  long  ago  by  Daniel  O'Connell 
that  "the  Englishman  has  all  the  qualities  of  a  poker 
except  its  occasional  warmth."  It  is  a  caricature,  of 
course,  but  there  is  truth  in  it.     We  are  icy  because 


I02      ON  THE  AMERICAN  SOLDIER 

we  are  uncertain  about  each  other — not  about  each 
other  as  human  beings,  but  about  each  other's  social 
status.  We  have  got  the  spirit  of  feudalism  still  in 
our  bones,  and  our  public  school  system,  our  titles,  and 
our  established  Church  system  all  tend  to  keep  it  alive, 
all  vi^ork  to  cut  up  society  into  social  orders  w^hich 
are  the  negation  of  democracy. 

And  as  if  we  had  not  enough  of  the  abomination, 
we  are  imitating  the  German  Rat  system  with  the 
grotesque  O.B.E.  We  shall  get  stiffer  than  ever  under 
this  rain  of  sham  jewelry,  and  shall  not  be  fit  to  speak 
to  our  American  friends.  But  we  shall  still  be  able 
to  admire  and  envy  the  fine  freedom  and  human 
friendliness  which  is  the  conspicuous  gift  of  these  stal- 
wart young  fellows  who  walk  our  streets  in  their  flat- 
brimmed  hats. 

Perhaps  when  the  account  of  the  war  is  made  up 
we  shall  find  that  the  biggest  credit  entry  of  all  is* 
this  fact  that  they  did  walk  our  streets  as  comrades 
of  our  own  sons.  For  over  a  century  we  two  peoples, 
talking  the  same  language  and  cherishing  the  same 
traditions  of  liberty,  have  walked  on  opposite  sides  of 
the  way,  remembering  old  grudges,  forgetting  our 
common  heritage,  forgetting  even  that  we  gave  the 
world  its  first  and  its  grandest  lead  in  peace  by  pro- 
claiming the  disarmament  of  the  Canadian-United 
States  frontier.  Now  that  the  grudges  are  forgotten 
and  we  have  found  a  reconciliation  that  will  never 
again  be  broken  and  that  will  be  the  corner  stone  of 
the  new  world  order  that  is  taking  shape  in  the  furnace 
of  these  days. 


'APPY  'EINRICH 


The  waiter  certainly  was  rather  slow,  or  perhaps  it 
was  that  we  were  hungry  and  impatient.  In  any  case, 
I  apologised  to  my  guest,  a  young  fellow  home  on 
leave,  and  explained  that  the  waiter  was  entitled  to  be 
a  little  absent-minded,  for  he  had  lost  two  sons  in 
the  war  and  his  only  remaining  son  had  been  invalided 
out  of  the  Army,  a  permanent  wreck. 

"He  tells  me,"  I  said,  "that  the  boy  never  talks 
about  the  war  or  his  experiences.  He  just  seems  silent 
and  numbed.  All  that  they  know  is  that  he  killed 
five  Germans,  and  that  he  is  sorry  for  one  of  them. 

103 


I04  'APPY  'EINRICH 

It  happened  while  he  was  on  patrol.  There  had  been 
a  good  deal  of  indignation  at  that  part  of  the  line 
because  there  had  been  cases  reported  in  which  'hands 
up'  had  been  a  trick  for  ensnaring  some  of  our  men, 
and  the  order  had  been  given  that  the  signal  was  to 
be  ignored  and  those  making  it  shot  at  sight.  It  was 
twilight  and  a  young  German  soldier  was  seen  run- 
ning forward  with  his  hands  up.  The  patrol  fired  and 
he  fell.  He  was  quite  unarmed  and  alone.  On  his 
body  they  found  letters  from  his  sweetheart  in  England 
— old  letters  that  he  had  apparently  carried  with  him 
all  through  the  war.  They  showed  that  he  had  been 
at  work  at  some  place  in  London  and  had  been  en- 
gaged to  be  married  when  the  war  broke  out." 

"Yes,"  said  my  companion,  as  the  waiter  came  up 
with  the  fish.  "Yes,  when  the  enemy  turns  from  an 
abstraction  to  an  individual  you  generally  find  there's 
something  that  makes  you  hate  this  killing  business. 
I  don't  know  that  I  have  felt  more  sorry  for  any 
man's  death  in  this  war  than  for  that  of  a  German. 

"You've  been  to  F ,  haven't  you?     You  know 

that  bit  of  line  north  of  the  M road  that  you 

reach  by  the  communication  trench  that  is  always  up 
to  your  knees  in  mud  no  matter  how  dry  the  weather 
is.  You  remember  how  close  the  lines  are  to  each  other 
at  that  point — not  forty  yards  apart?  I  was  there  in 
a  dull  season." 

"You  were  lucky,"  I  said.  "It  isn't  often  dull 
there." 

"No,  but  it  was  then.  The  Boche  would  drop  over 
an  occasional  whiz-bang  as  a  reminder,  and  he'd  have 


'APPY  'EINRICH  105 

his  usual  afternoon  cock-shy  over  our  heads  at  the  last 
pinnacle  standing  on  the  ruins  of  the  cathedral  in  the 
town  behind  us.  But  really  there  was  nothing  doing, 
and  we  got  rather  chummy  with  the  fellows  over  the 
way.  We'd  put  up  a  target  for  them,  and  they'd  do 
the  same  for  us.  They'd  got  some  decent  singers 
among  them,  and  we'd  shout  for  the  'Hate'  song  or 
'Wacht  am  Rhein'  or  'Tannenbaum'  or  something  of 
that  sort  and  they  always  obliged,  and  we  gave  them 
the  best  we  had  back. 

"Yes,  we  got  quite  friendly,  and  one  morning  one 
of  their  men  got  up  on  the  parapet  over  the  way, 
bowed  very  low,  and  shouted  'Goot  morning.'  Our 
men  answered,  'Morgen,  Fritz.  How  goes  it?'  and  so 
on.  He  was  a  big,  fat  fellow,  with  glasses,  and  a 
good-humoured  face,  and  to  our  great  joy  he  began  to 
sing  a  song  in  broken  English.  And  after  he  had  fin- 
ished we  called  for  more  and  he  gave  us  more.  He 
had  a  real  gift  for  comedy;  seemed  one  of  those  fel- 
lows who  are  sent  into  the  world  with  their  happi- 
ness ready  made.  He  laughed  a  great  gurgling  laugh 
that  made  you  laugh  to  hear  it.  Our  chaps  gave  him 
no  end  of  applause,  and  called  for  his  name.  He 
beamed  and  bowed,  said  'Thank  you,  genteelmen,'  and 
said  that  his  name  was  Heinrich  something  or  other. 

"So  we  called  him  '  'Appy  'Einrich,'  and  whenever 
our  men  were  bored  and  things  had  gone  to  sleep 
someone  would  sing  out  'We  want  'Einrich.  Send 
us  'Appy  'Einrich  to  give  us  a  song.'  And  up  would 
come  Heinrich  on  to  the  parapet,  red  and  smiling  and 
bowing  like  a  prima  donna.    And  off  he  would  start 


io6  'APPY  'EINRICH 

with  his  programme.  He  always  seemed  willing  and 
evidently  greatly  enjoyed  his  popularity  with  our  fel- 
lows. 

"This  went  on  for  some  time,  and  then  one  day 
we  got  news  that  we  were  to  be  relieved  at  once.  We 
were  to  clear  out  that  night  and  our  place  was  to  be 
taken  by  "a  Scotch  regiment.  You  need  not  be  told 
that  we  were  glad.  Life  in  the  trenches  when  there 
is  nothing  doing  is  about  as  deadly  a  weariness  as  man 
has  invented.  We  got  our  kit  together  and  when  night 
fell  and  our  relief  had  come  we  marched  back  under 
the  stars  through  F towards  B . 

"We  had  been  too  much  occupied  with  the  pros- 
pect of  release  to  give  a  thought  to  the  fellows  over 
the  road  or  to  Heinrich.  I  remembered  him  after- 
wards and  hoped  that  someone  had  told  the  new  men 
that  Heinrich  was  a  good  sort  and  would  always  give 
them  a  bit  of  fun,  if  he  was  asked,  or  even  if  he  wasn't 
asked. 

"Some  weeks  afterwards  at  B I  ran  across  a 

man  in  the  Scotch  regiment  which  had  followed  us  in 

the  trenches  on  the  M road,  and  we  talked  about 

things  there.  'And  how  did  you  get  on  with  Hein- 
rich?' I  asked.  'Heinrich?'  he  said,  'who  is  he?' 
'Why,  surely,'  said  I,  'you  know  Heinrich,  the  fat 
fellow  across  the  way,  who  gets  up  on  the  parapet  and 
says  "Goot  morning,"  and  sings  comic  songs?'  'Never 
heard  of  him,'  he  said.  'Ah,'  I  said,  'he  would  have 
heard  we  were  relieved  and  didn't  find  you  so  respon- 
sive a  crowd  as  we  were.'  'Never  heard  of  him,'  he 
repeated — then,  after  a  pause,  he  added,  'There  was  an 


'APPY  'EINRICH 


107 


incident  the  morning  after  we  took  over  the  line.  Some 
of  our  fellows  saw  a  bulky  Boche  climbing  on  to  the 
parapet  just  across  the  way  and  had  a  little  target  prac- 
tice, and  he  went  down  in  a  heap.'  'That  was  him,'  I 
said,  'that  was  'Appy  'Einrich.  What  a  beastly  busi- 
ness war  is,  and  what  ungrateful  beggars  we  were  to 
forget  him!' 

"Yes,  a  beastly  business,  killing  men,"  he  added.  "I 
don't  wonder  the  waiter's  son  doesn't  want  to  talk 
about  it.  We  shall  all  be  glad  to  forget  when  we 
come  out  of  hell." 


ON  FEAR 


I  AM  disposed  to  agree  with  Captain  Dolbey  that  the 
man  who  knows  no  fear  exists  only  in  the  imagination 
of  the  lady  novelist  or  those  who  fight  their  battles 
at  the  base.  He  is  invented  because  these  naive  peo- 
ple suppose  that  a  hero  who  is  conscious  of  fear  ceases 
to  be  a  hero.  But  the  truth  surely  is  that  there  would 
be  no  merit  in  being  brave  if  you  had  no  fear.  The 
real  victory  of  the  hero  is  not  over  outward  circum- 
stance, but  over  himself.  One  of  the  bravest  men 
of  our  time  is  a  man  who  was  born  timid  and  nervous 
and  suffered  tortures  of  apprenhension,  and  who  set 
himself  to  the  deliberate  conquest  of  his  fears  by  chal- 
lenging every  danger  that  crossed  his  path  and  even 
going  out  of  his  way  to  meet  the  things  he  dreaded.  ^ 
By  sheer  will  he  beat  down  the  enemy  within,  and  to 
the  external  world  he  seemed  like  a  man  who  knew  no 
fear.  But  the  very  essence  of  his  heroism  was  that  he 
had  fought  fear  and  won. 

io8 


ON  FEAR  109 

It  is  time  we  got  rid  of  the  notion  that  there  is 
anything  discreditable  in  knowing  fear.  You  might 
as  well  say  that  there  is  something  discreditable  in 
being  tempted  to  tell  a  falsehood.  The  virtue  is  not 
in  having  no  temptation  to  lie,  but  in  being  tempted 
to  lie  and  yet  telling  the  truth.  And  the  more  you  are 
tempted  the  more  splendid  is  the  resistance.  Without 
temptation  you  may  make  a  plaster  saint,  but  not  a 
human  hero.  That  is  why  the  familiar  story  of  Nel- 
son when  a  boy — "Fear!  grandmother.  I  never  saw 
fear.  What  is  it?" — is  so  essentially  false.  Nelson 
did  some  of  the  bravest  things  ever  done  by  man.  They 
were  brave  to  the  brink  of  recklessness.  The  whole 
episode  of  the  battle  of  Copenhagen  was  a  breathless 
challenge  to  all  the  dictates  of  prudence.  On  the 
facts  one  would  be  compelled  to  admit  that  it  was  an 
act  of  uncalculating  recklessness,  except  for  one  inci- 
dent which  flashes  a  sudden  light  on  the  mind  of  Nel- 
son and  reveals  his  astonishing  command  of  himself  and 
of  circumstance.  When  the  issue  was  trembling  in  the 
balance  and  every  moment  lost  might  mean  dis- 
aster, he  prepared  his  audacious  message  of  terms 
to  the  Crown  Prince  ashore.  It  was  a  magnificent 
piece  of  what,  in  these  days,  we  should  call  camou- 
flage. When  he  had  written  it,  a  wafer  was  given  him, 
but  he  ordered  a  candle  to  be  brought  from  the  cock- 
pit and  sealed  the  letter  with  wax,  affixing  a  larger 
seal  than  he  ordinarily  used.  "This,"  said  he,  "is  no 
time  to  appear  hurried  and  informal."  With  such 
triumphant  self-possession  could  he  trample  on  fear 
when  he  had  a  great  end  in  view.     But  when  there 


no  ON  FEAR 

was  nothing  at  stake  he  could  be  as  fearful  as  any- 
body, as  in  the  accident  to  his  carriage,  recorded,  I 
think,  in  Southey's  "Life  of  Nelson." 

That  incident  of  young  Swinburne's  climb  of  Culver 
Cliff,  in  the  Isle  of  Wight,  expresses  the  common-sense 
of  the  matter  very  well.  At  the  age  of  seventeen  he 
wanted  to  be  a  cavalry  officer,  and  he  decided  to  climb 
Culver  Cliff,  which  was  believed  to  be  impregnable, 
"as  a  chance  of  testing  my  nerve  in  the  face  of  death 
which  could  not  be  surpassed."  He  performed  the 
feat,  and  then  confessed  his  hardihood  to  his  mother. 

"Of  course,"  he  said,  "she  wanted  to  know  why 
I  had  done  such  a  thing,  and  when  I  told  her  she 
laughed  a  short,  sweet  laugh,  most  satisfactory  to  the 
young  ear,  and  said,  'Nobody  ever  thought  you  were 
a  coward,  my  boy.'  I  said  that  was  all  very  well,  but 
how  could  I  tell  till  I  tried?  'But  you  won't  do  it 
again?'  she  said.  I  replied,  'Of  course  not — where 
would  be  the  fun  ?'  " 

It  was  not  that  he  had  no  fear;  it  was  that  he 
wanted  to  convince  himself  that  he  was  able  to  master 
his  fear  when  the  emergency  came.  Having  discov- 
ered that  he  had  fear  under  his  control  there  was 
no  sense  in  taking  risks  for  the  mere  sake  of  taking 
them. 

Most  fears  are  purely  subjective,  the  phantoms  of  a 
too  vivid  mind.  I  was  looking  over  a  deserted  house 
situated  in  large  grounds  in  the  country  the  other  day. 
It  had  been  empty  since  the  beginning  of  the  war. 
Up  to  then  it  had  been  occupied  by  a  man  in  the  ship- 
ping trade.     On  the  day  that  war  was  declared  he 


ON  FEAR  III 

rushed  into  the  house  and  cried,  "We  have  declared 
war  on  Germany,  I  am  ruined."  Then  he  went  out 
and  shot  himself.  Had  his  mind  been  disciplined  against 
panic  he  would  have  mastered  his  fears,  and  would 
have  discovered  that  he  had  the  luck  to  be  in  a  trade 
which  has  benefited  by  the  war  more,  perhaps,  than 
any  other. 

In  this  case  it  was  the  sudden  Impact  of  fear  that 
overthrew  reason  from  its  balance,  but  in  other  cases 
fear  is  a  maggot  in  the  brain  that  grows  by  brooding. 
There  is  a  story  of  Maupassant's,  which  illustrates  how 
a  man  who  is  not  a  coward  may  literally  die  of  fright, 
by  dwelling  upon  fear.  He  had  resented  the  conduct 
of  a  man  in  a  restaurant,  who  had  stared  insolently 
at  a  lady  who  was  with  him.  His  action  led  to  a 
challenge  from  the  offender,  and  an  arrangement  to 
meet  next  morning.  When  he  got  home,  instead  of 
going  to  bed,  he  began  to  wonder  who  his  foe  was, 
to  hunt  for  his  name  in  directories,  to  recall  the  cold 
assurance  of  his  challenge,  and  to  invest  him  with  all 
sorts  of  terrors  as  a  marksman.  As  the  night  ad- 
vanced he  passed  through  all  the  stages  from  anxious 
curiosity  to  panic,  and  when  his  valet  called  him  at 
dawn  he  found  a  corpse.  Like  the  shipowner,  he  had 
shot  himself  to  escape  the  terrors  of  his  mind. 

It  is  the  imaginative  people  who  suffer  most  from 
fear.  Give  them  only  a  hint  of  peril,  and  their  minds 
will  explore  the  whole  circumference  of  disastrous  con- 
sequences. It  is  not  a  bad  thing  in  this  world  to  be 
born  a  little  dull  and  unimaginative.  You  will  have 
a  much  more  comfortable  time.    And  if  you  have  not 


112 


ON  FEAR 


taken  that  precaution,  you  will  do  well  to  have  a 
prosaic  person  handy  to  correct  your  fantasies.  Therein 
Don  Quixote  showed  his  wisdom.  In  the  romantic 
theatre  of  his  mind  perils  rose  like  giants  on  every 
horizon ;  but  there  was  always  Sancho  Panza  on  his 
donkey,  ready  to  prick  the  bubbles  of  his  master  with 
the  broadsword  of  his  incomparable  stupidity. 


ON  BEING  CALLED  THOMPSON 


Among  my  letters  this  morning  was  one  which  an- 
noyed me,  not  by  its  contents,  but  by  its  address. 
My  name  (for  the  purposes  of  this  article)  is  Thomson, 
but  my  correspondent  addressed  me  as  Thompson. 
Now  I  confess  I  am  a  little  sensitive  about  that  "p." 
When  I  see  it  wedged  in  the  middle  of  my  name  I 
am  conscious  of  an  annoyance  altogether  dispro- 
portioned  to  the  fact.  I  know  that  taken  in  the 
lump  the  Thompsons  are  as  good  as  the  Thomsons. 
There  is  not  a  pin  to  choose  between  us.  In  the 
beginning  we  were  all  sons  of  some  Thomas  or  other, 
and  as  surnames  began  to  develop  this  man  called 
himself  Thomson  and  that  man  called  himself  Thomp- 
son. Why  he  should  have  spatchcocked  a  "p"  into 
his  name  I  don't  know.  I  daresay  it  was  pride  on 
his  part,  just  as  it  is  my  pride  not  to  have  a  "p." 

"3 


114    ON  BEING  CALLED  THOMPSON 

Or  perhaps  the  explanation  is  that  offered  by 
Fielding,  the  novelist.  He  belonged  to  a  branch  of 
the  Earl  of  Denbigh's  family,  but  the  Denbighs 
spelt  their  family  name  Feilding.  When  the  novelist 
vv^as  asked  to  explain  the  difference  betvi^een  the 
rendering  of  his  name  and  theirs,  he  replied:  "I 
suppose  they  don't  know  how  to  spell."  That  is 
probably  the  case  of  the  Thompsons.  They  don't 
know  how  to  spell. 

But  whatever  the  origin  of  these  variations  we 
are  attached  to  our  own  forms  with  obstinate  pride. 
We  feel  an  outrage  on  our  names  as  if  it  were  an  out- 
rage on  our  persons.  It  was  such  an  outrage  that  led 
to  one  of  Stevenson's  most  angry  outbursts.  Some 
American  publisher  had  pirated  one  of  his  books. 
But  it  was  not  the  theft  that  angered  him  so  much 
as  the  misspelling  of  his  name.  "I  saw  my  book 
advertised  as  the  work  of  R.  L.  Stephenson,"  he  says, 
"and  I  own  I  boiled.  It  is  so  easy  to  know  the 
name  of  a  man  whose  book  you  have  stolen,  for  there 
it  is  full  length  on  the  title  page  of  your  booty.  But 
no,  damn  him,  not  he!  He  calls  me  Stephenson." 
I  am  grateful  to  Stevenson  for  that  word.  It  ex- 
presses my  feelings  about  the  fellow  who  calls  me 
Thompson.    Thompson,  indeed! 

I  feel  at  this  moment  almost  a  touch  of  sympathy 
with  that  snob.  Sir  Frederic  Thesiger,  the  uncle  of 
the  first  Lord  Chelmsford.  He  was  addressed  one 
day  as  "Mr.  Smith,"  and  the  blood  of  all  the  Thesigers 
(whoever  they  may  have  been)  boiled  within  him. 
"Do  I  look  like  a  person  of  the  name  of  Smith?" 


ON  BEING  CALLED  THOMPSON    115 

he  asked  scornfully,  and  passed  on.  And  as  the 
blood  of  all  the  Thomsons  boils  within  me  I  ask, 
"Do  I  look  like  a  person  of  the  name  of  Thompson? 
Now  do  I?"  And  yet  I  suppose  one  may  fall  as 
much  in  love  with  the  name  of  Smith  as  with  the 
name  of  Thesiger,  if  it  happens  to  be  one's  own.  I 
should  like  to  try  the  experiment  on  Sir  F.  E.  Smith. 
I  should  like  to  address  him  as  Sir  Frederic  Thesiger 
and  see  how  the  blood  of  all  the  Smiths  would  take  it. 

It  is,  I  suppose,  the  feeling  of  the  loss  of  our  identity 
that  annoys  us  when  people  play  tricks  with  our 
names.  We  want  to  be  ourselves  and  not  somebody 
else.  We  don't  want  to  be  cut  off  from  our  ancestry 
and  the  fathers  that  begat  us.  We  may  not  know 
much  about  our  ancestors,  and  may  not  care  much 
about  them.  Most  of  us,  I  suppose,  are  in  the  posi- 
tion of  Sydney  Smith.  "I  found  my  neighbours," 
he  said,  "were  looking  up  their  family  tree,  and  I 
thought  I  would  do  the  same,  but  I  only  got  as  far 
back  as  my  great-grandfather,  who  disappeared  some- 
where about  the  time  of  the  Assizes/'  If  we  go  far 
enough  back  we  shall  all  find  ancestors  who  disappeared 
about  the  time  of  the  Assizes,  or,  still  worse,  ought 
to  have  disappeared  and  didn't.  But,  such  as  they 
are,  we  belong  to  them,  and  don't  want  to  be  con- 
founded with  those  fellows,  the  Thompsons. 

And  there  is  another  reason  for  the  annoyance. 
To  misspell  a  man's  name  is  to  imply  that  he  is  so 
obscure  and  so  negligible  that  you  do  not  know  how 
to  address  him  and  that  you  think  so  meanly  of  him 
that  you  need  not  trouble  to  find  out.     It  is  to  offer 


ii6    ON  BEING  CALLED  THOMPSON 

him  the  subtlest  of  all  insults — especially  if  he  is 
a  Scotsman.  The  old  prides  and  hatreds  of  the  clans 
still  linger  in  the  forms  of  the  Scotch  names,  and  I 
believe  you  may  make  a  mortal  enemy  of,  let  us  say, 
Mr.  Macdonald  by  calling  him  Mr.  M'Donald  or  vice 
versa.  Indeed,  I  recall  the  case  of  a  malignant 
Scotch  journalist  vi^ho  used  systematically  to  spell 
a  political  opponent's  name  M'Intosh  instead  of 
Mackintosh  because  he  knew  it  made  him  "boil," 
as  Stephenson  made  R.  L.  S.  boil  or  as  Thompson 
makes  me  boil. 

Nor  is  this  reverence  for  our  name  a  contemptible 
vanity.  I  like  a  man  who  stands  by  his  name  and 
distrust  the  man  who  buys,  borrows,  or  steals  another. 
I  have  never  thought  so  well  of  Bishop  Percy,  the 
author  of  "Percy's  Reliques,"  since  I  discovered  that 
his  real  name  was  Piercy,  and  that,  being  the  son  of 
a  grocer,  he  knocked  his  "i"  out  when  he  went  into 
the  Church  in  order  to  set  up  a  claim  to  belong  to 
the  house  of  the  Duke  of  Northumberland.  He  even 
put  the  Percy  arms  on  his  monument  in  Dromore 
Cathedral,  and,  not  content  with  changing  his  own 
name,  altered  the  maiden  name  of  his  wife  from 
Gutteridge  to  Godriche.  I  am  afraid  Bishop  Percy 
was  a  snob. 

There  are,  of  course,  cases  in  which  men  change 
their  names  for  reputable  reasons,  to  continue  a 
distinguished  family  association  and  so  on;  but  the 
man  who  does  it  to  cover  up  his  tracks  has  usually 
"something  rotten  about  him,"  as  Johnson  would 
say.     He  stamps  himself  as  a  counterfeit  coin,  like 


ON  BEING  CALLED  THOMPSON    117 

M.  Fellaire  in  Anatole  France's  "Jocasta."  When 
he  first  started  business  his  brass  plate  ran  "Fellaire 
(de  Sisac)."  On  removing  to  new  premises  he  dropped 
the  parenthesis  and  put  up  a  plate  with  "Fellaire, 
de  Sisac."  Changing  residence  again,  he  dropped 
the  comma  and  became  "Fellaire  de  Sisac." 

It  is  possible  of  course  to  go  to  the  other  extreme — 
to  err,  as  it  were,  on  the  side  of  honesty.  I  know  a 
lady  who  began  life  with  the  maiden  name  of  Bloomer. 
She  married  a  Mr.  Watlington  and  became  Mrs. 
Bloomer-Watlington.  Her  husband  died  and  she 
married  a  Mr.  Dodd,  whereupon  she  styled  herself 
Mrs.  Bloomer-Watlington-Dodd.  She  is  still  fairly 
young  and  Mr.  Dodd,  I  regret  to  say,  is  in  failing 
health.  Already  I  have  to  write  her  name  in  smallish 
characters  to  get  it  into  a  single  line  on  the  envelope. 
I  see  the  time  approaching  when  I  shall  have  to  turn 
over  and  write,  let  us  say, 


There  Is  no  need  to  be  so  aggressively  faithful  to 
one's  names  as  all  this.  It  is  hard  on  your  children 
and  trying  to  your  friends  who  may  have  difficulty 
in  remembering  which  husband  came  before  the  others. 
After  all,  a  name  is  only  a  label,  and  if  it  is  honest  the 
shorter  it  is  the  better. 

But  the  spirit  of  the  thing  is  right.  Let  us  avoid 
disguises.  Let  us  stick  to  our  names,  be  they  ever 
so  humble.  For  myself,  I  shall  remain  Thomson 
to  the  end  of  the  chapter — and  no  "p"  if  you  please. 


ON  THINKING  FOR  ONE'S  SELF 


A  FRIEND  of  mine,  to  whom  I  owe  so  much  of  my 
gossip  that  I  sometimes  think  that  he  does  the  work 
and  I  only  take  the  collection,  told  me  the  other  day 
of  an  incident  at  a  picture  exhibition  which  struck  me 
as  significant  of  a  good  deal  that  is  wrong  with  us  to- 
day. He  observed  two  people  in  ecstasies  before  a  cer- 
tain landscape.  It  was  quite  a  nice  picture,  but  my 
friend  thought  their  praises  were  extravagant.  Sud- 
denly one  of  the  two  turned  to  the  catalogue.  "Why 
this  is  not  the  Leader  picture  at  all,"  said  she.  "It  is 
No.  So-and-So,"  And  forthwith  the  two  promptly 
turned  away  from  the  picture  they  had  been  admiring 
so  strenuously,  found  No.  So-and-So,  and  fell  into  rap- 
tures before  that. 

Now  I  am  not  going  to  make  fun  of  these  people. 
I  am  not  going  to  make  fun  of  them  because  I  am 
not  sure  that  I  don't  suffer  from  their  infirmity.  If 
I  don't  I  am  certainly  an  exceptional  person,  for  the 
people  who  really  think  for  themselves  are  almost  as 
scarce  as  virtuous  people  were  found  to  be  in  the  Cities 
of  the  Plain.  We  are  most  of  us  second-hand  thinkers 
and  second-hand  thinkers  are  not  thinkers  at  all.  Those 
Ii8 


ON  THINKING  FOR  ONE'S  SELF    119 

good  people  before  the  picture  were  not  thinking  their 
own  thoughts:  they  were  thinking  what  they  thought 
was  the  right  thing  to  think.  They  had  the  luck  to 
find  themselves  out.  Probably  it  did  not  do  them  any 
good,  but  at  least  they  knew  privately  what  humbugs 
they  were,  what  empty  echoes  of  an  echo  they  had  dis- 
covered themselves  to  be.  They  had  been  taught — 
heaven  help  them ! — to  admire  those  vacant  prettinesses 
of  Leader  and  they  were  so  docile  that  they  admired 
anything  they  believed  to  be  his  even  when  it  wasn't 
his. 

It  reminds  me  of  the  story  of  the  two  Italians  who 
quarrelled  so  long  and  so  bitterly  over  the  relative 
merits  of  Tasso  and  Ariosto  that  at  last  they  fought 
a  duel.  And  as  they  lay  dying  on  the  ground  one 
of  them  said  to  the  other,  "And  to  think  that  I  have 
never  read  a  line  of  them."  "Nor  I  either,"  said  the 
other.  Then  they  expired.  I  do  not  suppose  that 
story  is  true  in  fact,  but  it  is  true  in  spirit.  Men 
are  always  dying  for  other  people's  opinions,  prejudices 
they  have  inherited  from  somebody  else,  ideas  they  have 
borrowed  second  hand.  Many  of  us  go  through  life 
without  ever  having  had  a  genuine  thought  of  our  own 
on  any  subject  of  the  mind.  We  think  in  flocks  and 
once  in  the  flock  we  go  wherever  the  bell-wether 
leads  us. 

It  is  not  only  the  ignorant  who  are  afflicted  with 
this  servility  of  mind.  Horace  Walpole  was  enrap- 
tured with  the  Rowley  Poems  when  he  thought  they 
were  the  work  of  a  Mediaeval  monk:  when  he  found 
they  were  the  work  of  Chatterton  himself  his  interest 


I20    ON  THINKING  FOR  ONE'S  SELF 

in  them  ceased  and  he  behaved  to  the  poet  like  a  cad. 
Yet  the  poems  were  far  more  wonderful  as  the  pro- 
ductions of  the  "marvellous  boy"  of  sixteen  than  they 
would  have  been  as  the  productions  of  a  man  of  sixty. 
The  literary  world  of  the  eighteenth  century  thought 
Ossian  hardly  inferior  to  Homer ;  but  when  Macpher- 
son's  forgery  was  indisputable  it  dropped  the  imposture 
into  the  deepest  pit  of  oblivion.  Yet,  as  poetry,  it  was 
as  good  or  bad — I  have  never  read  it — in  the  one  case 
as  in  the  other. 

There  is  a  delicious  story  told  by  Anatole  France 
which  bears  on  this  subject.  In  some  examination  in 
Paris  the  Military  Board  gave  the  candidates  a  piece 
of  dictation  consisting  of  an  unsigned  page.  It  was 
printed  in  the  papers  as  an  example  of  bad  French. 
"Wherever  did  these  military  fellows,"  it  was  asked, 
"find  such  a  farrago  of  uncouth  and  ridiculous 
phrases?"  In  his  own  literary  circles  Anatole  France 
himself  heard  the  passage  held  up  to  laughter  and 
torn  to  tatters.  The  critic  who  laughed  loudest,  he 
says,  was  an  enthusiastic  admirer  of  Michelet.  Yet 
the  passage  was  from  Michelet  himself,  from  Michelet 
at  his  best,  from  Michelet  in  his  finest  period.  How 
the  great  sceptic  must  have  enjoyed  that  evening. 

It  is  not  that  we  cannot  think.  It  is  that  we  are 
afraid  to  think.  It  is  so  much  easier  to  go  with  the 
tide  than  against  it,  to  shout  with  the  crowd  than  to 
stand  lonely  and  suspect  in  the  midst  of  it.  Even 
some  of  us  who  try  to  escape  this  hypnotism  of  the 
flock  do  not  succeed  in  thinking  independently.  We 
only  succeed  in  getting  into  other  flocks.     Think  of 


ON  THINKING  FOR  ONE'S  SELF    121 

that  avalanche  of  crazy  art  that  descended  on  us 
some  years  ago,  the  Cubists  and  Dottists  and  Spottists 
and  Futurists  and  other  cranks,  who  filled  London 
with  their  shows,  and  set  all  the  "advanced"  people 
singing  their  praises.  They  were  not  real  praises 
that  expressed  genuine  feeling.  They  were  the 
artificial  enthusiasms  of  people  who  wanted  to  join 
in  the  latest  fashion.  They  would  rave  over  any 
imbecility  rather  than  not  be  in  the  latest  fashion — 
rather  than  not  be  thought  clever  enough  to  find  a 
meaning  in  things  that  had  no  meaning. 

We  are  too  timid  to  think  alone,  too  humble  to 
trust  our  own  feeling  or  our  own  judgment.  We 
want  some  authority  to  lean  up  against,  and  when 
we  have  got  it  we  mouth  its  shibboleths  with  as  little 
independent  thought  as  children  reciting  the  "twice- 
times"  table.  I  would  rather  a  man  should  think 
ignorantly  than  that  he  should  be  merely  an  echo. 
I  once  heard  an  Evangelical  clergyman  in  the  pulpit, 
speaking  of  Shakespeare,  gravely  remark  that  he 
"could  never  see  anything  in  that  writer."  I  smiled 
at  his  naivete,  but  I  respected  his  courage.  He 
couldn't  see  anything  in  Shakespeare  and  he  was  too 
honest  to  pretend  that  he  could.  That  is  far  better 
than  the  affectations  with  which  men  conceal  the 
poverty  of  their  minds  and  their  intellectual  servility. 

In  other  days  the  man  that  dared  to  think  for 
himself  ran  the  risk  of  being  burned.  Giordano 
Bruno,  who  was  himself  burned,  has  left  us  a  descrip- 
tion of  the  Oxford  of  his  day  which  shows  how 
tyrannical    established    thought     can     be,      Aristotle 


122    ON  THINKING  FOR  ONE'S  SELF 

was  almost  as  sacred  as  the  Bible,  and  the  University 
statutes  enacted  that  "Bachelors  and  Masters  who 
did  not  follow  Aristotle  faithfully  were  liable  to  a 
fine  of  five  shillings  for  every  point  of  divergence  and 
for  every  fault  committed  against  the  Logic  of  the 
Organon."  We  have  liberated  thought  from  the 
restraints  of  the  policeman  and  the  executioner  since 
then,  but  in  liberating  it  we  have  lost  our  reverence 
for  its  independence  and  integrity.  We  are  free 
to  think  as  we  please,  and  so  most  of  us  cease  to  think 
at  all,  and  follow  the  fashions  of  thought  as  servilely 
as  we  follow  the  fashions  in  hats. 

The  evil,  I  suppose,  lies  in  our  education.  We 
standardise  our  children.  We  aim  at  making  them 
like  ourselves  instead  of  teaching  them  to  be  them- 
selves— new  incarnations  of  the  human  spirit,  new 
prophets  and  teachers,  new  adventurers  in  the  wilder- 
ness of  the  world.  We  are  more  concerned  about 
putting  our  thoughts  into  their  heads  than  in  drawing 
their  thoughts  out,  and  we  succeed  in  making  them 
rich  in  knowledge  but  poor  in  wisdom.  They  are 
not  in  fear  of  the  stake,  but  they  are  in  fear  of  the 
judgment  of  the  world,  which  has  no  more  title  to 
respect  than  those  old  statutes  of  Oxford  which  we 
laugh  at  to-day.  The  truth,  I  fear,  is  that  thought 
does  not  thrive  on  freedom.  It  only  thrives  under 
suppression.  We  need  to  have  our  liberties  taken 
away  from  us  in  order  to  discover  that  they  are  worth 
dying  for. 


ON  SAWING  WOOD 


I  DO  not  think  this  article  will  be  much  concerned 
with  the  great  art  of  sawing  wood;  but  the  theme 
of  it  came  to  me  while  I  was  engaged  in  that  task. 
It  was  raining  hard  this  morning,  and  it  occurred  to 
me  that  it  was  a  good  opportunity  to  cut  some  winter 
logs  in  the  barn.  The  raw  material  of  the  logs  lies 
at  the  end  of  the  orchard  in  the  shape  of  sections  of 
trunks  and  branches  of  some  old  apple  trees  which 
David  cut  down  for  us  last  autumn,  to  enable  us  to 
extend  the  potato-patch  by  digging  up  a  part  of  the 
orchard.  I  carried  some  of  the  sections  into  the  barn 
and  began  to  saw,  but  I  was  out  of  practice  and  had 
forgotten  the  trick.  The  saw  would  go  askew,  the 
points  would  dig  in,  and  the  whole  operation  seemed  a 
clumsy  failure. 

Then    I    remembered.      You   are   over-doing   it,    I 

said.     You  are  making    a    mess  of  the  job  by  too 

much    energy — misdirected    energy.     The    trick    of 

sawing  wood  is  to  work  within  your  strength.    You 

123 


124  ON  SAWING  WOOD 

are  starting  at  it  as  if  you  intended  to  saw  through 
the  log  at  one  stroke.  It  is  the  mistake  the  Rumanians 
have  made  in  Transylvania.  They  bit  off  more  than 
they  could  chew.  You  are  biting  off  more  than  you 
can  chew,  and  you  and  the  log  and  the  saw  get  at 
cross  purposes,  with  the  results  you  see.  The  art 
of  the  business  is  to  work  easily .  and  with  a  light 
hand,  to  make  the  incision  with  a  firm  stroke  that 
hardly  touches  the  surface,  to  move  the  saw  forward 
lightly  so  that  it  barely  touches  the  wood,  to  draw  it 
back  at  a  shade  higher  elevation,  and  above  all  to 
take  your  time  and  to  avoid  too  much  energy.  "Gently 
does  it"  is  the  motto. 

It  is  a  lesson  I  am  always  learning  and  forgetting. 
i  suppose  I  am  one  of  those  people  who  are  afflicted 
with  too  eager  a  spirit.  We  want  a  thing  done,  but 
we  cannot  wait  to  do  it.  We  rush  at  the  task  with 
all  our  might  and  expect  it  to  surrender  on  the  spot, 
and  when  it  doesn't  surrender  we  lose  patience, 
complain  of  our  tools,  and  feel  a  grievance  against 
the  perversity  of  things.  It  reminds  me  of  the 
remark  which  a  professional  made  to  me  at  the 
practice  nets  long  ago.  He  was  watching  a  fast 
bowler  who  was  slinging  the  ball  at  the  batsman  like 
a  whirlwind,  and  with  disastrous  results  for  himself. 
"He  would  make  a  good  bowler,"  said  the  pro- 
fessional, "if  he  wouldn't  try  to  bowl  three  balls  at 
once."  Recall  any  really  great  bowler  you  have 
known  and  you  will  find  that  the  chief  impression 
he  left  on  the  mind  was  that  of  ease  and  reserve 
power.    He  was  never  spending  up  to  the  hilt.    There 


ON  SAWING  WOOD  125 

was  always  something  left  in  the  bank.  I  do  not 
speak  of  the  medium-paced  bowler,  like  Lohmann, 
whose  action  had  a  sort  of  artless  grace  that  masked 
the  most  wily  and  governed  strategy;  but  of  the 
fast  bowler,  like  Tom  Richardson  or  Mold  or  even 
Spofforth.  With  all  their  physical  energy,  you  felt 
that  their  heads  were  cool  and  that  they  had  some- 
thing in  hand.  There  was  passion,  but  it  was  con- 
trolled passion. 

And  if  you  have  tried  mowing  a  meadow  you  will 
know  how  much  the  art  consists  in  working  within 
your  powers,  easily  and  rhythmically.  The  tempta- 
tion to  lay  on  with  all  your  might  is  overpowering, 
and  you  stab  the  ground  and  miss  your  stroke  and 
exhaust  yourself  in  sheer  futility.  And  then  you 
watch  John  Ruddle  at  the  job  and  see  the  whole 
secret  of  the  art  reveal  itself.  He  will  mow  for  three 
hours  on  end  with  never  a  pause  except  to  sharpen 
the  blade  with  the  whetstone  he  carries  in  his  hip 
pocket.  What  a  feeling  of  reserve  there  is  in  the 
beautiful  leisureliness  of  his  action.  You  could  go 
to  sleep  watching  him,  and  you  feel  that  he  could 
go  to  sleep  to  his  own  rhythm,  as  the  mother  falls 
asleep  to  her  own  swaying  and  crooning.  There 
is  the  experience  of  a  lifetime  in  that  masterful  tech- 
nique, but  the  point  is  that  the  secret  of  the  tech- 
nique is  its  restraint,  its  economy  of  effort,  its 
patience  with  the  task,  its  avoidance  of  flurry  and 
hurry,  and  of  the  waste  and  exhaustion  of  over- 
emphasis.    At  the  bottom,  all  that  John  Ruddle  has 


126  ON  SAWING  WOOD 

learned  is  not  to  try  to  bowl  three  balls  at  once.  He 
is  always  master  of  his  job. 

And  if  you  chance  to  be  a  golfer,  haven't  you 
generally  found  that  when  you  are  "off  your  game" 
it  is  because  you  have  pitched  the  key,  as  it  were, 
too  high?  You  smite  and  fail,  and  smite  harder 
and  fail,  and  go  on  increasing  the  effort,  and  as  your 
effort  increases  so  does  your  futility.  You  are  play- 
ing over  your  strength.  You  are  screaming  at  the 
ball  instead  of  talking  to  it  reasonably  and  sensibly. 
Then  perhaps  you  remember,  cut  down  your  effort 
to  the  scope  of  your  powers,  and,  behold,  the  ball 
sails  away  on  its  errand  with  just  the  right  flight 
and  just  the  right  direction  and  just  the  right  length. 
And  you  purr  to  yourself  and  learn  once  more  that 
the  art  of  doing  things  is  moderation. 

It  is  so  in  all  things.  The  man  who  wins  is  the 
man  who  keeps  cool,  whose  effort  is  always  propor- 
tioned to  his  power,  who  gives  the  impression  that 
there  is  more  in  him  than  ever  comes  out.  I  have 
seen  many  a  man  lose  the  argument,  not  because  he 
had  the  worse  case,  but  because  he  was  too  eager,  too 
impatient,  too  unrestrained  in  presenting  it.  What 
is  the  secret  of  the  extraordinary  influence  which 
Viscount  Grey  exercises  over  the  mind  but  the 
grave  moderation  and  reserve  of  his  style?  There 
are  scores  of  more  eloquent  speakers,  more  nimble 
disputants  than  he,  but  there  has  been  no  one  in  our 
time  with  the  same  authority  and  finality  of  speech. 
He  conveys  the  sense  of  a  mind  disciplined  against 
passion,    austere  in   its    reserve,    implacably    honest, 


ON  SAWING  WOOD  127 

understating  itself  with  a  certain  cold  aloofness  that 
leaves  controversy  silent.  Take  his  indictment  of 
Germany  as  an  example.  It  was  as  though  the  ver- 
dict of  the  Day  of  Judgment  had  fallen  on  Germany. 
Yet  it  was  a  mere  grave,  dispassionate  statement  of 
the  facts  without  a  word  of  extravagance  or  violence. 
It  was  the  naked  truthfulness  of  it  that  was  so  terrible 
and  unanswerable. 

And  much  the  most  impressive  description  I  have 
seen  of  the  horrors  of  war  was  in  a  letter  of  a  German 
artillery  officer  telling  his  experiences  in  the  first 
great  battle  of  the  Somme.  Yet  the  characteristic  of 
the  letter  was  its  plainness  and  freedom  from  any 
straining  after  effect.  He  just  left  the  thing  he  de- 
scribed to  speak  for  itself  in  all  its  bare  horror.  It 
was  a  lesson  we  people  who  write  would  do  well  to 
remember.  Let  us  have  fewer  adjectives,  good  peo- 
ple, fewer  epithets.  Remember,  the  adjective  is  the 
enemy  of  the  noun.  It  is  the  scream  that  drowns  the 
sense,  the  passion  that  turns  the  argument  red  in  the 
face  and  makes  it  unbelievable.  Was  it  not  Stendhal 
who  used  to  read  the  Code  Napoleon  once  a  year  to 
teach  him  its  severity  of  style? 

It  is  still  raining.  I  will  return  to  the  barn  and 
practise  the  philosophy  of  moderation  on  those  logs. 


VARIATIONS  ON  AN  OLD  THEME 


A  SOLDIER,  whom  I  met  in  the  train  the  other  day, 
said  that  the  most  unpleasant  thing  in  his  experience 
of  the  war  was  the  bodies  which  got  caught  in  the 
barbed  wire  in  No  Man's  Land,  and  had  to  be  left 
corrupting  in  the  sun.  "It  isn't  healthy,"  he  said. 
There  was  no  affectation  of  bravado  in  the  remark. 
He  made  it  quite  simply,  as  if  he  were  commenting 
on  the  inclemency  of  the  weather  or  the  overheating 
of  the  carriage.  It  was  not  the  tragedy  of  the  thing 
that  affected  him,  but  its  insanitariness.  Yet  he 
was  obviously  a  kindly  and  humane  man,  and  he 
talked  of  his  home  with  the  yearning  of  an  exile. 
"It  makes  you  think  something  of  your  home,"  he 
said,  speaking  of  the  war.     "I  shan't  never  want  to 

128 


VARIATIONS  ON  AN  OLD  THEME    129 

leave  my  home  when  I  get  out  of  this,  and  I  shan't 
never  grumble  at  the  missus  again,"  he  added,  as 
though  recalling  the  past. 

I  suppose  everyone  who  has  talked  to  soldiers 
back  from  the  war  has  been  struck  by  this  attitude 
of  mind  towards  death.  I  remember  a  friend  of 
mine,  who  was  afterwards  killed  in  the  first  battle 
of  the  Somme  while  trying  to  save  one  of  his  men 
who  had  been  wounded,  telling  me  of  the  horror  of 
the  first  days  of  his  experience  of  war,  and  of  the 
subsequent  calm  with  which  he  saw  a  man  who  had 
been  his  friend  blown  to  pieces  by  his  side.  "It 
is  as  though  war  develops  another  integument,"  he 
said.  "Your  sensibilities  are  atrophied.  Your  nerve 
ends  are  deadened.  Your  normal  feelings  perish,  and 
you  become  a  part  of  a  machine  that  has  no  feelings — 
only  functions." 

In  some  measure  the  same  phenomenon  is  apparent 
in  the  minds  of  most  of  us.  There  has  not  been 
since  the  Great  Plague  swept  Europe  250  years  ago 
such  a  harvesting  of  untimely  death  as  we  have 
witnessed  during  the  last  two  and  a  half  years.  If 
the  ghostly  army  of  the  slain  were  to  file  before  you, 
passing  in  a  rank  of  four  for  every  minute  that  elapsed, 
you  could  sit  and  watch  it  day  and  night  for  five  years 
without  pause  before  the  last  of  the  phantom  host  had 
gone  by.  And  if  behind  the  dead  there  followed  the 
maimed,  blind,  and  mentally  shattered,  you  could 
sit  on  for  twenty  years  and  still  the  end  of  the  vast 
procession  would  not  be  in  sight.  If  we  had  been 
asked  three  years  ago  whether  the  human  mind  could 


I30    VARIATIONS  ON  AN  OLD  THEME 

endure  such  a  deliberate  orgy  of  death  in  its  most 
terrible  form,  we  should  have  said  the  thing  was 
incredible.  Yet  we  live  through  it  without  revolt, 
clamour  about  the  shortage  of  potatoes,  crowd  the 
cinemas  to  see  the  latest  extravagance  of  Charlie 
Chaplin,  and  have  forgotten  to  glance  at  the  daily 
tale  of  dead  that  fills  the  obscure  columns  of  the 
newspapers — such  of  them  as  trouble  any  longer  to 
give  that  tale  at  all. 

It  is  not  merely  that  we  avert  our  eyes  from  the 
facts.  That  is  certainly  done.  You  may  go  to  see 
the  "war  pictures"  at  the  cinema  and  come  away 
without  supposing  that  they  represent  anything 
more  than  a  skilfully  arranged  entertainment — in 
which  one  attractive  "turn"  follows  another  in 
swift  succession.  Once  they  actually  showed  a  man 
falling  dead,  and  there  was  a  cry  of  indignation  at 
such  an  outrage.  Ten  millions  have  fallen  dead, 
but  we  must  not  look  on  one  to  remind  us  of  the  reality 
behind  this  pictured  imposture.  There  has  never 
been  a  lie  on  the  scale  of  these  "war  pictures"  that 
leave  out  war  and  all  its  sprawling  ugliness,  monotony, 
mutilation,  and  death. 

But  it  is  not  this  fact  that  explains  our  apparent 
indifference  to  the  Red  Harvest.  We  are  like  the 
dyer's  hand.  We  are  subdued  to  what  we  work  in. 
Even  those  who  have  been  directly  stricken  find  that 
they  bear  the  blow  with  a  calm  that  astonishes  them- 
selves. We  have  got  into  a  new  habit  of  thought 
about  death — in  a  sense  a  truer  habit  of  thought. 
It  used  to  be  screened  from  the  light  of  day,  talked 


This  generation  has  companioned  Death  too  closely  to  see  him 
again  quite  as  the  hooded  terror  of  old. 


132    VARIATIONS  ON  AN  OLD  THEME 

of  in  hushed  voices,  surrounded  with  the  mystery 
and  aloofness  of  a  terrible  divinity.  It  has  come 
into  the  open,  brutal,  naked,  violent.  We  accept 
it  as  the  commonplace  it  is,  instead  of  enveloping 
it  in  a  cloud  of  tragic  fear  and  strangeness.  The 
heart  seems  steeled  to  the  blows  of  fate,  looks  death 
steadily  in  the  face,  understands  that  the  individual 
life  is  merged  in  issues  more  vast  than  this  little 
tale  of  years  that,  at  the  most,  is  soon  told. 

It  may  be  that,  like  the  soldiers,  our  senses  are 
only  numbed  by  events,  and  that  when  we  come  out 
of  the  nightmare  the  old  feelings  will  resume  their 
sway.  But  it  will  be  long  before  they  recover  their 
former  tyranny  over  the  mind.  This  generation 
has  companioned  Death  too  closely  to  see  him  again 
quite  as  the  hooded  terror  of  old.  And  that,  I  think, 
is  a  gain.  I  have  always  felt  that  Johnson's  morbid 
attitude  towards  death  was  the  weakest  trait  in  a 
fine  character,  and  that  George  Selwyn's  perpetual 
absorption  in  the  subject  was  a  form  of  mental 
disease.  Montaigne,  too,  lived  with  the  constant 
thought  of  the  imminence  of  death,  so  much  so  that 
if,  when  out  walking,  he  remembered  something  he 
wanted  done,  he  wrote  down  the  request  at  once, 
lest  he  should  not  reach  home  alive.  But  he  was 
quite  healthy  in  his  thought.  It  was  not  that  he 
feared  death,  but  that  he  did  not  want  to  be  caught 
unawares. 

In  this,  as  in  most  things,  Czesar  shone  with  that 
grand  sanity  that  makes  him  one  of  the  most  illumi- 
nated secular  minds  in  history.      He  neither  sought 


VARIATIONS  ON  AN  OLD  THEME    133 

death  nor  shunned  it.  When  Hirtius  and  Pansa 
remonstrated  with  him  for  going  unprotected  by  a 
bodyguard,  he  answered,  "It  is  better  to  die  once 
than  always  to  go  in  fear  of  death."  That  is  the 
common-sense  attitude — as  remote  from  the  spirit 
of  the  miser  as  from  that  of  the  spendthrift.  And 
that  other  comment  of  his  on  death  is  equally  deserv- 
ing of  recall.  He  was  dining  the  night  before  his 
murder  at  the  house  of  Decimus  Brutus,  who  had 
joined  the  conspiracy  against  him.  As  he  sat  des- 
patching his  letters,  the  others  talked  of  death  and 
of  that  form  of  death  which  was  preferable.  One  of 
the  group  asked  Caesar  what  death  he  would  prefer. 
He  looked  up  from  his  papers  and  said,  "That  which 
is  least  expected."  This  was  not  an  old  man's 
weariness  of  life  such  as  that  which  made  Lord 
Holland,  the  father  of  Charles  James  Fox,  write  to 
Selwyn:  "And  yet  the  man  I  envy  most  is  the  late 
Lord  Chamberlain,  for  he  is  dead  and  he  died 
suddenly."  It  was  just  the  Roman  courage  that 
accepted  death  as  an  incident  of  the  journey. 

Of  that  high  courage  the  end  of  Antoninus  Pius  is 
an  immortal  memory.  As  the  Emperor  lay  dying 
in  his  tent  the  tribune  of  the  night-watch  entered 
to  ask  the  watchword.  "^Equanimitas,"  said 
Antoninus  Pius,  and  with  that  last  word  he,  in 
the  language  of  the  historian,  "turned  his  face  to  the 
everlasting  shadow." 

With  that  grave  calm  the  philosophy  of  the 
ancient  world  touched  its  noblest  expression.  It 
faced    the    shadow    without    illusions    and   without 


134    VARIATIONS  ON  AN  OLD  THEME 

fear.  It  met  death  neither  as  an  enemy,  nor  as  a 
friend,  but  as  an  implacable  fact  to  be  faced  implac- 
ably. Sir  Thomas  More  met  it  like  a  bridegroom. 
In  all  the  literature  of  death  there  is  nothing  com- 
parable with  Roper's  story  of  those  last  days  in  the 
Tower.  Who  can  read  that  moving  description  of 
the  farewell  with  his  daughter  Margaret  (Roper's 
wife)  without  catching  its  pity  and  its  glory?  "In 
good  faythe,  Maister  Roper,"  said  stout  Sir  William 
Kingstone,  the  gaoler,  "I  was  ashamed  of  myself 
that  at  my  departing  from  your  father  I  found  my 
harte  soe  feeble  and  his  soe  stronge,  that  he  was 
fayne  to  comfort  me  that  should  rather  have  com- 
forted him."  And  when  Sir  Thomas  Pope  comes 
early  on  St.  Thomas'  Even  with  the  news  that  he 
is  to  die  at  nine  o'clock  that  morning  and  falls  weeping 
at  his  own  tidings — "Quiet  yourselfe,  Good  Maister 
Pope,"  says  More,  "and  be  not  discomforted;  for 
I  trust  that  we  shall  once  in  heaven  see  eche  other 
full  merily,  where  we  shalbe  sure  to  live  and  love 
togeather,  in  joyfull  blisse  eternally."  And  then, 
Pope  being  gone.  More  "as  one  that  had  beene 
invited  to  some  solempne  feaste,  chaunged  himself 
into  his  beste  apparrell;  which  Maister  Leiftenante 
espyinge,  advised  him  to  put  it  off,  saying  that  he 
that  should  have  it  was  but  a  javill  (a  common 
fellow:  the  executioner).  What,  Maister  Leiftenante, 
quothe  he,  shall  I  accompte  him  a  javill  that  shall 
doe  me  this  day  so  singular  a  benefitt?  Nay,  I 
assure  you,  were  it  clothe  of  goulde,  I  would  accompte 
it  well  bestowed  upon  him,  as  St.  Ciprian  did,  who 


VARIATIONS  ON  AN  OLD  THEME    135 

gave  his  executyoner  thirtye  peeces  of  golde.  .  .  . 
And  soe  was  he  by  Maister  Leiftenante  brought  out 
of  the  Tower  and  from  thence  led  towardes  the  place 
of  execution.  Wher,  goinge  up  the  scaffold,  which 
was  so  weake  that  it  was  readye  to  fall,  he  said 
merilye  to  Maister  Leiftenante,  I  praye  you,  Maister 
Leiftenante,  see  me  safe  uppe  and  for  my  cominge 
down  let  me  shift  for  myselfe.  Then  desired  he  all 
the  people  there  aboute  to  pray  for  him,  and  to  bare 
witnes  with  him  that  he  should  now  there  suffer 
deathe,  in  and  for  the  faith  of  the  Holy  Catholicke 
Churche.  Which  donne,  he  kneeled  downe;  and 
after  his  prayers  sayed,  turned  to  the  executioner, 
and  with  a  cheerful  countenance  spake  thus  unto 
him:  'Plucke  uppe  thy  spiritts,  manne,  and  be  not 
affrayde  to  doe  thine  office;  my  necke  is  very  shorte, 
take  heede,  therfore,  thou  strike  not  awrye  for  savinge 
of  thine  honesty.'  So  passed  Sir  Thomas  More  out 
of  this  worlde  to  God,  upon  the  very  same  daye  (the 
Utas  of  St.  Peter)  in  which  himself  had  most  de- 
sired." 

The  saint  of  the  pagan  world  and  the  saint  of  the 
Christian  world  may  be  left  to  share  the  crown  of 
noble  dying. 


II 


I  had  rather  a  shock  to-day.  I  was  sitting  down 
to  write  an  article  on  a  subject  that  had  still  to  be 
found,  and  had  almost  reached  the  point  of  decision, 
when    a    letter    which  had   been   addressed    to    the 


136    VARIATIONS  ON  AN  OLD  THEME 

Editor  of  The  Star,  and  which  he  had  sent  on  to  me, 
started  another  and  more  attractive  hare.  It  was 
a  letter  announcing  my  lamented  demise.  There 
was  no  doubt  about  it.  There  was  the  date  and 
there  was  the  name  (a  nice  name  too),  and  there 
were  the  circumstances  all  set  out  in  black  and  white. 
And  the  writer  wanted  to  know,  in  view  of  all  this, 
why  no  obituary  notice  of  me  had  appeared  in  the 
columns  of  the  paper  I  had  adorned. 

Now  this  report,  however  it  arose,  is,  to  use  Mark 
Twain's  famous  remark  in  similar  circumstances, 
"greatly  exaggerated."  I  am  not  dead.  I  am  not 
half  dead.  I  am  not  even  feeling  poorly.  I  had  a 
tooth  out  a  week  or  two  ago,  but  otherwise  nothing 
dreadful  has  happened  to  me  for  ever  so  long.  I 
was  once  nearly  in  a  shipwreck,  but  that  was  so  long 
ago  that  I  had  almost  forgotten  the  circumstance. 
Moreover,  as  all  the  people  in  the  ship  were  saved  I 
could  not  possibly  have  died  then  even  if  I  had  been 
on  board.  And  I  wasn't  on  board,  for  I  had  left  at 
the  previous  port  of  call.  It  was  a  narrow  escape, 
but  I  can't  pretend  that  I  wasn't  saved.    I  was. 

But  though  I  am  most  flagrantly  and  aggressively 
alive,  the  announcement  of  my  death  has  set  me 
thinking  of  myself  as  if  I  were  dead.  I  find  it  quite 
an  agreeable  diversion.  Not  that  I  am  morbid.  I 
do  not  share  my  friend  Clerihew's  view,  expressed 
in  his  chapter  on  Lord  Clive  in  that  noble  work 
"Biography  for  Beginners."  You  may  remember 
the  chapter.    If  not,  it  is  short  enough  to  repeat: — 


VARIATIONS  ON  AN  OLD  THEME     137 

What  I  like  about  Clive 
Is   that   he   is   no   longer   alive. 
There's  something  to  be  said 
For  being  dead. 

That  is  overdoing  the  thing.  What  I  find  agreeable 
is  being  alive  and  thinking  I  am  dead.  You  have 
the  advantage  of  both  worlds,  so  to  speak.  In  com- 
pany w^ith  this  amiable  correspondent,  I  have  shed 
tears  over  myself.  I  have  wept  at  my  own  grave- 
side. I  have  composed  my  own  obituary  notice,  and 
I  don't  think  I  have  ever  turned  out  a  more  moving 
piece  of  work.  I  have  met  my  friends  and  condoled 
with  them  over  my  decease,  and  have  heard  their 
comments,  and  I  am  proud  to  say  that  they  were 
quite  nice.  Some  of  them  made  me  think  that  I 
might  write  up  the  obituary  notice  in  a  rather  higher 
key,  put  the  virtues  of  the  late  lamented  ''Alpha  of 
the  Plough"  in  more  gaudy  colours,  tone  down  the 
few,  the  very  few,  weak  points  of  his  austere,  saintly, 
chivalrous,  kindly,  wise,  humorous,  generous  char- 
acter— in  a  word,  let  myself  go  a  bit  more.  Old 
Grumpington  at  the  club,  it  is  true,  said  that  I  should 
be  no  great  loss  to  the  world,  and  that  so  far  as  he 
was  concerned  I  was  one  of  the  people  that  he  could 
do  without.  But  then  Old  Grumpington  never 
says  a  good  word  for  anybody,  living  or  dead.  I 
discounted  Grumpington.  I  took  no  notice  of 
Grumpington — the  beast. 

And  then  I  passed  from  the  living  world  I  had 
left  behind  to  the  contemplation  of  the  said  Alpha, 
fallen  on  sleep,  and  I  found  his  case  no  subject  for 


138    VARIATIONS  ON  AN  OLD  THEME 

tears.  After  all,  said  I,  the  world  is  not  such  a  gay 
place  in  these  days,  that  I  need  worry  about  having 
quitted  it.  I  have  left  some  dear  friends  behind, 
but  they  will  pass  the  toll-gate  too  in  due  course, 
and  join  me  and  those  who  have  preceded  me. 
"What  dreams  may  come!"  Well,  so  be  it.  I 
have  no  fear  of  the  dreams  of  death,  having  passed 
through  the  dream  of  life,  which  was  so  often  like  a 
nightmare.  If  there  are  dreams  for  me,  I  think  they 
will  be  better  dreams.  If  there  are  tasks  for  me,  I 
think  they  will  be  better  tasks.  If  there  are  no  dreams 
and  no  tasks,  then  that  also  is  well.  "I  see  no  such 
horror  in  a  dreamless  sleep,"  said  Byron  in  one  of  his 
letters,  "and  I  have  no  conception  of  any  existence 
which  duration  would  not  make  tiresome."  And  so, 
dreamless  or  dreaming,  I  saw  nothing  in  the  circum- 
stances of  the  departed  Alpha  to  lament.  .  .  . 

Meanwhile,  I  am  very  well  indeed,  thank  you.  If 
you  prick  me  I  shall  still  bleed.  If  you  tickle  me  I 
shall  still  laugh.  And  with  due  encouragement  I 
shall  still  write. 


Ill 


I  was  going  home  late  last  night  from  one  of  the 
Tube  stations  when  my  companion  pointed  to  a 
group — a  man  in  a  bowler  hat,  reading  a  paper,  two 
women  and  a  child — sitting  on  a  seat  on  the  platform. 
"There  they  are,"  he  said.  "Every  night  and  any 
hour,  moonlight  or  moonless,  you'll  find  them  sitting 
there."    "What  for?"    I  asked.    "Oh,  in  case  there's 


VARIATIONS  ON  AN  OLD  THEME    139 

a  raid.  They  are  taking  things  in  time;  they  are 
running  no  risks.  You'll  see  a  few  at  most  stations." 
And  as  the  train  passed  from  station  to  station  I 
noticed  similar  little  groups  on  the  platforms,  sleeping 
or  just  staring  vacantly  at  nothing  in  particular,  and 
waiting  till  the  lights  went  out  and  they  could  wait  no 
longer. 

There  is  no  discredit  in  taking  reasonable  precau- 
tions against  danger,  but  these  good  people  carry 
apprehension  to  excess.  We  need  not  under-rate 
the  risks  of  the  raids,  but  we  need  not  make  ourselves 
ridiculous  about  them.  So  far  as  the  average  in- 
dividual life  is  concerned  they  are  almost  negligible. 
Assuming  that  the  circumference  of  danger  of  an 
exploding  bomb  is  90  yards,  and  that  the  Germans 
drop  two  hundred  bombs  a  month  on  London,  it  is, 
I  understand,  calculated  that  it  will  be  thirty-four 
years  before  we  have  all  come  in  the  zone  of  danger. 
But  the  Germans  do  not  drop  two  hundred  bombs 
a  month,  nor  twenty  bombs,  probably  not  ten  bombs. 
Let  us  assume,  however,  that  they  get  up  to  an  aver- 
age of  twenty  bombs.  It  will  be  over  three  hundred 
years  before  we  have  all  come  within  the  range  of 
peril.  I  do  not  suggest  that  this  reflection  justifies 
us  in  going  out  into  the  streets  when  a  raid  is  on.  It 
is  true  I  may  not  get  my  turn  for  three  hundred  years, 
but  still  there  is  no  sense  in  running  out  to  see  if 
my  turn  has  come.  So  I  dive  below  ground  as 
promptly  as  anybody.  It  is  foolish  to  take  risks  that 
you  need  not  take.  But  it  is  not  less  foolish  to  go 
and  sit  for  hours  every  night  on  a  Tube  station  plat- 


I40    VARIATIONS  ON  AN  OLD  THEME 

form,  not  because  there  is  a  raid,  but  because  there 
may  be  a  raid. 

This  is  carrying  the  fear  of  death  to  extremities. 
I  have  referred  to  Caesar's  sane  axiom  on  the  subject, 
and  to  his  refusal  to  take  what  seemed  to  others  reason- 
able precautions  against  danger.  In  the  end  he  was 
murdered,  but  in  the  meantime  he  had  lived  as  no 
one  whose  life  is  one  nervous  apprehension  of  danger 
can  possibly  live.  You  may,  of  course,  carry  this 
philosophy  of  fearless  living  to  excess.  Smalley, 
in  his  reminiscences,  tells  us  that  when  King  Edward 
(then  Prince  of  Wales)  was  staying  at  Homburg  he 
said  one  day  to  Lord  Hartington  (the  late  Duke  of 
Devonshire),  "Hartington,  you  ought  not  to  drink 
all  that  champagne."  "No,  sir,  I  know  I  ought  not," 
said  Hartington.  "Then  why  do  you  do  it?" 
"Well,  sir,  I  have  made  up  my  mind  that  I  would 
rather  be  ill  now  and  then  than  always  taking  care 
of  myself."  "Oh,  you  think  that  now,  but  when 
the  gout  comes  what  do  you  think  then?"  "Sir,  if 
you  will  ask  me  then  I  will  tell  you.  I  do  not 
anticipate." 

I  do  not  commend  Hartington's  example  for 
imitation  any  more  than  the  example  of  those  forlorn 
little  groups  on  the  Tube  platforms.  He  was  not 
refusing,  like  Caesar,  to  be  bullied  by  vague  fears; 
he  was,  for  the  sake  of  a  present  pleasure,  laying  up 
a  store  of  tolerably  certain  misery.  It  was  not  a 
case  of  fearless  living,  but  of  careless  living,  which 
is  quite  another  thing.  But  at  least  he  got  a  present 
pleasure  for  his  recklessness,  while  the  people  who 


VARIATIONS  ON  AN  OLD  THEME    141 

hoard  up  life  like  misers,  and  see  the  shadow  of  death 
stalking  them  all  the  time,  do  not  live  at  all.  They 
only  exist.  They  are  like  Chesterfield  in  his  later 
years.  "I  am  become  a  vegetable,"  he  said.  "I  have 
been  dead  twelve  years,  but  I  don't  want  anyone  to 
know  about  it."  Those  people  in  the  Tube  are  quite 
dead,  although  they  don't  know  about  it.  What  is 
more,  they  have  never  been  alive. 

You  cannot  be  alive  unless  you  take  life  gallantly. 
You  know  that  the  Great  Harvester  is  tracking  you 
all  the  time,  and  that  one  day,  perhaps  quite  suddenly, 
his  scythe  will  catch  you  and  lay  you  among  the 
sheaves  of  the  past.  Every  day  and  every  hour  he 
is  remorselessly  at  your  heels.  A  breath  of  bad  air 
will  do  his  work,  or  the  prick  of  a  pin,  or  a  fall  on 
the  stairs,  or  a  draught  from  the  window.  You  can't 
take  a  ride  in  a  bus,  or  a  row  in  a  boat,  or  a  swim  in 
the  sea,  or  a  bat  at  the  wicket  without  offering  your- 
self as  a  target  for  the  enemy.  I  have  myself  seen 
a  batsman  receive  a  mortal  blow  from  a  ball  driven 
by  his  companion  at  the  wicket.  Why,  those  people 
so  forlornly  dodging  death  in  the  Tube  were  not  out 
of  the  danger  zone.  They  were  probably  in  more 
peril  sitting  there  nursing  their  fears,  lowering  their 
vitality,  and  incubating  death  than  they  would  have 
been  going  about  their  reasonable  tasks  in  the  fresh 
air  above.    You  may  die  from  the  fear  of  death. 

I  am  not  preaching  Nietzsche's  gospel  of  "Live 
dangerously,"  There  is  no  need  to  try  to  live 
■dangerously,  and  no  sense  in  going  about  tweaking 
the  nose  of  death  to  show  what  a  deuce  of  a  fellow 


142    VARIATIONS  ON  AN  OLD  THEME 

you  are.  The  truth  is  that  we  cannot  help  living 
dangerously.  Life  is  a  dangerous  calling,  full  of 
pitfalls.  You,  getting  the  coal  in  the  mine  by  the 
light  of  your  lamp,  are  living  with  death  very,  very 
close  at  hand.  You,  on  the  railway  shunting  trucks, 
you  in  the  factory  or  the  engine  shop  moving  in  a 
maze  of  machinery,  you  in  the  belly  of  the  ship  stoking 
the  fire — all  alike  are  in  an  adventure  that  may 
terminate  at  any  moment.  Let  us  accept  the  fact 
like  men,  and  dismiss  it  like  men,  going  about  our 
tasks  as  though  we  had  all  eternity  to  live  in,  not 
foolishly  challenging  profitless  perils,  but,  on  the  other 
hand,  declining  to  be  intimidated  by  the  shadow  of  the 
scythe  that  dogs  our  steps. 


IV 


It  is,  I  suppose,  a  common  experience  that  our 
self-valuations  are  not  fixed  but  fluctuating.  Some- 
times the  estimate  is  extravagantly  high;  sometimes, 
but  less  frequently,  it  is  too  low.  There  are  people, 
no  doubt,  whose  vanity  is  so  vast  that  no  drafts 
upon  it  make  any  appreciable  difference  to  the  fund. 
It  is  as  inexhaustible  as  the  horn  of  Skrymir.  And 
there  are  others  whose  humility  is  so  established 
that  no  emotion  of  vain-glory  ever  visits  them.  But 
the  generality  of  us  go  up  and  down  according  to 
the  weather,  our  health,  our  fortune  and  a  hundred 
trifles  good  or  bad.  We  are  like  corks  on  the  wave, 
sometimes  borne  buoyantly  on  the  crest  of  the  heaving 
sea  of  circumstance,  then  sinking  into  the  trough  of 


VARIATIONS  ON  AN  OLD  THEME    143 

the  billows.  At  this  moment  I  am  in  the  trough. 
I  have  been  passing  through  one  of  these  chastening 
experiences  which  reveal  to  us  how  unimportant  we 
are  to  the  world.  When  we  are  in  health  we  bustle 
about  and  talk  and  trade  and  write  and  push  and 
thrust  and  haggle  and  bargain  and  feel  that  we  are 
tremendous  fellows.  However  would  the  world  get 
on  without  us?  we  say.  What  would  become  of 
the  office?  Who  could  put  those  schemes  through 
that  I  have  in  hand?  What  on  earth  would  that  dear 
fellow  Robinson  do  without  my  judgment  to  lean  on? 
What  would  become  of  Jones  if  he  no  longer  met  me 
after  lunch  at  the  club  for  a  quiet  and  confidential 
talk?     How  would  The  Star  survive  without  .  .  . 

And  so  we  inflate  ourselves  with  a  comfortable 
conceit,  and  feel  that  we  are  really  the  hub  of  things, 
and  that  if  anything  goes  wrong  with  us  there  will 
be  a  mournful  vacuum  in  society.  Then  some  day 
the  bubble  of  our  vanity  is  pricked.  We  are  gently 
laid  aside,  deflated  and  humble,  the  world  forgetting, 
by  the  world  forgot.  Our  empire  has  shrunk  to  the 
dimensions  of  a  sick-room,  and  there  fever  plays 
its  wild  dramas,  turning  the  innocent  patterns  of 
the  wall-paper  into  fantastic  shapes,  and  fearsome 
conflicts,  filling  our  unquiet  slumbers  with  dreadful 
phantoms  that,  waking,  we  try  to  seize,  only  to  fall 
back  defeated  and  helpless.  And  then  follow  the 
days — those  peaceful  days — of  sheer  collapse,  when 
you  just  lie  back  on  the  pillow  and  look  hour  by  hour 
at  the  ceiling,   desiring    nothing    and    thinking     of 


144    VARIATIONS  ON  AN  OLD  THEME 

nothing,  and  when  the  doctor,  feeling  your  stagnant 
pulse,  says,  "Yes,  you  have  had  a  bad  shaking." 

These  are  the  days  of  illumination.  Outside  the 
buses  rumble  by,  and  you  know  they  are  crowded 
with  people  going  down  to  or  returning  from  the 
great  whirlpool.  And  you  realise  that  the  mighty 
world  is  thundering  on  in  the  old  way  as  though  it 
had  never  heard  of  you.  Fleet  Street  roars  by  night 
and  day  in  happy  unconcern  of  you;  your  absence 
from  "the  Gallery"  in  the  afternoon  is  unnoted  by 
a  soul;  Robinson  gives  one  thought  to  you,  and  then 
turns  to  his  work  as  though  nothing  had  happened; 
Jones  misses  you  after  lunch,  but  is  just  as  happy  with 
Brown ;  and  The  Star — well,  The  Star  .  .  .  yes, 
the  painful  fact  has  to  be  faced.  .  .  .  The  Star 
goes  on  its  radiant  path  as  though  you  had  only  been 
a  fly  on  its  wheel. 

It  is  a  humbling  experience.  This,  then,  was  all 
your  high-blown  pride  amounted  to.  You  were  just 
a  bubble  on  the  surface,  a  snowflake  on  the  river — 
a  moment  there,  then  gone  for  ever.  This  is  the 
foretaste  of  death.  When  that  comes  the  waters  will 
just  close  over  your  head  as  they  have  closed 
now — a  comment  here  and  there,  perhaps  friendly, 
perhaps  critical,  a  few  tears  it  may  be,  and — oblivion. 
It  is  an  old  story — old  as  humanity.  You  remember 
those  verses  of  Dean  Swift  on  the  news  of  his  own 
death,  with  what  airy  jests  and  indifference  it  was 
received  in  this  and  that  haunt  where  he  had  played 
so  great  a  part.  It  comes  to  a  card  party  who  a£Fect 
to  receive  it  in  "doleful  dumps." 


VARIATIONS  ON  AN  OLD  THEME    145 

"The  Dean  is  dead    (pray  what  is  trumps?") 
Then  "Lord  have  mercy  on  his  soul ! 
(Ladies,   I'll  venture  for  the  vole). 
Six  deans,  they  say,  must  bear  the  pall, 
.    (I  wish  I  knew  what  king  to  call). 
Madam,  your  husband  will  attend 
The  funeral  of  so  good  a  friend?" 
"No,  madam,   'tis  a  shocking  sight; 
And  he's  engaged  to-morrow  night; 
My  Lady  Club  will  take  it  ill 
If  he  should   fail  her   at  quadrille. 
He  loved  the  Dean    (I   lead   a  heart)  ; 
But  dearest  friends,  they  say,  must  part." 

That  is  the  way  of  it.  Your  friend  is  dead:  you 
heave  a  sigh  and  lead  a  heart. 

Listen  to  that  thrush  outside.  How  he  is  going 
it!  He,  too,  on  this  bright  March  morning  sings  of 
the  world's  indifference — the  indifference  of  the 
joyous,  living  world  to  those  who  have  crept  to  their 
holes.  I  hear  in  his  voice  the  news  of  the  coming  of 
spring,  and  know  that  down  at  "the  cottage"  the 
crocuses  are  out  in  the  garden  and  the  dark  beech- 
woods  are  turning  to  brown,  and  the  lark  is  springing 
up  into  the  blue  like  a  flame  of  song.  How  I  have 
loved  this  pageantry  of  nature,  these  days  of  revela- 
tion and  promise.  I  used  to  think  that  I  was  a  part 
of  them,  but  now  I  know  that  the  pageant  goes 
forward  in  sublime  unconsciousness  that  I  am  no  longer 
in  the  audience. 

And  so -I  lie  and  look  at  the  ceiling  and  feel  humble 
and  disillusioned.  I  have  discovered  that  the  world 
goes  on  very  well  without  me,  and  I  am  not  sure 


146    VARIATIONS  ON  AN  OLD  THEME 

that  it  is  not  worth  spending  a  week  or  two  in  bed 
to  learn  that  salutary  lesson.  When  I  return  to  the 
world  I  fancy  I  shall  have  lost  some  of  my  ancient 
swagger.  I  shall  feel  like  a  modest  intruder  upon  a 
society  that  has  shown  it  has  no  need  of  me.  I 
may  recover  my  feeling  of  importance  in  time,  but 
in  my  secret  heart  I  shall  know  that  I  am  not  the 
hub  but  only  a  fly  on  the  mighty  wheel  of  things.  I 
can  skip  off  and  no  one  is  any  the  wiser. 


4*1  ,i/ui  ii.ifi'"  1  «»»«•»;•,  t  IW 


ON  CLOTHES 

There  is  one  respect  in  which  the  war  has  brought 
us  a  certain  measure  of  relief.  It  is  no  longer  neces- 
sary to  lie  awake  o'  nights  thinking  about  your  clothes. 
There  are  some  people,  of  course,  who  like  thinking 
about  their  clothes.  They  seem  to  regard  themselves 
as  perambulating  shop  window  models  on  which  to 
hang  things,  and  if  you  take  away  that  subject  from 
their  conversation  they  are  bankrupt.  When  I  was 
coming  down  on  the  bus  the  other  afternoon  I  could 
not  help  overhearing  snatches  of  a  conversation  which 
was  going  on  between  two  women  in  the  seat  behind 
me.  It  was  conducted  with  great  volubility  and 
seriousness,  and  it  came  to  me  in  scraps  like  this:  "No, 
I  don't  like  that  shade.  ...  I  saw  a  beautiful  hat 
at  So-and-So's  at  Kensington;  only  25s.;  it  was 
147 


148  ON  CLOTHES 

,  .  .  Yes,  she  has  nice  taste  and  always  looks  .  .  . 
No,  brocaded  .  .  ."  And  so  on  without  a  pause 
for  the  space  of  half  an  hour. 

I  don't  offer  that  conversation  as  representative. 
I  imagine  that  in  the  lump  women  are  thinking  less 
about  dress  to-day  from  the  merely  ornamental 
point  of  view  than  they  ever  did.  If  you  spend 
twelve  hours  a  day  on  a  bus  or  a  tram  in  a  blue 
uniform  and  leggings,  or  driving  a  Carter  Paterson 
van  in  a  mackintosh  and  a  sou-wester,  or  filling  shells 
in  a  yellow  overall,  dress  cannot  occupy  quite  its  old 
dominion  over  your  thoughts.  You  will  think  more 
about  comfort  and  less  about  finery.  And  that,  ac- 
cording to  Herbert  Spencer,  is  an  evidence  of  a  higher 
intelligence.  The  more  barbaric  you  are  the  more 
you  regard  dress  from  the  point  of  view  of  ornament 
and  the  less  from  the  point  of  view  of  utility.  It  is 
a  hard  saying  for  the  West  End  of  life.  Spencer, 
to  illustrate  his  point,  mentions  that  the  African  at- 
tendants of  Captain  Speke  strutted  about  in  their 
goatskin  mantles  when  the  weather  was  fine,  but  when 
it  was  wet  took  them  off,  folded  them  up,  and  went 
about  naked  and  shivering  in  the  rain. 

A  talk  like  that  of  the  two  women  on  the  bus 
would  not  be  possible  among  men;  but  that  does 
not  mean  that  they  have  souls  above  finery.  It  is 
not  good  form  among  them  to  talk  about  dress — 
that  is  all.  But  that  many  of  them  think  about  it 
as  seriously  as  women  do,  if  less  continuously,  is 
certain.  Pepys'  Diary  is  strewn  with  such  self- 
revelations   as   "This   morning   came   home   my   fine 


ON  CLOTHES  149 

Camlett  cloak,  with  gold  buttons,  and  a  silk  suit, 
which  cost  me  much  money,  and  I  pray  God  to  make 
me  able  to  pay  for  it."  He  ought  to  have  thought 
of  that  earlier.  No  one  is  entitled  to  order  fine 
clothes  and  then  throw  the  responsibility  for  paying 
for  them  on  the  Almighty.  At  least  he  might  have 
prayed  to  God  on  the  subject  before  approaching 
the  tailor.  The  case  of  Goldsmith  was  not  less 
conspicuous.  He  was  as  vain  as  a  peacock,  and  re- 
fused to  go  into  the  Church  because  he  loved  to  wear 
bright  clothes.     And  his  spirit  is  not  dead  among  men. 

Who  can  look  upon   the  large  white  spats  of  

as  he  comes  down  the  floor  of  the  House  without 
feeling  that  he  is  as  dress-conscious  as  a  milliner? 

I  am  not  speaking  with  disrespect  of  the  well- 
dressed  man .  ( I  do  not  mean  the  over-dressed  man : 
he  is  an  offence).  I  would  be  well-dressed  myself  if 
I  knew  how,  but  I  have  no  gift  that  way.  Like 
Squire  Shallow,  I  am  always  in  the  rearward  of  the 
fashion.  I  find  that  with  rare  exceptions  I  dislike 
new  fashions.  They  disturb  my  tranquillity.  They 
give  me  a  nasty  jolt.  I  suspect  that  the  explanation 
is  that  beneath  my  intellectual  radicalism  there  lurks 
a  temperamental  conservatisim,  a  love  of  sleepy 
hollows  and  quiet  havens  and  the  old  grass-grown 
turnpikes  of  habit.  It  is  no  uncommon  paradox. 
Spurgeon  had  it  like  many  others.  He  was  once 
rebuked  by  a  friend  for  his  political  activity  on  the 
Liberal  side.  Why  did  he  yield  to  this  weakness? 
"You  ought  to  mortify  the  Old  Man,"  said  his  friend. 
"I   do  mortify  him,"  said   Spurgeon.     "You  see  my 


I50  ON  CLOTHES 

Old  Man  is  a  Tory  and  I  make  him  vote  Liberal. 
That  mortifies  him."  I  am  conscious  of  the  same 
conflict  within  myself,  and  in  the  matter  of  clothes 
the  Old  Man  of  Toryism  is  an  easy  winner. 

It  was  so  with  Carlyle.  He  raged  like  a  bear  with 
a  sore  head  against  the  existing  political  fashion  of 
things,  but  in  the  matter  of  clothes  he  was  a  mere 
antediluvian,  and  when  he  wanted  a  new  suit  he 
simply  wrote  to  the  little  country  tailor  in  far-off 
Ecclefechan  and  told  him  to  send  another  "as  before." 
And  so,  by  taking  no  thought  about  the  matter,  he 
achieved  the  distinction  in  appearance  which  the 
people  who  worry  about  clothes  do  not  achieve.  The 
flavour  of  the  antique  world  hung  about  him  like  a 
fragrance,  as,  but  yesterday,  it  hung  about  Lord  Court- 
ney who  looked  like  a  reminiscence  of  the  world  of  our 
grandfathers  walking  our  streets  to  the  rebuke  of  a 
frivolous  generation. 

I  cannot  claim  to  exhale  this  fine  essence  of  the 
past.  I  am  just  an  ordinary  camp  follower  of  the 
fashions,  too  perverse  to  march  with  the  main  army, 
too  timid  to  ignore  it,  but  just  hanging  on  its  skirts 
as  it  were,  a  forlorn  relic  of  the  year  before  last.  My 
taste  in  ties,  I  am  assured,  is  execrable.  My  clothes 
are  lacking  in  style,  and  my  boots  have  an  uncon- 
querable tendency  to  shapelessness.  I  put  on  what- 
ever is  handiest  without  a  thought  of  artistic  design. 
My  pockets  bulge  with  letters  and  books,  and  I  am 
constantly  reminded  by  well-meaning  people  that 
the  top  button  of  my  waistcoat  is  unbuttoned.  I 
am  perfectly  happy  until   I   come   into  contact  with 


ON  CLOTHES  151 

the  really  well-dressed  man  who  has  arranged  himself 
on  a  conscious  scheme,  and  looks  like  a  sartorial 
poem.  I  lunched  with  such  a  man  a  few  days  ago. 
I  could  not  help  envying  the  neat  perfection  of  every- 
thing about  him,  and  I  knew,  as  his  eye  wandered 
to  my  tie,  that  there  was  something  there  that  made 
him  shudder  as  a  harsh  discord  in  music  would  make 
me  shudder.  It  may  have  been  the  wrong  shade; 
it  may  have  been  awry;  it  may  have  been  anything 
that  it  oughtn't  to  have  been.     I  shall  never  know. 

And  it  is  a  great  joy  to  be  able  not  to  care.  The 
war  has  lightened  the  cloud  that  hangs  over  those 
of  us  who  simply  cannot  be  dressy  no  matter  how 
much  we  try.  It  is  no  longer  an  offence  to  appear  a 
little  secondhand.  It  is  almost  a  virtue.  You  may 
wear  your  oldest  clothes  and  look  the  whole  world 
in  the  face  and  defy  its  judgments.  You  may  claim 
that  your  baggy  knees  are  a  sacrifice  laid  on  the 
altar  of  patriotism  and  that  the  hat  of  yester-year 
is  another  nail  in  the  coffin  of  the  Kaiser.  A  dis- 
tinguished Parliamentarian,  a  man  who  has  sat  in 
Cabinets,  boasted  to  me  the  other  day  that  he  had 
not  bought  a  suit  of  clothes  since  the  war  began, 
and  I  had  no  difficulty  in  believing  the  statement. 

That  is  the  sort  of  example  that  makes  me  happy. 
It  gives  me  the  feeling  that  I  am  at  last  really  in  the 
fashion — the  fashion  of  old  and  unconsidered  clothes. 
It  is  a  very  comfortable  fashion.  It  saves  you  worry 
and  it  saves  you  money.  I  hope  it  will  continue 
when  the  war  has  become  a  memory.  And  if  we 
want  a  literary  or  historical  warrant  for  it  we  may  go 


152 


ON  CLOTHES 


to  old  Montaigne.  When  he  was  a  young  fellow 
without  means,  he  says  somewhere,  he  decked  himself 
out  in  brave  apparel  to  show  the  world  that  he  was  a 
person  of  consequence;  but  when  he  came  to  his 
fortune  he  went  in  sober  attire  and  left  his  estates 
and  his  chateaux  to  speak  for  him.  That  is  the  way 
of  us  unfashionable  folk.  We  leave  our  estates  and 
our  chateaux  to  speak  for  us. 


THE  DUEL  THAT  FAILED 


"I  THINK,"  said  my  friend,  "that  the  war  will  end 
when  the  Germans  know  they  are  beaten.  No,  that 
is  not  quite  so  banal  a  prophecy  as  it  seems.  Wars 
do  not  always  end  with  the  knowledge  of  defeat. 
They  only  end  with  the  admission  of  defeat,  which  is 
quite  another  thing.  The  Civil  War  dragged  on  for 
a  year  after  the  South  knew  that  they  were  beaten. 
All  that  bloodshed  in  the  Wilderness  was  suffered  in 
the  teeth  of  the  incontrovertible  fact  that  it  was  in 
vain.  But  the  man  or  the  nation  which  adopts  the 
philosophy  of  the  bully  does  not  fight  when  the  cer- 
tainty of  victory  has  changed  into  the  certainty  of  de- 
feat. I  have  never  known  a  bully  who  was  not  a 
coward  when  his  back  was  to  the  wall.  The  French 
are  at  their  best  in  the  hour  of  defeat.  There  was 
nothing  so  wonderful  in  the  story  of  Napoleon  as  that 
astonishing  campaign  of  1814,  and  even  in  1870-1  it 
was  the  courage  of  France  when  all  was  lost  that  was 
the  most  heroic  phase  of  the  war.  But  the  bully  col- 
lapses when  the  stimulus  of  victory  has  deserted  him. 

"Let  me  tell  you  a  story.     In  1883,  having  grad- 
uated at  Dublin,  I  went  to  Heidelberg — alt  Heidel- 

153 


154  THE  DUEL  THAT  FAILED 

berg  du  feine.  You  know  that  jolly  city,  and  the 
students  who  swagger  along  the  street,  their  faces 
seamed  with  the  scars  of  old  sword  cuts.  I  was  one 
of  a  group  of  young  fellows  from  different  countries 
who  were  studying  at  the  University,  and  who  fra- 
ternised in  a  strange  land. 

"It  was  about  the  time  when  the  safety  bicycle  was 
introduced  in  England,  and  one  of  our  group,  a  young 
Polish  nobleman  who  had  a  great  passion  for  English 
things,  got  a  machine  sent  over  to  him  from  London. 
If  not  the  first,  it  was  certainly  one  of  the  first  ma- 
chines of  the  kind  that  had  appeared  in  Heidelberg. 
You  may  remember  how  strange  it  seemed  even  to  the 
English  public  when  it  first  came  out.  We  had  got 
accustomed  to  the  old  high  bicycle,  and  the  'Safety' 
looked  ridiculous  and  babyish  by  comparison. 

"Well,  in  Heidelberg  the  appearance  of  the  young 
Pole  on  his  'Safety'  created  something  like  a  sensa- 
tion. The  sports  of  the  'Englander'  were  held  in  con- 
tempt by  the  students,  and  this  absurd  toy  was  the 
last  straw.  It  was  the  very  symbol  of  the  childish- 
ness of  a  nation  given  over  to  the  sport  of  babes. 

"One  day  the  Pole  was  riding  out  on  his  bicycle 
when  he  passed  a  couple  of  students,  who  shouted  op- 
probrious epithets  at  the  'Englander'  and  his  prepos- 
terous vehicle.  The  Pole  turned  round,  flung  some 
verbal  change  back  at  them,  and  rode  on  his  way. 

"That  evening  as  he  sat  in  his  room  he  heard  steps 
ascending  the  stairs,  and  there  entered  two  students 
clothed  in  all  the  formality  of  grave  business.  They 
had  brought  the  Pole  a  challenge  to  a  duel  from  each 


THE  DUEL  THAT  FAILED  155 

of  the  two  young  fellows  with  whom  he  had  exchanged 
words  on  the  road.  The  challenges  were  couched  in 
the  most  ruthless  terms.  This  was  to  be  no  mere 
nominal  satisfaction  of  honour.  It  was  to  be  a  duel 
without  guards  or  any  of  those  restrictions  that  are 
cr'e  mon  in  such  affairs.  The  weapon  was  the  sword, 
t    i.  the  time-limit  eight  days. 

"The  seconds  having  fulfilled  their  errand  went 
away,  leaving  the  Pole  in  no  cheerful  frame  of  mind. 
He  was  only  a  very  indifferent  swordsman,  and  had 
never  cultivated  the  sport  of  duelling.  Now  suddenly 
he  was  faced  with  the  necessity  of  fighting  a  duel  in 
which  he  would  certainly  be  beaten,  and  might  be 
killed,  for  he  understood  the  intentions  of  the  chal- 
lengers. It  was  clearly  not  possible  for  him  to  acquire 
in  a  week  such  expertness  with  the  sword  as  would 
give  him  a  chance  of  victory. 

"In  this  emergency  he  came  along  to  the  little 
group  of  which  I  have  spoken.  We  were  playing  cards 
when  he  entered,  but  stopped  when  we  saw  that  some- 
thing unusual  had  happened.  He  told  us  the  story  of 
the  bicycle  ride  and  the  sequel.  What  was  he  to  do? 
He  must  fight,  of  course,  but  how  was  he  to  get  a  dog's 
chance  ? 

"Now  the  oldest  of  our  group,  and  by  far  the  most 
worldly  wise,  was  an  American.  He  listened  to  the 
Pole  and  agreed  that  there  was  no  time  for  him  to 
become  sufficiently  expert  with  the  sword.  'But  can 
you  shoot?'  he  asked  the  Pole.  Yes,  he  was  not  a  bad 
shot.  The  American  took  up  an  ace  from  a  pack  of 
cards  and  held  it  up.    'Could  you,  standing  where  you 


156  THE  DUEL  THAT  FAILED 

are,  hit  that  ace  with  a  revolver?'  'I  am  not  sure  that 
I  could  hit  it,'  answered  the  Pole,  'but  I  should  come 
very  near  it.'  'That's  all  right,'  said  the  American. 
'Now  to  business.  These  fellows  have  forgotten  some- 
thing. They're  so  used  to  fighting  with  the  sword 
that  they've  forgotten  there's  such  a  thing  as  the  'e- 
volver.  And  they're  trying  to  bluff  you  into  their  cJwn 
terms.  They've  forgotten,  or  don't  choose  to  remem- 
ber, that,  as  the  challenged  party,  you  have  choice  of 
weapons.  Now  we'll  draw  up  an  answer  to  this  letter, 
accepting  the  challenge,  claiming  the  choice  of  weapons, 
choosing  the  revolver,  and  putting  the  conditions  as 
stiff  as  we  can  make  'em.' 

"So  we  sat  around  the  American  and  composed  the 
reply.  And  I  can  assure  you  it  had  a  very  ugly  look. 
The  Pole  signed  it  with  great  delight,  and  the  Ameri- 
can and  I  as  seconds  delivered  it. 

"Then  we  waited.  One  day  passed  without  an  an- 
swer— two,  three,  four,  five,  six.  Still  no  answer.  We 
were  enjoying  ourselves.  On  the  evening  of  the  sev- 
enth day  the  seconds  reappeared  at  the  Pole's  rooms. 
They  brought  no  acceptance  of  his  challenge,  but  an 
impudent  demand  for  the  original  conditions.  The 
Pole  came  along  to  us  with  the  news.  'That's  all 
right,*  said  the  American.  'We've  got  them  on  the 
run.  Now  to  clinch  the  business.'  And  once  more  we 
sat  round  in  great  glee  to  draft  the  reply.  It  was  as 
hot  as  we  knew  how  to  make  it.  It  breathed  death  in 
every  syllable,  and  it  gave  the  Germans  eight  days  to 
prepare  for  the  end  at  the  muzzle  of  the  revolver. 

"Again  we  waited,  and  again  the  days  passed  with- 


THE  DUEL  THAT  FAILED  157 

out  a  sign.  Then  on  the  eve  of  the  eighth  day  the 
seconds  once  more  appeared.  I  was  present  with  the 
Pole  at  the  time.  I  have  never  seen  a  more  forlorn 
pair  than  those  seconds  made  as  they  entered.  Their 
principals,  driven  into  a  corner,  faced  with  the  alterna- 
tive of  fighting  with  weapons  which  did  not  assure 
them  victory  or  of  accepting  the  humiliation  of  run- 
ning away,  had  decided  to  run  away.  They  would 
not  fight  on  the  conditions  offered  by  the  Pole,  and 
the  seconds  were  a  spectacle  of  humiliation.  Their 
apologies  to  us  struggled  with  their  indignation  at  their 
principals  and  they  went  away  a  chastened  spectacle. 
That  night  we  had  a  gay  gathering  with  the  American 
in  the  chair,  and  I  think  the  incident  must  have  got 
wind  abroad,  for  thenceforward  the  Pole  rode  his 
Safety  in  peace  and  in  triumph.  .  .  . 

"You  may  think  that  story  is  a  trifle.     Well  it  is. 
But  I  think  it  has  some  bearing  on  the  end  of  the  war." 


ON  EARLY  RISING 


There  is  no  period  of  the  year  when  my  spirit  is 
so  much  at  war  with  the  flesh  as  this.  For  the  winter 
is  over,  and  the  woods  are  browning  and  the  choristers 
of  the  fields  are  calling  me  to  matins — and  I  do  not 
go.  Spiritually  I  am  an  early  riser.  I  have  a  passion 
for  the  dawn  and  the  dew  on  the  grass,  and  the  "early 
pipe  of  half-awakened  birds."  On  the  rare  occasions 
on  which  I  have  gone  out  to  meet  the  sun  upon  the 
upland  lawn  or  on  the  mountain  tops  I  have  experi- 
enced an  emotion  that  perhaps  no  other  experience  can 
give.  I  remember  a  morning  in  the  Tyrol  when  I  had 
climbed  Kitzbulhhorn  to  see  the  sun  rise.  I  saw  the 
darkness  changing  to  chill  grey,  but  no  beam  of  sun- 
light came  through  the  massed  clouds  that  barred  the 
east.  Feeling  that  my  night  climb  had  been  in  vain,  I 
turned  round  to  the  west,  and  there,  by  a  sort  of  magi- 
cal reflection,  I  saw  the  sunrise.  A  beam  of  light,  in- 
visible to  the  east,  had  pierced  the  clouds  and  struck 
the  mountains  in  the  west.  It  seemed  to  turn  them 
158 


ON  EARLY  RISING  159 

to  molten  gold,  and  as  it  moved  along  the  black  mass 
it  was  as  though  a  vast  torch  was  setting  the  world 
aflame.  And  I  remembered  that  fine  stanza  of 
Clough's: — 

And  not  through  eastern  windows  only, 
When  morning  comes,  comes  in  the   light. 

In  front  the   dawn  breaks  slow,  how  slowly. 
But  westward,   look,   the  land   is  bright. 

And  there  was  that  other  dawn  which  I  saw,  from 
the  icy  ridge  of  the  Petersgrat,  turning  the  snow-clad 
summits  of  the  Matterhorn,  the  Weisshorn,  and  Mont 
Blanc  to  a  magic  realm  of  rose-tinted  battlements. 

And  there  are  others.  But  they  are  few,  for  though 
I  am  spiritually  a  son  of  the  morning,  I  am  physically 
a  sluggard.  There  are  some  people  who  are  born 
with  a  gift  for  early  rising.  I  was  born  with  a  genius 
for  lying  in  bed.  I  can  go  to  bed  as  late  as  anybody, 
and  have  no  joy  in  a  company  that  begins  to  yawn 
and  grow  drowsy  about  ten  o'clock.  But  in  the  early 
rising  handicap  I  am  not  a  starter.  A  merciful  provi- 
dence has  given  me  a  task  that  keeps  me  working  far 
into  the  night  and  makes  breakfast  and  the  newspaper 
in  bed  a  matter  of  duty.  No  words  can  express  the 
sense  of  secret  satisfaction  with  which  I  wake  and 
realise  that  I  haven't  to  get  up,  that  stern  duty  bids 
me  lie  a  little  longer,  listening  to  the  comfortable 
household  noises  down  below  and  the  cheerful  songs 
outside,  studying  anew  the  pattern  of  the  wall-paper 
and  taking  the  problems  of  life  "lying  down"  in  no 
craven  sense. 


i6o  ON  EARLY  RISING 

I  know  there  are  many  people  who  have  to  catch 
early  morning  buses  and  trams  who  would  envy  me 
if  they  knew  my  luck.  For  the  ignoble  family  of 
sluggards  is  numerous.  It  includes  many  distinguished 
men.  It  includes  saints  as  well  as  sages.  That  moral 
paragon,  Dr.  Arnold,  was  one  of  them ;  Thomson,  the 
author  of  "The  City  of  Dreadful  Night,"  was  another. 
Bishop  Selwyn  even  put  the  duty  of  lying  in  bed  on  a 
moral  plane.  "I  did  once  rise  early,"  he  said,  "but  I 
felt  so  vain  all  the  morning  and  so  sleepy  all  the  after- 
noon that  I  determined  not  do  it  again."  He  stayed 
in  bed  to  mortify  his  pride,  to  make  himself  humble. 
And  is  not  humility  one  of  the  cardinal  virtues  of  a 
good  Christian?  I  have  fancied  myself  that  people  who 
rise  early  are  slightly  self-righteous.  They  can't  help 
feeling  a  little  scornful  of  us  sluggards.  And  we  know 
it.  Humility  is  the  badge  of  all  our  tribe.  We  are  not 
proud  of  lying  in  bed.  We  are  ashamed — and  happy. 
The  noblest  sluggard  of  us  all  has  stated  our  case  for 
us.  "No  man  practises  so  well  as  he  writes,"  said  Dr. 
Johnson.  "I  have  all  my  life  been  lying  till  noon; 
yet  I  tell  all  young  men,  and  tell  them  with  great 
sincerity,  that  nobody  who  does  not  rise  early  will  ever 
do  any  good." 

Of  course  we  pay  the  penalty.  We  do  not  catch 
the  early  worm.  When  we  turn  out  all  the  bargains 
have  gone,  and  we  are  left  only  with  the  odds  and 
ends.  From  a  practical  point  of  view,  we  have  no 
defence.  We  know  that  an  early  start  is  the  secret 
of  success.  It  used  to  be  said  of  the  Duke  of  New- 
castle that  he  always  went  about  as  though  he  had 


ON  EARLY  RISING  l6i 

got  up  half  an  hour  late,  and  was  trying  all  day  to 
catch  it  up.  And  history  has  recorded  what  a  gro- 
tesque failure  he  was  in  politics.  When  someone  asked 
Nelson  for  the  secret  of  his  success  he  replied:  "Well, 
you  see,  I  always  manage  to  be  a  quarter  of  an  hour  in 
front  of  the  other  fellow."  And  the  recipe  holds  good 
to-day.  When  the  inner  history  of  the  battle  of  the 
Falkland  Islands  is  told  in  detail  it  will  be  found  that 
it  was  the  early  start  insisted  on  by  the  one  man  of 
military   genius   that   gave   us   that   priceless   victory. 

And  if  you  have  ever  been  on  a  walking  tour  or  a 
cycling  tour  you  know  that  early  rising  is  the  key  of 
the  business.  Start  early  and  you  are  master  of  your 
programme  and  your  fate.  You  can  linger  by  the  way, 
take  a  dip  in  the  mountain  tarn,  lie  under  the  shadow 
of  a  great  rock  in  the  hot  afternoon,  and  arrive  at  the 
valley  inn  in  comfortable  time  for  the  evening  meal. 
Start  late  and  you  are  the  slave  of  the  hours.  You 
chase  them  with  weary  feet,  pass  the  tarn  with  the 
haste  of  a  despatch  bearer  though  you  are  dying  for  a 
bathe,  and  arrive  when  the  roast  and  boiled  are  cleared 
away  and  the  merry  company  are  doing  a  "traverse"' 
around  the  skirting  board  of  the  billiard  room.  Happy 
reader,  if  you  know  the  inn  I  mean — the  jolly  inn  at 
Wasdale  Head. 

No,  whether  from  the  point  of  view  of  business  or 
pleasure,  worldly  wisdom  or  spiritual  satisfaction,  there 
is  nothing  to  be  said  in  our  defence.  All  that  we  can 
say  for  lying  in  bed  is  what  Foote — I  think  it  was 
Foote — said  about  the  rum.  "I  went  into  a  public- 
house,"  he  said,  "and  heard  one  man  call  for  some  rum 


1 62 


ON  EARLY  RISING 


because  he  was  hot,  and  another  call  for  some  rum 
because  he  was  cold.  Then  I  called  for  some  rum 
because  I  liked  it,"  We  sluggards  had  better  make  the 
same  clean  breast  of  the  business.  We  lie  in  bed  be- 
cause we  like  it.  Just  that.  Nothing  more.  We  like 
it.  We  claim  no  virtue,  ask  no  indulgence,  accept 
with  humility  the  rebukes  of  the  strenuous. 

As  for  me,  I  have  a  licence — nay,  I  have  more;  I 
have  a  duty.  It  is  my  duty  to  lie  in  bed  o'  mornings 
until  the  day  is  well  aired.  For  I  burn  the  midnight 
oil,  and  the  early  blackbird — the  first  of  our  choir  to 
awake — has  often  saluted  me  on  my  way  home.  There- 
fore I  lie  in  bed  in  the  morning  looking  at  the  ceiling 
and  listening  to  the  sounds  of  the  busy  world  with- 
out a  twinge  of  conscience.  If  you  were  listening,  you 
would  hear  me  laugh  softly  to  myself  as  I  give  the 
pillow  another  shake  and  thank  providence  for  having 
given  me  a  job  that  enables  me  to  enjoy  the  privileges 
of  the  sluggard  without  incurring  the  odium  that  he  so 
richly  deserves. 


J^'c^^: 

u 

^J^^ 

fe^\ 

v^ 

w 

n\i'? 

|fr^\l 

^U^M'i 

1 

ft 

'M|^ 

'^ 

Ir 

^~"y' 

iww 

ON  BEING  KNOWN 


I  WENT  into  a  tailor's  in  the  West  End  the  other 
day  to  order  some  clothes.  My  shadow  rarely  darkens 
a  tailor's  door  and  this  tailor's  door  it  had  never 
darkened  before.  I  was  surprised  therefore  when, 
after  the  preliminaries  of  measurement  were  finished, 
the  attendant,  in  reply  to  a  question  about  a  deposit, 
said:  "No  deposit  is  necessary.  The  name  is  good 
enough."  I  confess  I  felt  the  compliment  as  an 
agreeable  shock.  The  request  for  a  deposit  always 
jars  on  me.  I  know  that  "business  is  business"  and 
that  in  this  wilderness  of  London  it  is  no  dishonour 
to  be  unknown  and  no  discredit  to  be  formally  dis- 
credited; but  yet  .  .  .  And  here  was  a  man  I  had 
never  seen  before  and  who  had  never  seen  me  who 
was  prepared  to  execute  my  order  without  any  sordid 
assurances  of  character  on  my  side — simply    on    my 

163 


i64  ON  BEING  KNOWN 

name.  Such  a  tribute  needed  some  recognition. 
"It  will  save  trouble,"  said  I,  "if  I  pay  the  account 
now."  And  I  did  so.  I  fancy  the  action  was  a 
little  childish,  but  I  couldn't  help  it.  I  really  couldn't. 
I  simply  had  to  do  something  civil  and  this  was  the 
only  civil  thing  that  occurred  to  me. 

And  then  I  went  out  of  the  shop  feeling  that  I  had 
come  suddenly  into  an  unexpected  and  pleasing  in- 
heritance. I  knew  now  something  of  the  emotion 
of  Mr.   Sholes,   the  eminent  author — 

Whenever  down  Fleet  Street  he  strolls 

The  policemen  look  hurriedly  up 
And  say,   "There's  the  great  Mr.   Sholes, 

Who  writes  such   delectable   gup." 

I  might  not  be  able  to  write  such  delectable  gup 
as  Mr.  Sholes,  but  I  could  write  gup  good  enough 
to  make  that  fellow  in  the  shop  trust  me  for  a  six 
guinea  suit.  I  did  not  observe  that  the  policeman 
took  any  particular  notice  of  me  as  I  passed  along. 
But — "Give  me  time,"  said  I,  addressing  the  shade 
of  Mr.  Sholes.  "Give  me  time.  I  have  made  a 
start  in  the  handicap  of  the  famous.  I  am  known 
to  that  excellent  shopman.  I  may  yet  be  known 
(favourably  and  admiringly)  to  the  police.  I  may 
yet  walk  the  Strand  with  a  nimbus  that  will  challenge 
Mr.  Horatio  Bottomley  and  Mr.  Pemberton  Billing 
and  the  illustrious  great.  I  may  yet  have  the  agree- 
able consciousness  that  heads  are  turning  in  my 
direction,  and  that  the  habitual  Londoner  is  saying 
to  his  country  cousin,  'That,  my  dear  Jane,  is  the  emi- 


ON  BEING  KNOWN  165 

nent  Mr.  Alpha  of  the  Plough  who  writes  those  articles 
in  The  Star.  .  .  .  Give  me  time,  Mr.  Sholes.  Give 
me  time." 

But  as  I  walked  on  and  as  that  momentary  flash 
of  the  limelight  faded  from  me  I  became  less  confident 
that  I  wanted  to  live  in  it.  I  became  sensible  of  the 
pleasures  of  obscurity.  I  strolled  along  untroubled  by 
the  curious  and  enjoyed  the  pageant  of  the  pavement, 
the  display  of  dress,  the  diversity  of  faces,  the  play  of 
light  in  the  eyes,  the  incidents  of  the  streets.  I  paused 
in  front  of  shops  and  fell  into  a  reverie  before  the 
window  of  the  incomparable  Mr.  Bumpus — the  win- 
dow of  stately  books  in  noble  bindings.  I  was  sub- 
merged in  the  tide  of  the  common  life  and  felt  the 
enfranchisement  of  the  obscure.  I  could  walk  which 
way  I  pleased  and  no  one  would  remark  me;  pause 
when  I  liked  and  be  unobserved.  But — why,  here  is 
Lord  French  of  Ypres  coming  along.  See  how  heads 
are  turning  and  fingers  are  pointing  and  tongues  are 
wagging — "That,  my  dear  Jane  .  .  ."  What  a  nui- 
sance this  limelight  must  be! 

And  if  you  are  really  conspicuous  you  cannot  trust 
yourself  out  of  doors — unless  you  have  the  courage 
of  John  Burns,  who  does  not  care  two  pins  who  sees 
him  or  talks  about  him.  The  King,  poor  man,  could 
no  more  walk  along  this  pavement  as  I  am  doing, 
rubbing  shoulders  with  the  people  and  enjoying  the 
comedy  of  life,  than  he  could  write  to  the  newspapers, 
or  address  a  crowd  from  the  plinth  of  the  Nelson 
Monument,  or  go  to  a  booking-office  and  take  a  ticket 
for  the  Tube,  or  into  an  A.B.C.  shop  and  ask  for  a 


i66  ON  BEING  KNOWN 

cup  of  tea,  or  any  of  the  thousand  and  one  things  that 
I  am  at  liberty  to  do  and  enjoy  doing  without  let  or 
hindrance,  comment  or  disturbance.  He  is  the  pris- 
oner of  publicity.  He  is  pursued  by  the  limelight,  as 
the  fleeing  soul  of  the  poet  was  pursued  by  the  hound 
of  heaven.  He  can't  look  in  Bumpus's.  He  can't  go 
on  to  an  allotment  and  dig  undisturbed.  You  cannot 
have  limelight  playing  about  an  allotment.  In  fact, 
the  more  one  thinks  of  it  the  more  impoverished  his 
life  seems,  and  so  in  a  lesser  degree  with  all  the  emi- 
nent people  who  are  pursued  by  the  photographer, 
mobbed  in  the  streets,  fawned  on  by  their  friends,  slan- 
dered by  their  enemies,  exalted  or  defamed  in  the  Press, 
and  dissected  in  every  club  smoking-room  and  bar  par- 
lour. 

But,  you  will  say,  think  of  the  glory  of  having  your 
name  handed  down  to  posterity.  It  is  a  very  ques- 
tionable privilege.  I  am  not  much  concerned  about 
posterity.  I  respect  it,  as  Wordsworth  respected  it. 
"What  has  posterity  done  for  me  that  I  should  con- 
sider it?"  some  one  said  to  him,  and  he  replied,  "No, 
but  the  past  has  done  much  for  you."  It  was  a  just 
reminder  of  our  obligations.  But  it  is  a  lean  ambi- 
tion to  pose  for  posterity.  I  cannot  thrill  to  the  vision 
of  the  trumpeter  Fame  blowing  my  name  down  the 
corridors  of  time  while  I  sleep  on  unheeding  in 

My    patrimony    of    a    little   mould 
And  entail  of  four  planks. 

I  am  not  warmed  by  the  idea  of  a  marble  image  stand- 
ing with  outstretched  arm  in  the  Abbey  or  sitting  on 


ON  BEING  KNOWN 


167 


a  horse  for  ever  in  the  streets,  wet  or  fine,  or  perched 
up  on  a  towering  column  to  be  a  convenience  to  vagrant 
birds.  If  fame  is  often  a  nuisance  to  the  living,  it  is 
only  an  empty  echo  for  the  dead.  Spare  me  marble 
trappings,  good  friends,  and  give  me  the  peace  of  for- 
getfulness. 

By  the  time  I  had  reached  the  end  of  my  walk  and 
iiiy  ruminations,  I  felt  less  cordial  towards  that  man 
in  the  shop.  I  wished,  on  the  whole,  that  he  had 
asked  for  the  deposit. 


ON  A  MAP  OF  THE  OBERLAND 

I  WAS  rummaging  among  my  books  this  morning  when 
I  came  across  Frey's  map  of  the  Bernese  Oberland, 
and  forthwith  forgot  the  object  of  my  search  in  the 
presence  of  this  exhilarating  discovery.  Mr.  Chester- 
ton, I  think,  once  described  how  he  evoked  the  emo- 
tions of  a  holiday  by  calling  a  cab,  piling  it  up  with 
luggage,  and  driving  to  the  station.  Then,  having 
had  his  sensation,  he  drove  home  again.  It  seemed 
to  me  rather  a  poor  way  of  taking  an  imaginative 
holiday.  One  might  as  well  heat  an  empty  oven  in 
order  to  imagine  a  feast.  The  true  medium  of  the 
spiritual  holiday  Is  the  map.  That  is  the  magic  carpet 
that  whisks  you  away  from  this  sodden  earth  and 
unhappy  present  to  sunny  lands  and  serener  days. 
i68 


ON  A  MAP  OF  THE  OBERLAND      169 

There  are  times  when  books  offer  no  escape  from 
the  burden  of  things,  when  as  Mr.  Biglow  says 

I'm  as  unsoshul   as  a  stone, 

And  kind  o'  suffercate  to  be  alone; 

but  there  are  no  circumstances  in  which  a  map  will 
not  do  the  trick.  I  do  not  care  whether  it  is  a  map 
of  the  known  or  the  unknown,  the  visited  or  the 
unvisited,  the  real  or  the  fanciful.  It  was  the  jolly 
map  which  Stevenson  invented  in  an  idle  hour  which 
became  the  seed  of  "Treasure  Island."  That  is  how 
a  map  stimulated  his  fancy  and  sent  it  out  on  a  career 
of  immortal  adventure.  And  though  you  have  not 
Stevenson's  genius  for  describing  the  adventure,  that 
is  what  a  map  will  do  for  you  if  you  have  a  spark 
of  the  boy's  love  of  romance  left  in  your  soul.  It  is 
the  "magic  casement"  of  the  poet.  I  have  never 
crossed  the  Atlantic  in  the  flesh,  but,  lord,  what 
spiritual  adventures  I  have  had  with  maps  in  the  en- 
chanted world  on  the  other  side !  I  have  sailed  with 
Drake  in  Nombre  de  Dios  Bay,  and  navigated  the  grim 
straits  with  Magellan,  and  lived  with  the  Incas  of 
Peru  and  the  bloody  Pizarro,  and  gone  up  the  broad 
bosom  of  the  Amazon  into  fathomless  forests,  and 
sailed  through  the  Golden  Gates  on  golden  afternoons, 
and  stood  with  Cortes  "silent  upon  a  peak  in  Darien." 
I  know  the  Shenandoah  Valley  far  better  than  I  know 
Wimbledon  Common,  and  have  fought  over  every  inch 
of  it  by  the  side  of  Stonewall  Jackson,  just  as  I  have 
lived  in  the  mazes  of  the  Wilderness  with  Grant 
and  Lee, 


I70    ON  A  MAP  OF  THE  OBERLAND 

Do  not  tell  me  I  have  never  been  to  these  places 
and  a  thousand  others  like  them.  I  swear  that  I  have. 
I  have  traversed  them  all  in  the  kingdom  of  the 
mind,  and  if  you  will  give  me  a  map  and  a  rainy 
day  (like  this)  I  will  go  on  a  holiday  more  en- 
trancing than  any  that  Mr.  Cook  ever  planned.  It 
is  not  taking  tickets  that  makes  the  traveller.  I  have 
known  people  who  have  gone  round  the  world  with- 
out seeing  anything,  while  Thoreau  could  stay  in  his 
back  garden  and  entertain  the  universe. 

But  if  maps  of  the  unvisited  earth  have  the  magic 
of  romance  in  them,  maps  of  the  places  you  have 
known  have  a  fascination,  no  less  rich  and  deep.  They, 
too,  take  you  out  on  a  holiday,  but  it  is  a  holiday  of 
memory  and  not  of  the  imagination.  You  are  back 
with  yourself  in  other  days  and  in  other  places  and 
with  other  friends.  You  may  tell  me  that  this  was 
a  dreary,  rainy  morning,  sir,  and  that  I  spent  it  look- 
ing out  over  the  dismal  valley  and  the  sad  cornfields 
with  their  stricken  crops.  Nothing  of  the  sort.  I 
spent  it  in  the  Bernese  Oberland,  with  an  incom- 
parable companion.  Three  weeks  I  put  in,  sir,  three 
weeks  on  the  glaciers.  See,  there,  on  this  glorious 
map  of  Frey's,  is  Mvirren,  from  whence  we  started.  In 
front  is  the  mighty  snow  mass  of  the  Jungfrau,  the 
Monch  and  the  Eiger,  shutting  out  the  glacier  solitudes 
whither  we  are  bound. 

There  goes  our  track  up  the  ravine  to  Obersteinberg 
and  there  is  the  Miitthorn  hut,  standing  on  the  bit 
of  barren  rock  that  sticks  out  from  the  great  ice- 
billows   of  the  Tschingelhorn   glacier.     Do  you   re- 


ON  A  MAP  OF  THE  OBERLAND     171 

member,  companion  of  mine,  the  mighty  bowls  of 
steaming  tea  we  drank  when  we  reached  that  haven 
of  refuge?  And  do  you  remember  our  start  from 
the  hut  at  two  o'clock  in  the  morning,  roped  with 
our  guide  and  with  our  lanterns  lit — and  the  silence 
of  our  march  over  the  snow  and  ice  and  beneath  the 
glittering  stars,  and  the  hollow  boom  of  distant  ava- 
lanches, and  the  breaking  of  the  wondrous  dawn  over 
the  ice-fields,  and  the  unforgettable  view  as  we  reached 
the  ridge  of  the  Petersgrat  and  saw  across  the  Rhone 
Valley  the  great  mountain  masses  beyond — the  Weiss- 
horn,  the  Matterhorn,  Mont  Blanc,  and  the  rest — 
touched  to  an  unearthly  beauty  by  the  flush  of  the 
new  risen  sun?  And  the  scramble  up  the  Tschingel- 
horn,  and  the  long  grind  down  the  ice-slopes  and  the 
moraine  to  the  seclusion  of  the  Lotschenthal  ?  And 
then  the  days  that  followed  in  the  great  ice  region 
behind  the  Jungfrau;  the  long,  silent  marches  over 
pathless  snows  and  by  yawning  crevasses,  the  struggle 
up  peaks  in  the  dawn,  and  the  nights  in  the  huts, 
sometimes  with  other  climbers  who  blew  in  across 
the  snows  from  some  remote  adventure,  sometimes 
alone  as  in  that  tiny  hut  on  the  Finsteraarhorn,  where 
we  paid  three  and  a  half  francs  for  a  bunch  of  wood 
to  boil  our  kettle? 

There  is  the  Oberaar  hut  standing  on  the  ledge  of 
a  dizzy  precipice.  Do  you  remember  the  sunset 
we  saw  from  thence,  when  out  of  the  general  gloom 
of  the  conquering  night  one  beam  from  the  vanished 
sun  caught  the  summit  of  the  Dom  and  made  it  gleam 
like  a  palace  in  the  heavens  or  like  the  towers  of  the 


172     ON  A  MAP  OF  THE  OBERLAND 

radiant  city  that  Christian  saw  across  the  dark  river? 
And  there  at  the  end  of  the  journey  is  the  great 
glacier  that  leaps  down,  seven  thousand  feet,  between 
the  Schreckhorn  and  the  Wetterhorn,  to  the  gracious 
valley  of  Grindelwald.  How  innocent  it  looks  on  this 
map,  but  what  a  day  of  gathering  menace  was  that 
when  we  got  caught  between  the  impassable  crevasses, 
and  night  came  on  and  the  rain  came  down  and  .  .  . 
But  let  the  magic  carpet  hasten  slowly  here.  .  .  . 

It  was  still  dark  when  Heinrich  of  the  Looking 
Glass  leapt  up  from  our  bed  of  hay  in  the  Dolfuss 
hut,  lit  the  candle  and  began  to  prepare  the  break- 
fast. Outside  the  rain  came  down  in  torrents  and 
the  clouds  hung  thick  and  low  over  glacier  and  peaks. 
Our  early  start  for  the  Gleckstein  hut  was  thwarted. 
Night  turned  to  dawn  and  dawn  to  day,  and  still  the 
rain  pelted  down  on  that  vast  solitude  of  rock  and 
ice.  Then  the  crest  of  the  Finsteraarhorn  appeared 
through  a  rent  in  the  clouds,  patches  of  blue  broke 
up  the  grey  menace  of  the  sky,  the  rain  ceased. 
Otmar  and  Heinrich  hastily  washed  the  iron  cups  and 
plates  and  swept  the  floor  of  the  hut,  and  then,  should- 
ering our  rucksacks  and  closing  the  door  of  the  empty 
hut,  we  scrambled  down  the  rocks  to  the  glacier. 

It  was  8.15  and  the  guidebooks  said  it  was  a  seven 
hours*  journey  to  the  Gleckstein.  That  seemed  to 
leave  ample  margin;  but  do  not  "trust  guidebooks  in 
a  season  of  drought  when  the  crevasses  are  open. 

This  wisdom,  however,  came  later.  All  through 
the  morning  we  made  excellent  progress.  The  sun 
shone,  the  clouds  hung  lightly  about  the  peaks,  the 


ON  A  MAP  OF  THE  OBERLAND     173 

ice  was  in  excellent  condition.  Heinrich,  who  brought 
up  the  rear,  occasionally  broke  into  song.  Now,  when 
Heinrich  sings  you  know  that  all  is  well.  When  he 
whistles  you  are  in  a  tight  place.  For  the  rest  he  is 
silent.  Otmar,  his  brother,  is  less  communicative.  He 
goes  on  ahead  silently  under  all  conditions,  skirting 
crevasses,  testing  snow  bridges  to  see  if  they  will 
bear,  occasionally  pausing  to  consult  his  maps.  Once 
only  did  he  burst  into  song  that  day — but  of  that 
later.  Otmar  is  an  autocrat  on  the  ice  or  the  rocks. 
In  the  hut  he  will  make  your  tea  and  oil  your  boots 
and  help  Heinrich  to  wash  your  cups  and  sweep  the 
floor.  But  out  in  the  open  he  is  your  master.  If 
you  ask  him  inconvenient  questions  he  does  not  hear. 
If  you  suggest  a  second  breakfast  before  it  is  due  his 
silence  as  he  pounds  forward  ahead  humiliates  you. 
If  your  pace  slackens  there  is  a  rebuke  in  the  taut  in- 
sistence of  the  rope. 

It  was  eleven  when  we  halted  for  our  cold  tea  and 
sardines  (white  wine  for  Otmar  and  Heinrich).  The 
pause  gave  Heinrich  an  opportunity  of  taking  out 
his  pocket  looking-glass  and  touching  up  his  mous- 
tache ends  and  giving  a  flick  to  his  eye-brows.  Hein- 
rich is  as  big  and  brawny  as  an  ox,  but  he  has  the 
soul  of  a  dandy. 

It  had  been  easy  going  on  the  furrowed  face  of 
the  ice,  but  when  we  came  to  the  snow  slope  that 
leads  to  the  Lauteraar  saddle  our  pace  slackened.  The 
snow  was  soft,  and  we  sank  at  each  step  up  to  our 
shins.  Otmar  eased  the  passage  up  the  slope  by  zig- 
zagging, but  it  was  one  o'clock  when  we  came  face 


174     ON  A  MAP  OF  THE  OBERLAND 

to  face  with  the  wall  of  snow,  flanked  by  walls  of 
rock  which  form  the  "saddle."  Otmar  led  my  com- 
panion over  the  rocks ;  but  decided  that  Heinrich  should 
bring  me  up  the  snow  face.  Step  cutting  is  slow  work, 
and  though  Otmar,  having  reached  the  top  of  the  sad- 
dle, threw  down  a  second  rope,  which  Heinrich  lashed 
round  his  waist,  it  was  two  o'clock  before  that  terrible 
wall  was  surmounted,  and  we  could  look  down  the 
great  glacier  that  plunges  seven  thousand  feet  down 
into  the  hollow  where  Grindelwald  lay  with  its  red 
roofs  and  pleasant  pastures,  its  hotels  and  its  tourists. 

We  had  taken  nearly  six  hours  to  surmount  the  pass ; 
but  we  seemed,  nevertheless,  to  have  the  day  well 
in  hand.  Four  thousand  feet  down  on  a  spur  of  the 
Wetterhorn  we  could  see  the  slate  roof  of  the  Gleck- 
stein  hut.  It  seemed  an  easy  walk  over  the  glacier, 
but  in  these  vast  solitudes  of  ice  and  snow  and  rock 
vision  is  deceptive.  The  distance  seems  incredibly  near, 
for  the  familiar  measurements  of  the  eye  are  want- 
ing. 

The  weather  had  changed  again.  Clouds  had  settled 
on  the  mighty  cliffs  of  the  Schreckhorn  on  our  left  and 
the  Wetterhorn  on  our  right.  Mist  was  rolling  over 
the  pass;  rain  began  to  fall.  We  cut  short  our  lunch 
(cold  tea,  cold  veal,  bread  and  jam),  and  began  our 
descent,  making  a  wide  detour  of  the  glacier  to  the 
right  in  the  direction  of  the  Wetterhorn.  We  de- 
scended a  rocky  precipice  that  cleaves  the  glacier,  crossed 
an  ice  slope  on  which  Otmar  had  to  cut  steps,  and 
came  in  view  of  Grindelwald,  lying  like  a  picture 
postcard  far  down  below — so  immediately  below  that  it 


Wherever  he  turned  he  was  baulked. 


176     ON  A  MAP  OF  THE  OBERLAND 

seemed  that  one  might  fling  a  stone  down  into  its  midst. 

At  half-past  three  it  began  to  dawn  on  me  that 
things  were  not  going  well.  Otmar  had,  during  the 
past  three  weeks,  been  the  most  skilful  of  guides  over 
most  of  the  great  glacier  passes  of  the  Oberland  and 
up  many  a  peak;  but  so  far  we  had  seen  nothing  like 
the  condition  of  the  Grindelwaldfirn.  The  appalling 
slope  of  this  great  sea  of  ice  makes  a  descent  in  normal 
times  a  task  of  difficulty.  But  this  year  the  long 
drought  had  left  open  all  the  yawning  crevasses  with 
which  it  is  seamed  and  its  perils  were  infinitely  in- 
creased. 

Again  and  again  Otmar  sought  a  way  out  of  the 
maze,  taking  us  across  perilous  snow  bridges  and  cut- 
ting steps  on  knife  edges  of  ice  where  one  looked  down 
the  glittering  slope  on  one  side  and  into  the  merciless 
green-blue  depths  of  the  crevasse  on  the  other.  But 
wherever  he  turned  he  was  baulked.  Always  the 
path  led  to  some  vast  fissure  which  could  be  neither 
leapt  nor  bridged.  Once  we  seemed  to  have  escaped 
and  glissaded  swiftly  down.  Then  the  slope  got  steeper 
and  we  walked — steeper  and  Otmar  began  cutting 
steps  in  the  ice — steeper  and  Otmar  paused  and  looked 
down  the  leap  of  the  glacier.  We  stood  silent  for 
his  verdict.  "It  will  not  go."  We  turned  on  the 
rope  without  a  word,  and  began  remounting  our  steps. 

It  was  half-past  four.  The  mist  was  thickening,  the 
rain  falling  steadily.  Below,  the  red  roofs  and  green 
pastures  of  Grindelwald  gleamed  in  the  sunlight  of 
the  valley.  Nearer,  the  slate  roof  of  the  Gleckstein 
on  its  spur  of  rock  was  still  visible.    Two  hours  before 


ON  A  MAP  OF  THE  OBERLAND     177 

it  had  seemed  but  a  step  to  either.  Now  they  seemed 
to  have  receded  to  another  hemisphere. 

For  the  first  time  there  flashed  through  the  mind 
the  thought  that  possibly  we  should  not  reach  the  hut 
after  all.  A  night  on  the  glacier,  or  rather  on  the 
dark  ridges  of  the  Wetterhorn!     A  wet  night  too. 

The  same  thought  was  working  in  Otmar's  mind. 
No  word  came  from  him,  no  hint  that  he  was  con- 
cerned. But  the  whole  bearing  of  the  man  was 
changed.  In  the  long  hours  of  the  morning  he  had 
led  us  listlessly  and  silently;  now  he  was  like  a  hound 
on  the  trail.  The  tug  of  the  rope  became  more  in- 
sistent. He  made  us  face  difficulties  that  he  had 
skirted  before;  took  us  on  to  snow  bridges  that  made 
the  mind  reel;  slashed  steps  with  his  ice  axe  with  a 
swift  haste  that  spoke  in  every  stroke  of  the  coming 
night.  Once  I  failed  to  take  a  tricky  snow  ridge 
that  came  to  a  point  between  two  crevasses,  slipped 
back,  and  found  myself  in  the  crevasse,  with  my  feet 
dancing  upon  nothing.  The  rope  held.  Otmar  hauled 
me  out  without  a  word,  and  we  resumed  our  march. 

Heinrich  had  been  unroped  earlier  and  sent  to  pros- 
pect from  above  for  a  possible  way  out.  We  followed 
at  his  call,  but  he  led  us  into  new  mazes,  down  into 
a  great  cavern  in  the  glacier,  where  we  passed  over 
the  ruined  walls  and  buttresses  of  an  ice  cathedral, 
emerging  on  the  surface  of  the  glacier  again,  only  to 
find  ourselves  once  more  checked  by  impassable  gulfs. 

It  was  now  half-past  five.  We  had  been  three  and 
a  half  hours  in  vainly  attempting  to  find  a  way  down 
the  ice.     The  mist  had  come  thick  upon  us.     The 


178     ON  A  MAP  OF  THE  OBERLAND 

peaks  were  blotted  out,  Grindelwald  was  blotted  out; 
the  hut  was  no  longer  visible.  Only  an  hour  and  a 
half  of  light  remained,  and  the  whole  problem  was 
still  unsolved.  The  possibility  of  a  night  on  the  ice 
or  the  rocks  began  to  approach  the  sphere  of  certainty. 
My  strength  was  giving  out,  and  I  slipped  again  and 
again  in  the  ice  steps.  A  kind  of  dull  resignation  had 
taken  possession  of  the  mind.  One  went  forward  in  a 
stupor,  responsive  to  the  tug  of  the  rope,  but  indiffer- 
ent to  all  else. 

Otmar  was  now  really  concerned.  He  came  from 
a  valley  south  of  the  Rhone,  and  was  unfamiliar  with 
this  pass;  but  he  is  of  a  great  strain  of  Alpine  guides, 
is  proud  of  his  achievements — he  had  led  in  the  first 
ascent  of  the  Zmutt  ridge  of  the  Matterhorn  that  year 
— and  to  be  benighted  on  a  glacier  would  have  been  a 
deadly  blow  to  his  pride. 

He  unroped  himself,  and  dashed  away  in  the  direc- 
tion of  the  ridge  of  the  Wetterhorn  that  plunged  down 
on  our  right.  We  watched  him  skimming  across  crev- 
asses, pausing  here  and  there  to  slash  a  step  in  the  ice 
for  foothold,  balancing  himself  on  icy  ridges  and  van- 
ishing into  a  couloir  of  the  mountain — first  depositing 
his  rucksack  on  the  rocks  to  await  his  return.  Five 
minutes  passed — ten.  Heinrich  startled  the  silence 
with  an  halloo — no  answer.  A  quarter  of  an  hour — 
then,  from  far  below,  a  faint  cry  came. 

"It  will  go,"  said  Heinrich,  "get  on."  We  hurried 
across  the  intervening  ice,  and  met  Otmar  returning 
like  a  cat  up  the  rocks.  Down  that  narrow  slit  in  the 
mountain  we  descended  with  headlong  speed.     There 


ON  A  MAP  OF  THE  OBERLAND     179 

were  drops  of  thirty  and  fifty  feet,  slabs  of  rock  to 
cross  with  meticulous  foot  and  hand  hold,  passages  of 
loose  rock  where  a  careless  move  would  have  sent  great 
stones  thundering  on  the  heads  of  those  before.  Once 
Heinrich  lowered  me  like  a  bale  of  goods  down  a 
smooth-faced  precipice  of  fifty  feet.  Once  he  cried: 
"Quick:  it  is  dangerous,"  and  looking  up  at  the  crest 
of  the  Wetterhorn  I  saw  a  huge  block  of  ice  poised 
perilously  above  our  downward  path. 

The  night  was  now  upon  us.  We  were  wet  to  the 
skin.  A  thunderstorm  of  exceptional  violence  added 
to  the  grimness  of  the  setting.  But  we  were  down 
the  ridge  at  last.  We  raced  across  a  narrow  tongue 
of  the  glacier  and  were  safe  on  the  spur  of  rocks 
where  we  knew  the  Gleckstein  hut  to  be.  But  there 
was  no  light  to  guide  us.  We  scrambled  breathlessly 
over  boulders  and  across  torrents  from  the  Wetterhorn, 
each  of  us  hardly  visibly  to  the  other  in  the  thickening 
mist,  save  when  the  blaze  of  lightning  flashed  the  scene 
into  sudden  and  spectral  clearness.  At  last  we  struck 
a  rough  mountain  path,  and  five  minutes  later  we  lifted 
the  latch  of  the  hut. 

"What  is  the  time,  Heinrich?" 

"Half-past  eight." 

"What  would  you  have  done,  Otmar,  if  we  had 
been  benighted?" 

Otmar  did  not  hear.  But  as  he  got  the  wood  and 
made  the  fire,  and  emptied  the  rucksacks  of  our  pro- 
visions, he  began  to  sing  in  a  pleasant  tenor  voice. 
And  Heinrich  joined  in  with  his  full  bass. 

And   presently,   stripped   of   our   wet  clothes   and 


i8o     ON  A  MAP  OF  THE  OBERLAND 

wrapped  in  blankets,  we  sat  down  to  a  glorious  meal 
of  steaming  tea — in  an  iron  teapot  as  large  as  a  pail 
— tongue,  soup,  potted  chicken,  and  jam, 

"That  was  a  narrow  escape  from  a  night  on  the 
mountains,"  I  said. 

"It  is  a  very  foolish  glacier,"  said  Heinrich. 

Otmar  said  nothing. 

Five  hours  later  Otmar  woke  us  from  our  bed  of 
hay. 

"It  is  fine,"  he  said.      "The  Wetterhorn  will  go." 

As  I  look  up  it  is  still  raining  and  the  sad  sheaves 
still  stand  in  the  sodden  fields.  But  I  have  been  a 
journey.  I  have  had  three  weeks  in  the  Oberland 
— three  weeks  of  summer  days  with  a  world  at  peace, 
the  world  that  seems  like  a  dream  we  once  had,  so 
remote  has  it  become  and  so  incredible.  I  roll  up  my 
magic  carpet  and  bless  the  man  who  invented  maps  for 
the  solace  of  men. 


X\UA/>.^ 


?5i%t 


ON  A  TALK  IN  A  BUS 

I  JUMPED  on  to  a  bus  in  Fleet  Street  the  other  evening 
and  took  a  seat  against  the  door.  Opposite  me  sat 
a  young  woman  in  a  conductor's  dress,  who  carried 
on  a  lively  conversation  with  the  woman  conductor 
in  charge  of  the  bus.  There  were  the  usual  criticisms 
of  the  habits  and  wickedness  of  passengers,  and  then 
the  conductor  inside  asked  the  other  at  the  door  how 
"Flo"  was  getting  on  at  the  job  and  whether  she  was 
"sticking  it  out." 

"Pretty  girl,  ain't  she?"  she  said. 

"Well,  I  can't  see  where  the  pretty  comes  in,"  re- 
plied the  other. 

"Have  you   seen   her  when   she   has  her   hat   off? 
She's  pretty  then." 

"Can't  see  what  difference  that  would  make." 

"She's  got  nice  eyes." 

"Never  see  anything  particular  about  her  eyes." 

"Well,  she's  a  nice  kid,  anyway." 

"Yes,  she's  a  nice  kid  all  right,  but  I  can't  see  the 

pretty   about   her — not   a    little   bit.      Pretty!"      She 

tossed  her  head  and  looked  indignant,  almost  hurt,  as 

though  she  had  received  some  secret  personal  affront. 

i8i 


i82  ON  A  TALK  IN  A  'BUS 

I  do  not  think  she  had.  It  was  more  probable  that 
on  a  subject  about  which  she  felt  deeply  she  had  suf- 
fered a  painful  shock.  She  liked  "Flo,"  thought  her 
"a  nice  kid,"  but  mere  personal  affection  could  not  be 
permitted  to  compromise  the  stern  truth  about  a  sa- 
cred subject  like  "prettiness." 

The  little  incident  interested  me  because  it  illus- 
trated one  of  the  great  differences  between  the  sexes. 
You  have  only  to  try  to  turn  that  conversation  into 
masculine  terms  to  see  how  wide  that  difference  is. 
Tom  and  Bill  might  have  a  hundred  things  to  say 
about  Jack.  They  might  agree  that  he  was  a  liar 
or  an  honest  chap,  that  he  drank  too  much  or  didn't 
drink  enough,  that  he  was  mean  or  generous;  but 
there  is  one  thing  it  would  never  occur  to  them  to 
discuss.  It  would  never  occur  to  them  to  discuss 
his  looks,  to  talk  about  his  eyes,  to  consider  whether 
he  was  more  beautiful  with  or  without  his  hat.  They 
might  say  that  he  looked  merry  or  miserable,  sulky 
or  pleasant,  but  that  would  have  reference  to  Jack's 
character  and  moral  aptitudes  and  not  to  any  aesthetic 
consideration. 

But  this  conversation  about  "Flo"  was  entirely 
aesthetic.  The  question  of  her  moral  traits  only  came 
in  as  a  means  of  dodging  the  main  issue.  The  main 
issue  was  whether  she  was  pretty,  and  it  was  evidently 
a  very  important  issue  indeed. 

It  is  this  interest  of  women  in  their  own  sex  as 
works  of  art  that  distinguishes  them  from  men.  Men 
have  no  interest  in  their  own  sex  in  that  sense.  Sit 
on  a  bus  and  see  what  interests  the  male  passenger. 


ON  A  TALK  IN  A  'BUS  183 

It  is  not  his  fellow-males.  He  does  not  sit  and  study 
their  clothes,  and  make  mental  notes  on  their  claims 
to  beauty.  If  he  is  interested  in  his  fellow-passengers 
at  all  it  is  the  other  sex  that  appeals  to  him.  His  own 
sex  has  no  pictorial  attraction  for  him.  But  a 
woman  is  interested  in  women  and  women  only.  It 
is  their  clothes  that  her  eye  wanders  over  with  mild 
envy  or  disapproval.  You  almost  hear  her  mind  re- 
cording the  price  of  that  muff,  those  furs,  the  hat 
and  the  boots.  At  the  end  of  her  survey  you  feel 
that  she  knows  what  everything  cost,  what  are  the 
wearer's  ambitions,  social  status,  place  of  residence — 
in  fact,  all  about  her.  And  she  is  equally  concerned 
about  her  physical  qualities.  She  will  watch  a  pretty 
face  with  open  admiration,  and  pay  it  the  same  sort 
of  tribute  that  she  would  pay  to  a  beautiful  picture  or 
any  other  work  of  art.  "What  a  pretty  woman!" 
"What  lovely  hair  that  girl  has!" 

This  is  not  a  peculiarity  of  our  own  people  alone. 
Not  long  ago  I  went  with  two  French  officers  over  a 
great  munitions  factory  near  Paris.  We  were  accom- 
panied by  a  clever  little  woman  who  was  secretary  to 
the  head  of  one  of  the  departments,  and  who  acted  as 
guide.  We  went  through  great  shops  where  thou- 
sands of  women  were  working,  and  as  we  passed  along 
I  noticed  that  every  eye  fell  on  the  little  woman.  I 
became  so  interested  in  this  human  fact  that  I  forgot 
to  give  my  attention  to  the  machinery.  And  to  be 
honest  I  am  always  ready  to  turn  away  from  machin- 
ery, which  to  me  is  much  less  interesting  than  human 
nature.     I  think  I  can  say  with  truth  that  not  one 


i84  ON  A  TALK  IN  A  'BUS 

woman  in  all  those  thousands  failed  to  scan  our  guide 
or  bothered  to  give  one  glance  at  the  officers.     Yet 
they  were  fine  fellows  and  obviously  important  persons,  > 
while  the  guide  was  common-place  in  appearance  and 
quite  plainly  dressed. 

There  are  of  course  women  who  dress  and  comport 
themselves  with  an  eye  to  male  admiration  as  well 
as  female  envy  and  appreciation.  They  are  the  women 
of  the  bold  eye,  which  is  not  the  same  thing  as  the 
brave  eye.  But  taking  women  in  the  lump,  it  is  their 
own  sex  they  are  interested  in.  They  devote  enor- 
mous attention  to  dress,  but  they  do  so  for  each  other's 
enjoyment.  They  have  a  passion  for  personal  beauty, 
but  it  is  the  personal  beauty  of  their  own  sex  that  ap- 
peals to  them.  No  doubt  there  is  a  sexual  motive  un- 
derlying this  fact.  It  is  the  motive  expressed  in  "  'My 
face  is  my  fortune,  sir,'  she  said."  The  desire  to  be 
pretty  is  ultimately  the  desire  to  be  matrimonially 
fortunate.  Bill's  success  in  life  has  no  relation  to  his 
looks.  He  may  be  as  ugly  as  sin,  but  if  he  has  strong 
arms,  a  good  digestion,  and  a  sound  mind  he  will  do 
as  well  as  another.  Some  of  the  plainest  men  in  Eng- 
land have  sat  on  the  Woolsack.  Plain  women,  it  is  true, 
have  come  to  eminence.  Catherine  Sedley,  the  mistress 
of  James  II.,  is  a  case  in  point.  She  herself  was  puzzled 
to  explain  her  influence  over  that  sour  fanatic-libertine, 
for  as,  she  said,  "I  have  no  beauty  and  he  has  not  the 
faculty  to  appreciate  my  intelligence."  But  the  ex- 
ceptions prove  the  rule.  Prettiness  is  the  woman's  com- 
modity. It  is  the  badge  of  her  servitude.  And  behind 
that  little  conversation  in  the  bus  about  "Flo's"  claims 


ON  A  TALK  IN  A  'BUS  185 

to  prettiness  was  a  very  practical,  though  unformed, 
consideration  of  her  prospects  in  life. 

What  will  be  the  effect  of  the  war  upon  "Flo" 
and  her  kind?  She  has  found  that  she  has  an  in- 
dependent, non-sexual  importance  to  society,  that  she 
has  a  career  which  has  nothing  to  do  with  prettiness, 
that  she  can  win  her  bread  with  her  mental  and  physical 
faculties  as  easily  as  a  man.  She  has  tasted  freedom 
and  discovered  herself.  The  discovery  will  give  her 
a  new  independence  of  outlook,  a  more  self-confident 
view  of  her  place  in  society,  a  greater  respect  for  the 
hard  practical  things  of  life.  She  will  still  desire  to 
be  pretty  and  to  have  the  admiration  of  her  sex,  but 
the  desire  will  have  a  sounder  foundation  than  in  the 
past.  It  will  no  longer  be  her  career.  It  will  be  her 
ornament.  It  will  decorate  the  fact  that  she  can  run 
a  bus  as  well  as  a  man. 


ON  VIRTUES  THAT  DON'T  COUNT 


I  OFTEN  think  that  when  we  go  down  into  the  Valley 
of  Jehoshaphat  we  shall  all  be  greatly  astonished  at 
the  credit  and  debit  items  we  shall  find  against  our 
names  in  the  ledger  of  our  life.  We  shall  discover 
that  many  of  the  virtues  which  we  thought  would  give 
us  a  thumping  credit  balance  have  not  been  recorded 
at  all,  and  that  some  of  our  failings  have  by  the  magic 
of  celestial  book-keeping  been  entered  on  the  credit  side. 
The  fact  is  that  our  virtues  are  often  no  virtues  at  all. 
They  may  even  only  be  vices,  seen  in  reverse. 

Take  Smithson  Spinks — everyone  knows  the  Smith- 
son  Spinks  type.  What  a  reputation  for  generosity  the 
fellow  has.  What  a  grandeur  of  giving  he  exhales. 
How  noble  his  scorn  for  mean  fellows.  How  royal  the 
flash  of  his  hand  to  his  pocket  if  you  are  getting  up 
a  testimonial  to  this  man,  or  a  fund  for  that  object, 
or  want  a  loan  yourself.  No  one  hesitates  to  ask 
i86 


ON  VIRTUES  THAT  DON'T  COUNT    187 


Smfthson  Spinks  for  anything.  He  likes  to  be  asked. 
He  would  be  hurt  if  he  were  not  asked.  And  yet  if 
you  track  Smithson  Spinks's  generosity  to  its  source 
you  find  that  it  is  only  pride  turned  inside  out.  The 
true  motive  of  his  giving  is  not  love  of  his  fellows, 
but  love  of  himself  and  the  vanity  of  a  mind  that 
wants  the  admiration  and  envy  of  others.  You  see  the 
reverse  of  the  shield  at  home,  where  the  real  Smithson 
Spinks  is  discovered  as  a  stingy  fellow,  who  grumbles 
when  the  boys  want  new  boots  and  who  leaves  his 
wife  to  struggle  perpetually  with  a  load  of  debt  and 
an  empty  purse,  while  he  plays  the  part  of  the  large- 
hearted  gentleman  abroad.  He  believes  in  his  own 
fiction,  but  when  he  looks  in  the  ledger  he  will  have  a 
painful  shock.  He  will  turn  to  the  credit  side,  expect- 
ing to  find  Generosity  written  in  large  and  golden 


i88    ON  VIRTUES  THAT  DON'T  COUNT 

letters,  and  he  will  probably  find  instead  Vanity 
in  plain  black  on  the  debit  side. 

And  I — let  us  say  that  I  flatter  myself  on  being  a 
truthful  person.  But  am  I?  What  will  the  ledger 
say?  I  have  a  dreadful  suspicion  that  it  may  put  my 
truthfulness  down  to  the  compulsion  of  a  tremulous 
nerve.  I  may — who  knows? — only  be  truthful  be- 
cause I  haven't  courage  enough  for  dissimulation.  It 
may  not  be  a  positive  moral  virtue  at  all,  but  only  the 
moral  reflection  of  a  timorous  spirit.  It  needs  great 
courage  to  tell  a  lie  which  you  have  got  to  face  out. 
I  could  no  more  do  it  than  I  could  dance  on  the  point 
of  a  needle. 

Consider  the  courage  of  that  monumental  liar  Ar- 
thur Orton — the  sheer  unflinching  audacity  with  which 
he  challenged  the  truth,  facing  Tichborne's  own 
mother  with  his  impudent  tale  of  being  her  son,  facing 
judges  and  juries,  going  into  witness-boxes  with  his 
web  of  outrageous  inventions,  keeping  a  stiff  lip  before 
the  devastating  rain  of  exposure.  A  ruffian,  of  course, 
a  thick-skinned  ruffian,  but  what  courage! 

Now  there  may  be  a  potential  Arthur  Orton  in 
me,  but  he  has  never  had  a  chance.  I  have  no  gift 
of  dissimulation.  If  I  tried  it  I  should  flounder  like 
a  boy  on  his  first  pair  of  skates.  I  could  not  bluff  a 
rabbit.  No  one  would  believe  me  if  I  told  him  a  lie. 
My  eye  would  return  a  verdict  of  guilty  against  me 
on  the  spot,  and  my  tongue  would  refuse  its  office. 
And  therein  is  the  worm  that  eats  at  my  self-respect. 
May  not  my  obedience  to  the  ten  commandments  be 
only  due  to  my  fear  of  the  eleventh  commandment — 


ON  VIRTUES  THAT  DON'T  COUNT    189 

that  cynical  rescript  which  runs,  "Thou  shalt  not  be 
found  out"?  I  hope  it  is  not  so,  but  I  must  prepare 
myself  for  the  revelations  of  the  ledger  in  the  Valley 
of  Jehoshaphat.  For  they  will  be  as  candid  about  me 
and  you  as  about  Smithson  Spinks. 

You  can  never  be  absolutely  sure  of  a  man's  moral 
nature  until  you  have  shipped  him,  figuratively, 

.  .  .  somewheres  East  of  Suez 
Where   the  best  is  like  the  worst, 
Where  there  aren't  no  ten  commandments, 
And  a  man  can  raise  a  thirst — 

until  in  fact  you  have  got  him  away  from  his  defences, 
liberated  him  from  the  conventions  and  respectabilities 
that  encompass  him  with  minatory  fingers  and  vigilant 
eyes  and  left  him  to  the  uncontrolled  governance  of 
himself.  Then  it  will  be  found  whether  the  virtues 
are  diamonds  or  paste — whether  they  spring  out  of  the 
ten  commandments  or  out  of  the  eleventh.  The  lord 
Angelo  in  "Measure  for  -Measure"  passed  for  a  strict 
and  saintly  person — and  I  have  no  doubt  believed  him- 
self to  be  a  strict  and  saintly  person — so  long  as  he 
was  under  control,  but  when  the  Duke's  back  was 
turned  the  libertine  appeared.  And  note  that  subtle 
touch  of  Shakespeare's.  Angelo  was  not  an  ordinary 
libertine.  He  passed  for  a  saint  because  he  could  not 
be  tempted  by  vice,  but  only  by  virtue.  Hear  him  com- 
muning with  himself  when  Isabella  has  gone: — 

.  .  .  What  is't  I  dream  on? 

O  cunning  enemy,  that,  to  catch  a  saint. 

With  saints  dost  bait  thy  hook!     Most  dangerous 


I90    ON  VIRTUES  THAT  DON'T  COUNT 

Is  that  temptation  that  doth  goad  us  on 
To  sin  in  loving  virtue ;  never  could  the  strumpet, 
With  all  her  double  vigour,  art  and  nature 
Once  stir  my  temper ;   but  this  virtuous  maid 
Subdues  me   quite. 

His  safntliness  revolted  from  vice,  but  his  love  of  virtue 
opened  the  floodgates  of  viciousness.  What  a  paradox 
is  man.  I  think  I  have  known  more  than  one  lord 
Angelo  whose  virtue  rested  on  nothing  better  than  a 
fastidious  taste,  or  an  absence  of  appetite. 

That  is  certainly  the  case  with  many  people  who 
have  the  quality  of  sobriety.  Abraham  Lincoln,  him- 
self a  total  abstainer,  once  got  into  great  trouble  for 
saying  so.  He  was  addressing  a  temperance  meeting 
at  a  Presbyterian  church,  and  said:  "In  my  judgment 
such  of  us  as  have  never  fallen  victims  (to  drink)  have 
been  spared  more  from  the  absence  of  appetite  than 
from  any  mental  or  moral  superiority  over  those  who 
have  fallen."  It  seemed  a  reasonable  thing  to  say,  but 
it  shocked  the  stern  teetotalers  present.  "It's  a  shame," 
said  one,  "that  he  should  be  permitted  to  abuse  us  so 
in  the  house  of  the  Lord."  They  did  not  like  to  feel 
that  they  were  not  more  virtuous  than  men  who  drank 
and  even  got  drunk.  They  expected  to  have  a  large 
credit  entry  for  not  tippling.  Like  Malvolio,  they 
mixed  up  virtue  with  "cakes  and  ale,"  If  you  in- 
dulged in  them  you  were  vicious,  and  if  you  abstained 
from  them  you  were  virtuous. 

It  was  a  beautifully  simple  moral  code,  but  virtue 
is  not  so  easily  catalogued.  It  is  not  a  negative  thing, 
but  a  positive  thing.  It  is  not  measured  by  its  anti- 
pathies but  by  its  sympathies.     Its  manifestations  an 


ON  VIRTUES  THAT  DON'T  COUNT    191 

many,  but  its  root  is  one,  and  its  names  are  "truth 
and  justice"  which  even  the  Prayer  Book  puts  before 
"religion  and  piety." 

And  to  return  to  the  Lincoln  formula,  if  you  have 
no  taste  for  tippling  what  virtue  is  there  in  not  tip- 
pling? The  virtue  is  often  with  the  tippler.  I  knew 
a  man  who  died  of  drink,  and  whose  life  nevertheless 
had  been  an  heroic  struggle  with  his  enemy.  He  was 
always  falling,  but  he  never  ceased  fighting.  And  it 
is  the  fighting,  I  think,  he  will  find  recorded  in  the 
ledger — greatly  to  his  surprise,  for  he  had  the  most 
modest  opinion  of  his  merits  and  a  deep  sense  of  his 
moral  infirmity. 

It  is  no  more  virtuous  for  some  men  not  to  get 
drunk  than  it  is  for  a  Rothschild  not  to  put  his  hand 
in  his  neighbour's  pocket  in  order  to  steal  half  a  crown. 
He  doesn't  need  a  half-crown,  and  there  is  no  virtue 
in  not  stealing  what  you  don't  want.  That  was  what 
was  wrong  with  the  "Northern  Farmer's"  philosophy 
that  those  who  had  money  were  the  best: — 

'Tis'n  them  as  'as  munny  as  breaks  into  'ouses  an'  steals, 
Them  as  'as  coats  to  their  backs  an'  taakes  their  regular 

meals. 
Noa,  but  it's  them  as  niver  knaws  wheer  a  meal's  to  be 

'ad— 
Taake  my  word  for  it,  Sammy,  the  poor  in  a  loomp  is  bad. 

It  was  a  creed  of  virtue  which  looked  at  the  fact  and 
not  at  the  temptation.  He  will  have  found  a  much 
more  complex  system  of  book-keeping  where  he  has 
gone.  I  imagine  him  standing  painfully  puzzled  at 
the  sort  of  accounts  which  he  will  find  made  up  in 
the  "valley  of  decision." 


ON  HATE  AND  THE  SOLDIER 


"And  when  are  you  going  back  to  fight  those  vermin 
again?"  asked  the  man  in  the  corner. 

"D'ye  mean  ole  Fritz?"  said  the  soldier. 

"I  mean  those  Huns,"  said  the  other, 

"Oh,  there's  nothing  wrong  with  ole  Fritz,"  replied 
the  soldier.  "He  can't  help  hisself.  He's  shoved 
out  there  in  the  mud  to  fight  same  as  we  are,  and 
he  does  the  job  same  as  we  do.  But  he'd  jolly  well 
like  to  chuck  the  business  and  go  home.  Course  he 
would.     Stands  to  reason.     Anybody  would." 

It  was  a  disappointing  reply  to  the  man  in  the 
corner,  who  obviously  felt  that  the  other  was  wanting 
in  the  first  essential  of  a  soldier — a  personal  hatred 
of  the  individual  enemy.  This  man  clearly  did  not 
hate  the  enemy.  Yet  if  anyone  was  entitled  to  hate 
him  he  had  abundant  reason.  He  had  been  out 
since  August  1914,  had  been  wounded  four  times, 
buried  by  shell  explosion  three  times,  and  gassed  twice. 
It  was  two  years  since  he  had  been  home  on  leave, 
192 


ON  HATE  AND  THE  SOLDIER       193 

and  now  he  was  on  his  way  to  see  his  people  in  the 
West  of  England.  He  talked  about  his  experiences 
with  the  calm  dispassionateness  of  one  describing 
commonplace  things,  quite  uncomplainingly,  very  sen- 
sibly, and  without  the  least  trace  of  egotism.  He'd 
been  in  a  horrible  spot  lately,  "reg'lar  death-trap,"  at 

G .     "Nobody  can  hold  it,"  he  said.     "We  take 

it  when  we  like,  and  Fritz,  he  takes  it  when  he  likes. 
That's  all  there  is  about  it,"  It  was  noticeable  that  he 
always  spoke  of  the  enemy  as  "Fritz,"  and  always 
without  any  appearance  of  personal  animus. 

I  do  not  record  the  incident  as  unusual.  I  record 
it  as  usual.  No  one  who  has  had  much  intercourse 
with  soldiers  at  the  front,  whether  rank  or  file,  will 
dispute  this.  In  any  circumstance,  it  is  hard  to 
nurse  a  passion  at  white  heat  over  a  term  of  years, 
and  it  is  impossible  to  do  so  when  you  see  the  ugly 
business  of  war  at  close  quarters.  You  have  to  be 
comfortably  at  home  to  really  enjoy  the  luxury  of 
hate.  I  have  heard  more  bitter  things  from  the  lips 
of  clergymen  and  seen  more  bitter  things  from  the 
pen  of  so-called  comic  journalists  than  I  have  heard 
from  the  lips  of  soldiers,  and  in  that  admirable  collec- 
tion of  utterances  of  hate  in  Germany,  made  by  Mr. 
William  Archer,  it  will  be  found  that  the  barbaric 
things  generally  come  from  pulpits  or  the  studies  of  be- 
spectacled professors. 

The  soldier  is  too  near  the  foul  business,  sees  all  the 
misery  and  suffering  too  close,  to  be  consumed  with 
hate.  If  he  could  envy  the  other  fellow  he  would 
stand   a   better  chance  of  hating  him.     But  he  sees 


194      ON  HATE  AND  THE  SOLDIER 

that  Fritz  is  in  no  better  plight  than  himself.  He  is 
living  in  the  mud  among  the  rats  too,  and  is  just  as 
helpless  an  atom  in  the  machine  of  war  as  himself. 
He  sees  his  body,  torn  and  disgusting,  cumbering  the 
battlefield,  or  hanging  limp  and  horrible  on  the 
barbed  wire  in  No  Man's  Land.  It  is  Fritz's  turn 
to-day;  it  may  be  his  own  to-morrow.  And  the 
baser  feeling  gives  place  to  a  general  compassion.  The 
chord  of  a  common  humanity  is  struck,  and  if  he  does 
not  actually  love  his  enemy  he  ceases  to  hate  him. 

But  the  man  in  the  corner  of  the  carriage  need 
have  no  fear  that  this  means  that  the  soldier  opposite 
is  a  less  valuable  fighting  man  in  consequence.  The 
idea  that  you  must  grind  your  teeth  all  the  time  is 
an  infantile  delusion.  I  should  have  much  more 
confidence  in  that  quiet,  sane,  undemonstrative 
soldier  in  the  face  of  the  enemy  than  I  should  have 
in  the  people  who  kill  the  enemy  with  their  mouth, 
and  prove  their  patriotism  by  the  violence  of  their 
language.  I  have  known  many  brave  men  who  have 
given  their  lives  heroically  in  this  war,  but  I  cannot 
recall  one — not  one — who  stained  his  heroism  with 
vulgar  hate. 

The  gospel  of  hate  as  the  instrument  of  victory, 
indeed,  is  not  the  soldier's  gospel  at  all.  There  have 
been  few  greater  soldiers  in  history  than  General  Lee, 
and  probably  no  more  saintly  man.  He  fought 
literally  to  the  last  ditch,  but  he  never  ceased  to 
repudiate  the  doctrine  of  hate.  When  a  minister  in 
the  course  of  a  sermon  had  expressed  himself  bitterly 
about  the  enemy,  Lee  said  to  him:     "Doctor,  there  is 


ON  HATE  AND  THE  SOLDIER       195 

a  good  old  Book  which  says,  'Love  your  enemies.' 
Do  you  think  that  your  remarks  this  evening  were 
quite  in  the  spirit  of  that  teaching?"  And  when 
one  of  his  generals  exclaimed  of  the  enemy,  "I  wish 
these  people  were  all  dead,"  Lee  answered,  "How 
can  you  say  so?  Now,  I  wish  they  were  all  at  home 
attending  to  their  business  and  leaving  us  to  do  the 
same."  And  Lee  stated  his  attitude  generally 
when  he  said:  "I  have  fought  against  the  people 
of  the  North  because  I  believed  they  were  seeking 
to  wrest  from  the  South  dearest  rights.  But  I  have 
never  cherished  bitter  or  vindictive  feelings  and  have 
never  seen  the  day  when  I  did  not  pray  for  them." 

There  was  a  striking  illustration  of  the  contrast 
between  the  soldier's  and  the  civilian's  attitude 
towards  the  enemy  the  other  day.  In  the  current 
issue  of  Punch  I  saw  a  poem  by  Sir  Owen  Seaman 
(the  author  of  that  heroic  line,  "I  hate  all  Huns"), 
addressed  to  the  "Huns,"  in  which  he  said: — 

But  where  you  have  met  your  equals, 
Gun  for  gun  and  man  for  man, 

We   have   noticed   other   sequels, 
It  was  always  you  that  ran. 

In  the  newspapers  that  same  morning  (March  5th, 
191 8)  there  appeared  a  report  from  Sir  Douglas  Haig, 
in  the  course  of  which  he  said: — 

Many  of  the  hits  upon  our  Tanks  at  Flesquieres  were  ob- 
tained by  a  German  artillery  officer  who,  remaining  alone 
at  his  battery,  served  a  field  gun  single-handed  until  killed 


196       ON  HATE  AND  THE  SOLDIER 

at  his  gun.  The  great  bravery  of  this  officer  aroused  the 
admiration  of  all  ranks. 

The  same  chivalrous  spirit  breathes  through  the 
letters  of  Captain  Ball,  V.C.,  published  in  the  memoir 
of  the  brilliant  airman.  He  was  little  more  than  a 
boy  when  he  was  killed  after  an  almost  unparalleled 
career  of  victory  in  the  air.  He  fought  with  a  terrible 
skill,  but  he  had  no  more  personal  animus  for  his 
opponent  than  he  would  have  had  for  the  bowler 
whom  it  was  his  business  to  hit  to  the  boundary.  In 
one  of  his  letters  to  his  father  he  said : — 

You  ask  me  to  let  the  devils  have  it  when  I  fight.  Yes,  I 
always  let  them  have  all  I  can,  but  really  I  don't  think 
them  devils.  I  only  scrap  because  it  is  my  duty,  but  I  do 
not  think  anything  bad  about  the  Huns.  He  is  just  a 
good  chap  with  very  little  guts,  trying  to  do  his  best. 
Nothing  makes  me  feel  more  rotten  than  to  see  them  go 
down,  but  you  see  it  is  either  them  or  me,  so  I  must  do 
my  best  to  make  it  a  case  of  them. 

And  the  gay,  healthy  temper  in  which  he  played  his 
part  is  revealed  in  another  letter,  in  which  he  describes 
a  fight  that  ended  in  mutual  laughter: — 

We  kept  on  firing  until  we  had  used  up  all  our  am- 
munition. There  was  nothing  more  to  be  done  after  that, 
so  we  both  burst  out  laughing.  We  couldn't  help  it — it 
was  so  ridiculous.  We  flew  side  by  side  laughing  at  each 
other  for  a  few  seconds,  and  then  we  waved  adieu  to  each 
other  and  went  off.     He  was  a  real  sport  was  that  Hun. 

That  is  a  pleasant  picture  to  carry  in  the  mind,  the 
two  high-spirited  boys  sent  out  to  kill  each  other  faith- 


ON  HATE  AND  THE  SOLDIER       197 

fully  trying  to  do  their  duty,  failing,  and  then  riding 
through  the  air  side  by  side  with  merry  laughter  at 
their  mutual  discomfiture  and  gay  adieus  at  parting. 

And  at  the  risk  of  hurting  the  feelings  of  the  man 
in  the  corner  I  shall  recall  a  letter  which  shows  that 
even  among  the  enemy  of  to-day,  even  among  that 
worst  of  all  military  types,  the  German  officer,  there 
are  those  whom  the  miseries  and  horrors  of  war  touch 
to  something  nobler  than  hate.  The  letter  appeared 
in  the  Cologne  Gazette  early  in  the  war  and  was  as 
follows : — 

Perhaps  you  will  be  so  good  as  to  assist  by  the  publica- 
tion of  these  lines  in  freeing  our  troops  from  an  evil  which 
they  feel  very  strongly.  I  have  on  many  occasions,  when 
distributing  among  the  men  the  postal  packets,  observed 
among  them  postcards  on  which  the  defeated  French,  Eng- 
lish and  Russians  were  derided  in  a  tasteless  fashion. 

The  impression  made  by  these  postcards  on  our  men  is 
highly  noteworthy.  Scarcely  anybody  is  pleased  with  these 
postcards;  on  the  contrary,  every  one  expresses  his  dis- 
pleasure. 

This  is  natural  when  one  considers  the  position.  We 
know  how  victories  are  won.  We  also  know  by  what  tre- 
mendous sacrifices  they  are  obtained.  We  see  with  our 
own  eyes  the  unspeakable  misery  of  the  battlefield.  We 
rejoice  over  our  victories,  but  our  joy  is  damped  by  the 
recollection  of  the  sad  pictures  which  we  observe  almost 
daily. 

And  our  enemies  have  in  an  overwhelming  majority  of 
cases  truly  not  deserved  to  be  derided  in  such  a  way.  Had 
they  not  fought  as  bravely  we  should  not  have  had  to  reg- 
ister such  losses. 

Insipid,  therefore,  as  these  postcards  are  in  themselves, 
their  effect  here,  on  the  battlefields,  in  the  presence  of  our 


198       ON  HATE  AND  THE  SOLDIER 

dead  and  wounded,  is  only  calculated  to  cause  disgust. 
Such  postcards  are  as  much  out  of  place  in  the  battlefield 
as  a  clown  is  at  a  funeral.  Perhaps  these  lines  may  prove 
instrumental  in  decreasing  the  number  of  such  postcards 
sent  to  our  troops. 

I  do  not  suppose  they  did.  I  have  no  doubt  the 
fire-eaters  at  home  went  on  fire-eating  under  the 
impression  that  that  was  what  the  men  at  the  front 
wanted  to  keep  up  their  fighting  spirit.  But  it  is 
not.  There  is  plenty  of  hate  in  the  trenches,  but  it 
is  directed,  not  against  the  victims  of  war,  but  against 
the  institution  of  war.  That  is  the  one  ray  of  hope 
that  shines  over  the  dismal  landscape  of  Europe  to-day. 


ON  TAKING  THE  CALL 


Jane  came  home  from  the  theatre  last  night  over- 
flowing with  an  indignation  that  even  the  beauty  of 
a  ride  on  the  top  of  a  bus  in  the  air  of  these  divine 
summer  nights  had  not  cooled.  It  was  not  dissatis- 
faction with  the  play  or  the  performance  that  made 
her  boil  with  volcanic  wrath.  It  was  the  vanity  of 
the  insufferable  actor-manager,  who  would  insist  on 
"taking  the  call"  all  the  time  and  every  time.  There 
were  some  quite  nice  people  in  the  play,  it  seemed,  but 
the  more  the  audience  called  for  them  the  more  the 
preposterous  "old  clo'  "  man  of  the  stage  came  smirk- 
ing before  the  curtain,  rubbing  his  fat  hands  and  creas- 
ing his  fat  cheeks.  "It  was  disgusting,"  said  Jane. 
"The  creature  had  been  gibbering  in  the  lime-light  all 
night,  and  the  audience  were  trying  to  level  things  up 
a  bit  by  giving  the  interesting  people  a  show,  and  this 
greedy  cormorant  snatched  every  crumb  for  himself. 
I  hate  him.     He  is  a  Hun." 

The  outburst  reminded  me  of  a  story  I  once  heard 

about  another  actor-manager.    At  the  end  of  the  play 

he  went  on  the  stage  and  found  his  company  bending 

down   in   a  circle  and   gazing   intently  at  something 

199 


200  ON  TAKING  THE  CALL 

on  the  floor.  "What  are  you  looking  at?"  he  asked. 
"Oh,"  they  chanted  in  chorus,  "we're  looking  at  a  spot 
we've  never  seen  before.    It's  the  centre  of  the  stage." 

There  are,  of  course,  people  who  carry  the  centre 
of  the  stage  with  them.  It  does  not  matter  where 
they  go  or  what  they  play:  they  dominate  the  scene. 
"Where  O'Flaherty  sits  is  the  head  of  the  table,"  and 
where  Coquelin  stood  was  the  centre  of  the  stage.  He 
needed  no  placard  to  remind  you  that  he  was  someone 
in  particular.  You  would  no  more  have  thought  of 
turning  the  limelight  on  to  him  than  you  would  have 
thought  of  turning  it  on  to  the  moon  at  midnight  or 
the  sun  at  midday.  He  just  appeared  and  everyone 
else  became  accessory  to  that  commanding  presence:  he 
spoke  and  all  other  voices  seemed  like  the  chirping  of 
sparrows. 

And  so  in  other  spheres.  Take  the  case  of  Mr. 
Asquith,  for  example,  in  relation  to  the  House  of  Com- 
mons. It  does  not  matter  where  he  sits.  He  may  go 
to  the  darkest  corner  under  the  gallery,  but  the  centre 
of  the  stage  will  go  with  him.  When  he  had  sat  down 
after  delivering  his  first  speech  in  opposition,  one  of 
the  ablest  observers  in  Parliament  turned  to  me  and 
said:  "The  Prime  Minister  has  crossed  the  floor  of 
the  House."  And  that  exactly  expressed  the  feeling 
created  by  that  authoritative  manner,  that  masculine 
voice,  that  air  of  high  detachment  from  the  mere 
squalor  and  tricks  of  the  Parliamentary  game.  He 
never  seemed  greater  to  the  House  than  in  the  mo- 
ment when  he  had  fallen — never  more  its  intellectual 


ON  TAKING  THE  CALL  201 

master,  its  most  authentic  voice,  its  wisest  and  most  dis- 
interested counsellor. 

It  is  not  these  men,  the  Coquelins  and  the  Asquiths, 
who  come  sprinting  before  the  curtain  after  drench- 
ing themselves  in  the  limelight  on  the  stage.  They 
hate  the  limelight  and  they  are  indifferent  to  the  ap- 
plause. The  gentry  who  cultivate  the  art  of  "taking 
the  call"  are  quite  another  breed.  You  know  the  type, 
both  on  the  stage  and  off.  Take  that  eminent  actor, 
Bluffington  Phelps.  He  shambles  about  the  stage,  his 
words  gurgle  in  his  throat,  his  eyes  roll  like  a  bull's 
under  torture;  if  he  is  not  throwing  agonised  glances 
at  the  man  with  the  limelight  he  is  straining  to  catch 
the  voice  of  the  prompter  at  the  flies.  But  when  it 
comes  to  "taking  the  call"  there  is  not  his  superior  on 
the  stage.  He  monopolises  the  applause  as  he  monopo- 
lises the  limelight,  and  by  these  artifices  he  has  per- 
suaded the  public  that  he  is  an  actor.  .  It  is  a  glorious 
joke — 

Hood  an  ass  in  reverend  purple, 

So   that   you   hide   his   too   ambitious   ears, 

And  he  shall  pass  for  a  cathedral  doctor. 

It  is  true,  as  Lincoln  said,  that  you  can  fool  some 
of  the  people  all  the  time.  Mr.  Bluffington  Phelps 
knows  that  it  is  true.  He  knows  that  there  is  a  large 
part  of  the  public,  possibly  the  majority  of  the  public, 
which  is  born  to  be  fooled,  which  will  believe  any- 
thing because  it  hasn't  the  faculty  of  judging  anything 
but  the  size  of  the  crowd  and  which  will  always  follow 
the  ass  with  the  longest  ears  and  the  loudest  bray. 


202  ON  TAKING  THE  CALL 

It  is  the  same  off  the  stage.  The  art  of  politics  is 
the  art  of  "taking  the  call."  Harley  knew  the  trick 
perfectly.  Where  anything  was  to  be  got,  it  was  said 
of  him,  he  always  knew  how  to  wriggle  himself  in; 
when  any  misfortune  threatened  he  knew  how  to 
wriggle  himself  out.  He  took  the  cheers  and  passed 
the  kicks  on  to  his  colleagues.  His  chivalrous  spirit 
is  not  dead.  It  is  familiar  in  every  country,  but  most 
of  all  in  democratic  countries.  We  all  know  the  type 
of  politician  who  has  the  true  genius  for  the  limelight. 
If  the  newspapers  forget  him  for  five  minutes  he  is 
miserable.  "What  has  happened  to  the  publicity  de- 
partment? Has  the  fellow  in  charge  of  the  limelight 
gone  to  sleep?  Wake  him  up.  Don't  let  the  public 
forget  me.  If  there's  nothing  else  to  tell  'em,  tell  'em 
that  my  hat  is  two  sizes  larger  than  it  was  a  year  ago. 
Tell  'em  about  my  famous  smile.  Tell  'em  about  my 
dear  old  grandmother  to  whom  I  owe  my  inimitable 
piety.  Tell  'em  I'm  at  my  desk  at  seven  o'clock  every 
morning  and  never  leave  it  until  half-past  seven  the 
next  morning.  Tell  'em  anything  you  like — only  tell 
em. 

If  things  go  right,  and  there  is  applause  in  the 
house,  he  skips  in  front  of  the  curtain  to  take  the  call. 
"Thank  you,  gentlemen — and  ladies.  Thank  you. 
Yes,  alone  I  did  it.  Nobody  else  in  the  company  had 
a  hand  in  it — nor  a  finger.  No,  not  a  finger."  If 
anything  goes  wrong  and  the  audience  hiss,  does  he 
shirk  the  ordeal?  Not  at  all.  He  comes  before  the 
curtain  with  indignant  sorrow.  "Yes,  ladies  and  gen- 
tlemen, I  agree  with  you.     Most  scandalous  failure. 


ON  TAKING  THE  CALL  203 

It  was  all  Jones's  doing,  and  Smith's,  and  Robinson's. 
I  went  down  on  my  bended  knees  to  them,  but  they 
wouldn't  listen  to  me — wouldn't  listen.  And  now  you 
see  what's  happened.  Hear  the  anguish  in  my  voice. 
Look  at  the  tears  in  my  broken-hearted  eyes.  Oh,  the 
pity  of  it,  ladies  and  gentlemen — the  pity  of  it.  And 
I  tried  so  hard — I  really  did.  But  they  wouldn't  lis- 
ten— they  wouldn't  1-1-listen."  (Breaks  down  in  sobs.) 
I  recall  a  legend  that  seems  apposite.  A  certain 
politician  of  antiquity — let  us  call  him  Eurysthenes — 
hit  on  a  happy  idea  for  making  himself  famous.  He 
bought  a  lot  of  parrots  and  taught  them  to  shriek 
"Great  is  Eurysthenes!"  Then  he  turned  them  all 
out  into  the  woods,  and  there  they  sat  and  squawked 
"Great  is  Eurysthenes."  And  the  Athenians,  aston- 
ished at  such  unanimity,  took  up  the  refrain  and  cried, 
"Great  is  Eurysthenes."  And  Eurysthenes,  who  was 
waiting  in  the  flies,  so  to  speak,  took  the  call  and  was 
famous  ever  after. 


A  DITHYRAMB  ON  A  DOG 


Chum^  roped  securely  to  the  cherry  tree,  is  barking 
at  the  universe  in  general  and  at  the  cows  in  the 
paddock  beyond  the  orchard  in  particular.  Occa- 
sionally he  pauses  to  snap  at  passing  bees,  of  which 
the  orchard  is  full  on  this  bright  May  morning;  but 
he  soon  tires  of  this  diversion  and  resumes  his  loud- 
voiced  demand  to  share  in  the  good  things  that  are 
going.  For  the  sun  is  high,  the  cuckoo  is  shouting 
over  the  valley,  and  the  woods  are  calling  him  to 
unknown  adventures.  They  shall  not  call  in  vain. 
Work  shall  be  suspended  and  this  morning  shall  be 
dedicated  to  his  service.  For  this  is  the  day  of 
deliverance.  The  word  is  spoken  and  the  shadow  of 
the  sword  is  lifted.  The  battle  for  his  biscuit  is 
won. 

He  does  not  know  what  a  narrow  shave  he  has  had. 

He  does  not  know  that  for  weeks  past  he  has  been 

under  sentence  of  death  as  an  encumbrance,  a  luxury 

that  this  savage  world  of  men  could  no  longer  afford; 

204 


A  DITHYRAMB  ON  A  DOG         205 

that  having  taken  away  his  bones  we  were  about  to 
take  away  his  biscuits  and  leave  his  cheerful  com- 
panionship a  memory  of  the  dream  world  we  lived  in 
before  the  Great  Killing  began.  All  this  he  does  not 
know.  That  is  one  of  the  numerous  advantages  of 
being  a  dog.  He  knows  nothing  of  the  infamies  of 
men  or  of  the  incertitudes  of  life.  He  does  not  look 
before  and  after  and  pine  for  what  is  not.  He  has 
no  yesterday  and  no  to-morrow — only  the  happy  or 
the  unhappy  present.  He  does  not,  as  Whitman 
says,  "lie  awake  at  night  thinking  of  his  soul,"  or 
lamenting  his  past  or  worrying  about  his  future. 
His  bereavements  do  not  disturb  him  and  he  doesn't 
care  twopence  about  his  career.  He  has  no  debts 
and  hungers  for  no  honours.  He  would  rather  have 
a  bone  than  a  baronetcy.  He  does  not  turn  over  old 
albums,  with  their  pictured  records  of  forgotten 
holidays  and  happy  scenes,  and  yearn  for  the  "tender 
grace  of  a  day  that  is  dead,"  or  wonder  whether  he 
will  keep  his  job  and  what  will  become  of  his  "poor 
old  family,"  as  Stevenson  used  to  say,  if  he  doesn't, 
or  speculate  whether  the  war  will  end  this  year,  next 
year,  some  time,  or  never.  He  doesn't  even  know 
there  is  a  war.  Think  of  it!  He  doesn't  know 
there  is  a  war.  O  happy  dog!  Give  him  a  bone,  a 
biscuit,  a  good  word,  and  a  scamper  in  the  woods, 
and  his  cup  of  joy  is  full.  Would  that  my  needs  were 
as  few  and  as  easily  satisfied. 

And  now  his  biscuit  is  safe  and  I  have  the  rare 
privilege  of  rejoicing  with  Sir  Frederick  Banbury. 
I  do  not  know  that  I  should  go  as  far  as  he  seems  to 


2o6         A  DITHYRAMB  ON  A  DOG 

go,  for  in  that  touching  little  speech  of  his  at  the 
Cannon  Street  Hotel  he  indicated  that  nothing  in 
the  heavens  above  or  in  the  earth  beneath  should 
stand  between  him  and  his  dogs.  "In  August  1914," 
he  said,  "my  son  w^ent  to  France.  The  night 
before  he  left  he  said,  'Father,  look  after  my  dogs 
and  horses  while  I  am  away.'  I  said,  'Don't  you 
worry  about  them.'  He  was  killed  in  December,  and 
I  have  got  the  horses  and  dogs  now.  As  I  said  to 
Mr.  Bonar  Law  last  year,  I  should  like  to  see  the  man 
who  would  tell  me  I  have  not  to  look  after  my  son's 
dogs  and  horses."  Well,  I  suppose  that  if  the  choice 
were  between  a  German  victory  and  a  dog  biscuit, 
the  dog  biscuit  would  have  to  go.  Sir  Frederick.  But 
I  rejoice  with  you  that  we  have  not  to  make  the 
choice.  I  rejoice  that  the  sentence  of  death  has 
passed  from  your  dead  son's  horses  and  dogs  and  from 
that  noble  creature  under  the  cherry  tree. 

Look  at  him,  barking  now  at  the  cows,  now  with 
eloquent  appeal  at  me,  and  then,  having  caught  my 
eye,  turning  sportively  to  worry  the  hated  rope.  He 
knows  that  my  intentions  this  morning  are  honour- 
able. I  think  he  feels  that,  in  spite  of  appearances, 
I  am  in  that  humour  in  which  at  any  radiant  moment 
the  magic  word  "Walk"  may  leap  from  my  lips. 
What  a  word  that  is.  No  sleep  so  sound  that  it  will 
not  penetrate  its  depths  and  bring  him,  passionately 
awake,  to  his  feet.  He  would  sacrifice  the  whole 
dictionary  for  that  one  electric  syllable.  That  and 
its  brother  "Bones."  Give  him  these  good,  sound, 
sensible  words,  and  all  the  fancies  of  the  poets  and 


A  DITHYRAMB  ON  A  DOG         207 

all  the  rhetoric  of  the  statesmen  may  whistle  down 
the  winds.  He  has  no  use  for  them.  "Walk"  and 
"Bones" — that  is  the  speech  a  fellow  can  understand. 

Yes,  Chum  knows  very  well  that  I  am  thinking 
about  him  and  thinking  about  him  in  an  uncommonly 
friendly  way.  That  is  the  secret  of  the  strange 
intimacy  between  us.  We  may  love  other  animals, 
and  other  animals  may  respond  to  our  affection. 
But  the  dog  is  the  only  animal  who  has  a  reciprocal 
intelligence.  As  Coleridge  says,  he  is  the  only  animal 
that  looks  upward  to  man,  strains  to  catch  his  mean- 
ings, hungers  for  his  approval.  Stroke  a  cat  or  a 
horse,  and  it  will  have  a  physical  pleasure ;  but  pat 
Chum  and  call  him  "Good  dog!"  and  he  has  a 
spiritual  pleasure.  He  feels  good.  He  is  pleased 
because  you  are  pleased.  His  tail,  his  eyebrows,  every 
part  of  him,  proclaim  that  "God's  in  his  heaven,  all's 
right  with  the  world,"  and  that  he  himself  is  on  the 
side  of  the  angels. 

And  just  as  he  has  the  sense  of  virtue,  so  also  he 
has  the  sense  of  sin.  A  cat  may  be  taught  not  to  do 
certain  things,  but  if  it  is  caught  out  and  flees,  it  flees 
not  from  shame,  but  from  fear.  But  the  shame  of  a 
dog  touches  an  abyss  of  misery  as  bottomless  as  any 
human  emotion.  He  has  fallen  out  of  the  state  of 
grace,  and  nothing  but  the  absolution  and  remission 
of  his  sin  will  restore  him  to  happiness.  By  his 
association  with  man  he  seems  to  have  caught  some- 
thing of  his  capacity  for  spiritual  misery.  I  had  an 
Airedale  once  who  had  moods  of  despondency  as 
abysmal  as  my  own.     He  was  as  sentimental  as  any 


2o8         A  DITHYRAMB  ON  A  DOG 

minor  poet,  and  at  the  sound  of  certain  tunes  on  the 
piano  he  would  break  into  paroxysms  of  grief,  whining 
and  moaning  as  if  in  one  moment  of  concentrated 
anguish  he  recalled  every  bereavement  he  had  en- 
dured, every  bone  he  had  lost,  every  stone  heaved  at 
him  by  his  hated  enemy,  the  butcher's  boy.  Indeed, 
there  are  tirnes  when  the  dog  approximates  so  close  to 
our  intelligence  that  he  seems  to  be  of  us,  a  sort  of 
humble  relation  of  ourselves,  with  our  elementary  feel- 
ings but  not  our  gift  of  expression,  our  joy  but  not 
our  laughter,  our  misery  but  not  our  tears,  our  thoughts 
but  not  our  speech.  To  sentence  him  to  death  would 
be  almost  like  homicide,  and  the  day  of  his  reprieve 
should  be  celebrated  as  a  festival.     .     .     . 

Come,   old   friend.      Let    us   away   to    the   woods. 
"Walk." 


-^> 


"<^^^^^.-^^ 


ON  HAPPY  FACES  IN  THE  STRAND 


I  WAS  walking  along  the  Strand  a  few  afternoons  ago 
and  had  a  singuar  impression  of  a  cheerful  world. 
The  Strand  is  to  me  always  the  most  attractive  street 
I  know,  especially  on  bright  afternoons  when  the  sun 
is  drooping  behind  the  Admiralty  Arch  and  its  light 
glints  and  dances  in  the  eyes  of  the  crowd  moving 
westward.  Then  it  is  that  I  seem  to  see  the  way- 
farers transfigured  into  a  procession  hurrying  in  pur- 
suit of  some  sunlit  adventure  of  the  soul,  and  am 
almost  persuaded  to  turn  round  and  catch  with  them 
the  flash  of  vision  that  gleams  in  their  eyes.  But  the 
thing  that  struck  me  this  afternoon  was  the  unusual 
gaiety  of  the  people.  It  seemed  to  me  that  I  had 
209 


2IO    ON  HAPPY  FACES  IN  THE  STRAND 

never  seen  such  a  procession  of  laughing,  happy  faces. 
Probably  it  was  due  to  the  fact  that  it  was  about 
the  time  when  the  afternoon  theatres  were  empty- 
ing. Probably  also  the  impression  on  my  mind  was 
all  the  sharper  because  it  was  a  day  of  depressing 
tidings — bad  news  from  Russia,  from  Italy,  from 
everywhere.  I  did  not  suppose  that  these  merry  people 
were  ignorant  of  the  news  or  indifferent  to  it.  They 
were  simply  obeying  the  impulse  of  healthy  minds  and 
good  digestions  to  be  cheerful — quand  meme. 

And  as  I  passed  along  I  wondered  whether,  in 
spite  of  all  the  tragedy  in  which  our  life  is  cast,  our 
fund  of  personal  happiness  is  undiminished.  Do  we 
come  into  the  world  with  a  certain  capacity  for 
pleasure  and  pain  and  realise  it  no  matter  what  our 
external  circumstances  may  be?  Johnson  took  that 
view  and  expressed  it  in  the  familiar  lines  incorporated 
in  Goldsmith's  "Traveller" — the  only  lines  of  John- 
son's very  pedestrian  poetry  which  have  won  a  sort 
of  immortality: 

How   small  of  all  that  human  hearts  endure, 
That  part  which  kings  or  laws  can  cause  or  cure. 
Still   to  ourselves  in   every  place  consigned 
Our  own   felicity   we  make   or  find. 

In  its  political  intention  I  have  always  disagreed  with 
this  verse.  Johnson  was  a  Tory  who  loved  liberty  in 
its  social  meanings,  but  distrusted  it  as  a  political  ideal 
and  hated  all  agitation  for  reform.  And  because  he 
hated  reform  he  said  that  our  happiness  had  no  re- 
lation to  the  conditions  in  which  we  live. 


ON  HAPPY  FACES  IN  THE  STRAND    211 

It  is  an  argument  which  must  be  a  great  comfort 
to  the  slum-owner,  the  slave-owner,  the  profiteer,  and 
all  the  odious  people  who  live  by  exploiting  others. 
And  like  most  falsities  there  is  a  sense  in  which  it 
is  true.  The  child  playing  in  a  sunless  court  laughs 
as  gaily  and  probably  experiences  as  much  animal  hap- 
piness— assuming  it  is  sufficiently  fed  and  sufficiently 
warm — as  the  boy  in  the  Eton  playing  fields.  It  is 
a  mercy  it  is  so.  It  is  a  mercy  that  we  have  this 
reservoir  of  defiant  happiness  within  that  answers  the 
harsh  and  bitter  blows  of  outward  circumstance.  But 
he  who  advances  this  fact  as  a  political  argument  is  not 
a  wise  man.  Is  the  quality  of  happiness  nothing?  Is 
it  nothing  to  us  whether  we  find  our  happiness  over  a 
pint  pot,  or  in  the  love  of  gardens,  the  beauties  of  the 
world  and  the  infinite  fields  of  the  mind's  adventures? 
Is  it  nothing  to  society?  We  have  learned  that  even 
the  pig  is  better  for  a  clean  sty. 

But  putting  aside  the  quality  of  happiness  and  its 
social  aspects,  there  is  much  truth  in  Johnson's  lines. 
Happiness  is  an  entirely  personal  affair.  We  have  it 
in  large  measure  or  in  small,  but  in  so  far  as  we 
have  it  it  is  wholly  and  completely  ours  and  not  the 
sport  of  fortune.  I  do  not  say  that  if  you  put  me  in 
a  dungeon  it  will  not  lessen  the  sum  of  my  happiness, 
for  personal  freedom  is  the  soul  of  happiness.  If 
you  are  a  sensitive  person  the  sorrows  of  the  world 
will  afflict  you,  but  they  will  afflict  you  as  a  personal 
thing,  and  it  may  be  doubted  whether  their  magnitude 
will  add  to  the  affliction.  I  hope  it  is  not  a  shocking 
thing  to  say,  but  I  sometimes  doubt,  looking  on  the 


212   ON  HAPPY  FACES  IN  THE  STRAND 

world  as  it  appears  to  me  and  putting  aside  the  infinity 
of  sheer  physical  suffering,  whether  the  sum  of  per- 
sonal happiness  is  less  to-day  than  in  normal  times. 

I  was  talking  the  other  day  to  a  well-known  author, 
who  expressed  satisfaction  that  he  had  had  the  good 
fortune  to  live  in  the  most  "interesting"  period  of 
the  world's  history.  There  was  an  indignant  protest 
against  the  word  from  another  member  of  the  com- 
pany ;  but  the  author  insisted.  Yes,  interesting.  Could 
not  tragedy  be  interesting  as  well  as  comedy?  Could 
not  one  feel  all  the  horror  and  misery  and  insanity 
of  this  frightful  upheaval,  shoulder  one's  tasks,  take 
one's  part  in  the  battle,  and  still  preserve  in  the 
quiet  chambers  of  the  mind  a  detached  and  philosophic 
contemplation  of  the  drama  and  pronounce  it — ^yes, 
interesting?  His  own  record  of  unselfish  service  dur- 
ing the  war,  and  his  passionate  desire  for  a  sane  and 
ordered  world  were  too  unquestionable  for  his  meaning 
to  be  misunderstood. 

And  the  idea  he  wished  to  convey  was  sound  enough. 
There  has  never  been  an  event  on  the  earth  which 
has  so  absorbed  the  thought,  the  energies,  and  the 
faculties  of  men  as  the  catastrophe  through  which  we 
are  living.  It  overshadows  every  moment  of  our  lives, 
colours  everything  that  we  do,  roots  up  our  habits, 
cuts  down  our  food,  breaks  up  our  homes,  scatters 
the  dead  like  leaves  over  the  plains  of  Europe,  and 
sows  the  seas  with  the  wreckage  of  a  thousand  ships. 
I  can  fancy  that  when  our  great-grandchildren  in 
2017  look  back  upon  the  days  of  their  forefathers  they 
will  picture  us  cowering  like  sheep  before  the  tempest, 


ON  HAPPY  FACES  IN  THE  STRAND    213 

with  no  thought  except  of  the  gigantic  cataclysm  that 
has  overtaken  us.  In  a  sense  they  will  be  right. 
In  another  sense  they  will  be  wrong.  We  are  living 
through  a  nightmare,  but  we  laugh  in  our  dreams. 
The  vastness  of  the  general  calamity  might  be  expected 
to  plunge  us  individually  in  despair.  But  it  doesn't. 
Individually  we  seem  to  preserve  a  defiant  cheerful- 
ness, snatch  our  pleasures  with  a  sharpened  appetite, 
can  even  find  a  fascination  in  the  wild  sky  and  the 
lightnings  that  stab  the  tortured  earth. 

As  I  look  up  I  see  the  buses  passing  and  read  the 
announcements  on  the  knife-boards.  You  might,  read- 
ing them,  suppose  that  we  were  living  in  the  most 
light-hearted  of  worlds.  There  is  "A  Little  Bit  of 
Fluff"  at  one  theatre,  "High  Jinks"  at  another, 
"Monty's  Flapper"  here,  the  "Bing  Girls"  there,  and 
someone  called  Shirley  Kellogg  invites  me  to  "Zig- 
Zag."  These,  my  dear  child  of  a.d.  2017,  are  the 
things  with  which  England  amused  itself  in  the  time 
of  the  tempest.  And  do  not  forget  also  that  it  was 
during  the  great  war  that  Charlie  Chaplin  swept  the 
two  hemispheres  with  the  magic  of  his  incomparable 
idiocy.  Perhaps  without  the  great  war  he  could  not 
have  achieved  such  unparalleled  renown.  For  this 
levity  is  largely  a  counterpoise  to  our  anxieties — a 
violent  reaction  against  events,  an  attempt  to  keep 
the  balance  of  things  even.  The  strain  on  us  is  so 
heavy  that  we  tend  to  go  a  little  wildly  in  extremes, 
as  the  ship  sailing  through  heavy  seas  plunges  into 
the  trough  of  the  waves  and  then  soars  skyward  but 
preserves  its  equilibrium  throughout. 


214    ON  HAPPY  FACES  IN  THE  STRAND 

We  are  seen  both  at  our  best  and  our  worst — 
stripped  naked  as  it  were  to  the  soul,  our  disguises 
gone,  our  real  selves  revealed  to  ourselves  and  to  our 
neighbours,  and  with  equal  surprise  to  both.  Our 
nerve  ends  are  bare,  and  our  reactions  to  circumstance 
are  violent  and  irrational.  We  are  at  once  more 
generous  and  more  bitter.  We  are  the  sport  even  of 
the  weather.  If  we  see  the  silver  lining  of  our  spiritual 
cloud  more  brilliantly  when  the  sun  laughs  in  our 
faces,  our  depression  touches  a  more  abysmal  note 
when  the  east  wind  blows  and  we  flounder  in  the  slush 
of  our  winter  nights.  I  could  not  help  associating 
with  the  procession  of  happy  faces  in  the  Strand 
another  widely  different  incident  that  I  witnessed  in 
a  bus  the  other  night.  It  seemed  the  reverse  side 
of  the  same  shield.  A  respectably  dressed,  middle- 
aged  pair  came  in  out  of  the  darkness  and  the  sleet. 
They  were  both  rather  large,  and  there  was  not  much 
room,  but  they  squeezed  themselves  into  two  vacant 
places  with  an  air  of  silent  resolution  which  indicated 
that  they  would  stand  no  nonsense,  knew  how  to 
demand  their  "rights"  and  had  no  civility  to  waste 
on  anybody.  You  know  the  sort  of  people.  If  you 
don't  get  out  of  their  way  in  double  quick  time  they 
simply  sit  down  on  you.  They  do  not  say  "Is  there 
room?"  or  "Can  you  make  room?"  That  would  be 
a  sign  of  weakness,  an  act  of  politeness,  and  they 
abominate  politeness  except  in  other  people.  They 
expect  it  in  other  people. 

"Where  are  you  going  to?"  asked  the  woman  when 
they  were  seated. 


ON  HAPPY  FACES  IN  THE  STRAND    215 

"Victoria,"  said  the  man  with  a  snap. 

"Well  you  needn't  bite  my  head  off,"  said  the 
woman. 

"I've  told  you  six  times,"  snapped  the  man. 

"What  a  bully  you  are,"  retorted  the  woman. 
Then  they  subsided  into  silence.  Husband  and  wife, 
I  thought — bursting  with  bad  temper  to  such  an  extent 
that  they  boil  over  even  in  a  bus  full  of  people. 
Probably  they  have  been  snarling  like  that  ever  since 
their  honeymoon,  and  will  go  on  snarling  until  one 
puts  on  crape  for  the  other. 

But  on  second  thoughts  I  concluded  that  this  was 
probably  unjust.  They  had  come  in  out  of  the  slush 
and  the  blackness,  and  had  got  the  gloom  of  the 
London  night  in  their  souls.  Most  of  us  get  it  in 
our  souls  more  or  less.  It  makes  us  ill-humoured  and 
depressed.  In  the  early  days  there  was  a  certain 
novelty  in  the  darkened  streets,  and  some  ecstatic 
writers  discovered  that  London  had  never  been  so 
beautiful  before.  They  even  wrote  poems  about  it. 
When  you  blundered  into  a  pillar-box  and  began 
making  profuse  apologies,  or  stumbled  against  the 
kerb-stone,  or  fell  into  the  arms  of  some  invisible 
but  substantial  part  of  the  darkness,  or  scurried  fran- 
tically across  Trafalgar  Square,  you  felt  that  it  was 
all  part  of  the  great  adventure  of  war  and  was  in 
its  way  rather  romantic  and  exhilarating.  But  three 
winters  of  that  experience  have  exhausted  our  enthusi- 
asm and  have  made  London  at  night  a  mere  debauch 
of  depression  except  for  those  who  make  it  a  debauch 
of  another  kind. 


2i6    ON  HAPPY  FACES  IN  THE  STRAND 

But  whatever  the  explanation  of  that  little  scene 
in  the  bus,  there  is  no  doubt  that  as  the  long  strain 
goes  on  it  plays  havoc  with  our  nerves  and  our 
tempers.  We  are  tired  and  angry  with  this  mad 
world,  and  since  we  cannot  visit  our  anger  on  the 
enemy  we  visit  it  very  unreasonably  on  each  other. 
The  shattered  vase  of  life  lies  in  ruins  at  our  feet,  and 
there  is  an  overmastering  temptation  to  grind  the  frag- 
ments to  dust  rather  than  piece  them  together  for 
the  healing  future  to  restore.  We  have  lost  faith 
in  men,  in  principles,  in  ideals,  in  ourselves,  and  are 
subdued  to  the  naked  barbarism  into  which  civilisa- 
tion has  collapsed.  Religion  was  never  at  so  low  an 
ebb,  so  openly  repudiated,  or,  what  is  worse,  so 
travestied  by  charlatans  and  blackguards.  I  heard  the 
other  day  the  description  of  an  address  at  a  public 
gathering  by  a  person  who  mixed  up  his  blasphemies 
about  some  new  god  of  the  creature's  imagining  with 
obscenities  that  would  be  impossible  on  a  music  hall 
stage. 

In  the  Divorce  Court  last  week  the  counsel  for  the 
lady  in  the  case  gravely  advanced  the  plea  that  in 
these  days,  when  men  are  dying  by  the  million  in 
mud  and  filth,  the  women  at  home  must  not  be  denied 
their  excitements,  their  flirtations  and  their  late  sup- 
pers. When  Mars  is  abroad  Venus  must  be  abroad 
too.  Murder  is  the  sole  business  of  the  world  and 
lust  is  its  proper  pastime.  Take  a  glance  at  any 
bookstall  and  note  the  garbage  which  lines  its  shelves. 
Dip  into  the  morass  of  the  popular  Sunday  news- 
papers with  their  millions  of  circulation  and  see  the 


ON  HAPPY  FACES  IN  THE  STRAND    217 


broth  of  foulness  in  which  the  great  public  take  their 
weekly  intellectual  bath.  The  tide  has  overwhelmed 
the  Stage  as  it  has  overwhelmed  the  Church,  and  a 
wild  levity  companions  our  illimitable  tragedy. 

It  is  no  new  phenomenon.  In  time  of  peril  humanity 
always  reveals  these  extravagant  contrasts,  and  Boc- 
caccio, with  the  true  instinct  of  the  artist,  set  his 
tales  of  merriment  and  licentiousness  against  the  back- 
ground of  a  city  perishing  of  plague.  We  live  at 
once  more  intensely  and  more  frivolously.  The  pendu- 
lum of  our  emotions  swings  violently  from  extreme 
to  extreme  and  a  defiant  exhilaration  answers  the 
mood  of  depression  and  anxiety.  I  can  conceive  that 
that  couple  in  the  bus  were  quite  merry  when  they 
saw  the  sun  shine  in  the  morning  and  read  that  Vimy 
Ridge  had  been  won.  There  is,  in  Pepys*  Diary, 
a   delightful   illustration   of   the  swift   transitions   by 


2i8    ON  HAPPY  FACES  IN  THE  STRAND 

which  the  mind  in  times  of  stress  seeks  to  keep 
its  equipoise.  It  is  the  loth  Sept.  (Lord's  Day),  1665: 
The  plague  is  at  its  worst  and  the  whole  city  seems 
doomed.  The  war  with  the  Dutch  is  going  badly. 
Mrs.  Pepys'  father  is  dying,  and  everything  looks 
black.  But  there  comes  news  of  a  success  at  sea  and 
Pepys  goes  down  the  river  to  meet  Lord  Brouncker 
and  Sir  J.  Minnes  at  Greenwich — 

"Where  we  supped  [there  was  also  Sir  W.  Doyly  and  Mr. 
Evelyn]  ;  but  the  receipt  of  this  news  did  put  us  all  into 
such  an  extasy  of  joy  that  it  inspired  into  Sir  J.  Minnes 
and  Mr.  Evelyn  such  a  spirit  of  mirth  that  in  all  my 
life  I  never  met  so  merry  a  two  hours  as  our  company 
this  night.  Among  other  humours,  Mr.  Evelyn's  repeat- 
ing of  some  verses  made  up  of  nothing  but  the  various 
acceptations  of  may  and  can,  and  doing  it  so  aptly  upon 
occasion  of  something  of  that  nature,  and  so  fast,  did  make 
us  all  die  almost  with  laughing,  and  did  so  stop  the  mouth 
of  Sir  J.  Minnes  in  the  middle  of  all  his  mirth  that  I 
never  saw  any  man  so  out-done  in  all  my  life;  and  Sir 
J.  Minnes's  mirth  to  see  himself  out-done  was  the  crown 
of   all   our  mirth." 

Isn't  that  a  wonderful  picture?  And  think  of  the 
grave  John  Evelyn  having  this  gaiety  in  him!  You 
will  read  the  whole  of  his  Diary  and  not  get  one 
smile  from  his  severe  countenance.  I  had  the  curiosity 
to  turn  to  his  own  record  of  the  same  time.  He 
has  no  entry  for  the  loth,  but  two  days  before  he  says: 

"Came  home,  there  perishing  neere  10,000  poor  creatures 
weekly;  however  I  went  all  along  the  City  and  suburbs 
from  Kent  Streete   to   St,  James's,   a   dismal   passage,   and 


ON  HAPPY  FACES  IN  THE  STRAND    219 

dangerous  to  see  so  many  coffins  expos'd  in  the  streetes, 
novf  thin  of  people ;  the  shops  shut  up  and  all  in  mourneful 
silence,  as  not  knowing  whose  turn  might  be  next." 

And  then,  at  the  receipt  of  a  bit  of  good  news 
this  austere  man  is  seized  with  "such  an  extasy  of  joy" 
that  he  gives  Pepys  the  merriest  evening  of  his  life. 
And  Pepys  was  a  good  judge  of  merry  evenings. 

The  truth  is  expressed  somewhere  in  Hardy's  works, 
where  he  says  that  the  soul's  specific  gravity  is  always 
less  than  that  of  the  sea  of  circumstances  into  which 
it  is  cast  and  rises  unfailingly  to  the  surface.  There 
comes  to  my  mind  as  illustrating  this  truth  a  passage 
in  that  great  and  moving  book  "Under  Fire" — the 
most  tremendous  picture  of  the  horror  and  squalor 
of  war  ever  painted  by  man.  One  of  the  squad  of 
French  soldiers  with  whom  the  book  deals  is  in  the 
trenches  near  Souchez  and  the  Vimy  Ridge.  It  is 
before  the  English  had  taken  over  that  part  of  the 
line.  There  is  a  quiet  time  and  some  of  the  men 
get  on  companionable  terms  with  the  enemy.  This 
man's  wife  and  child  are  in  Lens,  just  behind  the 
German  lines.  He  has  not  seen  them  for  eighteen 
months,  and  out  of  sheer  good  nature  the  German 
soldiers  lend  him  a  uniform  and  smuggle  him  into  a 
coal  fatigue  which  is  going  into  Lens.  He  passes  in 
the  disguise  among  his  enemy  companions  by  his  own 
house  and  sees  through  the  open  door  his  wife  and 
the  widow  of  a  comrade  sitting  at  their  work.  In 
the  room  with  them  are  two  German  non-commis- 
sioned officers,  and  his  child  is  on  the  knee  of  one  of 
them. 


220   ON  HAPPY  FACES  IN  THE  STRAND 

But  the  thing  that  strikes  him  to  the  heart  is  the 
fact  that  his  wife  is  smiling  as  she  talks  to  the  non- 
coms. — "Not  a  forced  smile,  not  a  debtor's  smile,  non, 
a  real  smile  that  came  from  her,  that  she  gave."  He 
did  not  doubt  her  affection  or  her  loyalty,  and  when 
the  bitterness  had  passed  and  he  was  back  in  his  lines 
and  telling  his  comrade  of  the  adventure,  he  defended 
her  from  the  criticism  of  his  own  mind  in  words  of 
extraordinary  beauty: 

"She's  quite  young,  you  know;  she's  twenty-six.  She 
can't  hold  her  youth  in,  it's  coming  out  of  her  all  over,  and 
when  she's  resting  in  the  lamplight  and  the  warmth,  she's 
got  to  smile;  and  even  if  she  burst  out  laughing,  it  would 
just  simply  be  her  youth  singing  in  her  throat.  It  isn't 
on  account  of  others,  if  truth  were  told ;  it's  on  account  of 
herself.  It's  life.  She  lives.  Ah,  yes,  she  lives  and  that's 
all.  It  isn't  her  fault  if  she  lives.  You  wouldn't  have  her 
die?  Very  well,  what  do  you  want  her  to  do?  Cry  all 
day  on  account  of  me  and  the  Boches?  Grouse?  One 
can't  cry  all  the  time,  nor  grouse  for  eighteen  months. 
Can't  be  done.  It's  too  long,  I  tell  you.  That's  all  there 
is  to  it." 

In  that  poignant  story  we  touch  the  root  of  the 
matter.  We  live.  And,  living,  the  light  and  shadow 
of  life  play  across  the  surface  of  ourselves,  though 
deep  down  in  our  hearts  there  is  the  sense  of  the 
unspeakable  tragedy  of  things.  We  may  wonder  that 
we  can  be  happy  and  may  be  rather  ashamed  of  it, 
but  "we  live"  and  we  cannot  deny  our  natures.  We 
may,  like  Miss  Havisham,  draw  down  the  blinds,  shut 
out  the  world,  and  dwell  in  darkness,  but  then  we 
cease  to  live  and  become  mad.     We  must  laugh  if 


"4  real  smile.  .  .  ." 


222       ON  HAPPY  FACES  IN  THE  STRAND 

only  to  keep  our  sanity,  and  nature  arranges  that  we 
shall  laugh  even  in  the  face  of  terrible  things.  There 
was  a  good  deal  of  truth  in  the  remark  of  the  French 
lady  to  Boswell  that  "Our  happiness  depends  on  the 
circulation  of  the  blood."  The  wild  current  of  affairs 
sweeps  us  on  whithersoever  it  will,  but  in  our  separate 
little  eddies  we  whirl  around  and  find  relief  in  private 
distractions  and  pleasures  that  seem  independent  of 
the  great  march  of  events.  Jane  Austen  wrote  her 
novels  in  the  midst  of  the  Napoleonic  wars,  yet  I 
cannot  recall  one  hint  in  them  of  that  world-shaking 
event.  She  mentioned  a  battle  in  one  of  her  letters, 
but  even  then  only  a  little  callously.  And  a  friend 
of  mine  told  me  the  other  day  that  he  had  had  the 
curiosity  to  turn  up  the  newspaper  files  of  the  time 
of  Austerlitz  and  found  that  the  public  were  ap- 
parently all  agog,  not  about  the  battle  that  had  changed 
the  current  of  the  world,  but  about  the  merits  of 
the  Infant  Roscius.  It  is  well  that  we  have  this 
faculty  of  detachment  and  independent  life.  If  there 
were  no  private  relief  for  this  public  tragedy  the 
world  would  have  gone  mad.  But  perhaps  you  will 
say  it  has  gone  mad.  .  .  . 

Let  me  recall  by  way  of  envoi  that  fine  story  in 
Montaigne.  When  the  town  of  Nola  was  destroyed 
by  the  barbarians  Paulinus,  the  bishop,  was  stripped 
of  all  he  possessed  and  taken  prisoner.  And  as  he 
was  led  away  he  prayed,  "O  Lord,  make  me  to  bear 
this  loss,  for  Thou  knowest  that  they  have  taken 
nothing  that  is  mine:  the  riches  that  made  me  rich 
and  the  treasures  that  made  me  worthy  are  still  mine 
in  their  fullness." 


ON  WORD-MAGIC 

I  SEE  that  a  discussion  has  arisen  in  the  Spectator 
on  the  "Canadian  Boat  Song."  It  appeared  in 
Blackwood's  nearly  a  century  ago,  and  ever  since  its 
authorship  has  been  the  subject  of  recurrent  contro- 
versy. The  author  may  have  been  "Christopher  North," 
or  his  brother,  Tom  Wilson,  or  Gait,  or  the  Ettrick 
Shepherd,  or  the  Earl  of  Eglinton,  or  none  of  these. 
We  shall  never  know.  It  is  one  of  those  pleasant 
mysteries  of  the  past,  like  the  authorship  of  the  Junius 
Letters  (if,  indeed,  that  can  be  called  a  mystery), 
which  can  never  be  exhausted  because  they  can  never 
be  solved.  I  am  not  going  to  offer  an  opinion;  for  I 
have  none,  and  I  refer  to  the  subject  only  to  illustrate 
the  magic  of  a  word.  The  poem  lives  by  virtue  of  the 
famous  stanza: — 


From  the  lone  shieling  of  the  misty  island 

Mountains  divide  us,   and  the  waste  of  seas — 

Yet  still  the  blood  is  strong,  the  heart  is  Highland, 
And  we  in  dreams  behold  the  Hebrides. 
223 


224  ON  WORD-MAGIC 

It  would  be  an  insensible  heart  that  did  not  feel 
the  surge  of  this  strong  music.  The  yearning  of  the 
exile  for  the  motherland  has  never  been  uttered  with 
more  poignant  beauty,  though  Stevenson  came  near  the 
same  note  of  tender  anguish  in  the  lines  written  in  far 
Samoa  and  ending: — 

Be  it  granted  me  to  behold  you  again,  in  dying, 
Hills  of  home,  and  to  hear  again  the  call. 

Hear  about  the  graves  of  the  martyrs  the  peewees  crying — 
And  hear  no  more  at  all. 

But  for  energy  and  masculine  emotion  the  unknown 
author  takes  the  palm.  The  verse  is  like  a  great 
wave  of  the  sea,  rolling  in  to  the  mother  shore, 
gathering  impetus  and  grandeur  as  it  goes,  culminating 
in  the  note  of  vision  and  scattering  itself  triumphantly 
in  the  splendour  of  that  word  "Hebrides." 

It  is  a  beautiful  illustration  of  the  magic  of  a  word 
used  in  its  perfect  setting.  It  gathers  up  the  emotion 
of  the  theme  into  one  chord  of  fulfilment  and  flings 
open  the  casement  of  the  mind  to  far  horizons.  It 
is  not  the  only  instance  in  which  the  name  has  been 
used  with  extraordinary  effect.  Wordsworth's  "Soli- 
tary Reaper"  has  many  beautiful  lines,  but  the  peculiar 
glory  of  the  poem  dwells  in  the  couplet  in  which, 
searching  for  parallels  for  the  song  of  the  Highland 
girl  that  fills  "the  vale  profound,"  he  hears  in  imagina- 
tion the  cuckoo's  call 

Breaking   the    silence   of   the  seas 
Among  the  farthest  Hebrides. 


ON  WORD-MAGIC  225 

Wordsworth,  like  Homer  and  Milton,  and  all  who 
touch  the  sublime  in  poetry,  had  the  power  of  trans- 
muting a  proper  name  to  a  strange  and  significant 
beauty.  The  most  memorable  example,  perhaps,  is 
in  the  closing  lines  of  the  poem  to  Dorothy 
Wordsworth : — 

But    an   old    age    serene    and    bright, 
And  lovely  as   a  Lapland   night. 
Shall    lead   thee   to   thy  grave. 

"Lapland"  is  an  intrinsically  beautiful  word,  but 
it  is  its  setting  in  this  case  that  makes  it  shine,  pure 
and  austere,  like  a  star  in  the  heavens  of  poetry. 
And  the  miraculous  word  need  not  be  intrinsically 
beautiful.  Darien  is  not,  yet  it  is  that  word  in  which 
perhaps  the  greatest  of  all  sonnets  finds  its  breathless, 
astonished  close: — 

Silent — upon  a  peak — in  Dar — ien. 

And  the  truth  is  that  the  magic  of  words  is  not  in 
the  words  themselves,  but  in  the  distinction,  delicacy, 
surprise  of  their  use.  Take  the  great  line  which 
Shakespeare  puts  into  the  mouth  of  Antony — 

I    am    dying,    Egypt,    dying. 

It  is  the  only  occasion  in  the  play  which  he  makes 
Antony  speak  of  Cleopatra  by  her  territorial  name 
and  there  is  no  warrant  for  the  usage  of  Plutarch. 
It  is  a  stroke  of  sheer  word  magic.  It  summons  up 
with    a    sudden    magnificence    all    the    mystery    and 


226  ON  WORD-MAGIC 

splendour  incarnated  in  the  woman  for  whom  he 
has  gambled  away  the  world  and  all  the  earthly 
glories  that  are  fading  into  the  darkness  of  death. 
The  whole  tragedy  seems  to  flame  to  its  culmination 
in  this  word  that  suddenly  lifts  the  action  from  the 
human  plane  to  the  scale  of  cosmic  drama. 

Words  of  course  have  an  individuality,  a  perfume 
of  their  own,  but  just  as  the  flame  in  the  heart  of  the 
diamond  has  to  be  revealed  by  the  craftsman,  so 
the  true  magic  of  a  beautiful  word  only  discloses  itself 
at  the  touch  of  the  master.  "Quiet"  is  an  ordinary 
enough  word,  and  few  are  more  frequently  on  our 
lips.  Yet  what  wonderful  effects  Wordsworth,  Cole- 
ridge and  Keats  extract  from  it: — 

It  is  a  beauteous  evening,  calm  and  free; 
The  holy  time  is  quiet  as  a  nun, 
Breathless  with  adoration. 

The  whole  passage  is  a  symphony  of  the  sunset,  but 
it  is  that  ordinary  word  "quiet"  which  breathes  like 
a  benediction  through  the  cadence,  filling  the  mind 
with  the  sense  of  an  illimitable  peace.  And  so  with 
Coleridge's  "singeth  a  quiet  tune,"  or  Keats' : — 

Full  of  sweet  dreams  and  health  and  quiet  breathing. 
Or  when,  "half  in  love  with  easeful  Death,"  he 

Called  him  soft  names  in  many  a  mused  rhyme 
To  take  into  the   air  my  quiet  breath. 

And  again : — 


ON  WORD-MAGIC  227 

Far  from  the  fiery  noon   and  eve's  one   star 
Sat  grey-hair'd  Saturn,  quiet  as  a  stone. 

There  have  been  greater  poets  than  Keats,  but 
none  who  has  had  so  sure  an  instinct  for  the  precious 
word  as  he  had.  Byron  had  none  of  this  magician 
touch,  Shelley  got  his  effects  by  the  glow  and  fervour 
of  his  spirit;  Swinburne  by  the  sheer  torrent  of  his 
song,  and  Browning  by  the  energy  of  his  thought. 
Tennyson  was  much  more  of  the  artificer  in  words 
than  these,  but  he  had  not  the  secret  of  the 
word-magic  of  Shakespeare,  Wordsworth,  or  Keats. 
Compare  the  use  of  adjectives  in  two  things  like 
Shelley's  "Ode  to  the  Skylark"  and  Keats'  "Ode  to  the 
Nightingale,"  and  the  difference  is  startling.  Both 
are  incomparable,  but  in  the  one  case  it  is  the  hurry 
of  the  song,  the  flood  of  rapture  that  delights  us:  in 
the  other  each  separate  line  holds  us  with  its  jewelled 
word.  "Embalmed  darkness."  "Verdurous  glooms." 
"Now  more  than  ever  seems  it  rich  to  die."  "Cooled 
a  long  age  in  the  deep-delved  earth."  "Darkling  I 
listen."  "She  stood  in  tears  amid  the  alien  corn." 
"Oh,  for  a  beaker  full  of  the  warm  south."  "With 
beaded  bubbles  winking  at  the  brim."  "No  hungry 
generations  tread  thee  down."  And  so  on.  Such  a 
casket  of  jewels  can  be  found  in  no  other  poet  that  has 
used  our  tongue.  If  Keats'  vocabulary  had  a  defect  it 
was  a  certain  over-ripeness,  a  languorous  beauty  that, 
like  the  touch  of  his  hand,  spoke  of  death.  It  lacked 
the  fresh,  happy,  sunlit  spirit  of  Shakespeare's  sovran 
word. 


228 


ON  WORD-MAGIC 


Word-magic  belongs  to  poetry.  In  prose  It  is 
an  intrusion.  That  was  the  view  of  Coleridge.  It 
was  because,  among  its  other  qualities,  Southey's 
writing  was  so  free  from  the  shock  of  the  dazzling 
word  that  Coleridge  held  it  to  be  the  perfect  example 
of  pure  prose.  The  modulations  are  so  just,  the  note 
so  unaffected,  the  current  so  clear  and  untroubled 
that  you  read  on  without  pausing  once  to  think  "What 
a  brilliant  writer  this  fellow  is."  And  that  is  the 
true  triumph  of  the  art.  It  is  an  art  which  addresses 
itself  to  the  mind,  and  not  the  emotions,  and  word- 
magic  does  not  belong  to  its  true  armoury. 


ODIN  GROWN  OLD 


I  HAD  a  strange  dream  last  night.  Like  most  dreams, 
it  was  a  sort  of  wild  comment  on  the  thought  that 
had  possessed  me  in  my  waking  hours.  We  had  been 
talking  of  the  darkness  of  these  times,  how  we  walked 
from  day  to  day  into  a  future  that  stalked  before  us 
like  a  wall  of  impenetrable  night  that  we  could  almost 
touch  and  yet  never  could  overtake,  how  all  the 
prophets  (including  ourselves)  had  been  found  out,  and 
how  all  the  prophecies  of  the  wise  proved  to  be  as 
worthless  as  the  guesses  of  the  foolish.  Ah,  if  we 
could  only  get  behind  this  grim  mask  of  the  present 
and  see  the  future  stretching  before  us  ten  years,  twenty 
years,  fifty  years  hence,  what  would  we  give?  What 
a  strange,  ironic  light  would  be  shed  upon  this  writh- 
ing, surging,  blood-stained  Europe.  With  what  a 
shock  we  should  discover  the  meaning  of  the  terror. 
229 


230  ODIN  GROWN  OLD 

But  the  Moving  Finger  writes  on  with  inscrutable  se- 
crecy. We  cannot  wipe  out  a  syllable  that  it  has  writ- 
ten ;  we  cannot  tell  a  syllable  that  it  will  write.  .  .  . 

You  deserved  bad  dreams,  you  will  say,  if  you  talked 
like  this.  .  .  . 

When  I  awoke  (in  my  sleep)  I  seemed  like  some 
strange  reminiscence  of  myself,  like  an  echo  that  had 
gone  on  reverberating  down  countless  centuries.  It 
was  as  if  I  had  lived  from  the  beginning  of  Time, 
and  now  stood  far  beyond  the  confines  of  Time.  I 
was  alone  in  the  world.  I  forded  rivers  and  climbed 
mountains  and  traversed  endless  plains;  I  came  upon 
the  ruins  of  vast  cities,  great  embankments  that  seemed 
once  to  have  been  railways,  fragments  of  arches  that  had 
once  sustained  great  bridges,  dockyards  where  the  skele- 
tons of  mighty  ships  lay  rotting  in  garments  of  seaweed 
and  slime.  I  seemed,  with  the  magic  of  dreams,  to 
see  the  whole  earth  stretched  out  before  me  like  a  map. 
I  traced  the  course  of  the  coast  lines,  saw  how  strangely 
altered  they  were,  and  with  invisible  power  passed 
breathlessly  from  continent  to  continent,  from  desola- 
tion to  desolation.  Again  and  again  I  cried  out  in  the 
agony  of  an  unspeakable  loneliness,  but  my  cry  only 
startled  a  solitude  that  was  infinite.  Time  seemed  to 
have  no  meaning  in  this  appalling  vacancy.  I  did  not 
live  hours  or  days,  but  centuries,  aeons,  eternities.  Only 
on  the  mountains  and  in  the  deserts  did  I  see  anything 
that  recalled  the  world  I  had  known  in  the  immeasur- 
able backward  of  time.  Standing  on  the  snowy  ridge 
of  the  Finsteraarjoch  I  saw  the  pink  of  the  dawn  still 
flushing  the  summits  of  the  Southern  Alps,  and  in 


ODIN  GROWN  OLD  231 

the  desert  I  came  upon  the  Pyramids  and  the  Sphinx. 

And  it  was  by  the  Sphinx  that  I  saw  The  Man. 
He  seemed  stricken  with  unthinkable  years.  His  gums 
were  toothless,  his  eyes  bleared,  his  figure  shrunken 
to  a  pitiful  tenuity.  He  sat  at  the  foot  of  the  Sphinx, 
fondling  a  sword,  and  as  he  fondled  it  he  mumbled 
to  himself  in  an  infantile  treble.  As  I  approached  he 
peered  at  me  through  his  dim  eyes,  and  to  my  ques- 
tion as  to  who  he  was  he  replied  in  thin,  queasy  voice : 

"I  am  Odin — hee!  hee!  I  possess  the  earth,  the 
whole  earth  ...  I  and  my  sword  ...  we  own  it 
all  .  .  .  we  and  the  Sphinx  .  .  .  we  own  it  all. 
.  .  .  All  .  .  .  hee!  hee!  .  .  ."  And  he  turned  and 
began  to  fondle  his  sword  again. 

"But  where  are  the  others?  What  happened  to 
them?" 

"Gone  .  .  .  hee!  hee!  .  .  .  All  gone.  ...  It  took 
thousands  of  years  to  do  it,  but  they've  all  gone.  It 
never  would  have  been  done  if  man  hadn't  become  civ- 
ilised. For  centuries  and  centuries  men  tried  to  kill 
themselves  off  with  bows  and  arrows,  and  spears  and 
catapults,  but  they  couldn't  do  it.  Then  they  invented 
gunpowder,  but  that  was  no  better.  The  victory  really 
began  when  man  became  civilised  and  discovered  mod- 
ern science.  He  learned  to  fly  in  the  air  and  sail  under 
water,  and  move  mountains  and  make  lightnings,  and 
turn  the  iron  of  the  hills  into  great  ships  and  the  coal 
beneath  the  earth  into  incredible  forms  of  heat  and 
power.  And  all  the  time  he  went  on  saying  what  a 
good  world  he  was  making  .  .  .  hee!  hee!  Such  a 
wonderful   Machine.  .  .  .  Such  a  peaceful   Machine 


232  ODIN  GROWN  OLD 

.  .  .  hee !  hee !  .  .  .  Age  of  Reason,  he  said.  .  .  ,  Age 
of  universal  peace  and  brotherhood  setting  in,  he  said. 
.  .  .  Hee!  hee!  .  .  .  We  have  been  seeking  God  for 
thousands  of  years,  he  said,  and  novi^  we  have  found 
Him.  We  have  made  Him  ourselves — out  of  our  own 
heads.  We  got  tired  of  looking  for  Him  in  the  soul. 
Now  we  have  found  Him  in  the  laboratory.  We  have 
made  Him  out  of  all  the  energies  of  the  earth.  Great 
is  our  God  of  the  Machine.  Honour,  blessing,  glory, 
power — power  over  things.    Power!  Power!  Power!" 

His  voice  rose  to  a  senile  shriek. 

"And  all  the  time  .  .  .  hee,  hee!  ...  all  the  time 
he  was  making  the  Machine  for  me — me,  Odin,  me 
and  my  servants,  the  despots,  the  kings,  the  tyrants, 
the  dictators,  the  enemies  of  men.  I  laughed  .  .  .  hee, 
hee!  ...  I  laughed  as  I  saw  his  Machine  growing 
vaster  and  vaster  for  the  day  of  his  doom,  growing 
beyond  his  own  comprehension,  making  him  more  and 
more  the  slave  of  itself,  the  fly  on  its  gigantic  wheel. 
What  a  willing  servant  is  this  Power  we  have  made, 
he  said.  What  a  friend  of  Man.  How  wonderful  we 
are  to  have  created  this  Machine  of  Benevolence.  .  .  . 

"And  it  was  mine  .  .  .  hee,  hee!  .  .  .  Mine.  And 
when  it  was  complete  I  handed  it  over  to  my  servants. 
And  the  Machine  of  Benevolence  became  the  Monster 
of  Destruction.  First  one  tyrant  seized  it  and  fell; 
then  another  and  he  fell.  This  white  race  got  the 
Machine  for  a  season,  then  another  white  race  got  it; 
then  the  yellow  race.  And  they  all  perished  .  .  .  hee, 
hee!  .  .  .  They   all   perished.  .  .  .  And   with    every 


ODIN  GROWN  OLD  233 

victory  the  Machine  grew  more  deadly.  All  the  gifts 
of  the  earth  and  all  the  labour  of  men  went  to  feed  its 
mighty  hunger.  It  devoured  its  creators  by  thousands, 
by  millions,  by  nations.  It  slew,  it  poisoned,  it  burned, 
it  starved.    The  whole  earth  became  a  desolation.  .  .  . 

"And  now  I  own  it  all  .  .  .  hee,  hee!  ...  I  and 
my  sword.  We  own  it  all.  .  .  .  We  and  the  Sphinx." 
His  voice,  which  had  grown  strong  with  excitement, 
sank  back  to  its  infantile  treble. 

"And  what  was  the  meaning  of  it  all?"  I  asked. 
"And  what  will  you  do  with  your  victory?" 

"The  meaning  .  .  .  the  meaning  ...  I  don't 
know.  .  .  .  I've  come  to  ask  the  Sphinx.  I've  sat  here 
waiting  for  years,  centuries  .  .  .  oh,  so  long.  But  she 
says  nothing — only  looks  out  over  the  desert  with  that 
terrible  calm,  as  though  she  knew  the  riddle  but  would 
never  tell  it.  .  .  .  Sometimes  I  think  she  is  going  to 
speak.  .  .  .  Look  .  .  .  look  now.  .  .  .  Aren't  her 
lips  .  .  ." 

His  thin  voice  rose  to  a  tremulous  cry.  The 
sword  shook  in  his  palsied  hands.  His  rheumy  eyes 
looked  up  at  the  image  with  a  senile  frenzy. 

I  looked  up,  too.  .  .  .  Yes,  surely  the  lips  were 
moving.  They  were  about  to  open.  I  should  hear  at 
last  the  reading  of  the  enigma  of  the  strange  beings 
who  made  a  God  that  slew  them.  .  .  .  The  lips  were 
open  now  .  .  .  there  was  a  rattling  in  the  throat.  .  .  . 

But  as  I  waited  for  the  words  that  were  struggling 
into  utterance  there  came  a  sudden  wind,  hot  and  blind- 
ing and  thick  with  the  dust  of  the  desert.      It  blotted 


234 


ODIN  GROWN  OLD 


out  the  sun  and  darkened  the  vision  of  things.  The 
Sphinx  vanished  in  the  swirling  folds  of  the  storm, 
the  figure  of  the  man  faded  into  the  general  gloom, 
and  I  was  left  alone  in  the  midst  of  nothingness.  .  .  . 


ON  A  SMILE  IN  A  SHAVING  GLASS 


As  I  looked  into  the  shaving  glass  in  the  privacy  of 
the  bathroom  this  morning,  I  noticed  that  there  vt^as 
a  very  pronounced  smile  on  my  face.  I  w^as  surprised. 
Not  that  I  am  a  smileless  person  in  ordinary:  on  the 
contrary,  I  fancy  I  have  an  average  measure  of  mirth- 
fulness — a  little  patchy  perhaps,  but  enough  in  quan- 
tity if  unequal  in  distribution.  But  I  have  not  been 
hilarious  for  a  week  past.  There  is  not  much  to  be 
hilarious  about  in  these  anxious  days  when  the  tide 
of  war  is  sweeping  back  over  the  hills  and  valleys 
of  the  Somme  and  every  hour  comes  burdened  with 
dark  tidings.  I  find  the  light-hearted  person  a  trial, 
and  gaiety  an  offence,  like  a  foolish  snigger  breaking 
in  on  the  mad  agony  of  Lear. 

Why,  then,  this  smiling  face  in  the  glass?  Only 
last  night,  coming  up  on  the  top  of  the  late  bus,  I 
was  irritated  by  the  good  humour  of  a  fat  man  who 
came  and  sat  in  front  of  me.  He  looked  up  at  the 
brilliant  moonlit  sky  and  round  at  the  passengers,  and 
then  began  humming  to  himself  as  though  he  was  full 
of  good  news  and  cheerfulness.  When  he  was  tired 
of  humming  he  began  whistling,  and  his  whistling  was 
235 


236    ON  A  SMILE  IN  A  SHAVING  GLASS 

more  intolerable  than  his  humming,  for  it  was  noisier. 
Hang  the  fellow,  thought  I,  what  is  he  humming  and 
whistling  about?  This  moon  that  is  touching  the 
London  streets  with  beauty — what  scenes  of  horror 
and  carnage  it  looks  down  on  only  a  few  score  smiles 
away!  What  nameless  heroisms  are  being  done  for  us 
as  we  sit  under  the  quiet  stars  in  security  and  ease! 
What  mighty  issues  are  in  the  balance.  .  .  ,  And  this 
fellow  hums  and  whistles  as  though  he  had  had  no  end 
of  a  good  day.  Perhaps  he  is  a  profiteer.  Anyhow, 
I  was  relieved  when  he  went  down  the  stairs,  and  his 
vacuous  whistling  died  on  the  air.  .  .  .  Yet  this  face 
in  the  glass  looked  as  though  it  could  hum  or  whistle 
quite  as  readily  as  that  fat  man  whom  I  judged  so 
harshly  last  night. 

It  was  certainly  not  the  sunny  morning  that  was 
responsible.  The  beauty  of  these  wonderful  days 
would,  in  ordinary  circumstances,  charge  my  spirits  to 
the  brim,  but  now  I  wake  to  them  with  a  feeling  of 
resentment.  They  are  like  a  satire  on  our  tragedy — 
like  marriage  garments  robing  the  skeleton  of  death. 
Moreover,  they  are  a  practical  as  well  as  a  spiritual 
grievance.  They  are  the  ally  of  the  enemy.  They 
have  come  when  he  needed  them,  just  as  they  deserted 
us  last  autumn  when  we  needed  them,  and  when  day 
after  day  our  gallant  men  floundered  to  the  attack 
in  Flanders  through  seas  of  mud.  No,  most  Imperial 
Sun,  I  cannot  welcome  you.  I  would  you  would  hide 
your  face  from  the  tortured  earth,  and  leave  the  rough 
elements  to  deal  out  even  justice  between  the  disput- 
ants in  this  great  argument.  .  .  .  No,  this  smile  can- 


ON  A  SMILE  IN  A  SHAVING  GLASS    237 

not  be  for  you.  And  it  is  not  wholly  a  tribute  to  the 
letter  that  has  just  come  from  that  stalwart  boy  of 
nineteen,  boy  of  the  honest,  open  face  and  the  frequent, 
hearty  laugh,  stopped  on  the  eve  of  his  first  leave  and 
plunged  into  this  hell  of  death.  Dated  Saturday.  All 
well  up  to  Saturday.  The  first  two  terrible  days  sur- 
vived. Those  who  love  him  can  breathe  more  freely. 
But  though  that  was  perhaps  the  foundation,  it 
did  not  explain  the  smile.  Ah,  I  had  got  it.  It  was 
that  paragraph  I  had  read  in  the  newspaper  record- 
ing the  Kaiser's  message  to  his  wife  on  the  victory 
of  his  armies,  and  concluding  its  flamboyant  braying 
with  the  familiar  blasphemy,  "God  is  with  us."  I 
find  that  when  I  am  cheerless  a  message  from  the 
Kaiser  always  provides  a  tonic,  and  that  his  patronage 
of  the  Almighty  gives  me  confidence.  This  crude, 
humourless  vanity  cannot  be  destined  to  win  the  world. 
It  cannot  be  that  humanity  is  to  suffer  so  gro- 
tesque a  jest  as  to  fall  under  the  heel  of  this  inflated 
buffoon  and  of  the  system  of  which  he  is  the  symbol, 
I  know  that  other  warriors  have  claimed  the  Almighty 
and  have  justified  the  claim — have  won  even  in  virtue 
of  the  claim,  Mohammedanism  swept  the  Christian 
world  before  it  to  the  cry  of  "Allah-il-Allah,"  and  to 
Cromwell  the  presence  of  the  Lord  of  Hosts  at  his 
side  was  as  real  as  the  presence  of  Jehovah  was  to  the 
warriors  of  Israel.  Stonewall  Jackson  was  all  the 
more  terrible  for  the  grim,  fanatical  faith  that  burned 
in  him  from  the  days  of  his  conversion  in  Mexico,  and, 
though  Lincoln  had  no  orthodox  creed,  the  sense  of 
divine  purpose  was  always  present  to  him,  and  no  one 


238    ON  A  SMILE  IN  A  SHAVING  GLASS 

used  the  name  of  the  Almighty  in  great  moments  with 
more  sincere  and  impressive  beauty. 

You  have  only  to  turn  to  Lincoln  or  Cromwell 
to  feel  the  vast  gulf  between  their  piety  and  this 
vulgar  impiety.  And  the  reason  is  simple.  They  be- 
lieved in  the  spiritual  governance  of  human  life.  Crom- 
well may  have  been  mistaken  in  his  conception  of  God, 
but  it  was  a  God  of  the  spirit  whom  he  served  and 
whose  unworthy  instrument  he  was  in  achieving  the 
spiritual  redemption  of  men.  The  material  victory 
was  nothing  to  him  except  as  a  means  of  accomplish- 
ing the  emancipation  of  the  soul  of  man,  of  which 
political  liberty  was  only  the  elementary  expression. 
But  the  Kaiser's  conception  of  God  is  a  denial  of  every- 
thing that  is  spiritual  and  humane.  He  talks  of  his 
God  as  if.  he  were  a  brigand  chief,  or  an  image  of  blood 
and  iron  wrought  in  his  own  likeness,  a  family  deity,  a 
sort  of  sleeping  partner  of  the  firm  of  Hohenzollern, 
to  be  left  snoring  when  villainy  is  afoot  and  nudged 
into  wakefulness  to  adorn  a  triumph.  It  is  the  nega- 
tion of  the  God  of  the  spirit.  It  is  the  God  of  brute 
force,  of  violence  and  terror,  tramping  on  the  garden 
of  the  soul  in  man.  It  is  the  God  of  materialism  at 
war  with  all  that  is  spiritual.  In  a  word,  this  thing 
that  the  Kaiser  calls  God  is  not  God  at  all.  It  is  the 
Devil. 

On  this  question  of  the  partisanship  of  the  Almighty 
in  regard  to  our  human  quarrels,  the  best  attitude  is 
silence.  Lincoln,  with  his  unfailing  wisdom,  set  the 
subject  in  its  right  relationship  when  a  lady  asked 
him  for  the  assurance  that  God  was  on   their  side. 


ON  A  SMILE  IN  A  SHAVING  GLASS    239 

"The  important  thing,"  he  said,  "is  not  whether  God 
is  on  our  side,  but  whether  we  are  on  the  side  of 
God."  This  attitude  will  save  us  from  blasphemous 
arrogance  and  from  a  good  deal  of  perplexity.  For 
when  we  claim  that  God  is  our  champion  and  is 
fighting  exclusively  for  us  we  get  into  difficulties. 
We  have  only  finite  tests  to  apply  to  an  infinite  pur- 
pose and  by  those  tests  neither  the  loyalty  nor  the 
omnipotence  of  the  Almighty  will  be  sustained.  And 
what  will  you  do  then?  Will  you,  when  things  go 
wrong,  ask  with  the  poet, 

"Is  he  deaf  and  blind,  our  God.'  ...  Is  he  indeed  at  all?" 

The  Greeks  got  out  of  the  dilemma  by  having  many 
deities  who  took  the  most  intimate  share  in  human 
quarrels,  but  adopted  opposite  sides.  They  could  do 
much  for  their  earthly  clients,  but  their  efforts  were 
neutralised  by  the  power  of  the  gods  briefed  on  the 
other  side.  Vulcan  could  forge  an  impenetrable  shield 
for  Achilles,  and  Juno  could  warn  him,  through  the 
mouth  of  his  horse  Xanthus,  of  his  approaching  doom, 
but  neither  could  save  him.  This  guess  at  the  spiritual 
world  supplied  a  crude  working  explanation  of  the 
queer  contrariness  of  things  on  the  human  plane,  but 
it  left  the  gods  pale  and  ineffectual  shadows  of  the 
mind. 

We  have  lost  this  ingenuous  explanation  of  the 
strange  drama  of  our  life.  We  do  not  know  what 
powers  encompass  us  about,  or  in  what  vast  rhythm 
the  tumultuous  surges  and  wild  discords  of  our  being 


240    ON  A  SMILE  IN  A  SHAVING  GLASS 

are  engulfed.  No  voice  comes  from  the  void  and  no 
portents  are  in  the  sky.  The  stars  are  infinitely  aloof 
and  the  face  of  nature  offers  us  neither  comfort  nor 
revelation.  But  vi^ithin  us  vi^e  feel  the  impulse  of  the 
human  spirit,  seeking  the  free  air,  turning  to  the  light 
of  beautiful  and  reasonable  things  as  the  flower  turns 
to  the  face  of  the  sun.  And  in  that  impulse  we  find 
the  echo  to  whatever  far-off,  divine  strain  we  move. 
We  cannot  doubt  its  validity.  It  is  the  authentic,  in- 
destructible note  of  humanity.  We  may  falter  in  the 
measure,  stumble  in  our  steps,  get  bewildered  admidst 
the  complexity  of  intractible  and  unintelligible  things. 
But  the  spiritual  movement  goes  on,  like  the  Pilgrim's 
Chorus  fighting  its  way  through  the  torrent  of  the 
world.  It  may  be  submerged  to-day,  to-morrow,  for 
generations;  but  in  the  end  it  wins — in  the  end  the 
moral  law  prevails  over  the  law  of  the  jungle.  The 
stream  of  tendency  has  many  turnings,  but  it  makes 
for  righteousness  and  saps  ceaselessly  the  foundations 
of  the  god  of  violence.  It  is  to  that  god  of  harsh, 
material  things  that  the  Kaiser  appeals  against  the 
eternal  strivings  of  man  towards  the  divine  preroga- 
tive of  freedom.  Like  the  false  prophets  of  old  he 
leaps  on  his  altar,  gashes  himself  with  knives  till  the 
blood  pours  out  and  cries,  "Oh,  Baal,  hear  us."  And 
it  is  because  Baal  is  an  idol  of  wood  and  stone  in  a 
world  subject  to  the  governance  of  the  spirit  that,  even 
in  the  darkest  hour  of  the  war,  we  need  not  lose  faith. 
That,  I  think,  is  the  meaning  of  the  smile  I  caught 
in  the  shaving  glass  this  morning. 


ON  THE  RULE  OF  THE  ROAD 


That  was  a  jolly  story  which  Mr.  Arthur  Ransome 
told  the  other  day  in  one  of  his  messages  from  Petro- 
grad.  A  stout  old  lady  was  walking  with  her  basket 
down  the  middle  of  a  street  in  Petrograd  to  the  great 
confusion  of  the  traffic  and  with  no  small  peril  to 
herself.  It  was  pointed  out  to  her  that  the  pavement 
was  the  place  for  foot-passengers,  but  she  replied: 
"I'm  going  to  walk  where  I  like.  We've  got  liberty 
now."  It  did  not  occur  to  the  dear  old  lady  that  if 
liberty  entitled  the  foot-passenger  to  walk  down  the 
middle  of  the  road  it  also  entitled  the  cab-driver  to 
drive  on  the  pavement,  and  that  the  end  of  such  liberty 
would  be  universal  chaos.  Everybody  would  be  getting 
in  everybody  else's  way  and  nobody  would  get  any- 
where. Individual  liberty  would  have  become  social 
anarchy. 

241 


242   ON  THE  RULE  OF  THE  ROAD 

There  is  a  danger  of  the  world  getting  liberty-drunk 
in  these  days  like  the  old  lady  with  the  basket,  and 
it  is  just  as  well  to  remind  ourselves  of  what  the  rule 
of  the  road  means.  It  means  that  in  order  that  the 
liberties  of  all  may  be  preserved  the  liberties  of 
everybody  must  be  curtailed.  When  the  policeman, 
say,  at  Piccadilly  Circus  steps  into  the  middle  of  the 
road  and  puts  out  his  hand,  he  is  the  symbol  not 
of  tyranny,  but  of  liberty.  You  may  not  think  so. 
You  may,  being  in  a  hurry  and  seeing  your  motor- 
car pulled  up  by  this  insolence  of  office,  feel  that 
your  liberty  has  been  outraged.  How  dare  this  fellow 
interfere  with  your  free  use  of  the  public  highway? 
Then,  if  you  are  a  reasonable  person,  you  will  reflect 
that  if  he  did  not,  incidentally,  interfere  with  you  he 
would  interfere  with  no  one,  and  the  result  would 
be  that  Piccadilly  Circus  would  be  a  maelstrom  that 
you  would  never  cross  at  all.  You  have  submitted  to 
a  curtailment  of  private  liberty  in  order  that  you  may 
enjoy  a  social  order  which  makes  your  liberty  a  reality. 

Liberty  is  not  a  personal  affair  only,  but  a  social 
contract.  It  is  an  accommodation  of  interests.  In 
matters  which  do  not  touch  anybody  else's  liberty, 
of  course,  I  may  be  as  free  as  I  like.  If  I  choose  to 
go  down  the  Strand  in  a  dressing-gown,  with  long 
hair  and  bare  feet,  who  shall  say  me  nay?  You 
have  liberty  to  laugh  at  me,  but  I  have  liberty  to 
be  indifferent  to  you.  And  if  I  have  a  fancy  for  dyeing 
my  hair,  or  waxing  my  moustache  (which  heaven 
forbid ) ,  or  wearing  a  tall  hat,  a  frock-coat  and  sandals, 
or  going  to  bed  late  or  getting  up  early,  I  shall  follow 


ON  THE  RULE  OF  THE  ROAD      243 

my  fancy  and  ask  no  man's  permission.  I  shall  not 
inquire  of  you  whether  I  may  eat  mustard  with  my 
mutton.  I  may  like  mustard  with  my  mutton.  And 
you  will  not  ask  me  whether  you  may  be  a  Protestant 
or  a  Catholic,  whether  you  may  marry  the  dark 
lady  or  the  fair  lady,  whether  you  may  prefer  Ella 
Wheeler  Wilcox  to  Wordsworth,  or  champagne  to 
shandygaff. 

In  all  these  and  a  thousand  other  details  you  and 
I  please  ourselves  and  ask  no  one's  leave.  We  have 
a  whole  kingdom  in  which  we  rule  alone,  can  do  what 
we  choose,  be  wise  or  ridiculous,  harsh  or  easy,  con- 
ventional or  odd.  But  directly  we  step  out  of  that 
kingdom  our  personal  liberty  of  action  becomes 
qualified  by  other  people's  liberty.  I  might  like  to 
practise  on  the  trombone  from  midnight  till  three 
in  the  morning.  If  I  went  on  to  the  top  of  Helvellyn 
to  do  it  I  could  please  myself,  but  if  I  do  it  in  my 
bedroom  my  family  will  object  and  if  I  do  it  out  in  the 
streets  the  neighbours  will  remind  me  that  my  liberty 
to  blow  the  trombone  must  not  interfere  with  their 
liberty  to  sleep  in  quiet.  There  are  a  lot  of  people 
in  the  world,  and  I  have  to  accommodate  my  liberty 
to  their  liberties. 

We  are  all  liable  to  forget  this,  and  unfortunately 
we  are  much  more  conscious  of  the  imperfections  of 
others  in  this  respect  than  of  our  own. 

I  got  into  a  railway  carriage  at  a  country  station 
the  other  morning  and  settled  down  for  what  the 
schoolboys  would  call  an  hour's  "swot"  at  a  Blue- 
book.     I  was  not  reading  it  for  pleasure.     The  truth 


244   ON  THE  RULE  OF  THE  ROAD 

is  that  I  never  do  read  Blue-books  for  pleasure.  I 
read  them  as  a  barrister  reads  a  brief,  for  the  very 
humble  purpose  of  turning  an  honest  penny  out  of 
them.  Now,  if  you  are  reading  a  book  for  pleasure 
it  doesn't  matter  what  is  going  on  around  you.  I 
think  I  could  enjoy  "Tristram  Shandy"  or  "Treasure 
Island"  in  the  midst  of  an  earthquake. 

But  when  you  are  reading  a  thing  as  a  task  you 
need  reasonable  quiet,  and  that  is  what  I  didn't 
get,  for  at  the  next  station  in  came  a  couple  of  men, 
one  of  whom  talked  to  his  friend  for  the  rest  of  the 
journey  in  a  loud  and  pompous  voice.  He  was  one 
of  those  people  who  remind  one  of  that  story  of  Home 
Tooke  who,  meeting  a  person  of  immense  swagger 
in  the  street,  stopped  him  and  said,  "Excuse  me,  sir, 
but  are  you  someone  in  particular?"  This  gentle- 
man was  someone  in  particular.  As  I  wrestled  with 
clauses  and  sections,  his  voice  rose  like  a  gale,  and 
his  family  history,  the  deeds  of  his  sons  in  the  war, 
and  his  criticisms  of  the  generals  and  the  politicians 
submerged  my  poor  attempts  to  hang  on  to  my  job. 
I  shut  up  the  Blue-book,  looked  out  of  the  window, 
and  listened  wearily  while  the  voice  thundered  on 
with  themes  like  these:  "Now  what  French  ought 
to  have  done  .  .  ."  "The  mistake  the  Germans 
made  .  .  ."  "If  only  Asquith  had  .  .  ."  You 
know  the  sort  of  stuff.  I  had  heard  it  all  before,  oh, 
so  often.  It  was  like  a  barrel-organ  groaning  out 
some  banal  song  of  long  ago. 

If  I  had  asked  him  to  be  good  enough  to  talk  in 
a  lower  tone  I  daresay  he  would  have  thought  I  was 


ON  THE  RULE  OF  THE  ROAD      245 

a  very  rude  fellow.  It  did  not  occur  to  him  that 
anybody  could  have  anything  better  to  do  than  to 
listen  to  him,  and  I  have  no  doubt  he  left  the  carriage 
convinced  that  everybody  in  it  had,  thanks  to  him, 
had  a  very  illuminating  journey,  and  would  carry 
away  a  pleasing  impression  of  his  encyclopaedic  range. 
He  was  obviously  a  well-intentioned  person.  The 
thing  that  was  wrong  with  him  was  that  he  had  not 
the  social  sense.    He  was  not  "a  clubbable  man." 

A  reasonable  consideration  for  the  rights  or  feelings 
of  others  is  the  foundation  of  social  conduct.  It  is 
commonly  alleged  against  women  that  in  this  repect 
they  are  less  civilised  than  men,  and  I  am  bound 
to  confess  that  in  my  experience  it  is  the  woman — 
the  well-dressed  woman — who  thrusts  herself  in  front 
of  you  at  the  ticket  office.  The  man  would  not  attempt 
it,  partly  because  he  knows  the  thing  would  not  be 
tolerated  from  him,  but  also  because  he  has  been  better 
drilled  in  the  small  give-and-take  of  social  relation- 
ships. He  has  lived  more  in  the  broad  current  of  the 
world,  where  you  have  to  learn  to  accommodate  your- 
self to  the  general  standard  of  conduct,  and  his  school 
life,  his  club  life,  and  his  games  have  in  this  respect 
given  him  a  training  that  women  are  only  now  begin- 
ning to  enjoy. 

I  believe  that  the  rights  of  small  people  and  quiet 
people  are  as  important  to  preserve  as  the  rights  of 
small  nationalities.  When  I  hear  the  aggressive, 
bullying  horn  which  some  motorists  deliberately  use, 
I  confess  that  I  feel  something  boiling  up  in  me  which 
is  very  like  what  I  felt  when  Germany  came  trampling 


246   ON  THE  RULE  OF  THE  ROAD 

like  a  bully  over  Belgium,  By  what  right,  my  dear 
sir,  do  you  go  along  our  highways  uttering  that 
hideous  curse  on  all  who  impede  your  path?  Cannot 
you  announce  your  coming  like  a  gentleman?  Cannot 
you  take  your  turn?  Are  you  someone  in  particular 
or  are  you  simply  a  hot  gospeller  of  the  prophet 
Nietzsche  ?  I  find  myself  wondering  what  sort  of  per- 
son it  is  who  can  sit  behind  that  hog-like  outrage  with- 
out realising  that  he  is  the  spirit  of  Prussia  incarnate, 
and  a  very  ugly  spectacle  in  a  civilised  world. 

And  there  is  the  more  harmless  person  who  has 
bought  a  very  blatant  gramophone,  and  on  Sunday 
afternoon  sets  the  thing  going,  opens  the  windows 
and  fills  the  street  with  "Keep  the  Home  Fires 
Burning"  or  some  similar  banality.  What  are  the 
right  limits  of  social  behaviour  in  a  matter  of  this 
sort?  Let  us  take  the  trombone  as  an  illustration 
again.  Hazlitt  said  that  a  man  who  wanted  to  learn 
that  fearsome  instrument  was  entitled  to  learn  it  in 
his  own  house,  even  though  he  was  a  nuisance  to 
his  neighbours,  but  it  was  his  business  to  make  the 
nuisance  as  slight  as  possible.  He  must  practise 
in  the  attic,  and  shut  the  window.  He  had  no  right 
to  sit  in  his  front  room,  open  the  window,  and  blow 
his  noise  into  his  neighbours'  ears  with  the  maximum 
of  violence.  And  so  with  the  gramophone.  If  you 
like  the  gramophone  you  are  entitled  to  have  it,  but 
you  are  interfering  with  the  liberties  of  your  neigh- 
bours if  you  don't  do  what  you  can  to  limit  the  noise 
to  your  own  household.  Your  neighbours  may 
not  like   "Keep   the   Home   Fires   Burning."      They 


*'No  right  to  sit  in  his  front  room,  open  the  window  and  blow 
his  noise  into  his  neighbours'  ears." 


248   ON  THE  RULE  OF  THE  ROAD 

may  prefer  to  have  their  Sunday  afternoon  undis- 
turbed, and  it  is  as  great  an  impertinence  for  you  to 
wilfully  trespass  on  their  peace  as  it  would  be  to  go, 
unasked,  into  their  gardens  and  trample  on  their  flower 
beds. 

There  are  cases,  of  course,  where  the  clash  of 
liberties  seems  to  defy  compromise.  My  dear  old 
friend  X.,  who  lives  in  a  West  End  square  and  who 
is  an  amazing  mixture  of  good  nature  and  irascibility, 
flies  into  a  passion  when  he  hears  a  street  piano,  and 
rushes  out  to  order  it  away.  But  near  by  lives  a 
distinguished  lady  of  romantic  picaresque  tastes,  who 
dotes  on  street  pianos,  and  attracts  them  as  wasps  are 
attracted  to  a  jar  of  jam.  Whose  liberty  in  this  case 
should  surrender  to  the  other?  For  the  life  of  me  I 
cannot  say.  It  is  as  reasonable  to  like  street  pianos 
as  to  dislike  them — and  vice  versa.  I  would  give  much 
to  hear  Sancho  Panza's  solution  of  such  a  nice  riddle. 

I  suppose  the  fact  is  that  we  can  be  neither  com- 
plete anarchists  nor  complete  Socialists  in  this 
complex  world — or  rather  we  must  be  a  judicious 
mixture  of  both.  We  have  both  liberties  to  preserve 
— our  individual  liberty  and  our  social  liberty.  We 
must  watch  the  bureaucrat  on  the  one  side  and  warn 
off  the  anarchist  on  the  other.  I  am  neither  a 
Marxist,  nor  a  Tolstoyan,  but  a  compromise.  I  shall 
not  permit  any  authority  to  say  that  my  child  must 
go  to  this  school  or  that,  shall  specialise  in  science  or 
arts,  shall  play  rugger  or  soccer.  These  things  are 
personal.  But  if  I  proceed  to  say  that  my  child 
shall  have  no  education  at  all,  that  he  shall  be  brought 


ON  THE  RULE  OF  THE  ROAD      249 

up  as  a  primeval  savage,  or  at  Mr.  Fagin's  academy 
for  pickpockets,  then  Society  will  politely  but  firmly 
tell  me  that  it  has  no  use  for  primeval  savages  and 
a  very  stern  objection  to  pickpockets,  and  that  my 
child  must  have  a  certain  minimum  of  education 
whether  I  like  it  or  not.  I  cannot  have  the  liberty 
to  be  a  nuisance  to  my  neighbours  or  make  my  child 
a  burden  and  a  danger  to  the  commonwealth. 

It  is  in  the  small  matters  of  conduct,  in  the  observ- 
ance of  the  rule  of  the  road,  that  we  pass  judgment 
upon  ourselves,  and  declare  that  we  are  civilised  or 
uncivilised.  The  great  moments  of  heroism  and 
sacrifice  are  rare.  It  is  the  little  habits  of  common- 
place intercourse  that  make  up  the  great  sum  of 
life  and  sweeten  or  make  bitter  the  journey.  I  hope 
my  friend  in  the  railway  carriage  will  reflect  on  this. 
Then  he  will  not  cease,  I  am  sure,  to  explain  to  his 
neighbour  where  French  went  wrong  and  where  the 
Germans  went  ditto;  but  he  will  do  it  in  a  way  that 
will  permit  me  to  read  my  Blue-book  undisturbed. 


?^^z^. 


ON  THE  INDIFFERENCE  OF  NATURE 

There  has  never,  I  suppose,  been  a  time  when  the 
moon  had  such  a  vogue  as  during  the  past  ten  days. 
For  centuries,  for  thousands  of  years,  for  I  know  not 
what  uncounted  ages,  she  has  been  sailing  the  sky, 
"clustered  around  with  all  her  starry  fays."  She  has 
seen  this  tragi-comedy  of  man  since  the  beginning,  and 
I  daresay  will  outlive  its  end.  What  she  thinks  of 
it  all  we  shall  never  know.  Perhaps  she  laughs  at  it, 
perhaps  she  weeps  over  it,  perhaps  she  does  both  in 
turns,  as  you  and  I  do.  Perhaps  she  is  only  indifferent. 
Yes,  I  suppose  she  is  indifferent,  for  she  holds  up  her 
lamp  for  the  just  and  the  unjust,  and  lights  the  as- 
sassin's way  as  readily  as  the  lover's  and  the  shepherd's. 
But  in  all  her  timeless  journeyings  around  this  flying 
ball  to  which  we  cling  with  our  feet  she  has  never 
been  a  subject  of  such  painful  concern  as  now.  Love- 
sick poets  have  sung  of  her,  and  learned  men  have 
250 


ON  INDIFFERENCE  OF  NATURE     251 

studied  her  countenance  and  made  maps  of  her  hills 
and  her  valleys,  and  children  have  been  lulled  to 
sleep  with  legends  of  the  old  man  in  the  moon  and 
the  old  woman  eternally  gathering  her  eternal  sticks. 
But  for  most  of  us  she  had  no  more  serious  import 
than  a  Chinese  lantern  hung  on  a  Christmas  tree  to 
please  the  children. 

And  suddenly  she  has  become  the  most  sensational 
fact  of  our  lives.  From  the  King  in  his  palace  to 
the  pauper  in  his  workhouse  we  have  all  been  talking 
of  the  moon,  and  watching  the  moon  and  studying 
the  phases  of  the  moon.  There  are  seven  millions 
of  Londoners  who  know  more  about  the  moon 
to-day  than  they  ever  dreamed  there  was  to  be  known, 
or  than  they  ever  dreamed  that  they  would  want  to 
know.  John  Bright  once  said  that  the  only  virtue  of 
war  was  that  it  taught  people  geography,  but  even 
he  did  not  think  of  the  geography  of  the  moon  and 
of  the  firmament.  But  in  the  intense  school  of  these 
days  we  are  learning  about  everything  in  heaven  above 
and  in  the  earth  beneath  and  in  the  waters  under  the 
earth.  Count  Zeppelin  taught  us  about  the  stars,  and 
now  Herr  von  Gotha  is  giving  us  a  lesson  on  the  moon. 
We  are  not  so  grateful  as  we  might  be. 

But  the  main  lesson  we  are  all  learning,  I  think, 
is  that  Nature  does  not  take  sides  in  our  affairs.  We 
all  like  to  think  that  she  does  take  sides — that  is,  our 
side — that  a  special  providence  watches  over  us,  and 
that  invisible  powers  will  see  us  through.  It  is  a 
common  weakness.  The  preposterous  Kaiser  exhibits  it 
in  its  most  grotesque  assumption.     He  does  really  be- 


252     ON  INDIFFERENCE  OF  NATURE 

lieve — or  did,  for  dreadful  doubts  must  be  invading 
the  armour-plated  vanity  of  this  jerry-built  Caesar — 
that  God  and  Nature  are  his  Imperial  agents. 

And  in  a  less  degree  most  of  us,  in  times  of  stress, 
pin  our  faith  to  some  special  providence.  We  are 
so  important  to  ourselves  that  we  cannot  conceive  that 
we  are  unimportant  to  whatever  powers  there  be. 
Others  may  fall,  but  we  have  charmed  lives.  Our 
cause  must  prevail  because,  being  ours,  it  is  beyond 
mortal  challenge.  A  distinguished  General  was  tell- 
ing me  not  long  ago  of  an  incident  in  the  second  battle 
of  Ypres.  He  stood  with  another  General,  since  killed, 
watching  the  battle  at  its  most  critical  phase.  They 
saw  the  British  line  yield,  and  the  Germans  advance, 
and  all  seemed  over.  My  friend  put  up  his  glasses 
with  the  gesture  of  one  who  knew  the  worst  had  come. 
His  companion  turned  to  him  and  said,  "God  will 
never  allow  those to  win."  It  was  an  odd  ex- 
pression of  faith,  but  it  represents  the  conviction  latent 
in  most  of  us  that  we  can  count  on  invisible  allies  who, 
like  the  goddess  in  Homer,  will  intervene  if  we  are  in 
straits,  and  fling  a  cloud  between  us  and  the  foe. 

This  reliance  on  the  supernatural  is  one  of  the  sources 
of  power  in  men  of  primitive  and  intense  faith.  Crom- 
well was  a  practical  mystic  and  never  forgot  to  keep 
his  powder  dry,  but  he  saw  the  hand  of  the  Lord  visibly 
at  work  for  his  cause  on  the  winds  and  the  tempest 
and  that  conviction  added  a  fervour  to  his  terrible 
sword.  In  his  letter  to  Speaker  Lenthall  on  the  battle 
of  Dunbar  he  tells  how  in  marching  from  Mussel- 
burgh to  Haddington  the  enemy  fell  upon  "the  rear- 


ON  INDIFFERENCE  OF  NATURE    253 

forlorn  of  our  horse"  and  "had  like  to  have  engaged 
our  rear-brigade  of  horse  with  their  whole  army — had 
not  the  Lord  by  His  Providence  put  a  cloud  over  the 
Moon,  thereby  giving  us  opportunity  to  draw  off  those 
horse  to  the  rest  of  our  army." 

In  the  same  way  Elizabethan  England  witnessed 
God  Himself  in  the  tempest  that  scattered  the  Armada, 
and  a  hundred  years  later  the  people  saw  the  same 
Divine  sanction  in  the  winds  that  brought  William 
Prince  of  Orange  to  our  shores  and  drove  his  pursuers 
away.  "The  weather  had  indeed  served  the  Protestant 
cause  so  well,"  says  Macaulay,  "that  some  men  of 
more  piety  than  judgment  fully  believed  the  ordinary 
laws  of  nature  to  have  been  suspended  for  the  preser- 
vation of  the  liberty  and  religion  of  England.  Exactly 
a  hundred  years  before,  they  said,  the  Armada,  invin- 
cible by  man,  had  been  scattered  by  the  wrath  of  God. 
Civil  freedom  and  divine  truth  were  again  in  jeopardy; 
and  again  the  obedient  elements  had  fought  for  the 
good  cause.  The  wind  had  blown  strong  from  the  east 
while  the  Prince  wished  to  sail  down  the  Channel, 
had  turned  to  the  south  when  he  wished  to  enter 
Torbay,  had  sunk  to  a  calm  during  the  disembarka- 
tion, and,  as  soon  as  the  disembarkation  was  completed, 
had  risen  to  a  storm  and  had  met  the  pursuers  in  the 
face." 

If  we  saw  such  a  sequence  of  winds  blowing  for  our 
cause  we  should,  in  spite  of  Macaulay,  allow  our  piety 
to  have  the  better  of  our  judgment.  Indeed,  there 
have  been  those  who  in  the  absence  of  more  solid 
evidence  have  accepted  the  Angels  of  Mons  with  as 


254    ON  INDIFFERENCE  OF  NATURE 

touching  and  unquestioning  a  faith  as  they  accepted 
the  legend  of  the  Army  of  Russians  from  Archangel. 
Perhaps  it  is  not  "piety"  so  much  as  anxiety  that  ac- 
counts for  this  credulity.  In  its  more  degraded  form 
it  is  responsible  for  such  phenomena  as  the  revival  of 
fortune  telling  and  the  emergence  of  the  Prophet  Bot- 
tomley.  In  its  more  reputable  expression  it  springs 
from  the  conviction  of  the  justice  of  our  cause,  of  the 
dominion  of  the  spiritual  over  the  material  and  of  the 
witness  of  that  dominion  in  the  operations  of  Nature. 


Then  comes  this  vi^onderful  harvest  moon  with  its 
clear  sky  and  its  still  air  to  light  our  enemies  to  their 
villainous  work  and  to  remind  us  that,  however  virtu- 
ous our  cause,  Nature  is  not  concerned  about  us.  She 
is  indifferent  whether  we  win  or  lose.  She  is  not 
against  us,  but  she  is  not  for  us.  Sometimes  she  helps 
the  enemy,  and  sometimes  she  helps  us.  She  blew  a 
snowstorm  in  the  face  of  the  Germans  on  the  most 


ON  INDIFFERENCE  OF  NATURE    255 

critical  day  of  Verdun,  and  helped  to  defeat  that  great 
adventure.  In  August  last  she  came  out  on  the  side 
of  the  enemy.  She  rained  and  blew  ceaselessly,  and 
disarranged  our  plans  in  Flanders,  so  that  the  attack 
on  which  so  much  depended  was  driven  perilously  late 
into  the  year.  And  even  the  brilliant  moon  and  the 
cloudless  nights  that  have  been  so  disturbing  to  us  in 
London  speak  the  same  language  of  Nature's  impar- 
tiality. They  serve  the  enemy  here,  but  they  are 
serving  us  far  more  just  across  the  sea,  where  every 
bright  day  and  moonlit  night  snatched  from  the  mud 
and  rain  of  the  coming  winter  is  of  priceless  value  to 
our  Army.  That  consideration  should  enable  us  to 
bear  our  affliction  with  fortitude  as  we  crowd  the 
"tubes"  or  listen  to  the  roar  of  the  guns  from  under 
the  domestic  table. 

But  we  must  admit,  on  the  evidence,  that  Nature 
does  not  care  twopence  who  wins,  and  is  as  uncon- 
cerned about  our  affairs  as  we  are  about  the  affairs 
of  a  nest  of  ants  that  we  tread  on  without  knowing 
that  we  have  trodden  on  it.  She  is  beyond  good  and 
evil.  She  has  no  morals  and  is  indifferent  about 
justice  and  what  men  call  right  and  wrong.  She 
blasts  the  wise  and  leaves  the  foolish  to  flourish. 

Nature,  with  equal  mind 
Sees   all    her    sons    at   play; 
Sees   man    control    the    wind, 
The   wind    sweep   man    away; 
Allows  the  proudly  riding  and  the  found'ring  barque. 

It  is  a  chill,  but  a  chastening  thought.     It  leaves  us 


256     ON  INDIFFERENCE  OF  NATURE 

with  a  sense  of  loneliness,  but  it  brings  with  it,  also, 
a  sense  of  power,  the  power  of  the  unconquerable 
human  spirit,  self-dependent  and  self-reliant,  reaching 
out  to  ideals  beyond  itself,  beyond  its  highest  hope  of 
attainment,  broken  on  the  wheel  of  intractable  things, 
but  still  stumbling  forward  by  its  half-lights  in  search 
of  some  Land  of  Promise  that  always  skips  just  be- 
yond the  horizon. 

Happily  the  moon  is  skipping  beyond  the  horizon 
too.  Frankly,  we  have  seen  enough  of  her  face  to 
last  us  for  a  long  time.  When  she  comes  again 
let  her  clothe  herself  in  good  fat  clouds  and 
bring  the  winds  in  her  train.  We  do  not  like  to  think 
of  her  as  a  mere  flunkey  of  the  Kaiser  and  the  torch- 
bearer  of  his  assassins. 


IF  JEREMY  CAME  BACK 

It  is  the  agreeable  illusion  of  the  theatre  that  life  is 
a  rounded  tale.  We  pay  our  money  at  the  box,  go 
in,  see  the  story  begin,  progress  and  end,  sadly  or 
cheerfully,  and  come  away  with  the  discords  resolved, 
virtue  exalted  and  villainy  abased,  and  the  tangled 
skein  of  things  neatly  unravelled.  And  so  home, 
content.  But  on  the  stage  of  life  there  is  none  of 
this  satisfying  completeness  and  finish.  We  enter  in 
the  midst  of  a  very  ancient  drama,  spend  our  years 
in  trying  to  pick  up  the  threads  and  purport  of  the 
action,  and  go  as  inopportunely  as  we  came.  The 
curtain  does  not  descend  punctually  upon  an  ex- 
hausted plot  and  an  accomplished  purpose.  It  de- 
scends upon  a  thrilling  but  unfinished  tale.  You 
have  got,  perhaps,  into  the  most  breathless  part  of 
the  action,  seized  at  last  the  clue  that  will  assuredly 
explain  the  mystery,  when  suddenly  and  irrationally 
the  light  fails,  and  for  you  the  theatre  is  dark  for 
ever.  Your  emotions  have  been  stirred,  your  curiosity 
awakened,  your  sympathies  aroused  in  vain.  Even 
the  episode  you  have  been  permitted  to  witness  is 
left  with  ragged  ends  and  unfinished  judgments. 
257 


258  IF  JEREMY  CAME  BACK 

How  did  it  proceed  and  how  did  it  end,  and  what 
was  the  sequel?  Was  virtue  or  villainy  triumphant? 
Who  was  the  real  hero?  Were  your  sympathies  on 
the  right  side  or  the  wrong?  And,  more  personally, 
what  of  those  shoots  of  life  you  have  thrown  out  to 
the  challenge  of  the  future?  Did  they  wilt  or  flourish, 
and  what  was  their  fortune?  These  are  among  the 
thousand  questions  to  which  we  should  like  an  answer, 
and  there  is  nothing  unreasonable  in  thinking  that 
we  may  have  an  answer. 

It  would  be  enough  to  satisfy  the  curiosity  of  most 
of  us  to  have  the  privilege  which  Jeremy  Bentham 
confessed  that  he  would  like  to  enjoy.  That  amiable 
and  industrious  philosopher,  having  spent  a  blameless 
life  in  the  development  of  his  comfortable  gospel  of 
the  "greatest  good  of  the  greatest  number,"  enter- 
tained the  pleasant  fancy  of  returning  to  the  scene 
of  his  labours  once  in  every  hundred  years  to  see 
humanity  marching  triumphantly  to  the  heavenly 
city  of  Utilitarianism,  along  the  straight  and  smooth 
turnpike  road  that  he  had  fashioned  for  its  ease  and 
direction.  He  had  the  touching  confidence  of  the 
idealist  that  humanity  only  had  to  be  shown  the  way 
out  of  the  wilderness  to  plunge  into  it  with  joyous 
shouts,  and  hurry  along  it  with  eager  enthusiasm. 
And  since  he  had  shown  the  way  all  would  hence- 
forth be  well.  It  is  this  confidence  which  makes  the 
idealist  an  object  of  pity  to  the  cynic.  For  the  cynic 
is  often  only  the  idealist  turned  sour.  He  is  the 
idealist  disillusioned  by  loss  of  faith,  not  in  his  ideals, 
but  in  humanity. 


IF  JEREMY  CAME  BACK  259 

This  is  about  the  time  when  Jeremy  might  be 
expected  back  on  his  first  centennial  visit  to  see  how 
we  have  got  along  the  road  to  human  perfectibility. 
I  can  imagine  him,  poised  in  the  unapparent,  looking 
with  round-eyed  astonishment  upon  the  answer  which 
a  century  of  time  has  given,  to  his  anticipations. 
This,  the  New  Jerusalem  of  his  confident  vision? 
This  shambles  the  harvest  of  a  hundred  years  of 
progress?  And  the  cynic  beside  him,  tapping  his 
ghostly  snuff-box,  observes  dryly,  "They  don't  seem 
to  have  got  very  far  on  the  way,  friend  Jeremy; 
not  very  far  on  the  way."  I  can  conceive  the  philos- 
opher returning  sadly  to  the  Elysian  fields,  wondering 
whether,  after  all,  these  visits  are  worth  while.  If 
this  is  the  achievement  of  a  hundred  years'  enjoyment 
of  the  philosophy  of  Utilitarianism,  what  unthinkable 
revelation  may  await  him  on  his  next  visit?  Perhaps 
.  .  .  yes,  perhaps,  it  will  be  better  to  stay  away. 

But  all  the  answers  of  time  will  not  be  so  dis- 
quieting. It  is  probable,  for  example,  that  Benjamin 
Franklin  will  enjoy  his  visit  immensely.  He  will 
find  much  to  delight  his  curious  and  adventurous 
mind.  I  see  him  watching  the  flying  machines  as 
joyously  as  a  child  and  as  fondly  as  a  parent.  For 
among  his  multitudinous  activities  he  experimented 
with  balloons  and  suffered  the  gibes  of  the  foolish. 
Why,  asked  his  critic,  did  he  waste  his  time  over 
these  childish  things?  What,  in  the  name  of  heaven, 
was  the  use  of  balloons?  And  Benjamin  made  the 
immortal  reply,  "What  is  the  use  of  a  newborn 
baby?"     If  he  is  among  the   presences  who  watch 


26o  IF  JEREMY  CAME  BACK 

the  events  of  to-day  he  will  be  almost  as  astonished 
as  his  critics  to  see  the  dimensions  his  "newborn 
baby"  has  grown  to.  He  will  be  astonished  at  other 
things.  He  will  recall  the  day  when,  in  his  fine 
flowered-silk  garment,  he  entered,  as  the  delegate  of 
the  insurgent  farmers  of  New  England,  the  recep- 
tion of  the  great, — was  it  not  in  Downing  Street? — 
and  was  spat  upon  by  the  noble  lords,  to  whose  dim 
vision  the  future  of  the  newborn  baby  across  the 
Atlantic  was  undecipherable.  He  will  recall  how 
he  put  his  outraged  garment  away,  never  to  wear 
it  again  until  he  had  signed  the  Declaration  of  In- 
dependence. And  now,  what  miracle  is  this?  Eng- 
land and  America  reconciled  at  last.  England,  no 
less  than  France,  straining  her  eyes  across  the 
Atlantic  for  the  relief  that  is  hastening  to  her  help 
in  the  extremest  peril  of  her  history  from  the  giant 
by  whose  unquiet  cradle  he  played  his  part  a  century 
and  a  half  ago.  .  .  .  Well,  no  one  will  rejoice  more 
at  the  reconciliation  or  watch  the  tide  of  relief  stream- 
ing across  the  ocean  with  more  good  will  than  Ben- 
jamin, who  deplored  the  breach  with  England  as 
much  as  anybody.  But  the  noble  lords  who  spat  on 
him.  .  .  . 

And  I  can  see  Napoleon,  with  his  unpleasant 
familiarity,  pinching  the  spiritual  ears  of  the  French 
scientists  of  his  day  and  saying,  "How  now,  gentle- 
men? What  do  you  say  to  the  steamboat  now?" 
Poor  wretches,  how  humiliated  they  will  be.  For 
when  Napoleon  asked  the  Academic  des  Sciences  to 
report  as  to  the  possibilities   of   the  newly   invented 


IF  JEREMY  CAME  BACK  261 

steamboat,  their  verdict  was,  "Idee  folle,  erreur 
grossiere  absurdite."  They  saw  in  it  only  a  foolish 
toy,  and  not  a  newborn  baby  destined  to  be  the 
giant  who  is  performing  such  prodigies  on  the  seas 
of  the  world  to-day. 

But  it  is  not  the  scientists  who  will  need  to  hang 
their  heads  before  the  revelations  that  await  them. 
They  will  look  on  with  the  complacency  of  those  who 
see  the  mighty  harvest  of  their  sowing.  Perhaps 
among  the  presences  who  surround  them  they  may 
descry  a  bulky  man,  with  rolling  gait,  whom  they 
knew  in  their  day  on  earth  as  the  intellectual  auto- 
crat of  his  generation  and  who  levelled  the  shafts 
of  his  wit  at  their  foolish  experiments.  They  will 
have  lost  the  very  human  frailty  of  retaliation  if 
they  do  not  remind  him  of  some  of  those  shafts  that, 
to  the  admiring  circle  which  sat  at  his  feet,  seemed 
so  well-directed  and  piercing.  Perhaps  they  will 
read  this  to  him: 

Some  turn  the  wheel  of  electricity,  some  suspend  rings 
to  a  loadstone  and  find  that  what  they  did  yesterday  they 
can  do  again  to-day.  Some  register  the  changes  of  the  wind, 
and  die  fully  convinced  that  the  wind  is  changeable.  There 
are  men  yet  more  profound,  who  have  heard  that  two  colour- 
less liquors  may  produce  a  colour  by  union,  and  that  two 
cold  bodies  will  grow  hot  if  they  are  mingled;  they  mingle 
them,  and  produce  the  eflFect  expected,  say  it  is  strange,  and 
mingle  them  again. 

Admirable  old  boy!  What  wit  you  had!  We 
can  still  enjoy  it  even  though  time  has  turned  it  to 
foolishness  and  planted  its  barb  in  your  own  breast. 


262  IF  JEREMY  CAME  BACK 

All  your  roaring,  sir,  will  not  take  the  barb  out. 
All  your  genius  for  argument  will  not  prevail  against 
the  witness  you  see  of  the  mighty  fruits  of  those 
little  experiments  that  filled  your  Olympian  mind 
with  scorn.  But  you  will  have  your  compensations. 
Even  you  will  be  astonished  at  the  place  you  fill  in 
our  thoughts  so  long  after  your  queer  figure  and 
brown  wig  were  last  seen  in  Fleet  Street.  You  will 
find  that  the  very  age  in  which  you  lived  is  remem- 
bered as  the  Age  of  Johnson,  and  that  the  thunders 
of  your  voice,  transmitted  by  the  faithful  Bozzy, 
are  among  the  immortal  reverberations  from  the  past. 
Yes,  sir,  in  spite  of  the  scientists,  you  will  go  back 
very  well  content  with  your  visit. 

And  it  may  be  that  the  victory  of  the  scientists 
will  assuage  the  disappointment  of  Jeremy  himself. 
It  is  possible  that  when,  back  once  more  in  whatever 
region  of  heaven  is  reserved  for  philosophers,  he 
begins  to  reflect  on  all  he  has  seen,  Jeremy  will  re- 
cover his  spirits.  This  moral  catastrophe  of  man,  he 
will  say,  must  be  seen  in  relation  to  his  astonishing 
intellectual  victory.  I  forgot  that  stage  in  the 
journey  to  the  heavenly  city  of  Utilitarianism.  This 
century  that  has  passed  has  witnessed  that  stage. 
It  has  been  a  period  of  inconceivable  triumph  over 
matter.  Man  has  discovered  all  the  wonders  of  the 
earth  and  is  dazzled  and  drunk  with  the  conquest  of 
things.  His  moral  and  social  sense  has  not  been  able 
to  keep  pace  with  this  breathless  material  develop- 
ment. He  has  lost  his  spiritual  bearings  in  the  midst 
of  the  gigantic  machine  that  his  genius  has  fashioned. 


IF  JEREMY  CAME  BACK  263 

He  has  become  the  slave  of  his  own  creation,  the 
victim  of  the  monster  of  his  invention,  and  this  calam- 
ity into  w^hich  he  has  fallen  is  his  blind  effort  to 
readjust  his  life  to  the  new  scheme  of  things  that 
the  machine  has  imposed  on  him.  The  great  par- 
turition is  upon  him  and  he  is  shedding  gouts  of 
blood  in  his  agony.  But  he  will  emerge  from  his 
pains.  The  material  century  is  accomplished;  the 
conquest  of  the  machine  is  at  hand,  and  with  that 
conquest  the  moral  sense  of  man  will  revive  with 
a  grandeur  undreamed  of  in  the  past.  The  march 
is  longer  than  I  thought,  but  it  will  gain  impetus 
and  majesty  from  this  immense  overthrow.  The 
road  I  built  was  only  premature.  Man  was  not  ready 
to  take  it.  But  it  is  still  there — a  little  grass-grown 
and  neglected,  but  still  beckoning  him  on  to  the 
earthly  paradise.  When  he  rises  from  his  wrestle  in 
the  dark,  his  sight  will  clear  and  he  will  surely  take 
it.  .  .  .  Yes,  I  think  I  shall  go  back  after  all.  .  .  . 
Unteachable  old  optimist,  murmurs  the  cynic  at  his 
side. 


ON  SLEEP  AND  THOUGHT 


In  the  middle  of  last  night  I  found  myself  suddenly 
and  quite  acutely  awake.  It  is  an  unusual  experience 
for  me.  I  knew  the  disturbance  had  not  come  from 
without  myself,  but  from  within — from  some  low 
but  persistent  knocking  at  the  remote  door  of  con- 
sciousness. Who  was  the  knocker?  I  ran  over  the 
possible  visitors  before  opening  the  door  just  as  one 
sometimes  puzzles  over  the  writing  of  an  address 
before  opening  a  letter.  Ah,  yes,  the  disquieting 
discovery  I  had  made  yesterday — that  was  the 
intruder.  And,  saying  this,  I  opened  the  door  and 
let  the  fellow  in,  to  sit  upon  my  pillow  and  lord  it 
over  me  in  the  darkness.  I  had  succeeded  in  sup- 
pressing him  before  I  went  to  bed — burying  him 
beneath  talk  about  this  and  that,  some  variations  of 
Rameau,  a  few  of  those  Hungarian  songs  from 
Korbay's  collection,  so  incomparable  in  their  fierce 
energy  and  passion,  and  so  on ;  the  mound  nicely 
rounded  off  with  Duruy's  "History  of  France,"  and 
the  headstone  of  sleep  duly  erected.  Now,  I  thought, 
264 


ON  SLEEP  AND  THOUGHT         265 

I  shall  hear  nothing  more  of  him  until  I  face  him 
squarely  to-morrow.  And  here,  up  from  the  depths 
he  had  come  and  taken  his  seat  upon  the  headstone 
itself. 

It  is  with  sleep  as  with  affairs.  One  cracked  bell 
will  shatter  a  whole  ring;  one  scheming,  predatory 
power  will  set  the  whole  world  in  flames.  And  one 
disorderly  imp  of  the  mind  will  upset  the  whole 
comity  of  sleep.  He  will  neither  slumber  forgetfully 
nor  play  with  the  others  in  dreams,  turning  the 
realities  and  solemnities  of  the  day  into  a  wild  travesty 
of  fun  or  agony,  in  which  everything  that  is  incredible 
seems  as  natural  as  sneezing,  and  you  stand  on  your 
head  on  the  cross  of  St.  Paul's  or  walk  up  the  Strand 
carrying  your  head  under  your  arm  without  any 
sense  of  surprise  or  impropriety.  Nor  is  he  one  of 
those  obliging  subjects  of  the  mind  who  obey  their 
orders  like  a  sensible  housedog,  sleeping  with  one 
eye  open  and  ready  to  bark,  as  it  were,  if  anything 
goes  wrong.  You  know  that  sort  of  decent  fellow. 
You  say  to  him  overnight,  "Now,  remember,  I  have 
that  train  to  catch  in  the  morning,  and  I  must  be 
awake  without  fail  at  seven."  Or  it  may  be  six,  or 
four.  And  whatever  the  hour  you  name,  sure  enough 
the  good  dog  barks  in  time.  If  he  has  a  failing,  it 
is  barking  too  soon  and  leaving  you  to  discuss  the 
nice  question  whether  you  dare  go  to  sleep  again 
or  whether  you  had  better  remain  awake.  In  the 
midst  of  which  you  probably  go  to  sleep  again  and 
miss  your  train. 

This  control  of  the  kingdom  of  sleep  by  the  appar- 


266         ON  SLEEP  AND  THOUGHT 

ently  dormant  consciousness  can  be  carried  far.  A 
friend  of  mine  tells  me  that  he  has  even  learned  to 
put  his  dreams  under  the  check  of  conscious  or  sub- 
conscious thought.  He  had  one  persistent  dream 
which  took  the  form  of  missing  the  train.  Some- 
times his  wife  was  on  board,  and  he  rushed  on  to 
the  platform  just  in  time  to  see  the  train  in  motion 
and  her  head  out  of  the  window  with  agony  written 
on  her  face.  Sometimes  he  was  in  the  train  and  his 
wife  just  missed  it.  Sometimes  they  were  both 
inside,  but  saw  their  luggage  being  brought  up  too 
late.  Sometimes  the  luggage  got  in  and  they  didn't. 
Always  something  went  wrong.  He  determined  to 
have  that  dream  regularised.  And  so  before  going 
to  bed  he  thought  hard  of  catching  the  train.  He 
saturated  himself  with  the  idea  of  catching  the  train. 
And  the  thing  worked  like  a  charm.  He  never  misses 
a  train  now,  nor  his  wife,  nor  his  luggage.  They  all 
steam  away  on  their  dream  journeys  together  without 
a  hitch.  So  he  tells  me,  and  I  believe  him,  for  he  is 
a  truthful  man. 

You  and  I,  and  I  suppose  everybody,  have  had 
evidence  of  this  sub-conscious  operation  in  sleep.  That 
it  is  common  enough  is  shown  by  the  familiar  saying, 
"I  will  sleep  on  it,"  I  have  gone  to  bed  more  than 
once  with  problems  that  have  seemed  insoluble,  have 
fallen  to  sleep,  and  have  wakened  in  the  morning  with 
the  course  so  clear  that  I  have  wondered  how  I  could 
have  been  in  doubt.  And  Sir  Edward  Clarke  in  his 
reminiscences  of  the  Bar  tells  how,  after  a  night  over 
his  briefs  he  would  go  to  bed  with  his  way  through  the 


ON  SLEEP  AND  THOUGHT         267 

tangle  obscure  and  perplexing,  and  would  wake  from 
sleep  with  the  path  plain  as  a  pike  staff.  The  pheno- 
menon is  doubtless  due  in  some  measure  to  rest.  The 
mind  clears  in  sleeping  as  muddy  water  clears  in  stand- 
ing. But  this  is  not  the  whole  explanation.  Some 
process  has  taken  place  in  the  interval  far  down  in  the 
hinterlands  of  thought.  You  may  observe  this  even 
in  your  waking  hours.  Lord  Leverhulme,  who  I 
suppose  has  one  of  the  biggest  letter-bags  in  the 
country,  once  told  me  that  his  habit  in  dealing  with  his 
correspondence  is  to  answer  at  once  those  letters  he 
can  reply  to  offhand,  and  to  put  aside  those  that 
need  consideration.  When  he  turns  to  the  latter  he 
finds  the  answers  have  fashioned  themselves  without 
any  conscious  act  of  thought.  This  experience  is  not 
uncommon,  and  as  it  occurs  when  the  mind  is  at  the 
maximum  of  activity  it  disposes  of  the  idea  that  rest 
is  the  complete  explanation. 

More  goes  on  in  us  than  we  know.  At  this  moment 
I  am  conscious  of  at  least  six  strata  of  thought.  I 
am  attending  to  this  writing,  the  shaping  of  the  letters, 
the  spelling  of  the  words;  I  am  thinking  what  I 
shall  write;  I  am  sensible  that  a  thrush  is  singing 
outside,  and  that  the  sun  is  shining;  this  pervades 
my  mind  with  the  glow  of  the  thought  that  in  a  few 
days  I  shall  be  in  the  beechwoods;  through  this 
happy  glow  the  ugly  imp  who  sat  on  my  pillow  last 
night  forces  himself  on  my  attention ;  down  below 
there  is  the  boom  of  the  great  misery  of  the  world 
that  goes  on  ceaselessly  like  the  deep  strum  of  the 
double  bass  in  the  orchestra.     And  out  of  sight  and 


268         ON  SLEEP  AND  THOUGHT 

consciousness  there  are,  I  suspect,  deeper  and  more 
obscure  functions  shaping  all  sorts  of  things  in  the 
unfathomed  caves  of  the  mind.  The  results  will 
come  to  the  surface  in  due  course,  and  I  shall  wonder 
where  they  came  from.  It  is  a  mistake  to  suppose 
that  we  can  only  think  of  one  thing  at  a  time.  The 
mind  can  keep  as  many  balls  circulating  as  Cinque- 
valli.  It  can  keep  some  of  them  circulating  without 
knowing  that  they  even  exist. 

But  these  profound  functions  of  the  mind  that 
know  no  sleep,  and  yet  do  not  disturb  our  sleep,  are 
not  to  be  confused  with  that  imp  of  the  pillow.  He 
is  a  brawler  of  the  day.  He  brings  the  noisy  world 
of  fact  into  the  cloistered  calm  or  the  playground  of 
sleep.  He  is  known  to  all  of  us,  but  most  of  all  to 
the  criminal  who  has  still  got  a  conscience.  Macbeth 
knew  him — "Macbeth  hath  murdered  sleep,  the 
innocent  sleep."     Eugene  Aram  knew  him: — 

And  a  mighty  wind  had  swept  the  leaves 
And  still  the  corpse  was  bare. 

I  know  him.  .  .  .  And  that  reminds  me.  It  is  time 
I  went  and  had  it  out  with  my  imp  of  the  pillow  in  the 
daylight. 


ON  MOWING 


I  HAVE  hung  the  scythe  up  in  the  barn  and  now  I 
am  going  to  sing  its  praises.  And  if  you  doubt  my 
competence  to  sing  on  so  noble  a  theme  come  with 
me  into  the  orchard,  smell  the  new  mown  hay,  mark 
the  swathes  where  they  lie,  and  note  the  workmanship. 
Yes,  I  admit  that  over  there  by  the  damson  trees  and 
down  by  the  fence  there  is  a  sort  of  unkempt,  dis- 
hevelled appearance  about  the  grass  as  though  it  had 
been  stabbed  and  tortured  by  some  insane  animal  armed 
with  an  axe.  It  is  true.  It  has  been  stabbed  and 
tortured  by  an  insane  animal.  It  was  there  that  I 
began.  It  was  there  that  I  hacked  and  hewed,  per- 
spired and  suffered.  It  was  there  that  I  said  things 
of  which  in  my  calmer  moments  I  should  disapprove. 
It  was  there  that  I  served  my  apprenticeship  to  the 
269 


270  ON  MOWING 

scythe.  But  let  your  eye  scan  gently  that  stricken 
pasture  and  pause  here  where  the  orchard  slopes  to 
the  paddock.  I  do  not  care  who  looks  at  this  bit.  I 
am  prepared  to  stand  or  fall  by  it.  It  speaks  for  itself. 
The  signature  of  the  master  hand  is  here.  It  is  my 
signature. 

And  having  written  that  signature  I  feel  like  the 
wounded  soldier  spoken  of  by  the  "Wayfarer"  in  the 
Nation.  He  was  returning  to  England,  and  as  he 
looked  from  the  train  upon  the  cheerful  Kentish  land- 
scape and  saw  the  haymakers  in  the  fields  he  said,  "I 
feel  as  though  I  should  like  to  cut  grass  all  the  rest  of 
my  life."  I  do  not  know  whether  it  was  the  crafts- 
man in  him  that  spoke.  Perhaps  it  was  only  the  beau- 
tiful sanity  and  peace  of  the  scene,  contrasted  with  the 
squalid  nightmare  he  had  left  behind,  that  wrung  the 
words  from  him.  But  they  were  words  that  anyone 
who  has  used  a  scythe  would  echo.  I  echo  them.  I 
feel  that  I  could  look  forward  joyfully  to  an  eternity 
of  sunny  da5's  and  illimitable  fields  of  waving  grass  and 
just  go  on  mowing  and  mowing  and  mowing  for  ever. 
I  am  chilled  by  the  thought  that  you  can  only  play 
the  barber  to  nature  once,  or  at  most  twice  a  year.  I 
look  back  over  the  summers  of  the  past,  and  lament 
my  wasted  opportunities.  What  meadows  I  might  have 
mown  had  I  only  known  the  joy  of  it. 

For  mowing  is  the  most  delightful  disguise  that 
work  can  wear.  When  once  you  have  got  the  trick  of 
it,  it  goes  with  a  rhythm  that  is  intoxicating.  The 
scythe,  which  looked  so  ungainly  and  unmanageable 


ON  MOWING  271 

a  tool,  gradually  changes  its  character.  It  becomes 
an  instrument  of  infinite  flexibility  and  delicacy.  The 
lines  that  seemed  so  uncouth  and  clownish  are  discov- 
ered to  be  the  refinement  of  time.  What  centuries 
of  accumulated  experience  under  the  suns  of  what  di- 
verse lands  have  gone  to  the  perfecting  of  this  most 
ancient  tool  of  the  fields,  shaping  the  blade  so  cun- 
ningly, adjusting  it  to  the  handle  at  so  artful  an  angle, 
disposing  the  nebs  with  such  true  relationship  to  the 
action  of  the  body,  so  that,  skilfully  used,  the  instru- 
ment loses  the  sense  of  weight  and  seems  to  carry  you 
forward  by  its  own  smooth,  almost  instinctive  motion. 
It  is  like  an  extension  of  yourself,  with  a  touch  as  fine 
as  the  brush  of  a  butterfly's  wing  and  a  stroke  as  bold 
and  resistless  as  the  sweep  of  a  cataract.  It  is  no  longer 
a  clumsy,  blundering,  dead  thing,  but  as  obedient  as 
your  hand  and  as  conscious  as  your  touch.  You  seem 
to  have  developed  a  new  member,  far-reaching,  with  the 
edge  of  a  scimitar,  that  will  flick  off  a  daisy  or  fell 
a  forest  of  stalwart  grasses. 

And  as  the  intimacy  grows  you  note  how  the  action 
simplifies  itself.  The  violent  stabbings  and  discords 
are  resolved  into  a  harmony  as  serene  as  a  pastoral 
symphony.  You  feel  the  rhythm  taking  shape,  and 
as  it  develops  the  body  becomes  captive  to  its  own 
task.  You  are  no  longer  manipulating  a  tool.  You 
and  the  tool  have  become  magically  one,  fused  in  a 
common  intelligence,  so  that  you  hardly  know  whether 
you  swing  the  scythe  or  the  scythe  bears  you  forward 
on  its  own  strong,  swimming  stroke.     The  mind,  re- 


272  ON  MOWING 

leased,  stands  aloof  in  a  sort  of  delighted  calm,  rejoic- 
ing in  a  spectacle  in  which  it  has  ceased  to  have  a  con- 
scious part,  noting  the  bold  swing  of  the  body  back- 
wards for  the  stroke  (the  blade  lightly  skimming  the 
ground,  as  the  oar  gently  flatters  the  water  in  its 
return),  the  delicate  play  of  the  wrist  as  the  scythe 
comes  into  action,  the  "swish"  that  tells  that  the  stroke 
is  true  and  clean,  the  thrust  from  the  waist  upwards 
that  carries  it  clear,  the  dip  of  the  blade  that  leaves 
the  swathe  behind,  the  moderate,  timely,  exact  move- 
ment of  the  feet  preparatory  to  the  next  stroke,  the  law, 
musical  hum  of  the  .vibrating  steel.  A  frog  hops  out 
in  alarm  at  the  sudden  invasion  of  his  secrecy  among 
the  deep  grasses.  You  hope  he  won't  get  in  the  way 
of  that  terrible  finger,  but  you  are  drunk  with  the 
rhythm  of  the  scythe  and  are  swept  along  on  its  im- 
perious current.  You  are  no  longer  a  man,  but  a 
motion.     The  frog  must  take  his  chance.     Swish — 

swish — swish 

Not  that  the  rhythm  is  unrelieved.  It  has  its  "ac- 
cidentals." You  repeat  a  stroke  that  has  not  pleased 
you,  with  a  curious  sense  of  pleasure  at  the  interrupted 
movement  which  has  yet  not  changed  the  theme;  you 
nip  off  a  tuft  here  or  there  as  the  singer  throws  in  a 
stray  flourish  to  garland  the  measure;  you  trim  round 
the  trees  with  the  pleasant  feeling  that  you  can  make 
this  big  thing  do  a  little  thing  so  deftly;  you  pause 
to  whet  the  blade  with  the  hone.  But  all  the  time 
the  song  of  the  scythe  goes  on.  It  fills  your  mind  and 
courses  through  your  blood.    Your  pulse  beats  to  the 


ON  MOWING  273 

rhythmic  swish — swish — swish,  and  to  that  measure 
you  pass  into  a  waking  sleep  in  which  the  hum  of  bees 
and  the  song  of  lark  and  cuckoo  seem  to  belong  to  a 
dream  world  through  which  you  are  floating,  bound 
to  a  magic  oar. 

The  sun  climbs  the  heavens  above  the  eastward 
hills,  goes  regally  overhead,  and  slopes  to  his  setting 
beyond  the  plain.  You  mark  the  shadows  shorten 
and  lengthen  as  they  steal  round  the  trees.  A  thrush 
sings  ceaselessly  through  the  morning  from  a  beech  tree 
on  the  other  side  of  the  lane,  falls  silent  during  the 
heat  of  the  afternoon  and  begins  again  as  the  shadows 
lengthen  and  a  cool  wind  comes  out  of  the  west.  Over- 
head the  swifts  are  hawking  in  the  high  air  for  their 
evening  meal.  Presently  they  descend  and  chase  each 
other  over  the  orchard  with  the  curious  sound  of  an 
indrawn  whistle  that  belongs  to  the  symphony  of  late 
summer  evenings. 

You  are  pleasantly  conscious  of  these  pleasant  things 
as  you  swing  to  the  measured  beat  of  the  scythe,  and 
your  thoughts  play  lightly  with  kindred  fancies,  snatches 
of  old  song,  legends  of  long  ago,  Ruth  in  the  fields  of 
Boaz,  and  Horace  on  his  Sabine  farm,  the  sonorous 
imagery  of  Israel  linking  up  the  waving  grasses  with 
the  life  of  man  and  the  scythe  with  the  reaper  of  a 
more  august  harvest. 

The  plain  darkens,  and  the  last  sounds  of  day  fall 
on  the  ear,  the  distant  bark  of  a  dog,  the  lowing  of 
cattle  in  the  valley,  the  intimate  gurglings  of  the  thrush 


274 


ON  MOWING 


settling  for  the  night  in  the  nest,  the  drone  of  a  winged 
beetle  blundering  through  the  dusk,  one  final  pure  note 
of  the  white  throat.  There  is  still  light  for  this  last 
slope  to  the  paddock.     Swish — swish — swish.  .  .  . 


~^^r^  1^^ 


Deacidified  using  the  Bookkeeper  proc 
Neutralizing  agent:  Magnesium  Oxide 
Treatment  Date:  June  2009 

Preservationlechnologi 

A  WORLD  LEADER  IN  COLLECTIONS  PRESERVA 

111  Thomson  Park  Drive 
Cranberry  Township,  PA  16066 
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