|
"I consider that William Shakespeare was the most psychic man
that ever
lived. I don't suppose there was ever such a long-sighted man
before
_or_ since. He could see through anything. He'd have seen through
Wilson
and he'd have seen this war didn't stop before the job was done. It's
a
pity we haven't a William Shakespeare now. Lloyd George and Asquith
are
not in it with him. They're simply duds beside William Shakespeare.
Couldn't
hold a candle to him."
"Seems to me," said timid voice, "that there's
nobody, as you might say,
worth anything to-day."
"Nobody," said big
voice. "We've gone right off. There used to be men.
Old Dizzy, he was a man.
So was Joseph Chamberlain. He was right about
Tariff Reform. I saw it years
before he did. Free Trade I said was all
right years ago, when we were
manufacturing for the world. But it's out
of date. I saw it was out of date
long before Joseph Chamberlain. It's
the result of being long-sighted. I said
to my father, 'If we stick to
Free Trade this country is done.' That's what I
said, and it's true. We
_are_ done. Look at these strikes. We stick to things
too long. I
believe in looking ahead. When I was in America before the war
they
wouldn't believe I came from England. Wouldn't believe it. 'But
the
English are so slow,' they said, 'and you--why you want to be getting
on
in front of us.' That's my way. I look ahead and don't stand
still."
"It's the best way too," said timid voice. "We want more of it.
We're
too slow."
And so on. When I came to the end of my journey I
rose so that the
light of a lamp shone on the speakers as I passed. They were
both
well-dressed, ordinary-looking men. If I had passed them in the
street
I should have said they were intelligent men of the well-to-do
business
class. I have set down their conversation, which I could not
help
overhearing, and which was carried on by the big voice in a tone
meant
for publication, as exactly as I can recall it. There was a good
deal
more of it, all of the same character. You will laugh at it, or
weep
over it, according to your humour.
[Illustration:
0055]
ON BEING TIDY
|Any careful observer of my habits
would know that I am on the eve of
an adventure--a holiday, or a bankruptcy,
or a fire, or a voluntary
liquidation (whatever that may be), or an
elopement, or a duel, or a
conspiracy, or--in short, of something out of the
normal, something
romantic or dangerous, pleasurable or painful, interrupting
the calm
current of my affairs. Being the end of July, he would probably
say:
That fellow is on the brink of the holiday fever. He has all
the
symptoms of the epidemic. Observe his negligent, abstracted
manner.
Notice his slackness about business--how he just comes and looks in
and
goes out as though he were a visitor paying a call, or a person who
had
been left a fortune and didn't care twopence what happened. Observe
his
clothes, how they are burgeoning into unaccustomed gaiety, even
levity.
Is not his hat set on at just a shade of a sporting angle? Does
not
his stick twirl with a hint of irresponsible emotions? Is there not
the
glint of far horizons in his eye? Did you not hear him humming as
he
came up the stairs? Yes, assuredly the fellow is going for a
holiday.
Your suspicions would be confirmed when you found me ransacking
my
private room and clearing up my desk. The news that I am clearing up
my
desk has been an annual sensation for years. I remember a colleague
of
mine once coming in and finding me engaged in that spectacular
feat.
His face fell with apprehension. His voice faltered. "I hope you are
not
leaving us," he said. He, poor fellow, could not think of anything
else
that could account for so unusual an operation.
For I am one of
those people who treat their desks with respect. We do
not believe in
worrying them about their contents. We do not bully them
into disclosing
their secrets. We stuff the drawers full of papers and
documents, and leave
them to mellow and ripen. And when the drawers are
full we pile up other
papers and documents on either side of us; and the
higher the pile gets the
more comfortable and cosy we feel. We would not
disturb them for worlds. Why
should we set our sleeping dogs barking at
us when they are willing to go on
sleeping if we leave them alone? And
consider the show they make. No one
coming to see us can fail to be
impressed by such piles of documents. They
realise how busy we are. They
understand that we have no time for idle talk.
They see that we have
all these papers to dispose of--otherwise, why are they
there? They get
their business done and go away quickly, and spread the news
of what
tremendous fellows we are for work.
I am told by one who
worked with him, that old Lord Strathcona knew the
trick quite well, and used
it unblushingly. When a visitor was announced
he tumbled his papers about in
imposing confusion and was discovered
breasting the mighty ocean of his
labours, his chin resolutely out
of the water. But he was a supreme artist in
this form of amiable
imposture. On one occasion he was entertained at a great
public dinner
in a provincial city. In the midst of the proceedings a portly
flunkey
was observed carrying a huge envelope, with seals and trappings, on
a
salver. For whom was this momentous document intended? Ah, he has
paused
behind the grand old man with the wonderful snowy head. It is for
him.
The company looks on in respectful silence. Even here this
astonishing
old man cannot escape the cares of office. As he takes the
envelope his
neighbour at the table looks at the address. It was in
Strathcona's own
hand-writing!
But we of the rank and file are not
dishevelled by artifice, like this
great man. It is a natural gift. And do
not suppose that our disorder
makes us unhappy. We like it. We follow our
vocation, as Falstaff says.
Some people are born tidy and some are born
untidy. We were bom untidy,
and if good people, taking pity on us, try to
make us tidy we get lost.
It was so with George Crabbe. He lived in
magnificent disorder, papers
and books and letters all over the floor, piled
on every chair, surging
up to the ceiling. Once, in his absence, his niece
tidied up for him.
When he came back he found himself like a stranger in a
strange land.
He did not know his way about in this desolation of tidiness,
and he
promptly restored the familiar disorder, so that he could find
things.
It sounds absurd, of course, but we people with a genius for
untidiness
must always seem absurd to the tidy people. They cannot understand
that
there is a method in our muddle, an order in our disorder, secret
paths
through the wilderness known only to our feet, that, in short, we
are
rather like cats whose perceptions become more acute the darker it
gets.
It is not true that we never find things. We often find
things.
And consider the joy of finding things you don't hope to find.
You, sir,
sitting at your spotless desk, with your ordered and labelled
shelves
about you, and your files and your letter-racks, and your card
indexes
and your cross references, and your this, that, and the other--what
do
you know of the delights of which I speak? You do not come suddenly
and
ecstatically upon the thing you seek. You do not know the shock of
delighted
discovery. You do not shout "Eureka," and summon your family
around you to
rejoice in the miracle that has happened. No star swims
into your ken out of
the void. You cannot be said to find things at
all, for you never lose them,
and things must be lost before they can
be truly found. The father of the
Prodigal had to lose his son before
he could experience the joy that has
become an immortal legend of the
world. It is we who lose things, not you,
sir, who never find them, who
know the Feast of the Fatted Calf.
This
is not a plea for untidiness. I am no hot gospeller of disorder.
I only seek
to make the best, of a bad job, and to show that we untidy
fellows are not
without a case, have our romantic compensations, moments
of giddy exaltation
unknown to those who are endowed with the pedestrian
and profitable virtue of
tidiness. That is all. I would have the
pedestrian virtue if I could. In
other days, before I had given up hope
of reforming myself, and when I used
to make good resolutions as piously
as my neighbours, I had many a spasm of
tidiness. I looked with envy on
my friend Higginson, who was a miracle of
order, could put his hand on
anything he wanted in the dark, kept his
documents and his files and
records like regiments of soldiers obedient to
call, knew what he had
written on 4th March 1894, and what he had said on
10th January 1901,
and had a desk that simply perspired with tidiness. And in
a spirit
of emulation I bought a roll-top desk. I believed that tidiness was
a
purchasable commodity. You went to a furniture dealer and bought a
large
roll-top desk, and when it came home the genius of order came home
with
it. The bigger the desk, the more intricate its devices, the
larger
was the measure of order bestowed on you. My desk was of the
first
magnitude. It had an inconceivable wealth of drawers and
pigeon-holes.
It was a desk of many mansions. And I labelled them all, and
gave them
all separate jobs to perform.
And then I sat back and looked
the future boldly in the face. Now, said
I, the victory is won. Chaos and old
night are banished. Order reigns
in Warsaw. I have but to open a drawer and
every secret I seek will
leap magically to light. My articles will write
themselves, for every
reference will come to my call, obedient as Ariel to
the bidding of
Prospero.=
````"Approach, my Ariel; come,"=
I
shall say, and from some remote fastness the obedient spirit will
appear
with--=
```"All hail, great master; grave sir, hail! I come
```To
answer thy best pleasure; be 't to fly,
```To swim, to dive into the sea,
to ride
```On the curl'd clouds."=
I shall know where Aunt Jane's
letters are, and where my bills are,
and my cuttings about this, that, and
the other, and my diaries and
notebooks, and the time-table and the street
guide. I shall never be
short of a match or a spare pair of spectacles, or a
pencil, or--in
short, life will henceforth be an easy amble to old age. For a
week it
worked like a charm. Then the demon of disorder took possession of
the
beast. It devoured everything and yielded up nothing. Into its
soundless
deeps my merchandise sank to oblivion. And I seemed to sink with
it.
It was not a desk, but a tomb. One day I got a man to take it away to
a
second-hand shop.
Since then I have given up being tidy. I have
realised that the quality
of order is not purchasable at furniture shops, is
not a quality of
external things, but an indwelling spirit, a frame of mind,
a habit that
perhaps may be acquired but cannot be bought.
I have a
smaller desk with fewer drawers, all of them nicely choked up
with the litter
of the past. Once a year I have a gaol delivery of the
incarcerated. The
ghosts come out into the daylight, and I face them
unflinching and unafraid.
They file past, pointing minatory fingers at
me as they go into the
waste-paper basket. They file past now. But I
do not care a dump; for
to-morrow I shall seek fresh woods and pastures
new. To-morrow the ghosts of
that old untidy desk will have no terrors
for my emancipated
spirit.
[Illustration: 0061]
[Illustration:
0062]
AN EPISODE
|We were talking of the distinction
between madness and sanity when one
of the company said that we were all
potential madmen, just as every
gambler was a potential suicide, or just as
every hero was a potential
coward.
"I mean," he said, "that the
difference between the sane and the
insane is not that the sane man never has
mad thoughts. He has, but he
recognises them as mad, and keeps his hand on
the rein of action. He
thinks them, and dismisses them. It is so with the
saint and the sinner.
The saint is not exempt from evil thoughts, but he
knows they are evil,
is master of himself, and puts them away.
"I
speak with experience," he went on, "for the potential madman in me
once
nearly got the upper hand. I won, but it was a near thing, and if
I had gone
down in that struggle I should have been branded for all
time as a criminal
lunatic, and very properly put away in some place of
safety. Yet I suppose no
one ever suspected me of lunacy."
"Tell us about it," we said in
chorus.
"It was one evening in New York," he said. "I had had a very
exhausting
time, and was no doubt mentally tired. I had taken tea with two
friends
at the Belmont Hotel, and as we found we were all disengaged
that
evening we agreed to spend it together at the Hippodrome, where a
revue,
winding up with a great spectacle that had thrilled New York, was
being
presented. When we went to the box office we found that we could not
get
three seats together, so we separated, my friends going to the floor
of
the house and I to the dress circle.
"If you are familiar with the
place you will know its enormous
dimensions and the vastness of the stage.
When I took my seat next but
one to one of the gangways the house was crowded
and the performance had
begun. It was trivial and ordinary enough, but it
kept me amused, and
between the acts I went out to see the New Yorkers taking
'soft' drinks
in the promenades. I did not join them in that mild indulgence,
nor did
I speak to anyone.
"After the interval before the concluding
spectacle I did not return to
my seat until the curtain was up. The
transformation hit me like a
blow. The huge stage had been converted into a
lake, and behind the lake
through filmy draperies there was the suggestion of
a world in flames.
I passed to my seat and sat down. I turned from the
blinding glow of the
conflagration in front and cast my eye over the sea of
faces that filled
the great theatre from floor to ceiling. 'Heavens! if there
were a fire
in this place,' I thought. At that thought the word 'Fire' blazed
in my
brain like a furnace. 'What if some madman cried Fire?' flashed
through
my mind, and then '_What if I cried Fire?_'
"At that hideous
suggestion, the demon word that suffused my brain leapt
like a shrieking
maniac within me and screamed and fought for utterance.
I felt it boiling in
my throat, I felt it on my tongue. I felt myself to
be two persons engaged in
a deadly grapple--a sane person struggling to
keep his feet against the mad
rush of an insane monster. I clenched my
teeth. So long as I kept my teeth
tight--tight--tight the raging
madman would fling himself at the bars in
vain. But could I keep up the
struggle till he fell exhausted? I gripped the
arms of my seat. I felt
beads of perspiration breaking out on my right brow.
How singular that
in moments of strain the moisture always broke out at that
spot. I could
notice these things with a curious sense of detachment as if
there were
a third person within me watching the frenzied conflict. And
still
that titanic impulse lay on my tongue and hammered madly at my
clenched
teeth. Should I go out? That would look odd, and be an
ignominious
surrender. I must fight this folly down honestly and not run away
from
it. If I had a book I would try to read. If I had a friend beside me
I
would talk. But both these expedients were denied me. Should I turn
to
my unknown neighbour and break the spell with an inconsequent remark
or
a request for his programme? I looked at him out of the tail of my
eye.
He was a youngish man, in evening dress, and sitting alone as I was.
But
his eyes were fixed intently on the stage. He was obviously gripped
by
the spectacle. Had I spoken to him earlier in the evening the
course
would have been simple; but to break the ice in the midst of this
tense
silence was impossible. Moreover, I had a programme on my knees and
what
was there to say?...
"I turned my eyes from the stage. What was
going on there I could not
tell. It was a blinding blur of Fire that seemed
to infuriate the
monster within me. I looked round at the house. I looked up
at the
ceiling and marked its gilded ornaments. I turned and gazed intensely
at
the occupants of the boxes, trying to turn the current of my mind
into
speculations about their dress, their faces, their characters. But
the
tyrant was too strong to be overthrown by such conscious effort.
I
looked up at the gallery; I looked down at the pit; I tried to busy
my
thoughts with calculations about the numbers present, the amount
of
money in the house, the cost of running the establishment--anything.
In
vain. I leaned back in my seat, my teeth still clenched, my hands
still
gripping the arms of the chair. How still the house was! How
enthralled
it seemed!... I was conscious that people about me were noticing
my
restless inattention. If they knew the truth.... If they could see
the
raging torment that was battering at my teeth.... Would it never go?
How
long would this wild impulse burn on my tongue? Was there no
distraction
that would=
```Cleanse the stuffed bosom of this perilous
stuff
```That feeds upon the brain.=
"I recalled the
reply--=
```Therein the patient must minister to himself.=
"How
fantastic it seemed. Here was that cool observer within me quoting
poetry
over my own delirium without being able to allay it. What a
mystery was the
brain that could become the theatre of such wild
drama. I turned my glance to
the orchestra. Ah, what was that they were
playing?... Yes, it was a passage
from Dvorak's American Symphony. How
familiar it was! My mind incontinently
leapt to a remote scene, I saw
a well-lit room and children round the hearth
and a figure at the
piano....
"It was as though the madman within me
had fallen stone dead. I looked
at the stage coolly, and observed that
someone was diving into the lake
from a trapeze that seemed a hundred feet
high. The glare was still
behind, but I knew it for a sham glare. What a fool
I had been.... But
what a hideous time I had had.... And what a close
shave.... I took out
my handkerchief and drew it across my
forehead."
[Illustration: 0066]
[Illustration:
0067]
ON SUPERSTITIONS
|It was inevitable that the fact
that a murder has taken place at a
house with the number 13 in a street, the
letters of whose name number
13, would not pass unnoticed. If we took the
last hundred murders that
have been committed, I suppose we should find that
as many have taken
place at No. 6 or No. 7, or any other number you choose,
as at No.
13--that the law of averages is as inexorable here as elsewhere.
But
this consideration does not prevent the world remarking on the fact
when
No. 13 has its turn. Not that the world believes there is anything
in
the superstition. It is quite sure it is a mere childish folly, of
course.
Few of us would refuse to take a house because its number was
13, or decline
an invitation to dinner because there were to be 13 at
table. But most of us
would be just a shade happier if that desirable
residence were numbered 11,
and not any the less pleased with the dinner
if one of the guests contracted
a chill that kept him away. We would
not confess this little weakness to each
other. We might even refuse to
admit it to ourselves, but it is
there.
That it exists is evident from many irrefutable signs. There
are
numerous streets in London, and I daresay in other towns too, in
which
there is no house numbered 13, and I am told that it is very rare that
a
bed in a hospital bears that number. The superstition, threadbare
though
it has worn, is still sufficiently real to enter into the
calculations
of a discreet landlord in regard to the letting qualities of his
house,
and into the calculations of a hospital as to the curative properties
of
a bed. In the latter case general agreement would support the
concession
to the superstition, idle though that superstition is. Physical
recovery
is a matter of the mind as well as of the body, and the slightest
shadow
on the mind may, in a condition of low vitality, retard and even
defeat
recovery. Florence Nightingale's almost passionate advocacy of
flowers
in the sick bedroom was based on the necessity of the creation
of
a certain state of mind in the patient. There are few more
curious
revelations in that moving record by M. Duhamel of medical
experiences
during the war, than the case of the man who died of a pimple on
his
nose. He had been hideously mutilated in battle and was brought
into
hospital a sheer wreck; but he was slowly patched up and seemed to
have
been saved when a pimple appeared on his nose. It was nothing in
itself,
but it was enough to produce a mental state that checked the
flickering
return of life. It assumed a fantastic importance in the mind of
the
patient who, having survived the heavy blows of fate, died of
something
less than a pin prick. It is not difficult to understand that so
fragile
a hold of life might yield to the sudden discovery that you were
lying
in No. 13 bed.
I am not sure that I could go into the
witness-box and swear that I am
wholly immune to these idle superstitions
myself. It is true that of
all the buses in London, that numbered 13 chances
to be the one that
I constantly use, and I do not remember, until now, ever
to have
associated the superstition with it. And certainly I have never
had
anything but the most civil treatment from it. It is as well behaved
a
bus, and as free from unpleasant associations as any on the road. I
would not
change its number if I had the power to do so. But there are
other
circumstances of which I should find it less easy to clear myself
of
suspicion under cross examination. I never see a ladder against a
house side
without feeling that it is advisable to walk round it rather
than under it. I
say to myself that this is not homage to a foolish
superstition, but a duty
to my family. One must think of one's family.
The fellow at the top of the
ladder may drop anything. He may even
drop himself. He may have had too much
to drink. He may be a victim of
epileptic fits, and epileptic fits, as
everyone knows, come on at the
most unseasonable times and places. It is a
mere measure of ordinary
safety to walk round the ladder. No man is justified
in inviting danger
in order to flaunt his superiority to an idle fancy.
Moreover, probably
that fancy has its roots in the common-sense fact that a
man on a ladder
does occasionally drop things. No doubt many of our
superstitions have
these commonplace and sensible origins. I imagine, for
example, that the
Jewish objection to pork as unclean on religious grounds is
only due to
the fact that in Eastern climates it is unclean on physical
grounds.
All the same, I suspect that when I walk round the ladder I am
rather
glad that I have such respectable and unassailable reasons for
doing
so. Even if--conscious of this suspicion and ashamed to admit it
to
myself--I walk under the ladder I am not quite sure that I have
not
done so as a kind of negative concession to the superstition. I
have
challenged it rather than been unconscious of it. There is only one
way
of dodging the absurd dilemma, and that is to walk through the
ladder.
This is not easy. In the same way I am sensible of a certain
satisfaction
when I see the new moon in the open rather than through
glass, and over my
right shoulder rather than my left. I would not for
any consideration arrange
these things consciously; but if they happen
so I fancy I am better pleased
than if they do not. And on these
occasions I have even caught my hand--which
chanced to be in my pocket
at the time--turning over money, a little
surreptitiously I thought,
but still undeniably turning it. Hands have habits
of their own and one
can't always be watching them.
But these shadowy
reminiscences of antique credulity which we discover
in ourselves play no
part in the lives of any of us. They belong to a
creed outworn. Superstition
was disinherited when science revealed the
laws of the universe and put man
in his place. It was no discredit to be
superstitious when all the functions
of nature were unexplored, and
man seemed the plaything of beneficent or
sinister forces that he could
neither control nor understand, but which held
him in the hollow of
their hand. He related everything that happened in
nature to his own
inexplicable existence, saw his fate in the clouds, his
happiness or
misery announced in the flight of birds, and referred every
phenomenon
of life to the soothsayers and oracles. You may read in Thucydides
of
battles being postponed (and lost) because some omen that had no
more
relation to the event than the falling of a leaf was against it.
When
Pompey was afraid that the Romans would elect Cato as prætor he
shouted
to the Assembly that he heard thunder, and got the whole
election
postponed, for the Romans would never transact business after it
had
thundered. Alexander surrounded himself with fortune tellers and
took
counsel with them as a modern ruler takes counsel with his
Ministers.
Even so great a man as Cæsar and so modern and enlightened a man
as
Cicero left their fate to augurs and omens. Sometimes the omens
were
right and sometimes they were wrong, but whether right or wrong
they
were equally meaningless. Cicero lost his life by trusting to the
wisdom
of crows. When he was in flight from Antony and Cæsar Augustus he put
to
sea and might have escaped. But some crows chanced to circle round
his
vessel, and he took the circumstance to be unfavourable to his
action,
returned to shore and was murdered. Even the farmer of ancient
Greece
consulted the omens and the oracles where the farmer to-day is
only
careful of his manures.
I should have liked to have seen Cæsar
and I should have liked to have
heard Cicero, but on the balance I think we
who inherit this later
day and who can jest at the shadows that were so real
to them have the
better end of time. It is pleasant to be about when the
light is abroad.
We do not know much more of the Power that=
````Turns
the handle of this idle show=
than our forefathers did, but at least we
have escaped the grotesque
shadows that enveloped them. We do not look for
divine guidance in the
entrails of animals or the flight of crows, and the
House of Commons
does not adjourn at a clap of thunder.
[Illustration:
0072]
[Illustration: 0073]
ON POSSESSION
|I met
a lady the other day who had travelled much and seen much, and
who talked
with great vivacity about her experiences. But I noticed one
peculiarity
about her. If I happened to say that I too had been, let us
say, to Tangier,
her interest in Tangier immediately faded away and
she switched the
conversation on to, let us say, Cairo, where I had not
been, and where
therefore she was quite happy. And her enthusiasm about
the Honble. Ulick de
Tompkins vanished when she found that I had had
the honour of meeting that
eminent personage. And so with books and
curiosities, places and things--she
was only interested in them so long
as they were her exclusive property. She
had the itch of possession, and
when she ceased to possess she ceased to
enjoy. If she could not have
Tangier all to herself she did not want it at
all.
And the chief trouble in this perplexing world is that there are so
many
people afflicted like her with the mania of owning things that really
do
not need to be owned in order to be enjoyed. Their experiences must
be
exclusive or they have no pleasure in them. I have heard of a man
who
countermanded an order for an etching when he found that someone
else
in the same town had bought a copy. It was not the beauty of the
etching
that appealed to him: it was the petty and childish notion that
he
was getting something that no one else had got, and when he found
that
someone else had got it its value ceased to exist.
The truth, of
course, is that such a man could never possess anything
in the only sense
that matters. For possession is a spiritual and not a
material thing. I do
not own--to take an example--that wonderful picture
by Ghirlandajo of the
bottle-nosed old man looking at his grandchild. I
have not even a good print
of it. But if it hung in my own room I could
not have more pleasure out of it
than I have experienced for years. It
is among the imponderable treasures
stored away in the galleries of the
mind with memorable sunsets I have seen
and noble books I have read, and
beautiful actions or faces that I remember.
I can enjoy it whenever I
like and recall all the tenderness and humanity
that the painter saw in
the face of that plain old Italian gentleman with the
bottle nose as he
stood gazing down at the face of his grandson long
centuries ago. The
pleasure is not diminished by the fact that all may share
this spiritual
ownership, any more than my pleasure in the sunshine, or the
shade of
a fine beech, or the smell of a hedge of sweetbrier, or the song of
the
lark in the meadow is diminished by the thought that it is common
to
all.
From my window I look on the slope of a fine hill crowned with
beech
woods. On the other side of the hill there are sylvan hollows
of
solitude which cannot have changed their appearance since the
ancient
Britons hunted in these woods two thousand years ago. In the legal
sense
a certain noble lord is the owner. He lives far off and I doubt
whether
he has seen these woods once in ten years. But I and the children of
the
little hamlet know every glade and hollow of these hills and have
them
for a perpetual playground. We do not own a square foot of them,
but
we could not have a richer enjoyment of them if we owned every leaf
on
every tree. For the pleasure of things is not in their possession but
in
their use.
It was the exclusive spirit of my lady friend that
Juvenal satirised
long ago in those lines in which he poured ridicule on the
people who
scurried through the Alps, not in order to enjoy them, but in
order to
say that they had done something that other people had not done.
Even
so great a man as Wordsworth was not free from this disease of
exclusive
possession. De Quincey tells that, standing with him one day
looking at
the mountains, he (De Quincey) expressed his admiration of the
scene,
whereupon Wordsworth turned his back on him. He would not permit
anyone
else to praise _his_ mountains. He was the high priest of
nature,
and had something of the priestly arrogance. He was the medium
of
revelation, and anyone who worshipped the mountains in his
presence,
except through him, was guilty of an impertinence both to him and
to
nature.
In the ideal world of Plato there was no such thing as
exclusive
possession. Even wives and children were to be held in common,
and
Bernard Shaw to-day regards the exclusiveness of the home as the
enemy
of the free human spirit. I cannot attain to these giddy heights
of
communism. On this point I am with Aristotle. He assailed
Plato's
doctrine and pointed out that the State is not a mere individual,
but
a body composed of dissimilar parts whose unity is to be drawn
"ex
dissimilium hominum consensu." I am as sensitive as anyone about
my
title to my personal possessions. I dislike having my umbrella
stolen
or my pocket picked, and if I found a burglar on my premises I am sure
I
shouldn't be able to imitate the romantic example of the good bishop
in
"Les Miserables." When I found the other day that some young fruit
trees
I had left in my orchard for planting had been removed in the night
I
was sensible of a very commonplace anger. If I had known who my
Jean
Valjean was I shouldn't have asked him to come and take some more
trees.
I should have invited him to return what he had removed or submit
to
consequences that follow in such circumstances.
I cannot conceive a
society in which private property will not be a
necessary condition of life.
I may be wrong. The war has poured human
society into the melting pot, and he
would be a daring person who
ventured to forecast the shape in which it will
emerge a generation or
two hence. Ideas are in the saddle, and tendencies
beyond our control
and the range of our speculation are at work shaping our
future. If
mankind finds that it can live more conveniently and more
happily
without private property it will do so. In spite of the
Decalogue
private property is only a human arrangement, and no reasonable
observer
of the operation of the arrangement will pretend that it
executes
justice unfailingly in the affairs of men. But because the idea
of
private property has been permitted to override with its selfishness
the
common good of humanity, it does not follow that there are not
limits
within which that idea can function for the general convenience
and
advantage. The remedy is not in abolishing it altogether, but
in
subordinating it to the idea of equal justice and community of
purpose.
It will, reasonably understood, deny me the right to call the
coal
measures, which were laid with the foundations of the earth, my
private
property or to lay waste a countryside for deer forests, but it
will
still leave me a legitimate and sufficient sphere of ownership. And
the
more true the equation of private and public rights is, the more
secure
shall I be in those possessions which the common sense and
common
interest of men ratify as reasonable and desirable. It is the
grotesque
and iniquitous wrongs associated with a predatory conception of
private
property which to some minds make the idea of private property
itself
inconsistent with a just and tolerable social system. When the idea
of
private property is restricted to limits which command the sanction
of
the general thought and experience of society, it will be in no
danger
of attack. I shall be able to leave my fruit trees out in the
orchard
without any apprehensions as to their safety.
But while I
neither desire nor expect to see the abolition of private
ownership, I see
nothing but evil in the hunger to possess exclusively
things, the common use
of which does not diminish the fund of enjoyment.
I do not care how many
people see Tangier: my personal memory of the
experience will remain in its
integrity. The itch to own things for the
mere pride of possession is the
disease of petty, vulgar minds. "I do
not know how it is," said a very rich
man in my hearing, "but when I
am in London I want to be in the country and
when I am in the country I
want to be in London." He was not wanting to
escape from London or the
country, but from himself. He had sold himself to
his great possessions
and was bankrupt. In the words of a great preacher "his
hands were full
but his soul was empty, and an empty soul makes an empty
world." There
was wisdom as well as wit in that saying of the Yoloffs that
"he who was
born first has the greatest number of old clothes." It is not a
bad rule
for the pilgrimage of this world to travel light and leave the
luggage
to those who take a pride in its abundance.
[Illustration:
0078]
[Illustration: 0079]
ON BORES
|I was
talking in the smoking-room of a club with a man of somewhat
blunt manner
when Blossom came up, clapped him on the shoulder, and
began:
"Well, I
think America is bound to----" "Now, do you mind giving us two
minutes?"
broke in the other, with harsh emphasis. Blossom, unabashed
and unperturbed,
moved off to try his opening on another group. Poor
Blossom! I had almost
said "Dear Blossom." For he is really an excellent
fellow. The only thing
that is the matter with Blossom is that he is a
bore. He has every virtue
except the virtue of being desirable company.
You feel that you could love
Blossom if he would only keep away. If
you heard of his death you would be
genuinely grieved and would send
a wreath to his grave and a nice letter of
condolence to his wife and
numerous children.
But it is only absence
that makes the heart grow fond of Blossom. When
he appears all your affection
for him withers. You hope that he will not
see you. You shrink to your
smallest dimensions. You talk with an air of
intense privacy. You keep your
face averted. You wonder whether the back
of your head is easily
distinguishable among so many heads. All in vain.
He approacheth with the
remorselessness of fate. He putteth his hand
upon your shoulder. He remarketh
with the air of one that bringeth new
new's and good news--"Well, I think
that America is bound to----" And
then he taketh a chair and thou lookest at
the clock and wonderest how
soon thou canst decently remember another
engagement.
Blossom is the bore courageous. He descends on the choicest
company
without fear or parley. Out, sword, and at 'em, is his motto.
He
advances with a firm voice and a confident air, as of one who knows
he
is welcome everywhere and has only to choose his company. He will
have
nothing but the best, and as he enters the room you may see his
eye
roving from table to table, not in search of the glad eye of
recognition, but
of the most select companionship, and having marked
down his prey he goes
forward boldly to the attack. Salutes the circle
with easy familiarity,
draw's up his chair with assured and masterful
authority, and plunges into
the stream of talk with the heavy impact
of a walrus or hippopotamus taking a
bath. The company around him melts
away, but he is not dismayed. Left alone
with a circle of empty chairs,
he riseth like a giant refreshed, casteth his
eye abroad, noteth another
group that whetteth his appetite for good
fellowship, moveth towards it
with bold and resolute front. You may see him
put to flight as many as
three circles inside an hour, and retire at the end,
not because he is
beaten, but because there is nothing left worth crossing
swords with. "A
very good club to-night," he says to Mrs B. as he puts on his
slippers.
Not so Trip. He is the bore circumspect. He proceeds by sap and
mine
where Blossom charges the battlements sword in hand. He enters
timidly
as one who hopes that he will be unobserved. He goes to the table
and
examines the newspapers, takes one and seats himself alone. But not
so
much alone that he is entirely out of the range of those fellows in
the
corner who keep up such a cut-and-thrust of wit. Perchance one of
them
may catch his eye and open the circle to him. He readeth his
paper
sedulously, but his glance passeth incontinently outside the margin
or
over the top of the page to the coveted group. No responsive eye
meets
his. He moveth just a thought nearer along the sofa by the wall.
Now
he is well within hearing. Now he is almost of the company itself.
But
still unseen--noticeably unseen. He puts down his paper, not
ostentatiously
but furtively. He listens openly to the conversation,
as one who has been
enmeshed in it unconsciously, accidentally,
almost unwillingly, for was he
not absorbed in his paper until this
conversation disturbed him? And now it
would be almost uncivil not to
listen. He waits for a convenient opening and
then gently insinuates
a remark like one venturing on untried ice. And the
ice breaks and the
circle melts. For Trip, too, is a bore.
I remember
in those wonderful submarine pictures of the brothers
Williamson, which we
saw in London some time ago, a strange fish at
whose approach all the other
fish turned tail. It was not, I think, that
they feared him, nor that he was
less presentable in appearance than any
other fish, but simply that there was
something about him that made them
remember things. I forget what his name
was, or whether he even had a
name. But his calling was obvious. He was the
Club Bore. He was the fish
who sent the other fish about their business. I
thought of Blossom as
I saw that lonely creature whisking through the water
in search of some
friendly ear into which he could remark--"Well, I think
that America is
bound to----" or words to that effect. I thought how superior
an animal
is man. He doth not hastily flee from the bore as these fish did.
He
hath bowels of compassion. He tempereth the wind to the shorn lamb.
He
looketh at the clock, he beareth his agony a space, he seemeth even
to
welcome Blossom, he stealeth away with delicate solicitude for
his
feelings.
It is a hard fate to be sociable and yet not to have the
gift of
sociability. It is a small quality that is lacking. Good company
insists
on one sauce. It must have humour. Anything else may be lacking,
but
this is the salt that gives savour to all the rest. And the humour
must
not be that counterfeit currency which consists in the retailing
of
borrowed stories. "Of all bores whom man in his folly hesitates to
hang,
and Heaven in its mysterious wisdom suffers to propagate its
species,"
says De Quincey, "the most insufferable is the teller of good
stories."
It is an over hard saying, subject to exceptions; but it contains
the
essential truth, for the humour of good company must be an
authentic
emanation of personality and not a borrowed tale. It is no
discredit to
be a bore. Very great men have been bores! I fancy that
Macaulay,
with all his transcendent gifts, was a bore. My head aches even at
the
thought of an evening spent in the midst of the terrific torrent
of
facts and certainties that poured from that brilliant and amiable man.
I
find myself in agreement for once with Melbourne who wished that he
was
"as cocksure of one thing as Macaulay was of everything." There is
pretty
clear evidence that Wordsworth was a bore and that Coleridge was
a bore, and
I am sure Bob Southey must have been an intolerable
bore. And Neckar's
daughter was fortunate to escape Gibbon for he was
assuredly a prince of
bores. He took pains to leave posterity in
no doubt on the point. He wrote
his "Autobiography" which, as a wit
observed, showed that "he did not know
the difference between himself
and the Roman Empire. He has related his
'progressions from London to
Bariton and from Bariton to London' in the same
monotonous, majestic
periods that he recorded the fall of states and
empires." Yes, an
indubitable bore. Yet these were all admirable men and even
great men.
Let not therefore the Blossoms and the Trips be discomfited. It
may be
that it is not they who are not fit company for us, but we who are
not
fit company for them.
[Illustration: 0084]
[Illustration:
0085]
A LOST SWARM
|We were busy with the impossible
hen when the alarm came. The
impossible hen is sitting on a dozen eggs in the
shed, and, like the boy
on the burning deck, obstinately refuses to leave the
post of duty. A
sense of duty is an excellent thing, but even a sense of duty
can be
carried to excess, and this hen's sense of duty is simply a disease.
She
is so fiercely attached to her task that she cannot think of eating,
and
resents any attempt to make her eat as a personal affront or a
malignant
plot against her impending family. Lest she should die at her post,
a
victim to a misguided hunger strike, we were engaged in the
delicate
process of substituting a more reasonable hen, and it was at this
moment
that a shout from the orchard announced that No. 5 was
swarming.
It was unexpected news, for only the day before a new nucleus
hive had
been built up from the brood frames of No. 5 and all the queen
cells
visible had been removed. But there was no doubt about the swarm.
Around
the hive the air was thick with the whirring mass and filled with
the
thrilling strum of innumerable wings. There is no sound in nature
more
exciting and more stimulating. At one moment the hive is normal.
You
pass it without a suspicion of the great adventure that is being
hatched
within. The next, the whole colony roars out like a cataract,
envelops
the hive in a cloud of living dust until the queen has emerged and
gives
direction to the masses that slowly cohere around her as she
settles
on some branch. The excitement is contagious. It is a call to
adventure
with the unknown, an adventure sharpened by the threat of loss and
tense
with the instancy of action. They have the start. It is your wit
against
their impulse, your strategy against their momentum. The cloud
thins
and expands as it moves away from the hive and you are puzzled
to
know whither the main stream is moving in these ever widening folds
of
motion. The first indeterminate signs of direction to-day were
towards
the beech woods behind the cottage, but with the aid of a syringe we
put
up a barrage of water in that direction, and headed them off towards
a
row of chestnuts and limes at the end of the paddock beyond the
orchard.
A swift encircling move, armed with syringe and pail, brought them
again
under the improvised rainstorm. They concluded that it was not such
a
fine day as they had thought after all, and that they had better
take
shelter at once, and to our entire content the mass settled in a
great
blob on a conveniently low bough of a chestnut tree. Then, by the aid
of
a ladder and patient coaxing, the blob was safely transferred to a
skep,
and carried off triumphantly to the orchard.
[Illustration:
0089]
And now, but for the war, all would have been well. For, but for
the
war, there would have been a comfortable home in which the
adventurers
could have taken up their new quarters. But hives are as hard to
come by
in these days as petrol or matches, or butter or cheese, or most of
the
other common things of life. We had ransacked England for hives and
the
neighbourhood for wood with which to make hives; but neither could
be
had, though promises were plenty, and here was the beginning of
the
swarms of May, each of them worth a load of hay according to the
adage,
and never a hive to welcome them with. Perhaps to-morrow something
would
arrive, if not from Gloucester, then from Surrey. If only the
creatures
would make themselves at home in the skep for a day or
two....
But no. For two hours or so all seemed well. Then perhaps they
found
the skep too hot, perhaps they detected the odour of previous
tenants,
perhaps--but who can read the thoughts of these inscrutable
creatures?
Suddenly the skep was enveloped in a cyclone of bees, and again
the
orchard sang with the exciting song of the wings. For a moment the
cloud
seemed to hover over an apple tree near by, and once more the
syringe
was at work insisting, in spite of the sunshine, that it was
a
dreadfully wet day on which to be about, and that a dry skep,
even
though pervaded by the smell of other bees, had points worth
considering. In
vain. This time they had made up their minds. It may
be that news had come to
them, from one of the couriers sent out to
prospect for fresh quarters, of a
suitable home elsewhere, perhaps a
deserted hive, perhaps a snug hollow in
some porch or in the bole of an
ancient tree. Whatever the goal, the decision
was final. One moment the
cloud was about us; the air was filled with the
high-pitched roar of
thirty thousand pair of wings. The next moment the cloud
had gone--gone
sailing high over the trees in the paddock and out across the
valley. We
burst through the paddock fence into the cornfield beyond; but we
might
as well have chased the wind. Our first load of hay had taken
wings
and gone beyond recovery. For an hour or two there circled round
the
deserted skep a few hundred odd bees who had apparently been out
when
the second decision to migrate was taken, and found themselves
homeless
and queenless. I saw some of them try to enter other hives, but
they
were promptly ejected as foreigners by the sentries who keep the
porch
and admit none who do not carry the authentic odour of the hive.
Perhaps
the forlorn creatures got back to No. 5, and the young colony left in
possession of that tenement. |
|
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