|
But perhaps he doesn't wake. Perhaps, like Macbeth, he has
"murdered
Sleep," and is suffering the final bankruptcy of life. A man may
lose
a crown and be all the better, but to lose the faculty of sleep is
to
enter the kingdom of the damned. If you or I were offered a new
lease
of life after our present lease had run out and were told that we
could
nominate our gifts what would be our first choice? Not a kingdom,
nor
an earldom, nor even succession to an O.B.E. There was a period of
my
childhood when I thought I should have liked to have been born a
muffin
man, eternally perambulating the streets ringing a bell, carrying
a
basket on my head and shouting "Muffins," in the ears of a
delighted
populace. I loved muffins and I loved bells, and here was a man who
had
those joys about him all day long and every day. But now my
ambitions
are more restrained. I would no more wish to be born a muffin man
than
a poet or an Archbishop. The first gift I should ask would be
something
modest. It would be the faculty of sleeping eight solid hours
every
night, and waking each morning with the sense of unfathomable
and
illimitable content with which I opened my eyes to the world
to-day.
All the functions of nature are agreeable, though views may
differ as to
their relative pleasure. A distinguished man, whose name I
forget, put
eating first, "for," said he, "there is no other pleasure that
comes
three times a day and lasts an hour each time." But sleep lasts
eight
hours. It fills up a good third of the time we spend here and
it
fills it up with the divinest of all balms. It is the very kingdom
of
democracy. "All equal are within the church's gate," said George
Herbert. It
may have been so in George Herbert's parish; but it is
hardly so in most
parishes. It is true of the Kingdom of Sleep. When you
enter its portals all
discriminations vanish, and Hodge and his master,
the prince and the pauper,
are alike clothed in the royal purple and
inherit the same golden realm.
There is more harmony and equality in
life than wre are apt to admit. For a
good twenty-five years of our
seventy we sleep (and even snore) with an
agreement that is simply
wonderful.
And the joy of waking up is not
less generously distributed. What
delight is there like throwing off the
enchantment of sleep and seeing
the sunlight streaming in at the window and
hearing the happy jangle of
the birds, or looking out on the snow-covered
landscape in winter, or
the cherry blossom in spring, or the golden fields of
harvest time, or
(as now) upon the smouldering fires of the autumn woodlands?
Perhaps the
day will be as thorny and full of disappointments and
disillusions as
any that have gone before. But no matter. In this wonder of
waking there
is eternal renewal of the spirit, the inexhaustible promise of
the best
that is still to come, the joy of the new birth that experience
cannot
stale nor familiarity make tame.
That singer of our time, who
has caught most perfectly the artless note
of the birds themselves, has
uttered the spirit of joyous waking that
all must feel on this exultant
morning--=
````Good morning, Life--and all
````Things glad and
beautiful.
````My pockets nothing hold,
````But he that owns the
gold,
````The Sun, is my great friend--
````His spending has no
end.=
Let us up, brothers, and greet the sun and hear the ringing of
the
bells. There has not been such royal waking since the world
began.
It is an agreeable fancy of some that eternity itself will be a
thing of
sleep and happy awakenings. It is a cheerful faith that solves a
certain
perplexity. For however much we cling to the idea of immortality,
we
can hardly escape an occasional feeling of concern as to how we
shall
get through it. We shall not "get through it," of course, but speech
is
only fashioned for finite things. Many men, from Pascal to Byron,
have
had a sort of terror of eternity. Byron confessed that he had no
terror
of a dreamless sleep, but that he could not conceive an eternity
of
consciousness which would not be unendurable. We are cast in a
finite
mould and think in finite terms, and we cling to the thought
of
immortality less perhaps from the desire to enjoy it for ourselves
than
from fear of eternal separation from the companionship of those
whose
love and friendship we would fain believe to be deathless. For
this
perplexity the fancy of which I speak offers a solution. An eternity
of
happy awakenings would be a pleasant compromise between being and
not
being. I can conceive no more agreeable lot through eternity,
than=
````To dream as I may,
`````And awake when I
will,
````With the song of the bird,
`````And the sun on the
hill.=
Was it not Wilfred Scawen Blunt who contemplated an eternity
in
which, once in a hundred years, he would wake and say, "Are you
there,
beloved?" and hear the reply, "Yes, beloved, I am here," and
with
that sweet assurance lapse into another century of forgetfulness?
The
tenderness and beauty of the idea were effectually desecrated by
Alfred
Austin, whom some one in a jest made Poet Laureate. "For my part,"
he
said, "I should like to wake once in a hundred years and hear news
of
another victory for the British Empire." It would not be easy to
invent
a more perfect contrast between the feeling of a poet and the
simulated
passion of a professional patriot. He did not really think that,
of
course. He was simply a timid, amiable little man who thought it
was
heroic and patriotic to think that. He had so habituated his tiny
talent
to strutting about in the grotesque disguise of a swashbuckler that
it
had lost all touch with the primal emotions of poetry. Forgive me
for
intruding him upon the theme. The happy awakenings of eternity
must
outsoar the shadow of our night, its slayings and its vulgar
patriotisms. If
they do not do that, it will be better to sleep on.
[Illustration:
0235]
[Illustration: 0236]
ON
RE-READING
I
|A weekly paper has been asking well-known people
what books they
re-read. The most pathetic reply made to the inquiry is that
of Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle. "I seldom re-read now," says that unhappy man.
"Time
is so short and literature so vast and unexplored." What a
desolating
picture! It is like saying, "I never meet my old friends now. Time
is so
short and there are so many strangers I have not yet shaken hands
with."
I see the poor man, hot and breathless, scurrying over the "vast
and
unexplored" fields of literature, shaking hands and saying, "How
d'ye
do?" to everybody he meets and reaching the end of his journey,
impoverished
and pitiable, like the peasant in Tolstoi's "How much land
does a man
need?"
I rejoice to say that I have no passion for shaking hands
with
strangers. I do not yearn for vast unexplored regions. I take the
North
Pole and the South, the Sahara and the Karoo for granted. As
Johnson
said of the Giant's Causeway, I should like to see them, but I
should
not like _to go_ to see them. And so with books. Time is so short
that
I have none to spare for keeping abreast with the circulating
library.
I could almost say with the Frenchman that when I see that a new
book is
published I read an old one. I am always in the rearward of the
fashion,
and a book has to weather the storms of its maiden voyage before
I
embark on it. When it has proved itself seaworthy I will go aboard;
but
meanwhile the old ships are good enough for me. I know the captain
and
the crew, the fare I shall get and the port I shall make and
the
companionship I shall have by the way.
Look at this row of fellows
in front of me as I write--Boswell, "The
Bible in Spain," Pepys, Horace,
"Elia," Montaigne, Sainte-Beuve,
"Travels with a Donkey," Plutarch,
Thucydides, Wordsworth, "The Early
Life of Charles James Fox,"
"Under
the Greenwood Tree," and so on. Do not call them books.=
````Camerado,
this is no book.
````Who touches this, touches a man,=
as Walt
Whitman said of his own "Leaves of Grass." They are not books.
They are my
friends. They are the splendid wayfarers I have met on
my pilgrimage, and
they are going on with me to the end. It was
worth making the great adventure
of life to find such company. Come
revolutions and bereavements, come storm
and tempest, come war or peace,
gain or loss--these friends shall endure
through all the vicissitudes
of the journey. The friends of the flesh fall
away, grow cold, are
estranged, die, but these friends of the spirit are not
touched with
mortality. They were not born for death, no hungry generations
tread
them down, and with their immortal wisdom and laughter they give
us
the password to the eternal. You can no more exhaust them than you
can
exhaust the sunrise or the sunset, the joyous melody of Mozart or
Scarlatti,
the cool serenity of Velasquez or any other thing of beauty.
They are a part
of ourselves, and through their noble fellowship we are
made freemen of the
kingdoms of the mind--=
```... rich as the oozy bottom of the
deep
```In sunken wrack and sumless treasuries.=
We do not say we
have read these books: we say that we live in communion
with these
spirits.
I am not one who wants that communion to be too exclusive. When
my old
friend Peter Lane shook the dust of Fleet Street off his feet for
ever
and went down into the country he took Horace with him, and there
he
sits in his garden listening to an enchantment that never grows
stale.
It is a way Horace has. He takes men captive, as Falstaff took
Bardolph
captive. They cannot see the swallows gathering for their
southern
flight without thinking that they are going to breathe the air
that
Horace breathed, and asking them to carry some such message as
John
Marshall's:=
`````Tell him, bird,
```That if there be a
Heaven where he is not,
```One man at least seeks not admittance
there.=
This is not companionship. This is idolatry. I should be sorry to
miss
the figure of Horace--short and fat, according to Suetonius--in
the
fields of asphodel, but there are others I shall look for with
equal
animation and whose footsteps I shall dog with equal industry.
Meanwhile, so
long as my etheric body, as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle would
say, is imprisoned
in the flesh I shall go on reading and re-reading
the books in which their
spirits live, leaving the vast and unexplored
tracts of the desert to those
who like deserts.
II
|A correspondent asked me the other day
to make him out a list of Twelve
Books that he ought to read. I declined the
task in that form. I did not
know what he had read, and I did not know what
his tastes or his needs
were, and even with that knowledge I should hesitate
to prescribe for
another. But I compromised with him by prescribing for
myself. I assumed
that for some offence against D.O.R.A. I was to be cast
ashore on a
desert island out in the Pacific, where I was to be left in
solitude for
twelve months, or perhaps never to be called for at all, and
that as a
mitigation of the penalty I was to be permitted to carry with me
twelve
books of my own choosing. On what principles should I set about
so
momentous a choice?
In the first place I decided that they must be
books of the
inexhaustible kind. Rowland Hill said that "the love of God was
like a
generous roast of beef--you could cut and come again." That must be
the
first quality of my Twelve Books. They must be books that one could
go
on reading and re-reading as interminably as the old apple-woman in
Borrow
went on reading "Moll Flanders." If only her son had known that
immortal
book, she said, he would never have got transported for life.
That was the
sort of book I must have with me on my desert island. But
my choice would be
different from that of the old apple-woman of Old
London Bridge. I dismissed
all novels from my consideration. Even the
best of novels are exhaustible,
and if I admitted novels at all my
bundle of books would be complete before I
had made a start with the
essentials, for I should want "Tristram Shandy" and
"Tom Jones," two
or three of Scott's, Gogol's "Dead Souls," "David
Copperfield," "Evan
Harrington," "The Brothers Karamazoff," "Pere Goriot,"
"War and Peace,"
"The Three Musketeers," all of Hardy's, "Treasure Island,"
"Robinson
Crusoe," "Silas Marner," "Don Quixote," the "Cloister and the
Hearth,"
"Esmond"--no, no, it would never do to include novels. They must be
left
behind.
The obvious beginning would have been the Bible and
Shakespeare, but
these had been conceded not as a luxury but as a necessity,
and did not
come in the scope of my Twelve. History I must have on the grand
scale,
so that I can carry the story of the past with me into exile. I
have
no doubt about my first choice here. Thucydides (I) is as easily
first
among the historians as Sirius is first among the stars. To read
him
by the lightnings of to-day is to read him with a freshness
and
understanding that have the excitement of contemporary comment. The
gulf
of twenty-three centuries is miraculously bridged, and you pass to
and
fro, as it were, from the mighty European drama of to-day to the
mighty
drama of ancient Greece, encountering the same emotions and agonies,
the
same ambitions, the same plots and counter-plots, the same villains,
and
the same heroes. Yes, Thucydides of course.
And Plutarch (2)
almost equally of course. What portrait gallery is
there to compare with his?
What a mine of legend and anecdote, history
and philosophy, wisdom and
superstition. I am less clear when I come
to the story of Rome. Shall I put
in the stately Gibbon, the learned
Mommsen, or the lively, almost
journalistic Ferrero? It is a hard
choice. I shut my eyes and take pot luck.
Ferrero (3) is it? Well,
I make no complaint. And then I will have those
three fat volumes of
Motley's, "Rise of the Dutch Republic" (4) put in my
boat, please,
and--yes, Carlyle's "French Revolution" (5), which is history
and drama
and poetry and fiction all in one. And, since I must take the story
of
my own land with me, just throw in Green's "Short History" (6). It
is
lovable for its serene and gracious temper as much as for its
story.
That's as much history as I can afford, for I must leave room for
the
more personal companions who will talk to me like old friends and
keep
the fires of human contact ablaze on my solitary isle. First, of
course,
there is Boswell (7), and next there is Pepys (8), (Wheatley's
edition,
for there only is the real Samuel revealed "wart and all"). I
should
like to take "Elia" and that rascal Benvenuto Cellini; but I must
limit
my personal following to three, and on the whole I think the third
place
must be reserved for old Montaigne (9), for I could not do without
that
frank, sagacious, illuminated mind in my little fellowship. Akin
to
these good fellows I must have the picaresque Borrow to lend the
quality
of open-air romance to the comradeship, and shutting my eyes once
more
I choose indifferently from the pile, for I haven't the heart to make
a
choice between the "Bible in Spain," "The Romany Rye," "Lavengro,"
and
"Wild Wales." But I rejoice when I find that "Lavengro" (10) is in
the
boat.
I can have only one poet, but that makes the choice easy. If
I could
have had half a dozen the choice would have been hard; but when it
is
Wordsworth (11) _contra mundum_, I have no doubt. He is the man who
will
"soothe and heal and bless." My last selection shall be given to
a
work of travel and adventure. I reduce the area of choice to
Hakluyt's
"Voyages" and the "Voyage of the Beagle," and while I am balancing
their
claims the "Beagle" (12) slips out of my hand into the boat. My
library
is complete. And so, spread the sails to the wind and away for
the
Pacific.
[Illustration: 0243]
FEBRUARY
DAYS
|The snow has gone from the landscape and the sun, at the hour
of
setting, has got round to the wood that crowns the hill on the
other
side of the valley. Soon it will set on the slope of the hill and
then
down on the plain. Then we shall know that spring has come. Two
days
ago a blackbird, from the paddock below the orchard, added his
golden
baritone to the tenor of the thrush who had been shouting good
news
from the beech tree across the road for weeks past. I don't know why
the
thrush should glimpse the dawn of the year before the blackbird,
unless
it is that his habit of choosing the topmost branches of the tree
gives
him a better view of the world than that which the
golden-throated
fellow gets on the lower branches that he always affects. It
may be
the same habit of living in the top storey that accounts for the
early
activity of the rooks. They are noisy neighbours, but never so noisy
as
in these late February days, when they are breaking up into families
and
quarrelling over their slatternly household arrangements in the
topmost
branches of the elm trees. They are comic ruffians who wash all
their
dirty linen in public, and seem almost as disorderly and bad-tempered
as
the human family itself. If they had only a little of our ingenuity
in
mutual slaughter there would be no need for my friend the farmer to
light
bonfires underneath the trees in order to drive the female from
the eggs and
save his crops.
A much more amiable little fellow, the great tit, has
just added his
modest assurance that spring is coming. He is not much of a
singer, but
he is good hearing to anyone whose thoughts are turning to his
garden
and the pests that lurk therein for the undoing of his toil. The tit
is
as industrious a worker in the garden as the starling, and, unlike
the
starling, he has no taste for my cherries. A pair of blue tits have
been
observed to carry a caterpillar to their nest, on an average every
two
minutes for the greater part of the day. That is the sort of bird
that
deserves encouragement--a bird that loves caterpillars and does not
love
cherries. There are very few creatures with so clean a record. So
hang
out the cocoanut as a sign of goodwill.
And yet, as I write, I am
reminded that in this imperfect world where no
unmixed blessing is vouchsafed
to us, even the tit does not escape
the general law of qualified beneficence.
For an hour past I have been
agreeably aware of the proximity of a great tit
who, from a hedge below
the orchard, has been singing his little see-saw song
with unremitting
industry. Now behold him. There he goes flitting and
pirouetting with
that innocent grace which, as he skips in and out of the
hedge just
in front of you, suggests that he is inviting you to a game
of
hide-and-seek. But not now. Now he is revealing the evil that dwells
in
the best of us. Now he reminds us that he too is a part of that
nature
which feeds so relentlessly on itself. See him over the hives,
glancing
about in his own erratic way and taking his bearings. Then, certain
that
the coast is clear, he nips down and taps upon one of the hives with
his
beak. He skips away to await results. The trick succeeds; the
doorkeeper
of the hive comes out to enquire into the disturbance, and down
swoops
the great tit and away he flies with his capture. An artful fellow
in
spite of his air of innocence.
There is no affectation of innocence
about that robust fellow the
starling. He is almost as candid a ruffian as
the rook, and three months
hence I shall hate him with an intensity that
would match Caligula's
"Oh, that the Romans had only one neck!" For then he
will come out of
the beech woods on the hillside for his great annual spring
offensive
against my cherry trees, and in two or three days he will leave
them an
obscene picture of devastation, every twig with its desecrated fruit
and
the stones left bleaching in the sun. But in these days of February
I
can be just even to my enemy. I can admit without reserve that he is
not
all bad any more than the other winsome little fellow is all good.
See
him on autumn or winter days when he has mobilised his forces for
his
forages in the fields, and is carrying out those wonderful evolutions
in
the sky that are such a miracle of order and rhythm. Far off, the
cloud
approaches like a swirl of dust in the sky, expanding,
contracting,
changing formation, breaking up into battalions, merging into
columns,
opening out on a wide front, throwing out flanks and advance
guards
and rear guards, every complication unravelled in perfect order,
every
movement as serene and assured as if the whole cloud moved to the
beat
of some invisible conductor below--a very symphony of the air, in
which
motion merges into music, until it seems that you are not watching
a
flight of birds, but listening with the inner ear to great waves
of
soundless harmony. And then, the overture over, down the cloud
descends
upon the fields, and the farmers' pests vanish before the
invasion.
And if you will follow them into the fields you will find infinite
tiny
holes that they have drilled and from which they have extracted
the
lurking enemy of the drops, and you will remember that it is to
their
beneficial activities that we owe the extermination of the May
beetle,
whose devastations were so menacing a generation ago. And after
the
flock has broken up and he has paired, and the responsibilities
of
housekeeping have begun he continues his worthy labours. When spring
has
come you can see him dart from his nest in the hollow of the tree
and
make a journey a minute to the neighbouring field, returning each
time
with a chafer-grub or a wire-worm or some other succulent, but
pestiferous
morsel for the young and clamorous family at home. That
acute observer, Mr G.
G. Desmond, says that he has counted eighteen such
journeys in fifteen
minutes. What matter a few cherries for a fellow of
such benignant
spirit?
But wait, my dear sir, wait until June brings the ripening
cherries and
see how much of this magnanimity of February is
left.
Sir, I refuse to be intimidated by June or any other
consideration.
Sufficient unto the day---- And to-day I will think only good
of the
sturdy fellow in the coat of mail. To-day I will think only of the
brave
news that is abroad. It has got into the hives. On fine days such
as
this stray bees sail out for water, bringing the agreeable tidings
that
all is well within, that the queen bee is laying her eggs,
"according
to plan," and that moisture is wanted in the hive. There are a
score
of hives in the orchard, and they have all weathered the winter and
its
perils. We saw the traces of one of those perils when the snow still
lay
on the ground. Around each hive were the footmarks of a mouse. He
had
come from a neighbouring hedge, visited each hive in turn, found
there
was no admission and had returned to the hedge no doubt hungrier than
he
came. Poor little wretch! to be near such riches, lashings of
sweetness
and great boulders of wax, and not be able to get bite or sup. I
see him
trotting back through the snow to his hole, a very dejected mouse.
Oh,
these new-fangled hives that don't give a fellow a chance.
In the
garden the news is coming up from below, borne by those unfailing
outriders
of the spring, the snowdrop and the winter aconite. A modest
company; but in
their pennons is the assurance of the many-coloured host
that is falling
unseen into the vast pageant of summer and will fill the
woods with the
trumpets of the harebell and the wild hyacinth, and make
the hedges burst
into foam, and the orchard a glory of pink and white,
and the ditches heavy
with the scent of the meadowsweet, and the fields
golden with harvest and the
gardens a riot of luxuriant life. I said
it was all right, chirps little red
waistcoat from the fence--all the
winter I've told you that there was a good
time coming and now you see
for yourself. Look at those flowers. Ain't they
real? The philosopher in
the red waistcoat is perfectly right. He has kept
his end up all through
the winter, and has taken us into his fullest
confidence. Formerly he
never came beyond the kitchen, but this winter when
the snow was about
he advanced to the parlour where he pottered about like
one of the
family. Now, however, with the great news outside and the earth
full of
good things to pick up, he has no time to call.
Even up in the
woods that are still gaunt with winter and silent, save
for the ringing
strokes of the woodcutters in some distant clearing, the
message is borne in
the wind that comes out of the west at the dawn of
the spring, and is as
unlike the wind of autumn as the spirit of the
sunrise is unlike the spirit
of the sunset. It is the lusty breath of
life coming back to the dead earth,
and making these February days the
most thrilling of the year. For in these
expanding skies and tremors of
life and unsealings of the secret springs of
nature all is promise and
hope, and nothing is for regret and lament. It is
when fulfilment comes
that the joy of possession is touched with the shadow
of parting. The
cherry blossom comes like a wonder and goes like a dream,
carrying the
spring with it, and the dirge of summer itself is implicit in
the scent
of the lime trees and the failing note of the cuckoo. But in these
days
of birth when=
``"Youth, inexpressibly fair, wakes like a
wondering rose."=
there is no hint of mortality and no reverted glance.
The curtain is
rising and the pageant is all before us.
[Illustration:
0249]
[Illustration: 0250]
ON AN ANCIENT
PEOPLE
|Among my letters this morning was one requesting that if I
were in
favour of "the reconstitution of Palestine as a National Home for
the
Jewish people," I should sign the enclosed declaration and return it
in
the envelope (unstamped), also enclosed. I dislike unstamped
envelopes.
I also dislike stamped envelopes. You can ignore an unstamped
enveloped
but a stamped envelope compels you to write a letter, when perhaps
you
don't want to write a letter. My objection to unstamped envelopes
is
that they show a meagre spirit and a lack of confidence in you.
They
suggest that you are regarded with suspicion as a person who
will
probably steam off the stamp and use it to receipt a bill.
But I
waived the objection, signed the declaration, stamped the envelope
and put it
in the post. I did all this because I am a Zionist. I am so
keen a Zionist
that I would use a whole bookful of stamps in the cause.
I am a Zionist, not
on sentimental grounds, but on very practical
grounds. I want the Jews to
have Palestine, so that the English may have
England and the Germans Germany
and the Russians Russia. I want them to
have a home of their own so that the
rest of us can have a home of
our own. By this I do not mean that I am an
anti-Semite. I loathe
Jew-baiting, and regard the Jew-baiter as a very
unlovely person. But I
want the Jew to be able to decide whether he is an
alien or a citizen.
I want him to shed the dualism that makes him such an
affliction to
himself and to other people. I want him to possess Palestine so
that he
may cease to want to possess the earth.
I am therefore
fiercely on the side of the Zionist Jews, and fiercely
against their
opponents. These people want to be Jews, but they do not
want Jewry. They do
not want to be compelled to make a choice between
being Jews and being
Englishmen or Americans, Germans or French. They
want the best of both
worlds. We are not a nation, they say; we are
Englishmen, or Scotsmen, or
Welshmen, or Frenchmen, or Germans, or
Russians, or Japanese "of the Jewish
persuasion." We are a religious
community like the Catholics, or the
Presbyterians, or the Unitarians,
or the Plymouth Brethren. Indeed! And what
is your religion, pray? _It
is the religion of the Chosen People_. Great
heavens! You deny that
you are a nation, and in the same breath claim that
you are the Chosen
Nation. The very foundation of your religion is that
Jehovah has picked
you out from all the races of men as his own. Over you his
hand is
spread in everlasting protection. For you the cloud by day and
the
pillar of fire by night; for the rest of us the utter darkness of
the
breeds that have not the signature of Jehovah. We cannot enter
your
kingdom by praying or fasting, by bribe or entreaty. Every other
nation
is accessible to us on its own conditions; every other religion is
eager
to welcome us, sends its missionaries to us to implore us to come
in.
But you, the rejected of nations, yourself reject all nations and
forbid
your sacraments to those who are not bom of your household. You
are
the Chosen People, whose religion is the nation and whose nationhood
is
religion.
Why, my dear sir, history offers no parallel to your
astounding claim to
nationality--the claim that has held your race together
through nearly
two thousand years of dispersion and wandering, of persecution
and
pride, of servitude and supremacy--=
``Slaves in eternal Egypts,
baking your strawless bricks;
``At ease in successive Zions, prating your
politics.=
All nations are afflicted with egoism. It is the national
egoism
of Prussia that has just brought it to such catastrophic ruin.
The
Frenchman entertains the firm conviction that civilisation ends at
the
French frontier. Being a polite person, he does his best not to
betray
the conviction to us, and sometimes almost succeeds. The
Englishman,
being less sophisticated, does not try to conceal the fact that
he has
a similar conviction. It does not occur to him that anyone can doubt
his
claim. He knows that every foreigner would like to be an Englishman
if
he knew how. The pride of the Spaniard is a legend, and you have only
to
see Arab salute Arab to understand what a low person the European
must
seem in their eyes. In short, national egoism is a folly which is
pretty
equally distributed among all of us. But your national egoism is
unlike
any other brand on earth. In the humility of Shylock is the pride of
the
most arrogant racial aristocracy the world has ever seen. God
appeared
to you in the burning bush and spoke to you in the thunders of
Sinai,
and set you apart as his own exclusive household. And when one of
your
prophets declared that all nations were one in the sight of God,
you
rejected his gospel and slew the prophet. By comparison with you we
are
a humble people. We know we are a mixed race and that we have no
more
divine origin--and no less--than anybody else. Mr Kipling, it is
true,
has caught your arrogant note:=
``For the Lord our God Most
High,
``He hath made the deep as dry,
``He hath smote for us a
pathway to the ends of all the earth.=
But that is because Mr Kipling
seems to be one of those who believe we
are one of the lost tribes of your
Chosen race. I gather that is so from
another of his poems in which he
cautions us against=
````Such boastings as the Gentiles
use
````And lesser breeds without the law.=
But Mr Kipling is only
a curiosity among us. We are much more modest
than that. But you are like
that. You are not only a nation. You are,
except the Chinese, the most
isolated, the most tenacious, the most
exclusive nation in history. Other
races have changed through the
centuries beyond recognition or have
disappeared altogether. Where are
the Persians of the spacious days of Cyrus?
Who finds in the Egyptians
of to-day the spirit and genius of the mighty
people who built the
Pyramids and created the art of the Third Dynasty? What
trace is there
in the modern Cretans of the imperial race whose seapower had
become
a legend before Homer sang? Can we find in the Greeks of our time
any
reminiscence of the Athens of Pericles? Or in the Romans any
kinship
with the sovereign people that conquered the world from Parthia
to
Britain, and stamped it with the signature of its civilisation
as
indelibly as it stamped it with its great highways? The nations
chase
each other across the stage of time, and vanish as the
generations
of men chase each other and vanish. You and the Chinese alone
seem
indestructible. It is no extravagant fancy that foresees that when
the
last fire is lit on this expiring planet it will be a Chinaman and a
Jew
who will stretch their hands to its warmth, drink in the last breath
of
air, and write the final epitaph of earth. No, it is too late by many
a
thousand years to deny your nationhood, for it is the most enduring
fact
in human records. And being a nation without a fatherland, you run
like
a disturbing immiscible fluid through the blood of all the nations.
You
need a home for your own peace and for the world's peace. I am going
to
try and help you to get one.
[Illustration:
0254]
[Illustration: 0201]
ON GOOD
RESOLUTIONS
|I think, on the whole, that I began the New Year with rather
a good
display of moral fireworks, and as fireworks are meant to be
seen
(and admired) I propose to let them off in public. When I awoke
in
the morning I made a good resolution.... At this point, if I am
not
mistaken, I observe a slight shudder on your part, madam. "How
Victorian!" I
think I hear you remark. You compel me, madam, to digress.
It is, I know,
a little unfashionable to make New Year's resolutions
nowadays. That sort of
thing belonged to the Victorian world in which we
elderly people were born,
and for which we are expected to apologise. No
one is quite in the fashion
who does not heave half a brick at Victorian
England. Mr Wells has just
heaved a book of 760 pages at it. This
querulous superiority to past ages
seems a little childish. It is like
the scorn of youth for its
elders.
I cannot get my indignation up to the boil about Victorian
England. I
should find it as difficult to draw up an indictment of a century
as
it is to draw up an indictment of a nation. I seem to remember that
the
Nineteenth Century used to speak as disrespectfully of the Eighteenth
as
we now speak of the Nineteenth, and I fancy that our grandchildren
will
be as scornful of our world of to-day as we are of the world of
yesterday.
The fact that we have learned to fly, and have discovered
poison gas, and
have invented submarines and guns that will kill a
churchful of people
seventy miles away does not justify us in regarding
the Nineteenth Century as
a sort of absurd guy. There were very good
things as well as very bad things
about our old Victorian England. It
did not go to the Ritz to dance in the
New Year, it is true. The Ritz
did not exist, and the modern hotel life had
not been invented. It used
to go instead to the watch-night service, and it
was not above making
good resolutions, which for the most part, no doubt, it
promptly
proceeded to break.
Why should we apologise for these habits?
Why should we be ashamed of
watch-night services and good resolutions? I am
all for gaiety. If I
had my way I would be as "merry" as Pepys, if in a
different fashion.
"Merry" is a good word and implies a good thing. It may be
admitted that
merriment is an inferior quality to cheerfulness. It is an
emotion, a
mere spasm, whereas cheerfulness is a habit of mind, a whole
philosophy
of life. But the one quality does not necessarily exclude the
other,
and an occasional burst of sheer irresponsible merriment is good
for
anybody--even for an Archbishop--especially for an Archbishop.
The
trouble with an Archbishop is that his office tends to make him
take
himself too seriously. He forgets that he is one of us, and that is
bad
for him. He needs to give himself a violent reminder occasionally
that
his virtue is not an alien thing; but is rooted in very ordinary
humanity. At
least once a year he should indulge in a certain
liveliness, wear the cap and
bells, dance a cake-walk or a horn-pipe,
not too publicly, but just publicly
enough so that there should be
nothing furtive about it. If not done on the
village green it might
at least be done in the episcopal kitchen, and
chronicled in the
local newspapers. "Last evening His Grace the Archbishop
attended the
servants' ball at the Palace, and danced a cake-walk with the
chief
scullery-maid."
[Illustration: 0257]
And I do not forget
that, together with its watch-night services and its
good resolutions,
Victorian England used to wish you "A Merry Christmas
and a Happy New Year."
Nowadays the formula is "A Happy Christmas and a
Prosperous New Year." It is
a priggish, sophisticated change--a sort of
shamefaced implication that there
is something vulgar in being "merry."
There isn't. For my part, I do not want
a Happy Christmas: I want a
Merry Christmas. And I do not want a fat,
prosperous New Year. I want a
Happy New Year, which is a much better and more
spiritual thing.
If, therefore, I do not pour contempt on the Victorian
habit of making
good resolutions, it is not because I share Malvolio's view
that
virtue is a matter of avoiding cakes and ale. And if I refuse to
deride
Victorian England because it went to watch-night services it is
not
because I think there is anything wrong in a dance at the Ritz. It
is
because, in the words of the old song, I think "It is good to be
merry
_and_ wise." I like a festival of foolishness and I like good
resolutions,
too. Why shouldn't I? Lewis Carrol's gift for mathematics
was not less
admirable because he made Humpty-Dumpty such a poor hand at
doing sums in his
head.
From this digression, madam, permit me to return to my good
resolution.
The thing that is the matter with you, I said, addressing myself
on New
Year's morning as I applied the lather before the shaving glass,
is
that you have a devil of impatience in you. I shouldn't call you
an
intolerant fellow, but I rather fear that you are an impulsive
fellow.
Perhaps to put the thing agreeably, I might say that your
nervous
reaction to events is a little too immediate. I don't want to
be
unpleasant, but I think you see what I mean. Do not suppose that I
am
asking you to be a cold-blooded, calculating person. God forbid. But
it
would do you no harm to wear a snaffle bar and a tightish rein--or,
as
we used to say in our Victorian England, to "count ten." I accepted
the
criticism with approval. For though we do not like to hear of our
failings
from other people, that does not mean that we are unconscious
of them. The
more conscious we are of them, the less we like to hear of
them from others
and the more we hear of them from ourselves. So I said
"Agreed. We will adopt
'Second thoughts' as our New Year policy and
begin the campaign at
once."
And then came my letters--nice letters and nasty letters and
indifferent
letters, and among them one that, as Lancelot Gobbo would say,
"raised
the waters." No, it was not one of those foolish, venomous letters
which
anonymous correspondents write to newspapers. They leave you cold.
I
might almost say that they cheer you up. They give you the
comforting
assurance that you cannot be very far wrong when persons capable
of
writing these letters disapprove of you. But this letter was
different.
As I read it I felt a flame of indignation surging up and
demanding
expression. And I seized a pen, and expressed it, and having done
so, I
said "Second thoughts," and tore it up, and put the fragments aside,
as
the memorial of the first skirmish in the campaign. I do not expect
to
dwell on this giddy moral altitude long; perhaps in a week the old
imperious
impulse will have resumed full dominion. But it is good to
have a periodical
brush with one's habits, even if one knows one is
pretty sure to go down in
the second round. It serves at least as a
reminder that we are conscious of
our own imperfections as well as of
the imperfections of others. And that, I
think, is the case for our old
Victorian habit of New Year's Day
commandments.
I wrote another reply in the evening. It was quite
_pianissimo_ and
nice.
[Illustration: 0261]
ON A
GRECIAN PROFILE
|I see that the ghouls have descended upon George
Meredith, and are
desecrating his remains. They have learned from the life of
him just
published that he did not get on well with his father, or his
eldest
son, and that he did not attend his first wife's funeral. Above
all,
he was a snob. He was ashamed of the tailoring business from which
he
sprang, concealed the fact that he was bom at Portsmouth, and
generally
turned his Grecian profile to the world and left it to be assumed
that
his pedigree was wrapped in mystery and magnificence.
I daresay
it is all true. Many of us have an indifferent record at home
and most of us
like to turn our Grecian profiles to the world, if we
have Grecian profiles.
We are like the girl in Hardy's story who always
managed to walk on the right
side of her lover, because she fancied that
the left side of her face was her
strong point. The most distinguished
and, I think, the noblest American of
our time always turns his profile
to the camera--and a beautiful profile it
is--for reasons quite
obvious and quite pardonable to those who have seen the
birth-mark that
disfigures the other cheek. I suspect that I do not myself
object to
being caught unaware in favourable attitudes or pleasing situations
that
dispose the observer to agreeable impressions. And, indeed, why should
I
(or you) be ashamed to give-a pleasant thrill to anybody if it is in
our
power. If we pretend we are above these human frailties, what is the
meaning
of the pains we take about choosing a hat, or about the cut of
a coat, or the
colour of a cloth for the new suit? Why do we so seldom
find pleasure in a
photograph of ourselves--so seldom feel that it
does justice to that
benignant and Olympian ideal of ourselves which we
cherish secretly in our
hearts? I should have to admit, if I went into
the confession box, that I had
never seen a photograph of myself that
had satisfied me. And I fancy you
would do the same if you were honest.
We may pretend to ourselves that it is
only abstract beauty or absolute
truth that we are concerned about, but we
know better. We are thinking
of our Grecian profile.
It is no doubt
regrettable to find that great men are so often afflicted
with little
weaknesses. There are some people who delight in pillorying
the immortals and
shying dead cats and rotten eggs at them.
They enjoy the discovery that
no one is better than he should be. It
gives them a comfortable feeling to
discover that the austere outside of
the lord Angelo conceals the libertine.
If you praise Caesar they will
remind you that after dinner he took emetics;
if Brutus, they will say
he made an idol of his public virtue. They like to
remember that Lamb
was not quite the St Charles he is represented to be, but
took far
too much wine at dinner and dosed beautifully, but
alcoholically,
afterwards, as you may read in De Quincey. They like to recall
that
Scott was something of a snob, and put the wine-glass that the
Prince
Regent had used at dinner in his pocket, sitting down on it
afterwards
in a moment of happy forgetfulness. In short, they go about
like
Alcibiades mutilating the statues of Hermes (if he was indeed
the
culprit), and will leave us nothing in human nature that we can
entirely
reverence.
I suppose they are right enough on the facts.
Considering what
multitudinous persons we are it would be a miracle if, when
we button
up ourselves in the morning we did not button up some individual
of
unpleasant propensities, whom we pretend we do not know. I have
never
been interested in my pedigree. I am sure it is a very ancient
one,
and I leave it at that. But I once made a calculation--based on
the
elementary fact that I had two parents and they had each two
parents,
and so on--and came to the conclusion that about the time of the
Norman
Conquest my ancestors were much more numerous than the
population
then inhabiting this island. I am aware that this proves rather
too
much--that it is an example of the fact that you can prove anything
by
statistics, including the impossible. But the truth remains that I
am
the temporary embodiment of a very large number of people--of
millions
of millions of people, if you trace me back to my ancestors who used
to
sharpen flints some six hundred thousand years ago. It would be
singular
if in such a crowd there were not some ne'er-do-wells jostling
about
among the nice, reputable persons who, I flatter myself, constitute
my
Parliamentary majority. Sometimes I fancy that, in a snap election
taken
at a moment of public excitement within myself, the ne'er-do-wells
get
on top. These accidents will happen, and the best I can hope is that
the
general trend of policy in the multitudinous kingdom that I carry
under
my hat is in the hands of the decent people.
And that is the
best we can expect from anybody--the great as well as
the least. If we demand
of the supreme man that he shall be a perfect
whole we shall have no supreme
man--only a plaster saint. Certainly we
shall have no great literature.
Shakespeare did not sit aloof like a
perfect god imagining the world of
imperfect creatures that he created.
The world was within him and he was only
the vehicle of his enormous
ancestry and of the tumultuous life that they
reproduced in the theatre
of his mind. In him was the mirth of a roystering
Falstaff of long ago,
the calculating devilry of some Warwickshire Iago, the
pity of Hubert,
the perplexity of some village Hamlet, the swagger of Ancient
Pistol,
the bucolic simplicity of Cousin Silence, the mingled nobleness
and
baseness of Macbeth, the agony of Lear, the sweetness of many a
maiden
who walked by Avon's banks in ancient days and lived again in
the
Portias and Rosalinds of his mind. All these people dwelt in
Shakespeare.
They were the ghosts of his ancestors. He was, like the
rest of us, not a
man, but multitudes of men. He created all these
people because he was all
these people, contained in a larger measure
than any man who ever lived all
the attributes, good and bad, of
humanity. Each character was a peep into the
gallery of his ancestors.
Meredith, himself, recognised the ancestral source
of creative power.
When Lady Butcher asked him to explain his insight into
the character of
women he replied, "It is the spirit of my mother in me." It
was indeed
the spirit of many mothers working in and through
him. |
|
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