even to the present day. Art here is no exotic. It smacks of the soil;
it springs spontaneous, like a weed; it burgeons of itself out of the
heart of the people. Not high art, understand well; not the art of
Burne-Jones and Whistler and Puvis de Chavannes and Sar Peladan.
Commonplace everyday art, that is a trade and a handicraft, like the
joiner's or the shoemaker's. Look up at your ceiling; it's overrun with
festoons of crude red and blue flowers, or it's covered with cupids and
graces, or it bristles with arabesques and unmeaning phantasies. Every
wall is painted; every grotto decorated. Sham landscapes, sham loggias,
sham parapets are everywhere. The sham windows themselves are provided,
not only with sham blinds and sham curtains, but even with sham
coquettes making sham eyes or waving sham handkerchiefs at passers-by
below them. Open-air fresco painting is still a living art, an art
practised by hundreds and thousands of craftsmen, an art as alive as
cookery or weaving. The Italian decorates everything; his pottery, his
house, his church, his walls, his palaces. And the only difference he
feels between the various cases is, that in some of them a higher type
of art is demanded by wealth and skill than in the others. No wonder,
therefore, he blossomed out at last into Michael Angelo's frescoes in
the Sistine Chapel!
To us English, on the contrary, high art is something exotic, separate,
alone, _sui generis_. We never think of the plaster star in the middle
of our ceiling as belonging even to the same range of ideas as, say, the
frescoes in the Houses of Parliament.
A nation in such a condition as that is never truly artistic. The artist
with us, even now, is an exceptional product. Art for a long time in
England had nothing at all to do with the life of the people. It was a
luxury for the rich, a curious thing for ladies' and gentlemen's
consumption, as purely artificial as the stuccoed Italian villa in which
they insisted on shivering in our chilly climate. And the pictures it
produced were wholly alien to the popular wants and the popular
feelings; they were part of an imported French, Italian, and Flemish
tradition. English art has only slowly outgrown this stage, just in
proportion as truly artistic handicrafts have sprung up here and there,
and developed themselves among us. Go into the Cantagalli or the Ginori
potteries at Florence, and you will see mere boys and girls, untrained
children of the people, positively disporting themselves, with childish
glee, in painting plates and vases. You will see them, not slavishly
copying a given design of the master's, but letting their fancy run riot
in lithe curves and lines, in griffons and dragons and floral
twists-and-twirls of playful extravagance. They revel in ornament. Now,
it is out of the loins of people like these that great artists spring by
nature--not State-taught, artificial, made-up artists, but the real
spontaneous product, the Lippi and Botticelli, the hereditary craftsmen,
the born painters. And in England nowadays it is a significant fact that
a large proportion of the truest artists--the innovators, the men who
are working out a new style of English art for themselves, in accordance
with the underlying genius of the British temperament, have sprung from
the great industrial towns--Birmingham, Manchester, Leicester--where
artistic handicrafts are now once more renascent. I won't expose myself
to further ridicule by repeating here (what I nevertheless would firmly
believe, were it not for the scoffers) that a large proportion of them
are of Celtic descent--belong, in other words, to that section of the
complex British nationality in which the noble traditions of decorative
art never wholly died out--that section which was never altogether
enslaved and degraded by the levelling and cramping and soul-destroying
influences of manufacturing industrialism.
In Italy, art is endemic. In England, in spite of all we have done to
stimulate it of late years with guano and other artificial manures, it
is still sporadic.
The case of music affords us an apt parallel. Till very lately, I
believe, our musical talent in Britain came almost entirely from the
cathedral towns. And why? Because there, and there alone, till quite a
recent date, there existed a hereditary school of music, a training of
musicians from generation to generation among the mass of the people.
Not only were the cathedral services themselves a constant school of
taste in music, but successive generations of choristers and organists
gave rise to something like a musical caste in our episcopal centres. It
is true, our vocalists have always come mainly from Wales, from the
Scotch Highlands, from Yorkshire, from Ireland. But for that there is, I
believe, a sufficient physical reason. For these are clearly the most
mountainous parts of the United Kingdom; and the clear mountain air
seems to produce on the average a better type of human larynx than the
mists of the level. The men of the lowland, say the Tyrolese, croak like
frogs in their marshes; but the men of the upland sing like nightingales
on their tree-tops. And indeed, it would seem as if the mountain people
were always calling to one another across intervening valleys, always
singing and whistling and shouting over their work in a way that gives
tone to the whole vocal mechanism. Witness Welsh penillion singing. And
wherever this fine physical endowment goes hand in hand with a delicate
ear and a poetic temperament, you get your great vocalist, your Sims
Reeves or your Patti. But in England proper it was only in the cathedral
towns that music was a living reality to the people; and it was in the
cathedral towns, accordingly, during the dark ages of art, that
exceptional musical ability was most likely to show itself. More
particularly was this so on the Welsh border, where the two favouring
influences of race and practice coincided--at Gloucester, Worcester,
Hereford, long known for the most musical towns in England.
Cause and effect act and react. Art is a product of the artistic
temperament. The artistic temperament is a product of the long
hereditary cultivation of art. And where a broad basis of this
temperament exists among the people, owing to intermixture of
artistically-minded stocks, one is liable to get from time to time that
peculiar combination of characteristics--sensuous, intellectual,
spiritual--which results in the highest and truest artist.
XXIII.
_A GLIMPSE INTO UTOPIA._
You ask me what would be the position of women in an ideal community.
Well, after dinner, imagination may take free flight. Suppose, till the
coffee comes, we discuss that question.
Woman, I take it, differs from man in being the sex sacrificed to
reproductive necessities.
Whenever I say this, I notice my good friends, the women's-rights women,
with whom I am generally in pretty close accord, look annoyed and hurt.
I can never imagine why. I regard this point as an original inequality
of nature, which it should be the duty of human society to redress as
far as possible, like all other inequalities. Women are not on the
average as tall as men; nor can they lift as heavy weights, or undergo,
as a rule, so much physical labour. Yet civilised society recognises
their equal right to the protection of our policemen, and endeavours to
neutralise their physical inequality by the collective guarantee of all
the citizens. In the same way I hold that women in the lump have a
certain disadvantage laid upon them by nature, in the necessity that
some or most among them should bear children; and this disadvantage I
think the men in a well-ordered State would do their best to compensate
by corresponding privileges. If women endure on our behalf the great
public burden of providing future citizens for the community, the least
we can do for them in return is to render that burden as honourable and
as little onerous as possible. I can never see that there is anything
unchivalrous in frankly admitting these facts of nature; on the
contrary, it seems to me the highest possible chivalry to recognise in
woman, as woman, high or low, rich or poor, the potential mother, who
has infinite claims on that ground alone to our respect and sympathy.
Nor do I mean to deny, either, that the right to be a mother is a sacred
and peculiar privilege of women. In a well-ordered community, I believe,
that privilege will be valued high, and will be denied to no fitting
mother by any man. While maternity is from one point of view a painful
duty, a burden imposed upon a single sex for the good of the whole, it
is from another point of view a privilege and a joy, and from a third
point of view the natural fulfilment of a woman's own instincts, the
complement of her personality, the healthy exercise of her normal
functions. Just as in turn the man's part in providing physically for
the support of the woman and the children is from one point of view a
burden imposed upon him, but from another point of view a precious
privilege of fatherhood, and from a third point of view the proper
outlet for his own energy and his own faculties.
In an ideal State, then, I take it, almost every woman would be a
mother, and almost every woman a mother of not more than about four
children. An average of something like four is necessary, we know, to
keep up population, and to allow for infant mortality, inevitable
celibates, and so forth. Few women in such a State would abstain from
maternity, save those who felt themselves physically or morally unfitted
for the task; for in proportion as they abstained, either the State must
lack citizens to carry on its life, or an extra and undue burden would
have to be cast upon some other woman. And it may well be doubted
whether in a well-ordered and civilised State any one woman could
adequately bear, bring up, and superintend the education of more than
four young citizens. Hence we may conclude that while no woman save the
unfit would voluntarily shirk the duties and privileges of maternity,
few (if any) women would make themselves mothers of more than four
children. Four would doubtless grow to be regarded in such a community
as the moral maximum; while it is even possible that improved
sanitation, by diminishing infant mortality and adult ineffectiveness,
might make a maximum of three sufficient to keep up the normal strength
of the population.
In an ideal community, again, the woman who looked forward to this great
task on behalf of the race would strenuously prepare herself for it
beforehand from childhood upward. She would not be ashamed of such
preparation; on the contrary, she would be proud of it. Her duty would
be no longer "to suckle fools and chronicle small beer," but to produce
and bring up strong, vigorous, free, able, and intelligent citizens.
Therefore, she must be nobly educated for her great and important
function--educated physically, intellectually, morally. Let us forecast
her future. She will be well clad in clothes that allow of lithe and
even development of the body; she will be taught to run, to play games,
to dance, to swim; she will be supple and healthy, finely moulded and
knit in limb and organ, beautiful in face and features, splendid and
graceful in the native curves of her lissom figure. No cramping
conventions will be allowed to cage her; no worn-out moralities will be
tied round her neck like a mill-stone to hamper her. Intellectually she
will be developed to the highest pitch of which in each individual case
she proves herself capable--educated, not in the futile linguistic
studies which have already been tried and found wanting for men, but in
realities and existences, in the truths of life, in recognition of her
own and our place among immensities. She will know something worth
knowing of the world she lives in, its past and its present, the
material of which it is made, the forces that inform it, the energies
that thrill through it. Something, too, of the orbs that surround it, of
the sun that lights it, of the stars that gleam upon it, of the seasons
that govern it. Something of the plants and herbs that clothe it, of the
infinite tribes of beast and bird that dwell upon it. Something of the
human body, its structure and functions, the human soul, its origin and
meaning. Something of human societies in the past, of institutions and
laws, of creeds and ideas, of the birth of civilisation, of progress and
evolution. Something, too, of the triumphs of art, of sculpture and
painting, of the literature and the poetry of all races and ages. Her
mind will be stored with the best thoughts of the thinkers. Morally, she
will be free; her emotional development, instead of being narrowly
checked and curbed, will have been fostered and directed. She will have
a heart to love, and be neither ashamed nor afraid of it. Thus nurtured
and trained, she will be a fit mate for a free man, a fit mother for
free children, a fit citizen for a free and equal community.
Her life, too, will be her own. She will know no law but her higher
instincts. No man will be able to buy or to cajole her. And in order
that she may possess this freedom to perfection, that she may be no
husband's slave, no father's obedient and trembling daughter, I can see
but one way: the whole body of men in common must support in perfect
liberty the whole body of women. The collective guarantee must protect
them against individual tyranny. Thus only can women be safe from the
bribery of the rich husband, from the dictation of the father from whom
there are "expectations." In the ideal State, I take it, every woman
will be absolutely at liberty to dispose of herself as she will, and no
man will be able to command or to purchase her, to influence her in any
way, save by pure inclination.
In such a State, most women would naturally desire to be mothers. Being
healthy, strong, and free, they would wish to realise the utmost
potentialities of their own organisms. And when they had done their duty
as mothers, they would not care much, I imagine, for any further outlets
for their superfluous energy. I don't doubt they would gratify to the
full their artistic sensibilities and their thirst for knowledge. They
would also perform their duties to the State as citizens, no less than
the men. But having done these things I fancy they would have done
enough; the margin of their life would be devoted to dignified and
cultivated leisure. They would leave to men the tilling of the soil, the
building and navigation of marine or aerial ships, the working of mines
and metals, the erection of houses, the construction of roads, railways,
and communications, perhaps even the entire manufacturing work of the
community. Medicine and the care of the sick might still be a charge to
some; education to most; art, in one form or another, to almost all. But
the hard work of the world might well be left to men, upon whom it more
naturally and fitly devolves. No hateful drudgery of "earning a
livelihood." Women might rest content with being free and beautiful,
cultivated and artistic, good citizens to the State, the mothers and
guardians of the coming generations. If any woman asks more than this,
she is really asking less--for she is asking that a heavier burden
should be cast on some or most of her sex, in order to relieve the
minority of a duty which to well-organised women ought to be a
privilege.
"But all this has no practical bearing!" I beg your pardon. An ideal has
often two practical uses. In the first place, it gives us a pattern
towards which we may approximate. In the second place, it gives us a
standard by which we may judge whether any step we propose to take is a
step forward or a step backward.
XXIV.
_OF SECOND CHAMBERS._
A Second Chamber acts as a drag. Progress is always uphill work. So we
are at pains to provide a drag beforehand--for an uphill journey.
There, in one word, you have the whole philosophy of Second Chambers.
How, then, did the nations of Europe come to hamper their legislative
systems with such a useless, such an illogical adjunct? In sackcloth and
ashes, let us confess the truth--we English led them astray: on us the
shame; to us the dishonour. Theorists, indeed (wise after the fact, as
is the wont of theorists), have discovered or invented an imaginary
function for Second Chambers. They are to preserve the people, it seems,
from the fatal consequences of their own precipitancy. As though the
people--you and I--the vast body of citizens, were a sort of foolish
children, to be classed with infants, women, criminals, and imbeciles (I
adopt the chivalrous phraseology of an Act of Parliament), incapable of
knowing their own minds for two minutes together, and requiring to be
kept straight by the fatherly intervention of Dukes of Marlborough or
Marquises of Ailesbury. The ideal picture of the level-headed peers
restraining the youthful impetuosity of the representatives of the
people from committing to-day some rash act which they would gladly
repent and repeal to-morrow, is both touching and edifying. But it
exists only in the minds of the philosophers, who find a reason for
everything just because it is there. Members of Parliament, I have
observed, seem to know their own minds every inch as well as earls--nay,
even as marquises.
The plain fact of the matter is, all the Second Chambers in the world
are directly modelled upon the House of Lords, that Old Man of the Sea
whom England, the weary Titan, is now striving so hard to shake off her
shoulders. The mother of Parliaments is responsible for every one of
them. Senates and Upper Houses are just the result of irrational
Anglomania. When constitutional government began to exist, men turned
unanimously to the English Constitution as their model and pattern. That
was perfectly natural. Evolutionists know that evolution never proceeds
on any other plan than by reproduction, with modification, of existing
structures. America led the way. She said, "England has a House of
Commons; therefore we must have a House of Representatives. England has
also a House of Lords; nature has not dowered us with those exalted
products, but we will do what we can; we will imitate it by a Senate."
Monarchical France followed her lead; so did Belgium, Italy,
civilisation in general. I believe even Japan rejoices to-day in the
august dignity of a Second Chamber. But mark now the irony of it. They
all of them did this thing to be entirely English. And just about the
time when they had completed the installation of their peers or their
senators, England, who set the fashion, began to discover in turn she
could manage a great deal better herself without them.
And then what do the philosophers do? Why, they prove to you the
necessity of a Second Chamber by pointing to the fact that all civilised
nations have got one--in imitation of England. Furthermore, it being
their way to hunt up abstruse and recondite reasons for what is on the
face of it ridiculous, they argue that a Second Chamber is a necessary
wheel in the mechanism of popular representative government. A foolish
phrase, which has come down to us from antiquity, represents the
populace as inevitably "fickle," a changeable mob, to be restrained by
the wisdom of the seniors and optimates. As a matter of fact, the
populace is never anything of the sort. It is dogged, slow,
conservative, hard to move; it advances step by step, a patient,
sure-footed beast of burden; and when once it has done a thing, it never
goes back upon it. I believe this silly fiction of the "fickleness" of
the mob is mainly due to the equally silly fictions of prejudiced Greek
oligarchs about the Athenian assembly--which was an assembly of
well-to-do and cultivated slave-owners. I do not swallow all that
Thucydides chooses to tell us in his one-sided caricature about Cleon's
appointment to the command at Sphacteria, or about the affair of
Mitylene; and even if I did, I think it has nothing to do with the
question. But on such utterly exploded old-world ideas is the whole
modern argument of the Second Chamber founded.
Does anybody really believe great nations are so incapable of managing
their own affairs for themselves through their duly-elected
representatives that they are compelled to check their own boyish ardour
by means of the acts of an irresponsible and non-elective body? Does
anybody believe that the House of Commons works too fast, and gets
through its public business too hurriedly? Does anybody believe we
improve things in England at such a break-neck pace that we require the
assistance of Lord Salisbury and Lord St. Leonards to prevent us from
rushing straight down a steep place into the sea, like the swine of
Gadara? If they do, I congratulate them on their psychological acumen
and their political wisdom.
What the Commons want is not a drag, but a goad--nay, rather, a
snow-plough.
No; the plain truth of the matter is this: all the Second Chambers in
the world owe their existence, not to any deliberate plan or reason, but
to the mere accident that the British nobles, not having a room big
enough to sit in with the Commons, took to sitting separately, and
transacted their own business as a distinct assembly. With so much
wisdom are the kingdoms of the earth governed! How else could any one in
his senses have devised the idea of creating one deliberative body on
purpose to mutilate or destroy the work of another? to produce from time
to time a periodical crisis or a periodical deadlock? There is not a
country in the world with a Second Chamber that doesn't twice a year
kick and plunge to get rid of it.
The House of Lords was once a reality. It consisted of the
ecclesiastical hierarchy--the bishops and mitred abbots; with the
official hierarchy--the great nobles, who were also great satraps of
provinces, and great military commanders. It was thus mainly made up of
practical life-members, appointed by merit. The peers, lay and
spiritual, were the men who commended themselves to the sovereign as
able administrators. Gradually, with prolonged peace, the hereditary
element choked and swamped the nominated element. The abbots
disappeared, the lords multiplied. The peer ceased to be the leader of a
shire, and sank into a mere idle landowner. Wealth alone grew at last to
be a title to the peerage. The House of Lords became a House of
Landlords. And the English people submitted to the claim of
irresponsible wealth or irresponsible acres to exercise a veto upon
national legislation. The anomaly, utterly indefensible in itself, had
grown up so slowly that the public accepted it--nay, even defended it.
And other countries, accustomed to regard England--the Pecksniff among
nations--as a perfect model of political wisdom, swallowed half the
anomaly, and all the casuistical reasoning that was supposed to justify
it, without a murmur. But if we strip the facts bare from the glamour
that surrounds them, the plain truth is this--England allows an assembly
of hereditary nobodies to retard or veto its legislation nowadays,
simply because it never noticed the moment when a practical House of
administrative officers lapsed into a nest of plutocrats.
Mend or end? As it stands, the thing is a not-even-picturesque mediæval
relic. If we English were logical, we would arrange that any man who
owned so many thousand acres of land, or brewed so many million bottles
of beer per annum, should _ipso facto_ be elevated to the peerage. Why
should not gallons of gin confer an earldom direct, and Brighton A's be
equivalent to a marquisate? Why not allow the equal claim of screws and
pills with coal and iron? Why disregard the native worth of annatto and
nitrates? Baron Beecham or Lord Sunlight is a first-rate name. As it is,
we make petty and puerile distinctions. Beer is in, but whiskey is out;
and even in beer itself, if I recollect aright, Dublin stout wore a
coronet for some months or years before English pale ale attained the
dignity of a barony. No Minister has yet made chocolate a viscount. At
present, banks and minerals go in as of right, while soap is left out in
the cold, and even cotton languishes. If the Chancellor of the Exchequer
put up titles to auction, while abolishing the legislative function of
the Lords, there would be millions in it. But as we English are not
logical, our mending would probably resolve itself into fatuous
tinkering. We might get rid of the sons, but leave the fathers. We might
flood the Lords with life peers, but leave the veto. Such tactics are
too Britannic. "Stone dead hath no fellow!"
XXV.