All competent critics appear to agree that art ought to be kept
entirely distinct from moral purposes. A picture meant to urge us on
to virtue--and there are such pictures--is bad art. A play or a novel
with a purpose stands condemned at once. The same canon of criticism
must, I suppose, apply to parties of all kinds, dinner-parties,
garden-parties, or house-parties. A good host or hostess ought, like
the painter and the novelist, to aim at making her work beautiful in
itself; and should not have behind the hospitality a cause of any
kind, charitable or political.
I myself dissent, humbly, of course, from this view. Pictures like
_Time, Death and Judgment_--I take it as an example of the kind of
picture which is meant to make us good because I once saw it hung up
in a church--appeal to me strongly. I do not like novels which aim at
a reform of the marriage laws; but that is only because sex problems
bore me horribly. I enjoy novels written with any other purpose. I
hate parties, such as those which Godfrey instigates me to give, which
have no object except that of merely being parties, the bare
collection together of human beings in their best clothes. I was,
therefore, greatly pleased when I discovered that my original guess
was right and that Lady Moyne's party was definitely political. I
found this out when I arrived in the drawing-room before dinner. I was
a little too early and there was no one in the room except Moyne. He
shook hands with me apologetically and this gave me a clue to the
nature of the entertainment before me. He dislikes politics greatly,
and would be much happier than he is if he were allowed to hunt and
fish instead of attending to such business as is carried on in the
House of Lords. But a man cannot expect to get all he wants in life.
Moyne has a particularly charming and clever wife who enjoys politics
immensely. The price he pays for her is the loss of a certain amount
of sport and the endurance of long periods of enforced legislative
activity.
"I ought to have told you before you came," he said, "that--well, you
know that my lady is very strongly opposed to this Home Rule Bill."
Moyne is fifteen years or so older than his wife. He shows his respect
for her by the pretty old-fashioned way in which he always speaks of
her as "my lady."
"The fact is," he went on, "that the people we have with us at
present--"
"Babberly?" I asked.
Moyne nodded sorrowfully. Babberly is the most terrific of all
Unionist orators. If his speeches were set to music, the orchestra
would necessarily consist entirely of cornets, trumpets and drums. No
one could express the spirit of Babberly's oratory on stringed
instruments. Flutes would be ridiculous.
"Of course," said Moyne, still apologetically, "it really is rather a
crisis you know."
"It always is," I said. "I've lived through seventy or eighty of
them."
"But this is much worse than most," he said. "A man called Malcolmson
arrived this afternoon, a colonel of some sort. Was in the artillery,
I think."
"You read his letter in _The Times_, I suppose?"
"Yes, I did. But I needn't tell you, Kilmore, that that kind of thing
is all talk. My wife--"
"I fancy Lady Moyne would look well as _vivandiere_," I said,
"marching in front of an ambulance waggon with a red cross on it."
Moyne looked pained. He is very fond of Lady Moyne and very proud of
her. This is quite natural. I should be proud of her too if she were
my wife.
"Her idea," said Lord Moyne, "is--"
Just then our Dean came into the room. His presence emphasised the
highly political nature of the party. Unless she had asked Crossan,
Lady Moyne could not have got hold of any one of more influence with
our north of Ireland Protestant democracy. The Dean cannot possibly be
accustomed to the kind of semi-regal state which is kept up at Castle
Affey. I should be surprised to hear that he habitually dresses for
dinner. It was only natural, therefore, that he should be a little
overawed by the immensity of the rooms and the number of footmen who
lurk about the halls and passages. When he began explaining to me the
extreme iniquity of the recent Vatican legislation about mixed
marriages, he spoke in a quite low voice. As a rule this subject moves
the Dean to stridency; but the heavy magnificence of Castle Affey
crushed him into a kind of whisper. This encouraged me. If the Dean
had been in his usual condition of vigour, I should not have ventured
to do anything except agree with him heartily. Feeling that I might
never catch him in a subdued mood again, I seized a chance of
expressing my own views on the mixed marriage question. It seems to
me that the whole difficulty about the validity of these unions might
be got over by importing a few priests of the Greek Church into
Ireland. The Vatican, I believe, recognizes that these Orientals
really are priests. The Protestants could not reasonably object to
their ministrations since they refuse to acknowledge the jurisdiction
of the Pope. A mixed marriage performed by one of them would,
therefore, be valid in the opinion of the ecclesiastical advisers of,
let us say, the bridegroom. It would be quite unobjectionable to those
responsible for the soul of the bride. I put my plan as persuasively
as I could; but the Dean did not seem to see any merit in it. Indeed I
have never met any one who did. That is the great drawback to trying
to help the Irish nation out of its difficulties. No one will ever
agree to a reasonable compromise.
I took Lady Moyne in to dinner and enjoyed myself very much. She
was--as indeed she always is--beautifully dressed. Although she talked
a good deal to Babberly who sat on the other side of her, she left me
with the impression that I was the person who really interested her,
and that she only turned occasionally to her other neighbour from a
sense of duty. Babberly talked about Unionist clubs and the vigorous
way in which the members of them were doing dumb bell exercises, so as
to be in thoroughly good training when the Home Rule Bill became law.
The subject evidently interested him very much. He has a long white
beard of the kind described as patriarchal. When he reaches exciting
passages in his public speeches, and even when he is saying something
emphatic in private life, his beard wags up and down. On this occasion
it rose and fell like a foamy wave. That was what convinced me that
he was really interested in the activity of the Unionist clubs. Lady
Moyne smiled at him in her bewilderingly bewitching way, and then
turned round and smiled at me.
"But," I said, "do you actually mean to go out and do battle?"
"It won't be necessary," said Babberly. "Once the English people
understand that we mean to die rather than see our lives and
liberties--"
"Nowadays," said Lady Moyne, "when the industrial proletariate is
breaking free from all control, it is a splendid thing for us to have
a cause in which we take the lead, which will bind our working classes
to us, and make them loyal to those who are after all their best
friends and their natural leaders."
I quite saw Lady Moyne's point. Crossan would not be at all likely to
follow her or regard her as his best friend in ordinary matters. He
might even resent her interference with his affairs. But on the
subject of Home Rule Crossan would certainly follow any one who took
his side of the great controversy. If Lady Moyne wore an orange sash
over her pretty dresses Crossan would cheer her. While Home Rule
remained a real danger he would refrain from asking why Lord Moyne
should spend as much on a bottle of champagne for dinner, as would
feed the children of a labourer for a week. It did not surprise me to
find that Lady Moyne was clever enough to understand Crossan. I wanted
to know whether Babberly understood.
"But," I said to him, "suppose that the men you are enrolling take
what you say seriously--"
"I assure you, Lord Kilmore," said Babberly, "we are quite serious."
I could hear Malcolmson at the other end of the table explaining to
Moyne a scheme for establishing a number of artillery forts on the
side of the Cave Hill above Belfast Lough. His idea apparently, was to
sink any British warship which was ill-advised enough to anchor there
with a view to imposing Home Rule on us. Malcolmson, at all events,
was quite serious.
"It will never come to fighting," said Babberly again. "After all, the
great heart of the English people is sound. They will never consent to
see their brethren and co-religionists handed over--"
Lady Moyne turned to me and smiled again. I am sixty years of age, but
her smile gave me so much pleasure that I failed to hear the rest of
what Babberly said.
When at the end of dinner Lady Moyne left us, we congregated round the
other end of the table, and everybody talked loud; everybody, that is,
except Moyne and me. Moyne looked to me very much as if he wanted to
go to sleep. He blinked a good deal, and when he got his eyes open
seemed to hold them in that state with considerable effort. I did not
feel sleepy, and became more and more interested as the conversation
round me grew more violent. Babberly talked about a campaign among the
English constituencies. He had a curious and quite pathetic faith in
the gullibility of the British working-man. Nobody listened much to
Babberly. The Dean prosed on about the effects of the _Ne Temere_
decree. We all said that we agreed with him, and then stopped
listening. Malcolmson got on to field guns, and had an elaborate plan
for training gunners without actual practice. Babberly did not like
this talk about artillery. He kept on saying that we should never get
as far as that. A Mr. Cahoon, who came from Belfast, and spoke with
the same kind of accent as McNeice, prophesied doleful things about
the paralyzing of business under a Home Rule Parliament. What
interested me was, not the conversation which beat fiercely on my
ears, but the personal question, Why had Lady Moyne invited me to this
party?
I am constitutionally incapable of becoming excited about politics,
and have therefore the reputation, quite undeserved, of being that
singular creature, a Liberal peer. Why, being the kind of Gallio I am,
I should have been, like a second Daniel, thrown among these lions, I
could not understand. They were not the least likely to convert me to
their own desperate intensity of feeling. If Lady Moyne wanted to
convert me a far better plan would have been to invite me to her house
after the politicians had gone away. Circe, I imagine, did not attract
new lovers by parading those whom she had already turned into swine.
Nor could I suppose that I had been brought to Castle Affey in order
to convert people like Malcolmson to pacific ways of thought. In the
first place, Lady Moyne did not want him converted. He and his like
were a valuable asset to the Conservative party. And even if she had
wanted them converted I was not the man to do it. I am mildly
reasonable in my outlook upon life. To reason with Malcolmson is much
the same as if a man, meaning well, were to offer a Seidlitz powder to
an enraged hippopotamus.
It was not until next day that I found a solution of my problem. Moyne
buttonholed me after breakfast, and invited me, rather wistfully I
thought, to go round the stables with him. He wanted my opinion of a
new filly. I went, pursued by the sound of the Dean's voice.
He was telling the story of a famous case of wife desertion brought
about by the _Ne Temere_ decree. He was telling it to Cahoon, the
Belfast manufacturer, who must, I am sure, have heard it several times
before.
I used, long ago, to be a good judge of horses. I still retained my
eye for a neat filly. Moyne's latest acquisition was more than neat. I
stroked her neck, and patted her flanks with genuine appreciation.
Moyne looked quite cheerful and babbled pleasantly about hunting. Then
Lady Moyne came through the door of the stable. I was very glad to see
her. Her dress, a simple brown tweed, suited her admirably, and her
smile, less radiant, perhaps, than it was the night before when set
off by her diamonds, was most attractive. Moyne, too, though I knew
that he did not want to talk politics, was glad to see her. She came
into the horse-box, and fondled the filly. Then she sighed.
"What a lot we have to go through for a good cause!" she said. "Those
terrible men!"
"Heavy going," said Moyne, "that kind of thing at breakfast. Let's
take out the new car, and go for a spin."
"I should love to," she said, "but I must not. I only ran out to speak
to you for a minute, Lord Kilmore."
Her eyes led me to believe at dinner the night before that I was the
one man among her guests that she really wanted to talk to. Now her
lips said the same thing plainly. I did not believe it, of course;
but I felt quite as much gratified as if it had been true.
"Mr. Conroy comes this afternoon," she said.
"That millionaire fellow?" said Moyne, who was evidently not well up
in the list of his visitors.
"And I want you to take him in hand," said Lady Moyne to me--not to
her husband. "He's very clever, and it's most important to get him
interested in our movement."
"You'd much better take him in hand yourself," I said. "If any one
could interest him--"
"I shall, of course; but I can't always be with him. I'm dreadfully
afraid that if Mr. Babberly talks to him--but you know what Mr.
Babberly is. He's splendid in Parliament and on a platform; perfectly
splendid. We've nobody like him. But he might not quite suit Mr.
Conroy. Then poor dear Colonel Malcolmson does talk such nonsense. Of
course it's very good in its way, and I do hope the Liberals will lay
to heart what he says about fighting before it's too late--"
"Mr. Conroy is a business man," I said, "and has a reputation for
shrewdness."
"That's just it," said Lady Moyne, "and the others--the Dean and that
curious Mr. Cahoon. They're dears, perfect dears in the way they stand
up for the Union and the Empire, but--" She shrugged her shoulders,
and smiled.
"I quite understand," I said; "but, after all, I'm rather an old bore,
too."
"You!" said Lady Moyne. "You're a literary man, and that's so rare,
you know, in our class. And, besides, you're a Liberal. I don't mean
in any offensive sense of the word; only just that you're not a party
man. I must run away now; but you will do your best with Mr. Conroy,
won't you? We want a big subscription from him."
The Dean caught me a little later in the morning, and, though I told
him I had letters to write, he insisted on explaining to me that, as a
clergyman, he considered it wrong to take any active part in politics.
"The Church," he said, "cannot allow herself to become attached to any
party. She must stand above and beyond party, a witness to divine and
eternal righteousness in public affairs."
I am, on the whole, glad that I heard the Dean say this. I should
certainly have believed he was taking a side in politics, if he had
not solemnly assured me that he was not. I might even have thought,
taking at their face value certain resolutions passed by its General
Synod, that the Church was, more or less, on the side of the
Unionists, if the Dean had not explained to me that she only appeared
to be on their side because they happened to be always in the right,
but that she would be quite as much on the side of the Liberals if
they would only drop their present programme which happened in every
respect to be morally wrong. This cleared my mind for me, and I felt
quite ready to face Conroy at luncheon, and dispel any difficulties he
might feel about the Church and politics.