Finding myself (not often in London on the day that comes so mercifully
between the Saturday and Monday) beside the enisled Marble Arch, I spent
half an hour in listening to the astonishing oratory that was going on
there. Although I had not done this for many, many years, there was so
little change in the proceedings that I gained a new impression of
perpetual motion. The same--or to all intents and purposes the
same--leather lungs were still at it, either arraigning the Deity or
commending His blessed benefactions. As invariably of old, a Hindu was
present; but whether he was the Hindu of the Middle Ages or a new Hindu,
I cannot say. One proselytizing Hindu is strangely like another. His
matter was familiar also. The only novelty that I noticed was a little
band of American evangelists (America being so little in need of
spiritual assistance that these have settled in London) in the attire
more or less of the constabulary of New York, the spokesman among whom,
at the moment I joined his audience, was getting into rather deep water
in an effort to fit the kind of halo acceptable to modern evangelicals
on the head of Martin Luther.
As I passed from group to group, with each step a certain inevitable
question grew more insistent upon a reply; and so, coming to one of
London's founts of wisdom and knowledge, I put it to him. "I suppose," I
said, indicating the various speakers with a semicircular gesture, "they
don't do all this for nothing?" The policeman closed one eye. "Not
they," he answered; "they've all got sympathizers somewhere."
Well, live and let live is a good maxim, thought I, and there surely
never was such a wonderful world as this, and so I came away; and it was
then that something occurred which (for everything so far has been sheer
prologue) led to these remarks. I was passing the crowd about one of the
gentlemen--the more brazenly confident one--who deny the existence of a
beneficent Creator, when the words, "Looking like a dying duck in a
thunderstorm," clanged out, followed by a roar of delighted laughter;
and in a flash I remembered precisely where I was when, forty and more
years ago, I first heard from a nursemaid that ancient simile and was so
struck by its humour that I added it to my childish repertory. And from
this recollection I passed on to ponder upon the melancholy truth that
originality will ever be an unpopular quality. For here were two or
three hundred people absolutely and hilariously satisfied with such a
battered and moth-eaten phrase, even to-day, and perfectly content that
the orator should have so little respect either for himself or for them
that he saw no disgrace in thus evading his duty and inventing something
new.
But was that his duty? That was my next thought; and a speech by that
eternally veracious type whom Mr. Pickwick met at Ipswich, and who, for
all his brief passage across the stage of literature, is more real than
many a prominent hero of many chapters, came to mind to answer it. I
refer to Mr. Peter Magnus, who, when Mr. Pickwick described Sam Weller
as not only his servant and almost friend, but an "original," replied in
these deathless words: "I am not fond of anything original; I don't like
it; don't see any necessity for it." And that's just it. The tribe of
Magnus is very large; it doesn't like originality, and doesn't see any
necessity for it--which, translated into the modern idiom, would run
"has no use for it." Hence the freethinker was right, and the longer he
continues to repose his faith in ancient comic _clichés_ the greater
will be his success.
And then I thought for the millionth time what an awful mistake it is to
be fastidious. Truly wise people--and by wisdom I mean an aggregation of
those qualities and acceptances and compromises that make for a fairly
unruffled progress through this difficult life--truly wise people are
not fastidious. They are easily pleased, they are not critical, and--and
this is very important--they allow of no exceptions among human beings.
Originals bore them as much as they did Mr. Magnus. One of the astutest
men that I know has achieved a large measure of his prosperity and
general contentment by behaving always as though all men were alike.
Because, although of course they are not alike, the differences are too
trifling to matter. He flatters each with the same assiduity and
grossness, with the result that they all become his useful allies. Those
that do not swallow the mixture, and resent it, he merely accuses of
insincerity or false modesty; yet they are his allies too, because,
although they cannot accept his methods, being a little uncertain as to
whether his intentions may not have been genuinely kind, or his judgment
honestly at fault, they give him the benefit of the doubt.