been wanting to say--that is why there is nothing so important for the
future or the present of the world as poetry. Allison, for instance,
and Wilson would be different men if only they would read my works!
I'm not sure even if I may say so, that Remenham himself wouldn't be
the better." Remenham, however, smilingly indicated that he had read
them. Whereat Coryat rather comically remarked, "Oh, well! Yes!
Perhaps then my poetry isn't quite good enough. But there's
Shakespeare, and Milton, and--I don't care who it is, so long as it has
the essential of all great poetry, and that is to make you feel the
worth of things. I don't mean by that the happiness, but just the
extraordinary value, of which all these unsolved questions about Good
and Evil are themselves part. No one, I am sure, ever laid down a
great tragedy--take the most terrible of all, take 'Lear'--without an
overwhelming sense of the value of life; life as it is, life at its
most pitiless and cruel, with all its iniquities, suffering,
perplexity; without feeling he would far rather have lived and had all
that than not have lived at all. But tragedy is an extreme case. In
every simpler and more common case the poet does the same thing for us.
He shows us that the lives he touches have worth, worth of pleasure, of
humour, of patience, of wisdom painfully acquired, of endurance, of
hope, even I will say of failure and despair. He doesn't blink
anything, he looks straight at it all, but he sees it in the true
perspective, under a white light, and seeing all the Evil says
nevertheless with God, 'Behold, it is very good.' You see," he added,
with his charming smile, turning to Audubon, "I agree with God, not
with you. And perhaps if you were to read poetry ... but, you know,
you must not only read it; you've got to feel it."
"Ah," said Audubon, "but that I'm afraid is the difficulty."
"I suppose it is. Well--I don't know that I can say any more."
And without further ado he dropped back into his seat.
SITTING next to Coryat was a man who had not for a long time been
present at our meetings. His name was Harington. He was a wealthy
man, the head of a very ancient family; and at one time had taken a
prominent part in politics. But, of late, he had resided mainly in
Italy devoting himself to study and to the collection of works of art.
I did not know what his opinions were, for it so happened that I had
never heard him speak or had any talk with him. I had no idea,
therefore, when I called upon him, what he would be likely to say, and
I waited with a good deal of curiosity as he stood a few moments
silent. It was now beginning to get light, and I could see his face,
which was unusually handsome and distinguished. He had indeed the air
of a seventeenth-century nobleman, and might, except for the costume,
have stepped out of a canvas of Van Dyck. Presently he spoke in a rich
mellow voice and with a gravity that harmonized with his bearing.
"Let me begin with a confession, perhaps I ought even to say an
apology. To be among you again after so many years is a privilege; but
it is one which brings with it elements of embarrassment. I have lived
so long in a foreign land that I feel myself an alien here. I hear
voices familiar of old, but I have forgotten their language; I see
forms once well known, but the atmosphere in which they move seems
strange. I am fresh from Italy; and England comes upon me with a
shock. Even her physical aspect I see as I never saw it before. I
find it lovely, with a loveliness peculiar and unique. But I miss
something to which I have become accustomed in the south; I miss light,
form, greatness, and breadth. Instead, there is grey or golden haze,
blurred outlines, tender skies, lush luxurious greenery. Italy rings
like metal; England is a muffled drum. The one has the ardour of
Beauty; the other the charm of the Picturesque. I dwell upon this
because I seem to see--perhaps I am fanciful--a kindred distinction
between the north and the south in quality of mind. The Greek
intelligence, and the Italian, is pitiless, searching, white as the
Mediterranean sunshine; the English and German is kindly, discreet,
amiably and tenderly confused. The one blazes naked in a brazen sky;
the other is tempered by vapours of sentiment. The English, in
particular, I think, seldom make a serious attempt to face the truth.
Their prejudices and ideals shut them in, like their green hedges; and
they live, even intellectually, in a country of little fields. I do
not deny that this is soothing and restful; but I feel it--shall I
confess--intolerably cooping. I long for the searching light, the wide
prospect; for the vision of things as they really are. I have
consorted too long with Aristotle and Machiavelli to find myself at
home in the country of the Anglican Church and of Herbert Spencer."
Here he paused, and seemed to hesitate, while we wondered what he could
be leading up to. Then, resuming, "This may seem," he went on, "a long
introduction; but it is not irrelevant; though I feel some hesitation
in applying it. But, if the last speaker will permit me to take my
text from him, I would ask him, is it not a curiously indiscriminate
procedure to affirm indifferently value in all life? A poet
surely--and Coryat's practice, if he will allow me to say so, is
sounder than his theory--a poet seeks to render, wherever he can find
it, the exquisite, the choice, the distinguished and the rare. Not
life, but beauty is his quest. He does not reproduce Nature, he
imposes upon her a standard. And so it is with every art, including
the art of life itself. Life as such is neither good nor bad, and,
Audubon's undistinguishing censure is surely as much out of place as
Coryat's undistinguishing approval. Life is raw material for the
artist, whether he be the private man carrying out his own destiny, or
the statesman shaping that of a nation. The end of the artist in
either case is the good life; and on his own conception of that will
depend the value of his work.
"I recall to your minds these obvious facts, at the risk of being
tedious, because to-night, seeing the turn that our discussion has
taken, we must regard ourselves as statesmen, or as would-be statesmen.
And I, in that capacity, finding myself in disagreement with everybody,
except perhaps Cantilupe, and asking myself the reason why, can only
conclude that I have a different notion of the end to be pursued, and
of the means whereby it can be attained. All of you, I think, except
Cantilupe, have assumed that the good life, whatever it may be, can be
attained by everybody; and that society should be arranged so as to
secure that result. That is, in fact, the democratic postulate, which
is now so generally accepted not only in this company but in the world
at large. But it is that postulate that I dispute. I hold that the
good life must either be the privilege of a few, or not exist at all.
The good life in my view, is the life of a gentleman. That word, I
know, has been degraded; and there is no more ominous sign of the
degradation of the English people. But I use it in its true and noble
sense. I mean by a gentleman a man of responsibility; one who because
he enjoys privileges recognizes duties; a landed proprietor who is
also, and therefore, a soldier and a statesman; a man with a natural
capacity and a hereditary tradition to rule; a member, in a word, of a
governing aristocracy. Not that the good life consists in governing;
but only a governing class and those who centre round them are capable
of the good life. Nobility is a privilege of the nobleman, and
nobility is essential to goodness. We are told indeed, that Good is to
be found in virtue, in knowledge, in art, in love. I will not dispute
it; but we must add that only a noble man can be virtuous greatly, know
wisely, perceive and feel finely. And virtue that is mean, knowledge
that is pedantic, art that is base, love that is sensual are not Goods
at all. A noble man of necessity feels and expresses himself nobly.
His speech is literature, his gesture art, his action drama, his
affections music. About him centres all that is great in literature,
science, art. Magnificent buildings, exquisite pictures, statues,
poems, songs, crowd about his habitation and attend him from the cradle
to the grave. His fine intelligence draws to itself those of like
disposition. He seeks genius, but he shuns pedantry; for his knowledge
is part of his life. All that is great he instinctively apprehends,
because it is akin to himself. And only so can anything be truly
apprehended. For every man and every class can only understand and
practise the virtues appropriate to their occupations. A professor
will never be a hero, however much he reads the classics. A
shop-walker will never be a poet, however much he reads poetry. If you
want virtue, in the ancient sense, the sense of honour, of courage, of
self-reliance, of the instinct to command, you must have a class of
gentlemen. Otherwise virtue will be at best a mere conception in the
head, a figment of the brain, not a character and a force. Why is the
teaching of the classics now discredited among you? Not because it is
not as valuable as ever it was, but because there is no one left to
understand its value. The tradesmen who govern you feel instinctively
that it is not for them, and they are right. It is above and beyond
them. But it was the natural food of gentlemen. And the example may
serve to illustrate the general truth, that you cannot revolutionize
classes and their relations without revolutionizing culture. It is
idle to suppose you can communicate to a democracy the heritage of an
aristocracy. You may give them books, show them pictures, offer them
examples. In vain! The seed cannot grow in the new soil. The masses
will never be educated in the sense that the classes were. You may
rejoice in the fact, or you may regret it; but at least it should be
recognized. For my own part I regret it, and I regret it because I
conceive that the good life is the life of the gentleman.
"From this it follows that my ideal of a polity is aristocratic. For a
class of gentlemen presupposes classes of workers to support it. And
these, from the ideal point of view, must be regarded as mere means. I
do not say that that is just; I do not say it is what we should choose;
but I am sure it is the law of the world in which we live. Through the
whole realm of nature every kind exists only to be the means of
supporting life in another. Everywhere the higher preys upon the
lower; everywhere the Good is parasitic on the Bad. And as in nature,
so in human society. Read history with an impartial mind, read it in
the white light, and you will see that there has never been a great
civilization that was not based upon iniquity. Those who have eyes to
see have always admitted, and always will, that the greatest
civilization of Europe was that of Greece. And of that civilization
not merely an accompaniment but the essential condition was slavery.
Take away that and you take away Pericles, Phidias, Sophocles, Plato.
Dismiss Greece, if you like. Where then will you turn? To the Middle
Ages? You encounter feudalism and serfdom. To the modern world? You
run against wage-labour. Ah, but, you say, we look to the future. We
shall abolish wage-labour, as we have abolished slavery. We shall have
an equitable society in which everybody will do productive work, and
nobody will live at the cost of others. I do not know whether you can
do this; it is possible you may; but I ask you to count the cost. And
first let me call your attention to what you have actually done during
the course of the past century. You have deposed your aristocracy and
set up in their place men who work for their living, instead of for the
public good, merchants, bankers, shop-keepers, railway directors,
brewers, company-promoters. Whether you are better and more justly
governed I do not pause to enquire. You appear to be satisfied that
you are. But what I see, returning to England only at rare intervals,
and what you perhaps cannot so easily see, is that you are ruining all
your standards. Dignity, manners, nobility, nay, common honesty
itself, is rapidly disappearing from among you. Every time I return I
find you more sordid, more petty, more insular, more ugly and
unperceptive. For the higher things, the real goods, were supported
and sustained among you by your class of gentlemen, while they deserved
the name. But by depriving them of power you have deprived them of
responsibility, which is the salt of privilege; and they are rotting
before your eyes, crumbling away and dropping into the ruck. Whether
the general level of your civilization is rising I do not pronounce. I
do not even think the question of importance; for any rise must be
almost imperceptible. The salient fact is that the pinnacles are
disappearing; that soon there will be nothing left that seeks the
stars. Your middle classes have no doubt many virtues; they are, I
will presume, sensible, capable, industrious, and respectable. But
they have no notion of greatness, nay, they have an instinctive hatred
of it. Whatever else they may have done, they have destroyed all
nobility. In art, in literature, in drama, in the building of palaces
or villas, _nihil tetigerunt quod non faedaverunt_. Such is the result
of entrusting power to men who make their own living, instead of to a
class set apart by hereditary privilege to govern and to realize the
good life. But, you may still urge, this is only a temporary stage.
We still have a parasitic class, the class of capitalists. It is only
when we have got rid of them, that the real equality will begin, and
with it will come all other excellence. Well, I think it possible that
you might establish, I will not say absolute equality, but an equality
far greater than the world has ever seen; that you might exact from
everybody some kind of productive work, in return for the guarantee of
a comfortable livelihood. But there is no presumption that in that way
you will produce the nobility of character which I hold to be the only
thing really good. For such nobility, as all history and experience
clearly shows, if we will interrogate it honestly, is the product of a
class-consciousness. Personal initiative, personal force, a freedom
from sordid cares, a sense of hereditary obligation based on hereditary
privilege, the consciousness of being set apart for high purposes, of
being one's own master and the master of others, all that and much more
goes to the building up of the gentleman; and all that is impossible in
a socialistic state. In the eternal order of this inexorable world it
is prescribed that greatness cannot grow except in the soil of
iniquity, and that justice can produce nothing but mediocrity. That
the masses should choose justice at the cost of greatness is
intelligible, nay it is inevitable; and that choice is the inner
meaning of democracy. But gentlemen should have had the insight to
see, and the courage to affirm, that the price was too great to pay.
They did not; and the penalty is that they are ceasing to exist. They
have sacrificed themselves to the attempt to establish equity. But in
that attempt I can take no interest. The society in which I believe is
an aristocratic one. I hold, with Plato and Aristotle, that the masses
ought to be treated as means, treated kindly, treated justly, so far as
the polity permits, but treated as subordinate always to a higher end.
But your feet are set on the other track. You are determined to
abolish classes; to level down in order to level up; to destroy
superiorities in order to raise the average. I do not say you will not
succeed. But if you do, you will realize comfort at the expense of
greatness, and your society will be one not of men but of ants and bees.
"For Democracy--note it well--destroys greatness in every kind, of
intellect, of perception, as well as of character. And especially it
destroys art, that reflection of life without which we cannot be said
to live. For the artist is the rarest, the most choice of men. His
senses, his perception, his intelligence have a natural and inborn
fineness and distinction. He belongs to a class, a very small, a very
exclusive one. And he needs a class to appreciate and support him. No
democracy has ever produced or understood art. The case of Athens is
wrongly adduced; for Athens was an aristocracy under the influence of
an aristocrat at the time the Parthenon was built. At all times Art
has been fostered by patrons, never by the people. How should they
foster it? Instinctively they hate it, as they hate all superiorities.
It was not Florence but the Medici and the Pope that employed
Michelangelo; not Milan but Ludovic the Moor that valued Leonardo. It
was the English nobles that patronized Reynolds and Gainsborough; the
darlings of our middle class are Herkomer and Collier. There have been
poets, it is true, who have been born of the people and loved of them;
and I do not despise poetry of that kind. But it is not the great
thing. The great thing is Sophocles and Virgil, a fine culture wedded
to a rich nature. And such a marriage is not accomplished in the
fields or the market-place. The literature loved by democracy is a
literature like themselves; not literature at all, but journalism,
gross, shrieking, sensational, base. So with the drama, so with
architecture, so with every art. Substitute the mass for the patron,
and you eliminate taste. The artist perishes; the charlatan survives
and flourishes. Only in science have you still an aristocracy. For
the crowd sees that there is profit in science, and lets it go its way.
Because of the accident that it can be applied, it may be
disinterestedly pursued. And democracy hitherto, though impatiently,
endures an ideal aim in the hope of degrading its achievement to its
own uses.
"Such being my view of democratic society I look naturally for elements
that promise not to foster, but to counteract it. I look for the germs
of a new aristocracy. They are hard to discover, and perhaps my
desires override my judgment. But I fancy that it will be the very
land that has suffered most acutely from the disease that will be the
first to discover the remedy. I endorse Ellis's view of American
civilization; but I allow myself to hope that the reaction is already
beginning. I have met in Italy young Americans with a finer sense of
beauty, distinction, and form, than I have been able to find among
Englishmen, still less among Italians. And once there is cast into
that fresh and unencumbered soil the seed of the ideal that made Greece
great, who can prophecy into what forms of beauty and thought it may
not flower? The Plutocracy of the West may yet be transformed into an
Aristocracy; and Europe re-discover from America the secret of its past
greatness. Such, at least, appears to me to be the best hope of the
world; and to the realization of that hope I would have all men of
culture all the world over unite their efforts. For the kingdom of
this earth, like that of heaven, is taken by violence. We must work
not with, but against tendencies, if we would realize anything great;
and the men who are fit to rule must have the courage to assume power,
if ever there is to be once more a civilization. Therefore it is that
I, the last of an old aristocracy, look across the Atlantic for the
first of the new. And beyond socialism, beyond anarchy, across that
weltering sea, I strain my eyes to see, pearl-grey against the dawn,
the new and stately citadel of Power. For Power is the centre of
crystallization for all good; given that, you have morals, art,
religion; without it, you have nothing but appetites and passions.
Power then is the condition of life, even of the life of the mass, in
any sense in which it is worth having. And in the interest of
Democracy itself every good Democrat ought to pray for the advent of
Aristocracy."
ALL of our company had now spoken except two. One was the author,
Vivian, and him I had decided to leave till the last. The other was
John Woodman, a member of the Society of Friends, and one who was
commonly regarded as a crank, because he lived on a farm in the
country, worked with his hands, and refused to pay taxes on the ground
that they went to maintain the army and navy. If Harington was
handsome, Woodman was beautiful, but with beauty of expression rather
than of features, I had always thought of him as a perfect example of
that rare type, the genuine Christian. And since Harington had just
revealed himself as a typical Pagan, I felt glad of the chance which
brought the two men into such close juxtaposition. My only doubt was,
whether Woodman would consent to speak. For on previous occasions I
had known him to refuse; and he was the only one of us who had always
been able to sustain his refusal, without unpleasantness, but without
yielding. To-night, however, he rose in response to my appeal, and
spoke as follows: