When you had seen him you knew that there was really nothing to be
said. Idealism, humanity, culture, philosophy, the religious and
æsthetic senses--after all, where did all that lead? Not to him!
What led to him was beef, and whisky, exercise, wine, strong cigars,
and open air. What led to him was anything that ministered to the
coatings of the stomach and the thickness of the skin. In seeing him,
you also saw how progress, civilisation, and refinement simply meant
attrition of those cuticles which made him what he was. And what was
he? Well--perfect! Perfect for that high, that supreme purpose--the
enjoyment of life as it was. And, aware of his perfection--oh, well
aware!--with a certain blind astuteness that refused reflection on
the subject--not caring what anybody said or thought, just enjoying
himself, taking all that came his way, and making no bones about it;
unconscious, indeed, that there were any to be made. He must have
known by instinct that thought, feeling, sympathy only made a man
chickeny, for he avoided them in an almost sacred way. To be “hard”
was his ambition, and he moved through life hitting things, especially
balls--whether they reposed on little inverted tubs of sand, or moved
swiftly toward him, he almost always hit them, and told people how he
did it afterward. He hit things, too, at a distance, through a tube,
with a certain noise, and a pleasant swelling sensation under his fifth
rib every time he saw them tumble, feeling that they had swollen still
more under their fifth ribs and would not require to be hit again. He
tried to hit things in the middle distance with little hooks which he
flung out in front of him, and when they caught on, and he pulled out
the result, he felt better. He was a sportsman, and not only in the
field. He hit any one who disagreed with him, and was very angry if
they hit him back. He hit the money-market with his judgment when he
could, and when he couldn’t, he hit it with his tongue. And all the
time he hit the Government. It was a perpetual comfort to him in those
shaky times to have that Government to hit. Whatever turned out wrong,
whatever turned out right--there it was! To give it one--two--three,
and watch it crawl away, was wonderfully soothing. Of a summer evening,
sitting in the window of his club, having hit balls or bookies hard
all day, how pleasant still to have that fellow Dash, and that fellow
Blank, and all the ----y crew to hit still harder. He hit women, not,
of course, with his fists, but with his philosophy. Women were made
for the perfection of men; they had produced, nourished, and nursed
him, and he now felt the necessity for them to comfort and satisfy him.
When they had done that he felt no further responsibility in regard to
them; to feel further responsibility was to be effeminate. The idea,
for instance, that a spiritual feeling must underlie the physical
was extravagant; and when a woman took another view, he took--if not
actually, then metaphorically--a stick. He was almost Teutonic in
that way. But the Government, the Government! Right and left, he hit
it all the time. He had a rooted conviction that some day it would
hit him back, and this naturally exasperated him. In the midst of
danger to the game laws, of socialism, and the woman’s movement, the
only hope, almost the only comfort, lay in hitting the Government.
For socialists were getting so near that he could only hit them now
in clubs, music-halls, and other quite safe places; and the woman’s
movement might be trusted implicitly to hit itself. Thus, in the world
arena there was nothing left but that godsend. Always a fair man, and
of thoroughly good heart, he, of course, gave it credit for the same
amount of generosity and good will that he felt present in his own
composition. There was no extravagance in that; and any man who gave it
more he deemed an ass.
He had heard of “the people,” and, indeed, at times had seen and smelt
them; it had sufficed. Some persons, he knew, were concerned about
their condition and all that; but what good it would do him to share
that concern he could not see. Fellows spoke of them as “poor devils,”
and so forth; to his mind they were “pretty good rotters,” most of
them--especially the working-man, who wanted something for nothing
all the time, and grumbled when he got it. The more you gave him the
more he wanted, and, if he were this ---- Government, instead of
coddling the blighters up he would hit them one, and have done with it.
Insurance, indeed; pensions; land reform; minimum wage--it was a bit
too thick! They would soon be putting the beggars into glass cases, and
labelling them “This side up.”
Sometimes he dreamed of the time when he would have to ride for God
and the king. But he strongly repelled, of course, any suggestion
that he had been brought up to a belief in “caste.” At his school he
had once kicked a small scion of the royal family; this heroic action
had dispersed in his mind once for all any notion that he was a snob.
“Caste,” indeed! There was no such thing in England nowadays. Had he
not sung “The Leather Bottel” to an audience of dirty people in his
school mission-hall, and--rather enjoyed it. It was not his fault that
Labor was not satisfied. It was all those professional agitators,
confound them! He himself was opposed to setting class against class.
It was, however, ridiculous to imagine that he was going to hobnob with
or take interest in people who weren’t clean, who wore clothes with a
disagreeable smell--people, moreover, who, in the most blatant way,
showed him continually that they wanted what he had got. No, no! there
were limits. Clean, at all events, any one could be--it was the _sine
quâ non_. What with clothes, a man to look after them, baths, and so
on, he himself spent at least two hundred a year on being clean, and
even took risks with the thickness of his skin, from the way he rubbed
and scrubbed it. A man could not be hard and healthy if he wasn’t
clean, and if the blighters were only hard and healthy they would not
be bleating about their wants.
One could see him perhaps to the best advantage in lands like India,
or Egypt, striding in the early morn over the purlieus of the desert,
with his loping, strenuous step, scurried after by what looked like
little dark and anxious women, carrying his golf-clubs; his eyes, with
their look of out-facing Death, fixed on the ball that he had just hit
so hard, intent on overtaking it and hitting it even harder next time.
Did he at these times of worship ever pause to contemplate that vast
and ancient plain where, in the distance, pyramids, those creatures
of eternity, seemed to tremble in the sun haze? Did he ever feel an
ecstatic wonder at the strange cry of immemorial peoples far-travelling
the desert air; or look and marvel at those dark and anxious little
children of old civilisations who pattered after him? Did he ever feel
the majesty of those vast lonely sands and that vast lonely sky? Not
he! He d----d well hit the ball, until his skin began to act; then,
going in, took a bath, and rubbed himself. At such moments he felt
perhaps more truly religious than at any other, for one naturally could
not feel so fit and good on Sundays, with the necessity it imposed
for extra eating, smoking, kneeling, and other sedentary occupations.
Indeed, he had become perhaps a little distracted in religious matters.
There seemed to be things in the Bible about turning the other cheek,
and lilies of the field, about rich men and camels, and the poor in
spirit, which did not go altogether with his religion. Still, of
course, one remained in the English church, hit things, and hoped for
the best.
Once his convictions nearly took a toss. It was on a ship, not as
classy as it might have been, so that he was compelled to talk to
people that he would not otherwise perhaps have noticed. Amongst such
was a fellow with a short beard, coming from Morocco. This person was
lean and brown, his eyes were extremely clear; he held himself very
straight, and looked fit to jump over the moon. It seemed obvious
that he hit a lot of things. One questioned him, therefore, with some
interest as to what he had been hitting. The fellow had been hitting
nothing, absolutely nothing. How on earth, then, did he keep himself so
fit? Walking, riding, fasting, swimming, climbing mountains, writing
books; hitting neither the Government nor golf balls! Never to hit
anything; write books, tolerate the Government, and look like that!
It was ‘not done.’ And the odd thing was, the fellow didn’t seem to
know or care whether he was fit or not. All the four days that the
voyage lasted, with this infernal fellow under his very nose, he
suffered. There was nothing to hit on board, and he himself did not
feel very fit. However, on reaching Southampton and losing sight of his
travelling acquaintance he soon regained his equanimity.
He often wondered what he would do when he passed the age of fifty; and
felt more and more that he would either have to go into Parliament or
take up the duties of a county magistrate. After that age there were
certain kinds of balls and beasts that could no longer be hit with
impunity, and if one was at all of an active turn of mind one must have
substitutes. Marriage, no doubt, would do something for him, but not
enough; his was a strenuous nature, and he intended to remain “hard”
unto the end. To combine that with service to his country, especially
if, incidentally, he could hit socialism and poachers, radicals,
loafers, and the income tax--this seemed to him an ideal well worthy
of his philosophy and life, so far. And with this in mind he lived on,
his skin thickening, growing ever more and more perfect, more and more
impervious to thought and feeling, to æstheticism, sympathy, and all
the elements destructive of perfection. And thus--when his time has
come there is every hope that he may die.