We all of us know (even the most consistent of us) those
baffling instincts which lead us to act in manners
incompatible with each other, simultaneously. That
is not so puzzling as it sounds (nor sounds quite as
ungrammatical as it is), and an instance will clarify
the principle. For who does not understand and in
measure sympathize with the careful housewife who
embarks on a two-shilling taxicab expedition in order
to purchase some small household commodity at sixpence
less than she could have bought it for across the road?
The motive of her expedition is economy, and therefore
she lashes out into bewildering expenditure in order to
achieve it. Economy, in fact, is the direct cause of her
indulging in totally unnecessary expenditure. She ties
herself to the stake with one hand, ready to be burned
for the sake of her faith, and offers incense to the
heathen gods with the other.
It is this strain of self-contradictory conduct that I
unhesitatingly label Matilda-ism, for, as far as I am
aware, there is no other succinct term in the English
language which sums up and expresses it. (Besides, it
is characteristic of my grey parrot, for as you shall
presently see, this is what Matilda does.) You cannot
explain this incompatibility of action and principle
otherwise: it is not vacillation, it is not infirmity
of purpose, for the economical housewife is one mass of
purpose and her motive is as pure as Parsifal. Simply
in pursuance of her economical design, she rushes into
expense. Nor is it the sign of a weak intellect, for
Matilda's grasp of a subject is, like Mrs. Micawber's,
inferior to none, and yet Matilda is the great example
of the quality which takes its name from her. She
does not spare thought and industry, perhaps, if
anything, she thinks too much, which may account for
the inadequacy of her plumage. She has been ill, too,
lately, which perhaps makes her plumage worse, for she
has been suffering from some obscure affection of the
brain. But since her illness her Matilda-ism has been
more marked than ever, and I prefer to think that it is
Thought which has accounted both for the illness and her
abnormal moultings. She had that rare disease, beloved
of novelists, called Brain-fever. People's hair, we are
told, falls out after brain-fever, and so did Matilda's
feathers. But I am sure that Matilda would sooner go
naked, than cease to think.
Unlike most women, Matilda does not care about her
clothes, and unlike most birds, she does not scoop and
preen herself after breakfast. She gives one shake,
and then settles down to her studies, which consist
in observing, with a scornful wonder, all that goes
on round her. When first she came here, she was in no
hurry to draw conclusions, or commit herself hastily
to irrevocable words, for she sat and waited without
speech for some six weeks, until I thought she was
either dumb or had nothing to say. Then, unlike Mr.
Asquith, she ceased to wait and see, and began calling
the kitchen-maid (Mabel) in a voice so like the cook's,
that that deluded young lady came running from the
scullery into the kitchen, to find no cook there at all,
at all, but only a grey parrot, that sat with stony,
half-closed eyes on her perch. Then, as she went out
again, believing that some discarnate intelligence had
spoken to her, Matilda laughed at her in a rude, hoarse
voice that was precisely like the milkman's, mewed like
the cat, and said "Cuckoo" a number of times. (This she
had learned last spring in the country, and was unaware
that there were no cuckoos in London ever, or even in
the country in November.) Matilda, in fact, with her
powerful intellect and her awful memory, had been taking
stock of everybody, and not telling anybody about it.
Now that it was well within her power to deal with every
situation that could possibly arise in a mocking manner,
she decided to begin talking and taking an active part,
that of the critic, in life. Simultaneously, she began
to reveal what Matilda-ism was. At this period, since
she was too accomplished to be limited to the kitchen, I
took her upstairs. I thought she would meet more people
there, and enlarge, if possible, a mind that was already
vast.
Her first definite elucidation of Matilda-ism was to
make love in the most abandoned manner to the green
parrot. She wooed him in the style that the Bishop of
L-nd-n so rightly deprecates, with loud Cockney whistles
and love-lorn eyes. Of course Joey seemed to like that,
and their cages were moved close together, in the hope
that eventually they would make a match of it, and that
most remarkable babies would chip the shells of their
eggs. Matilda continued to encourage him, and one day,
when their cages were now quite close to each other, the
green gentleman, trembling with excitement, put out a
horned claw, and introduced it into Matilda's cage. On
which Matilda screamed at the top of her voice and bit
it viciously. I thought at the time that this was only
an exhibition of the eternal feminine, which encourages
a man, and then is offended and indignant when he makes
the natural response to her invitations, but in the
light of subsequent events, I believe it to have been
Matilda-ism. She was not being a flirt, simply, while
she adored, she hated also. It was Matilda, you see: all
the time it was Matilda waiting to be classified.
Matilda knew perfectly well what a cat says: she knew,
too, that a cat is called "Puss," and, putting two and
two together, she always said "Meaow" when you went to
her cage and said "Puss." This is synthetic reasoning,
like that of the best philosophers, and, all the world
over, is taken as a mark of the highest intelligence.
Similarly, she knew that my dog is called Taffy, and (by
a converse process inaccessible to any but the finest
minds) if you went to her cage and said "Bow-ow-ow,"
she responded with the neatness of a versicle, "Taffy,
Taffy, Taffy." But--and this is Matilda-ism--when Taffy
came near her cage she invariably mewed to him, and
when a cat came near her cage, she barked. She did not
confuse them; Matilda's brain shines illustriously above
the clouds of muddle. She preferred to abandon synthetic
reasoning, and create Matilda-ism.
I must insist on this, for all the evidence goes to
confirm it. For instance, if you pull a handkerchief
from your pocket, she makes rude noises which cannot
fail to remind you of the blowing of a nose oppressed by
catarrh. Also, when Mabel left, she learned the name of
the new kitchen-maid at once, and never made mistakes
about it. But as she increased in years and wisdom, her
ineradicable leanings towards Matilda-ism increased also.
Then came the crisis in her life, the brain-fever to
which I have alluded. She had a fit, and for five or
six days was seriously ill in the spare-room, set high
above the noises of the street, where no exciting sounds
could reach her. But she recovered, and her recovery
was held to be complete when from the spare-room where
she had undergone her rest-cure, a stream of polyglot
noises one morning issued forth. I took her back into
my sitting-room again, and reminded her of the European
War by saying, "Gott strafe the Kaiser." I thought this
would bring her into touch with the world of to-day
again, but for a long time she remained perfectly
silent. But when I had said, "Gott strafe the Kaiser"
two or three hundred times, she burst into speech with a
loud preliminary scream.
"Gott strafe Polly's head," she cried. "Gott save the
King! Gott save the Kaiser! Gott scratch Polly's head.
Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord! Cuckoo! Cuckoo. Puss, Puss, Puss!
Bow-ow-ow!..." And the poor demented bird laughed in
hoarse ecstasy, at having got in touch with synthetic
reasoning again!
Matilda-ism took control of all her thoughts. If a
tea-cup was presented to her notice, she blew her nose
loudly, though I cannot believe that she had ever seen
a tea-cup used as a handkerchief. When Joey was put
near her cage again she called him Taffy. She barked at
the kitchen-maid, and mewed at the cook, and called the
cat Mabel. All her correlations had gone wrong in that
attack of brain-fever, and though she had shown signs
of Matilda-ism before, I never thought it would come
to this. She was a voluble mass of contradictory and
irreconcilable propositions.
All this I wrote to Francis, since he desired domestic
and ridiculous information, but when the letter was
sealed and dispatched, I could not help thinking that
Matilda, real as she is, is chiefly a parable. It
is impossible, in fact, not to recollect that King
Constantine of Greece was very ill last spring (like
Matilda), and subsequently (i) invited the Allies to
land at Salonica, and (ii) turned M. Venizelos out of
office. It all looks traitorous, but perhaps it is mere
Matilda-ism. But I am not sure that it would not be
better for him to have some more brain-fever, and have
done with it.
* * * * *
A postscript must be added. I took Matilda into the
country, when I went there for a few days last week.
One morning she saw a ferret being taken out of a bag,
and instantly sang, "Pop goes the Weasel." I think that
shows a turn for the better, some slight power of sane
synthesis lurks in the melody, for a ferret is a sort
of weasel. I am naturally optimistic, and cannot help
wondering whether a change of air might not produce a
similar amelioration in the case of King Constantine.
Russia, for instance....
I had intended to keep these annals of Matilda detached from the war,
but it has wound its way in again, as King Charles's head invaded the
chronicles of Mr. Dick. There is no getting away from it: if you light
a cigarette, you think of Turkey and the expedition to the Dardanelles;
if you drink a glass of wine, you think of the trenches dug through
the vineyards of France. And yet, how little, actually, has the war
entered into the vital parts of the mass of English people. To large
numbers, reckoned by thousands, it has made unhealable wounds, but into
larger numbers, reckoned by millions, no prick of the sword has really
penetrated. I wonder when some kind of awakening will come, when to the
endless dormitories of drowsy sleepers, some smell of the burning, some
sound of the flaming beams above their heads and below them will pierce
their dreams. I pray God that on that day there will be no terrified
plucking from sleep into realities vastly more portentous than any
nightmare, but an awakening from sloth into an ordered energy.
But up till now, a profound slumber, or at the most a slumber with
coloured dreams, has possessed the spirit of the nation. Occasionally
some sleeper, roused by the glare that burns sombrely on the placid
night of normal human existence, has awoke and has screamed out words
of Pythian warning. But his troubled awakening has but annoyed the
myriads of other sleepers. One has growled out, "Oh, for God's sake,
go to sleep again: there's the Navy;" another has murmured, "It's
unpatriotic to be pessimistic;" a third has whispered, "God always
permits us to muddle through." Sometimes the yell has startled another
into futile whimperings, but then some retired Colonel, who writes for
the papers, like a soft-slippered nurse, pads up to his bedside, and
says, "Go to sleep again, dearie, I'm here," and the whimpering ceases,
and the nurse pulls down the blind to keep the glare out of the eyes
of the sleeper. Occasionally one of them makes such a to-do that an
attendant hurries downstairs to fetch a member of the Government from
the room where they are having such a pleasant chat over their wine,
and he is given a glass of port, and asked to come downstairs in his
dressing-gown and join the amusing supper-party. Sometimes he goes,
sometimes he drinks his wine and prefers to go to sleep again instead.
I don't know what would happen if he refused to go downstairs, and
said he would go on screaming. But no one at present contemplates such
an upsetting contingency. Besides, there is always the Censor, Auntie
Censor, who can be stern when sternness is really wanted, and spank any
obstreperous screamer with a ruthless blue pencil.
* * * * *
Everyone knows that particular (and disagreeable) climatic condition,
when, during a frost, thaw becomes imminent. It may still be freezing,
but there is something in the air which tells those who are susceptible
to change just a little before change arrives that a thaw is
approaching. The sensation cannot be accounted for by the thermometer,
which still registers a degree or two of frost, but to those who have
this weather prescience, it is quite unmistakable. Similarly in affairs
not appealing to the merely physical sense, it sometimes happens that
people are aware of a coming event implying change, before there is any
real reason to justify their belief. This is so common a phenomenon
that it has even been crystallized into an awkwardly-worded proverb
which informs us that coming events cast their shadow before (meaning
light), but to adopt the current phrase, there has lately been a great
deal of shadow projected from the Dardanelles, and it is now a matter
of general belief that that ill-planned, ill-executed expedition is
about to be recalled, and that all the eager blood shed there will
now prove to have been poured out over an enterprise that shall be
abandoned as unrealizable. For many months now hearts have been sick
with deferred hope, eyes dim with watching for the dawn that never
broke, and it seems probable that "Too late" is to be scrawled in red
over another abortive adventure, now to be filed away among failures
under the appropriate letter D. It is idle to attempt to see any bright
lining to the cloud which hangs over that accursed peninsula: all that
can be hoped is that the gallant souls who still hold a corner of it,
despite the misadventures, the miscalculations, the mismanagement that
have for months punctuated heroism with halts and full stops written in
crimson, will be bought off without the crowning record of some huge
disaster.
* * * * *
Christmas approaches, and the furnaces of the world-war are being
stoked up to burn with a more hideous intensity, while village choirs
practise their hymns and anthems about peace on earth, good will
towards men. Every decent Christian Englishman (_pace_ the pacifists)
believes in the prime importance of killing as many Germans as
possible, and yet no decent Christian Englishman will somehow fail to
endorse with a genuine signature the message of the angelic host, even
though his fingers itch for the evening paper, which he hopes contains
some news of successful slaughter. That sounds like another instance
of Matilda-ism, and mere discussion, as confined to the narrow sphere
of rational argument, might easily leave the defender of such an
attitude with not a leg to stand upon. But all the time (for argument
at best can only prove what is not worth explaining) he will know at
heart that his position has not been shaken by the apparent refutation,
and he will give you his word (than which there is nothing greater and
nothing less) that his contention, logically indefensible, is also
unassailable. He can't explain, and it is better not to try. But he
knows how it feels, which is more vital than knowing how to account for
it. Logic and Euclid are not, after all, irrefutable, though they may
be, by human reason, the final guides to human conduct.
Everything cannot be referred to reason as to a supreme arbiter. Reason
will lead you a long way across the plain, but beyond the plain there
is, like a row of visionary blue mountains, a range of highland which
is the abode of the riddles, the questions, the inconsistencies which
are quite outside the level lands of reason. No one can tell why the
Omnipotent Beneficence (some people hate to see the word God) ever
allowed cancer and malarial mosquitoes and Prussian militarism to
establish themselves so firmly on the earth which is the Lord's. It is
impossible to explain this away, and unless you argue from the fact of
their undoubted existence that there is no such thing as the Omnipotent
Beneficence, and become that very silly thing called an atheist, the
best thing you can do (collectively) is to look for the germs of cancer
with a view to their destruction, cover with paraffin the breeding
places of the mosquito, and help, if you have the good fortune still to
be useful, in the extermination of Prussian militarism. All these three
things are, very possibly, manifestations of the devil, and even if
they are not (improbable as it sounds), they are so like manifestations
of the devil, that we are justified in mistaking them for such. I
am quite convinced of that, and am impervious to any argument about
it. I "am in love and charity" (in my microscopic degree) "with my
neighbours," but that would not prevent me killing a German with all
the good will in the world, if I was put in the firing line, any more
than it would prevent me squashing a malaria-carrying mosquito with
my Prayer Book. And if I could sing (which I can't) I would bellow
"Peace on earth, good will towards men," at the top of my voice, even
while I was poising the Prayer Book or drawing a bead on the Prussians.
"Inconsistent," I daresay, but why be consistent? Besides, deep down, I
know it is consistent.
Yet, though we all recognize the essential consistency of this apparent
inconsistency, how we long, as with the yearning for morning through
the dark hours of pain, for the time when such complication of instinct
will have vanished. Twelve leaden months have dropped sullenly, one by
one, into the well of time, salt with human tears, and those who were
optimistic a year ago, believing that when Christmas next came round,
Europe would have recovered from this madness of bloodshed, are less
confident in their outlook for another Christmas. But few, I think,
if a stroke of the pen could give back to the world that menacing
tranquillity which preceded the war, would put their name to so craven
a document. Now that we know what those faint and distant flashes of
lightning meant in the years that saw us all sunk in the lethargy of
opulent prosperity, now that we know what those veiled drowsy murmurs
of thunder from Central Europe portended, we would not take in exchange
for the days of direst peril, the false security that preceded them.
Even as America now is drunk with dollars, so that no massacre of her
citizens on the high seas will reduce her from the attitude of being
too proud to fight, to the humbler office of resenting crimes that
send her defenceless citizens without warning to the bottomless depths
of the Atlantic, so we, with our self-sufficiency and our traditional
sense of supremacy, could not be bothered to listen to the warnings of
the approaching storm till with hail of fire it burst on us. Then, it
is true, we ceased to dream, but ever since our kind nurses have done
their best to cozen back those inert hours. "I'm sitting up, dearie,"
they say. "Just wait and see."
* * * * *
And at this point I will again pass over a year, that comprises the war
events of 1916. In the spring the great German attack against Verdun
opened, and for months the French stood steadfast, until that hail
of hammer blows exhausted itself. Early in June was fought the naval
battle of Jutland, announced by the German Press as so stupendous a
victory, that for the rest of the year their fleet sheltered in Kiel,
presumably because they had destroyed the British naval supremacy for
ever. In August came the fall of Gorizia, and next month the entry of
Rumania into the war, and a disastrous campaign followed. In Greece
King Constantine continued his treacherous manoeuvres, but failed to
exhaust the patience of the Allies. In December, lastly, came the
bombastic announcement that the invincible and victorious Germany was
willing from motives of magnanimous humanity, to grant peace to the
crushed and trampled Allies, who had dared to dispute the might of her
God-given destiny. A suitable reply was returned.