a gay youth now at Cambridge. His sister Iris had even less intellect
and meant to be a wife. Nature had not fitted her for learning, and
when she left school she merely came out (as the phrase goes). Parties:
these were what Iris liked. Society, not societies. Stanley, aunt-like,
thought it a great pity that Maurice’s offspring were thus, and blamed
Maurice for leaving them too much to Amy. As to Vicky’s children,
Phyllis, who had done quite adequately at Girton, now lived at home
and helped her mother with entertaining and drawing-room meetings,
and was in politics on the whole a Tory; Nancy, at twenty-one, was at
the Slade, learning, so everyone but her teachers believed, to draw
and paint; Hugh was at Cambridge, a lad of good intelligence which he
devoted to the study of engineering; Tony was still at school; and
Imogen was to leave it this summer. Imogen was not for college; she
would, it was generally believed by her teachers and relatives, not
make much of that. Imogen was quite content; she was, as always, busy
writing stories and sunk deep in her own imaginings, which were still
of a very puerile sort. Imogen read a great deal, but was not really
intelligent; it was as if she had not yet grown up. She knew and cared
little about politics or progress. Bernard Shaw was to her merely the
most enchanting of playwrights. She was happy, drugged with poetry (her
own and that of others), and adventurous dreams. She was a lanky slip
of an undeveloped girl, light-footed, active as a cat, but more awkward
with her hands than any creature before her; at once a romantic dreamer
and a tomboyish child, loving school, her friends, active games,
bathing, climbing, reading and writing, animals, W. B. Yeats, Conrad,
Kipling, Henry Seton Merriman, Shelley, William Morris, Stevenson, “A
Shropshire Lad,” meringues, battleships, marzipan, Irene Vanbrugh,
Granville Barker and practically all drama; hating strangers, society,
drawing-room meetings, needlework, love stories, people who talked
about clothes, sentimentalists, and her Aunt Amy. She was at this
time as sexless as any girl or boy may be. She was still, in all her
imaginings, her continuous, unwritten stories about herself, a young
man.
As to Stanley’s children, Irving’s and Una’s, they were still at
school. Stanley watched her son and daughter with hope and joy; they
were such delightful, exciting creatures, and one day they would take
their place in the world and help to upset it and build it up again.
_They_, at least, should certainly join the Fabians when they were
old enough. Billy and Molly should not be slack, uninterested or Tory.
They should join in the game of life as eagerly as now they joined in
treasure hunts, that curious rage of this year which caused young and
old to fall to digging up the earth, seeking for discs.
13
THE YEAR
The year and the government petered towards their end. In the east the
Japanese were beating the Russians, hands down. In the Dogger Bank, the
Russians fired on a fishing-fleet from Hull, and there was trouble.
In European politics, the Anglo-French _entente_ throve, and
Anglo-German rivalry swelled the navies. In Scotland, the Wee Frees
split from the U.P.’s, and fought successfully for the lion’s share
of the loot. In Wales, Evan Roberts’ odd religious revival swept the
country, throwing strong men and women into hysteria and bad men and
women into virtue, reforming the sinners and seriously annoying the
publicans. In the Congo, rubber was grown and collected amid scenes
of distressing cruelty, and reports of the horrid business were
published in this country by Mr. Roger Casement and Mr. E. D. Morel.
In India, Lord Curzon quarrelled with Lord Kitchener. In Thibet, the
British expedition got to Lhassa. In Tangier, the Kaiser Wilhelm of
Germany made a speech. In Ireland, Mr. Wyndham resigned. In London,
the government apathetically stayed in office, the Tariff Reform
campaign raged, treasure discs were dug for, bridge was much played,
the Vedrenne-Barker company acted at the Court Theatre, many books
were published and pictures painted, and money brightly changed hands.
And in the provinces, by-election after by-election was lost to the
government, until at last, in November, Mr. Balfour resigned.
14
ROCKETS
They stood in the new open space at Aldwych, watching the election
results proclaimed by magic lanterns on great screens and flung to
the sky in coloured rockets. They had made up a family election
party--Maurice, Vicky, Charles, Rome, Stanley and Irving, and many
of their young. Stanley had brought Billy and Molly, that they might
rejoice in the great Liberal victory and always remember it. She had
bought them each, at their request, a little clacker, with which to
signal the triumph of right to the world. For to-night was to be a
triumph indeed; liberalism was to sweep the country. Though even
Stanley did not guess to what extent, or how far the inevitable
pendulum had swung.
Imogen was entranced by the dark, clear night, the coloured lights,
the crowd, the excitement, and little thrills ran up and down her as
names and figures and rockets were greeted with cheers and hoots. She
cared nothing for the results; to her the thing was a sporting event on
which she had no money. Aunt Stanley, she knew, had her shirt on the
Liberals. So had Uncle Maurice. But Aunt Rome had nothing either way.
Imogen’s own parents were Conservatives. So, on the whole, was Phyllis,
and Phyllis’s young man. So was Uncle Irving, who was for Tariff
Reform. Probably, on the whole, Liberals were the more right, thought
Imogen. But probably no party was particularly right. How excited they
all got, anyhow, right or wrong!
The Liberals were forging ahead. There was another Manchester division
going up on the screen. Three Manchester seats had already been lost to
the Tories. “Bet you an even twopence it’s a Lib.” Tony was saying.
“Right you are. Oh, it’s Balfour’s....”
“Well, he’s lost it. Hand over.”
The crowd roared with laughter, distress and joy. Balfour out.... What
next?
“Very badly managed,” Irving was complaining all the time, to no one in
particular. “Shockingly mismanaged. The most comic election I ever saw.
There’ll be no Front Bench left.”
“And a jolly good thing.” That was Stanley, getting more and more
triumphant. “There goes Brodrick....”
Imogen felt dazed and happy, and as if she were in a fairy palace, all
blue and red lights. Her upstrained face was stiff and cold, her mouth
open with joy, so that the cold air flowed in. She wasn’t betting any
more, for neither she nor Tony would bet on the Tories now. The Tories
were a dead horse. One was sorry for them, but one couldn’t bet on
them. Did the poor men who lost their seats mind much? Perhaps some of
them were pleased. After all, they had none of them sought or desired
office.... Statesmen always said that of themselves; they only wanted
to get in because they thought they were the ones who would do most
good; always they said that. Divine guidance, they said, had laid this
heavy burden on them, though it was a most frightful bore, and though
the thing they wanted to do was to live in the country and keep pigs.
“If I was in office,” thought Imogen, “I wouldn’t say that. I’d say,
I sought and wanted office, and I’m jolly glad I’ve got it, though I
expect I’ll be rotten at it. I simply love being in power, and thank
you awfully for putting me in, and I hope I’ll stop in for ages.”
How shocked everyone would be. That wasn’t the way public men ever
talked. Would women, if ever they got into Parliament, like Aunt
Stanley wanted them to? Perhaps they would at first, not being used to
proper public manners, but they would soon learn that it wasn’t nice to
talk like that and would begin on the I-never-wanted-it stunt.
More rockets; more blue flares. Lovely. Like a great garden of coloured
flowers. _Night is a garden gay with flowers...._ Hours. Showers.
Dowers. Bowers. Cowers....
_Their flaring blinds the sleepy hours...._ No. _The small dim
hours are lit, are starred._ Better. The rhymes alternately in the
middle and end of the lines, all through. That made it chime, like
bells beneath the sea....
“Lord, what a bungle!” Irving grunted. “It’s all up now. Nothing can
save it now. We may as well go home and get warm. What?”
His fine, dark, clear-cut face was beautiful in the coloured flares,
as he stared up, a cigar in the corner of his mouth. How interesting
people were, thought Imogen, the way they all wanted different things,
and in different ways. There was Uncle Maurice now, smiling over his
briar, as pleased as anything.... And Billy and Molly, silly little
goats, twirling away with their clackers and shouting with Liberal
joy because Aunt Stanley told them to.... Anyhow it couldn’t really
_matter_ who got in. Not matter, like the night, and the lights,
and poetry, and the lovely thrill of it all. Results didn’t matter,
only the thing itself.
“Brrr!” said Vicky, hunching herself together and hugging her muff.
“It’s too cold to watch the wrong side winning any more. Charles, I’m
going home to bed. Come along, all of you, or you’ll catch your deaths.”
“Oh, mother, mayn’t I stay as long as father does?”
“If you like. Very silly of you, Jennie, you’re blue and shivering
already. Stanley, aren’t you going to take those noisy and misguided
children of yours home? It’s nearly midnight.”
“I suppose I must. But what a night for them to remember always.”
What a night, thought Imogen, huddling up in her coat with a happy
shiver, to remember always. Indeed yes. Ecstasy and gaudy blossoms of
the night. _The gaudy blossoms of the night.... Sharp swords of
light...._ Bloss, moss, doss, toss ... toss ought to do....
“There goes Lyttelton. So much for those beastly Chinamen,” cried
Maurice.
15
ON PARTIES
So much for the beastly Chinamen, and so much for the beastly little
loaf and the tax on the People’s Food, so much for class legislation
and sectarian education bills. So much, in fact, for Toryism, for the
happy Liberals were in, and would be in, growing ever less and less
happy, for close on ten years.
“_Now_ we’ll show the world,” said Stanley.
Maurice cynically grinned at her.
“If you mean you think you’re going to get a vote, my dear, you’re off
it. This cabinet hasn’t the faintest intention of accommodating you.
Not the very faintest. And if ever they did put up a bill, they’d never
get it through the Lords. You may send all the deputations you like,
but you won’t move them. Woman’s suffrage is merely the House joke.”
“We’ll see,” said Stanley, who was of a hopeful colour.
“All you can say of Liberals,” said Maurice, who was not, “is that
they’re possibly (not certainly) one better than Conservatives.
However, I’m not crabbing them. They’ve got their chance, and let’s
hope they take it. First they’ve got to undo all the follies the last
government perpetrated. Every government ought to begin with that,
always. Then they’ve got to concentrate on Home Rule. As you say, we
shall see.”
“Anyhow,” said Stanley, “we’ve got our chance.... And there’s the
_Tribune_. Penny liberalism at last.”
“I give it a year,” said Maurice. “If it takes longer dying, Thomasson
is an even more stubborn lunatic than I think him. They’ve started
all right; quite a good first number, only how any Liberal paper can
publish a polite message from that damned Tsar beats one. I believe my
paper is really the only one that insults the Russian government as it
ought to be insulted. All the others either make up to the Tsar for his
armies or butter him up because of the Hague Conference and his silly
prattle about a world peace. It makes one sick. Liberals are as bad as
the rest.”
It was edifying, during the election days, to learn from various
authorities the reasons for the Liberal victory. The _Times_ said
it was the effect, long delayed, of the suffrage reform bills; the
working classes, at last articulate, had determined to dictate their
own policy; no triumph for liberalism, no humiliation for conservatism,
but an experiment on the part of Labour. The _Morning Post_ said
the victory was due to the misrepresentation of Chinese labour by
Liberals, false promises, and the inevitable swing of the pendulum.
The _Daily Mail_ said it was the swing of the pendulum, Chinese
labour, the over continuance in office of the last government, the
Education Act, taxation, unfair food-tax cries, and a liking for
antiquated methods of commerce. The _Daily News_ said it was
a rebellion against reaction, protection and the Little Loaf. The
_Tribune_ said it was a rebellion also against poverty, the
direction of companies by Ministers, and the undoing of the great
Victorian reforms; it was, in fact, the protest of Right against
Force, of the common good against class interest, of the ideal element
in political life against merely mechanical efficiency. (“Mechanical
efficiency!” Maurice jeered. “Much there was of that in the last
government. As to the ideal element, the Liberal ideal is a large loaf
and low taxes. Quite a sound one, but nothing to be smug about.”)
However, the whole press was smug, as always, and so were nearly all
statesmen in public speeches; their cynicism they kept for private
life. Mr. Asquith, for instance, said that this uprising of the
people was due to moral reprobation of the double dealing of the late
government; plain dealing was what they wanted. And Mr. Lloyd George,
in his best vein, spoke of a fearful reckoning. A tornado, he called
it, of righteous indignation with the trifling that had been going
on in high places for years with all that was sacred to the national
heart. The oppression of Nonconformists at home, the staining of the
British flag abroad with slavery, the rivetting of the chains of the
drink traffic on the people of this country--against all these had the
people risen in wrath. It was a warning to ministers not to trifle with
conscience, or to menace liberty in a free land. The people meant to
save themselves; the dykes had been opened, and reaction in all its
forms would be swept away by the deluge.
Mr. Balfour, less excited and more philosophic, observed, at his own
defeat at Manchester, that, after all, the Tories had been in office
ten years, and would doubtless before long be in office again, and
that these oscillations of fortune would and did always occur. He
was probably nearer the truth about the elections than most of those
who pronounced upon them. It is a safe assertion that no government
is popular for long; get rid of it and let’s try another, for anyhow
another can’t be sillier, is the voter’s very natural and proper
feeling. The sophisticated voter knows that it will almost certainly be
as silly, but, after all, it seems only fair to let each side have its
innings.
Anyhow, and whatever the reasons that brought liberalism into power,
there it was. It was expressed by a House which was at present, and
before its enthusiasms were whittled away in action, composed largely
of political and social theorists, men new to politics and brimming
with plans. Mr. H. W. Massingham said it was the ablest Parliament he
had ever known, but not the most distinguished.
16
DREADNOUGHT
Imogen saved up her pocket money for the cheap excursion fare to
Portsmouth, and slipped off there alone, on a raw February morning, by
the special early train, to see the King launch the _Dreadnought_.
The _Dreadnought_ was a tremendous naval event. She displaced
19,900 tons, beating the _Dominion_ and the _King Edward VII_
by 1,200 tons, and she would make 21 knots to their 16.5, and had
turbine engines, and carried ten 12-inch guns, and her outline was
smooth and lovely and unbroken by casemates, for she was built for
speed. Imogen had to go. She slipped off without a word at home, for
she had a cough and objections would have been raised. She stood wedged
for hours in a crowd on the docks in cold rain that pitted the heaving
green harbour seas, and coughed. She did not command a view of the
actual launching, but would see the splendid creature as she left the
slip and took the water. Before that there was a service; the service
appointed to be used at the launching of the ships of His Majesty’s
Navy. “They that go down to the sea in ships: and occupy their business
in great waters; These men see the works of the Lord: and his wonders
in the deep. For at his word the stormy wind ariseth: which lifteth up
the waves thereof. They are carried up to the heaven, and down again to
the deep: their soul melteth away because of the trouble. They reel to
and fro and stagger like a drunken man: and are at their wit’s end....”
After this, Hymn 592 (A & M) was irritating and silly, but hymns cannot
be helped, bishops will have them.
Then the King smashed the bottle of wine on her and, christened, she
took the water. She left the slip and came into the view of the crowd,
and a great shout went up. “She’s moving!”
Imogen, thrilled, gazed at the lovely, the amazing creature, the giant
of the navy. What a battleship! With professional interest Imogen
examined her points through her father’s field glasses. No openings in
the bulkheads--it was that which gave her her smooth, fleet look. She
was made for a running fight. She was glorious.
Imogen travelled home wet through, shivering, her cough tearing at her
chest, and went to bed for a month with bronchitis. So much for the
navy, said Vicky crossly. But the amazing grey ship was a comfort to
Imogen through her fevered waking dreams.
17
AT THE FARM
Imogen, bow and arrows in hand, crawled through the wood, beneath
overhanging boughs of oaks and elders and beeches and the deep green
arms of pines, that shut the little copse from the August sun into a
fragrant gloom. Every now and then she stopped, listened, and laid her
ear to the mossy ground.
“Three miles off and making a bee line south,” she observed, frowning.
“My God.”
“Michael crawled on,” she continued, “crawling, keeping his head low,
so as not to afford a target for any stray arrows. Who knew what
sinister shadows lurked in the forest, to right and to left?... Hist!
What was that sound? Something cracked in the tangle of scrub near
him.... A Cherokee on a lone trail, possibly.... A Cherokee: the most
deadly of the Red Tribes.... Cold sweat stood out on Michael’s brow.
Could he reach the camp in time? Again he laid his ear to the ground
and listened. They were only two miles now, and still that swift,
terrible, travelling.... The sun beat upon his head and neck; he felt
dizzy and sick. Suppose he fainted before he reached his goal.... That
damned cracking in the bushes again.... Good God!... out of the thicket
sprang a huge Redskin, uttering the horrid war-whoop of the Cherokee,
which, once heard, is never forgotten. Michael leaped to his feet,
pulled his bow-string to his ear, let fly....”
Imogen too let fly.
“Missed him,” she muttered, and swarmed nimbly up the gnarled trunk of
an oak until she reached the lower boughs, from whence she looked down
into a fierce red face, eagle-nosed, feather-crowned.
“Oh, Big Buffalo,” she softly called. “Will you parley?”
Big Buffalo grunted, and they parleyed. If Michael would betray
the whereabouts of his friends, Big Buffalo would grant him his
life. If not, no such easy death as the arrow awaited him, “for we
Cherokees well understand the art of killing....” Michael, sick with
fear, betrayed his friends, and Big Buffalo left him, primed with
information. (In common with other heroes of fiction, Michael never
thought of giving incorrect or misleading information.)
“Michael lay in the forest, his head upon his arms. What had he done?
There was no undoing it now. Why didn’t I choose the stake? Oh, damn,
why didn’t I....”
It was too warm, sweet and drowsy for prolonged remorse. Michael forgot
his shame. The breeze in the pine trees sang like low harps.... The
shadowy copse was soaked in piney sweetness, golden and dim. Michael,
with his bow, his Redskins, and his broken honour, faded out in the
loveliness of the hour.
Ecstasy descended on the wood; enchantment held it, saturating it with
golden magic. Ants and little wood-beetles scuttled over Imogen’s
outstretched hands and bare, rough head. Rabbits bobbed and darted
close to her. She was part of the woods, caught breathless into that
fairy circle like a stolen, enchanted child.
“I am full of the Holy Ghost,” said Imogen. “This is the Holy
Ghost....” And loveliness shook her, as a wind shakes a leaf. These
strange, dizzy moments lurked hidden in the world like fairies in
a wood, and at any hour they sprang forth and seized her, and the
emotion, however often repeated, was each time as keen. They would
spring forth and grip her, turning the dædal earth to magic, at any
lovely hour, in wood or lane or street, or among the wavering candles
and the bread and wine. She was stabbed through and through with beauty
sweet as honey and sharp as a sword, and it was as if her heart must
break in her at its turning. After this brief intensity of joy or
pain, whichever it was, it was as if something in her actually did
break, scattering loose a drift of pent-up words. That was how poems
came. After the anguished joy, the breaking loose of the words, then
the careful stringing of them together on a chain, the fastidious,
conscious arranging. Then the setting them down, and reading them over,
and the happy, dizzy (however erroneous) belief that they were good....
That was how poems came, and that was life at its sharpest, its highest
intensity. Afterwards, one sent them to papers, and it was pleasant and
gratifying if other people saw them and liked them too. But all that
was a side-issue. Vanity is pleasant, gratified ambition is pleasant,
earning money is very pleasant, but these are not life at its highest
power. You might at once burn every poem you wrote, but you would still
have known life.
The song the pines hummed became words, half formed, drifting,
sweet.... Imogen listened, agape, like an imbecile. It was a lovely,
jolly, woody thing that was being sung to her ... she murmured it
over....
A bell rang, far away. Sharply time’s voice shivered eternity to
fragments. Imogen yawned, got up, brushed pine needles out of her hair
and clothes, took up her bow, and strolled out of fairyland. It was
tea-time at the farm.
As she sauntered through the little wood, she shot arrows at the
trees and stopped to retrieve them. Then she found a long, sharp
stick, pointed, like a spear, and became a knight in a Norman forest.
She encountered another knight, a hated foe. There was a fight _à
outrance_. They fenced, parried, lunged....
“Swerve to the right, son Roger, he said,
When you catch his eye through the helmet’s slit;
Swerve to the right, then out at his head,
And the Lord God give you joy of it....”
A swinging thrust....
“Got him, pardie!”
“Hullo.”
Imogen faced about, and there, on the cart track between the wood and
the home farm, stood her Uncle Ted, large and red in breeches and
gaiters, his pipe between his teeth.
“Oh, hullo, Uncle Ted.”
Imogen had turned red. She had been seen making an ass of herself alone
in the wood. Behaving like a maniac. Damn.
“Anything the matter? Got the staggers, have you?” asked Uncle Ted, as
if she were a cow.
“No, I’m all right. Looking for arrows and things, that’s all.”
“Oh, I see.... Comin’ up to tea?”
They walked across the home field together. Imogen was sulky and
ashamed. She was emptied of enchantment and the Holy Ghost, and was
nothing but an abrupt, slangy, laconic girl, going sullenly in to tea,
feeling an ass. Uncle Ted was thinking farmer’s thoughts, of crops and
the like, not of Imogen.
But afterwards he said to Una, “Not quite all there, eh, that girl
of Vicky’s? Flings herself about in the wood when she’s alone, like
someone not right, and talks to herself, too. Nineteen, is she? It’d be
right enough if she was twelve. But at eighteen or nineteen....”
“Oh, Imogen’s all right. She’s childish for her age, that’s all.”
Una took everyone for granted.
“Childish, yes. That’s what I say. They ought to have her seen to.
Gabbles, too. I can’t make out half she’s saying.... Katie may do her
good, I daresay. Katie’s got sense.... It’s against a girl, going on
like that. No sensible young fellow would like it. They ought to have
her seen to. What?”
“Oh, she’s all right,” said Una again. “There she is in the field
playing rounders with the others quite sensibly, you see.”
“I daresay. She may be all right at games, but she oughtn’t to be let
loose alone in woods. She’ll get herself talked about....”
Katie too thought Imogen mad. But quite nicely mad. Harmless. Like
a kid. Katie was a few months younger, but she felt that Imogen was
a kid. She said and did such mad things. And she lacked the most
elementary knowledge; she didn’t know the first thing, for instance,
about clothes, what they were made of, and how they should be made. She
was like an imbecile about them; didn’t care, either. She would stare,
pleased and admiring, at Katie, who had beauty, as if Katie were a
lovely picture, but she never said the right things about her clothes.
You’d think, almost, she didn’t know one material from another.
When they had done playing rounders, and when Imogen and Tony, who was
staying at the farm too, had done damming the brook at the bottom of
the field, and when Tony had gone off rook shooting with his cousin
Dick, Imogen sat by the brook, her bare muddy legs in a pool scaring
minnows, and brooded over life. Rotten it was, being grown up. Simply
rotten. Because you weren’t really grown up. You hadn’t changed at
all. You knew some more, and you cared for a lot of fresh books, but
you liked doing all the things you had liked doing before you grew
up. Climbing, and playing Red Indians, and playing with soldiers, and
walking on stilts. But when you put your hair up, you had to hide all
sorts of things away, like a guilty secret. You could play real games,
like tennis and cricket and hockey and rounders, and even football,
and you could perhaps do the other things with someone else, but
not alone. If people found you alone up a tree, or climbing a roof,
or listening with your ear to the ground, or astride on a wall, or
pretending with a sword, they put up their eyebrows and thought you
an ass. Your mother told people you were a tomboy. A tomboy. Imbecile
word. As if girls didn’t like doing nice things as much as boys. Who
started the idea they didn’t, or shouldn’t?... Oh, it was rotten, being
grown up. Grown-up people had a hideous time. They became so queer,
talking so much, wanting to go to parties, and even meetings, and all
kinds of rotten shows. Mother held meetings in the drawing-room, for
good objects. So did Aunt Stanley. Different objects, but equally
good, no doubt. People came to the meetings and jabbered away, and
sometimes you were made to be there, “to learn to take an interest.”
Votes, cruelty to animals or children, sweated labour, bazaars, white
slaves, the Conservative party, the Liberal party.... What did any of
them matter? Phyllis was good at them. But now Phyllis was going to be
married. And Nancy was at the Slade, and wouldn’t attend the meetings;
she was too busy drawing and going to dances and parties. The modern
girl, mother said; independent, selfish, dashing about with young men
and no chaperons. The Edwardian young woman, so different from the
Victorian young woman.... Only Aunt Rome said she was not different,
but just the same.... Anyhow, Nancy wouldn’t take her turn at the
meetings. So Imogen, younger and more docile, was being trained up. But
she would never be any good. She hated them. Why shouldn’t the boys
take their turn? No one made them. It wasn’t fair.
Imogen kicked viciously at the minnows. Rotten, being a girl....
Perhaps she would run away to sea ... round the world ... the South Sea
Islands....
It was getting chilly. Imogen drew her legs out of the brook and dried
them on her handkerchief. Filthy they were, with mud. She put on her
stockings and old tennis shoes, and wondered what next. Tony was still
rooking. One might go and catch the colt in the meadow and ride him....
Katie appeared over the hunched shoulder of the field.
“Imogen, do you want to come and milk? It’s time.... Oh, I say, you
_are_ in a mess. You ass, what’ve you been up to?”
“Only damming the brook, and wading. Yes, I want to milk, rather.”
“Hurry up then.”
Katie was as beautiful as a June morning. As beautiful as Una. Pale as
milk, with eyes like violets and dark, clustering curls. And clever.
She could do nearly everything. Imogen, six months older, was as nought
beside her. But Katie liked her, and was very kind to her. Katie had
just left Roedean; she had been captain of the school hockey team, and
was going now to play for Essex. A splendid girl. Imogen believed that
Katie had none of the dark and cold forebodings, the hot excitements,
the black nightmares, the sharp, sweet ecstasies, the mean and base
feelings, that assailed herself, any more than Katie would be found
making an ass of herself playing in a wood. Katie, like her mother,
was balanced. This tendency to believe that others are balanced, and
are not rent by the sad and glad storms which one’s own soul knows, is
common to many. One supposes it to be because human beings put such a
calm face on things, so the heart alone knows its own turbulence.
Imogen grinned at Katie, and went with her to the milking.
18
HIGHER THOUGHT
Papa had aged very much in the last two years since mamma had died.
He had had wonderful experiences; he had constantly spoken with,
even seen, mamma; it had made him very happy. But he was aware that
the séances greatly strained and fatigued him. He slept badly; his
nerves seemed continually on edge. Further, he could not by any means
overcome the distaste he felt for the medium who made it her special
business to open the door between him and mamma. A common little
person, he could not help, even in his charity, thinking her. And
Flossie, the spirit on the Other Side, who spoke for mamma (except on
those rare occasions when mamma spoke for herself) was, to judge from
her manner, voice and choice of language, even commoner. And silly.
Papa scarcely liked to admit to himself _how_ silly Flossie seemed
to him to be. Mamma must dislike Flossie a good deal, he sometimes
thought, but then recollected that, where mamma had gone to dwell,
dislike was no more felt, only compassion. He would have liked to ask
mamma, on the rare occasions when she spoke for herself, what she
thought of Flossie, and of Miss Smythe, the medium on this side. But he
did not like to, for Flossie would certainly, and Miss Smythe possibly,
through her trance, hear his question and mamma’s reply. How he longed
for a little private talk, of the kind that mamma and he used to have
of old! But he was not ungrateful. He was in touch with mamma; he knew
her to be extant as a personality, and accessible to him, and that was
surely enough. As to the fatigue, that was a small price to pay.
Then, one tragic day, in the autumn of 1906, came one of those great
exposures which dog the steps of psychical men and women. Some of the
sharp, inquisitive persons who make it their business to nose out
frauds and write to _Truth_ about them, turned their attention
to Miss Smythe and her séances. In a few weeks--these things are very
easy, and do not take long--Miss Smythe was pilloried in the press
as a complete and accomplished fraud. She had, it was made clear
except to the most obstinate believers, never been in a trance, never
called spirits, from the vasty deep, never opened any spiritual doors.
The mechanism of the materialisation was once more discovered and
exposed.... (“What a stale old story,” said Rome. “As if we didn’t know
all about it long ago. These heavy-footed creatures, trampling over
children’s fairylands. Why can’t they let things be?”) ... and even
Flossie, that bright, silly, chatty spirit, was discredited. Flossie
was a quack, and had known about the thimble behind the sofa and the
other things in some cheap, sly way, or else just guessed.
Alas for papa! The gates of paradise clanged in his face; he might
believe by faith that paradise was there, and mamma in it, but the
door between him and it was shut. Great and bitter sorrow shook him,
and shame, for that he had so made cheap his love and mamma’s for the
benefit of common frauds. He sank into inert grief, from which he was
roused, in March 1907, by the call of Higher Thought. The name, in
the first instance, appealed to him. Thought should be higher; it was
usually lower, and very certainly much too low.
“Higher than what, papa dear?” Rome enquired. “These comparatives, in
the air, are so unfinished. Higher education, higher criticism, the
larger hope, the younger generation.... Higher, I mean than what other
thought?”
Than the thought customary on similar subjects, papa supposed.
“These geometrical metaphors,” Rome murmured. “Well, papa, I am sure it
must be very interesting.”
It was very interesting. Papa was introduced to a little temple near
High Street, Kensington, which, when you stepped on the entrance
mat, broke into “God is Love” in electric light over the altar. Here
he worshipped and thought highly, in company with a small but ardent
band of other high thinkers, who were led in prayer by a Guru of
immense power--the power of thought which was not merely higher but
highest--over mind and matter. So great was the power of this Guru that
he not only could cure diseased bodies and souls, but could correct
physical malformations, merely by absent treatment. A lame young man
was brought to him, one of whose legs was shorter than its fellow.
Certainly, said the Guru, this defect would yield to absent treatment.
Further, the treatment would in this case be doubly effective, as
he happened to be about to make a journey to Thibet, to visit the
Lama, the very centre of fervent prayer, absent treatment, and higher
thought. The nearer the Guru got to Thibet, the more powerful would
become, he said, the action of his treatment on the leg of the young
man. And, sure enough, so it proved. The shorter leg began, as the
Guru receded towards Asia, to grow. It grew, and it grew, and it grew.
There came a joyful day when the two legs were of identical length. The
power of absent treatment was triumphantly justified. But it proved to
be a power even greater than the young man and his family had desired
or deserved. For the short leg did not stop when it had caught up
its companion; on the contrary, it seemed to be growing with greater
velocity than before. And indeed, it was; for the Guru, now far beyond
reach of communication by letter or telegram, was journeying ever
deeper and deeper into the great heart of prayer, Holy Thibet, and as
he penetrated it his prayer intensified and multiplied in power, like
the impetus of a ball rolling down hill. The short leg surpassed its
brother, shot on, and on, and on....
It was still shooting on when papa was told of the curious phenomenon.
“Strange,” said papa. “Strange, indeed.”
But it was not these portents, however strange, that papa valued in
his new faith. It was the freedom, the prayerfulness, the rarefied
spiritual atmosphere; in brief, the height. After Miss Smythe, after
the darkened room and the rapping table and the lower thinking of poor
Flossie, it was like a mountain top, where the soul was purged of
commonness.
Mamma, papa sometimes thought, would have approved of Higher Thought;
might even, had she been spared, have become a Higher Thinker herself.
(It should be remembered, in this connection, that papa, since the
exposure of poor Flossie, was no longer in touch with mamma.)
19
LIBERALS IN ACTION
It is a pity to crab all governments and everything they do. For
occasionally it occurs that some government or other (its political
colour is an even chance) passes some measure or other which is not so
bad as the majority of measures. The Liberal government elected in 1906
composed tolerable bills more than once. It even succeeded, though more
rarely, in getting them, in some slightly warped form, tolerated by
the Upper House. The Trades Disputes Bill, for instance, got through.
Either the Lords were caught napping, or they felt they had to let
something through, just to show that things _could_ get through,
as at hoop-la the owner of the booth has, here and there, among
hundreds of objects too large to be ringed by the hoop, one of trifling
value which can fairly be ringed and won, just to show that the thing
can be done. Anyhow, the Trades Disputes Bill did get through, before
the game began of chucking all bills mechanically back, or amending
them out of all meaning so that the Commons disowned them and threw
them away.
Mr. Birrell had no luck with his Education Bill. It was a good,
rational bill, as education bills (a sad theme) go, and no party liked
it much, and the Upper House saw that it would not do at all, and sent
it back plastered all over with amendments that gave it a new and silly
face, like a lady over-much made up. So the Commons would have none of
it, and that was the end, for the moment, of attempts to improve the
management of our elementary schools.
The Lords were now getting into their form, and threw out the Plural
Voting Bill with no nonsense about amendments, and no trouble at all.
After all, what were they there for, if not to throw out? What, indeed,
asked the Lower House, many members of whom had for long wondered. As
to any kind of Woman’s Suffrage Bill, the Commons, as firmly as the
Lords, would have none of it. It was when this was made clear that
the Women’s Social and Political Union, that new, vigorous and vulgar
body, began to bestir itself, and to send bodies of women to waylay
members on their way to the House; in fact, the militant suffragist
nuisance began. There were processions, demonstrations, riots, arrests
and imprisonments. Stanley threw herself into these things at first
with dogged fervour; she did not like them, but held them advantageous
to the Cause. Her niece, Vicky’s Nancy, a very wild young woman,
who enjoyed fighting and making a disturbance on any pretext, threw
herself also into the Cause, fought policemen with vigour, and was
dragged off to prison with joy. Imogen wouldn’t participate in these
public-spirited orgies; she was too shy. And she couldn’t see that it
was any use, either. She had a hampering and rather pedantic sense of
logic, that prevented her from flinging herself into movements with
sentimental ardour; she preferred to know exactly how the methods
adopted were supposed to work, and to see clearly cause and effect,
and no one ever made it precisely clear to her how making rows in the
streets was going to get a suffrage bill passed. It seemed, in fact,
to be working the other way, and alienating some of the few hitherto
sympathetic. Her Aunt Stanley told her, “It’s to show the public and
the government how much we care. They’re crude weapons, but the only
ones we have. Constitutional methods have failed, so far.”
“But, Aunt Stanley, how do you know these are weapons at all?” Imogen
argued.
“We can but try them,” Stanley answered, herself a little doubtful on
the point.
“Anyhow,” she added, “anyhow, no woman who cares about citizenship can
be happy sitting still and doing nothing while we’re denied it. You do
care about the suffrage, don’t you, Imogen?”
“Oh, rather, Aunt Stanley, of course I do. I think it’s awful cheek
not giving it us. There’s no _sense_ in it, is there; no meaning.
Anti-suffragists do talk a lot of rot.... Only don’t you think
suffragists do too, sometimes? I mean, Aunt Stanley, people do so,
when they talk, get off the _point_, don’t they. It would be
a lot easier to be keen if people didn’t talk so much. They talk
_round_, not along. Really, there’s hardly anything to say about
anything; I mean, you could say it all, all that mattered, in a few
sentences. But people go on talking about things for hours, saying
the same things twice, and a lot of other things that don’t really
apply, and everything in hundreds of words when quite a few would do. I
noticed it in the House the other day when we were there. Two-thirds of
what they all said was just flapping about. And they say, ‘I have said
before, Mr. Speaker, and I say again....’ But _why_ do they say
it again? It isn’t awfully good even the first time. I do wonder why
people are like that, don’t you?”
“Soft heads and long tongues, my dear, that’s why. Can’t be helped.
One’s got to bear it and go ahead.... I wish Molly was five years
older; she’ll be so tremendously keen....”
Imogen said nothing to that. She knew Molly, her small elfish cousin
of fourteen, pretty well. Molly, with her short white face and merry,
narrow eyes, and quick wits and easy selfishness and charm, was,
though Imogen couldn’t know that, her father over again, without his
abilities. Imogen was afraid that Molly, when she left school and grew
up, was not going to take that place among the world’s workers that
Aunt Stanley hoped.
As to Billy, a cheerful, stocky Rugby boy of sixteen, he had no views
on the suffrage. He didn’t care. Politics bored him.
Poor Aunt Stanley. Aunt Stanley was a great dear; treated one always
as a friend, not as a niece; explained things, and discussed, and
said what she meant. She was easy to talk to. Easier than Vicky, whom
one loved, but couldn’t discuss things with; one couldn’t formulate
and express one’s ideas and project them into that spate of charming,
inconsequent talk, that swept on gaily over anything one said. Imogen
tried to please Aunt Stanley by seeming really keen about suffrage, but
it was difficult, because the things she actually was keen on were so
many and absorbing that they didn’t leave much time over. Imogen felt
that she was no good at these large, unselfish causes that Aunt Stanley
had at heart; she hadn’t soul enough, or brain enough, or imagination
enough, or something. And she did hate meetings. If one had to sit
indoors in the afternoon, were there not the galleries and theatres,
her point of view was. Perhaps, she thought, Nancy, who enjoyed it,
could do the votes-for-women business for the family.
Meanwhile, Mr. W. H. Dickinson’s Suffrage Bill failed to come to
anything, and it became obvious that the Liberal government, in this
matter, was to be no use at all.
It was quite a question whether it was going to be much use in any
other matter. Poor Law Reform it had postponed; likewise Old Age
Pensions. Licensing Reform was dropped; so was Mr. McKenna’s new
Education Bill, the Land Valuation Bill, and Irish Home Rule. It looked
as if the Liberal programme was running away like wax in the heat and
trouble of the day. How few party programmes, for that matter, ever do
become accomplished achievements! They are frail plants, and cannot
easily come to fruit in the rough air of office. What with one thing,
what with another, they wilt away in flower and die.
To make up for the stagnation of home politics, there was, in 1906 and
1907, plenty of international activity. The nations of Europe were
ostensibly drawing together, a happy family. British journalists
were entertained in Berlin, German journalists in London, amid some
mutual execration and dislike. A _rapprochement_ took place
between ourselves and Russia, for it was quite the fashion in Europe
to fraternise with Russia, her armies were so huge, even if not,
apparently, very good at what armies should be good at. There were
those in this country who held that it was not quite nice to fraternise
with Russia, disapproving of her governmental system, and of the
Tsar’s very natural suppression of the Duma that had for a few days
and by an oversight so strangely existed and actually dared to demand
constitutional reform. There were those in Great Britain who said that
we should not be at all friendly with a government so little liberal
in mentality. But, after all, you must take nations as you find them,
and their domestic affairs are quite their own concern, and one should
not be provincial in one’s judgments, but should make friends even with
the mammon of unrighteousness for the sake of the peace of Europe,
which was a good deal talked of just then by the Powers, though it is
doubtful whether any of them really believed in it. It is certain that
the nations by no means neglected the steady increase and building
up of armaments by land and sea. They hurried away from the Hague
Conference to lay down new battleships at a reckless pace; even Mr. W.
T. Stead said, “Let us strengthen our navy, for on its fighting power
the peace of Europe depends.” Strengthen our navy we did; but as to the
peace of Europe, that lovely, insubstantial wraith, she was perhaps
frightened by all those armoured ships, all those noisy guns, all those
fluent statesmen talking, for she never put on much flesh and bones.
20
1907
Outside politics, 1907 was a gay year enough. There was a severe
outbreak of pageantitis, which many people enjoyed very much, and
others found vastly disagreeable. Drama was noticeably good; the
Vedrenne-Barker company moved from the Court to the Savoy, and the
intelligent play-goer moved after it. Miss Horniman’s Repertory Theatre
toured the provinces; and the Abbey Theatre players took English
audiences by storm. Acting was good, literature and the arts were much
encouraged, dancing and social entertainments were more than ever the
fashion. Society, it was said, was getting rowdier. For that matter,
society has always been getting rowdier, since the dawn of time. How
rowdy it will end, in what nameless orgies it will be found at the Last
Day, is a solemn thought indeed.
As to the young they were thought of and written of much as ever, much
as now. The New Young were discovered afresh, and the Edwardian variety
was much like the Victorian and the Georgian. They were wild, people
said; they went their own way; they were hard, reckless, independent,
enquiring, impatient of control, and yet rather noble.
“Youth in the new century has broken with tradition,” people said. “It
is no longer willing to accept forms and formulæ only on account of
their age. It has set out on a voyage of enquiry, and, finding some
things which are doubtful, others which are insufficient, is searching
for forms of experience more in harmony with the realities of life and
of knowledge....”
Youth was, in fact, at it again.
“Girls are so wild in these days,” Vicky cheerfully complained. “Nancy
and Imogen both go on in a way we’d _never_ have dared to do.
Nancy dances all night (of course chaperons are a back number now),
and comes home alone, or with some wild, arty young men and women,
or, worse still, with one wild, arty young man, at five o’clock in
the morning, and lets herself in with a bang and a rush, and often
lets the arty young people in too. No, Nancy, I say to her, you don’t
let your friends into my house before breakfast, and that’s that. Not
several of them at once, nor one by herself or himself. If they don’t
want to go home to their own beds, they must just go and carouse in any
hotel that will receive them, for in my house they shall _not_
carouse. _Nor_ sit on the dining-room sofa and smoke, and carry
on conversations in tones that I suppose you all think are hushed.
It shall not be done, I said, so that is settled. But is it settled?
Not a bit of it. Nancy merely changes the subject, and Charles and I
are woken by the hushed voices again next morning. Edwardian manners,
people tell me; well, I’m Victorian, and I don’t care if it _is_
1907.”
“You were doing much the same in 1880, my dear,” Rome interpolated.
“Oh, well, I’ve forgotten ... were we?... Well, anyhow, you can’t say
I was behaving like Imogen. She doesn’t care for dancing much, and
she’s such a baby still that cocktails make her tipsy and cigarettes
sick; she prefers raspberry syrup and chocolate cigars, which is really
more indecent at her age. At her age _I_ was thinking of proper
young-ladyish things, like young men, and getting engaged; but Imogen
seems never to have heard of either--I mean, not of young men in
their proper uses. She plays childish games, and dashes about on her
bicycle, and makes ridiculous lists of all the ships in the navy and
how much they weigh and how many horses they’re equal to, and slips
off to Portsmouth all by herself to see them launched, without a word
to anyone, and of course makes herself ill. I said to her one day, I
suppose you’ll go and marry into the navy some day, Jennie; nothing
else will satisfy you. But she opened her eyes and said, _Marry_
the navy? Oh, no. I couldn’t do that. I should be too jealous of him.
You see, I want to be in the navy myself, and I know I should hate his
being in it when I couldn’t. It would only rub it in. I want to do nice
things myself, not to marry people who do them. I believe, mother, I’m
perhaps too selfish to marry; it’s _my_ life I want to enjoy, not
anyone else’s. Besides, there might be babies, and they would get so
in the way, little sillies. They wouldn’t get in your way, I told her
(only of course it isn’t true, because they always do, the wretches),
if only you’d behave like other grown girls, and not be forever
climbing about and playing silly games. You’re such a baby yourself,
that’s what’s the matter. What on earth the child’s book will be like
that she’s so busy with I can’t imagine. _She_ knows nothing about
life, bless her. There’s Phyllis married, and running her home so
capably, and Nancy at least carrying on like a girl, not like a child
in the nursery--but Imogen! I lose my patience with her sometimes.”
And even as her mother spoke, Imogen was in Hamley’s in Regent Street,
looking at toy pistols and blushing. She was blushing because she had
just been deceitful, and was afraid that the lady attending on her
guessed. “For what aged child is it?” this helpful lady had asked.
“Would caps or blank cartridges be what he’d want? I mean, if he’s
_very_ young....”
“Oh, no,” Imogen mumbled, “he’s not awfully young. Blank cartridges, he
likes....”
She bent her abashed face over the weapons, fingering them. A sordid
fib; was she seen through? She chose her pistol quickly, paid for it,
and hurried out of the shop. When she got well away, she extracted the
weapon from its cardboard box and tucked it, with a guilty look round,
into the side pocket of her skirt.
She strode along with a new reckless gallantry.
“Patrick slipped among the crowd; that queer, cosmopolitan, rather
sinister crowd that is to be found around the Marseilles docks. Was he
followed? His hand strayed to his hip pocket. His keen, veiled eyes
took in the passers-by without seeming to look. If he could get through
the next hour without mishap, he would be aboard and a-sail. But could
he? Prob’ly not....”
While Imogen thus walked in foreign ports or trackless forests, a
happy, dreaming spinster, a reckless adventurer armed to the teeth,
many of her contemporaries and elders walked in suffragist processions,
adventurers too, and no less absorbed than she. Stanley, disgusted now
by the increasingly reasonless methods of the militants, had definitely
turned her back on them and joined the constitutionals. These arranged
orderly and lady-like processions, headed at times by Lady Carlisle.
“There can be no doubt,” wrote the more dignified press, after one
such procession, “that many of these lady suffragettes are absolutely
in earnest, and honestly believe that the cause for which they are
contending is a just and sane one. But the fact remains that they
are in the minority; that the sex, _qua_ sex, is still content,
and proud to be content, to accept the symbol of petticoat....”
(“How indecent,” cried Vicky, “to gossip about our underwear in a
leader by a man!”) ... “the symbol of petticoat as the badge of
disenfranchisement.” Women, the article continued, are of low mental
calibre, and will never understand politics, and if they did it would
interfere with their only duty, the propagation of the race.
“I love journalists,” said Rome, reading this to her papa at their
Sunday breakfast. “They always write as if women did that job
single-handed. They are so modest about man’s share in it, which is
really quite as important as ours. They even kindly call us the fount
of life. Dear, generous, self-effacing creatures....”
But papa was shaking his head, gravely.
“You make a joke of it, my dear. But this low mental equipment on the
part of the writers on our leading papers is really a tragedy. The
guiders of public opinion.... The blind leading the blind ... how can
we avoid the ditch?”
“Indeed, we don’t avoid the ditch. We are all in it, up to the neck.
But if one is to be sad on account of the low mental equipment of
writers or others, there will be very little joy left. For my part, I
find a considerable part of my joy in it; it assists in providing the
cheering spectacle of human absurdity.”
“Pass me the paper, my dear. I want to read about.... I want to see it.”
Rome smiled behind the screen of paper which papa put up between him
and her. Well she knew what papa wanted to read in it. He was looking
for news of Mr. R. J. Campbell and his New Theology, searching for
tidings of Pantheism and the Divine Immanence. And, sure enough, he
found them. There was a Saying of the Week. Among the eminent persons
who had said other things, such as Dr. Clifford, who had remarked,
a little meiosistically, “It is not necessary to burn a man who is
seeking the truth,” and the Lord Chief Justice, who had observed, more
topically, “One of the greatest errors that motorists can make is to
believe that upon their blowing their horns everybody should clear out
of the way,” and Prince Fushimi from Japan, who had said, “I do not
wish to object to ‘The Mikado,’ as I am sure its writers did not intend
to hurt the feelings of a great nation, but I shall, of course, be
glad if it is not performed,” and two doctors, one of whom had said,
“Kissing consists in depositing some saliva on the lips or cheeks of
another person,” and the other, “Those who do not like milk will get
cancer”--among all these utterers of truth came Mr. R. J. Campbell,
remarking brightly, not for the first time nor for the last, “The New
Theology is the gospel of the humanity of God and of the divinity of
man.”
“True,” said papa, within himself. “Very true. Very proper and
intelligent indeed.”
He sighed gently behind the newspaper. He had had, of late, his doubts
as to Higher Thought; as to whether it was very intelligent, very
proper, or very true. It was strange in so many ways; high, doubtless,
but perhaps for earth too high. And there were strange tales going
about concerning the Gurus who led in prayer and in thought. And the
leg of that unfortunate young man ... how could people believe such
nonsense? The element of folly in all human creeds was becoming, in
the case of the Higher Thought, painfully evident to papa.
This New Theology now--this young man Campbell--he seemed, somehow,
nearer to solid earth than did the Higher Thinkers. He might talk of
the Divinity of Man, but he did not, as papa, having read his book on
the subject, knew, mean anything silly by it, only what all the mystics
have meant--the divine spark in the human heart. As to the humanity
of God--well, he probably meant no harm by that either. He was but an
anthropomorphist, like the rest of us.
The theologians had been hard upon that book of his. It was not, of
course, the book of a scholar; all it said had been said much better
by Loisy and other Catholic modernists, whom Mr. Campbell palely
reflected. But it gave a good peptonised version, suitable for the
unscholarly mind. And its reviewers had been unkind. They had nearly
all attacked it. Dr. Robertson Nicoll in the _British Weekly_ had
snubbed it at considerable length. The _Church Times_ had said,
“The book is one long offence against good taste,” and the _Methodist
Recorder_, “Frankly, we do not think this book worth reading, and
to price it at six shillings is enough to make us join in the Book
War.” Theological reviewers were not always fair, as papa, since he had
published his own mighty and erudite work on Comparative Religions, had
known. For himself, he had liked Mr. Campbell’s book, even though it
was rather bright than scholarly, more an appeal to the man in the City
Temple than to the student or the theologian. Papa, besides being a
student and a theologian, had of late been also on Sundays a man in the
City Temple. He had said nothing of it yet to anyone; he was trying it.
He liked it; there was nothing in it to bewilder or offend. The Divine
Immanence; call it Pantheism who chose, it was a beautiful idea. It was
in no degree incompatible with the Divine Transcendence; why should it
be, since there was also the Divine Ubiquity?
Brooding on these matters, papa finished breakfast somewhat silently,
and lit his pipe.
“A beautiful day,” said Rome, smoking her cigarette at the open window.
“I shall be out for lunch and tea, papa. I am joining a party of
pleasure; we are going to explore, in our cars, to Newlands Corner,
where we shall have trials of skill and of speed. You won’t come with
me, I suppose?”
“No, thank you, dear, I think not. I’m too old for trials of skill and
speed; too old, even, for exploring.”
Precisely, thought Rome, glancing at him with her indulgent smile, what
papa was not and never would be. He would very surely go exploring this
morning, searching the riches of the spiritual kingdoms. Much more
exciting than Newlands Corner.... To papa at seventy-seven, as to Mr.
R. J. Campbell at whatever age he might be, theology could still seem
new. Rome wondered whether it was an advantage or a misfortune that
to her, at forty-eight, all theologies, as most other of the world’s
businesses, seemed so very old. The only things that seemed new to her
in 1907 were taximeter cabs.
“Well, good-bye, dear, and good luck,” Rome wished her papa.
Of 1907 there is not very much more to record. Two or three items of
news may perhaps be mentioned. Maurice’s son Roger, aged twenty-four,
now attached, at his own urgent desire, to the literary side of
his father’s paper--(“He can’t do much harm there, I suppose,”
Maurice said, “though he’ll not do any good either; he hasn’t the
brains.”)--published a novel. It was a long novel, and it was about
a youth not unlike what Roger conceived himself to be, only his home
was different, for his father was a church-warden and bare the bag in
church, and bullied and beat and prayed over his children; fathers in
fiction must be like this, not heretical and intelligent journalists.
The book conducted the youth from the nursery through his private and
public schools (house matches, school politics, vice, expulsions,
and so on), through Cambridge (the Union, the river, tobacconists’
assistants, tripos), to journalistic, social and literary London, where
it left him, at twenty-four, having just published his first novel,
which was a great success.
“God, what tripe,” Maurice commented, but to himself, as he turned the
pages. “Exactly what the boy _would_ write, I fear. No better,
no worse. Well, poor lad, he’s pleased with it enough. And it will
probably be handsomely reviewed. It’s the stuff to give the public all
right.” His thoughts strayed to a familiar, rather bitter point. If he
had been given (by Amy: how fantastic a thought!) a son with brains; a
son with a hard, clear head or an original imagination; a son who, if
he wrote at all, wouldn’t produce the stuff to give the public, a son
who, like himself, would see the public damned first....
Roger was, as his father had predicted, handsomely reviewed, for the
Edwardians rather liked the biography-of-a-young-man type of novel, and
loved details of school life. Roger had his feet well on the ladder of
successful fiction-writing. Roger would be all right. Meanwhile, his
head swelled even larger than before. His father perceived that the
innocent youth really believed his reviewers, and conceived himself to
be a writer and a clever young man.
The other items I record of the year 1907 I quote from the diary of
Imogen for the 16th of March.
“_Indomitable_ launched, Glasgow. Largest and quickest cruiser in
the world. 17,250 tons. 41,000 h.p. 25 knots. _Invincible_ and
_Inflexible_, same type, building. Finished book, began to type
it. Got guinea prize from _Saturday Westminster_ for poem.”
21
WHITHER?
And so to the last years of Edwardianism. In them that gay, eager,
cultivated period listed gently to the political left. The Socialist
Budget, as it was called by its opponents, “the end of all things” as
Lord Rosebery a little optimistically called it, agitated the country.
Old Age Pensions were at last established, to the disgust of Tories,
who had, however, when members of Parliament, to be careful how they
expressed their disgust, for fear of their needy constituents. “Whither
are we drifting?” enquired the Conservative press, in anger and fear.
“Here is Socialism unabashed: the thin end of the wedge which shall at
last undermine the integrity and liberty of our Constitution.” Here
were sixty millions a year, not insurance but a free dole, squandered
on supporting old persons who might just as well be supported in
workhouses. What would that come to in Dreadnoughts? Anyhow, we had
got to lay down six or seven Dreadnoughts a year for the present, if
we were to be to Germany in the ratio of two keels to one, which was
assuredly essential. “They are ringing their bells; they will soon
be wringing their hands,” said the Tory leaders. The Radical element
in the government strengthened; Sir Henry Campbell Bannerman died,
and in Mr. Asquith’s ministry Mr. Lloyd George was Chancellor of
the Exchequer. But it remained, on the whole, a Liberal-Imperialist
government, and left most of the radicalism to Labour, whose
parliamentary strength was increasing and unifying. Wherever we were
drifting, it was not towards extreme radicalism.
As to Ireland, a bill was passed to reduce her docks, thistles and
noxious weeds: no other bill.
Parliamentary affairs and party politics were no more exciting and no
more tedious (for that is impossible) than usual. Of more interest
were the first flying machines that really flew, the drawings of Mr.
Augustus John exhibited at the New English Art Club and condemned by
all critics (except the few who liked the kind of thing), as essays
in a savage and childish archaism, and deliberate insults to our
intelligence; (whither indeed was art drifting, when such drawings
could be praised?); and the establishment of the White City at
Shepherds Bush, with the Franco-British Exhibition (sadly dull) and
flip-flaps, switchbacks, wiggle-woggles and scenic railways (most
exciting, and an insidious snare for pocket money; you could get rid
there in one evening of the careful hoardings of weeks; also, if you
were as weak in the stomach as Imogen, you felt repentant after a few
goes). Thither President Fallières, on a visit to King Edward, was
taken, to enjoy the Franco-British Exhibition and cement the _entente
cordiale_, which, however, needed it less then than now, for the
Edwardians were on the whole most enthusiastic about this international
understanding. “There is no longer a Channel,” they said, publicly and
politely; but in their hearts, for they were no more foolish than we,
they still gave thanks for this useful, if unpleasing, strip of sea.
To forge faster the other link in the Triple Entente, that only
possible guarantee for a world peace, King Edward visited the Tsar of
all the Russias, at Reval. So there we were, grasping these two great
military powers by the hand, ready to face any emergency. We had got
ahead of Germany in this matter of Russia. For all the European Powers,
discreetly averting their eyes from the chronic blood stains on the
bear’s savage claws, were courting her for her legions. To have the
bear at their beck and call--that was what everyone wanted, against the
emergencies which might arise. And never was a time when emergencies
seemed more imminent, more dangerous, more frequent; such a state of
simmering unrest was Europe’s in the days of Edward the Peacemaker. Of
the Kaiser Wilhelm and his Uncle Bertie it has been said that their
relations “lapsed into comparative calm only when they were apart from
one another.” Their subjects hated and feared each other; the press in
each country stirred up terror of invasion by the other; “the German
invasion,” “the English invasion”--these phrases were bandied about in
two jealous, frightened empires. The German spy scare, the British spy
scare, these fevers were worked up in the jingo press of two countries.
“You English are mad, mad, mad,” said Wilhelm. “I strive without
ceasing to improve relations and you retort that I am your arch-enemy.
You make it very hard for me.”
For that matter, nations always make it hard for one another; it is
their function. We did make it hard for Germany, and Germany made it
hard for us, and France made it hard for everyone.
Anyhow, here was the Triple Entente, full-armed, to meet the Triple
Alliance, and some one or other would see to it that they did meet
before long.
The chief European emergency which arose at the moment was an attack of
megalomania on the part of Servia, in 1909. The Serbs had the madness
to dream of a greater Servia, which should unite the scattered peoples
of their race--“a dream,” said the English press, “as hopeless as that
of Poland _rediviva_. Greater Servia either will be realised under
the sceptre of the Hapsburgs, or will not be realised at all.” The
awkwardness of the situation, so far as we were concerned, was that
Russia was, as usual, backing her mad little militant friend, and had
to be dissuaded with great tact from upsetting the apple cart. However,
a joint note to Servia from the Powers quieted her for the time being,
and the lid was shut down temporarily on the seething European kettle
of fish.
Other intriguing matters of this year were the building, in British
dockyards, of three huge battleships for Brazil, which disgusted
others than young Imogen Carrington; the Olympic Games in July; the
publication of various not unamusing books; and the deaths of two old
men, Algernon Swinburne and George Meredith. Our two greatest Grand
Old Men had departed from us, and no more would pilgrims alight at the
Pines, Putney, or go exploring to Box Hill. The office of our literary
G. O. M. was filled now only by Mr. Thomas Hardy, for Mr. Henry James
was still an American. Sometimes one speculates, aghast, what would
happen should we ever be left with no candidates for that honourable
post--that is to say, with no celebrated literary man or woman (for
there might, though improbably, be a G. O. W. some day) over seventy
years, no Master for the younger writers to greet on the festival of
his birth. It would be an undignified state of affairs indeed; and one
need not anticipate it at present, for behind Mr. Hardy there looms
more than one candidate of respectable claims.
The closing years of this reign were brightened further by Commander
Peary and Dr. Cook, who both maintained that they had discovered the
North Pole. It was ultimately decided that only the Commander had
done so, as the doctor had had the misfortune to mislay his papers
in Greenland; but his was a sporting venture, and deserving of all
applause, and he had a good run for his money.
And so an end to Edwardianism. The new Georgianism dawned on a nervous,
gay, absorbed nation, experimenting in new but cautious legislation,
alive, on the whole, to new literature and new art, alive wholly to
whatever enjoyment it could find, and thoroughly tied up in continental
politics, so that when that mine was fired we should go up with it
sky-high.