If some stranger from abroad asked me to point out to him the most
noteworthy things in England, I should first of all consider his
intellect. Were he a man of everyday level, I might indicate for his
wonder and admiration Greater London, the Black Country, South
Lancashire, and other features of our civilization which, despite eager
rivalry, still maintain our modern pre-eminence in the creation of
ugliness. If, on the other hand, he seemed a man of brains, it would be
my pleasure to take him to one of those old villages, in the midlands or
the west, which lie at some distance from a railway station, and in
aspect are still untouched by the baser tendencies of the time. Here, I
would tell my traveller, he saw something which England alone can show.
The simple beauty of the architecture, its perfect adaptation to the
natural surroundings, the neatness of everything though without
formality, the general cleanness and good repair, the grace of cottage
gardens, that tranquillity and security which make a music in the mind of
him who gazes--these are what a man must see and feel if he would
appreciate the worth and the power of England. The people which has made
for itself such homes as these is distinguished, above all things, by its
love of order; it has understood, as no other people, the truth that
"order is heaven's first law." With order it is natural to find
stability, and the combination of these qualities, as seen in domestic
life, results in that peculiarly English product, our name for
which--though but a pale shadow of the thing itself--has been borrowed by
other countries: comfort.
Then Englishman's need of "comfort" is one of his best characteristics;
the possibility that he may change in this respect, and become
indifferent to his old ideal of physical and mental ease, is the gravest
danger manifest in our day. For "comfort," mind you, does not concern
the body alone; the beauty and orderliness of an Englishman's home derive
their value, nay, their very existence, from the spirit which directs his
whole life. Walk from the village to the noble's mansion. It, too, is
perfect of its kind; it has the dignity of age, its walls are beautiful,
the gardens, the park about it are such as can be found only in England,
lovely beyond compare; and all this represents the same moral
characteristics as the English cottage, but with greater activities and
responsibilities. If the noble grow tired of his mansion, and, letting
it to some crude owner of millions, go to live in hotels and hired
villas; if the cottager sicken of his village roof, and transport himself
to the sixth floor of a "block" in Shoreditch; one sees but too well that
the one and the other have lost the old English sense of comfort, and, in
losing it, have suffered degradation alike as men and as citizens. It is
not a question of exchanging one form of comfort for another; the
instinct which made an Englishman has in these cases perished. Perhaps
it is perishing from among us altogether, killed by new social and
political conditions; one who looks at villages of the new type, at the
working-class quarters of towns, at the rising of "flats" among the
dwellings of the wealthy, has little choice but to think so. There may
soon come a day when, though the word "comfort" continues to be used in
many languages, the thing it signifies will be discoverable nowhere at
all.