|I see that the ghouls have descended upon George Meredith, and are
desecrating his remains. They have learned from the life of him just
published that he did not get on well with his father, or his eldest
son, and that he did not attend his first wife's funeral. Above all,
he was a snob. He was ashamed of the tailoring business from which he
sprang, concealed the fact that he was bom at Portsmouth, and generally
turned his Grecian profile to the world and left it to be assumed that
his pedigree was wrapped in mystery and magnificence.
I daresay it is all true. Many of us have an indifferent record at home
and most of us like to turn our Grecian profiles to the world, if we
have Grecian profiles. We are like the girl in Hardy's story who always
managed to walk on the right side of her lover, because she fancied that
the left side of her face was her strong point. The most distinguished
and, I think, the noblest American of our time always turns his profile
to the camera--and a beautiful profile it is--for reasons quite
obvious and quite pardonable to those who have seen the birth-mark that
disfigures the other cheek. I suspect that I do not myself object to
being caught unaware in favourable attitudes or pleasing situations that
dispose the observer to agreeable impressions. And, indeed, why should I
(or you) be ashamed to give-a pleasant thrill to anybody if it is in
our power. If we pretend we are above these human frailties, what is the
meaning of the pains we take about choosing a hat, or about the cut of
a coat, or the colour of a cloth for the new suit? Why do we so seldom
find pleasure in a photograph of ourselves--so seldom feel that it
does justice to that benignant and Olympian ideal of ourselves which we
cherish secretly in our hearts? I should have to admit, if I went into
the confession box, that I had never seen a photograph of myself that
had satisfied me. And I fancy you would do the same if you were honest.
We may pretend to ourselves that it is only abstract beauty or absolute
truth that we are concerned about, but we know better. We are thinking
of our Grecian profile.
It is no doubt regrettable to find that great men are so often afflicted
with little weaknesses. There are some people who delight in pillorying
the immortals and shying dead cats and rotten eggs at them.
They enjoy the discovery that no one is better than he should be. It
gives them a comfortable feeling to discover that the austere outside of
the lord Angelo conceals the libertine. If you praise Caesar they will
remind you that after dinner he took emetics; if Brutus, they will say
he made an idol of his public virtue. They like to remember that Lamb
was not quite the St Charles he is represented to be, but took far
too much wine at dinner and dosed beautifully, but alcoholically,
afterwards, as you may read in De Quincey. They like to recall that
Scott was something of a snob, and put the wine-glass that the Prince
Regent had used at dinner in his pocket, sitting down on it afterwards
in a moment of happy forgetfulness. In short, they go about like
Alcibiades mutilating the statues of Hermes (if he was indeed the
culprit), and will leave us nothing in human nature that we can entirely
reverence.
I suppose they are right enough on the facts. Considering what
multitudinous persons we are it would be a miracle if, when we button
up ourselves in the morning we did not button up some individual of
unpleasant propensities, whom we pretend we do not know. I have never
been interested in my pedigree. I am sure it is a very ancient one,
and I leave it at that. But I once made a calculation--based on the
elementary fact that I had two parents and they had each two parents,
and so on--and came to the conclusion that about the time of the Norman
Conquest my ancestors were much more numerous than the population
then inhabiting this island. I am aware that this proves rather too
much--that it is an example of the fact that you can prove anything by
statistics, including the impossible. But the truth remains that I am
the temporary embodiment of a very large number of people--of millions
of millions of people, if you trace me back to my ancestors who used to
sharpen flints some six hundred thousand years ago. It would be singular
if in such a crowd there were not some ne'er-do-wells jostling about
among the nice, reputable persons who, I flatter myself, constitute my
Parliamentary majority. Sometimes I fancy that, in a snap election taken
at a moment of public excitement within myself, the ne'er-do-wells get
on top. These accidents will happen, and the best I can hope is that the
general trend of policy in the multitudinous kingdom that I carry under
my hat is in the hands of the decent people.
And that is the best we can expect from anybody--the great as well as
the least. If we demand of the supreme man that he shall be a perfect
whole we shall have no supreme man--only a plaster saint. Certainly we
shall have no great literature. Shakespeare did not sit aloof like a
perfect god imagining the world of imperfect creatures that he created.
The world was within him and he was only the vehicle of his enormous
ancestry and of the tumultuous life that they reproduced in the theatre
of his mind. In him was the mirth of a roystering Falstaff of long ago,
the calculating devilry of some Warwickshire Iago, the pity of Hubert,
the perplexity of some village Hamlet, the swagger of Ancient Pistol,
the bucolic simplicity of Cousin Silence, the mingled nobleness and
baseness of Macbeth, the agony of Lear, the sweetness of many a maiden
who walked by Avon's banks in ancient days and lived again in
the Portias and Rosalinds of his mind. All these people dwelt in
Shakespeare. They were the ghosts of his ancestors. He was, like the
rest of us, not a man, but multitudes of men. He created all these
people because he was all these people, contained in a larger measure
than any man who ever lived all the attributes, good and bad, of
humanity. Each character was a peep into the gallery of his ancestors.
Meredith, himself, recognised the ancestral source of creative power.
When Lady Butcher asked him to explain his insight into the character of
women he replied, “It is the spirit of my mother in me.” It was indeed
the spirit of many mothers working in and through him.
It is this infinitely mingled yarn from which we are woven that makes it
so difficult to find and retain a contemporary hero. It was never
more difficult than in these searching days. I was walking along
the Embankment last evening with a friend--a man known alike for his
learning and character--when he turned to me and said, “I will
never have a hero again.” We had been speaking of the causes of
the catastrophe of Paris, and his remark referred especially to his
disappointment with President Wilson. I do not think he was quite fair
to the President. He did not make allowance for the devil's broth of
intrigue and ambitions into which the President was plunged on this side
of the Atlantic. But, leaving that point aside, his remark expressed a
very common feeling. There has been a calamitous slump in heroes. They
have fallen into as much disrepute as kings.
And for the same reason. Both are the creatures of legend. They are the
fabulous offspring of comfortable times--supermen reigning on Olympus
and standing between us common people and the unknown. Then come the
storm and the blinding lightnings, and the Olympians have to get busy
and prove that they are what we have taken them for. And behold, they
are discovered to be ordinary men as we are, reeds shaken by the wind,
feeble folk like you and I, tossed along on the tide of events as
helpless as any of us. Their heads are no longer in the clouds, and
their feet have come down from Sinai. And we find that they are feet of
clay.
It is no new experience in times of upheaval. Writing on the morrow of
the Napoleonic wars, when the world was on the boil as it is now, Byron
expressed what we are feeling to-day very accurately: