The seventy-three “reds,” detained on that asylum as undesirables,
who sent an “ultimatum,” modelled on the Berlin pattern, to the
Congressional Committee, would have charmed Gilbert and inspired
Sullivan. The solemnity with which they notified the indifferent
Congressmen that at half-past eight o’clock, Tuesday morning, November
25th, 1919, they would declare a hunger strike, the consequences of
which “shall fall upon the head of the administration of the island,”
was surpassed by the calmness with which they gave warning that they
would no longer attend the hearings of the committee. Like the heroine
of Mr. Davidson’s ballad, who told the Devil she would not stay in
hell, these gentlemen registered themselves as outside the pale of
coercion. They seemed to think that by refusing to eat, they could bend
the law to their will, and that by refusing to have their cases heard,
they could stop the slow process of deportation.
It is painful to record this lack of healthy humour on the part of
political offenders. Ordinary criminals are as a rule neat hands at a
joke, a practical joke especially, and convicts respond alacritously
to all intelligent efforts to amuse them. Comedians, who from time
to time have offered their services to relieve the sad monotony of
prison life, have found their audiences alert and responsive. Not a
joke is lost, not a song or a skit but wins its way to favour. It is
this engaging receptiveness which has made our captive thieves and
cut-throats so dear to the public heart. They dilate with correct
emotions when they hear good music; and, in the dearth of other
diversions, they can produce very creditable entertainments of their
own. The great Sing Sing pageant in honour of Warden Osborne was full
of fun and fancy. It would have done credit to the dramatic talent of
any college in the land. No wonder that we detect a certain ostentation
in the claims made by honest men to familiarity with rogues. The
Honourable T. P. O’Connor published a few years ago a series of papers
with the arrogant title, “Criminals I Have Known.” Could he have
attracted readers by boasting the acquaintanceship of any other class
of fellow-creatures?
The sourness incidental to a grievance deprives the political offender
of this winning vivacity. He is lamentably high-flown in his language,
and he has no sense of the ridiculous. The Sinn Feiners who wrecked
the office of a Dublin newspaper because it had alluded to one of the
men who tried to kill Lord French as a “would-be assassin,” should
expend some of the money received from the United States (in return
for stoning our sailors in Cork and Queenstown) in the purchase of
a dictionary. “Assassin” is as good a word as “murderer” any day of
the week, and a “would-be assassin” is no other than a “would-be
murderer.” The Sinn Feiners explained in a letter to the editor that
the calumniated man was really a “high-souled youth,” but this goes
without the saying. _All_ political offenders are high-souled youths.
It is their sub-title, eligible in oratory and obituary notices, but
not in the simple language of the press.
Mr. W. C. Brownell alludes casually to the social sentiment which
instinctively prefers the criminal to the police; but he declines
to analyze its rationale. Perhaps, as I have already hinted, we may
inherit it from our father, Adam, who could have felt no great kindness
for Saint Michael, the first upholder of the given law. Justice is
an unaccommodating, unappealing virtue. Deep in our hearts is a
distaste for its rulings, and a distrust of the fallible creatures
who administer it. Mr. Howells, writing ten years ago in the “North
American,” condemned without reserve the authority which, however
assailable, is our only bulwark against anarchy. “The State,” he said,
“is a collective despot, mostly inexorable, always irresponsible, and
entirely inaccessible to the personal appeals which have sometimes
moved the obsolete tyrant to pity. In its selfishness and meanness
it is largely the legislated and organized ideal of the lowest and
stupidest of its citizens, whose daily life is nearest the level of
barbarism.”
I am not without hope that the events of the past ten years modified
Mr. Howells’s point of view. If the German State revealed itself as
something perilously close to barbarism, the Allied States presented
a superb concentration of their peoples’ unfaltering purpose. That
the world was saved from degradation too deep to be measured was due
to individual heroism, animated, upheld, and focused by the State.
Though temperamentally conservative, I feel no shadow of regret for
the “obsolete” and very picturesque tyrant who softened or hardened
by caprice. I would rather trust our stupid and venal authorities,
because, while each member of a legislative body is kind to his own
deficiencies, he is hard on his neighbour’s. Collective criticism is a
fair antidote for collective despotism, and robs it of its terrors.
If we were less incorrigibly sentimental, we should be more nobly kind.
Sentimentalism is, and has always been, virgin of standards. It is,
and it has always been, insensible to facts. The moralists who, in the
first years of the war, protested against American munitions because
they were fresh-made for purposes of destruction, would have flung the
victory into Germany’s hands because her vast stores of munitions had
been prepared in times of peace. When the news of the Belgian campaign
sickened the heart of humanity, more than one voice was raised to say
that England had, by her treatment of militant suffragists (a treatment
so feeble, so wavering, so irascible, and so soft-hearted that it
would not have crushed a rebellious snail), forfeited her right to
protest against the dishonouring of Belgian women. The moral confusion
which follows mental confusion with a sure and steady step is equally
dangerous and distasteful. It denies our integrity, and it makes a mock
of our understanding.
An irritated Englishman, who must have come into close quarters with
British pacifists,--the least lovely of their species,--has protested
in “Blackwood’s Magazine” that the one thing dearer than the criminal
to the heart of the humanitarian is the enemy of his country, whose
offences he condones, and whose punishment he sincerely pities. Thus it
happened that British women joined American women in protesting against
the return of the cattle stolen during the last months of the war from
northern France. They said--what was undoubtedly true--that German
children needed the milk. French children also needed the milk (witness
the death-rates from tuberculosis in and about Lille), but this
concerned them less. The herds belonged to France, and their sympathy
went out to the raiders rather than to the raided.
In fact all pacifists seem disposed to look benignly upon the “noble
old piracy game.” The Honourable Bertrand Russell, whose annoyance
at England’s going to war deepened into resentment at her winning it
(a consummation which, to speak truth, he did his best to avert),
expressed regret that the sufferings of Belgium should have been
mistakenly attributed to Germany. Not Berlin, he said, but war must
be held to blame; and if war were a natural phenomenon, like an earth
quake or a thunderstorm, he would have been right. The original
Attila was not displeased to be called the “Scourge of God,” and
pious Christians of the fifth century acquiesced in this shifting
of liability. They said, and they probably believed, that Heaven had
chosen a barbarian to punish them for their sins. To-day we are less at
home in Zion, and more insistent upon international law. The sternest
duty of civilization is the assigning of responsibility for private and
for public crimes as the rules of evidence direct.
In the Christmas issue of the “Atlantic Monthly,” 1919, another
Englishman of letters, Mr. Clutton-Brock, preached a sermon to
Americans (we get a deal of instruction from our neighbours), the
burden of which was the paramount duty of forgiveness. Naturally he
illustrated his theme with an appeal for Germany, because there is
so much to be forgiven her. That he made no distinction between the
injuries which a citizen of Lille or Louvain, and the injuries which a
reader of the “Atlantic Monthly” has to forgive, was eminently right,
forgiveness being due for the greatest as well as for the least of
offences. The Frenchman or the Belgian who forgives “from his heart”
reaches a higher standard than we do; but the ethics of Christianity
bind him to that standard. It is his supreme spiritual test.
What was less endearing in Mr. Clutton-Brock’s sermon was the playful
manner in which he made light of wrongs which, to say the least, were
not matters for sport. We were called on to pardon, “not as an act of
virtue, but in good-humour, because we are all absurd, and all need
forgiveness.... We all fail, and we have no right to say that another
man’s, or another nation’s, failure is worse than our own.... We must
govern our behaviour to each other by the axiom that no man is to be
judged by his past.”
These sentences aptly illustrate my contention that the sentimentalist
is as unconcerned with standards as with facts. “Absurd” is not the
word to apply to Germany’s campaign in France and Flanders. A man
whose home has been burned and whose wife has been butchered cannot
be expected to regard the incident as an absurdity, or to recall it
with good-humour. The sight of a child bayoneted on the roadside (five
wounds in one poor little body picked up near Namur) arouses something
deep and terrible in the human heart. To say that one man’s failure is
no worse than another man’s failure, that one nation’s failure is no
worse than another nation’s failure, is to deny any vital distinction
between degrees of right and wrong. It is to place the German Kaiser by
the side of Belgium’s King, and George Washington by the side of George
the Third.
And by what shall men be judged, if not by their past? What other
evidence can we seek? What other test can we apply? A man who has run
away with his neighbour’s wife may not care to repeat the offence;
he may be cured forever of this particular form of covetousness; but
he is not welcomed in sedately conducted households. A defaulter may
be converted to the belief that honesty is the best policy; but few
there are who will entrust him with funds, and fewer still who will
receive him as a gentleman. If such behaviour is, as Mr. Clutton-Brock
authoritatively asserts, opposed to “a Christian technique,” it defines
the value of facts, and it holds upright the standard of honour.
The well-meaning ladies and gentlemen who flood society with appeals
to “open the prison door,” and let our good-will shine as a star
upon political prisoners, seem curiously indifferent as to what the
liberated ones will do with their liberty. There are few of us so base
as to desire to deprive our fellow-creatures of sunlight and the open
road. There are not many of us so unpractical as to want to keep them
a burden upon the State, if we have any assurance that they will not
be a menace to the State when released. Sufficiency, security, and
freedom have been defined as the prerogatives of civilized man. The cry
of the revolutionist for freedom is met by the call of sober citizens
for security. Sympathy for the lawless (the beloved sinner) is not
warranted in denying equity to the law-abiding, who have a right to
protection from the Republic which they voluntarily serve and obey.
The Virtuous Victorian
When Miss Amy Lowell, in her essay on Émile Verhaeren, says that the
influence of Zola on the younger writers of France and Belgium was
necessary “to down the long set of sentimental hypocrisies known in
England as ‘Victorian,’” she repeats a formula which has been in
popular use for many years, and to which we attach no very exact
significance. “Early-Victorian,” “mid-Victorian,” we use the phrases
glibly, and without being aware that the mental attitude to which
we refer is sometimes not Victorian at all, but Georgian. Take, for
example, that fairly famous sentiment about the British navy being
“if possible, more distinguished in its domestic virtues than in its
national importance.” Nothing more oppressively smug was ever uttered
in the reign of the virtuous Queen; yet it was written by the most
humorous and most pitiless of Georgian novelists, and it expressed the
conviction of her soul.
When we permit ourselves to sneer at Victorian hypocrisies, we allude,
as a rule, to the superficial observance of religious practices, and
to the artificial reticence concerning illicit sexual relations. The
former affected life more than it did literature; the latter affected
literature more than it did life. A resolute silence is apt to imply
or involve an equally resolute denial; and there came a time when
certain plain truths were denied because there was no other way of
keeping them out of sight. Novelists and poets conformed to a standard
which was set by the taste of their day. So profoundly was the great
Victorian laureate influenced by this taste that he grew reluctant to
accept those simple old English stories, those charming old English
traditions, the propriety or impropriety of which had never been a
matter for concern. His “fair Rosamond” believes herself a wedded wife,
and so escapes culpability. His “Maid Marian” wanders through Sherwood
Forest under the respectable chaperonage of her father, and will not
permit to Robin Hood the harmless liberties common among betrothed
lovers.
“Robin, I will not kiss thee,
For that belongs to marriage; but I hold thee
The husband of my heart; the noblest light
That ever flashed across my life, and I
Embrace thee with the kisses of the soul.
_Robin_: I thank thee.”
It is a bit frigid and a bit stilted for the merry outlaws. “If
love were all,” we might admit that conventionalism had chilled the
laureate’s pen; but, happily for the great adventures we call life
and death, love is not all. The world swings on its way, peopled by
other men than lovers; and it is to Tennyson we owe the most splendid
denial of domesticity--and duty--that was ever made deathless by verse.
With what unequalled ardour his Ulysses abandons home and country, the
faithful, but ageing, Penelope, the devoted, but dull, Telemachus, and
the troublesome business of law-making! He does not covet safety. He
does not enjoy the tranquil reward of his labours, nor the tranquil
discharge of his obligations. He will drink life to the lees. He will
seek the still untravelled world, and take what buffets fortune sends
him.
“For my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles whom we knew.”
Poor Penelope! What chance has she against such glad decision, such
golden dreams! It is plain that the Ithacan navy was less distinguished
than the British navy for the development of domestic virtues. Until
such time as Germany fulfils her threat, and drives the “bastard tongue
of canting island pirates” from its hold on the civilized world,
Tennyson’s Ulysses will survive as the embodiment of the adventurous
spirit which brooks no restraint, and heeds no liability.
The great Victorian novelists were well aware that, albeit the average
man does his share of love-making, he neither lives nor dies for
love. Mr. Edmund Gosse, reared in the strictest sect of Plymouth
Brethren, and professing religion at ten, was nevertheless permitted
by his father to read the novels of Dickens, because they dealt with
the passion of love in a humorous manner. More often they deal with
it in a purely perfunctory manner, recognizing it as a prelude to
marriage, and as something to which the novelist must not forget to
make an occasional reference. Nicholas Nickleby is a young man and
a hero. Consequently an assortment of female virtues and of female
charms is labelled, docketed, provided with ringlets and a capacity for
appropriate swooning,--and behold, Nicholas has a wife. Kate Nickleby’s
husband is even more sketchily outlined. He has a name, and--we are
told--an impetuous and generous disposition. He makes his appearance
when a suitor is needed, stands up to be married when a husband is
called for, and that is all there is of him. But what do these puppets
matter in a book which gives us Mrs. Nickleby, Vincent Crummles, Fanny
Squeers, and the ever-beloved Kenwigses. It took a great genius to
enliven the hideous picture of Dotheboys Hall with the appropriate
and immortal Fanny, whom we could never have borne to lose. It took a
great genius to evolve from nothingness the name “Morleena Kenwigs.” So
perfect a result, achieved from a mere combination of letters, confers
distinction on the English alphabet.
The charge of conventionalism brought against Thackeray and Trollope
has more substance, because these novelists essayed to portray life
soberly and veraciously. “Trollope,” says Sir Leslie Stephen, “was
in the awkward position of a realist, bound to ignore realities.”
Thackeray was restrained, partly by the sensitive propriety of British
readers who winced at the frank admission of sexual infirmities, and
partly by the quality of his own taste. In deference to the public, he
forbore to make Arthur Pendennis the lover of Fanny Bolton; and when
we remember the gallant part that Fanny plays when safely settled at
Clavering, her loyalty to her old friend, Bows, and her dexterity in
serving him, we are glad she went unsmirched into that sheltered port.
The restrictions so cheerfully accepted by Thackeray, and his
reticence--which is merely the reticence observed by every gentleman
of his day--leave him an uncrippled spectator and analyst of the
complicated business of living. The world is not nearly so simple a
place as the sexualists seem to consider it. To the author of “Vanity
Fair” it was not simple at all. Acting and reacting upon one another,
his characters crowd the canvas, their desires and ambitions, their
successes and failures, inextricably interwoven into one vast social
scheme. It is not the decency of Thackeray’s novels which affronts us
(we are seldom unduly aware that they are decent), but the severity
with which he judges his own creations, and his rank and shameless
favouritism. What business has he to coddle Rawdon Crawley (“honest
Rawdon,” forsooth!), to lay siege to our hearts with all the skill of
a great artificer, and compel our liking for this fool and reprobate?
What business has he to pursue Becky Sharp like a prosecuting
attorney, to trip her up at every step, to betray, to our discomfiture,
his cold hostility? He treats Blanche Amory in the same merciless
fashion, and no one cares. But Becky! Becky, that peerless adventuress
who, as Mr. Brownell reminds us, ran her memorable career before
psychology was thought of as an essential element of fiction. Becky
whose scheming has beguiled our weary hours, and recompensed us for the
labour of learning to read. How shall we fathom the mental attitude of
a novelist who could create such a character, control her fluctuating
fortunes, lift her to dizzy heights, topple her to ruin, extricate her
from the dust and débris of her downfall,--and hate her!
Trollope, working on a lower level, observant rather than creative,
was less stern a moralist than Thackeray, but infinitely more cautious
of his foot-steps. He kept soberly in the appointed path, and never
once in thirty years trod on the grass or flower-beds. Lady Glencora
Palliser thinks, indeed, of leaving her husband; but she does not
do it, and her continency is rewarded after a fashion which is very
satisfactory to the reader. Mr. Palliser aspires somewhat stiffly to
be the lover of Lady Dumbello; but that wise worldling, ranking love
the least of assets, declines to make any sacrifice at its shrine.
Trollope unhesitatingly and proudly claimed for himself the quality of
harmlessness. “I do believe,” he said, “that no girl has risen from
the reading of my pages less modest than she was before, and that
some girls may have learned from them that modesty is a charm worth
possessing.”
This is one of the admirable sentiments which should have been left
unspoken. It is a true word as far as it goes, but more suggestive
of “Little Women,” or “A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite’s Life,” than
of those virile, varied and animated novels which make no appeal to
immaturity. In Trollope’s teeming world, as in the teeming world about
us, a few young people fall in love and are married, but this is an
infrequent episode. Most of his men and women, like the men and women
whom we know, are engrossed in other activities. Once, indeed, Bishop
Proudie wooed and won Mrs. Proudie. Once Archdeacon Grantly wooed and
won Mrs. Grantly. But neither of these gentlemen could possibly have
belonged to “the great cruising brotherhood of the Pilgrims of Love.”
“Le culte de la femme” has never been a popular pastime in Britain,
and Trollope was the last man on the island to have appreciated its
significance. He preferred politics, the hunting-field, and the church.
Yet surely Archdeacon Grantly is worth a brace of lovers. With what
sincerity he is drawn, and with what consummate care! A churchman
who, as Sir Leslie Stephen somewhat petulantly observes, “gives
no indication of having any religious views whatever, beyond a
dislike to dissenters.” A solidly respectable member of provincial
clerical society, ambitious, worldly, prizing wealth, honouring rank,
unspiritual, unprogressive,--but none the less a man who would have
proved his worth in the hour of England’s trial.
It is a testimony to the power of fiction that, having read with
breathless concern and through countless pages Mr. Britling’s
reflections on the war, my soul suddenly cried out within me for
the reflections of Archdeacon Grantly. Mr. Britling is an acute and
sensitive thinker. The archdeacon’s mental processes are of the
simplest. Mr. Britling has winged his triumphant flight from “the
clumsy, crawling, snobbish, comfort-loving caterpillar of Victorian
England.” The archdeacon is still confessedly a grub. Mr. Britling has
“truckled to no domesticated god.” The archdeacon’s deity is open to
such grievous innuendoes. Yet I wish I could have stood on the smooth
lawn of Plumstead, and have heard what the archdeacon had to say when
he learned that an English scholar and gentleman had smuggled out of
England, by the help of a female “confidential agent,” a treacherous
appeal to the President of the United States, asking that pressure
should be brought upon fighting Englishmen in the interests of peace. I
wish I could have heard the cawing rooks of Plumstead echo his mighty
wrath. For there is that in the heart of a man, even a Victorian
churchman with a love of preferment and a distaste for dissenters,
which holds scatheless the sacred thing called honour.
Trollope is as frank about the archdeacon’s frailties as Mr. Wells is
frank about Mr. Britling’s frailties. In piping days of peace, the
archdeacon’s contempt for Mr. Britling would have been as sincere and
hearty as Mr. Britling’s contempt for the archdeacon. But under the
hard, heroic discipline of war there would have come to the archdeacon,
as to Mr. Britling, a white dawn of revelation. Both men have the
liberating qualities of manhood.