His romantic realism seems to plunge desperately into sentimentalism
when he contemplates very old age and death. Dr. Johnson had a strange
horror of death, "so much so, Sir," as he said to Boswell, "that the
whole of life is but keeping away the thoughts of it." But he achieved
quietness of mind when his end came and his last recorded words were
of a benignant character. "God bless you, my dear!" he said to Miss
Morris, forbidden by his faithful negro servant, Francis, to come
nearer to his bed than the outer room. Mr. Bennett seldom, if ever,
permits his very old people to die placidly. Their disappointments
press hardly upon them, if they are not prevented from remembering them
by senility or gross disease. Paralysis claims many of them. Age does
not beautify them nor bring peace to them, nor do they face their
end with undiminished heads. He is remarkably consistent in this view
of old age and death, and perhaps it is natural that he should regard
it so gloomily when one remembers how completely he is enthralled by
youth. But his view is an unbalanced one.
Old age is not always graceless and crabbed and unlovely. Such an
old man as Mr. Thomas Hardy has a grace and quietness and courage
discoverable only in those who have endured many things but have not
been conquered by them. Mr. Bennett, however, looks upon age as a
calamity which must, indeed, happen to all of us, if we live long
enough, but cannot possibly be mitigated.
He is able to detect the "young, slim, perhaps beautiful" girl in
the "fat, shapeless, ugly and grotesque" old woman, but he cannot so
easily detect the gracious old man or woman in the boy and girl. I
am oppressed sometimes by the thought that if Mr. Bennett had seen
the "young, slim, perhaps beautiful" girl, his romantic nature would
have let him down, yielding place to his cynicism, and he would have
detected the coming wrinkles on her brow, would have seen that her eyes
would grow dull, might even have pointed out her tendency to obesity.
"Of course, I should!" Mr. Bennett may retort, "for I am a realist as
well as a romantic, and in this case, I should have been right!" And
so he would, but the trouble is that, while Mr. Bennett romantically
and rightly sees the slim, perhaps beautiful girl in the fat old woman,
he always realistically and wrongly sees the fat old woman in the slim
young girl! I think that the spirit of "the Five Towns" is entirely
responsible for the fact that Mr. Bennett never sees beauty in age. It
is a harsh, acquisitive spirit, busy principally in the accumulation
of material things (despite the fact that it produces lovely pottery)
and inclined to measure a man's worth by the amount of his fortune. The
leisurely and gracious things of life are not the immediate or even the
ultimate concerns of life in "the Potteries," and old age is likely, in
such places, to be harsh and acquisitive. When men and women, who have
spent their activities entirely in money-making, reach the age at which
they possess much money but are no longer able to employ themselves in
its acquisition, they become crabbed, unlovely, mean, for they have
no resources. You cannot derive pleasure from literature or music or
painting or any other art when you bring to its consideration only the
fag-end of your life. One has seen men who were notorious among their
neighbours for their hard work--always engaged in their employment from
early morning until late night--seldom, if ever, resting or taking
holiday. One has seen these men, after they have retired from business,
so helpless without their work to occupy their minds that they steadily
declined into a condition of misery which brought about premature
death! They lived for one thing, and when that thing was no longer
available for them, they perished because they had no other resources
and it was too late to acquire any! Mr. Bennett must have seen such
men many times during his early years in "the Five Towns" and the
pitiful spectacle so impressed his mind that old age has become to him
a terrifying thing, a complete debâcle of the brain and energies. This
life, this youth, is so wonderful, so full of romantic possibilities,
that age and death seem to him merely obscene interruptions of an
enthralling spectacle.
V
Once only, so far as I can discover, did he make a poem. It was
published in _The English Review_ in the brave days when that magazine
was edited by Mr. Ford Madox Hueffer, and since it is singularly
characteristic, as a poem ought to be, of its author's outlook on life,
I quote it here in full. But first I must affirm my belief that _The
English Review_, under the editorship of Mr. Hueffer, was the greatest
magazine that this world has ever known. That is a tremendous title
to claim for any magazine, but I doubt whether any one, familiar with
great magazines, will seriously dispute it. The title of Mr. Bennett's
poem is "Town and Country." Here it is:
God made the country, and man made the town.
And so--man made the doctor, God the clown;
God made the mountain, and the ants their hill,
Where grinding servitudes each day fulfil.
God doubtless made the flowers, while in the hive
Unnatural bees against their passions strive.
God made the jackass and the bounding flea;
I render thanks to God that man made me.
Let those who recognize God's shaping power
Here but not there, in tree but not in tower,
In lane and field, but not in street and square,
And in man's work see nothing that is fair--
Bestir their feeble fancy to the old
Conception of a "country" made by God;
Where birds perceive the wickedness of strife
Against the winds, and lead the simple life
Nestless on God's own twigs; and squirrels, free
From carking care, exist through February
On nuts that God has stored. Let them agree
To leave the fields to God for just a year,
And then of God's own harvest make good cheer.
If one were a sentimentalist, one could describe that poem as a sign
of a blankly materialistic mind, with a turn for blasphemy, but if one
is what one ought to be, a romantic with a sense of reality, it will
appear to be a confession of faith in God _and_ man.