_Another little job for the tombstone-maker;_
_At the local cemetery they’ve_
_Been very very busy with a brand-new grave,_
_For Snoozer’s_
_Snuffed it!_
I am afraid that I should have to grant Mr. Archer the verse: the second
line, especially, cannot be called a model of good craftsmanship.
But the chorus is very neat. It was varied with each verse. Another
correspondent’s specimen finishes with “For Frederick’s fragments.”
I must bow to the correspondent who suggests that the success of the song
about the bride with artificial limbs was at least as much due to lines
he quotes as it was to “’Arf a woman and ’arf a tree.” His lines are:
_I can’t change her!_
_No matter how I try,_
_But I’ll chop her up for firewood_
_In the sweet by-and-by._
An equally impolite chorus is that of Herbert Campbell’s _’Blige a Lady_
which another correspondent sends. The conductor, on a rainy day, asked
the inside males to give up a seat to a lady and go outside, and the
reply was on the lines of
_Said I, “Old chap, she may have my lap,_
_But I don’t get wet for her.”_
That is very typical music-hall; and it will be observed that it gets
its effect by sticking close, as Wordsworth advised, to the natural
phraseology and sequence of everyday speech.
Mr. Albert Chevalier, I admit, I did not mention. He has not been
primarily a music-hall artist, and Mr. Archer himself made an exception
of his songs. Some of Mr. Gus Elen’s certainly might be quoted: _e. g._
_’E dunno where ’e are_ and _What’s the Use of looking out for Work?_ I
am afraid that I am not sufficiently well informed to answer questions
as to the sources of supply of modern music-hall songs. The only thing
I have observed is that large numbers of the worst ones are composed
by persons whose names suggest that the use of the English language is
with them rather an acquired than an inherited characteristic. How far
the practice prevails of a particular star employing a tame author to
write the words of all his songs for him I do not know. I have never
consciously met a writer of music-hall songs, though I did know one
man who made two attempts to produce what he thought the right sort of
commodity. He sent them to an entrepreneur, but all his wit was wasted.
The chorus of one song mentioned a well-known and much-advertised
comestible: this wouldn’t do, as all the vendors of similar articles
would be jealous and, possibly, refuse to advertise any more on the
programme. In the other song the author had had the misfortune to hit
upon an idea which had been used before. His refrain was:
_And when the pie was opened_
_The birds began to sing._
But there was an old song with the same tail to it. It was a song about
a pigeon-pie which was no better than it should be. This reminds me that
in tabulating favourite music-hall subjects one should certainly have
mentioned bad smells. Throughout history any reference to unpleasant
smells has moved the Englishman to roars of laughter. Perhaps it is
because we so thoroughly dislike them. I don’t think that these odours
take all nations in quite the same way: but travellers on the Continent
are sometimes tempted to think that most nations do not notice them so
much as we do.
The music-hall versifier, usually feeble when funny, is certainly at his
worst when serious. Such of the war-songs as I have heard are dreadful.
Perhaps those I have not heard are better. Early in the war I was looking
into a music-shop window in Upper Shaftesbury Avenue and saw two typical
titles. One was _Only a Bit of Khaki that Daddy wore at Mons_, and the
other was _The Little Irish Red Cross Nurse_. I did not dare to buy them,
but I could not help admiring the ingenuity of the author of the second
who had managed to work the perennial Irish Girl theme so neatly into the
new subject. All music-hall poets seem to be obsessed by Irish girls.
They will even work them into translations of foreign songs which do not
mention them. Five or six years ago a German music-hall song which had
nothing whatever to do with Irish girls was imported and became very
popular here. The ideas of the original were largely preserved, but an
Irish girl had to be stuck in. But _quo, Musa, tendis?_ If I go on like
this I shall end by agreeing with Mr. Archer.
Utopias
I saw recently a very entertaining article by Mr. Walter Lippman in the
_New Republic_ on the subject of Utopias. Mr. Lippman raised the question
of why it was Utopias had gone out of fashion. Since Mr. Wells wrote his
_Modern Utopia_ no one has had a shot.
It is, of course, not the longest period in human history which has
gone without a new Utopia. As far as I know, nothing of the sort was
constructed between the time of Plato and that of Sir Thomas More.
Reasons might, no doubt, be discovered for this long lapse. The Romans
were too realistic to bother about such things, and in the Middle Ages
the only people who could write were priests, and they probably did not
dare outline any other perfect society than that of the New Jerusalem.
In fact, Utopias of any merit have until recently always been produced
at long intervals: with the exception of Bacon’s _New Atlantis_ and
Campanella’s _City of the Sun_, which were, I think, published in the
same year. The nineteenth century must have produced more imaginary
states of this kind than all its predecessors put together. And if we
stop constructing Utopias, this will happen not because we have ceased
to hanker after them, but because the complexities of civilization have
become too unmanageable to handle. When the structures of society and
industry were comparatively simple, a man could invent an ideal state
which would not look too far removed from the states he knew. We can
still go on dreaming of little paradises, such as that in Morris’s _News
from Nowhere_; but what it is difficult to do is to describe fully an
imaginary community which is world-wide, or, at any rate, in contact
with the whole world, which has to face the problems of race, and which
has to take over from existing civilization our highly developed methods
of manufacture and distribution of labour. Mr. Wells did try to depict
a state that might grow out of the existing order; but his picture is
notably less complete than those of older writers. He could only hope to
produce his effect by giving us a series of cinema glimpses of various
aspects of life. Personally, I doubt whether any one else will even
attempt the job.
One could wish that somebody would make a thorough study of the principal
Utopias that the mind of man has conceived. Such a study would offer
many interesting paths to research. We might find out, for example, to
how great an extent the Utopians of various ages and nations have been
influenced (as Plato was conspicuously influenced) by the transient
conditions of their own time. For instance, the great variety of opinion
which Utopians have held with regard to the precious metals would be
worth examination. Some have held them in great respect; others have
vindictively suggested that they should be put to the basest possible
uses. Again, how far has each writer of this kind been influenced by his
predecessor? It can scarcely be supposed, for instance, that Campanella
did not lift his communistic ideas bodily from Plato, or that Mr. Wells’s
class of Samurai owed nothing to the same inspiration. Sometimes one sees
a quite minor and obviously personal idea lifted clean or adapted with
slight alterations which make it all the more curious. For example, in
More’s _Utopia_ brides and bridegrooms before marriage always inspected
each other in a state of nature. It is to be presumed that More had
some peculiar crank on this subject; for he mentions the possibility of
concealing deformities as though it were a common practice that should
certainly be guarded against by law. When we get to Bacon we find this
odd idea copied, with the difference that it is now the friends of the
respective parties that make the examination.
The endless queer details in Utopias would in themselves make such a
study amusing. Plato’s passion to secure that no mother should know
her own child; the preposterously exact account of the amount of money
subscribed towards the foundation of the new state in Theodor Hertzka’s
_Freeland_; the wonderful battle between the fleets of, if I remember
rightly, Abyssinia and Europe in the same book; the trains going two
hundred miles an hour, so smoothly that people played billiards on
them, in Mr. Wells’s New World. I remember another Utopia, an obscure
eighteenth-century one, in which persons who had committed murders were
given the choice of being executed in honour or surviving in disgrace.
If they chose death they were led to the scaffold amid universal
applause, their names were inscribed upon rolls of honour, and their
relatives were given fat jobs. Then, again, one could have a quite
interesting chapter on the various literary devices by which authors
have precipitated readers into their supposititious communities. More’s
introduction—with the bronzed and bearded seaman who went out with the
companions of Columbus and was stranded on an unknown island—is as
charming as any. Later dodges have been more far-fetched. Mr. Wells’s
transferment to the twin-world of this one is very subtle; Edward Bellamy
made his hero wake up after centuries in a room where he asked for Edith
(his old fiancée) and was conveniently answered by another lady of the
same name. I say nothing of the books which lie on the outskirts of
Utopian literature, such as various grotesque Utopias and anti-Utopias
and books like Lord Lytton’s _The Coming Race_ and W. H. Hudson’s _The
Crystal Age_, which last is, I believe, the only book on record which
purports to have been written by a man who dies in the last chapter and
describes his own demise. And the practical attempts to set up working
ideal communities—such as the Oneida community which developed into a
prosperous “Mfg. Coy.”—are another pleasant by-way.
I think that with all the peculiarities of time and place, all the
eccentricities of personal taste, and all the genuine varieties of ideals
allowed for, a student of Comparative Utopianism would probably find that
there was a good deal in the way of method and a very great deal in the
way of aim that all Utopians have in common. Mr. Yeats once suggested
that if we put together whatever the great poets have affirmed in their
finest moments we should come as near as possible to an authoritative
religion. In the same way, one feels that if one tabulated the ideals of
the most successful writers of Utopias we should be able to extract, if
not a residuum of agreed schemes, at least a common element of aspiration
which we might fairly say represented the permanent ideals of the human
race respecting the ordering of our life on earth. Really intelligent and
altruistic men—and nobody without some intelligence and some altruism
would bother to conceive a Utopia—have a tendency to dream the same
sort of dreams. To take it on its negative side, no deviser of an ideal
state, as far as I am aware, has proposed immense inequalities in the
distribution of wealth, crowded and insanitary houses, child labour, wars
of aggression, or sweating. There are large numbers of industrious and
accurate people in this country and America who are hunting for subjects
about which they can write volumes of “research.” I wish one of them
would write the book I suggest.
Charles II in English Verse
I was talking to a man the other day about books that ought to have been
written and have not been, when it occurred to me that somebody might
publish a very amusing selection of panegyrics written on undeserving
persons: say, the less immaculate of the English kings. I once thought of
writing a life of Charles II, each chapter of which should be headed by
an extract from some contemporary poem about him. The contrast between
the character and private and public actions of this monarch and the
descriptions of him by literary eulogists would have been illuminating.
Gross flattery was the habit of the time. James the First was given, very
unfairly as I think, the title of the British Solomon; and the Royal
Martyr, who after all had some virtues very highly developed, was written
of in terms which would have been extreme if applied to St. Francis of
Assisi. But no one, not even his father, received such wholehearted
praises as Charles II.
His career as a recipient of them began early. When he was a child
Francis Quarles’s _Divine Fancies_ were dedicated to him. The Dedication
was headed: “To the Royal Bud of Majesty and Centre of our Hopes and
Happiness, Charles,” and began: “Illustrious Infant, Give me leave to
acknowledge myself thy servant, ere thou knowest thyself my Prince.”
The hope is held out that the illustrious infant will become “a most
incomparable Prince, the firm pillar of our happiness and the future
object of the world’s wonder.” Addressing then the boy’s governess, Lady
Dorset, Quarles becomes even more rhapsodical:
“Most excellent Lady,
“You are the Star which stands over the Place where the Babe
lies. By whose directions’ light, I come from the East to
present my Myrrh and Frankincense to the young child. Let not
our Royal Joseph nor his princely Mary be afraid; there are no
Herods here. We have all seen his Star in the East, and have
rejoyced: our loyall hearts are full; for our eyes have seen
him, in whom our Posterity shall be blessed.”
One could scarcely hope that Quarles’s successors would quite live up to
that.
Dryden’s poem on Charles’s return to England is pitched a little lower.
It certainly contains lines like
_The winds that never moderation knew,_
_Afraid to blow too much, too faintly blew;_
_Or out of breath with joy would not enlarge_
_Their straightened lungs...._
but that is a mere excess of avowed fancy. When he wrote his _Threnodia
Augustalis_ on Charles’s death, Dryden decidedly went one better. Perhaps
it was that he had had twenty-five years of Charles’s reign in which to
appreciate fully the King’s reverend qualities. He calls him
_That all-forgiving King_
_The type of Him above,_
_That unexhausted spring_
_Of clemency and love._
He apostrophizes the Muse of History:
_Be true, O Clio, to thy hero’s name!_
_But draw him strictly so_
_That all who view the piece may know;_
_He needs no trappings of fictitious fame,_
_The load’s too weighty._
The anguished poet almost blasphemes against heaven for taking away so
peerless a sovereign; until he remembers that “saints and angels” had
been done out of Charles’s company for so long that their turn might
fairly be considered to have come. And there is the further consolation
that a James has succeeded a Charles:
_Our Atlas fell indeed, but Hercules was near;_
or, as the Earl of Halifax put it,
_James is our Charles in all things else but name._
Which Charles himself at least knew to be untrue.
The Halifax extract comes out of another funeral poem On the Death of His
Most Sacred Majesty. “Farewell,” he cries,
_great Charles, monarch of blest renown,_
_The best good man that ever fill’d a throne._
He sketches Charles’s career. He compares his exile to the banishment of
David (an open crib _from Astræ Redux_) and says of England that, when he
came back,
_to his arms she fled_
_And rested on his shoulders her fair bending head._
He “Us from our foes and from ourselves did save.” Only the almost
inevitable comparison to the Almighty can do him justice:
_In Charles so good a man and King we see_
_A double image of the deity._
_Oh! had he more resembled it! Oh, why_
_Was he not still more like, and could not die?_
What did become of Charles is suggested by “the Lord R” in a poem which
appears in _Miscellany Poems_:
_Good kings are number’d with Immortal Gods_
_When hence translated to the best Abodes,_
_For Princes (truly great) can never die,_
_They only lay aside Mortality._
After which we are told that the deceased is in Olympus passing the
nectar round; an occupation that should have suited him very well.
Perhaps the suggestion will be adopted. Let some publisher with a series
of anthologies get somebody to compile The Hundred Most Fulsome Poems in
the English Language. It would be a more entertaining book than most.
Very few examples, I think, would be drawn from the last hundred years.
As respects the monarchs, Great Elizabeth, the Great Jameses, the Great
Charleses, Great William, Great Anne, and the Great Georges all got
their full share of adulation. The break comes, I think, with George IV;
since whose accession we have lost the habit. Any one who should address
his sovereign to-day in words like those addressed to Charles II by his
subjects (e. g. Great George, the planets tremble at thy nod) would be
suspected of pulling the sovereign’s leg.
The Most Durable Books
The question of what books one would take with one for a prolonged
sojourn on a desert island is an old one. I thought it had lost its
interest for me, as too remote. For I do not propose to live on a desert
island; and if ever, by accident, I am cast upon the shore of one,
clinging to a solitary plank, it is unlikely that I shall have spent the
last hour on shipboard selecting mental food for a highly problematical
future as a hermit. But a letter from a distressed man in the trenches
revives my interest in the question. He complains that he very rapidly
exhausts the books that are sent him; that few of them are much use
as permanent companions; and that, as they take up room, he can carry
only a small bundle of them about with him. He cannot make up his mind
which ones to get and stick to; and he ends by putting the ancient poser
to me: “What three” (it is always three) “books would you rather have
with you if you had to live on a desert island?” He adds, with somewhat
unnecessary bluntness, that he will not believe me if I say that one of
them would be the Bible.
I suppose there must be some definition of what a book—what _one_
book—is. Otherwise one’s first impulse is to demand, as the companions
of solitude, _the Encyclopædia Britannica_, the _Dictionary of National
Biography_, and the _Oxford English Dictionary_—say some hundred and
twenty volumes in all. With these one could spend a fairly long life in
retreat without ever reading the same page twice. One might even read
with a definite scheme which would give one the semblance of systematic
inquiry united with a happy unexpectedness of route. Suppose, for
example, one were to start each day from something one had seen in the
morning. A boa-constrictor, for instance. Having twisted its neck and
left it for dead—castaways are very powerful fellows—one would go home
to the old hut and refer to _Boa in the Encyclopædia_. Having learnt all
about its anatomy, progenitiveness, and habitats, one would then refer
to the _Oxford Dictionary_ for the derivation of its name. Underneath
the philological discourse would be quotations from authors who had
referred to the beast or to its feathery similitude. The swift advent of
the tropic night would find one still immersed in the _D.N.B._ lives of
these authors. On a large rock outside one would keep, with a charred
stick, a list of the objects already dealt with; once in a way perhaps,
for sentiment’s sake, one would start from an old word again and revive
memories of the Boa Trail. A person of simple tastes, granted the island
produced enough goats and not too many constrictors, might well spend in
this way a life as contented as Horace’s. But to select those three books
would be cheating.
One might fairly suggest, in such a connexion, that a book is either
(1) any single coherent work by one author, or two in collaboration; or
(2) any series of works which either has been, or might reasonably be
expected to be, published in a single volume. The edition for island
use would not, however, necessarily be a one-volume edition. This rules
out these distended works of reference, whilst letting in every single
piece of creative literature that exists. There may seem to be an unfair
discrimination between author and author, the poets, especially, as a
body, being at a great advantage over the novelists; but if novelists
will be so verbose they must suffer for it. What, then, would one’s three
books be?
I can think of a good many books that I have not read and that I hope
to enjoy reading. There is _The Life of John Buncle_, there is _Old
Mortality_, there is _Hard Times_, there is Tom Paine’s _Rights of Man_,
there is Hooker’s _Ecclesiastical Polity_—and I am imperfectly acquainted
with the works of Ben Jonson and Beaumont and Fletcher. (I have also not
read _Ordeal by Battle_, and I don’t intend to.) But the mere fact that
one has not read a work which one knows to be interesting is not enough
to qualify it. It would be enough if one were proposing to be marooned
for a fortnight or three weeks and then taken off the island by “willing
hands”; but the books one wants for a residence of many years are books
one is sufficiently familiar with to be certain that they will not grow
stale at the fifty-fifth reading.
Well, Gibbon is a large and a very long book. I have been through it
once, and I am pretty sure I shall do so again. But after that I suspect
that the passages with pencil-marks beside them will satisfy me. I
certainly could not, just after finishing it, recommence it at once, as
Lord Randolph Churchill used to do, or make a practice of dipping into
it daily. Great as it is, it is not sufficiently varied or sufficiently
human. For perpetual reference no general history, I think, would do;
one must have something more of the flavour of everyday humanity in it.
And every mood and every kind of character must be represented. Though
the books may supplement one another, one finds one’s choice growing
at once very narrow. Even Horace Walpole’s _Letters_ or Saint-Simon’s
_Memoirs_ would pall—at any rate on me. Shakespeare will do; but I cannot
personally think of anything which, for me, would contest the other
places with Boswell and Rabelais, unless it were _Morte d’Arthur_.
There are people, no doubt, who would take _Don Quixote_ or Montaigne.
One man I know thinks that _Tristram Shandy_ would go with him. But
Sterne is too short; one would get to know him by heart in a month or
two. _Robinson Crusoe_ would have obvious advantages, especially in
an illustrated edition—which would provide one with useful models when
one was cutting out one’s garments. But I think I should take the three
I have mentioned—unless, indeed, I approached the matter from quite a
different angle. There is a strong case for taking a selection of the
more morose and bewildered modern novels—say _La Curée_, _Le Paradis des
Dames_, and _L’Assommoir_, or a judicious selection from Artzybascheff,
Mr. Cannan, and Mr. D. H. Lawrence. For these would do a great deal to
reconcile one to one’s lonely lot. Whenever one was regretting the world
of men one would find an everflowing spring of consolation in them.
“After all,” one would say, after each agued page, “there is a good deal
to be said for a desert island.”
The Worst Style in the World
The word “euphuism” is commonly employed: it is also commonly confused
with “euphemism.” The thing is very properly condemned, and the book
that gave it its name is usually condemned with it. But it is probable
that John Lyly’s _Euphues_ has frequently been abused by persons who
have never opened it. At any rate, confessions of having read it are
few, and have usually proceeded from the small minority who have found
merit in the book. It is very interesting, therefore, to see that Messrs.
Croll and Clemons have just published, through Routledge, a new edition,
fully annotated. A generation unfamiliar with it will have a chance of
reassessing it.