Bargello in Florence, for example, or in the Piazza di San Marco in
Venice--exclaiming, "Isn't that just too cunning!" or else "Aren't you
perfectly crazy about Saint Mark's! Don't you think those cupolas are
like the loveliest _turnips_ upside down, you know"--as if the beautiful
things of Europe were just having their guts pulled out by these
American admirers. They admire so wholesale. Sometimes they even seem to
grovel. But the golden cupolas of St. Mark's in Venice are turnips
upside-down in a stale stew, after enough American tourists have looked
at them. Turnips upside down in a stale stew. Poor Europe!
And there you are. When a few German bombs fell upon Rheims Cathedral up
went a howl of execration. But there are more ways than one, of
vandalism. I should think the American admiration of five-minutes'
tourists has done more to kill the sacredness of old European beauty and
aspiration than multitudes of bombs would have done.
But there you are. Europe has got to fall, and peace hath her victories.
Behold then Mr. Septimus Dodge returning to Dodge-town victorious. Not
crowned with laurel, it is true, but wreathed in lists of things he has
seen and sucked dry. Seen and sucked dry, you know: Venus de Milo, the
Rhine, or the Coliseum: swallowed like so many clams, and left the
shells.
Now the aristocratic Effinghams, Homeward Bound from Europe to America,
are at the mercy of Mr. Dodge: Septimus. He is their compatriot, so they
may not disown him. Had they been English, of course, they would never
once have let themselves become aware of his existence. But no. They are
American democrats, and therefore, if Mr. Dodge marches up and says:
"Mr. Effingham? Pleased to meet you, Mr. Effingham"--why, then Mr.
Effingham is _forced_ to reply: "Pleased to meet you, Mr. Dodge." If he
didn't, he would have the terrible hounds of democracy on his heels and
at his throat, the moment he landed in the Land of the Free. An
Englishman is free to continue unaware of the existence of a
fellow-countryman, if the looks of that fellow-countryman are
distasteful. But every American citizen is free to force his presence
upon you, no matter how unwilling you may be.
Freedom!
The Effinghams detest Mr. Dodge. They abhor him. They loathe and despise
him. They have an unmitigated contempt for him. Everything he is, says,
and does seems to them too vulgar, too despicable. Vet they are forced
to answer, when he presents himself: "Pleased to meet you, Mr. Dodge."
Freedom!
Mr. Dodge, of Dodgetown, alternately fawns and intrudes, cringes and
bullies. And the Effinghams, terribly "superior" in a land of equality,
writhe helpless. They would fain snub Septimus out of existence. But
Septimus is not to be snubbed. As a true democrat, he is unsnubbable. As
a true democrat, he has right on his side. And right is might.
Right is might. It is the old struggle for power.
Septimus, as a true democrat, is the equal of any man. As a true
democrat with a full pocket, he is, by the amount that fills his pocket,
so much the superior of the democrats with empty pockets. Because,
though all men are born equal and die equal, you will not get anybody to
admit that ten dollars equal ten thousand dollars. No, no, there's a
difference there, however far you may push equality.
Septimus has the Effinghams on the hip. He has them fast, and they will
not escape. What tortures await them at home, in the Land of the Free,
at the hands of the hideously affable Dodge, we do not care to disclose.
What was the persecution of a haughty Lord or a marauding Baron or an
inquisitorial Abbot compared to the persecution of a million Dodges? The
proud Effinghams are like men buried naked to the chin in ant-heaps, to
be bitten into extinction by a myriad ants. Stoically, as good democrats
and idealists, they writhe and endure, without making too much moan.
They writhe and endure. There is no escape. Not from that time to this.
No escape. They writhed on the horns of the Dodge dilemma.
Since then Ford has gone one worse.
Through these white novels of Cooper runs this acid of ant-bites, the
formic acid of democratic poisoning. The Effinghams feel superior.
Cooper felt superior. Mrs. Cooper felt superior too. And bitten.
For they were democrats. They didn't believe in kings, or lords, or
masters, or real superiority of any sort. Before God, of course. In the
sight of God, of course, all men were equal. This they believed. And
therefore, though they _felt_ terribly superior to Mr. Dodge, yet, since
they were his equals in the sight of God, they could not feel free to
say to him: "Mr. Dodge, please go to the devil." They had to say:
"Pleased to meet you."
What a lie to tell! Democratic lies.
What a dilemma! To feel so superior. To _know_ you are superior. And yet
to believe that, in the sight of God, you are equal. Can't help
yourself.
Why couldn't they let the Lord Almighty look after the equality, since
it seems to happen specifically in His sight, and stick themselves to
their own superiority. Why couldn't they?
Somehow, they daren't.
They were Americans, idealists. How dare they balance a mere intense
feeling against an IDEA and an IDEAL?
Ideally--i. e., in the sight of God, Mr. Dodge was their equal.
What a low opinion they held of the Almighty's faculty for discrimination.
But it was so. The IDEAL of EQUALITY.
Pleased to meet you, Mr. Dodge.
We are equal in the sight of God, of course. But er--
Very glad to meet you. Miss Effingham. Did you say--_er?_ Well now, I
think my bank balance will bear it.
Poor Eve Effingham.
Eve! Think of it. Eve! And birds of paradise. And apples.
And Mr. Dodge.
This is where apples of knowledge get you, Miss Eve. You should leave
'em alone.
"Mr. Dodge, you are a hopeless and insufferable inferior."
Why couldn't she say it? She felt it. And she was a heroine.
Alas, she was an American heroine. She was an EDUCATED WOMAN. She KNEW
all about IDEALS. She swallowed the IDEAL of EQUALITY with her first
mouthful of KNOWLEDGE. Alas for her and that apple of Sodom that looked
so rosy. Alas for all her knowing.
Mr. Dodge (in check knickerbockers): Well, feeling a little
uncomfortable below the belt, are you, Miss Effingham?
Miss Effingham (with difficulty withdrawing her gaze from the INFINITE
OCEAN): Good morning, Mr. Dodge. I was admiring the dark blue distance.
Mr. Dodge: Say, couldn't you admire something a bit nearer.
Think how easy it would have been for her to say "Go away!" or "Leave
me, varlet!"--or "Hence, base-born knave!" Or just to turn her back on
him.
But then he would simply have marched round to the other side of her.
Was she his superior, or wasn't she?
Why surely, intrinsically, she _was._ Intrinsically Fenimore Cooper was
the superior of the Dodges of his day. He felt it. But he felt he ought
not to feel it. And he never had it out with himself.
That is why one rather gets impatient with him. He feels he is superior,
and feels he ought _not_ to feel so, and is therefore rather snobbish,
and at the same time a little apologetic. Which is surely tiresome.
If a man feels superior, he should have it out with himself. "Do I feel
superior because I _am_ superior? Or is it just the snobbishness of
class, or education, or money?"
Class, education, money won't make a man superior. But if he's just
_born_ superior, in himself, there it is. Why deny it?
It is a nasty sight to see the Effinghams putting themselves at the
mercy of a Dodge, just because of a mere idea or ideal Fools. They ruin
more than they know. Because at the same time they are snobbish.
Septimus at the court of King Arthur.
Septimus: Hello, Arthur! Pleased to meet you. By the way, what's all
that great long sword about?
Arthur: This is Excalibur, the sword of my knighthood and my kingship.
Septimus: That so! We're all equal in the sight of God, you know, Arthur.
Arthur: Yes.
Septimus: Then I guess it's about time I had that yard-and-a-half of
Excalibur to play with. Don't you think so? We're equal in the sight of
God, and you've had it for quite a while.
Arthur: Yes, I agree. (Hands him Excalibur.)
Septimus (prodding Arthur with Excalibur): Say, Art, which is your fifth
rib?
Superiority is a sword. Hand it over to Septimus, and you'll get it back
between your ribs.--The whole moral of democracy.
But there you are. Eve Effingham had pinned herself down on the _Contrat
Social_, and she was prouder of that pin through her body than of any
mortal thing else. Her IDEAL. Her IDEAL of DEMOCRACY.
When America set out to destroy Kings and Lords and Masters, and the
whole paraphernalia of European superiority, it pushed a pin right
through its own body, and on that pin it still flaps and buzzes and
twists in misery. The pin of democratic equality. Freedom.
There'll never be any life in America till you pull the pin out and
admit natural inequality. Natural superiority, natural inferiority. Till
such time, Americans just buzz round like various sorts of propellers,
pinned down by their freedom and equality.
That's why these white novels of Fenimore Cooper are only historically
and sardonically interesting. The people are all pinned down by some
social pin, and buzzing away in social importance or friction, round and
round on the pin. Never real human beings. Always things pinned down,
choosing to be pinned down, transfixed by the idea or ideal of equality
and democracy, on which they turn loudly and importantly, like
propellers propelling. These States. Humanly, it is boring. As a
historic phenomenon, it is amazing ludicrous and irritating.
If you don't pull the pin out in time, you'll never be able to pull it
out. You must turn on it for ever, or bleed to death.
"Naked to the waist was I
And deep within my breast did lie,
Though no man any blood could spy,
The truncheon of a spear--"
Is it already too late?
Oh God, the democratic pin!
Freedom, Equality, Equal Opportunity, Education, Rights of Man.
The pin! The pin!
Well, there buzzes Eve Effingham, snobbishly, impaled. She is a perfect
American heroine, and I'm sure she wore the first smartly-tailored
"suit" that ever woman wore. I'm sure she spoke several languages. I'm
sure she was hopelessly competent. I'm sure she "adored" her husband,
and spent masses of his money, and divorced him because he didn't
understand LOVE.
American women in their perfect "suits." American men in their imperfect
coats and skirts!
I feel I'm the superior of most men I meet. Not in birth, because I
never had a great-grandfather. Not in money, because I've got none. Not
in education, because I'm merely scrappy. And certainly not in beauty or
in manly strength.
Well, what then?
Just in myself.
When I'm challenged, I do feel myself superior to most of the men I
meet. Just a natural superiority.
But not till there enters an element of challenge.
When I meet another man, and he is just himself--even if he is an
ignorant Mexican pitted with small-pox--then there is no question
between us of superiority or inferiority. He is a man and I am a man. We
are ourselves. There is no question between us.
But let a question arise, let there be a challenge, and then I feel he
should do reverence to the gods in me, because they are more than the
gods in him. And he should give reverence to the very me, because it is
more at one with the gods than is his very self.
If this is conceit, I am sorry. But it's the gods in me that matter. And
in other men.
As for me, I am so glad to salute the brave, reckless gods in another
man. So glad to meet a man who will abide by his very self.
Ideas! Ideals! All this paper between us. What a weariness.
If only people would meet in their very selves, without wanting to put
some idea over one another, or some ideal.
Damn all ideas and all ideals. Damn all the false stress, and the pins.
I am I. Here am I. Where are you?
Ah, there you are! Now, damn the consequences, we have met.
That's my idea of democracy, if you can call it an idea.
V. FENIMORE COOPER'S LEATHERSTOCKING NOVELS
In his Leatherstocking books, Fenimore is off on another track. He is no
longer concerned with social white Americans that buzz with pins through
them, buzz loudly against every mortal thing except the pin itself. The
pin of the Great Ideal.
One gets irritated with Cooper because he never for once snarls at the
Great Ideal Pin which transfixes him. No, indeed. Rather he tries to
push it through the very heart of the Continent.
But I have loved the Leatherstocking books so dearly. Wish-fulfilment!
Anyhow one is not supposed to take LOVE seriously, in these books. Eve
Effingham, impaled on the social pin, conscious all the time of her own
ego and of nothing else, suddenly fluttering in throes of love: no, it
makes me sick. Love is never LOVE until it has a pin pushed through it
and becomes an IDEAL. The ego turning on a pin is wildly IN LOVE,
always. Because that's the thing to be.
Cooper was a GENTLEMAN, in the worst sense of the word. In the
Nineteenth Century sense of the word. A correct, clock-work man.
Not altogether, of course.
The great National Grouch was grinding inside him. Probably he called it
COSMIC URGE. Americans usually do: in capital letters.
Best stick to National Grouch. The great American grouch.
Cooper had it, gentleman as he was. That is why he flitted round Europe
so uneasily. Of course in Europe he could be, and was, a gentleman to
his heart's content.
"In short," he says in one of his letters, "we were at table two counts,
one monsignore, an English Lord, an Ambassador, and my humble self."
Were we really!
How nice it must have been to know that one self, at least, was humble.
And he felt the democratic American tomahawk wheeling over his
uncomfortable scalp all the time.
The great American grouch.
Two monsters loomed on Cooper's horizon.
MRS. COOPER MY WORK
MY WORK MY WIFE
MY WIFE MY WORK
THE DEAR CHILDREN
MY WORK!!!
There you have the essential keyboard of Cooper's soul.
If there is one thing that annoys me more than a business man and his
BUSINESS, it is an artist, a writer, painter, musician, and MY WORK.
When an artist says MY WORK, the flesh goes tired on my bones. When he
says MY WIFE, I want to hit him.
Cooper grizzled about his work. Oh, heaven, he cared so much whether it
was good or bad, and what the French thought, and what Mr. Snippy
Knowall said, and how Mrs. Cooper took it. The pin, the pin!
But he was truly an artist: then an American: then a gentleman.
And the grouch grouched inside him, through all.
They seemed to have been specially fertile in imagining themselves
"under the wigwam," do these Americans, just when their knees were
comfortably under the mahogany, in Paris, along with the knees of
4 Counts
2 Cardinals
1 Milord
5 Cocottes
1 Humble self.
You bet, though, that when the cocottes were being raffled off, Fenimore
went home to his
_Wish Fulfilment_ _Actuality_
THE WIGWAM _vs._ MY HOTEL
CHINGACHGOOK _vs._ MY WIFE
NATTY BUMPPO _vs._ MY HUMBLE
SELF
Fenimore lying in his Louis Quatorze hôtel in Paris, passionately
musing about Natty Bumppo and the pathless forest, and mixing his
imagination with the Cupids and Butterflies on the painted ceiling,
while Mrs. Cooper was struggling with her latest gown in the next room,
and déjeuner was with the Countess at eleven....
Men live by lies.
In actuality, Fenimore loved the genteel continent of Europe, and waited
gasping for the newspapers to praise his WORK.
In another actuality, he loved the tomahawking continent of America, and
imagined himself Natty Bumppo.
His actual desire was to be: _Monsieur Fenimore Cooper, le grand
écrivain americain._
His innermost wish was to be: Natty Bumppo.
Now Natty and Fenimore arm-in-arm are an odd couple.
You can see Fenimore: blue coat, silver buttons, silver-and-diamond
buckle shoes, ruffles.
You see Natty Bumppo: a grizzled, uncouth old renegade, with gaps in his
old teeth and a drop on the end of his nose.
But Natty was Fenimore's great Wish: his wish-fulfilment.
"It was a matter of course," says Mrs. Cooper, "that he should dwell on
the better traits of the picture rather than on the coarser and more
revolting, though more common points. Like West, he could see Apollo in
the young Mohawk."
The coarser and more revolting, though more common points.
You see now why he depended so absolutely on MY WIFE. She had to look
things in the face for him. The coarser and more revolting, and
certainly more common points, she had to see.
He himself did so love seeing pretty-pretty, with the thrill of a red
scalp now and then.
Fenimore, in his imagination, wanted to be Natty Bumppo, who, I am sure,
belched after he had eaten his dinner. At the same time Mr. Cooper was
nothing if not a gentleman. So he decided to stay in France and have it
all his own way.
In France, Natty would not belch after eating, and Chingachgook could be
all the Apollo he liked.
As if ever any Indian was like Apollo. The Indians, with their curious
female quality, their archaic figures, with high shoulders and deep,
archaic waists, like a sort of woman! And their natural devilishness,
their natural insidiousness.
But men see what they want to see: especially if they look from a long
distance, across the ocean, for example.
Yet the Leatherstocking books are lovely. Lovely half-lies.
They form a sort of American Odyssey, with Natty Bumppo for Odysseus.
Only, in the original Odyssey, there is plenty of devil, Circes and
swine and all. And Ithacus is devil enough to outwit the devils. But
Natty is a saint with a gun, and the Indians are gentlemen through and
through, though they may take an occasional scalp.
There are five Leatherstocking novels: a _decrescendo_ of reality, and a
crescendo of beauty.
1. _Pioneers_: A raw frontier-village on Lake Champlain, at the end of
the eighteenth century. Must be a picture of Cooper's home, as he knew
it when a boy. A very lovely book. Natty Bumppo an old man, an old
hunter half civilized.
2. _The Last of The Mohicans_: A historical fight between the British
and the French, with Indians on both sides, at a Fort by Lake Champlain.
Romantic flight of the British general's two daughters, conducted by the
scout, Natty, who is in the prime of life; romantic death of the last of
the Delawares.
3. _The Prairie_: A wagon of some huge, sinister Kentuckians trekking
west into the unbroken prairie. Prairie Indians, and Natty, an old, old
man; he dies seated on a chair on the Rocky Mountains, looking east.
4. _The Pathfinder_: The Great Lakes. Natty, a man of about thirty-five,
makes an abortive proposal to a bouncing damsel, daughter of the
Sergeant at the Fort.
5. _Deerslayer_: Natty and Hurry Harry, both quite young, are hunting in
the virgin wild. They meet two white women. Lake Champlain again.
These are the five Leatherstocking books: Natty Bumppo being
Leatherstocking, Pathfinder, Deerslayer, according to his ages.
Now let me put aside my impatience at the unreality of this vision, and
accept it as a wish-fulfilment vision, a kind of yearning myth. Because
it seems to me that the things in Cooper that make one so savage, when
one compares them with actuality, are perhaps, when one considers them
as presentations of a deep subjective desire, real in their way, and
almost prophetic.
The passionate love for America, for the soil of America, for example.
As I say, if is perhaps easier to love America passionately, when you
look at it through the wrong end of the telescope, across all the
Atlantic water, as Cooper did so often, than when you are right there.
When you are actually _in_ America, America hurts, because it has a
powerful disintegrative influence upon the white psyche. It is full of
grinning, unappeased aboriginal demons, too, ghosts, and it persecutes
the white men like some Eumenides, until the white men give up their
absolute whiteness. America is tense with latent violence and
resistance. The very common-sense of white Americans has a tinge of
helplessness in it, and deep fear of what might be if they were not
common-sensical.
Yet one day the demons of America must be placated, the ghosts must be
appeased, the Spirit of Place atoned for. Then the true passionate love
for American Soil will appear. As yet, there is too much menace in the
landscape.
But probably, one day America will be as beautiful in actuality as it is
in Cooper. Not yet, however. When the factories have fallen down again.
And again, this perpetual blood-brother theme of the Leatherstocking
novels. Natty and Chingachgook, the Great Serpent. At present it is a
sheer myth. The Red Man and the White Man are not blood-brothers: even
when they are most friendly. When they are most friendly, it is as a
rule the one betraying his race-spirit to the other. In the white
man--rather highbrow--who "loves" the Indian, one feels the white man
betraying his own race. There is something unproud, underhand in it.
Renegade. The same with the Americanised Indian who believes absolutely
in the white mode. It is a betrayal. Renegade again.
In the actual flesh, it seems to me the white man and the red man cause
a feeling of oppression, the one to the other, no matter what the good
will. The red life flows in a different direction from the white life.
You can't make two streams that flow in opposite directions meet and
mingle soothingly.
Certainly, if Cooper had had to spend his whole life in the backwoods,
side by side with a Noble Red Brother, he would have screamed with the
oppression of suffocation. He had to have Mrs. Cooper, a straight strong
pillar of society, to hang on to. And he had to have the culture of
France to turn back to, or he would just have been stifled. The Noble
Red Brother would have smothered him and driven him mad.
So that the Natty and Chingachgook myth must remain a myth. It is a
wish-fulfilment, an evasion of actuality. As we have said before, the
folds of the Great Serpent would have been heavy, very heavy, too heavy,
on any white man. Unless the white man were a true renegade, hating
himself and his own race spirit, as sometimes happens.
It seems there can be no fusion in the flesh. But the spirit can change.
The white man's spirit can never become as the red man's spirit. It
doesn't want to. But it can cease to be the opposite and the negative of
the red man's spirit. It can open out a new great area of consciousness,
in which there is room for the red spirit too.
To open out a new wide area of consciousness means to slough the old
consciousness. The old consciousness has become a tight-fitting prison
to us, in which we are going rotten.
You can't have a new, easy skin before you have sloughed the old, tight
skin.
You can't.
And you just can't, so you may as well leave off pretending.
Now the essential history of the people of the United States seems to me
just this: At the Renaissance the old consciousness was becoming a
little tight. Europe sloughed her last skin, and started a new, final
phase.
But some Europeans recoiled from the last final phase. They wouldn't
enter the _cul de sac_ of post-Renaissance, "liberal" Europe. They came
to America.
They came to America for two reasons:
1. To slough the old European consciousness completely.
2. To grow a new skin underneath, a new form. This second is a hidden
process.
The two processes go on, of course, simultaneously. The slow forming of
the new skin underneath is the slow sloughing of the old skin. And
sometimes this immortal serpent feels very happy, feeling a new golden
glow of a strangely-patterned skin envelop him: and sometimes he feels
very sick, as if his very entrails were being tom out of him, as he
wrenches once more at his old skin, to get out of it.
Out! Out! he cries, in all kinds of euphemisms.
He's got to have his new skin on him before ever he can get out.
And he's got to get out before his new skin can ever be his own skin.
So there he is, a torn, divided monster.
The true American, who writhes and writhes like a snake that is long in
sloughing.
Sometimes snakes can't slough. They can't burst their old skin. Then
they go sick and die inside the old skin, and nobody ever sees the new
pattern.
It needs a real desperate recklessness to burst your old skin at last.
You simply don't care what happens to you, if you rip yourself in two,
so long as you do get out.
It also needs a real belief in the new skin. Otherwise you are likely
never to make the effort. Then you gradually sicken and go rotten and
die in the old skin.