the fine distinction of her humour, the sympathetic intimacy of her
satire, the easy exactitude of her unpretentious style, which have
appeared in celebration of her centenary, there is one criticism that
is naturally recurrent: the remark that she was quite untouched by the
towering politics of her time. This is intrinsically true; nevertheless
it may easily be used to imply the reverse of the truth. It is true
that Jane Austen did not attempt to teach any history or politics;
but it is not true that we cannot learn any history or politics from
Jane Austen. Any work so piercingly intelligent of its own kind, and
especially any work of so wise and humane a kind, is sure to tell us
much more than shallower studies covering a larger surface. I will
not say much of the mere formality of some of the conventions and
conversational forms; for in such things it is not only not certain
that change is important, but it is not even certain that it is final.
The view that a thing is old-fashioned is itself a fashion; and may
soon be an old fashion. We have seen this in many recurrences of female
dress; but it has a deeper basis in human nature. The truth is that
a phrase can be falsified by use without being false in fact; it can
seem stale without being really stilted. Those who see a word as
merely worn out, fail to look forward as well as back. I know of two
poems by two Irish poets of two different centuries, essentially on
the same theme; the lover declaring that his love will outlast the
mere popularity of the beauty. One is by Mr. Yeats and begins: “Though
you are in your shining days.” The other is by Tom Moore and begins:
“Believe me, if all those endearing young charms.” The latter language
strikes us as ridiculously florid and over-ripe; but Moore was far from
being ridiculous. Believe me (as he would say), it was no poetaster who
wrote those hackneyed words about the silent harp and the heart that
breaks for liberty. And if English were read some day by strangers as
a classic language, I am not sure that “endearing” would not endure
as a better word than “shining”; or even that (after some repetition
and reaction) it might not seem as strained to say “shining” as to say
“shiny.” Yet Mr. Yeats also is a great poet, as I called him last week;
only the printer or somebody altered it to a “good” one--a mysteriously
moderate emendation. Similarly, when one of Jane Austen’s heroines
wants to say that the hero is a good fellow, she expresses confidence
in what she calls “his worth.” This goads her younger modern readers
to madness; yet in truth the term is far more philosophic and eternal
than the terms they would use themselves. They would probably say he
was “nice,” and Jane Austen would indeed be avenged. For the best of
her heroes, Henry Tilney, himself foresaw and fulminated against the
unmeaning ubiquity of that word, a prophet of the pure reason of his
age, seeing in a vision of the future the fall of the human mind.
Negatively, of course, the historic lesson from Jane Austen is
enormous. She is perhaps most typical of her time in being supremely
irreligious. Her very virtues glitter with the cold sunlight of the
great secular epoch between mediæval and modern mysticism. In that
small masterpiece, _Northanger Abbey_, her unconsciousness of history
is itself a piece of history. For Catherine Morland was right, as
young and romantic people often are. A real crime _had_ been committed
in Northanger Abbey. It is implied in the very name of Northanger
Abbey. It was the crucial crime of the sixteenth century, when all
the institutions of the poor were savagely seized to be the private
possessions of the rich. It is strange that the name remains; it is
stranger still that it remains unrealized. We should think it odd to
go to tea at a man’s house and find it was still called a church. We
should be surprised if a gentleman’s shooting box at Claybury were
referred to as Claybury Cathedral. But the irony of the eighteenth
century is that Catherine was healthily interested in crimes and yet
never found the real crime; and that she never really thought of it as
an abbey, even when she thought of it most as an antiquity.
But there is a positive as well as a negative way in which her
greatness, like Shakespeare’s, illuminates history and politics,
because it illuminates everything. She understood every intricacy of
the upper middle class and the minor gentry, which were to make so much
of the mental life of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It is
said that she ignored the poor and disregarded their opinions. She did,
but not more than all our Governments and all our Acts of Parliaments
have done. And at least she did consistently ignore them; she ignored
where she was ignorant. Well it would have been for the world if others
had ignored the working-class until they understood it as well as she
did the middle class. She was not a student of sociology; she did
not study the poor. But she did study the students--or at least the
social types which were to become the students of the poor. She knew
her own class, and knew it without illusions; and there is much light
on later problems to be found in her delicate delineation of vanities
and snobberies and patronage. She had to do with the human heart;
and it is that which cometh out of the heart that defileth a nation,
philanthropy, efficiency, organization, social reform. And if the
weaker brethren still wonder why we should find in Baby Week or Welfare
Work a dangerous spirit, from which its best adherents find it hard
to free themselves, if they doubt how such a danger can be reconciled
with the personal delicacy and idealism of many of the women who work
such things, if they think that fine words or even fine feelings will
guarantee a respect for the personality of the poor, I really do not
know that they could do better than sit down, I trust not for the first
time, to the reading of _Emma_.
For all this that has happened since might well be called the Evolution
of Emma. That unique and formidable institution, the English Lady, has,
indeed, become much more of a public institution; that is, she has made
the same mistakes on a much larger scale. The softer fastidiousness
and finer pride of the more gracious eighteenth-century heroine may
seem to make her a shadow by comparison. It seems cruel to say that
the breaking off of Harriet’s humbler engagement foreshadows the
indiscriminate development of Divorce for the Poor. It seems horrible
to say that Emma’s small matchmaking has in it the seed of the
pestilence of Eugenics. But it is true. With a gentleness and justice
and sympathy with good intentions, which clear her from the charge
of common cynicism, the great novelist does find the spring of her
heroine’s errors, and of many of ours. That spring is a philanthropy,
and even a generosity, secretly founded on gentility. Emma Woodhouse
was a wit, she was a good woman, she was an individual with a right
to her own opinion; but it was because she was a lady that she acted
as she did, and thought she had a right to act as she did. She is the
type in fiction of a whole race of English ladies, in fact, for whom
refinement is religion. Her claim to oversee and order the social
things about her consisted in being refined; she would not have
admitted that being rich had anything to do with it; but as a fact it
had everything to do with it. If she had been very much richer, if she
had had one of the great modern fortunes, if she had had the wider
modern opportunities (for the rich) she would have thought it her duty
to act on the wider modern scale; she would have had public spirit and
political grasp. She would have dealt with a thousand Robert Martins
and a thousand Harriet Smiths, and made the same muddle about all of
them. That is what we mean about things like Baby Week--and if there
had been a baby in the story, Miss Woodhouse would certainly have seen
all its educational needs with a brilliant clearness. And we do not
mean that the work is done entirely by Mrs. Pardiggle; we mean that
much of it is done by Miss Woodhouse. But it is done because she _is_
Miss Woodhouse and not Martha Muggins or Jemina Jones; because the Lady
Bountiful is a lady first, and will bestow every bounty but freedom.
It is noted that there are few traces of the French Revolution in Miss
Austen’s novels; but, indeed, there have been few traces of it in Miss
Austen’s country. The peculiarity which has produced the situation I
describe is really this: that the new sentiment of humanitarianism
has come, when the old sentiment of aristocracy has not gone. Social
superiors have not really lost any old privileges; they have gained
new privileges, including that of being superior in philosophy and
philanthropy as well as in riches and refinement. No revolution has
shaken their secret security or menaced them with the awful peril of
becoming no more than men. Therefore their social reform is but their
social refinement grown restless. And in this old teacup comedy can be
found, far more clearly appreciated than in more ambitious books about
problems and politics, the psychology of this mere restlessness in the
rich, when it first stirred upon its cushions. Jane Austen described a
narrow class, but so truthfully that she has much to teach about its
after adventures, when it remained narrow as a class and broadened only
as a sect.
The Pseudo-Scientific Books ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
There is a certain kind of modern book which must, if possible, be
destroyed. It ought to be blown to pieces with the dynamite of some
great satirist like Swift or Dickens. As it is, it must be patiently
hacked into pieces even by some plodding person like myself. I will
do it, as George Washington said, with my little hatchet; though it
might take a long time to do it properly. The kind of book I mean is
the pseudo-scientific book. And by this I do not mean that the man
who writes it is a conscious quack or that he knows nothing; I mean
that he proves nothing; he simply gives you all his cocksure, and
yet shaky, modern opinions and calls it science. Books are coming
out with so-called scientific conclusions--books in which there is
actually no scientific argument at all. They simply affirm all the
notions that happen to be fashionable in loose “intellectual” clubs,
and call them the conclusions of research. But I am no more awed by
the flying fashions among prigs than I am by the flying fashions among
snobs. Snobs say they have the right kind of hat; prigs say they have
the right kind of head. But in both cases I should like some evidence
beyond their own habit of staring at themselves in the glass. Suppose
I were to write about the current fashions in dress something like
this: “Our ignorant and superstitious ancestors had straight hat-brims;
but the advance of reason and equality has taught us to have curly
hat-brims; in early times shirt-fronts are triangular, but science has
shown that they ought to be round; barbaric peoples had loose trousers,
but enlightened and humane peoples have tight trousers,” and so on, and
so on. You would naturally rebel at this simple style of argument. You
would say--“But, hang it all, give us some facts. Prove that the new
fashions are more enlightened. Prove that men think better in the new
hats. Prove that men run faster in the new trousers.”
I have just read a book which has been widely recommended, which is
introduced to the public by Dr. Saleeby, and which is, I understand,
written by a Swiss scientist of great distinction. It is called _Sexual
Ethics_, by Professor Forel. I began to read the book, therefore, with
respect. I finished reading it with stupefaction. The Swiss Professor
is obviously an honest man, though too Puritanical to my taste, and I
am told that he does really know an enormous lot about insects. But as
for the conception of proving a case, as for any notion that a “new”
opinion needs proof, and that it is not enough, when you knock down
great institutions, to say that you don’t like them--it is clear that
no such conceptions have ever crossed his mind. Science says that man
has no conscience. Science says that man and woman must have the same
political powers. Science says that sterile unions are morally free and
without rule. Science says that it is wrong to drink fermented liquor.
And all this with a splendid indifference to the two facts--first,
that “Science” does not say these things at all, for numbers of great
scientists say exactly the opposite; and second, that if Science did
say these things, a person reading a book of rationalistic ethics might
be permitted to ask why. Professor Forel may have mountains of evidence
which he has no space to exhibit. We will give him the benefit of that
doubt, and pass on to points where any thinking man is capable of
judging him.
Where this sort of scientific writer is seen in all his glory is in his
first abstract arguments about the nature of morality. He is immense;
he is at once simple and monstrous, like a whale. He always has one
dim principle or prejudice: to prove that there is nothing separate
or sacred about the moral sense. Professor Forel holds this prejudice
with all possible decorum and propriety. He always trots out three
arguments to prove it; like three old broken-kneed elephants. Professor
Forel duly trots them out. They are supposed to show that there is no
such thing positively existing as the conscience; and they might just
as easily be used to show that there are no such things as wings or
whiskers, or toes or teeth, or boots or books, or Swiss Professors.
The first argument is that man has no conscience because some men are
quite mad, and therefore not particularly conscientious. The second
argument is that man has no conscience because some men are more
conscientious than others. And the third is that man has no conscience
because conscientious men in different countries and quite different
circumstances often do very different things. Professor Forel applies
these arguments eloquently to the question of human consciences; and
I really cannot see why I should not apply them to the question of
human noses. Man has no nose because now and then a man has no nose--I
believe that Sir William Davenant, the poet, had none. Man has no nose
because some noses are longer than others or can smell better than
others. Man has no nose because not only are noses of different shapes,
but (oh, piercing sword of scepticism!) some men use their noses and
find the smell of incense nice, while some use their noses and find it
nasty. Science therefore declares that man is normally noseless; and
will take this for granted for the next four or five hundred pages, and
will treat all the alleged noses of history as the quaint legends of a
credulous age.
I do not mention these views because they are original, but exactly
because they are not. They are only dangerous in Professor Forel’s
book because they can be found in a thousand books of our epoch. This
writer solemnly asserts that Kant’s idea of an ultimate conscience
is a fable because Mohammedans think it wrong to drink wine, while
English officers think it right. Really he might just as well say
that the instinct of self-preservation is a fable because some people
avoid brandy in order to live long, and some people drink brandy in
order to save their lives. Does Professor Forel believe that Kant, or
anybody else, thought that our consciences gave us direct commands
about the details of diet or social etiquette? Did Kant maintain that,
when we had reached a certain stage of dinner, a supernatural voice
whispered in our ear “Asparagus”; or that the marriage between almonds
and raisins was a marriage that was made in heaven? Surely it is
plain enough that all these social duties are deduced from primary
moral duties--and may be deduced wrong. Conscience does not suggest
“asparagus,” but it does suggest amiability, and it is thought by some
to be an amiable act to accept asparagus when it is offered to you.
Conscience does not respect fish and sherry; but it does respect any
innocent ritual that will make men feel alike. Conscience does not tell
you not to drink your hock after your port. But it does tell you not to
commit suicide; and your mere naturalistic reason tells you that the
first act may easily approximate to the second.
Christians encourage wine as something which will benefit men.
Teetotallers discourage wine as something that will destroy men. Their
conscientious conclusions are different, but their consciences are
just the same. Teetotallers say that wine is bad because they think
it moral to say what they think. Christians will not say that wine is
bad because they think it immoral to say what they don’t think. And a
triangle is a three-sided figure. And a dog is a four-legged animal.
And Queen Anne is dead. We have, indeed, come back to alphabetical
truths. But Professor Forel has not yet even come to them. He goes on
laboriously repeating that there cannot be a fixed moral sense, because
some people drink wine and some people don’t. I cannot imagine how it
was that he forgot to mention that France and England cannot have the
same moral sense, because Frenchmen drive cabs on the right side of the
road and Englishmen on the left.
The Humour of King Herod
If I say that I have just been very much amused with a Nativity
play of the fourteenth century it is still possible that I may be
misunderstood. What is more important, some thousand years of very
heroic history will be misunderstood too. It was one of the Coventry
cycle of mediæval plays, loosely called the Coventry Mysteries, similar
to the Chester Mysteries and the Towneley Mysteries.
And I was not amused at the blasphemy of something badly done, but at
a buffoonery uncommonly well done. But, as I said at the time, the
educated seem to be very ignorant of this fine mediæval fun. When I
mentioned the Coventry Mystery many ladies and gentlemen thought it was
a murder in the police news. At the best, they supposed it to be the
title of a detective story. Even upon a hint of history they could only
recall the story of Godiva; which might be called rather a revelation
than a mystery.
Now I always read police news and I sometimes write detective stories;
nor am I at all ashamed of doing either. But I think the popular art of
the past was perhaps a little more cheerful than that of the present.
And in seeing this Bethlehem drama I felt that good news might perhaps
be as dramatic as bad news; and that it was possibly as thrilling to
hear that a child is born as to hear that a man is murdered.
Doubtless there are some sentimental people who like these old plays
merely because they are old. My own sentiment could be more truly
stated by saying that I like them because they are new. They are new in
the imaginative sense, making us feel as if the first star were leading
us to the first child.
But they are also new in the historical sense, to most people, owing to
that break in our history which makes the Elizabethans seem not merely
to have discovered the new world but invented the old one. Nobody could
see this mediæval play without realizing that the Elizabethan was
rather the end than the beginning of a tradition; the crown and not the
cradle of the drama.
Many things that modern critics call peculiarly Elizabethan are in
fact peculiarly mediæval. For instance, that the same stage could be
the place where meet the extremes of tragedy and comedy, or rather
farce. That daring mixture is always made a point of contrast between
the Shakespearean play and the Greek play or the French classical
play. But it is a point of similarity, or rather identity, between the
Shakespearean play and the miracle play.
Nothing could be more bitterly tragic than the scene in this Nativity
drama, in which the mothers sing a lullaby to the children they think
they have brought into safety the moment before the soldiers of Herod
rush in and butcher them screaming on the stage. Nothing could be more
broadly farcical than the scene in which King Herod himself pretends
that he has manufactured the thunderstorm.
In one sense, indeed, the old religious play was far bolder in its
burlesque than the more modern play. Shakespeare did not express the
unrest of King Claudius by making him fall over his own cloak. He did
not convey his disdain for tyranny by letting Macbeth appear with his
crown on one side. This was partly no doubt an improvement in dramatic
art; but it was partly also, I think, a weakening of democratic satire.
Shakespeare’s clowns are philosophers, geniuses, demigods; but
Shakespeare’s clowns are clowns. Shakespeare’s kings may be usurpers,
murderers, monsters; but Shakespeare’s kings are kings. But in this
old devotional drama the king is the clown. He is treated not so much
with disdain as with derision; not so much with a bitter smile as with
a broad grin. A cat may not only look at a king but laugh at a king;
like the mythical Cheshire cat, an ancient cat as terrible as a tiger
and grinning like a gargoyle. But that Cheshire cat has presumably
vanished with the Chester Mysteries, the counterpart of these Coventry
Mysteries; it has vanished with the age and art of gargoyles.
In other words, that popular simplicity that could see wrongful power
as something pantomimically absurd, a thing for practical jokes, has
since been sophisticated by a process none the less sad because it
is slow and subtle. It begins in the Elizabethans in an innocent and
indefinable form. It is merely the sense that, though Macbeth may get
his crown crookedly, he must not actually wear it crooked. It is the
sense that, though Claudius may fall from his throne, he must not
actually fall over his footstool.
It ended in the nineteenth century in many refined and ingenuous forms;
in a tendency to find all fun in the ignorant or criminal classes;
in dialect or the dropping of aitches. It was a sort of satirical
slumming. There was a new shade in the comparison of the coster with
the cat; a coster could look at a king and might conceivably laugh at a
king; but most contemporary art and literature was occupied in laughing
at the coster.
Even in the long lifetime of a good comic paper like _Punch_ we can
trace the change from jokes against the palace to jokes against the
public-house. The difference is perhaps more delicate; it is rather
that the refined classes are a subject for refined comedy; and only the
common people a subject for common farce. It is correct to call this
refinement modern; yet it is not quite correct to call it contemporary.
All through the Victorian time the joke was pointed more against the
poor and less against the powerful; but the revolution which ended the
long Victorian peace has shaken this Victorian patronage. The great
war which has brought so many ancient realities to the surface has
re-enacted before our eyes the Miracle Play of Coventry.
We have seen a real King Herod claiming the thunders of the throne
of God, and answered by the thunder not merely of human wrath but of
primitive human laughter. He has done murder by proclamations, and he
has been answered by caricatures. He has made a massacre of children,
and been made a figure of fun in a Christmas pantomime for the
pleasure of other children. Precisely because his crime is tragic, his
punishment is comic; the old popular paradox has returned.
The Silver Goblets