at His Majesty’s Theatre, the urns and goblets of the banquet were
specially wrought in real and solid silver and in the style of the
sixteenth century. This bombastic literalism is at least very much the
fashion in our modern theatricals. Mr. Vincent Crummles considered it a
splendid piece of thoroughness on the part of an actor that he should
black himself all over to perform Othello. But Mr. Crummles’s ideal
falls far short of the theoretic thoroughness of the late Sir Herbert
Tree; who would consider blacking oneself all over as comparatively a
mere sham, compromise, and veneer. Sir Herbert Tree would, I suppose,
send for a real negro to act Othello; and perhaps for a real Jew to
act Shylock--though that, in the present condition of the English
stage, might possibly be easier. The strict principle of the silver
goblets might be a little more arduous and unpleasant if applied,
let us say, to _The Arabian Nights_, if the manager of His Majesty’s
Theatre presented _Aladdin_, and had to produce not one real negro but
a hundred real negroes, carrying a hundred baskets of gigantic and
genuine jewels. In the presence of this proposal even Sir Herbert might
fall back on a simpler philosophy of the drama. For the principle
in itself admits of no limit. If once it be allowed that what looks
like silver behind the footlights is better also for really being
silver, there seems no reason why the wildest developments should not
ensue. The priests in _Henry VIII_ might be specially ordained in the
green-room before they come on. Nay, if it comes to that, the head of
Buckingham might really be cut off; as in the glad old days lamented by
Swinburne, before the coming of an emasculate mysticism removed real
death from the arena. We might re-establish the goriness as well as the
gorgeousness of the amphitheatre. If real wine-cups, why not real wine?
If real wine, why not real blood?
Nor is this an illegitimate or irrelevant deduction. This and a hundred
other fantasies might follow if once we admit the first principle that
we need to realize on the stage not merely the beauty of silver, but
the value of silver. Shakespeare’s famous phrase that art should hold
the mirror up to nature is always taken as wholly realistic; but it is
really idealistic and symbolic--at least, compared with the realism
of His Majesty’s. Art is a mirror not because it is the same as the
object, but because it is different. A mirror selects as much as art
selects; it gives the light of flames, but not their heat; the colour
of flowers, but not their fragrance; the faces of women, but not their
voices; the proportions of stockbrokers, but not their solidity. A
mirror is a vision of things, not a working model of them. And the
silver seen in a mirror is not for sale.
But the results of the thing in practice are worse than its wildest
results in theory. This Arabian extravagance in the furniture and
decoration of a play has one very practical disadvantage--that it
narrows the number of experiments, confines them to a small and wealthy
class, and makes those which are made exceptional, erratic, and
unrepresentative of any general dramatic activity. One or two insanely
expensive works prove nothing about the general state of art in a
country. To take the parallel of a performance somewhat less dignified,
perhaps, than Sir Herbert Tree’s, there has lately been in America an
exhibition not unanalogous to a conflict in the arena, and one for
which a real negro actually was procured by the management. The negro
happened to beat the white man, and both before and after this event
people went about wildly talking of “the White Man’s champion” and “the
representative of the Black Race.” All black men were supposed to have
triumphed over all white men in a sort of mysterious Armageddon because
one specialist met another specialist and tapped his claret or punched
him in the bread-basket.
Now the fact is, of course, that these two prize-fighters were so
specially picked and trained--the business of producing such men is so
elaborate, artificial, and expensive--that the result proves nothing
whatever about the general condition of white men or black. If you go
in for heroes or monsters it is obvious that they may be born anywhere.
If you took the two tallest men on earth, one might be born in Corea
and the other in Camberwell, but this would not make Camberwell a land
of giants inheriting the blood of Anak. If you took the two thinnest
men in the world, one might be a Parisian and the other a Red Indian.
And if you take the two most scientifically developed pugilists, it is
not surprising that one of them should happen to be white and the other
black. Experiments of so special and profuse a kind have the character
of monstrosities, like black tulips or blue roses. It is absurd to make
them representative of races and causes that they do not represent.
You might as well say that the Bearded Lady at a fair represents the
masculine advance of modern woman; or that all Europe was shaking under
the banded armies of Asia, because of the co-operation of the Siamese
Twins.
So the plutocratic tendency of such performances as _Henry VIII_ is to
prevent rather than to embody any movement of historical or theatrical
imagination. If the standard of expenditure is set so high by custom,
the number of competitors must necessarily be small, and will probably
be of a restricted and unsatisfactory type. Instead of English history
and English literature being as cheap as silver paper, they will be as
dear as silver plate. The national culture, instead of being spread out
everywhere like gold leaf, will be hardened into a few costly lumps
of gold--and kept in very few pockets. The modern world is full of
things that are theoretically open and popular, but practically private
and even corrupt. In theory any tinker can be chosen to speak for his
fellow-citizens among the English Commons. In practice he may have to
spend a thousand pounds on getting elected--a sum which many tinkers do
not happen to have to spare. In theory it ought to be possible for any
moderately successful actor with a sincere and interesting conception
of Wolsey to put that conception on the stage. In practice it looks
as if he would have to ask himself, not whether he was as clever as
Wolsey, but whether he was as rich. He has to reflect, not whether he
can enter into Wolsey’s soul, but whether he can pay Wolsey’s servants,
purchase Wolsey’s plate, and own Wolsey’s palaces.
Now people with Wolsey’s money and people with Wolsey’s mind are
both rare; and even with him the mind came before the money. The
chance of their being combined a second time is manifestly small and
decreasing. The result will obviously be that thousands and millions
may be spent on a theatrical misfit, and inappropriate and unconvincing
impersonation; and all the time there may be a man outside who could
have put on a red dressing-gown and made us feel in the presence of
the most terrible of the Tudor statesmen. The modern method is to sell
Shakespeare for thirty pieces of silver.
The Duty of the Historian
We most of us suffer much from having learnt all our lessons in history
from those little abridged history-books in use in most public and
private schools. These lessons are insufficient--especially when
you don’t learn them. The latter was indeed my own case; and the
little history I know I have picked up since by rambling about in
authentic books and countrysides. But the bald summaries of the small
history-books still master and, in many cases, mislead us. The root of
the difficulty is this: that there are two quite distinct purposes of
history--the superior purpose, which is its use for children, and the
secondary or inferior purpose, which is its use for historians. The
highest and noblest thing that history can be is a good story. Then it
appeals to the heroic heart of all generations, the eternal infancy of
mankind. Such a story as that of William Tell could literally be told
of any epoch; no barbarian implements could be too rude, no scientific
instruments could be too elaborate for the pride and terror of the
tale. It might be told of the first flint-headed arrow or the last
model machine-gun; the point of it is the same: it is as eternal as
tyranny and fatherhood. Now, wherever there is this function of the
fine story in history we tell it to children only because it is a fine
story. David and the cup of water, Regulus and the _atque sciebat_,
Jeanne d’Arc kissing the cross of spear-wood, or Nelson shot with all
his stars--these stir in every child the ancient heart of his race;
and that is all that they need do. Changes of costume and local colour
are nothing: it did not matter that in the illustrated Bibles of our
youth David was dressed rather like Regulus, in a Roman cuirass and
sandals, any more than it mattered that in the illuminated Bibles of
the Middle Ages he was dressed rather like Jeanne d’Arc, in a hood or
a visored helmet. It will not matter to future ages if the pictures
represent Jeanne d’Arc cremated in an asbestos stove or Nelson dying
in a top-hat. For the childish and eternal use of history, the history
will still be heroic.
But the historians have quite a different business. It is their affair,
not merely to remember that humanity has been wise and great, but to
understand the special ways in which it has been weak and foolish.
Historians have to explain the horrible mystery of how fashions were
ever fashionable. They have to analyse that statuesque instinct of the
South that moulds the Roman cuirass to the muscles of the human torso,
or that element of symbolic extravagance in the later Middle Ages which
let loose a menagerie upon breast and casque and shield. They have to
explain, as best they can, how anyone ever came to have a top-hat, how
anyone ever endured an asbestos stove.
Now the mere tales of the heroes are a part of religious education;
they are meant to teach us that we have souls. But the inquiries of the
historians into the eccentricities of every epoch are merely a part of
political education; they are meant to teach us to avoid certain perils
or solve certain problems in the complexity of practical affairs. It
is the first duty of a boy to admire the glory of Trafalgar. It is the
first duty of a grown man to question its utility. It is one question
whether it was a good thing as an episode in the struggle between Pitt
and the French Revolution. It is quite another matter that it was
certainly a good thing in that immortal struggle between the son of
man and all the unclean spirits of sloth and cowardice and despair.
For the wisdom of man alters with every age; his prudence has to fit
perpetually shifting shapes of inconvenience or dilemma. But his folly
is immortal: a fire stolen from heaven.
Now, the little histories that we learnt as children were partly meant
simply as inspiring stories. They largely consisted of tales like
Alfred and the cakes or Eleanor and the poisoned wound. They ought to
have entirely consisted of them. Little children ought to learn nothing
but legends; they are the beginnings of all sound morals and manners.
I would not be severe on the point: I would not exclude a story solely
because it was true. But the essential on which I should insist would
be, not that the tale must be true, but that the tale must be fine.
The attempts in the little school-histories to introduce older and
subtler elements, to talk of the atmosphere of Puritanism or the
evolution of our Constitution, is quite irrelevant and vain. It is
impossible to convey to a barely breeched imp who does not yet know
his own community, the exquisite divergence between it and some other
community. What is the good of talking about the Constitution carefully
balanced on three estates to a creature only quite recently balanced on
two legs? What is the sense of explaining the Puritan shade of morality
to a creature who is still learning with difficulty that there is any
morality at all? We may put on one side the possibility that some of us
may think the Puritan atmosphere an unpleasant one or the Constitution
a trifle rickety on its three legs. The general truth remains that we
should teach, to the young, men’s enduring truths, and let the learned
amuse themselves with their passing errors.
It is often said nowadays that in great crises and moral revolutions we
need one strong man to decide; but it seems to me that that is exactly
when we do not need him. We do not need a great man for a revolution,
for a true revolution is a time when all men are great. Where despotism
really is successful is in very small matters. Every one must have
noticed how essential a despot is to arranging the things in which
every one is doubtful, because every one is indifferent: the boats in
a water picnic or the seats at a dinner-party. Here the man who knows
his own mind is really wanted, for no one else ever thinks his own mind
worth knowing. No one knows where to go to precisely, because no one
cares where he goes. It is for trivialities that the great tyrant is
meant.
But when the depths are stirred in a society, and all men’s souls grow
taller in a transfiguring anger or desire, then I am by no means
so certain that the great man has been a benefit even when he has
appeared. I am sure that Cromwell and Napoleon managed the mere pikes
and bayonets, boots and knapsacks better than most other people could
have managed them. But I am by no means sure that Napoleon gave a
better turn to the whole French Revolution. I am by no means so sure
that Cromwell has really improved the religion of England.
As it is in politics with the specially potent man, so it is in history
with the specially learned. We do not need the learned man to teach
us the important things. We all know the important things, though we
all violate and neglect them. Gigantic industry, abysmal knowledge,
are needed for the discovery of the tiny things--the things that seem
hardly worth the trouble. Generally speaking, the ordinary man should
be content with the terrible secret that men are men--which is another
way of saying that they are brothers. He had better think of Cæsar as
a man and not as a Roman, for he will probably think of a Roman as a
statue and not as a man. He had better think of Coeur-de-Lion as a man
and not as a Crusader, or he will think of him as a stage Crusader. For
every man knows the inmost core of every other man. It is the trappings
and externals erected for an age and a fashion that are forgotten and
unknown. It is all the curtains that are curtained, all the masks
that are masked, all the disguises that are now disguised in dust and
featureless decay. But though we cannot reach the outside of history,
we all start from the inside. Some day, if I ransack whole libraries, I
may know the outermost aspects of King Stephen, and almost see him in
his habit as he lived; but the inmost I know already. The symbols are
mouldered and the manner of the oath forgotten; the secret society may
even be dissolved; but we all know the secret.
Questions of Divorce
I have just picked up a little book that is not only brightly and
suggestively written, but is somewhat unique, in this sense--that it
enunciates the modern and advanced view of Woman in such language as a
sane person can stand. It is written by Miss Florence Farr, is called
_Modern Woman: her Intentions_, and is published by Mr. Frank Palmer.
This style of book I confess to commonly finding foolish and vain. The
New Woman’s monologue wearies, not because it is unwomanly, but because
it is inhuman. It exhibits the most exhausting of combinations: the
union of fanaticism of speech with frigidity of soul--the things that
made Robespierre seem a monster. The worst example I remember was once
trumpeted in a Review: a lady doctor, who has ever afterwards haunted
me as a sort of nightmare of spiritual imbecility. I forget her exact
words, but they were to the effect that sex and motherhood should be
treated neither with ribaldry nor reverence: “It is too serious a
subject for ribaldry, and I myself cannot understand reverence towards
anything that is physical.” There, in a few words, is the whole twisted
and tortured priggishness which poisons the present age. The person
who cannot laugh at sex ought to be kicked; and the person who cannot
reverence pain ought to be killed. Until that lady doctor gets a little
ribaldry and a little reverence into her soul, she has no right to have
any opinion at all about the affairs of humanity. I remember there was
another lady, trumpeted in the same Review, a French lady who broke off
her engagement with the excellent gentleman to whom she was attached on
the ground that affection interrupted the flow of her thoughts. It was
a thin sort of flow in any case, to judge by the samples; and no doubt
it was easily interrupted.
The author of _Modern Woman_ is bitten a little by the mad dog of
modernity, the habit of dwelling disproportionally on the abnormal
and the diseased; but she writes rationally and humorously, like a
human being; she sees that there are two sides to the case; and she
even puts in a fruitful suggestion that, with its subconsciousness and
its virtues of the vegetable, the new psychology may turn up on the
side of the old womanhood. One may say indeed that in such a book as
this our amateur philosophizing of to-day is seen at its fairest; and
even at its fairest it exhibits certain qualities of bewilderment and
disproportion which are somewhat curious to note.
I think the oddest thing about the advanced people is that, while they
are always talking of things as problems, they have hardly any notion
of what a real problem is. A real problem only occurs when there are
admittedly disadvantages in all courses that can be pursued. If it is
discovered just before a fashionable wedding that the Bishop is locked
up in the coal-cellar, that is not a problem. It is obvious to anyone
but an extreme anti-clerical or practical joker that the Bishop must
be let out of the coal-cellar. But suppose the Bishop has been locked
up in the wine-cellar, and from the obscure noises, sounds as of song
and dance, etc., it is guessed that he has indiscreetly tested the
vintages round him; then, indeed, we may properly say that there has
arisen a _problem_; for, upon the one hand, it is awkward to keep
the wedding waiting, while, upon the other, any hasty opening of the
door might mean an episcopal rush and scenes of the most unforeseen
description.
An incident like this (which must constantly happen in our gay
and varied social life) is a true problem because there are in it
incompatible advantages. Now if woman is simply the domestic slave that
many of these writers represent, if man has bound her by brute force,
if he has simply knocked her down and sat on her--then there is no
problem about the matter. She has been locked in the kitchen, like the
Bishop in the coal-cellar; and they both of them ought to be let out.
If there is any problem of sex, it must be because the case is not so
simple as that; because there is something to be said for the man as
well as for the woman; and because there are evils in unlocking the
kitchen door, in addition to the obvious good of it. Now, I will take
two instances from Miss Farr’s own book of problems that are really
problems, and which she entirely misses because she will not admit that
they are problematical.
The writer asks the substantial question squarely enough: “Is
indissoluble marriage good for mankind?” and she answers it squarely
enough: “For the great mass of mankind, yes.” To those like myself,
who move in the old-world dream of Democracy, that admission ends the
whole question. There may be exceptional people who would be happier
without Civil Government; sensitive souls who really feel unwell when
they see a policeman. But we have surely the right to impose the State
on everybody if it suits nearly everybody; and if so, we have the right
to impose the Family on everybody if it suits nearly everybody. But the
queer and cogent point is this; that Miss Farr does not see the real
difficulty about allowing exceptions--the real difficulty that has made
most legislators reluctant to allow them. I do not say there should be
no exceptions, but I do say that the author has not seen the painful
problem of permitting any.
The difficulty is simply this: that if it comes to claiming exceptional
treatment, the very people who will claim it will be those who least
deserve it. The people who are quite convinced they are superior
are the very inferior people; the men who really think themselves
extraordinary are the most ordinary rotters on earth. If you say,
“Nobody must steal the Crown of England,” then probably it will not
be stolen. After that, probably the next best thing would be to say,
“Anybody may steal the Crown of England,” for then the Crown might find
its way to some honest and modest fellow. But if you say, “Those who
feel themselves to have Wild and Wondrous Souls, and they only, may
steal the Crown of England,” then you may be sure there will be a rush
for it of all the rag, tag, and bobtail of the universe, all the quack
doctors, all the sham artists, all the demireps and drunken egotists,
all the nationless adventurers and criminal monomaniacs of the world.
So, if you say that marriage is for common people, but divorce for free
and noble spirits, all the weak and selfish people will dash for the
divorce; while the few free and noble spirits you wish to help will
very probably (because they are free and noble) go on wrestling with
the marriage. For it is one of the marks of real dignity of character
not to wish to separate oneself from the honour and tragedy of the
whole tribe. All men are ordinary men; the extraordinary men are those
who know it.
The weakness of the proposition that marriage is good for the common
herd, but can be advantageously violated by special “experimenters” and
pioneers, is that it takes no account of the problem of the disease
of pride. It is easy enough to say that weaker souls had better
be guarded, but that we must give freedom to Georges Sand or make
exceptions for George Eliot. The practical puzzle is this: that it is
precisely the weakest sort of lady novelist who thinks she is Georges
Sand; it is precisely the silliest woman who is sure she is George
Eliot. It is the small soul that is sure it is an exception; the large
soul is only too proud to be the rule. To advertise for exceptional
people is to collect all the sulks and sick fancies and futile
ambitions of the earth. The good artist is he who can be understood; it
is the bad artist who is always “misunderstood.” In short, the great
man is a man; it is always the tenth-rate man who is the Superman.
Miss Farr disposes of the difficult question of vows and bonds in love
by leaving out altogether the one extraordinary fact of experience
on which the whole matter turns. She again solves the problem by
assuming that it is not a problem. Concerning oaths of fidelity, etc.,
she writes: “We cannot trust ourselves to make a real love-knot unless
money or custom forces us to 'bear and forbear.’ There is always the
lurking fear that we shall not be able to keep faith unless we swear
upon the Book. This is, of course, not true of young lovers. Every
first love is born free of tradition; indeed, not only is first love
innocent and valiant, but it sweeps aside all the wise laws it has been
taught, and burns away experience in its own light. The revelation is
so extraordinary, so unlike anything told by the poets, so absorbing,
that it is impossible to believe that the feeling can die out.”