in the popularity of Dickens. On the contrary, he has recaptured his
creative reputation and fascination far more than any of the other
great Victorians. Macaulay, who was really great in his way, is
rejected; Cobbett, who was much greater, is forgotten. Dickens is not
merely alive: he is risen from the dead. But the difficulty is in the
failing under his feet, as it were, of that firm historic platform on
which he had performed his Christmas pantomimes: a platform of which
he was quite as unconscious as we, most of us, are of the floor we
walk about on. The fact is that the fun of Christmas is founded on the
seriousness of Christmas; and to pull away the latter support even from
under a Christmas clown is to let him down through a trap-door. And
even clowns do not like the trap-doors that they do not expect. Thus
it is unfortunately true that so glorious a thing as a Pickwick party
tends to lose the splendid quality of a mere Mummery, and become that
much more dull and conventional thing, a Covent Garden Ball. We are not
ourselves living in the proper spirit of Pickwick. We are pretending to
be old Dickens characters, when we ought to be new Dickens characters
in reality.
The conditions are further complicated by the fact that while reading
Dickens may make a man Dickensian, studying Dickens makes him quite
the reverse. One might as well expect the aged custodian of a museum
of sculpture to look (and dress) like the Apollo Belvedere, as expect
the Pickwickian qualities in those literary critics who are attracted
by the Dickens fiction as the materials for a biography or the subject
of a controversy; as a mass of detail; as a record and a riddle. Those
who study such things are a most valuable class of the community, and
they do good service to Dickens in their own way. But their type and
temperament are not, in the nature of things, likely to be full of
the festive magic of their master. Take, for example, these endless
discussions about the proper ending of _Edwin Drood_. I thought
Mr. William Archer’s contributions to the query some time ago were
particularly able and interesting; but I could not, with my hand on my
heart, call Mr. William Archer a festive gentleman, or one supremely
fitted to follow Mr. Swiveller as Perpetual Grand of the Glorious
Apollos. Or again, I see that Sir William Robertson Nicoll has been
writing on the same Drood mystery; and I know that his knowledge of
Victorian literature is both vast and exact. But I hardly think that a
Puritan Scot with a sharp individualistic philosophy would be the right
person to fall off the coach. Sir William Nicoll, if I remember right,
once forcibly described his individualist philosophy as “firing out the
fools.” And certainly the spirit of Dickens could be best described
as the delight in firing them in. It is exactly because Christmas is
not only a feast of children, but in some sense a feast of fools, that
Dickens is in touch with its mystery.
Taffy
I do not understand Welshmen. When we say we do not understand
such-and-such a person, we usually mean that he has been making himself
a nuisance. He has been bothering us in some way; and the puzzle of his
motives and further intentions has become a practical one. I do not
mean anything of the kind here: I mean barely what I say. The distant
Trojans never injured me. Taffy never came to my house or stole any
part of the provisions. On the contrary, historically speaking, I went
to Taffy’s house and took away a good deal of what belonged to him. I
do not think that Taffy is a thief; I do not even know enough about him
to be sure of the preliminary statement that he is a Welshman. I mean,
quite simply and ingenuously, that I know nothing about Wales--not even
(for certain) that there is such a place. I went, indeed, a few weeks
ago to a curious place full of rocks; and the people there _said_ it
was Wales. But, then, other people said that these people were very
sly, and that you could not believe anything they said. But, then,
as I did not believe the second people who did not believe the first
people, it all came back to the same comfortable condition as before,
which is one of blank and disinterested nescience. It is a condition I
am in with regard to a large number of things in this world. I keep my
faith for the things of another world. About this world I am a complete
agnostic.
But in this particular case of ignorance I rather fancy that I am
not alone. I think that the great majority of Englishmen have no
real notion of the Welsh type or spirit, whatever it is. They have
conceptions of the Scot and the Irishman, false conceptions, but always
containing some lines of a true tradition. The Englishman does, so
to speak, understand the Scotchman even when he misunderstands him.
The Englishman does know what the Irish are, even while he demands
indignantly of heaven why they are. The stingy Puritan in plaid
trousers is a very crude and unjust version of that queer blend that
makes the Scot--the combination of a certain coarseness of fibre with
great intellectual keenness for abstract and even mystical things.
Still, it is a version; the prose and poetry of the Scot remain in
the caricature. The picture of Paddy at Donnybrook leaves out all the
subtlety and self-tormenting irony that are mixed up with the pugnacity
of the Irish. Still, the Irish are pugnacious; the Englishman has got
the leading feature right. He knows that, for all his economics, the
Scotchman often has a bee in his bonnet, and he knows that the Irishman
generally has a wasp in his--a thing that will sting itself or anyone
else merely for fun or glory.
In these cases, the caricature, though stiff, highly coloured,
antiquated, and largely false, tells the remains of several truths. But
who on earth has ever seen a caricature of a Welshman? In _Punch_ and
such papers we never see anything but pictures of a Welshwoman--as
if there were no males in that peculiar country with the rocks. Even
the woman is only marked as Welsh by wearing an extraordinary costume,
rather like that of Cinderella’s supernatural godmother. Without the
artist suggesting any costume at all, one would recognize the very
silly portraits of Irishmen with long upper lips, in the style of apes.
Without any plaid trousers to assist the mind, one could spot the stiff
beards and rocky cheek-bones of the Scotchmen of Charles Keene. But
if you took away the Welshwoman’s extraordinary hat, there would be
nothing whatever to show that she was a Welshwoman. We have not in our
minds a Welsh type to make fun of. It is interesting to remember that
apparently Shakespeare had.
This state of entire non-understanding (as distinct from
misunderstanding) of the Welsh seems to me just now to be not only
unique, but important and rather serious. For, unless I am very much
mistaken, Wales is going to play some peculiar, and perhaps dominant,
part in the developments of our extraordinary time. If the Welsh begin
to influence us without our having yet even begun to imagine them,
we shall have the whole Irish business over again; the gradual or
imperfect understanding of a thing in the process of wrestling with it
in the dark. The indications of such a movement in Wales (wherever it
is), the suggestion of the growing influence of Welshmen (whoever they
may be), is something that comes to us rather by widely distributed
happenings and hints than in any theatrical example. Some, however,
would call Mr. Lloyd George a theatrical example; he has been called
even more extraordinary things. And in that degree the thing is true.
Mr. Lloyd George is very much more genuine and sincere and formidable
in his capacity as leader of the little Welsh nation than he is in
any of the other capacities in which he is foolishly praised and
ridiculously reviled. But to anyone who really has an eye for history
in action, the smallest strike secretary in a Welsh railway or colliery
bulks much bigger in the present picture than Mr. Lloyd George. And it
has been in Wales that many of the most dramatic and effective labour
revolts have happened: above all it was in Wales that they presented
peculiar features of their own, bad or good, which marked them out
from the whole temper and habit of England in recent times. The modern
theory of animals was challenged in the episode of the ponies in
the mines. The modern theory of Jews was challenged in the violent
Anti-Semite riots of the last few weeks. Things fierce and unfamiliar,
things lost since the Middle Ages, are coming upon us out of the West.
As the curious incident of the quarrels between Welshmen and Jews
has been mentioned, I will take the opportunity here of correcting
a curious mistake that clings to the minds of numbers of my
correspondents. There is in particular a gloomy gentleman in America
who keeps on asking me how my Anti-Semite prejudice is getting on, and
generally displaying a curiosity about how many Hebrew teeth I have
pulled out this week, and how often a Pogrom is held in front of my
house. He appears to base it all on some statement of mine that Jews
were tyrants and traitors. Upon this basis his indignation is eloquent,
lengthy and (in my opinion) just. The only weakness affecting this
superstructure is the curious detail that I never did say that Jews
were tyrants and traitors. I said that a particular kind of Jew tended
to be a tyrant and another particular kind of Jew tended to be a
traitor. I say it again. Patent facts of this kind are permitted in
the criticism of every other nation on the planet: it is not counted
illiberal to say that a certain kind of Frenchman tends to be sensual.
It is as plain as a pikestaff that the Parisian tradition of life and
letters has a marked element of sensuality. It is also as plain as a
pikestaff that those who are creditors will always have a temptation
to be tyrants, and that those who are cosmopolitans will always have
a temptation to be spies. This has nothing to do with alleging that
the majority of any people falls into its typical temptations. In this
respect I should imagine that Jews varied in their moral proportions
as much as the rest of mankind. Rehoboam was a tyrant; Jehoshaphat was
not. In what is perhaps the most celebrated collection of Jews in human
history, the proportion of traitors was one in twelve. But I cannot see
why the tyrants should not be called tyrants and the traitors traitors;
why Rehoboam should not cause a rebellion or Judas become an object of
dislike, merely because they happen to be members of a race persecuted
for other reasons and on other occasions. Those are my views on Jews.
They are more reasonable than those of the people that wreck their
shops; and much more reasonable than those of the people who justify
them on all occasions.
“Ego et Shavius Meus”
Accident has cut me off this week from many current publications; and
left me much to my own devices. It is therefore my immutable purpose to
write an article about myself, under the thin pretence of noticing a
book about Mr. Bernard Shaw.
This is all the more fun because it is exactly what Mr. Bernard Shaw
would do himself; nor should I blame him. I like Mr. Shaw’s type of
Egoism; because, if he talks big, it is at least about big things;
things bound to be bigger than himself.
I revolt, not against the loud egoist, but the gentle egoist; who
talks tenderly of trifles; who says, “A sunbeam gilds the amber of my
cigarette-holder; I find I cannot live without a cigarette-holder.”
I resist this arrogance simply because it is more arrogant. For even
so complete a fool cannot really suppose we are interested in his
cigarette-holder; and therefore must suppose that we are interested
in him. But I defend a dogmatic egoist precisely because he deals in
dogmas.
The Apostles’ Creed is not regarded as a pose of foppish vanity; yet
the word “I” comes before even the word “God.” The believer comes
first; but he is soon dwarfed by his beliefs, swallowed in the
creative whirlwind and the trumpets of the resurrection. And if a man
says he believes in the Superman or the Socialist State, I think him
equally modest; only not so sensible.
Mr. Herbert Skimpole’s book, _Bernard Shaw: the Man and His Work_,
contains many suggestive and valuable things to which I cannot do
justice, including allusions to myself mostly only too flattering,
and in one case both amusing and mystifying. The passage suggests
that all the active figures in my idle fictions are made as fat as I
am; though I cannot recall that any of them are fat at all; except
a semi-supernatural monster in a nightmare called _The Man Who Was
Thursday_.
Let there be no alarm, however, that I shall talk about such
nightmares, or any of my own tales; like Shaw, I am egoistic about
things that matter. Mr. Skimpole says that while Shaw and I agree
that the world should be adapted to the man, “Chesterton includes our
present institutions among the parts of a man’s soul which cannot be
altered.” Now there is here a potential mistake, which I will not
apologize for taking more seriously than any fancy about the figures in
my very amateurish romances.
I need not say I do not mind being called fat; for deprived of that
jest, I should be almost a serious writer. I do not even mind being
supposed to mind being called fat. But being supposed to be contented,
and contented with the present institutions of modern society, is a
mortal slander I will not take from any man.
Whatever are the institutions I defend, they are not primarily those of
the present. They have been attempted in the past; and I hope they may
be achieved in the future; but they are not present, but conspicuous by
their absence. Mr. Skimpole truly says that I defend domesticity and
piety and patriotism, but these are not the typical institutions of
to-day.
The typical institutions of to-day are a Divorce Court cutting up
families with the speed of a sausage machine; a Science which preaches
the destiny without the divinity of Calvinism; and a Finance that
crosses all frontiers with the same enlightened indifference that is
shown by cholera.
These are the institutions of the instant, and even Mr. Skimpole has
realized them as those of the immediate future. In a somewhat innocent
passage he says that “it is of no use for Shaw to point out” to me
the hope of a cosmopolitan future; “that Internationalism, social
class-feeling, and Imperialism all point the same way he refuses to
see.”
It is indeed useless for Shaw to point out to me that I should follow
the lead of these things; since I happen to detest Imperialism,
disbelieve in Internationalism and distrust “social class-feeling,”
so far as I know what it means. I am well aware that an Imperial
Chancellor in Berlin, an international money-lender in Johannesburg,
and an anarchist spy in Petrograd, are “all pointing the same way”; and
that is why I feel pretty safe in going the other.
I warmly apologize to Mr. Skimpole for writing a personal explanation
instead of a review of his book, which contains many things well worth
writing and reviewing; notably the shrewd remark about Shaw’s style;
in which what is a paradox in spirit is seldom an epigram in form.
It takes our breath away rather by taking itself for granted than
by defining itself like a defiance. But I fancy Mr. Skimpole will
sympathize with me if I am primarily concerned with his convictions, as
he is with mine, and as we both are with Shaw’s.
And he has gone to the vital point in emphasizing this matter of the
things permanent in man. When I say that religion and marriage and
local loyalty are permanent in humanity, I mean that they recur when
humanity is most human; and only comparatively decline when society is
comparatively inhuman.
They have declined in the modern world. They may return through the
war; but anyhow, where we have the small farm and the free man and the
fighting spirit, there we shall have the salute to the soil and the
roof and to the altar.
To take a more casual case: I believe that when men are happy, they
sing; not only at the piano but at the plough, or at least in the
intervals of ploughing; at their work and in their walks abroad. I am
well aware that modern men do not sing in the street very much. I am
well aware that cosmopolitan money-lenders never sing, but die with all
their music in them. I know that the Song of the Happy Meat-Contractor
is not one of “our present institutions.”
I know that one can seldom come at dawn upon some solitary London
banker carolling more sweetly than the lark; and even his clerks do not
often sing in chorus over their ledgers. But I still think it is more
human to sing than not to sing; and that, being more human, it is more
permanent in humanity.
Some righteous revolution will teach the bankers and contractors that
little birds who can sing and won’t sing must be made to sing--or at
any rate made to squeal. In the interlude, the instinct of song takes
refuge in the lesser thing called poetry, or even prose; and to-morrow
the fever of personal sincerity may have passed; and I shall return,
with a lowly air, to literature.
The Plan for a New Universe
There is one theory of the Origin of Species which I have never seen
suggested. Probably this is because I have never read the numberless
and voluminous works in which it has been suggested. For I have read
much madder things, and nothing mad is likely to have been missed by
the modern mind. But since it shocked the respectability of agnostics
to suggest that all creatures had been made different by God, why did
nobody suggest that they had been made different by Man? Why not trace
the vast variety of animals as we can really trace the vast variety
of dogs? The dog is already almost a world in himself, with all the
appearance of distinct orders and types. A St. Bernard approaches the
size and surpasses the legendary virtues of a lion; while there is
a sort of Pekinese which a man might almost tread on as a somewhat
unpleasing insect. Yet all this world of evolution has presumably
had Man for its god. Suppose our sphere in space has itself been the
Island of Dr. Moreau. Suppose Man had some prehistoric civilization
so colossal and complete that all beasts were beasts of burden, or
all animals were domestic animals; that all rabbits were pet rabbits
or all fleas performing fleas. Suppose the tame bird came first, and
what we know as the wild bird afterwards. Mr. Bernard Shaw, in one of
his early anti-domestic diatribes, compared a woman in the home to a
parrot in the cage, saying that mere custom made us think the connexion
natural. The answer, it has always seemed to me, is strangely obvious.
It is surely plain that the housewife is not the bird in the cage, but
the bird in the nest. But if, in that age of wild sceptics, anyone had
wished to outdo Mr. Shaw in paradox, he could have done it brilliantly
by this hypothesis that the colours of a parrot were actually produced
in a cage; and that an exiled bird only built himself a rude den of
sticks and mud as an outlaw does when driven from his home. Suppose,
in short, that Man has not only been a dog-fancier, but a wolf-fancier
and a hyena-fancier. Suppose he really fancied a rhinoceros. Suppose
some prehistoric squire kept a stud of giraffes; or his money-lender
got a peerage on the plea that he had improved the breed of crocodiles.
Then we have only to suppose this universal Zoo broken up like the
Roman Empire; and all we see is its neglect and riot. The tiger is a
stray cat; a specially large and handsome cat who took the prize (and
the prize-giver) and escaped to the jungle. A whale was some sort of
hornless cow sent into the sea like a Newfoundland dog, who suddenly
refused to come back again. This thesis accounts for the comparative
rapidity of the differentiation, over which the geologists fight with
the biologists. It accounts rationalistically for those evidences of
a creative purpose which are so distressing to a refined mind. It
accounts for the camel, who seems always to have been in captivity;
and accounting for a camel is something. Above all, it accounts for
that very vivid impression of something in various species at once
outrageous and exact. Jefferies found in the farcical outlines of fish
or bird the notion that they must have been produced without design.
To me this sounds like saying that the caricatures of Max Beerbohm
must have been produced without design. I could as easily believe, so
far as this mere æsthetic impression goes, that the face on a gargoyle
was merely moulded by the pouring rain. Artistically, the sun-fish or
the hornbill do not look in the least like accidents; but it might be
maintained that they look like fashions. There are some tropical birds
and fruits that really have the cut and colours of novelties in a shop
window. We might fancy that an elephant was designed in the same taste
as Babylonian architecture; or the leopard and the tiger to match the
tapestries of the East. There is probably somewhere a bird as sinister
and terrifying as a top-hat; and in some luxuriant jungle a plant as
preposterous as a pair of trousers. The monsters may be only antiquated
fashion-plates. For this is one of the numberless neglected fallacies
in the clotted folly of Eugenics. Even if we could in the abstract
breed humanity well, there would be a flutter of modes and crazes about
what was considered well-bred. The dog is bred with design; but surely
not always with discretion. The dachshund appears to have been pulled
out on the rack of some demoniac vivisectionist; and somebody seems to
have cut off the bull-dog’s nose, most emphatically to spite his face.
On the analogy of the things we do breed, the Eugenist may be expected
to produce a brood of hunchbacks or a pure race of Albinos.
It is, I hope, unnecessary to remark that I do not believe in this
theory; but there have been people who might well have believed in it.
There were people who could believe in Swinburne’s sentiment, “Glory
to Man in the highest; for Man is the master of things”; and it would
surely have completed this consciousness in the poet if he could have
thought that the birds of Putney Heath, where he walked, or the fishes
in the sea, where he was so fond of swimming, were doing tricks taught
to them as to performing dogs. Suppose that such a fancy had fitted in
with one of the humanitarian religions of that time, how far would it
have satisfied what was often called the religious sentiment? It would
not have satisfied any religious sentiment, not even Swinburne’s. He
would have cared as little as Shelley to claim the birds when he could
not claim the sky. He certainly would have been much annoyed with the
notion of loving the fishes, if he were not allowed to go on loving
the sea. And though he poisoned paganism with pessimism, a thing not
only more false but more frivolous, though he tried to love the sea as
a wanton or admire the sky as a tyrant, though this morbidity weakened
his love of Nature not only as compared with Virgil or Dante, but
as compared with Wordsworth or Whitman, yet he was like every poet
elemental, and what he loved were the elementary things. And this is an
essential of any poetry and any religion. It must appeal to the origins
and deal with the first things, however much or little it may say about
them. It must be at home in the homeless void, before the first star
was made. The one thing every man knows about the unknowable is that
it is the Indispensable.