ST. GEORGE FOR MERRY ENGLAND.
'Geese are swans, and swans are geese,'
M. Arnold.
At first Mab was so overwhelmed at the nature of her reception by
Science and Theology, that she meditated an immediate return to
Polynesia; but the birds implored her so pathetically to stay longer,
that she yielded, and went with the owl into Surrey. She had seen
enough of Epping Forest.
Surrey was very beautiful, and once pleasantly established in Richmond
Park, she watched the human life that seemed so strange to her with
great interest, taking care nevertheless, for some time, to keep clear
of anything that looked like a scientific man. The owl supported her in
this policy. He was not intimately acquainted with any of the members
of the learned societies, but he had a deeply-rooted and perhaps
overstrained horror of vivisection. Still, being a liberal-minded bird,
he extenuated the professor's conduct as far as possible.
'Perhaps he did not mean to do you any harm,' he suggested. 'He only
wanted to put you under the microscope.'
'He might have had more sense, then?' returned Queen Mab, still
ruffled. 'He might have seen that I was a fairy. The child suspected
something at once.'
'Ah, he was an exceptional child,' said the Owl. 'Most of the children,
nowadays, don't believe anything. In fact, now that education is
spreading so widely, I don't suppose one of them will in ten years'
time.'
'It is very dreadful,' said Queen Mab. 'What are we coming to?'
'I am sure I don't know,' said the Owl. 'But we are being educated up
to a very high point. It saves people the trouble of thinking for
themselves, certainly; they can always get all their thoughts now,
ready made, on every kind of subject, and at extremely low prices. They
only have to make up their minds what to take, and generally they take
the cheapest. There is a great demand for cheap thought just now,
especially when it is advertised as being of superior quality.'
'How do they buy it?' asked Queen Mab. 'I don't quite understand.'
'Well, you know a little about Commerce. Education is another kind of
commerce. The authors and publishers are the wholesale market, and
teachers and schools and colleges are a kind of retail dealers. Of
course, not being human, we can't expect to find it quite clear, but
that is what we _do_ make out. The kingfisher and I were listening
lately to a whole course of lectures on Political Economy; we were on a
skylight in the roof of the building, and we found that Popular
Education was part of the system of co-operation. The people who don't
think, you know, but want thoughts, hand education over to the people
who do think, or who buy up old thoughts cheap, and remake them, and
this class furnishes the community. So that, by division of labour, no
one is obliged to think who doesn't want to think, and this saves any
amount of time and expense. It is really astonishing, I hear, how few
people have to think under this new system. But Thought is in great
demand, as I said, and so is Knowledge—whether there was any difference
between the two we could not quite gather. It is a law that everyone
must buy a certain quantity from the dealers: in other words, education
is compulsory. Eating is _not_ compulsory; you _may_ starve, you _must_
learn. The Government has founded a large system of retail
establishments, or schools, and up to a certain age all the children
are taught there whose parents do not undertake to have them supplied
with thoughts at other establishments. I say thoughts, but it is facts
principally that they acquire. Of course, some thoughts are necessary
to mix the facts together with; but they generally take as few as
possible, because facts are a cheaper article, and by the principles of
competition and profit, people use the cheapest article that will sell
again for the same price. Some writers say that thoughts at retail
establishments are very inferior, and that customers had better go to
wholesale dealers at once, or else make on the premises; but I don't
know about that. Generally people buy the kind that comes handiest;
they are not half so particular about them as about articles of food
and dress, and the dealers, wholesale or retail, can sell almost
anything they like if they have a good reputation. History, languages,
science, art, theology, are all so many departments. Politics are
always in demand, and there are many great manufacturers who issue
supplies at a penny, every day, all over the kingdom. There is no
branch where the labourers employed have such stirring times as the
makers of politics: we call them statesmen. They seem, however, rather
to enjoy it, and I suppose they get used to the heat, like stokers. I
think that the burden of the whole scheme really falls most heavily on
the children. But you are tired.'
'Tell me about the children,' said Queen Mab. 'I shall understand that
better.'
'They have to learn facts, facts, for ever facts,' said the Owl
compassionately. 'It makes one's head ache to think of it. I am a
pretty well educated bird myself, though I say it; but if I had spent
my time in acquiring a quarter of the knowledge those children have to
acquire, then I should certainly never have been able to look at things
in the broadly scientific light in which they should be looked at. It
does not seem to matter what the facts are, so long as they are cheap
and plenty of them; it does not even matter whether they are true, or,
at least, that is of very minor importance. But see! see there! That is
an example of what I have been telling you.'
A child was passing below them with a weary step. Queen Mab trembled at
the sight of him, secure as she was among the broad chestnut leaves,
and her fear was justified, for in another moment the professor himself
came into view. The fairy-had seen the child before, and, as Mr.
Trollope used to say, 'she had been to him as a god'—it was the
professor's little boy. But this time the philosopher was without his
butterfly-net, and she found him much less alarming. He was occupied
with the pale, tired child, and telling him charming stories about
coral islands, that sounded to Queen Mab's astonished ears almost like
a real fairy tale. They sat down, while the professor talked. Wonderful
things he told, and said not a word all the time about generalisation
or classification.
'It is like a fairy tale,' said the boy, echoing Queen Mab's thought,
when at last they rose to go. 'Oh, father, how I wish we could see Dala
again!'
'Dala, my boy? What, the lepidoptera? Ah, I wish we could! You will
find, as you grow older, Walter, that science is better than a
butterfly.'
The boy looked up wistfully, and over the face of the philosopher, too,
came a sudden shadow. When Walter grew older? Hand in hand, the two
passed silently out of sight.
'He is a good man, after all,' said the Owl sententiously. And then
there came by a British manufacturer, in a gold watch-chain and patent
creaking leather boots, warranted to creak everywhere without losing
tone.
'Who is that?' asked Queen Mab.
'It is one of the pillars of the Church,' replied the Owl. 'The
Dragon's church, I mean, where he is worshipped by himself. In some
places you may worship St. George and the Dragon together; but in the
Stock Exchange, for instance, you may only worship the Dragon.'
'Is the Dragon very wicked?'
'I don't know,' said the Owl. 'I think he can't be, or else so many
respectable people would not worship him. The professor doesn't, or
very little; but then he doesn't worship St. George either. The people
who worship the Dragon are sometimes called Snobs—not by themselves
though; it is one of the marks of the true Snob that he never knows he
is one. They never call the Dragon by that name either. He has as many
other names as Jupiter used to have, and all the altars, and temples,
and sacrifices are made to him under the other names.'
'Sacrifices!' exclaimed Queen Mab. 'What do they sacrifice?'
'It would be shorter to say what they _don't_ sacrifice,' replied the
Owl. 'Only nobody knows, for many of his worshippers sacrifice anything
and everything. The manufacturer you saw go past—'
'Yes,' said Queen Mab, a good deal impressed, for the owl was speaking
solemnly.
'He is sacrificing the happiness, and even the lives of hundreds of men
and women. Also the playtime of the children and their innocence. As
for his own peace and charity, he sacrificed them long ago. And yet—it
is very strange; he calls himself a worshipper of St. George. You
remember, in very early times there used to be sacrifices to the
Dragon.'
'I remember,' said the fairy. 'In wicker baskets. But never anything.
like this!'
'I daresay not,' said the Owl 'We do things on a larger scale now,
sacrifices and all. Everybody prefers, of course, to make sacrifices of
the belongings of other people; but there are certain possessions of
their own that unavoidably go too—as Truth, Sympathy, Justice; abstract
nouns, the names of any quality, property, state or action,' murmured
the Owl, falling unconsciously into his old habit of parsing. 'The
English,' he added, 'are very generous with their abstract nouns, and
will sacrifice or give away any quantity of them. It is a national
characteristic, of which they are justly proud.'
'Do the women worship the Dragon?'
'Certainly!' said the Owl. 'They generally profess a great deal of
veneration for St. George too; but they will worship either to get
front seats. I don't know why the English are so fond of front seats;
back ones are just as comfortable, and one can often hear better in
them; but they don't suit dragon-worshippers. They want front seats
anywhere—at concerts, in the church, in art or literature, or even in
subscription lists. The persons who can't afford front seats generally
adore those who can, and those who can, say that the others ought to be
grateful to Providence for putting them in the gallery or letting them
into the free pews. There is a great deal of veneration in the English,
and it shows itself in this way; they reverence the people with
reserved tickets. That is why they are so fond of a noble lord, and
that is why they admire Abraham, and even Lazarus, because he
ultimately got such an excellent place in the next world. They don't
care much about Lazarus in this, because their souls have not such a
natural affinity with his when he is hanging about anyone's doorstep,
or loafing round street-corners with oranges to sell or a barrel-organ.
Sometimes they give him the crumbs that fall from their tables, and
sometimes they don't, because they are afraid he will take advantage of
it to steal the spoons. Or else they take the lofty patriotic ground,
and say that their principles forbid them to countenance vagrancy, and
that Heaven helps those who help themselves. This is very consoling to
Lazarus, and it always gives him pleasure to hear what good moral
principles the Philistines—or Snobs—have got, even if he hasn't got any
himself. From what they frequently say, you would not think that they
looked forward to seeing him in Heaven. It is part of their
great-mindedness—a national characteristic—that the chords of their
nature are more deeply stirred by sympathy with him when he has got
into a good berth. I can fancy how, in Paradise, a British Snob will
edge round to some retired crossing-sweeper, who was converted by the
Salvation Army, and went straight up among the front row of angels and
prophets, and will say:
'"Pardon me; but I remember you _so_ well!" And I can fancy that the
seraph might reply:
'"Ah, yes! I used to sweep a crossing up your street. I asked you for a
copper once, and you told me to go—not where you find me."
'It would be a little awkward for the Snob: things often are; but he
would soon get over it. His sense of locality, you perceive, is
extremely acute. He may not always know at a glance exactly what men
are in themselves, but he can always tell _where_ they are. If you put
one of Madame Tussaud's waxworks into a front seat, or on a Woolsack,
or on a Board of Directors, the English would venerate it more than
most real persons. Their sensibilities are so strong that the merest
symbol stirs them. A noble lord need not do anything remarkable; but he
is in the front row, and if he just radiates ability, that is quite
enough. And he can't help radiating "ability;" it is one of his
characteristics, and has become automatic.'
'What is automatic?'
'Automatic! Oh, it means acting of its own accord, without any effort
of the will to make it work. Automatic actions may go on a very long
time without stopping, sometimes for ever. If I continued in this
strain much longer it might get automatic too: speaking often does,
especially with Members of Parliament. It is as if they were wound up
to say similar things one after the other, like musical-boxes, by
reflex action, and you never know when they will give up. The automatic
method has this advantage, that when you have had some experience of an
automaton, you can always tell—suppose that it is wound up, for
instance, to speak on a motion—what it will probably say next, and
certainly how it will vote, and that gives you a sense of calm peace.
It is a method very common among stump orators, because it comes
cheaper in the long run. But there are other things—novel-writing, for
instance. Novelists, many of them, are wound up at the beginning to
write novels periodically, and the action gradually gets feebler and
feebler, till at last it stops. It does not, however, generally stop
till they die, and that is why we have so many bad novels from some
writers. All authors, though, don't write automatically, any more than
all clergymen preach automatically. But it is a very easy habit to fall
into: I have done it myself more than once. Of course it is very
useful, and very inexpensive, and an immense saving of energy, and one
would advise the rising generation to cultivate it as much as possible,
that their years may be long in the land. But one ought never to allow
such a habit as swearing,—or shooting,' added the Owl gravely, 'to
become automatic. Let me see, where did I begin? I was telling you
about the female dragon-worshippers, who dress in symbolical costumes,
like the old priestesses or the Salvation Army captains. Lately,
though, a good many of the women who were brought up to it have taken
"a new departure," and gone off after the wholesale education
establishments at Camford, where they are fed on biscuits and
marmalade, and illuminate the fragments of Sappho on vellum. This may
not be very good: still I think it is better than the Dragon; the worst
of it is that it forces up the educational prices.'
With which remark the Owl began a long series of observations, a
mixture of political economy and his views on popular education, which
Queen Mab found rather tedious. But they inspired her with a few
verses, which she resolved, being the most philanthropic of fairies,
and full of compassion for the dreary state of Great Britain in
general, and of the rising generation in particular, to circulate among
the Polynesian children as soon as she returned home. In this
determination, unfortunately, she either forgot or ignored the fact
that she had left her happy island a prey to the combined effects of
annexation, civilisation, and evangelisation. But the verses ran thus:
'Upon my childhood's pallid morn
No tropic summer smiled,
In foreign lands I was not born,
A happy, heathen child.
Alas! but in a colder clime,
A cultured clime, I dwell
All in the foremost ranks of time,
They say: I know it well.
_You_ never learn geography,
No grammar makes you wild,
A book, a slate you never see,
You happy, heathen child.
I know in forest and in glade
Your games are odd but gay,
Think of the little British maid,
Who has no place for play.
When ended is the day's long joy,
And you to rest have gone,
Think of the little British boy,
Who still is toiling on.
The many things we learn about,
We cannot understand.
Ah, send your missionaries out
To this benighted land!
You blessed little foreigner,
In weather fair and mild,
Think of the tiny Britisher,
Oh, happy heathen child.
Ah! highly favoured Pagan, born
In some far hemisphere,
Pity the British child forlorn,
And drop one sorrowing tear!'