numerous precautions for his safety. No man is mad enough to set out
along a tight-rope in hobnailed boots with out previous practice. No
woman who has not learned to swim has ever tried to swim the English
Channel from Dover to Cape Grisnez. Even the daredevil barber of
Bristol insured himself, so far as he could, against the perils of his
adventure. He had an oxygen tank in the barrel which would have kept
him alive for a time if the barrel had not been swept under the Falls,
and he had friends patrolling the waters to recover the barrel. Like
the schoolboy who takes risks, he did not feel that he was going to
get caught. "I have the greatest confidence," he said, "that I shall
come through all right." His previous escapes must have given him the
assurance that he was not born to die of danger. Not only had he
served through the war, but he had once plucked a woman from the
railway line when the express was so near that it tore her skirt. He
must have felt that one man at least could live in perfect safety in
the kingdom of danger. He was probably less nervous as he crept into
his barrel than a schoolgirl would be in getting into the boat on the
chute. He had we may be sure, his thrill, but was it the thrill of
being in peril or the thrill of being conspicuous? Some men, of
course, there are who love danger for danger's sake, and who would run
risks in an empty world. Men of this kind make good spies, and, in
their youth, good burglars. Theirs is the desire of the moth for the
star--or at any rate of the moth that feels it is different from every
other moth and can successfully dare the candle flame. To play with
fire and not to be consumed is a universal pleasure. The child passes
its finger through the gas-flame and glories in the sensation. It is
like playing a game of touch with danger. The triumph of escape gives
one a delicious moment. That is why many men invent dangers for
themselves. It is simply for the pleasure of escaping them. There are
boys who enjoy wrenching knockers off doors, not because knockers are
an interesting kind of bric-à-brac, but because there is just a chance
of being caught in the act by the police. I once knew a youth who had
a drawer filled with knockers. He felt as proud of them as a young
Indian would have been of an equal number of the scalps of his
enemies. They proved that he was a brave. Every man would like to be a
brave, though every man dare not. I confess I never had much ambition
to wrench knockers, but that may have been because I was perfectly
content with the world as it is without making it any more dangerous.
I often think that people who put their heads into lions' mouths do
not realise what a dangerous place the planet is without any
artificial stimulus.
Did the daredevil barber of Bristol ever realise, I wonder, the danger
he was in every time he raised a fork with a piece of roast beef to
his lips? Either the beef might have choked him or it might have given
him ptomaine poisoning, or, if it failed of either of these, there are
at least half-a-dozen fatal diseases which vegetarians say are caused
by eating it. Even if we take for granted that there is little danger
in plain beef, are there not curries and sausages and pork-pies on
which a lover of risks may exercise his daring in the restaurants? I
know people who are afraid to eat fish on a Monday lest it may have
gone bad over the week-end. Others live in terror of mackerel and
herrings. I myself have always admired the gallantry of Londoners who
go into a chance restaurant and order lobster or curried prawns. Then
there are all the tinned foods, a spoil for heroes. I have known a
V.C. who was frightened of tinned salmon. And a man's food is not more
beset with perils than his drink. Even if he confines himself to
water, he is in danger at every sip. If the water is too hard, it may
deposit destruction in his arteries. If it is too soft, it may give
his child rickets. Or it may be populous with germs and give him
typhoid fever. If, on the other hand, he is dissatisfied with the
drink of the beasts and takes to beverages the use of which
distinguishes men from oxen, what a nightmare procession of potential
ills lies in wait for him! You may read an account of them in any
temperance tract. The very enumeration of them would drive a weak man
to water, if water itself were not suspect. But, alas, even to breathe
is to put oneself in danger. There are more germs in a bus than there
are stars in the firmament, and one cannot walk along the Strand
without all sorts of bacilli shooting their little arrows at one at
every breath. If men realised these things--truly realised them--they
would see that there is no need to go to the North Pole in order to
live dangerously. A walk from Charing Cross to St Paul's would then be
seen to be as rich in hairbreadth escapes as a voyage to an island of
head-hunters. The man who lives the most thrilling life I know is a
man who rarely stirs beyond his garden. Every time he is pricked by a
thorn or gets a little earth in his finger-nail, he rushes into the
house to bathe his hands in lysol and, for days afterwards, he keeps
feeling his jaw to see whether it is stiffening with the first signs
of tetanus. He lives in a condition of recurrent alarm. He gets more
frights in a week than an ordinary traveller could get in a year. I
have often advised him to give up gardening, seeing that he finds it
so exciting. I have come to the conclusion, however, that he enjoys
those half-hourly rushes to the lysol-bottle--the desperate game of
hide-and-seek with lockjaw. He needs no barrel to roll him over
Niagara in order to gaze into "the bright eyes of danger." He finds
all the danger he wants at the root of the meanest brussels sprout
that blows.
XX
WEEDS: AN APPRECIATION
A weed, says the dictionary, is "any plant that is useless,
troublesome, noxious or grows where it is not wanted." The dictionary
also adds: "_colloq._, a cigar." We may omit for our present purpose
the harmless colloquialism, but the rest of the definition deserves to
be closely examined. Socrates, I imagine, could have found a number of
pointed questions to put to the dictionary maker. He might have begun
with two of the commonest weeds, the nettle and the dandelion. Having
got his opponent--and the opponents of Socrates were all of the same
mental build as Sherlock Holmes's Dr Watson--eagerly to admit that the
nettle was a weed, he would at once put the definition to the test.
"The story goes," he would say, quoting Mrs. Clark Nuttall's admirable
work, _Wild Flowers as They Grow_, "that the Roman soldiers brought
the most venomous of the stinging nettles to England to flagellate
themselves with when they were benumbed with the cold of this--to
them--terribly inclement isle. It is certain," he would add from the
same source, "that physicians at one time employed nettles to sting
paralysed limbs into vigour again, also to cure rheumatism. In view of
all this," he would ask, "does it not follow either that the nettle is
not a weed or that your definition of a weed is mistaken?" And his
opponent would be certain to answer: "It does follow, O Socrates." A
second opponent, however, would rashly take up the argument. He would
point out that even if the Romans had a mistaken notion that
nettle-stings were useful as a preventive of cold feet, and if our
superstitious ancestors made use of them to cure rheumatism, as our
superstitious contemporaries resort to bee-stings for the same
purpose, the nettle was at all times probably useless and is certainly
useless to-day. Socrates would turn to him with a quiet smile and ask:
"When we say that a plant is useless, do we mean merely that we as a
matter of fact make no use of it, or that it would be of no use even
if we did make use of it?" And the reply would leap out: "Undoubtedly
the latter, O Socrates." Socrates would then remember his Mrs. Nuttall
again, and refer to an old herbal which claimed that "excessive
corpulency may be reduced" by taking a few nettle-seeds daily. He
would admit that he had never made a trial of this cure, as he had no
desire to get rid of the corpulency with which the gods had seen fit
to endow him. He would claim, however, that the usefulness of the
nettle had been proved as an article of diet, that it was once a
favourite vegetable in Scotland, that it had helped to keep people
alive at the time of the Irish famine, and that even during the recent
war it had been recommended as an excellent substitute for spinach.
"May we not put it in this way," he would ask, "that you call a nettle
useless merely because you yourself do not make use of it?" "It seems
that you are right, O Socrates." "And would you call an aeroplane
useless, merely because you yourself have never made use of an
aeroplane? Or a pig useless, merely because you yourself do not eat
pork?" There would be a great wagging of heads among the opponents,
after which a third would pluck up courage to say: "But, surely,
Socrates, nettles as we know them to-day are simply noxious plants
that fulfil no function but to sting our children?" Socrates would
say, after a moment's pause: "That certainly is an argument that
deserves serious consideration. A weed, then, is to be condemned, you
think, not for its uselessness, but for its noxiousness?" This would
be agreed to. "Then," he would pursue his questions, "you would
probably call monkshood a weed, seeing that it has been the cause not
merely of pain but even of death itself to many children." His
opponent would grow angry at this, and exclaim: "Why, I cultivate
monkshood in my own garden. It is one of the most beautiful of the
flowers." Then there would be some wrangling as to whether ugliness
was the test of weeds, till Socrates would make it clear that this
would involve omitting speedwell and the scarlet pimpernel from the
list. Someone else would contend that the essence of a weed was its
troublesomeness, but Socrates would counter this by asking them
whether horseradish was not a far more troublesome thing in a garden
than foxgloves. "Oh," one of the disputants would cry in desperation,
"let us simply say that a weed is any plant that is not wanted in the
place where it is growing." "You would call groundsel a weed in the
garden of a man who does not keep a canary, but not a weed in the
garden of a man who does?" "I would." Socrates would burst out
laughing at this, and say: "It seems to me that a weed is more
difficult to define even than justice. I think we had better change
the subject and talk about the immortality of the soul." The only part
of the definition of a weed, indeed, that bears a moment's
investigation is contained in the three words: "_colloq._, a cigar."
In my opinion, the safest course is to include among weeds all plants
that grow wild. It is also important to get rid of the notion that
weeds are necessarily evil things that should be exterminated like
rats. I remember some years ago seeing an appalling suggestion that
farmers should be compelled by law to clear their land of weeds. The
writer, if I remember correctly, even looked forward to the day when a
farmer would be fined if a daisy were found growing in one of his
fields. Utilitarianism of this kind terrifies the imagination. There
are some people who are aghast at the prospect of a world of
simplified spelling. But a world of simplified spelling would be
Arcadia itself compared to a world without wild flowers. According to
certain writers in _The Times_, however, we are faced with the
possibility of a world without wild flowers, even if the Board of
Agriculture takes no hand in the business. These writers tell us that
the reckless plucking of wild flowers has already led to a great
diminution in their numbers. Daffodils grow wild in many parts of
England, but, as soon as they appear, hordes of holiday-makers rush to
the scene and gather them in such numbers as to injure the life of the
plants. I am not enough of a botanist to know whether it is possible
in this way to discourage flowers that grow from bulbs. If it is, it
seems likely enough that, with the increasing popularity of country
walks, there will after a time be no daffodils or orchises left in
England. If one were sure of it, one would never pluck a bee-orchis
again. One does not know why one plucks it, except that the bee-shaped
flower is one of the most exquisite of Nature's toys, and one is
greedy of possessing it. Children try to catch butterflies for the
same reason. If it were possible to catch a sunset or a blue sea, no
doubt we should take them home with us, too. It may be that art is
only the transmuted instinct to seize and make our own all the
beautiful things we see. The collector of birds' eggs and the painter
are both collectors of a beauty that can be known only in hints and
fragments. Still, the painter is justified by the fact that his
borrowings actually add to the number of beautiful things. If the
collector of eggs and the gatherer of flowers can be shown to be
actually anti-social in their greed, we cannot be so enthusiastic
about them. I confess that on these matters I have an open mind. For
all I know, the discussion on wild flowers in _The Times_ may be
merely a scare. At the same time, it seems reasonable to believe that
if flowers that propagate themselves from seed were all gathered as
soon as they appeared, there would before long be no flowers left. I
notice that one suggestion has been made to the effect that
flower-lovers should provide themselves with seeds and should scatter
these in "likely places" during their country walks. I do not like
this plotting on Nature's behalf. Besides, it might lead to some
rather difficult situations. If this general seed-sowing became a
matter of principle, for instance, I should probably sow daisies on my
neighbour's tennis lawn, poppies and fumitory in his cornfield, and
dandelions in his meadow. It is not that I am devoted to the dandelion
as a flower, though it has been praised for its beauty, but at a later
stage a meadow of a million dandelion-clocks seems to me to be one of
the most beautiful of spectacles. But I would go further than this. I
should never see a hill-side cultivated without going out at night and
sowing it with the seeds of gorse and thistle. Not that I should bear
any ill-will to the farmer, but it is said that the diminution of
waste land, with its abundance of gorse and thistles, has led to a
great diminution in the number of linnets and goldfinches. The farmer,
perhaps, can do without linnets and goldfinches, but we who make our
living in other ways cannot. I should sow tares among his wheat, if
necessary, if I believed that tares would tempt a bearded tit or a
golden oriole.
Still, I cannot easily persuade myself that a Society for the
Protection of Weeds is even now necessary. I have great faith in
weeds. If they are given a fair chance, I should back them against any
cultivated flower or vegetable I know. Anyone who has ever had a
garden knows that, while it is necessary to work hard to keep the
shepherd's purse and the chickweed and the dandelion and the wartwort
and the hawkweed and the valerian from growing, one has to take no
such pains in order to keep the lettuces and the potatoes from
growing. For myself, I should, in the vulgar phrase, back the
shepherd's purse against the lettuces every time. If the weeds in the
garden fail to make us radiantly happy, it is not because they are
weeds, but because they are the wrong weeds. Why not the ground-ivy
instead of the shepherd's purse, that lank intruder that not only is a
weed but looks like one? Why not bee-orchises for wartwort, and
gentians for chickweed? I have no fault to find with the foxgloves
under the apple-tree or with the ivy-leaved toad-flax that hangs with
its elfin flowers from every cranny in the wall. But I protest against
the dandelions and the superfluity of groundsel. I undertake that, if
rest-harrow and scabious and corn-cockle invade the garden, I shall
never use a hoe on them. More than this, if only the right weeds
settled in the garden, I should grow no other flowers. But shepherd's
purse! Compared with it, a cabbage is a posy for a bridesmaid, and
sprouting broccoli a bouquet for a prima donna. After all, one ought
to be allowed to choose the weeds for one's own garden. But then when
one chooses them, one no longer calls them weeds. The periwinkle, the
primrose and the mallow--we spare them with our tongue as with our
hoe. This, perhaps, suggests the only definition of a weed that is
possible. A weed is a plant we hoe up or, rather, that we try to hoe
up. A flower or a vegetable is a plant that the hoe deliberately
misses. But, in spite of the hoe, the weeds have it. They survive and
multiply like a subject race.... Well, perhaps better a weed than a
geranium.
XXI
A JUROR IN WAITING
The train was crowded with jurymen. Every one of them was saying
something like "It's a disgrace," "It's a perfect scandal," "No other
nation would put up with it," and "Here we all are grumbling; and what
are we going to do about it? Nothing. That's the British way." They
were not complaining of any act of injustice perpetrated against a
prisoner. They were complaining of their own treatment. Fifty or sixty
of them had been summoned from the four ends of the county, and kept
packed away all day under a gallery at the back of the court, where
there was not even room for all of them to sit down, and where there
was certainly not room for all of them to breathe. It would have been
an easy thing for the Clerk of the Court to choose a dozen jurymen in
the first ten minutes of the day, and to dismiss the rest on their
business. He might, if necessary, have also picked a reserve jury, and
selected the jury for the next day's cases. The law revels in expense,
however and so a great number of middle-aged men were taken away for
two whole days from their businesses and compelled to sit in filthy
air and on benches that would not be endured in the gallery of a
theatre, with nothing to do but watch the backs of the heads of a
continuous procession of barristers and bigamists.
Few jurors would have complained, I think if there had been any
rational excuse for detaining them. What they objected to so bitterly
was the fact that no use was made of them, and that they were kept
there for two days, though it must have been obvious to everyone that
the majority of them might as well he at home. It may be, however,
that there is some great purpose underlying the present system of
calling together a crowd of unnecessary jurymen. Perhaps it is a form
of compulsory education for middle-aged men. It shows them the machine
of the law in action, and enables them to some extent to say from
their own observation whether it is being worked in a fair and humane
or in a harsh and vindictive spirit. One cannot sit through one
criminal case after another at the Assizes without gaining a
considerable amount of material for forming a judgment on this matter.
The juror in waiting, as he sees a pregnant woman swooning in the dock
or a man with a high, pumpkin-shaped back to his head led off down the
dark stairs to five years' penal servitude, becomes a keen critic of
the British justice that may have been to him until then merely a
phrase. How does British justice emerge from the test? Well, it may be
that this judge was a particularly kind judge and that the policemen
of this county are particularly kindly policemen, but I confess that,
much as I detest other people's boasting, I came away with the
impression that the boast about British justice is justified. I do not
believe that it is by any means always justified in the mouths of
statesmen who use it as an excuse for their own injustice, and I would
not trust every judge or every jury to give a verdict free from
political bias in a case that involved political issues. But in the
ordinary case--"as between," in the words of the oath, "our sovereign
lord the King and the prisoner at the bar"--it seems to me, if my two
days' experience can be taken as typical, that British justice is not
only just but merciful.
The evidence is, perhaps, insufficient, as, in most cases, the
sentences were deferred. But what pleased one was the general lack of
vindictiveness in the prosecution or in the police evidence. Hardly a
bigamist climbed into the dock--and there was an apparently endless
stream of them--to whom the local police did not give a glowing
certificate of character. The chief constable of the county went into
the witness-box to testify that one bigamist was "reliable," "a, good
worker," etc. "His general conduct," a policeman would say of another,
"as regards both the women, was good." The barristers, as was natural,
dwelt on the Army record of most of the men, and, even when a client
had pleaded guilty, would appeal to the judge to remember that he had
before him a man with a stainless past. "But wait, wait," the judge
would interrupt; "you know bigamy is a very serious offence." "I quite
agree with your lordship," counsel would reply nervously, "but I beg
of you to take into consideration that the prisoner was carried away
by his love for this woman--" This was where the judge always grew
indignant. He was a little man with big eyebrows, a big nose, a big
mouth, and white whiskers. His whiskers made him appear a little like
Matthew Arnold in a wig and scarlet, save that he did not look as if
he were sitting above the battle. "You tell me," he declared warmly,
"that he loved this woman, while he admits that he deceived her into
marrying him and falsely described himself in the marriage certificate
as a bachelor." Counsel would again nervously agree with his lordship
that his client had done wrong in deceiving the woman, but in three
sentences he would have found another way round to the portraiture of
the prisoner as all but a model for the young. Certainly, the great
increase in the offence of bigamy proves at least the hollowness of
all the talk about the growing indifference to the marriage tie.
Whatever we may think of bigamists--and there are black sheep in every
flock--the bigamist is manifestly a much-married man. He is a person,
I should say, with the bump of domesticity excessively developed. The
merely immoral man, as most of us know him, does not ask for the
sanction of the law for his immorality. He does not feel the want of
"a home from home," as the bigamist does. The increase in bigamy, it
seems clear enough, is largely due to the war, which not only gave men
opportunities for travel such as they had never had before, but
enabled them to travel in a uniform which was itself a passport to
many an impressionable female heart. Men had never been so much
admired before. Never had they had so wide a choice of female
acquaintances. "I am amazed," said Clive on a famous occasion, "at my
own moderation." Many a bigamist, as he stands in the dock in these
days of the cool fit, could conscientiously put forward the same plea.
But the most that any of them can say is that they thought the first
wife was dead or that she wanted to bring up the children Roman
Catholics.
The first wife in one of the bigamy cases went into the witness-box,
and I saw what to me was an incredible sight--an Englishwoman of
thirty who could neither read nor write. Red-haired, tearful, weary,
she did not even know the months of the year. She said a telegram had
been sent to her husband saying she was dangerously ill in February.
"Was that this year or last year?" asked counsel. "I don't know, sir,"
she said. "Come, come," said the judge, "you must know whether you
were suffering from a dangerous illness this year or last." "No, sir,"
she replied shakily; "you see, sir, not bein' a scholar, I couldn't
'ardly tell, sir." Then a bright idea struck her. "My hospital papers
could tell the date, sir." She produced from her pocket a paper saying
that she had undergone an operation in a hospital in September 1919.
That was all that could be got out of her. The counsel on the other
side rose to cross-examine her about the dates. "You had an operation
in September, you say. Were you laid up at any other time during the
past two years?" "No, sir." "But you have sworn that you were ill in
February, when a telegram was sent to your husband?" "Yes, sir." "And
now you say that you weren't ill at any other time except in
September?" "No, sir." "So you weren't ill in February?" "Oh yes, sir;
I had the 'flu, sir." She was as obstinate about it all as the child
in _We are Seven_. But she kept assuring us that she was no scholar.
Her husband said that he had received a letter saying she was dead,
and, though he had lost it, he quoted it at length "as far as he could
remember it." It was a beautiful letter, expressing regret that he had
not been at the side of the deathbed, where, the writer was sure,
whatever faults had been on either side would have been forgiven. "You
never were dead?" the judge asked the woman. "No sir," she replied in
the same tone of _We are Seven_ seriousness.