same kind. For I strolled through a place I had imagined quite virgin
and unvisited (as far as I was concerned), and I suddenly found I was
treading in my own footprints, and the footprints were nearly twenty
years old.
It was one of those stretches of country which always suggests an almost
unnatural decay; thickets and heaths that have grown out of what were
once great gardens. Garden flowers still grow there as wild flowers,
as it says in some good poetic couplet which I forget; and there is
something singularly romantic and disastrous about seeing things that
were so long a human property and care fighting for their own hand in
the thicket. One almost expects to find a decayed dog-kennel; with the
dog evolved into a wolf.
This desolate garden-land had been even in my youth scrappily planned
out for building. The half-built or empty houses had appeared quite
threateningly on the edge of this heath even when I walked over it years
ago and almost as a boy. I was astonished that the building had gone
no farther; I suppose somebody went bankrupt and somebody else disliked
building. But I remember, especially along one side of this tangle or
coppice, that there had once been a row of half-built houses. The brick
of which they were built was a sort of plain pink; everything else was a
blinding white; the houses smoked with white dust and white sawdust;
and on many of the windows were rubbed those round rough disks of white
which always delighted me as a child. They looked like the white eyes of
some blind giant.
I could see the crude, parched pink-and-white villas still; though I had
not thought at all of them for a quarter of my life; and had not thought
much of them even when I saw them. Then I was an idle, but eager youth
walking out from London; now I was a most reluctantly busy middle-aged
person, coming in from the country. Youth, I think, seems farther off
than childhood, for it made itself more of a secret. Like a prenatal
picture, distant, tiny, and quite distinct, I saw this heath on which I
stood; and I looked around for the string of bright, half-baked villas.
They still stood there; but they were quite russet and weather-stained,
as if they had stood for centuries.
I remembered exactly what I had done on that day long ago. I had half
slid on a miry descent; it was still there; a little lower I had knocked
off the top of a thistle; the thistles had not been discouraged, but
were still growing. I recalled it because I had wondered why one knocks
off the tops of thistles; and then I had thought of Tarquin; and then I
had recited most of Macaulay's VIRGINIA to myself, for I was young. And
then I came to a tattered edge where the very tuft had whitened with
the sawdust and brick-dust from the new row of houses; and two or three
green stars of dock and thistle grew spasmodically about the blinding
road.
I remembered how I had walked up this new one-sided street all those
years ago; and I remembered what I had thought. I thought that this
red and white glaring terrace at noon was really more creepy and more
lonesome than a glimmering churchyard at midnight. The churchyard could
only be full of the ghosts of the dead; but these houses were full of
the ghosts of the unborn. And a man can never find a home in the future
as he can find it in the past. I was always fascinated by that mediæval
notion of erecting a rudely carpentered stage in the street, and acting
on it a miracle play of the Holy Family or the Last Judgment. And I
thought to myself that each of these glaring, gaping, new jerry-built
boxes was indeed a rickety stage erected for the acting of a real
miracle play; that human family that is almost the holy one, and that
human death that is near to the last judgment.
For some foolish reason the last house but one in that imperfect row
especially haunted me with its hollow grin and empty window-eyes.
Something in the shape of this brick-and-mortar skeleton was attractive;
and there being no workmen about, I strolled into it for curiosity and
solitude. I gave, with all the sky-deep gravity of youth, a benediction
upon the man who was going to live there. I even remember that for the
convenience of meditation I called him James Harrogate.
As I reflected it crawled back into my memory that I had mildly played
the fool in that house on that distant day. I had some red chalk in
my pocket, I think, and I wrote things on the unpapered plaster walls;
things addressed to Mr. Harrogate. A dim memory told me that I had
written up in what I supposed to be the dining-room:
James Harrogate, thank God for meat,
Then eat and eat and eat and eat,
or something of that kind. I faintly feel that some longer lyric
was scrawled on the walls of what looked like a bedroom, something
beginning:
When laying what you call your head,
O Harrogate, upon your bed,
and there all my memory dislimns and decays. But I could still see quite
vividly the plain plastered walls and the rude, irregular writing,
and the places where the red chalk broke. I could see them, I mean, in
memory; for when I came down that road again after a sixth of a century
the house was very different.
I had seen it before at noon, and now I found it in the dusk. But its
windows glowed with lights of many artificial sorts; one of its low
square windows stood open; from this there escaped up the road a stream
of lamplight and a stream of singing. Some sort of girl, at least,
was standing at some sort of piano, and singing a song of healthy
sentimentalism in that house where long ago my blessing had died on the
wind and my poems been covered up by the wallpaper. I stood outside that
lamplit house at dusk full of those thoughts that I shall never express
if I live to be a million any better than I expressed them in red
chalk upon the wall. But after I had hovered a little, and was about to
withdraw, a mad impulse seized me. I rang the bell. I said in distinct
accents to a very smart suburban maid, “Does Mr. James Harrogate live
here?”
She said he didn't; but that she would inquire, in case I was looking
for him in the neighbourhood; but I excused her from such exertion. I
had one moment's impulse to look for him all over the world; and then
decided not to look for him at all.
THE PRIEST OF SPRING
The sun has strengthened and the air softened just before Easter Day.
But it is a troubled brightness which has a breath not only of novelty
but of revolution, There are two great armies of the human intellect
who will fight till the end on this vital point, whether Easter is to
be congratulated on fitting in with the Spring--or the Spring on
fitting in with Easter.
The only two things that can satisfy the soul are a person and a
story; and even a story must be about a person. There are indeed
very voluptuous appetites and enjoyments in mere abstractions like
mathematics, logic, or chess. But these mere pleasures of the mind
are like mere pleasures of the body. That is, they are mere pleasures,
though they may be gigantic pleasures; they can never by a mere increase
of themselves amount to happiness. A man just about to be hanged may
enjoy his breakfast; especially if it be his favourite breakfast; and
in the same way he may enjoy an argument with the chaplain about heresy,
especially if it is his favourite heresy. But whether he can enjoy
either of them does not depend on either of them; it depends upon his
spiritual attitude towards a subsequent event. And that event is really
interesting to the soul; because it is the end of a story and (as some
hold) the end of a person.
Now it is this simple truth which, like many others, is too simple for
our scientists to see. This is where they go wrong, not only about
true religion, but about false religions too; so that their account of
mythology is more mythical than the myth itself. I do not confine myself
to saying that they are quite incorrect when they state (for instance)
that Christ was a legend of dying and reviving vegetation, like Adonis
or Persephone. I say that even if Adonis was a god of vegetation,
they have got the whole notion of him wrong. Nobody, to begin with, is
sufficiently interested in decaying vegetables, as such, to make any
particular mystery or disguise about them; and certainly not enough to
disguise them under the image of a very handsome young man, which is a
vastly more interesting thing. If Adonis was connected with the fall
of leaves in autumn and the return of flowers in spring, the process of
thought was quite different. It is a process of thought which springs
up spontaneously in all children and young artists; it springs up
spontaneously in all healthy societies. It is very difficult to explain
in a diseased society.
The brain of man is subject to short and strange snatches of sleep. A
cloud seals the city of reason or rests upon the sea of imagination; a
dream that darkens as much, whether it is a nightmare of atheism or a
daydream of idolatry. And just as we have all sprung from sleep with a
start and found ourselves saying some sentence that has no meaning, save
in the mad tongues of the midnight; so the human mind starts from its
trances of stupidity with some complete phrase upon its lips; a complete
phrase which is a complete folly. Unfortunately it is not like the dream
sentence, generally forgotten in the putting on of boots or the putting
in of breakfast. This senseless aphorism, invented when man's mind was
asleep, still hangs on his tongue and entangles all his relations to
rational and daylight things. All our controversies are confused by
certain kinds of phrases which are not merely untrue, but were
always unmeaning; which are not merely inapplicable, but were always
intrinsically useless. We recognise them wherever a man talks of “the
survival of the fittest,” meaning only the survival of the survivors; or
wherever a man says that the rich “have a stake in the country,” as
if the poor could not suffer from misgovernment or military defeat; or
where a man talks about “going on towards Progress,” which only means
going on towards going on; or when a man talks about “government by the
wise few,” as if they could be picked out by their pantaloons. “The wise
few” must mean either the few whom the foolish think wise or the very
foolish who think themselves wise.
There is one piece of nonsense that modern people still find themselves
saying, even after they are more or less awake, by which I am
particularly irritated. It arose in the popularised science of the
nineteenth century, especially in connection with the study of myths and
religions. The fragment of gibberish to which I refer generally takes
the form of saying “This god or hero really represents the sun.” Or
“Apollo killing the Python MEANS that the summer drives out the winter.”
Or “The King dying in a western battle is a SYMBOL of the sun setting
in the west.” Now I should really have thought that even the skeptical
professors, whose skulls are as shallow as frying-pans, might have
reflected that human beings never think or feel like this. Consider what
is involved in this supposition. It presumes that primitive man went out
for a walk and saw with great interest a big burning spot on the sky. He
then said to primitive woman, “My dear, we had better keep this quiet.
We mustn't let it get about. The children and the slaves are so very
sharp. They might discover the sun any day, unless we are very careful.
So we won't call it 'the sun,' but I will draw a picture of a man
killing a snake; and whenever I do that you will know what I mean.
The sun doesn't look at all like a man killing a snake; so nobody can
possibly know. It will be a little secret between us; and while the
slaves and the children fancy I am quite excited with a grand tale of
a writhing dragon and a wrestling demigod, I shall really MEAN this
delicious little discovery, that there is a round yellow disc up in the
air.” One does not need to know much mythology to know that this is a
myth. It is commonly called the Solar Myth.
Quite plainly, of course, the case was just the other way. The god
was never a symbol or hieroglyph representing the sun. The sun was a
hieroglyph representing the god. Primitive man (with whom my friend
Dombey is no doubt well acquainted) went out with his head full of gods
and heroes, because that is the chief use of having a head. Then he saw
the sun in some glorious crisis of the dominance of noon on the distress
of nightfall, and he said, “That is how the face of the god would shine
when he had slain the dragon,” or “That is how the whole world would
bleed to westward, if the god were slain at last.”
No human being was ever really so unnatural as to worship Nature. No
man, however indulgent (as I am) to corpulency, ever worshipped a man
as round as the sun or a woman as round as the moon. No man, however
attracted to an artistic attenuation, ever really believed that the
Dryad was as lean and stiff as the tree. We human beings have never
worshipped Nature; and indeed, the reason is very simple. It is that all
human beings are superhuman beings. We have printed our own image upon
Nature, as God has printed His image upon us. We have told the enormous
sun to stand still; we have fixed him on our shields, caring no more
for a star than for a starfish. And when there were powers of Nature we
could not for the time control, we have conceived great beings in human
shape controlling them. Jupiter does not mean thunder. Thunder means the
march and victory of Jupiter. Neptune does not mean the sea; the sea is
his, and he made it. In other words, what the savage really said about
the sea was, “Only my fetish Mumbo could raise such mountains out of
mere water.” What the savage really said about the sun was, “Only my
great great-grandfather Jumbo could deserve such a blazing crown.”
About all these myths my own position is utterly and even sadly simple.
I say you cannot really understand any myths till you have found that
one of them is not a myth. Turnip ghosts mean nothing if there are
no real ghosts. Forged bank-notes mean nothing if there are no real
bank-notes. Heathen gods mean nothing, and must always mean nothing, to
those of us that deny the Christian God. When once a god is admitted,
even a false god, the Cosmos begins to know its place: which is the
second place. When once it is the real God the Cosmos falls down before
Him, offering flowers in spring as flames in winter. “My love is like a
red, red rose” does not mean that the poet is praising roses under the
allegory of a young lady. “My love is an arbutus” does not mean that the
author was a botanist so pleased with a particular arbutus tree that he
said he loved it. “Who art the moon and regent of my sky” does not mean
that Juliet invented Romeo to account for the roundness of the moon.
“Christ is the Sun of Easter” does not mean that the worshipper is
praising the sun under the emblem of Christ. Goddess or god can clothe
themselves with the spring or summer; but the body is more than raiment.
Religion takes almost disdainfully the dress of Nature; and indeed
Christianity has done as well with the snows of Christmas as with the
snow-drops of spring. And when I look across the sun-struck fields, I
know in my inmost bones that my joy is not solely in the spring, for
spring alone, being always returning, would be always sad. There is
somebody or something walking there, to be crowned with flowers: and my
pleasure is in some promise yet possible and in the resurrection of the
dead.
THE REAL JOURNALIST
Our age which has boasted of realism will fail chiefly through lack of
reality. Never, I fancy, has there been so grave and startling a divorce
between the real way a thing is done and the look of it when it is
done. I take the nearest and most topical instance to hand a newspaper.
Nothing looks more neat and regular than a newspaper, with its parallel
columns, its mechanical printing, its detailed facts and figures, its
responsible, polysyllabic leading articles. Nothing, as a matter
of fact, goes every night through more agonies of adventure, more
hairbreadth escapes, desperate expedients, crucial councils, random
compromises, or barely averted catastrophes. Seen from the outside, it
seems to come round as automatically as the clock and as silently as the
dawn. Seen from the inside, it gives all its organisers a gasp of relief
every morning to see that it has come out at all; that it has come out
without the leading article upside down or the Pope congratulated on
discovering the North Pole.
I will give an instance (merely to illustrate my thesis of unreality)
from the paper that I know best. Here is a simple story, a little
episode in the life of a journalist, which may be amusing and
instructive: the tale of how I made a great mistake in quotation. There
are really two stories: the story as seen from the outside, by a
man reading the paper; and the story seen from the inside, by the
journalists shouting and telephoning and taking notes in shorthand
through the night.
This is the outside story; and it reads like a dreadful quarrel. The
notorious G. K. Chesterton, a reactionary Torquemada whose one gloomy
pleasure was in the defence of orthodoxy and the pursuit of heretics,
long calculated and at last launched a denunciation of a brilliant
leader of the New Theology which he hated with all the furnace of his
fanatic soul. In this document Chesterton darkly, deliberately, and not
having the fear of God before his eyes, asserted that Shakespeare wrote
the line “that wreathes its old fantastic roots so high.” This he said
because he had been kept in ignorance by Priests; or, perhaps, because
he thought craftily that none of his dupes could discover a curious and
forgotten rhyme called 'Elegy in a Country Churchyard'. Anyhow, that
orthodox gentleman made a howling error; and received some twenty-five
letters and post-cards from kind correspondents who pointed out the
mistake.
But the odd thing is that scarcely any of them could conceive that it
was a mistake. The first wrote in the tone of one wearied of epigrams,
and cried, “What is the joke NOW?” Another professed (and practised, for
all I know, God help him) that he had read through all Shakespeare and
failed to find the line. A third wrote in a sort of moral distress,
asking, as in confidence, if Gray was really a plagiarist. They were a
noble collection; but they all subtly assumed an element of leisure and
exactitude in the recipient's profession and character which is far from
the truth. Let us pass on to the next act of the external tragedy.
In Monday's issue of the same paper appeared a letter from the same
culprit. He ingenuously confessed that the line did not belong to
Shakespeare, but to a poet whom he called Grey. Which was another
cropper--or whopper. This strange and illiterate outbreak was
printed by the editor with the justly scornful title, “Mr. Chesterton
'Explains'?” Any man reading the paper at breakfast saw at once the
meaning of the sarcastic quotation marks. They meant, of course, “Here
is a man who doesn't know Gray from Shakespeare; he tries to patch it up
and he can't even spell Gray. And that is what he calls an Explanation.”
That is the perfectly natural inference of the reader from the letter,
the mistake, and the headline--as seen from the outside. The
falsehood was serious; the editorial rebuke was serious. The stern
editor and the sombre, baffled contributor confront each other as the
curtain falls.
And now I will tell you exactly what really happened. It is honestly
rather amusing; it is a story of what journals and journalists really
are. A monstrously lazy man lives in South Bucks partly by writing a
column in the Saturday Daily News. At the time he usually writes it
(which is always at the last moment) his house is unexpectedly invaded
by infants of all shapes and sizes. His Secretary is called away; and
he has to cope with the invading pigmies. Playing with children is a
glorious thing; but the journalist in question has never understood
why it was considered a soothing or idyllic one. It reminds him, not
of watering little budding flowers, but of wrestling for hours with
gigantic angels and devils. Moral problems of the most monstrous
complexity besiege him incessantly. He has to decide before the awful
eyes of innocence, whether, when a sister has knocked down a brother's
bricks, in revenge for the brother having taken two sweets out of his
turn, it is endurable that the brother should retaliate by scribbling on
the sister's picture book, and whether such conduct does not justify the
sister in blowing out the brother's unlawfully lighted match.
Just as he is solving this problem upon principles of the highest
morality, it occurs to him suddenly that he has not written his Saturday
article; and that there is only about an hour to do it in. He wildly
calls to somebody (probably the gardener) to telephone to somewhere for
a messenger; he barricades himself in another room and tears his hair,
wondering what on earth he shall write about. A drumming of fists on
the door outside and a cheerful bellowing encourage and clarify his
thoughts; and he is able to observe some newspapers and circulars in
wrappers lying on the table. One is a dingy book catalogue; the second
is a shiny pamphlet about petrol; the third is a paper called The
Christian Commonwealth. He opens it anyhow, and sees in the middle of a
page a sentence with which he honestly disagrees. It says that the sense
of beauty in Nature is a new thing, hardly felt before Wordsworth. A
stream of images and pictures pour through his head, like skies chasing
each other or forests running by. “Not felt before Wordsworth!” he
thinks. “Oh, but this won't do... bare ruined choirs where late the
sweet birds sang... night's candles are burnt out... glowed with living
sapphires... leaving their moon-loved maze... antique roots fantastic...
antique roots wreathed high... what is it in As You Like It?”
He sits down desperately; the messenger rings at the bell; the children
drum on the door; the servants run up from time to time to say the
messenger is getting bored; and the pencil staggers along, making
the world a present of fifteen hundred unimportant words, and making
Shakespeare a present of a portion of Gray's Elegy; putting “fantastic
roots wreathed high” instead of “antique roots peep out.” Then the
journalist sends off his copy and turns his attention to the enigma
of whether a brother should commandeer a sister's necklace because the
sister pinched him at Littlehampton. That is the first scene; that is
how an article is really written.
The scene now changes to the newspaper office. The writer of the article
has discovered his mistake and wants to correct it by the next day:
but the next day is Sunday. He cannot post a letter, so he rings up the
paper and dictates a letter by telephone. He leaves the title to his
friends at the other end; he knows that they can spell “Gray,” as no
doubt they can: but the letter is put down by journalistic custom in a
pencil scribble and the vowel may well be doubtful. The friend writes
at the top of the letter “'G. K. C.' Explains,” putting the initials in
quotation marks. The next man passing it for press is bored with these
initials (I am with him there) and crosses them out, substituting with
austere civility, “Mr. Chesterton Explains.” But and now he hears
the iron laughter of the Fates, for the blind bolt is about to
fall--but he neglects to cross out the second “quote” (as we call
it) and it goes up to press with a “quote” between the last words.
Another quotation mark at the end of “explains” was the work of one
merry moment for the printers upstairs. So the inverted commas were
lifted entirely off one word on to the other and a totally innocent
title suddenly turned into a blasting sneer. But that would have
mattered nothing so far, for there was nothing to sneer at. In the same
dark hour, however, there was a printer who was (I suppose) so devoted
to this Government that he could think of no Gray but Sir Edward Grey.
He spelt it “Grey” by a mere misprint, and the whole tale was complete:
first blunder, second blunder, and final condemnation.