THE NEW MORALITY.
Our mistress is a little given to philosophy: what disputations
shall we have here by-and-by!—_Gil Blas._
They add up nature to a nought of God
And cross the quotient.
—_Elizabeth Barrett Browning._
Voilà de l’erudition.—_Les Femmes Savantes._
Dr. Day had introduced Elsworth to a rather singular society, founded
by himself and daughter, in the West End of town, and much frequented
by medical, literary, musical, and artistic young folk of “advanced”
views. One of its members, Arthur Devaux, was a rising physician at the
hospital, and his sister Linda soon became impressed with the
attentions of young Elsworth, and they met frequently and studied many
things together. Both were addicted to philological research; Linda
worked at Anglo-Saxon in the library of the British Museum, and, as
Elsworth had pronounced tastes in that direction, they were much thrown
together. Her father was an artist of French extraction, and, sharing
his daughter’s tastes for comparative languages and dialects, they
found the young doctor a welcome addition to their family circle.
Basque, and Caló, the dialect of the gipsies of Spain, were just now
occupying some of their attention, and the whole history and customs of
the latter interesting people had taken hold of young Elsworth to the
extent of making him desirous to visit them as soon as his hospital
work would permit. Such studies had by no means interfered with his
professional duties, but had assisted them by relaxing the mind when
wearied with the strain of long-continued effort in one direction.
Philology was one of his modes of unbending the bow, and a latent
Bohemianism gave him a strange sympathy with a gipsy’s life. Have not a
large proportion of the solemn and respectable folk dwellers in our
great cities a taint of this same disorder? Would not that calm,
awe-inspiring judge upon the bench, when the fit is on him, like to
pitch off his wig and crimson robe, and betake him to a Bedouin’s life,
if it were possible? Is it too much to imagine there may possibly be a
bishop or two who now and again have to smother a temptation, just the
least spice of a desire, say, to doff apron and shovel hat, and have a
season or two in a quiet, well-ordered sort of way, where Mrs. Grundy
could not find them? Certes, we have known more than a dozen doctors
who have neat broughams, and whose manner of entering them is dignified
and becoming; who wear well-cut clothes, spotless linen, and the
shiniest of hats; who speak in measured tones, and look the very
impersonations of propriety; who yet are so heartily sick of your
tongues and pulses, your livers and your hearts, your pills and
potions, and your horrible stair-climbing, that were it not for the
overpowering sense of duty to Mrs. Leech and the little Leeches, they
would long ere now have been off out of walled cities, and away from
the galling proprieties of civilisation, and betaken themselves to the
forest, the moor, and the mountain.
Our Society met every Sunday evening for social intercourse and
amusement; combined with the propagation of their advanced ideas. They
were all free men and women, that is to say, they had got rid of
old-world superstitions, and had dethroned God, setting up Science and
the Nineteenth Century in His place. They were a perfectly proper and
well-conducted set of people, who, though very revolutionary over tea
and biscuits, defending Nihilism, dynamite mission work, and the
loosening of mental fetters and actual bricks and mortar generally,
would not have rashly upset even a box of crackers, or exploded a match
in an unguarded manner. They were well dressed, spoke in subdued
society tones, and conducted themselves exactly as other people, only
they persisted in letting everybody know how extremely they disapproved
of God.
The young ladies were for the most part accompanied by their highly
respectable mammas or papas, who did not seem in the least alarmed at
their daughters’ sympathy with the violent doings of “men struggling
for freedom;” or at the indifference to continued existence on this
ill-conducted planet manifested by the young creatures in bewitching
evening toilettes who were under their tutelage. The mammas and papas
had heard it all before, and knew just what it meant; it made them
rather proud, perhaps, when they saw a blushing young curate confronted
for the first time with such advanced sentiments, but even the curate
got over his alarm when he found how very harmless it all was, and how
when the girls married they became just as reactionary as such people
usually are when they realize that they have any responsibilities. For
the most part the mammas seemed to act on the suggestion of one of the
lights of their school of thought, who maintained that it was “the duty
of parents to obey their children in all things;” reversing the Mosaic
command, as being suitable for the governance of a nomadic tribe of
Eastern people who had little or no science, but not a fit code of
behaviour for the highly educated and well-convoluted brains of
nineteenth-century children. Their mammas looked up to their offspring
with a touching pride and awe—they had, from their superior height,
been able to overlook and despise the lower ground on which their
parents stood. The parents, indeed, still felt in their nerves—however
much they might affect to disregard—the potent influence of the old
creeds—they could not relegate to the limbo of discarded stage
properties all the articles of the Christian faith in which they had
been nurtured, but this their sons and daughters could and did; and
they admired their superior attainments and often wished they had at
their tongues’ ends those caustic and supercilious answers to the
objections of the orthodox which came so readily from the lips of their
children. It was they who would set the world right on all those
points; it was they who would be able to forego prayer without that
constantly recurring sense of desolation and orphanhood. It was they
who would let the world see how Christ was to be estimated at perhaps a
lower standard than Confucius, and certainly as the inferior of Buddha.
It was they who would one day explode the Sermon on the Mount, and
substitute for it the New Morality, summed up in the motto, “Every one
for himself, and the devil take the hindmost.” It had not been quite
decided what word to substitute for devil, but it would be something
like “reversion to original type,” “degradation of species,”
“retrogression,” or some such scientific term. Meanwhile the word devil
was used not as implying any theological assent to the personality of
unpleasantness, but as a mere phrase like “Good-bye,” which originally,
of course, was “God be with ye,” now cut short, or topped and tailed,
as cooks prepare radishes. The inner schools of this society were
at the time we write of engaged in preparing a list of phrases
which advanced people should not be permitted to use,—an _index
expurgatorius_, in which were already placed “Good-bye!” “Adieu!” “Good
gracious!” “Bless me!” “Mercy on us!” “Faith!” “Oh law!” (though some
were for retaining this), “Heaven send us,” “Providential escape!” and
all ejaculations and expressions having their rise in “fables and lying
deceits.”
The use of the “big, big D.” and similar exclamations, was inhibited
for gentlemen, not merely on account of vulgarity, but because such
words implied some latent belief in superstitious dogmas, as Dr. Newman
argues that the terrible language used by the Tuscans and Neapolitans
is an evidence of the complete orthodoxy of their faith,—just as “By
our Ladye,” subjected to an abbreviating process, is in the modern
vernacular of the vulgar, a relic of Mariolatry, of which even our
enfranchised and much voting mechanics have not yet divested themselves.