clothes that sway the earnest and indiscriminating lover of the drama.
For once put virtue in a gossamer _peignoir_, the clinging, fascinating
kind, and slip her number six feet into a number three satin slipper,
and how the pit will rise at her as one man, as they have never done
before, and take her to their hearts, for human nature is as yielding as
putty to grief that wears nice clothes and is well scrubbed.
Unfortunately the world is full of undramatic tragedies that are all the
more tragic because of a dire need of soap and water.
As the educator of a public swayed by the eloquence of a slipper and
moved to tears by the pathos of a petticoat, one can but beg and implore
our dramatists, even at the risk of making their dramas less thrilling,
to give virtue a tiny bit of a chance--for a change.
_On Taking Oneself Seriously_
Never has mediocrity been so triumphantly successful as now, and that is
the reason we take ourselves so seriously. Never before has it attained
such a high level of excellence, and if, for that reason, we miss those
grand and lonely peaks that represent the supreme glory of the past, we
can at least cheer ourselves by the comfortable reflection that we are
each a glorious little peak. That being conceded it goes without saying
that, occupied as we are with ourselves, we really have too much to do
to bother about the greatness of our friends.
In the past the great man was surrounded by a band of ardent worshippers
who circled about him and trumpeted forth his praise. In these
degenerate days if there is a great man, he is not surrounded by
satellites, for the satellites are practically employed circling about
themselves. So the great man girds up his loins and wisely proclaims his
own greatness.
Then, too, it is a bother to chant another man's praises if you are
quite convinced, and you are probably right, that he is no greater than
you are, so you abstain from the folly of it and devote all your
energies to blowing your own little trumpet with seraphic vigour. In the
past the little bands of ardent worshippers were quite disinterested, a
merit to which the occasional ardent worshipper of the present cannot
always lay claim. Our modern attitude is one of doubt, and so when we
hear a pæan of praise we close one eye and ask "Why?" The fact is we
decline to take anyone else seriously, but we make up for that by taking
ourselves with redoubled seriousness. In previous ages there were no
newspapers who took upon themselves the role of Fame, poising aloft a
laurel wreath ready to drop it on the head of the best-advertised
genius. In those blissful days, so little appreciated now, when the
world could neither read nor write, hero worship was so popular that the
lauded one found it unnecessary to take himself too seriously, for
others kindly did it for him.
This is undoubtedly an age of emphasis and capitals. If you don't see
the capitals in print you are sure to see them in the attitude. Woman,
Millionaire, Poet, Statesman, Composer, Dramatist, Novelist, Artist--to
mention only a few--may not be spelled with a capital, but one never has
the honour of meeting any of these worthy people without recognising the
capital in their haughty intercourse with their fellow men.
Possibly it even permeates the lower strata of society, but one can only
judge by the experience that comes in one's modest way. The gentlemen,
who are at this moment shovelling in our winter coal, may take
themselves seriously. Possibly the one with the coal-sack lightly twined
across his shoulders has his own opinion as to the superior way in which
he shovels the coal down the hole. It is more than probable that the
plumber who came this morning to screw up a leaking tap takes himself
seriously. I think he does for he left a small boy and his tools to
remind me of him, and he has proudly retired from the scene. Still I
really think that the disorder generally attacks those who work with
what "the reverend gentleman is pleased to call his mind," and it is
most fatal where, besides dollars and cents, the sufferer demands the
tribute of instant applause.
Supposing the greatest singer in the world were to sing to stolid faces
and dead silence and were to receive no applause for two or three years;
her attitude towards the public would become one of praiseworthy
modesty. It is this frantic, ill-considered admiration which gives the
good lady such a mistaken sense of her own importance.
If the last work of the last great mediocrity in the way of novelists
were to be ignored, and only reviewed a couple of years after its
publication, many an estimable gentleman and lady would step down from
their pedestal and walk quite modestly on a level with their fellow
beings.
If the poets received their meed of praise long after they were nicely
buried instead of at afternoon teas, they would write better, indeed
they would. Weak tea praise has never been good for the mental stamina,
and it is awfully misleading. Because a gushing thing with an ardent eye
protests over a tea-cup that your poems are the most beautiful poems
she has ever read, it is not necessary to believe her. Do not on the
strength of that go home and snub your old mother who, to her sorrow,
has been educated to believe that among her goslings she has hatched a
swan. Gosling or swan in these days at best you can reach no higher
altitude than to be called a minor poet.
One wonders who was the first reviewing misanthrope who called the
modern singers "minor poets"? Why should that branch of the writing Art
have evoked his particular animosity? Do we say minor historian, minor
novelist, minor painter, minor composer? Why should we belittle an
artist who may be infinitely greater than all these, and damn his art
with an adjective? It is not for us to judge if a poet be minor or
major. That is usually the business of the future, and there is no
prophet among us able to prophesy which of our poets will join the
immortals. Thank Heaven, advertising is only a temporary product, and
has no influence on immortality.
The misfortune of our age is that the tools for the divine arts have
became so cheap and handy. Literature, especially, is at the mercy of
every irresponsible infant with ambition and a penny to spare. Why, the
snub-nosed board-school youngster down there skipping joyfully along the
gutter has a sheet of paper and a lead-pencil, the excellence of which
were beyond the imagination of Shakespeare. It is this cheap and fatal
luxury which makes such triumphant mediocrity and so little greatness,
and it is the fault of the newspapers, the publishers, too much
education, and afternoon teas. May they all be forgiven!
The truth is the poets should not be published, nor should the
newspapers be permitted to crown the singer with a laurel-wreath still
dripping with printers' ink. The poet should be handed down as was old
Homer and sung in the market place; if then in the future there is
enough of him left to be considered at all, let him then be considered
seriously, but let him not, O let him not, do it for himself
prematurely, for fear. Remember the famous and classic tragedy of Humpty
Dumpty who sat on a wall.
Once I came upon an editor--a great editor!--who in a moment of frenzy
was sincere. I was looking respectfully at that tomb of fame, his
wastepaper basket.
"Did you pass a fellow going down?" and he threw a scowl after the
departed one. "That is Jones." He really didn't say Jones, but he
mentioned a name so famous in literature that the tramcars proclaim it
along with the best brands of whiskies, soap, corsets, and sapolio, and
it adorns sandwich men in the gutter by the dozens; hoardings bellow it
forth silently, and the newspapers devote pages to it as if it were the
greatest thing in patent medicine.
"I made him," and the editor thumped his sacred desk. "I boomed him and
I printed his first confounded rot," and he strode up and down the room
with a full head of steam on.
"I've always said it is the advertising that does it, not the stuff one
advertises. Proved it, too, and then sat back and watched their heads
swell. He is the last. A year ago he sat in that very chair and gurgled
obsequious thanks. Last week we invited him to dinner and he forgot to
come. To-day he came in just to say if I don't pay him just double the
rate I've been giving him he'll take his stuff to the "Rocket," for the
"Rocket" editor has made him an offer. And this to me who boomed him and
made him out of nothing. O, by Jove!"
"That is only the artistic temperament," I said soothingly.
"Artistic temperament! There is no such thing. It's only another name
for d----d bad manners and a swelled head."
I was greatly interested in this artless definition of the artistic
temperament, and I went off deeply pondering as to what constitutes a
swelled head.
Now swelled head and taking yourself seriously are much the same, only
that swelled heads are common in all grades of society. I once had a
butcher who had it, being convinced that he was most beautiful to look
upon. He used to put a great deal of his stock-in-trade on his curling
brown locks. He was not a bit proud of the inside of his head, to do him
justice, but he was so absolutely sure of the effect of his shiny hair,
his big black moustache, his red cheeks and his round brown eyes.
He was a very happy man. Now you may take yourself seriously, but in a
crevice of your mind you can still have the ghost of a doubt. But a
swelled head never has a doubt. I have been told by those who have had
an opportunity of studying, that swelled heads are not uncommon among
shop-walkers, literary people, butlers and members of Parliament, and
that musicians even are not all as great as they think they are. The
last fiddler I had the joy of hearing scratched with so much temperament
and so out of tune! What a mercy it is that so many people do not know a
false note when they hear it!
It has even been whispered that some painters who paint very great
pictures (in size) are really not so wonderful as they think they are.
But if anyone is excusable for a too benevolent opinion of himself it is
surely a painter who stands before an acre of canvas, and squeezes a
thousand dear little tubes, and daubs away and has the result hung on
the line. Then we go to the private view, turn our backs on it and say,
"Isn't it sublime--did you ever!" Ah, me, it is no use being modest in
this world!
Take yourself seriously, and clap on a swelled head and you will impress
all such as have time to attend to you. Have we not come across the
pretty third-rate actress who puts on the airs of the great, and refers
to her wooden impersonations as "Art"? O art, art, what sins have been
committed in thy name! Have we not met the pet of the papers, the
celebrated lady novelist? How did she get her exalted position? Goodness
knows! She sweeps through society with superb assurance, and she is
really so rude at afternoon teas that that alone proves how great she
is; she only relents when she meets editors and reviewers. She coos at
them, and well she may for she is crowned with the laurel-wreath of the
best up-to-date advertising.
Once I met a little politician who thought he was a statesman. A rare
instance of course. Circumstances made me helpless, so to speak, and so
he inflicted on me all the speeches he did not make in the "House." He
gave me to understand that the Chancellor of the Exchequer consulted him
on all intricate matters of finance; that he was in fact the power
behind the throne. Now the truth was, and he knew it, and I knew it,
that his serious work consisted in paying those little tributes his
constituency demanded, to subscribe bravely to drinking fountains,
almshouses, and fairs--the kind with the merry-go-rounds--and, in his
enlightened patriotism, to open bazaars, and also to dance for the good
of his party. His supreme glory was to write M.P. after his name, which
made him much sought after at innocent dinner-parties that aspired to
shine with reflected glory. On such occasions he was often in great form
and delivered extracts from those tremendous speeches he never made. But
everybody was deeply impressed and it was rumoured in the suburbs that
he would certainly be in the next Cabinet.
If you have a grain of humour you can't take yourself too seriously, for
then you do realise how desperately unimportant you are. The very
greatest are unimportant; what then about the little bits of ones who
constitute the huge majority? Was there ever anyone in the world who was
ever missed except by one or two, and that not because he was great or
even necessary, but only because he was beloved by some longing, aching
heart? The waters of oblivion settle over a memory as quickly as over a
puddle which is disturbed by a pebble thrown by a careless hand. Alas!
Perhaps the most tremendous instance of the unimportance of the greatest
was Bismarck's discharge by his Emperor, with no more ceremony, indeed
less, than a housewife employs to discharge her cook. The greatest man
of his time, the creator of an empire, the inspirer of a nation! To whom
in his very lifetime statues were erected, north, south, east and west.
To whom the ardent hearts of the young went forth in adoration; whose
possible death could only be reckoned on as a misfortune that would
leave the country in chaos, when that iron hand should drop the reins.
Then one memorable day he dropped the reins, not because death was
greater than he, but simply because a young, untried man wished to do
the driving himself. So he was discharged. What happened? Nothing. Since
then who can believe in the importance of anyone? If the world can do
perfectly well without such a giant, why take yourselves so seriously,
you little second-rate people who have written a little book that is
dead as a door nail in three months, you little second-rate spouters of
talk on the stage, forgotten as soon as the light is turned out, you
little second-rate musicians with your long hair, your bad nerves and
your greed for adulation! Why, there have been greater folks than all of
you put together, and they have been forgotten as a summer breeze is
forgotten. Then what about you? Why even shop-walkers, and butlers and
parlour maids, though undoubtedly very important, should think of
Bismarck and not be so dreadfully haughty!
Then, too, how many people think themselves great who are only lucky,
vulgarly lucky. There is that solemn puffed-up one! Would he be so
important if he had not married a rich wife who can pay the bills? And
there is that other dull piece of prosperity who owes all his success to
his pretty and clever wife who knows just how to wheedle good things out
of the really great. And yet how seriously he takes himself! There is
the lucky parson who thinks he attracts such shoals of worshippers to
God's house. Why it is not he at all, but a royal princess who has
strayed in and whom the dear, unworldly sheep are following. Yet how
seriously he takes his reverend self!
There is the great medical light, who, while curing an eminent personage
of nothing in particular, interspersed a few racy anecdotes that made
him roar. No wonder his waiting-room overflows, and that he is called in
consultation all over the land. He is bound to be knighted. Why?
Goodness knows.
There is the popular M.P. "I am the great I am," he all but says as he
comes in. Once he was a modest man with modest friends, now he thinks he
is a great man, and he wisely turns his back on his modest friends
because he realises that he can serve his country best in the higher
social circles. The first time I ever saw a real live M.P. was in
America, and I held my breath I was so impressed.
We were even stirred by an Englishman who came over and who only aspired
to be an M.P. He talked of nothing but himself and his political views,
and he used to point out the majesty of his own intellect. That was
possibly the result of the American atmosphere; it is rather given to
that! He is not yet an M.P., and over here he has lucid intervals of
modesty. In a fit of humility a real M.P. once confessed to me that it
would answer all practical purposes if he sent his footman to that
magnificent building on the Thames, where the English legislator covers
his gigantic intellect with that silk hat, which represents nothing if
not perfect propriety.
One curious phase of taking ourselves so seriously is the enormous
increased importance of the Interesting. Society bristles with the
Interesting. Sometimes one wonders where the uninteresting go? Modern
society demands that you should be something or do something or say
something, or at least pretend to. You elbow your way through the other
struggling mediocrities, and behold you arrive and that proves that you
are interesting, whereupon you are invited to luncheon and dinner and
things to meet the other Interestings. Now I ask, as one perplexed, are
you ever invited to meet the thoroughly uninteresting? And yet don't
the uninteresting want to meet people and eat things? Of course they do,
but the world does not want them at any price!
Is there, perhaps, a dreary corner of the earth where the uninteresting,
one is not invited to meet, come together, and from this modest refuge
wistfully watch the Interesting asked out to breakfast and other revels?
But, really, have we the courage these days to invite anybody without
asking an "interesting" person to meet them? Have we the moral courage
to invite anyone to meet only--oneself? Of course a stray uninteresting
may wander into the haunts of the other kind. One does sometimes meet a
human being at a terribly intellectual afternoon tea or at a serious
dinner party, whose conversation does not absolutely thrill one's
pulses.
Fortunately the world's standard of what is interesting varies, or there
would be an appalling monotony in its circles, but it is understood that
you must be celebrated, or notorious, or well advertised or cheeky and
even dishonest, if it is on a magnificent scale. At any rate you must
take yourself seriously and get a swelled head.
Each Interesting carries about with him his own barrel organ on which he
grinds out his little tune, not always so great a tune as he honestly
thinks, but still it is his very own. You may have all the virtues
enumerated in the dictionary, but if you have not done something, or
said something, or been something, and if you are only a well-meaning,
law-abiding citizen and regularly pay your bills, a humdrum virtue which
the hard-up Interesting occasionally ignores, then you had better give
up and retire to the dull society to which you belong.
In studying the Interesting, one discovers that they do not always carry
their credentials on the outside. Sometimes, it is humiliating to
confess it, one nearly mistakes them for the other kind; still, it is
always an honour to sit on the outskirts of a Great Mind, and humbly
wonder in what forgotten corner genius has so triumphantly hidden
itself. However, an uninteresting celebrity is quite a different affair
from the uninteresting pure and simple, who are never asked to meet
anybody and certainly not to meals.
There was once, so we were taught at school, an age of stone and an age
of iron. After much study I have decided that we have arrived at the age
of Lions. Not the four-legged, dangerous kind, but the two-legged ones
who drink tea and nibble biscuits. The analogy is even more solemnly
striking for they both have enormous heads. The lion is evolved from the
Interesting. First you have to be interesting, and then you must
practise roaring, modestly at first, but not too modestly; then louder
and louder until society simply can't ignore you, you make so much
noise, and so you become a lion, and in these days it must be a very
pleasant business to be a lion, the only drawback being that the supply
rather exceeds the demand. However, no matter how excellent a thing is,
there is sure to be some trifling drawback.
Even when you take yourself seriously the effect you produce if not
irritating is often so delightfully funny! But one ought to be thankful
for that, for the world owes a debt of gratitude even to the
unconscious humourist. It is so much easier to make people cry than to
make them laugh! We are all little ready-made tragedians; do we not come
into the world with a cry? I feel convinced that it is easier to write a
great tragedy than a great comedy. Life's keynote is minor. We can turn
on tears at short notice, but humour is not every man's province.
"Our customers," the courteous attendant of a circulating library said
to me recently, "don't like funny books and so we don't stock them."
Perhaps for this reason the discouraged humourist in search of
amusement, seizes rejoicing on those refreshing people who take
themselves seriously. It adds indeed the last epicurean touch to his
delight that they don't know how awfully funny they are.
"_Soft-Soap_"
It takes a great deal of heroism to tell an unpleasant truth, but it
takes a great deal more of heroism to hear it. The privilege of telling
an unpleasant truth is strictly confined to one's familiar friends,
one's family, or one's enemies, which is probably the reason that no one
is a hero to any of these, and that he sometimes likes his familiar
friends and his family quite as much as he does his enemies. It is,
after all, an exceptional person who has a great opinion of himself;
even the most conceited has, I feel sure, his quarter hours when he sits
in sackcloth and ashes and contemplates his failures. No one rises
superior to a compliment, and without such and other little amenities of
life how the world's machinery would creak! I admire all those Spartan
souls who declare that they love the truth, and it is humiliating to
confess that I don't love the truth unless it is a pleasant one.
Everybody is, I do believe, his own best critic, and there is hardly
any thing unpleasant your family can tell you about yourself that you
have not known long before; but it is an added humiliation to see
yourself betrayed to the world. For example, it is the exception for the
creator of any work which is in reality poor, but which the voice of the
people acclaims (and the people are about the poorest critics going), if
he does not realise down in his doubting heart, that his stuff is poor
stuff. It is that which keeps the human balance, or some of our greatest
ones, or rather our noisiest ones, would be inflated to the
danger-point. There is a right standard in every heart, even if warped
by circumstances, and the excuse, "He knew no better," hardly holds good
out of a lunatic asylum.
It is always our humourists who have tackled truth, and who have shown
with a laugh that touches perilously near a sob (a little way of
humourists!) that a standard of pure unvarnished truth has never been
popular in this erring world; at least not since some of out forefathers
scalped their brother forefathers, and the ladies and gentlemen who
dwelt in caves took their afternoon tea in the shape of a cosy nibble at
the bones of their foes. It is not the bones of our foes we nibble in
these enlightened days!
It was an immortal humourist who, having discovered that truth is not
what we want,--unless like a pill in sugar,--provided the world with a
substitute--soft-soap. It is really soft-soap which makes social
intercourse so delightfully easy, and we therefore owe our humorous
benefactor a heavy debt of gratitude.
Nothing is, however, perfect, and if this blessed discovery has one
little defect, it is that, like patent medicine, the more you swallow
the more you want; so it occasionally happens that the great ones of
this world have finally to have it administered in buckets where once
they were grateful for only a sip.
The philosophic mind will discover that society can be quite simply
divided into two classes,--one soft-soaps and the other permits itself
to be soft-soaped. The humourist who invented the precious substitute
for truth hardly realised the value of what he did; for had he taken
out a patent he would have rivalled in wealth the great Rockefeller
himself, who has been so divinely blessed in that other oily
article--petroleum.