THE HIGHER CRITICISM AND MR. HIBBS
PEBBLEWICK boasted an enterprising evening paper of its own, called “The
Pebblewick Globe,” and it was the great vaunt of the editor’s life that
he had got out an edition announcing the mystery of the vanishing
sign-board, almost simultaneously with its vanishing. In the rows that
followed sandwich men found no little protection from the blows
indiscriminately given them behind and before, in the large wooden
boards they carried inscribed:
THE VANISHING PUB
PEBBLEWICK’S FAIRY TALE
SPECIAL
And the paper contained a categorical and mainly correct account of what
had happened, or what seemed to have happened, to the eyes of the amazed
Garge and his crowd of sympathisers. “George Burn, carpenter of this
town, with Samuel Gripes, drayman in the service of Messrs. Jay and
Gubbins, brewers, together with a number of other well-known residents,
passed by the new building erected on the West Beach for various forms
of entertainment and popularly called the small Universal Hall. Seeing
outside it one of the old inn-signs now so rare, they drew the quite
proper inference that the place retained the license to sell alcoholic
liquors, which so many other places in this neighborhood have recently
lost. The persons inside, however, appear to have denied all knowledge
of the fact, and when the party (after some regrettable scenes in which
no life was lost) came out on the beach again, it was found that the
inn-sign had been destroyed or stolen. All parties were quite sober, and
had indeed obtained no opportunity to be anything else. The mystery is
underlying inquiry.”
But this comparatively realistic record was local and spontaneous, and
owed not a little to the accidental honesty of the editor. Moreover,
evening papers are often more honest than morning papers, because they
are written by ill-paid and hardworked underlings in a great hurry, and
there is no time for more timid people to correct them. By the time the
morning papers came out next day a faint but perceptible change had
passed over the story of the vanishing sign-board. In the daily paper
which had the largest circulation and the most influence in that part of
the world, the problem was committed to a gentleman known by what seemed
to the non-journalistic world the singular name of Hibbs However. It had
been affixed to him in jest in connection with the almost complicated
caution with which all his public criticisms were qualified at every
turn; so that everything came to depend upon the conjunctions; upon
“but” and “yet” and “though” and similar words. As his salary grew
larger (for editors and proprietors like that sort of thing) and his old
friends fewer (for the most generous of friends cannot but feel faintly
acid at a success which has in it nothing of the infectious flavour of
glory) he grew more and more to value himself as a diplomatist; a man
who always said the right thing. But he was not without his intellectual
nemesis; for at last he became so very diplomatic as to be darkly and
densely unintelligible. People who knew him had no difficulty in
believing that what he had said was the right thing, the tactful thing,
the thing that should save the situation; but they had great difficulty
in discovering what it was. In his early days he had had a great talent
for one of the worst tricks of modern journalism, the trick of
dismissing the important part of a question as if it could wait, and
appearing to get to business on the unimportant part of it. Thus, he
would say, “Whatever we may think of the rights and wrongs of the
vivisection of pauper children, we shall all agree that it should only
be done, in any event, by fully qualified practitioners.” But in the
later and darker days of his diplomacy, he seemed rather to dismiss the
important part of a subject, and get to grips with some totally
different subject, following some timid and elusive train of
associations of his own. In his late bad manner, as they say of
painters, he was just as likely to say, “Whatever we may think of the
rights and wrongs of the vivisection of pauper children, no progressive
mind can doubt that the influence of the Vatican is on the decline.” His
nickname had stuck to him in honour of a paragraph he was alleged to
have written when the American President was wounded by a bullet fired
by a lunatic in New Orleans, and which was said to have run, “The
President passed a good night and his condition is greatly improved. The
assassin is not, however, a German, as was at first supposed.” Men
stared at that mysterious conjunction till they wanted to go mad and to
shoot somebody themselves.
Hibbs However was a long, lank man, with straight, yellowish hair and a
manner that was externally soft and mild but secretly supercilious. He
had been, when at Cambridge, a friend of Leveson, and they had both
prided themselves on being moderate politicians. But if you have had
your hat smashed over your nose by one who has very recently described
himself as a “law-abidin’ man,” and if you have had to run for your life
with one coat-tail, and encouraged to further bodily activity by having
irregular pieces of a corrugated iron roof thrown after you by men more
energetic than yourself, you will find you emerge with emotions which
are not solely those of a moderate politician. Hibbs However had already
composed a leaderette on the Pebblewick incident, which rather pointed
to the truth of the story, so far as his articles ever pointed to
anything. His motives for veering vaguely in this direction were, as
usual, complex. He knew the millionaire who owned the paper had a hobby
of Spiritualism, and something might always come out of not suppressing
a marvellous story. He knew that two at least of the prosperous artisans
or small tradesmen who had attested the tale were staunch supporters of
The Party. He knew that Lord Ivywood must be mildly but not effectually
checked; for Lord Ivywood was of The Other Party. And there could be no
milder or less effectual way of checking him than by allowing the paper
to lend at least a temporary credit to a well-supported story that came
from outside, and certainly had not been (like so many stories) created
in the office. Amid all these considerations had Hibbs However steered
his way to a more or less confirmatory article, when the sudden
apparition of J. Leveson, Secretary, in the sub-editor’s room with a
burst collar and broken eye-glasses, led Mr. Hibbs into a long, private
conversation with him and a comparative reversal of his plans. But of
course he did not write a new article; he was not of that divine order
who make all things new. He chopped and changed his original article in
such a way that it was something quite beyond the most bewildering
article he had written in the past; and is still prized by those highly
cultured persons who collect the worst literature of the world.
It began, indeed, with the comparatively familiar formula, “Whether we
take the more lax or the more advanced view of the old disputed problem
of the morality or immorality of the wooden sign-board as such, we shall
all agree that the scenes enacted at Pebblewick were very discreditable,
to most, though not all, concerned.” After that, tact degenerated into a
riot of irrelevance. It was a wonderful article. The reader could get
from it a faint glimpse of Mr. Hibbs’s opinion on almost every other
subject except the subject of the article. The first half of the next
sentence made it quite clear that Mr. Hibbs (had he been present) would
not have lent his active assistance to the Massacre of St. Bartholomew
or the Massacres of September. But the second half of the sentence
suggested with equal clearness that, since these two acts were no
longer, as it were, in contemplation, and all attempts to prevent them
would probably arrive a little late, he felt the warmest friendship for
the French nation. He merely insisted that his friendship should never
be mentioned except in the French language. It must be called an
“entente” in the language taught to tourists by waiters. It must on no
account be called an “understanding,” in a language understanded of the
people. From the first half of the sentence following it might safely be
inferred that Mr. Hibbs had read Milton, or at least the passage about
sons of Belial; from the second half that he knew nothing about bad
wine, let alone good. The next sentence began with the corruption of the
Roman Empire and contrived to end with Dr. Clifford. Then there was a
weak plea for Eugenics; and a warm plea against Conscription, which was
not True Eugenics. That was all; and it was headed “The Riot at
Pebblewick.”
Yet some injustice would be done to Hibbs However if we concealed the
fact that this chaotic leader was followed by quite a considerable mass
of public correspondence. The people who write to newspapers are, it may
be supposed, a small, eccentric body, like most of those that sway a
modern state. But at least, unlike the lawyers, or the financiers, or
the members of Parliament, or the men of science, they are people of all
kinds scattered all over the country, of all classes, counties, ages,
sects, sexes, and stages of insanity. The letters that followed Hibbs’s
article are still worth looking up in the dusty old files of his paper.
A dear old lady in the densest part of the Midlands wrote to suggest
that there might really have been an old ship wrecked on the shore,
during the proceedings. “Mr. Leveson may have omitted to notice it, or,
at that late hour of the evening, it may have been mistaken for a
sign-board, especially by a person of defective sight. My own sight has
been failing for some time; but I am still a diligent reader of your
paper.” If Mr. Hibbs’s diplomacy had left one nerve in his soul
undrugged, he would have laughed, or burst into tears, or got drunk, or
gone into a monastery over a letter like that. As it was, he measured it
with a pencil, and decided that it was just too long to get into the
column.
Then there was a letter from a theorist, and a theorist of the worst
sort. There is no great harm in the theorist who makes up a new theory
to fit a new event. But the theorist who starts with a false theory and
then sees everything as making it come true is the most dangerous enemy
of human reason. The letter began like a bullet let loose by the
trigger. “Is not the whole question met by Ex. iv. 3? I enclose
pamphlets in which I have proved the point quite plainly, and which none
of the Bishops or the so-called Free Church Ministers have attempted to
answer. The connection between the rod or pole and the snake so clearly
indicated in Scripture is no less clear in this case. It is well known
that those who follow after strong drink often announce themselves as
having seen a snake. Is it not clear that those unhappy revellers beheld
it in its transformed state as a pole; see also Deut. xviii. 2. If our
so-called religious leaders,” etc. The letter went on for thirty-three
pages and Hibbs was perhaps justified in this case in thinking the
letter rather too long.
Then there was the scientific correspondent who said—Might it not be due
to the acoustic qualities of the hall? He had never believed in the
corrugated iron hall. The very word “hall” itself (he added playfully)
was often so sharpened and shortened by the abrupt echoes of those
repeated metallic curves, that it had every appearance of being the word
“hell,” and had caused many theological entanglements, and some police
prosecutions. In the light of these facts, he wished to draw the
editor’s attention to some very curious details about this supposed
presence or absence of an inn-sign. It would be noted that many of the
witnesses, and especially the most respectable of them, constantly refer
to something that is supposed to be outside. The word “outside” occurs
at least five times in the depositions of the complaining persons.
Surely by all scientific analogy we may infer that the unusual phrase
“inn-sign” is an acoustic error for “inside.” The word “inside” would so
naturally occur in any discussion either about the building or the
individual, when the debate was of a hygienic character. This letter was
signed “Medical Student,” and the less intelligent parts of it were
selected for publication in the paper.
Then there was a really humorous man, who wrote and said there was
nothing at all inexplicable or unusual about the case. He himself (he
said) had often seen a sign-board outside a pub when he went into it,
and been quite unable to see it when he came out. This letter (the only
one that had any quality of literature) was sternly set aside by Mr.
Hibbs.
Then came a cultured gentleman with a light touch, who merely made a
suggestion. Had anyone read H. G. Wells’s story about the kink in space?
He contrived, indescribably, to suggest that no one had even heard of it
except himself; or, perhaps, of Mr. Wells either. The story indicated
that men’s feet might be in one part of the world and their eyes in
another. He offered the suggestion for what it was worth. The particular
pile of letters on which Hibbs However threw it, showed only too clearly
what it was worth.
Then there was a man, of course, who called it all a plot of frenzied
foreigners against Britain’s shore. But as he did not make it quite
clear whether the chief wickedness of these aliens had lain in sticking
the sign up or in pulling it down, his remarks (the remainder of which
referred exclusively to the conversational misconduct of an Italian
ice-cream man, whose side of the case seemed insufficiently represented)
carried the less weight.
And then, last but the reverse of least, there plunged in all the people
who think they can solve a problem they cannot understand by abolishing
everything that has contributed to it. We all know these people. If a
barber has cut his customer’s throat because the girl has changed her
partner for a dance or donkey ride on Hampstead Heath, there are always
people to protest against the mere institutions that led up to it. This
would not have happened if barbers were abolished, or if cutlery were
abolished, or if the objection felt by girls to imperfectly grown beards
were abolished, or if the girls were abolished, or if heaths and open
spaces were abolished, or if dancing were abolished, or if donkeys were
abolished. But donkeys, I fear, will never be abolished.
There were plenty of such donkeys in the common land of this particular
controversy. Some made it an argument against democracy, because poor
Garge was a carpenter. Some made it an argument against Alien
Immigration, because Misysra Ammon was a Turk. Some proposed that ladies
should no longer be admitted to any lectures anywhere, because they had
constituted a slight and temporary difficulty at this one, without the
faintest fault of their own. Some urged that all holiday resorts should
be abolished; some urged that all holidays should be abolished. Some
vaguely denounced the sea-side; some, still more vaguely, proposed to
remove the sea. All said that if this or that, stones or sea-weed or
strange visitors or bad weather or bathing machines were swept away with
a strong hand, this which had happened would not have happened. They
only had one slight weakness, all of them; that they did not seem to
have the faintest notion of what _had_ happened. And in this they were
not inexcusable. Nobody did know what had happened; nobody knows it to
this day, of course, or it would be unnecessary to write this story. No
one can suppose this story is written from any motive save that of
telling the plain, humdrum truth.
That queer confused cunning which was the only definable quality
possessed by Hibbs However had certainly scored a victory so far, for
the tone of the weekly papers followed him, with more intelligence and
less trepidation; but they followed him. It seemed more and more clear
that some kind of light and sceptical explanation was to be given of the
whole business, and that the whole business was to be dropped.
The story of the sign-board and the ethical chapel of corrugated iron
was discussed and somewhat disparaged in all the more serious and
especially in the religious weeklies, though the Low Church papers
seemed to reserve their distaste chiefly for the sign-board; and the
High Church papers chiefly for the Chapel. All agreed that the
combination was incongruous, and most treated it as fabulous. The only
intellectual organs which seemed to think it might have happened were
the Spiritualist papers, and their interpretation had not that solidity
which would have satisfied Mr. George.
It was not until almost a year after that it was felt in philosophical
circles that the last word had been said on the matter. An estimate of
the incident and of its bearing on natural and supernatural history
occurred in Professor Widge’s celebrated “Historicity of the
Petro-Piscatorial Phenomena”; which so profoundly affected modern
thought when it came out in parts in the _Hibbert Journal_. Everyone
remembers Professor Widge’s main contention, that the modern critic must
apply to the thaumaturgics of the Lake of Tiberias the same principle of
criticism which Dr. Bunk and others have so successfully applied to the
thaumaturgics of the Cana narrative: “Authorities as final as Pink and
Toscher,” wrote the Professor, “have now shown with an emphasis that no
emancipated mind is entitled to question, that the Aqua-Vinic
thaumaturgy at Cana is wholly inconsistent with the psychology of the
‘master of the feast,’ as modern research has analysed it; and indeed
with the whole Judæo-Aramaic psychology at that stage of its
development, as well as being painfully incongruous with the elevated
ideals of the ethical teacher in question. But as we rise to higher
levels of moral achievement, it will probably be found necessary to
apply the Canaic principle to other and later events in the narrative.
This principle has, of course, been mainly expounded by Huscher in the
sense that the whole episode is unhistorical, while the alternative
theory, that the wine was non-alcoholic and was naturally infused into
the water, can claim on its side the impressive name of Minns. It is
clear that if we apply the same alternative to the so-called Miraculous
Draught of Fishes we must either hold with Gilp, that the fishes were
stuffed representations of fishes artificially placed in the lake (see
the Rev. Y. Wyse’s “Christo-Vegetarianism as a World-System,” where this
position is forcibly set forth), or we must, on the Huscherian
hypothesis, deprive the Piscatorial narrative of all claim to
historicity whatever.
“The difficulty felt by the most daring critics (even Pooke) in adopting
this entirely destructive attitude, is the alleged improbability of so
detailed a narrative being founded on so slight a phrase as the
anti-historical critics refer it to. It is urged by Pooke, with
characteristic relentless reasoning, that according to Huscher’s theory
a metaphorical but at least noticeable remark, such as, ‘I will make you
fishers of men,’ was expanded into a realistic chronicle of events which
contains no mention, even in the passages evidently interpolated, of any
men actually found in the nets when they were hauled up out of the sea;
or, more properly, lagoon.
“It must appear presumptuous or even bad taste for anyone in the modern
world to differ on any subject from Pooke; but I would venture to
suggest that the very academic splendour and unique standing of the
venerable professor (whose ninety-seventh birthday was so beautifully
celebrated in Chicago last year), may have forbidden him all but
intuitive knowledge of how errors arise among the vulgar. I crave pardon
for mentioning a modern case known to myself (not indeed by personal
presence, but by careful study of all the reports) which presents a
curious parallel to such ancient expansions of a text into an incident,
in accordance with Huscher’s law.
“It occurred at Pebblewick, in the south of England. The town had long
been in a state of dangerous religious excitement. The great religious
genius who has since so much altered our whole attitude to the religions
of the world, Misysra Ammon, had been lecturing on the sands to
thousands of enthusiastic hearers. Their meetings were often
interrupted, both by children’s services run on the most ruthless lines
of orthodoxy and by the League of the Red Rosette, the formidable
atheist and anarchist organization. As if this were not enough to swell
the whirlpool of fanaticism, the old popular controversy between the
Milnian and the Complete Sublapsarians broke out again on the fated
beach. It is natural to conjecture that in the thickening atmosphere of
theology in Pebblewick, some controversialist quoted the text ‘An evil
and adulterous generation _seek for a sign_. But no sign shall be given
it save the sign of the prophet Jonas.’
“A mind like that of Pooke will find it hard to credit, but it seems
certain that the effect of this text on the ignorant peasantry of
southern England was actually to make them go about looking for a sign,
in the sense of those old tavern signs now so happily disappearing. The
‘sign of the Prophet Jonas,’ they somehow translated in their stunted
minds into a sign-board of the ship out of which Jonah was thrown. They
went about literally looking for ‘The Sign of the Ship,’ and there are
some cases of their suffering Smail’s Hallucination and actually seeing
it. The whole incident is a curious parallel to the Gospel narrative and
a triumphant vindication of Huscher’s law.”
Lord Ivywood paid a public compliment to Professor Widge, saying that he
had rolled back from his country what might have been an ocean of
superstitions. But, indeed, poor Hibbs had struck the first and stunning
blow that scattered the brains of all men.
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