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THIS AND THAT AND THE OTHER
by
H. BELLOC
Author of "On Anything," "On Everything," "On
Something," etc.
[Illustration: Logo]
New York
Dodd, Mead and Company
1912
Copyright, 1912, by
Dodd, Mead and Company
Published, November, 1912
To
_EVAN CHARTERIS_
PREFACE TO THE READER
Since I am assured that this book requires a Preface I must attempt to
write one, but I cannot conceive upon what lines it should run unless
they be an apology for writing of so many things, and in very many
different moods, and in so many different ways.
A Preface is intended to introduce to the Reader the air in which the
book that follows must be taken, but what air attaches in common to
historical reconstructions, to abstract vagaries, to stories, to jests,
to the impression of a storm, and to annoyance with a dead scientist?
The sort of introduction which a book like this needs is like that
which a man might find to say who should have to deliver at a house
a ton of coals, some second-hand books, a warrant, several weather
forecasts and a great quantity of dust. I do not know how such a man
would make himself pleasant to the homestead, or prepare for the
reception of so mixed a load.
But now I come to think of it the parallel is not quite just. For the
man with that heap of rubbish in his cart would be bound to deliver
the same, and proportionately to annoy the recipient. But you are not
bound to buy, to borrow, or even to pick up this book. And even if you
do you are not bound to read it. If you do read it I advise you to read
the Essay beginning on page forty-five; the history beginning on page
one hundred and forty-three; the denunciation of the very wickedest
sort of men, which I have begun on page one hundred and three; the
sort of thing which Shakespeare suffered, which you will find on page
one hundred and eighty-six. When you have waded through all that you
can console yourself by reading the last essay, which is intended to
console you. I hope it will. Farewell.
H. BELLOC.
P.S. I have never read a Preface in my life, and I suppose you will not
read this.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I AN OPEN LETTER TO A YOUNG DIPLOMATIST 1
II ON PEDANTS 12
III ON ATHEISM 22
IV ON FAME 28
V ON REST 33
VI ON DISCOVERY 38
VII ON INNS 45
VIII ON ROWS 56
IX THE PLEASANT PLACE 62
X ON OMENS 82
XI THE BOOK 89
XII THE SERVANTS OF THE RICH 103
XIII THE JOKE 111
XIV THE SPY 122
XV THE YOUNG PEOPLE 128
XVI ETHANDUNE 135
XVII THE DEATH OF ROBERT THE STRONG 143
XVIII THE CROOKED STREETS 153
XIX THE PLACE APART 162
XX THE EBRO PLAIN 170
XXI THE LITTLE RIVER 178
XXII SOME LETTERS OF SHAKESPEARE'S TIME 186
XXIII ON ACQUAINTANCE WITH THE GREAT 198
XXIV ON LYING 207
XXV THE DUPE 213
XXVI THE LOVE OF ENGLAND 219
XXVII THE STORM 224
XXVIII THE VALLEY 233
XXIX A CONVERSATION IN ANDORRA 242
XXX PARIS AND THE EAST 253
XXXI THE HUMAN CHARLATAN 262
XXXII THE BARBARIANS 273
XXXIII ON KNOWING THE PAST 284
XXXIV THE HIGHER CRITICISM 296
XXXV THE FANATIC 307
XXXVI A LEADING ARTICLE 314
XXXVII THE OBITUARY NOTICE 320
XXXVIII THE "MERRY ROME" COLUMN 327
XXXIX OPEN LETTER TO A YOUNG PARASITE 335
XL ON DROPPING ANCHOR 344
THIS AND THAT AND THE OTHER
I
AN OPEN LETTER TO A YOUNG DIPLOMATIST
MY VERY DEAR YOUNG DIPLOMATIST,
My life-long friendship with your father the Old Diplomatist, must
excuse me for the liberty I am now taking.
I am infinitely concerned that your career should be a successful one
and that before you perish of senile decay you should have held the
position of Ambassador in at least three great capitals of Europe.
You certainly will not attain to such eminence unless you are early
instructed by some competent authority in the mysteries of your trade,
and as I am singularly well placed for giving you private information
upon these, I shall immediately proceed to do so.
I beg you to remember at the very outset of your responsible profession
what destinies will lie in your hands. The lives of countless innocent
men will depend upon your judgment and upon your provocation or
restraint of some great war. The principal fortunes of our time will
be largely dependent upon your decisions and will always fluctuate
according to the advice you may give your Government. More important
still, the honour of your country and its splendour before the world
will hang upon your good sense and foresight. Weigh, therefore, I
beg of you, before you undertake so high a function, its duties and
its perils, and all that you may have to answer for at the Last Day,
if indeed (as so many still pretend) human beings are answerable
in the long run for the good or evil they have done upon earth. Do
not, however, be deterred by any shirking of consequences, or by
what Tennyson has well called "Craven fears of being great" from the
tremendous task which your noble calling involves. Some one must
undertake it, and why not you? Having well balanced in your mind these
major things, next note carefully, I beg of you, the rules I am about
to lay down.
The first of these is that you shall possess yourself of an income
of not less than $2,000 a year. You will immediately protest, and
with justice, that it is impossible upon such a revenue to impress
the nobility of Austria, of Russia, or even of Montenegro, with those
qualities which invariably accompany great wealth; but your objection
is a youthful and improvident one. You will not be required at this
outset of your activities to dazzle by any lavish expenditure the
luxurious Courts of the countries I have just named. You are too young
to be entrusted with any such duty and at the most it will be incumbent
upon you to expend no more upon appearances than what is necessary
for making a decent show at the dinner table of others. It is true
that from time to time you will have to entertain at a meal, and at
your own charges, a journalist perhaps or even a traveller, but from
a narrow and cautious observation of some several hundred instances I
have discovered that of an average of two hundred meals consumed by
Young Diplomatists in the space of a year at places of public resort,
no more than 83 at the most, nor less than 51 at the least, were a
burden upon their purses. And by management of the simplest sort you
can enjoy the hospitality of others at least three times as often as
you are compelled to extend it yourself. Moreover, you will have this
great advantage, that you will know the habits of the capital in which
you reside and can give your guest the impression of having dined well
amid luxurious surroundings, although as a matter of fact he shall have
dined exceedingly ill amid surroundings which I tremble to remember:
for I also have been in Arcadia.
If I have set down such a figure as $2,000 it is merely because that
sum has been decided upon by those experts in the profound art of
International Politics who determine the minimum for the Court of St.
James.
Let us leave this sordid matter and consider next the higher part of
your mission, in which connection I will first speak of what your
clothing and demeanour should be.
It is not true that the presence of a crease clearly emphasised down
the front of each trouser leg is a necessity or even an advantage to
the conduct of World-wide affairs. Upon the contrary, I have come to
the settled conclusion after no little review of the matter that a
mere hint at such a line is not only sufficient, but preferable to any
emphasis of it.
You may object to me that the eminent man who advised and all but
carried out the occupation of the South Pole by the troops of
Monomotapa six years ago, stretched his trousers in a machine every
night, or, to speak more accurately, ordered his valet under pain of
death to provide that detail. It is true. But it was not because of, it
was in spite of, this habit that the Baron brought his pigs to market,
and annexed to the dominion of his Sovereign those regions which were
abandoned the next year with the utmost precipitation.
I yield to no one in my admiration of his amazing subtlety and
comprehensive coup d'oeil; but I have it upon unimpeachable testimony
that the too great rigidity of his garments formed, until the very
last moment, an obstacle to the success of his plans. I give it to
you, therefore, as a general rule, that you should do no more than
put the trousers upon a table, and pass your hand lightly over them
before putting them on; in this way you will produce such a crease as
will suggest, and no more than suggest, the feature upon which I have
detained you in this paragraph.
More important even than your garments will be your method of address
and in particular your conversation with women. Here I can only give
you the advice which I fear may seem somewhat general and vague, that
you should never neglect upon the one hand to engage in a dialogue of
some sort, nor venture, upon the other, to be drawn into a violent
altercation.
Thus, if it be your good fortune (as it was once mine) to sit upon a
marble terrace overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, and there drink a
Chianti of that sort which the French call "Iron Filings" accompanied
by the flesh of goats, it would be noted disastrously against you if
you refused during the whole course of the meal to utter a word to the
lady upon your left or to the lady upon your right. But it will advance
you in no way if at the second course you allow your ungovernable
temper to become your master, and to tell either of these flanking
parties what you thought of them in the heat of the moment. Any attempt
to retrieve your position after such an excess by loud appeals to the
justice of your cause would but degrade you further in the eyes of
your chief, and you might look in vain during all succeeding years for
an appointment to the conduct of important and delicate negotiations
between any two great powers. No: under such circumstances (to take a
concrete instance) don't mention trivial things of literature or of
the weather, but discover something novel in the aspect of the sea, or
recite for the advantage of the company (but at intervals of not less
than five minutes) some terse falsehood that may have occurred to you,
and preferably one damaging to the moral character of an innocent man.
Never contradict any statement whatsoever that may be made in your
presence, at least in public. Nor, upon your part, make any affirmation
which might lead to a contradiction but, after waiting until you have
heard an expression of opinion from that person whom you would address,
agree with it, differing only in just so much as will lend salt to
the remainder of the delightful interchange. Let it appear in all you
say that you are at once more learned than those about you, and yet
believe them to be more learned than yourself. When you allude to the
Great never do so in terms of familiarity, even if the Great be your
own Uncle, but rather in terms of distant admiration or of still more
distant contempt. Above all--this I most urgently charge you--confess
in the most open manner a complete ignorance of how money is made,
whether honourably or dishonourably. This last precept is the more
difficult to fulfil when you consider that in the high-bred world of
European gentlemen in which you will find yourself, money is very
nearly the sole subject of discourse.
There remains to be dealt with the last exercise whereby some important
mission confided to you may be brought to an issue.
I will suppose that a cautious Government is making an experiment
of your abilities and has despatched you for the negotiation of a
Commercial Treaty with the Viceroy of Seringapatam: a very usual test
for the judging of a man's capacities.
You will, during the weeks in which sundry varlets draft letters,
exchange views, consider schedules, and argue tariffs, make it your
particular care to visit His Excellency and His Excellency's Wife, to
play tennis with His Excellency's daughters once or twice, but more
certainly to pursue in company with His Excellency's sons some animal
which may be killed without any serious risk.
When the preliminaries of the Treaty have been agreed to and the
moment has come for fixing your signature thereto, it is in the essence
of good breeding that you should perform the act quite simply with some
ordinary pen, such for instance as the fountain pen which you carry in
your pocket, and I need hardly say that jokes framed for the occasion,
or any flippancy of demeanour during the solemnity would be in equally
bad taste. You shall (if my memory of many such occasions serves me
right) spread your left hand (which you will previously have washed
very carefully) outwards over the paper, arch your eyebrows somewhat,
say to your salaried friend, "Where do I sign?" and then quickly put
down your name in the place indicated, and that in a very ordinary
manner. These are the little things that betray not only the Gentleman
but the Arbiter of the World's Destinies.
Space forbids me to deal with the minor matters of religion, affection
and morals. I only beg you to keep all three under a severe restraint,
and in particular the first, too great a zeal in which has early
ruined many a rising young fellow.
Good-bye, my dear Young Diplomatist. If they send you to Paris ask for
Berlin; and if they send you to Berlin kill yourself.
I am, in fond remembrance of your father,
Your devoted friend,
H. BELLOC.
II
ON PEDANTS
The just and genial man will attempt to take pleasure in what surrounds
him when it is capable of giving him amusement, always supposing that
it does not move him to wrath. I mean, that a man who is both just and
companionable will rather laugh than turn sour at the discomforts of
this world. For example, consider the Pedant.
Never was such an exasperating fellow; never was there a time when he
ran riot as he does now! On which account many are bewildered and many
sad, they know not why, and many who know their time are soured, but a
few (and I hope they may be an increasing few) are neither bewildered
nor saddened nor soured by this spectacle, but claim to be made
merry--and are.
What is a Pedant?
There are many fixed human types, and every one of them has a name.
There is the Priest, there is the Merchant, there is the Noble--and
there is the Pedant. Each of these types are known by a distinctive
name, and to most men they call up a clear image, but because they are
types of mankind they are a little too complicated for definition.
Nevertheless I will have a try at the Pedant.
The essence of the Pedant is twofold, first that he takes his
particular science for something universal, second, that he holds with
the Grip of Faith certain set phrases in that science which he has
been taught. I say "with the Grip of Faith"; it is the only metaphor
applicable; he has for these phrases a violent affection. Not only does
he not question them, but he does not know that they can be questioned.
When he repeats them it is in a fixed and hierarchic voice. When they
are denied he does not answer, but flies into a passion which, were he
destined to an accession of power, might in the near future turn to
persecution.
Alas! that the noblest thing in man should be perverted to such a use;
for Faith when it is exercised upon those unprovable things which are
in tune with things provable, illuminates and throws into a right
perspective everything we know. But the Faith of the Pedant!...
The Pedant crept in upon the eclipse of our religion; his reign is
therefore brief. Perhaps he is also but a reflection of that vast
addition to material knowledge which glorified the last century.
Perhaps it is the hurry, and the rapidity of our declining time, which
makes it necessary for us to accept ready-made phrases and to act on
rules of thumb good or bad. Perhaps it is the whirlpool and turmoil of
classes which has pitchforked into the power of the Pedant whole groups
of men who used to escape him. Perhaps it is the Devil. Whatever it is
it is there.
You see it more in England than in any other European country. It runs
all through the fibre of our modern literature and our modern comment,
like the strings of a cancer. Come, let us have a few examples.
There is "the Anglo-Saxon race." It does not exist. It is not there.
It is no more there than Baal or Moloch or the Philosopher's Stone, or
the Universal Mercury. There never was any such race. There were once
hundreds and hundreds of years ago a certain number of people (how many
we do not know) talking a local German dialect in what is now Hampshire
and Berkshire. To this dialect historians have been pleased to give the
name of Anglo-Saxon, and that is all it means. If you pin your Pedant
down to clear expression, saying to him, "Come, now, fellow, out with
it! What is this Anglo-Saxon race of yours?" you find that he means a
part (and a part only) of such people in the world as habitually speak
the English language, or one of its dialects: that part only which in
a muddy way he sympathises with; that part which is more or less of
his religion, and more or less conformable to his own despicable self.
It does not include the Irish, it does not include the negroes of the
United States, but it does include a horde of German Jews, and a mixed
rabble of every origin under the sun sweating in the slums of the New
World.
Why then you may ask, and you may well ask, does the man use the phrase
"Anglo-Saxon" at all?
The answer is simple. It smacks--or did originally smack--of learning.
Among the innumerable factors of modern Europe one, and only one, was
the invasion of the Eastern part of this island (and only the Eastern
part) by pirates from beyond the North Sea. The most of these pirates
(but by no means all) belonged either to a loose conglomeration of
tribes whom the Romans called Saxones, or to a little maritime tribe
called Angles. True, the full knowledge of that event is a worthy
subject of study; there is a good week's reading upon it in original
authorities, and I can imagine a conscientious man who would read
slowly and make notes, spending a fortnight upon the half dozen
contemporary sources of knowledge we possess upon these little
barbarian peoples. But, Lord! what a superstructure the Pedant has
raised upon that narrow base!
Then there is "alcohol"; what "alcohol" does to the human body, and
the rest of it; to read the absurd fellows one would imagine that this
stuff "alcohol" was something you could see and handle; something with
which humanity was familiar, like Beef, Oak, Sand, Chalk, and the rest.
Not a bit of it. It does not exist any more than the "Anglo-Saxon race"
exists. It is a chemical extraction. And in connection with it you have
something very common to all such folly, to wit, gross insufficiency
even in the line to which its pedantry is devoted. For this chemical
abstraction of theirs may be expressed in many forms and it is only
in one of these forms that they mouth out their interminable and
pretentious dogmas. Humanity, healthy European humanity that is, the
jolly place called Christendom, has drunk from immemorial time wine
and beer and cider. It has been noticed (also from immemorial time)
that if a man drank too much of any of these things he got drunk, and
that if he got drunk often his health and capacity declined. There is
the important fact which humanity has never missed, and without which
the rhodomontades of the Pedant would have no foothold. It is because
his pretended knowledge relates to a real evil with which humanity is
acquainted that people listen to him at all on the subject. He ill
requites their confidence! He exploits and bamboozles them to the top
of their bent. He terrifies the weak victims (and the weaker witnesses)
of drunkenness and often, I am sorry to say, picks their pockets as
well. I can call to mind as I write more than one Pedant who by harping
on this word "alcohol" has got very considerable sums out of the
public. Well, it is the public's fault! _Vult decipi et decipiatur._
And a murrain on it--also a quinsy!
Then there is "the Fourth Gospel": your Pedant never calls it the
Gospel of S. John, as his fathers have done before him for two thousand
years. He must give it a pretentious name and then, because it happens
to be cram-full of Christian doctrine, he must deny its authenticity.
There is not a vestige of proof against that authenticity, nor for
that matter a vestige of sound historical proof in favour of it.
Like everything else in the fundamental structure of the Faith from
the Mass to the Apocalypse, it has for witness the tradition of the
Church, and is no more acceptable as an historic document of the type
of the "Agricola" or the "Catiline Orations" than any one of the other
Gospels. There is not an event mentioned in the whole of the New
Testament which has true historic value. The whole thing depends upon
Belief, and Belief in a corporate teaching body. Yet how your Pedant
has flourished upon this same Fourth Gospel! Now he is "reverently
accepting it," now "reluctantly rejecting it"; he fondles it as a cat
does a mouse, and when you try to come to handgrips with him he will
first (taking you for a simple and unlearned man) put you off with
silly technicalities. You have but to read up the meaning of these
technicalities in the dictionary to find that he is talking through
his hat. He has no evidence, and there can be no evidence, as to
whether the Gospel was or was not written by the traditional figure
which the Catholic Church calls S. John, and all he has to say on the
matter would not tempt the most gullible gambler to invest a penny on a
ten-to-one chance.
Then there is "the conflict between religion and science." What the
Pedant really means when he uses that phrase (and he has not only used
it threadbare but has fed it by the ton to the recently enfranchised
and to the vulgar in general) is the conflict between a mystical
doctrine and every-day common sense. That conflict has always existed
and always will exist. If you say to any man who has not heard of such
a thing before "I will kill you and yet you will survive" or "This
water is not ordinary water, it does more than wash you or assuage your
thirst, it will also cure blindness, and make whole a diseased limb,"
the man who has not heard such things before, will call you a liar;
of course he will, and small blame to him. We can only generalise from
repeated experience, and oddities and transcendental things are not
within the field of repeated experience. But "science" has nothing to
do with that. The very fact that they use the word religion is enough
to show the deplorable insufficiency of their minds. What religion?
Your Pedant is far too warped and hypocritical to say exactly what he
means even in so simple a case; so he uses the word "religion," a term
which may apply to Thugs with their doctrine of the sanctity of murder,
or to the Mahommedans who are not bound to any transcendental doctrine
but only to a Rule of Life, or to Buddhists who have but a philosophy,
or to Plymouth Brethren, or to Head Hunters.
I said at the beginning of this that the Pedant was food for laughter,
rather than for anger.
Humph!
III
ON ATHEISM
The Atheist is he that has forgotten God. He that denies God may
do so in many innocent ways, and is an Atheist in form, but is not
condemnable as such. Thus one man will reason by contradiction that
there can be no God. If there were a God (says he), how could such
things be? This man has not read or does not know sufficient to his
purpose, or is not wide enough. His purpose is Truth, so he is not to
be condemned. Another will say, "There is no God," meaning, "There
is none that I have heard called God": as, the figure of an old man;
some vengeful spirit; an absurdity taught him by fools; and so forth.
Another also will say, "There is no God," as he would say, "Thus do I
solve this riddle!" He has played a game, coming to a conclusion of
logic, and supposes himself right by the rules of the game. Nor is he
more to be condemned than one who shall prove, not that God is not, but
that God is, by similar ways. For though this last man proves truth,
and that first man falsehood, yet each is only concerned with proving,
and not with making good or standing up for the Truth, so that it shall
be established. Neither would found in the mind something unshakeable,
but each would rather bring a process to its conclusion for neatness.
We call that man Atheist who, thinking or unthinking, waking or
sleeping, knows not God; and when it is brought to him that either God
is not or is, would act as though the question mattered nothing. Such
an Atheist makes nothing of God's judgments nor of his commands. He
does not despise them but will have them absent, as he will have God
absent also. Nor is he a rebel but rather an absconder.
Of Atheism you may see that it is proper to a society and not to a
man, so that Atheists are proper to an Atheist Commonwealth, and this
because we find God in mankind or lose him there.
Rousseau would have no Atheist in the Republic. All other opinion he
thought tolerable, but this intolerable because through it was loosened
every civil bond. But if a Commonwealth be not Atheist no Atheist will
be within it, since it is through men and their society that one man
admits God. No one quite lonely could understand or judge whether of
God's existence or of much lesser things. A man quite lonely could
not but die long before he was a man grown. He would have no speech
or reason. Also a man Atheist in a Commonwealth truly worshipping
would be abhorrent as a traitor with us and would stand silent. How,
then, would Rousseau not tolerate the Atheist in his Republic, seeing
that if his Republic were not Atheist no Atheist could be therein? Of
this contradiction the solution is that false doctrine of any kind is
partially hidden and striving in the minds of men before one man shall
become its spokesman. Now of false doctrine when it is thus blind and
under water nothing can be either tolerated or proscribed. The ill-ease
of it is felt but no magistrate can seize it anywhere. But when one man
brings it up to reason and arms it with words, then has it been born
(as it were) into the world, and can be tried and judged, accepted or
expelled.
No Commonwealth has long stood that was Atheist, yet many have been
Atheist a little before they died: as some men lose the savour of
meats, and the colours and sounds of things also a little before they
die.
A Commonwealth fallen into this palsy sees no merit in God's effect of
Justice, but makes a game of law. In peril, as in battle or shipwreck,
each man will save himself. In commerce man will cozen man. The
Commonwealth grown Atheist lets the larger prey upon the less, until
all are eaten up.
They say that a man not having seen salt or knowing that such a thing
as salt might be and even denying that salt could be (since he had not
seen it), might yet very livelily taste the saltness of the sea. So it
is with men who still love Justice, though they have lost Religion. For
these men are angered by evil-doing, and will risk their bodies in pity
and in indignation. They therefore truly serve God in whose essence
Justice resides, and of whom the Effect in Society is Justice. But what
shall we say of a man who speaks of salt as a thing well known, and yet
finds no division between his well and the water of the sea? And that
is the Atheist case. When men of a mean sinfulness purchase a seat of
judgment, and therein, while using the word "God," care nothing for
right but consider the advantage of their aged limbs and bellies, or of
the fellow rich they drink with, then they are Atheist indeed.
That Commonwealth also is Atheist in which the rulers will use the fear
of God for a cheat, hoping thereby to make foolish men work for them,
or give up their goods, or accept insult and tyranny. It is so ordered
that this trick most powerfully slings back upon its authors, and that
the populace are now moved at last not by empty sentences which have
God's name in them, but by lively devils. In the end of such cheats the
rich men who so lied are murdered and by a side wind God comes to his
own.
One came to a Courtier who had risen high in the State by flattery
and cowardice, but who had a keen wit. To this Courtier he propounded
a certain scheme which would betray the Commonwealth, and this the
Courtier agreed to. But when he had done so he said: "Either God is or
is not. If he is not, why then we have chosen well."
This instance is a mark and Atheism is judged by it. For if God is not,
then all falsehoods, though each prove the rest false, are each true,
and every evil is its own good, and there is confusion everywhere. But
if God is, then the world can stand. Now that the world does stand all
men know and live by, even those who, not in a form of words but in the
heart, deny its Grand Principle.
IV
ON FAME
Fame is that repute among men which gives us pleasure. It needs much
repetition, but also that repetition honourable. Of all things desired
Fame least fulfils the desire for it; for if Fame is to be very great
a man must be dead before it is more than a shoot; he therefore has
not the enjoyment of it (as it would seem). Again, Fame while a man
lives is always tarnished by falsehood; for since few can observe him,
and less know him, he must have Fame for work which he does not do and
forego Fame for work which he knows deserves it.
Fame has no proper ending to it, when it is first begun, as have things
belonging to other appetites, nor is any man satiated with it at any
time. Upon the contrary, the hunger after it will lead a man forward
madly always to some sort of disaster, whether of disappointment in
the soul, or of open dishonour.
Fame is not to be despised or trodden under as a thing not to be
sought, for no man is free of the desire of it, nor can any man believe
that desire to be an imperfection in him unless he desire at the same
time something greater than Fame, and even then there is a flavour of
Fame certain to attach to his achievement in the greater thing. No one
can say of Fame, "I contemn it"; as a man can say of titles, "I contemn
them." Nor can any man say of the love of Fame, "This is a thing I
should cast from me as evil," as a man may say of lust when it is
inordinate, that is, out of place. Nor can any man say of Fame, "It is
a little thing," for if he says that he is less or more than a man.
The love of Fame is the mobile of all great work in which also man is
in the image of God, who not only created but took pleasure in what he
did and, as we know, is satisfied by praise thereof.
In what way, then, shall men treat Fame? How shall they seek it, or
hope to use it if obtained? To these questions it is best answered that
a man should have for Fame a natural appetite, not forced nor curiously
entertained; it must be present in him if he would do noble things. Yet
if he makes the Fame of those things, and not those things themselves
his chief business, then not only will he pursue Fame to his hurt, but
also Fame will miss him. Though he should not disregard it yet he must
not pursue it to himself too much, but he will rightly make of it in
difficult times a great consolation.
When Fame comes upon a man well before death then must he most
particularly beware of it, for is it then most dangerous. Neither must
he, having achieved it, relax effort nor (a much greater peril) think
he has done his work because some Fame now attaches thereto.
Some say that after a man has died the spreading of his earthly Fame
is still a pleasure to him among greater scenes: but this is doubtful.
One thing is certain, Fame is enjoyable in good things accomplished;
bitter, noisome and poisonous in all other things--whether it be the
Fame of things thought to be accomplished but not accomplished, or Fame
got by accident, or Fame for evil things concealed because they are
evil.
The judgment of Fame is this: That many men having done great things of
a good sort have not Fame. And that many men have Fame who have done
but little things and most of them evil. The virtue of Fame is that it
nourishes endeavour. The peril of Fame is that it leads men towards
itself, and therefore into inanities and sheer loss. But Fame has a
fruit, which is a sort of satisfaction coming from our communion with
mankind.
They that believe they deserve Fame though they lack it may be consoled
in this: that soon they shall be concerned with much more lasting
things, and things more immediate and more true: just as a man who
misses some entertainment at a show will console himself if he knows
that shortly he shall meet his love. They that have Fame may correct
its extravagances by the same token: remembering that shortly they will
be so occupied that this earthly Fame of theirs will seem a toy. Old
men know this well.
V
ON REST
Rest is not the conclusion of labour but the recreation of power. It
seems a reward because it fulfils a need: but that need being filled,
Rest is but an extinction and a nothingness. So we do not pray for
Rest; but (in a just religion) we pray after this life for refreshment,
light and peace--not for Rest.
Rest is only for a little while, as also is labour only for a little
while: each demanding the other as a supplement; yet is Rest in some
intervals a necessary ground for seed, and without Rest to protect the
sprouting of the seed no good thing ever grew.
Of many follies in a Commonwealth concerning Rest the chief is that
Rest is not needed for all effort therein. Thus one man at leisure will
obtain work of another for many days without a sufficiency of Rest for
that other and think to profit by this. So he may: but he profits
singly, and when many rich do so by the poor it is like one eating his
own flesh, since the withdrawal of Rest from those that labour will
soon eat up the Commonwealth itself.
Much that men do with most anxiety is for the establishment of Rest.
Wise men have often ordered gardens carefully for years, in order
to enjoy Rest at last. Beds also are devised best when they give
the deepest interval of repose and are surrounded by artifice with
prolonged silence, made of quiet strong wood and well curtained from
the morning light. It is so with rooms removed from the other rooms of
a house, and with days set apart from labour, and with certain kinds of
companionship.
Undoubtedly the regimen of Rest for men is that of sleep, and sleep
is a sort of medicine to Rest, and again a true expression of it. For
though these two, Rest and Sleep, are not the same yet without sleep
no man can think of Rest nor has Rest any one better body or way of
being than this thing Sleep. For in sleep a man utterly sinks down in
proportion as it is deep and good into the centre of things and becomes
one with that from which he came, drawing strength not only by negation
from repose, but in some way positive from the being of his mother
which is the earth. Some say that sleep is better near against the
ground on this account and all men know that sleep in wild places and
without cover is the surest and the best. Sleep promises waking as Rest
does a renewal of power; and the good dreams that come to us in sleep
are a proof that in sleep we are still living.
A man may deny himself any other voluptuousness but not Rest. He may
forego wine or flesh or anything of the body, and music or disputation,
or anything of the mind, or love itself, or even companionship; but not
Rest, for if he denies himself this he wastes himself and is himself
no longer. Rest, therefore, is a necessary intermittent which we must
have both for soul and body and is the only necessity inherent to both
those two so long as those two are bound together in the matter and net
of this world. For food is a necessity to the body and virtue to the
soul, but Rest to one and to the other.
There is no picture of delight in which we envy other men so much as
when, lacking Rest, we see them possessing it; on which occasions we
call out unwisely for a Perpetual Rest and for the cessation of all
endeavour. In the same way men devise a lack of Rest for a special
torment, and none can long survive it.
Rest and innocence are good fellows, and Rest is easier to the innocent
man. The wicked suffer unrest always in some sort on account of God's
presence warning them, though this unrest is stronger and much more to
their good if men also warn them and if they live among such fellows in
their commonwealth as will not permit their wickedness to be hidden or
to go unpunished.
Rest has no time, and in its perfection must lose all mark of time. So
a man sleeping deeply knows not how many hours have passed since he
fell asleep until he awake again.
There are many good accompaniments for Rest, slow and distant music
which at last is stiller and then silent; the scent of certain herbs
and flowers and particularly of roses; clean linen; a pure clear air
and the coming of night. To all these things prayer, an honourable
profession and a preparation of the mind are in general a great aid,
and, in the heat of the season, cool water refreshed with essences. A
man also should make his toilet for Rest if he would have it full and
thorough and prepare his body as his soul for a relaxation. He does
well also in the last passage of his mind into sleep to commend himself
to the care of God; remembering both how petty are all human vexations
and also how weathercock they are, turning now a face of terror and
then in a moment another face of laughter or of insignificance. Many
troubles that seem giants at evening are but dwarfs at sunrise, and
some most terrific prove ghosts which speed off with the broadening of
the day.
VI
ON DISCOVERY
There is a great consolation lying all bottled and matured for those
who choose to take it, in the modern world--and yet how few turn to it
and drink the bracing draft! It is a consolation for dust and frequency
and fatigue and despair--this consolation is the Discovery of the World.
The world has no end to it. You can discover one town which you had
thought well known, or one quarter of the town, or one house in the
quarter of the town, or one room in that house, or one picture in that
room. The avenues of discovery open out infinite in number and quite a
little distance from their centre (which is yourself and your local,
tired, repeated experience) these avenues diverge outwards and lead to
the most amazingly different things.
You can take some place of which you have heard so often and in so
vulgar a connotation that you could wish never to hear of it again,
and coming there you will find it holding you, and you will enjoy many
happy surprises, unveiling things you could not dream were there.
How much more true is it not, then, that discovery awaits you if you
will take the least little step off the high road, or the least little
exploration into the past of a place you visit.
Most men inhabiting a countryside know nothing of its aspect even quite
close to their homes, save as it is seen from the main roads. If they
will but cross a couple of fields or so, they may come, for the first
time in many years of habitation, upon a landscape that seems quite new
and a sight of their own hills which makes them look like the hills of
a strange country.
In youth we all know this. In youth and early manhood we wonder what
is behind some rise of land, or on the other side of some wood which
bounded our horizon in childhood. Then comes a day when we manfully
explore the unknown places and go to find what we shall find.
As life advances we imagine that all this chance of discovery has been
taken from us by our increased experience. It is an illusion. If we are
so dull it is we that have changed and not the world; and what is more
we can recover from that dulness, and there is a simple medicine for
it, which is to repeat the old experiment: to go out and see what we
may see.
Some will grant this true of the sudden little new discoveries quite
close to home, but not of travel. Travel, they think, must always be
to-day by some known road to some known place, with dust upon the mind
at the setting out and at the coming in. It is a great error. You can
choose some place too famous in Europe and even too peopled and too
large, and yet make the most ample discoveries there.
"Oh, but," a man will say, "most places have been so written of that
one knows them already long before seeing them."
No: one does nothing of the kind. Even the pictured and the storied
places are full enough of newness if one will but shake off routine and
if one will but peer.
Speak to five men of some place which they have all visited, perhaps
together, and find out what each noticed most: you will be amazed at
the five different impressions.
Enter by some new entry a town which hitherto you had always entered by
one fixed way, and again vary your entry, and again, and you will see a
new town every time.
There are many, many thousand Englishmen who know the wonderful sight
of Rouen from the railway bridge below the town, for that lies on the
high road to Paris, and there are many thousand, though not so many,
who know Rouen from Bon-Secours. There are a few hundred who know it
from the approach by the great woods to the North. There are a dozen or
so perhaps who have come in from the East, walking from Picardy. The
great town lying in its cup of hills is quite different every way.
There is a view of Naples which has been photographed and printed and
painted until we are all tired of it. It is a view taken from the
hill which makes the northern horn of the Bay; there is a big pine
tree in the foreground and Vesuvius smoking in the background, and I
will bargain that most people who read this have seen that view upon
a postcard, or in a shop window, and that a good many of them would
rightly say that it was the most hackneyed thing in Europe.
Now some years ago I had occasion to go to Naples, a town I had always
avoided for that very reason--that one heard of it until one was tired
and that this view had become like last year's music-hall tunes.
I went, not of my own choice but because I had to go, and when I got
there I made as complete a discovery as ever Columbus made or those
sailors who first rounded Africa and found the Indian Seas.
Naples was utterly unlike anything I had imagined. Vesuvius was not a
cone smoking upon the horizon--it was a great angry pyramid toppling
right above me. The town was not a lazy, dirty town with all the marks
of antiquity and none of energy. It was alive with commerce and all the
evils and all the good of commerce. It was angrily alive; it was like a
wasp nest.
I will state the plain truth at the risk of being thought paradoxical.
Naples recalled to me an _American_ seaboard town so vividly that
I could have thought myself upon the Pacific. I could have gone on
for days digging into all this new experience, turning it over and
fructifying it. My business allowed me not twenty-four hours, but the
vision was one I shall never forget, and it was as completely new and
as wholly creative, or re-creative, of the mind, as is that land-fall
which an adventurous sailor makes when he finds a new island at dawn
upon a sea not yet travelled.
Every one, therefore, should go out to discover, five miles from home,
or five hundred. Every one should assure himself against the cheating
tedium which books and maps create in us, that the world is perpetually
new: and oddly enough it is not a matter of money.
VII
ON INNS
Here am I sitting in an Inn, having gloomily believed not half an hour
ago that Inns were doomed with all other good things, but now more
hopeful and catching avenues of escape through the encircling decay.
For though certainly that very subtle and final expression of a good
nation's life, the Inn, is in peril, yet possibly it may survive.
This Inn which surrounds me as I write (the law forbids me to tell its
name) is of the noblest in South England, and it is in South England
that the chief Inns of the world still stand. In the hall of it, as
you come in, are barrels of cider standing upon chairs. The woman that
keeps this Inn is real and kind. She receives you so that you are
glad to enter the house. She takes pleasure in her life. What was her
beauty her daughter now inherits, and she serves at the bar. Her son
is strong and carries up the luggage. The whole place is a paradise,
and as one enters that hall one stands hesitating whether to enjoy its
full, yet remaining delight, or to consider the peril of death that
hangs to-day over all good things.
Consider, you wanderers (that is all men, whatsoever, for not one of
you can rest), what an Inn is, and see if it should not rightly raise
both great fears and great affection.
An Inn is of the nation that made it. If you desire a proof that the
unity of Christendom is not to be achieved save through a dozen varying
nations, each of a hundred varying counties and provinces and these
each of several countrysides--the Inns will furnish you with that proof.
If any foolish man pretend in your presence that the brotherhood of men
should make a decent man cosmopolitan, reprove his error by the example
of an Inn.
If any one is so vile as to maintain in your presence that one's
country should not be loved and loyally defended, confound so horrid a
fool by the very vigorous picture of an Inn. And if he impudently says
that some damned Babylon or other is better than an Inn, look up his
ancestry.
For the truth is that Inns (may God preserve them, and of the few
remaining breed, in spite of peril, a host of new Inns for our sons),
Inns, Inns are the mirror and at the same time the flower of a people.
The savour of men met in kindliness and in a homely way for years and
years comes to inhabit all their panels (Inns are panelled) and lends
incense to their fires. (Inns have not radiators, but fires.) But
this good quintessence and distillation of comradeship varies from
countryside to countryside and more from province to province, and more
still from race to race and from realm to realm; just as speech differs
and music and all the other excellent fruits of Europe.
Thus there is an Inn at Tout-de-suite-Tardets which the Basques made
for themselves and offer to those who visit their delightful streams.
A river flows under its balcony, tinkling along a sheer stone wall,
and before it, high against the sunset, is a wood called Tiger Wood,
clothing a rocky peak called the Peak of Eagles.
Now no one could have built that Inn nor endowed it with its admirable
spirit, save the cleanly but incomprehensible _Basques_. There is no
such Inn in the Béarnese country, nor any among the Gascons.
In Falaise the Normans very slowly and by a mellow process of some
thousand years have engendered an Inn. This Inn, I think, is so good
that you will with difficulty compare it with any better thing. It
is as quiet as a tree on a summer night, and cooks crayfish in an
admirable way. Yet could not these _Normans_ have built that _Basque_
Inn; and a man that would merge one in the other and so drown both is
an outlaw and to be treated as such.
But these Inns of South England (such as still stand!)--what can be
said in proper praise of them which shall give their smell and colour
and their souls? There is nothing like them in Europe, nor anything to
set above them in all the world. It is within their walls and at their
boards that one knows what South England once did in the world and
why. If it is gone it is gone. All things die at last. But if it _is_
gone--why, no lover of it need remain to drag his time out in mourning
it. If South England is dead it is better to die upon its grave.
Whether it dies in our time or no you may test by the test of its
_Inns_. If they may not weather the chaos, if they fail to round the
point that menaces our religion and our very food, our humour and our
prime affections--why, then, South England has gone too. If, if (I
hardly dare to write such a challenge), if the Inns hold out a little
time longer--why, then, South England will have turned the corner and
Europe can breathe again. Never mind her extravagances, her follies or
her sins. Next time you see her from a hill, pray for South England.
For if she dies, you die. And as a symptom of her malady (some would
say of her death-throes) carefully watch her Inns.
Of the enemies of Inns, as of rich men, dull men, blind men,
weak-stomached men and men false to themselves, I do not speak: but of
their effect. Why such blighting men are nowadays so powerful and why
God has given them a brief moment of pride it is not for us to know.
It is hidden among the secret things of this life. But that they _are_
powerful all men, lovers of Inns, that is, lovers of right living, know
well enough and bitterly deplore. The effect of their power concerns
us. It is like a wasting of our own flesh, a whitening of our own blood.