There go a hopeless shoal through the reek: their doom is an eternal
sleeplessness and a nakedness in the gloom. There is nothing to comfort
them, not even memory: and they know that for ever and for ever they
must plunge and swirl, driven before the blasts, now hot, now icy, of
their everlasting pain. These are those men who were wont to come
into the room of the Poor Guest at early morning with a steadfast and
assured step and a look of insult. These are those who would take the
tattered garments and hold them at arm's length as much as to say:
"What rags these scribblers wear!" and then, casting them over the arm
with a gesture that meant: "Well, they must be brushed, but Heaven
knows if they will stand it without coming to pieces!" would next
discover in the pockets a great quantity of middle-class things, and
notably loose tobacco.
These are they that would then take out with the utmost patience,
private letters, money, pocket-books, knives, dirty crumpled stamps,
scraps of newspapers, broken cigarettes, pawn tickets, keys, and much
else, muttering within themselves so that one could almost hear it with
their lips: "What a jumble these paupers stuff their shoddy with! They
do not even know that in the Houses of the Great it is not customary to
fill the pockets! They do not know that the Great remove at night from
their pockets such few trinkets of diamonded gold as they may contain.
Where were they born or bred? To think that _I_ should have to serve
such cattle! No matter! He has brought money with him I am glad to
see--borrowed, no doubt--and I will bleed him well."
Such thoughts one almost heard as one lay in the Beds of the Great
despairing. Then one would see him turn one's socks inside out, which
is a ritual with the horrid tribe. Then a great bath would be trundled
in and he would set beside it a great can and silently pronounce the
judgment that whatever else was forgiven the middle-class one thing
would not be forgiven them--the neglect of the bath, of the splashing
about of the water and of the adequate wetting of the towel.
All these things we have suffered, you and I, at their hands. But be
comforted. They writhe in Hell with their fellows.
That man who looked us up and down so insolently when the great doors
were opened in St. James' Square and who thought one's boots so comic.
He too, and all his like, burn separately. So does that fellow with the
wine that poured it out ungenerously, and clearly thought that we were
in luck's way to get the bubbly stuff at all in any measure. He that
conveyed his master's messages with a pomp that was instinct with scorn
and he that drove you to the station, hardly deigning to reply to your
timid sentences and knowing well your tremors and your abject ill-ease.
Be comforted. He too burns.
It is the custom in Hell when this last batch of scoundrels, the horsey
ones, come up in batches to be dealt with by the authorities thereof,
for them first to be asked in awful tones how many pieces of silver
they have taken from men below the rank of a squire, or whose income
was less than a thousand pounds a year, and the truth on this they are
compelled by Fate to declare, whereupon, before their tortures begin,
they receive as many stripes as they took florins: nor is there any
defect in the arrangement of divine justice in their regard, save that
the money is not refunded to us.
Cooks, housemaids, poor little scullery-maids, under-gardeners,
estate carpenters of all kinds, small stable lads, and in general
all those humble Servants of the Rich who are debarred by their
insolent superiors from approaching the guests and neither wound them
with contemptuous looks, nor follow these up by brigandish demands
for money, _these_ you will not see in this Pit of Fire. For them
is reserved a high place in Paradise, only a little lower than that
supreme and cloudy height of bliss wherein repose the happy souls of
all who on this earth have been Journalists.
But Game-Keepers, more particularly those who make a distinction and
will take nothing less than gold (nay _Paper_!), and Grooms of the
Chamber, and all such, these suffer torments for ever and for ever. So
has Immutable Justice decreed and thus is the offended majesty of man
avenged.
And what, you will ask me perhaps at last, what of the dear old family
servants, who are _so_ good, _so_ kind, _so_ attached to Master Arthur
and to Lady Jane?
Ah!... Of these the infernal plight is such that I dare not set it down!
There is a special secret room in Hell where their villainous hypocrisy
and that accursed mixture of yielding and of false independence
wherewith they flattered and be-fooled their masters; their thefts,
their bullying of beggarmen, have at last a full reward. Their eyes
are no longer sly and cautious, lit with the pretence of affection,
nor are they here rewarded with good fires and an excess of food, and
perquisites and pensions. But they sit hearthless, jibbering with cold,
and they stare broken at the prospect of a dark Eternity. And now and
then one or another, an aged serving-man or a white-haired housekeeper,
will wring their hands and say: "Oh, that I had once, only once, shown
in my mortal life some momentary gleam of honour, independence, or
dignity! Oh, that I had but once stood up in my freedom and spoken to
the Rich as I should! Then it would have been remembered for me and I
should now have been spared this place--but it is too late!"
For there is no repentance known among the Servants of the Rich, nor
any exception to their vileness; they are hated by men when they live,
and when they die they must for all eternity consort with demons.
XIII
THE JOKE
There are two kinds of jokes, those jokes that are funny because they
are true, and those jokes that would be funny anyhow. Think it out and
you will find that that is a great truth. Now the joke I have here for
the delectation of the broken-hearted is of the first sort. It is funny
because it is true. It is about a man whom I really saw and really knew
and touched, and on occasions treated ill. He was. The sunlight played
upon his form. Perhaps he may still flounder under the light of the
sun, and not yet have gone down into that kingdom whose kings are less
happy than the poorest hind upon the upper fields.
It was at College that I knew him and I retained my acquaintance with
him--Oh, I retained it in a loving and cherishing manner--until he was
grown to young manhood. I would keep it still did Fate permit me so to
do, for he was a treasure. I have never met anything so complete for
the purposes of laughter, though I am told there are many such in the
society which bred his oafish form.
He was a noble in his own country, which was somewhere in the
pine-forests of the Germanies, and his views of social rank were far,
far too simple for the silent subtlety of the English Rich. In his poor
turnip of a mind he ordered all men thus:
First, reigning sovereigns and their families.
Secondly, mediatized people.
Third, Princes.
Fourth, Dukes.
Fifth, Nobles.
Then came a little gap, and after that little gap The Others.
Most of us in our College were The Others. But he, as I have said, was
a noble in his distant land.
He had not long been among the young Englishmen when he discovered
that a difficult tangle of titles ran hither and thither among them
like random briars through an undergrowth. There were Honourables, and
there were Lords, and Heaven knows what, and there were two Sirs, and
altogether it puzzled him.
He couldn't understand why a man should be called Mr. Jinks, and
his brother Lord Blefauscu, and then if a man could be called Lord
Blefauscu while his father Lord Brobdignag was alive, how was it that
quite a Fresher should be called Sir Howkey--no--he was Sir John
Howkey: and when the Devil did one put in the Christian name and when
didn't one, and why should one, and what was the order of precedence
among all these?
I think that last point puzzled him more than the rest, for in his own
far distant land in the pine-woods, where peasants uglier than sin
grovelled over the potato crop and called him "Baron," there were no
such devilish contraptions, but black was black and white was white.
Here in this hypocritical England, to which his father had sent him as
an exile, everything was so wrapped up in deceiving masks! There was
the Captain of the Eleven, or the President of the Boat Club. By the
time he had mastered that there might be great men not only without
the actual title (he had long ago despaired of that), but without so
much as cousinship to one, he would stumble upon a fellow with nothing
whatsoever to distinguish him, not even the High Jump, and yet "in"
with the highest. It tortured him I can tell you! After he had sat
upon several Fourth Year men (he himself a Fresher), from an error as
to their rank, after he had been duly thrown into the water, blackened
as to his face with blacking, sentenced to death in a court-martial
and duly shot with a blank cartridge (an unpleasant thing by the way
looking down a barrel); after he had had his boots, of which there
were seven pair, packed with earth, and in each one a large geranium
planted; after all these things had happened to him in his pursuit of
an Anglo-German understanding, he approached a lanky, pot-bellied youth
whom he had discovered with certitude to be the cousin of a Duke, and
begged him secretly to befriend him in a certain matter, which was this:
The Baron out of the Germanies proposed to give a dinner to no less
than thirty people and he begged the pot-bellied youth in all secrecy
to collect for him an assembly worthy of his rank and to give him
privately not only their names but their actual precedence according to
which he would arrange them at the table upon his right and upon his
left.
But what did the pot-bellied youth do? Why he went out and finding all
his friends one after the other he said:
"You know Sausage?"
"Yes," said they, for all the University knew Sausage.
"Well, he is going to give a dinner," said the pot-bellied one, who was
also slow of speech, "and you have to come, but I'm going to say you
are the Duke of Rochester" (or whatever title he might have chosen).
And so speaking, and so giving the date and place he would go on to
the next. Then, when he had collected not thirty but sixty of all
his friends and acquaintances, he sought out the noble Teuton again
and told him that he could not possibly ask only thirty men without
lifelong jealousies and hatreds, so sixty were coming, and the Teuton
with some hesitation (for he was fond of money) agreed.
Never shall I forget the day when those sixty were ushered solemnly
into a large Reception Room in the Hotel, blameless youths of varying
aspect, most of them quite sober--since it was but 7 o'clock--presented
one by one to the host of the evening, each with his title and style.
To those whom he recognized as equals the Aristocrat spoke with
charming simplicity. Those who were somewhat his inferiors (the lords
by courtesy and the simple baronets) he put immediately at their
ease; and even the Honourables saw at a glance that he was a man of
the world, for he said a few kind words to each. As for a man with no
handle to his name, there was not one of the sixty so low, except a
Mr. Poopsibah of whom the gatherer of that feast whispered to the host
that he could not but ask him because, though only a second cousin, he
was the heir to the Marquis of Quirk--hence his Norman name.
It was a bewilderment to the Baron, for he might have to meet the
man later in life as the Marquis of Quirk, whereas for the moment he
was only Mr. Poopsibah, but anyhow he was put at the bottom of the
table--and that was how the trouble began.
In my time--I am talking of the nineties--young men drank wine: it
was before the Bishop of London had noted the Great Change. And Mr.
Poopsibah and his neighbour--Lord Henry Job--were quite early in the
Feast occupied in a playful contest which ended in Mr. Poopsibah's
losing his end seat and going to grass. He rose, not unruffled, with a
burst collar, and glared a little uncertainly over the assembled wealth
and lineage of the evening. Lord Benin (the son of our great General
Lord Ashantee of Benin--his real name was Mitcham, God Rest His Soul)
addressed to the unreal Poopsibah an epithet then fashionable, now
almost forgotten, but always unprintable. Mr. Poopsibah, forgetting
what nobility imposes, immediately hurled at him an as yet half-emptied
bottle of Champagne.
Then it was that the bewildered Baron learnt for the last time--and for
that matter for the first time--to what the Island Race can rise when
it really lets itself go.
I remember (I was a nephew if I remember right) above the din and
confusion of light (for candles also were thrown) loud appeals as in
a tone of command, and then as in a tone of supplication, both in the
unmistakable accents of the Cousins overseas, and I even remember what
I may call the Great Sacrilege of that evening when Lord Gogmagog
seizing our host affectionately round the neck, and pressing the back
of his head with his large and red left hand, attempted to grind his
face into the tablecloth, after a fashion wholly unknown to the
haughty lords of the Teufelwald.
During the march homewards--an adventure enlightened with a sharp
skirmish and two losses at the hands of the police--I know not what
passed through the mind of the youth who had hitherto kept so careful
a distinction between blood and blood: whether like Hannibal he swore
eternal hatred to the English, or whether in his patient German mind
he noted it all down as a piece of historical evidence to be used in
his diplomatic career, we shall not be told. I think in the main he was
simply bewildered: bewildered to madness.
Of the many other things we made him do before Eights Week I have no
space to tell: How he asked us what was the fashionable sport and how
we told him Polo and made him buy a Polo pony sixteen hands high,
with huge great bones and a broken nose, explaining to him that it
was stamina and not appearance that the bluff Englishman loved in a
horse. How we made him wear his arms embroidered upon his handkerchief
(producing several for a pattern and taking the thing as a commonplace
by sly allusion for many preparatory days). How we told him that it was
the custom to call every Sunday afternoon for half an hour upon the
wife of every married Don of one's College: How we challenged him to
the Great College feat of throwing himself into the river at midnight:
How finally we persuaded him that the ancient custom of the University
demanded the presentation to one's Tutor at the end of term of an
elaborate thesis one hundred pages long upon some subject of Theology:
How he was carefully warned that surprise was the essence of this
charming tradition and not a word of it must be breathed to the august
recipient of the favour: How he sucked in the knowledge that the more
curious and strange the matter the higher would be his place in the
schools, and how the poor fool elaborately wasted what God gives such
men for brains in the construction of a damning refutation against the
Monophysites: How his tutor, a humble little nervous fool, thought he
was having his leg pulled--all these things I have no space to tell you
now.
But he was rich! Doubtless by the custom of his country he is now in
some great position plotting the ruin of Britannia and certainly she
deserves it in his case. He was most unmercifully ragged.
XIV
THE SPY
One day as I was walking along the beach at Southsea, I saw a little
man sitting upon a camp-stool and very carefully drawing the Old Round
Stone Fort which stands in the middle of the shallow water, one of the
four that so stand, and which looks from Southsea as though it were
about half-way across to the Island.
I said to him: "Sir, why are you drawing that old Fort?"
He answered: "I am a German Spy, and the reason I draw that Fort is to
provide information for my Government which may be useful to it in case
of war with this country."
When the gentleman sitting upon the camp-stool, who was drawing the
Old Round Stone Fort in the middle of the water, talked like this he
annoyed me very much.
"You merely waste your time," said I. "These Forts were put up nearly
sixty years ago, and they are quite useless."
"I know nothing about that," said the little man--he had hair like hemp
and prominent weak blue eyes of a glazed sort, and altogether he struck
me as a fool of no insignificant calibre--"I know nothing about that. I
obey orders. I was told to draw this Fort, and that I am now doing."
"You do not draw well," said I, "but that is neither here nor there. I
mean that what you draw is not beautiful. What I really want to know is
why in thunder you were told to draw that round stone barrel, for which
no one in Europe would give a five-pound note."
"I have nothing to do with all that," said the little man again, still
industriously drawing. "I was told to draw that Fort, and that Fort I
draw." And he went on drawing the Old Round Stone Fort.
"Can you not tell me for whom you are drawing it?" said I at last.
"Yes," said he, "with great pleasure. I am drawing it for his
King-like and Kaiser-like Majesty By the Grace of God and the Authority
of the Holy See, William, King of Prussia, Margrave of Brandenburg,
Duke of Romshall, Count Hohenzollern and of the Great German Empire,
Emperor."
With that he went on drawing the Old Round Stone Fort.
"I do assure you most solemnly," said I again, "that you can be of no
use whatever to your master in this matter. There are no guns upon that
ridiculous thing; it has even been turned into a hotel."
But the little man paid no attention to what I said. He went on obeying
orders. He had often heard that this was the strength of his race.
"How could there conceivably be any guns on it?" said I imploringly.
"Do think what you are at! Do look at the range between you and Ryde!
Do consider what modern gunnery is! Do wake up, do!"
But the little man with hair like hemp said again: "I know nothing
about all that. I am a lieutenant in the High Spy Corps, and I have
been told to draw this Fort and I must draw it." And he went on drawing
the Old Round Stone Fort.
Then gloom settled upon my spirit, for I thought that civilization was
in peril if men such as he really existed and really went on in this
fashion.
However, I went back into Southsea, into the town, and there I bought
a chart. Then I struck off ranges upon the chart and marked them in
pencil, and I also marked the Fairway through Spithead into Portsmouth
Harbour. Then I came back to the little man, and I said: "Do look at
this!"
He looked at it very patiently and carefully, but at the end of so
looking at it he said: "I do not understand these things. I do not
belong to the High Map-making Corps; I belong to the Spy Corps, and I
have orders to draw this Fort." And he went on drawing the Old Round
Stone Fort.
Then, seeing I could not persuade him, I went into a neighbouring
church which is dedicated to the Patron of Spies, to wit, St. Judas,
and I prayed for this man. I prayed thus:
"Oh, St. Judas! Soften the flinty heart of this Spy, and turn him,
by your powerful intercession, from his present perfectly useless
occupation of drawing the Old Round Stone Fort to something a little
more worthy of his distinguished mission and the gallant profession he
adorns."
When I had prayed thus diligently for half an hour something within
me told me that it was useless, and when I got back to the seashore I
found out what the trouble was. Prayers went off my little man like
water off a cabbage-leaf. My little man with hair like hemp was a
No-Goddite, for he so explained to me in a conversation we had upon the
Four Last Things.
"I have done my drawing," he said at the end of this conversation (and
he said it in a tone of great satisfaction). "Now I shall go back to
Germany."
"No," said I, "you shall do nothing of the kind. I will have you tried
first in a court, and you shall be sent to prison for being a Spy."
"Very well," said he, and he came with me to the court.
The Magistrate tried him, and did what they call in the newspapers
"looking very grave," that is, he looked silly and worried. At last
he determined not to put the Spy in prison because there was not
sufficient proof that he was a Spy.
"Although," he added, "I have little doubt but that you have been
prying into the most important military secrets of the country."
After that I took the Spy out of court again and gave him some dinner,
and that night he went back home to Germany with his drawing of the Old
Round Stone Fort.
It is certainly an extraordinary way of doing business, but that is
their look-out. _They_ think they are efficient, and _we_ think they
are efficient, and when two people of opposite interests are agreed on
such a matter it is not for third parties to complain.
XV
THE YOUNG PEOPLE
One of my amusements, a mournful one I admit, upon these fine spring
days, is to watch in the streets of London the young people, and to
wonder if they are what I was at their age.
There is an element in human life which the philosophers have
neglected, and which I am at a loss to entitle, for I think no name
has been coined for it. But I am not at a loss to describe it. It is
that change in the proportion of things which is much more than a mere
change in perspective, or in point of view. It is that change which
makes Death so recognisable and too near; achievement necessarily
imperfect, and desire necessarily mixed with calculation. It is more
than that. It is a sort of seeing things from that far side of them,
which was only guessed at or heard of at second hand in earlier years,
but which is now palpable and part of the senses: known. All who have
passed a certain age know what I mean.
This change, not so much in the aspect of things as in the texture of
judgment, may mislead one when one judges youth; and it is best to
trust to one's own memory of one's own youth if one would judge the
young.
There I see a boy of twenty-five looking solemn enough, and walking
a little too stiffly down Cockspur Street. Does he think himself
immortal, I wonder, as I did? Does the thought of oblivion appal him
as it did me? That he continually suffers in his dignity, that he
thinks the passers-by all watch him, and that he is in terror of any
singularity in dress or gesture, I can well believe, for that is common
to all youth. But does he also, as did I and those of my time, purpose
great things which are quite unattainable, and think the summit of
success in any art to be the natural wage of living?
Then other things occur to me. Do these young people suffer or enjoy
all our old illusions? Do they think the country invincible? Do they
vaguely distinguish mankind into rich and poor, and think that the
former from whom they spring are provided with their well-being by some
natural and fatal process, like the recurrence of day and night? Are
they as full of the old taboos of what a gentleman may and may not do?
I wonder!--Possibly they are. I have not seen one of them wearing a
billycock hat with a tail coat, nor one of them smoking a pipe in the
street. And is life divided for them to-day as it was then, into three
periods: their childhood; their much more important years at a public
school (which last fill up most of their consciousness); their new
untried occupation?
And do they still so grievously and so happily misjudge mankind? I
think they must, judging by their eyes. I think they too believe
that industry earns an increasing reward, that what is best done in
any trade is best recognised and best paid; that labour is a happy
business; and that women are of two kinds: the young who go about to
please them, the old to whom they are indifferent.
Do they drink? I suppose so. They do not show it yet. Do they gamble? I
conceive they do. Are their nerves still sound? Of that there can be no
doubt! See them hop on and off the motor 'buses and cross the streets!