rashly touching a piece of toast that a waiter brought me in a London
hotel. But I was right in style. Accustomed as I was to see on the
streets of any American city the healthy, cheerful, well-clad and
well-shod men and women, I was appalled by the faces and the clothes of
the Russians. What they look like today I know not, but a more unhappy
looking crowd than I saw every day on the streets of Russian cities I
have never seen outside of pictures of Hell. Many of the people had
their ears and mouths bandaged and on their feet were (if they could
afford it) enormous knee-boots. All seemed to be suffering from the
foot and mouth disease.
Never shall I forget the boots and overcoats and uniforms on the Nevski
Prospekt. The question of leg-clothes would have interested the author
of _Sartor Resartus_. In Edinburgh all the men and some of the women
wore knickers, with stockings that seemed an inch thick. Compared with
Europeans, Americans are tropically clad. In order to avoid the glare
of publicity, I bought in Scotland a homespun golf suit.
I tried these abbreviated trousers just once on the Nevski Prospekt.
Everybody stopped to stare. Had I worn a flowing purple robe, I should
not have attracted such attention. Military officers gazed at me in
cold amazement, as though I had leprosy; while the more naïve passers
made audible comment, which fortunately I could not translate. Then
I tried the experiment of conventional clothing, but wore low shoes.
Everyone gazed at my feet, some in wonder, some in admiration, some in
terror. I felt as I did many years ago when I wore a striped cap in
Brussels. A stranger looked at me earnestly and then said in an almost
reverent tone, and he said it three times: _Nom de Dieu!_
In America our citizens show much the same interest in strange
clothing. Professor E. B. Wilson, a distinguished mathematician, bought
a suit of clothes in Paris. He wore it only once in America. A citizen
gazed at him steadfastly, and said “J----!”
The faces of the common people in Russian cities were sad to behold,
whether one saw them on the street or in church. Not only was there no
hilarity, such as one sees everywhere in American towns; those faces
indicated a total lack of illuminating intelligence. They were blank,
dull, apathetic, helpless. Gorki said that the people in Russia had so
little to look forward to that they were glad when their own houses
burned down, as it made a break in the dull routine of life.
One afternoon I walked the entire length of the Nevski Prospekt, no
mean achievement in a heavy overcoat. I began at the banks of the
restless, blustering Neva, passed the extraordinary statue of Peter the
Great, came through the garden by the statue of Gogol, and with the
thin gold spire of the Admiralty at my back, entered the long avenue.
I followed the immense extension of the Nevski, clear to the cemetery,
and stood reverently before the tomb of Dostoevski. Here in January,
1881, the body of the great novelist was laid in the grave, in the
presence of forty thousand mourners.
In a corner of the enclosure I found the tomb of the composer
Chaikovski; I gazed on the last resting-place of Glinka, father of
Russian music. On account of the marshy soil, the graves are built
above instead of below the surface of the ground, exactly as they are
in New Orleans. It is in reality a city of the dead, the only place
where a Russian finds peace. I passed out on the other side of the
cemetery, walked through the grounds of the convent, and found myself
abruptly clear from the city, on the edge of a vast plain.
XXII
THE DEVIL
It is rather a pity that the Devil has vanished with Santa Claus
and other delectable myths; the universe is more theatrical with a
“personal devil” roaming at large, seeking whom he may devour. In the
book of Job the Devil played the part of the return of the native,
coming along in the best society in the cosmos to appear before the
Presence. And when he was asked where he came from, he replied in a
devilishly debonair manner, “From going to and fro in the earth, and
from walking up and down in it.”
There are so many things in this world that seem to be the Devil’s
handiwork, and there are so many people who look like the devil, that
it seems as if he could not be extinct. His chief service to the
universal scene was to keep virtue from becoming monotonous; to warn
even saints that they must mind their step; to prove that eternal
vigilance is the price of safety. The Enemy of Mankind never took a
holiday. Homer might nod, but not he. In fact, on human holidays he
was, if possible, unusually efficient. The idleness of man was the
opportunity of Satan.
The principle of evil is so active, so tireless, so penetrating that
the simplest way to account for it is to suppose that men and things
receive constantly the personal attention of the Devil. Weeds, and
not vegetables, grow naturally; illness, not health, is contagious;
children and day-labourers are not instinctively industrious; champagne
tastes better than cocoa.
Throughout the Middle Ages, although every one believed steadfastly
in the reality of the Devil and that he was the most unscrupulous of
all foes, there was a certain friendliness with him, born, I suppose,
of daily intimacy. It was like the way in which hostile sentries will
hobnob with one another, swap tobacco, etc., in the less tense moments
of war. The Devil was always just around the corner and would be glad
of an invitation to drop in.
Thus in the mediæval mystery plays, the forerunners of our modern
theatres, the Devil was always the Clown. He supplied “comic relief”
and was usually the most popular personage in the performance. He
appeared in the conventional makeup, a horrible mask, horns, cloven
hoofs and prehensile tail, with smoke issuing from mouth, ears and
posterior. He did all kinds of acrobatic feats, and his appearance
was greeted with shouts of joy. In front of that part of the stage
representing Hellmouth he was sometimes accompanied with “damned
souls,” persons wearing black tights with yellow stripes. On an
examination at Yale I set the question, “Describe the costume of the
characters in the mystery plays.” One of the students wrote: “The
damned souls wore Princeton colours.”
The modern circus clown comes straight from the Devil. When you see
him stumble and fall all over himself, whirl his cap aloft and catch
it on his head, distract the attention of the spectators away from the
gymnasts to his own antics, he is doing exactly what his ancestor the
Devil did in the mediæval plays.
It is at first thought singular that those audiences, who believed
implicitly in a literal hell of burning flame, should have taken the
Devil as the chief comic character. I suppose the only way to account
for this is to remember how essential a feature of romantic art is the
element of the grotesque, which is a mingling of horror and humour,
like our modern spook plays. If you pretend that you are a hobgoblin
and chase a child, the child will flee in real terror, but the moment
you stop, the child will say, “Do that again.”
There are many legends of compacts with the Devil, where some
individual has sold his soul to gain the whole world. The most famous
of these stories is, of course, _Faust_, but there are innumerable
others. Here is a story I read in an American magazine some fifty years
ago.
A man, threatened with financial ruin, was sitting in his library when
the maid brought in a visiting card and announced that a gentleman
would like to be admitted. On the card was engraved
Mr. Apollo Lyon.
As the man looked at it his eyes blurred, the two words ran together,
so they seemed to form the one word
Apollyon.
The gentleman was shown in; he was exquisitely dressed and was
evidently a suave man of the world. He proposed that the one receiving
him should have prosperity and happiness for twenty years. Then Mr.
Lyon would call again and be asked three questions. If he failed to
answer any of the three the man should keep his wealth and prosperity.
If all three were correctly answered the man must accompany Mr. Lyon.
The terms were accepted; all went well for twenty years. At the
appointed time appeared Mr. Lyon, who had not aged in the least; he was
the same smiling, polished gentleman. He was asked a question that had
floored all the theologians. Mr. Lyon answered it without hesitation.
The second question had stumped all the philosophers, but it had no
difficulties for Mr. Lyon.
Then there was a pause, and the sweat stood out on the questioner’s
face. At that moment his wife came in from shopping. She was rosy and
cheerful. After being introduced to Mr. Lyon she noticed her husband
was nervous. He denied this, but said that he and Mr. Lyon were playing
a little game of three questions and he did not want to lose. She asked
permission to put the third question and in desperation her husband
consented. She held out her new hat and asked: “Mr. Lyon, which is the
front end of this hat?” Mr. Lyon turned it around and around, and then
with a strange exclamation went straight through the ceiling, leaving
behind him a strong smell of sulphur.
XXIII
THE FORSYTE SAGA
It is impossible to say what books of our time will be read at the
close of this century; it is probable that many of the poems and tales
of Kipling, the lyrics of Housman, dramatic narratives by Masefield,
some plays by Shaw and Barrie, will for a long time survive their
authors.
Among the novels, I do not know of any that has or ought to have a
better chance for the future than the books written about the family of
the Forsytes by John Galsworthy. They at present hold about the same
place in contemporary English literature as is held in France by Romain
Rolland’s _Jean Christophe_. Both are works of great length which
reflect with remarkable accuracy the political, social, commercial,
artistic life and activity of the twentieth century, the one in
England, the other on the Continent.
Entirely apart from their appeal as good novels, that is to say, apart
from one’s natural interest in the plot and in the characters, both
are social documents of great value. If the future historian wishes
to know English and Continental society in the first quarter of the
twentieth century, he will do well to give attention and reflexion to
these two works of “fiction.”
John Galsworthy was just under forty when in 1906 he published a novel
called _The Man of Property_. He had produced very little before this,
but it took no especial critical penetration to discover that the new
book was a masterpiece. The family of the Forsytes bore a striking
resemblance to one another in basic traits and ways of thinking, yet
each was sharply individualised. A new group of persons had been added
to British fiction. The word “Property,” as in Tennyson’s _Northern
Farmer_, was the keynote, and before long it began to appear that
one of the most dramatic of contrasts was to be used as the subject.
This is the struggle between the idea of Property and the idea of
Beauty--between the commercial, acquisitive temperament and the more
detached, but equally passionate artistic temperament.
Even in the pursuit of beauty Mr. Soames Forsyte never forgot the idea
of property. He was a first-class business man in the city, but he was
also an expert judge of paintings, which he added to his collection.
Oil and canvas do not completely satisfy any healthy business man; so
Soames added to his collection, as the masterpiece in his gallery, an
exquisitely beautiful woman whom he made his wife.
The philosophy of love comes in here. What is love? Is it exclusively
the idea of possession, which often is no more dignified than the
predatory instinct or is it the unalloyed wish that the object of one’s
love should be as happy and secure as possible? No one can truly and
sincerely love Beauty either in the abstract or in the concrete if
one’s eyes are clouded by predatory desire. One must look at beauty
without the wish to possess it if one is really to appreciate beauty.
A first-class French chef would look into the big front window of a
confectioner’s shop and fully appreciate the art and taste that created
those delectable edibles; but a hungry boy who looked at the same
objects would not appreciate them critically at all.
The wife of Soames finds him odious, so odious that we cannot
altogether acquit her of guilt in marrying him; and Soames, who as a
Man of Property expected her to fulfill her contract, did not make
himself more physically attractive by insisting on his rights. She left
him for a man of exactly the opposite temperament.
When Mr. Galsworthy finished this fine novel, he had no intention of
going on with the history of the family. He wrote many other novels
and some remarkable plays, but nothing made the impression on readers
that had been produced by the Forsyte family. Nearly twenty years later
he returned to the theme, and at once his power as a novelist seemed
to rise; there is something in this family that calls out his highest
powers. When he discovered that he had written five works of fiction
on the Forsytes, three long novels and two short stories, of which the
brief interlude called _Indian Summer of a Forsyte_ is an impeccable
and I hope imperishable work of art, he hit upon the happy idea of
assembling them into one prose epic, and calling the whole thing by the
ironical title of _The Forsyte Saga_. It is my belief that for many
years to come the name of John Galsworthy will be associated with this
work, in what I fervently hope will be its expanded form.
For since the assembling of the five pieces Mr. Galsworthy has
published several other novels dealing with the family--_The White
Monkey_, _The Silver Spoon_ and in 1928 he wrote FINIS with _Swan
Song_. Here he kills Soames, and while he probably does not feel quite
so sad as Thackeray felt when he killed Colonel Newcome, I venture
to say that he does not gaze on the corpse of Soames with indifferent
eyes. For to my mind the most interesting single feature of this whole
mighty epic is the development of the character of this man.
Clyde Fitch used to say something that is no doubt true of many works
of the imagination; he said that he would carefully plan a play, write
his first act, and definitely decide what the leading characters
should say and do in the subsequent portions of the work. Then these
provokingly independent characters seemed to acquire, not only an
independent existence, but a power of will so strong that they insisted
on doing and saying all kinds of things which he tried in vain to
prevent.
In _The Man of Property_ Soames Forsyte is a repulsive character; he
is hated by his wife, by the reader, and by the author. But in these
later books Soames becomes almost an admirable person, and we may say
of him at the end in reviewing his life, that nothing became him like
the leaving of it--for he died nobly. Long before this catastrophe,
however, we have learned to admire, respect, and almost to love Soames.
Is it possible that Mr. Galsworthy had any notion of this spiritual
progress when he wrote _The Man of Property_, or is it that in living
so long with Soames he began to see his good points?
Dickens was a master in this kind of development. When we first
meet Mr. Pickwick, he seems like the president of a service club as
conceived by Sinclair Lewis; he is the butt of the whole company. Later
Mr. Pickwick develops into a noble and magnanimous gentleman, whom
every right-minded person loves. Look at Dick Swiveller--when we first
see him, he is no more than a guttersnipe. He develops into a true
knight.
XXIV
PROFESSION AND PRACTICE
Beautiful lines which show that the man who wrote them had a clear
conception of true religion are these:
Thus to relieve the wretched was his pride,
And even his failings leaned to virtue’s side;
But in his duty prompt at every call,
He watched and wept, he prayed and felt for all;
And, as a bird each fond endearment tries
To tempt its new-fledged offspring to the skies,
He tried each art, reproved each dull delay,
Allured to brighter worlds, and led the way.
The man who wrote them is thus described by James Boswell: “Those who
were in any way distinguished excited envy in him to so ridiculous an
excess that the instances of it are hardly credible. When accompanying
two beautiful young ladies with their mother on a tour of France, he
was seriously angry that more attention was paid to them than to him.”
Goldsmith wrote of virtue, modesty, sweet unselfishness in the most
convincing manner; his words were more convincing than his behaviour.
He allured to brighter worlds, but did not lead the way.
Schopenhauer, the great philosopher of pessimism, taught that absolute
asceticism was the only true religion and method of escape from the
ills of life; but he never practiced it, and told his disciples to mind
his precepts and not his example. Unfortunately, whenever any one gives
advice in the field of morality or religion, the first person on whom
we test its practical value is the preacher. Emerson remarked, “What
you are thunders so loud I cannot hear what you say.”
No great writer of modern times has written more persuasively of the
Christian way of life than Tolstoi; there is no doubt that his stories
and tracts have had an immense influence on millions of readers and
have inspired them toward unselfishness, kindness and humility. But of
all great Russian writers, Tolstoi himself was the most difficult to
get along with; he could not bear to hear any other writer praised and
was lacking in the grace of appreciation. His rival, Turgenev, who had
no religious belief of any kind, excelled Tolstoi in the virtues of
modesty, unselfishness and consideration for others.
One of the many reasons why the art of bringing up children is the most
difficult of all arts is that it is essential for parents to set a
daily example. All the moral precepts in the world will not seriously
impress children if their parents do not in their daily life come
somewhere near the ideals they hold up. The child will after a fashion
love his parents anyhow, but as he grows older and begins to compare
what he has been taught with what he sees, the child is transformed
into a judge. This partly explains that fear of their own children
which so many parents secretly feel.
If the parents make their small children go to church and stay home
themselves, the children quite naturally regard church-going as one of
the numerous penalties imposed on youth and look forward to maturity as
an escape from this and many other unpleasant compulsions. If parents
impress on their children the necessity of telling the truth, they must
not themselves tell lies; they are being watched by the sharpest eyes
in the world.
Although in a certain sense we are all hypocrites--for no one can live
up to his ideals--we hate any flagrant case of hypocrisy. I suppose one
reason we have a sneaking admiration for pirates is that pirates are
not hypocrites. There is no doubt that professional pirates are more
generally admired than professional politicians. I do not say that
politicians are hypocrites; I say that pirates are not.
It is the personalities of great leaders, much more than their sayings,
that have had a beneficial influence. The sayings of Jesus--every
word that has come down to us--can be read through in three hours.
But from His life and character flows a vital force, tremendously
effective after nineteen centuries. Very few people read the literary
compositions of Sir Philip Sidney, but millions have been influenced by
his life and character. The pure, unselfish life of George Herbert is
more efficacious than his poems; and consider Saint Francis!
The Christian Church has had in every century of its existence able,
honest, determined foes, who have done their best to destroy it; it
is probable that they have done it no injury. Nor have the frank
sensualists and materialists hurt it at all. It has been injured only
by its professed friends.
If a physician opens an office, his most dangerous foes are not his
competitors, that is to say, other doctors; his most dangerous foes are
those of his patients who say, “Well, I took his medicine, and it did
me no good.” The best advertising is done by one’s sincere friends and
admirers; the good word about the new doctor, or the new novel, or the
new play, is passed along.
The Christian religion professes to make those who accept it better and
happier; every one who professes it and exhibits none of its graces is
a powerful argument against its validity. A man’s foes are those of his
own household.
Sometimes I think religion should first of all show itself in good
manners; that is, in true politeness, consideration for others,
kindness and deference without servility. Such persons are those
we love to meet and be with; they are good advertisements of their
religion; they will not have to talk about it because its effects are
so plainly and attractively seen.
XXV
LONDON AS A SUMMER RESORT
I had an interesting conversation with Bernard Shaw last week. The next
day he and Mrs. Shaw were leaving to spend the summer on the Riviera,
which from time immemorial has been regarded as a winter resort. He
gave, as is his custom, an original and diverting explanation of the
fact that many now prefer to visit winter resorts in the summer. It is
a matter of clothes. The Victorians were forced to go to cool places,
or at any rate to avoid warm places; because they were compelled to
wear stuffy clothes, the men being encased in frock coats, thick
waistcoats, collars and swaddling neckcloths. But today, when one
leaves off almost everything, the finest place in the world, according
to G. B. S., is a climate where one can live outdoors in comfort, day
and night.
It is certainly true that many European resorts, where the hotels used
to be open only during a short winter season, now attract visitors the
year round. The converse is also true. I can well remember when the
great hotels of Switzerland--the playground of Europe--were open only
during the summer; and were crowded only during the month of August.
But now they never close and are as much sought after in December
and January as in the good old summertime. The same is true of Lake
Placid in America and of many other places. People in Victorian times
were forced to dress according to the prevailing style, which bore no
reference to climate or common sense; remember how the women used to
look, playing golf and tennis!
Furthermore the old idea that everyone who could afford it must
leave the city during the “heated term” has become obsolete, even in
America. President Harper of the University of Chicago established a
Summer Quarter, and professors who wished to do so could take their
three months’ vacation in the winter, a privilege that many continue
to enjoy. The Country clubs and golf have had much to do with the
contentment of business men who remain in cities during the summer.
As a matter of fact, the city is not at all a bad place, I mean, of
course, for those who can afford to make themselves comfortable.
The city of Munich has for many years been a Mecca for summer
pilgrims. The season of music, arranged for foreign visitors, reaches
its climax in August. Now I wish to urge the millions of Americans who
at one time or another cross the ocean to consider the merits of London
as a summer resort.
For over a hundred years July has been a part of the London “season”;
Parliament is in session, operas and theatres are open, and parties
flourish amain. The twelfth of August, the opening of the grouse
shooting season, is the formal beginning of the vacation; Parliament
always adjourns for it, and London society flies north. But to an
American London is day by day interesting, and there should be no
closing of any season for him.