In the quarrel earlier alluded to between the energetic Progressive and
the obstinate Conservative (or, to talk a tenderer language, between
Hudge and Gudge), the state of cross-purposes is at the present moment
acute. The Tory says he wants to preserve family life in Cindertown;
the Socialist very reasonably points out to him that in Cindertown
at present there isn’t any family life to preserve. But Hudge, the
Socialist, in his turn, is highly vague and mysterious about whether he
would preserve the family life if there were any; or whether he will try
to restore it where it has disappeared. It is all very confusing. The
Tory sometimes talks as if he wanted to tighten the domestic bonds that
do not exist; the Socialist as if he wanted to loosen the bonds that do
not bind anybody. The question we all want to ask of both of them is
the original ideal question, “Do you want to keep the family at all?” If
Hudge, the Socialist, does want the family he must be prepared for the
natural restraints, distinctions and divisions of labor in the family.
He must brace himself up to bear the idea of the woman having a
preference for the private house and a man for the public house. He must
manage to endure somehow the idea of a woman being womanly, which does
not mean soft and yielding, but handy, thrifty, rather hard, and very
humorous. He must confront without a quiver the notion of a child who
shall be childish, that is, full of energy, but without an idea of
independence; fundamentally as eager for authority as for information
and butter-scotch. If a man, a woman and a child live together any more
in free and sovereign households, these ancient relations will recur;
and Hudge must put up with it. He can only avoid it by destroying the
family, driving both sexes into sexless hives and hordes, and bringing
up all children as the children of the state--like Oliver Twist. But if
these stern words must be addressed to Hudge, neither shall Gudge escape
a somewhat severe admonition. For the plain truth to be told pretty
sharply to the Tory is this, that if he wants the family to remain,
if he wants to be strong enough to resist the rending forces of our
essentially savage commerce, he must make some very big sacrifices and
try to equalize property. The overwhelming mass of the English people at
this particular instant are simply too poor to be domestic. They are
as domestic as they can manage; they are much more domestic than the
governing class; but they cannot get what good there was originally
meant to be in this institution, simply because they have not got enough
money. The man ought to stand for a certain magnanimity, quite lawfully
expressed in throwing money away: but if under given circumstances
he can only do it by throwing the week’s food away, then he is not
magnanimous, but mean. The woman ought to stand for a certain wisdom
which is well expressed in valuing things rightly and guarding money
sensibly; but how is she to guard money if there is no money to guard?
The child ought to look on his mother as a fountain of natural fun and
poetry; but how can he unless the fountain, like other fountains,
is allowed to play? What chance have any of these ancient arts and
functions in a house so hideously topsy-turvy; a house where the woman
is out working and the man isn’t; and the child is forced by law to
think his schoolmaster’s requirements more important than his mother’s?
No, Gudge and his friends in the House of Lords and the Carlton Club
must make up their minds on this matter, and that very quickly. If
they are content to have England turned into a beehive and an ant-hill,
decorated here and there with a few faded butterflies playing at an old
game called domesticity in the intervals of the divorce court, then let
them have their empire of insects; they will find plenty of Socialists
who will give it to them. But if they want a domestic England, they must
“shell out,” as the phrase goes, to a vastly greater extent than any
Radical politician has yet dared to suggest; they must endure burdens
much heavier than the Budget and strokes much deadlier than the death
duties; for the thing to be done is nothing more nor less than the
distribution of the great fortunes and the great estates. We can now
only avoid Socialism by a change as vast as Socialism. If we are to save
property, we must distribute property, almost as sternly and sweepingly
as did the French Revolution. If we are to preserve the family we must
revolutionize the nation.
*****