largely suppressed by party politicians. The War Enquiry was conducted
with secrecy; Cabinet Ministers held their Councils, as it were, with
locked doors. An eager desire to conceal the real state of affairs in
the country, and an unfortunate tendency to “hush up” such matters
as are the plain right of ratepayers to know, are the betraying signs
of many of our statesmen’s inward disquiet. Because, as many people
instinctively feel, the trail of finance is likely to be openly traced
to an unlawful, and in some cases, dishonourable extent, over much
recent political work. Honour, however, is due to those Ministers who
valiantly endeavour to screen greater names than their own behind their
skilful diplomacy; and one naturally admires the zeal and courage with
which they fight for this cause, even as M. Maurepas and M. Necker
fought a similar campaign long ago in the dark days of France, when,
as Carlyle writes, it was “clearly a difficult point for Government,
that of the dealing with the masses--if indeed it be not rather the
sole point and problem of Government, and all other points were
incidental crotchets, superficialities, and beatings of the wind! For
let Charter-chests, Use and Wont, Law, common and special, say what
they will, the masses count to so many millions of units, made to all
appearance by God, whose earth this is declared to be. Besides, the
people are not without ferocity; they have sinews and indignation.”
At the immediate moment, the masses in our country are, rightly or
wrongly, vaguely conscious of two things which they view as forms
of injustice, namely, that they are asked to pay rates for an
educational system which a large bulk of them do not approve, and that
they are taxed for the expenses of a war, the conduct of which was
discussed “secretly,” as though its methods implied some dishonour
to those concerned in it. Moreover, they understand, with more or
less bewilderment, that though the King is now “Supreme Lord of the
Transvaal” there is no chance whatever for British subjects to make
fortune there, the trades being swamped by Germans, and the mines
controlled by Jews. Therefore, in their inability to follow the devious
paths of reasoning by which politicians explain away what they term
“ignorant and illiterate” conclusions, some of them begin to think that
the blood of their sons has been shed in hard battle, not so much for
the glory and good of the many, as for the private greed of the few.
They are no doubt wrong; but it will take something more than “secret”
enquiries to set them right.
Meanwhile, the passing of the social pageant interests them more
deeply than is apparent on the frothy surface of social things. Their
contempt is aroused and kept sullenly alive by daily contemplation of
the flagrant assertion of money-dominance over every other good. They
hear of one Andrew Carnegie strewing Free Libraries over the surface
of the country, as if these institutions were so many lollipops thrown
out of a schoolboy’s satchel; they follow the accounts of his doings
with a mingling of wonder and derision, some of them up in Scotland
openly and forcibly regretting the mischief done to the famed “grit and
grip” of Scottish students, who are not now, as of yore, forced by hard
necessity to work for their University education themselves, and win
it, as it were, by the very skin of their teeth. Hard necessity is a
fine taskmaster, and turns out splendid scholars and useful men. But
when educational advantages are thrown headlong at aspiring students,
and Universities are opened freely, as though they were a species of
pauper-refuge, the delights of learning are apt to be proportionately
cheapened and lessened. Lads with real ability naturally and invariably
seek to do something that shall prove their own capabilities of pluck
and endurance; and a truly independent spirit not only chafes at,
but absolutely resents, assistance. Thus it has come to pass that
Mr. Carnegie’s Free Libraries are looked upon by hosts of people as
so many brick and mortar advertisements of his own great wealth and
unfailing liberality. A labour leader of some repute among his own
class, remarked the other day that “the Carnegie libraries were like
‘So-and-So’s Pills,’ posted up everywhere lest the inventor’s name
should be forgotten!” This was an unkind, and perhaps an ungrateful
observation, but we have to recollect that a People, taken _as_ a
People, do not want to be grateful for anything. They want to work
for all they get, and to feel that they have honestly deserved their
earnings. It is only the drones of the hive that seek to be taken care
of. The able citizen strenuously objects to be helped in obtaining
sustenance for either his soul or his body. What is necessary for him,
that he will fight for, and, having won the battle, he enjoys the
victory. There is no pleasure in conquering an enemy, if a policeman
has helped you to knock him down.
Thus, with many of the more independently-thinking class, millionaire
Carnegie’s money, pitched at the public, savours of “patronage” which
they resent, and ostentation which they curtly call “swagger.” Free
Libraries are by no means essential to perfect happiness, while they
may be called extremely detrimental to the prosperity of authors. A
popular author would have good reason to rejoice if his works were
excluded from Free Libraries, inasmuch as his sales would be twice,
perhaps three times as large. If a Free Library takes a dozen copies of
a book, that dozen copies has probably to serve for five or six hundred
people, who get it in turn individually. But if the book could not
possibly be obtained for gratuitous reading in this fashion, and could
only be secured by purchase, then it follows that five or six hundred
copies would be sold instead of twelve. This applies only to authors
whose works the public clamour for, and insist on reading; with the
more select “unpopular” geniuses the plan, of course, would not meet
with approval. In any case, a Free Library is neither to an author,
nor to the reading public, an unmitigated boon. One has to wait for
months sometimes for the book specially wanted; sometimes one’s name
is 1,000 on the list, though certain volumes known as “heavy stock”
can always be obtained immediately on application, but are seldom
applied for. Real book-lovers buy their books and keep them. Reading
which is merely haphazard and casual is purely pernicious, and does
far more harm than good. However, Carnegie, being the possessor of
millions, probably does not know what else to do with the cash except
in the way of Libraries. To burden a human biped with tons of gold,
and then set him adrift to get rid of it as best he may, is one of the
scurviest tricks of Fortune. Inasmuch as ostentation is the trade mark
of vulgarity, and a rich man cannot spend his money without at least
_appearing_ ostentatious. The revival of the spinning and silk-weaving
industries in England would be a far nobler and more beneficial help
to the country and to the many thousands of people, than any number
of Free Libraries, yet no millionaire comes forward to offer the
needful assistance towards this deserving end. But perhaps a hundred
looms set going, with their workers all properly supported, would not
be so prominently noticed in the general landscape as a hundred Free
Libraries.
Apart from the manner in which certain rich men spend their wealth,
there is something in an overplus of riches which is distinctly “out
of drawing,” and lop-sided. It is a false note in the musical scale.
Just as a woman, by wearing too great a number of jewels, vulgarizes
whatever personal beauty she may possess by the flagrant exhibition of
valuables and bad taste together, so does a man who has no other claim
upon society than that of mere wealth, appear as a kind of monstrosity
and deformity in the general equality and equilibrium of Nature. When
such a man’s career is daily seen to be nothing more than a constant
pursuit of his own selfish ends, regardless of truth, honour, high
principle, and consideration for his fellow-men, he becomes even more
than a man-camel with a golden hump--he is an offence and a danger to
the community. If, by mere dint of cash, he is allowed to force his
way everywhere--if no ruling sovereign on the face of the earth has
sufficient wisdom or strength of character to draw a line against the
entrance into society and politics of Money, for mere Money’s sake,
then the close of our circle of civilisation is nearly reached, and
the old story of Tyre and Sidon and Babylon will be re-told again for
us with the same fatal conclusion to which Volney, in his _Ruins of
Empires_ impressively calls attention, in the following passage:
“Cupidity, the daughter and companion of ignorance, has produced
all the mischiefs that have desolated the globe. Ignorance and the
love of accumulation, these are the two sources of all the plagues
that infest the life of man. They have inspired him with false ideas
of his happiness, and prompted him to misconstrue and infringe the
laws of nature, as they related to the connection between him and
exterior objects. Through them his conduct has been injurious to his
own existence, and he has thus violated the duty he owes to himself;
they have fortified his heart against compassion, and his mind against
the dictates of justice, and he has thus violated the duty he owes
to others. By ignorant and inordinate desire, man has armed himself
against man, family against family, tribe against tribe, and the earth
is converted into a bloody theatre of discord and robbery. They have
sown the seeds of secret war in the bosom of every state, divided
the citizens from each other, and the same society is constituted of
oppressors and oppressed, of masters and slaves. They have taught the
heads of nations, with audacious insolence, to turn the arms of society
against itself, and _to build upon mercenary avidity the fabric of
political despotism_, or they have a _more hypocritical and deep-laid
project, that imposes, as the dictate of heaven, lying sanctions and
a sacrilegious yoke, thus rendering avarice the source of credulity_.
In fine, they have corrupted every idea of good and evil, just and
unjust, virtue and vice; they have misled nations in a _labyrinth
of calamity and mistake_. Ignorance and the love of accumulation!
These are the malevolent beings that have laid waste the earth; these
are the decrees of fate that have overturned empires; these are the
celestial maledictions that have struck these walls, once so glorious,
and converted the splendour of populous cities into a sad spectacle of
ruins!”
Laughable, yet grievous, is the childish conduct of many American
plutocrats who are never tired of announcing in the daily Press that
they are spending Three Thousand Pounds on roses for one afternoon’s
“At Home,” or Five Thousand Pounds on one single banquet! After this,
why should we call the Roman Heliogabalus a sensualist and voluptuary?
His orgies were less ostentatious than many social functions of to-day.
It is not, we believe, recorded that he paid any “fashion-papers”
(if there were any such in the Roman Empire) to describe his “Feasts
of Flowers,” though a lively American lady, giving out her “social
experiences” recently at an “Afternoon tea” said gaily: “I always send
an account of my dinners, my dresses, and the dresses of my friends to
‘_The ----_’ with a cheque. Otherwise, you know, I should never get
myself or my parties mentioned at all!” One is bound to entertain the
gravest doubts as to the truth of her assertion, knowing, of course,
that of all institutions in the world, the Press, in Great Britain at
any rate, is the last to be swayed by financial considerations. One
has never heard (in England at least) of any “Company” paying several
thousand pounds to the Press for “floating it.” Though such things
may be done in America, they are never tolerated here. But, the Press
apart, which in its unblemished rectitude “shines like a good deed
in a naughty world,” most things in modern politics and society are
swayed by money considerations, and the sudden acquisition of wealth
does not in many cases improve the morality of the person so favoured,
or persuade him to discharge such debts as he may have incurred in
his days of limited means. On the contrary, he frequently ignores
these, and proceeds to incur fresh liabilities, as in the striking
case of a lady “leader of society” at the present day, who, having
owed large sums to certain harmless and confiding tradesmen for the
past seven or eight years, ignores these debts or “shunts them,” and
spends six thousand pounds recklessly on the adornment of rooms for
the entertainment of Royalty--which fact most notably proclaims her
vulgarity, singularly allied to her social distinction. The payment of
her debts first, and the entertainment of great personages afterwards,
would seem to be a nobler and more becoming thing.
But show and vanity, pride and “bounce,” appear to have taken the
place of such old-fashioned virtues as simplicity, sincerity, and that
genuine hospitality which asserts nothing, but gives all.
Kind hearts are more than coronets,
And simple faith than Norman blood.
In very few cases does immense wealth seem to go hand in hand with
refinement, reserve and dignity. Millionaires are for the most part
ill-mannered and illiterate, and singularly uninteresting in their
conversation. A certain millionaire, occupying during some seasons
one of the fine old Scottish Castles whose owners still take pride
in the fact that its walls once sheltered “bonnie Prince Charlie,”
can find little to do with himself and his “house-party,” but fill
the grand old drawing-room with tobacco-smoke and whisky-fumes of
an evening, and play “Bridge” for ruinous stakes on Sundays, of all
days in the week. During other hours and days he goes out shooting,
or drives a motor-car. Intellectually speaking, the man is less of a
real personality than the great Newfoundland dog he owns. But measured
by gold he is a person of enormous importance--a human El Dorado. And
his banking-account is the latchkey with which he opens the houses of
the great and intrudes his coarse presence through the doors of royal
palaces; whereas if by some capricious stroke of ill-luck he had not
a penny left in the world, those same doors would be shut in his face
with a bang.
The vulgarity of wealth is daily and hourly so broadly evidenced
and apparent, that one can well credit a strange rumour prevalent
in certain highly exclusive circles, far removed from the “swagger
set,” to the effect that with one more turn of blind Fortune’s wheel,
the grace of Poverty will become a rare social distinction. The Poor
Gentleman, it is said, will be eagerly sought after, and to be seen in
his company will entitle one to respect. The man of money will stand
outside the ring of this Society, which is in process of formation for
the revival of the Art of Intelligent Conversation and the Cultivation
of Good Manners. Ladies who dress with a becoming simplicity, and who
are not liable to the accusation of walking about with clothes unpaid
for, will be eligible for membership,--and young men who are not
ashamed to emphatically decline playing cards on Sunday will be equally
welcome in the select coterie. Limited means will be considered more
of a recommendation than a drawback, and visits will be interchanged
among the members on the lines of unaffected hospitality, offered with
unassuming friendship and sincerity. Kindness towards each other,
punctilious attention to the smallest courtesies of life, unfailing
chivalry towards women, and honour to men, will be the prevailing
“rules” of the community, and every attempt at “show,” either in
manners or entertainment, will be rigorously forbidden and excluded.
The aim of the Society will be to prove the truth of the adage that
“Manners makyth the man,” as opposed to the modern reading, “Money
makyth the nobleman.” Bearing in mind that the greatest reformers and
teachers of the world were seldom destitute of the grace of Poverty, it
will be deemed good and necessary to make a stand for this ancient and
becoming Virtue, which as a learned writer says, “doth sit on a wise
man more becomingly than royal robes on a king.” Many who entertain
this view are prepared to unite their forces in making well-born and
well-bred Poverty the fashion. For in such a scheme, singular as it may
appear, there is just a faint chance of putting up a barrier against
boorish Plutocracy (which is a more unwieldy and offensive power than
Democracy), and also of asserting the existence of grander national
qualities than greed, avarice, and self-indulgence, which humours, if
allowed to generate and grow in the minds of a people, result in the
ravaging sickness of such a pestilence of evil as cannot be easily
stayed or remedied. There has been enough, and too much of the Idolatry
of Money-bags--it is time the fever of such insanity should abate and
cool down. To conclude with another admirable quotation from Mr. Lecky:
“Of colossal fortunes only a very small fraction can be truly said to
minister to the personal enjoyment of the owner. The disproportion in
the world between pleasure and cost is indeed almost ludicrous. The two
or three shillings that gave us our first Shakespeare would go but a
small way towards providing one of the perhaps untasted dishes on the
dessert table. The choicest masterpieces of the human mind--the works
of human genius that through the long course of centuries have done
most to ennoble, console, brighten, and direct the lives of men, might
all be purchased--I do not say by the cost of a lady’s necklace, but
by that of one or two of the little stones of which it is composed.
Compare the relish with which the tired pedestrian eats his bread and
cheese with the appetites with which men sit down to some stately
banquet; compare the level of spirits at the village dance with that
of the great city ball whose lavish splendour fills the society papers
with admiration; compare the charms of conversation in the college
common room with the weary faces that may be often seen around the
millionaire’s dinner table, and we may gain a good lesson of the
vanity of riches.”
And, we may add, of the vulgarity of those who advertise their wealth
by ostentation, as well as of those who honour Purses more than
Principles.
AMERICAN WOMEN IN ENGLAND
Why is the American woman so popular in English society? Why is her
charmingly assertive personality acknowledged everywhere? Why is she
received by knights and earls and belted churls with such overpowering
enthusiasm? Surely something subtle, elusive and mysterious, clings to
her particular form, nature and identity, for more often than not, the
stolid Britisher, while falling at her feet and metaphorically kissing
the hem of her garment, wonders vaguely how it is that she manages to
make such a fool of him! To which, she might reply, on demand, that if
he were not a fool already, she would not find her task so easy! For
the American woman is, above all women in the world, clever--or let
us say “brainy” to an almost incredible height of brainyness. She is
“all there.” She can take the measure of a man in about ten minutes
and classify him as though he were a botanical specimen. She realizes
all his limitations, his “notions,” and his special and particular
fads,--and she has the uncommonly good sense not to expect much of
him. She would not “take any” on the lily-maid of Astolat, the fair
Elaine, who spent her time in polishing the shield of Lancelot, and who
finally died of love for that most immoral but fascinating Knight of
the Round Table. No, she wouldn’t polish a shield, you bet! She would
make Lancelot polish it himself for all he was worth, and polish her
own dear little boots and shoes for her into the bargain. That is one
of her secrets--masterfulness--or, let us say queenliness, which sounds
better. The Lord of creation can do nothing in the way of ordering
_her_ about,--because, as the Lady of creation she expects to order
_him_ about,--and she does! She expects to be worked for, worshipped
and generally attended to,--and she gets her way. What she wants, she
will have,--though “Companies” smash, and mighty Combines split into
infinite nothingness; and more than any tamer of wild forest animals
she makes all her male lions and bears dance at her bidding.
Perhaps the chief note in the ever-ascending scale of her innumerable
attractions is her intense vitality. The mixed blood of many
intelligent races courses through her delicate veins and gives a
joyous lightness to the bounding of her heart and the swift grace of
her step. She is full of energy as well as charm. If she sets out to
enjoy herself, she enjoys herself thoroughly. She talks and laughs
freely. She is not a mere well-dressed automaton like the greater
majority of upper-class British dames. She is under the impression,--(a
perfectly correct one) that tongues were given to converse with, and
that lips, especially pretty ones, were made to smile with. She is,
taken at her best, eminently good-natured, and refreshingly free from
the jaundiced spite against others of her own sex which savours the
afternoon chitter-chatter of nine out of every ten English spinsters
and matrons taken together in conclave. She would, on the whole,
rather say a kind thing than a cruel one. Perhaps this is because she
is herself always so triumphant in her social career,--because she is
too certain of her own power to feel “the pangs of unrequited love,”
or to allow herself to be stung by the “green-eyed monster,” jealousy.
Her car is always rolling over roses,--there is always a British title
going a-begging,--always some decayed or degenerate or semi-drunken
peer, whose fortunes are on the verge of black ruin, ready and willing
to devour, monster-like, the holocaust of an American virgin, provided
bags of bullion are flung, with her, into his capacious maw. Though
certainly one should look upon the frequent marriages of American
heiresses with effete British nobles, as the carrying out of a wise
and timely dispensation of Providence. New blood--fresh sap, is sorely
needed to invigorate the grand old tree of the British aristocracy,
which has of late been looking sadly as though dry rot were setting
in,--as though the woodlice were at work in its heart, and the rats
burrowing at its root. But, by the importation of a few clean-minded,
sweet-souled American women, some of the most decayed places in the
venerable stem have been purged and purified,--the sap has risen, and
new boughs and buds of promise are sprouting. And it is full time that
this should be. For we have had to look with shame and regret upon
many of our English lords caught in gambling dens,--and shown up in
dishonourable bankruptcies;--some of them have disported themselves
upon the “variety” stage, clad in women’s petticoats and singing comic
songs for a fee,--others have “hired themselves out” as dummy figures
of attraction at evening parties, accepting five guineas for each
appearance,--and they have become painfully familiar objects in the
Divorce Court, where the stories of their most unsavoury manners and
customs, as detailed in the press, have offered singular instruction
and example to those “lower” classes whom they are supposed to more or
less influence. A return to the old motto of “noblesse oblige” would
not be objectionable; a re-adopting of old _un_-blemished scutcheons
of honour would be appreciated, even by the so-called “vulgar,”--and a
great noble who is at the same time a great man, would in this present
day, be accepted by all classes with an universal feeling of grateful
surprise and admiration.