know," wrote Mr. Mackenzie, "that if I were to set down all I could
remember of my childhood the work would not yet have reached beyond
the fifth year." They all often remember much, with rare understanding
and delicate insight. Heroes and heroines, to-day, are introduced to
us in the cradle, and for many a chapter remain nursery-bound. But,
curiously enough, we meet them all _at home, in a family group_. Every
one of the "newest" men and women, in modern novels, were brought up by
their parents (or nearest relatives), and did inherit the great gift
of influences they make no attempt to hand on. To fight fate they had,
at least, the traditional defence: _a self moulded by a mother's and
father's love_.
Fiction has not yet faced the offspring of Free Love.
They are still, however, bravely inspired by visions of mother-love.
The faith and loyalty they forbid to lovers, is still honoured in sons.
How many of Mr. Cannan's young heroines, for instance, could ever have
mothered his own Renè Fourny or the "Three Pretty Men." The Mrs. Morel
of D. H. Lawrence, most passionately tempestuous of all the moderns,
comes very near to the ideal. Few women have lived more absolutely
or continuously for, and in, their child. Yet few women can have had
better excuse or more temptation to desertion, greater need for a new
start. _Here was no love and no home, save what she made by loyal
constancy to the building up of the child she had borne._
Who would condemn more fiercely, and with more bitter tears, the
teaching of these men than the great mothers they have so nobly
created?
There would be none such in life so lived.
* * * * *
Could any novelist have drawn for us a more mad picture of the emotions
aroused by sex-licence than may be read in _The Jewel in the Lotus_ by
Rosita Forbes? The heroine, Corona, "who paints, you know," is not,
professionally, a gay woman. She had, perhaps justifiably, divorced her
first husband; and achieved something like real love with a Spanish
Catholic, whose religion alone prevented the legal sanction. He,
however, died suddenly before the story opens; and "from that time
Corona deliberately cut away the soft side of life . . . she fought her
lonely battle and she won."
But "_she did not attempt to shut sex out of her life again_. On the
contrary, _there were many incidents_ in many countries, but to no
single lover did she give any part of her soul. For a little while
they drifted into her life, fulfilling the need her loneliness had
of companionship. She paid the price asked for affection, sympathy,
kindness, and _it left no mark on her_. Sometimes passion took her and
she _loved like a man_ for a time and then forgot, but nothing and no
one interfered with the strange, new force she was developing."
"At thirty-five she was a woman, strong, courageous, intelligent, a
brilliant conversationalist"—in fact, a popular Society Queen. Her
"existence had been an orgy of sensation."
Then the boy, Gerald, came into her life. He had a "wonderful" mother:
"There's nothing I would not tell her, nothing that we do not talk
over." It was his plan, and hers, for him not to marry "for ages, not
for ten years, if then. You see, I want to make my castle first. Then
I will ask someone to live in it. I want to give my wife everything. I
want to stick her up in the public view and just arrange things for her
quietly."
_But_ his mother was "broad-minded." When "she sees a woman obviously
happy, she feels that she probably has a lover." She "wouldn't want all
the best" of her son's life. "She knows I don't mean to marry, and she
knows also that no man goes very far without a woman in his life."
And, _not_ "necessarily, in the background. I can imagine a very great
friendship developing into something more passionate while one was
young and impulsive, and then slipping gradually back into a wonderful
comradeship."
"And," he added, "I should never marry a woman who would mind my having
_friends_!"
All this he tells Corona—"very quietly and simply"; and then, "kissing
her face swiftly, hotly, . . . till she bit him"; with incredible
_naivete_, explains that he had talked about her with his mother—"She
feels I should be safe with you" and "she would be a good friend to my
mistress."
In her first blaze of anger and scorn Corona spits out: "I suppose Sir
Henry is your mother's lover"; and the boy cries, "No, he is not! How
dare you suggest it? _My mother is much too fine a woman to have a
lover._ She never had one and never will have."
This is the truth none can escape: the one answer possible for any
decent boy: the inspiration of all the youth of all ages, who have made
for us a fair world, illumined by faith, courage, and hope.
XI
HAVE WE ALREADY FORGOTTEN THE NATURAL LOYALTY OF YOUTH. HOW ARE WE
PAYING—OUR DEBT TO THEM?
Honour the dead, care for those who saved the homes: for, as we have
here striven to show, never before has youth been in such dire need of
sympathy, understanding, and help. Too soon we forget that war blasts
humanity, a state of war makes us all brutes, degrades every man,
woman, and child, in every part of their nature, for all hours of their
lives. Youth, indeed, was rudderless through no fault of its own and,
when least prepared, most needing a clear vision, it has been tossed
into such a medley of mad notions as never before deluded mankind.
We were, indeed, at the approach of Dawn; new light was breaking over
the mists of Victorian morality. To recover the _real_ progress, which
has been diverted into a mere riot of attack, we have endeavoured to
gather together, examine, and clearly state what the "new" morality
_really means and leads to_, how it has come to be upheld. Without
denying in some the honest seeking of truth, we have sought to make
clear where the teaching around us to-day is untrue, destructive of
reality, and poisonous in its effect.
As now proclaimed, this teaching cannot escape its responsibility for
much evil talk, thought, and emotion, for many black deeds. Under its
influence, thoughtless humanity is fast coming to believe and say that
all love, or even comradeship, between the sexes without immediate
physical satisfaction is hypocritical and unreal; that is, cramped by
forced self-denial or an evidence of cold blood and incapacity for real
love. The young live feverishly by this conviction: they flaunt their
passions, their falls and their conquests, before the world. They jest
at sin, sneer at restraint, and spare no thought for purity. Kindness,
courtesy, thought for others, are cast to the winds. At all costs, they
must be themselves, and snatch the hour's joy.
Such feverish disorder of emotion—the swooning delirium, sudden fires,
and complete abandon of balance—is not natural to wholesome humanity;
but, as we have seen, _it can easily be produced by suggestion_. Now
that popular novelists casually produce drama and crude excitement
by smart tales of such over-sexed human beings, an immense body of
readers, without knowledge or experience to combat the falseness of the
picture, have come to accept it as a _normal record_ of real life. They
are adapting themselves to its alluring thrills, modelling their lives
to its pattern, and acting upon its teaching. From men and women, they
may too soon become mere male and female, as God did _not_ create them.
The whole history of mankind, our centuries of growth from cave-man to
the last word in civilization, have established truths which remain
true. Our right to be ourselves can never wipe out our duty to others.
There is an eternal and infinite difference between Right and Wrong,
and those who ignore this _cannot escape the penalty_. Love is not
lust. All that is finest and noblest in human nature has been built
upon a pure and constant loyalty; of which the eternal symbol (however
smirched and stained by folly or sin) is marriage and the home.
Character, which ultimately rules the world, grows straight amidst
the influence of family life. The permanent ideal for man and woman;
creating new life, bearing and cherishing each new generation, is a
complete union of the whole nature, spiritual and physical, whereof the
spiritual bond must be supreme.
_Self-control, restraint, and, if needs be, Sacrifice, are the highest
expression of Self._
If we may not refuse new light, we can never forget old truth. The
foundations of morality have been established by our gradual emergence
from that state of savagery, into which we were again for a few years
submerged by war.
Those who blot out the Vision attained by centuries of man's upward
fight, thereby confounding the ultimate issues of right and wrong,
setting the body above the soul, _are intoxicating and poisoning
humanity as with a deadly drug_.
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TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:
The following correction has been made to the original text:
Page 55: because it is as light airs[original has "a light as
air"], imponderable