Cambridge men who had only just taken their degrees, Lowes Dickinson and
Roger Fry, came down to see me—two gentle, humorous and charming
creatures, who have since made their mark in Literature and Art, and
whose friendship has remained with me, I am happy to say, all these
years. Dickinson as a writer of pure English is I should say far ahead
of any of his contemporaries. In contrast with the Meredithian, Henry
Jamesian, Chestertonian, and other literary gymnastics of the day, his
style flows along, pellucid with pure grace and purpose, saying exactly
what is needed, no more and no less. It has the quality of ‘the absolute
in style’—which is very different from, though sometimes mistaken for,
absence of style. Nothing could be more charming and to the point than
his _Letters of John Chinaman_ (or _From a Chinese Official_) and his
_Greek View of Life_. With regard to the former he told me an amusing
story about W. J. Bryan, candidate more than once for the Presidency of
the United States. Being an American Mr. Bryan, perhaps naturally, did
not perceive (the English being so perfect) that no Chinaman could
possibly have written the book, and being also somewhat shocked at some
of the remarks in it about the common infidelities of matrimonial life
in England and America, he quite innocently published an article
rebutting these charges and explaining that if the author (the supposed
Chinese official) had had the advantage of being brought up in an
Anglo-Saxon household he would never have made such mistakes! Dickinson
had consequently to write to Mr. Bryan, and, breaking his incognito, to
inform him that the author _had_ had the said advantage, and really knew
what he was talking about!
From 1885 onwards I lectured pretty frequently in London, Edinburgh,
Glasgow, Bristol, Leeds, Birmingham, Bradford, and so forth—chiefly at
first in connection with the various Socialist societies and groups in
those places. The subjects treated of were those which are now so well
recognized and understood everywhere that there is no need to insist on
them, though at that time they were only beginning to appear on the
social horizon—the evils of Competition, Adulteration, Falsification of
goods, Waste, the scramble for Dividends, the iron Law of Wages, and so
forth. Afterwards the lectures branched out a little more widely into
literary and philosophical subjects, and with more general audiences.
In 1891, as I have already said, the Humanitarian League was founded.
And later on I gave addresses on various occasions in connection with
the League’s meetings; one at an early date (about ’92 or ’93) on
Vivisection—in conjunction with Edward Maitland; another on the same
subject some years later; one in ’97 on the Prisons; one in ’98 on what
might be called “Humane Science”; and one in 1906 on “Simplification of
Life,” and others. In the last-mentioned lecture I referred to the
complexity of life among our well-to-do classes which arises from the
fact of their being able to _pay_ servants for doing things for them,
and pointed out (supposing the bottom ever fell out of the bucket of
modern society, and these people really had to produce their own food,
clothing, etc.) how _simple_ their lives would probably become—and how
interesting it would be to see them going about barefoot and clothed in
flour-sacks, rather than do the hard work of cobbling and tailoring for
themselves.
The _Morning Leader_ took the idea up, and brought out a Cartoon
illustration of the lecture, showing the London Club men promenading in
Hyde Park with only Indian blankets and flour-bags for covering, though
still clinging religiously to their old umbrellas and tall hats!
For the Theosophist societies I spoke occasionally, in Birmingham,
Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield, and elsewhere—weaving in some amount
of Indian philosophy (the Upanishads, etc.) with talk on social
subjects; also for the Ethical societies in much the same way; and for
Charles Rowley’s Sunday afternoons at Ancoats, Manchester. In 1905 I
took up the question of Small Holdings and the Co-operative Colonization
of the Land—a question which had by that time become actual through the
Small Holdings Acts of 1892 and 1907, and which will have to be still
more seriously considered in the future; and spoke on the subject in
Holmesfield and other villages in my neighborhood, as well as in Oxford,
Glasgow and other large centres. Joseph Fels was very keen at that time
on the subject; and I went with him to view his group of a dozen or so
five-acre holdings at Maylands in Essex. Unfortunately the experiment
did not turn out a success. He had bought some very heavy clay land at
an absurdly low price, £7 an acre, and had spent £20 per acre on it in
breaking up and burning the clay and heavily manuring, thus making the
real initial cost of the land £27 per acre; and had then planted the
ground with fruit-trees and had suitable cottages built on it. Reckoning
up the total cost of each holding he offered them at a low rental, some
3 per cent. or 4 per cent. on the capital invested, and took some care
besides in the choice of tenants, feeling confident that with proper
handling the places would prove remunerative. Unfortunately they did not
do so. Probably it had been a mistake to speculate on such extremely
poor land as this was to begin with. Anyhow it never yielded the crops
expected; and one by one the tenants disheartened abandoned their
holdings, and the whole scheme fell to the ground.
Having always a good many friends among the Railway-men I was not
unfrequently asked to speak at their clubs and branch meetings. On one
occasion in November 1907, in conjunction with George Barnes, C. T.
Cramp, Pete Curran and Victor Grayson, I addressed an A.S.R.S. meeting
of over three thousand in the Sheffield Corn-Exchange. George Barnes
always strikes me as a fine, solid and sensible man; Charlie Cramp the
same; and indeed the railway-men generally—perhaps from their close and
constant contact with the flow of humanity—have a discernment and
reasonableness of outlook which is quite peculiar. Victor Grayson, the
course of whose political career was so brief and so meteoric, was a
most humorous creature. His fund of anecdotes was inexhaustible, and
rarely could a supper party of which he was a member get to bed before
three in the morning. On the platform for detailed or constructive
argument he was no good, but for criticism of the enemy he was
inimitable—the shafts of his wit played like lightning round him, and
with his big mouth and flexible upper lip he seemed to be simply
browsing off his opponents and eating them up. His disappearance from
public life has been quite a loss.
In some ways these large audiences are easier to speak to than small
ones. Consciousness of personalities—either one’s own or of members of
the audience—disappears; the great broad human interests come forward;
finesse and detailed argument are of little account; the reverberation
of emotion is great, and that carries the speaker on; but of course much
depends on conditions. To hold a large audience in the open air is
difficult work, but it is good practice. Concatenation and logical
continuity are of no great importance, but every word must be distinct,
every phrase must tell, every point be made clear and attractive, else
the congregation will evaporate even while you talk to it, and condense
again round the nearest coster’s barrow.
In a closed room or hall you have your hearers more at command. They
cannot easily escape, and you may become dull without knowing it! But
here again much depends on circumstances. I find a room (of the common
type) with level floor and high raised platform at one end rather
trying. It is difficult to get _at_ an audience so much below you, and
as the voice tends to rise the more _distant_ listeners seem
unreachable. Worse still is a flat room where you stand on the floor
without _any_ platform; for then you cannot see your flock, and you lose
all command over it. Personally I like an amphitheatre lecture-hall with
rising tiers of seats one behind the other; or best of all an ordinary
theatre with pit and galleries, so that from the stage one is nearly on
a level with the great bulk of those present. I have spoken (on _The
Larger Socialism_ or cognate subjects) to audiences of two thousand or
more at various theatres—the ‘Grand,’ Manchester (November 1908 and
November 1909), the ‘Prince’s,’ Blackburn (October 1910), the
‘Metropole,’ Glasgow (November 1910), and others, and with a
satisfactory sense in general of being able to reach my hearers.
On November 11, 1910, I gave an address to the Literary and
Philosophical Society at Greenock on _State-Interference with Industry_,
which was repeated afterwards at Cambridge, Oxford, and elsewhere. The
subject was much to the fore at that time, and from opposite points of
view, owing to prevalent strikes and lock-outs. The Clyde shipping
strike was on, and there was a good deal of indignation expressed up and
down the country at the conduct of the men in the shipyards, who had
refused to take up their tools and go to work again, even after their
leaders had counselled and urged them to do so. I was as much in the
dark as most others about the cause of this strange refusal—until I
reached Greenock; and then I soon heard from various quarters, both of
men and masters, the real reason. It was not a question of wages or of
hours. Those matters had so far been settled satisfactorily. The real
grievance was a personal one. The men had been affronted by the
overbearing conduct of the Chairman of the Employers’ Association, the
insulting manner in which he had behaved to their representatives, and
so forth; and they were not going to put up with this without a protest.
They wanted to be treated in a gentlemanly way. It was encouraging and
refreshing to find that this was so; and the fact that it was so lets a
good deal of light into a frequent cause of labour troubles and
dissensions. But of course in this case at Greenock, as in so many
others, the Press all over the country had got on the wrong tack, and
the public never knew the real rights of the matter.
On October 24, 1908, the Women’s Suffrage party held a great
demonstration in Manchester, which like others of their functions was a
miracle of organization. There were to be ten platforms, and the mere
getting together of ten distinct bodies of processionists at their
respective starting-stations in the neighborhood of the Town Hall, and
marching them off to the appointed time, was no light matter. However it
was done; and with Mrs. Despard walking gallantly at the head, supported
by Margaret Ashton, Miss Abadam, Dr. Helen Wilson, Isabella Ford, Mrs.
Swanwick, Mrs. K. D. Courtney, Mrs. Billington Greig, Councillor James
Johnston, Professor Chapman, Canon Hicks and myself, a solid phalanx
nearly a mile long, with bands and banners complete, walked all the way
to Alexandra Park, three miles out! The immense crowd which came forth
to witness the demonstration, and which lined both sides of the road,
did not say much; it did not cheer to any great extent, nor did it
scoff; it was simply deeply impressed. A large part of it followed on
the route and collected round the ten platforms—about a thousand
listeners to each. Each platform dealt with a separate subject—mine, in
conjunction with Mrs. Greig and Miss Margaret Robertson, took _Prison
Reform_. A cornet finally gave the signal for a joint resolution to be
proposed in favour of the Suffrage, which was of course carried by
acclamation, and the crowd dispersed.
Mrs. Despard’s work in the two related causes of Women and Labour has
been splendid. Her ardour and indomitable resolution, despite the
drawback of advancing years, have been almost miraculous, and I always
see her in my mind’s eye marching gloriously to some encounter, and
resembling the horse (in the words of the book of Job) “who saith among
the trumpets Ha! ha! and sniffeth the battle from afar!” It has been an
honour and a pleasure to me to speak on many a platform with Mrs.
Despard—in Trafalgar Square and elsewhere. In October 1912 I took the
chair at a meeting of the Sheffield Women’s Freedom League, when she
lectured on the subject of Shelley’s _Prometheus Unbound_. It is
characteristic of her that this poem was a favorite of hers from
earliest girlhood; and in a sustained address that evening she quoted
very large portions of it by heart, holding her audience for nearly two
hours in rapt accord and attention. Mrs. Despard was, I need hardly say,
like Shelley himself, an ardent vegetarian—though Shelley, owing to
circumstances and conditions, often probably found it difficult to live
quite up to the mark of his wishes in this respect.
In October 1909 I was honoured by being made President of the Vegetarian
Congress at Manchester for that year—notwithstanding my own occasional
derelictions from the ideal standard—and I found myself in the chair at
an interesting meeting supported by well-known pillars of the movement
like Professor J. E. Mayor of Cambridge, Dr. E. A. Axon of Manchester,
Dr. Lybeck of Helsingfors, and others. The thing that struck me most
about the meeting was the extraordinary number of extremely ancient
looking patriarchs present with long white hair and beards; and I very
nearly disgraced myself in my opening speech by expressing a doubt
whether in view of this result Vegetarianism was a thing really to be
desired or recommended! Some kind presiding spirit however saved me from
this ineptitude, and I reached the end of my discourse safely and
without succumbing to the temptation.
A subject on which I have often spoken—though always with the sense of
only touching the fringe of it—is that of the connection between Sun
worship and Christianity. The existing books on the subject are quite
unsatisfactory, being very limited in their outlook. Some day it will
have to be worked out more thoroughly. It is a most interesting subject,
but as it involves a good deal of historical and antiquarian information
and some technical knowledge of Astronomy besides reference to early
sexual rites, it is not a very easy one to put before a general
audience. I gave a lecture on it for the Sheffield Ethical Society in
December 1908 and for J. R. Campbell’s “Progressive League” at the City
Temple in November 1909, as well as in other places; but it really would
require a series of lectures for anything like adequate presentment. The
_continuity_ of Christianity with the religions of the old world and its
ordered evolution from them is the idea which we now require to realize.
We have had enough of its portrayal as a miraculous and exceptional
stage in human development; and now that the world is coming round again
to a concrete appreciation of the value and beauty of actual life, and
to a sort of neo-Pagan point of view, it is above all important that we
should understand the sources from which Christianity sprang in the
past, and what germs of a world-religion it may bear within itself for
the future, when it shall have cast off the crude and gothic elements of
its mediæval development.
My friend Edward Lewis, himself a writer on The New Paganism, was in
1912 and 1913 minister of the King’s Weigh House Church, Duke Street,
W., and he and R. J. Campbell not unfrequently interchanged pulpits at
that time. Lewis persuaded me to speak at his church; and on two
occasions (November 1912 and October 1913) I did so. His congregation,
largely trained no doubt and educated by his discourses, was an
intelligent and sympathetic one, and though I had some misgivings on my
first visit in speaking on so abstruse a subject as “The Nature of the
Self”—illustrated as it was by numerous quotations from the Upanishads
and from _Towards Democracy_—I felt no misgiving on the second occasion,
when my subject (similarly illustrated) was “Rest.” These lectures were
repeated at the Lyceum (women’s) Club, Piccadilly, at Croydon,
Eastbourne and elsewhere; and the fact that audiences like these, of a
rather popular character, could listen with deep understanding and
sympathy to the unfolding of innermost psychological teachings has
convinced me that the germs of a new and democratic religion are only
waiting among our mass-peoples for the day and the stimulus which will
bring them to birth and development.
Edward Lewis, being vigorous in heart and brain, and a real man,
naturally could not continue very long in a profession like “the
ministry” which entailed his ascending the pulpit three or four times a
week and not only giving ‘edifying’ counsel to his congregation but
confining his own life within a corresponding circle of inanity. Such a
career would inevitably have sapped and ruined his manhood; and with
true instinct he threw up his five or six hundred a year and retired
into the wilderness. The members of his congregation were duly shocked
and grieved in their different ways, according to the views they took of
his lapse or lapses from holiness; but if, as is likely, the quondam
Christian minister should become the missionary and apostle of a new and
vital Paganism, the world will be very much the gainer.
The War, now going on [1915] is not only acting already very directly on
the industrial life of the nations concerned but is pointing pretty
clearly towards a remodelling of our general conception of Industry for
the future. It is fairly certain that somehow or other the gloomy and
depressing wage-slavery of the present day—so intimately bound up with
the Commercial régime—will have to give way; and productive work will
have to regain the characters of spontaneity and gladness which surely
are of the essence of its nature, and which are the necessary roots of
all Art and of all Beauty and Joy in life. With that transformation of
industry all life will be transformed, and the neo-Pagan ideal will
become a thing possible of realization.
For some years, from 1910 onwards I have spoken on this idea—entitling
my lectures “Freedom in Industry,” “Beauty in Civic Life” and so forth,
and delivering them before various bodies and in various places—as at
Caxton Hall, London, for the Humanitarian League; at Crosby Hall,
Chelsea, for the University Settlement there; for the Fabian Society at
Oxford; for the Arts Club at Leeds; for the Progressive and
Town-planning League at Bolton; for the N.U.T. Association at
Chesterfield; and for many Adult Schools, I.L.P. Clubs and Ethical and
Theosophist societies in different parts of the country.
To produce for Use; that production should really take place for the
benefit of the Consumer; to concentrate not on Profit to individuals,
but on advantage and gain to the Community; to drop in one inspired
moment the whole mad sequence of cut-throat Rivalry, insane Waste,
disgusting Fraud, and inane Uselessness, which constitute modern
Industry; all this would mean such an enormous liberation of Power, such
an incalculable increase in general Wealth, that the spectre of poverty
would be exorcised for ever, and the numbing anxiety which weighs so
heavily now on the lives of millions would be lifted away like an evil
cloud. Joy would descend upon life, and the ordinary occupations would
become free, spontaneous and beautiful.
Our powers of production to-day are so immense that even in the midst of
the present frightful War we (on this little island) can spare millions
of our best men for fighting, and millions more for the work of
providing those fighters with engines of death and destruction, and
_yet_ with the residue can calmly and easily keep the nation going. What
our powers and our achievement might be if once those eight millions or
so—whose work is now only destructive—were turned on to the great
positive task of social reconstruction and sensible human emancipation,
it really passes imagination to conceive. The age-long world-dream of
Paradise Regained would at last be within our reach. We can see that the
War is even now forcing the modern peoples to take stock of their
boasted Civilization, to reckon up the gains to Humanity which it
represents—and the losses; to find out and decide in what direction they
are really moving, and in what direction they want to move. If an event
so great, so colossal, as this does not shatter the old order of
profit-grinding and wage-slavery and wake a new ideal of life in the
heart of the nations, one would say there is little hope for the world.
But surely it will do so.
XV
TRANSLATIONS AND TRANSLATORS
Among the many good things in my life which I owe to my books by no
means the least has been my introduction through them to dear and valued
foreign friends.
One day in March 1901 there called upon me a young Hungarian—Ervin
Batthyány by name—a modest, sturdy and almost rustic-looking youth of
about twenty-three. He proved to be a member of the well-known Batthyány
family, whose influence in Hungarian politics, on the Liberal as well as
on the Conservative side, has always been considerable; but he was by no
means conservative in his outlook or ultra-aristocratic in his leanings.
It happened at the moment of his appearance that I was doing some
gardening and trundling about a wheelbarrow. “Oh,” he said at once, “do
let me wheel that barrow for you; I do like so much to do that sort of
work, but I have no chance at home—I am so _civilized_ you know.” For a
moment I thought he was chaffing; then the next moment I saw he was
quite sincere. I believe I let him trundle the barrow for a bit; then we
sat down and talked.
It turned out that he was expecting in the following year to come into
large landed estates in Hungary; that he had studied and thought about
Socialism to some extent; and that among other things he wanted to
consult me about the administration of his property when he should have
the management of it. It appeared that with the almost feudal system
still prevailing in that part, the cottagers and labourers working on
such estates were practically attached to the soil and frequently
transferred with it from owner to owner; that they were employed by the
farm-bailiffs in gangs for the benefit of the estate; that they received
next to no monetary wages, but were paid in pork or flour or the poor
tenements they inhabited—that is, they were paid by a small share of the
wealth they had themselves created; that they had no means of earning
anything independently; and that they had little or no education—the
schools being all under the thumb of the Catholic priests.
We talked over possible reforms—of a mild kind of course, as anything
drastic would be out of the question; and when he went away he said with
the same charming simplicity as before “The next time I see you I hope I
shall not be so _civilized_.” The next time proved to be some three
years later.
He returned to Buda-Pesth shortly after his visit to Millthorpe; and
took as it happened a copy of _Towards Democracy_ with him, which he
gave to a lady friend there—a certain Madame Nadler—knowing that she was
interested and indeed accomplished in English literature. Madame Nadler
took warmly to the book, and before long it came about that she and the
young Count, who was a frequent visitor at her house, spent a large part
of their time together in reading and discussing it—with the not
unnatural result that they became warmly interested in each other.
Meanwhile he, the young man, plunged into the administration of his
newly acquired estate, and in the course of two or three years made
useful changes. He founded an undenominational school, with a workshop
for instructing the peasants in various crafts, and a reading-room
provided with more or less socialistic literature—an innocent enough
proceeding as we should think, but it turned the whole Clerical party
against him, and terrified the aristocratic landowners of the
neighborhood out of their wits, as with the shadow of a coming
revolution! All this, together with his journalistic work in connection
with various anti-militarist and Anarchist papers brought him into
conflict with his family and the authorities, with the result that a
sequestration of his property took place, and for a couple of years he
was subject to a good deal of annoyance. During that period, curiously
enough, little Millthorpe became the chief means of communication
between the two friends—for I was in touch with them both, while their
local and more direct letters were liable to be intercepted. They were
thus able to concert plans to frustrate the enemy, which they did with
such success that at the end of the period mentioned Ervin resumed work
on his estates—though not without some risk, as may be imagined, of
renewed attacks.