UPTON,
Shrove Tuesday, Feb. 16, 1904.
DEAR HERBERT,--One of those incredible incidents has just happened
here, an incident that makes one feel how little one knows of human
beings, and that truth, in spite of the conscientious toil of Mr. H. G.
Wells, does still continue to keep ahead of fiction. Here is the story.
Some money is missed in a master's house; circumstances seem to point
to its having been abstracted by one of the boys. A good-natured,
flighty boy is suspected, absolutely without reason, as it turns out;
though he is the sort of boy to mislay his own books and other portable
property to any extent, and to make no great difficulty under pressure
of immediate need, and at the last moment, about borrowing some one
else's chattels. On this occasion the small boys in the house, of whom
he is one, solemnly accuse him of the theft, and the despoiled owner
entreats that the money may be returned. He protests that he has not
taken it. The matter comes to the ears of the house-master, who
investigates the matter in the course of the evening, and interviews
the supposed culprit. The boy denies it again quite unconcernedly and
frankly, goes away from the interview, and wandering about, finds the
small boys of the house assembled in one of the studies discussing a
matter with great interest. "What has happened?" says our suspected
friend. "Haven't you heard?" says one of them; "Campbell's grandmother"
(Campbell is another of the set) "has sent him a tip of L2." "Oh, has
she?" says the boy, with a smile of intense meaning; "I shall have to
go my rounds again." This astonishing confession of his guilt is
received with the interest it deserves, and Campbell is advised to lock
up his money, or to hand it over to the custody of the house-master. In
the course of the evening another amazing event occurs; the boy whose
money was stolen finds the whole of it, quite intact, in the pocket of
his cricketing flannels, where he now remembers having put it. The
supposed culprit is restored to favour, and becomes a reliable member
of society. One of the small boys tells the matron the story of our
hero's amazing remark on the subject, in his presence. The matron
stares at him, bewildered, and asks him what made him say it. "Oh, only
to rag them," says the boy; "they were all so excited about it." "But
don't you see, you silly boy," says the kind old dame, "that if the
money had not been found, you would have been convicted out of your own
mouth of having been the thief?" "Oh yes," says the boy cheerfully;
"but I couldn't help it--it came into my head."
Of course this is an exceptional case; but it illustrates a curious
thing about boys--I mentioned it the other day--which is, their
extraordinary willingness and even anxiety to be thought worse than
they are. Even boys of unexceptionable principle will talk as if they
were not only not particular, but positively vicious. They don't like
aspersions on their moral character to be made by others, but they
rejoice to blacken themselves; and not even the most virtuous boys can
bear to be accused of virtue, or thought to be what is called "Pi."
This does not happen when boys are by themselves; they will then talk
unaffectedly about their principles and practice, if their interlocutor
is also unaffected. But when they are together, a kind of disease of
self-accusation attacks them. I suppose that it is the perversion of a
wholesome instinct, the desire not to be thought better than they are;
but part of the exaggerated stories that one hears about the low moral
tone of public schools arises from the fact that innocent boys coming
to a public school infer, and not unreasonably, from the talk of their
companions that they are by no means averse to evil, even when, as is
often the case, they are wholly untainted by it.
The same thing seems to me to prevail very widely nowadays. The
old-fashioned canting hypocrisy, like that of the old servant in the
Master of Ballantrae, who, suffering under the effects of drink, bears
himself like a Christian martyr, has gone out; just as the kind of
pride is extinct against which the early Victorian books used to warn
children, and which was manifested by sitting in a carriage surveying a
beggar with a curling lip--a course of action which was invariably
followed by the breaking of a Bank, or by some mysterious financial
operation involving an entire loss of fortune and respectability.
Nowadays the parable of the Pharisee and the publican is reversed. The
Pharisee tells his friends that he is in reality far worse than the
publican, while the publican thanks God that he is not a Pharisee. It
is only, after all, a different kind of affectation, and perhaps even
more dangerous, because it passes under the disguise of a virtue. We
are all miserable sinners, of course; but it is no encouragement to
goodness if we try to reduce ourselves all to the same level of
conscious corruption. The only advantage would be if, by our humility,
we avoided censoriousness. Let us frankly admit that our virtues are
inherited, and that any one who had had our chances would have done as
well or better than ourselves; neither ought we to be afraid of
expressing our admiration of virtue, and, if necessary, our abhorrence
of vice, so long as that abhorrence is genuine. The cure for the
present state of things is a greater naturalness. Perhaps it would end
in a certain increase of priggishness; but I honestly confess that
nowadays our horror of priggishness, and even of seriousness, has grown
out of all proportion; the command not to be a prig has almost taken
its place in the Decalogue. After all, priggishness is often little
more than a failure in tact, a breach of good manners; it is priggish
to be superior, and it is vulgar to let a consciousness of superiority
escape you. But it is not priggish to be virtuous, or to have a high
artistic standard, or to care more for masterpieces of literature than
for second-rate books, any more than it is priggish to be rich or
well-connected. The priggishness comes in when you begin to compare
yourself with others, and to draw distinctions. The Pharisee in the
parable was a prig; and just as I have known priggish hunting men, and
priggish golfers, and even priggish card-players, so I have known
people who were priggish about having a low standard of private virtue,
because they disapproved of people whose standard was higher. The only
cure is frankness and simplicity; and one should practise the art of
talking simply and directly among congenial people of what one admires
and believes in.
How I run on! But it is a comfort to write about these things to some
one who will understand; to "cleanse the stuff'd bosom of the perilous
stuff that weighs upon the heart." By the way, how careless the
repetition of "stuff'd" "stuff" is in that line! And yet it can't be
unintentional, I suppose?
I enjoy your letters very much; and I am glad to hear that you are
beginning to "take interest," and are already feeling better. Your
views of the unchangeableness of personality are very surprising; but I
must think them over for a little; I will write about them before long.
Meanwhile, my love to you all.--Ever yours,