Part 5
Still later I learned that Goethe was right when he said that in order to understand a poet you must personally visit the country where he wrote. Literary geography is seldom taught or seriously considered, but it is impossible to read famous authors intelligently without knowing their climatic and geographical environment. So keenly did I come to feel about this that I finally prepared a cardboard map of England, marking only the literary places, and I required my students to become familiar with it. One of them subsequently wrote me a magnificent testimonial, which I have often considered printing on the margin of the map.
Dear Mr. Phelps--I have been bicycling all over England this summer, and have found your Literary Map immensely useful. I have carried it inside my shirt, and I think on several occasions it has saved me from an attack of pneumonia.
There are millions of boys and girls studying Shakespeare in South Africa, Australia and New Zealand; the poet’s frequent allusions to the climate and the weather must seem strange.
That you have such a February face.
February “down under” is midsummer. Southern latitudes give the lie to Shakespeare’s metaphors.
The reason autumn has so bad a name in the world’s poetry and prose is that autumn in Northern Europe is a miserable season. In London, Paris, Berlin, November (and often October) is one of the worst times of the year. A chronically overcast sky, a continual drizzle, a damp chill even on mistily rainless days, combine to produce gloom. The first autumn and winter I spent in Paris revised my notions of those two seasons. As an American, I had thought of the difference between summer and winter as a difference only in temperature; I reasonably expected as much sunshine in autumn and winter as in summer. A typical January day in New York is cold and cloudless.
Well, in Paris the sun disappeared for weeks at a time, and on the rare occasions when it shone people ran out in the street to look at it. One of the worst jokes in the world is the expression, “sunny France.” The French themselves know better. François Coppée wrote of the “rare smiles” of the Norman climate, and Anatole France, describing a pretty girl, wrote “Her eyes were grey; the grey of the Paris sky.”
For the same reason “Italian skies” have been overpraised, because their eulogists are English or French or German. The Italian sky is usually so much better than the sky of more northerly European localities that it seems good by contrast. Now, as a matter of fact the winter sky over Bridgeport, Conn., is superior in brightness and blueness to the sky over Florence or Venice.
November, one of the best months of the year in America, is dreaded by all who live in France, England or Germany. Walking in New Haven one brilliant (and quite typical) day in mid-November, exhibiting the university and city to a visiting French professor, I enquired, “What do you think of our November climate?” He replied, “It is crazy.”
A strange thing is that Bryant, born in the glorious Berkshires of western Massachusetts, where autumn, instead of being pale and wet as the European poets have described it, is brilliant and inspiring, all blue and gold, did not use his eyes; he followed the English poetical tradition.
The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year.
James Whitcomb Riley used the evidence of his senses, and wrote an autumnal masterpiece.
O it’s then’s the times a feller is a-feelin’ at his best.... They’s something kind o’ hearty-like about the atmosphere When the beat of summer’s over and the coolin’ fall is here--Of course we miss the flowers, and the blossoms on the trees, And the mumble of the hummin’-birds and buzzin’ of the bees; But the air’s so appetizin’; and the landscape through the haze Of a crisp and sunny morning of the airly autumn days Is a picture that no painter has the colorin’ to mock-- When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock.
One difference between the temperament of the typical Englishman and the typical American is caused largely by the climate, and foreigners in writing books about us should not forget the fact. If nearly every morning the sky were overcast and the air filled with drizzle, we might not be quite so enthusiastic.
On the other hand, the early spring in England and France is more inspiring than ours, perhaps by reason of the darkness of winter. It comes much earlier. Alfred Housman says:
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now Is hung with bloom along the bough, And stands about the woodland ride Wearing white for Eastertide.
In our Northern American States a blossoming fruit tree at Eastertide would be a strange spectacle.
XVII
WAR
War is a sentimental affair; that is why it is so difficult to abolish. War is opposed to the dictates of common sense, prudence, rationality, and wisdom. But the sentiments of man and the passions of man are deeper, more elemental, and more primitive than his intelligence, knowledge, and reasoning powers. For intelligence and morality belong to man alone; his instincts he shares with the entire animal creation.
My own plan for getting rid of war would not win a peace prize, because it would never be adopted. But I believe it strikes at the root of war--sentiment. My plan would be to spoil the good looks of the officers and also take away all their drums, fifes, and brass bands. The uniforms are altogether too handsome, too attractive, too becoming.
It is a familiar saying that every woman is in love with a uniform; to which I would add that every man is also. The naval officers look magnificent in their bright blue frock coats, their yellow buttons, and their shining epaulets. These gorgeous hawks of war are decorated by the government as lavishly as Nature, the greatest of all tailors, fits out her birds of prey. A naval officer excels in brilliance the appearance of a civilian, even as the gay feathers of a sparrowhawk excel those of a sparrow.
Furthermore, every military and naval officer has a capable man to look after his wardrobe. Not only are his various uniforms beautiful in design and ornamentation, they are without spot or blemish. His trousers are mathematically creased, his coat unwrinkled, his linen like virgin snow. My suggestion is, that if you really want to get rid of war, the first thing to do is to compel all professional warriors to wear ill-fitting hand-me-downs, shabby and unpressed, and without gold trimmings. The glamour and the glory would vanish with the gold.
Then I would abolish the dance of death. Instead of having perfect drill, hundreds of men deploying with exactitude, I would make them look like Coxey’s Army, every man for himself, and the devil take the hindmost.
But above all, I would silence the drum and fife, and the big brass band. Although I myself hate war, and should like to see it abolished, whenever I hear the thrilling roll of the drums and the shrill scream of the fifes, followed by the sight and sound of marching men, their bayonets gleaming in the sunshine, I want to cry. A lump comes up in my throat and I am ready to fight anybody or anything. If you really want to get rid of war, you must not surround it with pomp and majesty, you must not give it such a chance at our hearts.
Although wars are never started by warriors, but only by politicians and tradesmen, for the very last place where a foreign war could begin would be at Annapolis or West Point; still, there is no doubt that high officers have a ripping time during a great war, and that the surviving soldiers love to talk about it (among themselves) at their regular reunions in later years. Shakespeare, himself no soldier, understood perfectly how the professional feels. This is the farewell he put in the mouth of Othello:
Farewell the tranquil mind: farewell content! Farewell the plumed troop and the big wars That make ambition virtue! O, farewell! Farewell the neighing steed, and the shrill trump, The spirit-stirring drum, the ear-piercing fife, The royal banner, and all quality, Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war!
Even so: Othello was a sentimentalist. He had more passion than brains. That is why Iago and not Desdemona made him jealous; that is why, with the loss of war and women, he lost everything. He was without any intellectual resources.
The leaders of thought and the leaders of morals have usually been against war. Although the historical books of the Old Testament and the emotional Psalms celebrated the glory of war, the contemporary sober-minded prophets were against it. They prophesied the coming of universal peace, when the money spent on armaments would be devoted to agriculture and to education. The appearance of Jesus was the signal for peace on earth and good will to men.
Jonathan Swift, more than two hundred years ago, said that men were less intelligent than beasts. A single wild beast would fight for his food or his mate; but you could never, said Swift, induce a lot of wild beasts to line up in dress parade, and then fight another set of wild beasts, whom they did not know.
Benjamin Franklin, the wisest of Americans, immediately after the Revolutionary War, which he had helped to win, said there had never been a good war or a bad peace.
But although the wisdom and morality of mankind have been against war, war goes on; the moment it breaks out in any country, all the forces of sentimentalism are employed to glorify, yes, even to sanctify its course. The first great casualty is Reason.
What shall we say of a scholar like the late Sir Walter Raleigh, Professor of English Literature at Oxford? He continually ridiculed religion for its sentimentality; but the moment the great war broke out, no school-girl was more sentimental than he.
Thus the hope for peace lies not in the poets, the literary men, the preachers and the philanthropists; the hope lies in hardheaded Scotsmen like Ramsay MacDonald, whose idealism is built on a foundation of shrewd sense.
XVIII
MAN AND BOY
F. P. A., in his excellent Conning Tower in the _New York World_ for the Ides of March, pays a fine tribute to E. W. Howe and his paragraphs long ago in the Atchison _Globe_. He says: “There were two paragraphs that appeared just about the time we began reading the _Globe_, which we are willing to bet were written by Ed himself. He was less oracular in those days. They were something like the following:
‘We have been editing a newspaper for twenty-five years, and have learned that the only thing a newspaper can safely attack is the man-eating shark.
‘A boy thinks, “What a fine time a man has!” And a man thinks, “What a fine time a boy has!” And what a rotten time they both have!’”
There is a strange reluctance on the part of most people to admit that they enjoy life. Having the honour of a personal acquaintance with both F. P. A. and Ed Howe, it is my belief they both had a happy childhood and that they are now having a good time in this strangest of all possible worlds. No one can judge another’s inner state of mind, but as these distinguished humorists are men of unusually high intelligence I think they find life immensely interesting; and to be constantly interested is to be happy.
I remember a magnificent reply made by F. P. A. to a remark of that hirsute Englishman, D. H. Lawrence; the latter, commenting in that tactless fashion so characteristic of foreign visitors to these shores, said, “It must be terrible to be funny every day.” “No,” said F. P. A., “not so terrible as never to be funny at all.”
I spent an agreeable afternoon in Florida talking with Ed Howe, or rather in hearing him talk. He told a succession of anecdotes and stories, and it was clear that he not only enjoyed telling them, which he did with consummate art, but that he enjoyed having them in his mind.
Why is it so many people are afraid to admit they are happy? I have a large and intimate acquaintance with farmers; many of them are splendid men. But how cautious they are in their replies to casual questions! If everything is going as well as could possibly be expected and you ask them how they are, they say, “Can’t complain.”
If a man says, “I have had and am having a happy life,” he is regarded by many as being a shallow and superficial thinker; but if he says, “My most earnest wish is that I had never been born,” many believe that he has a profound mind.
With regard to the saying quoted from the Atchison _Globe_ that a boy thinks a man has a fine time and a man thinks a boy has a fine time and in reality both have a rotten time--well, the statement, whoever said it, is shallow and untrue. When I was a boy I had lots of fun, and I deeply pitied old men of thirty-two because I supposed they had no fun at all. Then, when I became a man, I realised how enormously richer in happiness is manhood than boyhood.
The average American boy has a pretty good time. What fun, on emerging from school on Friday afternoon, to know that tomorrow is Saturday! What fun to play games, to go on exploring adventures in neighbouring woods, to have picnics and jollifications, to live a life of active uselessness! The mere physical health of boyhood makes one feel like a young dog released from a chain. “Mere living” is good.
I remember seeing a picture of an old man addressing a small boy. “How old are you?” “Well, if you go by what Mama says, I’m five. But if you go by the fun I’ve had, I’m most a hundred.”
Joseph Conrad, who was a grave and serious man, said he was neither an optimist nor a pessimist. He did not think life was perfect, but pessimism, he said, was intellectual arrogance. He made the point that no matter what was one’s religion or philosophy, this at all events is a spectacular universe.
To deny life, to show no appreciation of it, seems to me both ungrateful and stupid. If you showed a man the Himalaya Mountains, the ocean in a storm, sunrise in the desert, the Court of Honour in 1893, the Cathedral of Chartres, and he looked at them all with a lack-lustre eye, we should think him stupid. Well, the universe itself is tremendously spectacular, and the best shows in it are free. To go through life in rebellion, disgust or even in petulance, is the sign, not of a great, but of a dull mind.
How ridiculous it is for a boy to wish he were a man and how much more ridiculous for a man to wish he were a boy! It is as silly as crying for the moon. Instead of always longing for something beyond our reach, why not simply make the best of what we have? This would be a platitude if it were not that so very few people follow it.
There is certainly enough sorrow in the world, but I sometimes think we should enjoy life more if we had more of the divine gift of appreciation, if we were not so unappreciative. When Addison thanked God for the various pleasures of life, he thanked Him most of all for a cheerful heart.
More than two hundred years ago he wrote in the _Spectator_:
Ten thousand thousand precious gifts My daily thanks employ; Nor is the least a cheerful heart That tastes these gifts with joy.
XIX
AMBITION
What do we really mean when we say of a man, “He is too good for this world?” Do we mean exactly that, do we mean he is so far loftier in character than the average person that he seems almost out of place in a world like this? Don’t we rather mean that he lacks human sympathy and understanding, and therefore can be of no real use to anybody?
If you remember the character of Hilda in Hawthorne’s novel, _The Marble Faun_, you may remember that she used to be held up as an ideal of the religious life. “Her soul was like a star and dwelt apart.” But from the selfish sanctity of its seclusion, no real good resulted; no one was aided or cheered in the struggle of life. No one could confide in her, for she could not even confide in herself. Her nature may have had the purity of an angel, but it lacked the purity of a noble woman. She was no help to sinners; she was their despair. Her purity was like that of one who hesitates to rescue a drowning man, for fear of soiling his clothes.
Hilda gave up the world and worldly pleasure; easily enough, for she abhorred it, and felt ill at ease in society. But though she gave up many things precious to the average person, she had no conception of the meaning of the word _self_-denial.
For the true sacrifice, if one wishes to be of real use in this world, consists not in the giving of things, but in giving oneself. If a man’s life consists not in the abundance of things which he possesses, so the sacrificial life consists not in the number of luxuries one surrenders, but in the devotion of oneself, in the denial of the will. There is a certain kind of purity which is fundamentally selfish.
This manner of asceticism is not particularly common nowadays, and we need not fear that it will be too generally practiced. I am calling attention to it in order to show that selfishness may take on the mask of purity or of respectability, a selfishness that springs from pure moral motives and a longing for the elevation of character.
But there is another type of respectable selfishness that is far more common, possibly more common in America than in any other country. It is not usually recognised as selfishness, but regarded as one of the greatest--perhaps the greatest--of the virtues. It is seen chiefly among earnest and ambitious young men, who assume that life is not a holiday, but a serious affair, a struggle, a strictly competitive race, where if you stop a moment, even for reflexion, you are left behind.
We are bound to respect these men. They have at all events found out half the secret of life. They have set before themselves some goal, in politics, in business, in literature, and they are determined to reach it. They are equally determined to gain the prize by no dishonourable means. Their minds are full of the lessons learned from their predecessors, men who by the sacrifice of temporary pleasures, by the refusal to indulge in recreation or relaxation, have surpassed their competitors and reached the top.
We are constantly told that it is only by intense concentration, by terrific efforts day and night, and by keeping the end constantly in view that one can attain success. Surely these young men are to be admired, surely they are models, examples worthy of emulation?
Well, they are better than criminals, they are better than parasites, they are better than drones. But their driving motive is selfishness. Tennyson wrote _The Palace of Art_, Browning wrote _Paracelsus_, because each of these poets knew that his individual danger was not what is usually known as “temptation.” They knew that they would never go to hell by the crowded highway of dissipation, for they were above the mere call of the blood. Their danger lay in a high and noble ambition, which has wrecked many first-rate minds.
Modern life tends to encourage this respectable selfishness. The central law of the so-called science of Economics is selfishness. A whole science is built on one foundation--that every man in the world will get all he can for himself. The subject is naturally studied not from an ethical, but from a scientific standpoint. Life is a race.
Now I believe that Efficiency--mere practical success in the world--is as false an ideal as asceticism. If the morality of withdrawal is not good enough, neither is the morality of success. Those deserve the highest admiration and the most profound respect who have actually aided their human brethren, who have left the world better than they found it.
This is by no means a hopeless ideal of character. It is not necessary to crush a tyrant or to organise a revolution or to reconstruct society or to be a professional reformer. There are plenty of professional reformers who have tremendous enthusiasm for humanity and who have never helped an individual. Those who by unselfish lives and consideration for others elevate the tone of the community in which they live and who by their presence make others happier, these are the salt of the earth. Their daily existence is more eloquent than a sermon.
American young men and women in our High Schools and universities are not often face to face with the mystery of life. They have no conception of the amount of suffering in the world. Their own lives are comparatively free from it, in many cases free even from anxiety. These boys and girls are for the most part sensible, alert, quick-witted, and practical; what I should like to see would be a change in their ideals from mere Success to something nobler. I should like to see them devoting their intelligence and energy to the alleviation of suffering and to the elevation of human thought and life.
If one still believes that the highest happiness and satisfaction come from the attainment of any selfish ambition, no matter how worthy in itself, it is well to remember the significance of the fact that Goethe, acknowledged to be one of the wisest of men, made Faust happy only when he was unselfishly interested in the welfare of others; and to remember that Benjamin Franklin, perhaps the shrewdest of all shrewd Americans, found the greatest pleasure of his long life in two things--public service and individual acts of kindness.
XX
BIRDS AND STATESMEN
When, in the Spring of 1910, Theodore Roosevelt was on his way to England from his African explorations, he wrote a strange letter to the British Foreign Office in London. I call it a strange letter, because it is the kind of epistle one would not expect to be sent by an ex-executive of one country to the Foreign Office of another. He wrote that during his stay in England he would like to make an excursion into the woods, hear the English songbirds and learn their names; in order that he might do this satisfactorily and intelligently, would the Foreign Office please select some naturalist who knew the note of every bird in England and request him to accompany Mr. Roosevelt on this expedition?
Well, the head of the British Foreign Office was Sir Edward Grey and he himself knew the note of every singing bird in England--a remarkable accomplishment for one of the busiest statesmen in the world. He therefore appointed himself as bird-guide for the ex-President of the United States.
The two distinguished men stood on a railway platform one day in May and were surrounded by reporters, who supposed that a new world-problem of the first magnitude was on the carpet. But the two men told the reporters that they were going away into the country for two days, did not wish to be disturbed, and asked the journalists to leave them alone. Accordingly, it was generally believed that Roosevelt and Grey were absorbed in the discussion of international affairs, and as the great war broke out a few years later, some went so far as to believe then that it had its origin in this sinister interview.
Now, as a matter of fact, the two men did not mention either war or politics; they went a-walking in the New Forest and every time they heard the voice of a bird, Grey told Roosevelt the singer’s name. They both agreed (and so do I) that the English blackbird is the best soloist in Great Britain.
It is a curious fact that the four most famous birds in English literature are none of them native in America. The Big Four are the Nightingale, the Skylark, the Blackbird and the Cuckoo. From Chaucer to Kipling the British poets have chanted the praise of the Nightingale. And of all the verses in his honour, it is perhaps the tribute by Keats that is most worthy of the theme.