Part 9
I don't offer that conversation as representative. I imagine that in the lump women are thinking less about dress to-day from the merely ornamental point of view than they ever did. If you spend twelve hours a day on a bus or a tram in a blue uniform and leggings, or driving a Carter Paterson van in a mackintosh and a sou'wester, or filling shells in a yellow overall, dress cannot occupy quite its old dominion over your thoughts. You will think more about comfort and less about finery. And that, according to Herbert Spencer, is an evidence of a higher intelligence. The more barbaric you are the more you regard dress from the point of view of ornament and the less from the point of view of utility. It is a hard saying for the West End of life. Spencer, to illustrate his point, mentions that the African attendants of Captain Speke strutted about in their goatskin mantles when the weather was fine, but when it was wet took them off, folded them up, and went about naked and shivering in the rain.
A talk like that of the two women on the bus would not be possible among men; but that does not mean that they have souls above finery. It is not good form among them to talk about dress--that is all. But that many of them think about it as seriously as women do, if less continuously, is certain. Pepys' Diary is strewn with such self-revelations as "This morning came home my fine Camlett cloak, with gold buttons, and a silk suit, which cost me much money, and I pray God to make me able to pay for it." He ought to have thought of that earlier. No one is entitled to order fine clothes and then throw the responsibility for paying for them on the Almighty. At least he might have prayed to God on the subject before approaching the tailor. The case of Goldsmith was not less conspicuous. He was as vain as a peacock, and refused to go into the Church because he loved to wear bright clothes. And his spirit is not dead among men. Who can look upon the large white spats of ---- ---- as he comes down the floor of the House without feeling that he is as dress-conscious as a milliner.
I am not speaking with disrespect of the well-dressed man (I do not mean the over-dressed man: he is an offence). I would be well-dressed myself if I knew how, but I have no gift that way. Like Squire Shallow, I am always in the rearward of the fashion. I find that with rare exceptions I dislike new fashions. They disturb my tranquillity. They give me a nasty jolt. I suspect that the explanation is that beneath my intellectual radicalism there lurks a temperamental conservatism, a love of sleepy hollows and quiet havens and the old grass-grown turnpikes of habit. It is no uncommon paradox. Spurgeon had it like many others. He was once rebuked by a friend for his political activity on the Liberal side. Why did he yield to this weakness? "You ought to mortify the Old Man," said his friend. "I do mortify him," said Spurgeon. "You see my Old Man is a Tory and I make him vote Liberal. That mortifies him." I am conscious of the same conflict, and in the matter of clothes the Old Man of Toryism is an easy winner.
It was so with Carlyle. He raged like a bear with a sore head against the existing political fashion of things, but in the matter of clothes he was a mere antediluvian, and when he wanted a new suit he simply wrote to the little country tailor in far-off Ecclefechan and told him to send another "as before." And so, by taking no thought about the matter, he achieved the distinction in appearance which the people who worry about clothes do not achieve. The flavour of the antique world hung about him like a fragrance, as, but yesterday, it hung about Lord Courtney who looked like a reminiscence of the world of our grandfathers walking our streets to the rebuke of a frivolous generation.
I cannot claim to exhale this fine essence of the past. I am just an ordinary camp-follower of the fashions, too perverse to march with the main army, too timid to ignore it, but just hanging on its skirts as it were, a forlorn relic of the year before last. My taste in ties, I am assured, is execrable. My clothes are lacking in style, and my boots have an unconquerable tendency to shapelessness. I put on whatever is handiest without a thought of artistic design. My pockets bulge with letters and books, and I am constantly reminded by well-meaning people that the top button of my waistcoat is unbuttoned. I am perfectly happy until I come into contact with the really well-dressed man who has arranged himself on a conscious scheme, and looks like a sartorial poem. I lunched with such a man a few days ago. I could not help envying the neat perfection of everything about him, and I know, as his eye wandered to my tie, that there was something there that made him shudder as a harsh discord in music would make me shudder. It may have been the wrong shade; it may have been awry; it may have been anything that it oughtn't to have been. I shall never know.
And it is a great joy to be able not to care. The war has lightened the cloud that hangs over those of us who simply cannot be dressy no matter how much we try. It is no longer an offence to appear a little secondhand. It is almost a virtue. You may wear your oldest clothes and look the whole world in the face and defy its judgments. You may claim that your baggy knees are a sacrifice laid on the altar of patriotism and that the hat of yester-year is another nail in the coffin of the Kaiser. A distinguished Parliamentarian, a man who has sat in Cabinets, boasted to me the other day that he had not bought a suit of clothes since the war began, and I had no difficulty in believing the statement.
That is the sort of example that makes me happy. It gives me the feeling that I am at last really in the fashion--the fashion of old and unconsidered clothes. It is a very comfortable fashion. It saves you worry and it saves you money. I hope it will continue when the war has become a memory. And if we want a literary or historical warrant for it we may go to old Montaigne. When he was a young fellow without means, he says somewhere, he decked himself out in brave apparel to show the world that he was a person of consequence; but when he came to his fortune he went in sober attire and left his estates and his châteaux to speak for him. That is the way of us unfashionable folk. We leave our estates and our châteaux to speak for us.
THE DUEL THAT FAILED
"I think," said my friend, "that the war will end when the Germans know they are beaten. No, that is not quite so banal a prophecy as it seems. Wars do not always end with the knowledge of defeat. They only end with the admission of defeat, which is quite another thing. The Civil War dragged on for a year after the South knew that they were beaten. All that bloodshed in the Wilderness was suffered in the teeth of the incontrovertible fact that it was in vain. But the man or the nation which adopts the philosophy of the bully does not fight when the certainty of victory has changed into the certainty of defeat. I have never known a bully who was not a coward when his back was to the wall. The French are at their best in the hour of defeat. There was nothing so wonderful in the story of Napoleon as that astonishing campaign of 1814, and even in 1870-1 it was the courage of France when all was lost that was the most heroic phase of the war. But the bully collapses when the stimulus of victory has deserted him.
"Let me tell you a story. In 1883, having graduated at Dublin, I went to Heidelberg--_alt Heidelberg du feine_. You know that jolly city, and the students who swagger along the street, their faces seamed with the scars of old sword cuts. I was one of a group of young fellows from different countries who were studying at the University, and who fraternised in a strange land.
"It was about the time when the safety bicycle was introduced in England, and one of our group, a young Polish nobleman who had a great passion for English things, got a machine sent over to him from London. If not the first, it was certainly one of the first machines of the kind that had appeared in Heidelberg. You may remember how strange it seemed even to the English public when it first came out. We had got accustomed to the old high bicycle, and the 'Safety' looked ridiculous and babyish by comparison.
"Well, in Heidelberg the appearance of the young Pole on his 'Safety' created something like a sensation. The sports of the 'Englander' were held in contempt by the students, and this absurd toy was the last straw. It was the very symbol of the childishness of a nation given over to the sport of babes.
"One day the Pole was riding out on his bicycle when he passed a couple of students, who shouted opprobrious epithets at the 'Englander' and his preposterous vehicle. The Pole turned round, flung some verbal change back at them, and rode on his way.
"That evening as he sat in his room he heard steps ascending the stairs, and there entered two students clothed in all the formality of grave business. They had brought the Pole a challenge to a duel from each of the two young fellows with whom he had exchanged words on the road. The challenges were couched in the most ruthless terms. This was to be no mere nominal satisfaction of honour. It was to be a duel without guards or any of those restrictions that are common in such affairs. The weapon was the sword, and the time-limit eight days.
"The seconds having fulfilled their errand went away, leaving the Pole in no cheerful frame of mind. He was only a very indifferent swordsman, and had never cultivated the sport of duelling. Now suddenly he was faced with the necessity of fighting a duel in which he would certainly be beaten, and might be killed, for he understood the intentions of the challengers. It was clearly not possible for him to acquire in a week such expertness with the sword as would give him a chance of victory.
"In this emergency he came along to the little group of which I have spoken. We were playing cards when he entered, but stopped when we saw that something unusual had happened. He told us the story of the bicycle ride and the sequel. What was he to do? He must fight, of course, but how was he to get a dog's chance?
"Now the oldest of our group, and by far the most worldly wise, was an American. He listened to the Pole and agreed that there was no time for him to become sufficiently expert with the sword. 'But can you shoot?' he asked the Pole. Yes, he was not a bad shot. The American took up an ace from a pack of cards and held it up. 'Could you, standing where you are, hit that ace with a revolver?' 'I am not sure that I could hit it,' answered the Pole, 'but I should come very near it.' 'That's all right,' said the American. 'Now to business. These fellows have forgotten something. They're so used to fighting with the sword that they've forgotten there's such a thing as the revolver. And they're trying to bluff you into their own terms. They've forgotten, or don't choose to remember, that, as the challenged party, you have choice of weapons. Now we'll draw up an answer to this letter, accepting the challenge, claiming the choice of weapons, choosing the revolver, and putting the conditions as stiff as we can make 'em.'
"So we sat around the American and composed the reply. And I can assure you it had a very ugly look. The Pole signed it with great delight, and the American and I as seconds delivered it.
"Then we waited. One day passed without an answer--two, three, four, five, six. Still no answer. We were enjoying ourselves. On the evening of the seventh day the seconds reappeared at the Pole's rooms. They brought no acceptance of his challenge, but an impudent demand for the original conditions. The Pole came along to us with the news. 'That's all right,' said the American. 'We've got them on the run. Now to clinch the business.' And once more we sat round in great glee to draft the reply. It was as hot as we knew how to make it. It breathed death in every syllable, and it gave the Germans eight days to prepare for the end at the muzzle of the revolver.
"Again we waited, and again the days passed without a sign. Then on the eve of the eighth day the seconds once more appeared. I was present with the Pole at the time. I have never seen a more forlorn pair than those seconds made as they entered. Their principals, driven into a corner, faced with the alternative of fighting with weapons which did not assure them of victory or of accepting the humiliation of running away, had decided to run away. They would not fight on the conditions offered by the Pole, and the seconds were a spectacle of humiliation. Their apologies to us struggled with their indignation at their principals and they went away a chastened spectacle. That night we had a gay gathering with the American in the chair, and I think the incident must have got wind abroad, for thenceforward the Pole rode his Safety in peace and in triumph....
"You may think that story is a trifle. Well, it is. But I think it has some bearing on the end of the war."
ON EARLY RISING
There is no period of the year when my spirit is so much at war with the flesh as this. For the winter is over, and the woods are browning and the choristers of the fields are calling me to matins--and I do not go. Spiritually I am an early riser. I have a passion for the dawn and the dew on the grass, and the "early pipe of half-awakened birds." On the rare occasions on which I have gone out to meet the sun upon the upland lawn or on the mountain tops I have experienced an emotion that perhaps no other experience can give. I remember a morning in the Tyrol when I had climbed Kitzbulhorn to see the sun rise. I saw the darkness changing to chill grey, but no beam of sunlight came through the massed clouds that barred the east. Feeling that my night climb had been in vain, I turned round to the west, and there, by a sort of magical reflection, I saw the sunrise. A beam of light, invisible to the east, had pierced the clouds and struck the mountains in the west. It seemed to turn them to molten gold, and as it moved along the black mass it was as though a vast torch was setting the world aflame. And I remembered that fine stanza of Clough's:
And not through eastern windows only, When morning comes, comes in the light. In front the dawn breaks slow, how slowly. But westward, look, the land is bright.
And there was that other dawn which I saw, from the icy ridge of the Petersgrat, turning the snow-clad summits of the Matterhorn, the Weisshorn, and Mont Blanc to a magic realm of rose-tinted battlements.
And there are others. But they are few, for though I am spiritually a son of the morning, I am physically a sluggard. There are some people who are born with a gift for early rising. I was born with a genius for lying in bed. I can go to bed as late as anybody, and have no joy in a company that begins to yawn and grow drowsy about ten o'clock. But in the early rising handicap I am not a starter. A merciful providence has given me a task that keeps me working far into the night and makes breakfast and the newspaper in bed a matter of duty. No words can express the sense of secret satisfaction with which I wake and realise that I haven't to get up, that stern duty bids me lie a little longer, listening to the comfortable household noises down below and the cheerful songs outside, studying anew the pattern of the wall-paper and taking the problems of life "lying-down" in no craven sense.
I know there are many people who have to catch early morning buses and trams who would envy me if they knew my luck. For the ignoble family of sluggards is numerous. It includes many distinguished men. It includes saints as well as sages. That moral paragon, Dr. Arnold, was one of them; Thomson, the author of "The City of Dreadful Night," was another. Bishop Selwyn even put the duty of lying in bed on a moral plane. "I did once rise early," he said, "but I felt so vain all the morning and so sleepy all the afternoon that I determined not to do it again." He stayed in bed to mortify his pride, to make himself humble. And is not humility one of the cardinal virtues of a good Christian? I have fancied myself that people who rise early are slightly self-righteous. They can't help feeling a little scornful of us sluggards. And we know it. Humility is the badge of all our tribe. We are not proud of lying in bed. We are ashamed--and happy. The noblest sluggard of us all has stated our case for us. "No man practises so well as he writes," said Dr. Johnson. "I have all my life been lying till noon; yet I tell all young men, and tell them with great sincerity, that nobody who does not rise early will ever do any good."
Of course we pay the penalty. We do not catch the early worm. When we turn out all the bargains have gone, and we are left only with the odds and ends. From a practical point of view, we have no defence. We know that an early start is the secret of success. It used to be said of the Duke of Newcastle that he always went about as though he had got up half an hour late, and was trying all day to catch it up. And history has recorded what a grotesque failure he was in politics. When someone asked Nelson for the secret of his success he replied: "Well, you see, I always manage to be a quarter of an hour in front of the other fellow." And the recipe holds good to-day. When the inner history of the battle of the Falkland Islands is told in detail it will be found that it was the early start insisted on by the one man of military genius and vision we have produced in this war that gave us that priceless victory.
And if you have ever been on a walking tour or a cycling tour you know that early rising is the key of the business. Start early and you are master of your programme and your fate. You can linger by the way, take a dip in the mountain tarn, lie under the shadow of a great rock in the hot afternoon, and arrive at the valley inn in comfortable time for the evening meal. Start late and you are the slave of the hours. You chase them with weary feet, pass the tarn with the haste of a dispatch bearer though you are dying for a bathe, and arrive when the roast and boiled are cleared away and the merry company are doing a "traverse" around the skirting board of the billiard room. Happy reader, if you know the inn I mean--the jolly inn at Wasdale Head.
No, whether from the point of view of business or pleasure, worldly wisdom or spiritual satisfaction, there is nothing to be said in our defence. All that we can say for lying in bed is what Foote--I think it was Foote--said about the rum. "I went into a public-house," he said, "and heard one man call for some rum because he was hot, and another call for some rum because he was cold. Then I called for some rum because I liked it." We sluggards had better make the same clean breast of the business. We lie in bed because we like it. Just that. Nothing more. We like it. We claim no virtue, ask no indulgence, accept with humility the rebukes of the strenuous.
As for me, I have a licence--nay, I have more; I have a duty. It is my duty to lie in bed o' mornings until the day is well aired. For I burn the midnight oil, and the early blackbird--the first of our choir to awake--has often saluted me on my way home. Therefore I lie in bed in the morning looking at the ceiling and listening to the sounds of the busy world without a twinge of conscience. If you were listening, you would hear me laugh softly to myself as I give the pillow another shake and thank providence for having given me a job that enables me to enjoy the privileges of the sluggard without incurring the odium that he so richly deserves.
ON BEING KNOWN
I went into a tailor's in the West End the other day to order some clothes. My shadow rarely darkens a tailor's door, and this tailor's door it had never darkened before. I was surprised therefore, when, after the preliminaries of measurement were finished, the attendant, in reply to a question about a deposit, said "No deposit is necessary. The name is good enough." I confess I felt the compliment as an agreeable shock. The request for a deposit always jars on me. I know that "business is business" and that in this wilderness of London it is no dishonour to be unknown and no discredit to be formally discredited; but yet ... And here was a man I had never seen before and who had never seen me, who was prepared to execute my order without any sordid assurances of character on my side--simply on my name. Such a tribute needed some recognition. "It will save trouble," said I, "if I pay the account now." And I did so. I fancy the action was a little childish, but I couldn't help it. I really couldn't. I simply had to do something civil, and this was the only civil thing that occurred to me.
And then I went out of the shop feeling that I had come suddenly into an unexpected and pleasing inheritance. I knew now something of the emotion of Mr. Sholes, the eminent author:
Whenever down Fleet Street he strolls The policemen look hurriedly up And say "There's the great Mr. Sholes, Who writes such delectable gup."
I might not be able to write such delectable gup as Mr. Sholes, but I could write gup good enough to make that fellow in the shop trust me for a six-guinea suit. I did not observe that the policeman took any particular notice of me as I passed along. But--"Give me time," said I, addressing the shade of Mr. Sholes. "Give me time. I have made a start in the handicap of the famous. I am known to that excellent shopman. I may yet be known (favourably and admiringly) to the police. I may yet walk the Strand with a nimbus that will challenge Mr. Horatio Bottomley and Mr. Pemberton Billing and the illustrious great. I may yet have the agreeable consciousness that heads are turning in my direction, and that the habitual Londoner is saying to his country cousin: 'That, my dear Jane, is the eminent Mr. Alpha of the Plough who writes those articles in _The Star_.' ... Give me time, Mr. Sholes. Give me time."
But as I walked on and as that momentary flash of the limelight faded from me I became less confident that I wanted to live in it. I became sensible of the pleasures of obscurity. I strolled along untroubled by the curious, and enjoyed the pageant of the pavement, the display of dress, the diversity of faces, the play of light in the eyes, the incidents of the streets. I paused in front of shops and fell into a reverie before the window of the incomparable Mr. Bumpus--the window of stately books in noble bindings. I was submerged in the tide of the common life and felt the enfranchisement of the obscure. I could walk which way I pleased and no one would remark me; pause when I liked and be unobserved. But--why, here is Lord French of Ypres coming along. See how heads are turning and fingers are pointing and tongues are wagging--"That, my dear Jane..." What a nuisance this limelight must be!