Part 2

Caught at last by "romance," falling in love with a man who wondered—"would she be more trouble than she was worth"; this determined young woman "leapt up and began undressing . . . plunged into the water"; so that "the momentary glance he had of her naked beauty, the excitement, overcame him."

The hero, in his "first affair" with "the daughter of a very respectable God-fearing parson," carefully taught her the new ideals of "free love, free conscience, free everything . . . hoping himself to reap the fruit of his labours." Submitting, however, to the "ceremonial" of marriage, he was caught in his own trap. She was now "enlightened," and "dreading suddenly the binding nature of the service," ran away, at the eleventh hour, with another man.

Afterwards "she came back ill, very ill, and he left her to sink or swim." Such is the chivalry of free love; that ultimately drove her to become "a horrible, decadent, drug-maniac."

Of his "spiritual" union with another, we read: "Both were exhausted, the _emotions of the soul_ had overpowered them, they fell fainting against the cool grey stone, and there, like a burning picture of all the romances there have been since the beginning of time, they leant in the twilight."

By all means call a spade a spade; but do not imagine that all life is spades. To insist upon bedroom scenes in fiction or drama, and all the nakedness of phrase such a conception of art implies, does, and must, often suggest the sly and coarse innuendo. It is the same with all _excess_ of emphasis on physical detail. When Mr. D. H. Lawrence dwells on the feverish symptoms (mainly skin-deep) of his lovers, describes their breasts and loins, he is—actually—playing with the obscene.

The reticence we demand is not based on any pretence that our bodies are unclean, on any conventional association between mere words and thoughts.

A nude painting may be supremely, spiritually, beautiful: it may be lewd: but it is not, as many would now declare, more real _because_ of its nudity.

Can we _honestly_ say that the increasing undress on stage or in daily life provokes more deep, true and sincere feeling, reveals more of a girl's or a woman's real and best self? We know it does not. _It distracts our thoughts from the woman herself_ to memories of purely animal and gross experience, tempts us to lower depths. It matters not, in the book or in the play, that innocence prevail. I have heard men, for example, when the curtain fell at _The Sign of the Cross_, chuckling over the public attack on a girl's body (though it failed), with gay plans for vile conquests.

Obviously, there can be no fixed verbal rule. To say that no writer may use certain words or describe certain actions and things; no playwright may paint certain scenes; would be to "speak as a fool." Each case must be determined by its inner spiritual truth.

In one sense our selection of phrase must be a matter of taste and good feeling; in another, it comes from our artistic instinct. What I maintain, and have tried to show, is that modern novels are, too often, both poisonous _and_ untrue to life because their choice of words and, indeed, their whole picture of life, is dominated by a false view: that, if only your figures are naked they _must_ be true, that our bodies cannot lie. _In angry revolt against the half-truths of the past, they snatch at the other half and swear it is the whole._

Let the writer be sure that he cares only for truth; and loyalty to his vision will give him the right, clean thoughts and words.

Let the reader trust to his own natural instincts. Almost certainly, if a phrase or thought either shock or suggest the unclean, it is itself—as then used—unclean, false to life and nature; _and_ also bad art. If you are told that the first slight shock, prick of the conscience, impulse to shrink away, is false hypocrisy, _do not believe it_.

Nearly always the most inexperienced youth _feels straight_. Once the poison is drunk and you have let yourself go with the injected delirium, you will have lost the power to see and feel for yourself.

VI

NOVELS OF "GAY LIFE," WITH THE PROSTITUTE HEROINE, ARE, QUITE OBVIOUSLY, STRONG MORAL INTOXICANTS.

One does not pronounce the subject forbidden. We know, and recognize, that a man's mistress _may_ be a nobler woman than his wife, the love between them more real; we know and recognize where mere passion may lead; and we do not carelessly push beyond the pale, those whom a hundred different circumstances—quite different degrees of moral weakness or reckless defiance through special trouble—may have led to live on man's desires. We do not dismiss them from thought, reading, and conversation.

Nevertheless many novels now written use these most grave issues for mere dramatic effect, or to confound morality; and, to these ends, offer a falsely attractive picture of emotional adventure. In his terrible _Bed of Roses_, on the other hand, Mr. W. L. George treats his theme with the definite object of exposing the tragedy of a young woman with no training, suddenly forced to earn her living; and of expressing his righteous anger against the conditions of civilization. Because, he declares, "a woman can scratch up a living but not a future; and the only job she's really fit for is to be a man's keep, legal or illegal, permanent or temporary." The narrative itself is most emphatically not free from offence, but the motive is honest and sincere.

Mr. Gilbert Cannan, again, with less earnest intention but still legitimately, seems to have written _Pink Roses_ to illustrate the demoralizing effects of the war on a quite decent, average young man, who was "left out" of things—through a weak heart. He drifts into an experiment of lust, but is not finally destroyed, because he recognized from the first that he had only sought the adventure—to fill the blank years.

The frail "Cora" of Mr. Snaith's _Sailor_ merely stands for temptation, which no novelist can omit. The episode is not shirked, but it is treated with all the traditional reticence, which puts it outside our discussion here.

In these examples the motive may be acknowledged towards justification; but such books as Mr. W. L. George's _Confessions of Ursula Trent_ only respond to a morbid preference for melodramatic atmosphere: they assume, and encourage, our interest in the unclean.

To heighten the effect, they are—almost inevitably—untrue. The attractions and drama are exaggerated, giving a false glamour to the gravest tragedy of human nature. There is here obvious adventure, and far greater variety or colour than we can, most of us, reach in ordinary respectable life. There is even some real liberty for the individual (though far less than these superficial narratives suggest), in dramatic contrast to the slaving drudgery and imprisoned minds—of underpaid long hours of toil and drab unloving homes.

The hopeless tragedy, the bitter knowledge, the utter weariness and the slavery of the soul do not provide the novelist with dramatic material, and are—to a large extent—left out of the picture. He slurs over, or altogether ignores, the blunting of moral sense, the coarsening of moral fibre, the lowering of all ideals: the gradual loss of power over oneself, loss of will, loss of freedom, loss—even—of desire. He may use the more obvious foulness and brutality as an occasion for drama—naturally not wishing to be transparently unreal. The moral tragedy is not _there_.

But by his own art standard, that demands the exact truth, he is condemned; and he is guilty of just that falsehood which he set out to expose and revile—of treating his characters as a _class apart_, rather types than individuals. As the Victorians assumed, without charity, they were always lower than the "respectable"; he almost conveys the impression that they are necessarily higher—as careless, and far more dangerous, an assumption.

We can perhaps see more clearly where this perverse attack upon convention really leads from another example of fiction, frankly designed to sell.

It is, indeed, hard to detect the serious object or thought behind such books as _The Age of Consent_. The publisher claims "extraordinary delicacy" for its treatment of a "difficult, perilous, and exciting situation," which is "modern in the fullest sense." There is, we admit, nothing coarse here in language or thought, a welcome exception to-day; and the combination of essential purity, in a very real sense, with a courageous acceptance of life, is revealed with real understanding of morality and of our natural instincts.

In other words, Pamela is a true woman; with exceptional possession of herself, heroic impulse and a clean mind; capable of sustained, genuine self-sacrifice and self-restraint.

_But when we consider the tests by which her nature is revealed and developed, the sordid vice in which she grew from girl to woman; the whole impression is reversed._ Circumstances and atmosphere are violently morbid and also quite abnormal. We have not only every conceivable variety in the cruel and profit-sharing intrigues of lust (with no sudden impulse to excuse, if not condone); but illustration and discussion of the most extreme and vile form of criminal mania that serves no purpose but to heighten the crude sensationalism.

The legal problem suggested by the title (a "practical" issue of grave importance to public morality) is only used for the mechanism of the plot; and spiritual purity is fertilized by manure. This, of course, may be achieved by a strong nature: virtue does sometimes triumph against long odds. But such books without doubt imply that the surroundings of loathly sin _provide the most favourable soil_ for the growth and strengthening of a girl's innocence to perfect womanhood. Which is a lie.

_Can we finally hesitate to proclaim that too many novels, written round "gay life," create moods and stimulate emotions, by which truth and the Right are hidden or denied?_

VII

WHAT DO THE "NEW" WRITERS AND THINKERS TO-DAY ACTUALLY TEACH? HOW DO THEY INTERPRET LIFE AND LOVE?

We have, so far, considered rather the effects of "new" morality than the morality itself; and, to some extent, dwelt more upon the characteristics of modern fiction than on the thought it expounds.

It is now necessary to examine the actual teaching, or interpretation, of life and love.

The poison permeating literature and society seems to have its main origin in over-emphasis and a determination to reform by destruction.

A violent, but not altogether unjustified, reaction against our old moral rules and formulæ, which laid undue stress on "appearances," has led to a passionate declaration that the first right and duty of every man or woman is to express himself or herself at all costs. The one sin now held unpardonable is hypocrisy, or the insincere moulding of oneself by rule; falling in line, accepting any authority or tradition, any form of self-sacrifice. There is great confusion here between good and evil. We have already more than once explained that we of the older days frankly admit our mistake. We did conform over-much, fixed our ideals in a groove, and—with too anxious love—sought to guide and direct youth, rather than help and stimulate them to be their best selves.

But, if we laid too great stress on restraint, control, sacrifice, and mere orderliness; the new thinkers have, here again, missed the truth by their fiery haste. As the clear-sighted heroine of a recent novel has remarked, "It was a great and fine act to let yourself go—only no one said precisely where you went to."

Their Self is not a complete purposeful human being, of strong character and sustained courage, clear faith, and reasonable hope: certainly not of any charity whatsoever. _The ego they would exalt is a mere riot of moods._ They snatch at a moment's joy, utter a moment's emotion, act on a moment's thought. There is no idea of "finding" oneself _before_ expressing oneself. Every passing fancy, feverish excitement, sudden hate, is to be flung out upon a bewildered world; above all to the confounding and wounding of steadier souls—the old, the middle-aged, or any that bear another's burden. Such tempestuous demands on life are based on anger against parental preachments and on a curious lack of self-confidence. Seeing the glory of youth's capacity for enthusiasm, they seem always afraid that it will fade and die unless encouraged perpetually to explode. They will not tolerate any idea of growth and strength through self-control, any appeal to the higher, deeper Self, built up on loving service and kindness to one's fellow-men.

No theory of life ever produced such weak, formless, and utterly miserable human beings. _They quickly cease to have any self to express._ Swayed in a thousand contrary directions by every idle mood, they become more absolutely slaves to chance encounter and a thoughtless word than one would have supposed possible to an intelligent man or woman, with any pride in self or any standard of honour. It should be obvious that such a perpetual series of unconsidered experiments in emotion must wear out all independent thought, all strength of will, all capacity for judgment.

Miss Sheila Kaye Smith does not teach this ideal in _Joanna Godden_, but she exposes it with her usual grim sincerity. The heroine of that profound tragedy kills her lonely soul by a perpetual struggle to snatch happiness for herself. Originally a strong woman, she goes on "blundering worse and worse," until "there she stood, nearly forty years old, her lover, her sister, her farm, her home, her good name, all lost."

A novel in which we can, however, clearly detect confusion between love and the quick, vicious, response to every sensuous impression, is _The Sleeping Fire_ of W. E. B. Henderson, described by its author as a tale of "the urge in woman . . . where the flesh, crying like an infant for food, is yet held back by scruples of a spirit that bows to circumstance, from fastening on the breast of personal choice."

Here "the woman," Viva Barrington, is, again and again, described as "a human soul, innately decent and fine"; and yet she "suddenly kindled" at any man's mere touch. The young guardsman whom "considerable practice had enabled to use his fine eyes with much effect," declared "she could be no end o' fun, if she'd only let herself go." In fact, he took up a bet, "ten to one in quids," that he would kiss her before the last supper dance; "a real live kiss, mind you, where she gives as good as she gets. None of your stolen pecks."

As this "splendid specimen of the vigorous young male smoothed back her hair, devouring her with his eyes . . . a delicious languor . . . as of one yielding to an anæsthetic . . . was stealing over her. Husband, children—everything of her outside life slipped away."

And at his kiss "primordial passion" awoke. "Feeling herself a live coal of shame from head to foot she raised herself slightly upwards towards him, and with closed eyes and utter abandon, passionately returned the pressure of his lips."

This "pure" woman, already a mother, is fired by a "vulgar wager," a vain boy wanting to kiss her "for the mere enjoyment of the contact," in the conservatory, heated by champagne and the dance. There is no attempt to suggest real feeling, the passionate awakening that _may_ come after a foolish marriage; when the "right man" stirs unknown depths, beating down "fears, doubts, self-distrusts." She crumples up at the first chance shot.

No wonder that, after some months' experimenting among men, she grows "afraid—afraid! . . . now I know I'm liable to—to kindle, suddenly, inexplicably. . . . There's a man here—one of those to-night. He's unclean, through and through. I never used to attract that type. And now apparently I do. The 'sleeping fire' . . . he sees it in me and tries to feed it. He sickens me! Oh, I'm frightened. Suppose one day that type _ceased_ to sicken me. I've seen the demi-monde at the tables. Their faces haunt me. _They_ began with the sleeping fire, and men fed it and fed it till it became a furnace . . . for me, it's been like summer lightning so far . . . only summer lightning. Look after me, help me, lest it ever be forked lightning . . . the lightning that can strike and destroy."

So she appeals to the husband she had originally accepted as "a crutch," and who had looked upon her as "furniture." Fortunately—for the children, because he has "changed, broadened in outlook and understanding"—he is ready "to build afresh, stone by stone."

We admit that Mr. Henderson's moral is sound enough; he has, indeed, found "the way of salvation." But he has _not_ drawn for us the "innately decent and fine woman." Viva is weak and abnormally sensual from the first; pulled out of the mire by luck, human kindness, and a dim taste for "the things that are good, decent, and worth while"; _inherited from clean-living forebears_.

The danger for her was exceptional, not "that _natural_ yearning" against which "_all women_ must be _eternally_ on their guard." Her husband, we notice, hoped to guard his daughter "_against her mother's tendency_."

We have a precisely similar situation in _The Mother of All Living_ by Mr. Keable. An emotional, but high-minded woman, whose husband was not aggressively incompatible, is here suddenly stirred to the depths—practically at first sight—by a cynical, handsome man of the world. There is absolutely no attempt whatever to even suggest any natural affinity in mind or tastes between the two; no urge except the unexplained, and inexplicable, mystery of the spark that fires sex. The abandon to which this unnatural awakening leads up belongs to quite a different type of woman; and when, at the eleventh hour, she repents in melodrama, we have still a third personality, no way like the girl her husband wooed and won.

This is, perhaps, why Mr. Keable calls her _The Mother of all Living_, Eve incarnate, the World-Woman. As Mr. Masefield draws Mary Queen of Scots—too "big" for one lover. Both writers chose to forget, or to ignore, that love has no meaning, unless one's _whole_ self is expressed.

Mr. Temple Thurston, again, in _The Green Bough_, seems resolutely determined to uphold Pope's dictum that "every woman is at heart a rake."

Mary, indeed, is a woman "whom life had discarded and thrown aside"; whom, therefore, we are ready to judge leniently. It does _not_, therefore, follow "How vast a degree of false modesty there is in the world . . . it had _all been false_ that modesty which their mother had taught them."

She, at any rate without modesty, sought and found love. So fine a thing this that she took it, without hesitation, from a married man, who had told her how much he loved his wife. "It happened—in a fortnight."

Of her sisters, reproaching her, she declares "Jane thinks herself a true woman just because she's clung to modesty and chastity and a fierce reserve; but these things are only of true value when they're needed, and what man has needed them of us? _Who cares at all whether we've been chaste or pure?_ None but ourselves! And what made us care _but those false values_ that make Jane's shame of me? . . . You're not really ashamed of me. You're _envious, jealous, and you're stung with spite_. Calling me a servant girl or a woman of the streets only feeds your spite, it doesn't satisfy your heart. _You'd give all you know to have what I have._ . . . I'm going to have a child. . . . It's not a sin. It's not a shame. It's the most wonderful thing in the world."

_There is one unanswerable reply to that fearful charge—"What man has needed chastity of us, who cares?"—a son's honouring of his mother, the man's instinct to defend his wife, his sister, or his child._

False, or forced, "modesty" may degenerate into "spite"; but it will be a sad day for human nature when all women are "jealous" of the "free!"

Mr. Thurston seems to claim, in this novel, to be "the one man in the world who understands the truth about women." This is his reading of truth!

It had been "the one night of her lover's life"; but he went back to that "wonderful woman," his wife, who had "as big a heart as all this stretch of acres and that breadth of sea." To Mary, he wrote, "I blame myself utterly and I blame myself alone. . . . So many another woman would have reckoned the cost before she knew the full account. You said nothing. _You are wonderful, Mary_, and if any woman deserves to escape the consequences of passion, it is you."

"God!" she cried, "was that the little mind her own had met with? . . . She knew how in the deepest recesses of her soul there did not live a father to her child. . . . If this was a man, then men were nothing to women. Two nights of burning passion he had been with her and for those moments they had been inseparably one. But now he had gone as though the whole world divided them. . . . With that letter he had cancelled all existence in the meaning of life. There was no meaning in him."

He was "the mere servant of Nature, whipped with passion to her purpose . . . no father at all."

Wherefore _she tries to explain_ to him: "Women are not complicated. It is only the laws that make us appear so. . . . That first of our two nights on the cliffs, did you find me complicated or difficult of understanding? I showed, as well as gave you myself, and this is how you have treated that revelation. . . . _Why do you hint about shame to me? Did you think I shared what you call your weakness? Did you think for those moments that, as you say of yourself, I forgot or lost restraint?_ . . . You would not believe me if I told you that all women in their essence are the same. It is only with so many that . . . the hollow dignity of social position, the chimera of good repute . . . are more attractive and alluring than the pain and discomfort and difficulty of bringing children into a competitive world. . . . But starve one of these women . . . deny to her the first function which justifies her existence . . . and you will find her behave as I behaved. . . . I had no shame then. I loved. Loving no longer, I still now have no shame because, and believe me it is not in anger, we have no cause to meet again."

On the other hand, Miss E. M. Delafield's _Humbug_ reveals with startling clearness the falseness of self-seeking in passion. Her argument is the more convincing because her heroine, Lily Stellenthorpe, has the best of reasons for adopting the new ideal, the strongest possible temptation to follow a false light. Her sensitive and vital nature had been cramped from birth by "a good woman's capacity for the falsification of moral values." Her father literally drove her along the same demoralizing groove. Love and respect for their honest, but kind, goodness almost compel insincerity and the complete self-annihilation. Under such influences, she acquires a _good_ husband. He, alas, dictates her conscience, assumes that so sweet a woman will conform to type. It seems almost a brutal sin for her to act, think, or even feel, for herself. Steadily she grows more hidden, secret, and hypocritical.

This careful preparation for modern self-passion is admirably drawn. We can scarcely deny that any sudden outburst of even cruel selfishness or revolt might be excused, if not absolutely justified, for _her_.

Inevitably the occasion comes. The expected lover appears, young, ardent, understanding; all, it seems to her revived free impulse, that she had been seeking for many years. Lily, however, does not snatch at happiness, flare out herself. She looks into herself, getting herself—as it were—in order, before so fateful a choice.