Part 14

Best of all, I think, as a memory or an experience is the Ouse, which runs from Bedford to the Wash, and has upon it the astonishing monument of Ely. Here is a river which no one can descend without feeling as he descends it the change of English provinces from the Midlands to the sea. He should start at Bedford; then he will pass through fields where tall elms give to the plains something more than could be given them by distant hills. The river runs between banks of deep grass in summer. It is contented everywhere; and as you go you are in the middle of a thousand years. You pass villages that have not changed; you carry your boat over weirs where there are mills, always shaded by large trees. Once in a day, at the most, you find an unchanging town: Huntingdon is such an one, or St. Ives, where I do believe the people are kinder than in any other town. Then, as you still go on, the land takes on another character. You begin to know that England is not only rich and full of fields but also was made by the sea. For you come to great flats--and that rather suddenly--where, as at sea, the sky is your contemplation. You notice the light, the colour, and the shapes of clouds. The birds that wheel and scream over these spaces seem to be sea birds. You expect at any moment to hear beyond the dead line of the horizon the sound of surf and to see the glint of live water. Above such a waste rises, on what is called “an island,” and is in truth “an island,” the superb strength of Ely.

No one has seen Ely who has not seen it from the Ouse. It is a hill upon a hill, and now permanently present in the midst of loneliness. It is something made with a framework all around of accidental marsh and emptiness. Thenceafter the Ouse goes on. You get through and down the deep step of a lock, and beyond it is the salt water and busy energy that comes and goes from the sea. Very deep banks, alive with the salt and the swirl of the tide, shut in the boat for miles, and there are very high bridges uniting village to village above one, till at last the whole thing broadens, and one sees under the sunlight the roofs and the spars of King’s Lynn; and, if one has no misadventure, one ends the journey at some narrow quay at a narrow lane of that delightful port and town.

There is one English river out of at least thirty others. I wish that all were known! That journey down the Ouse is three days’ journey--but it is such a slice of time and character and history as teaches you most you need know upon this Island. Only I warn anyone attempting it, let the boat be light and let it be shallow, and be ready to sleep in it; it is only thus that you can know an English river, and if you can draw, why it will be a greater pleasure. It is very cheap.

On Two Manuals

Flaubert, I believe, designed once to publish a Dictionary of Errors, and would actually have set about it had he not found the subject growing much too vast for any human pen. He also designed a reference book, or rather anthology, of follies, stupidities, rash judgments, and absurdities, but never lived to complete this great task. Now, reading this, I have wondered whether two little books might not be written which should prove useful severally to the undergraduate and to the politician. I do not say to the schoolboy, for no book yet written ever was or ever will be useful to him. But for the undergraduate a useful book might be written which I shall presently describe, and which would make a sort of foundation for all his studies. So also for the politician a second book might be written which should be of the greatest service. Let me now describe these two books. Perhaps among those who read this there will be so many men of leisure and learning as can in combination give the world the volumes I imagine.

The first book should be called “Modern Thought,” and in this, without praise or blame and without any wandering into metaphysics or religion, the young fellow should be plainly taught to distinguish the certain from the uncertain. I know of nothing in which academic training just now is more at fault. That training seems to consist in two branches. First, the setting down of a very great number of things each equally certain with the last and all forming together one huge amorphic body or lump of assertion; second, a whole sheaf of theories, the whole fun of which consists in the fact that no one of them can positively be proved but that all are guesswork. These theories change from year to year, and while they are defended with a passion astonishing to those who live in a larger world, there is no pretence that they are true. The whole business of them is quite obviously a game. Consider, for instance, history. A lad is taught that William the Conqueror won at Hastings in 1066; that the opinion of the English people was behind the little wealthy clique that put an end to the Stuarts; that London heartily sympathised with the seven Bishops; that all Parliamentary institutions grew up on the soil of this island in the thirteenth century from Saxon origins; and that four people called Hengist, and Horsa, and Aella, and Cerdic led a great number of Germans to various points of this Island, killed the people living there and put the Germans in their stead. Now of these assertions, all of which he is to receive with equal certitude, all dogmatically affirmed, all taught to him as brute bits of truth--some, as that about Hastings, are rigidly true; some, such as the attitude of London towards the seven Bishops, are morally certain (though hardly capable of definite proof); some, as the weight of public opinion behind the Whigs, debatable though probable; some, like the Hengist and Horsa business, almost certainly mere legends--and so forth. It is to be noted that, if you are to teach at all, you must always have in your teaching some admixture of this error. No one can exactly balance the degree of probability attaching to each separate statement; there is no time to array all the evidence, and if there were, the mind of the student could not carry it. Each teacher, moreover, will have a scheme of values somewhat different from his neighbour’s; but even if some admixture of the error I speak of be necessary, at least let the student be warned that it exists. For if he is not so warned one of two things will happen: either he will believe all he is told, with the most appalling results to himself, and, should he later become powerful, to the whole nation (we are seeing something of that in economics to-day), or he will (as the cleverer undergraduate usually does) become sceptical of all he hears; he will begin to wonder, having once found his teacher out in, let us say, the absurdity of pretending that Parliamentary institutions were peculiar to Britain, whether the Battle of Hastings were really fought in 1066 or no. When he has discovered, as any boy of education, travel, and common sense will discover, that the Normans were not Scandinavians, but Frenchmen, he will be led to reason that perhaps William the Conqueror never existed at all. This mood of universal scepticism is even more dangerous than that of bovine assurance, more dangerous to character, that is, and more dissolving of national strength.

As with the assertions so with the theories. There was a theory, for instance, that a tenure of land existed in ancient England by which this land was the common property of all, and was called the land of the “folk.” Then this theory burst, and another theory swelled, which was that the “folk land” meant the land held by customary right as distinguished from land held by charter. Again, there was a theory that an original Saxon tendency to breed large landowners had gradually prevailed over feudal tenure. This theory burst, and another theory swelled, which was that the large units of land grew up by an accidental interpretation of Roman law.

In the book I propose all these theories could be very simply dealt with. The student should be warned that they are theories, and theories only, that their whole point and value is that they are not susceptible to positive proof; that what makes them amusing and interesting is the certitude that one can go on having a good quarrel about them, and the inner faith that when one is tired of them one can drop them without regret. Older men know this, but young men often do not, and they will take a theory in the Academies and make a friend of it, and at last, as it were, another self, and clasp it close to their souls and intertwine themselves with it, only to find towards thirty that they have been hugging a shade.

So much, then, for this first book. It would not need to be more than a little pocket volume of fifty or sixty pages, and a young man should have it to refer to at any moment of his studies. One of its maxims would be to look up the original evidence upon which anything he was told was based. Another rule he would find in it would be to underline all such words as “seems,” “probably,” and so forth, and watch in his books the way in which they gradually turn, as the argument proceeds, into “is” and “certainly.” He would also be warned before reading the work of any authority to remember that that authority was a human being, to look up his biography, if possible to meet him personally, to find out what general knowledge he had and what impression he made upon the casual man that met him. How many men have written histories of a campaign and yet have been proved at a dinner-table ignorant of the range of artillery during their period! How many men have learnedly criticised the style of Rousseau upon a knowledge of French very much inferior to that of most governesses! I at Oxford knew a don who exposed and ridiculed the legend of the Girondins, but throughout his remarks pronounced their title with a hard _g_.

As for the politicians, their little guide-book through life should be of another sort. In this the first and most valuable part would deal with political judgment and prophecy. The utmost care would be taken by the author to show how valueless is any determination of the future, and how crass the mind which predicts with confidence. Since so very few men happen to have made lucky shots, it would be the peculiar care of the author in a loving manner to collect all the follies and misjudgments which these same men had made upon other grave matters. And, in general, the reader would be left very certain that every pompous prophecy he heard was a piece of folly. Next in the book would come examples of all that political men have said and done which they most particularly desired to have forgotten. This would serve a twofold purpose, for first it would amuse and instruct the politician as he read it, since the misfortunes of others are delightful to human kind, and, secondly, it would show him that he could not himself trust to the effect of time, and that his natural desire to turn his coat or to pretend to some policy he did not understand would at last be judged as it deserved. In the third and final portion of the book the politician would be given a list of interesting truths, with regard to the matter of his trade. It would be proved to him in a few sentences that his decisions depend upon various difficult branches of study, and by a few suggested questions he would be convinced of his ignorance therein. The shortness of human life would be insisted upon, with examples showing how a man having painfully reached power was stricken with paralysis or died in torment. The ludicrous miscarriage of great plans would be laid before him, and, better still, the proof that the most successful adventures had proceeded almost entirely from chance, and surprised no one more than their authors.

At the end of the book would be a certain number of coupons permitting the reader to travel to many places which politicians commonly ignore, and there would be a list of the sights that he should see. As, for instance, the troops of such and such a nation upon the march, the artillery of such another at firing practice, and the opinion expressed by the populace in taverns in such and such a town. Then at the end would come a number of common phrases such as _cui bono_, _persona grata_, _toujours perdrix_, _double entendre_, _sturm und drang_, etc., with their English equivalents, if any, and their approximate meaning, when they possess a meaning. Upon the last page would be a list of the duties of a Christian man and a short guide to general conduct in conversation with the rich.

Armed with these manuals, the youth and manhood of a nation would at once and vastly change. You would find young men recently proceeded from the University filled with laudable doubts arising from the vastness of God’s scheme, and yet modestly secure in certain essential truths such as their own existence and that of an objective universe, the voice of conscience, and the difference between right and wrong. While among those of more mature years, who were controlling the energies of the State, there would appear an exact observance of real things, an admitted inability to know what would happen fifty or even twenty years hence, and a habit of using plain language which they and their audience could easily understand; of using such language tersely, and occasionally with conviction.

But this revolution will not take place. The two books of which I speak will not be written. And if anyone doubts this, let him sit down and try to frame the scheme of one, and he will soon see that it is beyond any man’s power.

On Fantastic Books

There has fallen upon criticism since perhaps a century ago, and with increasing weight, a sort of gravity which is in great danger of becoming tomfoolery at last: as all gravity is in danger of becoming.

No one dares to discuss all that lighter thing which is the penumbra of letters, and, what is more, no man of letters dares to whisper that letters themselves are not often much more than a pastime to the reader, and are only very rarely upon a level with good and serious speculation: never upon a level with philosophy: still less upon a level with religion. It is perhaps even a mark of the eclipse of religion when any department of mere intellectual effort can raise itself as high as literature has raised itself in its own eyes; and since all expression now (or nearly all) is through the pen literature thus suffering from pride can impose its pride upon the world.

Two things alone correct this pride: first, that those who practise the trade of literature starve if they are austere or run into debt if they are not; secondly, that now and then one of the inner circle gives the thing away--for instance, Mr. Andrew Lang in his excellent and never-to-be-forgotten remarks delivered only last year at the dinner of the Royal Literary Fund. This Member of our Union said (with how much truth!) that the writers of stories should remember they were writers of stories and not teachers and preachers. And the same might be said to others of the Craft. If a man has had granted to him by the Higher Powers a jolly little lyric, why, that is a jolly little lyric. He should bow and scrape to those who gave it to him and hand it on to his fellow-men for a dollar. But it does not make him a god, and if it gives him so much as a swelled head it makes him intolerably wearisome. More tolerable are the victors of campaigns discussing at table their successes in the field than poets who forget their Muse: for to their Muse alone, or to those who sent her, do they owe what they are, as may very clearly be seen in the case of those whose Muse has deserted them and flown again up to her native heaven; nor is any case more distressing than that of ----.

All of which leads me to the Fantastic Books. One, two, a dozen at the most, in all the history of the world have ranked with the greatest. Rabelais is upon the summit, and the _Sentimental Journey_ will live for some hundreds of years, but how many others are there which men remember? There is a sort of conspiracy against them led by the few intelligent vicious in league with the numerous and virtuous fools; and thus the salt of the Fantastic Books, which is as good as the salt of the sea, is lost to the most of mankind.

Men sit in front of the writers of Fantastic Books fair and squarely with their hands on their knees, their eyes set, their mouths glum, their souls determined, and say:

“Come now, Fantastic Book, are you serious or are you not serious?”

And when the Fantastic Book answers “I am both.”

Then the man gets up with a sigh and concludes that it is neither. Yet the Fantastic Book was right, and if people were only wise they would salt all their libraries with Fantastic Books.

Note that the Fantastic Books are not of necessity jocose books or ribald books, nor even extravagant books. If I had meant to write about extravagant books, _quâ_ extravagant, you may be certain I should have chosen that word. Rabelais is extravagant and so is Sterne, but not on account of their extravagance are they fantastic. The note of the Fantastic Book is an easy escape from the world. It is not imagination, though imagination is a necessary spring to it: it is that faculty by which the mind travels, as it reads, whether through space or through time or through _quality_. A book is a Fantastic Book, though time and space be commonplace enough, though the time be to-day and the place Camberwell, if only the mind perpetually travels, seeing one after another unexpected things in the consequence of human action or in the juxtaposition of emotions.

There is a category of Fantastic Books most delightful, and never to my thinking overdone, which deals with journeys to worlds beyond the earth. I confess that I care nothing whether they are well written or ill written; so long as they are written in any language that I can understand I will read them; and to day as I write I have before me a notable collection of such, every one of which I have read over and over again. I remember one called the _Anglo-Saxon Conquest of the Solar System_ or words to that effect; another of a noble kind, called _Thuka of the Moon_. I only mention the two together by way of contrast; and I remember one in which somebody or other went to Mars and went mad, but I forget the title. Be they as well written as the _First Men in the Moon_, which is or will be a classic, or as ill written as a book which I may not mention because there is a law forbidding any one to tell unpleasant truths, so long as they concern voyages to the Planets they are worth reading.

Then, also, there is the future. The _Time Machine_ is, perhaps, the chief of them; but writers who travel into the future, good or bad, are all delightful.

You may say that they are also always a little boring because they always try to teach a lesson or to prophesy. That is true, but when you have comforted yourself with the firm conviction that prophecies of this kind are invariably and wildly wrong the disturbance which they cause in your mind will disappear. I have among my most treasured books one of the early nineteenth century, called _Revelations of the Dead Alive_, in which the end of our age and its opinions upon _that_ age are presented, and it is all wrong! But it is very entertaining all the same. Most ridiculous but not least entertaining of such books are the Socialist books, the books showing humanity in the future all Socialist and going on like sticks. There is, indeed, another type of mournful Socialist book much more real and much more troubling, in which Socialism has failed, and the mass of men go on like slaves; but no matter. A prophecy (when it is scientific) is always and invariably absolutely and totally wrong:--and a great comfort it is to remember _that_!

Yet another sort of Fantastic Book is your Journey to Hell or to Heaven. There is one I have read and re-read. It is called _The Outer Darkness_. I shall never cease to read it. It is a journey to a sort of Hell, and these are as a rule more entertaining than the Heavenly journey, though why I cannot tell. Does the same hold true of Dante?

Lastly, and much the most rare and much the most valued of all are the books which are fantastic, though they cling to the present and to things known. In these I would include imaginary people in the Islands and in the Arctic, and even those which introduce half-rational beasts, for such books depend for their character not upon the matter of the fantasy, but upon the manner. There is a book called _Ninety North_, for instance, which is all about a race of people at the North Pole, but the power of the book resides not in the distance of the scene, but in the vision of the writer and in the little irony that trickles down every page.

Who collects them or preserves them--the Fantastic Books? No one, I think. They are not catalogued under a separate Heading. They puzzle the writers of Indices; they bewilder Librarians. They must be grouted out of the mass of rubbish as Pigs in the Perigord grout out truffles. There is no other way.

Also, in the Perigord, truffles are hunted with Hounds.

The Unfortunate Man

To all those who doubt the power of chance in human affairs; to all Stoics, Empiricists, Monists, Determinists, and all men whatsoever that terminate in this fashion, Greeting: Read what follows:

There was a man I used to know whose business it was to succeed in life, and who had made a profession of this from the age of nineteen. His father had left him a fortune of about £600 a year, which he still possesses, but, with that exception, he has been made by the gods a sort of puffball for their amusement, the sort of thing they throw about the room. It was before his father’s death that a determination was taken to make him the land agent at the house of a cousin, who would give him a good salary, and it was arranged, as is the custom in that trade, that he should do nothing in return but dine, smoke, and ride about. The next step was easy. He would be put into Parliament, and then, by quiet, effective speaking and continual voting, he would become a statesman, and so grow more and more famous, and succeed more and more, and marry into the fringes of one of the great families, and then die.

To this happy prospect was his future turned when he set out, not upon the old mare but upon the new Arab which his father had foolishly bought as an experiment, to visit his cousin’s home and to make the last arrangements. And note in what follows that every step in the success-business came off, and yet somehow the sum total was disappointing, and at the present moment one can very definitely say that he has not succeeded.

He set out, I say, upon the new Arab, going gently along the sunken road that leads to the Downs, when a man carrying a faggot at the end of a pitchfork seemed to that stupid beast a preternatural apparition, and it shied forward and sideways like a knight’s move, so that the Unfortunate Man fell off heavily and hurt himself dreadfully. When the Arab had done this it stood with its beautiful tail arched out, and its beautiful neck arched also, looking most pitifully at its fallen rider, and with a sadness in its eye like that of the horse in the Heliodorus. The Unfortunate Man got on again, feeling but a slight pain in the right shoulder. But what I would particularly have you know is this: that the pain has never wholly disappeared, and is perhaps a little worse now after twenty years than it has been at any previous time. Moreover, he has spent quite £350 in trying to have it cured, and he has gone to foreign watering-places, and has learnt all manner of names, how that according to one man it is rheumatism, and according to another it is suppressed gout, and according to another a lesion. But the point to him is the pain, and this endures.