Chapter 5

A girl or boy, who has no occupation, other than the occupation of mere amusement, who has no Ideal; who has no interest other than the interest of passing the time, is not only useless, but detestable as a member of human society, while his old age is of unhappiness the most unhappy. For what is Old Age worth if it has no "memories"; and what are "memories" worth if they are not memories of having lived one's life to the full? To me, to live one's own life is to live--or, perhaps I ought to say, to strive to live--all those ideals which Reflection has shown you to be good, and Nature has given you the power to accomplish. That to me is the fight to live your own life--the fight to realise yourself, to live the "best" that is in you. For a man and woman must be able to hold up their heads high, not only face to face with the world, but face to face with their own selves, before they can say that Life is happy, that Life has been worth while. The tragic cases are those who cannot live their own lives because the lives of other people demanded their sacrifice, a sacrifice which cannot be withheld without loss of self-respect, of that good fellowship with your own "soul" which some people call Conscience.

This sacrifice is generally a woman's sacrifice. You may see the victims of it in any church, in any town, at almost any hour of the day. They are grey-haired, and sad, and grim, and they hold the more tenaciously to the promise of happiness in After Life because they have sacrificed, or permitted to pass by, the happiness of this. To a great extent it is a "Victorian" sacrifice. They are victims of that passing Belief which was convinced that a girl of gentle birth ought to administer to her parents, pay calls, uphold the Church, and do a little needlework all her life, unless some man came along to marry her and give her emancipation. The happiness which goes with a career, even if that career fails, is saving daughters from this parentally imposed "atrophy." They are learning that to live one's own life is not necessarily to live a "bad" life, but a "fuller" life. Thus the young are teaching the Old People wisdom--the knowledge that youth has its Declaration of Rights no less than Middle Age.

_Autumn Sowing_

I sometimes think the man who first said that "the road to hell is paved with good intentions" must have said it in November. The autumn is full of good intentions--just as spring is full of holiday and hope, and summer of heat and _dolce far niente_. But, just as the first warm day in June fills you with a physical vitality which you feel convinced that you must live for ever, so autumn makes you realise that life is fleeting and the mind has not yet reached its full development, nor intellectual ambition its complete fruition. Perhaps it is the touch of winter in the air which braces your mind and soul and gives you the impression that, given the long autumn evenings over the fire undisturbed, your brain will soon be capable of tackling the removal of mountains. If you are unutterably silly (as so many of us are--alas! for the world's sanity; but thank heaven for the world's humour!) you will plan a whole curriculum of intellectual labour for the quiet evenings over the fireside. Oh, the books--good books, I mean--you will read! Oh, the subjects you will study! Perhaps you will learn Russian, or maybe something strange and out-of-the-ordinary, like Arabic! You dream of the moment when, speaking quite casually, you will inform your friends that you are reading the whole of the novels of Balzac; that you are studying for the law and hope to pass your "Final" "just for the fun of the thing"; that you are learning Persian, and intend to retranslate the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám and discover other Eastern philosophers. In fact, there is no end to the things you intend to do in the autumn evenings over the fireside when your labours of the day are over. Briefly, you are going to "cultivate your mind"; and when people talk about "cultivating their minds," they usually regard the mind as a kind of intellectual allotment which anyone can till--given determination, an easy-chair near a big fire, and the long, long autumn evenings.

_What You Really Reap_

But alas! all you do . . . all you _really_ do, is . . . Well, as I said before, the man who first said that "the way to hell is paved with good intentions," must have said it in the autumn, or perhaps, in the spring, when he realised how few of the good intentions he had lived up to. Well, maybe the most enjoyable part of going to hell is paving the way with, as it were, your back turned to your eventual goal. And sometimes I rather fancy, in spite of all the moralist may say, the paving-stones of good intent that you have laid on your way to perdition will be counted in your favour, and the Recording Angel will place them to your credit--which she can't do if, metaphorically speaking, you have not paved a way anywhere, but just been content to live snugly on the little plot upon which Fate planted you at the beginning, and you were too dully inert either to cultivate hot-house orchids thereon or even let it become overgrown with wild oats and roses. And I think sometimes that on good intentions we eventually mount to heaven. I certainly know that the good intentions of the early autumn make me very nearly forgive the cycle of the seasons which robs me of summer and its joys. And after all, there is always this to be said for a good intention, nobody knows, yourself least of all, if you may not one day fulfil it. That is what makes dreaming so exciting. In your dreams you _have_ learnt Russian; you _have_ read all the novels of Balzac; you _will_ be able to understand Sir Oliver Lodge when he leaves the realms of spiritualism and talks about the stars. And maybe--who knows?--by the time that your dreams have materialised into reality and spring has just arrived, you _will_ be able to tell Lenin, if you happen to meet him, that you have "seen the daughters of the lawyer and lost the pen of your aunt"; and you _will_ have read the books of Paul de Kock because you couldn't struggle through Balzac; and you _will_ know the composition of the moon and the impossibility of there being a man in it--which, after all, is a far greater achievement than having played countless games of bridge, learnt sixty-two steps of the tango, evolved a racing system, and arrived at loving the Germans, isn't it?

_Autumn Determination_

But unless your determination be something Napoleonic, you won't have achieved very much more than this. It has all been so invigorating and delightful to contemplate; and the way of your decline has been so cosy and so comfortable, and it has so often ended in a glass of hot "toddy" and so to bed. You had stage-managed your self-education so beautifully. You had brought the most comfortable easy-chair right up to the fire; you had put on your "smoking"--not that garment almost as uncomfortable as evening-dress, but that coat which is made of velvet, or flannel, softly lined with silk and deliciously padded: you had brought out all your books--the "First Steps to Russian," "How to appreciate Balzac," "Introduction to Astronomy"--put your feet on the fender, cut the end of your best cigar. Everything simply invited peace and comfort and an intellectual feast. Then, just _one more_ glimpse at the evening paper--and you would begin . . . oh yes! you _would begin_! And so you read about the threatened strike; the murder in East Ham; the leading article, the marriage of Lady Fitzclarence-Forsooth to--well, whoever she married, the funny remark the drunken woman made to the judge when he fined her two-and-six for kissing a policeman; Mr. Justice Darling's latest _mot_; the racing, the forthcoming fashions; the advertisement of Back-Ache Pills; Mr. C. B. Cochran's praise of his own productions, Mr. Selfridge's praise of his own shop; the "Wants," the "Situations Vacant," the . . . Then somebody woke you up to ask if you were asleep . . . which, of course, you _weren't_ . . . Well . . . well . . . It is past midnight! So what can one do now? What _can_ one do? Why, go to bed, of course. Another autumn evening is over. But then, there are plenty more . . . oh, plenty more. "Good-night."

_Two Lives_

I often wish that we could all of us lead two lives. I don't mean I wish that we could live twice as long--though, in reality, it would come to the same thing. But I would like to live the two lives which I want to lead, and only do lead in a sort of patchwork-quilt kind of way. I would like to live a life in which I could wander gipsy-like over the face of the globe--seeing everything, doing everything, meeting everybody. I should also like to live a purely vegetable existence in some remote country village--sleeping away my life in happy domesticity, away from the crowd, free from care, tranquil, and at peace. I suppose that, even as dreams, they are only too futile--but they are very pleasant dreams nevertheless. I know that they _are_ dreams--since I am quite sure that the reality would be far less satisfactory than it seems in anticipation. There is "always a fly in the amber" as the saying goes, and my experience is, that the truth more nearly resembles a great big fly with a tiny speck of amber sticking somewhere to its back. For in our dream voyages we overlook the fleas, the mosquitoes, the hunt for lodgings, the struggle with languages, the hundred-and-one disturbances of the spirit which are inseparable from real voyages of any kind and bombard our inner tranquillity at every turn. In the same way, when we gaze at the peaceful landscape of some hidden-away English countryside, we yearn to live among such peacefulness, forgetting that, though life in the country may _look_ peaceful to the stranger's eye, experience teaches us that gossip and scandal and the continual agitation round and round the trivial--an agitation so great that the trivial becomes colossal--at last rob life of anything resembling _dolce far niente_ mid country lanes and in the shadow of some country church. In fact, it seems to me that the emotion which we seek--the emotion of strange wonderplaces, the emotion of utter restfulness which falls upon the soul like a benediction--do come to us from time to time, but at the most unexpected moments and in the most unlikely places. They come--and we hug them in our memory like precious thoughts. And sometimes we try to reproduce them artificially, only to discover that "never anything twice" is one of the lessons of life--and quite the last one we ever learn, even if we ever do learn it--which is doubtful.

_Backward and Forward_

Thus for the most part, things look most beautiful when we anticipate them, or as we look back upon them in memory over the fireside. For distance lends enchantment, not only to most views, but also to memories and love. As, metaphorically, we stand on the Mount of Olives gazing down at the city of Jerusalem, thinking of all that tiny corner of the earth has meant to men and women, we forget--as we look back--the beastly little mosquito which bit us on the nose, the interruption or our companion who wondered what the stones might tell us if they could only speak. So (also metaphorically), as we set our faces towards the Holy City, filled with the anticipation of those sublime thoughts and emotions which would surge through our souls when we eventually arrived there, we were happy in our ignorance of the fact that, when we did arrive, we felt unutterably dirty and our head ached, and the corn on our little toe felt more like a cancer than a corn! Meanwhile, the emotion of the soul, which we expected to find upon the Mount of Olives, has sometimes come to us quite unexpectedly while standing in the middle of Clapham Common in the moonlight; and that glorious spirit of adventure, which to us means "travel," we have felt riding on a motor-bike through the New Forest at nightfall when the forest seemed full of pixies and the fading sunset was red and grey and golden like the transformation scene of a pantomime. But alas! the next day we found the forest unromantic, and Clapham Common looked indescribably common in the morning sunlight. Our mood had vanished, and although we tried to reproduce the same uplifting emotion the following evening, we couldn't--we had a headache and the gnats were about. So, although I often yearn to live _two_ lives--one full of travel and adventure, and the other peacefully over the fireside mid the peace and beauty of the country--I am quite sure that, were my wish granted, I should find both lives just the same mixture of unexpected happiness and unanticipated disappointment which I find this one to be, yet still go smiling on. Very rarely the Time and the Place and the Mood. But when they do happen to come together--well, life is so wonderful and so beautiful that to throw in the "Loved one" too would seem like gilding the rose--a heaven worth sacrificing every stolen happiness in life for.

_When?_

One of the greatest--perhaps _the_ greatest--problems which parents have to face is--when to tell their children the truth about sexual life; how to tell it; how little to tell--how much. And most parents, alas! are content to drift--to trust to luck! They themselves have got through fairly well; the probabilities are, then, that their children will get through fairly well too. So they, metaphorically speaking, fold their hands and listen, and, when any part of the truth breaks through the reticence of intimate conversation, they shake their heads solemnly, strive to look shocked--and often are; or else they make a joke of it--believing that their children regard the question in the same reasonable light as they do themselves. But ignorance is never reasonable, and half ignorance is even more excited. There is a "mystery" somewhere, and ignorant youth is hot after its solution. And the "mystery" is solved for them in a dozen ways--all more or less dirty and untrue. Better far be too frank, so long as your frankness isn't the frankness of coarse levity, than not to be frank enough. The reticence of parents towards their children in this matter has turned many a young life of brilliant promise into a life-long hell. We don't _see_ this hell for the most part, and, because we don't see it, we fondly believe that it does not exist--or, if it does exist, that it exists so rarely as scarcely to demand more than a passing condemnation and a sigh. We hear a great deal about the Hidden Plague. We hear of the 80,000 cases of syphilis which are registered every year in the United Kingdom. But we don't know any individual sufferer--or we _think_ we don't; and so, although we take the figure as an acknowledged fact, we nevertheless don't realise it--and in any case, it isn't a nice subject of debate, and, should the word be even mentioned in the presence of our dear, dear children, we would ask the speaker to leave the house immediately and never again return! I, too, was one of these poor fools--although I have no children to suffer from my foolishness. I knew it was a fact, but like others I didn't realise that fact--like we didn't realise the horror and filth and tragedy of war, we who never were "out there"; we who never "went over the top." But lately I have had to visit a friend in one of the largest lock hospitals in London. And one day I was obliged to walk through the waiting-room where the men are forced to sit until they are summoned to see the doctor. And truly I was appalled! There were _hundreds of them_ of all ages--from 16 to 60. They were not the serious cases, of course, and we should pass them in the street without realising that they were any but physically sound men, often of a very splendid type. But each one represented a blighted life--a future robbed of splendid promise, a present of misery and unhappiness stalking through the world like shame beneath a happy mask. I tell you, it brought the truth home to me in a way mere figures and statistics could never do. As I said before, I was appalled: I was also very angry. For I knew that ignorance was at the bottom of many of these sad tragedies--the criminal reticence of the people _who know_, too mock-modest to discuss openly a fact of life which, beyond all other facts of life, should be spoken of bluntly, honestly, therefore decently and cleanly.

_The Futile Thought_

Too many fond parents like to imagine that their children know nothing at all of sexual matters--that they are clean and innocent and ignorant, and that, as long as they can be kept so, they will not run into danger and disgrace. But no parent really knows how much or how little their children know of this matter. Children have ears and imagination, and once they know anything at all--which is at any time from eight years of age, sometimes, alas! earlier--they should be told everything, not in a nasty, furtive fashion, glossing over the ugly part and elevating the decent side until it is out of all proportion to the truth, but quietly, with dignity, laying stress on the fact that sexual morality is not a thing of religion and of God, but of self-respect, of care for the coming generation, and, especially, of that great love which one day will come into their lives. It should not be called a "sin"; at the same time it should not be laughed at and made the subject of a whispered jest. Sexual laxity should be treated in the same way as dishonesty and untruthfulness--a sin against oneself, against the beauty of one's own soul, and against those who believe in us and love us and are our world. Children should be taught to respect the dignity of their own bodies, of their own minds and soul; not by leaving them in half-ignorance, but by telling them everything, and telling them it in the right way--which is the clean and truthful way.

_The London Season_

If only the people who repeat the words of wisdom uttered by philosophers lived as if they believed them, how much happier the world would be! It is, however, so much easier to give, or to repeat, advice, than to follow it, isn't it? Conventionality is far stronger than common sense, and a fixed habit more powerful than a revolution. Besides, most people realise that to give advice is a much more impressive ceremony than merely to receive it. And I think that the majority of people would far sooner look _impressive_ than be _wise_. The _appearance_ of a thing sometimes pleases them far more than the thing itself. Besides, to give advice is a rather pleasant proceeding, and those who habitually indulge in it seem incapable of discouragement. They will inform the "rolling stone" that if he continues his unresisting methods he will gather no moss, but the rolling stone usually continues to roll merrily onward. They will protest to the ignorant that "to be good is to be happy," but very few of them will go out of their way to do good, if, by being "bad," they can snatch a personal advantage without anybody being any the wiser. "Life would be endurable if it were not for its pleasures," they declare in the face of a pile of social invitations. Yet they still endure that treadmill of entertainments which makes up a London season, only showing their real feelings by moaning to themselves in the process. They freely acknowledge that very few of these entertainments really entertain, but to miss being seen at them would be to risk a disaster which they would not dare to take. So they go wearily smiling to amusements which don't amuse, to dances which are too crowded to dance at, to dinner parties at which they pay in boredom for the food they eat; to "at homes" which are the most "homeless" things imaginable--travelling here and there, from one entertainment to another which proves as unutterably dull as the first one. Not content with these things, they must perforce be seen at the Opera--although they _hate_ music; visit all the exhibitions of art--when Maude Goodeman is their favourite painter; talk cleverly of books which they would never read did not people talk about them, and generally follow for three long months a time-table of "enjoyment" which very few of them really enjoy. In the meanwhile, the only affairs which give them pleasure are the little impromptu ones arranged on the spur of the moment between friends.

Of course I am not speaking of the débutante. She, "sweet young thing," always enjoys any entertainment at which there are plenty of young men and ices. Nor, judging from observation, do I include among those who willingly go through the three months' hard labour of a London season those henna haired ladies--thickening from anno domini--who seem perfectly happy in the delusion that their juvenile antics are still deliciously girlish, and whose décolleté dresses would seem to declare to the world that, though their faces may begin to show the wear and tear of life, their plump backs don't look a day over twenty-five. The one is so young that she will enjoy anything which requires the endurance of youth. The other is of that age which is happy hugging to its bosom the adage that a woman can't possibly look a day older than champagne makes her feel.

No, the person whose life of amusement I pity is the person who accepts invitations because she daren't refuse them. If the world doesn't see her in all places where she _should be_ seen, the world always presumes her to be dead--and people would rather die in reality than live to be forgotten. But what a price they have to pay to keep their memories green.

No, as I said before, the only entertainments which people really enjoy are those at which they can be perfectly natural--natural, because they are perfectly happy. Rarely are they fixed affairs, advertised weeks beforehand. Mostly are they unpremeditated---delightful little impromptu amusements made up of people who really desire to meet each other. Large entertainments are almost invariably dull. Upon them hangs the heavy atmosphere or a hostess "paying off old debts in _one_." The only really amusing part of them is to watch the amazement on the faces of one half of the guests that the other half is there at all! That is invariably funny. In the big affairs the chef and the champagne are the real hosts of the evening. If England went "dry," I think the London season would join the dodo--people couldn't possibly endure it on ginger "pop" and cider. But champagne and a good chef could, I believe, make even a Church Congress seem jolly. They only bring an illusion of happiness--but what's the odds? A London season is but an illusion of joy after all.

_Christmas_