Part 4

The remark refers, of course, to our English habit of relying upon experience or even mere weight of years. We are--or have been--so apt to listen to a man only when he is tottering on the verge of senility. In politics, the clean young enthusiast has been discouraged, and only the old intriguers have been respected. We have begun to take an artist seriously only when he was past his prime. Pantaloon is our national hero. Even Mr. Bernard Shaw, who ought to know better, would have politicians living for two or three hundred years to acquire wisdom, as if there was not folly enough in the world to delude a man for thrice three hundred years if he should choose to live and look for it. As for the young, they have not been given a hearing amongst us. If one of them, of more courage and energy than his fellows, pushed his way forward and told us something we did not know, we murmured ‘Oh, it’s only young So-and-So,’ and turned our backs upon him. We could afford to wait until his ideals and enthusiasms were gone, his energy sapped, and his body and mind shivering in their late autumn, before we listened to him. Such is our English attitude, which you and I have loudly deplored when we have met the sneers of men from newer countries. But actually there is a good deal to be said for it. In the last resort it does us credit.

But mark, this attitude of ours does not bring us any profit. We shall not try to defend it as a useful thing. When we are kind to the old, and put none but the aged and infirm in places of responsibility and trust, we are not better served; and we know it. The young, whom we put aside, would do the work much better. That, I fancy, is the ground of the criticism against us; but we are regarding it as an ethical question, and the very fact that our attitude works against our profit only makes our ethics shine more brightly. In order that we may give to the old, we have to deny the young some measure of power and substance, but whereas we are certainly kind to the one, it does not follow that we are cruel to the other.

We can afford to be hard upon the young, for youth itself is hard. The young are not dependent in any way upon what we think of them, for they are still convinced that the powers of the universe plotted amicably to fill them with greatness, so that whether the lesser mortals that encompass them think well or ill of them matters little. They are still living in Eternity, and, unlike the old, do not understand the need of claiming some measure of applause while there is yet time for it. Their hours are spacious, golden, crammed with promise. If we should put a young man into high office, it is unlikely that he would think any better of us: he owes us nothing; he has received only his deserts; he has got one office, but he might have had any one of a hundred others that were shining before his path. The world appears to him so fruitful of glorious opportunities that even to thrust him into a post of honour is to do him an injury by limiting his choice. And as for the young who scribble and paint and write music (and they are legion), what can be done for them? They are all geniuses whose work is above the understanding and taste of the age, and as such are beyond our ministrations, for your misunderstood young genius is perhaps the only completely independent, self-satisfied thing in the universe. What are little paragraphs in the papers, invitations to dinner, and the like, to him when he is the man for whom the century has been waiting to give it voice. He can exist, as a young friend of mine did, on stale cake and cocoa, and yet march about the world like an emperor, attended by the glittering cohorts of his vain and heated fancy. If it were possible to measure and tax youthful vanity; if young men could be imprisoned for egotism; if it were a hanging matter to imagine oneself a genius; then we might have a chance of being cruel to the young. Short of that, we cannot reach them. In order to protect ourselves from their dreadful efficiency, we may deny them place and profit, but what are our trumpery rewards to the largess of a fond imagination. So our gifts go where they are appreciated--to the old.

If our so-called cruelty is a myth, our kindness is yet real enough. When we put an old man into power, and give praise to mere persistence in living, our charity has taken no wrong turn. The very inefficiency, helplessness, and wistful vanity of the old make them unequalled objects of our Christian virtues. It would be easy enough to be cruel to them, for, unlike the young, they are at our mercy. They have lost all that goes to sustain youth, which could be careless of the world while it was still dreaming dreams, making love, and able to shout and sing, while life stepped out to the quick drumming of the blood. To the old, Eternity is no longer about them, and the far horizons have vanished. Their hours are remorselessly ticked away. There is no longer time to do everything and be everything: he will be a fortunate man who has rounded off even one little piece of work before the light goes. It is a monstrously silly fable that the aged are indifferent to praise, position and honour, that they have outgrown the little vanities of the world. The fact that a few old men have retired from the world because they were weary and infirm does not support the legend; and one has only to listen to their talk to discover how far such ancients have got beyond vanity. As for your active old men, they ceaselessly bestir themselves in pursuit of notice and applause. And well they might. With the dwindling of time and the shedding of illusions, their imagination has ceased to minister to their vanity. They require some confirmation from the world of their good opinion of themselves. Now that the far horizons, infinitely beguiling in youth, have vanished, the world itself shines more brightly against the steadily deepening background, and a dedication, a respectful hearing, a salute here, some little notice there, these become matters of some moment; they warm the heart when all other fires are being heaped with pale ashes. Consider the position of an old man. His lines are fixed and he cannot begin again; all his argosies left the quayside long ago, and if some of them do not bring him some return, he will find cold comfort now in his tales of their setting out. Now that he is no longer a potential Shakespeare, Beethoven or Lincoln, as he was in youth, your ageing man will try hard to become Deputy-Mayor of Suddleton: he will have the cash in hand. Deny him that, and he has nothing left.

This being so, what is there to be said against this habit of ours. We are not cruel to the young, but we are certainly kind to the old. Nothing could be better, for even supposing that a few youngsters here and there suffer from our neglect, they have only to grow old to remedy it, and if they have not persistence enough to keep on steadily increasing their ages, they are not the men for us. The pity is, not that we have such a habit, but that, having had it for centuries, we are now letting it go at the bidding of mere popular prejudice. Our old English habit of mind wants fortifying: we should push back the age at which a man is entitled to public notice and let our youngsters do their swaggering in private or among their brother fledglings. With some little contriving, it ought to be possible to make this a land in which every man under sixty has his future before him and no past to brood over, every office and place of profit is filled with an elder, and the cackling of gratified senile vanity is heard night and day. Make way for Justice Shallow, and give an ear to Polonius, and be content, for your Prince Hal can look after himself, and as for your Hamlets, their maladies are past your doctoring and their felicity is beyond the shouting of a mob or the solemn foolery of a committee.

THE DREAM

The afternoon sun, rather reproachfully, reillumined the page at which I was vacantly staring. I sank a little lower into my armchair, raised the book a trifle, and made a further pretence of reading. A few more words filtered into my brain; then the warm sun, the drowsy air, the still afternoon, drowned sense after sense....

I was hurrying along a dark side-street between two rows of houses, tall, featureless buildings, close-shuttered and with no lights showing. It was a vile night, of what season I could not tell, but seemingly wintry, for there were frequent icy gusts of wind snatching at the chimneys, and an occasional spatter of rain. I dashed forward, not trying to pick my way through the pools and mud, but splashing along as quickly as possible, a growing feeling of panic urging me on. I had no idea what was afoot, or at least the rational part of me knew nothing of the matter, but it was clear that some terror was behind. At last, panting for breath, I reached what I knew to be the back gate of my own house. It was open, and I had sufficient strength to press forward through a kind of courtyard of no great size, gain the house-door, which was also unbolted, and lock myself in the house. I found myself in a great draughty kitchen, in which there was no fire but only the cheerless flickering light of two candles. I knew it to be my own place; everything seemed familiar, though actually, of course, it was all strange. Behind the massive door, now securely bolted, I felt easier than I had done outside in that ill-favoured street; but even yet the fear of a hunted creature remained with me; I hardly dared to breathe, made no movement, but only listened intently.

There was nothing to be heard above the wind. Yet I still felt that the terror had not been evaded, that it was drawing nearer, though what form it would take I could not guess, having been precipitated so suddenly into the adventure. I was flying from something, of that there could be no doubt, but whether my pursuers were wild beasts, men or devils, there was no knowing. Whatever they were, it looked as if I had evaded them in the darkness; and as I was hidden away in one out of many similar houses, in a labyrinth of streets (for I knew somehow that I was in a large town, though not a modern one), it looked very unlikely that I should be discovered. I breathed more freely.

Then suddenly, to my horror, I heard above the wind the tramp of many feet coming down the street I had just left. It was not the sound of soldiers marching, nor yet the vague tumult of a moving crowd; but something between the two, the noise of men going in some sort of formation, men of set purpose. It was this then that I had been fearing, for now I fell into a dreadful panic, and hastened to put out the two candles, so that not even a tiny ray of light through the shutters should draw attention to the house. The whole row was in darkness; there was nothing apparently to mark off one house from another; I was safe enough. Probably the men did not even know that I had turned down this side street; they could not have seen me in such a black night. So I reasoned with myself, but got little comfort out of it.

Meanwhile, the sound was drawing nearer, and the crowd, or whatever it was, seemed to have fallen into a fairly regular step, as if assured of its destination. A moment later, the men burst out into a kind of marching song, which they voiced fiercely in a deep-throated unison. Two lines of the chorus remain with me yet:

‘You shall know him by his jolly red mouth, And the bushy black beard on his chin.’

the last line being repeated with startling emphasis. It seems absurd enough now, but at the time it was charged with menace, as if the very sound of it called up all manner of dreadful associations. Having fallen into such a swinging step, it appeared unlikely that the mob outside would make a halt; but to my utter dismay, as soon as the sound passed close to my window it stopped, there was a shuffling of feet, and then a great voice, the very herald of doom, cried out: ‘This is the house!’ At this, I crouched lower, and could do nothing else: there was a crawling and heaving in the pit of my stomach. I heard the outer gate being thrust open, then a stir in the courtyard, and a moment later, there came a thundering knock at the door. ‘Open the door!’ cried that terrifying voice. I could not move. Had I gone through the house, escape might have been possible; but it appeared to be one of the rules of this fearful game that I should not be able to move.

‘Open the door!’ came the cry again. Then there followed a medley of sound, shouts and yells and the trampling of feet, after which there came a series of terrific blows at the door. They were bursting it open. For a few moments it resisted the attack, but the battering increased in violence, and soon it was all over. One mighty effort, a yell of triumph, and the door came splintering in.... But only to let in a flood of yellow sunshine, the murmur of the flies, and the sight of my own room. The windy night, the dark side street, the great draughty kitchen, the besieging crowd, all had vanished, huddled away into the lumber-room of such phantasmagoria; one twist of the brain’s kaleidoscope and the strange tale was in progress, another twist and it was gone. I glanced at my watch and found that I had only been asleep for some ten minutes; I had only halted for a second near the Ivory Gate. Yet in that fraction of time, the chapter of romance, well conceived and deftly executed, was begun and ended, though the tale itself has neither beginning nor end. Surely, of all things in life, these fantastic dramas, coming and going between a few heart-beats, are the most personal and the most wonderful: ourselves alone are the authors and actors; we sketch out the scenario, fill in the dialogue, cast the parts and play them all ourselves; we it is who design and execute the scenery, clear the stage, and set the piece in motion; we it is who yawn in the stalls, shudder in the pit, and cheer from the gallery; from first to last, it is our own affair, and we alone can step forward briskly at the curtain to receive our own plaudits. Life cannot show elsewhere such a fine egotistical matter as this business of dreaming, and a dream, well done, makes even literature seem little more than its attenuated, halting shadow.

ON FILLING IN FORMS

To the uneducated, filling in forms of any kind is a considerable task. The curt official demands puzzle them; the various particulars they are asked to give do not readily come to hand; and, not least, the actual business of writing, unfamiliar as it is, seems very long and wearisome. It is no wonder then that the uneducated detest printed forms, and even extend their dislike to the official bodies that issue such things and compel honest labouring men to scratch their heads over them. But it is curious that this dislike is shared by many of us who are not entirely without letters, who can write our names and addresses and what not with tolerable facility and despatch. We have not the same reason for our distaste as the man to whom the feel of a pen is strange; and with our superior knowledge, such as it is, it would seem that we have less excuse, for at least we can understand that such things as forms may be necessary in a world given over to figures and tabulation. Our distaste for the business, then, seems irrational and nothing more nor less than a characteristically English prejudice. Where there are definite grounds for our objection, such as a mistrust of the official motive in collecting information, or a feeling that we are being compelled unnecessarily to take trouble and so forth, it is not mere prejudice; but with most of us, grounds or no grounds, the feeling remains; and whether this filling in of forms appears to be urgent and necessary or not, we approach it, according to our mood, with something like irritation or depression. There are people, of course, who do not feel in this way, people who take kindly to all the methods of the bureaucrat, who revere an official form whether it is reasonable or not, and love organisation and routine for their own sakes. When a person comes to believe that humanity will yet be saved by double-entry and the card-index system, the beauty and significance of an official form, correctly filled in and neatly docketed, is put beyond question. We imagine that to one of Mr. Sidney Webb’s admirers, the very sight of a printed form with inviting blank spaces will call forth the genuine aesthetic emotion; to such a one a form is not only desirable in itself but also beautiful because it exists as a symbol of a whole vision of life, namely, that ordered system, rigid with its hierarchy of officials in which some minds find their earthly paradise. When a man holds such doctrines he has become mystical and is past arguing with; our objection to bureaucratic paraphernalia, its forms and dockets and what not, is nothing to him but the grimacing and babbling of the half-witted. On this question of the value of forms, there are plainly two parties that can neither come to terms nor yet agree to ignore each other. We stand on each side of a great gulf, staring across, and occasionally making half-witted, menacing cries and gestures. Let us keep to our own side.

If our dislike of forms has little or nothing in common with that of the uneducated, who merely hate the unfamiliar task of recording; and if it seems to exist with sufficiently reasonable grounds, we must either bring to light reasons yet hidden or confess ourselves the victims of a stupid prejudice. It may be, of course, that we dislike forms for the same reason that our opponents, the official-minded, adore them, namely, because they can be taken as symbols of a certain kind of life for which we, on our part, have no admiration. But this will not explain our irritation at having to set down a few paltry particulars on demand: the real reason cuts more deeply, for it is a personal matter, unconnected with our social and political views. Unlike the lovers of forms, who have arid minds and are devoid of fancy, we on our side are for the most part full-minded, expansive, imaginative fellows, and in this can be found the reason for our dislike. We are asked to give an account of ourselves, but not a genuine account of ourselves, the kind we deliver to an old friend over the last few pipes and the dying fire; that kind of account we would give with pleasure at any seasonable hour to any fairly sympathetic listening official. No, our names, ages, occupations, and so forth, must be set down in various ruled columns on pieces of blue paper (usually of poor quality), which shall hereafter stand in our stead. But no piece of paper, blue, buff, or virgin white, can stand in our stead. No mere handful of facts can represent our unique and exquisite selves. If all the facts had to be given, we might be able to do something with them; they might gradually take shape into something like a personality; but to be compelled to give only a few, and those not the most essential, so that the beggarly total shall be sent abroad to represent us, this is to be subjected to a pitiless process of abstraction. It is an affront to the spirit. And it is useless to argue that the few facts demanded are sufficient for the particular official purpose for which they are required. Purpose or no purpose, we are human beings, and if we are to be made known to other human beings, let us be visible in all our colour and light. John Smith, Rosedene, Leicester Road, Cashier, 53 years of age, and the rest, is a libellous travesty of old Jack Smith, who always smokes a cherry-wood pipe and is the best amateur rose-grower in the East Midlands. Glancing at such a colourless list of petty details as--Henry Robinson, Coal Merchant’s Clerk, aged 27, Single, who would imagine it was meant to represent young Robinson who is so often seen about with the fair-headed girl from the Post Office, who has a temperament and is known to be the author of the greatest blank-verse tragedy of the time, a work so far above its age that no theatrical manager will look at it? Think of--William Shakespeare, Stratford and London, age 35, Married, Three Children, Occupation--Player; or William Wordsworth, Rydal Mount, Distributor of Stamps, Married, Church of England, and so on; these things are at once grotesque and pitiful. A man in prison is simply known by a number, and it is said that this alone tends to make him lose some of his self-respect. So, too, when we find ourselves subjected to this bowelless process, when we are bending over the printed forms and staring dully at their stupid demands, something of the same kind is happening to us as we answer question after question; we feel our personality evaporating as it were; the lines growing more angular and the colours fading; until what is left is not even a caricature, not even a flickering shadow of our real essential selves. And all the while we know that we carry with us a personality, richly deft and fantastically coloured, something as opulent as the Indies and as mysterious as China. Hence the irritation, the depression, the half instinctive revolt, the protest that does not even find words for itself. And we shall do well as the forms come snowing down upon us, to recognise the revolt and assert the protest, for it may be that when we come to the end of filling in these things, we shall find ourselves to be nothing better than the paltry details we have so often set down: we shall have lost our souls.

THREE MEN

The first is (or was) a schoolmaster. When he was in his later teens, long before I met him, he had worked for an Oxford scholarship, and he had worked so hard that a few days before the examination he was found at a late hour babbling incoherently over his books, a nervous wreck. He never took the examination and never went to Oxford, but, when he recovered, passed into a little day-school. Nevertheless, Oxford had entered into his soul. To me, he was more like an Oxford man, or what an Oxford man ought to be, than any other person I have ever met. He had all the larger and more genial traits clearly marked, with just the least delicious hint of pleasant caricature, like a good actor presenting a character-study of a younger Don. There were little peculiar traits too, as of some mythical college, of a ghostly Balliol or an unsubstantial ‘House.’ It may have been the result of deliberate cultivation, or it may have been the gift of one of the younger gods, a compensation for that disastrous breakdown; I do not know, but it was harmless enough, and delicate fooling for a spectator.