Part 19

“By the hazard of birth,” I should reply, “or by the equally great hazard of marriage. With us, when you happen to have the same father and mother, or even the same uncle, or when you happen to be married, it is generally considered that you may abandon the forms of politeness and the expressions of sympathy, and that you have an unlimited right of criticism.”

“I should have thought precisely the contrary,” he would probably say, being a lunatic.

The lunatic having been allowed to depart, I should like to ask the Smiths--middle-aged Mr. Smith and Mrs. Smith--a question somewhat in these terms: “What is the uppermost, the most frequent feeling in your minds about this community which you call ‘home’? You needn’t tell me that you love it, that it is the dearest place on earth, that no other place could ever have quite the same, etc., etc. I know all about that. I admit it. Is not your uppermost, commonest feeling a feeling that it is rather a tedious, tiresome place, and that the human components of it are excellent persons, but. . . and that really you have had a great deal to put up with?”

In reply, do not be sentimental, be honest.. . .

Such being your impression of home (not your deepest, but your most obvious impression), can it fairly be stated that the home of the Smiths is a success?

*****

There are two traits which have prevented the home of the Smiths from being a complete success, from being that success which both Mr. and Mrs. Smith fully intended to achieve when they started, and which young John and young Mary fully intend to achieve when they at length start without having decided precisely _how_ they will do better than their elders. The first is British independence of action, which causes the owner of a British temperament to seek to combine the advantages of anarchical solitude with the advantages of a community: impossible feat! In the home of the Smiths each room is a separate Norman fortress, sheltering an individuality that will be untrammelled or perish.

And the second is the unchangeable conviction at the bottom of every Briton’s heart that formal politeness in intimacy is insincere. This is especially true of the Midlands and the North. When I left the Midlands and went South, I truly thought, for several days, that Southerners were a hypocritical lot, just because they said, “If you wouldn’t mind moving,” instead of “Now, then, out of it!” Gruffness and the malicious satisfaction of candid gratuitous criticism are the root of the evil in the home of the Smiths. And the consequences of them are very much more serious than the Smiths in their gruffness imagine.

III--SPENDING-AND GETTING VALUE

I now allude to those financial harassments which have been a marked feature of the home founded and managed by Mr. Smith, who has been eternally worried about money. The children have grown up in this atmosphere of fiscal anxiety, accustomed to the everlasting question whether ends will meet; accustomed to the everlasting debate whether a certain thing can be afforded. And nearly every house in the street where the Smiths live is in the same case.

Why is this? Is it that incomes are lower and commodities and taxes higher in England than in other large European countries? No; the contrary is the fact. In no large European country will money go so far as in England. Is it that the English race is deficient in financial skill? England is the only large European country which genuinely balances its national budget every year and regularly liquidates its debts.

I wish to hint to Mr. Smith that he differs in one very important respect from the Mr. Smith of France, and the Mr. Smith of Germany, his only serious rivals. In the matter of money, he always asks himself, not how little he can spend, but how much he can spend. At the end of a lifetime the result is apparent. Or when he has a daughter to marry off, the result is apparent. In England economy is a virtue. In France, for example, it is merely a habit.

******

Mr. Smith is extravagant. He has an extravagant way of looking at life. On his own plane Mr. Smith is a haughty nobleman of old days; he is royal; he is a born hangman of expense.

“What?” cries Mr. Smith, furiousi. “Me extravagant! Why, I have always been most careful! I have had to be, with my income!”

He may protest. But I am right. The very tone with which he says: “With my income!” gives Mr. Smith away. What is the matter with Mr. Smith’s income? Has it been less than the average? Not at all. The only thing that is the matter with Mr. Smith’s income is that he has never accepted it as a hard, prosaic fact. He has always pretended that it was a magic income, with which miracles could be performed. He has always been trying to pour two pints and a gill out of a quart pot. He has always hoped that luck would befall him. On a hundred and fifty a year he ever endeavoured to live as though he had two hundred. And so on, as his income increased.

When he married he began by taking the highest-rented house that he could possibly afford, instead of the cheapest that he could possibly do with, and he has been going on ever since in the same style--creating an effect, cutting a figure.

This system of living, the English system, has indubitable advantages. It encourages enterprise and prevents fossilisation. It gives dramatic interest to existence. And, after all, though at the age of 50 Mr. Smith possesses little beside a houseful of furniture and his insurance policy, he can say that he has had something for his money every year and every day of the year. He can truthfully say, when charged with having “eaten his cake,” that a cake is a futile thing till it is eaten.

The French system has disadvantages. The French Mr. Smith does not try to make money, he tries merely to save it. He shrinks from the perils of enterprise. He does not want to create. He frequently becomes parsimonious, and he may postpone the attempt to get some fun out of life until he is past the capacity for fun.

On the other hand, the financial independence with which his habits endow him is a very precious thing. One finds it everywhere in France; it is instinctive in the attitude of the average man. That chronic tightness has often led Mr. Smith to make unpleasing compromises with his dignity; such compromises are rarer in France. Take a person into your employ in France, even the humblest, and you will soon find out how the habit of a margin affects the demeanour of the employed. Personally, I have often been inconvenienced by this in France. But I have liked it. After all, one prefers to be dealing with people who can call their souls their own.

Mr. Smith need not go to the extremes of the extremists in France, but he might advantageously go a long way towards them. Pie ought to reconcile himself definitely to his income. He ought to cease his constant attempt to perform miracles with his income. It is really not pleasant for him to be fixed as he is at the age of fifty, worried because he has to provide wedding presents for his son and his daughter. And how can he preach thrift to his son John? John knows his father.

There is another, and an even more ticklish, point. It being notorious that Mr. Smith spends too much money, let us ask whether Mr. Smith gets value for the money he spends. I must again compare with France, whose homes I know. Now, as regards solid, standing comfort, there is no comparison between Mr. Smith’s home and the home of the French Mr. Smith. Our Mr. Smith wins. His standard is higher. He has more room, more rooms, more hygiene, and more general facilities for putting himself at his ease.

*****

But these contrivances, once acquired, do not involve a regular outlay, except so far as they affect rent. And in the household budget rent is a less important item than food and cleansing. Now, the raw materials of the stuff necessary to keep a household healthily alive cost more in France than in England. And the French Mr. Smith’s income is a little less than our Mr. Smith’s. Yet the French Mr. Smith, while sitting on a less comfortable chair in a smaller room, most decidedly consumes better meals than our Mr. Smith. In other words, he lives better.

I have often asked myself, in observing the family life of Monsieur and Madame Smith: “How on earth do they do it?” Only one explanation is possible. They understand better how to run a house economically in France than we do in England.

Now Mrs. Smith in her turn cries: “Me extravagant?”

Yes, relatively, extravagant! It is a hard saying, but, I believe, a true one. Extravagance is in the air of England. A person always in a room where there is a slight escape of gas does not smell the gas--until he has been out for a walk and returned. So it is with us.

As for you, Mrs. Smith, I would not presume to say in what you are extravagant. But I guarantee that Madame Smith would “do it on less.”

The enormous periodical literature now devoted largely to hints on household management shows that we, perhaps unconsciously, realise a defect. You don’t find this literature in France. They don’t seem to need it.

IV--THE PARENTS

Let us look at Mr. and Mrs. Smith one evening when they are by themselves, leaving the children entirely out of account. For in addition to being father and mother, they are husband and wife. Not that I wish to examine the whole institution of marriage--people who dare to do so deserve the Victoria Cross! My concern is simply with the effects of the organisation of the home--on marriage and other things.

Well, you see them together. Mr. Smith has done earning money for the day, and Mrs. Smith has done spending it. They are at leisure to enjoy this home of theirs. This is what Mr. Smith passes seven hours a day at business for. This is what he got married for. This is what he wanted when he decided to take Mrs. Smith, if he could get her. These hours ought to be the flower of their joint life. How are these hours affected by the organisation of the home?

I will tell you how Mrs. Smith is affected. Mrs. Smith is worried by it. And in addition she is conscious that her efforts are imperfectly appreciated, and her difficulties unrealised. As regards the directing and daily recreation of the home, Mr. Smith’s attitude on this evening by the domestic hearth is at best one of armed neutrality. His criticism is seldom other than destructive. Mr. Smith is a strange man. If he went to a lot of trouble to get a small holding under the Small Holdings Act, and then left the cultivation of the ground to another person not scientifically trained to agriculture he would be looked upon as a ninny. When a man takes up a hobby, he ought surely to be terrifically interested in it. What is Mr. Smith’s home but his hobby?

*****

He has put Mrs. Smith in to manage it. He himself, once a quarter, discharges the complicated and delicate function of paying the rent. All the rest, the little matters, such as victualling and brightening--trifles, nothings!--he leaves to Mrs. Smith. He is not satisfied with Mrs. Smith’s activities, and he does not disguise the fact. He is convinced that Mrs. Smith spends too much, and that she is not businesslike. He is convinced that running a house is child’s play compared to what _he_ has to do. Now, as to Mrs. Smith being unbusinesslike, is Mr. Smith himself businesslike? If he is, he greatly differs from his companions in the second-class smoker. The average office and the average works are emphatically not run on business lines, except in theory. Daily experience proves this. The businesslikeness of the average business man is a vast and hollow pretence.

Besides, who could expect Mrs. Smith to be businesslike? She was never taught to be businesslike. Mr. Smith was apprenticed, or indentured, to his vocation. But Mrs. Smith wasn’t. Mrs. Smith has to feed a family, and doesn’t know the principles of diet. She has to keep children in health, and couldn’t describe their organs to save her life. She has to make herself and the home agreeable to the eye, and knows nothing artistic about colour or form.

I am an ardent advocate of Mrs. Smith. The marvel is not that Mrs. Smith does so badly, but that she does so well. If women were not more conscientious than men in their duties Mr. Smith’s home would be more amateurish than it is, and Mr. Smith’s “moods” more frequent than they are. For Mrs. Smith is amateurish. Example: Mrs. Smith is bothered to death by the daily question, What can we have for dinner? She splits her head in two in order to avoid monotony. Mrs. Smith’s _répertoire_ probably consists of about 50 dishes, and if she could recall them all to her mind at once her task would be much simplified. But she can’t think of them when she wants to think of them. Supposing that in Mrs. Smith’s kitchen hung a card containing a list of all her dishes, she could run her eyes over it and choose instantly what dishes would suit that day’s larder. Did you ever see such a list in Mrs. Smith’s kitchen? No. The idea has not occurred to Mrs. Smith!

I say also that to spend money efficiently is quite as difficult as to earn it efficiently. Any fool can, somehow, earn a sovereign, but to get value for a sovereign in small purchases means skill and immense knowledge. Mr. Smith has never had experience of the difficulty of spending money efficiently. Most of Mr. Smith’s payments are fixed and mechanical. Mrs. Smith is the spender. Mr. Smith chiefly exercises his skill as a spender in his clothes and in tobacco. Look at the result. Any showy necktie shop and furiously-advertised tobacco is capable of hood-winking Mr. Smith.

*****

In further comparison of their respective “jobs” it has to be noted that Mrs. Smith’s is rendered doubly difficult by the fact that she is always at close quarters with the caprices of human nature. Mrs. Smith is continually bumping up against human nature in various manifestations. The human butcher-boy may arrive late owing to marbles, and so the dinner must either be late or the meat undercooked; or Mr. Smith, through too much smoking, may have lost his appetite, and veal out of Paradise wouldn’t please him! Mrs. Smith’s job is transcendently delicate.

In fine, though Mrs. Smith’s job is perhaps not quite so difficult as she fancies it to be, it is much more difficult than Mr. Smith fancies it to be. And if it is not as well done as she thinks, it is much better done than Mr. Smith thinks. But she will never persuade Mr. Smith that he is wrong until Mr. Smith condescends to know what he is talking about in the discussion of household matters. Mr. Smith’s opportunities of criticism are far too ample; or, at any rate, he makes use of them unfairly, and not as a man of honour. Supposing that Mrs. Smith finished all her work at four o’clock, and was free to stroll into Mr. Smith’s place of business and criticise there everything that did not please her! (It is true that she wouldn’t know what she was talking about; but neither does Mr. Smith at home; at home Mr. Smith finds pride in not knowing what he is talking about.) Mr. Smith would have a bit of a “time” between four and six.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith are united by a genuine affection. But their secret attitudes on the subject of home management cause that affection, by a constant slight friction, to wear thin. It must be so. And it will be so until (a) Mr. Smith deigns to learn the business of his home; (b) Mr. Smith ceases to expect Mrs. Smith to perform miracles; (c) Mrs. Smith ceases to be an amateur in domestic economy--i. e., until domestic economy becomes the principal subject in the upper forms of the average girls’ school.

At present the organisation of the home is an agency against the triumph of marriage as an institution.

V--HAMIT’S POINT OF VIEW

You may have forgotten young Harry Smith, whom I casually mentioned in my first section, the schoolboy of fifteen. I should not be surprised to hear that you had forgotten him. He is often forgotten in the home of the Smiths., Compared with Mr. Smith, the creator of the home, or with the lordly eldest son John, who earns his own living and is nearly engaged, or with Mary, who actually is engaged, young Harry is unimportant. Still, his case is very interesting, and his own personal impression of the home of the Smiths must be of value. .

Is Harry Smith happy in the home? Of course, one would not expect him to be perfectly happy. But is he as happy as circumstances in themselves allow? My firm answer is that he is not. I am entirely certain that on the whole Harry Smith regards home as a fag, a grind, and a bore. Mr. Smith, on reading these lines, is furious, and Mrs. Smith is hurt. What! Our dear Harry experiences tedium and disappointment with his dear parents? Nonsense!

The fact is, no parents will believe that their children are avoidably unhappy. It is universally agreed nowadays, that children in the eighteenth century, and in the first half of the nineteenth, had a pretty bad time under the sway of their elders. But the parent of those epochs would have been indignant at any accusation of ill-treatment. He would have called his sway beneficent and his affection doting. The same with Mr. and Mrs. Smith! Now, I do not mean, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, that you crudely ill-treat your son, tying him to posts, depriving him of sleep, or pulling chestnuts out of the fire with his fingers. (See reports of S.P.C.C.) A thousand times, no! You are softhearted. Mrs. Smith is occasionally somewhat too soft-hearted. Still, I maintain that you ill-treat Harry in a very subtle, moral way, by being fundamentally unjust to him in your own minds.

Just look at your Harry, my excellent and conscientious Mr. Smith. He is all alive there, a real human being, not a mechanical doll; he has feelings just like yours, only, perhaps, more sensitive. He finds himself in a world which--well, of which the less said the better. _You_ know what the world is, Mr. Smith, and you have often said what you know. He is in this world, and he can’t get out of it. You have started him on the dubious adventure, and he has got to go through with it. And what is the reason of his being here? Did you start him out of a desire to raise citizens for the greatest of empires? Did you imagine he would enjoy it hugely? Did you act from a sense of duty to the universe? None of these things, Mr. Smith! Your Harry is merely here because you thought that Mrs. Smith was somehow charmingly different from other girls. He is a consequence of your egotistic desire to enlarge your borders, of your determination to have what you wanted. Every time you cast eyes on him he ought to remind you what a self-seeking and consequence-scorning person you are, Mr. Smith. And not only is he from no choice or wish of his own in a world as to which the most powerful intellects are still arguing whether it is tragic or ridiculous; but he is unarmed for the perils of the business. He is very ignorant and very inexperienced, and he is continually passing through disconcerting modifications.

These are the facts, my dear sir. You cannot deny that you, for your own satisfaction, have got Harry into a rather fearful mess. Do you constantly make the effort to be sympathetic to this helpless victim of your egotism? You do not. And what is worse, to quiet your own consciences, both you and Mrs. Smith are for ever pouring into his ear a shocking--I won’t call it “lie”--perversion of the truth. You are always absurdly trying to persuade him that the obligation is on his side. Not a day wears to night but Mrs. Smith expresses to Harry her conviction that by good behaviour he ought to prove his _gratitude_ to you for being such a kind father.

And you talk to him in the same strain of Mrs. Smith. The sum of your teaching is an insinuation--often more than an insinuation--that you have conferred a favour on Harry, Supposing that some one pitched you into the Ship Canal--one of the salubrious reaches near Warrington, Mr. Smith--and then clumsily dragged you half-way out, and punctured his efforts by a reiterated statement that gratitude to him ought to fill your breast, how would you feel?

*****

Things are better than they were, but the general attitude of the parent to the child is still fundamentally insincere, and it mars the success of the home, for it engenders in the child a sense of injustice. Do you fancy that Harry is for an instant deceived by the rhetoric of his parents? Not he! Children are very difficult to deceive, and they are horribly frank to themselves. It is quite bad enough for Harry to be compelled to go to school. Harry, however, has enough sense to perceive that he must go to school. But when his parents begin to yarn that he ought to be _glad_ to go to school, that he ought to _enjoy_ the privilege of solving quadratic equations and learning the specific gravities of elements, he is quite naturally alienated.

He does not fail to observe that in a hundred things the actions of his parents contradict their precepts. When, being a boy, he behaves like a hoy, and his parents affect astonishment and disgust, he knows it is an affectation. When his father, irritated by a superabundance of noise, frowns and instructs Harry to get away for he is tired of the sight of him, Harry is excusably affronted in his secret pride.

These are illustrations of the imperfect success of the Smiths’ home as an organisation for making Harry happy. Useless for Mr. Smith to argue that it is “all for Harry’s own good.” He would simply be aggravating his offence. Discipline, the enforcement of regulations, is necessary for Harry. I strongly favour discipline. But discipline can be practised with sympathy or without sympathy; with or without the accompaniment of hypocritical remarks that deceive no one; with or without odious assumptions of superiority and philanthropy.

I trust that young John and young Mary will take note, and that their attitude to _their_ Harrys will be, not: “You ought to be glad you’re alive,” but: “We thoroughly sympathise with your difficulties. We quite agree that these rules and prohibitions and injunctions are a nuisance for you, but they will save you trouble later, and we will be as un-cast-iron as we can.” Honesty is the best policy.

VI--THE FUTURE

The cry is that the institution of the home is being undermined, and that, therefore, society is in the way of perishing. It is stated that the home is insidiously attacked, at one end of the scale, by the hotel and restaurant habit, and, at the other, by such innovations as the feeding-of-school-children habit. We are asked to contemplate the crowded and glittering dining-rooms of the Midland, the Carlton, the Adelphi, on, for instance, Christmas Night, when, of all nights, people ought! to be on their own hearths, and we are told: “It has come to this. This! is the result of the craze for pleasure! Where is the home now?”

To which my reply would be that the home remains just about where it was. The spectacular existence of a few great hotels has never mirrored the national life. Is the home of the Smiths, for example, being gradually overthrown by the restaurant habit? The restaurant habit will only strengthen the institution of the home. The most restaurant-loving people on the face of the earth are the French, and the French home is a far more powerful, more closely-knit organisation than our own. Why! Up to last year a Frenchman of sixty could not marry without the consent of his parents, if they happened to be alive. I wonder what the Smiths would say to that as an example of the disintegration of the home by the restaurant habit!