Part 5
To inquire how this has happened would carry us beyond even the liberal limits of this discussion. It may be another instance of sheer human perversity, or in other words, the instinct of other people to do what we don’t like. The waltz may be a concession to human weakness, figure and organisation and rhythmic variety having been found to overtax the intelligence of the normal dancer. Some would say that the real point is not so much the rhythm as the fact of dancing in couples--the romantic interest, in short. There is no time to examine this theory: I pause only to note its subtle suggestion of Victorian sentiment and even more of Victorian politics. The round dance thus represents society as an aggregation of mutually exclusive monogamic units, taking their independent way and avoiding each other as much as possible; the art of ball-room steering becomes the analogue of Mill on Liberty. The Homeric dance equally typifies a society organic in all its members; but I digress.
Whatever be the cause, the fact is clear, that for practical purposes dancing is reduced to the waltz. If so, what seemed _prima facie_ absurd--to admit walking to a comparison with dancing on artistic grounds--is clearly anything but unreasonable; the balance rather inclines the other way. On the point of rhythm, walking can beat dancing both in subtlety and variety; the other artistic elements, figure and organisation, which might give the superiority to dancing, have been thrown overboard. The unison of walkers is as much and as little a harmony as the unison of waltzers; the figure of a walk is, like the figure of a waltz, a plain line, with the difference that it is shaped not by four walls, a dais, benches, potted plants, and the possibilities of collision, but by the rise and fall of the ground, the accidents of rock and vegetation, the configuration of our mother earth and her waters. Dancing, by surrendering its other possibilities, falls to the level of walking; by concentrating on one rhythm, it sinks below.
Even so, the waltzer will reply, is not the comparison still, in spite of your sophistries, absurd? Does the walker with all his rhythmic variety achieve any real sympathy with music comparable to the rapture of waltzing? Does not the very concentration of dancing on this form mean that it is the one artistic motion, the one bodily movement which can really express music? The walker may be able to fit music to his steps, but it is a mere extrinsic connection; the waltzer moves _in_ music, and his soul is one with that of the waltz composer.
The waltzer has hit the real point. It is of little use to argue in the abstract about the merits of this or that rhythm; we must take rhythm and music together as a whole if we are to form any judgment about them; waltzing ultimately stands or falls by the character of the music it has inspired. What, then, of waltz music considered as a whole? We can at once concede this to the waltzer, that his music is something quite distinct and apart from the rest of music, unique both in rhythm and melody. The rhythm must, for practical reasons, be absolutely uniform--three notes to the bar, sixty odd bars to the minute, a strong accent on the first note of each bar marked either in the melody or the accompaniment, dotted notes being a rare luxury and syncopations and cross-accents even rarer. The character of the music is hard to describe in words, but in practice unmistakable: it is smooth and melodious, appealing strongly and at once to the senses, stimulating or intensifying rather than dilating the imagination; it is built generally on phrases of equal length, which should, if possible, imply or repeat each other so that they can carry the dancer along and ‘run in the head’ (like water), even when he is distracted by the heat, the unwonted exercise, and his partner’s conversation. In short, a waltz is ‘catchy’: and to anybody who has ever heard one, further description is superfluous.
Waltz music, then, as a whole, has a definite character of its own. The question follows: is it a good character? To discuss this necessarily involves offending some one; but to carry all parties along together a little further, let us note two points on which all will agree. The first is that in judging waltz music, dancers use a criterion which is not applied to other music. There are certain waltzes of the great masters in which they attempted to use the form for musical purposes; unfortunately, they most of them strayed into syncopations and irregular phrases, and failed to make their tunes sufficiently catchy; consequently they are rarely heard in the ball-room, and the dancer’s verdict on them is that they are very fine music, no doubt, but not good to waltz to. At the other end of the scale are certain waltzes, in fact quite a large number, which no one would attempt to defend seriously on musical grounds; the dancer’s verdict is that they are possibly not much as music, but are good to waltz to, and he proceeds to wallow in them. Thus waltz music, besides having a special rhythm and a special character, is judged by a special criterion--_i.e._ whether it is good to waltz to, which practically means, whether it has this special rhythm and this special character, a regular three-time unobscured by rhythmic variations, and a strong sensuous appeal undistracted by any demand on the intellect.
The second point is simply another aspect of the same thing; to wit, the fact that in the normal reasonably good concert--taken, in its widest sense, to include orchestral and choral performances, chamber music, and recitals of all kinds--the waltz rhythm is extremely rare and the pure waltz even rarer. The ordinary concert-goer in a year’s experience will have ranged over practically every other kind of rhythm and (under the guidance of his programme) every other field of emotion; he will have quailed at the relentless tap of destiny, in two-four time; he will have bestridden the narrow world like a Colossus or plumbed the depths of grief or passion, in slow three-time; he will have wondered and frolicked and wondered again, in quick three-time; once or twice at least, he will have had his only relief in a fever of tortured imagination, in five-four time. (Note that every one of these is a walking tune.) But where are the medium three-times? Where are the waltz tunes? How often in his year’s experience has he come across the true waltz atmosphere? Perhaps thrice: in Suppé’s ‘Poet and Peasant’ Overture (if he cannot escape in time); in the Hoffmann ‘Barcarolle,’ which, by the way, is used in the opera to accompany a particularly brutal murder; and in the ‘Valse Triste’ of Sibelius, where the rhythm is employed with the very definite (and very gruesome) dramatic purpose of representing the imagination of a dying woman curdled by the stale memories of debauch. The one famous movement that is called a waltz is really much nearer a minuet; it is marked ♩=138, and can be walked to. Take together as a whole what may be called the ordinary mass of good music, and you cannot resist the conclusion that for some reason the musician will have nothing to do with the waltzer or his atmosphere.
The separation is complete. On the one hand we have music, which issues from life and returns upon life, which appeals to something very deep within us, making every kind of thought and feeling its minister--the music which fitly accompanies us as we walk. On the other hand, apart and alone, judged by its own criteria and bounded by its own conditions, we have the waltz music, related not to life but to a very small, narrow, and detached phase of it, appealing only to the senses, and these in a very abnormal state. Faced with this contrast, we can only say to the waltzer that here our ways part, bid him farewell, and proceed to denounce him.
For the state of the waltzer is something frightful to contemplate. The progressive limitation of dancing to the waltz rhythm is but the outward sign of an inner limitation of feeling, by which the waltzer cuts himself off from the rest of humanity and the rest of his own life, placing between himself and them the barriers of a bad art and a bad hygiene, and so fencing off his little paradise, his illuminated interspace of world and world, where never creeps a cloud, nor moves a wind. At a late hour, in a special costume, under artificial light, in a vitiated atmosphere, stimulated by abnormal food and drink; with every external condition that can unseat the judgment, suspend the continuity of good sense, and cut off the sane feeling of relation to the day that is past and the morrow that is to come--is it any wonder that he needs a special rhythm to move in and a special kind of melody to move to? And so the wheel moves in a vicious circle. The ambitious waltzes of the great masters impose a strain on the intellect; they have little direct sensuous appeal; they are recondite, discontinuous, frigid, tiring; they have no go; away with them to the outer darkness (to the stars and the fresh air). But from the cafés of Vienna arises a very different voice, sensuous, regular of rhythm, rich with the glamour of late hours, the swish of skirts and the slither of feet; however vulgar, however trivial, it is good to waltz to; bring wreaths of laurel to usher the conqueror in!
But to what a paradox are we come! Dancing, the highest of the bodily arts, which should be in the closest alliance with the companion art of music, appears its deadliest foe. The dancer, who should co-operate with and inspire the musician, is merely a burden to him; instead of pointing the way to further developments, he restrains him relentlessly from all rhythmic variety, from all reaches of feeling and character which do not fall within the narrow limits of being good to waltz to. With the shackles of a cast-iron rhythm he cramps his spirit: with the miasma of the waltz atmosphere he pollutes his soul. Is it any wonder that, with this prospect before him, the reputable musician turns his back on the ball-room and shakes the French chalk from off his feet? And when he is gone the charlatan sees his opportunity; and the end of it all is the dance music of to-day, expressing nothing beyond the mere dance atmosphere, indicating no feelings above the level of instincts, pointing the way to no developments, but an isolated system, cut off from all contact with the normal thoughts and feelings of humanity, exotic, expressionless, unfruitful, as only a hothouse hybrid can be.
_O Freunde, nicht diese Töne!_ Fellow-walkers, have nothing whatever to do with dance music! You who ply your craft by day, in the open, in easy clothes, whose thoughts roam at large over yesterday, to-day, to-morrow, and repose upon the sane continuity of experience, what part have you in the glamour of the waltz? You who stride from a hundred to a hundred and twenty steps to the minute, with a long swing from the hips, what have you to do with the waltz rhythm? Between you and it there is a gulf fixed. On the further side lights shine, and patent leather slithers over the polished floor, and the band has just had supper and is muting its strings for a particularly impassioned appeal; you cannot answer to that call, you cannot move in that rhythm, without forswearing your birthright as a walker. But on this side of the gulf are hills and fields and sun and wind, and as we go we shall whistle a stave to the rhythm of our stride. And if you would know what this rhythm is, look up the work from which I have copied the words that begin this paragraph, and turn back to the second movement. Or better still, turn further back in the bound volume, and find the Allegro of the seventh symphony. There is the song of walking, the sacred music of our craft. The rhythm ([Illustration: music notes]) is the exact measure of the stride, buoyant and elastic, with the uneven note marking the hoist of the outside leg from the hip. The tune swoops at us suddenly like a gusty breeze, plunges into the deep pianissimo, vanishes, and returns to a tremolo on the strings which suggests that it has been going on somewhere else all the time; it shifts and changes like the face of earth with the shadows racing across it. If music can ever be bound to time or place, surely we may assign this Allegro to a day in April when we surmount some height like Wetherlam or Maiden Moor, issuing in a long ridge, and swing forward over grass and rock with the wind in our ears and the earth spread out below.
(O Richard Wagner, you who called this movement the Apotheosis of the Dance, what did you mean by it? In that august Valhalla where you justly repose, no doubt by now you have met the author and apologised; but can you do nothing to reassure us on this side of the gulf? Can you not send some authoritative message, or at least work a concurrent automatism, to say that you are sorry?)
* * * * *
Is there any hope for dancing? Is the vicious circle to go on for ever? Is the gulf too deep to be spanned? Let us trust not: it would be tragic if dancing, the union of motion and music, were for ever to be represented only by that misshapen monstrosity, the waltz. Certain practical reforms are necessary before any development can begin; dancing must be performed by day, in fresh air, in reasonable costume, to good music. A minimum level of physical competency must be demanded, backed by proper training; as a provisional test, I would suggest excluding any one who would be refused on sight by the secretary of a fourth-class lacrosse club. New rhythms must be introduced and developed, and concerted dances organised, the dancer working throughout in close co-operation with the musician. When these changes have been made, the way is clear, and dancers can begin to take their craft seriously.
Until then nothing can be done; here at least, in the ball-room, where nature sickens, nothing. As Dr. Middleton said, ‘it is the time for wise men to retire within themselves, with the steady determination of the seed in the earth to grow. Repose upon nature, sleep in firm faith, and abide the seasons.’ For the change must come; if civilisation is based, as it surely is, on reason, the waltz can not be anything more than a temporary aberration. If omnipotent at present, it must ultimately be doomed: if we do not see the change, our grandchildren will. Against that day, when the waltz shall figure with our other fooleries before the inexorable Vehmgericht of posterity, let this at least be put on record, that in our own times, in the height of its popularity, when the false doctrine was expounded with all the art of Viennese composers and backed by all the weight of social authority, not every one acquiesced. Some at least shook their feet clear of it, and were content to tread the roads and hills to simple measures in the unadorned light of day, and to hand on, in however rudimentary a state, a tradition of free movement and clean rhythm to the wiser generation ensuing.
IV
WALKING, SPORT AND ATHLETICS
Our bodies are gardens; to the which our wills are gardeners, so that if we will plant nettles or sow lettuce, set hyssop or weed up thyme, supply it with one gender of herbs or distract it with many; either to have it sterile with idleness or manured with industry; why, the power and corrigible authority of this lies in our wills.
_Othello_, i. 3.
IV
WALKING, SPORT AND ATHLETICS
Nothing arouses keener feelings than the idea of sport. No one knows exactly what it means; every one feels very intensely that it is something truly intimate and national, unintelligible except to those who have been rightly bred, a touchstone of proper disposition, indefinable but unmistakable. To be called a ‘sportsman’ is the most gratifying compliment which an Englishman can receive; actions otherwise indefensible and risks otherwise unthinkable are undertaken gaily if once established as ‘sporting’; and any pursuit which can be brought under the title of ‘sport’ is thereby relieved of all further need for justification and becomes irradiated with the ethical light which the idea bestows. And the most awful moment of the walker’s life is when he suddenly faces himself with the question--Is walking a sport?
His horror deepens as he realises that most men, himself included, would instinctively answer, No. Walking is allowed a place in the Badminton series, but this is partly out of kindness and partly because it connects easily with rock-climbing and the more dangerous kinds of mountaineering, which are generally admitted to be sport. Besides, dancing is included in the Badminton series. If we collect the commonly accepted views, cricket is a sport, and hockey is a sport, and billiards is a sport, and grouse-shooting is a sport, and fox-hunting is a sport, and bull-fighting is a sport, only not proper, and cock-fighting was a sport in the good old days, and dog-fighting is still a sport north of the Trent, and boxing is a sport if homochromatic; but the one thing which never, nowhere, and under no conditions is, was, or could be a sport, is walking.
An exception might be made for walking of the racing type--the kind of thing which begins on Westminster Bridge at 6 a.m., continues through Crawley (3 h. 56 min. 23 s.) shepherded by cyclists carrying raisins, brandy, and plasmon, and ends about two in the afternoon at the Brighton Aquarium. But no ordinary walker will be inclined to press the exception. The walking race is indeed a wonderful thing, a standing testimony to the exuberance of human invention. Naturally, if a man wants to go fast, he runs; if he wants to go at a steady pace for a long distance, he walks. Only in the higher stages of civilisation, when his mind gets really to work, does he invent a mode of progression which combines all the possible disadvantages, being more exhausting than a walk, slower than a run, physically uncomfortable and aesthetically only to be described in the idiom of Aristophanes. No one who has seen the gait of a walking racer can ever forget it; it is a sport in more senses than one. Therefore, as our business is with walking in the ordinary sense, as we are physiologists rather than pathologists, we cannot press the exception. Consequently we are left with the blank and brutal fact, supported by general opinion, that walking is not a sport.
If we go on to ask why this is so, the question is naturally resented, since every decent man understands what is sport and what is not without being told or wanting to argue about it. Sportsmanship, like sense of humour, is one of the ultimate things; if you possess it, you do not need to define it; if you lack it, no process of reasoning can ever bring you anywhere near it. None the less, if we are not allowed to be sportsmen, we may at least be allowed to examine the limits of our own deficiency. After all, an eminent Frenchman has just written a book entirely about the sense of humour. Taking heart of grace from this we venture to proceed with the question.
The first and most obvious reason why walking is not a sport is that it does not arouse or gratify the sporting instinct. This may seem like arguing in a circle, but in fact it brings us to a clear definition. For there is no doubt what the sporting instinct is. It is the instinct which delights in a struggle on equal terms, which aims at a victory by sheer merit under conditions carefully adjusted so as to eliminate as far as possible all determinants except merit. The essential point in the sporting instinct is the paradox that you wish to win but at the same time wish your adversary to have every possible chance of winning; you desire victory, but you desire it after the closest possible struggle conducted with the greatest possible amount of difficulty. Your ideal is to win, figuratively speaking, by a hundred and one goals to a hundred, your last goal being obtained just before the call of time and leaving you in a state of complete exhaustion, relieved only by the fervid hope that your adversary may be able to put up an equally good or better struggle against you next week.
To dwell upon the great ethical beauty of this instinct--its chivalry, consideration for others, generous waiving of all advantages except that of merit, and so forth--is hardly a task for a layman. But we may be allowed to point out, with pardonable pride, that in England the sporting instinct extends far beyond sports, even in the catholic interpretation of the Badminton series. It--or something like it--may be found in nearly every department of life--in law, in religion, in politics, both domestic and foreign, in thought and philosophy. One reason for the popularity of the Darwinian theories, as generally understood, was that they represented the secular process as a glorified Cup Tie competition, with the mammoth and the ichthyosaurus disappearing in the qualifying rounds, and man emerging triumphantly from the final--in contrast with the unsportsmanlike theories of creation, in which man got his post by a job. In law and politics the sporting instinct is so fundamental that perhaps we ought really to call it the legal and political instinct, and regard sport, in the Badminton sense, as one of its secondary manifestations. In law, we do not concentrate the wisdom of bench, bar, and the detective service to decide whether something did or did not happen; we organise a fair struggle, and employ time, money, and all the resources of trained forensic skill to prove to an impartial jury in the first place that it did, and in the second place that it did not, happen. In politics, we do not unite all our wisest and most experienced men to determine the best policy; we propound to the electorate (with expenditure of time, money, and resources as before) at least two conflicting policies, which cannot both be the best. In religion, the brightest jewel in the British crown is a fair field and no favour for any creed not involving human sacrifice or Suttee. Captious critics may point out that there can only be one truth in law, politics, or religion, and that it seems a waste of energy to bolster up any number of alternative truths; and they suggest that in each department a panel of wise and experienced men (including themselves) should be authorised to decide for the community. To which the vulgar answer is that the same panel might as well decide the County Championship and the University Boat Race.
It is painful, then, to admit that this primary British instinct has no part in walking. We may, if we please, fondly imagine that walking involves a fair struggle with time and space, with rocks and hills, but this is a mere playing with words. The true sporting relation can only exist between man and man, never between man and things; your adversary must be something which you treat as an end, never something which you treat as a means. In walking, you do not wait until weather and ground are at their worst in order to give them a chance of defeating you; you take the most favourable opportunities, you steal advantages, you employ all the cunning of the organism to overcome the inorganic. A walker needs many qualities for the pursuit of his craft--endurance, equability, resource, a good conscience, both moral and physical; but the one thing which, as walker, he never needs is the sporting instinct.