IITHE JUDGMENT

“Now learn what morals critics ought to show,“For ’tis but half a judge’s task to know,”

“Now learn what morals critics ought to show,

“For ’tis but half a judge’s task to know,”

says Pope, who himself was hopelessly immoral in the manufacture of couplets. And what two men ever agreed on morality, anyhow? The personal equation is never more prominent than in the expression of the “individual’s views,” as nowadays ethics are dubbed. One may fancy oneself the most catholic of judges, yet one constantly betrays the hereditary prejudices that can be modified but never quite cast off.

I was recently with an Englishman at an outdoor variety theatre in Madrid. We sat restively through the miserable, third-rate performance, grumbling at each number as it proved worse than the last, and finally waxing positively indignant over the ear-splitting trills and outrageous contortions of the prima donna of the evening. “Still,” said the Englishman suddenly, “shehashad the energy to keep herself fit, and to come out here and do something. Really, she isn’t so bad, you know, after all.”

Before she had finished, he was actually approvingof her: her mere physical soundness had conquered him, and her adherence to his elemental creed of “doing something” and doing it with all one’s might. The artistic and the sentimental viewpoints, which the Englishman always wears self-consciously, slip away from him like gossamer when even the most indirect appeal is made to his fetish of physical fitness. In respect of this, he is by no means a snob, but a true democrat.

As a matter of fact, there are many breaks in the haughty traditional armour. It is in New York, not London, that one hears severe discussion of A’s charwoman grandmother, B’s lady’s maid mother, C’s father who deals in tinned beans. What London wants to know is what A, B, and C do; and how they do it. Snobbism turns its searchlight on the individual, not on his forbears; though to the individual it is merciless enough. In consequence, the city has become a sort of international Athenæum, a clearing-ground for the theories, dreams and fanaticisms of all men.

I remember being tremendously impressed, at my very first London tea-party, by the respect and keen interest shown each of the various enthusiasts gathered there. A Labour leader, a disciple of Buddhism, the founder of a new kind of dramatic school, a missionary from the Congo and a Post-Impressionist painter: all were listened to, in turn, and their several hobbies received with lively attention. The Labour leader got a good deal of counter-argument, the Post-Impressionist his share of good-humoured chaffing;but everyone was given the floor, and a chance to beat his particular drum as hard as he liked, until the next came on.

The essential thing, in London, is that one shall have a drum to beat; small talk, and the polite platitudes that sway the social reunions of New York and Paris, are relegated to the very youthful or the very dull. Nor is cleverness greeted with the raised eyebrow of dismay; people are not afraid, or too lazy, to think. One sees that in the newspapers, the books and plays, as well as in the drawing-room conversation of the English. The serious, even the so-called heavy, topics, as well as the subtle, finely ironic, and sharply critical, are given place and attention; not by a fewprécieuxalone, but by the mass of the people. And not to be well informed is to be out of the world, for both men and women.

Of course, there is the usual set of “smart” fashionables who delight in ignorance and whose languid energies are spent between clothes and the newest one-step. But these are no more typical of London society than they are of any other; though in the minds of many intelligent foreigners they have become so, through having their doings conspicuously chronicled in foreign newspapers and by undiscriminating visitors returning from England. On one point, this confusion of English social sets is easily understood: they share the same moral leniency that permits all to lend themselves to situations and ideas which scandalize the foreigner.

It is not that as a people they are more viciousthan any other, but they are franker in their vice; they have no fine shades. An American woman told me of the shock she received at her first English house-party, where her hostess—a friend of years, who had several times visited her in New York—knew scarcely one-half of her own guests. The rest were “friends,” without whom nothing would induce certain ladies and gentlemen to come.

“It wasn’t thefactof it,” said theAméricaine, candidly; “of course such things exist everywhere, but they aren’t so baldly apparent and certainly they aren’t discussed. Those people actually quarrelled about the arrangement of rooms, and changed about with the most bare-faced openness. My hostess and I were the only ones who didn’t pair, and we were simply regarded as hypocrites without the courage of our desires.”

All of which is perfectly true, and an everyday occurrence in English social life. The higher up the scale, the broader tolerance becomes. “Depend upon it,” said a lady of the old régime, “God Almighty thinks twice before he condemns persons of quality!” And, in England, mere human beings, to be on the safe side, do not condemn them at all. The middle-class (the sentimentalists of every nation) lead a life of severe rectitude—and revel in the sins of their betters, which they invent if the latter have none. But directly a man is a gentlemen, or a woman a lady, everything is allowable. Personal freedom within the class laws holds good among morals as among manners; and the result is rather horrifying to the stranger.

French people, for example, are far more shocked at the English than the English are at them. With the former, the offense is against good taste—always a worse crime, in Latin eyes, than any mere breach of ethics. The Englishman’s unvarnished candour in airing his private affairs appears to the Latin as crass and unnecessary; while in the Englishwoman it becomes to him positively repellent. The difference, throughout, in the two races, is the difference between the masculine and the feminine points of view. England is ever and always a man’s country. Even the women look at things through the masculine vision, and to an extent share the masculine prerogatives. As long as a woman’s husband accepts what she does, everyone accepts her; which explains how in the country where women are clamouring most frantically for equal privileges, a great number of women enjoy privileges unheard of by their “free” sisters of other lands.

Underwood & UnderwoodLONDON, THE EMPIRE CAPITAL

Underwood & Underwood

LONDON, THE EMPIRE CAPITAL

It is a question of position, not of sex; and harks back—moral privilege, I mean—to that core of all English institutions: breeding. There are no bounds to the latitude allowed the great, though it does not seem to occur to the non-great that such license in itself brings into question the rights of many who hold old names and ancient titles. Succession, that all-important factor of the whole social system, is hedged about with many an interrogation point; which society is pleased to ignore, nevertheless, on the ground ofnoblesse oblige! Above a certain stratum, the English calmly dispense with logic, and bestow divinerights on all men alike; obviously it is the only thing to do, and besides it confers divine obligations at the same time.

One must say for all Englishmen that rarely if ever, in their personal liberty, do they lose sight of their obligations. In the midst of after-dinner hilarity, one will see a club-room empty as if by magic, and the members hurry away in taxis or their own limousines. One knows that a division is to be called for, and that it wants perhaps ten minutes of the hour. The same thing happens at balls or almost any social function: the men never fail to attend when they can, for they are distinctly social creatures; but they keep a quiet eye on the clock, and slip out when duty calls them elsewhere. This serves two excellent purposes: of preventing brain-fag among the “big” men of the hour, and leading the zest of their interests and often great undertakings to society—which in many countries never sees them.

In England politics and society are far more closely allied than in America or on the Continent. Each takes colour from the other, and becomes more significant thereby. The fact of a person’s being born to great wealth and position, instead of turning him into an idle spendthrift, compels his taking an important part in the affairs of the country. The average English peer is about as hard-working a man as can be found, unless it be the King himself; and the average English hostess, far from being a butterfly of pleasure, has a round of duties as exacting as those of the Prime Minister. Through all the delightfulsuperficial intercourse of a London season, there is an undercurrent of serious purpose, felt and shared by everyone, though by each one differently.

At luncheons, dinners, garden-parties and receptions the talk veers sooner or later towards politics and national affairs. All “sets,” the fashionable, the artistic, the sporting, the adventurous, as well as the politicians themselves, meet and become absorbed in last night’s debate or the Bill to come up for its third reading tomorrow. By the way, for a foreigner to participate in these bouts of keen discussion, he must become addicted to the national habit: before going anywhere, he must read the Times.

As regularly as he takes his early cup of tea, every self-respecting Englishman after breakfast retires into a corner with the Times, and never emerges until he has masticated the last paragraph. Then and only then is he ready to go forth for the day, properly equipped to do battle. And he speedily discovers if you are not similarly prepared—and beats you. Of all the characteristic English things I can think of, none is so English as the Times. In it you find, besides full reports of political proceedings and the usual births, marriages, and deaths, letters from Englishmen all the way from Halifax to Singapore. Letters on the incapacity of American servants, the best method of breeding Angora cats, the water system of the Javanese (have they any?), how to travel comfortably in Cochin China, the abominable manners of German policemen, the dangers of eating lettuce in Palestine, etc., etc. Signals are raised to all Englishmeneverywhere, warning them what to do and what to leave undone, and how they shall accomplish both. Column upon column of the conservative old newspaper is devoted to this sort of correspondence club, which has for its motto that English classic: prevention, to avoid necessity for cure.

The Englishman at home reads it all, carefully, together with the answers to the correspondents of yesterday, the interminable speech of Lord X in the Upper House last night, the latest bulletins concerning the health of the Duchess of Y. It is solid, unsensational mental food, and he digests it thoroughly; storing it away for practical future use. But the foreigner, accustomed to the high seasoning of journalistic epigram and the tang of scandal, finds it very dull. Unfortunately, the mission of the newspaper in most countries has become the promoting of a certain group of men, or a certain party, or a certain cause, and the damning of every other man or party or cause that stands in the way. The English press has none of this flavour. It is imbued with the national instinct for fair play, which, while it by no means prohibits lively discussion of men and measures, remains strictly impersonal in its attitude of attack.

The critic on the whole is inclined to deserve his title as it was originally defined; one who judges impartially, according to merit. He is a critic of men and affairs, however, rather than of art. He lives too much in the open to give himself extensively to artistic study or creation. And Englishmen have,generally speaking, distinguished themselves as fighters, explorers, soldiers of fortune, and as organizers and statesmen, rather than as musicians, painters, and men of letters.

Especially in the present day is this true. There are the Scots and Shackletons, the Kitcheners, Roberts, and Curzons; but where are the Merediths, Brownings, Turners, and Gainsboroughs? Literature is rather better off than the other arts—there is an occasional Wells or Bennett among the host of the merely talented and painstaking; more than an occasional novelist among the host of fictioneers. But poets are few and uneventful, playwrights more abundant though tinged with the charlatanism of the age; while as for the painters, sculptors and composers, in other countries the protagonists of the peculiar violence and revolution of today—in England, who are they?

Underwood & UnderwoodTHE GREAT ISLAND SITE

Underwood & Underwood

THE GREAT ISLAND SITE

We go to exhibitions by the dozen, during the season, and listen conscientiously to the latest tenor; but seldom do we see art or hear music. In the past, the great English artists have been those who painted portraits, landscapes, or animals; reproducing out of experience the men and women, horses, dogs, and out-of-doors they knew so well; rather than creating out of imagination dramatic scenes and pictures of the struggle and splendour of life. Their art has been a peaceful art, the complement rather than the mirror of the heroic militancy that always has dominated English activity. Similarly, the musicians—the few that have existed—have surpassed in compositions of the sober, stately order, oratorios, chorals, hymns and solemn marches. Obviously, peace and solemnity are incongruous with the restless, rushing spirit of today, to which the Englishman is victim together with all men, but which, with his slower articulation, he is not able to express on canvas or in chromatics.

Cubism terrifies him; on the other hand he is, for the moment at least, insanely intrigued by ragtime. The hoary ballad, which “Mr. Percy Periwell will sing this day at Southsea Pier,” is giving way at last to syncopated ditties which form a mere accompaniment to the reigning passion for jigging. No one has time to listen to singing; everyone must keep moving, as fast and furiously as he can. There is a spice of tragi-comedy in watching the mad wave hit sedate old London, sweeping her off her feet and into a maze of frantically risqué contortions. Court edicts, the indignation of conservative dowagers, the severity of bishops and the press—nothing can stop her; from Cabinet ministers to house-maids, from débutantes to duchesses, “everybody’s doing it,” with vim if not with grace. And such is the craze for dancing, morning, noon and night, that every other room one enters has the aspect of asalle de bal—chairs and sofas stiff against the walls, a piano at one end, and, for the rest, shining parquetry.

Looking in at one of these desecrated drawing-rooms, where at the moment a peer of the realm was teaching a marchioness to turkey-trot, a lady of theold order wished to know “What,whatwould Queen Victoria say?”

“Madam,” replied her escort, also of the epoch of square dances and the genteel crinoline, “the late Queen was above all things else a gentlewoman. She had no language with which to describe the present civilization!”

It is not a pretty civilization, surely; it is even in many ways a profane one. Yet in its very profanities there is a force, a tremendous and splendid vitality, that in the essence of it must bring about unheard-of and glorious things. Our sentimentalism rebels against motor-buses in Park Lane, honking taxis eliminating the discreet hansom of more leisurely years; we await with mingled awe and horror the day just dawning, when the sky itself will be cluttered with whizzing, whirring vehicles. But give us the chance to go back and be rid of these things—who would do it?

Underwood & UnderwoodLINKING THE NEW ERA AND THE OLD

Underwood & Underwood

LINKING THE NEW ERA AND THE OLD

As a matter of fact, we have long since crossed from the sentimental to the practical. We are desperately, fanatically practical in these days; we want all we can get, and as an afterthought hope that it will benefit us when we get it. England has caught the spirit less rapidly than many of the nations, but she has caught it. No longer does she smile superciliously at her colonies; she wants all that they can give her. Far from ignoring them, she is using every scheme to get in touch; witness the Island Site and the colonial offices fast going up on that great tract of land beyond Kingsway. No longer doesshe sniff at her American cousins, but anxiously looks to their support in the slack summer season, and has everything marked with dollar-signs beforehand! Since the Entente Cordiale, too, she throws wide her doors to her neighbours from over the Channel: let everyone come, who in any way can aid the old island kingdom to realize its new ideal of a great Empire federation.

Doctor Johnson’s assertion that “all foreigners are mostly fools,” may have been the opinion of Doctor Johnson’s day; it is out-of-date in the present. English standards are as exacting, English judgments as strict, as ever they were; but to those who measure up to them, whatever their race or previous history, generous appreciation is given. And I know of no land where the reformer, the scientist, the philosopher—the man with a message of any kind—is granted fairer hearing or more just reward; always provided his wares are trade-marked genuine.

“Nonsense of enthusiasts is very different from nonsense of ninnies,” was the conclusion of one of the wisest Englishmen who ever lived. And the critical country has adopted it as a slogan; writing across the reverse side of her banner: “Freedom and fair play for all men.”

THE END

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