Ex Librii 
 
 C. K. OGDEN 
 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 CROSS VIEWS
 
 CROSS VIEWS 
 
 BY 
 
 WILFRID SCARBOROUGH JACKSON 
 
 AUTHOR OF "NINE POINTS OF THE LAW" 
 "TRIAL BY MARRIAGE," ETC. 
 
 LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD 
 NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY 
 TORONTO: BELL fcf COCKBURN. MCMXII
 
 Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON 6r> Co. 
 At the Ballantyne Press, Edinburgh
 
 PR 
 6019 
 Jl39c 
 
 To Her 
 
 Who invariably had the Jirst word in 
 
 these discussions but has not been allowed 
 
 the fast, in all love and sympathy. 
 
 1C.26127
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 I. TOWN AND COUNTRY 
 II. ALSO A GARDEN 
 
 III. A WET DAY .... 
 
 IV. THE LION AND THE UNICORN 
 V. OUR COMMON TONGUE . 
 
 VI. WOMAN 
 
 VII. MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE . 
 VIII. JOHN BULL .... 
 IX. THE GAME-PLAYERS 
 X. OVER THE FIRE . . 
 XI. APPEARANCES .... 
 XII. A GENTLEMAN AND A SOLDIER 
 
 XIII. FACETIOUSNESS . 
 
 XIV. THE MAN OF THE WORLD 
 XV. A FRIEND TO STAY . 
 
 XVI. SELFISHNESS AND OTHER VIRTUES
 
 CROSS VIEWS
 
 TOWN AND COUNTRY 
 
 I AM glad to think that the position of the Cockney 
 has weakened. His champions are mostly gathered 
 to their fathers, and each generation of them has fallen 
 further from their high estate. Gog and Magog are 
 pasteboard scarecrows. Dr. Johnson tired of life 
 though he never tired of London. The apologetics 
 of Lamb followed the ascendancy of Mitre Court, and 
 latter-day and literary enthusiasts for the town live in 
 lodgings far west of Charing Cross, and their proofs 
 are posted after them into the wilds. 
 
 The Cockney fades and pales. We of the country 
 have borne his scorn for long enough. The turnip 
 has been offered us for sustenance, and our brains were 
 supposed to conform to our diet. But the country 
 has long been discovered. It is no longer the pic- 
 turesque. The wits have disappeared from town. 
 Clubs are clubs no more. The buff waistcoat of the 
 Mayfair lounger is replaced in the bay-windows by 
 the striped yellow of the bored waiter until the lamps 
 are lit and the reflux of the City-tide fills the great 
 rooms with otherwhere unassociated crowds. There 
 is scarcely " desart enough in Scotland " for all the 
 
 3
 
 Cross Views 
 
 citizens who fly to it, and lions are no longer to be 
 visited at the Tower or bears to be pursued in Fleet 
 Street. 
 
 The smart set, whether or no a fiction of the 
 associated press, is chiefly exhibited in country houses, 
 and whereas not long since the countryman in town 
 in June avoided the half-crown side of Piccadilly and 
 visited his club in the forenoon, his dust-bedaubed car 
 now halted by the curb affords him a pied-a-terre 
 whence he steps unashamed in tweeds and Burberrys. 
 He carries with him something of his real estate, and 
 is still in such close touch, by speed, with his rural 
 existence, that his condition passes, as a man may 
 cross his doorstep bareheaded to speed a guest without 
 exciting remark. But who now carries his tall hat 
 into the countryside ? It still sets on our brow the 
 mark of its sovereignty on solemn and on some festal 
 occasions, though as far from Pall Mall as Calcutta or 
 Cathay ; but its occasions diminish, and there are 
 none so poor to do it reverence. Mine is laid up in 
 lavender at least it reposes in a bandbox on a high 
 set shelf in Piccadilly, flanked by proud names of terri- 
 torial magnates. I hope it is happy. 1 have made 
 my election, and am of the country. 
 
 The man whose windows give upon the street may 
 have a wider outlook than has he whose windows 
 command a county ; nevertheless, outlook, in the geo- 
 graphical sense, is not without its parallel effect. 
 
 The mind has its assimilative and digestive processes 
 even as the body has, and its digestive or ruminating 
 
 4
 
 Town and Country 
 
 periods are well spent on the edge of a noble down, 
 whence the eye is naturally sensible of the curve of 
 this small earth, can see a town smouldering below, 
 an estuary charged with shipping, and the encircling 
 shallows of the great sea dotted with little men in 
 little ships creeping up over the bend of the world or 
 dropping away, spar by spar, down to the deep waters 
 and the Antipodes. 
 
 Thence I can see the belly and the members of the 
 body-politic sprawl beneath me. I am a part of all 
 that I can see, a cell of that body, a momentarily 
 strayed unit from that pullulating ant-heap down 
 there, and my senses receive a physical stimulus 
 towards realising my place in it all, towards seeing the 
 range and the restrictions, from the universal sun 
 pouring on my head to the similarly strayed emmet at 
 my feet scaling a dizzy height of dandelion for 
 purposes of his own, possibly meditative also. 
 
 I say I have made my choice ; for I have lived in town 
 also all too long and my repudiation of Cockney 
 impudence was but the generous heat of the convert. 
 
 I have noticed, though, that his enthusiasm is not 
 always communicable to those born in the faith. 
 They damp down the ardour of the catechumen. 
 They seem to hold that the cold-water cure should 
 be carried further than baptism. Haversedge, whose 
 father lived before him at Landfall Manor house, 
 and has lived there himself for fifty years, has made 
 himself one of my sponsors in the neighbourhood. 
 Except for the even brown of his skin, a weathered 
 
 5
 
 Cross Views 
 
 tint so uniform that one supposes it to extend all 
 over him, he does not carry out my old conception 
 of the countryman. But what is a conception but 
 a makeshift to fill a void ? Ignorance is seldom 
 emptiness. The abhorred vacuum has filled itself with 
 rubbish. When knowledge comes, you see, for in- 
 stance, the Guardsman a rather bookish person with 
 a badly-rolled umbrella ; and the actress a very ragbag 
 with no features or complexion of her own ; and Haver- 
 sedge, a countryman in the flesh, wears ordinarily 
 neither gaiters nor shooting-jacket, and carries minor 
 verse in his pocket in place of corn-samples. A rusty 
 morning suit with tails, and buttoned boots, enclose 
 his person. He is the gentlest of men, and has 
 an illimitable patience in listening. But that, I think, 
 is a country attribute. Too courteous to snub my 
 ill-directed admirations for poppies in the corn, or 
 blackbirds' song in the orchard, he takes up the 
 premises I have rejected, and shakes his head at my 
 denunciations. 
 
 " You have seen much of London," he says, " and 
 I but little. But how pleasant to run up for a 
 change to one of the healthiest spots in the kingdom. 
 To get away from the smell of manured fields, and 
 ill-kept farmyards. To walk on clean dry pavements 
 uncrossed by the trail of herds of domestic animals. 
 How one enjoys one's first breakfast " 
 
 " Hang it all, Haversedge," I exclaim. 
 
 " The fresh eggs, the genuine butter, the certificated 
 
 milk ; the ready service " 
 
 6
 
 Town and Country 
 
 " Are these things the product of London ? " I ask. 
 
 " They go there," says Haversedge. " We cannot 
 get them. Then to touch clean linen once more ! 
 I dream sometimes of the laundries of London, and 
 wake up to the grey and ill-rinsed wash of Landfall." 
 
 "But that can only be carelessness and individual 
 slovenliness," I protest 
 
 "Of course it is," he says soothingly, " and think 
 of the abundant water in dry seasons, the universal 
 sanitation, the healthy well-kept people, the absence 
 of invalids, all gone to the country." 
 
 " Well but " I appeal to his intellectual honesty, 
 
 but he goes on, evoking his visions with raised hand. 
 "The monumental quiet of no-thoroughfares, the 
 beauty of the squares and parks where no trippers 
 scatter papers, and no sacrilegious hands tear and 
 trample the leaves and flowers all day long." 
 
 " Your paradox is amusing," I reply, " but my 
 confidence is not to be upset." 
 
 " No paradox," he replies. " You find it matter for 
 rejoicing that the Cockney is leaving town. But the 
 high standard of comfort there has drawn to him the 
 best products of the country. It is an economic 
 transaction of great magnitude, and will take time to 
 adjust. He leaves town, and town, which is the 
 receiving- and sorting-office, still receives his drain 
 upon the country, and has now to dispatch it after 
 him whence it came. Perhaps you buy your groceries, 
 meat, boots, or what not, in the village ? " 
 
 " As far as I can," I say stoutly. 
 
 7
 
 Cross Views 
 
 "Admirable. But the grocer, the butcher, and the 
 bootmaker do not. That's all. And the quality that 
 comes down is somehow not the quality that goes up. 
 The article must bear the price of the double journey. 
 Country life is more artificial than you suppose. And 
 in the days when it was according to nature those 
 who could afford to went to London." 
 
 " How comes it that you have stayed here ? " I ask 
 rather sulkily, seeing in my companion one of those 
 unpleasant people who rejoice to point out to you that 
 your house faces east, that you are on clay soil, that 
 breweries in which you are interested are threatened 
 with special taxation and are already down with a 
 
 run, that you should not have joined the club, 
 
 where you proudly paid your forty-guinea entrance 
 fee last week after years of waiting, for it is in diffi- 
 culties and all the best members left last year, &c. 
 
 " For reasons which I trust will induce you to stay 
 here, even if they did not bring you," he replies with 
 his slow smile. " You and I do not weigh the same 
 evidences as little Mrs. Underwing at the Nasturtiums. 
 Do you know her ? She can never make up her mind 
 which she prefers, town or country, and you can't be 
 with her for ten minutes but the question pops up. 
 But the real ground of her indecision is that she has 
 a sister who lives in town, Mrs. Justin Touch." 
 
 " I know her," I say ; " she has a little red-brick 
 house behind Sloane Street." 
 
 "She calls it Belgravia at least Mrs. Underwing 
 does." 
 8
 
 Town and Country 
 
 " It would like to cross to that side, but as a matter 
 of fact it leans strongly on Harrods'." 
 
 " Well, never mind. Justin Touch is an average 
 householder in the well-conditioned class that has 
 choice of residence. His wife sees that the servants 
 look after the house, takes care that the nurse takes 
 care of the child " 
 
 "And looks to her husband to look after himself. 
 I know her." 
 
 " No doubt. It is hard to see her superiority to 
 Mrs. Underwing. But Mrs. Underwing sees it, and 
 feels it, though openly she denies it. She chooses the 
 better but approves the worse. But you have not her 
 half-dozen good reasons growing out of their clothes 
 every year. Some such reasons appeal to me to some 
 extent, or did ; but her choice is fundamentally different 
 from ours. We don't oppose low rent, fresh air, house 
 and garden room, all the usual country nosegay, to the 
 handiness of the muffin man and the proximity of 
 Buckingham Palace. We want to save our souls alive. 
 I am not about to remark that God made the country. 
 He didn't. Not as we know it. It has been made 
 by hundreds of laborious generations of men who in 
 long-inhabited countries have given the landscape some- 
 thing of what is called quality in painting. But He 
 made man individual and the devil has made him social. 
 He heard God's voice too plainly when he walked in 
 the garden, and has shunned solitude ever since." 
 
 " One can be very much alone in a city," I object. 
 " A commonplace reflection, I admit." 
 
 9
 
 Cross Views 
 
 " I never object to a commonplace if I am permitted 
 to examine it, and not hurried on to the next. You 
 can feel a desolating loneliness in a city, but the 
 essence of it is contrast. I do not think that the 
 sense of solitude is there. The avenue to every sense 
 positively roars with distraction. Untuned to your 
 surroundings you may easily believe yourself a pariah, 
 and fall to depression, melancholy, and madness. But 
 solitude builds character the soul is not driven in on 
 itself, but flowers and expands. In shallow minds a 
 slight depression touches bed rock. Silly people cannot 
 bear to be melancholy. Distraction is the fatal 
 hindrance to the development of the Cockney soul. If 
 you must live in a city live in a foreign city. Human 
 speech breaks in less when unintelligible." 
 
 "An English squire who positively prefers 
 foreigners," I cry in despair. 
 
 Haversedge pursues unmoved. " Have you ever 
 looked for a reason for that modern tendency to 
 change of neighbourhood ? Like many other modern 
 tendencies it is not modern at all, but modern facilities 
 have made it practicable, and the full advantage that 
 is taken of the possibility is modern, and remarkable. 
 Live where you will for ten years and fifty per cent, 
 of your neighbours are come and gone." 
 
 " Well, what is the reason ? " I ask, for I am already 
 beginning to know that when Haversedge asks a 
 question he is ready to supply the answer. 
 
 "I believe they are moved by an unacknowledged 
 hope of cheating the undertaker. A few years' resi- 
 10
 
 Town and Country 
 
 dence in a country neighbourhood, a few years of still- 
 ness and observation, make the waste of death too 
 perceptible. Every death is the death of an acquaint- 
 ance, in some sense at least, and the knowledge of its 
 certainty becomes, absurdly, a panic fear, and drives 
 the unstable-minded leaseholder to new surroundings, 
 where he does not recognise the recent gaps but starts 
 afresh in a new community. 'It was impossible to 
 stay,' he tells his neighbours, 'the place changed so. 
 I assure you that when I went there first,' &c. And 
 the new neighbourhood smiles sympathetically and 
 starts at once, as it seems to him, to remove to the 
 cemetery, et autres lieux" 
 
 "I am enjoying my conversation with you im- 
 mensely," I say. " I am indeed happy to enter here 
 under your auspices. You put things in the most 
 pleasant light." 
 
 Haversedge halts and leans on his stick, absorbing 
 the scene with far-sighted eyes. We have been 
 walking across the fields towards Landfall Manor. 
 His weathered colouring and strong knotted hands 
 supported on the unshod nature-crooked sapling give 
 him, to my amused fancy, no little likeness to an old 
 thorn tree bent from the prevalent winds of many 
 winters, and obstinate to endure as many more. 
 
 "You are no sojourner here," he says; "you have 
 bought your land, you have built your house, and 
 your philosophy must henceforth be that of the 
 countryman, and not that of the summer visitor. 
 Unless I am mistaken in you, you do not seek 
 
 II
 
 Cross Views 
 
 distraction in the country ; you would avoid it. Now 
 the Cockney is a man bemused. He lives his life to 
 a band of music. Stillness never invades his soul, the 
 inducer, nay, the compeller of self-formation. In his 
 existence sound and movement fill the void of thought, 
 and distraction is always at his elbow. Remember, 
 we are discussing the leisured choice, and not the 
 tethered worker. Comes sorrow and the Cockney 
 drowns it, comes worry and he can forget it, depres- 
 sion and he can find stimulant, sickness with self or 
 sense of defeat and he can plunge into other men's 
 doings. An enlarged and unvirtuous Podsnap, he 
 puts everything behind him. He faces nothing, he 
 conquers nothing, he wins nothing. He always runs 
 away, and comes up smiling and unscarred. His body 
 has killed its enemy the soul, and lives at peace." 
 
 " And is even peace to be denied me ? " I ask in 
 terror. 
 
 " Even peace ! " echoes Haversedge. " Peace is 
 not a premise ; it is the desired conclusion. You have 
 come here to seek it. If you don't run away you will 
 find it before you die. It is expressly excluded from 
 a lease, but it is an implied clause in a settled estate." 
 
 "Then there is still Hope at the bottom of the 
 deed-box," I say smiling. 
 
 We have reached the lodge. The coachman's 
 wife flaps a cloth at some scared and scatter-brained 
 chickens, which, deprived thereby even of the sense of 
 direction, the lowest form of conscious intelligence, 
 run through the dusk in all directions. 
 12
 
 Town and Country 
 
 "Tell Hurrish, he must wire that bank," says 
 Haversedge, " those chickens are laying the hedge- 
 roots bare this dry season. They scratch, scratch, on 
 that side all day long." 
 
 Mrs. Hurrish says, " Yes sir," with a mild patience, 
 but I think that Haversedge would have to exercise 
 his turn for listening if I were not with him. 
 
 " You can't grow a good thorn-hedge in a day," he 
 says to me ; " my father planted that one." 
 
 " Why," I exclaim in surprise. " I was in the 
 Handyside's garden yesterday, and they have a splendid 
 privet-hedge nearly as high as my head, and they put 
 it in when they came here." 
 
 u I said thorn," replies Haversedge grimly. " I like 
 to live behind thorn." 
 
 " I see, I see," I say hastily ; and then again, on 
 reflection, with more intelligence, "I see." 
 
 Haversedge turns a few steps back with me, and 
 asks whether I have seen much of the people here. 
 We discuss one or two houses. 
 
 " You will find your situation the usual one. Two 
 or three friends if you are fortunate, a dozen inti- 
 mates, two or three score acquaintances. But you 
 will see them in every stage of their life's experience. 
 Privacy is another fond fancy you must part from, for 
 everything is known in the country. I am not re- 
 ferring particularly to gossip, though that is one of the 
 things well missed in the Capital, but I mean that 
 every small outstanding act and event sufficient to 
 cause general attention at the moment is filed as a 
 
 13
 
 Cross Views 
 
 record in local history, and can always be produced on 
 occasion. Our family histories are well known. 
 Quarrels cannot be concealed, illness and misfortune 
 are patent, and the causes are known and discussed. 
 And in a man's native village, if nowhere else, his 
 sins advance a step towards the light pan passu 
 with his every step up the ladder of fame." 
 
 "The course of true love is followed and even 
 anticipated, and the happy marriage blossoms amid a 
 concourse of well-wishers or fades in a chorus of com- 
 ment. Persons are not known merely as members of 
 a political party, followers of a branch of sport, ad- 
 herents of a certain church, habitues of a club, or as 
 business figure-heads with whom one deals in stocks 
 and shares. They are known much beyond this. 
 We know how their politics and religion were bred, 
 how their business is thought of, not on 'change, but 
 by their family and friends, and by those who knew 
 the business when the father had it ; after what 
 fashion they live with their wives, how they shape in 
 the hunting-field, how they have borne good and ill 
 times, how they have conducted themselves in personal 
 crises. Our vicar is not a mere incumbent, nor his 
 house a number on a street door. He is one of us, 
 and it behoves him to be one of our best. Our doctor 
 is not a specialist, a man with whom we come in 
 touch only when we are ill. He is everyman's 
 doctor, and his good or evil report may be picked up 
 at every dinner-table. And is it nothing to him that 
 his patients are his own people, not faces that crop up 
 '4
 
 Town and Country 
 
 in a consulting-room from the world away of the 
 next street ? " 
 
 4t It is just as well that I have left my character 
 behind me," I conclude, shaking hands with him. 
 
 " Don't forget you dine with me to-morrow night," 
 he says. " I have one or two people coming I want 
 you to meet, and you may begin the exhibition of 
 your new self." 
 
 I walk away along the clipped impenetrable barrier, 
 putting up more of Mrs. Hurrish's strayed leggy 
 chickens from their dust baths, and smile as I think 
 that I am on the right side of old Haversedge's thorn- 
 fence. I like the old fellow much. I wonder lightly 
 what friends the morrow may bring. "Blessed are 
 they that expect nothing for they shall not be dis- 
 appointed." I have never built much expectation on 
 an acquaintance, and look on every friendship as a 
 windfall, and unearned increment. 
 
 I had always hoped to build my house in an orchard, 
 and to step from my windows on to hummocky turf, 
 or thick, unmown meadow-grass, reckoning a garden 
 a Cockney attribute to a dwelling, and a rus in urbe. 
 But here I am with my hedged-in strip of green, 
 and painful flower-beds. Circumstances have been too 
 strong, and money short. I have not built, moreover, 
 as Haversedge implied, but bought and modified, and 
 the garden is as yet unconverted. But the house I 
 have taken in hand, a plain coat of white has replaced 
 the salmon paint picked out with buff, in which I met 
 it. The sash-windows and the blinds, those heavy- 
 
 15
 
 Cross Flews 
 
 lidded vacant eyes, have been removed, and casement 
 openings, side-shrouded with short curtains, expand or 
 contract their vertical slits of inner dark under the 
 sunshine, like the insinuating inscrutable eyes of a 
 basking cat. I have rebuilt the dining-room, giving 
 the old house a new stomach. Its dyspeptic and 
 queasy little old apparatus is gone in favour of my 
 Chippendale, whose century of elbow polish defies the 
 stains that cling to your French veneer, and makes it 
 the only dining-room furniture there is. Dixi. And 
 I have given it a brain, my library, and I myself will 
 supply its soul, having re-shaped its body. 
 
 My library is floored and panelled with oak, asking 
 no covering or renewal, not torn from other and older 
 walls, and mourning its loss of caste, but beginning 
 an honest and serviceable career. Bunbury, Rowland- 
 son, and Gillray decorate the uprights and oblongs on 
 the walls, and massed books rise between in tall 
 presses, friendly and unglazed. 
 
 A great gate-legged table, nearly black it is so much 
 older than its surroundings supports on its eight 
 slender columns my modern folios and quartos the 
 atlases where one goes a-travelling, the dictionaries 
 for visiting, the histories for change of air, and the 
 picture-books when one's legs are tired with their 
 various adventures. 
 
 Two great arm-chairs face my hearth ; there 
 should be but one in a library. One is mine, but 
 though they are of a pattern, the other I view with 
 dislike. I think a chapter on^Chairs when I regard 
 16
 
 Town and Country 
 
 it. Armistead will mostly occupy this one I expect. 
 Armistead is a painter, and tolerates me as well as 
 he can anyone who is not a painter. And I don't 
 mind him much. And I have my retreat, for my 
 house has an attic, a rare feature under the low- 
 pitched wasteful roof of the English builder. A 
 slightly sharper pitch will give you another story, and 
 if the design be touched by some other hand than 
 the builder's the reinforcement of a mansard will 
 make your extra floor the most alluring in the house. 
 A thing so simple yet so seldom attainable. I joy- 
 fully accepted the reversion of two attic bedrooms 
 rejected by my amazing servants, gave them a room 
 to their fancy looking townwards, and demolishing 
 a party-wall, gave myself the range of the whole attic 
 front, commanding twenty miles of Channel through 
 dormer windows from its raftered ceiling and white- 
 washed walls. 
 
 A noble attic, two bedrooms (Armistead again), 
 library and dining-room. I paid more for my cup- 
 boards in Duke Street, and the view is thrown in. 
 I have the poor taste to be fond of my own company, 
 and in an attic you may live with the aloofness of a 
 Stylite. I have no enthusiasm for humanity. I am 
 eternally interested in its activities, and could live 
 several lives without boredom, but prefer the more 
 admirable evidences of man to his animal accidents. 
 The study of human nature is one of the basest of 
 catch-words in the common mouth, and when I am 
 told that people are so interesting, I can only wish that 
 
 B 17
 
 Cross Fiews 
 
 my interest were as easily aroused. I have known 
 a man sitting in a club window to delude himself that 
 he was studying human nature, and it is the invari- 
 able resource of neglected ladies in a ball-room. 
 
 Consider this tedious and difficult business of lan- 
 guage, our medium of understanding, whose study 
 only removes one further and further from the pigeon- 
 English of daily speech. Take the bare coin of 
 catch-word as it passes from man to man, hold it a 
 moment and turn it over, and you are defrauded. If 
 you are an honest man you cannot pass it on. You 
 receive it eternally, but cannot use it. You are 
 bankrupt in speech. For an example, two are talk- 
 ing politics. People who talk generally talk about 
 things like that. One of them thinks, and goes so 
 far as to say, that a recent war might have been 
 avoided. "Pro-Boer," says the other triumphantly. 
 His opponent does not admire the superscription, but 
 pockets the false piece and returns another stamped 
 " Jingo." And that incident is closed. 
 
 This rapid and ready exchange of tokens makes 
 for briskness in speech and torpor in thought. If you 
 attack this torpidity of the thought, it is transferred 
 to the speech. Your interlocutor is tongue-tied, and 
 you, my friend, are a bore. Here is a preliminary 
 obstacle to the study of people, who are so inter- 
 esting. 
 
 The interesting people of Landfall are likely to 
 find me an agreeable neighbour. 
 
 No. It is the pastime of the omnibus-patron, the 
 18
 
 Town and Country 
 
 dodge of the mean man buying a workman's ticket, 
 the excuse of the loiterer, of the crowd-lover, the 
 band-listener, the exhibition-loafer, the keeper of low 
 company, and of the general dullard who can find no 
 resource in himself. The student of human nature 
 develops into that innocent ass the cynic with his 
 cheaply-acquired phrases about men and women and 
 their price, his black-and-white views of society, and 
 his hopeless cecity to the composition of the shaded, 
 complex, mutable, inarticulate, wonderful mass of pos- 
 sibilities he condemns so glibly. 
 
 The student of human nature can always read 
 character in the face. " I can tell in a moment," he 
 says ; and he does. He will point out to you the 
 ill-nature of the dyspeptic, the evil passions of the 
 bad-complexioned, the innocence of the blue-eyed 
 maiden, the strong will of the prognathous, the in- 
 tellect behind the promontoried brow, the shiftiness 
 in the eyes of the myope, the cheery frankness of the 
 loud-voiced, the misanthropy of the shy, the tendency 
 to drink in the rubicund. All these things are patent 
 to him. No man comes into his presence unrevealed. 
 
 He knows all this. You sit at home and know 
 nothing. He has been out in the world, and seen 
 hundreds of men and women, on the beach and in 
 the street. He is a student of them, and a reader of 
 character. A man's likes and dislikes are supposed to 
 be eloquent of him, but of a man who likes preserved 
 ginger, solitude, twopenny buses and the works of 
 the late Mr. Samuel Butler, and dislikes rissoles, golf, 
 
 19
 
 Cross F'iews 
 
 cut-flowers, and the Daily Mail^ what do you 
 make ? And if, furthermore, he hates theatres, 
 militarism, and comic papers, and loves his wife, 
 political economy, and the drawings of Mr. Augustus 
 John ? Again, community of tastes is always offered 
 as the basis of friendship. But those who kill 
 pheasants and partridges will seldom associate with 
 slayers of beef and mutton, though they would seem 
 to have not a little in common beyond this. 
 
 I, alas, am lost in the crowd of humanity. I meet 
 statesmen and warriors, and take them for general 
 dealers and small clothes-men. I see the headpieces 
 of leaders and thinkers on the shoulders of road- 
 navvies. 
 
 I look for sympathy and friendship behind beetle 
 brows and atrabilious countenances, and flee from the 
 uncharitableness of smiles and the acid of strawberries 
 and cream. The captains and the kings depart, and 
 I had taken them for grocers, and I run to meet the 
 hero or the saint, and grasp the hand of a dissenting 
 minister or other impossible person. It is fortunate 
 indeed, that these guides to character and founts of 
 human knowledge are amongst us, or society would 
 get into an inextricable tangle. The world is rightly 
 severe on people who, ignorantly as I do, or wilfully 
 as some, change labels and turn sign-posts. Let them 
 restrain these erratic motions, correct their distorted 
 vision with the glasses of conformity, and follow the 
 indications furnished so readily by the knowing and 
 astute. 
 
 20
 
 Town and Country 
 
 Wandering round my library where I am not yet 
 sufficiently acclimatised to settle to a book in the 
 afternoon, the front door bell speaks from the outer 
 world. A bell to me has always something of a 
 panic sound. Release from the summons of the bell 
 I reckon among the immunities of manhood, and the 
 church bell and the school bell frighten me now but 
 in dreams ; but there are all too many bells left to 
 shake the adult mind. I say nothing of bicycle bells, 
 telephone bells, dinner bells, and such wretched scares 
 and interruptions, but how does that bell speak to 
 you that is followed by the cry of " Any more for the 
 shore ? " when, wrapped in triple brass and a reeking 
 tarpaulin, you see, in stoney-eyed despair, your boat 
 torn, shrieking, from the sheltering quay ? The last 
 slow bell, the last of all, I shall not hear, but there is 
 still the wedding-bell. Many a good man has it 
 taken, unawares. Pooh ! Let me keep a stout 
 heart. Some of us win through that danger, and I 
 am still free. But the panic set up by the front- 
 door bell has been very enduring in my case. The 
 call is inevitable, when there is no wife to cover 
 one's retreat retro me Sathanas ! "Jane, I am at 
 home. Show any one in here." 
 
 It is the vicar, come to see his new parishioner. 
 We shake hands amicably. I hope I am not anti- 
 clerical, but I seldom shake hands with a clergyman 
 without a flying vision of a roped ring and a quick 
 break-away. But this seems a benign old fellow. 
 We fall to talking of the neighbourhood, and he 
 
 21
 
 Cross Views 
 
 informs himself of my antecedents, and of my con- 
 nection with Landfall. Curious, kindly, and a snob 
 of course, he hears with interest of my old friendship 
 with Haversedge, and is more at ease. 
 
 "An odd fellow, now, Haversedge," he says, 
 laughing, and crossing his knees j " quite a crank you 
 know. You would be surprised to know how few 
 friends he has about here. He is very opinionated, 
 is Haversedge, not to say conceited, though it is hard 
 to see why. He and I were at Oxford together 
 very ancient history, but he was not in what you 
 might call the best set, and I believe he never took 
 his degree. He was a Radical in those days not 
 now oh, no ! he has seen fit to alter all that most 
 of them do but the taint sticks about him somehow. 
 But perhaps I am on dangerous ground I trust that 
 you are a Conservative, Mr. Askew ? " 
 
 He laughs tolerantly, tolerant to both of us, feeling 
 that even if wrong he has paid me a compliment. I 
 reply that I am no politician, and that I am not 
 offended. 
 
 " Well, I am glad you are not a Radical," he re- 
 sumes, looking round the room while he picks up his 
 thread again. " Of course, Haversedge is a very old 
 friend of mine, and I would not say a word against 
 him, you may be sure." 
 
 There is something very feminine about parsons, I 
 reflect. " But I would not be much guided by him 
 in your notions of the neighbourhood, Mr. Askew. 
 A very peculiar fellow, a very tiresome fellow in some 
 22
 
 Town and Country 
 
 ways." He has ceased smiling, and seems to see 
 Haversedge before him. 
 
 The Englishman takes a tolerant view of his clergy- 
 man, and the tolerance is reciprocal. His church is 
 a church of compromise, a fluctuating influence, a 
 parcelled-ofF body of the better public opinion given 
 a habitation and a name and a commutation of tithes. 
 
 He looks on his clergyman as a rather more decent 
 fellow than himself, if comparatively a weakling. He 
 recognises that he stands for something in the Re- 
 public that is of worth, and apt to be neglected. 
 That he performs an office he himself is too slack or 
 too flippant to attend to, that his job is mortifying 
 and unthankful, and that if unsatisfactory at times, it 
 is not for the clergyman's parishioners to throw 
 stones. 
 
 He laughs at him behind his back, but willingly 
 allows him his title of reverend; he does not bring 
 him his profaner concerns, and, allowing him his 
 rostrum, does not care to hear his voice beyond its 
 range. 
 
 The clergyman is not unaware of this, and while 
 he takes his privileges returns the forbearances. And 
 so it comes about that his footing, take it all round, is 
 not assured. He exists on terms of treaty. 
 
 However good his intentions, he is not accepted as 
 a living spiritual fount. When he comes among his 
 friends, it is as a man who has left his business for the 
 day like other men, and he is expected to show in his 
 person the kind of man his business turns out, and 
 
 23
 
 Cross Views 
 
 the impression that he gives, most times, is that the 
 business is not doing very well. That it is not 
 supporting itself. That he is a figure-head, and that 
 he feels the want of scope and responsibility. Or 
 that he belongs to a fighting profession, and that his 
 enemies will not give him battle. If his service be a 
 State service, how can the State inspire such work as 
 his should be ? If his work draw other inspiration, 
 how can he leave it at the office ? 
 
 So perhaps he turns to hobbies, and side-issues, and 
 parish-details, that eat the heart out of a good man, 
 and turn a poor one into an old woman. I wonder 
 as these reflections run through my head, and my 
 visitor revives his parish animosities against Haver- 
 sedge, whether Mr. Stather knows these self-question- 
 ings. When you come to think of it, how oddly his 
 appearance sits on his profession this middle-aged 
 gentleman with the gold watch-chain, paying his 
 afternoon calls, and quarrelling with a neighbour's 
 politics. The old type of civil servant who played 
 bilboquet between ten and four, the lately existent 
 commissioned soldier who thought himself underpaid 
 as an ornament, must soon be joined by their old ally. 
 
 " A man in Haversedge's position," he says, smack- 
 ing his knee, "should set his face against all this 
 this new nonsense this socialism, to use a convenient 
 word." 
 
 "It is a convenient word," I agree. 
 
 " The position of a clergyman is difficult at times, 
 Mr. Askew." 
 
 24
 
 Town and Country 
 
 " All the time, I am sure," I hasten to reply. 
 
 " You are a Churchman, I hope ? " 
 
 " The Church casts a wide net." 
 
 " You are right," he says, brightening. " There is 
 room for all who come. But what was I saying ? 
 Yes. A man like Haversedge adds greatly to the 
 difficulties of his vicar. It is uphill work preaching 
 respect for superiors when the chief man in the place 
 has no respect for himself. He panders to the people, 
 Mr. Askew. I cannot express it otherwise. He 
 panders to the Radical element. Though he no longer 
 votes Radical, as I have said, he has the sitting 
 member to stay at Landfall, Boardman. And he 
 countenances dissent in quarters where he has the 
 power to stop it. That sort of thing gets about 
 among the working class and among one's servants, 
 and is most difficult to combat. And naturally it 
 makes the best people furious with him. For, after 
 all, he is a gentleman, and of really old family, 
 and a man of standing and means. Colonel Holme- 
 staple, or Mr. Baumeister, or old Lady Tapley, would 
 
 shut their doors in Boardman's face. Boardman " 
 
 He turned disgustedly in his chair. 
 
 "I suppose you have never met him, then ? " I ask. 
 
 " One meets him at dinner at Landfall. That is 
 what I complain of." 
 
 I opened my lips, but closed them again. 
 
 u But now I shall look forward to meeting you 
 there, Mr. Askew. That must be my excuse for 
 hurrying away. Delightful to see so many books. 
 
 25
 
 Cross Views 
 
 No friends like them, what ? I envy you your 
 leisure. Good-bye ; pray don't let me disturb you." 
 
 I close the hall door. 
 
 I had always thought it pleasant to see the door 
 stand open in the country. But I was a visitor in 
 those days. 
 
 26
 
 II 
 
 ALSO A GARDEN 
 
 MY garden rather perplexes me. I am not quite 
 sure that it is a garden. I have never come across a 
 definition, though garden literature is not lacking. 
 Is it a matter of aspect, contents, and size, would you 
 say ? Must it have a sun-dial, for instance ? If so, 
 mine is none. But mine has a south border, which 
 I believe to be a necessity, where the genius loci and 
 the hora serena flourish for the layman alongside the 
 Primula Himalaica or whatever it may be. This 
 south border is undoubtedly a sine qua non another 
 blossom for you to stick in your buttonhole. There 
 must be a south border, and there must be inhabitants 
 of the garden, under names that define but do not 
 indicate. There is, then, my Visitor to the garden, 
 myself who am the Spectator of the garden, and there 
 is a worker who is best left out of this. 
 
 How does my garden grow ! It has contents and 
 characters ! As for size, I seem to have read of 
 window gardening, which would exclude mere dimen- 
 sional rules, and certainly we do not measure beauty 
 by the foot. As for size, then, you may " put " on 
 my lawn, but you may not practise your approaching. 
 
 27
 
 Cross Views 
 
 In that the consent of neighbours is involved. You 
 may play diabolo, but not croquet. You may stroll, 
 but scarcely walk. Meditate, but not discuss at 
 least, not loudly. A watering-can more beseems it 
 than a hose. Bacon on Gardens you may read in it, 
 but scarcely the Syha. Tea may be given to an inti- 
 mate, but not entertainment to a party. The crocus 
 coming early finds room, and daffodils can dance in 
 April before the company is gathered, and the season 
 bat son plein ; but the stiff-mannered tulip and, later, 
 the full-petticoated peony are crowded. The flags 
 and St. Joseph lilies stand like sky-scrapers on prohi- 
 bitive ground-rents, and the sun-flowers cannot wring 
 their necks round following the day, anxious as I 
 am to see the feat, for they have no room to turn 
 their heads. My spirits sink again. It is certainly 
 very small. 
 
 " Look, I come to the test, a tiny garden." 
 
 Would I have it a garden, though ? Here again 
 my indecision recurs, for gardens are for townsfolk. 
 If I lived in town I would cultivate my garden were 
 it but a window garden, as it likely would be, but 
 why hedge in a rectangle of grass and coloured things 
 when there is a hundred square miles of them across 
 the boundary ? 
 
 A view is much cheaper than a garden, and beauty 
 comes round in its season without thought for bedding 
 out, cutting down, tying up, and forking in. The 
 child on the beach turns his back to the ocean, digs a 
 28
 
 Also a Garden 
 
 little trench with his wooden spade and fills his own 
 particular puddle from which he draws a particular 
 satisfaction his bigger playmate cannot afford him ; but 
 my soul rises above puddles, and rejects spades and 
 heavy watering-pots. I will admire the illimitable 
 view. 
 
 Nature is a little careless. At times she over- 
 waters her garden, and forgets to water it at others ; 
 but I can cast no stone at her. She raises weeds and 
 flowers ; but there she has my sympathy. I have a 
 tenderness for weeds, and seldom endeavour to repel 
 nature with a fork. Far be from me to scoff at her 
 rather mixed results. If I said anything against her, 
 it would be that she was rather too imitative. If I 
 don't water the geraniums, no more does she. If I 
 water, she follows suit. If, in a live-and-let-live 
 mood, I fail to eradicate a dandelion, she encourages 
 it to become insufferable. If, on the other hand, I 
 check a thrusting young creeper, she slays the poor 
 wretch outright. Put out a stand of chrysanthemums 
 for a breather, and she blows their medusa-locks off 
 their heads ; complain, and for fresh air she substi- 
 tutes thick white ghostly sea-fog, haunted all day and 
 night by complaints of straying ships. 
 
 But I leave it to her, chiefly. I can't help thinking 
 she must know more about it than I do. The 
 worker in the garden, I notice, confines himself to 
 tidying up after her, and I think he is in the right of 
 it. Shall man, knowing how little time he has to 
 stay, and what inroads, as seen by easy calculation, 
 
 29
 
 Cross Views 
 
 his own toilet makes upon his span of life, give another 
 and a larger fraction of it to shaving his lawns ? 
 Though time and space be annihilated by man's 
 inventions, and anything that escapes be recovered 
 and bottled by Mr. Willett, yet would I not let 
 myself out as barber to my own garden. Let it wear 
 its own aspect. Let nature work her healthy com- 
 petition, and if I have no bolstered exotics flourishing 
 in artificial soil I will walk in a finer show of Bel/is 
 perennis and Leontodon taraxacum than any to be seen 
 at my pragmatical neighbours'. These names are an 
 ornament to my page, and will not be found in any 
 garden-book published these ten years. 
 
 My walk is rather like the sailor's three steps and 
 overboard, for the chief of my view (I hope I have 
 not deceived you) is the Channel. 
 
 I remember a morning when the cold white fog 
 stood up against the cliff, curling over here and there, 
 a puff of congealed breath, but for the most part keep- 
 ing without the sharp line of the cliff edge where 
 the sunlight bordered the cloud. In the garden we 
 walked in the sun, and heard the sirens, great and 
 small, give chorus all the morning long like " mongrel, 
 puppy, whelp and hound," for a fleet was enshrouded 
 within a mile of us, waiting to greet a potentate from 
 across Channel. Towards midday the fog settled 
 downwards as heavy snow melts and showed a plain 
 of white under a blue sky. The opposite horn of the 
 bay put up a ridge of warm brown turf, and, packed 
 within the curve, lay the great white mattress of fog, 
 
 30
 
 Also a Garden 
 
 showing a level and falling surface. Its even floor 
 became pitted with dimples, whence issued the hot 
 breath of half a hundred smoke-stacks. Down sank 
 the snow-field and the topmasts of the battle-ships 
 pierced the air, allocating the blowholes ; and as it 
 continued to sink and melt, now a mere sheet, up 
 came funnel and bridge, barbette and bulwark, while 
 through the last thin coverlet the phenomenon of 
 their gradual emergence was played over again by 
 the small fry of destroyers and torpedo-boats on either 
 flank ; when, the last thin veil withdrawn, we beheld 
 His Majesty's Channel Fleet, already turning on its 
 keel disgustedly, for the potentate had slipped through 
 in the obscurity, and it had got a cold in its head 
 for nothing. 
 
 I don't say this happened because I complained 
 about the chrysanthemums, but give it as a sketch of 
 nature's workings in the vicinity of my garden. 
 
 If you come to consider the matter, a grass lawn, an 
 evergreen hedge, and a blue sea at the other side of 
 it, will offer you summer whenever the sun shines. 
 Were I a gardener, instead of a spectator of gardens, 
 I should look upon a Golgotha, a place of skulls, a 
 space of inverted flower-pots with a dead stick pro- 
 truding through each lifeless eyehole and strawy 
 cerements wrapped about their clay-cold forms. My 
 unfrozen outlook and undissolving view smiles back 
 merrily winter as summer. 
 
 A gentleman whose windows looked on to the 
 Atlantic complained that there was nothing between 
 
 3 1
 
 Cross Views 
 
 him and America. He had four thousand miles of 
 turbulent water, and what more he wanted, unless it 
 were the great wall of China or a landing-tax, I 
 cannot imagine. But probably that was not what 
 he meant. He wanted incident, and should have 
 come round the corner, to the left. 
 
 If you would walk round your native land, fairly, 
 and cutting no corners, you must pass under my 
 hedge. There is no help for you. On my section 
 of that long road you will find an Islander, leisurely 
 sweeping but chiefly gazing seaward, and above the 
 hedge you will see me, also admiring the view. For 
 when my garden has bested me, and the view has the 
 preference, I am there and see the pedestrian go by. 
 
 He is frequently a foreigner, and if he isn't he is 
 an Overner, as my friend with the broom would call 
 him. You are an Overner. Because you are not an 
 Islander. When you are past, the man with the 
 broom will laugh at you. I shall not. I have more 
 control over my emotions, ridiculous as Overners are. 
 And perhaps a foreigner will follow, at whom we 
 can all laugh. He will probably be a German. It 
 is a Luxusreise to visit the Inse/, and all affluent 
 Germans make it. His wife walks some yards behind 
 him, and he talks back at her over his shoulder. She 
 carries a basket, two umbrellas, and his Havelock, 
 which is another English luxus no longer known to 
 us by that name. French families pass also, pleased, 
 astonishingly pleased with what they see. But let us 
 take courage in this particular. Our side of the 
 32
 
 Also a Garden 
 
 Channel has the south aspect, an undeniable pull, and 
 the sun tempts the countryside down to the lip of 
 the sand ; our shores are greener than those opposite, 
 and southerly winds spray the adventurous bluebell 
 and primrose with salt showers, and the sea-anemone 
 and the wood-anemone are almost within the borders 
 of the one garden. The beach-minstrel, a summer- 
 growth I would fain discourage, is to the foreign visitor 
 but a garish outlander, showing a dash of barbarism 
 quite pleasant on a civilised holiday, and for aught I 
 know is accounted "tres snob." And you, if you 
 saw a bathing-machine for the first time on a foreign 
 strand, might you not perhaps fall into ecstasies over 
 such a quaint and practical device that does not leave 
 you to pick your way over long stretches of shingle 
 or pebble, but follows the tides up and down the 
 beaches ? I think it possible that Corrrmonsense would 
 write to his daily paper and denounce the striped tent, 
 were that the native article, and the gazers on the 
 foreshore, and demand the introduction of the admir- 
 able, delightful, private, and picturesque bathing- 
 machine. It would figure largely in the colour-books 
 series, with a violent violet shadow and a very French 
 lady tripping down the ladder, and the bathing- 
 machine horse with his bare-legged rider might cut 
 into the profits of the Volendam types, and enable 
 the sands of Bognor to compete in the Academy with 
 the red roofs of Brittany, and seduce the painters of 
 Fontainebleau. It was born English, the poor bathing- 
 machine, but one day it will be discovered by the 
 
 c 33
 
 Cross Views 
 
 wandering Continental some Marco Polo of the 
 race will find it and exploit it, some unborn Manet 
 or Monet found a school on its lines. Meanwhile 
 the pioneers of the entente^ voyagers before Columbus, 
 meet it and rejoice. 
 
 As for the dinner that meets them at the Royal 
 Promenade Hotel, I can only say that one must shut 
 one's eyes to a certain amount of suffering. The 
 descendants of the survivors will be hardier. And 
 travel should have its hardships, or home would have 
 no attractions. Were every comfort obtainable in 
 France but read M. Octave Mirbeau. It is better 
 that a nation's shortcomings should be pointed out by 
 one of its sons. 
 
 Out in the bay there are the submarines. Far 
 away you see what appears to be a man walking on 
 the water. Presently he goes under, but leaves his 
 walking-stick, which walks alone, wonderfully, and 
 leaves a thin white trail. And sometimes even the 
 stick disappears, and then two torpedo boats spread a 
 net between them and go a-shrimping for him. 
 This makes me so nervous that I cannot go in to my 
 meals, but stand on one leg mentally offering rewards 
 for his recovery. I remind myself of the gouty old 
 gentleman who, comfortably propped over against a 
 similar outlook, his promontoried foot rising between 
 his vision and the horizon, was discovered frantically 
 waving ships off his inflamed and over-sensitive toe. 
 
 And sometimes a little tug with a very large red 
 flag will steam across and across the bay, far out, and 
 34
 
 Also a Garden 
 
 a cable's length behind her two squares of canvas 
 follow in her wake. Northward, from the green, 
 easy slope of the down rising from the pebble beach 
 three miles away in the opposite curve, there is a 
 long flash, bright as the sunlight, a long gathering 
 whine from the travelling shell, and a column of 
 white water is struck up between the targets : 
 another and another white dash mark its ricochet 
 to the final plunge, and a tremendous roar follows all 
 up, like an oath flung after a stone. " Good sha-at ! " 
 says the Islander, who always has time to watch 
 things of this kind. He is as good a spectator as any 
 man in the world. 
 
 I am reminded that I am a spectator of gardens. 
 
 If only one knew the names of things ! I suppose 
 it is because the Garden of Eden came so early in the 
 scheme of things that everything in a garden is so 
 thoroughly christened. Everything that grows has a 
 name and most of them have several. You have 
 the Latin name though have does not imply posses- 
 sion. You have butterflies when you can catch 
 them, and sparrows when you can put salt on their 
 tails you have, I say, the Latin names, and the 
 English names, the local and the poetical names, the 
 wrong names you get by putting faith in seed-labels, 
 and the really astonishing names that come from the 
 gardener. When the res innominate flourish you call 
 them by one or more of these names, and when, 
 again, they don't flourish, you call them quite other 
 names. 
 
 35
 
 Cross Views 
 
 My Visitor in the garden is aggrieved that she and 
 her sisters have not distinguishing scents, even as the 
 flowers. I think they have ; at least but she says 
 that I am ignorant of flowers, and cannot argue from 
 a missing premise. Be that as it may, and over- 
 looking the wanton and ridiculous excess, such an 
 addition would be of dubious advantage. The scent 
 could, clearly, not be individual. It must follow a 
 class name. That there should be a sweet scent for 
 Marys, for instance, we shall all agree. But if Mary 
 did not love Mary ? Or if Mary christened into the 
 tuberose class, let us say, were made faint with too 
 much sweet ? There would be this much good, that 
 the flower-names such as Lily or Violet would be of 
 doubly sweet suggestion, and bring less disillusion in 
 their train, but there would be this much bad, that 
 unappropriated perfumes would be few for Beatrice, 
 Maud, or Juliet, while divine Margaret must plainly 
 go unscented. And there are others who might be 
 considered. If to the barriers of blood, fortune, and 
 mischance, that wreck so many lives in fact and 
 fiction, we were to add congenital perfumes and con- 
 genital aversions, we should reduce the marriage rate 
 beyond any reasonable expectation of a happy ending 
 to the tale. The clinging odour of Nicotiana tabacum 
 has ere now dashed the prospects of its votaries, but 
 there is every likelihood of this delicious and satisfying 
 effluvium, capable too of so many subtle variations 
 and individual strains, capturing the persons of our 
 maidens and ending that particular danger. But I 
 36
 
 Also a Garden 
 
 should not like to be tied by irrevocable ties of birth 
 even to the Arcadian mixture, which, in spite of the 
 author's advertised assurance, is not to be enjoyed by 
 ordinary men ; and picture the position of the smoker 
 born into an aristocratic family, but whose means 
 force him to drop the Henry, and adopt the simple 
 Clay. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. 
 
 No. Colours, flowers, and scents are made various 
 to suit variable woman, and are better unappropriated. 
 
 I would have no flowers in the house. Children 
 in the nursery, dogs in the yard, flowers in the garden, 
 and women at the polls. But I am a crank, and 
 not one with my kind. Men go out in the autumn 
 with a bag, children with baskets in the spring, and 
 they return rejoicing with their dead ; and woman 
 decks herself, smiling, with fur, feathers, and flowers. 
 The primrose is learning to hide, and her indeter- 
 minate, exquisite face will surely take on more and 
 more the protective colouring of the greenwood, and 
 will avoid being a yellow primrose by the river's brim 
 to anyone, by being green. 
 
 I keep one or two in my garden. I know their 
 name for one thing, and never treat them as did little 
 Psyche the buttercup. To see freshly-slaughtered 
 masses of perfect growth decaying in swathes on my 
 table gives me no joy. I would as soon shoot a bird 
 as pick a wild flower. 
 
 The act of meditation is peculiarly attached to 
 gardens. Study is so obviously for indoors that the 
 word has become eponymous. Reflection and con- 
 
 37
 
 Cross Views 
 
 sideration we carry about with us for our daily needs ; 
 speculation is a vain thing, and rumination may be 
 left to ruminants. To ponder or to muse demands, 
 I think, the firelight, but to meditate, a garden. 
 There are who meditate in bed, but this is an 
 abuse. I have felt the initial stages, the interior 
 debate, of an uninviting morning, but I never lapse. 
 I am innately virtuous. I may sin, but cannot wallow 
 in sin, so the morning-long indulgence of meditation 
 in bed is unfamiliar to me. I take this recreation, 
 then, out-of-doors ; even to indulgence perhaps ; but 
 work is the thief of time, and the pursuit of letters 
 an arduous distraction enforcing much idleness. 
 
 Meditation, of course, is on the past, and, rightly, 
 on an unsuccessful past, for meditation on a prosperous 
 past recalls the ruminant again. The definition of 
 happiness as the contemplation of past pleasure with- 
 out present pain is merely descriptive of a good 
 digestion. The past should be full of storm and 
 hardship, for a garden to be truly a garden must be 
 a harbour of refuge, even if it cannot be a port. 
 
 I have by me an advertisement of a house to be let 
 for the summer. I cut it out of the Times once, 
 years ago. It is brief yet embracing, and ends in 
 these words : 
 
 "Ency. Britt. and mall Garden? 
 
 Now, if it be the effort that counts for something 
 in life, and not the result, surely an Encyclopaedia is 
 a noble thing, and no unfit epitome of human en- 
 38
 
 Also a Garden 
 
 deavour ! What a magnificent conception, to enclose 
 all knowledge in a book ! What a lame and impo- 
 tent conclusion, to leave out of it everything that ever 
 man wanted to know ! A great monument, then, 
 this, of human effort and human impotence ; im- 
 pressive as Baalbec, irresponsive as the Sphinx, in- 
 ordinate as the Pyramids, and futile as the Eiffel 
 Tower. My gifted advertiser knew the struggles and 
 the vain pursuits, the baffled quests and Pisgah sights 
 that make up our little span, and the ultimate defeat 
 and philosophic retirement that round it off. Every 
 son of Adam has his double, they say, and when I 
 read that pregnant message that had found me across 
 the desert of print, for one moment I saw myself and 
 the maker of the tender gazing fearfully on each other 
 like the duplicated lovers in Rossetti's water-colour. 
 But, of course, he was really the man who earns 
 .1,000 a year by writing advertisements. You have 
 often heard of him. But what a gift of condensation ! 
 What a lightning summary ! He knew about it all ! 
 He knew the human heart, as he needs must who 
 draws ^1,000 yearly from framing advertisements. 
 He summed it all up, that Master of Phrase. He did 
 not offer "Encyc. Britt. and small study" No. His 
 offer was not to green youth, but to riper age. What 
 he held out to the unheeding crowd was the Encyclo- 
 pedia Brittanica an epitome of vanities and a small 
 garden to meditate it in. 
 
 I hope some other solitary, and worse-supplied, 
 stretched a weary hand. 
 
 39
 
 Cross Views 
 
 I meditate, then, on my grass plot, and without 
 going further find subject enough. The first thing 
 that strikes me about it is that there is no grass on it. 
 Really, it is scarcely represented. It is green enough 
 after rain, but after a spell of sun it has rather an 
 infinite variety of bronzes. This of course is due to 
 the incursions of wild things. Some one has been 
 letting in the jungle. My predecessor. He must 
 have been a man much of my stamp. The weeds 
 were too many for him, and now he is in Heaven, or 
 in town. Now, I have a neighbour, a cheerful out- 
 door man, not given to meditation at all, but a man 
 of speech and also a man of action, with a hawk-eye 
 for a weed. I find him, of fine afternoons, walking 
 his lawns with a glass bottle in his hand containing a 
 killing acid. The stopper crowns a long sharp needle 
 grooved towards the point to hold the deadly drop, 
 and when the victim is seen for so utterly is the 
 savage subjugated in his domains that a sense of pity 
 arises in the ill-regulated breast and lends to the 
 remnants of a barbaric horde the false colours of the 
 noble red man, of the hunted and oppressed "it is 
 pizen wherever found." My moral reflections are 
 transferred to the lawns of that dutiful Christian, and 
 the dark picture of the enemy sowing tares is overlaid 
 by this of the enthusiastic missioner and exemplary 
 groundsman, my friend with the acid bottle, eradi- 
 cating them. 
 
 My plot is too far gone. It is too late to mend. 
 It was the fault of the man who let it me. I have 
 40
 
 Also a Garden 
 
 other things to do, and the view across the hedge 
 calls me away. 
 
 That quaint and irregular sonnet of Soulary's runs 
 in my head sometimes. In English it would be 
 something like this, though I should be sorry to 
 submit my rendering to the Jeffreys of the Westminster 
 Gazette : 
 
 " If I had a rood of ground, hill, or plain, or vale, 
 A little living water, were it runnel, fall, or spring, 
 I would plant an olive-shade, or ash, or willow-veil, 
 There would raise my roof-tree, tiled, or thatched with 
 
 reed, or ling. 
 
 In my tree a nest of down, of grass, or woolly trail, 
 Should lure the finch or mavis-song, or sparrow 
 
 chattering ; 
 Beneath my roof a cradle soft, a mat, or soft-meshed 
 
 swing, 
 
 Couch a lovely child for me, ruddy, brown, or pale. 
 I only ask a rood of ground ; this to measure right, 
 I would say me to the child fairest in my sight : 
 ' Up, and from the rising sun take the earliest gleam ; 
 Then, within the line thy shadow casts upon the lawn, 
 Are the bounds of my desire ever more withdrawn.' 
 Happiness beyond hand-reach is but an empty dream." 
 
 " A little living water " a roc's egg ! I knew a 
 garden once, though, no bigger than what shall I 
 say no bigger than the refuge in Piccadilly Circus 
 (whose fountain water rises at the bidding of a 
 turncock and where flowers are brought in baskets of 
 a morning : or than that court in the Temple whose
 
 Cross Views 
 
 sleepy-sounding patron spring deadened my senses so 
 effectually against the appeal of Themis) a little 
 garden flowering with a storied luxuriance at the foot 
 of the finest down in England, and drawing living 
 water from a tiny cave filled with fern, whence it 
 flowed, an absurd exquisite microcosmical river, two 
 feet wide and six inches deep, with eddies, rapids, 
 finger-tip shallows and wrist-deep pools, cresses, and 
 trout ! The trout were out of proportion that I 
 admit. They were fed too much. If they were 
 refused they jumped out into the garden, knowing 
 full well that they would be put back and comforted 
 with crumbs. Yes, they were too big for the scene, 
 they destroyed the unities : and harassed my infant 
 soul, just as the cannon provided in my day for leaden 
 armies. Now they have it in proportion, for military 
 matters have progressed in the nursery : and in the 
 garden much water has flowed under the rustic bridge 
 that one stepped over, but not on. So much indeed 
 that I dare not revisit my toy-stream. I should be 
 hopelessly out of the picture. 
 
 A clean brook ! Where may it be found ? I wonder 
 did it ever exist, in the good old times that were so 
 abominably dirty. And if a dripping tap cost twenty 
 shillings and three shillings costs, what would be the 
 water rate for a private-trout stream ? To be in- 
 terested in the answer you must have shares in the 
 New River Company. 
 
 Did you ever risk penal servitude by scooping fry 
 out of a river in a bucket, and transferring them to an 
 42
 
 Also a Garden 
 
 aquarium ? They are so pretty it is worth the risk. 
 In the stream they are no more than tadpoles or 
 shadows, but through glass the tiny, perfect, silvery 
 things have the attraction that models and miniatures 
 never fail to exercise. But they don't flourish on 
 crumbs, and the injury done the gentle angler in their 
 premature death affects the conscientious naturalist. 
 
 As to birds, the poet, as you see, will take a sparrow. 
 He is not the first, though birds and bird-names are 
 almost as numerous as plants. I knew a man once 
 who was happy for years in the knowledge of one 
 bird. He said he knew the cuckoo by his note. It 
 was a rash faith anyway, for the early cuckoos reported 
 in the papers spring by spring, are wonderfully simu- 
 lated by small country-bred boys, and even, though I 
 fear I shall be scoffed at for saying so, by distant dogs, 
 when heard once in a way. But the man, who knew 
 the cuckoo when he heard him, had a friend who hated 
 him, and who said that there were no consonants in 
 bird language, and that the cuckoo was not a cuckoo 
 but an oo-oo. So the man of one bird, undone, went 
 away on a Polar expedition and lived on penguins for 
 three years ; but the friend, who had determined on 
 his death, said that the penguin wasn't a real bird 
 which was manifestly a falsehood. But the man 
 mourned, and set out to Shepherd's Bush, thinking to 
 find birds there, but there were none. He made his 
 way back eventually, and went on another expedition 
 to Golder's Green, pioneering for a tube railway, and 
 there perished ; and when I say he perished, I mean 
 
 43
 
 Cross Views 
 
 he perished miserably. But his friend rejoiced, for 
 he was a member of the cage-bird society and hated 
 amateurs. 
 
 But though there is much one must contemn in 
 his conduct, he was probably right about the cuckoo ; 
 and not altogether wrong about the penguin. For 
 though Darwin's story is the better reasoned, that of 
 M. France is the more convincing ; and the penguin 
 moreover, and I have studied him for hours, has that 
 earnest striving towards humanity, that will to be 
 human, that constant and solemn purpose to be upright 
 that, however blown upon the Lamarckian theory 
 may be at the present moment, contrasts most 
 favourably with the careless, degenerate and remi- 
 niscent likeness fitfully displayed in the monkey-house. 
 Personally I am a convinced and practising Dar- 
 winian, but the penguin striving to be a man draws 
 from me an admiration I cannot accord to the ape 
 striving to forget that he is one. I could live with a 
 penguin, and be the better for him, but I could not 
 live with a monkey. The penguin and the monkey 
 are Nature's Jekyll and Hyde. The penguin is a 
 prig, you say, impossibly good, insufferably solemn and 
 earnest, with no sense of humour and no sympathy 
 give me the monkey, you say ? Own at once you 
 have no taste for virtue. For me, I am on the side 
 of the Penguins. 
 
 I have frequently read the name of a certain Lord 
 No Zoo in the Liberal papers lately, and he is treated 
 to no little contumely and abuse. I have not noticed 
 44
 
 Also a Garden 
 
 that the Duke of Bedford and Lord Walsingham and 
 other keepers of Zoos are held up as models to him, 
 but I suppose that that is the implication : and it is 
 surely a reproach to landholders and the super-taxed 
 that with land reserves and revenues at their disposal 
 they keep no big game, but subdue their guns to the 
 unexciting pheasant and the quite occasional beater. 
 
 " They take thee for thy better, tumid fowl ! " 
 
 That a man should have woodland, covert, pasture, 
 water and all in a ring fence, and reckon among his 
 family monuments the lapidary inscription on one : 
 
 Qui dum sub luna agebat 
 
 Quinquies mille perdrices 
 
 plumbo confecit 
 
 varii cibi 
 Centumpondia millies centena millia, &c., 
 
 and yet be a Lord No Zoo, argues a strange poverty 
 of mind. For he would always have at the disposal 
 of his guns that surplusage of feral life that at Regent's 
 Park is kept down by the unavoidable strait confine- 
 ment, by the " little bit of everything " tendered by 
 visitors (who thus keep within bounds their own infant 
 population), by the harassing of segregated animals at 
 the hands of their keepers anxious for fees and visitors 
 ready to bestow them, by the sharp ferules of sticks 
 and umbrellas, by the military bands on Mondays, 
 and other measures. If the larger carnivores were 
 kept, the education of East Enders undertaken by the 
 
 45
 
 Cross Views 
 
 Fellows of the London Zoo on Sundays, could not be 
 attempted, or would be apt to be too abrupt and 
 violent for modern ideas ; but excursion-aeroplanes 
 might be run and give a bird's-eye view, and the 
 advertisement of an elephant-drive in Goodwood 
 Park might draw like a race-meeting. 
 
 But the animal that would best become my garden, 
 to return to it, would be a sloth. Sir Thomas Browne, 
 by whom a monosyllable has but to be seen to be 
 rejected, calls him the Lazy of Brasilia. He must 
 have had him in mind when he wrote " Festination 
 may prove Precipitation, Deliberating Delay a wise 
 cunctation, and slowness no slothfulness." 
 
 For even the Lazy of Brasilia arrives one day ; 
 and one day my garden may be a garden ; who 
 knows ? 
 
 46
 
 Ill 
 
 A WET DAY 
 
 A WET day is a natural Sabbath. The stillness of 
 its dawn is not cut into by any clash of bells, no 
 stream of feet hastens by to Church, no murmur 
 of returning crowds and unloosed tongues break its 
 middle quiet, but a day-long whisper of water on the 
 roof publishes the universal truce. Man is confined 
 to his dwellings, and a sense of relief breathes from 
 the untrodden soil. 
 
 A light white mist brings the horizon very near, 
 and muffles the cliff contours and the prominence of 
 trees and roofs, and closes in upon itself the modest 
 personality of my dwelling and small holding, making 
 it all-important among half-invisible surroundings and 
 lost comparisons. To-day it must suffice unto itself, 
 and the solitary and far-sounding footfall of the early 
 tradesman marks all the ministration it will receive. 
 On such a day, if the house be old enough to have 
 a soul, it will stir a little and sigh under the quiet 
 and relaxation of the low heaven, and under cover 
 of the hush memories will revive in old furniture and 
 faded pictures, and dead things exhale from the 
 softened breast of the earth, and re-enter in some 
 
 47
 
 Cross Views 
 
 tenuous and unspeakably remote manner the dim 
 corners of their ancient habitations. 
 
 There is a quiet unrest within, a charged silence, 
 a peopled emptiness throughout the expectant rooms, 
 and if you give yourself up to the listening mood 
 of the unbroken hours, and entertain the fancies that 
 move with you across the floors and meet you on 
 stairs and in passages, every door that stands ajar, 
 letting a filtered light upon the shadowed landings, 
 seems a mute invitation to some waiting presence. 
 
 You pause before some cabinet perhaps, where 
 treasures are carefully disposed, those absurd and 
 magpie accumulations which your animistic tendency 
 has endowed, each one, with a semi-sacred indivi- 
 duality ; at times the scales have dropped from your 
 eyes, and you have thought of the caddis-worm in the 
 ditch, cumbered and stuck over with all the rubbish 
 of water and earth ; but to-day every hand that ever 
 handled them before you seems to caress them anew. 
 
 You stay before some portrait in an upper room, 
 and half idly, half musingly, look on the smiling irre- 
 sponsive face, so like in its moment the face once 
 laid to yours, so terribly unlike because it has never 
 a next moment. The moment that saw the likeness 
 caught saw an aspect you never saw, for it was not 
 bent on you. You were not reflected in the eyes, 
 and that it is that makes the face you love ; and that 
 is the want that makes this a mockery. 
 
 Your dim reflection glances from the panels of a 
 press, and the time-smoothed oak emphasizes the transi- 
 48
 
 A Wet Day 
 
 toriness of your shadow, soon to be one with the 
 shadows of the shades now gathering round its 
 stubborn wood. You hear the rustle of the rain, and 
 the " flowing of all men's tears beneath the sky," and 
 stand in a haunted house, a sceptic and a solitary. 
 
 Though a wet day is a spiritual Sabbath, I do not 
 find it a day of rest. Happy, then, is the man who 
 has hobbies. It is not a day for reading. That is 
 a refuge when the world is awake and about, but 
 when its noise is stilled I am untuned to reading. I 
 set up a vibration of my own. I cannot work on a 
 wet day. I can work on a Sunday all of me except 
 my digestion, which from old and soured association 
 strikes work like a pious Christian from the first 
 matin bell and but takes up its arrears of business 
 unwillingly on the Monday. 
 
 But a wet day is perhaps rather a witches' Sabbath, 
 when all unrestful spirits throng the house, and my 
 feet are driven from room to room and my hands to 
 touch everything and hold to nothing. Vague 
 schemes and great-hearted beginnings are born of 
 wet days, magnificent fragments of revisal, noble 
 conceptions of method, to stand anomalously and 
 crumble on their ground plans when the narrow 
 short-sighted round of week-day work begins again. 
 
 A wet season is not made up of wet days. To 
 think so is a natural mistake on your part, but there 
 could not be a greater. A wet day stands alone, 
 needing, indeed, a dry season, and has other necessary 
 qualifications. It must be windless or the wrong 
 
 D 49
 
 Cross Views 
 
 class of ghosts will be evoked ; and should be warm, 
 that the open windows may let in the rising essence 
 of earth, grass, and all wet growing things, and allow 
 you to feast your senses on beautiful Nature at 
 her bath. 
 
 Did you ever play, when a child, in a hayloft on 
 a wet day ? The charm of it lay purely in the near- 
 ness to the weather, every individual tile close over- 
 head chattering of the wet outside as it slid its drops 
 on to the next below, to be passed on to the bubbling 
 gutter and swell the tide that bore one's fleet of 
 chips and husks from the port of the eave-sheltered 
 doorway to the maelstrom of the far-off drain. The 
 low doors stood perilously open, high above the 
 shining yard where the water ran in little runnels 
 between the bricks, and the close-packed hay and 
 looser sheaves of clean straw and sacks of slippery 
 oats smelt deliciously in the moist air of the summer 
 evening. Below, the horses stamped and clinked 
 their head-chains in their stalls, and looking down 
 the short wide chutes at the back of the loft you 
 could see soft muzzles steadily munching over the 
 mangers, and dribble handfuls of brisk-sounding corn 
 down to them if John were out of the way. The 
 pure joy of that straight wooden ladder and trap-door 
 approach ! Never would I have a staircase in house 
 of mine and I am something of a stylite still. There 
 was a hay-chopper in my loft, forbidden as were the 
 oats, and I don't think I was ever wicked enough to 
 touch the chopper. Rashness never threatened my 
 
 50
 
 A Wet Day 
 
 length of days, and I was seldom bad unless I saw no 
 chance of the devil coming by his own. But there 
 I was not peculiar, I think. 
 
 If one could keep quiet long enough, among the 
 hay, the house-martins would come and walk on the 
 sheltered ledge on fluffy invisible feet, and play at 
 pushing one another over the drop, a practical joke 
 we none of us tired of. But not even the martins 
 are left me to play with the sparrows have driven 
 them out. 
 
 I turn with something of a sigh to my books. 
 Read while you are young, yes ; but I am thank- 
 ful that it is not necessary to study cards for one's 
 old age. There are more amusing picture-books 
 than cards, and a catholic taste in illustrations is 
 an introduction to a more live and vivid company 
 than the club card-room provides though it must 
 be confessed that their cult, too, is more costly than 
 that of the philosophers. The price of a Marcus 
 Aurelius will not purchase much of Phil May, and 
 Everyman's library does not run to the works of 
 Grasset or de Monvel ; but folly has always been 
 more costly than wisdom, and beauty more ruinous 
 than either. The bibliophile may read, or not read, 
 his Shakespeare in the first folio, but for 6d. a play 
 you may read him much better ; whereas the more 
 you lay out on a picture or its reproduction the nearer 
 you come to its painter ; and here it is that the 
 worshipper is lured beyond his means. At the same 
 time, viewing the sheaves of sample, supplemental, 
 
 51
 
 Cross Views 
 
 and even commercially-used prints that flutter out 
 from every magazine and book-box, I have often 
 thought that one might possess a penny picture gallery, 
 nay, a gallery of gratis plates, that would beguile the 
 hours of a very long day. Has any hoarder with the 
 space at his disposal ever attempted its formation]? 
 A rope-walk might house all the treasures of the 
 Uffizi, and every hermit in a lighthouse have his own 
 Hermitage. How many passable prints could be had 
 for the price of a Hals or a Velasquez ? I don't 
 believe the money could be spent, they are so cheap. 
 I cannot find it in me to rank the unnamed masters 
 of the earliest woodcuts, or the happily inspired taker 
 of the first niello print, below the cutter of the 
 Buchstaben, or the name of Senefelder below that of 
 Gutenberg, or to think the poor man's gallery a less 
 happy chance of my period than the poor man's 
 library. 
 
 Illustration has its curiosities, for which I keep a 
 corner. There is the comedy of illustration (which 
 is not the same thing, bien entendu, as the illustration 
 of comedy, though the two may not impossibly be 
 one we have all seen illustrations to Shakespeare's 
 comedies, to go no further, which combined this art 
 and artlessness) and there is the tragedy of illustra- 
 tion, which may be personal as is the common case 
 of the misinterpreted author who cannot persuade 
 even his collaborator to read his text and whose 
 sorrows are but aggravated at times by the weight of 
 the other's reputation ; or as in such case as that of 
 52
 
 A Wet Day 
 
 mine in the loss of Cranford^ irrevocably lost to me 
 by early association with drawings I found un- 
 sympathetic ; or which may be general as in the case 
 of fine work thrown away on ephemeral or unworthy 
 publication. This tragedy is well seen where illus- 
 tration has touched its highest in Paris. 
 
 Of the oddities I collect I showed one the other 
 day to a French painter who, mocking at most men 
 and most things as Parisians do, had a corner in his 
 heart for that great draughtsman Ingres. Some one 
 had sent me a small monograph on the artist, illus- 
 trated from his principal canvases a kind of hand- 
 book we do much better in this country, by the by 
 and there is Thetis implorant Jupiter, imploring with 
 tears, and caressing the god with two right hands ! 
 A German draughtsman of to-day, and a great one, 
 Otto Greiner it is when men are great that the 
 malicious small take pleasure in their occasional lapses 
 has given us Ulysses and the Sirens where the labour- 
 ing oarsmen are seen with bent backs and straining 
 muscles to " smite the sounding furrow " as they urge 
 the vessel beyond the danger of the voices. Small 
 wonder that they put their backs into it, for they 
 pull stern first against the force of the bellying sail, 
 and the helmsman stands behind them. But the 
 purest comedy of illustration in my small collection 
 is supplied by a drawing of William Bell Scott's in 
 an edition of Keats's Hyperion. Saturn is fallen, and 
 the " mammoth-brood " of Titans lies prone among 
 the mountains. The good artist drew the Titans 
 
 53
 
 Cross Views 
 
 and the mountains, but found to his perplexity that 
 he could only command men lying among molehills. 
 What was to be done ? How lend the heroic pro- 
 portions ? I myself, in whom an invincible desire 
 to draw is more than the wisdom of years, under- 
 stand his feelings so well that I can scarcely bear 
 to laugh. But William Bell Scott was not defeated. 
 If he lacked power he did not lack ingenuity. He 
 seized his pencil, and, in the immediate foreground, 
 against the nearest of the sprawling forms, and sniffing 
 at it, as it were, mouse-like, he placed a rhinoceros ! 
 The funniest, tiniest, stuffed rhinoceros that ever 
 came out of a toy zoo but no matter from the 
 rhinoceros you may now argue the Titan, and from 
 the Titans the mountains, and Saturn hobbling up 
 over the now distant horizon on Thea's arm is all 
 but restored to his primal grandeur. 
 
 An impressionist introduced to us upside down 
 in the pages of our leading art journal was a good 
 stroke in this kind. We may hope not unreasonably 
 that the indignity was not apparent to many ; but 
 I filed the poor man still standing on his head. 
 
 Among Mr. Sambourne's delightful designs to 
 Kingsley's Water Babies is a superb salmon, a flash 
 of silver and black, swirling past his despised cousin 
 the trout " as for trout, everyone knows what they 
 are" and in the salmon you suddenly see the 
 features once so familiar in every picture-paper of 
 Mr. Gladstone. And some years ago I came across 
 a bookplate, that of an angler, into which the artist 
 54
 
 A Wet Day 
 
 had introduced the paraphernalia of the craft, and, 
 wanting a fish, had borrowed Mr. Sambourne's 
 salmon, Gladstone and all ! This drawing within 
 a drawing was constantly practised by that Puckish 
 genius Aubrey Beardsley, whose designs had to be 
 closely edited by admiring but much-tried publishers. 
 
 An old natural history in many volumes affords me 
 " the front and back-view of a mermaid " drawn and 
 coloured with a daunting and indecent realism, but 
 the unbridled excesses of the old natural history 
 draughtsmen belong to a looser age. No longer do 
 they move the inconstant mind, which receives 
 sterner thrill from the camera-shots of those genuine 
 sportsmen, Messrs. Schillings & Dugmore. 
 
 Whole volumes have been devoted to the subject 
 of the arrangement of libraries, and subject indexes 
 have been issued with labour and received with ac- 
 clamation, but between ourselves the difficulty of 
 arrangement is great in inverse ratio to the size of 
 the collection. It is comparatively easy for Mr. 
 Hagberg-Wright or Mr. Fortescue to reckon their 
 miles of shelving and their hosts of volumes, and to 
 apportion a furlong to Political Economy, for instance, 
 and two furlongs to Poetry, and so on, and more- 
 over, they have not to think whether they have this 
 book or that. If the book exists they have it, and 
 there's an end on't. I see no trouble in their path. 
 O these sinecurists ! But how to arrange a modest 
 thousand, the picked and re-picked representatives 
 of millions ? Segregation by subject is out of the 
 
 55
 
 Cross Views 
 
 question, where a volume must stand for a literature. 
 Alphabetical order, which first suggests itself to the 
 humble librarian, helps to find but also helps to lose, 
 for where am I to place, or rather, where am I 
 subsequently to find, Boswe/l's Johnson, or Fitz- 
 gerald's Omar ? Should the mighty translators, 
 themselves classic, North, Urquhart, or Florio, lead 
 me to Plutarch, Rabelais and the rest, as seems 
 fitting ; and coming to my illustrated books should 
 not Rowlandson take precedence of Combe, Cruik- 
 shank of Ainsworth, and should Hogarth refer me 
 to Dobson, or Dobson to Hogarth ? Or I rise from 
 the joyful company of some beloved intimate, and 
 my subconscious affection induces me more than 
 likely to deposit Jane Austen under "J.," or "St. 
 Charles " among the saints, as Thackeray did. Then 
 the cold-mannered catalogue only recognising " Lamb, 
 Charles," one fine day one goes to " L " and there is 
 gnashing of teeth. 
 
 A friend of mine, extremely sensitive in his 
 zesthetic perceptions, arranges his books in masses 
 and shades of colour. He will buy any book that 
 goes in a delicate green, and will hardly have a red 
 book under his roof. His library looks nicer than any 
 I know, and a book out of place interfering with 
 the colour scheme, he can detect it instantly, as I 
 know to my cost. Even a book upside down he 
 will raise his hands at that " even " destroys the 
 balance of his composition, and causes him acute 
 suffering, and the gap left by a volume in use so 
 56
 
 A Wet Day 
 
 works upon his nerves that it is as well to read it 
 standing' before the temporary void. He is my oldest 
 and dearest friend, and one cannot handle such a 
 possession too carefully. 
 
 To his wife I owe the bold dictum " Everything's 
 a book that has batters," i.e. boards. This saying, 
 so roundly contradictory of Lamb's biblia-a-biblia^ 
 comes appropriately enough from the country of 
 Carlyle, as indeed does she ; but the application of 
 it made by her husband would, I think, have worked 
 strongly, though differingly, on both philosophers. 
 
 Once I thought I had got it. A library, I said, 
 should be arranged by date, say in periods of ten years 
 to a press. This would be most educational, for 
 a visual recollection of your bookshelves would furnish 
 you with a memor'ia technica ; the position of Darwin's 
 Origin, for instance, suggesting all that was doing 
 at the period in art, history, philosophy or what 
 not, recalling Newman's Apologia, Ruskin's Elements, 
 Tennyson's Idylls, Mill's Representative Government, 
 Froude's History, Browning's Dramatis Persona, 
 Thackeray's Virginians, Eliot's Adam Bede, and Mill 
 on the Floss, &c. The remembered sequence of the 
 book presses would afford a chronological survey of 
 letters, and enable one to follow the evolution and 
 growth of individuals and tendencies. Here was an 
 idea a discovery to turn curators green. Press '59- 
 '69 was a huge success ; but the next decade, looking 
 forward, was not so rich, at least not in my library, 
 and when I got to the end of the century I was left 
 
 57
 
 Cross Views 
 
 with that gorgeous book The Way of all Flesh, along 
 with which it was useless to stand anything, for when 
 that meets my eye I always read it again. But in 
 this adventure of buying books though, what vipers 
 may one not take to one's bosom ? The King's English, 
 for instance. Who that has taken it up and seen 
 what asp has come to life in his hands, but wished 
 vainly that it had never crossed his path. And here 
 comes a new and diabolically well-done rhyming 
 dictionary scoff not, ungentle reader, it has more 
 uses than you wot of which will not have pork 
 rhyme with forL Since when I have sat around in 
 bitter discouragement and atheistic despair. God 
 knows I don't want to rhyme pork with fork, but 
 what sort of age do we live in when a man can get 
 up and deliver himself of such horrid and blasphemous 
 negation of known truth and first principles and not 
 be torn to pieces ? Nothing is respected now. I have 
 lived to see Euclid flouted, and the doctrine of the 
 conservation of energy blown upon, and now it is 
 unsafe for the poet to sound his dove and love, his 
 moon and coon, without assuring himself first that 
 he is abreast of modern science. 
 
 To return to my disarranged library, I must own 
 that there is but one method, after all, for such as it 
 my books must be governed by the compelling cir- 
 cumstance of size. The big books must stand on the 
 big shelves, and the small books on the small shelves ; 
 and my little array having passed the Caudine Forks 
 it is useless for them to stand further on order or 
 58
 
 A Wet Day 
 
 precedence. And the housemaid cometh whom no 
 man can hinder. 
 
 What is a book that it is so disliked by the 
 majority ? The average man is bored by a book : 
 the silence, the still attitude, the black lines on the 
 white paper get on his nerves. He may not really 
 quarrel with its substance. Put in dramatic or con- 
 versational form he could possibly spend an evening 
 with it in enjoyment, and if the stage is to be looked 
 upon as a moral factor and an instrument of instruc- 
 tion, and indeed the drama demands some such bean 
 pole to support its tender shoots in this soil, it looks 
 to me as if Messrs. Shaw, Barker and Galsworthy go 
 the right way to work. A minority is bored and 
 dazed by the noise and lights and crowd of a theatre 
 or other company, and even good talk may be spoiled 
 for them by such accompaniments. These are the 
 book lovers, to whom books and study bring a natural 
 atmosphere. 
 
 The common ground is hard to hit upon, and the 
 well-intentioned are frequently baulked. If you are 
 of a bookish turn but segregated by circumstance 
 from your kind, and associated with other herds 
 where you find it incumbent on you to make the first 
 advances towards communion, you will sometimes 
 have noticed with gratitude a brightening of the eye 
 and a promising response of lips when to the stranger 
 whom you have rather temerariously drawn on to 
 your own ground and endeavoured to engage in the 
 discussion of things written, you mention some name 
 
 59
 
 Cross Views 
 
 you venerate in modern thought. Let N. be an 
 author. You say to yourself, then, here is a kindred 
 spirit. I don't speak of N. to deaf ears. Your hopes 
 are quickly dashed, for your new-found friend waiting 
 patiently for his effect while you develop a cautious 
 enthusiasm for your subject, puts you out of the 
 running with the information " I know N. very well. 
 He is a near neighbour of ours. It is a pity you 
 don't know him. Most interestin' man to talk to, 
 don't you know. Can't say I know his books, but 
 reading's not much in my line." We need not pro- 
 tract the conversation with this gentleman, who is a 
 familiar friend, though I have treated him in the first 
 instance as an acquaintance ; but you here recognise, 
 as you have been forced to do before, perhaps, that 
 personal acquaintance with N. fills him with a sense 
 of superiority to you, who know only his works. It 
 may be that he is full of enthusiasm for the great ; 
 is a lion-hunter, or an autograph-collector, and can 
 die happy, if of the right gender, now that she knows 
 N., or could do so did she know M. But why ? 
 Times are too bad for conversational charity. The 
 original mind gives no alms to needy journalists or 
 diarists, and there is small advantage in meeting the 
 begetter of the flying machine, of X-rays, a new 
 religion, or of the most epoch-making novel these ten 
 years since yesterday's. You will only meet a weary- 
 eyed person who looks rather seedier than his neigh- 
 bours, who is callous to compliments, and politely 
 deaf to questioning. He won't entertain your draw- 
 60
 
 A Wet Day 
 
 ing-room or set your table in a roar. He will talk 
 symptoms with you, or rival golf-links, but hero- 
 worshipping youth has no chance against the pretty 
 sister who worships no heroes, but takes scalps as they 
 come. Grasp the substance, my youth, and leave 
 the shadow. The great man is a squeezed lemon. 
 
 Why should that lie neglected and despised because 
 printed on paper, whose disjointed and fragmentary 
 parts would be treasured as a dinner- table attraction 
 to the great vulgar ? Is not the considered and sus- 
 tained utterance of a man more than his occasional 
 conversation ? Conversation is the life, to most 
 people, and literature is international conversation 
 the intercourse of the best minds put into the best 
 form, talking across all barriers, and beyond boundaries 
 and frontiers. If they cannot enjoy a good talk with 
 Johnson or with Jerome Coignard, they do not like 
 good talk, or to put it more rudely, they prefer noise 
 to wit. Consider the talk in the clubs when what 
 we call a crisis is toward ; that is, when the shifting 
 limelights of the press are concentrated on some 
 particular point of the periphery of the great groaning 
 wheel of things. Is it of investigation on the spot 
 of trained inquirers, the opinions of experts, the 
 assurances of trusted ministers of State, or of authori- 
 tative works of reference ? Does Morley know any- 
 thing of the popular forces, Mahan of sea-power, 
 Cromer of modern Egypt ? I trow not. The in- 
 formation that the clubman gathers and repeats and 
 values is that old Bill Smith of the lOist has heard 
 
 61
 
 Cross Views 
 
 from his son in the Frontier Police that, etc., that 
 Jones, who was formerly Ass. Com. in that district, 
 was told by Browne you remember Busting Browne, 
 who had the N. W . command in the sixties ? that in 
 his opinion, etc. These men are in the know, you are 
 told. " I suppose you got that out of a book," is the 
 answer to your differing views. Only a book ! Why, 
 if a book is only a book, what is a handshake ? Who 
 knows N., an author, the better, his devout readers 
 or his old acquaintance who goes golfing with him ? 
 Maintain the advantage of the latter if you will, but 
 which knowledge is the better worth ? Is it N., in 
 a word, who is worth knowing, or his work ? The 
 student, you will be told, is inhuman. Better an hour of 
 warm human intercourse than years in a musty library. 
 
 " books, they are not human ; 
 
 I'd give all mine away for one sweet woman," 
 
 and no one has the courage to demur. I haven't 
 myself; particularly when the sweet woman is thrown 
 into the balance. But are not books human ? I 
 would make no hopeless plea for the library against 
 the world, but as far as the makers of books are 
 concerned say bookmaker, and there is no doubt 
 about his humanity I maintain certainly that their 
 books are their better part, and that to neglect the 
 public labours of such men and glory in their personal 
 acquaintance, in the possession of their autographs 
 and in a knowledge of their diet and other idiosyn- 
 crasies, is to drop the substance and follow the 
 62
 
 A Wet Day 
 
 shadow : it is a misuse of human intercourse and a 
 sterile and trivial pursuit. 
 
 There was a long paragraph in the Times lately, 
 warning a presumably interested public that the 
 manuscript of a detective story by a popular magazine 
 writer was coming up for sale on such and such a 
 date, and was in danger of passing to America. The 
 person who would give a price for such a manuscript 
 at auction would probably not even rise to reading 
 it in print. 
 
 And what can be the feelings of the author towards 
 people whom he sees disputing possession of his waste- 
 paper ? For the honour of letters, I hope he does not 
 take the money himself, but lets his housemaid have 
 her vails. 
 
 For purposes of warm humanity clasp to yourself 
 with hooks of steel the other type of mankind, whose 
 vitality flows from them through no medium of paper, 
 paint, platform oratory, or laboratory research for 
 though I have said let N. be an author, he may 
 obviously be a savant, a statesman, a painter or a 
 financier take the people at your door and about 
 your household. If you would play golf, play with 
 the man whose soul is in golf ; there are many such ; 
 you may play with N. why should the poor devil 
 go round alone ? but do not flatter yourself that you 
 thereby know the man better than another. You 
 only know him in his reactionary aspect. 
 
 Dingley, nilustre Icrivain, is best known to his 
 readers, and certainly the biographer of Dingley, I 
 
 63
 
 Cross Views 
 
 will parenthetically remark, knew his original in his 
 off time. A well-chosen library is a choice of human 
 souls. It is no museum, no hortus siccus or collection 
 of prepared anatomies, but the real men and women 
 at their best and on their own showing, and not 
 otherwise to be known. You may close Montaigne 
 and desipere with Jones in loco y who is an excellent 
 fellow and greatly your superior in many qualities, but 
 you need not regret that you cannot know Montaigne 
 on the same terms. You might as reasonably wish 
 that Jones should publish three volumes of essays. 
 
 The foolish and perhaps vicious belief to be com- 
 bated is that an acquaintance with N. is a short 
 cut to his results. There is no short cut to this or 
 to any other knowledge, and you must be a Shakes- 
 peare to know a Shakespeare to your advantage, 
 without you approach him through his works. You 
 cannot usefully associate with the great unless you 
 have great qualities that march with theirs, or at any 
 rate until you have assimilated their gospel. The 
 invariable effect of such familiarity on the inferior 
 and inferiorly equipped mind is one of disappointment, 
 and the hopelessly inferior will privately disparage the 
 apostle ; and perhaps publicly, when he publishes 
 the volume of reminiscences he will found on his 
 great acquaintance of the past. 
 
 Though as I have said this holds good of many 
 varieties of the eminent, I would particularly emphasize 
 the blighting effect on the enthusiastic humanitarian 
 of intercourse with literary men, which is scarcely 
 64
 
 A Wet Day 
 
 human intercourse at all. If it be the bright, busy, 
 human, pulsating personality of the literary world 
 that draws their hearts and gratulatory hands, let them 
 seek the clean and collared young assistants in West 
 End bookshops, who speak quite sprucely of the poets 
 in what passes, with me, for the Oxford accent ; let 
 them associate with enthusiastic publishers whose 
 encomiastics are indeed limited to their own wares, 
 but one mustn't expect all things of all men, and one 
 can always pass on to the next let them join the 
 Authors' Club, where they may meet newspaper 
 proprietors, editors, reviewers, reporters, war corres- 
 pondents, librarians, lexicographers, compilers, cyclo- 
 pasdists, statisticians, bibliophiles, agriculturists, and 
 electrical engineers, or attend literary fund dinners for 
 authors' wives and children, the most deserving class 
 in existence, but never let them have anything to do 
 with men of letters. 
 
 I have had to do with them, and I know. 
 
 Next below the company of the great come in 
 order of degeneration, the workers, amateurs, game- 
 players and the potterers. Some do this and some 
 do that, but I have known a man who never did 
 anything at all. On the soberest reflection I cannot 
 modify this statement about him. I knew him long 
 and saw much of him, and he never did anything at 
 all. I will briefly set out one of his days to justify 
 my extraordinary assertion, and with him one day 
 was as a thousand years. 
 
 He rose at eight, and his toilet took him an hour- 
 E 65
 
 Cross Views 
 
 and-a-half. An hour was given to his breakfast, not 
 that he was an immoderate eater, but that he ate 
 with an exaggerated deliberation, waiting till his food 
 was cool, and at every meal paused until others had 
 finished a course before he started one, eyeing his 
 neighbours, whether hosts or guests, much as Joe 
 Gargery did Pip when the bread and butter disap- 
 peared "I've been among a many bolters, but I 
 never see your bolting equal yet." After breakfast he 
 put in a quarter of an hour comparing his watch with 
 the hall clock and saying " hullo " to the barometer, 
 and then, ascending to his sitting-room, he sat there 
 until 2 P.M. He did not read the paper, he never 
 opened a book all the years I knew him, he had no 
 hobby, he played no game : he just sat in his room, 
 where, if you entered, you found him sitting in his 
 armchair, whence he would stare with some resent- 
 ment at your entrance. At 2 P.M. he made a second 
 toilet, and at 3 P.M. went out and walked very slowly 
 up to Clubland, where he had several houses of call. 
 There he talked to the members he knew and stared 
 at the members he didn't know. He came home in a 
 'bus at 6.30, made a third change of attire, sat at the 
 dinner-table till 9.45, then entered the drawing-room, 
 where he slept till the rest of his family withdrew, 
 then, remarking that he had no time all day to glance 
 at the papers, he retired to his own room once more, 
 mixed himself a glass of whisky and water, spread the 
 Times on his knee, and slept till midnight, when he 
 woke, temporarily, and went to bed. 
 66
 
 A Wet Day 
 
 This was a man barely past the prime of life, in 
 the soundest health and perfect in every faculty, 
 retired from an active profession in which he had 
 reached rather more than average attainment in a 
 branch not open to fools. He never talked politics ; 
 he never talked shop ; he did not hunt, shoot, ride, 
 golf, play cards but I can't continue the list of 
 things he didn't do, for he never did anything. His 
 was the most singular instance of quiescent vitality 
 I ever encountered, and I could never understand 
 it. He was as dead to the world as a Trappist, and 
 if he heard me say so he would be more surprised, 
 perhaps, than ever he was in his life. Some day yet 
 he must come out with a new universal synthesis of 
 all the philosophies, or make an attempt upon the 
 Constitution. Nature can never be so denied, surely. 
 Meanwhile his portent gathers. 
 
 In one's later years a most quickening and fruitful 
 source of pleasure is the mastery of another language, 
 for there is no richer province to be conquered than 
 a new literature. It is easier to the cultivator of the 
 written word than to the talker, and a useful way 
 to its attainment is the reading of technical matter 
 in some other tongue than one's own, which is a 
 double good, for the attention cannot afford to 
 wander, nor the eye run quickly down the page, a 
 constant temptation to the practised reader in un- 
 engaging passages. The subject is more slowly and 
 therefore more surely mastered, and one fine day 
 your labours burst into blossom and fruit ; the arid 
 
 67
 
 Cross Views 
 
 tracts are traversed, and you find yourself in the 
 land of plenty and in the company of letters. 
 
 To read Greek with one's feet in the fender is 
 for the very few, and must, I imagine, introduce 
 to a peak rather than to a province ; but I was never 
 a mountaineer, and am content to look up from 
 the flower-filled valleys ; and to know current tongues 
 would suffice me for more than one lifetime. Cul- 
 tured folk (the word is rather out of date, I know) 
 feed chiefly on the past, and if they do not all travel 
 as far as Greece, they seldom stop short of Italy. 
 English people are particularly given to mediaeval 
 Italian studies, and for one reader of Goethe or 
 Heine, Hugo or Balzac, you will find a dozen Dante 
 circles, and perfervid admirers of Botticelli and 
 Domenichino, who give each syllable of these names 
 a weight of affection and respect. Pious pilgrimage 
 to Firenze, Venezia, or Napoli is undertaken by the 
 quaintest middle-aged ladies, whose night's halt at 
 Paris, en route, fills them with trepidation. The 
 Divina Commedia is their vade mecum, and such names 
 as Anatole France or Sudermann are only less ignored 
 than D'Annunzio or Fogazzaro. 
 
 Great airy windows, most refreshing and whole- 
 some, are opened into the close atmosphere of the 
 study by science, whose neologisms, however, breed 
 so fast that to keep abreast of the language is as 
 strenuous a pursuit as to keep in touch with its ideas, 
 and the knowledge e.g. that geobios, limnobios, and 
 halobios simply mean land-, shore-, and pond-life, does 
 68
 
 A Wet Day 
 
 not come by nature to the science-side student, but 
 only to his classic-side brother, who cares for none 
 of these things. But the greater the pioneer, the 
 smoother the track you are left to follow ; and Darwin 
 is intelligible even if his detractors are not. And 
 when the classics have sent you bedward with some 
 heavy opiate labelled vita brevis or pallida mars, or 
 when thousand-year-old legends of a golden age 
 that was always legendary have left you glad to 
 shut your eyes on to-day, and when the sentimental 
 potterer and weather-bound has taken his ill-earned 
 repose, it is well that there should be some one to 
 wake him in the morning with a message such as 
 I find in The Kingdom of Man : 
 
 " Let man arise and take possession of his kingdom, 
 the Regnum Hominis foreseen by Francis Bacon. 
 . . . The will to possess and administer this vast 
 territory alone is wanting . . . heir to a magnificent 
 kingdom, he has been finally educated to take posses- 
 sion of his property, and is at length left alone to 
 do his best. He has wilfully abrogated in many 
 important respects the laws of his Mother, Nature, 
 by which the kingdom was hitherto governed ; he 
 is threatened on every hand by dangers and disasters 
 hitherto restrained ; no retreat is possible his only 
 hope is to control, as he knows that he can, the 
 sources of these dangers and disasters. They already 
 make him wince. How long will he sit listening 
 to the fairy tales of his boyhood, and shrink from 
 manhood's task ? " 
 
 69
 
 IV 
 
 THE LION AND THE UNICORN 
 
 " THE lion and the unicorn fought for the Crown," 
 but that was before history, and the boastful second 
 line is obviously a latter-day invention a leonine verse 
 shall we say, the catch of some rhymster whose 
 jingle has proved more lasting than the temporary 
 settlement it possibly celebrated ; its contradiction is 
 supplied by the present attitude of the ancient foes 
 as supporters of the Crown for which they fought. 
 The Crown stands in stable equilibrium, and the 
 opposing forces, stiffened into conventionally rampant 
 posture, sustain, by their formal opposition, the head 
 of the State. It was not as His Majesty's Govern- 
 ment and His Majesty's Opposition that they started 
 life. Liberal and Conservative they are, or were but 
 yesterday, Whig and Tory the day before, Roundhead 
 and Royalist a little earlier, and King's men and 
 Kingmakers' men once the Crown wobbling violently 
 then until we get back to a day when the Crown 
 was in abeyance pending their dispute. 
 
 But which is the lion and which the unicorn ? 
 That aggressive and pushing horn, those legs to save 
 their owner in season, seem to indicate offence rather 
 70
 
 The Li ion and the Unicorn 
 
 than defiance, and to symbolise the oft-repeated charge 
 and retreat ; and the predatory teeth and hold-fast 
 claws and masterful voice on the other side of the 
 shield the party of have and hold. And the rhyme 
 is an old rhyme, and it is only in recent history that 
 the unicorn has beaten the lion for long. 
 
 Nursery rhymes enclose some of our oldest lore, 
 chronicle, and social satire, and this old couplet, which 
 may or may not have had a less partial turn in its 
 original form, was probably the fruit of the satirical 
 fancy of some very early non-party man, some 
 mediaeval mugwump, or uncomfortable Bellocian 
 before Mr. Belloc, who, having worse things to fear 
 than the power of a caucus, and heavier than party 
 whips, wrapped his meaning in seeming innocence, 
 and wrote for children, as many a satirist has done 
 since. The Crown has come out of it well, and the 
 fight has long since taken on another meaning, and 
 become a contest for suffrages, and its war-cries 
 dropped to an insinuating assurance that Codlin's the 
 friend, not Short. The lion and the unicorn still 
 fight all round the town, but the town is the arbiter 
 and plum-cake all the prize, and the Crown sits 
 serene and uncommitted, from hope and fear set free. 
 The feral beasts are dead and stuffed, and but their 
 painted signs face each other across the street, rival 
 taverns, clubs, and headquarters of party bosses ; but 
 there are many go-betweens, many who cry a plague 
 on both houses, and those who swear that the liquor 
 is indifferent bad on both sides of the way ; and 
 
 7'
 
 Cross Views 
 
 fewer and fewer are found willing to break heads 
 or risk their own sconces in either cause. Even 
 the tavern-keepers, the living representatives of the 
 ancient feud, the leaders who wear the lion's skin 
 and the hide and horn as insignia, walk occasion- 
 ally arm-in-arm to the disgust of their henchmen, 
 and play at ball together when they are tired of 
 playing with words. 
 
 But far as the controversy has travelled and changed 
 and dwindled, such indifference and agnosticism is 
 as yet sporadic and confined to high places, and the 
 party elements are not yet fused, and pride themselves 
 on their difference in blood. The two strains are 
 still maintained from generation to generation, if not 
 from father to son, and latent and patent antagonism 
 still divides the mass of the town. What are the 
 roots of this prejudice ? What is this seemingly 
 natural and inevitable division that must prolong a 
 warfare whose cause is no longer apparent, whose 
 very leaders weary of it, which hampers progress and 
 promotes a hundred evils, and whose followers and 
 fighters see their sustenance as "white bread or 
 brown," according to the hand which dispenses it ? 
 There is much in the theory of heredity, and the 
 satirist we have just lost hit the mark again with his 
 " little Liberal and little Conservative." There is 
 much virtue in badges and banners, and fighting- 
 cocks are easily urged on when pitted one against 
 another ; but there must be deeper roots than these. 
 
 We know how easily we all fall into antagonism, 
 72
 
 The Lion and the Unicorn 
 
 however mild ; that the difference of any two indivi- 
 duals is a law of nature, and that you can divide men 
 into as many camps as you choose to raise questions ; 
 that mankind may be divided into Big-endians and 
 Little-endians as easily as into civilised and cannibal ; 
 and that if you commonly get out of bed on the right- 
 hand side you cannot go through the morning without 
 meeting some one ready to dispute your preference. 
 Probably the men of the Neanderthal did not suffer 
 such opposition of opinion early in the morning, and 
 the arbitrament of the club would settle the question 
 for the day at least ; but when men agreed to differ 
 they called it civilisation. We are mostly civilised 
 now, as far as that interpretation takes us, but the 
 differences subsist in spite of the agreement. When 
 a few living in proximity can divide over a point or 
 two you have the nucleus of a family ; a few families 
 ranged either side of local questions give us the village 
 community, or peaceful settlement ; and a sufficiency 
 of such neighbouring habitations divided against them- 
 selves and one another could take shape as a tribe or 
 nation, multiplying by division on the fissiparous 
 principle. Religion was a great and early help to its 
 activity ; kinship and inheritance, blood relationship 
 and filial feeling kept up a brisk division of details ; 
 and loyalty, patriotism, the administration of justice, 
 the maintenance of order, the conservation of property, 
 the bond of marriage, and other institutions of the 
 perfect state, ensured a healthy and unending division 
 of lives and ways and a never-failing circulation of 
 
 73
 
 Cross Views 
 
 bad blood, so that it never became stagnant even 
 when blood-letting went out of fashion. 
 
 Easier facilities of communication, particularly that 
 of ideas set up by the invention of books, and, better 
 still, newspapers, enabled widely-separated individuals 
 to come to each other's moral support, a journal 
 devoted to the spreading of the Big-endian doctrine, 
 for instance, acting like a party cry at a football 
 match when a submerged supporter, by raising his 
 war-whoop, draws friends to his side before his un- 
 popular tenets are trampled out of him by a hostile 
 surrounding. 
 
 Differences exist ; and variation in the world of 
 ideas is the complement and analogy of those physical 
 variations on which the theory of selection is built 
 up. The individual variation is always there, and 
 with it the potential new species. How many are 
 smothered without propagating we shall never know, 
 but just as a favourable combination of circumstances 
 will enable the locust or carrier-pigeon to devastate 
 half a continent once in a way, so will a new idea 
 falling in season gather adherents hand over fist 
 until the movement spends itself tired, possibly, of 
 so much agreement. The fissiparous process begins 
 again. Society, then, can be divided on any point, 
 however minute and trivial, but the most successful 
 division and the most lasting comes, naturally, of the 
 collection and enouncement of as many differences as 
 can be fitted together without embracing so many as 
 to leave no opposition strong enough to carry on the 
 74
 
 The Lion and the Unicorn 
 
 game. A highly complex religion comprising a multi- 
 tude of minor beliefs and observances easily dominates 
 smaller sects which tend to simplify, as they reduce, 
 the number of points on which they base their 
 resistance to their environment. In fact, one protest 
 only makes one protestant. The secret is to find the 
 greatest common factor, and in civil affairs, to which 
 I am trying to confine my attention, the greatest 
 common divisor is the political. 
 
 The proclamation and advocacy of a simple idea, or 
 the utterance of a simple protest, directly ensures the 
 widest partisanship if the time is ripe for the question, 
 but one detached point of dispute will not last the 
 combatants for long it is either lost or carried ; and 
 the questions that have long divided mankind will be 
 found to have hitched themselves on to other and 
 already existing centres of controversy, and to have 
 taken on a theological or legal or philosophical cast 
 and got themselves incorporated in some already 
 fighting doctrine or heresy. The friends of a new 
 idea, by their association with other disputes, make 
 enemies for it in other camps on hastening to its 
 support. The friends, for instance, of the New 
 Learning were marked men, and the sponsors of 
 science ensured the enmity of the clerics ; and would 
 science frown not at the humble birth of any notion 
 from the College of Cardinals ? This particular 
 quarrel has been enlarged into the great quarrel of 
 the world, each side absorbing more and more of the 
 no-man's-land of hitherto uncontested ground, and 
 
 75
 
 Cross 
 
 ranging under its standard the new generations of 
 ideas and their development bred in the acquired 
 regions, so that the novice in the seminary is shown 
 from an upper window vast tracts of hostile territory 
 where he may never venture unarmed, and every 
 little scientist born into a world of inquiry recognises 
 clericalism as the enemy, and is trained to seize up 
 his lethal microscope and scalpel when he hears that 
 religion is abroad. The nets are cast wider and 
 wider, and ban and arriere-ban of connoted ideas, 
 deductions, and sympathies swell the opposing armies ; 
 and since nature's abhorrence of a vacuum is scarcely 
 more pronounced than society's abhorrence of the 
 unsocial habit of indifference, few are left who will 
 not engage under either banner. " Who is not with 
 me is against me," cry the one side. "The luke- 
 warm I will spew out of my mouth." While the 
 other contemptuously lumps the unconvinced with 
 the ignorant. 
 
 The Churches embrace, or claim to embrace, or 
 include in spite of themselves, or are driven to 
 include, the fanatic, the mystic, the superstitious, the 
 unlettered, the revivalist, the spiritualist, the simple, 
 the saint, and the visionary, as well as all that great 
 multitude of weary and oppressed who but support 
 this unjustly ordered and painful life in the hope 
 of a better, and in the belief of an ultimate purpose ; 
 and ranged against them stand the materialist, the 
 scoffer, the dry-as-dust, the anatomist, the logician, 
 the sensualist, and all that order of mind that will 
 76
 
 The Lion and the Unicorn 
 
 not accept authority or believe in anything it cannot 
 verify in the laboratory all scraped together willy- 
 nilly in the same fashion. Theirs also is the horn 
 of the unicorn, and his latter-day elevation to a 
 fighting equality with the lion of dogma. 
 
 That the Liberal party in politics, with all its 
 tag-rag of Independents, is kindred with the liberal 
 party of ideas, and the Conservatives with the ad- 
 herents of revelation and submission to pastors, is 
 an obvious contention ; but it has so become from 
 the force of association, the impossibility of an un- 
 related standing, the truth that one quarrel makes 
 many, and that only the welding of many quarrels 
 into one will enable the quarrel to stand and assure 
 to society that constant and steady circulation of 
 affected blood necessary to prevent stagnation and 
 slow poison. A liberal principle standing alone and 
 unrelated, could such a thing be conceived, and 
 swallowed and assimilated by an unsuspicious Con- 
 servative ; a stray and unclassified dogma finding its 
 way into the digestive system of a greedy Rationalist ; 
 would tend to alter and ultimately to destroy the 
 two organisms, and what the process would result 
 in if indefinitely continued may be figured by 
 imagining the carnivora converted to vegetable food, 
 and fish inured to mountain air. Creation would 
 lose its characteristics, and reversion to primordial 
 types be a mere matter of time. 
 
 Error cannot stand alone but can truth ? And 
 what is truth, said jesting Pilate. Your doxy and 
 
 77
 
 Cross Views 
 
 my doxy must seek their food where they can find 
 it, like other living things, and will assimilate, grow, 
 and multiply as long as nature keeps them supplied ; 
 but their grand feature is that they are social and 
 not individualistic, and flourish by alliance, not by 
 independence. An idea may have a disruptive force, 
 it may be urged, and indeed it commonly has, but 
 it is the function of the master-mind, of the leaders 
 who guide and engineer the main issues, jealously 
 to watch the division created by the explosion of 
 a new idea and to claim the larger moiety each for 
 his own. When reformations occur and revolutions 
 break out, the enemies of established things are 
 jubilant, but many of the pieces fall back within 
 the old lines, and the forces of reaction do not 
 suffer so greatly as at first appears. Action and re- 
 action are the waves that smooth over the scars of 
 such earthquakes, and gain and loss are, in the end, 
 not so unevenly shared. 
 
 In mundane affairs social politics now show the 
 greater activity and react more fiercely to the agency 
 of new ideas. Religion was once all in all, " the lion 
 beat the unicorn all round the town," but rationalism 
 has now won the solid ground even though the aerial 
 warfare is still proceeding, and the material welfare of 
 mankind has now taken the front place in human 
 councils ; but with the growing importance of terres- 
 trial matters and of the domestic economy of our 
 earthly home we find the old cleavage or a similar one 
 spreading between opposing parties in the State, and 
 78
 
 The Lion and the Unicorn 
 
 nothing can get itself done without the vivifying 
 element of dispute, and dispute, and here is the point, 
 organised, recruited, and disciplined to the highest 
 pitch. A man does not fight to best advantage for 
 his own hand, and the principle that union is strength 
 is only second in antiquity to that of self-preservation, 
 and alliance into groups was followed by alliance of 
 groups until the alliance of nations practically divides 
 Europe into two ; and the same utilisation of all 
 possible sources of strength, given the inevitable and 
 necessary cleavage of personal opinion, divides each 
 State into the main parties under Conservative or 
 Liberal, Republican or Democratic, Progressive and 
 Reactionary colours. Variety of opinion is co-exten- 
 sive with the population ; there is alliance for and 
 against, and the answer to the given problem of 
 finding the common principle that will embrace the 
 greatest possible number is only to be arrived at by 
 delving deep into the nature of man, by finding the 
 mainsprings of his conduct, by recognising the factors 
 that divide him against himself that urge or restrain 
 him, that give him hope or fear, drive him forth or 
 keep him at home, make him social or hold him 
 individual. You must find the watershed of the 
 great currents if you would control their flow. Just 
 as a great stream it is the oldest of similes gathers 
 volume from all sorts of contributories, still or running, 
 which had quite other sources than its own, so do 
 the mainstreams of active principles receive and sweep 
 up adherents whose support must be explained by 
 
 79
 
 Cross Views 
 
 having recourse to the whole philosophy of human 
 nature, and many influences be adduced to understand 
 the presence of saints among unbelievers, atheists 
 among churchmen, rich men among socialists, poor 
 men supporting capitalism, pugnacious men com- 
 bating militarism, radical squires, conservative pro- 
 letarians, and masses of inert and uninterested voters 
 yet voting one way or the other. But there must 
 be a mainstream to gather the tributaries, and there 
 must be a dominant principle, passion, characteristic, 
 vice, virtue, or disease, in each breast which will carry 
 everything else along either furiously or sluggishly. 
 There must be a watershed, and down one side or 
 the other the current will flow. Would you know 
 why a man is a Liberal rather than a Conservative, 
 a Christian rather than a Rationalist, an Anarchist 
 or an Autocratist, you must go back to the beginning 
 and inquire why Adam's hesitation ended in his eating 
 the apple rather than in refusing it. Adam began 
 life a Conservative and acquiescing in an Autocratic 
 regime, and ended as an inquirer and a rebel, reversing 
 the order in which these states of mind generally 
 occur among his descendants ; but then he started 
 life in comfort and ended it in hardship. However, 
 that is only his individual story. But did we know 
 the why of it we should be wiser than we are. One 
 son of Adam has leisure or recurrence of respite 
 sufficient to enable him to wake to the wonder and 
 beauty of the universe, to ponder the underlying 
 mystery, its possible symbolisms, its justification by 
 80
 
 The Lion and the Unicorn 
 
 an ultimate purpose, the which he may await or 
 abide in comparative patience by reason of his com- 
 parative well-being. He will not refuse the assump- 
 tion that all is for the best, "on earth the broken 
 arc, in Heaven the perfect round." His moderate 
 comfort gives play to his jesthetic faculties, he admires 
 old constituted things, dwells on the storied past, 
 which he sees as a succession of Kings and Queens, 
 pageants, story of wars, interesting customs and 
 institutions ; he lends his support to ancient monu- 
 ments and quaint survivals that do not inconvenience 
 him, leans back on long-established orders, religious 
 principles, laws, and methods, and hopes things will 
 last his time. He is born and bred among others of 
 his kind, people who have a small holding on this 
 earth, who derive from families and factions who in 
 recent times have taken a hand in some civic struggle 
 against change and upheaval ; his caste, clan, or party, 
 have drawn lines of demarcation against others of 
 differing ways of life and thought ; by volition or 
 drift or force of circumstance, they tend to certain 
 lines of life and professions which require or defend 
 or explain or deal in the status quo> and demand its 
 continuance for their existence ; and a thousand sub- 
 sidiary influences and dependent beliefs have swelled 
 their ranks. What is the common principle ? What 
 name at least shall serve ? Such a name has been 
 found, and the word Conservative crystallises the fluid 
 mass, bonds and stiffens it with unity, and makes it 
 a power in the State. Forced into opposition and 
 
 F 81
 
 Cross Views 
 
 hardened into a parallel community of force is the 
 mass that toils from necessity and without leisure to 
 consider the purpose, who are dully aware of cruelty 
 and ugliness in the scheme of things, who in their 
 rare moments of respite see that the world is not good 
 enough, and raise their heads to listen to those who 
 speak of the attainable Kingdom of Man rather than 
 of the overlong-promised Kingdom of God ; who 
 decry the selfishness of property, the waste and bar- 
 barism of surviving conditions, the hideousness of 
 mediaevalism ; who preach " the beacon-bright re- 
 public far-off sighted," and cry to them to attack 
 all who stand in the ancient ways. A thousand 
 temperamental antagonisms in either party are amalga- 
 mated by the larger purpose, and a thousand natural 
 ties broken between them. The agreements must 
 give way to the differences that the quarrel may be 
 sustained, and the minor individual struggle be sub- 
 ordinated to the more effective social warfare whose 
 banners, battles, and results all men can see and judge. 
 The mass must not simmer : it must boil. Evolution 
 has become conscious, and we run its forces into 
 narrow channels that we may be aware of its motion 
 and may jog the universe by lending an impetus to 
 the next generation by launching it on a smoother 
 incline. Union makes strength, and society must 
 be dragooned into putting its heavy shoulder to the 
 work. 
 
 And so a man, and presently a woman, is born a 
 little Liberal or a little Conservative, and all unaware 
 82
 
 The Lion and the Unicorn 
 
 of the vast drag-net enclosing all his horizon, of the 
 bias of his own birth and upbringing, his tempera- 
 mental tendencies and the pull exercised by his very 
 digestive organs, votes for or against a Parliament 
 Bill in the full and happy belief that he judges it on 
 its merits. 
 
 But there is one thing that we can all see, and that 
 is that the issue has been narrowed for us into for 
 or against. It is not an opinion that is wanted but 
 our vote. The elector may spin a coin if he be 
 bewildered, or he may abstain if he perceive and resent 
 the ordering of his affairs, but if he act he must hang 
 on to the tail of the unicorn or on to the tail of the 
 lion. The wise acknowledge the position, dine 
 together and laugh in company ; another minority 
 sulks apart : but the great mass rage angrily over 
 against each other even as they are intended to do, 
 and so the Crown is supported by its conventionally 
 absurd and ramping monsters. 
 
 Superior persons may rise superior to party and 
 creed, but their security in aloofness depends on the 
 regimentation of humbler organisms ; you may be 
 a spectator at a football match, but you may not be 
 a spectator in a riot. The best feature of great 
 organised systems of quarrel in Church and State when 
 fairly evenly balanced is the tolerance enforced by 
 respect for the allied strength behind the unit of 
 opinion. In the mass much is explained which goes 
 unexplained in the individual, and a name and a 
 uniform relegates a dissenter in a given circle to a 
 
 83
 
 Cross Views 
 
 recognised mass of opinion without. Instead of de- 
 stroying one another in detail, we postpone hostilities 
 to great occasions and to battlefields assigned them, 
 where the spectator may back his mild fancy and 
 the indifferent stay at home. 
 
 Much is explained by the massing of congenial 
 minds and the enunciation of general principles. 
 Individual persecution ceases when idiosyncrasy is 
 found to be but a personal expression of a wide 
 belief. Differences of developing character in the 
 family circle which end by falling into line with one 
 or other of the national divisions find themselves 
 within the comparative peace and tolerance of stated 
 differences in public life, and the quarrel is not pur- 
 sued in detail. Henceforth the family unites on 
 points of agreement, and, referring their antagonisms 
 to the all-embracing cause, shrug off their animosities 
 with the one word, and save them for plain occasions 
 and the Armageddon of a general election. The 
 imaginative, unsettled, theoretical, irreverent, imprac- 
 ticable, untidy, argumentative member of the house- 
 hold is no longer howked at, snubbed, restrained, and 
 repressed, nor the solid, conventional, well-groomed, 
 worshipping, practical dissenter in another kind 
 worried, ridiculed, and driven. Each has joined hands 
 with superior powers, and his vices are seen as the 
 reputed virtues of a half world. Emancipation bills 
 are passed, alternative legislation of parties is respected 
 and left on the statute books. No doubt it is the 
 unicorn who makes the running. I have maligned 
 84
 
 The Lion and the Unicorn 
 
 the use of his long legs. He has come a long journey 
 and still has far to go. History itself is the history 
 of the unicorn's forward progress, and equally the 
 history of the retreat of the lion. The unicorn never 
 retreats, though often checked. The lion never 
 gains ground, but often gives it. The forward party 
 is often reduced to marking time, and that for long 
 enough to strain their patience, but behind their lines 
 is the long tract of the enemies' country, won long 
 since, and the tract still held by them will be theirs 
 to-morrow. They could lose no land, for they are 
 landless. One party had everything to gain, the other 
 everything to lose. Retaliation wears itself out, and 
 the direct simplicity of mutual destruction weakens 
 into the rarer and more subtle process of mutual con- 
 version. The vivifying agent of disagreement is 
 active as ever, but its varieties are co-ordinated, 
 marshalled, and disciplined ; the distinctive uniforms 
 of the hostile party proclaim their leadership and 
 cause, from the extreme right of the line to the 
 extreme left ; but when not so marshalled for battle 
 the units can intermingle and go about their private 
 affairs each bearing the noli me tangere of his cloth, 
 and Liberal and Conservative, Progressive and Re- 
 actionary, Catholic and Protestant, lie down together 
 with sheathed swords. This clearing of the ground, 
 these great camps of armed neutrality, this mutual 
 respect for differences must be allowed, then, to be 
 a great improvement on the old cut-throat existence 
 and kill-at-sight methods, but though it bears all the 
 
 85
 
 Cross Views 
 
 smiling promise of law and order and offers the 
 efficiency of scientific procedure, it contains the grave 
 evils of repressed individualism, as great armaments 
 maintained, as allowed and avowed, for defensive 
 purposes, are but half-way on the road to peace, 
 though their terror maintains it from day to day. 
 These great defensive alliances allow the heretic to 
 breathe ; he need not even join either camp, but unless 
 he do he can have no active existence. The political 
 independent can refrain from voting, but if he wish 
 to have a voice in determining his affairs he must vote 
 blue or buff with all it entails. Otherwise he cannot 
 register his opinion, but only express it ; he has a right 
 to his own judgment, but cannot make it effective, for 
 he is only allowed a voice on condition of taking the 
 oath. He is a sparrow on the house-top, a voice 
 crying in the wilderness. The franc-tireur gets no 
 mercy in war and no hearing in politics. And the 
 independent is barred in politics perhaps because he 
 is not to be tolerated in war, for the shadow of 
 militarism rests upon party warfare while it has taken 
 its discipline thence ; and when peace is assured 
 without armaments men will perhaps be allowed to 
 vote according to their convictions. It was the under- 
 lying danger as much as the inefficiency of internecine 
 struggle that created state armies, so the latent threat 
 of national armaments helps to enforce discipline in 
 politics. When pure conflict of opinion is all the con- 
 flict the world has to fear, then the independent may be 
 enfranchised, and the lion lie down with the unicorn. 
 86
 
 The Lion and the Unicorn 
 
 We can all see the strength that accrues from 
 many thinking as one, but are apt to overlook the 
 weakening and impoverishment of the contributors to 
 the common stock, for it is plain that many do not 
 and cannot think as one without each divests himself 
 of much or something that will not fit into the 
 common creed. He cannot conform without losing 
 something of himself, and time and association will 
 supply this loss with new fibre drawn from the regu- 
 lation diet. This is very well seen in the case of 
 the man with backbone enough to revolt against a 
 party measure, and vote blue instead of buff. The 
 blues receive his support with acclamation, the buffs 
 pursue him with abuse and derision. His new en- 
 vironment infuses more blue into his composition, 
 and buff colour becomes less assimilable. He cannot 
 remain buff with a blue spot ; circumstances are too 
 strong for him. If he is so strong a man that he can 
 withstand them, both parties cast him out and he 
 ceases to exist as an active agent. An independent 
 party is an absurdity carrying its own contradiction, 
 but more and more independents protest yearly against 
 this dragooning of their consciences, and so far make 
 common cause ; but so ingrained in society is the 
 principle of alliance, discipline, and submission for the 
 attainment of ends, that ridicule is excited by the 
 spectacle of a body of men disputing on a matter 
 which they are supposed to have at heart. If they 
 cannot even agree among themselves they are clearly 
 absurd and negligible, and a protest or a criticism 
 
 87
 
 Cross Views 
 
 from an honest adherent draws triumphant laughter 
 from better-drilled opponents glorying in the indi- 
 vidual weakness that produces general strength. 
 
 A depressing and to some almost paralysing outcome 
 of this narrowing and canalising of activity into two 
 streams, is the stultifying of the faculty of choice ; for 
 choice reduced to this or that, and under this or that 
 including all shades of opinion of the one hue, inclines 
 thinking men to despair of the utility of such choice, 
 and to see themselves reduced to the level of those 
 who cry heads or tails on it. Under such a system 
 what would adult suffrage and the enfranchisement 
 of women effect by doubling the number of voters ? 
 That the supporters of one colour should number ten 
 millions instead of five millions, and give it a majority 
 of two millions instead of one million, would react in 
 no manner whatever on its councils, and reveal no 
 iota more of the constituent elements of the republic. 
 It is this consideration that above all increases the 
 indifference of the electorate to the whole business. 
 Pending an alternative to the party machine, which 
 the recent whittling away of old and picturesque 
 portions has merely exposed in all its ugly and un- 
 sympathetic nakedness of hard opportunism, one may 
 emphasize the palliation that fortunately exists, and 
 impress on the swelling numbers of disillusioned voters 
 the duty and importance of abstention from either 
 pledge. If it be unpracticable that proposed measures 
 should be submitted to an independently minded 
 House of Representatives, if there must be two 
 88
 
 The Lion and the Unicorn 
 
 dominant parties each purged of any sympathy with 
 opposing ideas, if, in short, it is necessary to the 
 working of the existing machine that the warring 
 elements in human nature should be distilled into 
 separate alembics, then it becomes imperative that 
 there should be a third factor in the State, of suffi- 
 cient strength to ensure that the Conservatism and 
 Liberalism of the nation, both natural, necessary, and 
 mutually dependent as are flesh and blood, appetite 
 and digestion, work and sleep, though artificially 
 divorced for purposes of demonstration, be absorbed 
 in alternate doses. Nothing could ultimately be as 
 fatal to the State as the perpetuation of a Conservative 
 regime, save the indefinite continuance of an unchecked 
 Liberalism. If that is not a commonplace of thought 
 it is hard to say what is, and yet it is vigorously 
 denied in practice by two men out of three. The 
 swing of the pendulum is the salvation of the com- 
 munity, and the party of non-party can at least 
 preach the right motive of the swing, nor leave it 
 to the irregular and spasmodic escapement of popular 
 weariness or enthusiasm. 
 
 The ship of State is a fine old simile, and even 
 in an age of engineering I hope you still see it 
 as a sailing ship. And the man at the wheel is 
 not the Minister of the day. The ministerial party, 
 the driving power, is, justly, the wind that urges 
 the ship against the waves of opposition, and thus 
 submitted to two forces she takes a middle course 
 according to the law of the parallelogram of forces. 
 
 89
 
 Cross Views 
 
 The man at the helm, without whom she must 
 broach to or fall away, now eases her and now puts 
 her nose into it. The wind tears at him, the waves 
 beat him, but did he not " wobble " that helm, you 
 were better in an orange-boat with a crew of Dagos. 
 For the man at the wheel is the Wobbler ! Yea, 
 a man and a Mugwump ! 
 
 And the moral is that whether Lion or Unicorn 
 assail, fear not, but whack them both over the rump. 
 They want it. 
 
 90
 
 OUR COMMON TONGUE 
 
 OUR common tongue ! What a striding petitio principii 
 is made by that common phrase, and what a fallacy 
 it embraces ! Of which, if the thousand disputatious 
 commentators of our common Shakespeare do not 
 give sufficient warning, the scars of History earned 
 in the religious wars waged round our common Bible 
 should stand as evidence to every man who takes 
 into his mouth the Word of God as rendered to 
 His chosen people by their authorised Translators 
 and Revisers. A common tongue ! Why, the three 
 hundred classified tongues and the three thousand 
 variants have sprung from the impossibility of a 
 common tongue, and every son of Adam struggling 
 to express his individual differentiation contributes to 
 the diversity. And yet there is none so lowly but 
 he will lightly set out to the exposition of Genesis, 
 the identification of Mr. W. H., Clause 14 of the 
 Education Act, or of his neighbour's duty. 
 
 Your fluent expounder of these matters is hard 
 to stop when he is under way, so let us try and 
 trip him up at the outset, give him pause in the 
 first sentence. Let us meet him on the step of his 
 
 91
 
 Cross 
 
 dwelling, emerging strong, brushed, and shining, 
 at ten o'clock in the morning, ready to clothe the 
 nakedest idea in the newest assortment of dictionary 
 patterns. " How do you do ? " says he, " a fine 
 morning," and his impatient umbrella already hails 
 the Bloomsbury omnibus. Not so fast, Mr. Silver- 
 tongue, we would have a word with thee, but that 
 word must be significant. " What do you mean " 
 (and as we slide this trenchant blade from our ex- 
 pository instrument-case our ruddy friend falters and 
 pales) " what do you mean by * a fine morning ? ' ' 
 The poet murmuring, elate with Spring, 
 
 "Full many a glorious morning have I seen 
 Flatter the mountain tops with sovran eye," 
 
 encounters, let us say, his landlord, the master builder, 
 whose forty-pound villas, numbers one to nine, 
 alternate, stand, newly grown as the daffodils, on 
 the south side of Ladysmith Road, and tenanted by 
 the better and more fortunate class of poets ; while 
 numbers two to ten push their way skyward on the 
 opposite side, breaking the mould like " the yellow 
 ground flame of the crocus." " A fine day," says 
 the builder, good-naturedly, congratulating himself 
 on the good drying weather. The poet heartily 
 assents, but his landlord might have remarked buono 
 giorno, and the poet o-hay-o, for all the understanding 
 that passed. 
 
 " A fine day," says the sportsman, buying a cigar 
 light, and hopes that the "stinking violets" won't 
 92
 
 Our Common Tongue 
 
 spoil the scent. "A fine day," sighs the umbrella 
 merchant, and hopes that one swallow will not make 
 a summer. The pleased excursionist presses the fine 
 day on the notice of the burnt-up farmer, but the 
 simple greeting finds no sympathetic response. 
 
 " How do you do ? " asks the valetudinarian, inter- 
 ested in regime. 
 
 " How do you do ? " asks the doctor, interested 
 in symptoms. 
 
 " How do you do ? " is what the acquaintance 
 wants to know, who cares nothing for your symptoms 
 or treatment, but knows you as a face at the club, 
 and a fourth at the bridge-table. 
 
 And now, Mr. Dealer in words, what do you mean, 
 once more, when you say " How do you do, a fine 
 day ? " 
 
 But let the poor man catch his 'bus. He cannot 
 answer. 
 
 Dine out, and without quarrelling in the ante- 
 room where these two poor little coins pass from 
 hand to hand until dinner is announced (I never talk 
 about anything but the weather before dinner, do 
 you ? One must economise one's material) examine 
 the next piece of the medium of exchange that comes 
 from your neighbour on the right. Unless it be 
 a City dinner where the first remark is always the 
 reminder that it is an occasion when you may and 
 should have a second go of soup ; or a dinner where 
 the vintages figure on the menu to the exclusion, as 
 the subtle reader will apprehend, of any such question 
 
 93
 
 Cross Views 
 
 and questioner, you will be asked " Don't you love 
 the theatre ? " 
 
 Dry and Forty will probably reply to Sweet Seven- 
 teen that he does not care to turn out of an evening. 
 They use the same word, they may mention the same 
 playhouse, but there is confusion of tongues. " No," 
 says Forty, "I didn't care about the Trumpets of 
 Sennacherib" and remembers with disrelish the in- 
 different performance of twaddling commonplace. 
 His neighbour conjures up a presentment of passions 
 by supermen, flooded more than by limelight with the 
 flush of newness and fever of youthful enthusiasm, 
 and is chilled by this indifference to all that the magic 
 word theatre says to her imagination. We will not 
 labour his point of view ; no doubt he ought to be 
 ashamed of it ; but what is there in common in the 
 tongue they speak ? After dinner he draws up his 
 chair to his host's, and the circulation of the port 
 suggests the Licensing Bill. To one a heavy blow 
 has been dealt to intemperance and all that it implies 
 to his experience and views of social welfare to 
 another depreciation of securities he has put his and 
 others' trust in. They dispute, but they are scarcely 
 in the same arena. Each man with the simple faith 
 of a Quixote battles with the foes of his brain, not 
 with his opponent, and mows down swathes of bitter 
 grudges, carving the ambient air, ineffectual and un- 
 scathed. There is probably very little disagreement 
 in the world. There is only misunderstanding. But 
 it answers just as well. 
 94
 
 Our Common Tongue 
 
 The just word bringeth joy to the finder. To the 
 headmaster of a preparatory school, seated in his study, 
 there entered once upon a time two very small boys, 
 obviously pushed in from behind, for the door closed 
 after them without help from their unwilling hands. 
 They announced falteringly that they were a deputa- 
 tion from the school which begged to suggest (I 
 think) fruit tart and cream on Sundays, instead of 
 rice and prunes, a diet of which they were heartily 
 sick. The Doctor (his name was Grimstone, of course) 
 rose with a horrid politeness and opened the door for 
 them once more. "Inform the school," he said, 
 " that I return them their ambassadors uninjured" 
 And sitting down to his desk again with a well- 
 founded confidence in the finality of the message, 
 he wrote to the stores for another hundredweight of 
 rice and a small bottle of prunes. 
 
 The cases of dual personality set forth in solemn 
 medical treatises, and eagerly seized on by enterpris- 
 ing novelists, possibly have their key in the half- 
 understanding that passes for knowledge of our fellows, 
 for when we say that we understand such a one we 
 mean at best that we understand half of him ; recog- 
 nise that facet of his character which we touch. We 
 often hear the shocked complaint " I never thought he 
 would do such a thing." But if the outraged friend's 
 own hidden half had been consulted, there would have 
 been less cause for surprise. We cry hypocrite on 
 a man who says this and does that. " Let him be one 
 thing or the other," says Mr. Commonplace : " I 
 
 95
 
 Cross Views 
 
 hate a man who preaches virtue, but is no better than 
 I am." The serious and high-minded celibate relaxes 
 after dinner : he lifts a veil, and Commonplace 
 sniggers. "Told you he was a hypocrite," he says. 
 But are there no moments in his own existence when 
 he feels the stirring of something higher ? Does he 
 never seek, stammeringly, to affirm some principle 
 alien to his daily conduct ? If so, he is equally a 
 hypocrite. At long intervals he lifts the veil from his 
 face, as the other man from his lower nature. The 
 veil were better transferred. 
 
 We study, some of us, foreign languages, that 
 misunderstanding may be pursued to its limits, but 
 few there are who study their mother-tongue, to give 
 expression every chance. It can afford the neglect of 
 none. Most people have a dim perception that 
 something more than a knowledge of his language is 
 required before we can understand a foreigner. They 
 see a further difference in his " ways." But this 
 warning indication fades between compatriots whose 
 ways are one, and disappears altogether when persons 
 are bred and live under the same roof, so that family 
 quarrels are the most irremediable of any. I under- 
 stand my family, so I know they are wrong. And 
 nowhere is the warning to beware uncharted rocks so 
 needful as between man and woman who are more 
 diverse and mutually incomprehensible than Papuan 
 and Esquimaux. 
 
 One reason for woman's facility in speech is that 
 she does not know the names of things. The very 
 96
 
 Our Common Tongue 
 
 lack that hampers a man enables her to trip it 
 lightly. Her vocabulary being very small it is at her 
 fingers' ends, and the fewness of her wants in this 
 one particular give her the initial advantage also in 
 foreign languages, for when we go abroad we depend 
 on our wives who have " learnt " French. Chose and 
 machin cover a lot of ground, and their wants being 
 mainly concrete they can always point to what they 
 desire. 
 
 Woman uses her tongue with a facility denied to 
 man, but it is the most futile of all her pleasures. I 
 verily believe that if she were dumb we should under- 
 stand her better, and if she were deaf she would 
 understand us no less than she does. Speech is simply 
 no medium of communication between man and 
 woman. Between man and man it serves certain 
 practical utilitarian ends ; anything beyond that at- 
 tempted by it ends in a deadlock only to be loosed 
 by blows. But between the sexes I really do not see 
 the use of it. I believe marriage should always be 
 between foreigners, and all dictionaries destroyed. 
 This would break down international barriers, and 
 remove the occasions of private differences. A word 
 and a blow, we say proverbially. No word no blow, 
 then. You argue a point with a woman. She will 
 gain her point, or die in the attempt, but she does 
 not want to keep it. Words never yet brought man 
 and woman together, nor kept them united. A 
 certain man had triumphed over his wife in argument. 
 She said : " My dear, if you were not so logical 
 
 G 97
 
 Cross Views 
 
 perhaps you would not be so silly." He treasured 
 the reply, for he was a wise man and was only 
 logical in his off moments. You cannot argue a 
 woman into loving you, but it is well to remember 
 that you can argue her out of it : that 
 
 " Wommen desiren have sovereynetee 
 As wel over her housbond as hir love 
 And for to been in maistrie hym above," 
 
 we may read as meaning that she distinctly demands 
 concession as the tribute of love, and that when she 
 asks for the unreasonable thing she has this reason on 
 her side : that she does not want the thing, but the 
 tribute of its concession ; offer the tribute, and she 
 will touch and remit. Save your breath and you 
 shall always have porridge to cool. Men, submit 
 yourselves to your wives, and you shall enjoy the 
 stalled ox and no dissension therewith. Why am I 
 not married, that I might put my precepts into 
 practice ? 
 
 I met the nicest little woman the other night at 
 Landfall, where I was dining with Haversedge. I 
 became aware of Mrs. Passavent as soon as I entered 
 the room. She was of the type, though a diverse 
 type enough, towards which attention insensibly 
 focuses, and in that small company where there was 
 scarcely a subordinate point to arrest the attention, 
 she made her effect instantaneously. 
 
 A woman not afraid of dress, evidently. Who 
 could submit herself to the hands of an authority,
 
 Our Common Tongue 
 
 nor botch the work of an artist with any fallacious 
 touch from the amateur palette. An artist in per- 
 ception, and a work of art in effect. A handsome 
 woman, yes. A charming woman, certainly. With 
 a humour in the mouth more often seen on plainer 
 faces. But not a face to be defined. Beauty of 
 form expresses itself at once. Charm, being of the 
 soul, only grows definite on knowledge. Give this 
 woman the five minutes' start once claimed by the 
 plainest of men, and she would not have much to 
 fear. Such was my opening judgment, as I listened 
 for a minute or two to my host, and looked at Mrs. 
 Passavent. 
 
 I have often noticed when I have passed some time 
 confined in a small company, whether on board ship, 
 in a country house, or in the one hotel of some quiet 
 resort, how unneedful is actual beauty to the woman 
 who would have the momentary ascendancy. It is 
 merely necessary that she should be best looking 
 present. Every day will strengthen the spell, but 
 when the circle is suddenly enlarged, the ship reaches 
 port, or your seaside community is overwhelmed by 
 a fe"te that fills the little place, one rubs one's eyes ! 
 What was the matter with one ? How could one 
 have followed with a sore attention the every move- 
 ment of that quite second-rate and dowdy young 
 woman ? 
 
 Landfall has a small horizon. It holds its pretty 
 faces, and here was one that was pre-eminent. Over 
 what enlarged area would it hold its own ? I prided 
 
 99
 
 Cross Views 
 
 myself on my detachment, as I called up my experience 
 and matched her against its background. The image 
 toned, but would not be subdued. 
 
 Her charm was not local or temporary, I said to 
 myself. And your personal equation in this ? 
 
 Ridiculous, I replied to myself. I have never seen 
 the woman till this evening. She is nothing to me. 
 
 Liar! 
 
 When you argue with yourself and can't get a civil 
 reply, you can only turn away. Naturally I turned 
 to Mrs. Passavent. It was after dinner. She was 
 turning over some music with Haversedge's niece. 
 " One's music gets so fearfully untidy," Miss Haver- 
 sedge was saying, as she rose with flushed face from 
 research in an oak chest. " I cannot find that wretched 
 piece." "My dear Miss Haversedge, I implore you 
 not to trouble about it any more," said Mrs. Passavent. 
 " It isn't worth while." 
 
 " There is only one remedy," said I, " for the 
 malignant resistance of things that hampers one's 
 finest moments." 
 
 " Tell it us for pity's sake," asked Miss Haversedge, 
 patting her hair. 
 
 " Unfortunately it is not to be come by," I replied. 
 
 "But that is the essence of a true remedy," said 
 Mrs. Passavent. " What is yours ? " 
 
 " To keep a nigger. How energetic and productive 
 one would become ! I would spare no pains to my 
 nigger. He should read and remember everything of 
 the dullest and most indispensable. He should write 
 100
 
 Our Common Tongue 
 
 rapidly and legibly, and his summing should be un- 
 impeachable. He should fix my fleeting thoughts in 
 round-hand, verify my quotations, keep accounts, 
 write to my relatives, follow me round with the ash- 
 tray, tidy the music, and in all things become the 
 perfect man. Some West Coast officials, they say, 
 irritable with fever, pay a nigger to beat him ; and 
 some beat him without paying him ; but I would only 
 beat him for his good, when he was lazy, and remiss 
 in any of the virtues I have mapped out for him. I 
 would make a splendid nigger of him. Sitting still I 
 could see him perfected like so many schemes. Why 
 haven't I a nigger or a master ? But are you not 
 going to play to us ? " I said, for she was moving 
 away from the piano. "Is it the music that is 
 wanting ? " 
 
 " No. It is the nigger," she said, smiling maliciously. 
 " Had I a nigger, he should sing you songs of Nubia, 
 Mr. Askew." 
 
 " I would go down on my knees and rummage that 
 chest " 
 
 "I have done it already," said Miss Haversedge 
 fretfully, "and I shouldn't mind beating some one 
 myself." 
 
 I followed Mrs. Passavent with supplication, but 
 she shook her pretty head. " I don't like your reading 
 of the dual personality theory, Mr. Askew," she said. 
 " You would separate all that is admirable in your 
 composition and drive it into a fellow-being with a 
 stick. No. You needn't smile so ruefully. My 
 
 101
 
 Cross Views 
 
 reflection is that this pleasing scheme of yours has been 
 worked on women for ages." 
 
 ! ! 
 
 " Yes. Perhaps the worst injury you have done us 
 has been that you have set us on a pedestal, attributed 
 all the virtues to us, and punished us cruelly when we 
 failed. And kept all the vices to yourselves, with your 
 usual selfishness. Now, Mr. Askew, the nigger is in 
 full revolt ! Say what you can." Her eyes laughed 
 at me, but there was an extra touch of colour a little 
 high set on her face, and the pearls in her ears 
 quivered. She was half sitting on the end of a big 
 couch, one arm stretched out supporting her, white, 
 slim, and nervous in the lampglow, and her face, in 
 shadow, absorbed the reflected light into her dancing 
 eyes. I had said something, then, to vex her, probably 
 at the dinner-table, and she had saved the grudge. I 
 was consternated. Was she a feminist ? I made a 
 stammering recovery, and protested piteously against 
 the turn she had given to the talk. 
 
 " Even so," I said, " look what we have made of 
 you. If you are indeed the work of our hands, do we 
 not reverence our idol ? " I was conscious of arguing 
 in a circle. 
 
 "But if the idol prefers not to be an idol ? If 
 it thinks fetich a nearer word, seeing that it is flung 
 down and cast out if its worshippers don't get their 
 desires. Have we not * hands, organs . . . senses, 
 affections, passions ? If you pinch us, do we not 
 bleed? . . . If you wrong us shall we not revenge ?" 
 102
 
 Our Common Tongue 
 
 " And do you not ? You are tearing me now for 
 some offence of which I am unconscious." 
 
 " Ah ! The unconsciousness is the offence ! Sit 
 down by me once more, Mr. Askew, before you go, 
 and I will read you a lecture ! " She slipped into the 
 corner of the big couch with slow and graceful rustle 
 and subsidence, nor feared the sophist's juggling eyes 
 I bent upon her. She closed her own for a delicious 
 second, and smiled before she began : 
 
 " The feminist loves an audience," she said, " but 
 there must be no heckling.'* I swore it, but Miss 
 Haversedge had joined her uncle. " You men," 
 began Mrs. Passavent, with great seriousness, "say 
 commonly either that woman has all she wants, or 
 that she doesn't know what she wants. It may be 
 she wants so much that she doesn't know where to 
 begin, or it may be she has all that man wants her 
 to have. But if you could clear your minds of cant " 
 she paused for the protest I was under oath 
 not to utter, and then continued with enjoyment 
 " you would recognise that she knows her wants very 
 clearly, and that it is just what you don't want her 
 to have. She wants an equal moral code and 
 judgment." 
 
 It was not what I had expected. 
 
 "You must give her the chance of equal vices, 
 if her virtue is to be anything worth. She is so 
 penalised that she has no free will. Denial of free 
 will is the death of the conscience, is it not ? Then 
 let her sins bring her the same retribution and no 
 
 103
 
 Cross Fiews 
 
 more, that his bring to man, and her virtue will 
 shine for the first time. You men," and she pointed 
 at me with her fan, "protest that goodness is too 
 delicate a jewel for you to handle. You are too base, 
 you say, with odious mock humility, and you shift 
 the care of it on to the womdn, and woe betide her 
 if she lose it ! It is not for fallible creatures like 
 you, you say, and you go off chuckling to your clubs. 
 The poor woman, equally fallible, but with the 
 threat of irreversible punishment hanging over her, 
 guards the home and the treasure. And wonderfully 
 she guards it." She dropped her lids. "For she is 
 a timorous creature." 
 
 " I protest ! " I exclaimed. " No, I don't care. 
 I will not have woman so traduced." 
 
 " I am glad I have moved you ! " she said glee- 
 fully. "For you cannot deny that so long as an 
 unequal punishment guards it, her virtue cannot 
 be stated. Women's morality, so far, is man's con- 
 venience." 
 
 " You have practised this," I said spitefully. " You 
 speak admirably." 
 
 " You are glad enough to take woman's weapons 
 when she takes yours," she said with a nod. 
 " Nature's ways cannot be altered. A woman knows 
 that better than a man, for there is more that she 
 would like to alter. But creeds and systems can 
 pass, and woman wants her freedom. The franchise 
 is a detail." She paused for defence and defiance, 
 but I was more sad than pugnacious. 
 104
 
 Our Common Tongue 
 
 "I am sorry to think it such a Jekyll and Hyde 
 business," I began. 
 
 " Exactly ! " she said, delightedly. " Hyde en- 
 joyed himself thoroughly. And poor Jekyll Do you 
 not understand me ? " 
 
 " I hope not " I began ponderously, but she cut 
 
 me short. 
 
 " You think you are open to argument, but take 
 refuge in preaching ! Please say instead that you 
 think my emancipation might shed a perfume on 
 the violet ? Say something nice before we part." 
 
 "I know what the poet thought," I replied, as I 
 took her hand in mine and said good-night. 
 
 Now here was a woman talking most ridiculous 
 nonsense. Naturally it fell on deaf ears, and had 
 I used a man's superior powers of reasoning to lay 
 before her the masculine and right view, it would, I 
 have little doubt, have proved as ineffectual. Mention 
 morality to a woman and she says you preach. To 
 the harem with her ! The Turks are right. 
 
 I have read that in China, where everything that 
 the Emperor says takes precedence of everything else, 
 his replies to memorials appear before the documents 
 to which they relate. You piece them together 
 afterwards as best you can. But what relation has 
 an answer to a question in any land ? Would it 
 matter if Ministerial replies were published on the 
 Monday, and the questions that evoked them on the 
 
 105
 
 Cross Views 
 
 Tuesday ? In a court of law, where it is an estab- 
 lished belief that all questions can be answered by yes 
 or no, when the counsel insists "answer me, Sir, yes 
 or no," and the witness has sworn to tell the whole 
 truth and nothing else, one feels that some word of 
 compromise is wanting the blessed word Mesopo- 
 tamia, for instance. 
 
 Do you understand the nature of an oath ? Yes 
 or no, Sir ? 
 
 Are you a moral man ? Yes or no, Sir ? 
 
 Did you break the plaintiff's heart ? Yes or no, 
 Sir ? 
 
 None of your subterfuges here. 
 
 I hope counsel are as much married as other men. 
 I should like to hear one say : " Do you or do you 
 not know that I detest boiled mutton ? Answer me 
 at once, yes or no, Madam ! " He couldn't appeal 
 to the Court for protection. It is a pretty sport to 
 tie a man up with an oath and loose a trained 
 advocate on him whose bread and butter depends on 
 making him commit perjury. 
 
 Lawyers in Parliament draft the laws, and they 
 are so many that they can pass the laws ; lawyers 
 outside administer the laws, exploit the laws and live 
 by the laws. They have made themselves irremovable, 
 and constituted themselves the highest Court of 
 Appeal. And all for the abuse of words. 
 
 If the world lasts long enough to see the natural 
 end of all existing institutions, the last it will see 
 fade is the Law the Science of Disagreement. 
 106
 
 Our Common Tongue 
 
 The first stone of Babel was laid when Eve's voice 
 broke on Adam's ear. Perhaps earlier, for when 
 God walked with Adam in the garden, Adam certainly 
 did not take His mind. Had the angel with the 
 flaming sword been visible before the Fall, Adam, 
 we may be pretty certain, would have remained 
 upright. The sword speaks plainer than the word. 
 
 Start any topic in a mixed company and we are 
 all relegated to Babel, and the basis of disagreement 
 is non-agreement on terms. General conversation 
 is impossible except on banalities, and particular con- 
 versation is apt to become a lecture to an auditor, 
 though the roles are likely to be wrongly assigned, 
 for mistaken manners ordain that the instructed shall 
 generally hold his peace before the simple. For the 
 fool does not know that he is a bore. 
 
 Differing vocabulary, or want of vocabulary, ignor- 
 ance of etymology, of syntax, of any grounding in 
 logic, catch-words, sloppy-mindedness, lack of educa- 
 tion shutting off whatever reference to authority, 
 method, or even illustration, bog the whole company 
 in a morass of misapprehension. 
 
 The loud pitch, too, of general conversation in 
 unintellectual gatherings is a plain instance of sound 
 taking the place of sense. It is of course unnecessary, 
 for when many people are talking in a place which is 
 not quite common ground, where everyone does not 
 know everyone, during the entr'acte at a theatre, 
 for instance, hundreds can talk and be heard without 
 a voice being raised : but at a table or in a room 
 
 107
 
 Cross Views 
 
 where each shouts against each, the voice is strained 
 and the ear wearied. It springs from the notion that 
 noise is gay ; from the savage love of din. A con- 
 versazione is voted dull, because the majority prefer 
 the niggers. 
 
 Discussion should proceed like a game of chess, 
 piece replying to piece put forward ; an argument 
 aptly used, reinforced by knowledge, backed by 
 authority and tending towards a point, should move 
 as a piece moves on its proper squares, reinforced by 
 its fellows and powers behind and on either flank, 
 towards the opponent's king. But when the opponent 
 does not know the moves, revives the slain, dashes 
 into trebly commanded positions and disputes his 
 capture, only heat and weariness can come of such 
 a game, and wisdom is put to its final use, the endur- 
 ance of folly. 
 
 The more a man studies the science of meaning 
 the more it inclines him to hold his tongue. He 
 knows he can express his own meaning but rarely, 
 and must suffer those who have no meaning to 
 express ; and do it. And hardest of all perhaps, those 
 well-intentioned fatty degenerates who seek to blanket 
 the bright flame of discussion with such manufactured 
 wads and stuff-goods as " perhaps there is something 
 in it," or again, " I think too much of it a mistake," 
 or strike down one's nerveless arms with such ex- 
 pressions as " You say so " or " I don't see that at all." 
 
 Learn, O timorous cotton-heads, to whom divine 
 argument is a wrangle, and halfway to a quarrel, to 
 108
 
 Our Common Tongue 
 
 be stifled as soon as it breaks out, that, of your pro- 
 position which is possibly spiritualism, or if not is 
 certainly Christian science, as of the proposition that 
 there are mutton chops for dinner (and nut cutlets 
 for yours), there cannot be " something in it." If there 
 are mutton chops there is everything in it, if no chops, 
 there is nothing in it except the devil, for cheese 
 and biscuits are as ciphers, standing alone. And so of 
 your spooks. One spook, spiritualism ; no spook, no 
 spiritualism. And as for you, Madam, who " think 
 too much of this a mistake," here is an occasion when 
 you may justly excuse yourself from thinking, and 
 state the fine certainty without fear of contradiction. 
 
 109
 
 VI 
 
 WOMAN 
 
 WHAT is a woman's philosophy of life ? A thousand 
 writers have answered the question to their own satis- 
 faction, and almost every man who has formed any 
 philosophy of his own takes it for granted that it is bi- 
 sexual in origin and application : but such a premise is 
 in itself unphilosophical. For on reflection he must 
 own, I think, that his philosophy is masculine in origin 
 and that in applying it to the woman the misfit that 
 ensues causes him an endless perplexity. Has woman 
 ever expressed herself ever painted the man as she 
 sees him ever dramatised her own tragedy and 
 comedy of life ever found her utterance in song that 
 can soar on equal pinions in the glorious chorus of 
 poets or founded a religion to suit her needs, created 
 a literature to educate her own mind and instruct the 
 man, governed a state for women, preached her gospel 
 or left her rule of life in any form ? 
 
 What, after all, do we know about her ; and of those 
 who have celebrated her and of those who have 
 analysed her, which have done her the greater 
 wrong ? With what eyes does she see the age-long 
 celebration of the eternal feminine ? Does its homage 
 no
 
 Woman 
 
 console her for her lack of self-expression ? Does she 
 laugh at the analysts, or is she gratified by their 
 attempts at expounding her to herself? Her ways are 
 well nigh as inscrutable as those of Providence, which 
 theologians interpret in divers ways and without 
 authority. Juliet, Portia, Margaret, Beatrice, are 
 men's celebrations and renderings of the feminine, and 
 the unidealistic mind has given us a hundred more 
 materialised portraits, but what confirmation have we 
 from the subject, for subject in that sense she remains, 
 for she is not self-expository nor does she turn the 
 mirror or the scalpel on her partner. She remains a 
 sphinx, supplying an eternal riddle, nor puzzles herself, 
 apparently, over the corresponding complexity of the 
 sex that dominates hers. 
 
 Our theologies, arts, philosophies, politics, are man- 
 made, and the woman who lifts her gaze from the 
 hearth, who steps from out the swept and garnished 
 circle of her little realm, having no children tugging 
 at her skirts, and with a mind-hunger unsatisfied with 
 spoon-food, must feel, one thinks, when she enters 
 these roaring marts made by and for generations of 
 male workers and thinkers, much as that modern type 
 the female clerk must feel when she first takes up her 
 post in the city not that the effort is beyond her 
 powers altogether, not that the life, strenuous and ill- 
 paid as it may be, is too much for her frailer strength 
 or inimical finally to her sex, but that the whole 
 organism of the business from dawn to dark, from 
 Cheapside to Aldgate, from finance to chandlery, from 
 
 HI
 
 Cross Views 
 
 manager to out-porter, from office to bodega, from 
 Mansion House speech to Stock Exchange slang, is a 
 male organism, old, complex, far-stretching and pro- 
 pagated without help of woman. It is this a-sexual 
 formation of their hive which daunts the female 
 worker and makes the path hard for the poor little 
 pioneers. It makes it necessary for them to go to 
 work, so to speak, in trousers and a hard hat. 
 Trousers and hard hats are not ethically connected 
 with finance or the wool-exchange, but custom has 
 made them so. At present she can only gain ad- 
 mission to the stronghold by donning a male disguise, 
 but when the Nova Solyma is run by men and women 
 and half the control is hers, she will doff that ill- 
 becoming khaki of warfare and reappear in an en- 
 hanced beauty in a reborn city. 
 
 But underlying the hard daily necessities is a 
 broader and deeper hunger that drives us all, and of 
 the food that supplies it we ask does it nourish 
 woman, and can she develop her full faculties on it if 
 it is primarily a male diet ? 
 
 She has been the inspiration of poets, dramatists, 
 painters, sculptors, musicians, from the beginning, the 
 text of moralists, and philosophers, and essayists, the 
 prize of warriors, the prime trophy of the hunter's 
 lodge in whatever shape he has taken in every age. 
 She has been the goddess of the oldest religion on 
 earth, but we have no revelation. You look across 
 your fireplace and there sits an inarticulate mystery, 
 the beautiful and passive object of man's activities, 
 112
 
 Woman 
 
 the centre of his interest since his race began. You 
 approach the study of this mystery and all the written 
 word from papyrus to the daily paper is full of her 
 as she has appeared to men. You idealise her and all 
 the poets come to your aid. You materialise her and 
 all romantic and amorous literature feeds your flame. 
 You shun her and the moralists and theologians ap- 
 prove you. You admire, and the fine arts expand in 
 mile-long galleries of exquisite and varied presentments 
 all down the centuries. Whatever your mood, some 
 man has felt it before you and offers his record to 
 strengthen your fancy. But she she never speaks 
 and has never spoken. She has her being in a 
 universe bounded by masculine spirits of good and evil 
 and from her time-long prison or pleasure-house she 
 has never let us know what she thinks of her keeper. 
 
 The boy enters on puberty and wakes simul- 
 taneously to the ten thousand histories of love felt 
 by man before him, from the Canticles to the sorrows 
 of Werther, from the ravings of the lover of Laura to 
 the ravings of the lover of Maud. How does the 
 woman open her eyes to these things ? A thousand 
 writers are ready to tell you, but all of them are men. 
 All the noble women of Fiction are, after all, fiction, 
 and created by men. And if Man is a horrid fact, 
 Woman is, perhaps, a pleasing fiction. 
 
 Religion wakes in the man, and his struggles and 
 inspirations are reflected in the countless systems and 
 convulsions that have compelled men before him. 
 How did they strike women ? Politics have been his 
 
 H 113
 
 Cross Views 
 
 ancient game and she has looked on. War answers 
 to strong impulses in his temperament. Here indeed 
 she has cried out, but who has listened ? Consider the 
 brotherhood of men in schools and universities, and its 
 preachers, teachers, orators, generals, and leaders who 
 find audience and response and obedience. Where 
 are the gatherings of women ? What solidarity or 
 communion have they known, what women do they 
 sit under, learn from, applaud, follow, obey ? The 
 history they learn is the history of men. What man 
 has done man can do, but can history move a 
 woman's soul ? Not as it is written, anyway, for 
 they use the same text-book. Every pulse, desire, 
 and necessity in man has its exposition there, to 
 which we may turn for edification, but every woman 
 child comes into a virgin world, a primaeval jungle 
 where, even as the pioneer's wife is dependent on 
 him for aid in her natural curse, no woman's hand 
 is stretched to aid, no woman's mind has made a 
 clearing, or set up a landmark. No woman has 
 painted man for her, but what is more terrible, no 
 woman has painted woman for her. No female 
 philosophy instructs her, no gynocracy offers pro- 
 tection, no prophetess has founded a creed for her, no 
 woman-poet expressed her, no priestess ministers to 
 her. 
 
 Silent she bears the raptures of the great lovers of 
 literature, or of the pursuers of a legion of Chloes, 
 Lalages, and Phyllindas. Sometimes a part is written 
 for her, but whether she feels it we never know. 
 114
 
 Woman 
 
 With unmoved gaze she stands before Venus of the 
 Louvre, La Belle Joconde, the Madonnas of Raphael. 
 Unfired she reads the exploits of crusaders, giant- 
 killers, conquerors, and heroes. Uncomprehending 
 she hears of the march of progress, through the suc- 
 cessive ages of stone, bronze, iron, and steel. She 
 only sees that they grow harder and harder for her 
 to make her mark on. 
 
 It is easily argued that woman has made wars, pulled 
 the strings of government, lent her cloak to religious 
 movements, patronised the liberal arts, and in individual 
 instances, no doubt, she has done these things, but on 
 the whole when we ascribe these influences to her, 
 we mean that she has smiled and that man has wrought. 
 Again, to say as I have said that she has never expressed 
 herself in word or action is obviously a too sweeping 
 statement, but set against the overwhelming mass of 
 male activities hers may go for nothing, and that the 
 names of her champions occur so readily to mind is 
 proof of their conspicuous fewness j but of them only 
 it is a most noteworthy thing only the queens and 
 the saints are on a par with man's greatest. 
 
 However, if it be indubitable, as some think, that 
 man has had the doing of everything in the past, it is 
 as indubitable that woman wants to do something in 
 the future. Still addressing ourselves to that minute 
 but important percentage of the part of the western 
 world whose common bond is the printed word, and 
 not pretending to predicate anything of the great mass 
 of humanity that recognises no movement save that of 
 
 "5
 
 Cross Views 
 
 an army on the march, we may say that woman is 
 developing an individuality, and were the world's ac- 
 tivities not organised on exclusively masculine lines, 
 her renaissance would be more apparent than it is. 
 At present in descending into the arena she must, as 
 the phrase goes, take the rough and tumble of it, but 
 that rough and tumble is the way of the ring because 
 she has not hitherto entered it. A woman may well 
 shrink from the Stock Exchange, but Stock Exchange 
 manners are only an unfortunate accident of the 
 business of exchanging stock they are not of its 
 essence. The woman who would be a doctor has to 
 face the medical student, but might he not be tamed ? 
 The thought of a woman on the hustings fills us with 
 disgust, but it is the manners of elections that should 
 disgust, and not the manner of woman. Professional 
 ways and business habits are brutal or grubby or 
 attended with the consumption of liquor or conducted 
 with slang and obscenity because the ground is closed 
 to woman, and so long as the half of all our cities is re- 
 served for men only, the city of the future, the clean, 
 shining, gracious place foretold by optimists, will never 
 be. Why, the smoking room, that foul, smelling old 
 den with its greasy chairs and lurking spittoon, is dis- 
 appearing now that woman has nearly made good her 
 equal claim to the divine weed, and the delightful 
 " living-room " unites the married couple. It is her 
 work. He could have continued in his "froust." 
 She has weaned him from his after-dinner potations, 
 lured him from the smoking-room, invites him to her 
 116
 
 Woman 
 
 club, and before he knows what is happening the 
 trumpet will have sounded before the walls of club- 
 land, and he will no longer be dining alone in a 
 surrounding of black coats. She has won his leisure, 
 as we all see, plays his games, shares his sport, travel, 
 and adventure, and now she is guiding herself to share 
 his work. More power to her ! Politics are never 
 practical politics until they come about, and things are 
 only contrary to nature until that lady adapts herself, 
 and a very adaptable person she is, as every student of 
 evolution knows. 
 
 For instance, it is contrary to nature that a solicitor 
 should be a woman. In defiance of this postulate let 
 a solicitor be a woman. It will not be denied that 
 she could pass an examination. She opens an office. 
 Stubbs, Stubbs & Chowder on the door-post is expanded 
 on the letter-paper to Miss Edith Stubbs, Miss Alice 
 Stubbs, Mrs. Cholmondeley Chowder (Divorce and 
 Admiralty). The door knocker is brightened, 
 window-boxes take the place of wire gauze, a house- 
 maid is introduced to Finsbury, and documents may 
 be examined without a smother of dirt and soot, the 
 partners secure the first word with eminent counsel, 
 clients call for the pleasure of the interview (6*. and 
 8</.), Messrs. Fisher bring out a new solicitor's bag 
 with fitted hand-mirror and screw-top eau-de-cologne 
 bottle, the solicitor's table in the court blossoms into 
 cut flowers, judges never go to sleep any more upon 
 my word, it is contrary to nature that a solicitor 
 should be a man ! 
 
 117
 
 Cross Views 
 
 You laugh ? How long have we had the hospital 
 nurse ? The solicitor's office is the nursing home for 
 legal operations. 
 
 The man's attitude in the controversy is always 
 that of the king of the castle. " I was here first, I 
 have arranged this place as I want it to be. Can't 
 you see that it is arranged for a man ? How can you 
 be so stupid ! " And woman stands in the doorway, 
 contracting delicate nostrils and lifting her skirts an 
 inch, and says : " I don't see why you should adopt 
 this tone here more than elsewhere, for you would 
 never dare to speak to me like that at home. I have 
 never sought to oust you from anywhere : I have 
 only followed you round with the duster and the 
 clothes-brush. My mission is to civilise you. We 
 were meant to share the earth and not to divide it, 
 and in your exclusive strongholds you get into bad and 
 selfish ways. It may not be necessary for women to 
 be lawyers, doctors, brokers, or politicians, but it is 
 necessary and urgent that politicians, brokers, doctors, 
 and lawyers and the rest of them should have women 
 in their ranks. It is not essential that my daughters 
 should go to the city or belong to the Bachelors 1 Club, 
 but it is essential that my sons should not live 
 segregated from their sisters in these places. Com- 
 panionship is three-fourths of marriage, and its 
 necessary preliminary, and this preliminary is denied 
 by the present state of things, and marriage made 
 difficult by lack of opportunity, and rendered insup- 
 portable by difference of ideas and training, and void- 
 118
 
 Woman 
 
 able by reason of the back door always open upon a 
 bachelor world. My friend, we must have a spring 
 cleaning, and you shall have no peace till we do." 
 
 I think we ought to know more at this date than to 
 refuse woman anything. We ought to know better 
 than to jest about the attraction of the forbidden 
 apple of course it has attraction, but man who has 
 long assumed freedom of the whole orchard is not in 
 a position to wag a reproving finger. Had woman 
 been put on the register as soon as popular govern- 
 ment was initiated she would possibly no more care to 
 vote than she asks to go out with the North Sea 
 fishing fleet, or to read the Times. If your wife 
 wants a Havana, offer your cigar case at once. He is 
 a fool who locks his cigars away and exhorts and 
 wrangles for a year about it. She would burn the 
 house down to get a whiff. And so would he. 
 
 If it is beyond arguing against that every man (and 
 woman) as such should have a voice in controlling 
 public affairs (though in matters less than national no 
 one has a hearing unless he has knowledge, and the 
 only logical basis for the suffrage is pass-examination 
 and the soundest use the pass-examination can be put 
 to, to boot) yet is the woman-suffrage movement but 
 an item in the infinitely wider and more interesting 
 feminist movement. If woman-suffrage means the 
 increase of the number of ignorant voters it is the 
 fault of the suffrage-qualification, and only secondarily 
 the fault of the ignorant, and when the feminist move- 
 ment wins the gates of the professional and business 
 
 119
 
 Cross Views 
 
 strongholds for woman, her voice in politics could 
 not be denied, even on the illogical grounds of her 
 innocence of public affairs. It looks as if the various 
 suffrage associations would do well to concentrate 
 on the professional circles and business centres, which, 
 mobbed each in turn with the persistence and clever- 
 ness hitherto wasted on the House of Commons, 
 would have to succumb in detail. Business men 
 who are really busy will submit to anything rather 
 than interference with the course of business, a fact 
 well known to Chancellors of the Exchequer. Like 
 laborious and devoted insects interfered with by idle 
 observers, they round obstacles, carry burdens, and 
 reconstruct dilapidations, a furious hum alone marking 
 their indignation so long as work can be carried on 
 somehow and a blockade of the city ganglions would 
 extort anything and everything. Cut their com- 
 munications and they must capitulate to catch the 
 evening post. Time is not money at Westminster. 
 You may waste a minister's time, and welcome. He 
 is not paid by the piece, and if he is kept from 
 his activities neither he nor the public is greatly 
 concerned, however they may bluster. But cut the 
 barrister from the courts, the solicitor from his clients, 
 the broker from the telephone, and things are brought 
 to a head. Either man or woman must go down. 
 The woman who believes that she can compete in the 
 professions is possibly foolish, but not so foolish as the 
 professions which won't let her try. If she wins her 
 way to the Chancellorship she must be fitted for it 
 120
 
 Woman 
 
 if she doesn't there is no harm done and she will have 
 no cause to complain. One sees difficulties in her 
 path beyond existent disabilities. There are points in 
 the hostile argument that she has not met, and one 
 of them is nothing other than her present inferiority 
 of position. To put it bluntly, if she should be man's 
 equal why is she not his equal ? A thousand voices 
 cry in chorus that she has been kept under. By man's 
 superior cunning ? No, they cry, by his brute force. 
 How then has it come about that the mammoth did 
 not keep man under, the man of muscle enslave the 
 man of brains, the savage tribes overwhelm the civilised 
 communities ? Brute force has never enjoyed more than 
 a moment's look-in. All the good things of the uni- 
 verse are in the hands of the cunning, and she is the 
 best of the good things. And she has had more time 
 to think than has the man. Her share of the common 
 task has been laborious and painful, but over domestic 
 labour a powerful lot of thinking, scheming, planning, 
 inventing and circumventing can be done which can 
 find little place in the day's work of the hunter, the 
 warrior, and the maker of things. Moreover, in a 
 day when cunning lay very low, and the man-at-arms, 
 to his own seeming, was lord of the earth, learning 
 was left largely to women, but those women of the Re- 
 naissance, for instance, what did they do for their sex ? 
 They used their Greek and Latin as they used their 
 clothes and jewels, and their wardrobes perished with 
 them. Let us not deny her her chance in the future, 
 but do not let her deny that she has had it in the past. 
 
 121
 
 Cross Views 
 
 The period of youth sees a fairly equal struggle 
 between the two factors, body and brain, that go to 
 make the man, for the school athlete is forced to 
 recognise the class-room attainments of the weaklings, 
 and sees their acknowledgment by authorities who 
 enforce his own respect ; and he knows, moreover, 
 that in after life, as in the school examinations, great 
 places and distinctions will fall to their share, and 
 knows indeed if he be shrewd that unless some un- 
 earned increment enable him to support his body 
 until it can support him, that every pound avoirdupois 
 will be a positive handicap by reason of its demands 
 on the necessaries of life. At Miss Pinkerton's 
 academy for young ladies, au contraire, there is not a 
 pretty little fool in the establishment but knows that 
 she holds better cards for the game of life than does 
 her teacher, and that she has but to play them mode- 
 rately well to win a social position where she may bask 
 in the sun for evermore. How many women would 
 call for an equality of opportunity with men if it 
 meant the deprivation of that glorious gamble, that 
 additional lottery ticket they hold in matrimony, that 
 future chance and ever-present dream that Miss A. 
 may be elevated to dizzy heights above the less fortu- 
 nate Miss B. ? What romantic possibilities attach to 
 Miss Pinkerton's boarders ! Some small maiden eating 
 bread-and-butter in the schoolroom whom you have 
 patted on the head, a few seasons later, though she 
 has neither toiled nor spun, is married and lo ! she 
 is holding a ministerial reception, a vice-regal ball or 
 122
 
 Woman 
 
 what not, and there is no pat on the head for you, 
 poor old Blunderbore, in the shape of a piece of 
 pasteboard. But you should not pat little girls on 
 the head, they find it most offensive. The triumphs 
 of prize-day in a girls' school are but dust and 
 ashes indeed to many of the terribly sapient little 
 women in whose microcosm tongues have an edge 
 and eyes a percipiency to scare the heaviest sixth- 
 form swell who ever sat on the wall at Eton. In 
 man and woman alike the temptation and natural 
 lapse is towards pampering this delicate and dear 
 body we all indulge to what extent we may ; but 
 whereas in the one case it means defeat in the race, 
 in the other it is, or is shockingly near being, a 
 means to success. For it is the woman of beauty 
 and not the woman of brains who is chosen, who 
 multiplies and takes possession it has made her the 
 fairer sex and there you have another explanation ! 
 Man, however ill-favoured, yea, estropit or hunch- 
 backed, will never lack a mate, and often secures the 
 pick, for the powerful and diverse-working brain has 
 provided the means : but the ill-favoured woman 
 seldom, and the deformed never, finds her fulfilment. 
 The man's success is often made a reproach to her 
 as indicated now, but it is perhaps her glory and the 
 constant witness to the divine in her, however starved 
 and borne down by the age-long exercise of man's 
 lower choice, that she will never refuse to see and 
 love the conquering spark of intellect or soul in the 
 meanest-looking sculpin that wears trousers. 
 
 123
 
 Cross Views 
 
 It would be a fine turn of irony if, the emancipa- 
 tion of woman coming about under a socialist state 
 where she was independent in livelihood and un- 
 biassed in choice of mate, her choice were to gravi- 
 tate wholly towards le beau male. Capacity would 
 become extinct and the greatest revenge of time be 
 worked in the reduction of man to the level where 
 his appetites have fixed the mean of womankind. 
 
 124
 
 VII 
 
 MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE 
 
 THE prosaic madness of dream-doings, from which 
 surprise is nearly always excluded, will sometimes 
 take the form of social and moral outrage only equalled 
 by the extravagant insouciance of the shadowy actors, 
 and in these fleeting comedies of the night-time one 
 may hap upon one's maiden aunt in the well of an 
 operating theatre mildly suggesting salts of lemon 
 for stains on the table ; or be told by the Vicar's 
 wife, in casual conversation, that her husband has 
 fired the church and gone to the Brazils with an 
 opera-dancer : " if he had only let me know in time," 
 she says, "I need not have put up clean curtains 
 this week, but he never thinks " ; in your dream 
 you perhaps sympathise with the Vicar, and pro- 
 nounce her very fussy. 
 
 For me a breath of this cold insanity steals across 
 the page when I read proposals for seven-year marriages, 
 or propositions such as that marriage is the source 
 of immorality, bastardy, and concubinage, and that 
 divorce for the asking is the only road to virtue. 
 It makes feasible for a moment a society and a code 
 wherein and whereby your daughters should come 
 home at breakfast hours in their evening array and 
 
 125
 
 Cross Views 
 
 no question asked, and your wife remind you as she 
 pours the morning tea that your matrimonial lease 
 is up next Monday, when she leaves for the Engadine 
 with your neighbour Brown who is parting with 
 hij old acquaintance Mrs. Brown, because of her 
 obstinate preference for peppermint bullseyes and 
 what are you going to do about meals, as she must 
 let the servants know. The existence or non-exist- 
 ence of such everyday tone is presumably a matter 
 of convention. Common agreement could bring it 
 about to-morrow, even as common agreement rejects 
 it to-day, or at any rate this morning. Our sons 
 come home with the milk and nothing said, and 
 our daughters have been crying for equal rights for 
 some time past, and husbands leave their wives daily 
 for reasons no stronger than peppermint, if as strong, 
 and go off with other men's wives to the Riviera 
 or the Balearics. Do we approve it ? Go to ! That 
 question marks an earlier stage. It is now shall we 
 legalise it ? For the agitation for cheap and easy 
 divorce and remarriage is not for freedom of action 
 that exists already but for the stamp of legality 
 that will enforce conventional approval. The hard- 
 ship is not that two people are fast tied, for the social 
 uni. is perfectly fluid in action, and no physical 
 restraint is put upon free love, but that a considerable 
 measure of ostracism visits the exercise of the liberty. 
 And that the exercise of individual liberty may carry 
 no penalties, the agitators would constrain the public 
 conscience by law. 
 126
 
 Marriage and Divorce 
 
 It may be that the demand of divorced persons to 
 be married again in a church springs from a valid and 
 praiseworthy wish that the blessing of the church 
 should help them to sustain their second essay as it 
 did not their first : it may be that their recourse to the 
 registrar springs from a strong reverence for the law 
 as law-abiding English citizens who, having broken 
 their contract, are anxious to try again. But other 
 transgressors are not reinstalled in their civil rights 
 without demur, any more than in their social con- 
 sideration, though no doubt it would help them to the 
 recovery of their self-respect and smooth over hard 
 memories of conviction were their offences over- 
 looked and condoned the thesis of Mr. Galsworthy's 
 Justice ; but we do not accept on the old terms 
 the convict who has stolen his neighbour's goods, and 
 still fight shy of the man convicted of stealing his 
 neighbour's wife. Now such an expression as "his 
 neighbour's wife " (or husband presumably) makes the 
 agitators very angry. They say that the notion of 
 possession is odious and barbarous, and that husbands 
 have no property in wives. One may reply that one 
 has heard equally strong expressions applied to the 
 more obvious forms of property, but that the world is 
 not as yet convinced of its iniquity ; and indeed here 
 one might go further and point out that the legalising 
 of certain forms of dispossession has by no means con- 
 vinced the dispossessed ; but that is another quarrel. 
 We will confine ourselves then to replying that when 
 two people make a public pact of mutual alliance and 
 
 127
 
 Cross Views 
 
 service, and consideration passes, they do in a real 
 sense belong to one another, and have a distinct and 
 valid claim each on the other. They cannot possibly 
 remain as free as before. Why, if I contract to lunch 
 with a friend and another friend seduces me to go 
 golfing, I am stolen from that luncheon party. De 
 minimi* non cur at, but the injury though infinitesi- 
 mal, and even capable of proof as a benefit to that 
 luncheon, and positively injurious to the links, is yet 
 real. The woman is nine times out of ten taken by 
 stealth and the word attests something, and the injury 
 done has always been recognised throughout the world 
 and the ages even when civil or Christian marriage did 
 not complicate the question. The absolutely inde- 
 pendent status of the married person is not tenable, 
 and if one party to the contract breaks the contract 
 the other has a grievance and should have a remedy, 
 or there is no advantage in civil life. The social and 
 economic circumstances of the parties are inevitably 
 changed by the marriage as well as by its abrogation, 
 and hostages to fortune are given in more ways than 
 one, and subsidiary parties to the contract spring up 
 and a small host of new relationships are formed by it, 
 and concentric ripples of activity start flowing to all 
 points of the compass, and cannot be recalled. Society 
 in consequence, sensible of its interdependence, makes 
 it unpleasant for people who perform unsocial acts, 
 and frowns upon the light-heartedly offered compensa- 
 tion of dancing at the new wedding. 
 
 That marriage entered on by mutual consent should 
 128 

 
 Marriage and Divorce 
 
 be dissolved by mutual consent then, is only, I think, 
 superficially reasonable, even if there are none of the 
 " almost inevitable consequences," for the status quo ante 
 cannot be restored ; but it is certainly to be preferred 
 to the queer proposal for seven-year unions put forward 
 not long ago, when the first question that arose in one's 
 mind was, why seven years ? Because of the seven 
 champions of Christendom, the seven-branched candle- 
 sticks, or the seven maids with seven mops ? If Mr. 
 Meredith had any better reason for the number seven 
 one would much like to know it. True, it might 
 have been the Seven Years' War. Or in the case of 
 a ten years' union was it the ten little niggers, the 
 ten tribes, his ten toes, or the decimal system that 
 prescribed the just period ? It can hardly have been 
 the Decalogue. But for the magic of numbers we 
 are referred in the Pseudodoxia of Sir Thomas Browne 
 to the learned discourse of Salmasius, " how every- 
 one hath different climactericals : with many other 
 observables impugning the present opinion." Suffice 
 it to say that it means a period very much less than 
 life and arbitrarily fixed even if not by mental associa- 
 tion of numbers, but the ill-assorted couple under such 
 time-bond would cry out as loudly as ever, and would 
 have quite as much to say for themselves, for shortness 
 or length of time is a matter of personal experience, 
 of wise and fortunate, unwise and unfortunate choice ; 
 and a seven-year connection with the wrong mate 
 may be a greater hardship than a life union undertaken 
 with more consideration, and the cutting down of the 
 
 i 129
 
 Cross Views 
 
 latter kind a worse outrage on humanity than the 
 week-end arrangements of weaker brethren. Better 
 a union during mutual consent than any attempt to 
 fix the period of duration of the honeymoon of the 
 affections, even if the sentiments of the honeymoon 
 are alone to be considered. If we ask from marriage 
 what we ask from all too many enterprises namely, 
 the advantages without the drawbacks, the pleasures 
 without the duties the thing is to be had, ostensibly ; 
 but to ask for the social status of the wedded into 
 the bargain is to ask too much. There was a fox lost 
 his tail in a trap. 
 
 The hardship inflicted on the innocent under what- 
 ever code of civil and criminal law cannot be allowed 
 to govern the situation. It is a hardship that a 
 hungry man may not take the bread he needs, or, to 
 come nearer the actual grievance, when a man must 
 remain single because he cannot support a wife, or 
 that a woman must remain unmarried because nobody 
 asks her to change her condition. Hardship is more 
 than an exception, it is attendant on every step we 
 take, and he who has escaped the hardship of celibacy 
 finds hardship in matrimony, hardship again in illegal 
 relations, and would escape this yet again by a second 
 marriage ! A virtuous woman is married to a " brute," 
 divorces him and obtains the power of re-marriage 
 with the approval of the kind-hearted and the 
 " brute " obtains like licence to create fresh hardships 
 for his second spouse. The acquiescence of society 
 in the hardships suffered for the good of society may 
 130
 
 Marriage and Divorce 
 
 appear pharisaic, and probably is so ; but to-day's 
 pharisee may be to-morrow's publican and there lies 
 the explanation, and the unphilosophical appeal of the 
 sufferer that " if you were in my place you would 
 think differently " may be justly met with " and you 
 would think differently if my case were yours." And 
 without any inclination to be brutal we may oppose 
 to the application for short and easy marriage the 
 consideration that there are things harder to be en- 
 dured than the deprivation of wedding-cake. 
 
 Even if a marriage has no unfortunate issue, it has 
 been an experience and an opportunity denied to 
 thousands who might have made a better job of it, 
 and to grant divorce and re-marriage on individual 
 prompting is to give the run of the marriage-market 
 an odious but unhappily truthful expression to a long 
 purse and a fickle temperament where many a good 
 man and woman must look and long. We should 
 perhaps be on the road to a better state of things were 
 licence to marry after divorce accorded only to the 
 innocent party, if there were one, and the alternative 
 hunting-grounds of the guilty narrowed by the im- 
 provement of the remediable economic circumstances 
 which keep up the supply of wild game, and by exclu- 
 sion from the married preserves of bad characters likely 
 to prove poachers ; but there is very little done in 
 these directions, for the tendency is all the other way. 
 
 It is a burning question and essentially one on 
 which every man and woman must be allowed an 
 opinion, even a writer of commonplace, for there are
 
 Cross Views 
 
 no experts in marriage, and the more marriages you 
 may have entered on and abandoned, obviously the 
 less expert you are. The sufferers expose their hard 
 cases to the growing sentimentalism of the age, and 
 the Churches oppose a prohibition whose source is less 
 and less reverenced, and offer consolations less and less 
 acceptable and future compensation harder and harder 
 to discount. Social morality is hustled towards the 
 melting pot. Hitherto it has leant upon authority, 
 and does not yet feel its feet as a science, and it is 
 much harder for reason to stand than for dogma. 
 
 What will be done ? It is hard to foresee, but 
 there is still marriage as of old for those who can 
 sustain it, and separation for those who cannot ; there 
 is celibacy for the continent, and union without the 
 law for the incontinent. And what about the innocent 
 and the injured, who are commonly women, it seemSj 
 and therefore cannot find solace and outlet in the 
 manner of men ? But this is the distinction between 
 the sons and daughters over again, in whose case the 
 remedy is surely to bring pressure of opinion to bear 
 on the men, and not to emancipate the maidens ; for 
 it is woman's fault if man can lead a loose life and yet 
 be accepted by women who are virtuous, and so long 
 as Don Juan is the acceptable type it is hard to see 
 how laws can reform our lives. If men take a licence 
 they refuse to women, it is women's business to make 
 it " neither or both." Such an argument for divorce 
 and re-marriage is on a level with that other drawn 
 from the bastardy laws. Mankind visits its sins on its 
 132
 
 Marriage and Divorce 
 
 helpless offspring, defaming it and handicapping it 
 from cradle to grave, and then holds out its piteous 
 case to cover his own iniquity, for I read that " the 
 denial of divorce leads to immorality, 1 concubinage, 
 and illegitimacy." The same authority suggests that 
 " scandalous marriages had better be performed by the 
 registrar " a sentiment that might pass in a clergyman, 
 but that in a magistrate argues slight respect for the 
 dignity of the law. 
 
 If law comes of change and not change of law, the 
 reform of marriage along the lines indicated and in- 
 sistently urged by many would mark a great weakening 
 of the institution ; but so much law is born of agitation 
 that one becomes very suspicious of its supposed broad 
 base upon the people's will. The agitator is at the 
 top of his boom, and what a popular speaker says 
 to-day is aired to-morrow in every village in the king- 
 dom, but what the village thinks is not reported in 
 the next issue of the papers. The determined heckler 
 who disorders the parish meeting can rise with equal 
 effect in the Albert Hall, though his representation be 
 still the same, though he is still the member for I. 
 What Mr. Kensit has to say about Church discipline 
 gets as wide a hearing as the opinion of the Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury ; and if all Mr. Shaw's readers 
 were Shavians, Mr. Walkley might keep a pike. If 
 short marriage or speedy divorce is to be carried by 
 agitation, we are ripe for the referendum, for everyone 
 has a finger in that pie. 
 
 1 Marriage and Divorce. Chapman. 
 
 133
 
 Cross Views 
 
 To take Mr. Shaw's philosophy, his summary 
 summarised is that marriage should be dissolved 
 promptly, and without questions asked, at the request 
 of either party. Marriage on this basis is until one of 
 the parties has had enough of it. A man, then, who 
 asks your daughter in marriage he does not ask the 
 parent bien entendu ; as a parent you are the last person 
 to be allowed any control is to be free to leave her 
 after a week without giving a reason, and free to 
 repeat the process. You are told that as a matter of 
 fact people don't do these things. If that be so why 
 have a written contract when you take a house ? 
 Your landlord won't defraud you, people don't do 
 these things. Mr. Shaw, to do him justice, would wait 
 until women are economically independent ; but this, 
 again, in the opinion of many, would defer the matter 
 until the Greek Kalends. But grant that your 
 daughter who has married, let us say, a solicitor, 
 is herself at the Bar and doing well when he throws 
 her over after the honeymoon, being dissatisfied with 
 her knowledge of the Common Law ; she may still 
 maintain herself in spite of his opinion, but why call 
 this a marriage ? All goes swimmingly and irresistibly 
 as usual in Mr. Shaw's preface, but when it comes to 
 " Getting Married " well, it comes to getting married, 
 and by a bishop at that. As Mr. Shaw observes, there 
 is no subject on which more dangerous nonsense is 
 thought and talked than on marriage. 
 
 What is the difference between marriage relieved by 
 divorce for the asking and promiscuous intercourse 
 
 134
 
 Marriage and Divorce 
 
 punctuated by marriage ? If mutual love is the only 
 foundation, and the moment that love fails either party 
 the marriage becomes an immoral union to be dropped 
 like a cold potato, why not recognise the inevitable 
 and embrace the gospel of free love preached by the 
 philosophic anarchist ? I learn from that subversive 
 apostle of the new world, Miss Emma Goldman, that 
 " marriage is a poor little Church-and-State-begotten 
 weed," that " love in freedom is the only condition of 
 a beautiful life," and that " if the world is ever to give 
 birth to true companionship and oneness, not marriage 
 but love will be the parent." What one likes about 
 this gospel is that it knows what it wants and says 
 what it means, and perhaps even means what it says. 
 It does not drag marriage along with it in its fantastic 
 course and twine her sober grey hairs with vine- 
 leaves. The emancipation of the young woman may 
 be all for the best, but let her not drag her mother 
 along with her into the market-place. As a matter 
 of mere practical wisdom, let the older generation 
 keep some sticks together, in case the daughter may 
 want to come home in the evening. Cannot, in fact, 
 the new generation try its co-habitatory experiments 
 without applying such unpleasant names to the marital 
 relations of its parents ? If marriage be a cloak for 
 every abomination, why do they seek to endue them- 
 selves with it at all ? And will it still possess a magic 
 of its own against the evils that attend union and 
 separation without obstacle or question as practised 
 nightly in our cities ? One does not take out a 
 
 135
 
 Cross Views 
 
 marriage licence as one takes a theatre-ticket for one's 
 evening's amusement. One takes an oath meaning 
 to keep it ; and if fortitude fails, the less said the better. 
 The man who takes vows of celibacy, silence, and 
 poverty, and afterwards flings out of the monastery, 
 has all my sympathy, for one, but he should not 
 advertise himself as the " escaped monk " and denounce 
 the monastic life as the abomination of desolation. It 
 is not fitted for everyone and evidently not for him, 
 and that is all. Most monks die monks, and in spite 
 of the incredulous laughter of those who keep the 
 world amused and talking, most married people keep 
 their vows ; and if you doubt it reckon up a hundred 
 married couples of your acquaintance and set a mark 
 against those whom you have even reasonable grounds 
 to suspect of unfaithfulness, or of acute unhappiness in 
 faithfulness. 
 
 Let us suppose that the wedding, the public 
 ceremony and celebration, were the crown of 
 married life instead of its initiation, and marked the 
 twenty-fifth anniversary, let us say, mortality apart, 
 and that those who won through to it were entitled 
 to a greater consideration from their fellow-citizens : 
 should we listen to the complaints of those who were 
 refused the gifts and the bride-cake, the congratula- 
 tions and the Church's blessing, and the rest, because 
 they had been unstable as water and did not excel ? 
 " No, my friends," we should say : " you have had 
 your cake, and cannot eat it again. If you cannot 
 agree over your prandial bacon you must at least pay 
 136
 
 Marriage and Divorce 
 
 for it ; there will be no Dunmow flitch for you. 
 Without mockery we will believe that misfortune is 
 your only fault, but reward is for the successful : we 
 cannot grant you public honours." The demand for 
 re-marriage is a claim for forfeited social consideration 
 on the part of the divorced, and should be entertained 
 with caution. Not content to be free, they ask to be 
 esteemed. 
 
 The game of cross-questions and crooked answers 
 goes merrily on, and we try to remedy one evil by 
 applying another, we defend good causes with wrong 
 arguments, and attack abuses with any weapon but 
 the right one, and most noticeably when the sexual 
 question crops up do all shrink from the subject 
 matter and argue about it and about without ever 
 coming to the point. There is a child's game where 
 a ring of hands is formed round some central object, 
 usually a pile of hats and caps, and all the players seek 
 to drag each other in contact with it. The desperate 
 leaps and capers of those dragged nearest the forbidden 
 thing are amusing to witness. Our disputants doff 
 their true opinions and keep as far away from them as 
 possible, and invoke anything from the liberty of the 
 subject to the morals of a compositor that may call 
 fools into a circle and enlarge the boundary of the 
 dispute. The recurring antagonisms over censored 
 or uncensored books, pictures, and theatrical represen- 
 tations as constantly illustrate this reluctance. The 
 objectors declare that such and such things are disgust- 
 ing and repulsive, and their opponents that if there be 
 
 137
 
 Cross Views 
 
 anything objectionable it is in the depraved mind of 
 the censors, and that to the pure all things are pure. 
 Objection and defence as stated are equally absurd 
 and untrue. The subject in dispute touches in one 
 way or another the note of sex, and no normal man or 
 woman is disgusted or repulsed by appeals to normal 
 sexual impulse, nor, on the other hand, none past child- 
 hood is so pure as to be ignorant of its presence. If the 
 disputants were not afraid to speak their minds the 
 one party would say that their code of morals forbade 
 them the pleasurable attraction offered, and the other 
 that they chose to indulge it. Both are attracted ; but 
 while one man will not say he thinks it a sin, the 
 other will not say that he finds it a pleasure. It 
 is a very old joke that the moralist who makes sin 
 ugly and repulsive in his homilies makes it unrecog- 
 nisable when met ; but the Puritan is fundamentally, 
 though unconsciously, right in attacking sensuality 
 when it comes in artistic guise, and neglecting it when 
 coarse and dirty in ignoring sporting publications 
 and music-hall jokes and in crying out on Art. But 
 his method is to call the Art coarse and dirty, which 
 it is not, and he thereby raises a hornet's nest of 
 indignant artists and connoisseurs. When Reinhardt's 
 " Sumurun " was staged in London, the sensuous and 
 provocative atmosphere of the Arabian Nights, one of 
 the seven wonders of the imagination, breathed pal- 
 pably upon us in the heart of the Eastern city, and 
 though this piece of Art was edited for us by our 
 censors it evoked many disapproving voices, but what 
 138
 
 Marriage and Divorce 
 
 was the style of the criticism ? Did any Christian 
 moralist arise and say : " This is beautiful and wonder- 
 ful, but a great peril, for it may lead us to sins of the 
 senses. Let us turn away our eyes from it lest we 
 fall ? " No, it was called every name that could not 
 possibly apply to it it was dull, stupid, disgusting, it 
 was coarse, silly, and horrid and the old quarrel 
 joined issue at once, and everyone took the greatest 
 care to keep away from the point. 
 
 By that curious substitution of form for essence 
 which keeps us, as ever, bowing down to lifeless 
 images, the wedding has overlaid the marriage, and an 
 alliance, however thoughtless, venal, vicious, or ill- 
 kept, if initiated by the barest civil rite, makes the 
 wedded couple free of a world closed inexorably 
 against the faithful and straight-walking pair who 
 only cannot celebrate their golden wedding because 
 there was no original ceremony. We are all agreed 
 pace the philosophic anarchist that the initiatory 
 ceremony should take place, but is it not making a 
 fetich of the marriage rite, and making, moreover, a 
 queer use of that fetich, to assign it a retrospective 
 virtue in cases where the obligations it entails have 
 not been respected, and to deny it that virtue in the 
 case of the subsequent wedding of the freely united ? 
 For it is harder for the couple married subsequently 
 to their union to obtain social recognition than it is 
 for the re-married divorced ; and more pardonable 
 therefore, we must conclude, to violate a contract 
 than to keep a voluntary agreement without the law. 
 
 139
 
 Cross Views 
 
 The children of the one union, whose paternity is 
 undoubted, are stamped cruelly with bastardy, and the 
 children born of other unions, whose paternity is more 
 than doubtful and whose young lives are full of 
 calamity and quarrel, have the good fortune to escape 
 the unmerited stain. 
 
 A licence to exhibit armorial bearings will cost you 
 a guinea, a licence to exhibit a wife about ten shillings 
 more. In each case, though your neighbours may 
 make mental reservations and preserve pious opinions, 
 your exercise of your licence as husband or as armiger 
 will meet with no resistance, for you have complied 
 with your civil obligations. Omit your obligation in 
 the one case and you are faced with some laughter 
 and a fine : omit it in the other and oh ! dear ! oh ! 
 dear ! the defaulting citizen finds himself confronted 
 with a disapproval that seems out of all proportion to 
 the small regulation omitted. Tremblingly he offers 
 thrice the fee, but all the gold in circulation would 
 not satisfy the public conscience. Yesterday he could 
 have bought the freedom of the city for thirty shillings ; 
 to-day he could as soon buy the city itself. But if 
 they who neglect to conform to the mere civil 
 obligation of registration be ostracised, however faith- 
 fully they keep their voluntary agreement, and they 
 who conform time and again only to flout the 
 obligations involved be duly accepted, it seems to 
 follow that it is the ceremony we respect and not its 
 meaning, the mere empty rite and not its essence, 
 and that we are fetich worshippers. It is this weak 
 140
 
 Marriage and Divorce 
 
 point in the harness of society that is taken advantage 
 of by those who seek the aid of the divorce court, not 
 that they may break off their existing partnership, not 
 that they may seek and enjoy more compatible alliance, 
 but that they may by the magic of a new wedding be 
 reinstated in their civic respect. The married may 
 murmur, the unmarried sneer, but the divorced 
 triumph. 
 
 A friend writes to me : " I leave my wife full 
 liberty to do what she pleases, to go where she 
 pleases and when : I have confidence in her or I 
 should never have married, but if she comes to detest 
 me I shall not ask her to stay with me." I quote this 
 voluntary contribution as a convenient expression of 
 a healthy and enlightened modern view, for constraint, 
 as we all ought to know by now, breeds no virtue. 
 But if my friend's marriage results in his wife detest- 
 ing him, though the liberal understanding between 
 them should greatly lessen such eventuality, the upshot 
 of her departure with another will remain as of old. 
 The virtue of such mutual freedom is that it tends 
 to lastingness in marriage. But if she wish to re- 
 arrange her life, and he to try his luck with another 
 woman, one can only echo why not ? But why drag 
 in marriage ? It costs at least 2. 
 
 The very low percentage of divorce in the United 
 Kingdom as compared with the figures in various 
 other countries, is proof to the marriage-law reformers 
 of a terrible amount of concealed iniquity and misery ; 
 and indeed no one would seek to maintain that because 
 
 141
 
 Cross Views 
 
 there are five divorces in Barataria to one here, that 
 therefore the Baratarians are five times more wicked 
 than we are ; but, for all that, opportunity makes the 
 thief, and when divorce is to be had for the asking, 
 divorce will be entertained very light-heartedly, and 
 easy divorce encourage reckless marriage, and reckless 
 marriage breed more divorce ; and I would be bold 
 enough to say that if a low percentage of divorce 
 conceals much iniquity, it will also cover much patience, 
 forbearance, self-sacrifice, and other such tedious and 
 neglected virtues which the swelling egoism of a 
 hungry generation is treading down. An inherent 
 weakness of Socialism or virtue by legislation, if it is 
 to lead to the Utopia of Anarchism, or no legislation 
 at all, is that it cripples that happy scheme of evolu- 
 tion by destroying the individual effort on which such 
 eventual anarchism must rest ; and to set about con- 
 vincing the world that it is the institution of marriage 
 that is to blame and not the people who marry, is to 
 preach a more crying absurdity than any mankind has 
 suffered from under a discredited Christianity. That 
 marriage is "legalised prostitution," for instance, is a 
 contention founded on facts, summarised by Miss 
 Olive Schreiner among others, which appear to point 
 to the conclusion that woman is becoming entirely 
 dependent for her maintenance on her sexual and 
 maternal functions. If so, is it the fault of the 
 institution of marriage or of the economic factors that 
 prevent her from earning her living in other ways, 
 and force her to marry that she may not starve ? 
 142
 
 Marriage and Divorce 
 
 That marriage is Hell is an older and more succinct 
 way of putting a general complaint, but that divorce 
 is the road to Heaven is a most dubious signpost. 
 The direction formerly given was to be good. 
 
 The easily stirred revolt and resort to strong action 
 on their own behalf among the discontented and 
 distressed which is so particularly marked nowadays 
 contains in its essential justice or naturalness an ad- 
 mixture of unfairness to the more happily conditioned 
 a seeming desire to oust them and not merely to 
 equal them. That A. should be as well off as B. 
 is a desirable proposition, but that A. should supplant 
 B. would mark no advance at all. And this jealous 
 method of attacking social difficulties would in this 
 particular pull down the temple that cannot accom- 
 modate every belief. Proclaim the failure of your 
 own marriage or business venture and you are 
 recognised as a martyr to society adduce its success 
 and you are a prig, or your wife or someone is a 
 martyr to you. It is the complainant's hour, and if 
 any man who has a place in the sun has also his virtue 
 to keep him warm he is a pluralist of the worst, for 
 virtue should always inhabit the poor and the afflicted. 
 It is easier for a camel, &c. ; and the camel's hump is 
 bigger every time we hear of him, though the rich 
 man dwindles. 
 
 That divorce laws favour men, that divorce is a 
 luxury for the rich, that existing practice, according 
 to obiter dicta of judges and magistrates, is inadequate, 
 mischievous, and contradictory, we may well grant. 
 
 143
 
 Cross Views 
 
 A back-door has been opened and there is quarrelling 
 and dissatisfaction on that side because it does not 
 offer the amenities of a carriage-drive and footmen to 
 bow the way. 
 
 We live by compromise and adjustment and due 
 recognition of sharp-edged exceptions, and divorce is 
 one of the adjustments we make on this crowded 
 planet under pressure from the sharp elbows of un- 
 accommodating individuals. It is a concession to 
 hard cases, but hard cases make bad law. It may be 
 said that bad laws make hard cases, but even good 
 ones will do that, and a law with a loophole for hard 
 cases seems the limit of the possible in legislation. 
 One day when we are perfected to the point of living 
 without laws, or when laws are only made to deal 
 with hard cases instead of being abrogated thereby, 
 exceptional couples surviving fifty years of married 
 life and celebrating golden weddings to the scandal 
 of a free-loving community, may haply find generous- 
 tempered advocates and playwrights with an eye to 
 originality to plead their cause, and liberal-minded 
 acquaintances to console them with pasteboard. But 
 if these sparse malefactors endeavour to diversify their 
 immoral faithfulness by occasional excursions into the 
 established domain of free-love, others no doubt will 
 recall them rudely to a sense of their impropriety and 
 defend the free working of a hard-won institution 
 from the contagion of a too-settled habit. 
 
 144
 
 VIII 
 JOHN BULL 
 
 ONE cannot but think that in a parliament of nations 
 the Englishman would be the foreigner par excellence. 
 From the Danube to the Tagus the current of human 
 sentiment stirring and flowing for ages has passed 
 easily over shifting and intangible frontiers and more 
 slowly over the natural boundaries and barriers which 
 separate the European families ; but however slow at 
 periods and weak in places, it has never been cut off, 
 but has moved on its circuit until centuries have cir- 
 culated something of the same, a cosmopolitan flavour, 
 a common touch, through all the continental nations ; 
 so that emotions that stir unrest in the Balkans respond 
 to the same influences as far off as the Pyrenees, and 
 manners, which we may call the lubricating medium 
 in human intercourse, are the same with a difference 
 all the way. But where the sea interposes, the tale 
 on the opposite coast is otherwise. Here only by the 
 friendly invasion of apostles, or forcible entry of arms, 
 or through report of pioneer travellers, has an inter- 
 mittent influx of the comity of nations reached our 
 isolation, and then as strange gospel, or as something 
 not passed on from hand to hand, but as curious im- 
 
 K 145
 
 Cross Views 
 
 portation of traffickers " who on the beach undid their 
 corded bales." It is getting on for a thousand years 
 since a foreign tide submerged these islands, and it 
 has long had all the salt taken out of it. 
 
 In that international parliament we can figure the 
 continental delegate excepting the Turk, who is an 
 intruder, and the Dutchman, whose adhesive cement 
 is very much watered, though only not so much as he 
 could wish it we can figure him standing up pleased 
 with his public ovation, self-conscious to vanity, with 
 no doubts about himself, never forgetful of the ladies 1 
 gallery, emphasizing his points with gesture and mobile 
 features, sounding his vowels as all his audience save 
 one sounds them, at ease with his surroundings, accept- 
 ing with facility the fundamental facts of human 
 nature, its animal constitution and recognised appetites 
 and motives, its hierarchies and family ties, giving just 
 expression to its passions, and appealing with con- 
 fidence to every man as being of the same flesh and 
 blood as himself different in degree but not in kind. 
 And every constituent of the assembly, save one again, 
 would know him for a blood-relation. Follows the 
 Englishman, self-conscious to shyness, his stiff body 
 unrelated to modulations of the voice, his hands quite 
 out of employment, his 's and *'s and /'s carrying 
 misunderstanding to its limits. No peacock attribute 
 in him is flattered by the presence of women, appeal 
 to emotions, however creditable, he despises, for in his 
 view the emotions should have no say in public life, 
 and to work on the feelings is the device of the 
 146
 
 Bull 
 
 demagogue. Instincts and passions are for private 
 consumption, it is indecent to bring them into such 
 arena, and almost an insult to ascribe them to another 
 man. He does not share the preliminaries of agree- 
 ment. Speech is no joy to him, and the parliament 
 of his invention was for stern business. A seat in the 
 shade, light refreshment, and conversation, he has 
 never had any use for. He does not from choice ask 
 for company but for room. His family is something 
 he has attached to himself, he does not necessarily 
 attach himself to it. Parental authority he early 
 cast off, and he has stronger ties than those of home, 
 and hears more urgent calls than the call of the blood. 
 The world is full of strangers and he is content to 
 keep it so, and can scarcely smile or raise his hat save 
 to an equal and a friend. The current of fellow- 
 feeling that flows and has flowed beyond his shores 
 has not even its smaller counterpart in his microcosm, 
 and the beginnings of an understanding are more 
 troublesome between Englishman and Englishman 
 than between Russian and Frenchman. If his club, 
 society, or party offend him, he damns them silently 
 and walks out and broods alone. Long cut off from 
 the comity of nations, a sort of shipwrecked mariner, 
 he has turned to and made things for himself, his 
 constitution, his philosophy, his manners though 
 these he did not waste much time on, perhaps 
 naturally his cookery, his dwellings, his religion and 
 morality, and, like all men who are self-made, he thinks 
 highly of his work. 
 
 H7
 
 Cross Views 
 
 To generalise about a people, and the mere expres- 
 sion "general characteristic" is a generalisation of 
 the broadest kind, is not helpful to an understanding 
 unless overhauled from time to time in the light of 
 new knowledge, for it is at best a rough summary of 
 prominent features, and since every decade of modern 
 times has added fresh voices to national expression as 
 it has added fresh votes to national councils, the 
 national type grows rapidly more complex. The 
 Englishman of the eighteenth century, Gilray's John 
 Bull, became a changed man after the Napoleonic 
 era ; sweated off his corpulency, went to a better 
 tailor, cultivated or at any rate collected the fine arts, 
 exchanged brutality for coldness, contempt for reserve, 
 and refined his profusion, gluttony, and excess into 
 the more presentable shapes of extravagance, luxury, 
 and oddity. The strong frame of the squire lent the 
 stiff back to the milord. But the generalisation was 
 yet drawn from a small class, and it was not long 
 before the parallel development of the mass had its 
 disintegrating effect upon the type. Tenniel's British 
 working-man had to help out his washed and middle- 
 aged Mr. Bull, and other elements were occasionally 
 personified. To-day, the Englishman who stands for 
 his country's likeness is less ruddy, less open-handed, 
 less assured. The pale cast of thought is on his 
 countenance, though as yet only in its extraneous hue 
 of worry, and his inner man is distracted by many 
 hitherto unheard voices and claims telling him that he 
 is not representative, that he is no longer the accept- 
 148
 
 Bull 
 
 able delegate, and he feels, poor fellow, as timid and 
 unassertive as a politician before a general election. 
 
 Is he or is he not the typical Englishman, or if the 
 John Bull who defied Boney, or the English milord 
 on his travels after the battle of Waterloo, or the 
 Victorian paterfamilias in top-boots who did service 
 in the 'sixties, and whose superannuated rendering 
 may still be seen on the old-fashioned stage, could 
 stand each for his period, what should the portrait 
 give us at the present day ? 
 
 Some attempts show us a flabby yellow-faced man 
 in a counting-house, bemused with strong liquors and 
 sapped by disease, subject to panic fears so changed 
 is he, unenlightened as ever and as insensible to beauty, 
 undisciplined, unread, inattentive to progress, uncon- 
 scious of the growth of modern forces, of the strength 
 of rivals, wholly dependent on the power of a shrink- 
 ing purse. His top-boots and buckskins, a world too 
 wide, are laid aside, and lean and slippered he counts 
 his pieces and hugs his faults to the last. The foreign 
 cartoonist gives us a rat-toothed, spider-limbed monster, 
 attenuated, sprawling, but predatory as ever, while 
 the Sydney Bulletin, one of his family papers, turns 
 him frankly into a Jew, the world's usurer. 
 
 These caricatures seem to me to point simply to 
 the fact that so long as a nation is content to be 
 represented by a class, generalisation is as easy as 
 legislation. Where you find an autocracy you can 
 satirise the autocrat, the easiest attack of any ; where 
 an aristocracy is dominant, or a moneyed class very 
 
 149
 
 Cross Views 
 
 powerful, their summing up in a cartoon is as com- 
 paratively simple as to them the manipulation of the 
 laws ; but when a nation will be represented in its 
 assemblies, and still more when it is supreme in them, 
 the framing of laws to please everybody shadows forth 
 in its complexity the difficulty of drawing a portrait 
 that is to sum up everybody. The family group must 
 come into vogue again. 
 
 Indeed, although the national type and portrait 
 modifies with the years, it always lags behind the 
 composite and progressive original, and its generalisa- 
 tion is dangerous as well as misleading, for a difficult 
 task is made more difficult when the bringing about 
 of good feeling between peoples and a working entente 
 between nations is hampered, perhaps, by a false typifi- 
 cation, or subsequently injured, perhaps, by a truer one. 
 Jacques Bonhomme, Michel, and Uncle Sam have 
 a large common factor, but the popular acceptance 
 of such notions as that the Frenchman is feminine 
 and frivolous, the German a phlegmatic and contented 
 stay-at-home, the Japanese a toddling delightful little 
 doll, notions now on the wane, are examples of foreign 
 generalisations drawn in neglect of the home view 
 of each, and one must be alertly on one's guard 
 against them and recognise them as convenient but 
 very rough summaries of shifting conditions and 
 transient facts. 
 
 There are some amongst us who are not afraid to 
 hold up the continental cartoon as a passable picture 
 of our over-sea activities and perhaps it is an English 
 150
 
 n Bull 
 
 idiosyncrasy that such disagreeable critics are always 
 with us and there are more who accept the shrunken 
 old gentleman in the counting-house, but most of us, 
 while disclaiming a desire for flattery, will disclaim 
 nevertheless such post-impressionistic renderings of 
 our representative in the world's conclave. The 
 Englishman, since he treads on so many toes, probably 
 hears more of his faults than does any man and hears 
 it all very good-naturedly but then he is remarkably 
 insensitive to criticism ; and when the reproach, 
 irritated by its inefficacy, becomes fierce and stinging, 
 he, conscious that he has listened patiently and good- 
 humouredly, is hurt and retires into his fastnesses. 
 You may say what you like, but you must let him do 
 what he likes. Theory and performance are not twin 
 brethren in John Bull's territory. If you can prove 
 to him that something can be better done than it is 
 you must try to do it better. If you are incapable of 
 the performance you have an uphill task in front of 
 you. He has always been the most individual man in 
 Europe, and in the past at least his independence has 
 led him into much selfishness and brutality, and it is 
 his remorse for past sins of omission rather than any 
 willingness to have his corners rubbed off that induces 
 him to lend an ear to such gospel as socialism, for 
 instance, which, with his instinct for getting hold of 
 the wrong thing by the right end, he regards as well- 
 organised charity, while never losing sight of his belief 
 that society depends on the unit and not contrariwise. 
 Goodness of heart makes him an easy prey to the
 
 Cross Views 
 
 initial attack, but the State running the Englishman 
 instead of the Englishman his State will not be seen 
 until the coming of the Martians. The segregated 
 Anglo-Saxon race (I fear I shall draw the approval of 
 Dr. Caliban) has certainly thrown up stronger and more 
 individual variations for the working of natural selec- 
 tion than have the continental stocks, and happily there 
 is small sign of diminution, but selection by the State 
 interferes with the natural working of evolution and, 
 whether for better or for worse, smooths in places its 
 rugged inequality by checking the pressure on weaker 
 varieties. Let us own at once that it is for the better, 
 for man, though he must still fight for many things 
 against man, must no longer fight a outrance ; but the 
 variation, the potentiality contained in the individual 
 difference, still occurs and will occur, and will not 
 be gainsaid, however much of it run to waste and 
 freakishness. Its redundance may be seen in the wide- 
 spread refusal to bow to standards or authority in art 
 and literature, in law and medicine, in science and 
 religion, even to constitution and climate. In no 
 other country will you meet with such negation of 
 academies, oddity in letters, amateurishness in art, 
 with so many passive resisters and unqualified prac- 
 titioners, with so many flat-earthers and rival churches, 
 with such multitude of constitution-mongers, or with 
 such numbers ready and willing to seek new skies on 
 the smallest provocation, or, in a word, to walk any- 
 where but in their father's footsteps. I should not be 
 surprised if there were found to be more " and " 
 152
 
 jfohn Bull 
 
 associations in Great Britain than associations all told 
 between Biscaya and the Urals. The strongest 
 opinion held by that opinionated person the English- 
 man is that his opinion is as good as anybody else's, 
 and it is obvious that as long as the race continues 
 to throw up that obstinacy in its stock there will be 
 plenty of material for struggle. 
 
 People of light and leading, of orderly and scientific 
 mind, express disgust at times with all this, cry out 
 upon his ignorance and insubordination, and would 
 have him submitted to army discipline to teach him 
 patriotism, would secularise his education to teach him 
 the religion of humanity, would enforce eugenics to 
 regularise his breeding, would set up academies to 
 overawe the amateur, would close his markets to make 
 him consume his own products, would bray out of 
 him in a mortar his notions of meum and tuum in 
 matters of property, marriage, and parenthood, would 
 suppress bone-setters, independent members of Parlia- 
 ment, secessionist painters, Hyde Park apostles, un- 
 censored writings, and non-conformity at large ; but 
 how and whither the diverted but unchecked springs 
 of character would flow they do not pause to inquire. 
 Yet the character of the unit is everything, and when 
 you reflect that the unit every other time is a woman ! 
 I know an excellent lady who makes her own north 
 wherever she may find herself, i.e. her prospect is 
 always south ; and east and west fall ever left and 
 right ; who thinks that tributaries run out of rivers ; 
 that engine-drivers steer their trains ; who wonders 
 
 153
 
 Cross Views 
 
 that they don't have billiard-rooms on board ship, who 
 will stoutly maintain that it is further from A. to B. 
 than from B. to A., and, without possessing a rag of 
 moral principle that I have ever been able to discover, 
 pursues the path of virtue with the ease and accuracy 
 of a homing pigeon. Her conclusive reply to all 
 remonstrance is " I always think so, always" or, when 
 very hard pressed, " you may be right but I know you 
 are not." She may be singular in these particular views, 
 but to say that a person is normal is simply to confess 
 that you don't know him or her ; and as for deducing 
 character from what is called a characteristic, paleon- 
 tology is skittles alongside such a construction. I have 
 known this same astonishing woman "Envy, be 
 silent and attend ! " to walk from a seaside, nay, 
 from a seaport residence, a mile along the coast, and to 
 pursue the same direction under the impression that 
 she was going home a thing imagination boggles at ; 
 and to sell at a premium a heavily depreciated property 
 which had been the despair of men of business. It is 
 coming up against this sort of thing that makes one 
 revise one's ideas and humbly admit that although she 
 "always confuses those two things" the great Seal 
 and the great Bear, a woman might be allowed a say 
 in the constitution. Legislators who indulge in long 
 views, and political economists who live by generali- 
 sations, and other caricaturists, should be submitted to 
 a six months' course of microscopic research in a 
 very restricted field. When they began to call for 
 higher powers they might be considered convalescent. 
 
 154
 
 Bull 
 
 It is the supreme recommendation of marriage that 
 it affords the only means of studying one's fellow-man 
 or woman as exhaustively as material limits permit. 
 That is why divorce should be allowed in no circum- 
 stances ; and if you come to me with your eternal 
 hard case I can only reply that you cannot expect 
 results from every frog or guinea-pig, and that the 
 successful vivisectionist keeps his subject alive. 
 
 The continental peoples vary one from another, 
 but the variation of the Englishman is a true difference. 
 His lack of the common courtesies of intercourse is 
 the first barrier he sets up between himself and the 
 rest of the European family, for the salute, the bow, 
 the smile, the deprecatory attitude and ingratiating 
 address of the newcomer in a strange circle still pro- 
 vokes his growl, and his reception of the stranger 
 within his gates is still ludicrously reminiscent of the 
 reception by the watch-dog of the wanderer halting 
 timidly on three legs at the entrance of the yard. 
 These discourtesies he is supposed to be losing, and 
 the reiteration of them may sound stale, but the re- 
 action against the comparatively modern adoption of 
 good manners is become quite marked once more, and 
 the rougher methods of an unregenerate age are 
 spreading again in the very class which was the first 
 to soften them. An extraordinary impatience of the 
 convention we call manners is a most marked feature 
 in the motored class. " Speeding up " has become 
 general, is not confined to the road, and if you are 
 not spry enough to hop in and out of an acquaintance- 
 
 155
 
 Cross Views 
 
 ship as society whirls past you, but look for a little 
 individual consideration and a moment's patience you 
 must join the old-fashioned omnibus of the humbler 
 classes. We have added speed of passage to our 
 natural impediment of stand-offishness, and, goggles 
 apart, are on the way to become the strangest animals 
 on the globe. 
 
 By our conception of the family we are marked 
 down for the folk-lorist, for if one asked the English- 
 man what he thought of the family he might reply, 
 "I don't think about it at all," and, in the Roman 
 sense, no more he does. His family begins and ends 
 with his own household, and he actually reverses 
 the agnate and cognate relationship, for his sons marry 
 out of the family and his sons-in-law marry, if any- 
 thing, into it. The married son starts anew, but a 
 married daughter generally has the entry. Connec- 
 tions are as nothing, unless they figure in Who's 
 Who, that newer and somewhat better Peerage 
 though still turned to base uses. 
 
 Snobbery has been reckoned a strong attribute of 
 ours, but inquiry shows that the Almanach de Gotha 
 is a greater force than Burke, and if the snob be less 
 active and prevalent abroad it is because his efforts are 
 more hopeless. On the continent the demarcation is 
 accepted, so our more fluctuating conditions mark a 
 real advance, for the order of snobbery that believes 
 in a blue-blooded species of the human race and 
 humbly refrains or is restrained from miscegenation is 
 lower in the scale than the snobbery that is bent on 
 I 5 6
 
 Bull 
 
 attaining to the fancied strain if only by purchase. 
 Thackeray wrote of the " lowly-minded British snob," 
 but he is more truly ambitiously-minded, taking his 
 ambition for such as it is, for, born into a society 
 arranged in grades he is unhappy unless he can climb. 
 Even snobbery has its good side, and the only snob 
 who is past redemption is the snob who submits to be 
 snubbed. But the subject is deserving of philosophi- 
 cal treatment, for the instinct is a force in human 
 affairs. Research into its origins might upset our 
 accepted theories of the origin of Kingship. In Mr. 
 James's The American Scene, he gives us the atmos- 
 phere of a gala night at the New York Opera House, 
 and communicates to us the sense of something 
 wanted and wanting, the convergence of success and 
 magnificence without a converging point, the ladder 
 lifted to the sky without a star not as in Blake's 
 little design the greatest of wants expressed by the 
 humblest means, but the meanest of wants expressed 
 by the utmost magnificence of means. A mean 
 desire, but ineradicable from humanity. 
 
 Another national trait ascribed to us which is 
 greatly lenified I think on examination, is hypocrisy 
 in morals. We put our hands over our faces, they 
 say, but peep through our fingers. The Englishman, 
 though no better than his neighbours, is for ever 
 being shocked, and the word "shoking" has found 
 place as a term of ridicule in Larousse. The whited 
 sepulchre is held to be a peculiarly British erection. 
 I would meet the charge boldly by maintaining, in 
 
 '57
 
 Cross Views 
 
 the first place, that a sepulchre is better whited than 
 not ; but if this be denied I would assert that the 
 Englishman when shocked is nine times out of ten 
 genuinely shocked, and when subsequently discovered 
 to be peeping through his fingers, or even coming to 
 a closer knowledge of the res nefas^ it is the natural 
 corollary and no imputation on his sincerity. We 
 are never shocked twice to the same degree, for shock 
 comes to unsophistication, and sophistication follows 
 shock. For the Englishman, and here is my philo- 
 sophy of the thing, is unsophisticated, take him by 
 and large, and is capable of reaching middle life in 
 ignorance of matters that are commonplace to a lychn. 
 I think this must be acknowledged. To what can 
 one ascribe the shame-faced reluctance of public dis- 
 cussion and debate of pressing social evils if not to 
 the stifled atmosphere of private family life, the 
 shutting of windows to keep out the smuts, the con- 
 spiracy of avoidance that denies any spoken expression 
 to the passions of the decently clothed citizen. The 
 children of the people see and comment on the facts 
 of life from the first, and the children of the emanci- 
 pated rich easily learn, but it is in the great middle 
 class whose morality is the boast of the Church to 
 which so few of them belong, whose purse sends forth 
 the missionary and the bible to convert the heathen 
 from his ignorance, men grow up without knowing 
 what they think, without knowing what to think, 
 without the material for thought on these questions. 
 Each stumbles along his path in the light of his own 
 158
 
 Bull 
 
 physical experience, but is denied any illumination 
 from the experience of other men and women. The 
 spoken word is hushed, the written word is barred, or, 
 when it escapes the censor, falls into the hands of the 
 police. But the natural man is not to be denied, and 
 curiosity waking in him is not pardoned as it is in 
 the boy. Men and women who are shocked at mani- 
 festations of unregenerate nature provoke laughter in 
 the initiated, but they merely follow the ordinary 
 course of the growth of knowledge though at a later 
 period of life, and it is to the large proportion of un- 
 initiated in our midst that we owe the outbreaks of 
 the censorship and the waves of puritanism that act 
 so unevenly and in so irritating a manner on public 
 conduct. The leaders learn many things in the brief 
 course of their crusade, their sensitiveness is dulled, 
 and the movement spends itself, though possibly it 
 has exerted a salutary check. I cannot discover that 
 the hypocrite proper, who cloaks vice with virtue, 
 flourishes in greater number on this side of the 
 channel, though it would seem to follow on the greater 
 restriction of spontaneous conduct and speech, but a 
 trait we have which comes nearer to the reproach 
 levelled at us is the very common desire of self- 
 justification. 
 
 It is a very abandoned type of Englishman who 
 will say " I know it is wrong, but I find it pleasant." 
 If he finds it pleasant he must needs prove it right. 
 He will search the Scriptures for the prohibition of 
 tobacco, as Ernest Pontifex did, and, not finding it, 
 
 159
 
 Cross F^iews 
 
 will smoke his pipe in peace, and the injunction to 
 " take a little wine for thy stomach's sake " has been 
 a very great comfort to him. He believes that the 
 Scripture was given him to wrest to his own salvation, 
 and the Englishman who is past dodging his con- 
 science in this way is really past praying for. You 
 may take it that he is a villain. But not oftener a 
 disguised villain here than elsewhere. At least so 
 I would plead. 
 
 Whether such idiosyncrasies as his eating meat for 
 breakfast and his necessity of exercise identify him 
 with the chosen people or with the lost tribes I will 
 not attempt to make out, but he has another peculiarity 
 which seems to preclude either source of ancestry, 
 and that is his inability to distinguish a Jew from 
 another man, a faculty so strongly developed in every 
 continental nation ; though his further inability to 
 hate him when pointed out almost confounds him in 
 the eyes of the anti-Semite with the object of that 
 detestation. It may be our special sense of favour 
 in the eyes of the Almighty that has made us kind to 
 those we have supplanted in His sight, but the exist- 
 ence of the society for the conversion of the Jews 
 is plain evidence to the contrary in the eyes of the 
 Berliner or Parisian, who would as soon think of 
 founding a society to convert the leopard from his 
 spots, or the elephant from his trunk. But national 
 characteristics may be national virtues, and no one 
 is better aware of it than the Englishman. 
 
 The invention and growing practice of flying offers 
 1 60
 
 jfobn Bull 
 
 material for the most pleasing speculation on this 
 subject of the rektion of nations one to another. 
 The birds are the only migrants who come and go 
 as they wish without fevering the pulse of the political 
 economist. For the moment the airman is the 
 observed of all observers, and his take-off and his 
 landing draws half the countryside in attendance, but, 
 as we are frequently reminded in the reviews, the 
 first locomotive was preceded by a man on foot with 
 a red flag. This stage of curiosity will soon pass, and 
 when, as Herr Lilienthal promises us, we can fly 
 by man- power and the aeroplane is no more than 
 a winged bicycle, such a swarm of summer fliers will 
 rise into the air that frontier forces will be paralysed, 
 and man, become a bird, be as cosmopolitan as a 
 sparrow. There will still be the Channel for us 
 Islanders to reckon with, and the elderly and already 
 disappearing tricyclist or triplaner will have to content 
 himself with short flights across the Thames valley 
 and such like while he sighs for the mere diplomatic 
 boundaries easily flown by foreign contemporaries ; 
 but I do not see what device short of a battue can 
 stop a flock of Easter trippers from settling pigeon- 
 like on the Place de 1'Opera or on the Piazza de San 
 Marco, picking up picture post-cards with avidity 
 instead of corn, and rising with a great flutter of 
 wings on the approach of the douanier or gendarme 
 to take their course to the next town on Baedeker's 
 itinerary. Who could foresee that the race would 
 take unto itself wings, and now that it has come 
 
 L 161
 
 Cross Views 
 
 about why should we be estopped from foretelling 
 anything ? My international Parliament has become 
 a Parliament of Fowls, and my English delegate is 
 become one with his kind. With his machine he 
 has built himself an ice-breaker more potent than any 
 seen on Lake Baikal. When the Franco-Russian 
 entente was brought about Caran d'Ache illustrated 
 the union between the two remote nations by a 
 flight of little winged hearts crossing the German 
 frontier high in air regardless of the spiked helmets 
 of the angry Polizei beneath. Russian hearts fluttered 
 down into the soft hands of Marie and Jeanne, of 
 Sarah and Yvette, and were caught and clasped in 
 affectionate and telling fashion by the persons and 
 types of his pencil. Alsace Lorraine was not forgotten, 
 but received its winged visitants with manifestations 
 of joy though a pickel-haube was coming up full tilt, 
 and in the distance a responsive shower fell upon 
 ecstatic boyars and dancing moujiks in spite of the 
 butterfly nets and brooms of the East Prussian army 
 corps. His cartoon, it seems to me, was more pro- 
 phetic than actual, and it requires no great advance 
 in imagination to see flights of men and women where 
 he saw flights of sentiment, but his fancy on that 
 occasion provided a counterblast to that other delicious 
 fantasy of his where one saw the German war-lord 
 improvising on a grand piano, the notes pouring forth 
 in volume and transforming into soldiers as they fell, 
 file after file, under the command of fiery minims and 
 of ferocious colonels horsed on semiquavers. 
 162
 
 Bull 
 
 Intercourse, knowledge, sympathy are progressive 
 steps in the march of humanity, and a common under- 
 standing is the best safeguard against a common 
 danger. We have broken down the natural barriers, 
 and must make common cause against the artificial. 
 
 Touching very lightly on these matters at the Club 
 a day or two ago, Colonel Slowworthy soon made me 
 acquainted with the chief failing of his fellow-country- 
 men in his eyes, and it was the lack of the military 
 spirit. " We stand absolutely alone," he said, " in our 
 neglect of national duties, and if we don't come into 
 line before long we shall rue the day." I did not 
 argue the point, but I reserved my liberty of thought ; 
 defensive tactics best suiting the civilian. But is 
 national military service the result of a military spirit ? 
 It is no more so than the comparatively quiet conduct 
 of private quarrels amongst us is the result of a pacific 
 spirit. The Englishman is on no point more certain 
 of his superiority to the foreigner than in his conduct 
 of his quarrels, and he is filled with huge amusement 
 and contempt at the exhibition of angry passions 
 abroad, the dramatic expression of violent emotions 
 occasionally to be witnessed in places of public resort. 
 We may acknowledge the superiority of the home 
 attitude in these matters, but must remember that such 
 exhibition of violent feeling would be far more ludi- 
 crous and contemptible here than there, and for this 
 reason, that here it could only end at worst in the 
 intervention of the policeman, or a claim for money 
 damages in a Court of Law. We put our honour into 
 
 163
 
 Cross Views 
 
 the safe-keeping of the law there, every man keeps 
 his own, and a quarrel in a cafd may mean death j 
 a possibility not everyone can face with equanimity. 
 In this case the heat evolved is from an underlying 
 necessity, a social pressure, and the voluntary sub- 
 mission of a people to military discipline as the result 
 of political necessity is perhaps more widely removed 
 from voluntary enlistment than appearances warrant. 
 The submission, with a bad grace, to general taxation 
 does not argue a good public spirit, and were taxation 
 voluntary as Mr. Auberon Herbert would have had it, 
 the result would likely be inadequate for public pur- 
 poses. To bring a soft-bodied citizen in contact with 
 a recruiting sergeant is to bring an unmade horse up 
 to a made jump, but to lead the same citizen through 
 public agitation and parliamentary debate to vote for 
 a disembodied principle ere ever he has been brought 
 to face the rude reality underlying it is a far more 
 feasible proceeding ; and another consideration that 
 works with him is the less unwillingness of most men 
 to do an unpleasant thing if they can reckon on their 
 neighbours doing it along with them, and to bear a 
 burden cheerfully that cannot be dropped is not the 
 same thing as bearing it with good-will, though it be 
 the next best thing. Military service fosters the 
 military spirit rather than springs from it, and this is 
 its worst feature, for granting the good of physical 
 training and the right republican feeling engendered 
 by the mixing of classes, the feeling fanned in rival 
 military teams leads to the great game of war. 
 164
 
 Bull 
 
 Another consideration that might have worked with 
 my friend at the Club is that a national army in this 
 country would not in all probability be officered in the 
 old way from the upper classes but by open com- 
 petition, and the glories of conscription would possibly 
 pale in the eyes of his kind if colonels were drawn 
 from the popular sources that supply Liberal Chan- 
 cellors of Exchequer, for instance. On the whole we 
 may take it that the lack of military spirit in our 
 Englishman is no idiosyncrasy but a present exemp- 
 tion from particular necessities. It is a misfortune of 
 training and not of birth. I differ from the Colonel, 
 but I might have been made to conform. 
 
 Likenesses and unlikenesses between nations are 
 chiefly matters of report by travellers in search of the 
 picturesque, even as books and playhouses have made 
 us believe in a race of fellow-mortals whose likeness 
 and unlikeness to ourselves is drawn, from dramatic 
 necessity, in such high relief that each of us comes 
 to look on the mixture of virtue and vice in his own 
 breast as peculiar to himself, and that his lukewarm- 
 ness, his indecision, and self-contradiction unfit him 
 for his private part that a good trait means that a 
 man shall be saved, a lapse indicates an inherent and 
 fatal weakness, and the exhibition of a vice or a virtue 
 of the first magnitude raises to superman ity or damns to 
 blackness. The Italian Camorrist who supports a 
 beloved and affectionate family by the ill-paid labour 
 of an assassin, the excellent and thrifty housewife 
 whose unreligious profession is that of a mother abbess, 
 
 165
 
 Cross Views 
 
 the prostitute who keeps her little brothers and sisters, 
 the thief who will sacrifice his life for a principle, are 
 types that the untravelled mind almost refuses to 
 receive. We can no more see good in a murderer 
 than the Middle Ages could hope redemption for a 
 heretic. Looking for likeness among differences is a 
 more profitable and charitable activity than looking 
 for differences where all are made in the same likeness, 
 and the manufacture of national Guy Fawkeses to set 
 nations by the ears is only doing on a larger scale 
 what we do when we gibbet our budding naughtinesses 
 in the person of a public criminal, and hang them in 
 effigy. The variety in nations is lessened when we 
 look into the variety of one, and the individual man 
 is the germ and microcosm of all and more infinitely 
 various in himself than in all his communal manifes- 
 tations. Nihil humanum is a good tag for John Bull 
 to remember, for John Bull is Everyman. 
 
 166
 
 IX 
 
 THE GAME-PLAYERS 
 
 THIS hamlet of Landfall is emptied of its householders 
 every morning by the ten o'clock up train and sees 
 them restored to it by the five o'clock train down. 
 At five minutes to ten the station road is dotted with 
 methodical season-ticket holders, walking in twos and 
 threes, fed, shaven, and rosy, be it wet or dry, come 
 wind, heat, or cold. A daily exodus not peculiar to 
 us you will say, but the daily staple of ten o'clock 
 trains in this industrious nation and, indeed, in others, 
 save that their train is an hour or two earlier a 
 difference, however, that in no wise saps the truth of 
 your comment. But the men of Landfall are differ- 
 entiated from the ordinary bread-and-butter men of 
 commerce as I have heard them called by a retired 
 service man whose bread and butter they were earning 
 by a noticeable physical aptitude for work and a 
 studied preparedness for it in its hardest aspects, to be 
 seen in such ancillary details as their thickly-shod and 
 carefully-laced feet, their loose collars, the resisting 
 homespun of their clothes, and the heavy metal of 
 their tools. Young and old, their faces are bronzed 
 with exposure, and fine wrinkles round the eye tell 
 
 167
 
 Cross Views 
 
 of gazing into pitiless weather, and the hobnails on 
 their boots of desperate clutch for foothold in perilous 
 circumstance. And this little body of daily labourers 
 going forth from Landfall is peculiarly homogeneous : 
 they repair to the same field of labour day by day, 
 where each man knows each for what he is worth, 
 and reputation is watched and promotion jealously 
 accorded, but justly admired. These men build up 
 their good names stroke by stroke, in the daily en- 
 counter of gradually lessened difficulty, of danger 
 resourcefully encountered, of obstacles cleared or cir- 
 cumvented by skill and courage growing with the 
 years. 
 
 The solidarity and communion engendered by 
 common hardships on a common ground bind the 
 little group together, and it is pleasant to see the 
 brief greeting carrying for the observant eye its shade 
 of respect for the strong, its meed of good-humoured 
 tolerance for the weak, and to note the curt inquiry 
 after an absent face, the sympathy for the enforced 
 inactivity of bodily disablement, the eloquent silence 
 when no excuse is forthcoming for keeping house. 
 
 I hope silence meets my case, but I shall never 
 know, for I am not one of this band of brothers. 
 Who wishes for more men from England must not 
 reckon on me. I will say it at once I am no golfer. 
 
 The philosophy of ball-games has yet to be written. 
 Those who do not play do not write of games philo- 
 sophically, and those who play do not philosophise as 
 a general rule. Possibly they do better. But the 
 168
 
 The Game-Players 
 
 idle inquirer will come along, who strolling on the 
 green field of manifestation kicks up the underlying 
 turnip of cause, and astonishes his simple mind with 
 innocent commonplace. Why do people work at 
 games who are under no necessity to work at work ? 
 Did that Mandarin push his researches far who would 
 not believe that the members of an eastern lawn- 
 tennis club were not paid for their exertions ? " A 
 game ! " he said. " Yes, a very deep game." And 
 the more assurances he received that it was but a 
 game, the more he set himself to watch and counter- 
 mine this inexplicable phase of foreign activity which 
 must have a hidden meaning could he but hit on it. 
 Perhaps he is cogitating still, unless he has since tried 
 to cut the knot with a Boxer sword. 
 
 It has been made a matter of wonder and of re- 
 proach that the Englishman who spends so much of 
 his time in playing games should be beaten on his 
 own ground by Australians, Americans, Belgians, and 
 Frenchmen. The reproach seems scarcely fair. It 
 is not made matter of wonder when the Englishman 
 makes a fortune in America, where they have a genius 
 for money-making, takes a medal at the Paris salon, 
 or furnishes ideas to Germany once in a way. More- 
 over, the outstanding feature of this game-playing is 
 not so much the excellence of the performance but 
 the numbers that engage in it, and though, it is true, 
 that where large numbers pursue a certain business 
 it is there that one looks to see the pre-eminent in 
 their kind come to the front, it is really the high 
 
 169
 
 Cross Views 
 
 general level that counts : a table-land is more than a 
 peak, and whether you are dealing in cricket or in 
 poetry a widespread devotion and high average pro- 
 duct speaks better for its national vitality than does 
 more or less isolated and sporadic genius. The 
 Englishman is not easily " rattled," and that he does 
 not get unduly excited; when cups are captured by 
 foreign teams is, to my mind, the consolatory feature 
 of these unfortunate occasions. We have our experts 
 and enthusiasts of this sort though I have never 
 heard of a native player bursting into tears when 
 downed by the last stroke of a long-fought contest, 
 and hope I never shall but deep down in his heart 
 the English game-player, even of the pronounced and 
 apparently exclusive type, a little distrusts these very 
 experts and enthusiasts, and can find a smile, though 
 he generously hides it, when their highly educated 
 gifts occasionally fail to cany the day. In his heart 
 he recognises that there is a strain of duty in his 
 simulacrum of work, and he does it as well as he can, 
 and does not shirk it for mere weather conditions ; 
 for he has a vague consciousness, never expressed, that 
 though he works at play, and is glad that he has not 
 to work at work, that his play is a sort of training, 
 a keeping fit, an exercise of the physical powers he 
 has faith in against a possible demand that may one 
 day be made on him. He does not think that the 
 demand will be made, but a certain healthiness of 
 conscience, however insensitive in some spots, drives 
 him to do what he thinks the right thing by himself 
 170
 
 The Game-Players 
 
 when he sees to it that his muscles do not grow 
 flabby nor his eye slow ; but his innate seriousness, 
 which is of an exceeding simple, but immovably solid 
 kind, forbids him to put the last ounce into a mock 
 contest. The Englishman is not the man to drop 
 dead in a Marathon race. And he is right. 
 
 He will stay till he drops when there is worthy 
 occasion, but it is not a cheering crowd that will nerve 
 him to the point. The cheers of the crowd are 
 "not good enough." The flush and inspiration of 
 the winner do not draw his best from him, and the 
 imagination that is stirred to the glorious fever point 
 of a bursting heart under the stimulus of great public 
 expectation and thunders of applause, is usefully re- 
 placed in him by the five-o'clock-in-the-morning 
 courage that will hold him on a solitary outpost with 
 never a reporter to decorate the tale. It is because 
 large numbers pursue this business of games that we 
 throw up a proportion of first-class players, rather 
 than by reason of any extraordinary and specialised 
 efforts on the part of these latter ; for the extra- 
 ordinary and specialised effort is, I maintain, not to be 
 had out of the Englishman except in very serious 
 matters, and in spite of his manifold devotion to games 
 and the consequent vacuity of his mind, and, as I have 
 heard it impatiently said, the boredom of his company 
 when he is sitting still, he keeps a reserve of strength 
 all too frequently wasted, but as frequently over- 
 looked. 
 
 Compromise is ever the key to the Englishman's 
 
 171
 
 Cross Views 
 
 secret. He is a puritan, but will not be deprived of 
 his amusements. He is not a whole-hog man, and 
 when, over-driven, he knocks something over, he will 
 at least put up something afterwards to mark the spot. 
 
 Games are the leisured Englishman's refuge from 
 art and letters, and there is this to be said that he 
 takes them up in no dilettante spirit, and that he 
 confines himself strictly to such things as he knows. 
 You may wander on his preserves, and be received 
 with amused toleration, but he will never trespass on 
 yours. Dine with him, and you sit in the company 
 of game-players, and if you cannot play your eighteen 
 holes over again you must e'en sit and listen while 
 others do it ; but seat him at your table, and you 
 will still have to listen to the same recital the next 
 day's, but the same. The conversation, like water, 
 will still seek its own level, and flow progressively 
 round the child, the game-player, the soldier, or the 
 woman. 
 
 Very wonderfully do outer things work on the 
 mind of this neighbour of mine. I have heard him 
 say when the portentous birth and development of 
 modern Japan was in discussion, or endeavouring 
 to be discussed, that to his mind the most extra- 
 ordinary thing about Japan was that she had not 
 yet thrown up an International player. I have heard 
 him speak with regret of a rising administrator, as one 
 who might have played for his county, and the dis- 
 heartening failure of certain peace negotiations worked 
 on him instantly in this way. 
 172
 
 The Game-Players 
 
 "No inter-regimental this year," he said, as the 
 poster caught his eye. 
 
 And there were the " England in Danger " placards, 
 when we were recovering or failing to recover "the 
 ashes" (I forget which, outsider that I am). But 
 take this last and much sneered at illustration of this 
 absorption in games, when a big struggle of a serious 
 kind was in progress elsewhere. Since he was at 
 home, as perforce most people must be at home, even 
 in war time, was not his attitude of mind preferable 
 to that which saw a great national war, a life-and- 
 death struggle for England, a parallel to 1870 in 
 Europe, or to the i86o's in America, in what was, 
 after all, an Imperial police affair six thousand miles 
 removed from his hearth and home, very much out 
 of hand though the matter had got ? I think our 
 friend, reading the cricket news at that juncture, was 
 more in touch with Imperial tradition than they who 
 called for National humiliation and prayer, or mafficked 
 deliriously in public squares when our forces obtained 
 control again. I think our cricketing friend recog- 
 nised that it was not an occasion for his last ounce of 
 sentiment, that there were already as many gallant 
 clumsy fellows setting about the job as even South 
 Africa could well accommodate, and that there was 
 still in existence an item that some ardent patriots are 
 apt to overlook the Navy. 
 
 He was not to be rattled by the shrieks of a half- 
 penny press making a boom in war news. He was a 
 bear in that market, and his influence was not unuse- 
 
 173
 
 Cross Views 
 
 fill. Very salutary and very Anglo-Saxon was the 
 humour of the old lady's reply in Mark Twain's 
 anecdote of the " slim-shanked boy in the brief shirt," 
 who burst into the ship-saloon with "Jump and run, 
 the boat's afire, and there ain't a minute to lose ! " 
 
 "But you mustn't catch cold, child," said the old 
 lady gently. " Run and put on your breast pin, and 
 then come and tell us all about it" 
 
 The halfpenny press is largely run by " slim-shanked 
 boys, wild-eyed, erect-haired, and shouting," and it is 
 a relief to think that to their shrill and fevered councils 
 come at the close of a summer's day the pacific and 
 ginger-beer-stayed representatives of England at the 
 Oval. 
 
 Yes, it is hard to be very angry with the game- 
 player. Scold him as we may the ineradicable seed of 
 his naughtiness is in us all, and those who come to 
 scoff remain to play. And when he was angry in his 
 turn because a very strong person called him a 
 "flannelled fool," public sympathy was undoubtedly 
 on his side, and he it was who " recovered of the bite." 
 
 Work is work and play is play, but in the hours of 
 work it is the work that is the companionship, and 
 the company of workers, when work is over, is often 
 lamentably lacking in something that we find in the 
 idle apprentice. Work with the workers, but play with 
 the players ; be serious with the serious, but leave 
 them when they recreate, is only another version of 
 the old advice to think with the Liberals, but live 
 with the Tories. Compromise, compromise ! 
 
 174
 
 The Game-Players 
 
 Let him play while the sun shines, say the prophets 
 of evil, for the night cometh when no man can play. 
 The big drab- coloured crowd is pressing nearer and 
 nearer on his sacred swards. As the water-fowl 
 swims in ever-narrowing circles within the enclosing 
 ice, the leisured man, ringed by the advancing have- 
 nots, protests against straitening means and shrink- 
 ing estates, but if my theory of him holds good he 
 does not wake to serious action because he is not yet 
 convinced that the time has come, that things are as 
 bad as they make out. They cry in his ears of re- 
 volution, robbery, and ruin, but grumble as he may at 
 the taxes he still plays his games. Come revolution 
 and the rest and he will possibly surprise the prophets. 
 Force under arms and moving is an impressive spec- 
 tacle, but when force in reserve is still quiescent the 
 end is not yet. There are great games and small 
 games, and the Englishman plays them all. 
 
 I have spoken of the higher flights of his energies. 
 To the hopeless duffer and mud-dobber, such as my- 
 self, his seriousness and devotion to the diurnal round 
 are sufficiently appalling. Though, as I have expressed 
 my belief, he does not play his games pro aris et focis^ 
 it is still the spirit of work that inspires them, and not 
 the spirit of play. He hears on Sundays that life was 
 not given us wherein to amuse ourselves, and that we 
 should put away childish things ; let the galled jade 
 wince. His life is not one of amusement, and it 
 would be a rueful child that played under his direc- 
 tion. 
 
 175
 
 Cross Views 
 
 There was a lawn-tennis tournament in progress 
 at a foreign watering-place. Local cracks and travel- 
 ling pot-hunters sprang strenuously on shaven lawns 
 my Visitor in the Garden would not accept the 
 epithet j she said once that grass in Continental 
 gardens reminded her of " baby's hair " or stood 
 aside muffled in the professional white overcoat watch- 
 ing with serious faces and anxious calculation the 
 " form " of friend and enemy. Nor was the crowd 
 wanting in appreciation as it stood thick round the 
 " les simples " or " les doubles mixtes " applauding 
 " les revers " and " les smatches " and crying " bien 
 plac ! " or " bien e"cras ! " as the case might be. 
 By-and-bye two little girls, at the age when the 
 plait of school-days meets the coiffure of womanhood 
 in the halfway stage of a ribboned knot at the nape of 
 the neck, who had been watching with grave eyes 
 and eager whispers the astonishing leaps and gyrations 
 of the champions, slipped away from the ring of 
 spectators to an unoccupied and, truth to tell, very 
 uneven court in the shadow, and there, with racquets 
 a little shyly produced and one ball, began a game of 
 their own. 
 
 Their pretty faces had, as I thought, shown that 
 shade of mutiny, that slight but marked, and always 
 maintained, protest of the Frenchwoman long since 
 trampled out of her English sister, against circum- 
 stances that contend with her supremacy in attraction ; 
 but whether it had been that early-developed instinct, 
 or merely the depression of inaction on young limbs, 
 
 .76
 
 The Game-Players 
 
 the shade now quickly cleared and things went 
 merrily enough. But, presently, the rallies proving 
 of the very shortest duration, one of them made her 
 clear-voiced appeal to that ever-present justice, the 
 logic of the Gallic mind. She said that it was im- 
 possible for her to take a ball falling into the left-hand 
 court when she was in the other, or vice versa, and 
 would her companion see to it ? Who apologised 
 instantly, and thereafter directed, or, at least, made 
 most conscientious efforts to direct, the ball to her 
 friend's racquet, and thus the unruly thing, subjected 
 to the co-operative efforts of two minds with but a 
 single thought, was kept going for some time to their 
 mutual satisfaction. 
 
 Now here, mused the travelling philosopher, is the 
 true spirit of play. 
 
 These two children try to keep the ball a-rolling. 
 Yonder they make every effort to bring it to a stand- 
 still. These play for the game's sake, those to win. 
 There every stroke is directed to end the rally, to 
 " out " the opponent, to be the last stroke. It is hard 
 work, competition, struggle for mastery and survival 
 that, pace the ca'-canny prophets of the humanitarian, 
 socialist, and protective schools, produces the Uber- 
 mensch of tennis, the great Potholder, and Friend of 
 Monarchs retired from business. But what has 
 become of the game ? 
 
 I read the other day a sorrowful account by an 
 athlete of his difficulty and uphill labour in drilling 
 into his village boys the principles of modern cricket. 
 
 M 177
 
 Cross Views 
 
 How they would not assemble for serious practice, 
 soon tired of active and intent fielding, and cared only 
 for their innings and their swipe at the long-hopping 
 lob. Inwardly my heart bled for those small survivors 
 of Merry England, who blindly and unconsciously 
 strive in their rustic way to maintain the tradition of 
 the game as play and amusement. They feel, as their 
 ancestors felt, that the fun of the thing lies in the 
 " knock," as they call it, though that each may have 
 his turn they willingly run after the ball until their 
 time comes to make others run. Lessons are over, 
 or toil on the farm, and they ask for a game, and 
 down on them comes the dreadful young vicar, or 
 colonel's son home on long leave, and turns the village 
 green into a drill ground, or sets up a self-denying 
 discipline with what he can recall and put into practice 
 of the rough-spoken and absolute authority of the 
 coach. They must stand here, they must stand there, 
 they must stand so. They must hold their tongues, 
 they must back up, they must not throw at the 
 wicket (a bitter prohibition), nor rattle an umpire, 
 however small he may be, nor do ever so little hasty 
 football with a poaching outfield, who overvalues his 
 throw-in. 
 
 When games are keyed up to the pitch of work, 
 business to the pitch of warfare, and war to the 
 crushing of a nation's vitality and to rendering her 
 impotent for future struggles, small wonder that village 
 greens are deserted, that game-playing becomes a 
 livelihood, that spectators increase beyond the capacity 
 I 7 8
 
 The Game-Players 
 
 of benches, that money-making kills its thousands, 
 and that anti-militarism finds lodging in the breast of 
 patriots. It may be well that the leisured class should 
 work at games, there may be truth in the contention 
 that work at games makes a better man than work at 
 bread-getting, but by the great majority who have 
 no choice, relaxation and amusement after hours is 
 what is asked, and should not a little charity be 
 extended to the duffer who has no desire and no 
 chance to be anything but a duffer ? Will not the 
 game-worker grant a corner of the ground to the 
 mere player, a little room for the man who is a 
 worker in no playing-field ? Is it not time we spoke 
 of game-workers and game-players ? Could you say 
 to a man " Do you work at Golf ? " and get the plain 
 answer " Yes," you could proceed to the business of 
 handicaps, and all the armoury of implements and 
 terms. I say you could. But if he answered simply, 
 " No, but I play," I could embrace him heartily, take 
 him to a links whose beauty is its excuse for its being, 
 and he could sit on a camp stool until I had persuaded 
 my ball to leave the tee beyond immediate recall, and 
 could say "one." 
 
 But players are frightened and hide. I cherish the 
 memory of a man who kept his ball going as he 
 walked and talked, like a boy with a hockey stick ; 
 I have played with a man whose conversation was so 
 good that we forgot about the balls, until it was too 
 late to go back for them ; and I have played, the best 
 game of all, with a man who brought a retriever. 
 
 179
 
 Cross Views 
 
 But his was a rare and gentle spirit. It knew that 
 the essence of play was the absence of rule. After 
 all, there is not much sympathy between game and 
 game. Hear the polo-player on golf, the cricketer on 
 tennis. It is not the duffer alone who knows the 
 impulse felt in the course of a long game of modern 
 croquet, when endless consultations are held by 
 studious tacticians crouched over a wired ball like 
 doctors at a street accident, to devote himself to 
 eternal shame and enmity, to exile from that white- 
 wash rectangle and from the pale of society, by moving 
 his ball with his toe. He does not care a button who 
 wins ; he would not cheat to gain Heaven ; it is the 
 resurgence of the irrepressible spirit of Merry England 
 in revolt against Presbyterian gloom and oppression. 
 I believe it is that confounded projected efficiency 
 that is at the root of our troubles. It is Mr. Kidd 
 and his kind who fill the butchers' shops with large 
 blue flies nowadays. Even play must be study and 
 labour, that our lives may be one long struggle to 
 arrange those of our great-grandchildren. If the 
 result in that generation be numerous little Dohertys 
 and Frys whose proficiency be theirs without trouble 
 on their part, the spirit of play may revive. Mean- 
 while, there are the proficient who know not how 
 to play, and the players who know not how to be 
 proficient. I look on. 
 
 There are great games and small games j and 
 politics, if we do not play it quite so seriously as we 
 1 80
 
 'The Game- Players 
 
 play cricket, is played more seriously than we play 
 war, for instance ; and it is certainly entitled to a 
 place among the more important pastimes, if only 
 in consideration of its "gate." The theory of the 
 game, as far as I have been able to make it out, is 
 that the leaders of political thought in either team 
 should produce a ball of contention in the shape of 
 a programme or measure, and that those who approve 
 should back them up and endeavour to force it through 
 the goal. That the host of players at large should 
 be open to conviction and fluid of opinion, and should 
 divide on each proposal according to their beliefs is, 
 of course, a totally exploded practice, if ever it were 
 the true theory. You can't play games that way. 
 I see that Mr. W. S. Lilly, writing on the game 
 lately in the Nineteenth Century speaks of " Wob- 
 blers, fortunately few." And there is indeed much 
 evidence to show that independent conviction and 
 choice is becoming entirely subordinated to field 
 discipline, to the great benefit of the game ; though in 
 face of the astonishing and swift reversals of form 
 in various contests about the country, the onlooker 
 much needs expert knowledge such as this. But we 
 can all see how much the sense of loyalty to leader- 
 ship, the communion born of playing together for a 
 common end, and the subsequent adhesion from mere 
 contact in scrimmages, holds together the same con- 
 course of units after the particular win is achieved. 
 A working machine has been formed, inertia and 
 friction overcome, party spirit and antagonisms created, 
 
 181
 
 Cross Views 
 
 private ambitions have sprung up, and these tend to 
 prevent the breaking away again on independent lines 
 when time is called. And the captainship remains, 
 has power and place in its gift, and, finally, an organisa- 
 tion brought about for a given purpose controls the 
 thoughts of all its members, who no longer consider 
 a proposal in the light of its effect on national welfare 
 but as an order from its leaders for the benefit of the 
 league. The activities of a public are transferred to 
 the activities of professionals who are committed to 
 party victory, and chosen and loved for their gladia- 
 torial powers. Every fight deepens the line of 
 cleavage, and we get the admired result that, instead 
 of some popular good vaguely seeking support in a 
 non-committal community, the support and the oppo- 
 sition are ready prepared, and the proposal follows. 
 It is dropped like a football between the opposing 
 teams, and the result depends upon excellence in 
 game-playing, and the sweets of office reward the 
 successful team. 
 
 A word as to the ball. This varies surprisingly 
 little in shape from match to match, at least when 
 first dropped it may be kicked out of all recognition 
 in the struggle. But personal and national security 
 being fairly well assured in this corner of the world 
 by the beginnings of civilisation, property its acquire- 
 ment, division, transfer, and taxation is the first and 
 most absorbing object of interest, and property conse- 
 quently, in one or other form, attacked and defended, 
 is, nine times out of ten, the ball thrown down at 
 182
 
 The Game-Players 
 
 the feet of the opposed sides ; and this fact has lent, 
 or is beginning to lend, new nomenclature to the old 
 parties, who come to be known as the Haves and 
 Have-nots. Every generation that passes sees the 
 line of demarcation clearer and clearer ; the Haves 
 shrink nearer their numerical proportions, and the 
 Have-nots recognise their growing bulk. Other 
 burning policies merge, old names and issues are for- 
 gotten, and the swelling horde of the Have-nots, only 
 owing allegiance to their leaders who promise them 
 the spoils, and recognising, from long political training, 
 about as much right in a minority as a redskin sees 
 in a captive, stretches a great Hand. And the Haves 
 won't drop a penny into it. Is it a vain hope that at 
 the last moment both parties may remember that it 
 is only a game after all, and listen to the women who 
 are crying for the field, and hand it over to them, not in 
 part, but altogether, and set about the business of men ? 
 
 I said something of the kind to Haversedge only 
 this morning. 
 
 " Meanwhile," said Haversedge, " as the Duke said, 
 the King's Government must be carried on. It looks 
 as if we must be governed by referendum, by repre- 
 sentatives, or by people to whom we give powers of 
 attorney. The referendum is the coming favourite, 
 and will meet little opposition from Ministers. 
 Cowardice is the badge of all their tribe, and the 
 referendum will remove all initiative and responsibility. 
 Training, knowledge, and education may then be 
 scrapped." 
 
 183
 
 Cross Views 
 
 "I forget whether you are in favour of woman 
 suffrage ? " I said. 
 
 He shook his head. " I want to take away votes, 
 not give them. The property qualification for a vote 
 is perhaps the meanest motive ever introduced into 
 public affairs. Votes should be by pass examination. 
 The cadre is practically prepared. A short pass paper 
 in the elements of modern constitutional problems. 
 * Explain in a few lines the difference between Free 
 Trade and Protection/ or * State the chief arguments 
 for and against Home Rule,' or * What are the 
 programmes of the chief Socialist parties ? ' A paper 
 containing six or eight such questions, my dear fellow, 
 failure to answer which would and should disen- 
 franchise for three years, would bring the poll within 
 very small proportions, and, still better, silence the 
 noisy political bore in many and many an afflicted 
 circle." 
 
 His eye gleamed, and I think mine must have 
 lighted sympathetically. 
 
 " Only fancy being able to say to such and such a 
 one * Have you a vote ? ' and see him fade away into 
 the Ewigkeit. Of course, if the case were altered " 
 
 I ruminated a moment. "No, Haversedge," I 
 continued. "That the Englishman will ever be 
 weaned from games is doubtful. That he will ever 
 be referred to lessons is not doubtful at all. Your 
 dream of suffrage on an educational basis is the wildest 
 I have ever heard. I have never seen anything so 
 subversive in any political programme in my life." 
 184
 
 The Game-Players 
 
 Haversedge offered nothing. 
 
 " Have you played over on the Downside Links 
 yet ? " he asked presently. 
 
 " No. But I am only waiting an opportunity." 
 
 " Come and play with me to-morrow, and I'll put 
 you up for the Club if you like the course. Ten 
 o'clock train, you know.'* 
 
 " Ten o'clock train. So be it." 
 
 185
 
 OVER THE FIRE 
 
 SITTING over the fire, that handful of old Hell stirring 
 and ramping in the caged grate, munching its repast 
 with fierce little whines and murmurings of unassuaged 
 desire, I wonder who found the great analogies who 
 first saw, sitting over a fire, the image of life in that 
 flicker of destruction. Born and extinguished per- 
 petually at a million points, one and the same yet 
 divisible, gnawing and stirring from start to finish its 
 tenement and repast in one the handful of fuel that 
 sustains its immense possibilities, it sinks and departs 
 without sign, irrevocably, from the exhausted habitat, 
 leaving a little heap of white ash a little while to mark 
 its passage. It is one of the analogies that man has 
 seen and fixed, the astonishing and embracing analogies 
 that in moments of seeming link all facts and concepts 
 in a quivering ether clear as but the unsubstantial can 
 be ; moments when the range and motion of the 
 universe moving from unknown beginnings through 
 change and growth and decay looks, on the spread 
 table of the brain's camera lucida, a vast and mirrored 
 magnification of the individual, moving pan passu 
 with his life, halting doubtful when he halts doubtful, 
 
 1 86
 
 Over the Fire 
 
 holding what he holds, returning what he gives, 
 perhaps ending when he ends. Dreams over the fire, 
 from which he wakes to a memory of flame and a 
 handful of ashes. Great events of our time seem to 
 answer to some turn in our little being, as a great 
 wheel and a small may revolve under the same driving- 
 band, though the wheels are two. The analogical 
 mind is beset with such images, as to some eyes, and 
 to mine again, faces present themselves in every broken 
 surface, and personality in every contoured object. 
 
 The observer of this kind, like the naturalist, or 
 nature-lover, brings home little tangible. The hunter 
 sees and slays, and brings home horn, and hide, and 
 bone, but the pursuer of fancies when, after long 
 lying in wait, the game is on the move, grasps his 
 note-book, the sorry weapon, and secures some maimed 
 thing strangely shrunk and inert. He will stuff it 
 and set it up it is something to show but the herd 
 is gone and will not be overtaken for many a day. 
 
 One seems to see in figures of speech some more 
 intimate relation. We speak of the ups and downs of 
 life, a figure taken from the earth we tread, but why 
 is it that there should be ups and downs on this 
 surface, and in the life we lead on it ? You will say 
 that ups and downs do not exist in life ; that they are 
 differences of level expressible only in feet and inches, 
 but that therefrom we draw a metaphor. But if 
 there is no correspondence how did the metaphor 
 arise ? We speak of sun and shade in men's lives. 
 Is there no real correspondence ? Why should the 
 
 187
 
 Cross Views 
 
 earth be dappled with sunlight and shadow, and life 
 be chequered also ? A metaphor, you say impatiently. 
 Well, but why does Nature afford these metaphors ? 
 It might have been a flat earth, it might have been a 
 sunless sky. There are flat regions, you say, and 
 sunless but there are lives that see no brightness and 
 top no acclivities. Everywhere does analogy dog 
 our steps. 
 
 " Pleasures are like poppies spread " 
 
 What a hackneyed old couplet ! But there is an 
 analogy well seized. A very obvious analogy, you 
 say wearily but why was the analogy ? Put case 
 that the flower seized its bloom were not shed. But 
 you cannot put the case. It is so. You instance a 
 gem perhaps. If you think a gem as attractive as 
 a flower you must be a woman and not open to 
 argument. No. The gem was put there for other 
 analogies. You must seize the flower and its bloom 
 is shed. 
 
 Do these analogies in the constitution and course 
 of nature point to a third term in the sum, as Butler 
 argued ? Or has this larger envelope and mould of 
 the universe formed us on corresponding lines as a 
 latter day philosopher would teach ? Are we formed, 
 as such might say, so that we smile and weep because 
 the elements are alternately cruel and caressing, do 
 we hope and fear because of our experience of the 
 unpredictable forces of Nature, as we sleep and wake 
 because of the earth's revolution, and still bear witness 
 188
 
 Over the Fire 
 
 in our periodic stages to infinitely remote tidal 
 influence on the early forms of animated matter ? 
 Are pleasures and flowers merely parallel facts ? 
 That life has its morning and evening, or its seasons ; 
 that life and fire are lit and extinguished, that blooms 
 are shed, that pleasure brings pain, light casts shadow, 
 loss follows love, parallel manifestations of the work- 
 ing and ravages of the vital spark that has found its 
 way into our solar universe, a force of strict limita- 
 tions that can do this and no other with the con- 
 stituent elements? Or is it as Butler says, that 
 when we trifle on the edge of a precipice, or suffer 
 the natural consequences of folly and indulgence, 
 that we read a clearly illustrated lesson-book ? 
 
 Take it as you will, the analogy is there, and it 
 bothers me more than a little. These are unbalanced 
 and extravagant fancies may be, and one would err 
 in following them far, but an error one is saved 
 from may point a wrong path accounting for many 
 things. Nightmare afflicts me no longer than I 
 dream, but what lurid fears and misshapen spectres 
 have pursued men beyond the legitimate boundary 
 of sleep, and harried them, waking, with the visions 
 and sensations of the night ? Evil things are wrought 
 in dreams. Passions are wrongly associated and dis- 
 sociated. Horror is not evoked by horrors but by 
 meaningless distortions of common things, enormous 
 distensions of weight, size and time ; pity is divorced 
 from suffering, respect from the sacred ; passion has 
 no bridle, beings dear and divine move with cold 
 
 189
 
 Cross Views 
 
 grimaces and talk like Bedlamites ; and at any turn 
 of one's antic progression some insane thing may be 
 waiting round the corner with no speculation in 
 its eyes, to let fly a commonplace of waking life so 
 unevoked and unrelated that it has more terror than 
 the terrible. The figure of some one long dead will 
 come forward and play its part in present things, 
 speak connectedly and move familiarly, and voice 
 and gesture have corresponding play ; imagination 
 will do this, which can make puppets of all things ; 
 but in the dream the puppets come out of the box 
 and play idly, fairily, madly, or horribly, short scenes 
 of their own without guidance of the maker. And 
 stranger still, they can take the sleeping showman 
 and make him dance with them to their music, and 
 illude him with the scenery, effects, and images of 
 his own creation all that he laid by when he sought 
 his rest. 
 
 When all is said and done you cannot describe a 
 sensation. At best, you can but liken it, and the 
 sensation we call nightmare is like nothing awake, 
 and could we set down an impression on foolscap as 
 Mr. Sargent sets down a water-colour on Whatman, 
 I doubt we could render the simplest dream. Nothing 
 more vivid, nothing more evanescent. It has a waver- 
 ing light and transmutations too quick to follow, and 
 actual though it be, a perverse wrongness in detail 
 will mock the memory of it. Dreams do not proceed 
 in words, and fade in the painful translation. Even 
 the glowing poetry and transcendent art we frame 
 190
 
 Over the Fire 
 
 in dreams bears probably more relation to colour or 
 trumpets than to language ; the scroll rolls up so 
 quickly that the text is confounded with the illumina- 
 tion, and we cheat ourselves in the honestest effort 
 to transcribe it. But one thing we may safely aver, 
 and that is that, whether the devil be born of dreams 
 or whether he send them, it was through dreams he 
 came into the world ; and so a right view of dreams 
 may dispel the obsession of Satan, incubi and succubi, 
 and of all wicked spirits who wander through the 
 world to the ruin of souls. 
 
 The earlier world was fortified, in some sense, by 
 the physical arm in combating Apollyon, and by its 
 personification, in Belial, Mammon, and Ashtaroth, 
 of the great temptations of the flesh. We read 
 a new meaning into the devil and his wiles, and 
 dwell on the defeat of self rather than on the victory 
 of powers of darkness, and sell our souls for short 
 spans of mortal happiness in subtler ways and in less 
 open bargains, and see evil the plainer for denying its 
 traffickers. 
 
 But superstition lingers and will find food, and 
 ghosts, at any rate, are far from extinct, and still 
 flourish in a day when the miracle-monger has fallen 
 on hard times, and when devils' leaps and Punch- 
 bowls are as deserted as the groves of Apollo. No art 
 can revive the vanished spell of these, but the " good 
 ghost story " still finds favour, though it takes greater 
 and greater art to illude the sophisticated. The power 
 it may have to thrill us lies not in the facts, to call
 
 Cross Views 
 
 them so, but in their manner of telling, for the art of 
 the ghost-story the praeter-natural story that art can 
 still vitalise is not so much in making us believe 
 that its facts are facts, but in persuading us that it is 
 the facts that work upon us and not the style. The 
 artless tale will neither gain nor lose in repetition to 
 those who can listen to it. It is generally a charnel- 
 house category of bones and groans dealing in the 
 ugly vestiges of the body but not with its re-animation 
 in a way to work upon the nerves of the elders. 
 Indeed, the nearer its facts come to the proof, the 
 more they invalidate its legitimate effect. The signed 
 and dated reports of convinced scientists in successful 
 research of the spirit-kind make the dreariest and 
 most unconvincing reading of anything in this litera- 
 ture. The style is the man, and the style is still the 
 ghost. To take an example, The Turn of the Screw 
 has of late years held the field against all flesh- 
 creepers. The author shows very little he whispers 
 " Can't you see ? " and indicates in the troubled eyes 
 of his creatures the reflection of nameless things, and 
 this sustained hinting at something evil has its way 
 with you before long, and from a passive auditor you 
 become an active speculator, and question your own 
 horrorful mind when the teller lays his finger on his 
 lips. Your own panic fancies are let loose, and then 
 he leaves you, alone and in the dark, and steals off, no 
 doubt laughing quietly to himself. 
 
 I do not know whether it is permissible to see an 
 allegory in this wonderfully-done story of Mr. James's 
 192
 
 Over the Fire 
 
 in the agonised watching for the birth of evil in 
 young souls, and the despairing struggle against it. 
 The story of course goes much beyond the allegory, if 
 there, but one seems to catch it again at the close ; 
 the woman-child hardened by exposure and hopelessly 
 lost, the man-child overwhelmed by recognition tff 
 what had possessed him. Some memory of the moun- 
 tains of concealment, fear, and hypocrisy heaped by 
 the innocent over a first fault, may have helped the 
 germ of the story. 
 
 The Ghost Stones of an Antiquary were excellent 
 essays in the praeter-natural, but to the fastidious in 
 thrill a collection of ghost stories is its own undoing. 
 Horror on horror's head brings something of the 
 consolation of company, and fear should walk unat- 
 tended, and find you alone. They were daylight 
 ghost-stories, to put a pleasant chill on a summer's 
 afternoon, and at night one could be chased with 
 another. 
 
 The being frightened has a horrid fascination for 
 children, and when a child the anguished hours to 
 follow never kept me from gathering in the daytime 
 material for bad dreams at night. Some blood-curdling 
 verses known to my super-brothers were my first 
 introduction to the kingdom of shadows, and I would 
 positively cajole them to repeat the forbidden spell 
 which worked on me with such power. Withdrawn 
 into a corner with the not unwilling bogie-man he 
 would begin his horrid recital in hollow, booming 
 tones, and from the first words my feet were rooted 
 
 N 193
 
 Cross Views 
 
 to the spot and my bowels turned to water. The 
 incantation started with the words : 
 
 " There was a lady all skin and bone 
 And she was walking home alone. 
 Her way was by a churchyard dark " 
 
 I don't know how it went on. I don't think I ever 
 knew, or ever heard it to its deadly end, but as the 
 end approached the reciter rose gradually to his feet, 
 bending his shadow over my devoted head, raised 
 eyebrows, rolled eyes, and groaned in witch-doctor 
 fashion, mumbled the mystery in rapid crescendo of 
 dreadful sound, and the culmination was lost in my 
 yell of terror and the brisk and reassuring scolding 
 of my nurse as she rescued me, clammy and half- 
 rigid, from the shocking embraces of the under world. 
 
 The fear of the supernatural seems to have little 
 to do with the belief in it. For me ghosts, fairies, 
 and angels co-existed, and faded in company, though 
 I don't know that they ever had for me the intimate 
 connection seen by that unlikely child who, assured 
 by his mother that when she took away the candle 
 his guardian angel remained by him, suggested that 
 the angel should be taken and the candle left. But 
 my paradoxical, and I find not uncommon, attitude 
 of disbelief in ghosts' existing, but of abject fear if 
 they do, has its counterpart in the calm acceptance 
 of unearthly visitants by those who receive their 
 visits. 
 
 I am well within the mark when I say that I have 
 194
 
 Over the Fire 
 
 met a dozen people who have told me their first hand 
 experience of ghosts, and in some cases they have held 
 converse with these re-visitants of the glimpses of the 
 moon, and have retired peacefully to bed and not 
 ravingly to any lunatic asylum. 
 
 So common are these beliefs, and so reasonable are 
 the irrational, and so irrational is reason. But it takes, 
 as I have said, increasing art to catch the sophisticated 
 that is all, I think. Peter Quint succeeded with 
 me where the lady all skin and bone had long failed, 
 but I don't know who is to follow him. Though I 
 only speculate on his succession in the daytime. 
 
 My own ghost-story or unusual experience that 
 puzzled me the longest, is a slight enough thing, 
 indeed a mere " sell," for I will not attempt to raise 
 the mildest thrill in the breast of the gentlest reader, 
 but it is not a bad example of the type of occurrence 
 that, failing ultimate explanation, becomes the basis 
 of many an impressive narrative ; so on that account I 
 will relate it, though it is only its moral that is of 
 value. One night, then, I was sitting alone and late 
 it had just struck twelve ; you note the fitness of the 
 occasion reading, over an expiring fire. It was 
 winter, in the country ; the house was absolutely 
 still, the servants in bed, and no mouse stirring. 
 Without the slightest warning a tremendous noise 
 burst on the quiet of the moment, a noise positively 
 confounding in its crash and resonance, bringing me 
 to my feet in an instant, and, subsiding again at once, 
 left me standing, listening to the recovering silence. 
 
 '95
 
 Cross Views 
 
 My sitting-room door was not closed, and I dashed 
 out into the hall, expecting I know not what. But 
 the hall was empty, orderly and neat. Something 
 must have fallen, I said, and I said it aloud, and I 
 scanned the walls though I knew even as I made 
 myself the verbal suggestion that I had no picture 
 heavy enough hanging on any wall. But no picture 
 had fallen. Nothing had fallen. I turned up the 
 lights in the other rooms, and explored more and 
 more curiously and incredulously as everything down 
 to the smallest ornament appeared in place, staring 
 blankly at the untimely illumination ; and I stood 
 peering and listening to the heavy stillness at my 
 wit's end for a solution, the easy, absurd, and re- 
 assuring solution that must be at my elbow, could I 
 see it. The thing positively demanded an explana- 
 tion, and became menacing, but my surroundings 
 " kept on saying nothing " until they fairly got on 
 my nerves. A heavy body had been violently dis- 
 placed in my immediate proximity I should have 
 said in the hall but everything was in place and 
 at rest. I sought refuge in bed. Next morning 
 I left home early for several days (no, it was a 
 previous arrangement) and by the time I got back 
 my story was already taking legendary proportions, 
 and I had told it with effect in more than one quarter. 
 On re-entering the house I happened to notice almost 
 at once that the grandfather clock in the hall had 
 stopped. I had wound it up the day before I left, 
 and here it was at six o'clock in the evening pointing 
 196
 
 Over the Fire 
 
 to five minutes past twelve. Five minutes past twelve ! 
 Why ! Breathlessly I demanded how long the 
 clock had been stopped, and was told ever since 
 I left. Here then was witness to something uncanny, 
 a document for the S. P. R., a tale for my children's 
 children. It had stopped at the very moment of that 
 horrid earth-rumble and convulsion of nature for 
 which I had vainly sought a humbler origin. I 
 approached the tall clock with some awe, the impassive 
 aged ironist that had swung its long scythe before ever 
 I was born, and would mow down my last hour with- 
 out haste or pause. Was there some portent in this ? 
 Would it stop again when it had struck my hour ? 
 I unlocked its long narrow door with some solemnity. 
 A clock case is not unlike a coffin, I reflected ; and 
 then well, there was my ghost, that's all. A gut- 
 string had rotted, and the heavy weight, as heavy as 
 a dumb-bell, had fallen the whole length of the case 
 down into the wooden well beneath with a sound 
 like thunder, as I could testify. 
 
 I have never got nearer to a ghost than that ; but 
 suppose I had never returned to that house, or that the 
 clock had been repaired in my absence ? And there 
 was that instance, again typical of many, of a certain 
 distinguished man who had his own ghost-story which 
 he had been in the habit of telling for many years 
 after dinner when the occasion fitted. It set forth 
 how he, as a child, when in the company of others 
 one Christmas day, had seen a pale face pressed against 
 the window-pane looking in from the outer dark, and 
 
 197
 
 Cross Views 
 
 had cried out, " There is Aunt Mary ! " And how 
 his mother had immediately guessed that her sister, 
 then lying seriously ill, must be dead, and how this 
 proved to be the case, she having died at that hour. 
 " And if you doubt me," Sir George always added, 
 " you may ask my mother," for the old lady was 
 still alive and vigorous, and awaiting them in the 
 drawing-room upstairs. But for long things intervened 
 to postpone her witness to the tale. There was no 
 reason to doubt her son's knightly word, for he was 
 a man incapable of falsehood ; his wine was good and 
 his guests lingered over it ; and many people are 
 unmoved by ghost-stories, or, if moved, are wisely un- 
 interrogative ; and the good man's tale waxed to a 
 green old age. But the day came when he told it 
 once too often. There was present one of those 
 obstinately inquiring minds who cause so much dis- 
 comfort to the world, a man without faith in men, 
 wine, or ghosts, and he unscrupulously availed himself 
 of his host's courteous suggestion as soon as ever he 
 got upstairs. The sceptic asked for confirmation and 
 Sir George stood smiling by. " What story is that ? " 
 asked the old lady affably. "Tut, tut," said her son 
 he was one of the last to say " tut, tut " " you 
 remember, my dear Mother, about Aunt Mary ap- 
 pearing that Christmas Day " " Whose Aunt 
 Mary ? " asked the old lady. Sir George showed a 
 shade of natural annoyance, and began to tell his tale 
 again. But his parent cut him short. "What can 
 you be thinking of, George ? " she said. " You never 
 198
 
 Over the Fire 
 
 had an Aunt Mary, or any other aunt. I had no 
 sister, and your father was an only child." 
 
 I suppose the inquirer after truth was pleased, but I 
 see no cause for rejoicing that one more good story 
 should be lost to the world. Maybe I could have 
 supplied its loss could I have mended my clock with 
 my own hands. But if Sir George was an upright 
 man, so am I. 
 
 Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark ; 
 but the terms of the proposition may be raised and the 
 philosopher let down a peg, for philosophers fear 
 death and men fear to go in the dark. There is no 
 one but fears death, and no one can investigate alone 
 and at midnight a phenomenon that comes backed 
 with the panic fears of a hundred generations with the 
 same abstraction of mind that he could devote to it 
 when the cheerful, heartening sun lights the suspected 
 chamber. The scientist works in the light, the 
 spirit-raiser in the dark, and a stance is never held in 
 a laboratory. There is a "just let me catch you at 
 it, that's all " tone about the controversy, and the 
 spook has no intention of being " caught at it." 
 
 There is a theory that men fear to go in the dark 
 because of the dangers that beset aboriginal man in 
 his arboreal couch, but this theory is not only obviously 
 far fetched, but is, I think, fetched superfluously far, 
 and from the wrong source. The millions of mankind 
 who still subsist in a state not very far removed from 
 the arboreal and who are compassed with real dangers 
 that make the tall tree as natural and handy a refuge 
 
 199
 
 Cross Views 
 
 as with us the firmly planted policeman, have the very 
 liveliest apprehensions of ghosts, and never think of 
 confounding their superior terrors with the yet awful 
 voice of the lion or the cold contact of the serpent. 
 The glowing eyeballs that circle the fire in the outer 
 darkness, the padded footfall of the unseen carnivore, 
 wake emotions of fear in the black man, but not the 
 worst, and his ghostly enemies do not use the same 
 terrors as with us the anguished spirit with an un- 
 delivered message comes to him in the guise of a 
 missionary, and white-gleaming human bones but 
 waken pleasant and ruminative memories ; but ghostly 
 enemies he has, and he can distinguish between the 
 sources of his fears as easily as civilised man, who 
 fortifies himself against the one kind with bolts and 
 burglar insurance, and against the other with the 
 counterpane. No. Dreams are the more likely 
 generators of unsubstantial fears, and if dreams come 
 from indigestion it is only to be expected that we 
 should find the belief in spooks to flourish the most 
 vigorously among savages who eat anyhow and of the 
 wrong things, and among our prominent scientists who 
 eat anything and at the wrong times. 
 
 The French, a sceptical nation, pay great attention 
 to cookery, and never hurry their digestions, and 
 they were the first to set up the goddess of reason 
 in their midst ; and M. Salomon Reinach is capable 
 of attributing the hundred religions of the English 
 directly to their one sauce. 
 
 But it is hard to associate, however distantly, the 
 200
 
 Over the Fire 
 
 stances of the spirit-raisers with the idea of religion. 
 The desire to see ghosts must be a specialised yearning, 
 or survival in age of the fascination of the flesh- 
 creeping for the child. To raise the devil was a 
 favourite pastime of men who had wallowed in their 
 sensations until they had broken every spring but 
 that, and sought in the messe noire the obverse of what 
 they had lost in the messe blanche. The messe noire 
 is still celebrated, I believe, but its votaries are no 
 longer the rakehells and the intellectually depraved, 
 nor do they include such names as we read with 
 surprise and contempt in the comparatively recent 
 records of Medmenham Abbey ; they are rather the 
 young and the vapid who would leave nothing un- 
 tried by the close of their second decade, and can 
 taste the joys of such naughtiness because they are 
 but barely emancipated from clerical authority, are 
 still in the shadow of early superstition, and were bred 
 in circles that react favourably to the nasty puerilities 
 of the youthful sinner. Profanation and blasphemy 
 are the natural set-off to the elaborate practices of a 
 materialised religion, and sacrilege, devil-worship, and 
 black magic follow as the night the day, on sacred 
 mysteries, miracles, and exorcisms ; and the pious 
 believers in saints and angels and the multitudes of 
 good spirits who intervene on virtue's side in earthly 
 affairs, cannot easily deny or deride the cult of evil 
 spirits. 
 
 The open doors and windows of the English Church 
 allow the escape of much mephitic vapour, but how 
 
 201
 
 Cross Views 
 
 far the hankering after worse and earlier forms of 
 worship, pagan rites, and black man's ju-ju still lingers 
 in low intelligences and vacant minds may be seen 
 in the latter-day swarms of fortune-tellers, crystal- 
 gazers, and spirit-rappers who do a brisk trade among 
 the illiterate servant girls of the suburbs and overdressed 
 Hottentots of Bond Street, and in the crop of old 
 wives' tales and terrors evoked by such periodic 
 phenomena as Halley's comet, a species of attendant 
 folly that seems to fade only at about the same rate 
 as the trail of that meteor and will not fail it as long 
 as it visits our skies. The successful coincidence of 
 dreams and visitations with material happenings swells, 
 to the few, the sense of personal favour, of having 
 been " singled out " as 
 
 " A burnin' and a shinin' light 
 To a' this place," 
 
 and such personal experience or belief has, no doubt, 
 its effect on the unscientific mind : and the failure in 
 result, the unsuccessful warning, or exploded ghost, 
 is the cause of defection in others and of cynical 
 disbelief. The sceptic is disillusioned because his own 
 experience proved illusory. A dream three times 
 repeated in one night, with interludes of waking to 
 certify the recurrence, gave me great hopes one time 
 when on a voyage that I was one of the chosen : but 
 the rude and unsympathetic health of the relative 
 whose death had been foreshadowed to me shocked 
 my faith on my return. If some are chosen for revela- 
 202
 
 Over the Fire 
 
 tion, some are chosen for rebuff, and if it require more 
 than faith to see ghosts, the unfaith in most of us 
 has been superadded to disappointment. 
 
 But more blessed are they who expect nothing of 
 the sort ; who relegate ghosts and spectres and all 
 spirits black and white to the kingdom of dreams, nor 
 by confounding the boundaries of daylight and dark 
 bring upon themselves the curse put upon those who 
 remove landmarks. It is true enough that ten thou- 
 sand evil spirits lie in wait to be meddled with, but 
 only on condition that you do not meddle can you 
 recognise them as the shadows of your brain, and know 
 that they have nothing to do with bodily existence 
 after death, but only with food-persistence after dinner. 
 That the survival of bodily death would be a discovery 
 transcending all discoveries we may freely admit 
 without allowing that we are on the road to any 
 such ; and meanwhile our conduct on this brink of 
 Lethe need not entirely depend on the existence of a 
 farther shore and a ferry. 
 
 203
 
 XI 
 
 APPEARANCES 
 
 THERE are certain small spiders which throw out a 
 long fine filament of web on to the warm air and 
 presently, wafted by a favouring breath, sail up to 
 giddy heights for a little space ere they sink slowly to 
 ground again. Earth-scouring ants swarming about 
 their daily business doubtless regard these as great 
 seers and favoured visionaries to whom a hand is 
 stretched down from the infinite ; but cynical insects 
 here and there will scoff, and say that the shining 
 path their feet ascend is stuff of their own spinning. 
 But the sceptics are not popular. The ants are a 
 downright practical people who say that facts are 
 facts, by which they mean that appearances are ap- 
 pearances, and if they are not to believe in appear- 
 ances they demand to know what they can believe in. 
 If appearances are not what they appear, what are 
 they ? Appearances must be kept up, they say. 
 Gossamer will maintain a reputation in one latitude, 
 and jumping beans in another. 
 
 Wandering as we do on the outer skin of a planet, 
 unable to rise beyond the little altitude of its higher 
 excrescences even by attaching ourselves to bubbles 
 204
 
 Appearances 
 
 of gas ; struggling, like a premiere danseuse, though 
 less gracefully, against our earth-bound state, we 
 vainly spurn the soil, for we are practically two- 
 dimensional beings living and moving on a super- 
 ficies : superficial in fact, and nourishing ourselves on 
 appearances. We can only arrive at a third dimen- 
 sion, at the height or the depth of a subject, by 
 launching an inquiring and detached spirit on to the 
 ambient ether : 
 
 " I sent my soul through the Invisible, 
 Some letter of that After-life to spell." 
 
 When given free flight its reports, though marvel- 
 lous, being unchecked are received with suspicion ; 
 when flown on a length of chain, a mathematical 
 chain for instance, its flight can be measured and its 
 return to the starting-point ensured : but what it 
 gains in credibility it loses in inspiration, and an un- 
 noticed kink in the chain will play the deuce with 
 our deductions, and when discovered rob us of some 
 old established friend such as the nebular hypothesis 
 for instance, and create great confusion and uproar 
 among the Kiteflyers. Attempts to chain the spirit 
 of religious inquiry have caused a terrible amount of 
 squabbling and bloodshed, and nowadays every man 
 may fly his own kite in that airy region, but the 
 messages received are very conflicting. Destructive 
 criticism is, however, not popular, and though when 
 mediums, prophets, and philosophers come tumbling 
 to the ground their audiences disperse with jeers and 
 
 205
 
 Cross Views 
 
 curses it is only to re-form round the nearest aviator 
 or operator of aerial telegraphy, and to make a ring 
 against outside opinion. 
 
 Sceptics are not encouraged, and they are com- 
 paratively few who seek or care to hear of hidden and 
 more proximate causes of revealed effects. The 
 feeling of the crowd sets instinctively against the 
 acute person who kncws how it is done, and is all in 
 favour of the prestidigitators, thought-readers, and 
 spirit-raisers, and hard to detach from revivalists, 
 orators, great noblemen, strong still men, patent 
 medicines, actors, gold lace, big drums, and the 
 various crowd-carrying appeals. Man likes to trust 
 his instinct and give his reason a rest, wherein M. 
 Bergson supports him. Reason is for work days, 
 instinct for Sundays and holidays, and he can always 
 reply to the busybody who says that there is " nothing 
 in it " that at any rate there is something outside it : 
 that if there is nothing in the hat whence the omelette 
 appears the more there is to the omelette. And he 
 has furthermore an impatient notion that the analysis 
 of science frequently leaves matters where his own 
 unaided divination had arrived already. That inquiry 
 into the life and daily pursuits of the blue-bottle fly, 
 to go no further, emulating the impudent curiosity of 
 the insect itself, tells us that his presence amongst us 
 is obnoxious to our well-being, and that we do a good 
 deed when we knock him flat. Well, we knew it 
 long since ! And then there is the waste and friction 
 of continual change in keeping abreast of new theories. 
 206
 
 Appearances 
 
 When we were young and supple we may have 
 suffered conversion once or twice, but later in life 
 whatever damnation they may threaten us with we 
 reflect that three removals are as bad as a fire, and 
 stay where we are. New doctrines to make head- 
 way must get on our blind side or the side on which 
 we think we see best ; the side of our prejudices, of 
 the eye that we trust. Approached in this quarter 
 we will believe that the earth is round because we 
 can see something of its roundness ; we can believe 
 that the ape is our great-uncle because we can see 
 how we have improved from his likeness ; we believe 
 in Free Trade because we see so plainly that we 
 ourselves are free, and in Protection because of its 
 warm and comforting connotation ; but we will not 
 abandon War since our armies make the bravest show 
 we have, nor accept Eugenics because they make no 
 show at all ; and to cure us of party-politics it would 
 be necessary to close our blind side altogether. 
 
 Of verbal appearances, or stereotyped opinions, we 
 have great store, and we defend them as if they were 
 our off-spring, going, each of us, with his brood of 
 adoptions, and ready to fight for them and against all 
 others like a wild creature in defence of its own. 
 The earth is spread thick with opinions ready-made 
 and waiting to be picked up, and the choice, whether 
 free as it is very occasionally, or forced on us by 
 circumstance like a conjuror's card, once made the 
 thing is our own, a possession to be cherished against 
 all mankind, and our true brethren are they who have 
 
 207
 
 Cross Views 
 
 picked up the like. And then comes along your 
 uneasy examiner of soothing syrups and wants to 
 upset the whole collection, and would induce us to 
 swap our trusted pain-killer against the latest cell- 
 stimulator. We collect the outward signs of inward 
 things and cannot endure that new meanings should 
 be read into old significances. 
 
 Connoisseurs as we are, and familiar with our own 
 priceless and unimpugnable collections of opinions 
 and names, we may be allowed a pitying smile at our 
 neighbour's hoard. Heaven help the poor man, what 
 a rubbishing lot he has picked up ! Every kind of 
 cheap imposture posing as the veritable article, and 
 anything of any possible worth wrongly ascribed. 
 Labels waiting for philosophers' stones, things that a 
 child might recognise at a glance asking identification, 
 and all so badly arranged, such hopeless misassortment, 
 such helpless mis-classification ! Here are churches 
 under one head and religion under another, political 
 programmes bound up with " Popular Magic " while 
 Pamphlets on disease or poverty are lettered "Business 
 of State " ; pious opinions ranged among facts, and 
 undisputed facts marked " doubtful," and elementary 
 notions that we instil into very school-children marked 
 " dangerous " j superstitions in the science department 
 and scientific discoveries in the torture collection ; 
 Smith's daubs hung all round his gallery, and of the 
 divine creations of Robinson not a single example. 
 Unappropriated labels inscribed "honest doubt," 
 "rights of minorities," "justice," "gentleman by 
 208
 
 Appearances 
 
 birth," " proper station in life " (this show-case quite 
 empty), and great classes such as "one's inferiors" 
 entirely unrepresented ! Here are expensive cabinets 
 for keeping records without conceivable interest of 
 all sorts of submerged people, of the most everyday 
 duties, of outbreaks and violences better passed over, 
 useless memories no dates, naturally and in inner 
 drawers quite inexplicable things of which he is 
 evidently ashamed without knowing why. He cannot 
 even keep apart such disparates as Individualism and 
 Socialism, and would mix oil and water if he could ; 
 cannot give even Empire or Nationality an assured 
 place among his best pieces, and puts truth itself aside 
 for closer scrutiny. He evidently does not know a 
 gentleman when he meets him, nor a patriot, nor 
 even a statesman. 
 
 But enough of our neighbour's freak museum. Let 
 us hope he extracts pleasure from it in his leisure 
 hours. He will not find many to go all the way 
 round with him. It is his misconception of the 
 business of notion collecting that has led us into false 
 analogy, for such collection of ideas and opinions and 
 of the phrases which are their labels should not be 
 unique but exemplary in order to be of any worth ; 
 must not include solitary or original curiosities, oddities, 
 cracked specimens or things ignored or not studied 
 such as our poor friend apparently prides himself on, 
 but only such matters as evoke ready and instant 
 understanding from our fellow-collectors who may 
 easily hope to emulate it, and all ranged in recognised 
 
 o 209
 
 Cross Views 
 
 classes and under plainly legible and brightly descrip- 
 tive labels. Perhaps you will allow me the felicity 
 of exhibiting one of my show-cases no doubt you 
 could show a better, but it will serve to illustrate to 
 the beginner an intelligent effort at classification and 
 plain exposition of things precious to us all. For 
 example, then, observe this group marked the State 
 on no matter are opinions so easily gathered. Divi- 
 sions : King, Commons, people (or electors). You 
 see that I keep my arrangement up to date. 
 
 Subdivisions. 
 
 i. Pillars of the State. Costume models of Land- 
 owners, high-sheriffs, soldiers (retired), sailors, 
 lawyers, clergymen, city men ; doctors per- 
 haps. Bank of England. Old nobility. 
 
 ii. Glories of the State. Portraits of Great Party 
 Leaders (Mr. Balfour crowned with laurel in- 
 dicating recent departure) ; statuette of Shake- 
 speare ; battle-rolls up to 1815, A.D. ; series 
 of tableaux illustrating growth of liberty, from 
 Runnymede to Institution of Syndicalism ; 
 University boat-race records from 1839; lts 
 freedom from foreign invasion ; State proces- 
 sions, &c. 
 
 Hi. Privileges of Citizenship. Series of coins re- 
 presenting taxation per pound of income. 
 Some coloured photographs of India, and other 
 things that have occurred to me. 
 210
 
 App 
 
 earances 
 
 iv. Rights and Duties. Ballot-box from Romford 
 (entrance-hall, large exhibit), another from 
 Ireland (miniature case). Territorial uniforms, 
 new and unused ; right to work (attached to 
 Trade union exhibit), right of free speech, 
 closure, &c. 
 
 v. History of the State. Concise library, contain- 
 ing inter alia ; Lives of Kings and Queens of 
 England, with separate lives of Henry VIII, 
 the Stuarts, memoirs of Court of Charles II, 
 Four Georges ; How the Constitution Grew, 
 with supplementary chapter on additions in 
 present reign ; How the poor live, with tables 
 of mortality; Baronetage Inquiry Reports; 
 Golf and Golfers ; History of Rationalism in 
 England, &c. &c. 
 
 This is merely a sketch of how one may set to 
 work ; obviously there are details to fill in, and 
 additions to be made according to taste and observa- 
 tion. If you are a person with what are called literary 
 tastes you can hunt up, say, the best novels of each 
 year, to illustrate the literature of a given reign, and 
 some would add poetry it can be obtained from 
 dealers in remainders at a very moderate price, but 
 is more easily referred to in the mass without par- 
 ticular examples. Philosophy and that sort of thing 
 suffers from mildew, and anyway is more suited to 
 the oddity show ; but the collector of varied tastes, 
 particularly if a traveller or a motorist, may pick up 
 
 211
 
 Cross Views 
 
 many bright and interesting items of more universal 
 appeal. Thus the well-stored mind resembles a good 
 natural-history museum whose purpose is to teach 
 us all how to kill and stuff living things for ourselves 
 where the larger groups and the sub-kingdoms are 
 plainly set out through the medium of well-mounted 
 types in realistic attitudes with explanatory tickets. 
 Some one comes to you for information on one of 
 your subjects, say the Drama. There is no woolly 
 hesitancy in your reply for you are under no necessity 
 of thinking. Rapidly you detail the Edwardian 
 dramatists, Messrs. Marshal, Barrie, Shaw, Grossmith 
 Jun., &c. &c. j the critical appreciations of Messrs. 
 Walkley, Redford, Shaw (again), and Mr. W. T. 
 Stead's first night impressions. Costume figures of 
 Mr. Waller, Sir H. Tree, Sir George Alexander. 
 Influence of the Drama on the Englishman's Home, 
 Influence of Criticism on the Drama, by Geo. 
 Edwardes. Economic influence of Ballet on Grand 
 Opera, and of costume balls on same : comparative 
 economic and other value of original and borrowed 
 plays. You know all about it, and in ten minutes 
 so does your interlocutor, so great an advantage has 
 the well-ordered mind. 
 
 Parallels are innumerable. We stock our ward- 
 robes with a dozen or so of everything we may want, 
 take what the provision dealers supply, what the 
 house-agent has to offer, what our wine merchant is 
 recommending we do not spin our own wool and 
 linen, brew our own beer, and no wise man ever did 
 212
 
 Appearances 
 
 build his own house. Life is not long enough, and 
 were we to form our own opinions we should never 
 be done as housekeepers say, and the product would 
 not be worthy to be offered to our friends. We 
 accept things at their face-value. A disordered 
 freedom of thought may spell actual ruin ; witness 
 the detached thinkers on high finance who think 
 clean away the value of five-pound notes ; and soci- 
 ologists who think away frontiers, and mathematicians 
 who get to that pitch of the inane that they cannot 
 do simple sums, while philosophers think away matter 
 itself, and cannot distinguish good from evil. These 
 people are a warning to any one who has eyes to see 
 of the danger of divergence from the general view ; 
 they nearly all live miserably and die unnoticed, and 
 rightly so, for they are socially useless, and when con- 
 sulted on the everyday matters which are the elements 
 of their particular sciences on the investment of 
 money, on social precedence, on Budget incidences, 
 on philosophic endurance they are reduced to im- 
 potence, and make a pitiable show. 
 
 The cult of originality in thought and word par- 
 ticularly afflicts literary men, yet all the prizes of the 
 profession fall to the plain sensible men and women 
 who hold the mirror up to nature, 1 repeating what 
 everybody knows. They do as all other caterers do 
 who supply our wants and do not seek to control 
 our tastes, for we know what suits us and what we 
 
 1 I have always particularly admired this phrase. It is to be 
 found in Hamlet, and other places. 
 
 213
 
 Cross Views 
 
 can digest, and we know equally well what will 
 amuse us, but your new author in his 'prentice stage 
 is for ever trying to palm off on us the sprouts of his 
 fancy. It won't do, my young friend, and so you 
 will find. Writers themselves, without exception, 
 recognise the value of appearances when it comes 
 to exchanging their work for good cash. Serious 
 books they give a serious appearance, and to comic 
 books a comic appearance, and beyond this there are 
 accepted and differing styles and back-lettering for 
 the presentation of biography, art monographs which 
 have a special cloth or canvas, essays and apprecia- 
 tions (paper label), while poems have a little gilt 
 ornament, gift books much gilt, and books you can 
 only get by purchase no gilt at all a pretty cynical 
 conclusion. Immoral books, of course, go in yellow 
 paper ; and it is the ambition of every author to be 
 in a uniform edition to have an individual appear- 
 ance or livery of his own. A writer will say osten- 
 tatiously "I leave those things to my publisher," 
 but if he be one of those who command a large 
 sale (edition of 50,000 copies exhausted before publica- 
 tion), and did the publisher issue him as a colourable 
 imitation of pure merit, he would probably take the 
 matter out of the hands of his publisher and put it 
 into the hands of his solicitor. But publishers have 
 a holy passion for appearances, and you may find 
 among them those who believe that a factor in 
 book sales is the name of the firm at the foot of 
 the title-page, and that the public discriminates 
 214
 
 Appearances 
 
 between Barabbas and Gestas. The printers very 
 likely hug the same delusion, and for the matter of 
 that I have met an author who believed that he was 
 recognised when he walked down Piccadilly. 
 
 The importance of keeping up appearances is by 
 none given more weight than by politicians, who 
 scrupulously live up to their portraits in Punch and 
 Vanity Fair y cultivating with patent foods and ener- 
 gisers the minute differences seen by the expert eye 
 of the cartoonist, who, autocratic as a tailor or a race- 
 trainer, dictates the pose, movement, frown or smile, 
 hair-parting, button-hole, coat or mouth closed or 
 open, &c. ; and since the cartoonist is much rarer 
 than the politician the politician must take his chance 
 when it comes, and so it happens that many unfortu- 
 nate public men caught and taken unpreparedly have 
 to live up thenceforth to some unstudied gesture, 
 unconsidered hat, or intempestive overcoat which was 
 provoked, but in the caricaturist's hour, by an un- 
 seeing Speaker, a surprise motion, or a mistake in the 
 cloak-lobby. It has happened that an elderly and 
 stout member of Parliament hurrying to a division has 
 taken the fancy of an influential draughtsman, and, 
 represented running, has had ever after to break into 
 a breathless trot when entering a public meeting or 
 mounting a platform, and has shortened and embittered 
 a useful and modest career. Another introduced to 
 notoriety, by a really unpardonable piece of careless- 
 ness, with whiskers, was forced to grow the things, 
 and so, to maintain a position he was unable to induce 
 
 215
 
 Cross Views 
 
 an insolent and overfed artist to reconsider, lost his 
 wife's affection and the respect of his children. It 
 was a thoughtless commonplace to exclaim, as we did 
 once a week in the days when there were prominent 
 politicians in the arena, "what would Chamberlain 
 be without his eyeglass, or Balfour without his golf 
 clubs." Astigmatism, or one-eyedness, follows on the 
 persistent use of the monocle, and " staleness " became 
 so marked in Mr. Balfour's game that he had to give 
 it up for a time. A white waistcoat on an impecuni- 
 ous member has become a permanent charge on the 
 party funds, and the not undesigned representation of 
 a member of the I.L.P. as a man of fashion led to his 
 subsequent candidature, and extinction, in the Conser- 
 vative interest, and to his end at Earlswood where he 
 would sit all day in evening dress reading the Morning 
 Post, even as he had seen himself in the fatal print. 
 
 Change of name, change of countenance by use or 
 disuse of the steel, change of address, we resent them 
 all. A mere ambiguity may annoy the sensitive. 
 This complaint has come under my notice : 
 
 " O why is Alfred Austin ? 
 And wherefore Henry James ? 
 Identities are lost in 
 These duplicated names. 
 
 There seems a hint of slander, 
 There's just a touch of fraud, 
 If George be Alexander, 
 And Cyril one with Maude. 
 216
 
 Appearances 
 
 'Tis Herbert one peruses 
 Not politician Paul. 
 I'm still in love with Lily, 
 Though Elsie's past recall. 
 
 If Henry's one with Lucy 
 Still thicker grows the fog ; 
 In papers that amuse he 
 Is Mr. Punch's dog. 
 
 One knows that Hugh is Cecil, 
 But also Robert is 
 Now, families progress ill 
 With joint-held properties. 
 
 'Tis best methinks to forge an 
 Agnomen for the void, 
 To set before a George an 
 Assuring name like Lloyd. 
 
 And if to great Augustus 
 
 Lies no appeal from John " 
 
 But enough of this complainant. All these changes 
 and ambiguities pale before change of opinion. 
 
 Change of name is usually for the better, and an 
 instructive and entertaining " Who's Who " might 
 be compiled from the announcement column of the 
 Times for ten years past ; it affords old friends the 
 amusement of reviving the original at seasonable 
 moments, and political opponents by keeping it alive 
 can harass the invading foreigner ; change of style 
 may in extreme cases have been effected by such 
 
 217
 
 Cross Views 
 
 methods as worked upon the Rev. Hopley Porter : 
 and change of address may bring a happy oblivion : 
 but change of opinion is an unforgivable and inex- 
 cusable injury, and we hound the renegade to a 
 dishonoured grave. Rat, traitor, and apostate that 
 he is, he has ceased to believe in the appearances 
 we see. Drop into the limbo of Agnosticism or 
 non-partisanship if you must, but adopt another set of 
 appearances you shall not without we set our mark 
 on you. 
 
 But the philosophy of appearances covers more even 
 than a philosophy of clothes, and its patron philo- 
 sopher would rather be he who took all knowledge 
 for his province. Beyond the obvious take-in which 
 ensnares the great vulgar generation after generation, 
 the bedazzlement, as ancient and as ever fresh as the 
 confidence trick or the pea under the thimble, of 
 corporals of the guard, high-stepping horses, smart 
 society, macaws, Christmas numbers, coronets in 
 Westminster Abbey or pearlies in RatclifFe Highway, 
 there are the subtler deceptions of the soulful counte- 
 nance, the widow's cap, the maiden's innocence, the 
 bluff man's honesty, the cleverness of authors and the 
 intelligence of readers, and many more, and below 
 these deeps again that depth of delusion which baits 
 its trap with crumbs of truth, which shows a little 
 genuine virtue in a setting so alluring that we pro- 
 nounce it a gem of the first water which so enhances 
 the merits of the rich and great that, however hard 
 it may be for such to enter Heaven the difficulty is 
 218
 
 Appearances 
 
 as little apparent to their humble neighbours as it is 
 little daunting to themselves. 
 
 The vulgar are dazzled by wealth, but you and I 
 can see the unworthiness of the rich as plainly as we 
 can see anything, and we laugh to scorn the mere- 
 tricious attractions of the wicked noble or shining 
 millionaire, but are we proof against virtue when it 
 co-exists with money, and rides in a gilt automobile ? 
 That is the test. Should we withstand virtue, you 
 ask ? By no means, but if virtue is what you admire 
 why seek it in such pleasant places ? It is not the 
 direction given us by the prophets. The man in 
 search of virtue does not beat up Mayfair though he 
 desires an honest lodging it is Mayfair that he is 
 after. And so we dilate on Lady Gold's chastity, 
 amiability, charity, and wit, not that we do not 
 genuinely admire those eminent virtues or that Lady 
 Gold does not possess them, but more especially 
 because they are possessed by Lady Gold. Barring 
 charity, which is the sharing of the necessaries of 
 life and a virtue only possible to the poor, she may 
 have these qualities and more, though they have been 
 sneered at in her case by Becky Crawley and other 
 hard-working people, but it would be an instructive 
 and amusing pastime to reckon the comparative stand- 
 ing of our friends in our own and the public estima- 
 tion under a socialistic regime. How many, and 
 which, foolish old ladies and tedious old gentlemen 
 should we call on of a Sunday afternoon, what sons 
 should we invite to our houses, what daughters 
 
 219
 
 Cross Views 
 
 pursue ? Should we still praise the aquiline beauty of 
 Mr. Beilstein's nose, still recognise the good nature in 
 Miss Maggie de Castro's wide smile, and the aristo- 
 cratic type of Mr. Smith whose grandfather, under 
 the old regime was Baron Butts of Kennington ? 
 How, exactly, would our luncheon parties be consti- 
 tuted, supposing that the communal board permitted 
 us to group ourselves at will, and to whom should we 
 offer the half of our communal umbrella on leaving ? 
 It will be a great day for the pretty face and the fine 
 young fellow, and the one thing unlikely to change in 
 the new age is card-playing for the elders, though won't 
 they be cross when their winnings are taxed 100 per 
 cent. ? I hope I may not live to see it, for I am entirely 
 dependent for my neighbours' toleration of me on some 
 decent port left me by a relative, and on certain expec- 
 tations on my own decease and I don't play cards. 
 
 There is an extreme of vulgarity which speaks of 
 " little people," meaning people who cannot " keep 
 up appearances " on their income, but inhabit little 
 houses ; and if everyone became a little person under 
 the presidency of Mr. Lloyd George's great-grandson, 
 I should wish, all the same, to be there, and would sit 
 on my doorsteps watching with great equanimity 
 certain people forcing quarts into pint bottles. Virtue 
 may inhabit the rich we have allowed, and viciousness 
 may inhabit the poor. 
 
 Vice is its own reward but virtue requires a witness. 
 Were every saint sure of a biographer there would be 
 more of them. I would be one myself. 
 220
 
 App 
 
 earances 
 
 Do not rashly assume a virtue if you have it not. 
 We are all so dependent on appearances and go so 
 much by signs and tokens that the simulacra we 
 present quickly become sacred to each, and an un- 
 ashamed and consistent profligate will meet with 
 sympathetic grins where a detected Joseph Surface 
 will excite indignation. This is not merely the 
 punishment of the hypocrite, but falls on every man 
 who pursues serious paths, and that from choice, but 
 lapses once in a way, and is particularly the revenge 
 of time on the married and other virtuous people who 
 have maintained a severe code of morals ; and the 
 worldly wise while pursuing the stony path will speak 
 indulgently of the erring. Such tone lends high relief 
 to their own good conduct, and eases their possible 
 backsliding ; and similarly the rake who does not 
 omit to show his good heart from time to time keeps 
 open his chance of acceptance as a reformed char- 
 acter when necessity shall compel. Hypocrisy is a 
 woman's talent. It is no use to a man, for man is 
 never given sufficient credit. It is the cloak under 
 which she goes covered to her first dance. 
 
 She "comes out," as men say in their innocent 
 naivet, but she does not come out of the cloak. 
 That is only exchanged for the veil and orange- 
 blossom. Then, the new nest prepared, the young 
 married woman enters like the young cuckoo, 
 smoothly as an egg, and develops as thrustingly as 
 the bird. And the astonished hedge-sparrow of a 
 husband labours heroically to supply the nourishment 
 
 221
 
 Cross Views 
 
 which she turns into feathers and more feathers, and 
 sees her daily out-growing the modest home where 
 there is no more room for him. He brings 500 
 a year and she has two servants. He brings 1000 
 a year and she has four servants and brougham. 
 .2000 a year and many other things are added unto 
 her. We will not pursue the cuckoo's career. Besides, 
 the metaphor is getting mixed. 
 
 Judging by appearances, or the reading of character 
 as it is commonly called, is a profession for some, 
 but an avocation for all, and a good judge of 
 character is as much respected as a tribal medicine- 
 man. To the doctor we are all diseased, to the priest 
 we are all sinners, and in the presence of a lawyer feel 
 that we are all convicts in posse y and each of us within 
 the range of his familiar vision sees the truth far 
 too plainly for it to be true that his children are 
 undutiful, that his doxy is right, that his neighbours 
 are wrong all the time, and though none of us knows 
 the exact stage of respectability at which his own 
 overcoat has arrived we are all able to tell at first sight 
 of a face in what category of intelligence, temperament, 
 morality, and breeding its owner should fall. A new 
 acquaintance comes towards us open-mouthed. " Ade- 
 noids," says the doctor, " laxity," thinks the moralist, 
 " stupidity," thinks the physiognomist ; but it may be 
 the man's expression of wonder at the critic's hat 
 or trousers, or perhaps he has been eating chilis at 
 lunch and is cooling his palate. Of course it is the 
 man's fault. I do not deny it he ought to know 
 222
 
 Appearances 
 
 that if he goes open-mouthed he will catch flies, 
 though not everyone knows that. " I never walk in 
 the sun but I get my mouth full of flies," said the 
 Royal Duke. " Perhaps your Highness walks with 
 your mouth open." " Lord ! I never thought of that," 
 said the Prince. But the romance that may underlie 
 the unromantic appearance, the mental suffering not 
 excluded by a rubicund countenance, the capacity 
 for love under a scowling index, the charity possible 
 to a bilious exterior, and again the flint beneath milk 
 and roses and the acid of strawberries and cream, are 
 now insisted on by pyschological novelists to the 
 point of totally extinguishing the old Family Herald 
 indications, and of making an unpromising appearance 
 the infallible sign of the hero, and of the heroine, of 
 romance ; though again, in accordance with modern 
 readings they must seldom hope to be happy for 
 ever after, or even during such a disputable lease as 
 used to be granted them at the parish church on 
 the last page. It is possible that this probing under 
 the skin of characteristics in search of originality or 
 indeed in search of truth, has done something to 
 improve the lot of the ill-favoured, and has led us 
 to look more kindly on fellow-creatures who have 
 hitherto been cast for the comic or villainous r61es. 
 The hunchback and the cripple we are quite converted 
 to and overwhelm with arrears of kindness, but jaundice 
 or a cast in the eye still spread an opaque covering 
 over moral attributes, and the man who makes love 
 in spectacles had best woo the short-sighted. Perhaps 
 
 22 3
 
 Cross Views 
 
 that is why the spectacled so increase. " You can see 
 it in his face," protest the character-readers. " You 
 have only to look at her," they say, and they follow it 
 up with " You could never have thought it to look 
 at him," and "Who would have believed she had it 
 in her." They know all about us, we are pre-judged 
 and pre-destinated in their presence, and if our natural 
 perversity falsifies their predictions, what hypocrites 
 they have always and rightly suspected us to be ? But 
 one's very dog will bark at a tramp, and we encourage 
 him in his snobbishness by breeding him for his appear- 
 ance, and discourage intelligence in the cur by drown- 
 ing him early. Breeding for wits has never been 
 tried because appearance is so much more highly 
 valued. Members of a political party will pride them- 
 selves on being governed by gentlemen, and when 
 it is pointed out to them that they never think of 
 consulting gentlemen according to their code if their 
 private interests are at stake, if it be a question of 
 money, education, hygiene, housing, transport, health, 
 engineering, or art and letters if they indulge in them, 
 they will yet prefer to confide national interests to 
 those whose manners imply, rather than their attain- 
 ments assert, a superiority. The expert may advise 
 but the amateur must control. 
 
 The expert, however, has broken many of his bonds 
 of late, and in an unexpected manner, or they have 
 been loosened for him, as if to give him a compen- 
 satory influence in lateral directions, and he gets 
 remarkable opportunities to express his opinions as an 
 224
 
 Appearances 
 
 amateur on many subjects to make up for his not 
 being allowed to drive home the knowledge of which 
 he is the undisputed possessor. His profound researches 
 into the longitudinal stability of hydroplanes under 
 the action of Hertzian waves, on the delineation of 
 Mendelian characters in chromosome or monochrome, 
 or on the use of re-inforced concrete in cases of 
 broken-down tissue, are buzzed abroad, and straight- 
 way his views are sought and quoted on all sides on 
 hair dyes, dietetics, minor poetry, and foreign policy ; 
 he edits a Sunday paper for a week, and becomes 
 willy-nilly a tower of strength to Tariff Reform or a 
 thorn in the flesh of Free Trade. En revanche the 
 expert has frequently a grievance when he is called 
 into the councils of the many, and that is the 
 euphemism which speaks of his opinion rather than 
 of his time and knowledge, and rewards him with 
 thanks for his loss of substance. Were professional 
 value always referred to cash terms we should read 
 in the papers that Miss Mina Lyte of the Theatre 
 Royal contributed two guineas towards the entertain- 
 ment given by the Duchess of Pebblybeach to her 
 friends last night, that Mr. Piranesi Brown who has 
 been staying at Cadger's Hall for the week-end 
 presented the Hon. Mrs. Cadger with ^50 towards 
 the contemplated new wing, or that the late Dr. 
 Good heart, probate of whose will has just been 
 granted, left ^693, 45. 2d., and was in the habit of 
 distributing 200 a year to the poor of his district. 
 We expect workmen to do " little jobs like that " for 
 
 P 225
 
 Cross Views 
 
 nothing, chiefly because well, because they can do 
 little jobs like that ; and the ingratitude of our daily 
 ministers who, although they have been paid for 
 doing what they have done, yet will not do what 
 they are not paid for doing, is a constant theme of 
 minor complaint. A chapter might be written 
 perhaps it has been written, and I will not risk it on 
 the demeanour of servants, which, though constantly 
 thrown aside at the open sesame of a month's warning, 
 affords an invariably acceptable disguise to the new- 
 comer ; and manners in general whether regulated by 
 the presence of a hostess in a drawing-room, or tamed 
 by the presence of the policeman at the corner, cloak 
 us all with the amplitude of charity. 
 
 On the seers who labour to open our eyes rests the 
 curse laid on Moses, that he should see the promised 
 land but not enjoy it, for to the artists who show us 
 how to look at things and to the writers who tell us 
 what to think of things, pictures and books which to 
 us are windows through which we obtain wider and 
 brighter glimpses of the universe, become opaque sur- 
 faces illustrating processes of paint and word-arrange- 
 ment, things for them dead and left behind ere they 
 reach their disciples. What is a revelation to us has 
 become to these their makers a fixed and dull render- 
 ing of a concept long hammered at in the workshop 
 and issued in despair of betterment. The artist's joy 
 is in the working, but never, we suppose, in the work, 
 for the satisfied artist is none. It is the penalty of 
 vision, and happier are we who walk in darkness. 
 226
 
 XII 
 
 A GENTLEMAN AND A SOLDIER 
 
 "They who on glorious ancestors enlarge 
 Produce their debt instead of their discharge." 
 
 COLONEL HOLMESTAPLE has been orating to me at the 
 Club, and his resentment of its mixed elements re- 
 minds me that a writer in the Spectator cited not long 
 ago, and there was a touch of the original Spectator in 
 the citation, the resentment of a certain friend of his 
 in the country at any attempt to analyse the precious 
 essence of the quality of gentleman. We may imagine 
 this latter-day Sir Roger getting astride his subject 
 after dinner, somewhat flushed. He would say, per- 
 haps, if he dealt in such inquiries, " A gentleman is 
 not made up of this and that. He is elemental ; born, 
 not made ; certain of himself; a man who can move 
 without friction in the established order of primates. 
 What these fellows cannot understand," he would 
 say, "is that a gentleman may do ungentlemanly 
 things, but cannot help being a gentleman." And 
 here one may interrupt him, for he is not likely to 
 say anything more clearly to the point. Here, I 
 think, we have it. A priest is a priest according to 
 
 227
 
 Cross F'iews 
 
 the order of Melchisedek. "You may break, you 
 may shatter the vase," &c. 
 
 It is an order, a fount of honour, that constitutes 
 the class. And the class is dying out. This we have 
 on its own authority. It has said so for centuries. 
 Here an opponent might direct his cautious attack. 
 
 " On the contrary," says the new man, " they in- 
 crease with the general prosperity." 
 
 The man of blood objects that wealth does not 
 make the aristocracy now under discussion, but lets 
 his opponent proceed. 
 
 It preserves it though for honours without main- 
 tenance perish, and a modern writer tells us that 
 plenty of Fiennes, Howards, and Talbots work on the 
 land, showing that every eminence gravitates to the 
 level, and enforcing the converse proposition that from 
 the level it came. 
 
 Formerly, poverty disqualified a peer from holding 
 his dignity. In the reign of Edward IV a Duke of 
 Bedford was degraded by Act of Parliament on this 
 account, lest he should practise extortion on his 
 neighbours. On the other hand, in the reign of 
 Edward I, freeholders possessing 20 a year were 
 compelled to accept knighthood ! Bitter were the 
 complaints and persistent the evasions. In Piers 
 Plowman you may already read of the knighting 
 of " soapsellers' sons for silver," and there are com- 
 plaints that knighthood is conferred on artisans, 
 bakers, woolcombers, usurers, and cozening ribalds." 
 
 The knightly life in the days of chivalry was a 
 228
 
 A Gentleman and a Soldier 
 
 strictly commercial proposition. The killing of a 
 knight in battle was most carefully avoided, for the 
 reason that " bang went " his ransom, and Froissart 
 writes of Crecy field, " Behold a great evil aventure 
 they slew as many as would have been worth 400,000 
 franks." Astonishingly few were slain in great fights 
 like Bouvines or Tinchebrai, and great must have 
 been the harvest. 
 
 Wives and wards were sold like cattle. The privi- 
 leges of over-lordship were converted into money 
 terms revenue, for instance, was drawn from the 
 serfs' licence to marry. 1 
 
 If military service, the original fount of honour in 
 the heraldic sense, is the only source, and that source 
 dry, there is indeed an end. But what proportion of 
 our recognised aristocracy derives from such a source ? 
 Almost a majority of the first grade derives from the 
 bastards of a comparatively recent king and from 
 other blood which no man would willingly have in 
 his veins, and an overwhelming majority of Burke's 
 clients first appeared in his volume when even such 
 families as these were well established. 
 
 " Title is not necessary," smiles our man of blood. 
 
 True. But even a simple gentleman must have 
 had a beginning, and if we fix a coronet on his slippery 
 personality which we are endeavouring to corner, it 
 will give him a moment's permanency. 
 
 For three quarters of a century scientists have been 
 busy on the history of man's descent. Let us apply 
 
 1 Chaucer and his England, G. C. Coulton. 
 
 229
 
 Cross Views 
 
 some of the principles they do not dispute over to the 
 descent of our admired friend. 
 
 When Darwin, patiently pondering for years the 
 vast conception of Evolution that had attracted so 
 many great intellects, managed to track down a line 
 of its workings, and set out for the world's instruction 
 his proved and beautifully illustrated section of the 
 principle, he started a current of working ideas whose 
 swelling volume has swept all contemporary thought 
 before it, and incidentally, and unnoticed by the 
 serious, upset the little gilded apple-cart of the 
 hereditary gentleman. It was pelted by the Satirists 
 to the last, and the Snob Papers, appearing in the 
 last years of the Pre-Darwinian dispensation, left this 
 subject exhausted for the humorist, but still fruitful 
 for the scientist. 
 
 Now, since man has never been bred for points, his 
 marks of breeding, so called, are precisely not marks 
 of breeding, but marks of training, or acquired 
 qualities. His inborn qualities, whatever they may 
 be, are capable of appearing, and do appear, in any 
 man in any walk of life whatever. Small hands and 
 feet, for example, an arched instep, fine features and 
 what not will appear in a due proportion of the 
 population, and will or may be transmitted as inborn 
 characteristics from cobbler to cobbler as from knight 
 to knight. But the small hand and filbert nail will 
 be cultivated and cared for in the one case, enlarged 
 and broken with work in the other ; while rough 
 traits are tempered by training, dress, and barbering 
 230
 
 A Gentleman and a Soldier 
 
 in the one class, when they appear in it, and are 
 emphasized by poverty, dirt, and neglect when they 
 appear out of it. To put the thing statistically, the 
 proportion of any suppositious aristocratic trait, not 
 capable of acquirement, to the total of the upper class, 
 will be the same as the proportion in which it is 
 found among the population at large. 
 
 The air royal, high carriage, condescension and 
 command, are the result of circumstance in the 
 particular generation. Surrounded by submission, 
 superiority of bearing is inevitable, just as, submitted 
 to domination, a lowly carriage and poorness of spirit 
 will result. 
 
 A member of the upper or richer class, not favoured 
 with the inborn qualities unreasonably associated with 
 rank, will by dint of training and circumstance 
 assume its other characteristics. But were a naturally 
 favoured specimen of the lower class given the same 
 opportunities, he could come much nearer to the ideal. 
 Were the two changed at birth, the discrepancy 
 would be still clearer. 
 
 I shall be again accused of confounding gentle birth 
 with title if I begin to speak of Heraldry, but since 
 it is of birth that we dispute, I think it not unfair to 
 take such distinctly labelled families. Heraldry is 
 accounted a foolish science, and we chuckle at 
 Chesterfield's King-at-Arms, who, "silly man, did 
 not know his own silly business." The Book of 
 St. Alban's speaks of " the offspring of that gentleman 
 Japhet . . . that gentleman Jesus gentleman by his 
 
 231
 
 Cross Views 
 
 mother Mary, princess of coat-armour." But if the 
 grammar of descent, illustrated by a simple Stammbaum 
 such as every stock-breeder must learn to draw, were 
 taught in our schools, we should have less foolish 
 boasting of family, and there would be less lack 
 of that modicum of general knowledge necessary to 
 the working of criticism. 
 
 Snobley is great-grandson to Sir Blankley Snobley, 
 and we are asked to bow to his superiority of blood, 
 and most of us do so. But how many people re- 
 member, and does Snobley remember, that he had 
 four great-grandfathers, aye, and four great-grand- 
 mothers, each contributing a one-eighth portion of the 
 great-grandparental strain, and that Sir: Blankley, who 
 figures to the exclusion of all the rest, contributed but 
 one-fourteenth to the making of our friend ? The 
 stream from the fount of honour, then, is rapidly 
 diluted. But Snobley has a still feebler claim to our 
 consideration, which he is fond of advancing, and 
 we may attend to it here though it is but a graft 
 on that humbugging old family tree of his which I 
 attack with as feeble an instrument as the glass hatchet 
 in the fairy tale ; and this claim is in his connections. 
 
 Now, consanguinity has an undeniable meaning, 
 for disease or insanity in the blood chills that blood 
 with fear even to the third and fourth generation. 
 The claim of consanguinity no one denies. But 
 what is a connection ? Why, a King's son marries 
 an actress, and her brother, a bully in the New Cut, 
 is the King's connection. To claim a connection is 
 232
 
 A Gentleman and a Soldier 
 
 to claim something you know is not yours, and 
 always implies a repudiation. If Snobley claim con- 
 nection with Lord Stareleigh, it follows as the night 
 the day that Stareleigh will never claim connection 
 with Snobley. Another ground for refusing it re- 
 cognition is its easiness or universality. It has been 
 said that if you go back four generations to the 
 ancestor we spoke of, in fact you can make con- 
 nection with anyone you like. Any way, it is an 
 acknowledgment of superiority, and implies a corre- 
 sponding contempt. Knowledge of blood ancestry 
 should be in every family, on the ground of eugenics 
 alone, but knowledge of connections is merely work- 
 ing in other people's muniment rooms. Let me 
 dismiss it and return to my inquiry. 
 
 A modern champion of the order would perhaps 
 state his case more in this manner : It is a matter 
 of externals. Birth would be helpless without a 
 minimum of position. Position requires orthodox up- 
 bringing wealth is only useful to the intelligent. 
 Refined tastes and leisure to indulge them will go far 
 in a generation or two, but have more chance of 
 respect than of acceptance. The professions offer 
 the surest road, for society is fairly committed to 
 them. The man we call a gentleman must speak, 
 dress, and conduct himself according to the mean of 
 the acceptable. 
 
 His opponent will reply : Your externals are 
 worthless rags. The essentials of a gentleman are 
 honour, truth, purity of life, the never uttering any- 
 
 233
 
 Cross Views 
 
 thing cruel, mean, or base, devotion to high ideals, 
 restraint of self, and consideration of others. Your 
 caste and class distinctions are an exploded mediaeval- 
 ism. The word is too grand to be wasted on 
 heraldry, profession, or birth. A man may carry all 
 these things and be ungentle. I grant the nobility of 
 your Cinqbars (he will say) I cannot grant that he 
 is a gentleman. You don't understand the value of 
 the word. 
 
 His opponent will smile indulgently and reply that 
 these are great virtues, and merit the Kingdom of 
 Heaven, but do not constitute a gentleman. I should 
 not be surprised if he said that they had no more to 
 do with the status than with the Man in the Moon. 
 I grant the nobility of your favourite, he may say, 
 but cannot grant that he is a gentleman. 
 
 Here are two sides to the shield, with a vengeance ! 
 Impossible to accept a Caliban in a fine suit of ex- 
 ternals impracticable to pass off a Christian in broken 
 boots. 
 
 " There is a rabble even amongst the gentry," says 
 Sir Thomas Browne ;".... there is a nobility 
 without heraldry." 
 
 And the conclusion ? Even if we have not reached 
 one we have at least travelled some way from our 
 friend the squire's elementary conception. The 
 gentleman is obviously not a simple and elemental 
 article, and even Christianity does not cover him 
 entire. Faith and good works both are necessary. 
 Faith in the status is not enough ; good works 
 234
 
 A Gentleman and a Soldier 
 
 without it will not suffice. A self-made man is not 
 necessarily a gentleman, but a gentleman is necessarily 
 a self-made man. Why, what is a scoundrel, and 
 what is a saint ? Can you denounce the evil liver ? 
 He is very likely a valuable public servant, very pos- 
 sibly a kind and beloved father. Can you embrace 
 the upright and honest man who lives cleanly, and 
 who would rather die than lie ? Certainly not. He 
 is very likely an aitchless person in Brixton, hating 
 soap and water. Life is not so simple. 
 
 Were it only the blackguard who did blackguardly 
 things ! Alas ! It is as often as not the decent 
 kindly fellow we all love. Were it the just man who 
 drew our affections ! Alas I He as frequently repels 
 them. We quarrel with the saint for his imperfec- 
 tions, and love the scamp for his grain of gold. 
 
 The attitude of the republic of letters towards this 
 question is what one would hope in a republic. It is 
 dismissed as a prejudged question, and the written 
 formula is roughly that the butcher, baker, and candle- 
 stick-maker, if good fellows and instructed, shall be 
 received as associates without second thought, and a 
 duke (always suspect) only on the same terms. No 
 man nowadays may pretend to social superiority in any 
 public arena. This is a healthy open atmosphere, 
 and much to be thankful for, but the private cult 
 lingers sufficiently to justify the earnest student of 
 manners in his researches in the field of snobbery, 
 and the superstition is not less strong because it is 
 
 235
 
 Cross F'iews 
 
 more confined. The social strugltfeur struggles for 
 repose. To arrive is to be at peace. The ascetic is 
 too conscious of his body, the poor man of his neces- 
 sities, the lowly snob of his lowliness, and to attain 
 Nirvana must be rid of this onus. 
 
 I have always had a sneaking sympathy for the 
 poor snob, and sympathy, you know, is a fellow- 
 feeling. That all men are not born free and equal is 
 the commonplace of the wise, but its practical recog- 
 nition by the vulgar draws the gibe of the satirist. 
 
 In this country we have the hereditary legislator 
 who conducts his debates without need of control. 
 In a certain great republic the controller himself of the 
 legislative chamber sits, shirt-sleeved and scavenger- 
 spoken, chewing tobacco, and spitting on the floor of 
 the House, and is admired for his " independence," so 
 odd an interpretation does a great people put on its 
 Declaration. The French, a polite nation, quickly 
 got over their excesses of revolution, and the destruc- 
 tion of the nobility in France has been followed by 
 its popular revival and extension to the point that no 
 man need go without a "de" before his name. 
 Mankind positively refuses to accept equality, and the 
 citizen who cannot be above his fellows delights in 
 being below, and when he has no peerage to reverence 
 will bow to something if it is only to money, and has 
 never changed his nature but only his clothes since 
 the days when he ascribed to his tribal chief the eye 
 of the eagle and the strength of the bull, and cheerfully 
 ceded him the spoils of war. 
 236
 
 A Gentleman and a Soldier 
 
 The more practical application of the Squire's 
 theory, made by the less affluent, is that it does not 
 matter how a gentleman earns his livelihood, if things 
 come to that pass with him, for he is always a gentle- 
 man. We must recognise the necessity to live, 
 particularly in his case, so we do not deprive him of 
 his patent because he is forced to keep himself, but it 
 is not an excuse to be used lightly. If we meet a 
 friend walking with a tea-merchant or, and this is 
 running it rather fine, with what Kipps called "a 
 Nacter chap," we hear with relief his subsequent 
 assurance that the man is "really, a gentleman." 
 To do these things as a whim is a better defence ; to 
 do them on account of a wife and family requires 
 sound antecedents, and when very very dire necessity 
 exists, some connection with the peerage should be 
 made out. Still, these things are done, and with help 
 from favouring circumstances an undoubted name, 
 excellence at golf, and good friends a man whose 
 father was a retired colonel may drive a trade and 
 reclaim his father's sword undimmed. If his status is 
 less than that his recovery is precarious. He will 
 probably go under with a bubbling cry. The great 
 belt of retired army men whose families palisade the 
 lower slopes of the upper classes and shut off the 
 herds upon the level plain, mark the limits of the 
 " possible." If you haven't a relation in the army, 
 at least, you may as well give up the struggle at once. 
 
 Some walk by licence within the pale actors, 
 when they are managers ; persons in temporary 
 
 237
 
 Cross Flews 
 
 office, such ( as Conservative members of Parliament; 
 Americans, possessors of a minimum of two motors ; 
 and, I believe, two or three very successful writers 
 but these through, the retired colonels close their 
 ranks. I reckon ten thousand retired colonels on our 
 shores ; given ten thousand wives, and an average of 
 three daughters, you have a force of fifty thousand 
 disciplined and incorruptible defenders, doing detached 
 garrison duty in every smallest village and hamlet that 
 may sustain their worth and nourish pretenders to 
 their post. 
 
 Speaking as one who was brought up on retired 
 colonels, who saw them stand three deep round his 
 cradle and form the chief of his diet until he sought 
 his own sustenance ; who had them domesticated in 
 his home life, and drew from their lips the opinions 
 of his youthful years, and has since seen them the 
 staple of society in every neighbourhood he has had 
 the privilege to dwell in, I incline to believe that, 
 however elevating their acquaintance, this ubiquitous 
 presence is not without its drawbacks. And we 
 cannot but pause to remark on this ubiquity. What 
 becomes of the retired sailors ? I have met many 
 a sailor, but his service always seemed to require 
 him before nightfall, or, at latest, by the six o'clock 
 in the morning train, after the dance. When they 
 retire, do they inhabit together the peaceful hulls 
 that dot the Mother Bank, or do they not retire, 
 or do they suffer a land change into something civil ? 
 Are their hearts so young, is their age so green, that 
 238
 
 A Gentleman and a Soldier 
 
 they can cast off the memory of the ward-room, 
 service grievances, and the foreign station, and cultivate 
 their gardens with the deferred affection of half a 
 century ? I cannot tell. 
 
 But the retired colonel is the most familiar and 
 popular object upon the sea-shore and country-side ; 
 of town life and village existence. Service clubs are 
 entirely filled with him, not only to the exclusion of 
 the nominal naval membership, but to that of the 
 other ranks of his own service. The ornament of 
 esplanades, the stand-by of county towns, the arbiter 
 of modest communities, the support of county 
 magnates, he is dotted liberally on the green of 
 the map, sprinkled thickly on the enlarged scale of 
 Piccadilly and St. James's, and massed thick and 
 black on the town plans of Southsea and Brighton. 
 His grievances are common talk from Waterloo Place 
 to the Scillies, from Whitehall to John o' Groat's ; 
 and Indian ways and Indian days are as familiar to 
 our homekeeping English as the doings of the 
 colonel's son, now fitting himself in his turn for his 
 future role of the great retired. 
 
 The colonel's son we see but on occasions, but 
 where the colonel is there is the colonel's wife, and 
 there are the daughters. The Conservators of Con- 
 servatism, the retired colonel's family constitutes the 
 very backbone of the Tory party. 
 
 Its faith is simple and serene. Its side in politics, 
 and it is ardently political, is the bulwark of the 
 King and State against evil-utionary tendencies. 
 
 239
 
 Cross Views 
 
 Liberals, Heaven confound them, are little better 
 than traitors and sans-culottes, and the most ungentle- 
 manly thing a man can do, and the severest strain 
 that can be put upon the " once and always " theory 
 that should see him through all offences, is the 
 registering a vote for the Liberal candidate. 
 
 The Church of England stands, in much the same 
 way, between the Almighty and his enemies, the 
 wolves of dissent and Roman Catholicism. 
 
 Europe is to be coerced or shamed from its sins 
 by the strength and rectitude of Englishmen, whose 
 word, as all foreigners know, is their bond, and 
 whose blow, when administered by their army, is 
 final. Socialism, only understood as yet as efforts of 
 the common people to rise above their station, is 
 contravention of discipline, and infringement of the 
 rights of immemorial retired colonels. 
 
 The French are monkeys, and very immoral, as 
 monkeys are. The daily beer and tobacco of the 
 Germans is poisoned by the thought of our posses- 
 sions, and their activities are solely devoted to our 
 future subjugation. The Americans are our cousins, 
 secretly very fond of us, and can be relied upon 
 to support us at a pinch by reason of their family 
 alliances with our upper class. Many Americans are 
 not to be distinguished from gentlemen ; but, save 
 when he is thinking imperially, the colonel cannot 
 say as much for our Colonists. But he wishes 
 he could. 
 
 The revival of the old Protectionist cry has put 
 240
 
 A Gentleman and a Soldier 
 
 new blood into him, for in the days when agriculture 
 held its own, every labourer touched his hat. 
 
 Sometimes he would restore flogging in the army 
 I have heard him say so and he never forgets that 
 Moltke approved our commission by purchase. 
 
 He has always foretold the failure of the Territorial 
 army, and favours conscription. 
 
 A man of caste, and raised in a disciplinary frame, 
 he does not discuss measures, entertain doubts, or 
 listen to objections. A liberal view connotes a 
 liberal politician, and several liberal views will land 
 you in his black books. 
 
 Well, Heaven bless the colonel and his views ! I 
 suppose he cannot be otherwise, and since I have not 
 his earnest convictions and inner light, I cannot press 
 my own. But before I cease fire before his superior 
 metal, I would enter my protest against his grievances. 
 I cannot for the life of me see that he is such an ill- 
 used man. When he began life, a Colonel's son, his 
 mother and sisters cheerfully denied themselves many 
 small amusements for the pleasures of life that cost 
 no money are not known to these that the public 
 school and Sandhurst fees might be paid ; and his 
 uniforms and his second charger were borne on the 
 housekeeping books. His commission gained, half a 
 day's work most days and three months' holiday, great 
 respect and admiration from the drab-coloured civilian, 
 the first word with women, healthy and open-air 
 employment amongst his own kind and standing, open 
 hospitality in all quarters of the world, and retirement 
 
 Q 241
 
 Cross Views 
 
 practically at will on a pension that cannot be earned 
 on such terms or at such age by any other man in 
 any walk of life, constitute a fortune and profession 
 that few would neglect if division of labour were 
 differently apportioned. 
 
 Did he enter the Service from patriotic motives ? 
 Perhaps. But is it he alone who serves his country ? 
 The man who works at the forge, in the mine, on 
 the land, in the factory, is as indispensable to his 
 country as the soldier, has fewer of the good things of 
 life, works harder and longer, dies earlier, and dies, or 
 did till lately, unpensioned. There is many a trade 
 more dangerous than the soldier's, and one hard- 
 worked frontier force at least, the medical, that risks 
 death every day and has no security of rest by night, 
 dresses its own wounds, and gets no blood-money, 
 not only has no pension but frequently gets no pay. 
 Its standing is not particularly marked, and its griev- 
 ances are quite unheard. 1 
 
 The soldier's work proper comes to him about one 
 year in ten. We all wish devoutly that it never came 
 at all, but how ungrudgingly we all applaud it. The 
 generals incur blame for the inevitable muddle that 
 ensues, but we give them titles and large lump sums 
 of money to soften the hard words, and with their 
 pensions and the retaining fees of past years they 
 comfort their retirement, and for the rest, every man 
 is a hero, and every hero has a D.S.O. 
 
 And every colonel has a grievance. 
 
 1 Or were. 
 242
 
 A Gentleman and a Soldier 
 
 His grievances are, I must confess, a digression ; 
 they are no business of mine. But his views seemed 
 to me germane to my inquiry, and typical of much of 
 the old regime. There is new leaven working in the 
 affairs of men, which proceed per saltum on the 
 psychical side if they don't on the physiological. 
 Virtue takes on a new meaning, as authority dwindles. 
 Man is leaving school, and the passing from his life 
 of the Headmaster who kept him straight with threat 
 and exhortation, saddles him with responsibility for 
 his own career and ends the thoughtless period when 
 submission to Power transferred the onus of failure, or 
 at least equalised sin with punishment. 
 
 Virtue filtered downwards from heaven now it 
 must work upwards. It made its way through the 
 principle of obedience through kings and high priests, 
 and then ministers, and inferior officers of these. 
 There was an actively responsible Being over all, who 
 had made and ordered, could reward and punish, be 
 offended or appeased. For there can be no authority 
 without responsibility, and no subordination without 
 a measure of vindication for its misdeeds. 
 
 When man mocked the virtuous precept he covertly 
 mocked his idol, the old man of the sky ; when he 
 got drunk and giggled at sobriety and decency, it was 
 because he lived under authority and must have his 
 fling. 
 
 But the new man knows virtue as the building up 
 of character and the practice of hygiene. He knows 
 life as the healthy relations of brain and stomach. 
 
 243
 
 Cross Views 
 
 He has nothing to giggle at if he gets drunk, and 
 no one to blame for his lapses. 
 
 He does not lie down in his " state of life " ; he 
 gets up and gets out of it. He does not leave the 
 kingship to the seed of David, and the priesthood to 
 the tribe of Levi, the flocks and herds to the family 
 of Jacob. He will have his share of all, and takes 
 nothing on authority, unless authority can show its 
 reasons on demand, and strives to fulfil himself in 
 body and mind in unity, before both perish together. 
 He sees a lie as a nuisance to be removed by common 
 action, disease as a reproach, poverty as evidence of 
 maladministration, vice as lack of better things, and 
 crime as the product of these remediable evils. Drain 
 the marsh, and malaria will disappear. 
 
 When I lived in town, and knew something of the 
 activities of busy thinkers and shapers, and was in 
 touch, however lightly, with associations, societies, and 
 institutes, I fear I overvalued their influence and 
 extension. Time was, I thought the colonel's views 
 comically old-fashioned, material for museums, and 
 the archaeologist's quarry ; but returned to the 
 country, I see science, art, philosophy, and literature 
 as things afar off, the private and almost furtive 
 hobbies of a quaintly-mannered and almost ignored 
 minority, and I recognise the enormous and untouched 
 mass of average opinion. 
 
 To whom do they address themselves, these apostles 
 of eugenics, of projected efficiency, of preventive 
 medicine, or of pragmatism, modern art and the new 
 244
 
 A Gentleman and a Soldier 
 
 life ? To no one I know. To whom is printed 
 matter addressed ? The joke that says the advertiser 
 carries it is not wholly a joke. Above the halfpenny 
 rate it reaches no more than five per cent, of the 
 population, and the halfpenny print in its most 
 notorious form makes daily inroads on that small 
 reserve. Bread and newspapers are the daily prayer, 
 and then butter is added to the bread, and jam thereto, 
 and then leisure, and as the crown of life the motor- 
 car. The halfpenny print still supplies the higher 
 appetite. 
 
 It is an odd reflection and an ironical turn of things 
 that the more one guards against the bias of training, 
 class, religion, or nationality, and the possibilities of 
 prejudice set up by temperament, education, and cir- 
 cumstance, to the end that one may have as clear a 
 look as possible at the world one finds oneself in, the 
 more one is cut off from sympathy with one's kin, 
 and therefore from understanding them. The more 
 completely one shakes oneself free from the totemic 
 beliefs of one's tribe, the more estranged one must 
 become. 
 
 The Colonel Homestaple of my youth I under- 
 stood, for I saw with the same eyes, but nowadays I 
 can scarcely understand him at all. Proud of a little 
 knowledge, I thought myself an authority on the 
 retired colonel, and lo ! I can only rally him, not 
 expound him at all. I have lost touch. I have 
 wandered outside the palisade, and it is doubtful 
 whether he will let me in again. Whoever may 
 
 245
 
 Cross Views 
 
 be an apostle. I am none, for I only know how 
 to talk to the converted. The heathen does not 
 listen. 
 
 For I need scarcely say that when Colonel Holme- 
 staple had finished talking to me, he went up to the 
 card room, or these discursive remarks could never 
 have been uttered. 
 
 246
 
 XIII 
 
 FACETIOUSNESS 
 
 THERE was a parrot once I knew who had his perch 
 in the inner hall of the house of a certain Amphitryon 
 
 " Le veritable Amphitryon 
 Est 1'Amphitryon ou Ton dine," 
 
 and in the quiet of the forenoon when the house was 
 resting from its overnight festivity the parrot would 
 re-enact with great verve his aspect, or, as I should 
 rather say, his audience of the entertainment. Loud 
 brisk volleys of " Ha-ha-ha " and a skilful rendering 
 of the clatter of plate and glass in psittacine onomato- 
 poeia would be followed by a subdued repetition of 
 the sounds as they had come to him on the shutting 
 of the dining-room door, and the remoter conviviality 
 would be broken again by gruff remarks such as " 'urry 
 up there," or " mind them dishes," and by his trium- 
 phantly given " pop " of the champagne cork. It 
 was funny, for the parrot is a natural droll and has 
 that uncommon and in low comedians highly paid 
 talent of raising irresistible laughter without going 
 to the expense of wit, and of spreading highly com- 
 
 247
 
 Cross Views 
 
 municable human mirth without the tinge of superi- 
 ority attaching to the ban mot or the shade of effort 
 demanded for its enjoyment. But it was also cynical, 
 for it was an exposition of the bare bones of the 
 banquet, a burlesque of good fellowship, a painted 
 feast, the grin without the glow of pleasure, and, with 
 a little development at the hands of a society entertainer, 
 would have made an ill-natured travesty of the con- 
 ventional fourteen who meet to dine and do not dine 
 to meet. I think there was a tyrant of old who 
 indulged some omen-speaking fowl and kept it at 
 his elbow for the sake of its catchword of warning, 
 and at times when I have filled a chair to avert the 
 evil chancing of the unlucky number I have listened 
 in a moment's oblivion over my wine-glass to my 
 parrot's mechanical laughter and noise, and recognised 
 his ironical rattling of the machinery of pleasure not 
 as a death's head at the board, but a mere buffer at 
 a dinner-party. 
 
 It is an evil voice to give ear to, and a distraction 
 particularly to be reprehended in buffers who should 
 contribute their threepenny bit to the entertainment 
 in all cheerfulness and reflect that they are not invited 
 for the sake of their beaux yeux, and that if they 
 bring no power of entertainment and have no title 
 to be entertained, the least they can do is to laugh 
 as loudly as possible and smilingly admire the white 
 shoulders turned from them on either hand. And 
 there are always the salted almonds, of course, and 
 the butler to whisper a kind word in season. No, 
 248
 
 Facetiousness 
 
 I know there is no excuse ; but the parrot-voice 
 breaks in at times. 
 
 His hard eye and his satirical clowning and his 
 absurd gay plumage all so unrelated somehow to the 
 mirth he excites, his impenetrable beaked and clawed 
 personality and upside down views, so near and so 
 familiar, so distant and inexplicable, are recalled by 
 the evoking vibrations of the glittering posturing flock 
 whose mirth seems provoked by laughter, whose words 
 come before the thought, who take and proffer sugar 
 delicately as long as sugar is to be had, and rend the 
 hand when the sugar gives out, of whom we see 
 so much and know so little, and the majority of whose 
 actions are parrot performances founded on report or 
 on glimpses they obtain through doorways they may 
 not enter. And the under sound of the parasite 
 world of service accompanies and sustains the general 
 brou haha of their movements, and the artificial stimulus 
 of unstoppered riches feeds their feeble carnival. 
 
 Is the power of enjoyment a rare gift of the gods ? 
 One would say surely not it goes with normal 
 humanity and is a happy constituent hard to eliminate 
 from the most miserable conditions ; but the palpable 
 falseness of the merry-making mocked not so unjustly 
 by the infernal bird comes, one cannot but see, from 
 the preposterous expectation of mirth from laughter, 
 of high spirits from noise, of light-heartedness from 
 making merry, in a word, from the expectation of 
 gaiety by preparing its manifestation beforehand, from 
 the unthinking imitation of the effect of a spontaneous 
 
 249
 
 Cross Views 
 
 cause. A gathering of friends and congenial spirits 
 round the table of one of them who delights in hospi- 
 tality results in much cheerful laughter and uninter- 
 rupted communion of spirit, and the good things 
 joyfully spread are gratefully enjoyed. The mimic 
 quickly lays his table, exerts himself and works his 
 guests that noise may not lack nor laughter slacken, 
 and when he reckons his empty bottles and recalls 
 with difficulty the names of his guests persuades 
 himself that it all "went off" very well. A very 
 pretty entertainment, he thinks. Pretty Polly ! Such 
 entertainments multiplying to the point of competi- 
 tion, "fixtures," and "future arrangements" impose 
 a further handicap on the spontaneity which is the 
 necessary element of enjoyment, and boredom, that 
 sickly heir of Dives, is born into an exhausted atmos- 
 phere. 
 
 If one were to sketch roughly a progress of mirth 
 it would be a degenerate process that one must follow, 
 for, since our mirth is not the result of taking thought, 
 its best example is the most involuntary. It does not 
 rise from small beginnings to a highly organised cul- 
 mination, but springs full-grown in its best manifesta- 
 tions. It will hardly be denied that the best of all 
 jokes is the family joke, and that laughter in excehis, 
 tear-compelling, side-splitting, beyond all control or 
 respect, is in the sole possession of groups of simple 
 people united by affectionate and early ties. The 
 cause is nothing, the occasion is everything. They 
 are in the mood and the company is the most con- 
 250
 
 Facetiousness 
 
 genial that exists, and laughter comes as naturally 
 as the sparks fly upwards. The company being the 
 same but the mood lagging some coaxing is required, 
 and the family droll the funniest of all drolls comes 
 into play, and again from almost imperceptible cause 
 laughter is easily born. When the company is less 
 congenial, when we break and enlarge the intimate 
 circle, a more sophisticated effort is required, and when 
 enlarged to a public audience, and much of it in a 
 mood that must be exorcised, there must be careful 
 provision of wit and insidious attention to subsidiary 
 appetites. That is, the creation of mirth by taking 
 thought precludes the enjoyment of the workers, for 
 they must work very hard indeed. The public pays 
 its jesters well but uses them up at a great rate. 
 
 Pleasure achieved this way again has its imitators, 
 and having now assumed concrete and verbal form, 
 the jeu d'esprit, the catchword, and the nightly 
 repeated and formalised drollery lend themselves very 
 freely to the debased mimicry of sincere but inefficient 
 flatterers who retail broadcast, ostensibly for the benefit 
 of others but really to re-excite their own pleasurable 
 memories and to taste something of the glory of their 
 original, the more or less artistically prepared humour 
 served up in the appointed places at so much a head. 
 Thus society is served by innumerable amateur pro- 
 viders, and the process being repeated ad infimtum by 
 imitators of the imitation, the fount of mirth, canalised 
 in some places by the municipality, runs thinner and 
 less sparkling until a fatal facetiousness runs from 
 
 251
 
 Cross Views 
 
 every household tap. Facetiousness is the form of the 
 joke without its essence. Even wit, the more subli- 
 mated form of the ridiculous, has its dependence on 
 occasion if not entirely on the occasion which gave it 
 birth, and the less the credentials of a joke the more 
 it will depend on the humour of the moment being in 
 accord ; but facetiousness discarding the assistance of 
 wit on the one hand, and unmindful of occasion on 
 the other, blunders on its untestimonialed merits into 
 any company at any moment. 
 
 Wherever a few are gathered together one will be 
 facetious. However withdrawn from joviality the 
 conversation may happen to be, he will not be able to 
 resist the chance of provoking the first smile, and that 
 partly from the fear that he may lose that petty priority, 
 that one of his companions may yield to the facetious 
 spirit before him. A very small joke lights up best 
 against a sombre background. The more serious the 
 occasion the greater the temptation to the sinner, and 
 it speaks well for clergymen whom we do not account 
 strong men and poorly for judges of whom we go in 
 awe, that the one class never and the other class so 
 often takes the opportunity offered by a solemn and 
 defenceless audience. That a clergyman can be wholly 
 serious in the pulpit, but that a judge cannot be so on 
 the bench is a remarkable tribute to the Law that is 
 the less observed. 
 
 One used to know the bicycle face, since overlaid 
 by the motor face, but there is a wrinkle against the 
 mouths of most of us caused by the tributary twitch 
 252
 
 Facetiousness 
 
 we render to the peddlar of facetize. It has developed 
 a small muscle in our cheeks whose movement is not 
 reflected round the eye, but by the pricking of it we 
 know that something funny this way comes, and when 
 the muscle twitches we recognise the most familiar of 
 all the nervous masks, the face suffering from facetious- 
 ness. Those who resist it are few, for few care to 
 suffer the reproach of sulkiness or the implication of 
 superiority to mild amusement, so that the untimely 
 incursion, itself denoting the weakly incontinence of 
 the joker, seldom fails to draw the answering lip 
 service, the tributary contortion of the unresisting 
 public. Serious intercourse, unless immediately oc- 
 casioned by material and personal anxiety, about money, 
 perhaps, or Christianity, is at the mercy of the weaker 
 brethren, and the puritans of discussion are routed by 
 these 'Arries of debate. 
 
 How widely removed this impertinence of the 
 facetious from the cheerfulness that was always 
 breaking in on Dr. Johnson's early friend ! He had 
 a false notion of philosophy, no doubt, and held the 
 illusion repudiated with such sweet indignation in the 
 Mask of Comus, but we are very certain that he would 
 never have broken in on his awful schoolmate with 
 insubordinate and unwelcome levity. Indeed the only 
 irrelevance in Mr. Edwards's converse on his memor- 
 able day was his reference to a topic which his 
 Venerable Friend found altogether too serious for his 
 liking. The great man had acquaintance enough with 
 melancholy to welcome mirth when it came his way, 
 
 253
 
 Cross Views 
 
 but facetiousness would have had short shrift from his 
 bludgeon. 
 
 We like to seek refuge from this rackety and 
 nervous age and from the monkey-like activities of its 
 press which handles all things and proves nothing, in 
 an eighteenth-century literature which employed pen 
 and ink to soberer purpose, and whose printed word 
 even was scarcely for the multitude. In spite of the 
 wars which kept up the common sequence of history 
 and supply the historian with his old-established 
 material, the records of the century have an unmistak- 
 ably literary flavour, and we agreeably conclude that 
 the leisured class who were not too nearly affected 
 by the uninterrupted drums and tramplings of man- 
 kind's progress entered the salon when of the elect 
 and humbly admired from without when unadmitted. 
 That the conversation of the Johnsonian circle, for 
 instance, was not confined to the Club, but that 
 wherever its intimates appeared there was an easy and 
 instant nucleus for intellectual life and brilliant con- 
 verse. The mere rich man does not figure, but peers 
 are eager for recognition, and Covent Garden porters 
 give the wall to the Sage. Grub Street is a disquiet- 
 ing feature in the golden scene, but the man of books 
 who looks on the world of print in the twentieth 
 century with something of the same dismay as the 
 student in the laboratory sees his hard-won discoveries 
 snatched, dismembered, and converted into coin 
 through the Patent Office and factory, flatters himself 
 with the dream of an age when learning and polite 
 254
 
 Facetiousness 
 
 conversation were passports to the tables of the 
 great. There is an illusion, if illusion it be, that 
 seems scarcely evitable by the literary man, and it 
 may be well illustrated even from such a worldling 
 as Thackeray, and that is that the Fokers, Rawdon 
 Crawleys, Frank Esmonds, and Harry Warringtons 
 of this world, whose little difficulties with their 
 mother tongue are rallied by their creator, will show 
 on occasion, when stirred to their uncultured depths 
 by differing events, a hidden admiration and longing 
 for "education and all that," and abase themselves in 
 the last eventuality before the Henry Esmonds, Pen- 
 dennises, and George Warringtons. With Dickens, 
 on the contrary, the man of attainments is invariably 
 ridiculous, and character, worthy or worthless, goes 
 all the way. Mr. Chesterton, in one of those lightning 
 flashes of insight his genius is so prodigal of, has 
 pointed out that Dickens's gentleman, a portrait so 
 sneered at by its original, may be a very good likeness 
 in the eyes of the people, and it is unfortunately 
 probable that this popular view of the learned, 
 scientific, and artistic few is better seen through 
 Dickens's eyes than through the too flattering 
 spectacles of Thackeray, where the distortion is the 
 more dangerous because it is the less expected. The 
 humble and naif admiration, the wistful and awestruck 
 affection of the unlettered, is not a tribute gathered 
 freely by literary men I imagine, even by the most 
 eminent, and if Grub Street came by anything of its 
 own in Dr. Johnson's day it must have been by 
 
 255
 
 Cross Views 
 
 force of his character, which lent dignity to his 
 attainments and the possibility of dignity to letters in 
 general. Facetiousness had long ago broken in on 
 letters, and expressed itself in print. There were 
 long ages when the world's mind, if there was such a 
 thing, did not express itself at all ; then, following 
 the course of the sporadic and spontaneous generation 
 of life itself, isolated philosophers and poets sprang 
 into being on the planet, who, coming fresh to the 
 vast and unworked field of humanity, mopped up half 
 the realisable wealth of philosophy and poetry and 
 said all their descendants' good things before them, 
 and the flame they lighted was kept alive through 
 dark and stormy centuries in guarded circles, courts, 
 and convents until the invention of printing. Then, 
 quickly, the printed joke, the germ of innumerable 
 facetiae, made good its claim to circulation. Jest 
 books and merry tales in all likelihood persuaded the 
 enemies of books and their multiplication, and 
 authorities who could suppress the broadcast sowing 
 of the new learning could not so easily restrain 
 the taste for the Satire Menipp&e or the Facetiee of 
 Poggio. The uses of the funny man are well 
 understood by the modern press wherein he has his 
 column, and our ancestors had a remarkable fore- 
 sight of it, and Everyman his own Jester perhaps 
 proved a more flattering inducement to the purchaser of 
 books than Everyman his own Bible Commentator. 
 Humour had remarkably crude beginnings, as we all 
 know, and accredited humorists maintained great 
 256
 
 Facetiousness 
 
 reputations on the dismalest of funniments, but when 
 it spread over a larger field its evolution into better 
 forms was assured ; but there is the reverse of the 
 principle to be borne in mind, for the higher the type 
 evolved the greater the number of side-tracked and 
 imperfect forms, and the course of the great wit is 
 traced through a wilderness of less and less amusing 
 ancestors. There are few so poor nowadays but that 
 they claim a sense of humour, and if the sense so long 
 denied to women by harsher generations than ours, 
 which felt I suppose that there must be a limit to the 
 thing, be claimed by women along with the greater 
 half of the universe, evolution from so wide a field 
 should result in something vaster even than the great 
 American Joke which at present holds pride of place. 
 The proclamation of the possession of a sense of 
 humour may be looked upon as the hall-mark of the 
 Great Facetious, as the invariable characteristic of the 
 lower form ; in their audience the state of laughter 
 precedes and awaits the joke, and immediately below 
 these come the amiable class who can laugh at any- 
 thing save wit, and finally the substratum of agelasts 
 or people who do not laugh at all. The agelast and 
 the man whose laughter is of the mind have a super- 
 ficial resemblance, but this should not deceive the 
 expert, and it is important that it should not, for the 
 two are at opposite ends of the scale. The agelast, 
 though he does not laugh, is never marked with 
 melancholy. He stares and breathes hard, and is 
 favoured with a compensatory callousness to suffering, 
 
 R 257
 
 Cross Views 
 
 whereas laughter of the mind is to be diagnosed as 
 the unseen compensation of the man of sorrows. 
 The phrase recalls its great prototype, and there are 
 those who have found, in all reverence, the laughter 
 of the mind in such a saying as " He that is without 
 sin among you, let him cast the first stone." Per- 
 fection must contain all good qualities, and no man is 
 perfect who has not that salt in his composition. 
 
 The comic view of the Poor, which is a staple of 
 the best comic papers, is in the right ancestral line, 
 directly descended from the Olympian laughter raised 
 by Vulcan's lame leg, but a jest kept nowadays within 
 the bounds of print ; and the low comedian's expres- 
 sion of sexual admiration has possibly forbears as 
 ancient and as disreputable but it has spawned 
 swarms of degraded verbal facetiae mimicked ad 
 nauseam by lower forms still, and is responsible for 
 an immense vocabulary of burlesque of an order 
 which makes so ready an appeal to the imitative 
 multitude that the serious or poetic rendering of the 
 emotions has a hard struggle for existence. In no 
 case the product of wit, they afford an easily seen 
 example of the devastation possible to the facetious 
 spirit. Consider a few common phrases and catch- 
 words in use on our streets, and then what they 
 stand for as expressed in other tongues : 
 
 Inamorata = spoons, spoonies. 
 
 Une tendresse = a sneaking liking. 
 
 Pays du tendre = Fool's Paradise. 
 
 L'heure du berger = in the twi-twi-light. 
 258
 
 Facetiousness 
 
 Un sentimental = a softy, adj. barmy. 
 
 Une grande passion = " gone on " such an 
 
 one. 
 
 Les mignardises d'amour = (v. Music Halls.) 
 Les amants = the lovers or the guilty 
 
 couple. 
 
 L'abandon = (n'a pas de correspond- 
 
 ence.) 
 Dansons la ronde, &c. = waltz me round again, 
 
 Willy. 
 Les hasards de 1'escar- = swing me just a little 
 
 polette bit higher. 
 
 L'embarquement pour = off to the City. 
 
 Cythere 
 Fiance = fiasco. 
 
 The spread of these debased equivalents is an un- 
 happy thing in more ways than one. They overlie 
 the native originals when they exist, and their odious 
 association is often difficult to shake off; but were 
 their only vice to degrade serious conversation and 
 trip it into the gutter now and again we could 
 pardon them perhaps, for high seriousness has few 
 enthusiastic friends ; but they perform a worse office 
 than this, and it is that they stifle native humour and 
 mother wit, for the season's catchwords and circulated 
 funniments of the sporting and comic papers kill 
 the home-made product even as tinned goods and 
 baker's bread are putting an end to the art of house- 
 hold cookery, since it is easier to apply a catch 
 sufficiently meaningless to be adapted to a thousand 
 situations, and echoed and re-echoed until recognised 
 
 259
 
 Cross Views 
 
 as a joke of authentic origin and good standing, than 
 to make headway with any original ebullition of 
 wit. The tendency always existed, and was the same 
 when anecdotes were fastened on Sydney Smith or 
 ascribed to Joe Miller. I am afraid that the tendency 
 is very English, and believe that Puddin'-head Wilson 
 was something of a libel on his countrymen, who 
 have a remarkable faculty of originating and express- 
 ing humorous aspects, and, what is more, of recog- 
 nising them. It takes two at least to launch a joke, 
 and the reliance upon baker's bread has created so 
 strong a demand for it that the home-baked loaf is 
 no longer called for, and home-brewed small beer 
 may be consumed by the brewer. There are, it is 
 true, one-sided jokes which are recognised without 
 being enjoyed, the jokes, for instance, of our school- 
 masters, doctors, and lawyers. Nature herself is full 
 of such jests, from minor facetiae, such as the greening 
 of new flannels when one reclines on her verdant 
 bosom, to her clumsy exaggerations of snowballing 
 in the avalanche, or of ducking in her tidal waves. 
 But genuine and gentle wits who may haply win 
 their way to recognition and general gratitude through 
 the outlets of print or playhouse have had, we may 
 be sure, their period of loneliness when they con- 
 sumed their home-brewed in not wholly disagreeable 
 bitterness of spirit ; a period when they were ac- 
 counted the silliest members of their circle, Puddin'- 
 heads, in fact, and went down before the multiple 
 repetition of the patented article. Their revenge 
 260
 
 Facetiousness 
 
 came when they took over their patent in turn, and 
 no one will grudge them their royalties which, 
 one hears, are considerable. But the facetious spirit 
 is guilty of greater excesses even than these. It 
 pervades and dominates the daily intercourse of 
 ordinary men and women not only to the exclusion 
 of the genuine salt but also to the paralysing of sim- 
 plicity and sincerity. Wherever a few are gathered 
 together with the attendant spirit in their midst there 
 will be timid souls who wear the unvarying mirthless 
 simper which testifies to his presence, which says, "I 
 know what is expected of me but I really cannot ; 
 here is my tribute of a smile, already spread ; rally 
 anything, rally everything, and me if you must ; I 
 will laugh, but do not expect me to be amused." 
 Useless to approach such a one, useless to endeavour 
 to induce a straightforward straight-faced talk on any 
 subject of human interest. The fascination is exer- 
 cised, the nervous risus is set up, the jest is in the air, 
 and may descend at any moment and possibly from 
 you, and the giggle will and must break out with less 
 ostensible cause than any other spasm of nerves. 
 Reference to anything frivolous of course evokes the 
 laugh, but reference to no matter what of serious 
 kind evokes it even more surely. Touch the Mark 
 Twain button, and though the spring is very worn, 
 you rouse the responsive tremor of laughter ; but 
 touch, say, the Herbert Spencer button, and a peal 
 of cachinnation results. (You must of course keep 
 within well - recognised limits. The name of 
 
 261
 
 Cross Views 
 
 Bergson, e.g. would be an original joke and would 
 fall flat.) The recognisedly weighty is the natural 
 food of the facetious. 
 
 Such gatherings do not afford the honest purge of 
 natural and hearty laughter, one of the finest things 
 extant for the liver and digestion, nor do they afford 
 the simple nutriment to be had from the exchange of 
 simple notions, but send away the participants with 
 nervous headache, and swollen with rank facetious- 
 ness. Everyone must number among his acquaintance 
 dozens of excellent people neither vapid nor ill-in- 
 formed, who are useless for human purposes unless 
 caught alone, and even then he must be singularly 
 free from suspicion of being amusing, and carry a 
 collected countenance, who would loose the nervous 
 contraction and unfold the unaffected self. 
 
 Ridicule kills in France, they say, but that is 
 because the French can see the ridiculous, i.e. they 
 have a just perception of what can or should be killed, 
 and the thing it never kills in France is the one thing 
 it does kill in England conversation. I have heard 
 tell of a certain great man universally known for his 
 piety and charity, and other essentially Christian 
 virtues, who is such a terror by reason of his fun that 
 there are those who rather go without his benefactions 
 than endure his acquaintance. Yet his vice is as 
 common as his virtues are rare. 
 
 Facetiousness is indeed the general bore, but goes 
 exempt from the charge, for bore is a term seldom 
 applied to the facetious man or to the talkative woman. 
 262
 
 Facetiousness 
 
 It is reserved entirely for the talkative man and may 
 it lie heavy on him but there are others. We know 
 the three wayside rarities, not all to be seen by one 
 of us in a lifetime a dead donkey, a woman who 
 stammers, and a poor man who is fat. I am not in 
 search of these, but among the undescribed varieties 
 of the bore is the female of the eponymous animal, 
 and the merry person who can move to tears. Some 
 naturalists have given particulars of specimens come 
 under their observation, but the types are not generally 
 received, and the facetious bore pur sang who has no 
 natural drollery cannot retail the wit of others un- 
 mangled, and proclaims his sense of humour without 
 any sense of pity, is at times pronounced an ass by 
 irritated convives, but is never pronounced " deadly," 
 as is poor old Heavysides whom the least agile can 
 avoid, and that though Funniman slays his thousands 
 where Heavysides slays his tens. The solid bore 
 resembles the old-fashioned round shot ; if it met you 
 it laid you out, but if you were quick-sighted and 
 quick-footed you could dodge it; the facetious more 
 resembles the lyddite shell which overcomes with its 
 emanations over a wide area. It is almost unani- 
 mously agreed that speech is enlivening and that 
 silence is depressing, but the right of protest is inalien- 
 able in the smallest minorities, and I refuse to believe 
 that I am in a minority of one in dissenting from the 
 universal application of the principle. The good- 
 humoured will likely reply, " It would be a nice sort of 
 world if nobody talked ! " Frankly, I think it would, 
 
 263
 
 Cross Views 
 
 but it would be useless to expect sympathy in so 
 extreme a view. But I will maintain that it would 
 be a nicer world, that there would be less suffering and 
 more enlivenment if the spirit of mirth were more 
 chastened and occasional silence less feared. Let us 
 have a little artistry in the affair. Consider your 
 background, my dear Jesters ! What and when have 
 been your most undisputed successes? Were they 
 not at breakfast, the veil of night withdrawn ; after 
 the sermon of Sundays, coming back from the funeral, 
 or whispered on solemn occasions when silence had 
 been requested ? Introduce a little, ever so little, of 
 the element of the unexpected. Consider your light 
 and shade, appetite and satiety, beans and bacon, or 
 any other natural apportionment of things. A faceti- 
 ous mind is a continual jest, but not to others. You 
 will not allow the contented mind to enjoy its per- 
 petual pasture, but why should your variety impose 
 itself so tyrannically ? 
 
 The world is rightly kind to its jesters. We are 
 kinder to all our kin nowadays, to all our erring 
 brethren. We look at the intention, consider the 
 limitations, praise the merits, and slur the defects of 
 a performance, and concur generally in the maxim 
 that all criticism should be praise. He would be a 
 bold man who advocated greater severity, and had 
 best buckle his bosom with anonymity. The poor 
 jester used to receive sharp reminders of his failure to 
 amuse, but that was no more than to say that his 
 employer was in a bad mood and confused the office 
 264
 
 Facetioumess 
 
 with that of the whipping boy. If it was the jester 
 who confused his own office with that of Dr. Clyster- 
 pipe if he was inopportune he deserved what he 
 got, for the successful jester, the Yorick regretted, 
 whose bare bones could move a kindly memory in the 
 melancholy prince, jested but in season have no doubt. 
 But it is not with the Yoricks nor with the men of 
 infinite variety, their true descendants, with whom 
 anyone quarrels. It is the facetious I am treating 
 seriously, as it has dealt facetiously with the serious of 
 whom I am one. Escape from it is to be obtained 
 at the top of the ladder, whence the Great step into 
 a great Reserve where no sport is allowed ; but all 
 the way up the ladder the man on the rung below 
 is pulling the leg immediately above. One dreams 
 sometimes of a Great Good Place, not quite so like a 
 nursing home as Mr. James's, nor yet that Royal 
 Enclosure I have just spoken of, for we must not 
 forget the moral of the epitaph on Mary Anne : 
 
 " . . . all very well for Mary Anne, 
 But very hard lines on Abraham." 
 
 No. But of a fair clean sunny and spacious republic 
 where men and women might walk at ease and say 
 the thing that was in them to say, and do the thing 
 that they could : utter their simple thoughts, impart 
 their dreams, their nai've longings, their still fresh 
 trails of childhood; act and go as Nature prompts, 
 yield to their emotions, laugh at the laughable, weep 
 at the pitiable, be enthusiastic when stirred by a live 
 
 265
 
 Cross Views 
 
 idea, wear clothes that suit them, and live in the style 
 they would choose. Where they might breathe an 
 air and eat the food that ensured their health : be 
 independent, sturdy, and sincere, nor mind if they 
 were quaint, odd, ridiculous, or old-fashioned ; where 
 no one should bring such reproach without being 
 accounted a terrified snob and a worshipper of base 
 conventions more ridiculous than the thing he tries 
 to ridicule. Where conversation, the community of 
 souls, the possibility of knowing one's neighbour as 
 oneself, and the ultimate possibility of loving him 
 should not suffer from the fatiguing necessity of 
 keeping up so debased a laughing philosophy as the 
 cult of the facetious. 
 
 266
 
 XIV 
 THE MAN OF THE WORLD 
 
 I SUSPECT that the average notion of that admired 
 rarity but assumed ordinary, the man of the world, 
 if the average of mankind expressed itself in epigram 
 or helpful definition, would be of one who was in- 
 capable of being shocked ; and it is even usual to find 
 among those of less than average experience that the 
 term conveys the notion of one to whom no naughti- 
 ness is unknown. To link knowledge of the world 
 with knowledge of evil is inevitable, but the notion 
 in its more concrete form that the cynic who sees no 
 good in mankind is a riper and more instructed person 
 than that contrary simpleton who is innocent of all 
 evil is, I think, a strange error, and bears witness to 
 the innate humility of that abused and much put-upon 
 creature man. But the tree of the knowledge of good 
 and evil is too big for my garden, and I must beware 
 of its ramifications. Our average person's first de- 
 finition requires clarification, for to be shocked by 
 a fact is a different matter from being shocked by its 
 circumstances. The being inured to the sights of a 
 battlefield, for instance, will not necessarily harden 
 the sensibilities to the sight of a ghastly accident by 
 
 267
 
 Cross Views 
 
 the roadside at home, and a Western miner from the 
 pages of Bret Harte might be shocked, and is indeed 
 so represented, by the mildest expletive in the mouth 
 of a child ; and there is no commoner remark than 
 that the man who has raked European capitals till his 
 senses are jaded will expect the strictest propriety 
 from the women of his family. The incapacity to 
 be shocked applies, then, to the shock of facts, but 
 fresh circumstances or setting will always lend to facts 
 fresh power to shock. But though fresh circumstances 
 must always, one may think, arouse sensibility, the 
 heart, that is, retain its goodness, the mind should 
 grow sophisticated and, arrived at manhood, shirk 
 no facts, and so far the definition may hold good. 
 For it is a discouraging outlook when half a dozen 
 men in middle life, even when we grant their equal 
 standing, and, roughly, equal education, must keep 
 when in company on what is called common ground. 
 The expression evokes a vision of neighbouring land- 
 owners who will only associate on an arid and much 
 trampled tract open to the public, keeping each his 
 own property inviolate. The believer and the un- 
 believer, the individualist and the socialist, the puritan 
 and the pagan, the disciplinarian and the anarchist, 
 gathered round a dinner-table can only discuss the 
 weather, or the prowess of county cricketers, because 
 each one is so tender of his beliefs that he will allow 
 no other man to touch them with careless hand. 
 
 " My beliefs are sacred to me," he says, and reckons 
 any other a blasphemer. What is blasphemy ? Irre- 
 268
 
 The Man of the World 
 
 verent treatment of sacred things. What is a sacred 
 thing ? My doxy. The nonconformist conscience 
 is proverbial, but is it tender to the English Church 
 hierarchy ? Or the Protestant to Catholic beliefs ? 
 Or the Catholic to the gods of the pagan ? Each 
 blasphemes in his turn. Within your private domain 
 of creed or conviction do you as you please, but don't 
 come on the common in your state of nature. Con- 
 sider, at least, the children playing there. 
 
 Plainly, this is not the attitude of a man of the 
 world. We all like to draw a line for ourselves over 
 which we resist being seduced, but up to which we 
 expect our friends to close unless they would incur 
 our good-humoured ridicule, and this line we draw 
 just beyond the verge of our experience. The first 
 example the many have of it is in the development of 
 the religious idea, wherein as we grow older we shed 
 more and more of our early mythology, and are 
 always ready to be shocked anew, and to shed more. 
 And the man of the world, and that without pursuing 
 naughtiness as an end, has rubbed out his last chalk- 
 line of demarcation. But if he stop here, where is 
 his equipment for life ? We look for a full man, but 
 this man is merely emptied. He has learned to face 
 existing facts without tremor or revulsion, he no longer 
 sees things as they are not, but he does not yet see 
 things as they are. He has only made his clearing. 
 
 We must find a better definition of the man of the 
 world if we are to admire him for anything more 
 than the hollow perfected ephemerid which lives its 
 
 269
 
 Cross Views 
 
 term, one full summer day, without any bowels. I 
 should incline to define him as a man capable of 
 understanding and dealing with all sorts and condi- 
 tions of men. One whose urbanity is more than 
 urban, not of a ward but of a world. He may be a 
 class man but not a caste man. The distinction is 
 faulty, but what I would postulate is that he may 
 belong to a class whose work lies among all classes, 
 but not to a class whose work lies within its own 
 lines, which is what I here intend by caste. He 
 may, then, be a priest, a lawyer, or a doctor ; he may 
 not be a soldier, a sailor, or a shopkeeper. The 
 soldier, for instance, does not sympathise with other 
 than soldiers, and is strangely out of touch even with 
 the sister service, and holds himself distinct from 
 what he calls the civilian, that is, the parent mass 
 from which he and his one per cent, are parcelled off. 
 The shopkeeper, may, without intentional use of 
 slang, be every man whose business holds him by the 
 leg and is conducted in terms of money. Such com- 
 munities tend to herd, and identity of work brings 
 the spirit of caste, and breaks the social body into 
 groups which it is the function of the man of the 
 world to interpret one to another. The more re- 
 presentative of his class a man may be the less insight 
 he will have into others, and the world we speak of 
 not being the geographical world, and still less the 
 "half-world," sojourn in capitals or foreign travel 
 will not make the universal citizen ; but in those 
 classes where work does not encourage the caste 
 270
 
 The Man of the World 
 
 spirit, whose activities on the contrary lie among all 
 sorts and conditions of men as in the instances I have 
 proposed, there is much greater variety of type. The 
 soldier and the sailor we can all place ; their conduct, 
 view, or parti-pris can be safely predicted nine times 
 out of ten, but these other men tell us nothing of 
 their philosophy of life, political or social principles, 
 by the suffix to their names. A question agitates the 
 senior service, and you have but to sound your family 
 member to hear the tone of the fleet, and if your 
 senior subaltern were not exactly representative of 
 all subalterns he would never have got so far as that 
 seniority, and you may accept his views on subaltern- 
 ship as authoritative ; but you could not obtain from 
 a priest, even a priest under the discipline perinde ae 
 cadaver, so trustworthy a response to a question on 
 the attitude of the priesthood to, let us say, the 
 Modernist movement, or from a politician, even, on 
 an agitated measure. The class man is in a sense 
 an expert, and must necessarily lay stress on the 
 importance of his field in the common land. He will 
 commonly cry for government by experts, would have 
 a soldier for War Minister, and presumably a banker 
 at the Exchequer, and a farmer at the Board of Agri- 
 culture, not perceiving that a Cabinet of experts 
 would get on no better than the workers on the 
 Tower of Babel. They would not speak a common 
 tongue. Caste men, as I have called them, must be 
 excluded from governing bodies which look after the 
 interests of a vast congeries of activities. That they 
 
 271
 
 Cross 
 
 come to the matter inexpert is a less danger than that 
 they come prepossessed. Railways are not governed 
 by engineers, nor shipping companies by sailors, and 
 one may usefully remind them that by the Constitu- 
 tion of the Bank of England, that unsupported pillar 
 of our national credit, no banker may sit on its board. 
 When power was taken out of the hands of one and 
 given into the hands of an oligarchy, it became 
 essential that their various persons should possess as 
 nearly as possible one mind, and a new class was 
 evolved the political with a language and a train- 
 ing of its own, but a ministry to all the State. The 
 essential is that the directorate or committee or 
 cabinet should be able to deal with the matters that 
 come before it as counters in a game they all under- 
 stand. They must be brought up to the game, or 
 they would possibly snatch the counters. 
 
 We have crossed the limits of Society into the wastes 
 of society at large, and within the narrower circle the 
 expression " man of the world " has a correspondingly 
 narrow interpretation, signifying a veteran of that 
 smaller, brighter, more pleasantly experienced, and 
 more self-repressive world which ignores the crude 
 mass from which it is distilled. The knowledge of 
 the process of distillation is not to be sought in the 
 product, but the knowledge, important to the man of 
 the world in the wider sense for whom the etiquette 
 of Society is but a page in the study of sociology, cannot 
 be entirely neglected by the man who is rising but 
 not risen, who is fighting for foothold ; who has to 
 272
 
 The Man of the World 
 
 become, before he can enjoy the insouciant bliss of 
 being, not an interpreter of class to class, but a 
 practised linguist in the shibboleths of one. This is 
 the safe man to follow, for he cannot afford to go 
 wrong. He will not commit the error of drawing his 
 knowledge from books, in this case books of etiquette, 
 nor attach himself blindly to leaders, who in this case 
 again may be eccentric noblemen, most unsafe guides 
 for the social neophyte. He recognises the real right 
 thing the more easily from his great knowledge of the 
 wrong, and sees the line of demarcation with a sharp- 
 ness of perception that will fade in a generation or 
 two. It is he who keeps up the standard and thereby 
 makes it possible for the older-established to lower it, 
 and his strict attention to details of clothing and his 
 stern differentiation of serviette from napkin is the 
 duke's licence for his scare-crow hat and his abuse ot 
 the over-christened piece of table linen as a handker- 
 chief maybe. Some one must support the code, and 
 though a gentleman may do anything, as the older 
 inhabitants of the charmed circle will inform him, 
 his knowledge of that world assures him that there is 
 a process of deterioration as well as of improvement, 
 and that bad wine must bear a good mark. And new 
 wine is not given much time to mature nowadays, the 
 competition of vulgar beer is so great, but it must pay 
 great attention to its label. 
 
 To turn again from the denizen of a specialised 
 world to the citizen of a wider universe, we find this 
 latter, taken as one who has seen many men and many 
 
 273
 
 Cross Views 
 
 lands and is at home wherever he may be, fairly 
 common amongst us, for the Englishman is a traveller. 
 The exploring Frenchman who pushed his way as far 
 as this country made the discovery that the Englishman 
 who so boasted his home was never in it; and indeed 
 the slightness of the family tie is one of our insular 
 idiosyncrasies. We make a shrine of the home, put 
 our affection and pious aspirations in safe keeping, and 
 then wander far afield drawn by our restless bodily 
 energies. The Frenchman does the precise contrary 
 his body is fixed immovably by his foyer, but his 
 impavid mind explores the universe of thought, and 
 his fearless speculation in ethics, his adventures over 
 the ranges of philosophy, in the jungle of sociology, 
 in tropical ardours of discussion and stormy seas of 
 politics, his intrepidity and experience make him, who 
 has never moved further in the flesh than his caf< at 
 the corner of the street, a sophisticated, easy-mannered, 
 tolerant, cynical creature who knows his fellow-man 
 from within and is not to be surprised by anything 
 that emanates from him. The hard-mannered soft- 
 hearted Englishman has no such knowledge of men's 
 souls, but has made their actions his study and their 
 control his business. The Frenchman understands 
 the motive, the Englishman deals with the outcome. 
 The one discourses on the psychology of the crowd, 
 the other keeps it on the move and averts the riot. 
 So even the man of the world may find fresh worlds 
 to explore. 
 
 To what extent knowledge of the world may in- 
 274
 
 The Man of the World 
 
 elude or exclude the world of books is a nice question. 
 It is not to be learned from books, but can it be 
 learned without them ? May a dweller in Vanity Fair 
 be excused from acquaintance with such names of 
 repute as Mrs. Crawley, or Major Pendennis, as he 
 might fairly be excused from knowing the names of 
 their flesh and blood contemporaries ? It is difficult 
 for those whose youth acknowledged the dominion of 
 the Major and Becky to admit their passing into 
 oblivion, but I feel that to-day's hostess who asks, 
 " Major Pendennis do I know him ? " cannot herself 
 be relegated to the unknown. I feel, on the contrary, 
 that I have made something like a gaffe in mentioning 
 his name, and that his lingering and lessening acquaint- 
 ances must belong to ancient history. I have met 
 this rebuff at the hands of a woman of the world, 
 but very likely my hostess knew some of the Elizabeths, 
 received their visits and sat in their gardens, and if 
 she had met Mr. Kipps, the Forsytes, Mr. Straker, 
 or Ann Veronica, as she may have done for all I 
 know, for I was too confused to inquire, she had 
 penetrated to strata of society never dreamed of by 
 the satellites of Gaunt House. 
 
 A lady disappointed of the visit of the Comedie 
 Frangaise with Chantecler, and recommended to read 
 it instead, " didn't know that there was a book about 
 it." A contrary defence might possibly be a lack 
 of interest in the basse cour, or did she not know 
 that there was "a book about" Faust, and an old 
 original to the Oberammergau tragedy ? When one 
 
 275
 
 Cross Views 
 
 takes the world for one's province there is a good deal 
 to be learnt, and move about as one may and talk as 
 much as one will, we are all dependent on print, though 
 we cut it down to as much as may be purchased for 
 a halfpenny ; and the humblest necessary journalist, 
 regarded in the study as a very cockroach and in the 
 drawing-room as a part of the type-setting machinery, 
 is yet visibly linked to all the written word, and so, 
 inevitably, and all the time, though in a far-off and 
 ill-discerning way, introduces a tincture of the world 
 of letters. Whether he celebrates marriages in 
 Knightsbridge, or sport at Lilliebridge, Peckham 
 politics, or police court dramas, the something in his 
 blood that drove him to the scribbling life and made 
 him write reports for specials instead of selling them 
 in the Strand, will betray him into false values, into 
 celebrating in his Fleet Street way the dim glories of 
 literature, and into surprising his patrons by mention, 
 perhaps, of an Authors' Club dinner on the same paper 
 with his account of Mrs. Jacky de Lyon's ball, into 
 giving the details of a poet's breakfast in the same 
 column with the diet of a Jessop, into putting purple 
 patches on the cricket-field or quoting verse " anent " 
 aviation. It is, too, this stream from his hurrying 
 fountain-pen that keeps the fount from stagnation and 
 drought, from sinking unmarked into dry sands of 
 physical activities. It is he who irrigates that wilder- 
 ness, and wherever the halfpenny print wraps a Bank 
 Holiday lunch, screws the locks of a coster girl, or 
 brings the morning butter to Mayfair basements, there 
 276
 
 The Man of the World 
 
 will be a drop of living water to animate the possible 
 seed. In the spring he never fails with his " summer 
 is icumen in," and he has reason, for even as the 
 wearied mummer is spurred by a fresh audience 
 through his five-hundredth performance, so, spring by 
 spring, fresh thousands become dependent on the 
 journalist and his daily tale, and some, however 
 hastily and in error, may be led to take ?.n interest in 
 the neglected ichneumon. And so the journalist 
 fulfils himself in divers ways, and as the greatest of 
 go-betweens, makes good his claim to be a man of the 
 world. 
 
 The man of the world must not take things too 
 hard. The Swiftian mood is, on the whole, inimical 
 to man-of-the-worldliness, for it is a mood that must 
 be severely mastered j and whereas it is a mood that 
 masters most of us at times, it takes a Swift to master 
 it. It takes a Swift to see men as he saw them and 
 yet go about the business of a man with them. 
 
 He makes a mistake if he neglects to have a re- 
 ligion. He should at least have had one, but he 
 should not take it from the advertisement columns. 
 He may have been divot he must not have been a 
 freak it marks. He may not joy in his lower nature 
 as Rabelais joyed in it, a vision of old Demogorgon 
 wallowing in the fat of the earth, the slime, and good 
 sunshine ; nor rebuke it as the right Christian, a vile 
 tetter that barks about all our fair bodies ; but take 
 his pleasure by candlelight, and thaw his virtue in the 
 sun. He must not depend entirely upon his animal 
 
 277
 
 Cross Views 
 
 spirits to see him through, for the cheery, acceptable 
 subaltern, for instance, grows into the morose and 
 vacant Retired. He must be ready-minded, for second 
 thoughts are no good on 'Change. In the matter 
 of book knowledge, if he be unread in history and 
 natural history, simple faith in the Peerage is better 
 than Norman blood. Indeed he had better take most 
 books for granted, except directories. Overmuch 
 attention to them will put him in danger of becoming 
 a specialist, the antithesis of his ambition. He may 
 admire the view from the windows of science, and 
 may glance with the aid of someone else's lantern 
 into the richly stored cupboards of the classics, but he 
 must be mindful of his advantage over such people 
 as authors and painters, &c., who have lost the use of 
 pictures and books, seeing in them only opaque sur- 
 faces illustrating certain processes of work, instead of 
 openings on to other worlds, and, while making in- 
 telligent and profitable use of applied science, avoid the 
 stuffy atmosphere of laboratories. Political economy 
 may be picked up from the press, a reflection such as 
 " the recent snowfall has been a godsend, giving work 
 to the unemployed " may be usefully stored in the 
 memory, and a prayer such as " God send our fleet 
 good luck " put up by another paper afford the educ- 
 able spirit the right blend of religion and paganism. 
 
 He must not pride himself on felicitous accidents in 
 his career, for of such is the amateur the professional 
 is the man who can do it again. He must know 
 himself and thus be beyond the reach of flattery.
 
 The Man of the World 
 
 The man who meets praise with the smile of modesty 
 is vulnerable. When he can meet it with the grin of 
 cynicism he may try it on somebody else, for he is 
 master of his weapon. And beyond all things let him 
 be adaptable, for Metchnikoff tells us that the instinct 
 of life is still strong when most of us come to die 
 because our physiological development is unfinished 
 owing to our disharmonies or imperfect adaptation. 
 The smooth hard pebble is the lasting entity. 
 
 279
 
 XV 
 A FRIEND TO STAY 
 
 ARMISTEAD has been staying with me. 
 
 He is a man of tirades and silences, but chiefly 
 of silences, as indeed one could wish. I think he 
 affects a philosophy he is far from feeling. He 
 knows his own tendency to see red, and avoids the 
 colour so he is hard to engage. 
 
 He would have things otherwise many things, 
 I suspect but cultivates an aloofness that has the 
 look of lack of interest, but is really a love of peace. 
 He has nerves, for he is an artist, and he dreads, I 
 think, the nerve storm set up in him by indignation 
 or enthusiasm. " What does it matter ? " he says, 
 meaning that it matters altogether too much. Indeed, 
 he can scarcely speak collectedly except on indifferent 
 topics, and when he is with me our evenings are 
 commonly spent in a still eighteenth-century atmo- 
 sphere of prints and memoirs ; for history in the 
 making and modern schools excite him to stuttering 
 declamation, gesture, and final inarticulateness. But 
 when he has left me I can generally count upon a 
 letter setting forth his apologia and plainly offering 
 amends for some angry dismissal of a burning subject. 
 I think I have learned more of Armistead through 
 280
 
 A Friend to Stay 
 
 his letters than from personal intercourse with him, 
 though I believe I am almost the only friend he has ; 
 for he is menschenscheu though not misanthropical, 
 unless I am mistaken. He was bred a Catholic, and 
 an attempt to draw his experiences from him on a 
 day when I knew him less well, led to no result at 
 the moment ; but brought me later a letter I found 
 not uninteresting. He writes rather a loaded style, 
 congested probably from lack of frequent expression : 
 very different from his painting, which is thin, but 
 extraordinarily suggestive. 
 
 " When I was a child (he wrote) I was a Catholic, 
 and the services and feasts of the Church were the 
 pasture of my young imagination. In my home other 
 bright things offered by accident of fortune, and the 
 surrounding Protestant world sensibly and insensibly 
 modified my Catholicism, but once entered in a 
 clerical school, where the community was strong in 
 numbers and existent as a religious community apart 
 from its scholastic faculty, and where the school itself 
 was therefore a secondary establishment and compara- 
 tively small, the religious domination was absolute ; 
 and uneventful weeks of class-room and playground, 
 refectory and dormitory, patrolled by black-robed, 
 white-faced priests, breviary in hand, were but the 
 fallow seasons preparatory to the great celebrations of 
 religion, when the little school appeared as a train of 
 young acolytes serving on the steps of the altar, or 
 pacing and singing in long procession through the 
 cloisters in the van of the Blessed Sacrament. These 
 
 281
 
 Cross Views 
 
 ceremonial occasions were the inspiration and excite- 
 ment of our school life, and every day of term had, 
 intermingled with its horarium of lessons, its training 
 for choir and sanctuary service. Each day opened with 
 Mass in the great cold nave of the monastery church, 
 where, on the high altar, the candles shone in the 
 slowly dissipating dark, and the priest's vestments 
 rustled and glimmered as he turned from Gradual to 
 Gospel ; and his low and sighing recital had response 
 in the child voice of one of our number. All round 
 us in the half-hidden side-chapels we heard the same 
 familiar sacred murmur, and the tinkle of the eleva- 
 tion-bell as each unseen celebrant reached in turn 
 the moment of the morning sacrifice ; and first one 
 and then another of the day's levy of small surpliced 
 acolytes, mass-book on breast, preceded his ghostly 
 father through the aisles to or from his appointed 
 side-altar. Each day closed again before the taber- 
 nacle, and our receding footsteps echoed bedwards 
 through the vaulted cloisters of the monastery. On 
 Rogation days, when we walked in procession through 
 the girdling woods, singing the long litany of the 
 Saints, when the early summer morning was fresh 
 and soft, and the young green was springing thick on 
 thorn and hazel, it was pure joy to shout the sonorous 
 Latin supplications in full-throated chorus through the 
 springing plantations. Te rogamus audi nos we shouted 
 lustily, and kept a sharp look-out for birds' nests, out 
 of bounds. Magic ground ! Whose magic has fled 
 with the lifted prohibition. 
 282
 
 A Friend to Stay 
 
 "Then the fearful joys of Tenebrae : the wailing 
 recital of the Passion in the darkened church, and the 
 candles going out one by one as the moments of the 
 Agony crept by, until the Dark Hour was reached 
 and the last light extinguished, and a terrible rumbling 
 proclaimed the convulsion of Nature and the Death 
 of the Son of God a rumbling which depended 
 largely for its effect on the lower boys, who never 
 failed, but clapped the benches with their missals, and 
 rocked their seats in pious and strenuous unison, after- 
 wards disputing with Christian warmth the honour 
 of the chiefest contribution. 
 
 " But just consider the joy of that moment of misrule 
 that annual permission to make a noise in church ! 
 
 " A Protestant ! A tailor's nit ! 
 
 " But one memory still smiles, whose smile is single 
 and of beauty. One feast outshone them all, the 
 June day feast of Corpus Christi. Almost from dawn 
 we children were busy in the cloisters on a labour 
 of love. Hampers from home filled with flowers in 
 immense and glorious profusion (received with no in- 
 gratitude, believe me !) stood against the walls, and 
 every tesselated square of the stone walks became a 
 tiny garden tended by a little group of workers, and 
 the hot sunshine in the quadrangle, slanting through 
 the pierced stone, lit up carpets of patterned blooms 
 of a brilliance and a perfume fit for the King of 
 Kings of an Eastern tale. And when the King 
 passed, under a golden canopy, borne by gold vested 
 priests and censed by fuming censers, and proclaimed 
 
 283
 
 Cross Views 
 
 in song that rolled its volume under the groined roof 
 and rose through the free windows into the summer 
 air, such fragrance sprang under the feet of His 
 attendants that it reaches me still across the desert. 
 But the flowers are long dead. 
 
 "An odd devotion, surely, for children, was the 
 annual retreat. That is, a three days' silence, when 
 friend must not speak to friend, nor brother to brother. 
 Services, discourses, and familiar sermons brought us 
 in company as often as usual, but between times we 
 wandered alone and apart, the life of some successful 
 saint under one's arm, or in perusal. Yes, I think it 
 was ridiculous, but there is no cause for indignation. 
 Variety is the spice of life, and the resources of clerical 
 authority were not exhausted, though strained. Other 
 barriers and bounds were temporarily raised. We 
 wandered in gardens kept for abbatial feet, and sat in 
 the seats of the mighty ; we found a hundred sunny 
 nooks where we could sprawl, and there were no 
 lessons. Moreover, the fertile ingenuity of the boy 
 mind is not easily defeated. Young casuists, avoiding 
 the prefect's eye, carried to extraordinary lengths the 
 science of conversation without words ; for of course 
 we took the precept literally, and regarded the thing 
 as a rather too extended game of dumb crambo 
 while observing the rules of the game like good sports- 
 men. Of course our microcosm afforded young saints 
 who lived up to the spirit of the rules, and young 
 sinners who scoffed at the letter, and took the modest 
 black wrapping off Blessed Margaret Mary or St. 
 284
 
 A Friend to Stay 
 
 Rose of Lima and lent it as disguise to Jack Sheppard 
 or D'Artagnan, leaving the poor saints to shiver naked 
 at the bottom of a desk. An epicure in sensation, I 
 tried both rules of conduct. It was in retreat that I 
 smoked my first pipe, but I was not so far on the 
 downward path but that I saw the finger of God in 
 the consequences. 
 
 "Looking back on it all, and remembering the simple 
 faith of a childhood that knew the Church to be 
 supreme on earth and the vestibule of Heaven, I can 
 see that its constantly recurring pageant and per- 
 vasive emotional spirit of religion lent a pleasant 
 colouring to our school-days and a relief to the inarticu- 
 late monotony of childhood's long early years. The 
 Catholic religion is a joyful apprenticeship for a child, 
 and this, in a word, is its strength and springing source 
 of renewal. I speak for myself, but I speak for many. 
 In later life I have found in not a few of that school- 
 ing a bitter resentment left, and an undeniable injury 
 to their public life, from the over long seclusion from 
 outer influence, the denial of the early freedom of the 
 public school, the barring of the Universities, the 
 steeping of the forming material in the purple dye of 
 the martyrs. I have felt it myself, but now that I am 
 past feeling the oppressions of that larger schoolboy, 
 my fellow Englishman, and grow more cosmopolitan 
 with years, I cannot wholly regret the price I paid for 
 my masonic bond with so many peoples of the earth, 
 for that larger than national outlook, that deeper than 
 
 285
 
 Cross Views 
 
 racial insight, that wider than Imperial communion, 
 my birthright and confirmation in the spiritual and 
 world- wide Empire of Rome." 
 
 Here, again, I suspect Armistead of taking the line 
 that soothes him rather than the line that wakes his 
 indignation. The young hero of the Rugby epic 
 entered school, as his father said, like a young bear 
 with all his troubles before him, but the Catholic boy 
 exchanges nursery for nursery, and leaves school very 
 much as Tom Brown entered it, but in a painful state 
 of overgrown innocence and cubbishness. It is com- 
 forting to the tender parent but a doubtful kindness to 
 the child. The abuses that stain the public school 
 where highly paid authority washes its hands of most 
 things, save fees, are practically unknown, but the 
 public schoolboy left to form himself, turns out, with 
 whatever percentage of waste, a better type of man ; 
 and I think that the comparative failure of the English 
 Catholic, which I premise, is an answer to those who 
 maintain that the English public man is what he is 
 in spite of the public school, and not by means of it. 
 Innocence is a useless good and a false ideal. We may 
 admire it as a virtue, but laugh at it, and rightly, when 
 exhibited. Neither man nor woman, boy nor girl, is the 
 better for it, and the innocence we find adorable in the 
 very young amuses us as a tribute to our own sophisti- 
 cation, and is a plaything we use to their detriment. 
 I incline to believe that the healthiest, nay, the cleanest 
 minds, are found in those who absorbed the bad as 
 286
 
 A Friend to Stay 
 
 early as the good ; for they accepted it as part of the 
 order of nature, and can see nakedness without knowing 
 shame. Indecency was born with clothing, and that 
 the attainment of puberty should be an individual 
 mystery is the source of half the disgrace in the world. 
 On another occasion Armistead wrote : 
 " When I was taught drawing at school (oh happy 
 hour twice a week and well remembered !) we were 
 taught, or was it only that we desired to be taught, 
 for I would do no wrong to the memory of the gentle 
 Benedictine, our instructor, whom I still see, his head 
 slightly inclined sideways in a just complacence, 
 putting magical touches to my work with that B.B. 
 reserved to his hand alone we were taught how to 
 do trees, thatched roofs, shaded doorways, and bridge- 
 arches and here it was that the B.B. came in with 
 compelling power one did an oak like this and one 
 did a beech like that ; and reflections in water were 
 stumped, and clouds were scraped or, for Exhibition 
 days, touched with Chinese white another perquisite 
 of Dom Maurus. And when the great day came, 
 with the speeches, the flawns, and the custards, and 
 the Old Boys' Match, and the visitors from town, 
 wonderfully bedizened to our innocent eyes, came 
 round with the Prior, and the handiwork of the 
 drawing-class had its moment of publicity and pride, 
 the good father was annually astonished and gratified 
 by the fresh aspect that the year's talent cast upon 
 the white horse at the forge, the dog guarding the 
 pair of gloves, and the waggon at the brook-side. 
 
 287
 
 Cross Views 
 
 There was also Dom Leo, more saturnine to the 
 stranger, more twinkling to the initiated ; a man with 
 the new knowledge, a Modernist I had nearly said, 
 who spoke darkly of process and of strange gods in 
 Chelsea, and had an infernal machine in an obscure 
 crypt of the monastery, whence came out on the 
 turning of a handle weird prints black as Erebus from 
 crushed copper-plates and smoke of corrosive chemicals. 
 Here as a printer's devil yet redeemed as by holy 
 water, I snatched a fearful joy." 
 
 The other night Armistead was sitting turning 
 over an armful of my picture-books, albums by Parisian 
 draughtsmen known here, when known at all, as 
 decadent, and drew my attention for a moment to a 
 brilliant page of Forain's Comedie. 
 
 " That wouldn't have done for Exhibition Day," I 
 said, smiling. 
 
 He took the allusion, and laughed. " You are 
 right," he said. " What is their quarrel over here with 
 the simplification of the Japanese, the jottings of a 
 Whistler, the long feeling line of a Forain, the ex- 
 travagances of an Ibels or a Lautrec ? Well I know ! 
 They, too, want the Exhibition touches. The B.B. 
 pencil and the Chinese white ! If I had the teaching 
 of the young ! " He shook his head and returned 
 to the pages of Nos Ennemis. 
 
 " Go on," I said encouragingly. " You deal too 
 much in the aposiopesis. Your silence is not as 
 eloquent as you suppose." 
 288
 
 A Friend to Stay 
 
 " What's the good ! " he said, half-vexed. Well, 
 let them draw the waggon, and the dog and gloves 
 very good. At first hand, needless to say but the 
 day of flat copies is over. But when these objects 
 are combined, as we combine words into living phrases, 
 teach them that the life is the thing. That they 
 must give us the guarding of the gloves, the going of 
 the waggon. Give a subject such as a man putting 
 on his hat, and the dull boy will draw the man and 
 the hat, but he must be made to understand that that 
 was not the subject given. Say we know that you 
 can draw a man or a hat perhaps but now give us 
 the action. Get out of the studio and study life. 
 How did the Japanese learn to draw a bird on the 
 wing ? Your B.B. and Chinese white, your surface 
 conscientiously ' squared up,' as the blockmakers say, 
 to every corner, will not help you. You might as 
 well chase a butterfly in a four-wheel cab." 
 
 He sprang impatiently out of his chair, dropping 
 my books on the floor, and picked up a periodical off 
 the table. 
 
 " Look here," he said, opening it at random the 
 page showed a gentleman leaning on a park railing, 
 time the Season " the man who drew that I know 
 well enough " he pointed to the signature. " He 
 is a thoroughly instructed draughtsman, an Academy 
 medallist, who has paid becoming attention to process 
 work. He can do a tall hat he can do a frock coat. 
 Poole might be glad to buy the drawing but he 
 can't give us a man pausing for a moment in the 
 
 T 289
 
 Cross Views 
 
 Row. Why ? Because he has never seen one. He 
 works in his studio, and leaves his eyes there when 
 he goes out. We don't want this rendering of the 
 whole person, Askew, from silk hat to boot heels. 
 The essential here is the moment's pose and relaxa- 
 tion of the form that differs in every creature who 
 ever leaned on a railing. Instead of striving for the 
 thing that is eternally various, they relapse into draw- 
 ing things which are eternally the same. It is easier 
 to give a half-turn to the lay figure than to follow 
 the turns the spirit gives the flesh. Pshaw ! " He 
 flung the paper from him. " One cannot look at this 
 kind of thing when one knows the work of a Forain or 
 even of a Guillaume ; any more than a reader of James 
 or of Meredith can endure the banalities of " 
 
 " Don't be abusive," I pleaded. " Your case is 
 not sufficiently weak." 
 
 "All we get here is still life still and stuffed 
 arranged in a wearisome repetition of stage properties. 
 Light above and to the right Chinese white shadow 
 below and to the left B.B." 
 
 He caught up the paper again. " Here a man is 
 given a legend to illustrate. A man says something, 
 a woman says something in reply. He has his man 
 and his woman ready. This week he is standing up, 
 and she is sitting down. Last week she stood and he 
 sat. She is giving him a cup of tea, and the cup and 
 the teapot and her face and his hand have all exactly 
 the same value in the picture. And the teapot is the 
 best thing in it. He knows his teapot. It stands still." 
 290
 
 A Friend to Stay 
 
 " Yes. He expresses the fact that tea must stand," 
 I said, studying the drawing, " but I agree that that 
 was not the fact to be rendered." 
 
 " How does a woman hand a cup of tea ? Is she 
 his mother, his sister, the woman he loves does she 
 love him, is she indifferent to him, does she dislike 
 him, is she interested in him, has she interests of her 
 own to serve ? Every phase will have its reflection 
 in the action, and be reflected again in the recipient. 
 Does he take tea, would he prefer whisky-and-soda ; 
 with what eyes does he look at a woman, and is her 
 drawing-room a familiar place to him ? Who can 
 tell from this ? " 
 
 " How would you represent a storm in a tea-cup ? " 
 I asked, but Armistead was too sad to heed. 
 
 "Forain would express their relationship, but 
 would neglect the tea-things. No. We get no char- 
 acters but the comic no action but the broadest 
 pantomime. There are honourable exceptions ; but 
 the mass of our draughtsmen are most of the time illus- 
 trating the great golf joke. Every month the caddie's 
 boots are bigger, the colonel's eyes bulge rounder, and 
 the inevitable catastrophe, the downfall of the prin- 
 cipal on his slant, is more smashing and reverberant." 
 
 " The fat party falling downstairs with the tea-things 
 is one of the national jokes. It is overlooked by Max 
 Beerbohm, I think. There are some weekly comics 
 that have lived on it entirely for years and years." 
 
 " I have lived on it, too," said Armistead bitterly. 
 "I remember when I was glad to get a guinea for 
 
 291
 
 Cross Views 
 
 drawing red noses and fat people falling on their 
 posteriors. The man who writes, Askew, however 
 much he is harassed and hacked, gets his small chance 
 at times of forwarding the beliefs by which he lives, 
 but the artist " he shrugged his shoulders, but could 
 not dislodge his annoyance. 
 
 " Can you wonder that he is generally an 
 Anarchist of a mild type ? He never gets an outlet. 
 His pencil is eternally at the service of grinning 
 conventions. He has to illustrate the doings of absurd 
 figure-heads in uniforms and furred gowns who spend 
 their footling existences in all manner of chuckle- 
 headed futilities in laying, and opening, and launch- 
 ing, presenting, receiving, and speechifying ; or he 
 illustrates other men's writings, or he takes his turn 
 at rubbing into the thickly-padded ribs of the public 
 one of those porous plasters the established jokes." 
 
 " Yes," I said, " his hand must grow raw occasion- 
 ally before the public is tickled. At the present day 
 the point of a joke is still treated in italics, in Punch. 
 Though I think they have dropped the (tableau ! ! !) 
 tableau in brackets with three notes of exclamation." 
 
 " Great Heaven," cried Armistead, stretching clutch- 
 ing hands as if to tear the muffles from truth, " why 
 don't all these subversive people Socialists, Shavians, 
 Suffragettes why don't they exploit the suppressed 
 artist ? Why don't they let him illustrate their ideas ? 
 Only a few read. The crowd wants pictures ! " 
 
 "You are a very dangerous man, Armistead," I 
 said. "I am not sure that you are not one of the 
 292
 
 A Friend to Stay 
 
 most dangerous agitators in posse that one cpuld come 
 across. You had better go to bed ; and I hope you 
 will be sorry for this in the morning." 
 
 He was already lighting his candle, and now said 
 good-night without resentment. 
 
 " Have no fear," were his last words ; a in sober 
 daylight I never fail to thank God that my work lies 
 with Nature and not with man." 
 
 I don't see much of him, for one. He is out 
 painting before I am up, despises the ministrations of 
 servants, does without meals, takes no note of weather 
 except on his canvases, and retires to bed just when 
 I am getting cheerful. 
 
 In the Palace of Art there are many mansions, and as 
 a mud-dobbing amateur, as my friend who has just gone 
 to bed calls me, I range where he will not follow. 
 
 The artist has many forms of expression clay, 
 paint, line, the copper and the stone provided that 
 he has the educable hand, but not every artist has 
 the hand, and this is the critic's defence. But there 
 is an art an extraneous art if you will, I do not 
 dispute about its place the art of photography, that 
 gives a handle for the production of beautiful work 
 to the man who has the seeing eye and the sensibility, 
 but whose hands are not his ministers. Science 
 gives him the camera, a highly perfected instrument 
 through whose instrumentality his eye can register 
 its impressions ; or, to speak more exactly, puts at 
 his service an educable and registering eye. What- 
 ever the relation of photography to the graphic arts, 
 
 293
 
 Cross Views 
 
 and properly speaking it has no relation to them at 
 all, it seems to me that it has its own proper standing 
 and province, and that if it is inadmissible as a basis 
 in the other arts, so are they as a top-dressing in 
 photography. In other words, if photography is 
 inadmissible in manual arts, so is manipulation in 
 photography. The camera may be improved by its 
 maker, but its product must not be touched by the 
 pencil of the artist a fortiori not by his whose 
 uneducated hand enforces the use of the camera 
 instead of the pencil. Bond Street photography, to 
 christen it so, is a bastard thing, and should be swept 
 away into the limbo of wax-flowers, stuffed birds, and 
 painted mirrors. No woman of taste, I say no 
 woman, should endure such a thing in her drawing- 
 room as a hand-touched photograph. It is neither 
 pretty nor Art, not flesh nor fish nor fowl, nor good 
 red herring, and though it cost five guineas for the 
 dozen, and though the perpetrator be of the dernier 
 cri y and his gilt autograph on the cardboard proclaim 
 you flush of money (and flash of taste), I beseech you, 
 dear Madam, to burn the abominable thing, and rather 
 frame an honest fashion-plate of your costume, though 
 the figure be fifteen heads high, for it is someone's 
 original work, and he did it as well as he could. 
 And if you want a likeness of yourself, and there are 
 many of us pining for it too, go to a man who 
 reverences his camera's work, and would no more 
 " touch up " its impressions than he would " touch 
 up " a pastel of La Tour, let us say. Plates are cheap. 
 294
 
 A Friend to Stay 
 
 The camera will take again, and again, and again. 
 That is what it is for. If you cannot afford a Thames 
 nocturne by Whistler, or even a rendering by Mr. 
 Alvin Coburn, patronise a lesser artist, employ a 
 minor photographer. But do not for a single moment 
 imagine that the two smaller men, by "combining 
 their information," will get the nearer to either. 
 
 Armistead, like all people very sensitive to colour, 
 will not look at colour-process work. I am not un- 
 aware that more celebrated painters than my friend 
 have testified to the gratification afforded them by 
 such reproduction, just as piano-playing machines do 
 not lack testimonials from distinguished executants. 
 But for all that, and although I mention reproduction 
 in colour to put in a humble plea for its presence in 
 a humble house, I cannot attack the judgment of 
 Armistead and his sympathisers. I would only say 
 that to a man who is not very sensitive to colour and 
 its gradation in paint, a clear attempt to follow it in 
 process is helpful on the whole. Most black and 
 white work is multiplied with more than tolerable 
 success, and sculpture by the cast ; but to represent 
 painting by monotone is to offer a paler ghost of the 
 original than is offered by the representation of sculp- 
 ture in the flat. Colour process preserves the forms, 
 and gives us something additional. It may interfere 
 sadly with the values at times, but so may monotone 
 for anything you know to the contrary; whereas 
 colour, while attracting you, should put you on your 
 guard. 
 
 295
 
 Cross Views 
 
 But these things are but Toyes. 
 
 Excellence in Art looks to be more variously graded 
 or difficult to appraise than excellence in poetry, for 
 we accord the title of poet sparingly, and with a very 
 definite sense of what it implies, whereas the style of 
 painter is used without discrimination and without 
 dispute by any competitor for honours in that field. 
 Bad poetry is none ; but bad painting we still have 
 to employ the word. A " first-class " in poetry re- 
 quires the attainment of a certain well-recognised 
 standard of greatness and felicity, in which the phrase 
 crystallises the thought and gives us a gem, and major 
 and minor poets we reckon by the quantity of their 
 production of this kind its quality, greater or less, 
 determining itself. 
 
 A poem, a passage, a line, may confer the degree of 
 poet. If he can show but this minimum, he is but a 
 minimus poet but a poet. A passage in a painting, 
 however to use the same word may be admired, 
 but since it cannot be detached, cannot stand alone, it 
 must fall with the picture if the picture be con- 
 demned. A poem then is judged by its best, a picture 
 by its worst ; the painter's effort must be more sus- 
 tained. And if a great painting must have a large 
 canvas, as some have argued, the painter's handicap 
 becomes apparent. But this last proposition is not 
 tenable. The epic in verse, though, has the stronger 
 constitution. It survives in great numbers. The 
 epic style in Art has done best in series. One re- 
 members the Dance of Death. 
 296
 
 XVI 
 
 SELFISHNESS AND OTHER VIRTUES 
 
 THE powerful emotions that tear the breasts of char- 
 acters in romance, emotions that work the reader to 
 a pitch of sympathy he seldom feels for his fellow-man 
 in the flesh, and act with such physical violence of 
 display on their subjects that it is a surprise to see 
 them turn up smiling and still youthful to the wedding 
 in the last chapter, leave one when the book is closed 
 with a sense of mortification. Should I, one asks one- 
 self, having fallen under suspicion of being a coward, 
 have enlisted in some frontier force or foreign legion 
 and not seen Her again until my certificate of heroism 
 had been printed in the papers ? Had I been called 
 a liar and been unable in the circumstances to disprove 
 the charge, should I have taken my name off my 
 clubs, distributed my personal effects and retired to a 
 South American republic until time and opportunity 
 had cleared my ancient name ? Or would the dis- 
 covery that my father had held the sacred bond of 
 matrimony in light esteem and undervalued the worth 
 of legitimacy to his offspring, or the being brought 
 face to face with the horrid fact that my wife had 
 loved another ere she met me, have filled my veins 
 
 297
 
 Cross Views 
 
 with ice and fire and driven me forth to range the 
 countryside in a blizzard, indignation keeping me un- 
 conscious of the dinner hour and of the condition of 
 the weather ? Speaking for myself truth compels me 
 to answer no. 
 
 It is given to few to be heroes of romance. Hero 
 or heroine of your own love tale you may be, but 
 when the ordinary love tale is given to the world 
 it is generally in epistolary form and one can only 
 regret its publication. But only the failures are 
 published, and it is not in recitals whose truth is 
 attested by affidavits that one looks for the emotional 
 purge that used to be labelled Mudie's mixture. I 
 am of that sluggish and cold-blooded disposition that 
 I can seldom resent an insult, cherish an injury or 
 recognise the deadliness of a disgrace that agitates and 
 lays waste the lives of my favourite characters. Did 
 a man call me a liar and speak truth I think I might 
 rise to knifing him had I a knife and no witnesses 
 and a little practice, but did he lie when he brought 
 the charge I fear I should feel no sting merely that 
 I was being subjected to deplorable rudeness. The 
 gravamen of such a charge is measured by one's 
 nakedness to it, but let the galled jade wince. The 
 reproach of cowardice we hear with great equanimity 
 as a nation when cast in our teeth by the Continental 
 duellist, having already determined by the principle 
 that regulates our public conduct to accept the re- 
 proach from each other. What, then, is the use of 
 working the unaccustomed spirit into a virtuous rage 
 298
 
 Selfishness and other Virtues 
 
 when a quarrel is offered you ? If your conscience 
 be good and the ethical standard of your community 
 support and enjoin inaction, why " fall a-cursing 
 like a very drab ? " The best answer given to the 
 question how do our army men manage a quarrel 
 without the appeal to the duel is that they do not 
 quarrel. And if you can't fight or won't fight the 
 least you can do is to avoid the preliminaries. The 
 impulses of daily life are regulated by reason ; we 
 control our charity by remembering the undeserving, 
 temper our religion with scientific inquiry, rein in 
 our affections by prudential care for the future, 
 restrain our resentment from a sentiment of law and 
 order ; are we then to fling out of doors and invoke 
 the thunderbolts of Heaven the instant we find that 
 our wives have fed a roaming fancy, as we did, or that 
 our fathers were men who could succumb to tempta- 
 tion, as we do ? A proud man is not easily insulted, 
 and an honourable man can never be disgraced. 
 Disgrace must come from within, and need not be 
 apprehended from defaulting relatives, or even from 
 erring wives or backsliding parents ; and it is a very 
 thin skin of gentility that is constantly irritated by 
 slights. 
 
 Most lives are lived on a smoother plane, and these 
 lapses into the vales of despair and soarings to the 
 heights of passion attract us in romance as the Illus- 
 trated Police News illuminates but not illustrates the 
 grey lives of the masses, and as the divorce courts 
 diverts but hardly diversifies the wide hum-drum of 
 
 299
 
 Cross Views 
 
 married virtue. If the tiresome people who demand 
 realism from romance and actuality from the drama 
 could only reverse the matter a moment for their own 
 instruction, project their dull lives on to the stage 
 and look at reality instead of talking about realism, 
 how they would be hoist ! Zola's Bonheur des Dames 
 is realism and a presentable example, but why not 
 rather read the Store's Catalogue (which I regard 
 as one of the hundred best books) ? Real life on the 
 stage would not draw even a paper audience ; the 
 orders would have to be money orders. Why, when 
 an established and licensed original like Mr. Shaw 
 gets as near the real thing as well may be by suppress- 
 ing every sort of action and emotion and reducing 
 matters to a conversation between cultivated people 
 it rings false, for real conversation has little sequence 
 and less wit, and a soldier, and in uniform, talking 
 metaphysic is no nearer actuality than the Transpon- 
 tine villain in his slouch hat. 
 
 When shall we unlearn the unhappy notion that 
 Art holds the mirror up to nature ? The artist is 
 the man who sees what we do not, and who repro- 
 duces it in his medium as well as he can, to enrich 
 our poverty-stricken faculties. But let us not, for 
 goodness' sake, be so stage-struck as to look for dramatic 
 appropriateness of word and action in the untrained 
 citizen who stumbles unexpectedly on a dramatic 
 motive in his leasehold villa at Ealing. He is not 
 even an amateur possibly enough, and the Ercles vein 
 is entirely foreign to him. Let him take the pikes de 
 300
 
 Selfishness and other Virtues 
 
 conviction to his solicitor, or, in urgent cases, beckon 
 the policeman who can always bring dignity to the 
 part ; nor let us call him " sordid, wretched, degraded, 
 spiritless outcast " because his wrongs do not fire him 
 to rhetoric or swift revenge. He has for once all 
 the " actuality " he can demand : let him digest his 
 discovery that it is remote from Art. 
 
 But dramatic moments come into the lives of com- 
 paratively few, and considering the bad use they are 
 likely to make of them in the artistic sense to say 
 nothing of the practical outcome, it is matter for 
 congratulation ; and it is, maybe, an unexpressed sense 
 of personal limitation in the art of conducting direct 
 feud that makes that intermediary the tale-bearer play 
 so large a part in society. For it is the quarrel at 
 second-hand that makes most waste places in our 
 midst. How women suffer from it, and will do as 
 long as they listen ! The male gossip is despised, but 
 the female gossip is hated, which is much less injurious 
 to vitality. And yet there is a means of deliverance, 
 for the rule is very clear if only we would apply it. 
 It is your friend's duty to report to you any slander 
 that justice could take notice of. It is your friend's 
 duty to conceal from you any other slander. If your 
 neighbour's remarks are not "actionable," if he said 
 that you were a fool, or as ugly as a gargoyle, or that 
 your taste in ties made him sick, or that your wife 
 was a hundred times too good for you, bear in mind 
 that these statements may not only be true in his 
 opinion at least, but that he has an absolute right to 
 
 301
 
 Cross Views 
 
 state such opinions, and that you yourself, unless you 
 are a person of a virtue so rare as to be negligible, 
 pass similar judgments upon him and others every day 
 of your life. Bear him no grudge, his tastes are his to 
 express ; he is a man after your own and the common 
 kind, and he would not have said these things in your 
 hearing for the world. But fire your informant out 
 of doors as a false friend who has uselessly and mis- 
 chievously hurt your feelings and come to your house 
 with the set intention of making bad blood between 
 two human beings. Here is an] occasion for high- 
 minded proceedings. Seize it joyfully, and before the 
 noble fit is passed go to the innocent culprit, for such 
 he is, and tell him what you have been told. Say that 
 you bear him no resentment and will always cheerfully 
 abuse him on the same terms if he will agree to bar 
 the go-between. In this manner tale-bearers would 
 fall between two audits and perish miserably. The 
 matter might be reduced to a pleasing exactitude by 
 referring the words to legal advice, the mistaken party 
 paying the fee. There is no hope of putting salt on 
 the tail of that very elusive bird the Truth, but His 
 Majesty's counsel are always ready to pronounce on 
 any stray feather he may have dropped. Take abuse 
 in good part. You can always take slander to the 
 Courts. But take leave of the tale-bearer. 
 
 But virtues and vices are fallen on critical times. 
 Sinners are speaking up for themselves on all sides, 
 and bewildered saints find themselves the target of 
 contemptuous revolutionaries and more in a minority 
 302
 
 Selfishness and other Virtues 
 
 than ever. The divine right of their ancient royal 
 family is questioned, and the sans-culottes recline 
 pleasantly in their high places. Marriage must admit 
 divorce to equal rank and control, King Sabbath sees 
 his silent dominions invaded by vulgar holiday makers, 
 the child is set above the parent, contentment is 
 become a reproach and poverty a crime, and the law 
 of meum and tuum almost entirely abolished. 
 
 Without further enumeration of reversals of opinion 
 effected by other liberators, I will draw attention to my 
 own part in the movement exhibited in the attack I 
 have just made on "proper spirit," wherein I have 
 done my best to prove it improper, and, thirsting for 
 fresh blood, will deal shortly with another reproach 
 levelled at me and other poor citizens for long enough. 
 The word selfishness has suffered the degradation 
 usual when words are overtaken by common use, for 
 selfishness as opposed to altruism is concentration as 
 opposed to diffusion, continence as opposed to slopping 
 over. A strong sense of self and devotion to its inborn 
 ambitions is the unit of power by which you may 
 measure superior forces, unless you will not subscribe 
 to the doctrine that the story of the hero, or superman 
 as we call him now, is the history of nations. At any 
 rate you will not deny the hero, and the hero is 
 supremely selfish, and everything is forgiven to success. 
 Shakespeare's wife had, after all, something in addition 
 to that second-best bed, Romney's wife could remember 
 that she was Romney's wife, and the slighted lady 
 whose finger was used as a tobacco-stopper could 
 
 303
 
 Cross Views 
 
 comfort herself with the reflection that it was applied 
 to Newton's clay and none other. But this selfishness 
 is not selfish in the acquisitive way. It is the impera- 
 tive necessity of a strong personality not to acquire 
 the things of this world but to use and transform them 
 in the course of its development ; whereas selfishness 
 in the degraded sense of every day I hold to be a want 
 of personality and not a superfluity of it. The egoist 
 overflows, the selfish man is a void. That fully 
 equipped organism the hero, or super-egoist, goes his 
 way relying on himself, the mere selfish are blind 
 mouths that scarce themselves know how to feed, are 
 empty and must be filled, cannot see but must be 
 shown, cannot stand alone but must have support, 
 cannot amuse themselves but must be amused. Some- 
 one must take in their washing, and they cry out 
 eternally on the man who fends for himself. The 
 egoist in excehis passes out of their, and our, ken, and 
 we have left these people to whom others are neces- 
 sary, or the predatory class, and those others who are 
 their appointed prey. And who are these others ? I 
 will try to give their natural history. You may find 
 one in many a nursery. 
 
 Little Tommy and little Johnny are born of the 
 same mother, fed from the same breast, defile the 
 same carpet, break the same toys, know the same 
 cares, influences, tyrannies, indulgences, measles, and 
 colics. The short-clothed years pass and they are en- 
 dued with their first trousers, the toga virilis. Tommy 
 is still the same Tommy, loquacious, clutching, ob- 
 34
 
 Selfishness and other Virtues 
 
 stinate, rosy, demonstrative. But what is the matter 
 with Johnny, ask his parents impatiently. Johnny 
 is in the moon ; he has reservations, he reads books 
 voluntarily and of malice prepense^ has moments when 
 he will not play with Tommy who is much aggrieved. 
 How can poor Tommy play cricket when there is 
 no one to bowl ? How can the family circle enjoy 
 its evening when Johnny is always buried in a book ? 
 Why does he want to be by himself when other 
 children want to play with him ? It is decreed that 
 Johnny is getting selfish. That is what is the matter 
 with him. 
 
 Poor little Johnny does not know. Some gnat has 
 stung him. He was walking in the garden when a 
 shade fell on it, and on Tommy with the bat flushed 
 and triumphant, and on the lark above, and on the 
 ball turning in his own small hand, and he saw that 
 these things were no part of him. And now he 
 walks behind the hedge, and every leaf is new and 
 no brighter for the change. He is not like other 
 people ; that is the verdict against him ; and unless his 
 future career can justify his early eccentricity he is 
 marked down for trouble. Like the sick crow he 
 has violated the law of healthy communities, and will 
 be pecked to death. The superman has his revenge 
 a thousand fold for his early persecution, trampling 
 the herd who crowded his growing soul, but unless 
 the full fruition come, better far be soulless and 
 esurient. He is selfish, say his fellows ; what is this 
 ego of his that must walk alone ? And now his mind 
 
 u 305
 
 Cross Views 
 
 is sick ; he quarrels with the common food, he lingers 
 in the shade with weakly minorities, revolts against 
 seemly established things, nurses ideals, would have 
 earth reconstructed and heaven new-imagined, sees 
 the grass blue and the sky yellow, blankets good 
 fellowship and sours affection. To such a pass has 
 poor Johnny come who, but for that unkind twist of 
 Nature, might be a second Tommy, satisfied and peptic, 
 feeding healthily on the weak, a prosperous merchant 
 or a major in a marching regiment, a convinced party 
 politician, and the disposer of a wife and family. 
 And he is still considering perhaps whether it is more 
 selfish to go his way and ask for no company, or go 
 Tommy's way and insist on others accompanying 
 him. Is Tommy selfish who wants Johnny, or is 
 Johnny selfish who doesn't want Tommy ? The 
 nursery answer was prompt, but it has never quite 
 convinced Johnny. He is always being dragged at 
 some one's chariot wheels. He must follow but he 
 follows in scorn ; he cannot lead ; he can only revolt 
 against leadership ; he conforms but not consents. He 
 sees the distant hero following his star, and his own 
 spirit is not apterous, but his flesh is very weak, and 
 unhesitating Tommy still dominates him. He knows 
 not where to look for comfort ; his books tell him 
 that good is good and bad is bad, that a selfish trait 
 exhibited in the first chapter will surely lead to a 
 bank robbery or fratricide before the tale is through, 
 and very likely induce freckles or a cast in the eye 
 to boot. There is no place for his kind of man. 
 306
 
 Selfishness and other Virtues 
 
 He learns too late the lesson that if you have not 
 the higher selfishness that can batten on the multitude 
 you should cultivate the lower selfishness that vampires 
 the individual, for occupation with self alone burns 
 the candle at both ends, or, for metaphor is cheap, 
 is to be crushed between the upper and nether mill- 
 stones, and between Tommy and the Uebermensch 
 our unhappy Johnny emerges paper thin and ribbon 
 long like the little boy in Struwelpeter. And he 
 it is who is the appointed prey and sustenance of 
 the great selfish. In his most digestible form he is 
 the family drudge, in his most indigestible, an Anar- 
 chist. But whatever shape he take from circumstance 
 his selfish reluctance to be consumed, first evidenced 
 in his nursery days, is his constant reproach. 
 
 And he is wanting in respect for authority. He is 
 not dutiful to his parents, for he will not walk in their 
 ways ; he lacks faith in their religion, he has no stead- 
 fastness in opinion but only varying views ; he does 
 not worship his ancestors, he does not stick to his 
 party, he is not true to his caste, he does not uphold 
 the constitution in a word, he is not loyal. He has 
 slipped his cable and drifts, an annoyance and a scandal 
 to every safe-anchored craft. They feel that they 
 have him here. Selfishness may be disputed at times, 
 but disloyalty is an ugly trait and can draw no sym- 
 pathy. But few products of the human ferment are 
 wholly bad, and though I go to my death and a dis- 
 honoured grave accused of the accursed and revolu- 
 tionary purpose of attacking loyalty itself, I will enter 
 
 307
 
 Cross Views 
 
 a plea for non-conformity in this its most odious aspect, 
 and look for a soul of good in things evil. 
 
 In the world's workshop so many things go daily 
 into the melting-pot, and so much dust and sweat are 
 hammered out of men and material, and so much pain 
 and turmoil passes amid ugly and sordid surroundings, 
 that to discern things in the making needs more than 
 the casual inspection of an onlooker. 
 
 The workshop must be judged by its results. It is 
 an old-established business, and among its products is 
 everything that conservatism would conserve. So 
 beautiful are some of them as they gather colour and 
 atmosphere in their recession into the past that there 
 are they who cry " hold, enough ! " to the workmen ; 
 they are content with what has been done. But the 
 workshop knows that it must carry on. Something 
 forbids it to see " its own above itself made lord," and 
 though it work only for posterity still it must work. 
 Romance, chivalry, courts and kings, ritual and page- 
 ant, are some of its past products, now scarce, and 
 chiefly known by modern imitations, and another of 
 these beautiful and fading things has insensibly become 
 so rare that when we hear of loyalty to a fallen mon- 
 archy all our aesthetic instincts are aroused, and we 
 repeat that the great period is over and men cannot 
 make as once they made. The loyalist wears all the 
 hues of sunset, but the liberator his workman's clothes. 
 
 The word Loyalty stands for so much that man- 
 kind has admired in the past, and it is still blazoned 
 so large on the banners of those who inscribe them- 
 308
 
 Selfishness and other Virtues 
 
 selves on the side of the angels, that to impugn its 
 worth and beauty is to court almost certain denuncia- 
 tion, and yet it connotes, as even its champions may 
 possibly allow, an admixture of something not implicitly 
 admirable. For with loyalty must commonly go an 
 element of unthinkingness. Blind and unquestioning 
 are adjectives that constantly attend it on the lips of 
 its greatest admirers. These same attributes of blind- 
 ness and unquestioningness are nowadays discredited 
 when connected with faith, but mankind, which has 
 come to look at this faith askance and even to ridicule 
 its blind guidance, has scarcely as yet questioned 
 its lay brother loyalty. And yet, if faith is the denial 
 of reason, loyalty, in so far as it is a blind adherence 
 to personal leadership and the parallel to that other 
 blind adherence to unreasoned law, must stand or fall 
 with it. We are not loyal in this sense to our beliefs 
 or we should stand still. If we remain fast in a 
 belief it is because we still embrace it with our minds 
 and see no reason to abandon it. But this is not 
 loyalty but conviction, and such conviction may yet 
 be a stage to fresh conviction ; our loyalty must be a 
 larger thing, a loyalty to an ideal that will remain 
 unshaken beyond any shock to systems, regimes, or 
 doctrines. 
 
 The old loyalty to kings falls then from much of 
 its high estate. It has declined with the status of 
 kingship, for loyalty and faith being two aspects of 
 the same thing, declining faith in, among other things, 
 the divine right of kings, has pulled down with it the 
 
 309
 
 Cross Views 
 
 old loyalty to their persons, and the acknowledged 
 right of a people to the form of government it prefers 
 brings to us moderns a sense supplementary to the 
 pathetic when we witness the unavailing struggle of 
 those we ordinarily denominate reactionaries against 
 a new order of things determined to enforce itself. 
 
 The word, like all words that lend themselves to 
 question-begging by force of old association, is very 
 vilely misused, but it is in its misuse that its weak- 
 ness becomes clear ; for when failing faith leans on 
 its brother-in-arms loyalty and the cry is raised of 
 devotion to old beliefs and principles, and the men 
 who lead the necessarily destructive way to progress 
 and freedom are treated to "traitor" and "apostate," 
 the old trappings begin to drop off from these one- 
 sided champions, and faith and loyalty must take on 
 a new meaning, if they are to keep their high virtue 
 and hold their own ascendancy over men's minds and 
 hearts. There is no virtue in blindness, and questions 
 must be asked and answered if modern service is to 
 be anything worth. 
 
 There is still virtue in obedience, but even so the 
 virtue is greater when the obedience is intelligent. 
 A general may legitimately command an unwilling 
 obedience, but this analogy applied to party leader- 
 ship, to go no further, is of reactionary tendency and 
 defensible chiefly in tactical matters the least admir- 
 able side of politics and when bolstered by appeals 
 to loyalty is merely an illustration of one bad borrow- 
 ing leading to another. Loyalty, that is a blind 
 310
 
 Selfishness and other Virtues 
 
 personal devotion, is as out of place in politics as it is 
 exploded in courts, and its place is well taken by a 
 cool and well-reasoned acceptance of principles and 
 methods as expounded by the superior mind and ex- 
 perience. Failing their acceptance it is better that 
 a party should be divided by open argument than 
 united in unthinking obedience to a popular chieftain, 
 for when the rupture comes, as come it will, no 
 ground of union is left. 
 
 That party in a kingdom which pins its faith and 
 loyalty on the person of a leader instead of basing 
 them on broad grounds of principle and belief, may 
 gain immediate strength in individual crises but courts 
 ultimate disaster and disillusionment, for leaders, kings, 
 and dynasties must pass from them. "Put not 
 your faith in princes " takes on a new meaning, for 
 the dogma of a Pope is not more deadening to the 
 spirit of religion than the old loyalty to the old idols 
 is to the spirit of liberalism. 
 
 This reactionary loyalty being maintained as a 
 virtue in the face of progress and growth, disloyalty 
 is inevitably the term of reproach thrown at those 
 whose development leads or follows the development 
 of social ideas, as from its easy confusion with faith 
 and picturesque association with analogous methods 
 of expression, we get the same reproach levelled at 
 those who have been forced in honesty to abandon 
 early forms of religious belief. And in the case of 
 leaders in revolutionary or constitutional movements 
 public sentiment does not hesitate to admire the 
 
 3"
 
 Cross Views 
 
 defenders of the old regime who "seal their faith 
 with their blood," nor to fix the epithet disloyal on 
 those whose proximity to the throne has made them 
 protagonists of the upward and onward struggle. 
 
 Faith and Loyalty are virtues too bright to be soiled 
 with ignoble use, and the tendency to appropriate 
 great names to small things must be watched and 
 disputed, that all faith may not be confounded with 
 the faith that believes quia impossible, but a faith 
 distinguished that believes in the possibility of the 
 impossible thing and through very faith brings it 
 about ; and a loyalty recognised that is loyal to the 
 spirit of liberty. A faith well founded and a loyalty 
 well attached. 
 
 THE END
 
 TRIAL BY 
 MARRIAGE 
 
 BY 
 
 WILFRID SCARBOROUGH JACKSON 
 
 Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
 PRESS OPINIONS 
 
 Evening Standard. "Told in a pleasant style with a sly 
 humour to add zest to its skilfully imagined story. . . . Mr. 
 Jackson has a kindly philosophy strongly interwoven with excel- 
 lent common sense, and he possesses as well a sparkling and 
 incisive style which helps to make his book undeniably enter- 
 taining." 
 
 World. "As a novelist Mr. Jackson has two points in his 
 favour: he has imagination and he has humour . . . one can 
 confidently promise the reader of this skilfully treated and uncon- 
 ventional novel that he will not find a page of it dull. It is one 
 that will be not only read but remembered. " 
 
 Sunday Times. " A story of absorbing interest." 
 
 Bookman. "Observation and discernment in the study of 
 character are in this decidedly interesting novel, and the point of 
 view is sound and healthy." 
 
 Globe. "Written with all Mr. Jackson's simple and unaffected 
 charm." 
 
 Army and Navy Chronicle. "We recommend Trial by 
 Marriage to all and sundry who seek for fiction above the average, 
 and mess-presidents will do well to order it from the circulating 
 library." 
 
 Yorkshire Post. "Mr. Wilfrid Scarborough Jackson's latest 
 novel Trial by Marriage is of uncommon quality and excellence." 
 
 Dundee Advertiser. ''As a humorist Mr. Jackson has already 
 made his mark, and in this his latest novel he proves to the world 
 his powers as a philosopher. . . . The book is a splendid example 
 of the deep, thoughtful, modern novel."
 
 NINE POINTS 
 OF THE LAW 
 
 BY 
 
 WILFRID SCARBOROUGH JACKSON 
 
 Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 PRESS OPINIONS 
 
 The Manchester Guardian. "The kindly humorous philosophy of this 
 most diverting story is as remarkable as its attractive style. There is 
 hardly a page without something quotable, some neat bit of phrasing or 
 apt wording of a truth." 
 
 The Pall Mall Gazette. 11 The book is exceedingly able and full of 
 promise. It is written in an easy and attractive style ; and for its charac- 
 terisation Mr. Jackson deserves all praise. His portrayal of Hooper and 
 the minor characters of the story is not unworthy for its quiet humour and 
 kindly satire of Mr. Anstey." 
 
 The Daily Telegraph. "Nine Points of the Law is pure farce, a 
 most ingenious imbroglio. Mr. Jackson has a graceful and pleasant style, 
 a cultivated appreciation of beauty. . . . We must award no small measure 
 of praise to his first venture. ... A flickering smile is ever on our lips as 
 we read ; it frequently expands to a hearty laugh." 
 
 The Morning Advertiser. "Every one who likes a good story which 
 keeps interest on the stretch and is told with much observant humour must 
 read Nine Points of the Law for himself. The pace quickens as the 
 story gets along, and the last half of it is a breathless touch-and-go 
 business which makes you turn every page with apprehension." 
 
 The Daily Express. " In grand farce all one asks is that the complica- 
 tions should be ingenious and amusing, and Mr. Wayzgoose's tribulations 
 with the treasure are eminently both." 
 
 The Daily Chronicle." One must inevitably go forward with the story, 
 just as inevitably as Wayzgoose bad to go forward with the contents of the 
 bullock-trunk." 
 
 To-Day. "Mr. Jackson tells a simple story of modern life in a very 
 charming and unaffected manner. Its simplicity and easy naturalness is 
 the source of its delight." 
 
 The Dundee Advertiser. "The story is narrated in a fascinating 
 mannei, and there is one departure from established custom which is 
 worthy of note." 
 
 The Birmingham Post. " We have here an excellent and altogether 
 enjoyable story. The style is bright and sparkling, and the humour 
 irresistible. . . . Mr. Jackson is an admirable story-teller."
 
 THE WORKS OF 
 ANATOLE FRANCE 
 
 T has long been a reproach to 
 England that only one volume 
 by ANATOLE FRANCE 
 has been adequately rendered 
 into English ; yet outside this 
 country he shares with 
 TOLSTOI the distinction 
 of being the greatest and most daring 
 student of humanity living. 
 
 11 There have been many difficulties to 
 encounter in completing arrangements for a 
 uniform edition, though perhaps the chief bar- 
 rier to publication here has been the fact that 
 his writings are not for babes but for men 
 and the mothers of men. Indeed, some of his 
 Eastern romances are written with biblical can- 
 dour. '* I have sought truth strenuously," he 
 tells us, " I have met her boldly. I have never 
 turned from her even when she wore an
 
 THE WORKS OF ANATOLE FRANCE 
 
 unexpected aspect." Still, it is believed that the day has 
 come for giving English versions of all his imaginative 
 works, as well as of his monumental study JOAN OF 
 ARC, which is undoubtedly the most discussed book in the 
 world of letters to-day. 
 
 H MR. JOHN LANE has pleasure in announcing that 
 the following volumes are either already published or are 
 passing through the press. 
 
 THE RED LILY 
 
 MOTHER OF PEARL 
 
 THE GARDEN OF EPICURUS 
 
 THE CRIME OF SYLVESTRE BONNARD 
 
 BALTHASAR 
 
 THE WELL OF ST. CLARE 
 
 THAIS 
 
 THE WHITE STONE 
 
 PENGUIN ISLAND 
 
 THE MERRIE TALES OF JACQUES TOURNE 
 
 BROCHE 
 
 JOCASTA AND THE FAMISHED CAT 
 THE ELM TREE ON THE MALL 
 THE WICKER-WORK WOMAN 
 AT THE SIGN OF THE REINE PEDAUQUE 
 THE OPINIONS OF JEROME COIGNARD 
 MY FRIEND'S BOOK 
 THE ASPIRATIONS OF JEAN SERVIEN 
 LIFE AND LETTERS (4 vols.) 
 JOAN OF ARC (2 vols.) 
 
 If All the books will be published at 6/- each with the 
 exception of JOAN OF ARC, which will be 25/- net 
 the two volumes, with eight Illustrations. 
 
 U The format of the volumes leaves little ro be desired. 
 The size is Demy 8vo (9 X 5|), and they are printed from 
 Caslon type upon a paper light in weight and strong of 
 texture, with a cover design in crimson and gold, a gilt top, 
 end-papers from designs by Aubrey Beardsley and initials by 
 Henry Ospovat. In short, these are volumes for the biblio- 
 phile as well as the lover of fiction, and form perhaps the 
 cheapest library edition of copyright novels ever published, 
 for the price is only that of an ordinary novel. 
 
 f The translation of these books has been entrusted to 
 such competent French scholars as MR. ALFRED ALLINSON,
 
 THE WORKS OF ANATOLE FRANCE. 
 
 MR. FREDERIC CHAPMAN, MR. ROBERT B. DOUGLAS, 
 MR. A. W. EVANS, MKS. FARLEY, MR. LAFCADIO HEARN, 
 MRS. W. S. JACKSON, MRS. JOHN LANE, MRS. NEWMARCH, 
 MR. C. E. ROCHE, MISS WINIFRED STEPHENS, and MISS 
 M. P. WILLCOCKS. 
 
 1T As Anatole Thibault, dit Anatole France, is to most 
 English readers merely a name, it will be well to state that 
 he was born in 1844 in the picturesque and inspiring 
 surroundings of an old bookshop on the Quai Voltaire, 
 Paris, kept by his father, Monsieur Thibault, an authority on 
 eighteenth-century history, from whom the boy caught the 
 passion for the principles of the Revolution, while from his 
 mother he was learning to love the ascetic ideals chronicled 
 in the Lives of the Saints. He was schooled with the lovers 
 of old books, missals and manuscript ; he matriculated on the 
 Quais with the old Jewish dealers of curios and objets d'art; 
 he graduated in the great university of life and experience. 
 It will be recognised that all his work is permeated by his 
 youthful impressions ; he is, in fact, a virtuoso at large. 
 
 f He has written about thirty volumes of fiction. His 
 first novel was JOCASTA & THE FAMISHED CAT 
 (1879). THE CRIME OF SYLVESTRE BONNARD 
 appeared in 1881, and had the distinction of being crowned 
 by the French Academy, into which he was received in 1896. 
 
 f His work is illuminated with style, scholarship, and 
 psychology ; but its outstanding features are the lambent wit, 
 the gay mockery, the genial irony with which he touches every 
 subject he treats. But the wit is never malicious, the mockery 
 never derisive, the irony never barbed. To quote from his own 
 GARDEN OF EPICURUS : Irony and Pity are both of 
 good counsel ; the first with her smiles makes life agreeable, 
 the other sanctifies it to us with her tears. The Irony I 
 invoke is no cruel deity. She mocks neither love nor 
 beauty. She is gentle and kindly disposed. Her mirth 
 disarms anger and it is she teaches us to laugh at rogues and 
 fools whom but for her we might be so weak as to hate." 
 
 fl Often he shows how divine humanity triumphs over 
 mere asceticism, and with entire reverence ; indeed, he 
 might be described as an ascetic overflowing with humanity, 
 j'ust as he has been termed a " pagan, but a pagan 
 constantly haunted by the pre-occupation of Christ." 
 He is in turn like his own Choulette in THE RED 
 LILY saintly and Rabelaisian, yet without incongruity.
 
 THE WORKS OF ANATOLE FRANCE 
 
 At all times he is the unrelenting foe of superstition and 
 hypocrisy. Of himself he once modestly said : " You will 
 find in my writings perfect sincerity (lying demands a talent 
 I do not possess), much indulgence, and some natural 
 affection for the beautiful and good." 
 
 IT The mere extent of an author's popularity is perhaps a 
 poor argument, yet it is significant that two books by this 
 author are in their HUNDRED AND TENTH THOU- 
 SAND, and numbers of them well into their SEVENTIETH 
 THOUSAND, whilst the one which a Frenchman recently 
 described as " Monsieur France's most arid book " is in its 
 FIFTY-EIGHT-THOUSAND. 
 
 11 Inasmuch as M. FRANCE'S ONLY contribution to 
 an English periodical appeared in THE YELLOW BOOK, 
 vol. v., April 1895, together with the first important English 
 appreciation of his work from the pen of the Hon. Maurice 
 Baring, it is peculiarly appropriate that the English edition 
 of his works should be issued from the Bodley Head. 
 
 ORDER FORM. 
 
 . _ i g 
 
 To Mr _ _ _ __ ._ ._. 
 
 Bookseller. 
 
 Please send me the following works of Anatole France: 
 
 THAIS PENGUIN ISLAND 
 
 BALTHASAR THE WHITE STONE 
 
 THE RED LILY MOTHER OF PEARL 
 
 THE GARDEN OF EPICURUS 
 
 THE CRIME OF SYLVESTRE BONNARD 
 
 THE WELL OF ST. CLARE 
 
 THE MERRIE TALES OF JACQUES TOURNE- 
 
 BROCHE 
 
 THE ELM TREE ON THE MALL 
 THE WICKER-WORK WOMAN 
 JOCASTA AND THE FAMISHED CAT 
 JOAN OF ARC (2 VOLS.) 
 LIFE AND LETTERS (4 VOLS.) 
 
 for which 1 enclose 
 
 Name _ 
 
 Address , _ 
 
 JOHN LANE, PUBLISHER. THE BODLEY HEAD, Vice ST., LONDON.W.
 
 JOHN LANE'S LIST OF FICTION 
 BY ARTHUR H. ADAMS. 
 
 GALAHAD JONES. A Tragic Farce. Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 With 1 6 full-page Illustrations by Norman Lindsay. 
 
 *,* Galahad Jones is a middle-aged bank clerk, with a Jarrr'ly. One day, en 
 his way home, a letter tails to his feet from the balcony ol i> house he is passing. 
 It is addressed " To You," and on reading it he discovers that he is requested 
 to meet the writer in the garden ol the house at 10 o'clock that night. In a spirit 
 of knight-errantry, he decides to do BO, and learns that the writer a young girl 
 is kept practically in prison by her father, because o! her affection for a man of 
 whom he does not approTe. The chiTalry of Galahad Jones plunges him into 
 many difficulties, and leads to some rery awkward and extremely amusing situations. 
 
 A TOUCH OF FANTASY. Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 A Romance For Those who are Lucky Enough to Wear Glasses. 
 
 BY GIRO ALYI. 
 
 THE SAINT'S PROGRESS; A Novel. Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 Translated from the Italian of Giro Alvi by Mary Gibson. 
 
 *,* Signor Giro Alvi ha* written a long and most sympathetic novel dealing 
 with the life of one of the noblest spirits of the Christian Church who was perhaps 
 the most extraordinary man of his age The somewhat dissolute early life of the 
 founder of the Franciscan Order is deftly outlined, the young man's innate goodness 
 of heart and kindly disposition being clearly apparent even in the midst of his 
 ostentatious gaiety and sudden impulses. 
 
 BY W. M. ARDAGH. 
 
 THE MAGADA. Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 Pall Mall QazttU" ' The Magada ' is a store-house of rare and curious learn- 
 ing ... it is a well-written and picturesque story of high adrenture and deed* 
 of derring-do." 
 
 Obstrvtr " The book has admirably caught the spirit of romance." 
 Daily Chronicle " ' The Magada ' is a fine and finely told story, and we 
 congratulate Mr. Ardagh." 
 
 THE KNIGHTLY YEARS. Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 *,* In " The Knightly Years ' the author of " The Magada " takes us back 
 once more to the Canary Islands in the days of Isabella the Catholic. The tale 
 deals with the aftermath of conquests, when " the first use the islanders made of 
 their newly-acquired moral code was to apply it to their rulers." The hero of th 
 story is the body-servant of the profligate Governor of Gomera, whose lore affairs 
 become painfully involved with those of his master. In the course of his many 
 adventures we come across Queen Isabella herself, the woman to whom every man 
 was loyal save her own husband; and countless Spanish worthies, seamen, soldiers, 
 governors and priests, all real men, the makers of Empire four hundred years ago. 
 The book abounds in quaint sayings both of Spaniard and native, while the love- 
 making of the simple young hero and his child-wile weaves a pretty thread of 
 romance through the stirring tale of adventure.
 
 JOHN LANE'S LIST OF FICTION 
 BY ALLEN ARNOT. 
 
 THE DEMPSEY DIAMONDS; A Novel. Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 *,* This is the story oi the secret transference ol a fortune; and the scene is 
 laid mainly in two old houses in two Scottish Tillage*, one on the east coast, one 
 buried in midland woods. The tale i* ot the old alow days ot twenty yean ago 
 before the tyranny oi speed began, but it is swayed throughout and borne to its 
 close by the same swift passions that sway the stories of men and women to-day, 
 and will sway them till the end oi time. 
 
 BY GERARD BENDALL. 
 
 PROGRESS OF MRS. CRIPPS-MIDDLEMORE. Cr. 8vo. 6/- 
 
 Author of Mrs. Jones's Bonnet," " The Old Home," etc. 
 *,* This book deals with the vagaries of a middle-class family suddenly 
 enriched. The progress of Mrs. Cripps-Middlemore is under the direction ol various 
 ecclesiastics, each revered and beloved, from small shopkeeping and dissent to 
 papacy and the peerage. The clever precocious children of the family attempt to 
 emulate in the higher spheres ol literature and art the lemarkable financial success 
 oi the capable father. Mr. Cripps-Middlemore's greatest success is that he carries 
 his family with him. He entertains lavishly at his marble palace at Hampstead. 
 " He was in many respects a generous, just, honourable and sincere man. Hii 
 ancillary adventures I consider unfortunate," is the Rev. Moore Curtis' delightfully 
 phrased post-mortem tribute. Mr. Bendall has a wicked wit which, with his ability 
 to assume the attitude of the interested looker-on almost amounting to inspiration, 
 stamps him as a humourist. 
 
 BY PAUL BERTRAM 
 
 THE SHADOW OF POWER. Third Thousand. Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 *,* This is a Romance of the days when the Duke of Alva held the Netherlands 
 fast in his iron grasp, and the power of King and Church oast its shadow over the 
 land, sometimes over those even who were chosen to uphold it. There was DO 
 hope of progress and the most enlightened could only smile grimly, sceptically 
 upon the errors ol the age. Such also was the man whose story is here told; 
 proud, daring, ruthless, like all the lieutenants ol the great Duke yet lifted by 
 bis education above the blind fanaticism of his time, seeking truth and freedom, 
 like his great contemporary the Prince of Orange. The publisher claims for " The 
 Shadow of Power " that it is one oi the most powerful historical romances ever 
 submitted to him. 
 
 Timei " Few readers have taken up ' The Shadow of Power ' and come face to 
 face with Don Jaimie de Jorquera, will lay it down or refuse him a hearing until 
 the book and his adventures come to an end." 
 
 Daily Mail" This is a book that cuts deep into nature and experience. We 
 commend it most heartily to discerning readers, and hope it may take its place 
 with the best historical novels." 
 
 BY HORACE BLEACKLEY. 
 
 A GENTLEMAN OF THE ROAD. Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 Author of " Ladies Fair and Frail," etc. 
 
 * As the title implies, this is a very gallant novel: an eighteenth century 
 story of abductions, lonely inns, highwaymen and hangmen. Two men are in love 
 with Margaret Crofton: Colonel Thomley, an old villain, and Dick Maynard, who 
 is as youthful as he is virtuous. Thornley nearly succeeds in compelling Margaret 
 to marry him, for he has in his possession a document sadly incriminating to her 
 father. Maynard settles Thornley, but himself in his turn is " up against it." He 
 is arrested for complicity in the highway thefts of a glad but graceless young 
 ruffian. Both are sentenced to death, but a great effort is made to get them 
 reprieved. It would be a pity to divulge the climax cunningly contrived by Mr. 
 Bleackley, save to say that the book ends in a scene of breathless interest before 
 the Tyburn gallows.
 
 JOHN LANE'S LIST OF FICTION 
 BY H. F. PREYOST BATTERSBY. 
 
 THE LAST RESORT. Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 BY EX-LIEUTENANT BILSE. 
 
 LIFE IN A GARRISON TOWN. Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 Also in Paper Cover i/- net. 
 
 The suppressed German Novel. With a preface written by the 
 author whilst in London, and an introduction by Arnold White. 
 
 Truth" The disgraceful exposures of the book were expressly admitted to 
 be true by the Minister of War in the Reichstag. What the book will probably 
 suggest to you is. that German militarism is cutting its own throat, and will on 
 day oe hoist with its own petard." 
 
 BY SHELLAND BRADLEY. 
 
 ADVENTURES OF AN A.D.C. Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 Westmintttr Gazette " . . . makes better and more entertaining reeding than 
 nine out of every ten novels c-f the day. . . . Those who know nothing about 
 Anglo-Indian social life will be as well entertained by this story as those who 
 know everything about it." 
 
 Timts" Full of delightful humour." 
 
 BY EYELYN BRENTWOOD. 
 
 HECTOR GRAEME. Third Thousand Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 ** The outstanding feature of "Hector Graeme" is the convincing picture it 
 gives of military life in India and South Africa, written by one who is thoroughly 
 acquainted with it. Hector Graeme is not the great soldier of fiction, usuaMy 
 depicted by novelists, but a rather unpopular officer in the English army who 
 is given to strange fits of unconsciousness, during which he shows extraordinary 
 psychic powers. He is a man as ambitious as he is unscrupulous, with the desire 
 but not the abHity to become a Napoleon. The subject matter of the Btory is 
 unusual and the atmosphere thoroughly convincing. 
 
 Morning Leader" Provides much excitement and straightforward pleasure. 
 A remarkable exception to the usual boring novels about military life." 
 
 BY JAMES BRYCE 
 
 THE STORY OF A PLOUGHBOY. An Autobiography. 
 
 Crown 8vo. 6/ 
 
 ." As will be seen from the title of its parts" The Farm," " The Mansion," 
 " The Cottage "the characters whose passions and interests make the plot of this 
 story are drawn from the households of the Labourer, the Farmer and the Squire; 
 the book is therefore an attempt to present country life in all its important 
 aspects. In this, again, it differs from all other novels of the soil in our own or 
 perhaps in any language: its author writes not from book-knowledge or hearsay or 
 even observation, but from experience. He has lived what he describes, and under 
 the power of his icalism readers will feel that they are not so much glancing 
 over printed pages as mixing with living men and women. But the story has 
 interest for others than the ordinary novel-reader. It appeals as strongly to the 
 many earnest minds that are now concerned with the questions of Land and 
 Industrial Reform. To such ita very faithfulness to life will suggest answer* 
 startling, perhaps, but certainly arresting.
 
 JOHN LANE'S LIST OF FICTION 
 BY DANIEL CHAUCER. 
 
 THE SIMPLE LIFE, LIMITED. Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 This norel has a Tery decided quality of satire which is inspired by the 
 conTentions of the unconventional. Eridently Mr. Ohaucer knows the Simple Life 
 from the inside, and his reflection* will both amuse and amaze those who know it 
 only from casual allusions. Many well-known figures will be recognized, though not 
 in all cases under their proper names, and, as in the case of Mr. Mallock's " New 
 Republic," Society will be busy dotting the " i's " and crossing the " t's." 
 
 THE NEW HUMPTY DUMPTY Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 BY GILBERT K. CHESTERTON. 
 
 THE NAPOLEON OF NOTTING HILL. Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 With 6 Illustrations by W. Graham Robertson. 
 
 Daily Mail " Mr. Chesterton, as our laughing philosopher, is at his best in 
 this delightful fantasy." 
 
 Wextminatfr Gaztttf " It is undeniably cleyer. It scintillates that is exactly 
 the right word with bright and epigrammatic observations, and it is written 
 throughout with undoubted literary skill." 
 
 BY PARKER H. FILLIMORE 
 
 THE YOUNG IDEA; A Neighbourhood. Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 Author of " The Hickory Limb." With Illustrations by 
 Rosa Cecil O'Niel. 
 
 BY RICHARD GARNETT. 
 
 THE TWILIGHT OF THE GODS AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 Crown 8vo. Third Edition. 6/- 
 
 Daily Chronicl" A. subtle compound of philosophy and irony. Let the 
 reader take these stories as pure fun lirely incident and droll character and he 
 will be agreeably surprised to find how stimulating they are." 
 
 Timet " Here is learning In plenty, drawn from all ages and rnest languages, 
 but of dryness or dulness not a sentence. The book bubbles with laughter. . . . 
 His sense of humour has a wide range." 
 
 BY A. R. GORING THOMAS. 
 
 MRS. GRAMERCY PARK. Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 World " In the language of the heroine herself, this, her story, is delightfully 
 ' bright and cute.' " 
 
 Observtr " Fresh and amusing." 
 
 THE LASS WITH THE DELICATE AIR. Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 ,* In his new novel Mr. Goring-Thomas relates the history of a young girl 
 whose beautiful face is a mask that allures. R< und the history of " The Lass with 
 the Delicate Air " is woren the story oi the Hicks family. Mrs. Hicks keeps a 
 lodg'ng house in Chelsea, and baa theatrical ambitions. The author has keen 
 powers of observation and a faculty of "getting inside a woman's mind "; and the 
 same witty dialogue that was so commented upon in " Mrs. Gramercy-Park " is 
 again seen in the new work. The scene of the book is laid partly in London and 
 partly in Paris.
 
 JOHN LANE'S LIST OF FICTION 
 
 BY A. R. GORING TEOTAAS-continued 
 
 WAYWARD FEET. Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 *,* This book is a departure on the part of Mr. Caring-Thomas, and is a 
 brilliant piece of work. The scene of the book alternates between St. Wnlpny- 
 surmer, a mediaeval fortified town in the Pas-de-Calais, and Paris. The two 
 heroines Toinette Moreau and J*an Dombray, both come from St. Wnlphy and 
 both go to Paris. Their histories contrive a sharp contrast: one being by character 
 sweet, yielding and affectionate, while the other is combative, rebellions and 
 intellectual. The character drawing, as in Mr. Goring-Thomas' other books, is 
 notably clear and interesting. His already celebrated wit, his original humour, 
 and insight into character again illuminate his latest book. The history of Joan 
 Dombray, especially, is a strong, original, and striking piece of work. 
 
 BY HENRY HARLAND. 
 
 THE CARDINAL'S SNUFF BOX. Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 Illustrated by G. C. Wilmhurst. i6sth. Thousand. 
 
 Acod> my-" The drawings are all excellent in style and really illustrative of 
 the tale." 
 
 Saturday Review" Wholly delightful." 
 Pall Mall Gazette" Dainty and delicious." 
 Timet " A book among a thousand." 
 Spectator " A charming romance." 
 
 MY FRIEND PROSPERO. Crown 8vo. Third Edition. 6/- 
 
 Timei " There is no denying the charm of the work, the delicacy and 
 Iragrancy of the style, the sunny play of the dialogue, the vivacity ol the wit, and 
 the graceful flight of the fancy." 
 
 World " The reading f it is a pleasure mre and unalloyed." 
 
 THE LADY PARAMOUNT. Crown 8vo. ssth Thousand. 6/- 
 
 Time " A fantastic, delightful lore-idyll." 
 
 Spectator" A roseate romance without a crumpled rose leaf." 
 
 Daily Mail-" Charming, dainty, delightful." 
 
 COMEDIES AND ERRORS. Crown 8vo. Third Edition. 6/- 
 
 Mr. HENRY JAMES, in Fortnightly Krrieic" Mr. Harland bag clearly thought 
 oat a form. . . . He has mastered a method and learned how to paint. . . . Hi* 
 art is all alive with felicities and delicacies." 
 
 GREY ROSES. Crown 8vo. Fourth Edition. 3/6 net 
 
 Daily Telegraph" ' Grey Roses ' are entitled to rank among the choicest 
 Bowers of the realms of romance." 
 
 Spectator" Really delightful. ' Castles near Spain ' is as near perfection as it 
 could well be." 
 
 Daily Chronicle " Charming stories, simple, full ol treshnew." 
 
 MADEMOISELLE MISS. Crown 8vo. Third Edition. 3/6 
 
 Speaker" All through the book we are pleased and entertained." 
 Bookman" An interesting collection of early work. In it may be noted the 
 undoubted delicacy and strength of Mr. Harland'a manner."
 
 BY CROSBY HEATH. 
 
 HENRIETTA TAKING NOTES. Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 *** Henrietta is the eleven year old daughter of a dramatic critic, who, with 
 her delightful younger brother, Cyrus, are worthy of a place beside " Helen's 
 Babies " or " Elizabeth's Children." They cause the " Olympians " many anxious 
 and anguished momenta, yet their pranks are forgiven because of the endearing 
 charm of their generous natures. Miss Heath writes of children with the skill that 
 oomes oi a thorough understanding of the child mind. 
 
 BY MURIEL HINE. 
 
 HALF IN EARNEST. Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 ** Derrick Kilmarney, the secretary ol a famus politician, is a young man 
 with the disposition to take the best that life offers him, and shirk the respon- 
 sibilities. He falls in lore with a girl, but shudders at the idea of the bondage of 
 marriage. His lore is emancipated, unfettered. He is ambitious, politically, 
 allows himself to become entangled with his chief's wife, and is too indolent to 
 break with her even in, justice to the girl he loves. Eventually there comes a 
 time when all the threads hare to be gathered together, when lore has to be 
 weighed with ambition, and in Kilmarney's ease the denouement is unexpected 
 and startling. 
 
 EARTH. Second Edition. Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 *,* Muriel Hine's previous novel " Half in Earnest " achieved a considerable 
 success, " Earth " seems likely to achieve a greater. The story deals with the 
 awakening of a pure young girl to the realities of life and what they mean. With 
 a proper understanding of human nature oome-s sympathy : to know all is to pardon 
 all. " Earth " is a society novel with a society atmosphere that is convincing. 
 
 BY ADELAIDE HOLT. 
 
 THE VALLEY OF REGRET. Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 *,* Betty Feverell'a childhood is full t paths. For the best reason in the 
 world she is unable to capture the sympathy of her supposed father, and runs 
 away to make an imprudent marriage with a very charming but rather weak young 
 man who is addicted to " drink." Fastidious to a degree, this failing does not 
 seem to spoil the gentleness and refinement of his disposition, until, enraged by an 
 insult to bia v.ife, he kills a man in a fit of alcoholic frenzy. With her husband 
 sentenced to penal servitude for seven years, the problem of Betty's life is full of 
 difficulty. After five years a second man, John Earle, wins her love, knowing 
 little or nothing of the obstacles in the way of its fulfilment. Finally, news 
 arrive* that the convict will return in a few weeks, and the story ends suddenly 
 and unexpectedly. This is a delightful novel. It has incident and freshness; and 
 the directness of the style gives the book a remarka-bly artistic impression of life. 
 
 BY MRS. JOHN LANE. 
 
 KITWYK. Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 A Story with numerous illustrations by HOWARD PYLE 
 ALBERT STERNER and GEORGE WHARTON EDWARDS. 
 
 Timii " Mrs. Lane has succeeded to admiration, and chiefly by reason ol 
 
 being so much interested in her theme that she makes no conscious effort to 
 
 please. . . . Everyone who seeks to be diverted will read ' Kitwyk ' for its 
 obvious qualities ol entertainment."
 
 JOHN LANE'S LIST OF FICTION 
 
 BY MRS. JOHN LANE continued. 
 THE CHAMPAGNE STANDARD. Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 Morniny Pott" The author's champion* overflows with witty sayings too 
 numerous to cite." 
 
 Pail Mall Gazttti" Mrs. Lane's paper* on oar social manners and foible* are 
 the moat entertaining, the kindest and the truest that hare been offered us for a 
 long time. . . . The book shows an airy philosophy that will render it ol service 
 to the social student." 
 
 ACCORDING TO MARIA. Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 Daily Chronicli " Thia delightful norel, sparkling with humour. . . . Maria's 
 world is real. . . . Mrs. Lane is remarkably true to life in that world. . . . Maria 
 is priceless, and Mrs. Lane is a satirist whose life may be indefatigably joyous in 
 satiric art. For her eyes harvest the little absurdities, and her hand makes 
 sheares of them. . . . Thackeray might hare made such sheaves if he had been 
 a woman." 
 
 BALTHASAR AND OTHER STORIES. Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 Translated by Mrs. JOHN LANE from the French of Anatole France 
 
 Daily Graphic" The original charm and distinction ot the author's style has 
 survived the difficult ordeal of appearing in another language. . . .' The Cure's 
 Mignonette ' is as perfect in itself as some little delicate flower." 
 
 TALK O' THE TOWN. Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 % Mrs. John Lane's new book " Talk of the Town " is on the same lines 
 as " The Champagne Standard," that sparkling and brilliantly witty study of 
 English and American life, and has the delightful and refreshing humour 
 we hare a right to expect of the author of " According to Maria," and that power 
 of observation and keen insight into everyday life which made " The Champagne 
 Standard " one of the most successful and one ol the most quoted books of its 
 season, both in England and America." 
 
 BY RICHARD LE GALLIENNE. 
 
 THE QUEST OF THE GOLDEN GIRL. Cr. 8vo. 6/- 
 
 Fifteenth Edition. 
 
 Mr. MAX BEBBBOHM, in Diily Mail" Mr. Le Gallienne's gentle, high spirits, 
 and his sympathy with existence is exhibited here. . . . His poetry, like his 
 humour, suffuses the whole book and gives a charm to the most prosaic object* 
 and incidents of life. . . . The whole book is delightful, for this reason, that no 
 one else could hare written a book of the same kind." 
 
 THE ROMANCE OF ZION CHAPEL. Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 Second Edition. 
 
 Si. Jamet't Gazittf" Mr. Le Gallienne's masterpiece." 
 
 Timts " Extremely clever and pathetic. As for sentiment Dickens might 
 have been justly proud of poor Jenny's lingering death, and readers whose hearts 
 have the mastery over their heads will certainly weep over it."
 
 JOHN LANE'S LIST OF FICTION 
 BY W. J. LOCKE. 
 
 DERELICTS. Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 Daily Chronicle " Mr. Locke telU his story in a Tory true, very moving, and 
 Tery noble book. It anyone can read the last chapter with dry eyes we shall be 
 surprised. ' Derelicts ' is an impressive and important book." 
 
 Morning Pst " Mr. Locke's clever novel. One oi the most effective stories 
 that have appeared {or some time past." 
 
 IDOLS. Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 Daily Telegraph" A brilliantly written and eminently readable book." 
 Daily Hail" One of the most distinguished novels oi the present book season." 
 Punch " The Baron strongly recommends Mr. W. J. Locke's ' Idols ' to all 
 
 novel readers. It is well written. No time is wasted in superfluous descriptions; 
 
 there is no fine writing ior fine writing's sake, but the story will absorb the 
 
 reader. ... It is a novel that, once taken up, cannot willingly be put down 
 
 until finished." 
 
 A STUDY IN SHADOWS. Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 Daily Chronicle" Mr. Locke has achieved a distinct success In this novel. 
 He has struck many emotional chords and struck them all with a firm sure hand." 
 
 Athtncr.nm" The character-drawing is distinctly good. All the personages 
 etand well defined with strongly marked individualities." 
 
 THE WHITE DOVE. Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 Timt-i " An interesting story, lull ol dramatic scenes." 
 
 Horning Post" An interesting ttory. The characters are strongly conceived 
 and vividly presented, and the dramatic moments are powerfully realised." 
 
 THE USURPER. Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 World " This quite uncommon novel." 
 
 Spectator" Character and plot are most Ingeniously wrought, and the concln- 
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 Timtt " An impressive romance." 
 
 THE DEMAGOGUE AND LADY PHAYRE. Cr. 8vo. 3/6 
 
 AT THE GATE OF SAMARIA. Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 Daily Chronicle" The heroine of this clever story attracts our interest. . . . 
 She is a clever and subtle study. . . . We congratulate Mr. Locke." 
 
 Horning Post" A cleverly written tale . . . the author's pictures of 
 Bohemian life are bright and graphic." 
 
 WHERE LOVE IS. Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 Mr. JAMES DOUGLAS, in Star" I do not olten praise a book with this 
 exultant gusto, but it gave me so much spiritual stimulus and moral pleasure that 
 I feel bound to snatch the additional deligut oi commending it to those readers 
 who long for a novel that is a piece ot literature as well a* a piece of life." 
 
 Standard " A brilliant piece ol work." 
 
 Tinut" The author has the true gift; his people are alive." 
 
 THE MORALS OF MARCUS ORDEYNE. Cr. 8vo. 6/- 
 
 Mr. C. K. SHORTER, in Sphtrt" A book which has Just delighted my neart." 
 Truth" Mr. Locke's new novel is one ol the best artistic pieces ol work I 
 
 have met with for many a day." 
 
 Daily Chronicle" Mr. Locke succeeds, indeed, in every crisis of this most 
 
 original story." 
 
 8
 
 JOHN LANE'S LIST OF FICTION 
 
 BY W. J. LOCKE continued. 
 
 THE BELOVED VAGABOND. Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 Truth" Certainly it is the moat brilliant piece of work Mr. Locke has done. ' 
 Evening Standard" Mr. Locke can hardly tail to write beautifully. He has 
 not tailed now." 
 
 SIMON THE JESTER. Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 *.* The central figure oi Mr. Locke's new corel is one Simon de Gez, If .P., 
 
 who baring met life -with a gay and serene philosophy is suddenly called upon to 
 face Death. This he does gallantly and jests at Death until he di scorers to big 
 confusion that Destiny is a greater jester than he. Erentually by surrendering 
 his claims he attains salration. The heroine is Lola Brandt, an ex-trainer ol 
 animals, and an important figure in the story is a dwarf, Professor Anastasius 
 Papadopouloe, who has a troupe ol performing cats. The scene oi the norel is 
 laid in London and Algiers. 
 
 THE GLORY OF CLEMENTINA WING. Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 Obferver " Mr. Locke's best. . . . Clementina Wing and Dr. Quixtus are the 
 two most adorable characters that Mr. Locke has ever brought together in holy 
 wedlock. The phrases are Locke's most debonairly witty." 
 
 THE JOYOUS ADVENTURES OF ARISTIDE PUJOL. 6/- 
 
 BY LAURA BOGUE LUFFMAN. 
 
 A QUESTION OF LATITUDE. Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 ,* The author ot " A Question of Latitude " takes an English girl from the 
 oomtortable statelinesa oi a country house in the Old Country, and places her in a 
 rough and ready enrironment in Australia. The girl finds her standard of Talues 
 undergoing a change. She learns to distinguish between English snobbery and 
 Colonial simplicity and manliness, she also learns how to wash up dishes, and that 
 Australia is not all kangaroos and giant cricketers. The atmosphere oi the story is 
 conrincing, and there are many rirkl pictures ol Melbourne life. The book depicts 
 Australia as it really is, its strength and its weakness, its refinement and its 
 rnlLailty. 
 
 BY A. NEIL LYONS. 
 
 ARTHUR'S. Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 Timtt " Not only a rery entertaining and amusing work, but a rery kindiy 
 and tolerant work also. Incidentally the work is a mirror ot a phase of the low 
 London life oi to-day as true as certain oi Hogarth's transcripts in the eighteenth 
 century, and far more tender." 
 
 Punch. " Mr. Neil Lyons seems to get right at the heart ol things, and I 
 confess to a real admiration lor this philosopher ot the coffee-stall." 
 
 SIXPENNY PIECES. Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 Pall Mall Gazett*" It is pure, fast, sheer life, salted with a sense ot humour." 
 
 Evening Standard" ' Sixpenny Pieces ' is as good as ' Arthur's,' and that 
 
 to saying a great deal. A book full of laughter and tears and hits innumerable 
 
 that one feels impelled to read aloud. ' Sixpenny Pieces ' would be very bard 
 
 indeed to beat,"
 
 JOHN LANE'S LIST OF FICTION 
 
 BY A. NEIL LYONS continued 
 COTTAGE PIE. Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 * Mr. Lyons' former books dealt with Eait London characters. Now h 
 draws the rarying types oi a small country community. The humour o! the 
 whole is enforced, inimitable, and there i* the underlying note ot tragedy nerer 
 wholly absent Lrom the Urea o! the poorer classes. 
 
 W. J. LOCKE, in Out/oofc " . . . That book of beauty, truth, and artistry." 
 EDWIN PUOH, in Outlook " I hare nerer missed an opportunity to express my 
 admiration for his inimitable talent." 
 
 CHRONICLES OF CLARA. Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 BY ALLAN McAULAY. 
 
 THE EAGLE'S NEST, Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 Athtnatum " We should describe the book as a brilliant tour d fore*. . . . 
 The story is spirited and interesting. The lore interest also is excellent and 
 pathetic." 
 
 Sptetator" This is one oi thoee illuminating and stimulating romances which 
 set people reading history." 
 
 BEGGARS AND SORNERS. Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 **" Beggars and Sorners " is a norel which deals with what may be called the 
 back-wash of the " Forty Fire." It commemorates the debdclf of a great romance, 
 and in describing the lires, the struggles, the make-shifts, the intrigues and the 
 crimes of a small circle oi Jacobite exiles in Holland between the years 1745 and 
 1750, it strires to show the pathos of history while rerealing its seamy side. The 
 characters are imaginary (with one important exception) ; they hare imaginary 
 names and commit imaginary actions, for the story is not confined to, but only 
 founded on, fact. If some readers of Jacobite history find among their number 
 some old friends with new taces, this need not detract from the interest ot others 
 to whom all the characters are new actors in a drama drawn from the noreliit's 
 fancy. To English readers it may hare to be explained what the word Sorner 
 means but the story makes this sufficiently plain. The noTel is of a lighter 
 character than those preriously written by this author, and is not without 
 sensational elements. In spite of adrerae circumstances, grim characters, and all 
 the sorrows of a lost cause, it oontrires to end happily. The scene is laid in 
 Amsterdam. 
 
 BY KARIN MICHAELIS. 
 
 THE DANGEROUS AGE. Crown 8vo. 3/6 net 
 
 Translated from the Danish. 
 
 This book has been: 
 
 (1) Sold to the extent ot 100 editions in 6 months in Germany. 
 
 (2) Translated into 11 languages. 
 
 (3) Translated into French by the great MABCEL PEKVOST, who says in his 
 introduction to the English Edition " It is the feminine soul, and the feminine 
 soul of all thai is rerealed in these extraordinary documents. Here indeed is a 
 strange book." 
 
 ELSIE LINDTNER. A Sequel. Crown 8vo. 3/6 net
 
 JOHN LANE'S LIST OF FICTION 
 BY IRENE MILLER. 
 
 SEKHET. Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 ** Sekhet deals with that topic of unwearying interest to readers ol romance 
 the adventures and straggles of an exquisitely lovely woman upon whom the 
 hand ot Fate ii laid heavily. From the days ol her beautiful girlhood when her 
 Guardian himself proves her tempter, Erarne has good reason to believe herself 
 one of victims of " Sekhet," the ancient Egyptian Goddess ol Love and Cruelty. 
 Even though the main theme of this story is the tragic outcome of a too passionate 
 love, portions ol Frame's experiences, such as those with the bogus Theatrical 
 manager, are full of humour, and throughout there is a relieving lightness of touch 
 in the writing. The book grows in interest as it proceeds, and the final portion 
 a long duel between Evarne and the evil genius ol her life is dramatic in the 
 extreme. The result remains uncertain till the last page ox two, and though 
 decidedly ghastly U entirely original and unforeseen. 
 
 BY HECTOR H. MUNRO (Saki) 
 
 THE CHRONICLES OF CLOVIS. Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 Author of "Reginald," 
 A NEW HUMOURIST. 
 
 *' Gloria is an embodiment of the Modern Man in his moat frivolous, cynical, 
 mischief-loving vein. He moves through, or inspires, a series of congenial adventures 
 in the world of country-house and restaurant lite. The chronicle of his sayings 
 and misdoings form a feast ot wit and humour that will convince many that it is 
 no longer necessary to go abroad for our humourists. 
 
 BY LOUIS N. PARKER 
 
 POMANDER WALK. Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 Author of "Rosemary," etc. With numerous Illustrations by 
 J. Scott Williams. 
 
 .Novelised by the author of the delightful play of the eame name, which hat 
 met with so much success both in England and the United States. A picture ol 
 one ol the quaint ont-ol-the-way corners of London ol the olden times. The volume 
 contains a tinted frontispiece and title page, and numerous other charming 
 illustrations. 
 
 BY JOHN PARKINSON. 
 
 OTHER LAWS. Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 , This book is distinctly the outcome of the latest " intellectual " movement 
 in novel-writing. The hero, Hawkins, is an African explorer. During a holiday in 
 England he falls in love with and captivates Caroline Blackwood, a woman of 
 strong personality. Circumstances prevent him from entering upon a formal 
 engagement, and he departs again for Africa, without proposing marriage. Caroline 
 and Hawkins correspond fitfully for some time; but then a startling combination 
 of events causes Hawkins to penetrate further and further into the interior; a 
 native village is burned, and a report, based apparently upon fact, is circulated 
 of his death. Not until seven months have elapsed is be able to return to England. 
 He finds Caroline married to a man who has lound her money useful. Here the 
 story, strong and moving throughout, moves steadily to the close, describing 
 delicately and analytically the soul conflict of a man and a woman, sundered and 
 separata, with a yearning for each other's lore.
 
 JOHN LANE'S LIST OF FICTION 
 BY F. INGLIS POWELL. 
 
 THE SNAKE. Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 *,* For countless generations the soul of Peasant ladi* has been steeped in 
 weird, fantastic superstitions, some grotesque, some loathsome, all strangely 
 fascinating. Though the main theme ol this story U the unhappy lore of a 
 beautiful, evil woman, and the brutal frankness with which she writes of her 
 uncontrolled passions in her diary, yet the whole tale hinges on some of the most 
 gruesome superstitions of the East. This book should appeal to all who take an 
 interest in the strange beliefs not of the educated classes but of the simple- 
 minded and ignorant peasants of Behar. 
 
 BY F. J. RANDALL. 
 
 LOVE AND THE IRONMONGER. Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 Daily Telegraph" Since the gay days when Mr. F. Anstey was writing his 
 inimitable series of humourous novels, we can recall no book of purely farcical 
 imagination so full of excellent entertainment as this first effort of Mr. F. J. 
 Randall. ' Lore and the Ironmonger ' is certain to be a success." 
 
 Timrg " As diverting a comedy of errors as the reader is likely to meet with 
 for a considerable time." 
 
 Mr. CLEMENT SHORTER, in The Sphtrt" I thank the author for a delightful 
 hour's amusement." 
 
 THE BERMONDSEY TWIN. Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 ** A humourous story of the reappearance ol a twin brother, who is supposed 
 to be dead. Prosperous, respected, and well satisfied with himtelf, a suburban 
 tradesman is contemplating matrimony and the realisation of his ambitions, when 
 the twin brother appears. He is thrown into a state of panic, for not only is 
 hi- fortune thus reduced by half and his marriage prospects endangered, but the 
 twin is to all appearance a disreputable character, whose existence threatens to 
 mar the tradesman's respectability. The good man's attempts to hide this 
 undesirable brother make amusing reading, and the pranks of the unwelcome twin 
 serve to complicate matters, for the brothers are so much alike as to be easily 
 mistaken one for the other. The new arrival is really a man oi integrity, his 
 depravity being assumed as a joke. Having played the farce out he is about to 
 " confess," when the tables are turned upon him by accident, and he is forced to 
 pay heavily for his fun in a series oi humiliating adventures. 
 
 BY HUGH DE SELINCOURT. 
 
 A FAIR HOUSE. Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 Author of "A Boy's Marriage," "The Way Things Happen," "The 
 Strongest Plume." 
 
 *,* The outstanding idea oi Mr. Hugh de S&incourt's new novel U the 
 possibility of absolute love and confidence between father and daughter. It is the 
 main thread of the story and all the incidents are subordinated to it. The book 
 falls naturally into three sections. The first opens with the birth of the daughter 
 and the death ol the mother, the father's utter despair, until an idea comes to 
 him, to make the child his masterpiece and to see how much one human being can 
 mean to another. The second deals with the growth of the child from five to 
 fifteen. In the third, the girl becomes a woman. Her first experience of love is 
 unhappy and threatens to destroy the confidence between father and daughter. 
 But she is enabled to throw herself heart and soul into stage-work, and in the 
 excitement oi work she finds herself again. And the end of the book leaves her 
 with the knowledge that one love does not necessarily displace another, and that a 
 second, happier love has only strengthened the bond between her father and 
 herself. 
 
 12
 
 JOHN LANE'S LIST OF FICTION 
 BY ESSEX SMITH 
 
 WIND ON THE HEATH. Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 *.* No paragraph or descriptive note can give an idea ol Miss Essex Smith's 
 story. It depends upon style, psychology, woodland atmosphere, and more than 
 anything else upon originality ol outlook. It will make a direct appeal to that 
 public that has a taste ior the unusual. There is underlying it a tone ol passion, 
 the passion ol a fantastic Richard Jefferies. 
 
 BY HERMANN SUDERMANN. 
 
 THE MASTERPIECE (Das Hohe Lied). Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 A new Translation by Beatrice Marshall. 
 
 *,* The first English translation ol this work, published under the title el 
 " The Song ol Songs," proved to be too American for the taste ol the British 
 public, and was eventually dropped. Bat it was felt that the work was too great 
 au one not to be represented in the English language, and accordingly this entirely 
 new translation has been made, which it is hoped will fairly represent the wonderful 
 original without unduly offending the susceptibilities ol the British public. In 
 this colossal novel, Sndermann has made a searching and masterly study ol feminine 
 frailty. The character and career ol LUy Czepanck are depicted with such pitiless 
 power and unerring psychological insight, that the portrait would be almost 
 intolerable in its realism, if it were not lor its touches ol humour and tenderness. 
 In these pages too may be lound some ol Sudermann's most characteristic and 
 charming passages descriptire ol country life, while his pictures ol Berlin Society 
 in ail its phases, the glimpses he gives us into what goes on beneath the tinsel, 
 spick and span surface oi the great modern capital are drawn with Tolstoyan 
 rigour and colour. 
 
 THE INDIAN LILY and other Stories. Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 Translated by Ludwig- Lewisohn, M.A. 
 
 *,* A series ol characteristic stories by the great German Master which exhibit 
 his art in every phase. Sudermann is chiefly known in this country as a writer 
 of novels and ol plays, but this volume will place him in a new light for English 
 readers as a writer of short stories ol the first rank. In tact he may with justice 
 be termed the German Maupassant. 
 
 BY MARCELLE TINAYRE. 
 
 THE SHADOW OF LOVE. Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 Translated from the French by A. R. Allinson, M.A. 
 ** Ol the newer French novelists Marcelle Tinayre is perhaps the best known. 
 Her work has been crowned by the French Academy, and she possesses a very large 
 public in Europe and in America. The story deals with a girl's love and a heroic 
 sacrifice dictated by love. " The Shadow ol Love " is a book ol extraordinary 
 power, uncompromising in its delineation ol certain hard, some might say repulsive 
 facts of life, yet instinct all through with an exquisitely tender and beautiful 
 passion ol human interest and human sympathy. 
 
 BY GEORGE YANE. 
 
 THE LIFTED LATCH: A Novel. Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 *.* " The Lilted Latch " is a story of strong situations. The hero is the son 
 ol an Italian attachg and a girl ol whose frailty he takes advantage. The mother 
 decides to hide her shame by handing the child over to a foster-mother together 
 with a sum of money for its maintenance. When the boy grows up be becomes by 
 a curious sequence of events and circumstances reunited to his parents, and a 
 series ol plots and counterplots follow. The scene is set principally in diplomatic 
 circles in Rome. 
 
 13
 
 JOHN LANE'S LIST OF FICTION 
 
 BY GEORGE V ARE continued 
 THE CHIMERA. Crown 8vo, 6/- 
 
 ^7"Tn this book we meet some Sicilians of old lineage and considerable wealth 
 settled in a, gloomy manor in England. The family consists ol an aged and parti; 
 demented Princess, obsessed by a monomania lor revenge, her grandson, an attach^ 
 of the Italian Embassy to the Court ol St. James, and his ball sister, a fascinating, 
 winning, wayward and fickle creature. This girl captures the heart of Lord Drury 
 whose father murdered the Principe Baldas&are di Monreale son of the old Princess. 
 The contrast between these Southerners and their English neighbours is strongly 
 accentuated. Lion Sforza and his half sister Donna Giacinta are no mere puppeti 
 with Italian names; they give the reader the impression of being people the author 
 has met and drawn from life. The tragedy in which they are involved strikes one 
 as inevitable. Poor Lord Drury, in his utter inexperience, has taken a beautiful 
 chimaera for reality and starts in the pursuit of happiness when it was all the 
 time within his grasp. The lore-interest never flags to the last page when the hero's 
 troubles come to an end. The glimpses of diplomatic circles in London are 
 obviously not written by an outsider. 
 
 BY CLARA YIEBIG. 
 
 ABSOLUTION. Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 Timei " There is considerable strength in ' Absolution.' . . . As a realistic 
 
 study the story has much merit." 
 
 Daily Teltgraph" The tale is powerfully told . . . the tale will prove 
 
 absorbing with ite minute characterisation and real passion." 
 
 OUR DAILY BREAD. Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 Athenceum " The story is not only of great human interest, but also extremely 
 valuable as a study of the conditions in which a large section of the poorer classes 
 and small tradespeople of German cities spend their lives. Clara Viebig manipu- 
 lates her material with extraordinary vigour. . . . Her characters are alive." 
 
 BY H. B. MARRIOTT WATSON. 
 
 THE TOMBOY AND OTHERS. Crown 8vo. 3/6 net 
 
 Author of "Galloping Dick." 
 
 BY H. G. WELLS. 
 
 A NEW MACHIAVELLI. Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 * The N*w Machiavelli is the longest, most carefully and elaborately 
 constructed and most ambitious novel that Mr. Wells has yet written. It combines 
 much of the breadth and variety of Tono-Bungay with that concentrated unity 
 of effect which makes Love and Mr. Ltwisham, artistically, his most satisfactory 
 work. It has the autobiographical form which he has already used BO effectively 
 in Tono-Bungay, but this time the hero who surveys and experiences the 
 vicissitudes of our modern world is not a commercial adventurer but a Trinity man, 
 who directs very great ambitions and abilities to political ends, who is wrecked 
 in mid-career and driven into exile by a passionate love adventure. From his 
 retirement in Italy he reviews and discusses his broken life. The story he tells 
 opens amidst suburban surroundings, and the first book gives a series of vivid 
 impressions and criticisms of English public school and university life. Thenoe, 
 after an episode in Staffordshire, it passes to the world of Westminster and the 
 country house. The narrator recounts his relations with the varying groups and 
 forces in contemporary parliamentary life and political journalism in London, 
 and the growth and changes in his own opinion until the emotions of his passionate 
 entanglement sweep the story away to its sombre and touching conclusion. In 
 addition to the full-length portraits of Margaret, the neglected wife perhaps ..-<> 
 finest of Mr. Wells's feminine creations Isabel Rivers, and Remington, there 
 are scores of sharply differentiated characters, sketched and vignetted : Remington 
 the father, Britten, the intriguing Baileys, the members of the Pentagram Circle, 
 Codger the typical don, and Mr. Eves ham the Conservative leader. It is a book 
 to read and read again, and an enduring picture of contemporary English conditions. 
 
 14
 
 JOHN LANE'S LIST OF FICTION 
 BY MARGARET WESTRUP. 
 
 ELIZABETH'S CHILDREN. Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 Daily Teltgraph" The book is charming . . . the author . . . has a delicate 
 fanciful touch, a charming imagination . . . ekillully suggests character and 
 moods ... is bright and -witty, and writes about children with exquisite know- 
 ledge and sympathy." 
 
 HELEN ALLISTON. Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 Pall Mall Oazett" The book has TiTacity, fluency, colour, more than a touch 
 of poetry and passion. . . . We shall look forward with interest to future work 
 by the author oi ' Helen AllUton.' " 
 
 THE YOUNG O'BRIENS. Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 Saturday Ririfw" Delightful . . . the author treats them (the Young 
 O'Briens) very skilfully." 
 
 PHYLLIS IN MIDDLEWYCH. Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 *,* It is some years since " Elizabeth's Children " -was published and 
 immediately ran through edition after edition. In her new book the author shows 
 that same sympathetic touch and sure knowledge of the real child that stamped 
 " Elizabeth's Children " as a live book. The doings and misdoings of Phyllis are 
 told with understanding and with humorous and deft touches the little 
 idioeyncracies oi the Middlewichites are admirably hit off. 
 
 ELIZABETH IN RETREAT. Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 BY EDITH WHERRY. 
 
 THE RED LANTERN : Being the Story of the Goddess of the 
 
 Red Light. Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 *,* The most exciting novel of recent years. It deals with the Rebellion in 
 China and i of extraordinary anticipation. Sun Yat Sen is vividly depicted under 
 the name of Sam Wang in Miss Edith Wherry's startling novel. 
 
 BY IDA WILD. 
 
 ZOE THE DANCER. Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 ** The scene of the story is laid in Brussels, where Zoe, little more than a 
 child, shows her remarkable aptitude for dancing. Her wonderful yellow hair 
 secures for her a position in a hairdresser's window to the constant delight of the 
 good citizens. Chance leads to her adoption of dancing as a profession. The book 
 is full oi comedy and tragedy, and yet it is the charm and originality oi the telling 
 which holds the reader throughout. 
 
 IS
 
 JOHN LANE'S LIST OF FICTION 
 BY M. P. WILLCOCKS. 
 
 WIDDICOMBE. Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 Evening standard " Wonderfully alive and pulsating with a curious lervour 
 which brings round the reader the very atmosphere which the author describee. 
 ... A fine, rather unusual novel. . . . There are some striking studies ot women." 
 
 Truth" A first novel ot most unusual promise." 
 
 Quetn " An unusually deter book." 
 
 THE WINGLESS VICTORY. Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 Timel " Such books are worth keeping on the shelves even by the classics, 
 for they are painted in colours that do not lade." 
 
 Daily Tilegraph" A novel ol such power aa should win lor its author a 
 position in the front rank of contemporary writers ol fiction." 
 
 A MAN OF GENIUS. Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 Daily Tlgraph" ' Widdioombe ' was good, and ' The Wingless Victory ' 
 was perhaps better, but in ' A Man ol Genius ' the author has given, us something 
 that should assure her place in the front rank ol our liring novelists. In this 
 latest novel there ia so much ol character, so much ol incident, and to its writing 
 has gone so much insight and observation that it is not easy to praise it without 
 seeming exaggeration." 
 
 Punch" There is no excuse tor not reading ' A Man ol Genius ' and making 
 a short stay in the ' serenth Devon ol delight.' " 
 
 Glob*" Exquisite." 
 
 THE WAY UP. Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 Daily Mail " It is admirably done. . . . Eminently worth reading, lull ol 
 extremely clever characterisation, ol sharp and picturesque contrasts in personality 
 ... a merciless exhibition oi almost all the lollies known as modern thought.'' 
 
 WINGS OF DESIRE. Crown 8vo. 6/- 
 
 ** When the curtain goes up on " Wings ol Desire " it is to show Simon 
 Bodinar dancing a horn-pipe in a seaman's Mission Hall. For Simon, the Ulysces 
 of the novel, is in one sense the motive power oi a tale which carries its chief 
 characters Irom the Narrows oi the Dart to the South ol South America, to a lonely 
 core in the Straits ol Magellan. It is Bodinar's doggerel rhyme, 
 " OH Diego Ramires, where the Ilde-lonos roar, 
 There's gold, there's gold, there's gold galore," 
 
 that draws the men ol the story Southward-ho. For " Wings ol Desire " is in 
 frame-work the tale ol a treasure-hunt, while in subject it is a study ol the 
 character interactions ol a group ol ultra-modern people people prepared to bring 
 each social law to the bar oi reason and there try it for what it is worth. This, ol 
 course, brings them up against the most hotly contested question ol to-day- 
 marriage and diTorce. " Wings ot Desire " written in 1911, the year among other 
 things ol the Dirorce Commission, puts the case ol Archer Bellow, norelist and 
 poseur, and ol Sara his wife, the graTe-eyed woman who stoops, not to conquer, 
 but to save. Or so she thinks. The unconventional cutting of the knot many 
 will probably call by a harsher name. But the book is a human instance, not a 
 dogma. It ends with a question. The answer, the verdict, is with the reader; an 
 answer, a verdict, which will differ according to whether bis eyes are turned 
 backward into the past or forward into the future. 
 
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