First and Last
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H. Belloc >> First and Last
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I have no space to speak of how from Beeston you see all Cheshire; the
Vale Royal to your left, and the main plain of the county to your right.
The whole stretch is framed in with definite hills, the last and highly
marked line of the Pennines bounds the view upon the east; upon the west
the first of the Welsh hills stands sharply in a long even line against
the fading sun; and on the north you see the height of Delamere. There
are three other views in the North of England, the first easy, the last
two difficult to obtain, all between them making up a true picture of
what the North of England is. The first (and it is very famous) is the
view over the industrial ferment of South Lancashire, seen from the
complete silence of the hills round the Peak. No matter where you cross
that summit, even if you take the high road from the Snake Inn to
Glossop, where the easiest, and therefore the least striking, passage
has been chosen, much more if you follow the wild heights a little to
the south until you come to a more abrupt descent on which there are not
even paths, there comes a point where there is presented to you in one
great offering, without introduction, a vision of the vast energies of
England.
I remember once in winter when the sun sets early (it was December, and
seven years ago) coming upon this sight. The clouds were so arranged
after an Atlantic storm that all the heaven (which here is always
spacious and noble) was covered with a rolling curtain as though a man
had pulled it with his hands. But far off, westward, there was a broad
red band of sunset, and against this the smoke, the tall stacks, the
violence and the wealth of that cauldron. One could almost hear the
noise. It did arrest one; it was as though someone had painted something
unreal, to be a mystical emblem, and to sum up in one picture all those
million despairs, misfortunes, chances, disciplines, and acquirements
which make up the character of Lancashire men. This vision also many men
have seen and many men shall write of. Very rarely upon the surface of
the earth does the soul take on so immediate and obvious a physical body
as does the soul of that industrial world in the view of which I speak.
And the two other views are, first, that difficult one which one must
pick and choose but which can be obtained from several sites (especially
at the end of Wensleydale), and which is the view of that rich, old, and
agricultural Yorkshire, from which the county draws its traditions and
in which, perhaps, the truest spirit of the county still abides; for
Yorkshire is at heart farmer, and possibly after three generations of a
town, a man from this part of England still looks more lively when he
sees a lively horse put before him for judgment. Second, the view from
Cross Fell, very, very difficult to obtain, for often when one climbs
Cross Fell in sunny weather, one gets up over the Scar under the threat
of cloud, and one only reaches the summit by the time the evening or the
mist has fallen; but if one has the luck to see the view of which I
speak, then one sees all that rugged remaining part of the Northwest
exactly as the Romans saw it, and as it has been for two thousand years,
with the high land of the lakes and the stony nature and the sparseness
of all the stretch about one, and the approach to a foreign land.
I have often thought when I have heard men blaming the story of England
or her present mood for false reasons, or, what is worse, praising her
for false reasons; when I have heard the men of the cities talking wild
talk got from maps and from print, or the disappointed men talking wild
talk of another kind, expecting impossible or foreign perfections from
their own kindred--I have often thought, I say, when I have heard the
folly upon either side (and the mass of it daily increases)--that it
would be a wholesome thing if one could take such a talker and make him
walk from Dover to the Solway, exercising some care that he should rise
before the sun, and that he should see in clear weather the views of
which I speak. A man who has done that has seen England--not the name or
the map or the rhetorical catchword, but the thing. And it does not take
so very long.
The Lunatic
Those who are interested in what simple straightforward people call the
Pathology of Consciousness have gathered a great body of evidence upon
the various manias that affect men, and there is an especially
interesting department of this which concerns illusion upon matters
which in the sane are determinable by the senses and common experience.
Thus one man will believe himself to be the Emperor of China, another to
be William Shakespeare or some other impossible person, though one would
imagine that his every accident of daily life would convince him to the
contrary.
I had recently occasion to watch one of the most harmless and yet one of
the most striking of these illusions in a private asylum which has
specialized, if I may so express myself, upon men of letters. The case
was harmless and even benign, for the poor fellow was not of a combative
disposition to begin with, was of too careful and dignified a
temperament to show more than slight irritation if his delusion were
contradicted. This misfortune, however, very rarely overtook him, for
those who came to visit him were warned to humour his whim. This
eccentricity I will now describe.
He imagined, nay he was convinced, that he was existing fifty years in
the future, and that the interest of his conversation for others would
lie in his reminiscence of the state of society in which we are actually
living today. If anyone who had not been warned was imprudent enough to
suggest that the conversation was taking place in 1909 would smile
gently, nod, and say rather bitterly, "Yes, I know, I know," as though
recognizing a universal plot against him which he was too weary to
combat. But when he had said this he would continue to talk on as though
both parties to the conversation were equally convinced that the year
was really 1960 or thereabouts. Whether to add zest to what he said or
from some part of his malady consonant with all the rest, my poor friend
(who had been a journalist and will very possibly be a journalist again)
presupposed that the whole structure of society as we now know it had
changed and that his reminiscences were those of a past time which, on
account of some great revolution or other, men imperfectly comprehended,
so that it must be of the highest interest and advantage to listen to
the testimony of an eye-witness upon them.
What especially delighted him (for he was a zealous admirer of the
society he described) was the method of government.
"There was no possibility of going wrong," he said to me with curious
zeal, "not a shadow of danger! It would be difficult for you to
understand now how easily the system worked!" And here he sighed
profoundly. "And why on earth," he continued, "men should have destroyed
such an instrument when they had it is more than I can understand. There
it was in every country in Europe; there were elections; all the men
voted. And mind you, the elections were not so very far apart. Most
people living at one election could remember the last, so there was no
time for abuses to spring up.... Well, everybody voted. If a man wanted
one thing he voted one way, and if he wanted another thing he voted the
other way. The people for whom he voted would then meet, and with a
sense of duty which I cannot exaggerate they would work month after
month exactly to reproduce the will of those who had appointed them. It
was a great time!"
"Yet," said I, "even so there must have been occasional divergences
between what these people did and what the nation wanted."
"I see what you mean," he said, musing, "you mean that all the devotion
in the world, the purest of motives and the most devoted sense of duty,
could not keep the elected always in contact with the electors. You are
right. But you must remember that in every country there was a
machinery, with regard to the most important measures at least, which
could throw the matter before the electors to be re-decided. I can
remember no important occasion upon which the machinery was not brought
into use."
"But, after all, the value of the decisions of the electorate you are
describing," said I, continuing to humour him, "would depend upon the
information which the electorate had received as well as upon their
judgment."
"As for their judgment," he said, a little shortly, "it is not for our
time to criticize theirs. Human judgment is not infallible, but I can
well remember how in every nation of Europe it was the fixed conviction
of the citizens that judgment was their chief characteristic, and
especially judgment in national affairs. I cannot believe that so
universal an attitude of the mind could have arisen had it not been
justified. But as for information, they had the Press ... a free Press!"
Here he fell into a reverie, so powerfully did his supposed memories
affect him.
I was willing to lead him on, because this kind of illness is best met
by sympathy, and also because I was not uninterested to discover how his
own trade had affected him.
"You would hardly understand it," he said sadly; "what you hear from me
is nothing but words.... I wish I could have shown you one of those
great houses with information pouring in as rapid, as light, and as
clear, from every hidden corner of the world, digested by master brains
into the most lucid and terse presentment of it possible, and then
whirled out on great wheels to be distributed by the thousand and the
hundred thousand, to the hungry intelligence of Europe. There was
nothing escaped it--nothing. In every capital were crowds of men
dispatched from the other capitals of our civilization, moving with ease
in the wealthiest houses, and exquisitely in touch with the most
delicate phases of national life everywhere. And these men were such
experts in selection that a picture of Europe as a whole was presented
every morning to each particular part of Europe; and nowhere was this
more successfully accomplished than in my own beloved town of London."
"It must have been useful," I said, "not only for the political purposes
you describe, but also for investors. Indeed, I should imagine that the
two things ran together."
"You are right," he said with interest, "the wide knowledge which even
the poorest of the people possessed upon foreign affairs, through the
action of the Press, was, further, of the utmost and most beneficent
effect in teaching even the smallest proprietor what he need do with his
capital. A discovery of metallic ore--especially of gold--a new
invention, anything which might require development, was at once
presented in its most exact aspect to the reader."
"It was probably upon that account," said I, "that property was so
equally distributed, and that so general a prosperity reigned as you
have often described to me."
"You are right," said he; "it was mainly this accurate and universal
daily information which produced such excellent results."
"But it occurs to me," said I, by way of stimulating his conversation
with an objection, "that if so passionate and tenacious a habit of
telling the exact truth upon innumerable things was present in this old
institution of which you speak, it cannot but have bred a certain amount
of dissension, and it must sometimes even have done definite harm to
individuals whose private actions were thus exposed."
"You are right," said he; "the danger of such misfortunes was always
present, and with the greatest desire in the world to support only what
was worthy the writers of the journals of which I speak would
occasionally blunder against private interests; but there was a remedy."
"What was that?" I asked.
"Why, the law provided that in this matter twelve men called a jury,
instructed by a judge, after the matter had been fully explained to them
by two other men whose business it was to examine the truth boldly for
the sake of justice--I say the law provided that the twelve men after
this process should decide whether the person injured should receive
money from the newspaper or no, and if so, in what amount. And, lest
there should still be any manner of doubt, the judge was permitted to
set aside their verdict if he thought it unjust. To secure his absolute
impartiality as between rich and poor he was paid somewhat over L100 a
week, a large salary in those days, and he was further granted the right
of imprisoning people at will or of taking away their property if he
believed them to obstruct his judgment. Nor were these the only
safeguards. For in the case of very rich men, to whom justice might not
be done on account of the natural envy of their poorer fellow-citizens,
it was arranged that the jury should consist only of rich men. In this
way it was absolutely certain that a complete impartiality would reign.
We shall never see those days again," he concluded.
"But do you not think," I said before I left him, "that the social
perfection of the kind you have described must rather have been due to
some spirit of the time than to particular institutions? For after all
the zealous love of justice and the sense of duty which you describe are
not social elements to be produced by laws."
"Possibly," he said, wearily, "possibly, but we shall never see it
again!"
And I left him looking into the fire with infinite sadness and
reflecting upon his lost youth and the year 1909: a pathetic figure, and
one whose upkeep during the period of his deficiency was a very serious
drain upon the resources of his family.
The Inheritance of Humour
There are some truths which seem to get old almost as soon as they are
born, and that simply because they are so astonishingly true that people
soon get to feel as though they have known them all their lives; and
such a truth is that which first one writer and then another in the last
five years has been insisting upon, until it is already a perfect
commonplace that nations do not know their own qualities. The inmost,
the characteristic thing, that which differentiates one community from
another, as tastes or colours differentiate things--_that_ a
nation hardly ever knows until it is pointed out to it by some foreigner
or by some observer from within. It cannot know it, because one cannot
tell the very atmosphere in which one lives. It is universal and
therefore unnoticed. Now, if this is true of any nation, it is
particularly true of England. And English people need to be told
morning, noon, and night, not indeed the particular national
characteristic which they have, since for this no particular name could
be found, but rather what its evidences are; as, for instance,
spontaneity in design, a passion for the mystical in poetry and the
arts; a power in water-colour, in which they are perhaps quite alone,
and certainly the first in Europe; and, above all, the chief, the master
thing of all, humour.
There is not nor ever will be anything like English humour. It is a
thing quite apart, and by it for now more than two hundred years you may
know England. It does not puzzle the foreigner (as the more blatant kind
of intellectual man is too fond of boasting that it does); he simply
admires it as a rule and wonders at it always; sometimes he actually
dislikes it, but by it he knows that the thing he is reading is English
and has the savour and taste of England.
It is impossible to define it, because it is so full of stuff and so
organic a quality; but in our own time it was principally the pencil of
Charles Keene that has summed it up and presented it in a moment and at
once to the eye--the pencil of Charles Keene and that profound instinct
whereby he chose the legends for his drawing, whether he found them by
his own sympathy with the people or whether they were suggested to him
by friends.
It is the verdict of the men most competent perhaps to judge upon these
things that he had the greatest graphic power of his time, and that no
one had had that power to such an extent since Hogarth. Upon these
things the men of the trade must dispute; the layman cannot doubt that
he had here a genius and a genius comprehensively national. It is the
essence of a good draughtsman that what he wants to draw, that he draws.
The line that he desires to see upon the paper appears there as his
fingers move. It is a quality extremely rare in its perfection. And
Charles Keene had it in perfection, as in totally different manner had
the offensive and diseased talent of Beardsley.
But more important than the power to do is the quality of the thing
done, and the work of Charles Keene, multitudinous, varied, always
great, is an inheritance for English people comparable to the
inheritance they have in Dickens. It has also what Dickens had, a power
of representing, as it were, the essential English. Just that which
makes people say (with some truth) that Dickens never drew a gentleman
would make them say with equal truth that what was interesting in the
gentlemen of Charles Keene (and he perpetually drew them) was not the
externals upon which gentlemen so pride themselves, but the soul. Thus I
have in mind one picture wherein Keene drew a gentleman; true, he was a
gentleman who had just swallowed a bad oyster, and therefore he was a
man as well. I recall another of an old gentleman complaining of the
caterpillar on his chop: he is a gentleman of the professional rather
than the territorial classes, and, great heavens! what a power of line!
All you see beneath the round of his hat is the end of his nose, the
curve of his mouth, and two bushy ends of whiskers. Yet one can tell all
about that man; one could write a book on him. One knows his economics,
his religion, his accent, and what he thought of the Third Napoleon and
what of Garibaldi. I have called draughtsmanship of this quality an
inheritance--I might have called it perhaps with better propriety a
monument. It is possible that England in the near future will look back
with great envy, as she will certainly look back with great pride, to
the generation preceding our own: they were a solid and a happy
community of men. How much they owed to fortune, how much to themselves,
it is not the place of such random stuff as mine to consider.
They were nearly impregnable in their island; they were not bellicose.
They made and sold for all the world. Whether the very different future
which we are now entering is to be laid to their door or to our own,
that generation will still remain one of the principal things in English
history, like the Elizabethan generation, or the group of men who
organized the Seven Years' War, or the group of men who fought in the
Peninsula. And of that generation the note of health and of stability is
represented by its humour. I am not sure that of all things educational
to young men with no personal memory of that time, and especially to
young men with no family tradition of it to reflect it in their books
and their furniture; and--this yet more particularly--to young men born
out of England yet claiming communion with England, the Anglo-Indians
and the Colonials--I am not sure, I say, that the thing most educational
to these would not be some hundred of Charles Keene's drawings, for
therein they would find what it was that gave them the power and the
wealth that can hardly be defended unless its traditions are continued.
Note how Victorian England dealt with the humour of a Volunteer review;
note how it dealt with the humour of excessive wealth; and note how it
dealt with the humour of schools and of Dons. One might almost define it
by negations. There is in all of it no--but here I lack a word.... When
things ring false it is because they have got by exaggeration or by some
other form of falsity _beside_ themselves. Appreciation of rank or
even of worth becomes snobbishness; appreciation of another's judgment
false taste; and patriotism, the most beautiful, the noblest, the most
necessary of the great emotions, corrupts into something very vile
indeed.
Well, the Victorians, and notably this man of whose power of the pencil
I am speaking, did lack that false savour, that savour of just missing
what one wishes to say or to feel, which haunts us to-day; and I should
imagine that whether it were cause or effect the salt present in the
preservation of the moral health of that society was humour. Let us
enjoy it like an heirloom. It is more national than the language; at
least it is more national than what the language has become under
foreign pressure; it is infinitely more national than our problems and
our tragedies. It is so national that--who knows?--it may crop up again
of itself one of these days; and may that not be long.
The Old Gentleman's Opinions
I had occasion about a fortnight ago to meet a man more nearly ninety
than eighty years of age, who had had special opportunity for
discovering the changes of Europe during his long life. He was of the
English wealthier classes by lineage, but his mother had been of the
French nobility and a Huguenot. His father had been prominent in the
diplomacy of a couple of generations ago. He had travelled widely, read
perhaps less widely, but had known and appreciated an astonishing number
of his contemporaries.
I was interested (without any power of my own to judge whether his
decisions were right or wrong) to discover what most struck him in the
changes produced by that great stretch of years, all of which he had
personally observed: he was born just after Waterloo, and he could
remember the Reform Bill.
He surprised me by telling me, in the first place, that the material
changes and discoveries, enormous though they were in extent, were not,
in his view, the most striking. He was ready to leave it open whether
these material changes were the causes of moral changes more remarkable,
or merely effects concomitant with these. When I asked him what had
struck him most of the great material developments, he told me the
phonograph and the aeroplane among inventions; Mendel's observations in
the sphere of experimental knowledge; and, in the sphere of pure theory,
the breakdown of many things that had been dogmas of physical science in
his early manhood.
Since I did not quite understand what he meant by this last, he gave me,
after some hesitation, a few examples: That the interior of the earth
was molten; that a certain limited number of elements--not all yet
isolated, but certainly few in their total--were at the base of all
material forms, and were immutable; that the ultimate unit of each of
these was a certain indivisible, eternal thing called the Atom; and so
forth.
He assured me that views of this sort, extending over a hundred or a
thousand other points, were so universally accepted in his time that to
dispute them was to be ranked with the unlettered or the fantastic. I
asked him if it were so in economics. He said: Yes, in England, where
there was a similar dogma of Free Trade: not abroad.
When I asked him why Mendel's published experiments and the theory based
upon them had so much impressed him, he said because it was almost the
first attempt to apply to the speculative dogmas of biology some
standard demonstrably true; and here he wandered off to explain to me
why the commonly accepted views upon biology, which had so changed
thought in the latter part of his life, were associated with the name of
Darwin. Darwin, he assured me, had brought forward no new discovery, but
only a new hypothesis, and that only a small and particular hypothesis,
whereby to explain the general theory of transformism. This theory, he
told me--the unbroken descent of living organisms and their physical
connection with one another and with common parents--had been a
favourite idea from the beginning of history with many great thinkers,
from Lucretius to Buffon and from Augustus of Hippo to Lamarck.
Darwin's, the old gentleman assured me, which he had defended with
infinite toil, was that the method in which this continuity of descent
proceeded was by an infinitely slow process of very small changes
differentiating each minute step from the one before and the one after
it, and these small changes Darwin's hypothesis referred to a natural
selection. Nothing else in Darwin's work, he assured me, was novel, and
yet it was the one thing which subsequent research had rendered more and
more doubtful. Darwin (he said) said nothing new that was also true.
At this point I was moved to contradict the old gentleman, and to say
that one unquestioned contribution to science of Darwin, as novel as it
was secure, was his patient discovery of the work of earthworms, and of
its vast effect. The old gentleman was willing to admit that I was
right, but he said he was only speaking of Darwin in connection with
transformism and the whimsical way in which his private name (and his
errors) had become identified with evolution in general.
I asked him, since he had such a knowledge of men from observation, why
this was so.
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