First and Last

H >> H. Belloc >> First and Last

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To take but one example: history. The less the true historical book is
read and the more men depend upon ephemeral statement, the more will
legend crystallize, the harder will it be to destroy in the general mind
some comforting lie, and the great object-lesson of politics (which is
an accurate knowledge of how men have acted in the past) will become at
last unknown.

There are many, especially among younger men, who would contest the
premiss upon which all this is founded. They may point out, for
instance, that the actual number of bound books bought in a given time
at present is much larger than ever it was before. They may point out
again, and with justice, that the proportion of the population which
reads books of any sort, though perhaps not larger than it was three
hundred years ago, is very much larger than it was one hundred years
ago. And it may further be affirmed with truth that the range of
subjects now covered by books produced and sold is much wider than ever
it was before.

All this is true; and yet it is also true that the Book as a factor in
our civilization has not only declined but has almost disappeared. Were
many more dogs to be possessed in England than are now possessed, but
were they to be all mongrels, among which none could be found capable of
retrieving, or of following a fox or a hare with any discipline, one
would have a right to say that the dog as a factor of our civilization
had declined. Were many more men in England able to ride horses more or
less, but were the number of those who rode constantly and for pleasure
enormously to diminish, and were the new millions who could just manage
to keep on horseback to prefer animals without spirit on which they
would feel safe, one would have a right to say that the horse was
declining as a factor in our civilization; and this is exactly what has
happened with the Book.

The excellence of a book and its value as a book depend upon two
factors, which are usually, though not always, united in varied
proportions: first, that it should put something of value to the reader,
whether of value as a discovery and an enlargement of wisdom or of value
as a new emphasis laid upon old and sound morals; secondly, that this
thing added or renewed in human life should be presented in such a
manner as to give permanent aesthetic pleasure.

That is not a first-rate book which, while it is admirably written,
teaches something false or something evil; nor is that a first-rate book
which, though it discover a completely new thing, or emphasize the most
valuable department of morals, is so constructed as to be unreadable.
Now it will not be denied that as far as these two factors are
concerned--and I repeat they are almost always found in combination--the
position of the Book has dwindled almost to nothingness. One could give
examples of almost every kind: one could show how poetry, no matter how
appreciated or praised, no longer sells. One could show--and this is one
of the worst signs of all--how men will buy by the hundred thousand
anything at all which has the hall mark of an established reputation,
quite careless as to their love of it or their appetite for it. One
could further show how more than one book of permanent value in English
life has been discovered in our generation outside England, and has been
as it were thrust upon the English public by foreign opinion.

But for my purpose it will be sufficient to take one very important
branch which I can claim to have watched with some care, and that is the
branch of History.

It may be said with truth that in our generation no single first-rate
piece of history has enjoyed an appreciable sale. That is not true of
France, it is not true of the United States, it is not even true of
Germany in her intellectual decline, but it is true of England.

History is an excellent test. No man will read history, at least history
of an instructive sort, unless he is a man who can read a book, and
desires to possess one. To read History involves not only some permanent
interest in things not immediately sensible, but also some permanent
brain-work in the reader; for as one reads history one cannot, if one is
an intelligent being, forbear perpetually to contrast the lessons it
teaches with the received opinions of our time. Again, History is
valuable as an example in the general thesis I am maintaining, because
no good history can be written without a great measure of hard work. To
make a history at once accurate, readable, useful, and new, is probably
the hardest of all literary efforts; a man writing such history is
driving more horses abreast in his team than a man writing any other
kind of literary matter. He must keep his imagination active; his style
must be not only lucid, but also must arrest the reader; he must
exercise perpetually a power of selection which plays over innumerable
details; he must, in the midst of such occupations, preserve unity of
design, as much as must the novelist or the playwright; and yet with all
this there is not a verb, an adjective or a substantive which, if it
does not repose upon established evidence, will not mar the particular
type of work on which he is engaged.

As an example of what I mean, consider two sentences: The first is taken
from the 432nd page of that exceedingly unequal publication, the
_Cambridge History of the French Revolution_; the second I have
made up on the spur of the moment; both deal with the Battle of
Wattignies. The "Cambridge History" version runs as follows:--

On October 15 the relieving force, 50,000 strong, attacked the Austrian
covering force at Wattignies; the battle raged all that day and was most
furious on the right, in front of the village of Wattignies, which was
taken and lost three times; on the 17th the French expected another
general engagement but the enemy had drawn off.

There are here five great positive errors in six lines. The French were
not 50,000 strong, the attack on the 15th was not on Wattignies, but on
Dourlers; Wattignies was not taken and lost three times; the fight of
the 15th was _least_ pressed on the right (harder on the left and
hardest in the centre) and no one--not the least recruit--expected
Coburg to come _back_ on the 17th. Why, he had crossed the Sambre
at every point the day before! As for negative errors, or errors of
omission, they are capital, and the chief is that the victory was won on
the second day, the 16th, of which no mention is made.

Now contrast such a sentence with the following:--

On October 15th the relieving force, 42,000 strong, attacked the
Austrian centre at Dourlers, and made demonstrations upon its wings; the
attack upon Dourlers (which village had been taken and lost three times)
having failed, upon the following day, October 16th, the extreme left of
the enemy's position at Wattignies was attacked and carried; the enemy
thus outflanked was compelled to retreat, and Maubeuge was relieved the
same evening.

In the first sentence (which bears the hall mark of the University)
every error that could possibly be made in so few lines has been made.
The numbers are wrong; the nature of the fighting is misstated; the
village in the centre is confused with that on the extreme right; the
critical second day is altogether omitted, and every portion of the
sentence, verb, adjective, and substantive, is either directly
inaccurate or indirectly conveys an inaccurate impression. The second
sentence, bald in style and uninteresting in presentation as the first,
has the merit of telling the truth. But--and here is the point--it would
be impossible to criticize the first sentence unless someone had read up
the battle, and to read up that battle one has to depend on five or six
documents, some unpublished (like much of Jourdan's Memoirs), some of
them involving a visit to Maubeuge itself, some, like Pierrat's book,
very difficult to obtain (for it is neither in the British Museum nor in
the Bodleian) some few the writings of contemporary eyewitnesses, and
yet themselves demonstrably inaccurate. All these must be read and
collated, and if possible the actual ground of the battle visited,
before the first simple inaccurate sentence can be properly criticized
or the second bald but accurate sentence framed. None of these
authorities can have been so much as heard of by the official historian
I have quoted.

It would be redundant to press the point. Most readers know well enough
what labour the just writing of history involves, and how excellent a
type it is of that "making of a book" which art is, as I have said,
imperilled by apathy at the present day.

Consider for a moment who were those that purchased historical works in
this country in the past. There were, first of all, the landed gentry.
In almost every great country-house you will find a good old library,
and that good old library you will discover to be, as a rule, most
valuable and most complete in what concerns the end of the eighteenth
and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries. A very large proportion
of history, and history of the best sort, is to be found upon those
shelves. The standard dwindles, though it is fairly well maintained
during the first two-thirds of the nineteenth century. Then--as a
rule--it abruptly comes to an end. One may take as a sort of bourne, the
two great books Macaulay's _History_ and Kinglake's, for an earlier
and a later limit. Most of these libraries contain Macaulay; some few
Kinglake; hardly one possesses later works of value.

It may be urged in defence of the buyer that no later works of value
exist. Put so broadly, the statement is erroneous; but the truth which
it contains is in itself dependent upon the lack of public support for
good historical work. When there is a fortune for the man who writes in
accordance with whatever form of self-appreciation happens for the
moment to be popular, while a steady view and an accurate presentation
of the past can find no sale, then that steady view and that accurate
presentation cannot be pursued save by men who are wealthy, or by men
who are endowed, but even wealthy men will hesitate to write what they
know will not be read, and for history no one is endowed.

Our Universities were framed for many purposes, of which the cultivation
of learning was but one; in that one field, however, a particular form
of learning was taken very seriously, and was pursued with admirable
industry; I mean an acquaintance with and an imitation of the Latin and
Greek Classics.

It was a particular character of this form of learning that proficiency
in it would lead to undisputed honours. The scholar recognized the
superior scholar; the field of inquiry was by convention highly limited;
it had been thoroughly explored; discussion upon such results as were
doubtful did not involve a difference in general philosophy.

With history it is otherwise. Whether such things have or have not
happened, and, above all, if they have happened, the _way_ in which
they have happened, is to our general judgment of contemporary men what
evidence is to a criminal trial. Facts won't give way. If, therefore,
there are vested interests, moral or material, to be maintained, history
is, of all the sciences or arts, that one most likely to suffer at the
hands of those connected with such interests. Even where the truth will
be of advantage to those interests, they are afraid of it, because the
thorough discussion of it will involve the presentation of views
disadvantageous to privilege.

Where, as is much more commonly the case (for vested interests, moral or
material, are unreasoning and selfish things), the truth would certainly
offend them, they are the more determined to prevent its appearance.

But of all vested interests none deal with such assured incomes, none
are so immune by influence and tradition as the Universities.

Now, if the rich man has no temptation by way of popular fame, and the
poor man no opportunity for endowment, in any branch of letters, there
remains but a third form of support, and that is the support of the
buying public. And the public will not buy.

I will suppose the case of a popular novelist, who in a few months shall
write, not an historical novel, but a piece of so-called history. He
shall call it, for instance, "England's Heroes." Before you tell me his
name, or what he has written, I can tell you here and now what he will
write on any number of points. He will call Hastings Senlac. In the
Battle of Hastings he will make out Harold to be the head of a highly
patriotic nation called the "Anglo-Saxons"; they shall be desperately
defending themselves against certain French-speaking Scandinavians
called Normans. He will deplore the defeat, but will say it was all for
the best. Magna Charta he will have signed at Runnymede--probably he
will have it drawn up there as well. He will translate the most famous
clause by the modern words "Judgment of his peers" and "law of the
land." He will represent the Barons as having behind them the voice of
the whole nation--and so forth. When he comes to Crecy he will make
Edward III speak English. When he comes to Agincourt he will leave his
readers as ignorant as himself upon the boundaries, numbers and power of
the Burgundian faction. In the Civil War Oliver Cromwell will be an
honest and not very rich gentleman of the middle-classes. The
Parliamentary force will be that of the mass of the people against a few
gallant but wicked aristocrats who follow the perfidious Charles. He
will make no mention of the pay of the Ironsides. James II will be
driven out by a popular uprising, in which the great Churchill will play
an honourable and chivalric part. The loss of the American Colonies will
be deplored, and will be ascribed to the folly of attempting to tax men
of "Anglo-Saxon" blood, unless you grant them representation. The
Continental troops will be treated as the descendants of Englishmen! The
guns at Saratoga will be Colonial guns; the incapacity of the Fleet will
not be touched upon. Here again, as in the case of the Battle of
Hastings, all will be for the best, and there will be a few touching
words upon the passionate affection now felt for Great Britain by the
inhabitants of the United States. The defensive genius of Wellington
will be represented as that of a general particularly great in the
offensive. Talavera will be a victory. The Spanish Auxiliaries in the
Peninsula will be contemptible. No guns will be abandoned before Coruna,
but what are left at Coruna will be mentioned and re-embarked. The
character of Nelson will receive a curious sort of glutinous praise; Emma
Hamilton, not Naples, will be the stain upon his name; the Battle of
Trafalgar will prevent the invasion of England.

This is a lengthy but not unjust description of what this gentleman
would write; it is rubbish from beginning to end. It would sell, because
every word of it would foster in the reader the illusion that the
community of which he is a member is invincible under all circumstances,
that effort and self-denial and suffering are spared him alone out of
all mankind, and that a little pleasurable excitement, preferably that
to be obtained from his favourite game, is the chief factor in military
success.

I have omitted Alfred. Alfred in such a book will be the "teller of
truth"--but he will not go to Mass.

Given that the name is sufficiently well known, there is hardly any
limit to the sale of a book modelled upon these lines. Contrast with its
fate the fate of a book, written no matter how powerfully, that should
insist upon truths, no matter how valuable to the English people at the
present moment. These truths need by no means be unpleasant, though at
the present moment an unpleasant truth is undoubtedly more valuable than
a pleasant one. They could make as much or more for the glory of the
country; they could be at any rate of infinitely greater service, but
they would not be received, simply because they would compel close
attention and brain-work in the reader as well as in the writer of them.
An established groove would have to be abandoned; to use a strong
metaphor, the reader would have to get out of bed, and that is what the
modern reader will not do. Tell him that the men who fought on either
side at Hastings' plain cared nothing for national but everything for
feudal allegiance; that _lex terrae_ means the local custom of
ordeal and not the "law of the land"; tell him that _judicium
parium_ means the right of a noble to be judged by nobles, and has
nothing to do with the jury system; tell him that Magna Charta was
certainly drawn up before the meeting at Runnymede; that not until the
Lancastrians did English kings speak English; that Oliver Cromwell owed
his position to the enormous wealth of the Williamses, of whom had he
not been a cadet, he would never have been known; tell him that the
whole force of the Parliament resided in the squires and that the Civil
Wars turned England into an oligarchy; tell him the exact truth about
the infamy of Churchill; tell him what proportion of Englishmen during
the American War were taxed without being represented; tell him what
proportion of Washington's troops were of English blood; tell him any
one illuminating and true thing about the history of his country, and
the novelty will so offend him that a direct insult would have pleased
him better.

What is true of history is true of nearly all the rest, and the upshot
of the whole matter is that there is not, either in private patronage or
in popular demand, a chance for history in modern England.

You can have excellent literature in journalism, and it will be widely
read. I would say more--I would say that the better literature a
newspaper admits, the more widely will that paper be read, or at any
rate the greater will its influence be on modern Englishmen. But when it
comes to the kneaded and wrought matter of the true Book, neither the
public nor the centres of learning will have any of it, and the last
medium which might make it possible, patronage, has equally disappeared,
because the modern patron does not work in the daylight in the full view
of the nation and with its full approbation, and he is no longer a public
man (though he is richer than ever he was before). His patronage,
therefore, though it is still considerable, is expended in satisfying his
private demand. Private architects build him doubtful castles, private
collectors get him manuscripts and jewels, but Letters, which are a public
thing, he can no longer command.

It might be asked, by way of conclusion, whether there is any remedy for
this state of things. There is none. Its prime cause resides in a
certain attitude of the national mind, and this kind of broadly held
philosophy is not changed save by slow preaching or external shock. As
long as modern England remains what we know it, and follows the lines of
change which we see it following, the Book will necessarily decline more
and more, and we must make up our minds to it.

Of other evil tendencies of our time, one can say of some that they are
obviously mending, of others that such and such an applicable remedy
would mend them. Our public architecture is certainly getting better; so
is our painting. Our gross and increasing contempt of self-government
(to take quite another sphere) is curable by one or two simple reforms
in procedure, registration, the expenses of election, and voting at the
polls, which would restore the House of Commons to life, and give it
power to express English will. But a regard for, a cultivation of, above
all a sinking of wealth upon, English Letters is past praying for. We
must wait until the tide changes; we can do nothing, and the waiting
will be long.

Jose Maria de Heredia

The French have a phrase "la beaute du verbe" by which they would
express a something in the sound and in the arrangement of words which
supplements whatever mere thought those words were intended to express.
It is evident that no definition of this beauty can be given, but it is
also evident that without it letters would not exist. How it arises we
cannot explain, yet the process is familiar to us in everything we do
when we are attempting to fulfil an impulse towards whatever is good. An
integration not of many small things but of an infinite series of
infinitely small things build up the perfect gesture, the perfect line,
the perfect intonation, and the perfect phrase. So indeed are all things
significant built up: every tone of the voice, every arrangement of
landscape or of notes in music which awake us and reveal the things
beyond. But when one says that this is especially true of perfect
expression one means that sometimes, rarely, the integration achieves a
steadfast and sufficient formula. The mind is satisfied rather than
replete. It asks no more; and if it desires to enjoy further the
pleasure such completion has given it, it does not attempt to prolong or
to develop the pleasure under which it has leapt; it is content to wait
a while and to return, knowing well that it has here a treasure laid up
for ever.

All this may be expressed in two words: the Classical Spirit. That is
Classic of which it is true that the enjoyment is sufficient when it is
terminated and that in the enjoyment of it an entity is revealed.

When men propose to bequeath to their fellows work of so supreme a kind
it is to be noticed that they choose by instinct a certain material.

It has been said that the material in which he works affects the
achievement of the artist: it is truer to say that it helps him. A man
designing a sculpture in marble knows very well what he is about to do.
A man attempting the exact and restrained rendering of tragedy upon the
stage does not choose the stage as one among many methods, he is drawn
to it: he needs it; the audience, the light, the evening, the very slope
of the boards, all minister to his efforts. And so a man determined to
produce the greatest things in verse takes up by nature exact and
thoughtful words and finds that their rhythm, their combination, and
their sound turn under his hand to something greater than he himself at
first intended; he becomes a creator, and his name is linked with the
name of a masterpiece. The material in which he has worked is hard; the
price he has paid is an exceeding effect; the reward he has earned is
permanence.

Jose de Heredia was an artist of this kind. The mass of the verse he
produced, or rather published, was small. It might have been very large.
It is not (as a foolish modern affectation will sometimes pretend)
necessary to the endurance or even the excellence of work that it should
be the product of exceptional moments; nor is it even true (as the wise
Ancients believed) that great length of time must always mature it. But
the small volume of Heredia's legacy to European letters does argue this
at least in the poet, that he passionately loved perfection and that,
finding himself able to achieve it (for perfection can be achieved) but
now and then, he chose only to be remembered by the contentment which,
now and then, his own genius had given him.

He worked upon verse as men work upon the harder metals; all that he did
was chiselled very finely, then sawn to an exact configuration and at
last inlaid, for when he published his completed volume it is true to
say that every piece fitted in with the sound of one before and of one
after. He was careful in the heroic degree.

His blood and descent are worthy of notice. He was a Spaniard,
inheriting from the first Conquerors of the New World, nor was it
remarkable to those who have received a proper enthusiasm for the
classical spirit that the energy and even the violence natural to such a
lineage should express themselves in the coldest and the most exalted
form when, for the second time, a member of the family attempted verse.
It is in the essence of that spirit that it alone can dare to be
disciplined. It never doubts the motive power that will impel it; it is
afraid, if anything, of an excess of power, and consciously imposes upon
itself the limits which give it form.

Heredia in his person expressed the activity which impelled him, for he
was strong, brown, erect, a rapid walker, and a man whose voice was
perpetually modulated in resonant and powerful tones. In his last years
during his administration of the Library at the Arsenal this vitality of
his took on an aspect of good nature very charming and very fruitful.
His organization of the place was thorough, his knowledge of the readers
intimate. He refused the manuscripts of none, he advised, laughed, and
consoled. His criticism was sure. Several, notably Marcel Prevost, were
launched by his authority. The same deep security of literary judgment
which had permitted him to chastise and to perfect his impeccable
sonnets into their final form permitted him also to hold up before his
eyes, grasp, and judge the work of every other man.

His frailty, as must always be the frailty of such men, was
fastidiousness. The same sensitive consciousness which is said to have
all but lost us the Aeneid, and which certainly all but lost us the
Apologia, dominated his otherwise vigorous soul. It is more than forty
years since his first verse, written just upon achieving his majority,
appeared in the old _Revue de Paris_ and in the _Revue des Deux
Mondes_. It was not till 1893 that he collected in one volume the
scattered sonnets of his youth and middle age: the collection won him
somewhat tardily his chair in the Academy. There is irony in the
reminiscence that the man he defeated in that election was Zola.

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