Chapter II: Part 2

The news has created quite a sensation. But we are getting so used to sensations now that we are becoming _blasé_. There has never been such a year of wonders in the memory of any one living. The other day thousands of soldiers from the great camp ten miles away descended on our "terrain"--I think that's the word--and had a tremendous two-days' battle in the hills about us. They broke through the hedges, and slept in the cornfields, and ravished the apple-trees in my orchard, and raided the cottagers for tea, and tramped to and fro in our street and gave us the time of our lives.

"_I_ never seed such a sight in _my_ life," said old Benjamin to me in the evening. "Man and boy, I've lived in that there bungalow for eighty-five year come Michaelmas, and _I_ never seed the like o' _this_ before.... Yes, eighty-five year come Michaelmas. And my father had that there land on a peppercorn rent, and the way he lost it was like this--"

Happily at this moment there was a sudden alarum among the soldiers, and I was able to dodge the familiar rehearsal of old Benjamin's grievance.

And who would ever have dreamed that we should live to hear French talked in our street as a familiar form of speech? But we have. In a little cottage at the other end of the village is a family of Belgians, a fragment of the flotsam thrown up by the great inundation of 1914. They have brought the story of "frightfulness" near to us, for they passed through the terror of Louvain, hiding in the cellars for nights and days, having two of their children killed, and escaping to the coast on foot.

Every Sunday night you will see them very busy carrying their few chairs and tables into a neighbouring barn, for on Monday mornings mass is celebrated there. The priest comes up in a country cart from ten miles away, and the refugees scattered for miles around assemble for worship, after which there is a tremendous pow-pow in French and Flemish, with much laughter and gaiety.

Old Benjamin "don't hold with they priests," and he has grave suspicions about all foreign tongues, but the Belgians have become quite a part of us, and their children are learning to lisp in English down at the school in the valley.

Much less agreeable is the frame of mind towards the occupants of the cottage next to the Blue Boar. They are the wife and children of a German who had worked in this country for many years and is now in America. The woman is English and amiable, but the proximity of anything so reminiscent of Germany is painful to the village, and especially to the landlord, whose views about Germans can hardly be put into words.

"I should hope there'll be no prisoners took after _this_," he says grimly whenever he hears of a new outrage. "Vermin--that's what they are," he says, "and they should be treated according-ly."

The Germans, in fact, have become the substitute for every term of execration, even with mild David the labourer. He came into the orchard last evening staggering under a 15-ft. ladder. We had decided that if we were going to have the pears before the wasps had spoiled them we must pick them at once.

"It's a wunnerful crop," said David. "I've knowed this pear-tree [looking up at one of them from the foot of his ladder] for twenty-five year, and I've never seen such a crop on it afore."

Then he mounted the ladder and began to pick the fruit.

"Well, I'm blowed," he said, "if they ain't been at 'em a'ready." And he flung down pear after pear scooped out by the wasps close to the stalk. "Reg'lar Germans--that's what they are," he said. "Look at 'em round that hive," he went on. "They'll hev all the honey and them bees will starve and git the Isle o' Wight--that's what they'll git.... Lor," he added, reflectively, "I dunno what wospses are made for--wospses _and_ Germans. It gits over me."

I said it got over me too. And then from among the branches, while I hung on to the foot of the ladder to keep it firm, David unbosomed his disquiet to me about enlisting.

"Most o' the chaps round here has gone," he said, "an' I don't like staying be'ind. Seems as though you were hanging back like. 'Taint that I shouldn't like to go; but it's this way ... (Hullo, I got my hand on a wasp that time) ... There's such a lot o' women-folk dependent on me. There's my wife and there's my mother down the village _and_ my aunt; and not a man to do anything for 'em but me. After my work on th' farm, I keeps all three gardens going and a patch of allotment down the valley as well."

"You're growing a lot of good food, and that's military work," I said.

He seemed cheered by the idea, and asked me if I'd like to see the potatoes he had dug up that evening--they were "a wunnerful fine lot," he said.

So after he had stripped the pear-tree he shouldered the ladder, and we went down the village to David's garden. There I saw his potatoes, some lying to dry where they had been dug up, others in sacks. Also his marrows and beans and cabbages and lettuces. A little apologetically, he offered me some of the largest potatoes--"just as a hobby," he said, meaning thereby that it was only a trifle he offered.

As I went away in the gathering dark, with my hands full of potatoes, I met the landlord of the Blue Boar, his shirt sleeves rolled up as usual above his brown, muscular arms.

"Bad news that about Mrs. Lummis," he said, looking towards the cottage on the other side of the road.

"What is that?" said I. "Her son?" There had been no news of him for two months.

"Yes, poor Jack. She's got news that he was killed near la Bassée in June. Nice feller--and her only son."

Then, more cheerfully, he added, "Jim's coming home to-morrow. Going to get his officer's rig out, you know, and have a rest--the first since he went out a year ago."

"You'll be glad to see him," said I.

"Not half," said he with a vast smile.

ON RUMOUR

I was speaking the other day to a man of cautious mind on a subject of current rumour. "Well," he said, "if I had been asked whether I believed such evidence four months ago I should have said 'Certainly.' But after the great Russian myth I believe nothing that I can't prove. I believed in that army of ghosts that came from Archangel! There are people who say they didn't believe in it. Some of them believe they didn't believe in it. But I say defiantly that I did believe in it. And I say further that there was never a rumour in the world that seemed based upon more various or more convincing evidence. And it wasn't true.... Well, I find I'm a changed man. I find I am no longer a believer: I am a doubter."

This experience, I suppose, is not uncommon. The man who believes as easily to-day as he did six months ago is a man on whom lessons are thrown away. We have lived in a world of gigantic whispers, and most of them have been false whispers. Even the magic word "Official" leaves one cold. It is not what I am "officially" told that interests me: it is what I am "officially" not told that I want to know in order to arrive at the truth.

You remember that famous answer of the plaintiff in an action against a London paper years ago. "What did you tell him?" "I told him to tell the truth." "The whole truth?" "No, _selected truths_."

What we have to guard against in this matter of rumours is the natural tendency to believe what we want to believe. Take that case of the reported victory in Poland in November 1914. There is strong reason to believe that a large part of Hindenburg's army narrowly escaped being encircled, that had Rennenkampf come up to time the trick would have been done. But it wasn't done. Yet nearly every correspondent in Petrograd sent the most confident news of an overwhelming victory. The _Morning Post_ correspondent spoke of it as something "terrible but sublime. There has been nothing like it since Napoleon left the bones of half a million men behind him in Russia." Even Lord Kitchener, in the House of Lords, said that Russia had accomplished the greatest achievement of the war. And so, just afterwards, with the equally empty rumour of Hindenburg's "victory," which sent Berlin into such a frenzy of rejoicing. It believed without evidence because it wanted to believe.

And another fruitful source of rumour is fear. The famous concrete emplacement at Maubeuge will serve as an instance. We had the most elaborate details of how the property was acquired by German agents, how in secret the concrete platform was laid down, and how the great 42-cm. howitzer shelled Maubeuge from it. And instantly we heard of concrete emplacements in this country--at Willesden, Edinburgh, and elsewhere. We began to suspect every one who had a garage or a machine shop with a concrete foundation of being a German agent. I confess that I shared these suspicions in regard to a certain factory overlooking London, and could not wholly argue myself out of them, though I hadn't an atom of evidence beyond the fact that the building had been owned by Germans and had a commanding position. I was under the hypnotism of Maubeuge and the fears to which it gave birth.

Yet there never was a concrete emplacement at Maubeuge, and no 42-cm. howitzer was used against that fortress. The property belonged, not to German agents, but to respectable Frenchmen, and the apology of the _Matin_ for the libel upon them may be read by anybody who is interested in these myths of the war.

I refer to this subject to-day not to recall these historic fables, but to show what cruel wrong we may do to the innocent by accepting rumours about our neighbours without examining the facts. Was there ever a more pitiful story than that told at the inquest on an elderly woman at Henham in Suffolk? Her husband had been the village schoolmaster for twenty-eight years. The couple had a son whom they sent to Germany to learn the language. The average village schoolmaster has not much money for luxuries, and I can imagine the couple screwing and saving to give their boy a good start in life. When he had finished his training he set out to seek his fortune in South America, and there in far Guatemala he became a teacher of languages. When the war broke out he heard the call of the Motherland to her children and like thousands of others came back to fight.

But in the meantime the lying tongue of rumour had been busy with his name in his native village. It was said that he was an officer in the German Army, and on the strength of that rumour his parents were ordered by the Chief Constable to leave the village and not to dwell on the East Coast. It was a sentence of death on them. The order broke the old man's heart, and he committed suicide. The son arrived to find his father dead and his mother distracted by her bereavement. He took her away to the seaside for a rest, but on their return to the village she, too, committed suicide. And the jury did not say "Killed by Slander": they said "Suicide while of unsound mind." Oh, cautious jurymen!

How do rumours get abroad? There are many ways. Let me illustrate one of them. In his criticism of the war the other week Mr. Belloc said:

"The official German communiqué which appeared in print last Saturday is a very good example upon which to work. I quote it as it appeared in the _Westminster Gazette (which has from the beginning of the war, and even before its outbreak, been remarkable for the volume of its German information_), and as it was delivered through the Marconi channel."

Then follows the communiqué. Now, when I read this I smiled, for I love the subtleties of the ingenious Mr. Belloc. He quotes a document which appeared in every paper in the country, but he says he quotes it from the _Westminster Gazette._ Why, since it appeared everywhere, does he mention one paper? Obviously in order to make that parenthetical remark which I have italicised.

Now the reputation of the _Westminster_ stands too high to be affected by the suggestion that it is "remarkable"--which it isn't--for its German information. But suppose you, a mere ordinary citizen, were alleged by some one to have special intercourse with Germany at this time. You might be as innocent as that Suffolk schoolmaster, but that would not save you from the suspicions of your neighbours and, perhaps, the attentions of the Chief Constable.

Let me give another little illustration. A friend of mine, who happens to be a Liberal journalist, went to a private dinner recently to meet M. Painlevé, the French Academician, Senator Lafontaine, of Brussels, and two other French and Belgian deputies. The next morning he was stated in the _Daily Express_ (edited by Mr. Blumenfeld) to have dined with "_three or four foreigners_" for the purpose of discussing peace. And in the next issue of the _London Mail_ the question was asked, "Who were the foreigners with whom ------ dined?" You see the insinuation. You see how the idea grows. He did not reply, because there are some papers that one can afford to ignore, no matter what they say. But I mention the thing here to show how a legend is launched.

And the moral of all this? It is that of my friend whom I have quoted. Let us suspect all rumours whether about events or persons. When Napoleon's marshals told him they had won a victory, he said, "Show me your prisoners." When you are told a rumour do not swallow it like a hungry pike. Say "Show me your facts." And before you accept them be sure they are whole facts and not half facts.

ON UMBRELLA MORALS

A sharp shower came on as I walked along the Strand, but I did not put up my umbrella. The truth is I couldn't put up my umbrella. The frame would not work for one thing, and if it had worked, I would not have put the thing up, for I would no more be seen under such a travesty of an umbrella than Falstaff would be seen marching through Coventry with his regiment of ragamuffins. The fact is, the umbrella is not my umbrella at all. It is the umbrella of some person who I hope will read these lines. He has got my silk umbrella. I have got the cotton one he left in exchange. I imagine him flaunting along the Strand under my umbrella, and throwing a scornful glance at the fellow who was carrying his abomination and getting wet into the bargain. I daresay the rascal chuckled as he eyed the said abomination. "Ah," he said gaily to himself, "I did you in that time, old boy. I know that thing. It won't open for nuts. And it folds up like a sack. Now, this umbrella...."

But I leave him to his unrighteous communings. He is one of those people who have what I may call an umbrella conscience. You know the sort of person I mean. He would never put his hand in another's pocket, or forge a cheque or rob a till--not even if he had the chance. But he will swop umbrellas, or forget to return a book, or take a rise out of the railway company. In fact he is a thoroughly honest man who allows his honesty the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps he takes your umbrella at random from the barber's stand. He knows he can't get a worse one than his own. He may get a better. He doesn't look at it very closely until he is well on his way. Then, "Dear me! I've taken the wrong umbrella," he says, with an air of surprise, for he likes really to feel that he has made a mistake. "Ah, well, it's no use going back now. He'd be gone. _And I've left him mine_!"

It is thus that we play hide-and-seek with our own conscience. It is not enough not to be found out by others; we refuse to be found out by ourselves. Quite impeccable people, people who ordinarily seem unspotted from the world, are afflicted with umbrella morals. It was a well-known preacher who was found dead in a first-class railway carriage with a third-class ticket in his pocket.

And as for books, who has any morals where they are concerned? I remember some years ago the library of a famous divine and literary critic, who had died, being sold. It was a splendid library of rare books, chiefly concerned with seventeenth-century writers, about whom he was a distinguished authority. Multitudes of the books had the marks of libraries all over the country. He had borrowed them and never found a convenient opportunity of returning them. They clung to him like precedents to law. Yet he was a holy man and preached admirable sermons, as I can bear witness. And, if you press me on the point, I shall have to own that it _is_ hard to part with a book you have come to love.

Indeed, the only sound rule about books is that adopted by the man who was asked by a friend to lend him a certain volume. "I'm sorry," he said, "but I can't." "Haven't you got it?" asked the other. "Yes, I've got it," he said, "but I make it a rule never to lend books. You see, nobody ever returns them. I know it is so from my own experience. Here, come with me." And he led the way to his library. "There," said he, "four thousand volumes. Every--one--of--'em--borrowed." No, never lend books. You can't trust your dearest friend there. I know. Where is that _Gil Blas_ gone? Eh? And that _Silvio Pellico_? And.... But why continue the list.... He knows. HE KNOWS.

And hats. There are people who will exchange hats. Now that is unpardonable. That goes outside that dim borderland of conscience where honesty and dishonesty dissemble. No one can put a strange hat on without being aware of the fact. Yet it is done. I once hung a silk hat up in the smoking-room of the House of Commons. When I wanted it, it was gone. And there was no silk hat left in its place. I had to go out bareheaded through Palace Yard and Whitehall to buy another. I have often wondered who was the gentleman who put my hat on and carried his own in his hand. Was he a Tory? Was he a Radical? It can't have been a Labour man, for no Labour man could put a silk hat on in a moment of abstraction. The thing would scorch his brow. Fancy Will Crooks in a silk hat! One would as soon dare to play with the fancy of the Archbishop of Canterbury in a bowler--a thought which seems almost impious. It is possible, of course, that the gentleman who took my silk umbrella did really make a mistake. Perhaps if he knew the owner he would return it with his compliments. The thing has been done. Let me give an illustration. I have myself exchanged umbrellas--often. I hope I have done it honestly, but one can never be quite sure. Indeed, now I come to think of it, that silk umbrella itself was not mine. It was one of a long series of exchanges in which I had sometimes gained and sometimes lost. My most memorable exchange was at a rich man's house where I had been invited to dine with some politicians. It was summer-time, and the weather being dry I had not occasion for some days afterwards to carry an umbrella. Then one day a sensation reigned in our household. There had been discovered in the umbrella-stand an umbrella with a gold band and a gold tassle, and the name of a certain statesman engraved upon it. There had never been such a super-umbrella in our house before. Before its golden splendours we were at once humbled and terrified--humbled by its magnificence, terrified by its presence. I felt as though I had been caught in the act of stealing the British Empire. I wrote a hasty letter to the owner, told him I admired his politics, but had never hoped to steal his umbrella; then hailed a cab, and took the umbrella and the note to the nearest dispatch office.

He was very nice about it, and in returning my own umbrella took all the blame on himself. "What," he said, "between the noble-looking gentleman who thrust a hat on my head, and the second noble-looking gentleman who handed me a coat, and the third noble-looking gentleman who put an umbrella in my hand, and the fourth noble-looking gentleman who flung me into a carriage, I hadn't the least idea what I was taking. I was too bewildered by all the noble flunkeys to refuse anything that was offered me."

Be it observed, it was the name on the umbrella that saved the situation in this case. That is the way to circumvent the man with an umbrella conscience. I see him eyeing his exchange with a secret joy; then he observes the name and address and his solemn conviction that he is an honest man does the rest. After my experience to-day, I think I will engrave my name on my umbrella. But not on that baggy thing standing in the corner. I do not care who relieves me of that. It is anybody's for the taking.

ON TALKING TO ONE'S SELF

I was at dinner at a well-known restaurant the other evening when I became aware that some one sitting alone at a table near by was engaged in an exciting conversation with himself. As he bent over his plate his face was contorted with emotion, apparently intense anger, and he talked with furious energy, only pausing briefly in the intervals of actual mastication. Many glances were turned covertly upon him, but he seemed wholly unconscious of them, and, so far as I could judge, he was unaware that he was doing anything abnormal. In repose his face was that of an ordinary business man, sane and self-controlled, and when he rose to go his agitation was over, and he looked like a man who had won his point.

It is probable that this habit of talking to one's self has a less sinister meaning than it superficially suggests. It may be due simply to the energy of one's thought and to a concentration of mind that completely shuts out the external world. In the case I have mentioned it was clear that the man was temporarily detached from all his surroundings, that he was so absorbed by his subject that his eyes had ceased to see and his ears to hear. He was alone with himself, or perhaps with his adversary, and he only came back to the present with the end of his dinner and the paying of his bill. He was like a man who had emerged from another state of consciousness, from a waking sleep filled with tumultuous dreams. Obviously he was unaware that he had been haranguing the room in quite an audible voice for half an hour, and I daresay that if he were told that he had the habit of talking to himself he would deny it as passionately as you (or I) would deny that you (or I) snore in our sleep. And he would deny it for precisely the same reason. He doesn't know.

And here a dreadful thought assails me. What if I talk to myself, too? What if, like this man, I get so absorbed in the drama of my own mind that I cannot hear my own tongue going nineteen to the dozen? It is a disquieting idea. A strong conviction to the contrary, I see, amounts to nothing. This man, doubtless, had a strong conviction to the contrary--probably expressed an amused interest in any one talking to himself as he passed him in the street. And the fact that my friends have never told me of the failing goes for nothing also. They may think I like to talk to myself. More probably, they may know that I do not like to hear of my failings. I must watch myself. But, no, that won't do. I might as well say I would watch my dreams and keep them in check. How can the conscious state keep an eye on the unconscious? If I do not know that I am talking how can I stop myself talking?

Ah, happy thought. I recall occasions when I have talked to myself, and have been quite conscious of the sound of my voice. They have been remarks I have made on the golf links, brief, emphatic remarks dealing with the perversity of golf clubs and the sullen intractability of golf balls. Those remarks I have heard distinctly, and at the sound of them I have come to myself with a shock, and have even looked round to see whether the lady in the red jacket playing at the next hole was likely to have heard me or (still worse) to have seen me.

I think this is evidence conclusive, for the man who talks to himself habitually never hears himself. His words are only the echo of his thoughts, and they correspond so perfectly that, like a chord in music, there is no dissonance. It was thus with the art student I saw copying a picture at the Tate Gallery. "Ah, a little more blue," he said, as he turned from the original to his own canvas, and a little later: "Yes, that line wants better drawing." Several people stood by watching his work and smiling at his uttered thoughts. He alone was unconscious that he had spoken.

There are, it is true, cases in which the conscious and unconscious states seem to mingle--in which the intentional word and the unintentional come out almost in the same breath. It was so with Thomas Landseer, the father of Sir Edwin. He was one day visiting an artist, and inspecting his work. "Ah, very nice, indeed!" he said to his friend. "Excellent colour; excellent!" Then, as if all around him had vanished, and he was alone with himself, he added: "Poor chap, he thinks he can paint!"

And this instance shows that whether the habit is a mental weakness or only a physical defect it is capable of extremely awkward consequences, as in the case of the banker who was ruined by unwittingly revealing his secrets while walking in the street. How is it possible to keep a secret or conduct a bargain if your tongue is uncontrollable? What is the use of Jones explaining to his wife that he has been kept late at the office if his tongue goes on to say, entirely without his knowledge or consent, that had he declared "no trumps" in that last hand he would have been in pocket by his evening at the club? I see horrible visions of domestic complications and public disaster arising from this not uncommon habit.

And yet might there not be gain also from a universal practice of uttering our thoughts aloud? Imagine a world in which nobody had any secrets from anybody--could have no secrets from anybody. I see the Kaiser, after consciously declaring that his only purpose is peace, unconsciously blurting out to the British Ambassador that the ultimatum to Serbia is a "plant"--that what Germany means is war, that she proposes to attack Belgium, and so on. And I see the British Ambassador, having explained that England is entirely free from commitments, adding dreamily, "But if there's a war we shall be in it." In the same way Jones, after making Smith a firm offer of £30 for his horse, would say, absentmindedly, "Of course it would be cheap at £50, and I might spring £55 if he is stiff about it."

It would be a world in which lies would have no value and deception would be a waste of time--a world in which truth would no longer be at the bottom of the well, but on the tip of every man's tongue. We should have all the rascals in prison and all the dishonest traders in the bankruptcy court. Secret diplomacy would no longer play with the lives of men, for there would be no secrets. Those little perverse concealments that wreck so many lives would vanish. You, sir, who find it so easy to nag at home and so difficult to say the kind thing that you know to be true, would be discovered to your great advantage and to the peace of your household.

Yes, I think the world would go very well if we all had tongues that told our true thoughts in spite of us. But what a lot of us would be found out. My own face crimsons at the thought. So, I think, does yours.

ON BOSWELL AND HIS MIRACLE

As I passed along Great Queen Street the other evening, I saw that Boswell's house, so long threatened, is at last falling a victim to the housebreaker. The fact is one of the by-products of the war. While the Huns are abroad in Belgium the Vandals are busy at home. You may see them at work on every hand. The few precious remains we have of the past are vanishing like snows before the south wind.

In the Strand there is a great heap of rubbish where, when the war began, stood two fine old houses of Charles II.'s London. Their disappearance would, in normal times, have set all the Press in revolt. But they have gone without a murmur, so preoccupied are we with more urgent matters. And so with the Elizabethan houses in Cloth Fair. They have been demolished without a word of protest. And what devastation is afoot in Lincoln's Inn among those fine reposeful dwellings, hardly one of which is without some historic or literary interest!

In the midst of all this vandalism it was too much perhaps to hope that Boswell's house would escape. Bozzy was not an Englishman; his residence in London was casual, and, what is more to the point, he has only a reflected greatness. Macaulay's judgment of him is now felt to be too harsh, but even his warmest advocate must admit that his picture of himself is not engaging. He was gross in his habits, full of little malevolences (observe the spitefulness of his references to Goldsmith), and his worship of Johnson was abject to the point of nausea.

He made himself a sort of doormat for his hero, and treasured the dirt that came from the great man's heavy boots. No insult levelled at him was too outrageous to be recorded with pride. "You were drunk last night, you dog," says Johnson to him one morning during the tour in the Hebrides, and down goes the remark as if he has received the most gracious of good mornings. "Have you no better manners?" says Johnson on another occasion. "There is _your want_." And Boswell goes home and writes down the snub together with his apologies. And so when he has been expressing his emotions on hearing music. "Sir," said Johnson, "I should never hear it if it made me such a fool."

Once indeed he rebelled. It was when they were dining with a company at Sir Joshua Reynolds's. Johnson attacked him, he says, with such rudeness that he kept away from him for a week. His story of the reconciliation is one of the most delightful things in that astonishing book:

"After dinner, when Mr. Langton was called out of the room and we were by ourselves, he drew his chair near to mine and said, in a tone of conciliatory courtesy, 'Well, how have you done?' Boswell: 'Sir, you have made me very uneasy by your behaviour to me when we were last at Sir Joshua Reynolds's. You know, my dear sir, no man has a greater respect or affection for you, or would sooner go to the end of the world to serve you. Now, to treat me so--' He insisted that I had interrupted him, which I assured him was not the case; and proceeded, 'But why treat me so before people who neither love you nor me?' Johnson: 'Well I am sorry for it. I'll make it up to you in twenty different ways, as you please.' Boswell: 'I said to-day to Sir Joshua, when he observed that you _tossed_ me sometimes, I don't care how often or how high he tosses me when only friends are present, for then I fall upon soft ground; but I do not like falling upon stones, which is the case when enemies are present. I think this is a pretty good image, sir.' Johnson: 'Sir, it is one of the happiest I ever have heard.'"

Is there anything more delicious outside Falstaff and Bardolph, or Don Quixote and Sancho Panza? Indeed, Bardolph's immortal "Would I were with him wheresoe'er he be, whether in heaven or in hell," is in the very spirit of Boswell's devotion to his hero.

It was his failings as much as his talents that enabled him to work the miracle. His lack of self-respect and humour, his childish egotism, his love of gossip, his naive bathos, and his vulgarities contributed as much to the making of his immortal book as his industry, his wonderful verbal memory, and his doglike fidelity. I have said that his greatness is only reflected. But that is hardly just. It might even be more true to say that Johnson owes his immortality to Boswell. What of him would remain to-day but for the man who took his scourgings so humbly and repaid them by licking the boot that kicked him? Who now reads _London_, or _The Vanity of Human Wishes_, or _The Rambler_? I once read _Rasselas_, and found it pompous and dull. And I have read _The Lives of the Poets_, and though they are not pompous and dull, they are often singularly poor criticism, and the essay on Milton is, in some respects, as mean a piece of work as ever came out of Grub Street.

But _The Life_! What in all the world of books is there like it? I have been reading it off and on for more than thirty years, and still find it inexhaustible. It ripens with the years. It is so intimate that it seems to be a record of my own experiences. I have dined so often with Johnson at the Mitre and Sir Joshua's and Langton's and the rest that I know him far better than the shadows I meet in daily life. I seem to have been present when he was talking to the King, and when Goldsmith sulked because he had not shared the honour; when he met Wilkes, and when he insulted Sir Joshua and for once got silenced; when he "downed" Robertson, and when, for want of a lodging, he and Savage walked all night round St. James's Square, full of high spirits and patriotism, inveighing against the Minister and resolving that "they would _stand by their country_."

And at the end of it all I feel very much like Mr. Birrell, who, when asked what he would do when the Government went out of office, replied, "I shall retire to the country, and really read Boswell." Not "finish Boswell," you observe. No one could ever finish Boswell. No one would ever want to finish Boswell. Like a sensible man he will just go on reading him and reading him, and reading him until the light fails and there is no more reading to be done.

What an achievement for this uncouth Scotch lawyer to have accomplished! He knew he had done a great thing; but even he did not know how great a thing. Had he known he might have answered as proudly as Dryden answered when some one said to him that his _Ode to St. Cecilia_ was the finest that had ever been written. "Or ever will be," said the poet. Dryden's ode has been eclipsed more than once since it was written; but Boswell's book has never been approached. It is not only the best thing of its sort in literature: there is nothing with which one can compare it.

Boswell's house is falling to dust. No matter! His memorial will last as long as the English speech is spoken and as long as men love the immortal things of which it is the vehicle.

ON SEEING OURSELVES

A friend of mine who is intimate enough with me to guess my secrets, said to me quizzingly the other day: "Do you know 'Alpha of the Plough?'"

"I have never seen the man," I said promptly and unblushingly. He laughed and I laughed.

"What, never?" he said.

"Never," I said. "What's more, I never shall see him."

"What, not in the looking-glass?" said he.

"That's not 'Alpha of the Plough,'" I answered. "That is only his counterfeit. It may be a good counterfeit, but it's not the man. The man I shall never see. I can see bits of him--his hands, his feet, his arms, and so on. By shutting one eye I can see something of the shape of his nose. By thrusting out the upper lip I can see that the fellow wears a moustache. But his face, as a whole, is hidden from me. I cannot tell you even with the help of the counterfeit what impression he makes on the beholder. Now," I continued, pausing and taking stock of my friend, "I know what you are like. I take you all in at one glance. You can take me in at a glance. The only person we can none of us take in at a glance is the person we should most like to see."

"It's a mercy," said he.

I am not sure that he was right. In this matter, as in most things in this perplexing world, there is much to be said on both sides. It is lucky for some of us undoubtedly that we are condemned to be eternal strangers to ourselves, and that not merely to our physical selves. We do not know even the sound of our own voices. Mr. Pemberton-Billing has never heard the most sepulchral voice in the House of Commons, and Lord Charles Beresford does not know how a foghorn sounds when it becomes articulate. I have no idea, and you have no idea, what sort of impression our manner makes on others. If we had, how stricken some of us would be! We should hardly survive the revelation. We should be sorry we had ever been born.

Imagine, for example, that eminent politician, Mr. Sutherland Bangs, M.P., meeting himself out at a dinner one evening. Mr. Sutherland Bangs cherishes a comfortable vision of himself as a handsome, engaging fellow, with a gift for talk, a breezy manner, a stylish presence, and an elegant accent. And seated beside himself at dinner he would discover that he was a pretentious bore, that his talk was windy commonplace, his breezy manner an offence, his fine accent an unpleasant affectation. He would say that he would never want to see that fellow again. And, realising that that was Mr. Sutherland Bangs as he appears to the world, he would return home as humble and abject as Mr. Tom Lofty in _The Good-Natured Man_ was when his imposture was found out. "You ought to have your head stuck in a pillory," said Mr. Croaker. "Stick it where you will," said Mr. Lofty, "for by the lord, it cuts a poor figure where it sticks at present." Mr. Sutherland Bangs would feel like that.

But if making our own acquaintance would give some of us a good deal of surprise and even pain, it would also do most of us a useful turn as well. Burns put the case quite clearly in his familiar lines:

O wad some pow'r the giftie gie us
To see oursels as others see us:
It wad frae monie a blunder free us
An' foolish notion.

We should all make discoveries to our advantage as well as our discomfiture. You, sir, might find that the talent for argument on which you pride yourself is to me only irritating wrong-headedness, and I might find that the bright wit that I fancy I flash around makes you feel tired. Jones's eyeglass would drop out of his eye because he would know it only made him look foolish, Brown would see the ugliness of his cant, and Robinson would sorry that he had been born a bully and as prickly as a hedgehog. It would do us all good to get this objective view of ourselves.

It is not necessarily the right view or the complete view. You remember that ingenious fancy of Holmes' about John and Thomas. They are talking together and don't quite hit it off, and Holmes says it is no wonder since six persons are engaged in the conversation. "Six!" you say, lifting your eyebrows. Yes, six, says he. There is John's ideal John--that is, John as he appears to himself; Thomas's ideal John--that is, John as Thomas sees him; and the real John, known only to his Maker. And so with Thomas, there are three of him engaged in the talk also. Now John's ideal John is not a bit like Thomas's ideal John, and neither of them is like the real John, and so it comes about that John and Thomas--that is, you and I--get at cross purposes.

If I (John) could have your (Thomas's) glimpse of myself, my appearance, my manner, my conduct, and so on, it would serve as a valuable corrective. It would give that faculty of self-criticism which most of us lack. That faculty is simply the art of seeing ourselves objectively, as a stranger sees us who has no interest in us and no prejudice in our favour. Few of us can do that except in fleeting flashes of illumination. We cannot even do it in regard to the things we produce. If you paint a picture, or write an article, or make a joke, you are pretty sure to be a bad judge of its quality. You only see it subjectively as a part of yourself--that is, you don't see it at all. Put the thing away for a year, come on it suddenly as a stranger might, and you will perhaps understand why Thomas seemed so cool about it. It wasn't because he was jealous or unfriendly, as you supposed: it was because he _saw_ it and you didn't.

Even great men have this blindness about their own work. How else can we account for a case like Wordsworth's? He was one of the three greatest poets this country has produced, and also an acute critic of poetry, yet he wrote more flat-footed commonplace than any man of his time. Apparently he didn't know when he was sublime and when he was merely drivelling. He didn't know because he never got outside the hypnotism of self.

I have sometimes felt angry with that phrase, "What do they know of England, who only England know?" It is the watchword of a shallow Imperialism. But I felt a certain truth in it once. I was alone in the Alps, in an immense solitude of peak and glacier, and as I waited for the return of my guide, who had gone on ahead to prospect, I looked, like Richard, "towards England." In that moment I seemed to see it imaginatively, comprehensively, as I had never, never seen it in all the years of my life in it. I saw its green pastures and moorlands, its mountains and its lakes, its cities and its people, its splendours and its squalors as if it was all a vision projected beyond the verge of the horizon. I saw it with a fresh eye and a new mind, seemed to understand it as I had never understood it before, certainly loved it as I had never loved it before. I found that I had left England to discover it.

That is what we need to do with ourselves occasionally. We need to take a journey from our self-absorbed centre, and see ourselves with a fresh eye and an unprejudiced judgment.

ON THE ENGLISH SPIRIT

I have seen no story of the war which, within its limits, has pleased me more than that which Mr. Alfred Noyes told in the newspapers in his fascinating description of his visit to the Fleet. It was a story of the battle of Jutland. "In the very hottest moment of this most stupendous battle in all history," he says, "two grimy stokers' heads arose for a breath of fresh air. What domestic drama they were discussing the world may never know. But the words that were actually heard passing between them, while the shells whined overhead, were these: 'What I says is, 'e ought to have married 'er.'"

If you don't enjoy that story you will never understand the English spirit. There are some among us who never will understand the English spirit. In the early days of the war an excellent friend of mine used to find a great source of despair in "Tipperary." What hope was there for a country whose soldiers went to battle singing "Tipperary" against a foe who came on singing "Ein' feste Burg"? Put that way, I was bound to confess that the case looked black against us. It seemed "all Lombard Street to a China orange," as the tag of other days would put it. It is true that, for a music-hall song, "Tipperary" was unusually fresh and original. Contrast it with the maudlin "Keep the home fires burning," which holds the field to-day, and it touches great art. I never hear it even now on the street organ without a certain pleasure--a pleasure mingled with pain, for its happy lilt comes weighted with the tremendous emotions of those unforgettable days. It is like a butterfly caught in a tornado, a catch of song in the throat of death.

But it was only a music-hall song after all, and to put it in competition with Luther's mighty hymn would be like putting a pop-gun against a 12-inch howitzer. The thunder of Luther's hymn has come down through four centuries, and it will go on echoing through the centuries till the end of time. It is like the march of the elements to battle, like the heaving of mountains and the surge of oceans. In nothing else is the sense of Power so embodied in the pulse of song. And the words are as formidable as the tune. Carlyle caught their massive, rugged strength in his great translation:

A safe stronghold our God is still,
A trusty shield and weapon;
He'll help us clear from all the ill
That hath us now o'ertaken....

Yes, on the face of it, it seemed a poor lookout for "Tipperary" against such a foe. But it wasn't, and any one who knew the English temperament knew it wasn't. I put aside the fact that for practical everyday uses a cheerful tune is much better than a solemn tune. "Tipperary" quickens the step and shortens the march. Luther's hymn, so far from lightening the journey, would become an intolerable burden. The mind would sink under it. You would either go mad or plunge into some violent excess to recover your sanity. It is the craziest of philosophy to think that because you are engaged in a serious business you have to live in a state of exaltation, that the bow is never to be unstrung, that the top note is never to be relaxed. You will not do your business better because you wear a long face all the time; you will do it worse. If you are talking about your high ideals all day you are not only a nuisance: you are either dishonest or unbalanced. We are not creatures with wings. We are creatures who walk. We have to "foot it" even to Mount Pisgah, and the more cheerful and jolly and ordinary we are on the way the sooner we shall get over the journey. The noblest Englishman that ever lived, and the most deeply serious, was as full of innocent mirth as a child and laid his head down on the block with a jest. Let us keep our course by the stars, by all means, but the immediate tasks are much nearer than the stars--

The charities that soothe and heal and bless
Are scattered all about our feet--like flowers.

It is just this frightful gravity of the German mind that has made them mad. They haven't learned to play; they haven't learned to laugh at themselves. Their sombre religion has passed into a sombre irreligion. They have grown gross without growing light-hearted. The spiritual battle song of Luther has become a material battle song, and "the safe stronghold" is no longer the City of God but the City of Krupp. They have neither the splendid intellectual sanity of the French, nor the homely humour of the English. It is this homely humour that has puzzled Europe. It has puzzled the French as much as the Germans, for the French genius is declamatory and needs the inspiration of ideas and great passions greatly stated. It was assumed that, because the British soldier sang "Tipperary," moved in an atmosphere of homely fun, indulged in no heroics, never talked of "glory," rarely of patriotism or the Fatherland, and only joked about "the flag," there was no great passion in him. Some of our frenzied people at home have the same idea. They still believe we are a nation of "slackers" because we don't shriek with them.

The truth, of course, is that the English spirit is distrustful of emotion and display. It is ashamed of making "a fuss" and hates heroics. The typical Englishman hides his feelings even from his family, clothes his affections under a mask of indifference, and cracks a joke to avoid "making a fool of himself." It is not that he is without great passions, but that he does not like talking about them. He is too self-conscious to trust his tongue on such big themes. He might "make an exhibition of himself," and he dreads that above all things. This habit of reticence has its unlovely side; but it has great virtues too. It keeps the mind cool and practical and the atmosphere commonplace and good-humoured. It gives reserves of strength that people who live on their "top notes" have not got. It goes on singing "Tipperary" as though it had no care in life and no interest in ideas or causes. And then the big moment comes and the great passion that has been kept in such shamefaced secrecy blazes out in deeds as glorious as any that were done on the plains of windy Troy. Turn to those stories of the winning of the V.C., and then ask yourself whether the nation whose sons are capable of this noble heroism deserves to have the whip of Zabern laid across its shoulders by any jack-in-office who chooses to insult us.

Those two stokers, putting their heads out for a breath of fresh air in the midst of the battle, are true to the English type. Death was all about them, and any moment might be their last. But they were so completely masters of themselves that in the brief-breathing space allowed them they could turn their minds to a simple question of everyday conduct. "What I says is, 'e ought to have married 'er." That is not the stuff of which heroics are made; but it is the stuff of which heroism is made.

ON FALLING IN LOVE

Do not, if you please, imagine that this title foreshadows some piquant personal revelation. "Story! God bless you, I have none to tell, sir." I have not fallen in love for quite a long time, and, looking in the glass and observing what Holmes calls "Time's visiting cards" on my face and hair, I come to the conclusion that I shall never enjoy the experience again. I may say with Mr. Kipling's soldier that

That's all shuv be'ind me
Long ago and fur away.

But just as poetry, according to Wordsworth, is emotion recalled in tranquillity, so it is only when you have left the experience of falling in love behind that you are really competent to describe it or talk about it with the necessary philosophic detachment.