Chapter IX: Prologue (7)

They, alas, are too poor to enjoy it. I think there is something almost tragic in this fact that the entire society of Madrid cannot support the very moderate charges of the one first class hotel in the city. When one thinks of the dozens of luxurious stopping-places in London, New York, and Paris--always crowded by a mob of vulgar people with their purses overflowing, it seems actually cruel that the _vieille noblesse_ of the Spanish capital have no money for the simple establishment they admire with child-like extravagance. The old actor does so delight in pomp--of even the mildest variety; and his youthful shortsightedness has left him so pitiably unable to secure it, now in the beggardom of his old age.

Half a dozen years ago, the porter of a friend of mine in Madrid won a lottery prize of ten thousand dollars. No sooner had he come into this fabulous wealth, than he and his wife proceeded to rent a house on the Castellana, a box at the opera, another at the bull-ring; and of course the indispensable carriage and pair. The señor had his clubs and racers, the señora her jewels, and frocks from Paris; they amazed Madrid with their magnificence.

At the end of six months the ten thousand dollars were gone; and the couple went back to the porter’s lodge, where they have lived happily ever since. Could one make the last assertion of two people of any other race in the same circumstances? Certainly not of two Americans! But, of course, had they been Americans, they would promptly have invested the ten thousand dollars, and doubled it; in five years they would probably have been “millionaires from the West.” Not so the ingenuous Spaniards. With no thought for the morrow, they proceeded to outdo all competitors in making a gorgeous today; and, when that was done, retired without bitterness to rest on their laurels.

In all of which the good couple may have been wiser than they seem. Being true children of their race--that is, without the first instincts for “making money”--they would naturally have taken what they had won, and stretched it carefully over the remaining half century of their lives. So they could have existed in genteel poverty without working. As it was, they had their fling--such a one as to set Madrid by the ears; they are still famous for their unparalleled prodigality; and they jog along in the service to which they were born, utterly content if at the end of the day they have an hour or two in which to gloat over their one-time splendour. When I think of the enforced scrimping and soul-shrivelling calculation of the average Madrileño, I am always glad to remember two who threw their bonnets over the mill, and had what Americans call “one grand good time.”

It is impossible to conclude this cursory glance at some of the more striking of Spanish characteristics without mention of the two finest: honesty and lack of self-interest. They go hand in hand throughout this country of rock-rooted impulse, and are forever surprising one used to the modern rule of look-sharp-or-be-worsted. My first shock was in the Rastro (the old Thieves’ Market of Madrid), when an old man candidly informed me that the chain I admired was not of gold. It had every appearance of gold, and I should have bought it as such; but the shabby old salesman shook his head, and gave it to me gladly for twenty cents.

As Taine tells us, the Spanish are not practical; which endows them, among other things, with the unprofitable quality of honour. In Toledo, just as I was taking the train, I discovered that I had lost my watch. It occurred to me that I might have dropped it in the cab our party had had for a long drive that afternoon; but when the hotel proprietor telephoned to the stables, he found that the cab had not yet returned. “However,” he told me confidently, “tomorrow the _cosaria_ goes to Madrid, and if the watch is found she can bring it to you.”

The _cosaria_ (literally the “thing” woman) is an institution peculiar to Spain; she goes from town to town delivering parcels, produce, and what not--in short, she is the express company. Of course I never expected to see my watch again, but before six o’clock of the following day the _cosaria_ appeared at my door in Madrid with the article lost in Toledo--seventy miles away. The charge for her services was two pesetas (forty cents). When I suggested a reward for the coachman, she replied with amazement that it would be to insult him! I have visions of an American driver running risk of such “insult.” He would have been at the pawnshop, and got his ten dollars long since.

An American friend of mine who conducts a school for girls in Madrid tells of a still rarer experience. One day her butcher came to her in great distress. He had been going over his books, and he found that the price his assistant had been charging the school for soup-bones (daily delivered) was twice what it should have been. This, said he with abject regret, had been going on unknown to him since the first of the year; he therefore owed the señora nine hundred pesetas (one hundred and eighty dollars) for bones, and begged her to accept this sum on the spot, together with his profoundest apologies.

I call such experiences rare, yet they are of everyday occurrence in Spain; so that one knows it was not here that Byron said: “I never trust manners, for I once had my pocket picked by the civilest gentleman I ever met with!” In Spain, manners and morals have an original habit of walking out together; and one need not, as in other countries, fear a preponderance of the former as probable preclusion of the latter. That lack of the practical sense, which we wise analysts deplore, has its engaging side when it brings back our watch, or saves us paying a gold price for brass.

In the matter of servants, too, one is allured by a startling readiness on their part to do as much as, even more than, they are paid for. After the surly thanks and sour looks of the New York or London menial for anything under a quarter, the broad smile of the Spanish for five cents is quite an episode in one’s life. The breath-taking part of it is that the smile is still forthcoming when the five cents is not; this is frightfully disturbing to one’s nicely arranged opinions of the domestic class.

But it makes living in Madrid very agreeable. Like the rest of their countrymen, servants before they know you are inclined to be suspicious, and polite only along circumscribed lines, but once they have accepted you your position in their eyes is unimpeachable, and the service they will render has no limits. This standard of judgment of a very old country: the standard, throughout all classes, of judgment of the individual for what he proves himself to be, is extremely interesting as opposed to the instantaneous judgment and unquestioning acceptance of him as he outwardly appears to be by the very young country of America. To the American it is a disgrace to serve--or, at least, to admit that he is serving; to the Spaniard it is a disgrace not to serve, with his utmost powers and grace, anyone worthy of recognition whatsoever.

Wherefore Spanish maids and men are the most loyal and devoted the world over. They will run their feet off for you all day long, and sit up half the night too if you will let them, finishing some task in which they are interested. When you are ill, they make the most thoughtful of nurses, never sparing themselves if it is to give you even a fractional amount of comfort. And to all your thanks they return a deprecating “for nothing--for nothing.” They have never heard of “an eight-hour day”; the Union of Domestic Labour would be to them a title in Chinese; yet they find life worth living. They are even--breathe it not among the moderns!--contented; still more strange, they are considered, and whenever possible spared, by their unmodern masters and mistresses.

It is the civilization of an unpractical people; a people not in terror of giving something for nothing, but eager always to give more. They are, I believe, the one people to whom money--in the human relations of life--never occurs. And so, of course, they are despised by other peoples--for their poverty, their lack of “push.” Nowadays we worship the genius of Up-To-Date: his marvellous invention, his lightning calculation and keen move; his sweating, struggling, superman’s performance, day by day--and his final triumph. We disdain the old actor of mere grandiloquence, content to dream, passive in his corner.

Yet are his childishness and self-sufficiency, even his ignorance, so much meaner than the greed and sordidness and treachery of the demigod of today? And is the inexorable activity of the modern “Napoleon of finance” so surely worth more than the attitude of the shabby old man who refused to sell brass for gold?

V

IN REVIEW

(London)

_Underwood & Underwood_

“THE RESTFUL SWEEP OF PARKS”]

I

THE CRITICS

Coming into London from Paris or New York, or even from Madrid, is like alighting from a brilliant panoramic railway onto solid, unpretentious mother earth. The massive bulk of bridges, the serene stateliness of ancient towers and spires, the restful green sweep of park--unbroken by flower-beds or too many trees; the quiet leisure of the Mall, and the sedate brown palace overlooking it: all is tranquil, dignified, soothing. One leans against the cushions of one’s beautifully luxurious taxi, and sighs profound contentment. Here is order, well-being, peace!

And yonder, typical of it all, as the _midinette_ is typical of Paris and the _torero_ of Spain, stands the imperturbable London “bobby.” Already you have met his Southampton or Dover cousin on the pier; where the latter’s calm, competent orders made the usual flurried transfer from boat to train a simple matter. Too, you have made acquaintance with that policeman-in-embryo, the English porter. His brisk, capable answers: “Yes, sir. This way, please sir. Seven-twenty at Victoria, right, sir!”: and his deft piloting of you and your luggage into the haven of an empty carriage--in these days of frenzied democracy, whence can one derive such exotic comfort as from a servant who acknowledges himself a servant, and performs his servant’s duties to perfection?

I used to wonder why travelling in England is so much more agreeable than travelling in America, with all the conveniences the latter boasts. I think it is because, where America gives you things to make you comfortable, England gives you people--a host of them, well trained and intent only on serving you. The personal contact makes all the difference, with one’s flattered vanity. The policeman, the porter, the guard who finds one a seat, the boy who brings one a tea-basket, finally the chauffeur who drives one to an hotel and the doorman who grasps one’s bag: each and all tacitly insinuate that they exist to look out for oneself in particular, for all men in general. What wonder that Englishmen are snobs? Their universe revolves round them, is made for as well as by them; and what they want, when they want it, is always within arm’s reach. They are the inventors and perfectors of the Groove.

But no one can accuse them of being sybarites. Comfort, luxury, the elaborate service with which they insist on being surrounded are only accessory to a root-idea which may even be called a passion: the producing of great men. To this, as to all great creation, routine is necessary; and the careful systematizing of life into classes and sub-classes, each with its special duties. English people actually love their duties, they are taught from childhood to love them; and to attend to them before everything. As reward, when work is finished, they have the manifold pleasures of home. This is odd indeed, to the American or European--to whom duty is a dreary thing, to be avoided whenever possible; and home a place to leave, in search of pleasure, not to come back to. In consequence, the general summary of England is: “dull.”

English people are called dull--“heavy” is the more popular word--because they do not gather on street-corners or in cafés, arguing and gesticulating, but go methodically about their business; leaving the stranger to do the same. Of course, if the latter has no business, this is depressing. Here he is in an unknown country, with nothing to do but sight-see, which bores him infinitely. There is no one with whom to talk, no pleasant congregating-spot where he could at least look on at, if not share in, the life of the people. He is thrown dismally back upon himself for diversion. So what does he do? He goes and sees the sights, which was his duty from the beginning. Just as he goes to bed at midnight because every place except bed is closed against him; and to church on Sundays because every building except church is shut. England not only expects every man to do his duty, she makes it practically impossible for him to do anything else; by which she shrewdly gains his maximum efficiency when and where she needs it.

In return, or rather in preparation, she gives him a remarkably fine groundwork, both mental and physical, to start with. No foreigner can fail to be impressed with the minute care and thought bestowed upon English children, and the sacrifices gladly made to secure their health and best development. In comparison with French and American and Spanish parents, the English mother and father may seem undemonstrative, even cold; they do not gush over their children in public, nor take them out to restaurants, or permit them to share their own meals at home. Neither, however, do they give them the least comfortable rooms in the house, and decree that their wants and needs shall be second to those of the adult members of the family. The children have a routine of their own, constructed carefully for them, and studied to fit their changing requirements. They have their own rooms--as large and light and sunny as the parents can contrive--their own meals, of wholesome food served at sensible hours; their fixed time for exercise and study alike: everything is planned to give them the best possible start for mind and body.

“But,” the French or American mother objects, when one extols this system, “it takes so much money; so many rooms, so many servants--two distinct households, in fact.” It takes a different distribution of money, that is all. As the children are never on show, their clothes are simple; the clothes of the parents are apt to be simple too. Amusement is not sought outside the home in England, as it is in other countries; both interest and money are centred within the house and garden that is each man’s castle. This makes possible many comforts which people of other countries look upon as luxuries, but which to the Englishman and woman are the first necessities. And primary among these is a healthful, cheerful place to rear their children.

Not only the wealthy, but people in very modest circumstances insist upon this; and in houses of but six or seven rooms one finds the largest and airiest given over to the day and night nurseries for the children. Fresh chintz and white paint and simple furniture make these the most attractive as well as most sensible surroundings for the small people. Nurses, teachers, school-fellows, the whole chain of influence linking the development of the English child, emphasize the idea of physical fitness as a first essential. And this idea is so early instilled, and so constantly and emphatically fostered, that it becomes the kernel of the grown man’s activity. The stern creed that only the fit survive rules England almost as it ruled old Sparta: a creed terrible for the weak, but splendid for the strong; and that has produced such men as Gordon, Rhodes, Kitchener, Curzon and Roberts--and hundreds of others, the fruit of this rigorous policy.

First the home, then the public schools teach it. At school, a boy must establish himself by his proven prowess in one direction or another. To gain a footing, and then to hold it, he must do something--row, or play cricket or football; but play, and play hard, he must. The other boys force him to it, whether he will or no; hardness is their religion, and those who do not conform to it are practically finished before they begin. The reputation won at school lays or permanently fails to lay the foundation of after success. “Hm ... yes, I remember him at Eton,” has summarized many a man’s chances for promotion or failure. Rarely does he prove himself to be worth later more than he was worth then.

It is interesting to follow the primitive ideal, of bodily perfection, throughout this old and perhaps most finely developed civilization of the present. In the hurry-scurry of modern affairs, when other men pay little or no heed to preserving their bodily strength, never does this cease to be the first consideration of the Englishman. He wants money and position and power quite as keenly as other men want them; but he has been born and reared in the knowledge that to gain these things, then to enjoy them, sound nerves are necessary. His impulse is to store up energy faster than he spends it, and not to waste himself on a series of trifles someone else can do as well if not better than he.

Hence the carefully ordered routine he follows from childhood; the systematic exercise, the frequent holidays his strenuous American cousin scoffs at. All are designed to keep him hard and fit, and ready for emergencies that may demand surplus strength. Middle-aged men play the game and follow the hobbies of young men; the elderly vie with the middle-aged. In England, the fast and fixed lines that divide youth from maturity are blurred by the hearty good comradeship of sport; in which all ages and classes share alike. Sport is not a hobby with the Englishman; it is the backbone of his existence. Therefore, I think, it is so hard for the foreigner to enter into the real sports spirit of England: he never quite appreciates the vital motive behind it. With the Frenchman and the American and the Spaniard--even with the Austrian--sport is recreation; they take it apart from the business of life, where the Englishman takes it as essential to life itself. By it he establishes and maintains his working efficiency, and without it he would have lost his chief tool, and his perennial remedy for whatever ills befall him.

Obviously, it is this demand for physical perfection that underlies and engenders the national worship of race; and that is responsible, in the last analysis, for the renowned snobbishness of the English. Someone has said that English Society revolves round the King and the horse--or, as he might have added, round the supreme symbols of human and animal development. That towards which everyone is striving--to breed finer and stronger creatures--is crystallized in these two superlative types. While from the King down, on the human side, the scale is divided into the most minute shades of gradation.

As government in England tends to become more and more democratic, society tends to become more aristocratic--as far as magnifying ancient names and privileges is concerned. “A title is always a title,” said a practical American lady, “but an English title is just a bit better.” It is, because English people think so, and have thought it so long and so emphatically that they have brought everyone else to that opinion. The same is true of many English institutions, admirable in themselves but which actually are admired because the English admire them. Every nation is more or less egoist, but none is so sincerely and consistently egoist as the English. They travel the earth, but they travel to observe and criticize; not to assimilate foreign things.

The American is a chameleon, taking on the habits and ideas of each place as he lives in it; Latins have not a little of this character too. But the Briton, wherever he goes, remains the Briton: you never mistake him, in Palestine or Alaska or the South Sea Islands: no matter where he is, he has brought his tea and his tub and his point of view with him. And, though he may be one among thousands of another nationality, somehow these others become impressed with his traditions rather than he with theirs. Perhaps because away from home, he calmly pursues the home routine, adjusting the life of his temporary habitation to himself, rather than himself to it. If he is accustomed to dress for dinner, he dresses; though the rest of the company may appear in corduroys and neckerchiefs. And continues to dress, imperturbably, no matter how mercilessly he may be ridiculed or even despised. If he is accustomed to take tea at a certain hour, he takes it--in Brazil or Thibet, it makes no difference. And the same is true of his religious observance, his beloved exercise, his hobbies and his study: of all these things he is too firmly convinced to change them by one jot. Such an attitude is bound to have its effect on these persistently confronted with it; resentment, then curiosity, finally a certain grudging respect is born in the minds of the people on whom the Englishman serenely forces his superiority. They wonder about his country--he never sounds its praises or urges them to visit it. He simply speaks with complete contentment of “going home.”

When the foreigner, often out of very _pique_, follows him thither, he is met with the same indifference shown him in his own land. Visiting strangers may come or go: while they are in England, they are treated with civility; when they choose to depart, they are not pressed to remain. This tranquil self-sufficiency is galling to the majority, who go away to sulk, and to denounce the English as a race of “dull snobs.” Yet they come back again--and again; and continue to hammer at the door labelled “British Reserve,” and to be snubbed, and to swallow their pride and begin anew, until finally they pry their way in by sheer obstinacy--and because no one cares very much, after all, whether they are in or not. London is so vast and so diverse, in its social ramifications, it can admit thousands of aliens a year and remain quite unconscious of them.

Americans in particular are quick to realize this, and, out of their natural arrogance, bitterly to resent it. At home they explain rather piteously, they are “someone”; here, their money is accepted, but they themselves are despised--or, at best, barely tolerated. They who are used to carry all before them find themselves patronized, smiled at indulgently--or, worst of all, ignored. In short, the inexperienced young actors come before an audience of seasoned critics, whom they cannot persuade to take them seriously. For they soon discover that there is no “bluffing” these calmly judicial people, but that merit alone--of one sort or another--succeeds with them.

They are not to be “impressed” by tales of reckless expenditure or intimate allusions to grand dukes and princesses seen on the promenades of Continental “cures.” On the contrary, they are won over in no time by something the American would never think of using as a wedge--unaffected simplicity. But why should one want to win them--whether one be American or French, Spanish, German, or any other self-respecting egoist-on-one’s-own? Why does one always want to win the critical?

Because they set a standard. The English have set standards since ever they were at all: wise standards, foolish standards, some broad and finely tolerant, others absurdly narrow and short-sighted. But always they live by strict established rule, to which they demand of themselves exacting conformity. Each class has its individual ten commandments--as is possible where classes are so definitely graded and set apart; each man is born to obey the decalogue of his class--or to be destroyed. Practically limitless personal liberty is his, within the laws of his particular section of society; but let him once overstep these, and he soon finds himself in gaol of one kind or another.

Foreigners feel all this, and respond to it; just as they respond to the French criterion of beauty, the American criterion of wealth. England for centuries has stood for the _précieux_ of society, in the large significance of the term; before her unwavering ideal of race, other people voluntarily come to be judged for distinction, as they go to Paris to be judged for their artistic quality, to New York for their powers of accomplishment. Today more than ever, London confers the social diploma of the world which makes it, of course, the world’s Mecca and chief meeting-place.

This has completely changed the character of the conservative old city, from a provincial insular capital into a great cosmopolitan centre. Necessarily it has leavened the traditional British self-satisfaction, while that colossus slept, by the introduction of new principles, new problems, new points of view. The critic remains the critic, but he must march with the times--or lose his station. And conservatism is a dotard nowadays. Each new republic, as it comes along, shoves the old man a foot further towards his grave. Expansion is the battle-cry of the present, and critics and actors alike must look alive, and modulate their voices to the chorus.

A bewildering babel of tunes is the natural result in this transition period, but many of them are fine and all are interesting. England lifts her voice to announce that she is not an island but an Empire; and it is the fashion in London now to treat Colonials with civility, even actually to fête them. _Autre temps, autre mœurs!_ We have heard Mr. Bernard Shaw’s charwoman ask her famous daughter of the Halls: “But what’ll his duchess mother be thinkin’ if the dook marries a ballyrina, with me for a mother-in-law!” And the answer: “Indeed, she says she’s glad he’ll have somebody to pay his income tax, when it goes to twenty shillings in the pound!”

The outcry against American peeresses and musical comedy marchionesses has long since died into a murmur, and a feeble murmur at that. Since another astute playwright suggested that the race of Vere de Vere might be distinctly improved by the infusion of some healthy vulgar blood, and a chin or two amongst them, the aristocratic gates have opened almost eagerly to receive these alien beauties. In politics, too, new blood is welcomed; as it is in the Church, in the universities, and even in that haughtiest of citadels, the county. The egoism of England is becoming a more practical egoism: she is beginning to see where she can use the things she has hitherto disdained, and is almost pathetically anxious to make up for lost time. But, for ballast, she has always her uncompromising standards, by which both things and people must be weighed and found good, before being accepted.

In short, while the bugaboo of invasion and the more serious menace of Socialism have grown up to lead pessimists to predict ruin for the country, subtler influences have been at work to make her greater than ever before. The signs of conflict are almost always hopeful signs; only stagnation spells ruin. And where once the English delighted to stagnate--or at least to sit within their insular shell and admire themselves without qualification--now they are looking keenly about, to acquire useful men and methods from every possible source. Finding, a bit to their own surprise, that, rather than diminishing their prestige in the process, they are strengthening it.

The routine is being amplified, made to fit the spirit of the time, which is a spirit of progress above all things. John Bull has evolved from a hard-riding, hard-drinking, provincial squire into a keen-thinking tactician with cosmopolitan tendencies and breadth of view. From London as his reviewing-stand, he scrutinizes the nations as they pass; and his judgment--but that is for another chapter.

II

THE JUDGMENT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

_Underwood & Underwood_

LONDON, THE EMPIRE CAPITAL]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

_Underwood & Underwood_

THE GREAT ISLAND SITE]

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

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

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

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

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

_Underwood & Underwood_

LINKING THE NEW ERA AND THE OLD]

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

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

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

THE END

Transcriber’s Notes

Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they were not changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left unbalanced.

Illustrations in this eBook have been positioned between paragraphs and outside quotations. In versions of this eBook that support hyperlinks, the page references in the List of Illustrations lead to the corresponding illustrations.

Page 32: “cabaret in American” was printed that way; perhaps should be “America”.