Chapter IX: Part III: Edwardian (3)

To make up for the stagnation of home politics, there was, in 1906 and 1907, plenty of international activity. The nations of Europe were ostensibly drawing together, a happy family. British journalists were entertained in Berlin, German journalists in London, amid some mutual execration and dislike. A _rapprochement_ took place between ourselves and Russia, for it was quite the fashion in Europe to fraternise with Russia, her armies were so huge, even if not, apparently, very good at what armies should be good at. There were those in this country who held that it was not quite nice to fraternise with Russia, disapproving of her governmental system, and of the Tsar’s very natural suppression of the Duma that had for a few days and by an oversight so strangely existed and actually dared to demand constitutional reform. There were those in Great Britain who said that we should not be at all friendly with a government so little liberal in mentality. But, after all, you must take nations as you find them, and their domestic affairs are quite their own concern, and one should not be provincial in one’s judgments, but should make friends even with the mammon of unrighteousness for the sake of the peace of Europe, which was a good deal talked of just then by the Powers, though it is doubtful whether any of them really believed in it. It is certain that the nations by no means neglected the steady increase and building up of armaments by land and sea. They hurried away from the Hague Conference to lay down new battleships at a reckless pace; even Mr. W. T. Stead said, “Let us strengthen our navy, for on its fighting power the peace of Europe depends.” Strengthen our navy we did; but as to the peace of Europe, that lovely, insubstantial wraith, she was perhaps frightened by all those armoured ships, all those noisy guns, all those fluent statesmen talking, for she never put on much flesh and bones.

20

1907

Outside politics, 1907 was a gay year enough. There was a severe outbreak of pageantitis, which many people enjoyed very much, and others found vastly disagreeable. Drama was noticeably good; the Vedrenne-Barker company moved from the Court to the Savoy, and the intelligent play-goer moved after it. Miss Horniman’s Repertory Theatre toured the provinces; and the Abbey Theatre players took English audiences by storm. Acting was good, literature and the arts were much encouraged, dancing and social entertainments were more than ever the fashion. Society, it was said, was getting rowdier. For that matter, society has always been getting rowdier, since the dawn of time. How rowdy it will end, in what nameless orgies it will be found at the Last Day, is a solemn thought indeed.

As to the young they were thought of and written of much as ever, much as now. The New Young were discovered afresh, and the Edwardian variety was much like the Victorian and the Georgian. They were wild, people said; they went their own way; they were hard, reckless, independent, enquiring, impatient of control, and yet rather noble.

“Youth in the new century has broken with tradition,” people said. “It is no longer willing to accept forms and formulæ only on account of their age. It has set out on a voyage of enquiry, and, finding some things which are doubtful, others which are insufficient, is searching for forms of experience more in harmony with the realities of life and of knowledge....”

Youth was, in fact, at it again.

“Girls are so wild in these days,” Vicky cheerfully complained. “Nancy and Imogen both go on in a way we’d _never_ have dared to do. Nancy dances all night (of course chaperons are a back number now), and comes home alone, or with some wild, arty young men and women, or, worse still, with one wild, arty young man, at five o’clock in the morning, and lets herself in with a bang and a rush, and often lets the arty young people in too. No, Nancy, I say to her, you don’t let your friends into my house before breakfast, and that’s that. Not several of them at once, nor one by herself or himself. If they don’t want to go home to their own beds, they must just go and carouse in any hotel that will receive them, for in my house they shall _not_ carouse. _Nor_ sit on the dining-room sofa and smoke, and carry on conversations in tones that I suppose you all think are hushed. It shall not be done, I said, so that is settled. But is it settled? Not a bit of it. Nancy merely changes the subject, and Charles and I are woken by the hushed voices again next morning. Edwardian manners, people tell me; well, I’m Victorian, and I don’t care if it _is_ 1907.”

“You were doing much the same in 1880, my dear,” Rome interpolated.

“Oh, well, I’ve forgotten ... were we?... Well, anyhow, you can’t say I was behaving like Imogen. She doesn’t care for dancing much, and she’s such a baby still that cocktails make her tipsy and cigarettes sick; she prefers raspberry syrup and chocolate cigars, which is really more indecent at her age. At her age _I_ was thinking of proper young-ladyish things, like young men, and getting engaged; but Imogen seems never to have heard of either--I mean, not of young men in their proper uses. She plays childish games, and dashes about on her bicycle, and makes ridiculous lists of all the ships in the navy and how much they weigh and how many horses they’re equal to, and slips off to Portsmouth all by herself to see them launched, without a word to anyone, and of course makes herself ill. I said to her one day, I suppose you’ll go and marry into the navy some day, Jennie; nothing else will satisfy you. But she opened her eyes and said, _Marry_ the navy? Oh, no. I couldn’t do that. I should be too jealous of him. You see, I want to be in the navy myself, and I know I should hate his being in it when I couldn’t. It would only rub it in. I want to do nice things myself, not to marry people who do them. I believe, mother, I’m perhaps too selfish to marry; it’s _my_ life I want to enjoy, not anyone else’s. Besides, there might be babies, and they would get so in the way, little sillies. They wouldn’t get in your way, I told her (only of course it isn’t true, because they always do, the wretches), if only you’d behave like other grown girls, and not be forever climbing about and playing silly games. You’re such a baby yourself, that’s what’s the matter. What on earth the child’s book will be like that she’s so busy with I can’t imagine. _She_ knows nothing about life, bless her. There’s Phyllis married, and running her home so capably, and Nancy at least carrying on like a girl, not like a child in the nursery--but Imogen! I lose my patience with her sometimes.”

And even as her mother spoke, Imogen was in Hamley’s in Regent Street, looking at toy pistols and blushing. She was blushing because she had just been deceitful, and was afraid that the lady attending on her guessed. “For what aged child is it?” this helpful lady had asked. “Would caps or blank cartridges be what he’d want? I mean, if he’s _very_ young....”

“Oh, no,” Imogen mumbled, “he’s not awfully young. Blank cartridges, he likes....”

She bent her abashed face over the weapons, fingering them. A sordid fib; was she seen through? She chose her pistol quickly, paid for it, and hurried out of the shop. When she got well away, she extracted the weapon from its cardboard box and tucked it, with a guilty look round, into the side pocket of her skirt.

She strode along with a new reckless gallantry.

“Patrick slipped among the crowd; that queer, cosmopolitan, rather sinister crowd that is to be found around the Marseilles docks. Was he followed? His hand strayed to his hip pocket. His keen, veiled eyes took in the passers-by without seeming to look. If he could get through the next hour without mishap, he would be aboard and a-sail. But could he? Prob’ly not....”

While Imogen thus walked in foreign ports or trackless forests, a happy, dreaming spinster, a reckless adventurer armed to the teeth, many of her contemporaries and elders walked in suffragist processions, adventurers too, and no less absorbed than she. Stanley, disgusted now by the increasingly reasonless methods of the militants, had definitely turned her back on them and joined the constitutionals. These arranged orderly and lady-like processions, headed at times by Lady Carlisle.

“There can be no doubt,” wrote the more dignified press, after one such procession, “that many of these lady suffragettes are absolutely in earnest, and honestly believe that the cause for which they are contending is a just and sane one. But the fact remains that they are in the minority; that the sex, _qua_ sex, is still content, and proud to be content, to accept the symbol of petticoat....” (“How indecent,” cried Vicky, “to gossip about our underwear in a leader by a man!”) ... “the symbol of petticoat as the badge of disenfranchisement.” Women, the article continued, are of low mental calibre, and will never understand politics, and if they did it would interfere with their only duty, the propagation of the race.

“I love journalists,” said Rome, reading this to her papa at their Sunday breakfast. “They always write as if women did that job single-handed. They are so modest about man’s share in it, which is really quite as important as ours. They even kindly call us the fount of life. Dear, generous, self-effacing creatures....”

But papa was shaking his head, gravely.

“You make a joke of it, my dear. But this low mental equipment on the part of the writers on our leading papers is really a tragedy. The guiders of public opinion.... The blind leading the blind ... how can we avoid the ditch?”

“Indeed, we don’t avoid the ditch. We are all in it, up to the neck. But if one is to be sad on account of the low mental equipment of writers or others, there will be very little joy left. For my part, I find a considerable part of my joy in it; it assists in providing the cheering spectacle of human absurdity.”

“Pass me the paper, my dear. I want to read about.... I want to see it.”

Rome smiled behind the screen of paper which papa put up between him and her. Well she knew what papa wanted to read in it. He was looking for news of Mr. R. J. Campbell and his New Theology, searching for tidings of Pantheism and the Divine Immanence. And, sure enough, he found them. There was a Saying of the Week. Among the eminent persons who had said other things, such as Dr. Clifford, who had remarked, a little meiosistically, “It is not necessary to burn a man who is seeking the truth,” and the Lord Chief Justice, who had observed, more topically, “One of the greatest errors that motorists can make is to believe that upon their blowing their horns everybody should clear out of the way,” and Prince Fushimi from Japan, who had said, “I do not wish to object to ‘The Mikado,’ as I am sure its writers did not intend to hurt the feelings of a great nation, but I shall, of course, be glad if it is not performed,” and two doctors, one of whom had said, “Kissing consists in depositing some saliva on the lips or cheeks of another person,” and the other, “Those who do not like milk will get cancer”--among all these utterers of truth came Mr. R. J. Campbell, remarking brightly, not for the first time nor for the last, “The New Theology is the gospel of the humanity of God and of the divinity of man.”

“True,” said papa, within himself. “Very true. Very proper and intelligent indeed.”

He sighed gently behind the newspaper. He had had, of late, his doubts as to Higher Thought; as to whether it was very intelligent, very proper, or very true. It was strange in so many ways; high, doubtless, but perhaps for earth too high. And there were strange tales going about concerning the Gurus who led in prayer and in thought. And the leg of that unfortunate young man ... how could people believe such nonsense? The element of folly in all human creeds was becoming, in the case of the Higher Thought, painfully evident to papa.

This New Theology now--this young man Campbell--he seemed, somehow, nearer to solid earth than did the Higher Thinkers. He might talk of the Divinity of Man, but he did not, as papa, having read his book on the subject, knew, mean anything silly by it, only what all the mystics have meant--the divine spark in the human heart. As to the humanity of God--well, he probably meant no harm by that either. He was but an anthropomorphist, like the rest of us.

The theologians had been hard upon that book of his. It was not, of course, the book of a scholar; all it said had been said much better by Loisy and other Catholic modernists, whom Mr. Campbell palely reflected. But it gave a good peptonised version, suitable for the unscholarly mind. And its reviewers had been unkind. They had nearly all attacked it. Dr. Robertson Nicoll in the _British Weekly_ had snubbed it at considerable length. The _Church Times_ had said, “The book is one long offence against good taste,” and the _Methodist Recorder_, “Frankly, we do not think this book worth reading, and to price it at six shillings is enough to make us join in the Book War.” Theological reviewers were not always fair, as papa, since he had published his own mighty and erudite work on Comparative Religions, had known. For himself, he had liked Mr. Campbell’s book, even though it was rather bright than scholarly, more an appeal to the man in the City Temple than to the student or the theologian. Papa, besides being a student and a theologian, had of late been also on Sundays a man in the City Temple. He had said nothing of it yet to anyone; he was trying it. He liked it; there was nothing in it to bewilder or offend. The Divine Immanence; call it Pantheism who chose, it was a beautiful idea. It was in no degree incompatible with the Divine Transcendence; why should it be, since there was also the Divine Ubiquity?

Brooding on these matters, papa finished breakfast somewhat silently, and lit his pipe.

“A beautiful day,” said Rome, smoking her cigarette at the open window. “I shall be out for lunch and tea, papa. I am joining a party of pleasure; we are going to explore, in our cars, to Newlands Corner, where we shall have trials of skill and of speed. You won’t come with me, I suppose?”

“No, thank you, dear, I think not. I’m too old for trials of skill and speed; too old, even, for exploring.”

Precisely, thought Rome, glancing at him with her indulgent smile, what papa was not and never would be. He would very surely go exploring this morning, searching the riches of the spiritual kingdoms. Much more exciting than Newlands Corner.... To papa at seventy-seven, as to Mr. R. J. Campbell at whatever age he might be, theology could still seem new. Rome wondered whether it was an advantage or a misfortune that to her, at forty-eight, all theologies, as most other of the world’s businesses, seemed so very old. The only things that seemed new to her in 1907 were taximeter cabs.

“Well, good-bye, dear, and good luck,” Rome wished her papa.

Of 1907 there is not very much more to record. Two or three items of news may perhaps be mentioned. Maurice’s son Roger, aged twenty-four, now attached, at his own urgent desire, to the literary side of his father’s paper--(“He can’t do much harm there, I suppose,” Maurice said, “though he’ll not do any good either; he hasn’t the brains.”)--published a novel. It was a long novel, and it was about a youth not unlike what Roger conceived himself to be, only his home was different, for his father was a church-warden and bare the bag in church, and bullied and beat and prayed over his children; fathers in fiction must be like this, not heretical and intelligent journalists. The book conducted the youth from the nursery through his private and public schools (house matches, school politics, vice, expulsions, and so on), through Cambridge (the Union, the river, tobacconists’ assistants, tripos), to journalistic, social and literary London, where it left him, at twenty-four, having just published his first novel, which was a great success.

“God, what tripe,” Maurice commented, but to himself, as he turned the pages. “Exactly what the boy _would_ write, I fear. No better, no worse. Well, poor lad, he’s pleased with it enough. And it will probably be handsomely reviewed. It’s the stuff to give the public all right.” His thoughts strayed to a familiar, rather bitter point. If he had been given (by Amy: how fantastic a thought!) a son with brains; a son with a hard, clear head or an original imagination; a son who, if he wrote at all, wouldn’t produce the stuff to give the public, a son who, like himself, would see the public damned first....

Roger was, as his father had predicted, handsomely reviewed, for the Edwardians rather liked the biography-of-a-young-man type of novel, and loved details of school life. Roger had his feet well on the ladder of successful fiction-writing. Roger would be all right. Meanwhile, his head swelled even larger than before. His father perceived that the innocent youth really believed his reviewers, and conceived himself to be a writer and a clever young man.

The other items I record of the year 1907 I quote from the diary of Imogen for the 16th of March.

“_Indomitable_ launched, Glasgow. Largest and quickest cruiser in the world. 17,250 tons. 41,000 h.p. 25 knots. _Invincible_ and _Inflexible_, same type, building. Finished book, began to type it. Got guinea prize from _Saturday Westminster_ for poem.”

21

WHITHER?

And so to the last years of Edwardianism. In them that gay, eager, cultivated period listed gently to the political left. The Socialist Budget, as it was called by its opponents, “the end of all things” as Lord Rosebery a little optimistically called it, agitated the country. Old Age Pensions were at last established, to the disgust of Tories, who had, however, when members of Parliament, to be careful how they expressed their disgust, for fear of their needy constituents. “Whither are we drifting?” enquired the Conservative press, in anger and fear. “Here is Socialism unabashed: the thin end of the wedge which shall at last undermine the integrity and liberty of our Constitution.” Here were sixty millions a year, not insurance but a free dole, squandered on supporting old persons who might just as well be supported in workhouses. What would that come to in Dreadnoughts? Anyhow, we had got to lay down six or seven Dreadnoughts a year for the present, if we were to be to Germany in the ratio of two keels to one, which was assuredly essential. “They are ringing their bells; they will soon be wringing their hands,” said the Tory leaders. The Radical element in the government strengthened; Sir Henry Campbell Bannerman died, and in Mr. Asquith’s ministry Mr. Lloyd George was Chancellor of the Exchequer. But it remained, on the whole, a Liberal-Imperialist government, and left most of the radicalism to Labour, whose parliamentary strength was increasing and unifying. Wherever we were drifting, it was not towards extreme radicalism.

As to Ireland, a bill was passed to reduce her docks, thistles and noxious weeds: no other bill.

Parliamentary affairs and party politics were no more exciting and no more tedious (for that is impossible) than usual. Of more interest were the first flying machines that really flew, the drawings of Mr. Augustus John exhibited at the New English Art Club and condemned by all critics (except the few who liked the kind of thing), as essays in a savage and childish archaism, and deliberate insults to our intelligence; (whither indeed was art drifting, when such drawings could be praised?); and the establishment of the White City at Shepherds Bush, with the Franco-British Exhibition (sadly dull) and flip-flaps, switchbacks, wiggle-woggles and scenic railways (most exciting, and an insidious snare for pocket money; you could get rid there in one evening of the careful hoardings of weeks; also, if you were as weak in the stomach as Imogen, you felt repentant after a few goes). Thither President Fallières, on a visit to King Edward, was taken, to enjoy the Franco-British Exhibition and cement the _entente cordiale_, which, however, needed it less then than now, for the Edwardians were on the whole most enthusiastic about this international understanding. “There is no longer a Channel,” they said, publicly and politely; but in their hearts, for they were no more foolish than we, they still gave thanks for this useful, if unpleasing, strip of sea.

To forge faster the other link in the Triple Entente, that only possible guarantee for a world peace, King Edward visited the Tsar of all the Russias, at Reval. So there we were, grasping these two great military powers by the hand, ready to face any emergency. We had got ahead of Germany in this matter of Russia. For all the European Powers, discreetly averting their eyes from the chronic blood stains on the bear’s savage claws, were courting her for her legions. To have the bear at their beck and call--that was what everyone wanted, against the emergencies which might arise. And never was a time when emergencies seemed more imminent, more dangerous, more frequent; such a state of simmering unrest was Europe’s in the days of Edward the Peacemaker. Of the Kaiser Wilhelm and his Uncle Bertie it has been said that their relations “lapsed into comparative calm only when they were apart from one another.” Their subjects hated and feared each other; the press in each country stirred up terror of invasion by the other; “the German invasion,” “the English invasion”--these phrases were bandied about in two jealous, frightened empires. The German spy scare, the British spy scare, these fevers were worked up in the jingo press of two countries. “You English are mad, mad, mad,” said Wilhelm. “I strive without ceasing to improve relations and you retort that I am your arch-enemy. You make it very hard for me.”

For that matter, nations always make it hard for one another; it is their function. We did make it hard for Germany, and Germany made it hard for us, and France made it hard for everyone.

Anyhow, here was the Triple Entente, full-armed, to meet the Triple Alliance, and some one or other would see to it that they did meet before long.

The chief European emergency which arose at the moment was an attack of megalomania on the part of Servia, in 1909. The Serbs had the madness to dream of a greater Servia, which should unite the scattered peoples of their race--“a dream,” said the English press, “as hopeless as that of Poland _rediviva_. Greater Servia either will be realised under the sceptre of the Hapsburgs, or will not be realised at all.” The awkwardness of the situation, so far as we were concerned, was that Russia was, as usual, backing her mad little militant friend, and had to be dissuaded with great tact from upsetting the apple cart. However, a joint note to Servia from the Powers quieted her for the time being, and the lid was shut down temporarily on the seething European kettle of fish.

Other intriguing matters of this year were the building, in British dockyards, of three huge battleships for Brazil, which disgusted others than young Imogen Carrington; the Olympic Games in July; the publication of various not unamusing books; and the deaths of two old men, Algernon Swinburne and George Meredith. Our two greatest Grand Old Men had departed from us, and no more would pilgrims alight at the Pines, Putney, or go exploring to Box Hill. The office of our literary G. O. M. was filled now only by Mr. Thomas Hardy, for Mr. Henry James was still an American. Sometimes one speculates, aghast, what would happen should we ever be left with no candidates for that honourable post--that is to say, with no celebrated literary man or woman (for there might, though improbably, be a G. O. W. some day) over seventy years, no Master for the younger writers to greet on the festival of his birth. It would be an undignified state of affairs indeed; and one need not anticipate it at present, for behind Mr. Hardy there looms more than one candidate of respectable claims.

The closing years of this reign were brightened further by Commander Peary and Dr. Cook, who both maintained that they had discovered the North Pole. It was ultimately decided that only the Commander had done so, as the doctor had had the misfortune to mislay his papers in Greenland; but his was a sporting venture, and deserving of all applause, and he had a good run for his money.

And so an end to Edwardianism. The new Georgianism dawned on a nervous, gay, absorbed nation, experimenting in new but cautious legislation, alive, on the whole, to new literature and new art, alive wholly to whatever enjoyment it could find, and thoroughly tied up in continental politics, so that when that mine was fired we should go up with it sky-high.