Conversations in Ebury Street, Chapter 1

London: William Heineman, 1 January 1924, pages 1-26, 8,934 words

Conversations in Ebury Street is a nonlinear volume of nineteen chapters. Chapters 7-11 are essays in art criticism; chapter 19 is worldbuilding; the rest are essays in literary criticism. The chapters appear separately in the Aesthetics and Worlds pillars of George Moore Interactive. All are included in the ebook of Conversations in Ebury Street in the GMi Shop.

I

A letter from an unknown correspondent cozens us strangely, beyond our reason, exciting a curiosity, intellectual or animal, I know not which, only this: that its stimulus is different from any that the mere man or woman could awaken were he or she sitting by us, and the rather if the script be beautiful, for then we are drawn to our writing-tables to tell that our taste inclines to Poe's or Mallarme's and away from François Coppée's, his having always seemed to us artificial, hieratic, almost a mock of the fourteenth century. But Mr. Husband's letter is no mock, I said. His script is as natural and as beautiful as theirs; his imposition is perfect — sought for, no doubt, but found easily, it being part of the man's mind: and I returned again and again to his letter, come from the far-famed city of Winnetka, Illinois, for evidence of himself in his choice of words, in the turn of his sentences; even in his punctuation I sought him, and when the letter slipped from my hand I sat looking into the fire, catching glimpses in my thoughts of a young man, for his letter was certainly a young man's letter. But is he rich or poor? I asked myself, firm of purpose or likely to be led away? this last question begetting a scruple lest a casual phrase of mine intimating that a transcription of The Brook Kerith on vellum by him would be a beautiful thing in any man's library and later a nation's possession, should beguile him from his own tasks and bring a weighty manuscript to 121, Ebury Street, one which I should not know what to do with, unless, indeed, I presented it to a museum.

I dipped my pen in the ink and sat, pen in hand, a long while, thinking that it were ungracious to tell Mr. Husband that my letter of the eighth implied no more than a passing admiration of his script. Why passing? I asked, and after trying various adjectives reached out for a telegraph form and wrote: Pay no heed to mine of the eighth. But will not this telegram give undue importance to a remark which he will accept as casual and unimportant if I do not draw his attention to it? and this judgment seeming to me sound, I neither wrote nor telegraphed. At last a letter arrived from Winnetka, which I read eagerly for a reference to the transcription of The Brook Kerith on vellum, and finding none I began to think of Mr. Husband as a clever man who would not be misled by a few words possibly out of keeping with the tone of my letter. A man of letters, without doubt, I said, and after some pondering the conviction that he was the author of one book at least, if not of many, set my prose flowing over a sheet of notepaper, a novel seeming more likely than a volume of poems, a volume of lyrics more likely than an epic. A tale of travel in Mexico and Colorado is the book Mr. Husband is likely to send me, I said, but the book that came from him was about a mine; and after turning over some pages telling of the different shifts and the long way a miner has to go before he reaches his seam, I laid the book aside and fell to thinking that the literary sting must be deep in a man who seeks a book five hundred feet under the earth. I read of a hair-breadth escape, but keep small memory of it, or of the letter I wrote thanking Mr. Husband for his book, and no memory at all of the letter which it appears he wrote to me from the coast of Ireland, whither he had gone to hunt German submarines.

Some years went by without news of him, and then a letter came from Jermyn Street, and unable to imagine Mr. Husband in Jermyn Street, I sat like one stunned till my parlourmaid reminded me that the messenger was waiting. No matter from whence he comes, I shall learn why he descended Into a coal mine after taking his degree at Harvard, I said, and that my curiosity should be satisfied quickly, I scribbled an invitation to him to come to see me about tea-time; and at half-past four I was waiting at the window for the arrival of the young stalwart, withdrawing myself, however, from view, when a taxi left the middle of the street and steered straight for my door. I am now, I said, within a few minutes of the knowledge whether his quest in the mine was a literary one, a derivative of Robert Louis Stevenson's Travels with a Donkey, or if — Mr. Husband, sir, said the maid, and in walked Mr. Husband, interrupting my memories of his letters (which were not those of a mere miner), coming forward awed, just as I was the first time I groped my way through the encumbered work-room at Medan and found Zola reading proofs on the sofa, his leg tucked under him. I asked Mr. Husband if he had had a quiet crossing, but no sooner were the words past my lips than I remembered that a rough or quiet crossing were the same to a man who had prowled the Irish coast in winter in an American torpedo boat. As he had not noticed the weather, I turned to his hotel for a subject of conversation, but he had no opinion to offer about London hotels, having only arrived that morning. So his first act was to write to me! and on my inquiring how he had spent his hours in London, he told me that many were spent seeking the church in which Pepys was baptised. It lies behind Mark Lane, he said, and we came round by the British Museum. Ah, I thought the taxi that stopped at my door looked a little tired! But you found the church? and then I learnt that Pepys's bust stands on a bracket and looks down upon the pew in which he and his wife had sat. You have imagined a great many things, Mr. Moore, but I doubt if even you can imagine how much London means to me. All the books I have read, at least three-quarters of them, were about London, or written in London, and now I am in London with a fortnight before me to see as much of it as I can in the time. You will show me your pictures, I hope?

We walked round the dining-room and went upstairs to the drawing-room. So this is the Aubusson carpet! he said. At first the drift of his remark escaped me, but a moment after I remembered that I had introduced the carpet into a book; and having spoken of Manet and Monet, we returned to the dining-room, to talk of my books till Mr. Husband began to feel afraid that be had outstayed his welcome, whereupon I begged him not to think that this was so. He stayed on for another half­-hour, talking so well that I forgot the coal mine, and it was not till he stood on my threshold that I remembered it. Mr. Husband, I said, I have often wished to ask you how — it seemed unseemly to put the question in a letter, but face to face there can be no harm in my asking you why you descended five hundred feet to hew coal for ten months. No harm whatever, Mr. Husband replied, and your question is easily answered. I had learnt all I could out of books at Harvard, but they did not seem to bring me nearer to life, If I had lived in Europe, I should very likely have gone to Paris, as you did, but being in America there was nothing else for me to do but go down into a coal mine. An excellent answer this seemed to me to be, and after watching him from my door-step I returned to my study to think the matter out, saying to myself that he could not have given a better answer, for it profits a man but little to have read all the books in the world if he miss life. But he has not missed it and he will find it wherever he goes, to-morrow in Westminster Abbey, the day after in St. Paul's Cathedral and the Tower of London; I hope he won't forget to go to Hampton Court. And not a little curious to know how London struck him, I wrote asking him to dinner.

You have had a week of sight-seeing, I said, and I hope London has not disappointed you. Only in two things, he answered. And what has disappointed you? I was disappointed, he replied, in the Elgin marbles and in Sickert's portrait of you in the Tate Gallery. This strange association of images — the Theseus on one hand and Mr. Sickert's portrait on the other — taking me aback, I was moved to speak of Greek humanism, saying that whereas Assyrian and Babylonian sculpture represented oriental despotism, the Greeks had... but before I could bring my commonplace apology to a close, Mr. Husband interrupted: Mr. Sickert's portrait misses you altogether; if a portrait is not like the sitter, it is not a portrait. The quality of Sickert's painting, I said, occasionally rivals that of Manet, but he is not primarily a portrait painter inasmuch — A portrait that misses the sitter, Mr. Husband continued, but raising my voice a little I insisted upon being heard: Though Ingres's portraits are often very like his sitters, the absence of what is known in the studios as quality causes us to turn away from them with a feeling of disappointment, but the quality, or shall I say virtue, of Sickert's painting always detains us. I think a portrait ought to be like, Mr. Husband muttered, causing me a moment's annoyance, from which I escaped by changing the subject of our conversation, which was easy to do, for I was anxious to hear the further adventures of this young man, who, having in ten months tasted all there was of life in a mine, started for Texas, leaving the chasing of cows, this second source of llfe, for a third — a wife. And certain from the knowledge of his character already gotten that he had found and married the desire of his soul and body, I listened to his praises of her for whom he had forfeited his dear vagrancy and settled into a profitable business. Your business gives you time to pursue your literary career? I inquired, and it was pleasant to hear that he had but one fault to find with his business — it dragged him from his bed at seven in the morning. And nobody enjoys sleep more than I do, said Mr. Husbancl; and better than sleep is dozing. To turn over, said I, clasping your dreams to your bosom. My dream is my wife and my children, he answered. An answer that I appreciate, I replied, though I never had a wife. One of the charms of London is that I needn't get out of bed till nine, Mr. Husband muttered, addressing himself to himself rather than to me. And what do you dream when you lie awake in London? I asked, anxious to learn Mr. Husband as far as was possible in two visits. I dream, said he, that the next world is as pleasant as this one, and of course if it be, we need not fear death. Another Paul! said I to myself, and aloud: O grave, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting? At which Mr. Husband's face was overspread with such a genial light of cheerfulness that he set my thoughts flowing, and in a trice I was lost in a dream of dewy hillsides and a radiant morning, with a young man blowing a fanfare to his comrades, the meaning of which is: Life is a perfect gift and our duty to enjoy it, for by doing so we help others to enjoy; and if Mr. Husband had left my thoughts to swarm, an idea of a young man might have fixed itself in me, to flourish in due time.

The reader must not, however, draw from these words the thought that Mr. Husband had outstayed his welcome, nor can he be blamed for not having read himself into my mind, for it were folly to find fault with a guest because he is not a soothsayer, and as Mr. Husband had come to hear me talk literature, it was but natural that he should break the silence with an inquiry about the book I was writing, and impossible for me to do else than abandon my dream of him and tum to In Single Strictness, saying that the revised sheets had been returned to the printer and passed for Press. A very trite and lack-lustre admission this seemed to me to be, and to enliven it I confessed that whilst writing this new book I seemed to myself to be writing something I had never written before, and for that reason believed it to be as good as any of the books I had offered to the public within the last ten years. And so you took pleasure, Mr. Husband said, in writing this last book. Yes, for the reason I have given and for another reason: I thought it was going to be my last book. But you will always go on writing? I am afraid I have written too much, and the man who writes many books raises his tombstone. But, I continued, if one does not write and has lost the art of reading and never acquired that of fishing or of gardening, the hours go by on leaden wings. For you life extends in endless perspective beyond your own life, but I have nothing to look forward to when my library edition is published but a picture gallery (one in the provinces might be given to me to look after), or the learning of French and the senile temptation of writing a book in that language.  But the end has not yet come, Mr. Husband, for on opening Impressions and Opinions ­— One of your best books, Mr. Husband interjected; I always take it up with pleasure. After reading a few pages, I said, thoughts began to gather in me of another book of essays, one that would not be unworthy to offer to my American readers. And what, asked Mr. Husband, will be the title of your new book? I answered that I was thinking of calling it A Parley, or Parleys and Opinions, or perhaps Conversations in Ebury Street. And its character? he inquired. I shall try to make it more like Avowals, sets of conversations between me and my friends. But you will not omit the article about Balzac? Not altogether, I answered; but the original article begins by comparing The Human Comedy to a violet city and a traveller standing on the crest of the hill. I once liked that opening, said Mr. Husband. I doubt if you would like it if you were to read it again, I answered, and fell into meditation, from which he awakened me with the question: had I another opening in my mind? I replied that I had, a line from Matthew Arnold, but not the fourteenth line of the sonnet — Beloved, he said, of John Eglinton, one of the stalwarts who still walks daily from Terenure to the National Library determined that, come what may, he will not fail in his duty to see life steadily and to see it whole.

Your memory of my people in Hail and Farewell does me proud, I answered, and we debated the phrase beloved of journalists till I began to feel that the evening was passing, and to remove thoughts of the clock on the mantelpiece from my guest's mind, I returned for his sake to Arnold, who, after all, is literature, though he wrote words that have led John Eglinton astray, and with him a whole generation: Two things, he says somewhere, are required for a work of art, the man and the moment; and if Arnold's words be true and the moment be necessary, it seems to me not at all unlikely that we have seen the end of the art age, a theory that will be repugnant to one who is afraid of death only for that the next world may be different from the world he has been called upon to live in. You will answer me — I will venture to suggest, my guest interposed, that the moment Arnold deemed requisite will occur again. According to some there is no death, I replied, but repetition in endless time, and perhaps the moment that called The Human Comedy into being may reappear some billions of years hence; or it may be that the dead do not rise again. Moschus believed in eternal sleep for Bion: The sun brings back the mallows in the garden, and they live again, and spring in another year; but we, the great and mighty, or wise, when once we have died, in hollow earth we sleep, gone down into silence; a right long, and endless, and unawakening sleep. A lovely translation from the Greek, beautiful as the mallows themselves, whose beauty concerns us more nearly than the doctrine that everything that has been must of necessity return, return being the law over all things, great and small, stars and mallows alike, everything returning to unity, to spread out again through space and time and again to be collected into unity; and that for ever and ever. A wonderful dream was Poe's, that there is no death and that we are only separated from ourselves by some billions of years.

From Poe we returned to Balzac, for in Balzac there are all things, even Poe. Balzac was of the old world, for it was not until after the Battle of Waterloo that the old world slipped for ever behind us, and to apprehend the distance we have traversed since then we have only to go to Portsmouth and look at Nelson’s battleship, or, if she have been thrown to the ship­breakers, at a picture of her. Her masts and yards will tell us that she is of the kin of the ancient galley; whereas a Dreadnought — I will not labour the point. But although the external world changes, said Mr. Husband, man remains the same. His instincts are the same, no doubt, I replied, but his beliefs in good and evil presences are different in every century, and who shall say that with the death of superstition — But is superstition dead? my guest asked me, and I answered that the superstitions that peopled the woods with Sileni and fauns, that gave Neptune to the sea and Zeus to the skies, were a more spiritual influence than our superstitions never to sit down thirteen to dinner, and to be sure to tum round three times when we see two magpies. And on these words we spoke of other things, myself holding forth, as it was my duty to do, since Mr. Husband had come to hear me speak, that the cave man drew before he began to worship, not for his pleasure (so do the scientists spit their gall into our cup), but for some belief that the animal drawn was potentially dead, the inference being that the cave men were identical with modern savages; a false derivation, for one of the most notable of prehistoric drawings is a woman with child, showing that the artist was attracted, like Rembrandt, by the strange form of a woman whilst carrying. I see, said Mr. Husband, that you avoid the word beauty, and I answered him that beauty, like much else in life, cannot be defined. Would you admit, he asked, that the beauty perceived by the cave man and by Rembrandt in the child-burdened woman was a sense of moral beauty? God forbid that I should deny to the cave man the sense of the mystery he lives in and dies in, I answered. Tolstoi would not deny it, said Mr. Husband, and without waiting for my reply he asked me which I preferred, War and Peace or Anna Karenina. A reply to your question, I said, would lead me far away from the first chapter of my new book; and you know, Mr. Husband, you asked me to tell it to you. Mr. Husband acquiesced.

We must not, however, leave Tolstoi too quickly, I continued; I cannot allow him to be swept aside. I am sorry I interrupted you, Mr. Husband interjected; you were going to say that a great man can only be judged by his best work? No, I was not, for it may be fairly contended that a man's work is all of a piece. Tolstoi was always a moralist, plaguing himself and the world about God and morality, and in the end discovering himself to be neither Christian nor Pagan, but a man of genius. One regrets to admit it, for we like to think of a genius as a happy man, so full of admiration for the beautiful things of this world that he must reveal them to those who have not eyes to see and ears to hear. The joy of living was Homer's, Theocritus's, and Virgil's inspiration, Shakespeare's, Balzac's, Wagner's; and if men of genius do not always show a happy face in their portraits, the fault lies with the painters and sculptors. We have, however, a photograph of Tolstoi; the camera does not lie, and it represents him like a wild beast in a cage, raging against the bars, trying to escape from his animality, which is our better part, becoming unbearable to himself and to his family, at last running away, to die in the waiting-room of a roadside station, flying from himself, for though he had known for a long time that nobody could live with him, the knowledge became clearer to him on the day of his death, and so clear that he had to seek expression in an act. He had to run away, from himself, from his wife, from his children, and worst of all, from all he had taught and preached. As he lay in the roadside railway station he must have felt that it would have been better if he had never been born. I am sorry I spoke of him; I never will again. Let us talk of something else.

But before we talk of something else, said Mr. Husband, let us speak about his definition of art. You do not share it? I asked. After consulting all the authorities he decided that art was the means whereby a man communicates his sensations to another. How like Tolstoi, and how disagreeable! a pretext for poking up somebody to do what he doesn't want to do. We suspect at once that a disagreeable doctrine lies at the root of this definition, but we believe it to be the truth; it looks like the truth till we examine it. Tolstoi must have turned it over in his mind, and his mind was so shrewd that he could not have failed to see that his definition was a false one, for were it true any man who treads badly upon another man's toes would be creating a work of art. Turgenev, if he had been asked (and I wish he had been asked for a definition), would have probably answered: The arts are formulae whereby man interprets Nature. I cannot imagine him answering­ differently; and to develop this definition, to make it plain, he might have added that man being isolated in different communities for several thousand years after the birth of civilisation, was able to invent many formulae. Now and then a seed came from overseas, and in a new soil and in a different climate a new ftowerage began. Latin literature is derived from the Greek; it is said that Roman statues were the work of Greek sculptors­ which may be true; who shall say? Be this as it may, it is certain that, in the third or the fourth century, art vanished from the earth, some theorists giving as a reason the descent of northern barbarians into Italy, others contending that to have art there must be long periods without art. What concerns us is not the reason for the disappearance of art from the world, but the fact that it did disappear in the third century — not to re­appear again for nearly a thousand years.

May not history repeat itself? Mr. Husband asked, and I answered: History repeats itself when the circumstances are the same, and it would have been strange if art had not returned, the circumstance of the thirteenth century not differing very widely from the fourth. A Christian world not differing very widely from a Pagan, Mr. Husband interposed. The mediaeval world was hardly larger than the ancient world, I replied, only portions of the planet being known to men. But to-day we are without Gods, and in a world no bigger than a band-box, with every man looking over the next man's shoulder: A portrait painted in Christiania is indistinguishable from a portrait painted in Lima. The circumstances of the antique world and the modem were, till a hundred years ago, practically the same. We lived till eighteen hundred and fifty in isolated communities; every town had a society, customs, and a dialect of its own. Till eighteen hundred and fifty many languages were spoken in these islands. I remember the humming of looms in the village street, housewives spinning at cottage doors; and at the end of a passage in my house in Mayo stands a grandfather-clock which came from Castlebar at the end of the eighteenth century; the precise date I cannot vouch for, but it is certain that a grandfather-clock has not been made in Castlebar since eighteen hundred and fifty. It was about that time that beer ceased to be made at Moore Hall; the brew-house still existed in my childhood, but we got our beer from Ballinrobe; now the beer comes to Ballinrobe from Dublin. Moore Hall was built in seventeen hundred and eighty by Mayo builders and carpenters, and few houses in Ireland or England have withstood a hundred years of wear and neglect better than this hale old house, standing on a hill overlooking some ancient island castles. In my childhood Mayo masons, carpenters, and blacksmiths were little inferior to those who built Moore Hall. I remember one of Mayo's carpenters designing and making a handsome wardrobe; he could not read or write, but it may be doubted if Mayo's newspaper-reading peasantry could show so excellent a craftsman; and of this I am sure, that Mayo is a drearier county, for landlords and peasants alike, in the twentieth century than it was in the first half of the nineteenth.

I looked inquiringly across the hearthrug, and afraid lest this big-framed, even-complexioned, blue-eyed, dark­ haired, young American who sat in the armchair opposite me, was wearying of a discourse in which he had begun to lose sight of the man he had discovered in certain books and learnt to appreciate, I bethought myself of an anecdote that would restore his confidence in me; and the day that I had gone to the Metropolitan School of Art, Dublin, in search of Orpen, coming to memory as a charming narrative, I told my visitor of my surprise at finding myself not in a studio with three or four students, or a dozen, or twenty, or thirty (to these numbers I was accustomed), but in a studio numerous as a hive, a hundred or more young men in clerical garb, busy as bees, each bent over lumps of wet clay in which he sought to discover the natural shapes of pears and apples. You must not stir, sir, from the spot where I put you, said the porter, and his advice seeming to me good, I remained like a stock, afraid to advance a step lest I should over­ turn somebody's modelling stool; and it was whilst wondering if Ireland had turned from theology to sculpture that I caught sight of Orpen wriggling his way through the serried ranks, his face wearing a smile which told me that he had already guessed the reason of my astonishment. Whence come all these people to learn modelling? I asked. There must be at least a hundred here. And the money that brings them to Dublin­ — whence comes it? Out of the pockets of the Government, who pay them to come, said Orpen. Pay them to come! And for what reason? To get diplomas, he replied, which will allow them to teach. So men come here not to study art, but to learn to teach art, I said. The teacher has to be taught! Yes, he answered; and it is the same everywhere. But tell me, Orpen, why the students dress like clerics. All come from Christian Brothers' Schools, be answered. But what conception, I said, can the people who invented this system have of art? You must ask your friend, Mr. T. P. Gill, about that, Orpen replied; and I heard that a Metropolitan School of Art had been set up in every large town, for according to the newest democracy everybody must get his chance, whether he wants it or not. To admit, Orpen continued, that one man brings a gift into the world and that the next man does not, would amount to an admission that the Liberal party cannot rectify Nature's mistakes. And what would become of the constituencies if such a thing were admitted? I am amazed, I said, for I did not suspect imbecility in the average man. The average man is not originally imbecile, said Orpen, but if he have not genius he cannot react against a system; and so enslaved is he in it that he no longer believes in anything except what is taught in the schools. The contention of the Minister of Education would be that it is his business to look after mediocrity. He might even say: Let us create mediocrity.

Wonderful! thrice wonderful! I replied, and began a story that I had from my friend Tonks, the Slade professor, of how an artist was treated by Mr. Fisher or his department. The man was an artist; he had gained his Jiving by painting; but after the War he fell into difficult circumstances, and applied for the post of teacher at a provincial school; mind you, he was an artist who had gained his living by painting. The headmaster of the school at which he wished to teach had seen his paintings in many various exhibitions, and the artist thought that all was settled; but when he interviewed Mr. Fisher, or his department, I know not which, he was told: Yes, your pictures are well enough — we have photographs of them before us — but you must go to Kensington and pass through a course of pedagogy. Pedagogy — what is that? I asked; I have never heard the word. Tonks explained it to me, and I answered: Well, then, if a school were started to teach young ladies to write novels, and I applied for the post, I should have to learn how I was to teach them to write novels? Most undoubtedly you would! So that is the Fisher formula, Tonks. Mr. Fisher, Tonks continued, will admit that his system is not perfect; he hopes to improve it. But he has critics, I said, and these will dare to say that we are pursuing a false system of teaching; but nobody will admit that all teaching is futile, worse than futile, poisonous, and that the poison will continue generation after generation until there is neither handicraft nor art worth speaking of left in England.

It would seem, Mr. Husband, that every epoch is represented by a word: the thirteenth century by filioque, the Napoleonic empire by organisation, the twentieth century by education, and to bring about a renaissance of illiteracy, upon my word I would welcome a re­awakening of theology. The arts flourished in theology, and, if certain questions were not asked, men and women were left to their instincts. You think, said my guest, that man has not advanced in intelligence? You do not think he has, Mr. Husband, nor does anybody but those without knowledge of the world's history — the history of Greece, for example. Mr. Fisher knows that forcible education was not the law of Athens and that wisdom throve without it, and if he believes in detaining young folk at school till they are sixteen, and brings down Wranglers from Cambridge and Firsts from Oxford to teach them, it is because he does not know how life is made, or that his belief in forcible education springs from money — money hides from learned men many things that the poor know well, and every workman is aware that a boy released from school when he is fourteen is set upon learning a trade, but if he be kept at school till he is sixteen he very likely becomes part of the vagrant class. At sixteen a boy begins to look round, to think, and seeing that there is no future for him in ploughing, mowing, carting hay, reaping corn, or following a flock, he hesitates to return whence he came. If he be a town lad the plumbing trade does not entice him, the slater's still less, for sewers are deep and roofs are high; and if you press him, saying: Well, if you don't enter a trade how do you hope to get a living? Live on the old man, I expect, is the answer you will get. The new system allows boys to be kept at school till they are sixteen, and it permits exceptional boys to be detained till they are eighteen — the exceptional boy, in the eyes of the school master, being the boy who passes examinations. At one moment of my life I remember being able to count twenty men among my friends and acquaintances who had taken Firsts at Oxford, and looking back upon them now they seem to have been a very sorry squad indeed. Some lived upon their relations; some had small incomes, from two hundred and fifty to three hundred pounds a year, and struggled to make two ends meet in furnished apartments; some turned to journalism and wrote paragraphs and turn-overs for the Globe newspaper; some drifted into the Times office, others into chambers in the Temple, glad to accept what are known as soups at the Old Bailey. I don't remember these old friends as stupid, rather as worn-out men.

Education, said Mr. Husband, must come from within, not from without, and all that is of value is self-education. It is a pity that I did not listen longer, but the impulse of speech was upon me and I continued the conversation in these terms: Our concern is not with the men who go to Universities to wear their brains away learning things they do not want to learn for the sake of their parents, who would like to say: Johnny took a First. Oxford has produced some mental wrecks, men who lacked grit to resist education as resolutely as I did; but my pity is for those in the elementary school, who are turned from their natural instincts. The making of round pegs for square holes, Mr. Husband chimed in, and I answered: Yet it should be clear to everybody who gives five minutes' thought to the question that the destiny of the great majority of mankind is to dig the field. An everlasting law that no Government can change, said Mr. Husband, and I replied: The country goes to the town, but the town never returns to the country, and those that do are the jeering-stocks of the peasants. A few months ago a land-girl wrote to a daily paper that she found the scaring of rooks tedious, but was consoled by the thought that the winter's day is short and that she would return at four o'clock to tea and crumpets, to an evening of dancing and music in a comfortable cottage, a letter which set me thinking of the Court of Louis XVI leaving Versailles at undern for the Petit Trianon to milk cows. I often wonder if Mr. Fisher, on awakening from his educational dreams, asks himself how the world will get its food when the shepherd no longer goes to the fold, lantern in hand, and the ploughman to the stable. It will not surprise me, said Mr. Husband, if I live to see Europe without vegetables. Beef and corn you may get from abroad, but there will be no asparagus. I laughed at this sally, and continued: It is hard to think that Mr. Fisher ponders his educational schemes without sometimes seeing the peasant as Atlas, and the explanation that he is a Londoner, born and bred, and has never leaned over the stilts, is not enough, for on his holidays he cannot have escaped seeing a man hedging and ditching; but very learned men often have eyes only for print and are unable to appreciate the country until they read of it in books, and it may be that Mr. Fisher is one of these. If he understands what he reads in print, all will be well, said Mr. Husband, for I can see that you are bent on enlightening him. I was moved to reprove Mr. Husband for his facetiousness, but remembering that he was my guest, I said: Though there be no hedging and ditching in America, Mr. Husband, there are certainly coal mines, and you are perhaps the one educated man in the world who has hewn coal of his own free will. So tell me, you who know something of manual labour at first hand — no, I am not punning — tell me if education and manual work are compatible. Mr. Winston Churchill told yesterday in a great speech, said Mr. Husband, how Bolshevism had reduced Russia to a desert where millions are dying of starvation; and millions will die here, if Bolshevism gets a footing in England — his very words. And whilst Mr. Churchill spoke at his meeting, Mr. Fisher was vowing at his that he would keep boys at school till they were sixteen, and those that passed certain examinations till they were eighteen, without it occurring to him that he is — how shall I put it? — making the bed for Lenin.

I was about to start again on the words: The law that is over us, when my guest interrupted, and I listened, nothing loth, having already had my fill of words. It may be well for you to hear, said Mr. Husband — I hope you don't mind? On the contrary, I replied; you can illuminate the question whether forced education — I was going to say, began Mr. Husband, and then stopped suddenly, as if ashamed at having interrupted me. I waited. I was going to say, he repeated, that Aristotle thought it quite natural for men to be born slaves. I have not read Aristotle, I answered, but am willing to believe that a wisdom which has illuminated century after century is looked upon to-day with contempt — out of keeping with the twentieth century. Progress! I continued, looking into Mr. Husband's face. A book might be written indeed about the progress we have made. But however well written, the book would fail to open the eyes of the blind century we live in; and I spoke of Brown, Jones, and Robinson, whose conception of the word slavery is a nigger woman crossing a frozen river with a baby in her arms, jumping from floe to floe, or a nigger being tracked by bloodhounds or tied to a tree and whipped for disobedience. Of course the destiny of the vast majority of men is to dig the field; Nature intended Brown, Jones, and Robinson to dig, and the Minister of Education cannot alter Nature's decree. We have Aristotle on our side and even the Bible: Man shall get his living by the sweat of his brow. How stupid it all is, how stupid! for slavery, in Aristotle's conception of the word, meant that some men are born to manual work, others to intellectual, and he might have added that men are only happy when they are accomplishing the work that Nature has assigned to them. The worst slavery of all is to be set to perform tasks that are out of our instinct. A hare beating a tambourine in Regent Street is one of the most pathetic of all spectacles. I saw one once, and introduced poor puss — Into Evelyn Innes, said Mr. Husband. Yes; and now I compare the showman to the Minister of Education, who is daily dragging men and women out of their instincts, out of their nature, out of their genius, creating the worst slavery of all, unsuspicious that the Liberal professions cannot absorb everybody. And so it has come to pass that the men whom Nature designed for shepherds are curing the sick, and that those in whom Nature implanted the instinct of the office stool are painting pictures. All humanity suffers, and the greatest sufferer is the poor girl who dreams of her lost happiness in the kitchen whilst measuring heads in the Westminster School of Art.

After a pause, during which Mr Husband was kind enough to wait for me to collect my thoughts, I said: We have forsworn our hands and invented machines that do badly what the hand did well; and having got so far, we would, by means of enforced education, wipe out original instincts and remake mankind, for it amounts to as much. Everybody in the Education Office knows that he cannot educate himself, but he is convinced that he can educate somebody else. A well­ meaning race is the race of man, but incurably stupid, and going from bad to worse. You spoke of Aristotle just now; I wonder what he would think of the modern belief that everybody is a slave who does not go to an office and sit on a high stool and keep accounts, and go to the sea-side with his wife for a fortnight's holiday. I think I can see Aristotle in my thoughts looking at the office stool, and after looking at it for some time his words sound in my ears: But men are shaped differently; do you not keep different sizes? I think I can hear Mr. Fisher answer: At present the size does not fit every bum, but we hope that the bums will soon begin to fit the stool. A Platonist, surely, Aristotle murmurs; I always dreaded his influence, and now find it predominant after more than two thousand years. How very extraordinary! And then Aristotle might ask: Enforced education, or enforced slavery — which? Why is one meritorious and the other abominable? There are many among the young generation, said Mr. Husband, who dislike, and intensely, the education that is being forced upon them, who, as you would say, Mr. Moore, are inspired by their instincts to avoid it, and would prefer to educate themselves, feeling that they could do it better. But their parents will not hear of anything but Eton or Harrow, I interjected, and after that the boys must go to Oxford or Cambridge, for the parents who have achieved fortunes argue in this way: We were hindered for many years by lack of education; our children shall begin where we ended. How pathetic are human hopes and beliefs, and none of us is free from these. My first publisher — no, not my first, my second, Walter Scott, began life as a mason; he worked on the scaffold and helped to build the railway station at Newcastle. But he did not remain long a mason; he soon became a rich man, a great contractor, who would have undertaken a tunnel under Hyde Park as part of the day's work. But how did he become a publisher? asked Mr. Husband. Some bad debt, I answered, and he thought it might amuse his children; they had been to Oxford or Cambridge and knew more about literature than he did. He ran his publishing business like a grouse moor, as a pleasure; sometimes it paid, and sometimes it didn't, and when it didn't he wiped off the debts. At the end of his life he went to Egypt, interested in the building of the Pyramids. A big undertaking no doubt it was, he said to me, but one that I would undertake myself; what I would not undertake, however, are the tombs carved out of the rock. But with our modern appliances, surely, carving a tomb out of rock presents fewer difficulties to-day than it did three thousand years ago? No doubt, no doubt, he answered, but the tombs I saw were painted, and they were as fresh as if they'd been done yesterday; and unless the Egyptians had electric light, I don't know how it was done. And the sons who were educated at Oxford or Cambridge? asked Mr. Husband. I answered that I had never seen them, but believed they were just like other English gentlemen. Tell me, I continued, changing the subject suddenly, passing from philosophy to practical truths, is it true that in America all manual work is done by emigrants? I believe the servant problem is a very pressing one? Our servants come from Ireland, Italy, and Sweden, Mr. Husband replied, and that is why the emigration laws are not more strict; at least seventy per cent. of our manual labour comes from the middle of Europe. The first generation works hard, the second generation works less, the third generation looks upon itself as America and aspires to the Liberal professions, which, as you have said, cannot absorb everybody. I asked him if he had met no Americans hewing coal. About five-and-twenty per cent. in the mine in which I worked were Americans, he answered; and he spoke of some lean hunters who came sometimes from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Maryland. Who, he said, when not hunting or mining are employed in feuds, vendettas, the causes of which are forgotten, so long ago is it since the original shooting. Dick knows that he must shoot Jim when he meets him, and Jim is not more knowledgeable; enough it is for him to know that he must pull the trigger first. My attention was held by some fine stories of the outlaws of the Blue Ridge Mountains and the women that favoured them — how the mistress of a defiant and resolute robber brought food to her lover's cave month after month undetected, and would have succeeded in helping him to escape from justice if the man had not needed for his flight a pair of boots; it was the purchase of a size either larger or smaller than her husband's that directed the suspicions of the police. She was followed, and the robber captured, but I have forgotten whether he escaped hanging.

But I am wandering from memories of my delightful guest (is not every memory intermittent?), and what I remember next of the evening's conversation is Mr. Husband telling me many stories of the childishness and improvidence of the negroes he had met in the mine. I remember a negro, he said, going to a store with his week's earnings and paying two guineas for a pair of patent leather boots. He wore them on Sunday, and on Monday went down into the mine in them; on Wednesday they were no longer wearable. Not only are the negroes improvident, but they have no exact idea as to the value of money. A negro and his wife look after my offices; I pay him a hundred dollars a month, and he never has a cent by the time his next wages become due. Boss, said he once, I go buy motor-car. But, I answered, where will you keep it? You can't keep it in the office. No, no; but build garridge. Boss so-and-so tell me — And he described an outlay of some thousands of dollars, more money than he had ever met or could understand the meaning of. The highest social position that a nigger can fulfil is that of servant on board a mail train. You are not afraid, I asked Mr. Husband, that when they outnumber the whites they will revolt? A successful revolt, he answered, implies organisation. And we spoke of Hayti, Mr. Husband telling what every schoolboy knows, but which I did not, that Hayti had belonged to the French, and that the French revolutionaries sent over a deputation conferring freedom upon the negroes, the first result of which was a massacre of the whites and then a massacre of each other. One of these negroes, he said, a half-caste, built a palace (the ruins are still there); but he was massacred in his stronghold; and now the negroes govern themselves with the aid of half a dozen American warships. Very lucky, I answered, it is for you Americans that the negro cannot be raised out of the slavery bestowed upon him by Nature.

Mr. Husband's anecdotes illustrating the childishness of negroes had enlivened our conversation, and unwilling that it should again darken, I asked him if his eyes could distinguish a gleam of light on our horizon. His cheerful optimism did not desert his voice even when he said that the world would continue its breakneck pace till it toppled over into the barbarism of the Middle Ages, just as you have predicted, Mr. Moore, emerging, much reduced by famine, a smaller but more beautiful planet. And it seeming to me that I dared not run the risk of losing the pleasing optimism of Mr. Husband's voice, I refrained from speaking of the desolating tide of children flooding our doorways, and spoke instead of my Parisian life, l'École des Beaux-Arts, Cabanel, Manet, and Montmartre, peopling my anecdotes with those who assembled at Tortoni's during the ‘seventies, relating as a bonne bouche my last visits to the great tribe of Impressionists, now reduced to two, Monet and Mary Casatt; and Mr. Husband listened, as all Americans listen to tales of Paris, till he began to remember that his days in London were numbered and that he must not miss a night of long sleep. For heaven only knows when the chance of a ten-hours' sleep will come again, he said; I think I told you that I have to leave my bed at seven? Yes, I remember, I answered, and it is now going on for midnight. But do not leave on account of me; I sleep on in the morning and rise when I am rested. Mr. Husband hesitated, as if he had something still in his mind to say, and I wondered what it could be. We have talked, he said, when I opened the front door for him, about a great many things, without, however, mentioning my handwriting. You see, I am now in business and am afraid it would be rather too long a job to copy out the whole book, but if you would like a chapter of it — My dear Mr. Husband, your letters are enough; and after bidding him good-bye once more, I returned to my Aubusson carpet and my lyre­-shapen clock feeling that I would have done better to have talked less and to have drawn Mr. Husband into further confidences about himself. But no further confidences would have helped me to understand him better than his first avowal: that after leaving Harvard University he had gone down into a coal mine in search of — what? The last thing that anybody would suspect — life, primal, fundamental life. I sought, but without finding them, the words in which he said he had gone down into the mine in search of primal life. He said nothing about escaping from conventions and prejudices­ — what did he say? I asked myself, and stirred the fire without being able to recall his words. The words, however, that I am sure of, are: If I had been in Europe I might have done as you did, gone to France and lived in Montmartre, but being in America there was nothing for me to do but go down into a coal mine. How admirable! How altogether admirable! In these words we see the man from end to end, we weigh him, we appraise him. And before a dwindling fire I sat for a long time thinking of Mr. Husband's sea voyage, his arrival in New York, pausing after rising from my chair so that I might better consider the question whether he would sleep a night in New York or catch a train to take him to Chicago. The answer came: He is too eager to see his wife again to wait in New York; he will catch the train.