Introductory material (continued 6)

"I'll go if you wish it," I said.

"It might bring things home to you," said Father Payne, smiling, "but again it probably would not, because it would only be a game—the real pinch would not come. Most people would rather enjoy migrating to hell from heaven for a month—it would just give them a sharper relish for heaven."

"But do you really think your poverty hurt you?" I said.

"I have no doubt it did," said Father Payne. "Of course I was rescued in time, before the bitterness really sank down into my soul. But I think it prevented my ever being more than a looker-on. I believe I could have done some work worth doing, if I could have tried a few experiments. I don't know! Perhaps I am ungrateful after all. My poverty certainly gave me a wish to help things along, and I doubt if I should have learnt that otherwise. And I think, too, it taught me not to waste compassion on the wrong things. The people to be pitied are simply the people whose minds and souls are pinched and starved—the over-sensitive, responsive people, who feel hunted and punished without knowing why. It's temperament always, and not circumstance, which is the happy or the unhappy thing. I felt, when you said what you did about poverty, that you neither knew how harmless it could be, or how infinitely noxious it might be. I don't take a high-minded view of money myself. I don't tell people to despise it. I always tell the fellows here to realise what they can endure and what they can't. The first requisite for a sensible man is to find work which he enjoys, and the next requisite is for him to earn as much as he really needs—that is to say without having to think daily and hourly about money. I don't over-estimate what money can do, but it is foolish to under-estimate what the want of it can do. I have seen more fine natures go to pieces under the stress of poverty than under any other stress that I know. Money is perfectly powerless as a shield against many troubles—and on the other hand it can save a man from innumerable little wretchednesses and horrors which destroy the beauty and dignity of life. I don't believe mechanically in humiliation and renunciation and ignominy and contempt, as purifying influences. It all depends upon whether they are gallantly and adventurously and humorously borne. They often make some people only sore and diffident, and I don't believe in learning to hate life. Not to learn your own limitations is childish: and one of the insolences which is most heavily punished is that of making a sacrifice without knowing if you can endure the consequences of it. The people who begin by despising money as vulgar are generally the people who end by making a mess which other people have to sweep up. So don't be either silly or prudent about money, my boy! Just realise that your first duty is not to be a burden on yourself or on other people. Find out your minimum, and secure it if you can; and then don't give the matter another thought. If it is any comfort to you, reflect that the best authors and artists have almost invariably been good men of business, and don't court squalor of any kind unless you really enjoy it."

LIV

OF PEACEABLENESS

Father Payne, talking one evening, made a statement which involved an assumption that the world was progressing. Rose attacked him on this point. "Isn't that just one of the large generalisations," he said, "which you are always telling us to beware of?"

"It isn't an assumption," said Father Payne, "but a conviction of mine, based upon a good deal of second-hand evidence. I don't think it can be doubted. I can't array all my reasons now, or we should sit here all night—but I will tell you one main reason, and that is the immensely increased peaceableness of the world. Fighting has gone out in schools, and none but decayed clubmen dare to deplore it: corporal punishment has diminished, and isn't needed, because children don't do savage things; bullying is extinct in decent schools; crimes of violence are much more rare; duelling is no longer a part of social life, except for an occasional farcical performance between literary men or politicians in France—I saw an account of one in the papers the other day. It was raining, and one of the combatants would not furl his umbrella: his seconds said that it made him a bigger target. "I may be shot," he said, "but that is no reason why I should get wet!" Then there is the mediaeval nonsense among students in Germany, where they fence like Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Generally speaking, however, the belief that a blow is an argument has gone out. Then war has become more rare, and is more reluctantly engaged in. I suppose that till the date of Waterloo there was hardly a year in history when some fighting was not going on. No, I think it is impossible not to believe that the impulse to kick and scratch and bite is really on the decline."

"But need that be a proof of progress?" said Rose. "May it not only mean a decrease of personal courage, and a greater sensitiveness to pain?"

"I think not," said Father Payne, "because when there is fighting to be done, it is done just as courageously—indeed I think more courageously than used to be the case. No, I think it is the training of an instinct—the instinct of self-restraint. I believe that people have more imagination and more sympathy than they used to have; there is more tolerance of adverse opinion, a greater sense of liberty in the air: opponents have more respect for each other, and do not attribute bad motives so easily. Why, consider how much milder even the newspapers are. If one reads old reviews, old books of political controversy, old pamphlets—how much more blackguarding and calling names one sees. Anonymous journalists, anonymous reviewers, are now the only people who keep up the tradition of public bad manners—all signed articles and criticisms are infinitely politer than they used to be."

"But," persisted Rose, "isn't that simply a possible proof of the general declension of force?"

"Certainly not," said Father Payne, "it only means more equilibrium. You must remember that equilibrium means a balance of forces, not a mere diminution of them. There is more force present in a banked-up reservoir than in a rushing stream. The rushing stream merely means a force making itself felt without a counterbalancing force—but that isn't nearly as strong as the pressure in a reservoir exerted by the water which is trying to get out, and the resistance of the dam which is trying to keep it in. You must not be taken in by apparent placidity: it often means two forces at work instead of one. Peace, as opposed to war, is a tremendous counterpoising of forces, and it simply means an organised resistance. In old days, there was no cohesion of the forces which desire peace, and violence was unresisted. There can be no doubt, I think, that in a civilised country there are many more forces at work than in a combative country. I do not suppose that we can either of us prove whether the forces at work in the world have increased or diminished. Let us grant that the amount is constant. If so, a great deal of the force that was combative has now been transformed to the force which resists combat. But I imagine that on the whole most people would grant that human energies have increased: if that is so, certainly the combative element has not increased in proportion, while the peaceful element has increased out of all proportion."

"But," said Vincent, "you often talk in the most bellicose way, Father. You say that we ought all to be fighting on the side of good."

"Yes," said Father Payne, "on the side of resistance to evil, I admit; but you can fight without banging and smashing things, as the dam fights the reservoir by silent cohesion. There is a temptation, from which some people suffer, to think that one can't be fighting for God at all, unless one is doing it furiously, and all the time, and successfully, and on a large and impressive scale. That is a fatal blunder. To hide your adversary's sword is often a very good way of fighting. To have an open tussle often makes the bystanders sympathise with the assailant. It is really a far more civilised thing, and often stands for a higher degree of force and honour, to be able to bear contradiction not ignobly. Direct conflict is a mistake, as a rule—blaming, fault-finding, censuring, snapping, punishing. The point is to put all your energy into your own life and work, and make it outweigh the energy of the combative critic. Do not fight by destroying faulty opinion, but by creating better opinion. You fight darkness by lighting a candle, not by waving a fan to clear it away. Look at one of the things we have been talking about—bullying in schools. That has not been conquered by expelling or whipping boys, or preaching about it—it has been abolished by kindlier and gentler family life, by humaner school-masters living with and among their boys, till the happiness of more peaceful relations all round has been instinctively perceived."

"But isn't it right to show up mean and dishonest people, to turn the light of publicity upon cruel and detestable things?" said Vincent.

"Exactly, my dear Vincent," said Father Payne; "but you can't turn the light of publicity on evil unless the light is there to turn. The reason why bullying continued was because people believed in it as inseparable from school life, and even, on the whole, bracing. What has got rid of it is a kinder and more tender spirit outside. I don't object to showing up bad things at all. By all means put them, if you can, in a clear light, and show their ugliness. Show your shame and disgust if you like, but do not condescend to personal abuse. That only weakens your case, because it merely proves that you have still some of the bully left in you. Be peaceable writers, my dear boys," said Father Payne, expanding in a large smile. "Don't squabble, don't try to scathe, don't be affronted! If your critic reveals a weak place in your work, admit it, and do better! I want to turn you out peace-makers, and that needs as much energy and restraint as any other sort of fighting. Don't make the fact that your opponent may be a cad into a personal grievance. Make your own idea clear, stick to it, repeat it, say it again in a more attractive way. Don't you see that not yielding to a bad impulse is fighting? The positive assertion of good, the shaping of beauty, the presentment of a fruitful thought in so desirable a light that other people go down with fresh courage into the dreariness and dullness of life, with all the delight of having a new way of behaving in their minds and hearts—that's how I want you to fight! It requires the toughest sort of courage, I can tell you. But instead of showing your spirit by returning a blow, show your spirit by propounding your idea in a finer shape. Don't be taken in by the silly and ugly old war-metaphors—the trumpet blown, the gathering of the hosts. That's simply a sensational waste of your time! Look out of your window, and then sit down to your work. That's the way to win, without noise or fuss."

LV

OF LIFE-FORCE

I walked one afternoon with Father Payne just as winter turned to spring, in the pastures. There was a mound at the corner of one of his fields, on which grew a row of beech trees of which Father Payne was particularly fond. He pointed out to me to-day how the most southerly of the trees, exposed as it was to the full force of the wind, grew lower and sturdier than the rest, and how as the trees progressed towards the north, each one profiting more by the shelter of his comrades, they grew taller and more graceful. "I like the way that stout little fellow at the end grows," said Father Payne. "He doesn't know, I suppose, that he is protecting the rest, and giving them room to expand. But he holds on; and though he isn't so tall, he is bulkier and denser than his brethren. He knows that he has to bear the brunt of the wind, so he puts out no sail. He just devotes himself to standing four-square—he is not going to be bullied! He would like to be as smooth and as shapely as the rest, but he knows his own business, and he has adapted himself, like a sensible fellow, to his rough conditions."

A little later Father Payne stopped to look at a great sow-thistle that was growing vigorously under a hedge-row. "Did you ever see such a bit of pure force?" said Father Payne. "I see a fierce conscious life in every inch of that plant. Look at the way he clips himself in, and strains to the earth: look at his great rays of leaves, thrust out so geometrically from the centre, with the sharp, horny, uncompromising thorns. And see how he flattens down his leaves over the surrounding grasses: they haven't a chance; he just squeezes them down and strangles them. There is no mild and delicate waving of fronds in the air. He means to sit down firmly on the top of his comrades. I don't think I ever saw anything with such a muscular pull on—you can't lift his leaves up; look, he resists with all his might! Just consider the immense force which he is using: he is not merely snuggling down: he is just hauling things about. You don't mean to tell me that this thistle isn't conscious! He knows he has enemies, but he is going to make the place his very own—and all that out of a drifting little arrow of down!"

"Now that may not be a sympathetic or even Christian way of doing things," he went on presently, "but for all that, I do love to see the force of life, the intentness of living. I like our friend the beech a little better, because he is helping his friends, though he doesn't know it, and the thistle is only helping himself. But I am sure that it is the right way to go at it! We mustn't be always standing aside and making room: we mustn't obliterate ourselves. We have a right to our joy in life, and we mustn't be afraid of it. If we give away what we have got, it must cost us something—it must not be a mere relinquishing."

"It is rather hard to combine the two principles," I said—"the living of life, I mean, and the giving away of life."

"Well, I think that devotion is better than self-sacrifice," said Father Payne. "On the whole I mistrust weakness more than I mistrust strength. It's easy to dislike violence—but I rather worship vitality. I would almost rather see a man forcing his way through with some callousness, than backing out, smiling and apologising. You can convert strength, you can't do anything with weakness. Take the sort of work you fellows do. I always feel I can chasten and direct exuberance: what I can't do is to impart vigour. If a man says his essay is short because he can't think of anything to write, I feel inclined to say, 'Then for goodness' sake hold your tongue!' It's the people who can't hold their tongue, who go on roughly pointing things out, and commenting, and explaining, and thrusting themselves in front of the show, who do something. Of course force has to be kept in order, but there it is—it lives, it must have its say. What you have to learn is to insinuate yourself into life, like ivy, but without spoiling other people's pleasure. That's liberty! The old thistle has no respect for liberty, and that is why he is rooted up. But it's rather sad work doing it, because he does so very much want to be alive. But it isn't liberty simply to efface yourself, because you may interfere with other people. The thing is to fit in, without disorganising everything about you."

He mused for a little in silence; then he said, "It's like almost everything else—it's a weighing of claims! I don't want you fellows to be either tyrannical or slavish. It's tyrannical to bully, it's slavish to defer. The thing is to have a firm opinion, not to be ashamed of it or afraid of it; to say it reasonably and gently, and to stick to it amiably. Good does not attack, though if it is attacked it can slay. Good fights evil, but it knows what it is fighting, while evil fights good and evil alike. I think that is true. I don't want you people to be controversial or quarrelsome in what you write, and to go in for picking holes in others' work. If you want to help a man to do better, criticise him privately—don't slap him in public, to show how hard you can lay on. Make your own points, explain if you like, but don't apologise. The great writers, mind you, are the people who can go on. It's volume rather than delicacy that matters in the end. It must flow like honey—good solid stuff—not drip like rain, out of mere weakness. But the thing is to flow, and largeness of production is better than little bits of overhandled work. Mind that, my boy! It's force that tells: and that's why I don't want you to be over-interested in your work. You must go on filling up with experience; but it doesn't matter where or how you get it, as long as it is eagerly done. Be on the side of life! Amor fati, that's the motto for a man—to love his destiny passionately, and all that is before him; not to droop, or sentimentalise, or submit, but to plunge on, like a 'sea-shouldering whale'! You remember old Kit Smart—

'Strong against tide, the enormous whale Emerges as he goes.'

"Mind you emerge! Never heed the tide: there's plenty of room for it as well as for you!"

LVI

OF CONSCIENCE

Lestrange was being genially bantered by Rose one day at dinner on what Rose called "problems of life and being," or "springs of action," or even "higher ground." Lestrange was oppressively earnest, but he was always good-natured.

"Ultimately?" he had said, "why, ultimately, of course, you must obey your conscience."

"No, no!" said Father Payne, "that won't do, Lestrange! Who are you, after all? I mean that the 'you' you speak of has something to say about it, to decide whether to disobey or to obey. And then, too, the same 'you' seems to have decided that conscience is to be obeyed. The thing that you describe as 'yourself' is much more ultimate than conscience, because if it is not convinced that conscience is to be obeyed, it will not obey. I mean that there is something which criticises even the conscience. It can't be reason, because your conscience over-rides your reason, and it can't be instinct, generally speaking, because conscience often over-rides instinct."

"I am confused," said Lestrange. "I mean by conscience the thing which says 'You ought!' That is what seems to me to prove the existence of God, that there is a sense of a moral law which one does not invent, and which is sometimes very inconveniently aggressive."

"Yes, that is all right," said Father Payne, "but how is it when there are two 'oughts,' as there often are? A man ought to work—and he ought not to overwork—something else has to be called in to decide where one 'ought' begins and the other ends. There is a perpetual balancing of moral claims. Your conscience tells you to do two things which are mutually exclusive—both are right in the abstract. What are you to do then?"

"I suppose that reason comes in there," said Lestrange.

"Then reason is the ultimate guide?" said Father Payne.

"Oh, Father, you are darkening counsel," said Lestrange.

"No, no," said Father Payne, "I am just trying to face facts."

"Well, then," said Lestrange, "what is the ultimate thing?"

"The ultimate thing," said Father Payne, "is of course the thing you call yourself—but the ultimate instinct is probably a sense of proportion—a sense of beauty, if you like!"

"But how does that work out in practice?" said Vincent. "It seems to me to be a mere argument about names and titles. You are using conscience as the sense of right and wrong, and, as you say, they often seem to have conflicting claims. Lestrange used it in the further sense of the thing which ultimately decides your course. It is right to be philanthropic, it is right to be artistic—they may conflict; but something ultimately tells you what you can do, which is really more important than what you ought to do."

"That is right," said Father Payne, "I think the test is simply this—that whenever you feel yourself paralysed, and your natural growth arrested by your obedience to any one claim—instinct, reason, conscience, whatever it is—the ultimate power cuts the knot, and tells you unfailingly where your real life lies. That is the real failure, when owing to some habit, some dread, some shrinking, you do not follow your real life. That, it seems to me, is where the old unflinching doctrines of sin and repentance have done harm. The old self-mortifying saints, who thought so badly of human nature, and who tore themselves to pieces, resisting wholesome impulses—celibate saints who ought to have been married, morbidly introspective saints who needed hard secular work, those were the people who did not dare to trust the sense of proportion, and were suspicious of the call of life. Look at St. Augustine in the wonderful passage about light, 'sliding by me in unnumbered guises'—he can only end by praying to be delivered from the temptation to enjoy the sight of dawn and sunset, as setting his affections too much upon the things of earth. I mistrust the fear of life—I mistrust all fear—at least I think it will take care of itself, and must not be cultivated. I think the call of God is the call of joy—and I believe that the superstitious dread of joy is one of the most potent agencies of the devil."

"But there are many joys which one has to mistrust," said Lestrange; "mere sensual delights, for instance."

"Yes," said Father Payne, "but most healthy and normal people, after a very little meddling with such delights, learn certainly enough that they only obscure the real, wholesome, temperate joys. You have to compromise wisely with your instincts, I think. You mustn't spend too much time in frontal attacks upon them. You have a quick temper, let us say. Well, it is better to lose it occasionally and apologise, than to hold your tongue about matters in which you are interested for fear of losing it. You are avaricious—well, hoard your money, and then yield on occasions to a generous impulse. That's a better way to defeat evil, than by dribbling money away in giving little presents which no one wants. I don't believe in petty warfare against faults. You know the proverb that if you knock too long at a closed door, the Devil opens it to you? Just give your sins a knock-down blow every now and then. I believe in the fire of life more than I believe in the cold water you use to quench it. Everything can be forgiven to passion; nothing can be forgiven to chilly calculation. The beautiful impulse is the thing that one must not disobey; and when I see people do big, wrong-headed, unguarded, unwise things, get into rows, sacrifice a reputation or a career without counting the cost, I am inclined to feel that they have probably done better for themselves than if they had been prudent and cautious. I don't say that they are always right, because people yield sometimes to a mere whim, and sometimes to a childishly overwhelming desire; but if there is a real touch of unselfishness about a sacrifice—that's the test, that some one else's joy should be involved—then I feel that it isn't my business to approve or disapprove. I feel in the presence of a force—an 'ought' as Lestrange says, which makes me shy of intervening. It's the wind of the Spirit—it blows where it will—and I know this, that I'm thankful beyond everything when I feel it in my own sails."

"Tell me when you feel it next, Father," said Vincent.

"I feel it now," said Father Payne, "now and here." And there was something in his face which made us disinclined to ask him any further questions.

LVII

OF RANK

Someone had been telling a curious story about a contested peerage. It was a sensational affair, involving the alteration of registers, the burning down of a vestry, and the flight of a clergyman.

"I like that story," said Father Payne, "and I like heraldry and rank and all that. It's decidedly picturesque. I enjoy the zigzagging of a title through generations. But the worst of it is that the most picturesque of all distinctions, like being the twentieth baron, let us say, in direct descent, is really of the nature of a stigma; a man whose twentieth ancestor was a baron has no excuse for not being a duke."

"But what I don't like," said Rose, "is the awful sense of sanctity which some people have about it. I read a book the other day where the hero sacrificed everything in turn, a career, a fortune, an engagement to a charming girl, a reputation, and last of all an undoubted claim to an ancient barony. I don't remember exactly why he did all these things—it was noble, undoubtedly it was noble! But there was something which made me vaguely uncomfortable about the order in which he spun his various advantages."

"It's only a sense of beauty slightly awry," said Father Payne; "names are curiously sacred things—they often seem to be part of the innermost essence of a man. I confess I would rather change most things than change my name. I would rather shave my head, for instance."

"But my hero would have had to change his name if he had claimed the peerage," said Rose.

"Yes, but you see the title was his right name," said Father Payne; "he was only masquerading as a commoner, you must remember. Why I should value an ancient peerage is because I think it might improve my manners."

"Impossible!" said Vincent.

"Thank you," said Father Payne. "Yes, my manners are very good for a commoner—but I should like to be a little more in the grand style. I should like to be able to look long at a person, who said something of which I disapproved, and then change the subject. That would be fine! But I daren't do that now. Now I have to argue. Do you remember in Daniel Deronda, Grandcourt's habit of looking stonily at smiling persons. I have often envied that! Whereas my chief function in life is looking smilingly at stony persons, and that's very bourgeois."

"We must show more animation," said Barthrop to his neighbour.

"I mean it!" said Father Payne, "but come, I won't be personal! Seriously, you know, the one thing I have admired in the very few great people I have ever met is the absence of embarrassment. They don't need to explain who they are, they haven't got to preface their statements of opinion by fragments of autobiography, to show their right to speak. It is convenient to feel that if people don't know who you are, they will feel slightly foolish afterwards when they discover, like the man who shook hands warmly with Queen Victoria, and said, "I know the face quite well, but I can't put a name to it." It did not show any pride of birth in the Queen to be extremely amused by the incident. But even more than that I admire the case which people of that sort get by having had, from childhood onwards, to meet all sorts of persons, and to behave themselves, and to see that people do not feel shy or uncomfortable. I sometimes go about the village simply teeming with benevolence, and I pass some one, and can't think of anything to say. If I had the great manner, I should say, "Why, Tommy, is that you?" or some such human signal, which would not mean anything in particular, but would after all express exactly what is in my mind. But I can't just do that. I rack my brains for an appropriate remark, because I am bourgeois, and have not the point of honour, as the French say. And by the time I have elaborated it, Tommy is gone, and Jack is passing, and I begin elaborating again; whereas I should simply add, if I were aristocratic, 'And that's you, Jack, isn't it?' That's the way to talk."

We all laughed; and Barthrop said, "Well, I must say, Father, that I have often envied you your power of saying something to everyone."

"I have spent more trouble on it than it is worth," said Father Payne; "and that's my point, that if I were only a great man, I should have learnt it all in childhood, and should not have to waste time over it at all. That's the best of rank; it's a device for saving trouble; it saves introduction and explanation and autobiography and elaborate civility, and makes people willing to be pleased by the smallest sign of affability. You may depend upon it that it was a very true instinct which made the Scotch minister pray that all might have honourable ancestors. It isn't a sacred thing, rank, and it isn't a magnificent thing—but it's a pleasant human sort of thing in the right hands. What is more, in these democratic days, it tends to make people of rank additionally anxious not to parade the fact—and I doubt if there is anything on the whole happier than having advantages which you don't want to parade—it gives a tranquil sort of contentment, and it removes all futile ambitions. To be, by descent, what a desperately industrious lawyer or a successful general feels himself amply rewarded for his toil by becoming, isn't nothing. I'm always rather suspicious of the people who try to pretend that it is nothing at all. The rank is but the guinea stamp, of course. But after all the stamp is what makes it a guinea instead of an unnegotiable disc of metal!"

LVIII

OF BIOGRAPHY

Father Payne used often to say that he was more interested in biography than in any other form of art, and believed that there was a greater future before it than before any other sort of literature. "Just think," I remember his saying, "human portraiture—the most interesting thing in the world by far—what the novel tries to do and can't do!"

"What exactly do you mean by 'can't do'?" I said.

"Why, my boy," said Father Payne, "because we are all so horrified at the idea of telling the truth or looking the truth in the face. The novel accommodates human nature, patches it up, varnishes it, puts it in a good light: it may be artistic and romantic and poetical—but it hasn't got the beauty of truth. Life is much more interesting than any imaginative fricassee of it! These realistic fellows—they are moving towards biography, but they haven't got much beyond the backgrounds yet."

"But why shouldn't it be done?" I said. "There's Boswell's Johnson—why does that stand almost alone?"

"Why, think of all the difficulties, my boy," said Father Payne. "There's nothing like Boswell's Johnson, of course—but what a subject! There's nothing that so proves Boswells genius—we mustn't forget that—as the other wretched stuff written about Johnson. There's a passage in Boswell, when he didn't see Johnson for a long time, and stuck in a few stories collected from other friends. They are awfully flat and flabby—they have all been rolled about in some one's mind, till they are as smooth as pebbles—some bits of the crudest rudeness, not worked up to—some knock-down schoolboy retorts which most civilised men would have had the decency to repress—and then we get back to the real Boswell again, and how fresh and lively it is!"

"But what are the difficulties you spoke of?" I said.

"Why, in the first place," said Father Payne, "a biography ought to be written during a man's life and not after it—and very few people will take the trouble to write things down day after day about anyone else, as Boswell did. If it waits till after a man's death, a hush falls on the scene—everyone is pious and sentimental. Of course, Boswell's life is inartistic enough—it wanders along, here a letter, there a lot of criticism, here a talk, there a reminiscence. It isn't arranged—it has no scheme: but how full of zest it is! And then you have to be pretty shameless in pursuing your hero, and elbowing other people away, and drawing him out; and you have to be prepared to be kicked and trampled upon, when the hero is cross: and then you have to be a considerable snob, and say what you really value and admire, however vulgar it is. And then you must expect to be called hard names when the book appears. I was reading a review the other day of what seemed to me to be a harmless biography enough—a little frank and enthusiastic affair, I gathered: and the reviewer wrote in the style of Pecksniff, caddish and priggish at the same time: he called the man to task for botanising on his friend's grave—that unfortunate verse of Wordsworth's, you know—and he left the impression that the writer had done something indelicate and impious, and all with a consciousness of how high-minded he himself was.

"You ought to write a biography as though you were telling your tale in a friendly and gentle ear—you ought not to lose your sense of humour, or be afraid of showing your subject in a trivial or ridiculous light. Look at Boswell again—I don't suppose a more deadly case could be made out against any man, with perfect truth, than could be made out against Johnson. You could show him as brutal, rough, greedy, superstitious, prejudiced, unjust, and back it all up by indisputable evidence—but it's the balance, the net result, that matters! We have all of us faults; we know them, our friends know them—why the devil should not everyone know them? But then an interesting man dies, and everyone becomes loyal and sentimental. Not a word must be said which could pain or wound anyone. The friends and relations, it would seem, are not pained by the dead man's faults, they are only pained that other people should know them. The biography becomes a mixture of disinfectants and perfumes, as if it were all meant to hide some putrid thing. It's like what Jowett said about a testimonial, 'There's a strong smell here of something left out!' We have hardly ever had anything but romantic biographies hitherto, and they all smell of something left out. There's a tribe somewhere in Africa who will commit murder if anyone tries to sketch them. They think it brings bad luck to be sketched, a sort of 'overlooking' as they say. Well that seems to be the sort of superstition that many people have about biographies, as if the departed spirit would be vexed by anything which isn't a compliment. I suppose it is partly this—that many people are ill-bred, glum, and suspicious, and can't bear the idea of their faults being recorded. They hate all frankness: and so when anything frank gets written, they talk about violating sacred confidences, and about shameless exposures. It is really that we are all horribly uncivilised, and can't bear to give ourselves away, or to be given away. Of course we don't want biographies of merely selfish, stupid, brutal, ill-bred men—but everyone ought to be thankful when a life can be told frankly, and when there's enough that is good and beautiful to make it worth telling.

"But, as I said, the thing can't be done, unless it is written to a great extent in a man's lifetime. Conversation is a very difficult thing to remember—it can't be remembered afterwards—it needs notes at the time: and few people's talk is worth recording; and even if it is, people are a little ashamed of doing it—there seems something treacherous about it: but it ought to be done, for all that! You don't want so very much of it—I don't suppose that Boswell has got down a millionth part of all Johnson said—you just want specimens—enough to give the feeling of it and the quality of it. One doesn't want immensely long biographies—just enough to make you feel that you have seen a man and sat with him and heard him talk—and the kind of way in which he dealt with things and people. I'll tell you a man who would have made a magnificent biography—Lord Melbourne. He had a great charm, and a certain whimsical and fantastic humour, which made him do funny little undignified things, like a child. But every single dictum of Melbourne's has got something original and graceful about it—always full of good sense, never pompous, always with a delicious lightness of touch. The only person who took the trouble to put down Melbourne's sayings, just as they came out, was Queen Victoria—but then she was in love with him without knowing it: and in the end he got stuck into the heaviest and most ponderous of biographies, and is lost to the world. Stale politics—there's nothing to beat them for dulness unutterable!"

"But isn't it an almost impossible thing," I said, "to expect a man who is a first-rate writer, with ambitions in authorship, to devote himself to putting down things about some interesting person with the chance of their never being published? Very few people would have sufficient self-abnegation for that."

"That's true enough," said Father Payne, "and of course it is a risk—a man must run the risk of sacrificing a good deal of his time and energy to recording unimportant details, perhaps quite uselessly, but with this possibility ahead of him, that he may produce an immortal book—and I grant you that the infernal vanity and self-glorification of authors is a real difficulty in the way."

He was silent for a minute or two, and then he said: "Now, I'll tell you another difficulty, that at present people only want biographies of men of affairs, of big performers, men who have done things—I don't want that. I want biographies of people who wielded a charm of personality, even if they didn't do things—people, I mean, who deserve to live and to be loved.—Those are the really puzzling figures a generation later, the men who lived in an atmosphere of admiring and delighted friendship, radiating a sort of enchanting influence, having the most extravagant things said and believed about them by their friends, and yet never doing anything in particular. People, I mean, like Arthur Hallam, whose letters and remains are fearfully pompous and tiresome—and who yet had In Memoriam written about him, and who was described by Gladstone as the most perfect human being, physically, intellectually and morally, he had ever seen. Then there is Browning's Domett—the prototype of Waring—and Keats's friend James Rice, and Stevenson's friend Ferrier—that's a matchless little biographical fragment, Stevenson's letter about Ferrier—those are the sort of figures I mean, the men who charmed and delighted everyone, were brave and humorous, gave a pretty turn to everything they said—those are the roses by the wayside! They had ill-health some of them, they hadn't the requisite toughness for work, they even took to drink, or went to the bad. But they are the people of quality and tone, about whom one wants to know much more than about sun-burnt and positive Generals—the strong silent sort—or overworked politicians bent on conciliating the riff-raff. I don't want to know about men simply because they did honest work, and still less about men who never dared to say what they thought and felt. You can't make a striking picture out of a sense of responsibility! I'm not underrating good work—it's fine in every way, but it can't always be written about. There are exceptions, of course. Nelson and Wellington would have been splendid subjects, if anyone had really Boswellised them. But Nelson had a theatrical touch about him, and became almost too romantic a hero; while the Duke had a fund of admirable humour and almost grotesque directness of expression,—and he has never been half done justice to, though you can see from Lord Mahon's little book of Table Talk and Benjamin Haydon's Diary, and the letters to Miss J., what a rich affair it all might have been, if only there had been a perfectly bold, candid, and truthful biographer."

"But the charming people of whom you spoke," I said—"isn't the whole thing often too evanescent to be recorded?"

"Not a bit of it!" said Father Payne, "and these are the people we want to hear about, because they represent the fine flower of civilisation. If a man has a delightful friend like that, always animated, fresh, humorous, petulant, original, he couldn't do better than observe him, keep scraps of his talk, record scenes where he took a leading part, get the impression down. It may come to nothing, of course, but it may also come to something worth more than a thousand twaddling novels. The immense use of it—if one must think about the use—is that such a life might really show commonplace and ordinary people how to handle the simplest materials of life with zest and delicacy. Novels don't really do that—they only make people want to escape from middle-class conditions, what everyone is the better for seeing is not how life might conceivably be handled, but how it actually has been handled, freshly and distinctly, by someone in a commonplace milieu. Life isn't a bit romantic, but it is devilish interesting. It doesn't go as you want it to go. Sometimes it lags, sometimes it dances; and horrible things happen, often most unexpectedly. In the novel, everything has to be rounded off and led up to, and you never get a notion of the inconsequence of life. The interest of life is not what happens, but how it affects people, how they meet it, how they fly from it: the relief of a biography is that you haven't got to invent your setting and your character—all that is done for you: you have just got to select the characteristic things, and not to blur the things that you would have wished otherwise. For God's sake, let us get at the truth in books, and not use them as screens to keep the fire off, or as things to distract one from the depressing facts in one's bank-book. I welcome all this output of novels, because it at least shows that people are interested in life, and trying to shape it. But I don't want romance, and I don't want ugly and sensational realism either. That is only romance in another shape. I want real men and women—not from an autobiographical point of view, because that is generally romantic too—but from the point of view of the friends to whom they showed themselves frankly and naturally, and without that infernal reticence which is not either reverence or chivalry, but simply an inability to face the truth,—which is the direct influence of the spirit of evil. If one of my young men turns out a good biography of an interesting person, however ineffective he was, I shall not have lived in vain. For, mind this—very few people's performances are worth remembering, while very many people's personalities are."

LIX

OF EXCLUSIVENESS

Rose told a story one night which amused Father Payne immensely. He had been up in town, and had sate next a Minister's wife, who had been very confidential. She had said to Rose that her husband had just been elected into a small dining-club well known in London, where the numbers were very limited, the society very choice, and where a single negative vote excluded a candidate. "I don't think," said the good lady, "that my husband has ever been so pleased at anything that has befallen him, not even when he was first given office—such a distinguished club—and so exclusive!" Father Payne laughed loud and shrill. "That's human nature at its nakedest!" he said. "It's like Miss Tox, in Dombey and Son, you know, who, when Dombey asked her if the school she recommended was select, said, 'It's exclusion itself!' What people love is the power of being able to exclude—not necessarily disagreeable people, or tiresome people, but simply people who would like to be inside—

"'Loving not, hating not, just choosing so.'

"Those are the two great forces of society, you know—the exclusive force, and the inclusive force: the force that says, 'We few, we happy few, we band of brothers'; and the force which says, 'The more the merrier.' The exclusive force is represented by caste and class, by gentility and donnishness, by sectarianism and nationalism, and even by patriotism—and the inclusive force is represented by Walt Whitmanism and Christianity."

"But what about St. Paul's words," said Lestrange, "'Honour all men: love the brotherhood'?"

"That's an attempt to recognise both," said Father Payne, smiling. "Of course you can't love everyone equally—that's the error of democracy—democracy is really one of the exclusive forces, because it excludes the heroes—it is 'mundus contra Athanasium,'—it is best illustrated by what the American democrat said to Charles Kingsley, 'My principle is "whenever you see a head above the crowd, hit it."' Democracy is, at its worst, the jealousy of the average man for the superior man."

"But which is the best principle?" said Vincent.

"Both are necessary," said Father Payne. "One must aim at inclusiveness, of course: and we must be quite certain that we exclude on the ground of qualities, and not on the ground of superficial differences. The best influences in the world arise not from individuals but from groups—and there is no sort of reason why groups should spoil their intensive qualities by trying to admit outsiders. The strength of a group lies in the fact that one gets the sense of fellowship and common purpose, of sympathy and encouragement. A man who has to fight a battle single-handed is always tempted to wonder whether, after all, it is worth all the trouble and misunderstanding. But, on the other hand, you are at liberty to mistrust the men who say that they don't want to know people. Do you remember how Charles Lamb once said, 'I do hate the Trotters!' 'But I thought you didn't know them?' said someone. 'That's just it,' said Charles Lamb, 'I never can hate anyone that I know!' The best bred man is the man who finds it easy to get on with everybody on equal terms: but it's part of the snobbishness of human nature that exclusiveness is rather admired than otherwise. There's a delightfully exclusive woman in one of Henry James' novels, who refuses to be introduced to a family. She entirely declines, and the man who is anxious to effect the introduction says, 'I can't think why you object to them.' 'They are hopelessly vulgar,' says the incisive lady, 'and in this short life, that is enough!' But St. Paul's remark is really very good, because it means 'Treat everyone with courtesy—but reserve your fine affections for the inner circle, whose worth you really know!'—it's a better theory than that of the man who said, 'It is enough for me to be with those whom I love!' That's rather inhuman."

"Do you remember," said Barthrop, "the lines in Tennyson's Guinevere, which sum up the knightly attributes?

"'High thought, and amiable words, And courtliness, and the desire of fame, And love of truth, and all that makes a man.'"

"That's very interesting and curious!" said Father Payne. "Dear me, I had forgotten that—did Tennyson say that?—Come—let's have it again!"

Barthrop repeated the lines again.

"Now, that's the gentlemanly ideal of the sixties," said Father Payne, "and, good heavens, how offensive it sounds! The most curious part of it really is 'the desire of fame'—of course, a hundred years ago, no one made any secret of that! You remember Nelson's frank confession, made not once, but many times, that he pursued glory, 'Defeat—or Westminster Abbey'—didn't he say that?"

"But surely people pursue fame as much as ever?" said Vincent.

"I daresay," said Father Payne, "but it isn't now considered good taste to say so. You have got to pretend, at all events, that you wish to benefit humanity now-a-days. If a man had said to Ruskin or Carlyle, 'Why do you write all these books?' and they replied, 'It is because of my desire for fame,' it would have been thought vulgar. There's that odd story of Robert Browning, when he received an ovation at Oxford, and someone said to him, 'I suppose you don't care about all this,' he said, 'It is what I have waited for all my life!' I wonder if he did say it! I think he must have done, because it is exactly the sort of thing that one is supposed not to say—and I confess I don't like it—it seems to me vain, and not proud, I don't mind a kind of pride—I think a man ought to know what he is worth: but I hate vanity. Perhaps that's only because I haven't been a success myself."

"But mayn't you desire fame?" said Vincent. "It seems to me rather priggish to condemn it!"

"Many fine things sound priggish when they are said," said Father Payne. "But, to be frank, I don't think that a man ought to desire fame. I think he may desire to do a thing well. I don't think he ought to desire to do it better than other people. It is the wanting to beat other people which is low. Why not wish them to do it well too?"

"You mean that the difference between pride and vanity lies there?" said Barthrop.

"Yes, I do," said Father Payne, "and it is a pity that pride is included in the deadly sins, because the word has changed its sense. Pride used to mean the contempt of others—that's a deadly sin, if you like. It used to mean a ghastly sort of self-satisfaction, arrived at by comparison of yourself with others. But now to be called a proud man is a real compliment. It means that a man can't condescend to anything mean or base. We ought all to be proud—not proud of anything, because that is vulgar, but ashamed of doing anything which we know to be feeble or low. The Pharisee in the parable was vain, not proud, because he was comparing himself with other people. But it is all right to be grateful to God for having a sense of decency, just as you may be grateful for having a sense of beauty. The hatefulness of it comes in when you are secretly glad that other people love indecency and ugliness."

"That is the exclusive feeling then?" said Barthrop.

"Yes, the bad kind of exclusiveness," said Father Payne—"the kind of exclusiveness which ministers to self-satisfaction. And that is the fault of the group when it becomes a coterie. The coterie means a set of inferior people, bolstering up each other's vanity by mutual admiration. In a coterie you purchase praise for your own bad work, by pretending to admire the bad work of other people. But the real group is interested, not in each other's fame, but in the common work."

"It seems to me confusing," said Vincent.

"Not a bit of it," said Father Payne; "we have to consider our limitations: we are limited by time and space. You can't know everybody and love everybody and admire everybody—and you can't sacrifice the joy and happiness of real intimacy with a few for a diluted acquaintance with five hundred people. But you mustn't think that your own group is the only one—that is the bad exclusiveness—you ought to think that there are thousands of intimate groups all over the world, which you could love just as enthusiastically as you love your own, if you were inside them: and then, apart from your own group, you ought to be prepared to find reasonable and amiable and companionable people everywhere, and to be able to put yourself in line with them. Why, good heavens, there are millions of possible friends in the world! and one of my deepest and firmest hopes about the next world, so to speak, is that there will be some chance of communicating with them all at once, instead of shutting ourselves up in a frowsy room like this, smelling of meat and wine. I don't deny you are very good fellows, but if you think that you are the only fit and desirable company in the world for me or for each other, I tell you plainly that you are utterly mistaken. That's why I insist on your travelling about, to avoid our becoming a coterie."

"Then it comes to this," said Vincent drily, "that you can't be inclusive, and that you ought not to be exclusive?"

"Yes, that's exactly it!" said Father Payne. "You meant to shut me up with one of our patent Oxford epigrams, I know—and, of course, it is deuced smart! But put it the other way round, and it's all right. You can't help being exclusive, and you must try to be inclusive—that's the truth, with the Oxford tang taken out!"

We laughed at this, and Vincent reddened.

"Don't mind me, old man!" said Father Payne, "but try to make your epigrams genial instead of contemptuous—inclusive rather than exclusive. They are just as true, and the bitter flavour is only fit for the vitiated taste of Dons." And Father Payne stretched out a large hand down the table, and enclosed Vincent's in his own.

"Yes, it was a nasty turn," said Vincent, smiling, "I see what you mean."

"The world is a friendlier place than people know," said Father Payne. "We have inherited a suspicion of the unknown and the unfamiliar. Don't you remember how the ladies in The Mill on the Floss mistrusted each other's recipes, and ate dry bread in other houses rather than touch jam or butter made on different methods. That is the old bad taint. But I think we are moving in the right direction. I fancy that the awakening may be very near, when we shall suddenly realise that we are all jolly good fellows, and wonder that we have been so blind."

"A Roman Catholic friend of mine," said Rose—"he is a priest—told me that he attended a clerical dinner the other day. The health of the Pope was proposed, and they all got up and sang, 'For he's a jolly good fellow!'"

There was a loud laugh at this. "I like that," said Father Payne, "I like their doing that! I expect that that is exactly what the Pope is! I should dearly love to have a good long quiet talk with him! I think I could let in a little light: and I should like to ask him if he enjoyed his fame, dear old boy: and whether he was interested in his work! 'Why, Mr. Payne, it's rather anxious work, you know, the care of all the churches'—I can hear him saying—'but I rub along, and the time passes quickly! though, to be sure, I'm not as young as I was once: and while I am on the subject, Mr. Payne, you look to me to be getting on in years yourself!' And then I should say 'Yes, your Holiness, I am a man that has seen trouble.' And he would say, 'I'm sorry to hear that! Tell me all about it!' That's how we should talk, like old friends, in a snug parlour in the Vatican, looking out on the gardens!"

LX

OF TAKING LIFE

I was walking with Father Payne one hot summer day upon a field-path he was very fond of. There was a copse, through the middle of which the little river, the Fyllot, ran. It was the boundary of the Aveley estate, and it here joined another stream, the Rode, which came in from the south. The path went through the copse, dense with hazels, and there was always a musical sound of lapsing waters hidden in the wood. The birds sang shrill in the thicket, and Father Payne said, "This is the juncture of Pison and Hiddekel, you know, rivers of Paradise. Aveley is Havilah, where the gold is good, and where there is bdellium, if we only knew where to look for it. I fancy it is rich in bdellium. I came down here, I remember, the first day I took possession. It was wonderful, after being so long among the tents of Kedar, to plant my flag in Havilah; I made a vow that day—I don't know if I have kept it!"

"What was that?" I said.

"Only that I would not get too fond of it all," said Father Payne, smiling, "and that I would share it with other people. But I have got very fond of it, and I haven't shared it. Asking people to stay with you, that they may see what a nice place you have to live in, is hardly sharing it. It is rather the other way—the last refinement of possession, in fact!"

"It's very odd," he went on, "that I should love this little bit of the world so much as I do. It's called mine—that's a curious idea. I have got very little power over it. I can't prevent the trees and flowers from growing here, or the birds from nesting here, if they have a mind to do so. I can only keep human beings out of it, more or less. And yet I love it with a sort of passion, so that I want other people to love it too. I should like to think that after I am gone, some one should come here and see how exquisitely beautiful it is, and wish to keep it and tend it. That's what lies behind the principle of inheritance; it isn't the money or the position only that we desire to hand on to our children—it's the love of the earth and all that grows out of it; and possession means the desire of keeping it unspoiled and beautiful, I could weep at the idea of this all being swept away, and a bdellium-mine being started here, with a factory-chimney and rows of little houses; and yet I suppose that if the population increased, and the land was all nationalised, a great deal of the beauty of England would go. I hope, however, that the sense of beauty might increase too—I don't think the country people here have much notion of beauty. They only like things to remain as they know them. It's a fearful luxury really for a man like myself to live in a land like this, so full of old woodland and pasture, which is only possible under rich proprietors. I'm an abuse, of course. I have got a much larger slice of my native soil than any one man ought to have; but I don't see the way out. The individual can't dispossess himself—it's the system which is wrong."

He stopped in the middle of the copse, and said: "Did you ever see anything so perfectly lovely as this place? And yet it is all living in a state of war and anarchy. The trees and plants against each other, all fighting for a place in the sun. The rabbit against the grass, the bird against the worm, the cat against the bird. There's no peace here really—it's full of terrors! Only the stream is taking it easy. It hasn't to live by taking life, and the very sound of it is innocent."

Presently he said: "This is all cut down every five years. It's all made into charcoal and bobbins. Then the flowers all come up in a rush; then the copse begins to grow again—I never can make up my mind which is most beautiful. I come and help the woodmen when they cut the copse. That's pleasant work, you know, cutting and binding. I sometimes wonder if the hazels hate being slashed about. I expect they do; but it can't hurt them much, for up they come again. It's the right way to live, of course, to begin again the minute you are cut down to the roots, to struggle out to the air and sun again, and to give thanks for life. Don't you feel yourself as if you were good for centuries of living?"

"I'm not sure that I do," I said, "I don't feel as if I had quite got my hand in."

"Yes, that's all right for you, old boy," said Father Payne. "You are learning to live, and you are living. But an old fellow like me, who has got in the way of it, and has found out at last how good it is to be alive, has to realise that he has only got a fag-end left. I don't at all want to die; I've got my hands as full as they can hold of pretty and delightful things; and I don't at all want to be cut down like the copse, and to have to build up my branches again. Yes," he added, pondering, "I used to think I should not live long, and I didn't much want to, I believe! But now—it's almost disgraceful to think how much I prize life, and how interesting I find it. Depend upon it, on we go! The only thing that is mysterious to me is why I love a place like this so much. I don't suppose it loves me. I suppose there isn't a beast or a bird, perhaps not a tree or a flower, in the place that won't be rather relieved when I go back home without having killed something. I expect, in fact, that I have left a track of death behind me in the grass—little beetles and things that weren't doing any harm, and that liked being alive. That's pretty beastly, you know, but how is one to help it? Then my affection for it is very futile. I can't establish a civilised system here; I can't prevent the creatures from eating each other, or the trees from crowding out the flowers. I can't eat or use the things myself, I can't take them away with me; I can only stand and yearn with cheap sentiment.

"And yet," he said after a moment, "there's something here in this bit of copse that whispers to me beautiful secrets—the sunshine among the stems, the rustle of leaves, the wandering breeze, the scent and coolness of it all! It is crammed with beauty; it is all trying to live, and glad to live. You may say, of course, that you don't see all that in it, and it is I that am abnormal. But that doesn't explain it away. The fact that I feel it is a better proof that it is there than the fact that you don't feel it is a proof that it isn't there! The only thing about it that isn't beautiful to me is the fact that life can't live except by taking life—that there is no right to live; and that, I admit, is disconcerting. You may say to me, 'You old bully, crammed with the corpses of sheep and potatoes, which you haven't even had the honesty to kill for yourself, you dare to come here, and talk this stuff about the beauty of it all, and the joy of living. If all the bodies of the things you have consumed in your bloated life were piled together, it would make a thing as big as a whole row of ricks!' If you say that, I admit that you take the sentiment out of my sails!"

"But I don't say it," said I: "Who dies if Father Payne live?"

He laughed at this, and clapped me on the back. "You're in the same case as I, old man," he said, "only you haven't got such a pile of blood and bones to your credit! Here, we must stow this talk, or we shall become both humbugs and materialists. It's a puzzling business, talking! It leads you into some very ugly places!"

LXI

OF BOOKISHNESS

I went in to see Father Payne one morning about some work. He was reading a book with knitted brows: he looked up, gave a nod, but no smile, pointed to a chair, and I sate down: a minute or two later he shut the book—a neat enough little volume—with a snap, and skimmed it deftly from where he sate, into his large waste-paper basket. This, by the way, was a curious little accomplishment of his,—throwing things with unerring aim. He could skim more cards across a room into a hat than anyone I have ever seen who was not a professed student of legerdemain.

"What are you doing?" I said—"such a nice little book!" I rose and rescued the volume, which was a careful enough edition of some poems and scraps of poems, posthumously discovered, of a well-known poet.

"Pray accept it with my kindest regards," said Father Payne. "No, I don't know that I ought to give it you. It is the sort of book I object to."

"Why?" I said, examining it—"it seems harmless enough."

"It's the wrong sort of literature," said Father Payne. "There isn't time, or there ought not to be, to go fumbling about with these old scraps. They aren't good enough to publish—and what's more, if the man didn't publish them himself, you may be sure he had very good reasons for not doing so. The only interest of them is that so good a poet could write such drivel, and that he knew it was drivel sufficiently well not to publish it. But the man who can edit it doesn't know that, and the critics who review it don't know it either—it was a respectful review that made me buy the rubbish—and as for the people who read it, God alone knows what they think of it. It's a case of

"'Weave a circle round him thrice, And close your eyes in holy dread.'

"You have to shut your eyes pretty tight not to see what bosh it all is—it is all this infernal reverence paid by people, who have no independence of judgment, to great reputations. It reminds me of the barber who used to cut the Duke of Wellington's hair and nails, who made quite a lot of money by selling clippings to put in lockets!"

"But isn't it worth while to see a great poet's inferior jottings, and to grasp how he worked?" said I.

"No," said Father Payne;—"at least it would be worth while to see how he brought off his good strokes, but it isn't worth while seeing how he missed his stroke altogether. This deification business is all unwholesome. In art, in life, in religion, in literature, it's a mistake to worship the saints—you don't make them divine, you only confuse things, and bring down the divine to your own level. The truth—the truth—why can't people see how splendid it is, and that it is one's only chance of getting on! To shut your eyes to the possibility of the great man having a touch of the commonplace, a touch of the ass, even a touch of the knave in him, doesn't ennoble your conception of human nature. If you can only glorify humanity by telling lies about it, and by ruling out all the flaws in it, you end by being a sentimentalist. "See thou do it not … worship God!" that's one of the finest things in the Bible. Of course it is magnificent to see a streak of the divine turning up again and again in human nature—but you have got to wash the dirt to find the diamond. Believe in the beauty behind and in and beyond us all—but don't worship the imperfect thing. This sort of book is like selling the dirt out of which the diamonds have been washed, and which would appear to have gained holiness by contact. I hate to see people stopping short on the symbol and the illustration, instead of passing on to the truth behind—it's idolatry. It's one degree better than worshipping nothing; but the danger of idolatry is that you are content to get no further: and that is what makes idolatry so ingenious a device of the devil, that it persuades people to stop still and not to get on."

"But aren't you making too much out of it?" I said. "At the worst, this is a harmless literary blunder, a foolish bit of hero-worship?"

"Yes," said Father Payne, "in a sense that is true, that these little literary hucksters and pedlars don't do any very great harm—I don't mean that they cause much mischief: but they are the symptom of a grave disease. It is this d——d bookishness which is so unreal. I would like to say a word about it to you, if you have time, instead of doing our work to-day—for if you will allow me to say so, my boy, you have got a touch of it about you—only a touch—and I think if I can show you what I mean, you can throw it off—I have heard you say rather solemn things about books! But I want you to get through that. It reminds me of the talk of ritualists. I have a poor friend who is a very harmless sort of parson—but I have heard him talk of a bit of ceremonial with tears in his eyes. 'It was exquisite, exquisite,' he will say,—'the celebrant wore a cope—a bit, I believe of genuine pre-Reformation work—of course remounted—and the Gospeller and Epistoller had copes so perfectly copied that it would have been hard to say which was the real one. And then Father Wynne holds himself so nobly—such a mixture of humility and pride—a priest ought to exhibit both, I think, at that moment?—and his gestures are so inevitable—so inevitable—that's the only word: there's no sense of rehearsal about it: it is just the supreme act of worship expressing itself in utter abandonment'—He will go on like that for an hour if he can find a great enough goose to listen to him. Now, I don't mean to say that the man hasn't a sense of beauty—he has the real ritual instinct, a perfectly legitimate branch of art. But he doesn't know it's art—he thinks it is religion. He thinks that God is preoccupied with such things; 'a full choral High Mass, at nine o'clock, that's a thing to live and die for,' I have heard him say. Of course it's a sort of idealism, but you must know what you are about, and what you are idealising: and you mustn't think that your kind is better than any other kind of idealising."

He made a pause, and then held out his hand for the book.

"Now here is the same sort of intemperate rapture," he said. "Look at this introduction! 'It is his very self that his poems give, and the sharpest jealousy of his name and fame is enkindled by them. Not to find him there, his passion, endurance, faith, rapture, despair, is merely a confession of want in ourselves.' That's not sane, you know—it's the intoxication of the Corybant! It isn't the man himself we want to fix our eyes upon. He felt these things, no doubt: but we mustn't worship his raptures—we must worship what he worshipped. This sort of besotted agitation is little better than a dancing dervish. The poems are little sparks, struck out from a scrap of humanity by some prodigious and glorious force: but we must worship the force, not the spark: the spark is only an evidence, a system, a symbol if you like, of the force. And then see how utterly the man has lost all sense of proportion—he has spent hours and days in identifying with uncommon patience the exact date of these tepid scraps, and he says he is content to have laid a single stone in the "unamended, unabridged, authentic temple" of his idol's fame. That seems to me simply degrading: and then the portentous ass, whose review I read, says that if the editor had done nothing else, he is sure of an honoured place for ever in the hierarchy of impeccable critics! And what is all this jabber about—a few rhymes which a man made when he was feeling a little off colour, and which he did not think it worth while to publish!

"You mustn't get into this kind of a mess, my boy. The artist mustn't indulge in emotion for the sake of the emotion. 'The weakness of life,' says this pompous ass, 'is that it deviates from art!' You might just as well say that the weakness of food was that it deviated from a well-cooked leg of mutton! Art is just an attempt to disentangle something, to get at one of the big constituents of life. It helps you to see clearly, not to confuse one thing with another, not to be vaguely impressed—the hideous danger of bookishness is that it is one of the blind alleys into which people get. These two fellows, the editor and his critic, have got stuck there: they can't see out: they think their little valley is the end of the world. I expect they are both of them very happy men, as happy as a man who goes to bed comfortably drunk. But, good God, the awakening!" Father Payne relapsed into a long silence, with knitted brows. I tried to start him afresh.

"But you often tell us to be serious, to be deadly earnest, about our work?" I said.

"Oh yes," said Father Payne, "that's another matter. We have to work hard, and put the best of ourselves into what we do. I don't want you to be an amiable dilettante. But I also want you to see past even the best art. You mustn't think that the stained-glass window is the body of heaven in its clearness. The sort of worshippers I object to are the men who shut themselves up in a church, and what with the colour and the music and the incense-smoke, think they are in heaven already. It's an intoxication, all that. I don't get you men to come here to make you drunk, but to get you to loathe drunkenness. God—that's the end of it all! God, who reveals Himself in beauty and kindness, and trustfulness, and charm and interest, and in a hundred pure and fine forces—yet each of them are but avenues which lead up to Him, the streets of the city, full of living water. But it is movement I am in search of—and I would rather be drowned in the depth of the sea than mislead anyone, or help him to sit still. I have made an awful row about it all," said Father Payne, relapsing into a milder mood—"But you will forgive me, I know. I can't bear to see these worthy men blocking the way with their unassailable, unabridged, authentic editions. They are like barbed-wire entanglements: and the worst of it is that, in spite of all their holy air of triumph, they enjoy few things more than tripping each other up! They condemn each other to eternal perdition for misplacing a date or misspelling a name. It's like getting into a bed of nettles to get in among these little hierophants. They remind me of the bishops at some ancient Church Council or other who tore the clothes off two right reverend consultants, and literally pulled them limb from limb in the name of Christ. That's the end of these holy raptures, my boy! They unchain the beast within."

LXII

OF CONSISTENCY

There had been a little vague talk about politics, and someone had quoted a definition of a true Liberal as a man who, if he had only to press a button in a dark room to annihilate all cranks, faddists, political quacks, extremists, propagandists, and nostrum-mongers, would not dream of doing so, as a matter of conscience, on the ground that everyone has a right to hold his own beliefs and to persuade the world to accept them if he can. Father Payne laughed at this; but Rose, who had been nettled, I fancy, at a lack of deference for his political experience, his father being a Unionist M.P., said loudly, "Hear, hear! that's the only sort of Liberal whom I respect."

A look of sudden anger passed over Father Payne's face—unmistakable and uncompromising wrath. "Come, Rose," he said, "this isn't a political meeting; and even if it were, why proclaim yourself as accepting a definition which is almost within the comprehension of a chimpanzee?"

There was a faint laugh at this, but everyone had an uncomfortable sense of thunder in the air. Rose got rather white, and his nostrils expanded. "I'm sorry I put it in that way," he said rather frostily, "if you object. But I mean it, I think. I don't like diluted Liberalism."

"Yes, but you beg the question by calling it diluted," said Father Payne. "If anyone had said that the only Tory he respected was a man who if he could press a button in a still darker room, and by doing so bring it to pass that all institutions on the face of the earth would remain immutably fixed for ever and ever, and would feel himself bound conscientiously to do it, you wouldn't accept that as a definition of Conservatism? These things are not hard and fast matters of principle—they are only tendencies. Toryism is an instinct to trust custom and authority, Liberalism is an instinct to welcome development and change. All that the definition of Liberalism which was quoted means is, that the Liberal has a deep respect for freedom of opinion; and all that my grotesque definition of Toryism means is that a Tory prefers to trust a fixed tradition. But, of course, both want a settled Government, and both have to recognise that the world and its conditions change. The Tory says, 'Look before you leap'; the Liberal says, 'Leap before you look.' But it is really all a matter of infinite gradations, and what differentiates people is merely their idea of the pace at which things can go and ought to go. Why should you say that you can only respect a man who wants to go at sixty miles an hour, any more than I should say I can only respect a man who wants to remain absolutely still?"

Rose had by this time recovered his temper, and said, "It was rather crude, I admit. But what I meant was that if a man feels that all opinions are of equal value, he must give full weight to all opinions. The doctrinaire Liberal seems to me to be just as much inclined to tyrannise as the doctrinaire Tory, and to use his authority on the side of suppression when it is convenient to do so, and against all his own principles."

"I don't think that is quite fair," said Father Payne. "You must have a working system; you can't try everyone's experiments. All that the Liberal says is, 'Persuade us if you can.' Pure Liberalism would be anarchy, just as pure Toryism would be tyranny. Both are intolerable. But just as the Liberal has to compromise and say, 'This may not be the ultimate theory of the Government, but meanwhile the world has to be governed,' so the Tory has to compromise, if a large majority of the people say, 'We will not be governed by a minority for their interest; we will be governed for our own.' The parliamentary vote is just a way of avoiding civil war; you can't always resort to force, so you resort to arbitration. But why the Liberal position is on the whole the stronger is because it says frankly, 'If you Tories can persuade the nation to ask you to govern it, we will obey you.' The weakness of the Tory position is that it has to make exactly the same concessions, while it claims to be inspired by a divine sort of knowledge as to what is just and right. I personally mistrust all intuitions which lead to tyranny. Of course, the weakness of the whole affair is that the man who believes in democracy has to assume that all have equal rights; that would be fair enough if all people were born equal in character and ability, and influence and wealth. But that isn't the case; and so the Liberal says, 'Democracy is a bad system perhaps, but it is the only system,' and it is fairer to maintain that everyone who gets into the world has as good a right as anyone else to be there, than it is to say, 'Some people have a right to manage the world and some have only a duty to obey.' Both represent a side of the truth, but neither represents the whole truth. At worst Liberalism is a combination of the weak against the strong, and Toryism a combination of the strong against the weak! I personally wish the weak to have a chance; but what we all really desire is to be governed by the wise and good, and my hope for the world is that the quality of it is improving. I want the weak to become sensible and self-restrained, and the strong to become unselfish and disinterested. It is generosity that I want to see increase—it is the finest of all qualities—the desire, I mean to serve others, to admire, to sympathise, to share, to rejoice, in other people's happiness. That would solve all our difficulties."

"Yes, of course," said Rose. "But I would like to go back again, and say that what I was praising was consistency."

"But there is no such thing," said Father Payne, "except in combination with entire irrationality. One can't say at any time of one's life, 'I know everything worth knowing. I am in a position to form a final judgment.' You can say, 'I will shut off all fresh light from my mind, and I will consider no further evidence,' but that isn't a thing to respect! I begin to suspect, Rose, that why you praised the uncompromising Liberal, as you call him, is because he is the only kind of opponent who isn't dangerous. A man who takes up such a position as I have described is practically insane. He has a fixed idea, which neither argument nor evidence can alter. The uncompromising man of fixed opinions, whatever those opinions may be, is almost the only man I do not respect, because he is really the only inconsistent person. He says, 'I have formed an opinion which is based on experience, and I shall not alter it.' That is tantamount to saying that you have done with experience; it is a claim to have attained infallibility through fallible faculties. Where is the dignity of that? It's just a deification of stupidity and stubbornness and insolence and complacency."

"But you must take your stand on some certainties," said Rose.

"The fewer the better," said Father Payne. "One may learn to discriminate between things, and to observe differences; but that is very different from saying that you have got at the ultimate essence of any one thing. I am all for clearness—we ought not to confuse things with each other, or use the same names for different things; but I'm all against claiming absolute and impeccable knowledge. It may be a comfortable system for a man who doesn't want to be bothered; but he is only deferring the bother—he is like a man who stays in bed because he doesn't like dressing. But it isn't a solution to stay in bed—it is only suspending the solution. No, we mustn't have any regard for human consistency—it's a very paltry attribute; it's the opposite of anthropomorphism. That makes out God to be in the image of man, but consistency claims for man the privilege of God. And that isn't wholesome, you know, either for a man or his friends!"

"I give up," said Rose: "can nothing be logical?"

"Hardly anything," said Father Payne, "except logic itself. You have to coin logical ideas into counters to play with. No two things, for instance, can ever be absolutely equal, except imaginary equalities—and that's the mischief of logic applied to life, that it presumes an exact valuation of the ideas it works with, when no two people's valuations of the same idea are identical, and even one person's valuation varies from time to time; and logic breeds a phantom sort of consistency which only exists in the imagination. You know the story of how Smith and Jones were arguing, and Smith said, 'Brown will agree with me': 'Yes,' said Jones triumphantly, 'he will, but for my reasons!'"

LXIII

OF WRENS AND LILIES

It was the first warm and sunny day, after a cold and cloudy spring: I took a long and leisurely walk with Father Payne down a valley among woods, of which Father Payne was very fond. "Almost precipitous for Northamptonshire, eh?" he used to say. I was very full of a book I had been reading, but I could not get him to talk. He made vague and foolish replies, and said several times, "I shall have to think that over, you know," which was, I well knew, a polite intimation that he was not in a mood for talk. But I persisted, and at last he said, "Hang it, you know, I'm not attending—I'm very sorry—it isn't your fault—but there's such a lot going on everywhere." He quoted a verse of The Shropshire Lad, of which he was very fond:

"'Now, of my threescore years and ten, Twenty will not come again, And take from seventy springs a score, It only leaves me fifty more'";

adding, "That's the only instance I know of a subtraction sum made into perfect poetry—but it's the other way round, worse luck!

"And add to seventy springs a score, That only leaves me forty more!"

The birds were singing very sweetly in the copses as we passed—"That isn't art, I believe," said Father Payne. "It's only the reproductive instinct, I am told! I wish it took such an artistic form in my beloved brothers in the Lord! There," he added, stopping and speaking in a low tone; "don't move—there's a cock-wren singing his love-song—you can see his wings quivering." There followed a little tremolo, with four or five emphatic notes for a finish. "Now, if you listen, you'll hear the next wren answer him!" said Father Payne. In a moment the same little song came like an echo from a bush a few yards away. "The wren sings in stricter time than any bird but the cuckoo," said Father Payne—"four quavers to a bar. That's very important! Those two ridiculous creatures will go on doing that half the morning. They are so excited that they build sham nests, you know, about now—quite useless piles of twigs and moss, not intended for eggs, just to show what they can do. But that little song! It has all the passion of the old chivalry in it—it is only to say, 'My Dulcinea is prettier, sweeter, brighter-eyed than yours!' and the other says, 'You wait till I can get at you, and then we will see!' If they were two old knights, they would fight to the death over it, till the world had lost a brave man, and one of the Dulcineas was a hapless widow, and nothing proved. That's the sort of thing that men admire, full of fine sentiment. Why can't we leave each other alone? Why does loving one person make you want to fight another? Just look at that wren: he's as full of joy and pride as he can hold: look at the angle at which he holds his tail: he feels the lord of the world, sure enough!"

We walked on, and I asked no more questions. "There's a bit of colour," said Father Payne, pointing to a bare wood, all carpeted with green blades. "That's pure emerald, like the seventh foundation of the city. Now, if I ask you, who are a bit of a poet, what those leaves are, what do you say? You say hyacinth or daffodil, or perhaps lily-of-the-valley. But what does the simple botanist—that's me—say? Garlic, my boy, and nothing else! and you had better not walk musing there, or you will come in smelling of spring onions, like a greengrocer's shop. So much for poetry! It's the loveliest green in creation, and it has a pretty flower too—but it's never once mentioned in English poetry, so far as I know. And yet Keats had the face to say that Beauty was Truth and Truth Beauty! That's the way we play the game."

We rambled on, and passed a pleasant old stone-built cottage in the wood, with a tiny garden. "It's a curious thing," said Father Payne, "but in the spring I always want to live in all the houses I see. It's the nesting instinct, no doubt. I think I could be very happy here, for instance—much happier than in my absurd big house, with all you fellows about. Why did I ever start it? I ought to have had more sense. I want a cottage like this, and a little garden to work in, and a few books. I would live on bread and cold bacon and cheese and cabbages, with a hive of my own honey. I should get wise and silent, and not run on like this."

A dog came out of the cottage garden, and followed us a little way. "Do we belong to your party, sir, or do you belong to ours?" said Father Payne. The dog put his head on one side, and wagged his tail. "It appears I have the pleasure of your acquaintance!" said Father Payne to him. "Very well, you can set us on our way if you like!" The dog gave a short shrill bark, and trotted along with us. When we got to the end of the lane, where it turned into the high road, Father Payne said to the dog, "Now, sir, I expect that's all the time you can spare this morning? You must go back and guard the house, and be a faithful dog. Duty first!" The dog looked mournfully at us, and wagged his tail, but did not attempt to come farther. He watched us for a little longer, but as we did not invite him to come on, he presently turned round and trotted off home. "Now, that's the sort of case where I feel sentimental," said Father Payne. "It's the sham sort of pathos. I hate to see anyone disappointed. A person offering flowers in the street for sale, and people not buying them—the men in London showing off little toys by the pavement, which nobody wants—I can't bear that. It makes me feel absurdly wretched to see anyone hoping to please, and not pleasing. And if the people who do it look old and frail and unhappy, I'm capable of buying the whole stock. The great uncomforted! It's silly, of course, and there is nothing in the world so silly as useless emotion! It is so easy to overflow with cheap benevolence, but the first step towards the joyful wisdom is to be afraid of the emotion that costs you nothing: but we won't be metaphysical to-day!"

Presently Father Payne insisted on sitting down in a sheltered place. He flung his hat off, and sate there, looking round him with a smile, his arms clasped round his big knees. "Well," he said, "it's a jolly place, the old world, to be sure! Plenty of nasty and ugly things, I suppose, going on in corners; but if you look round, they are only a small percentage of the happy things. They don't force themselves upon the eye and ear, the beastly things: and it's a stupid and faithless mistake to fix the imagination and the reason too much upon them. We are all of us in a tight place occasionally, and we have to meet it as best we can. But I don't think we do it any better by anticipating it beforehand. What is more, no one can really help us or deliver us: we can be made a little more comfortable, and that's all, by what they call cooling drinks, and flowers in a vase by the bedside. And it's a bad thing to get the misery of the world in a vague way on our nerves. That's the useless emotion. We have got certain quite definite things to do for other people in our own circle, and we are bound to do them; we mustn't shirk them, and we mustn't shirk our own troubles, though the less we bother about them the better. I am not at all sure that the curse of the newspapers is not that they collect all the evils of the world into a hideous posy, and thrust it under our nose. They don't collect the fine, simple, wholesome things. Now you and I are better employed to-day in being agreeable to each other—at least you are being kind to me, even though I can't talk about that book—and in looking at the delightful things going on everywhere—just think of all the happiness in the world to-day, symbolised by that ridiculous wren!—we are better employed, I say, than if we were extending the commerce of England, or planning how to make war, or scolding people in sermons about their fatal indifference to the things that belong to their peace. Men and women must find and make their own peace, and we are doing both to-day. That awful vague sense of responsibility, that desire to interfere, that wish that everyone else should do uncomplaining what we think to be their duty—that's all my eye! It is the kindly, eager, wholesome life which affects the world, wherever it is lived: and that is the best which most of us can do. We can't be always fighting. Even the toughest old veteran soldier—how many hours of his life has he spent actually under fire? No, I'm not forgetting the workers either: but you need not tell me that they are all sick at heart because they are not dawdling in a country lane. It would bore them to death, and they can live a very happy life without it. That's the false pathos again—to think that everyone who can't do as we like must be miserable. And anyhow, I have done my twenty-five years on the treadmill, and I am not going to pretend it was noble work, because it wasn't. It was useless and disgraceful drudgery, most of it!"