that the English like their King. But he does not grasp that while it is
base to worship a King, it is almost noble to worship a powerless King.
The impotence of the Hanoverian Sovereigns has raised the English loyal
subject almost to the chivalry and dignity of a Jacobite. The Frenchman
sees that the English servant is respectful: he does not realise that he
is also disrespectful; that there is an English legend of the humorous
and faithful servant, who is as much a personality as his master; the
Caleb Balderstone, the Sam Weller. He sees that the English do admire a
nobleman; he does not allow for the fact that they admire a nobleman
most when he does not behave like one. They like a noble to be
unconscious and amiable: the slave may be humble, but the master must
not be proud. The master is Life, as they would like to enjoy it; and
among the joys they desire in him there is none which they desire more
sincerely than that of generosity, of throwing money about among
mankind, or, to use the noble mediaeval word, largesse--the joy of
largeness. That is why a cabman tells you are no gentleman if you
give him his correct fare. Not only his pocket, but his soul is hurt.
You have wounded his ideal. You have defaced his vision of the perfect
aristocrat. All this is really very subtle and elusive; it is very
difficult to separate what is mere slavishness from what is a sort of
vicarious nobility in the English love of a lord. And no Frenchman
could easily grasp it at all. He would think it was mere slavishness;
and if he liked it, he would be a slave. So every Englishman must (at
first) feel French candour to be mere brutality. And if he likes it, he
is a brute. These national merits must not be understood so easily. It
requires long years of plenitude and quiet, the slow growth of great
parks, the seasoning of oaken beams, the dark enrichment of red wine in
cellars and in inns, all the leisure and the life of England through
many centuries, to produce at last the generous and genial fruit of
English snobbishness. And it requires battery and barricade, songs in
the streets, and ragged men dead for an idea, to produce and justify the
terrible flower of French indecency.
When I was in Paris a short time ago, I went with an English friend of
mine to an extremely brilliant and rapid succession of French plays,
each occupying about twenty minutes. They were all astonishingly
effective; but there was one of them which was so effective that my
friend and I fought about it outside, and had almost to be separated by
the police. It was intended to indicate how men really behaved in a
wreck or naval disaster, how they break down, how they scream, how they
fight each other without object and in a mere hatred of everything. And
then there was added, with all that horrible irony which Voltaire began,
a scene in which a great statesman made a speech over their bodies,
saying that they were all heroes and had died in a fraternal embrace. My
friend and I came out of this theatre, and as he had lived long in
Paris, he said, like a Frenchman: "What admirable artistic arrangement!
Is it not exquisite?" "No," I replied, assuming as far as possible the
traditional attitude of John Bull in the pictures in _Punch_--"No, it is
not exquisite. Perhaps it is unmeaning; if it is unmeaning I do not
mind. But if it has a meaning I know what the meaning is; it is that
under all their pageant of chivalry men are not only beasts, but even
hunted beasts. I do not know much of humanity, especially when humanity
talks in French. But I know when a thing is meant to uplift the human
soul, and when it is meant to depress it. I know that 'Cyrano de
Bergerac' (where the actors talked even quicker) was meant to encourage
man. And I know that this was meant to discourage him." "These
sentimental and moral views of art," began my friend, but I broke into
his words as a light broke into my mind. "Let me say to you," I said,
"what Jaures said to Liebknecht at the Socialist Conference: 'You have
not died on the barricades'. You are an Englishman, as I am, and you
ought to be as amiable as I am. These people have some right to be
terrible in art, for they have been terrible in politics. They may
endure mock tortures on the stage; they have seen real tortures in the
streets. They have been hurt for the idea of Democracy. They have been
hurt for the idea of Catholicism. It is not so utterly unnatural to them