Appearances Part 1

Appearances.

by Goldsworthy Lowes d.i.c.kinson.

PREFACE

The articles included in this book have already appeared, those from the East in the _Manchester Guardian_, those from America in the _English Review_. In reprinting them, I have chosen a t.i.tle which may serve also as an apology. What I offer is not Reality; but appearances to me. From such appearances perhaps, in time, Reality may be constructed. I claim only to make my contribution. I do so because the new contact between East and West is perhaps the most important fact of our age; and the problems of action and thought which it creates can only be solved as each civilisation tries to understand the others, and, by so doing, better to understand itself. These articles represent at any rate a good will to understand; and they may, I hope, for that reason throw one gleam of light on the darkness.

For the opportunity of travelling in the East I am indebted to the munificence of Mr. Albert Kahn of Paris, who has founded what are known in this country as the Albert Kahn Travelling Fellowships.[1] The existence of this endowment is perhaps not as widely known as it should be. And if this volume should be the occasion of leading others to take advantage of the founder's generosity it will not have been written in vain.

I have hesitated long before deciding to republish the letters on America. They were written in 1909, before the election of President Wilson, and all that led up to and is implied in that event. It was not, however, the fact that, so far, they are out of date, that caused me to hesitate. For they deal only incidentally with current politics, and whatever value they may have is as a commentary on phases of American civilisation which are of more than transitory significance. Much has happened in the United States during the last few years which is of great interest and importance. The conflict between democracy and plutocracy has become more conscious and more acute; there have been important developments in the labour movement; and capital has been so "hara.s.sed" by legislation that it may, for the moment, seem odd to capitalists to find America called "the paradise of Plutocracy." No doubt the American public has awakened to its situation since 1909. But such awakenings take a long time to transform the character of a civilisation and all that has occurred serves only to confirm the contention in the text that in the new world the same situation is arising that confronts the old one.

What made me hesitate was something more important than the date at which the letters were written. There is in them a note of exasperation which I would have wished to remove if I could. But I could not, without a complete rewriting, by which, even if it were possible to me, more would have been lost than gained. It is this note of exasperation which has induced me hitherto to keep the letters back, in spite of requests to the contrary from American friends and publishers. But the opportunity of adding them as a pendant to letters from the East, where they fall naturally into their place as a complement and a contrast, has finally overcome my scruples; the more so, as much that is said of America is as typical of all the West, as it is foreign to all the East.

That this Western civilisation, against which I have so much to say, is nevertheless the civilisation in which I would choose to live, in which I believe, and about which all my hopes centre, I have endeavoured to make clear in the concluding essay. And my readers, I hope, if any of them persevere to the end, will feel that they have been listening, after all, to the voice of a friend, even if the friend be of that disagreeable kind called "candid."

Footnotes:

[Footnote 1: These Fellowships, each of the value of 660, were established to enable the persons appointed to them to travel round the world. The Trust is administered at the University of London, and full information regarding it can be obtained from the Princ.i.p.al, Sir Henry Miers, F.R.S., who is Honorary Secretary to the Trustees.]

PART I

INDIA

I

IN THE RED SEA

"But why do you do it?" said the Frenchman. From the saloon above came a sound of singing, and I recognised a well-known hymn. The sun was blazing on a foam-flecked sea; a range of islands lifted red rocks into the glare; the wind blew fresh; and, from above,

"Nothing in my hand I bring, Simply to Thy cross I cling."

Male voices were singing; voices whose owners, beyond a doubt, had no idea of clinging to anything. Female voices, too, of clingers, perhaps, but hardly to a cross. "Why do you do it?"--I began to explain. "For the same reason that we play deck-quoits and shuffle-board; for the same reason that we dress for dinner. It's the system." "The system?" "Yes.

What I call Anglicanism. It's a form of idealism. It consists in doing the proper thing." "But why should the proper thing be done?" "That question ought not to be asked. Anglicanism is an idealistic creed. It is anti-utilitarian and anti-rational. It does not ask questions; it has faith. The proper thing is the proper thing, and because it is the proper thing it is done." "At least," he said, "you do not pretend that this is religion?" "No. It has nothing to do with religion. But neither is it, as you too simply suppose, hypocrisy. Hypocrisy implies that you know what religion is, and counterfeit it. But these people do not know, and they are not counterfeiting. When they go to church they are not thinking of religion. They are thinking of the social system. The officers and civilians singing up there first learned to sing in the village church. They walked to the church from the great house; the great house stood in its park; the park was enclosed by the estate; and the estate was surrounded by other estates. The service in the village church stood for all that. And the service in the saloon stands for it still. At bottom, what that hymn means is not that these men are Christians, but that they are carrying England to India, to Burma, to China." "It is a funny thing," the Frenchman mused, "to carry to 300 million Hindus and Mahometans, and 400 million Confucians, Buddhists, and devil-worshippers. What do they do with it when they get there?"

"They plant it down in little oases all over the country, and live in it. It is the sh.e.l.l that protects them in those oceans of impropriety.

And from that sh.e.l.l they govern the world." "But how can they govern what they can't even see?" "They govern all the better. If once they could see, they would be lost. Doubt would enter in. And it is the virtue of the Englishman that he never doubts. That is what the system does for him."

At this moment a voice was borne down the breeze. It was that of my travelling companion, and it appeared, as he approached, that he was discoursing to the captain on the merits of Dostoievsky's novels. He is no respecter of persons; he imposes his own conversation; and the captain, though obviously puzzled, was polite. "Russians may be like that," he was remarking as he pa.s.sed, "but Englishmen aren't." "No,"

said my friend, "but don't you wish they were?" "I do _not_," said the captain with conviction. I looked at the Frenchman. "There," I said, "behold the system." "But your friend?" "Ah, but he, like myself, is a pariah. Have you not observed? They are quite polite. They have even a kind of respect--such as our public school boys have--for anyone who is queer, if only he is queer enough. But we don't "belong," and they know it. We are outside the system. At bottom we are dangerous, like foreigners. And they don't quite approve of our being let loose in India." "Besides, you talk to the Indians." "Yes, we talk to the Indians." "And that is contrary to the system?" "Yes, on board the boat; it's all very well while you're still in England." "A strange system--to perpetuate between rulers and ruled an impa.s.sable gulf!" "Yes. But, as Mr. Podsnap remarked, 'so it is.'"

We had penetrated to the bows of the ship and hung looking over.

Suddenly, just under the surf, there was an emerald gleam; another; then a leap and a dive; a leap and a dive again. A pair of porpoises were playing round the bows with the ease, the spontaneity, the beauty of perfect and happy life. As we watched them the same mood grew in us till it forced expression. And "Oh," I said, "the ship's a prison!" "No,"

said the Frenchman, "it's the system."

II

AJANTA

A dusty road running through an avenue across the great plateau of the Deccan; scanty crops of maize and cotton; here and there low hills, their reddish soil spa.r.s.ely clothed with trees; to the north, a receding line of mountains; elsewhere infinite s.p.a.ce and blazing light. Our "tonga," its pair of wheels and its white awning rolling and jolting behind two good horses, pa.s.ses long lines of bullock-carts. Indians, walking beside them with their inimitable gait, make exquisite gestures of abjection to the clumsy white Sahibs huddled uncomfortably on the back seat. Their robes of vivid colour, always harmoniously blent, leave bare the slender brown legs and often the breast and back. Children stark naked ride on their mothers' hips or their fathers' shoulder. Now and again the oxen are unyoked at a dribble of water, and a party rests and eats in the shade. Otherwise it is one long march with bare feet over the burning soil.

We are approaching a market. The mud walls of a village appear. And outside, by a stream shrunk now into muddy pools, shimmers and wimmers a many-coloured crowd, buzzing among their waggons and awnings and improvised stalls. We ford the shallow stream, where women are washing clothes, cleaning their teeth, and drinking from the same water, and pa.s.s among the bags of corn, the sugar-cane, and sweetmeats, saluted gravely but unsolicited.

Then on again for hours, the road now solitary, till as day closes we reach Fardapur. A cl.u.s.ter of mud-walled compounds and beehive huts lies about a fortified enclosure, where the children sprawl and scream, and a Brahmin intones to silent auditors. Outside they are drawing water from the puddles of the stream. And gradually over the low hills and the stretches of yellow gra.s.s the after-glow spreads a transfiguring light.

Out of a rosy flush the evening star begins to shine; the crickets cry; a fresh breeze blows; and another pitiless day drops into oblivion.

Next day, at dawn, we walk the four miles to the famous caves, guided by a boy who wears the Nizam's livery, and explains to us, in a language we do not know, but with perfect lucidity, that it is to him, and no one else, that backsheesh is due. He sings s.n.a.t.c.hes of music as old and strange as the hills; picks us b.a.l.l.s of cotton, and p.r.i.c.kly pear; and once stops to point to the fresh tracks of a panther. We are in the winding gorge of a watercourse; and presently, at a turn, in a semicircle facing south, we see in the cliff the long line of caves. As we enter the first an intolerable odour meets us, and a flight of bats explains the cause. Gradually our eyes accustom themselves to the light, and we become conscious of a square hall, the flat roof resting on squat pillars elaborately carved, fragments of painting on the walls and ceiling, narrow slits opening into dark cells, and opposite the entrance, set back in a shrine, a colossal Buddha, the light falling full on the solemn face, the upturned feet, the expository hands. This is a monastery, and most of the caves are on the same plan; but one or two are long halls, presumably for worship, with barrel-vaulted roofs, and at the end a great solid globe on a pedestal.

Of the art of these caves I will not speak. What little can be seen of the painting--and only ill-lighted fragments remain--is full of tenderness, refinement, and grace; no touch of drama; no hint of pa.s.sion. The sculpture, stripped of its stucco surface, is rude but often impressive. But what impresses most is not the art but the religion of the place. In this terrible country, where the great forces of nature, drought and famine and pestilence, the intolerable sun, the intolerable rain, and the exuberance of life and death, have made of mankind a mere pa.s.sive horde cowering before inscrutable Powers--here, more than anywhere, men were bound under a yoke of observance and ritual to the G.o.ds they had fashioned and the priests who interpreted their will. Then came the Deliverer to set them free not _for_ but _from_ life, teaching them how to escape from that worst of all evils, rebirth again and again into a world of infinite suffering, unguided by any reason to any good end. "There is no G.o.d," said this strange master, "there is no soul; but there is life after death, life here in this h.e.l.l, unless you will learn to deliver yourselves by annihilating desire." They listened; they built monasteries; they meditated; and now and again, here, perhaps, in these caves, one or other attained enlightenment. But the cloud of Hinduism, lifted for a moment, rolled back heavier than ever. The older G.o.ds were seated too firmly on their thrones. Shiva--creator, preserver, destroyer--expelled the Buddha. And that pa.s.sive figure, sublime in its power of mind, sits for ever alone in the land of his birth, exiled from light, in a cloud of clinging bats.

But outside proceeds the great pageant of day and night, and the patient, beautiful people labour without hope, while universal nature, symbolised by Shiva's foot, presses heavily on their heads and forbids them the stature of man. Only the white man here, bustling, ungainly, aggressive, retains his freedom and acts rather than suffers. One understands at last the full meaning of the word "environment." Because of this sun, because of this soil, because of their vast numbers, these people are pa.s.sive, religious, fatalistic. Because of our cold and rain in the north, our fresh springs and summers, we are men of action, of science, of no reflection. The seed is the same, but according to the soil it brings forth differently. Here the patience, the beauty, the abjection before the Devilish-Divine; there the defiance, the cult of the proud self. And these things have met. To what result?

III

ULSTER IN INDIA

"Are you a Home Ruler?" "Yes. Are you?" Instantly a torrent of protest.

He was a Mahometan, eminent in law and politics; clever, fluent, forensic, with a pa.s.sion for hearing himself talk, and addressing one always as if one were a public meeting. He approached his face close to mine, gradually backing me into the wall. And I realised the full meaning of Carlyle's dictum "to be a mere pa.s.sive bucket to be pumped into can be agreeable to no human being."

It was not, naturally, the Irish question for its own sake that interested him. But he took it as a type of the Indian question. Here, too, he maintained, there is an Ulster, the Mahometan community. Here, too, there are Nationalists, the Hindus. Here, too, a "loyal" minority, protected by a beneficent and impartial Imperial Government. Here, too, a majority of "rebels" bent on throwing off that Government in order that they may oppress the minority. Here, too, an ideal of independence hypocritically masked under the phrase "self-government." "It is a law of political science that where there are two minorities they should stand together against the majority. The Hindus want to get rid of you, as they want to get rid of us. And for that reason alone, if there were not a thousand others"--there were, he hinted, but, rhetorically, he "pa.s.sed them over in silence"--"for that reason alone I am loyal to the British raj." It had never occurred to me to doubt it. But I questioned, when I got a moment's breathing s.p.a.ce, whether really the Hindu community deliberately nourished this dark conspiracy. He had no doubt, so far as the leaders were concerned; and he mistrusted the "moderates"

more than the extremists, because they were cleverer. He "multiplied examples"--it was his phrase. The movement for primary education, for example. It had nothing to do with education. It was a plot to teach the ma.s.ses Hindi, in order that they might be swept into the anti-British, anti-Mahometan current. As to minor matters, no Hindu had ever voted for a Mahometan, no Hindu barrister ever sent a client to a Mahometan colleague. Whereas in all these matters, one was led to infer, Mahometans were conciliation and tolerance itself. I knew that the speaker himself had secured the election of Mahometans to all the seats in the Council. But I refrained from referring to the matter. Then there was caste. A Hindu will not eat with a Mahometan, and this was taken as a personal insult. I suggested that the English were equally boycotted; but that we regarded the boycott as a religious obligation, not as a social stigma. But, like the Irish Ulstermen, he was not there to listen to argument. He rolled on like a river. None of us could escape. He detected the first signs of straying, and beckoned us back to the flock.

"Mr. Audubon, this is important." "Mr. Coryat, you must listen to this."

Coryat, at last, grew restive, and remarked rather tartly that no doubt there was friction between the two communities, but that the worst way to deal with it was by recrimination. He agreed; with tears in his eyes he agreed. There was nothing he had not done, no advance he had not made, to endeavour to bridge the gulf. All in vain! Never were such obstinate fellows as these Hindus. And he proceeded once more to "multiply examples." As we said "Good-bye" in the small hours of the morning he pressed into our hands copies of his speeches and addresses.

And we left him perorating on the steps of the hotel.

A painfully acquired mistrust of generalisation prevents me from saying that this is _the_ Mahometan point of view. Indeed, I have reason to know that it is not. But it is a Mahometan point of view in one province. And it was endorsed, more soberly, by less rhetorical members of the community. Some twenty-five years ago, they say, Mahometans woke to the fact that they were dropping behind in the race for influence and power. They started a campaign of education and organisation. At every point they found themselves thwarted; and always, behind the obstacle, lurked a Hindu. Lord Morley's reform of the Councils, intended to unite all sections, had had the opposite effect. Nothing but the separate electorates had saved Mahometans from political extinction. And precisely because they desired that extinction Hindus desired mixed electorates. The elections to the Councils have exasperated the antagonism between the two communities. And an enemy might accuse the Government of being actuated, in that reform, by the Machiavellian maxim "Divide et impera."

What the Hindus have to say to all this I have not had an opportunity of learning. But they too, I conceive, can "multiply examples" for their side. To a philosophic observer two reflections suggest themselves. One, that representative government can only work when there is real give and take between the contending parties. The other, that to most men, and most nations, religion means nothing more than antagonism to some other religion. Witness Ulster in Ireland; and witness, equally, Ulster in India.

IV

ANGLO-INDIA