On Nothing & Kindred Subjects Part 7

But that's all by the way. Let them debate that will, for it leads nowhere unless indeed there be sharp revelation, positive declaration and very certain affirmation to go upon by way of Basis or First Principle whence to deduce some sure conclusion and irrefragable truth; for thus the intellect walks, as it were, along a high road, whereas by all other ways it is lurching and stumbling and boggling and tumbling in I know not what mists and brambles of the great bare, murky twilight and marshy hillside of philosophy, where I also wandered when I was a fool and unoccupied and lacking exercise for the mind, but from whence, by the grace of St. Anthony of Miranella and other patrons of mine, I have very happily extricated myself. And here I am in the parlour of the "Bugle" at Yarmouth, by a Christian fire, having but lately come off the sea and writing this for the edification and confirmation of honest souls.

What, then, of the question, _Quid de quuerendo? Quantum?

Qualiter? Ubi? Cur? Quid? Quando? Quomodo? Quum? Sive an non?_

Ah! There you have it. For note you, all these interrogative categories must be met, faced, resolved and answered exactly--or you have no more knowledge of the matter than the _Times_ has of economics or the King of the Belgians of thorough-Ba.s.s. Yea, if you miss, overlook, neglect, or shirk by reason of fatigue or indolence, so much as one t.i.ttle of these several aspects of a question you might as well leave it altogether alone and give up a.n.a.lysis for selling stock, as did the Professor of Verbalism in the University of Adelaide to the vast solace and enrichment of his family.

For by the neglect of but one of these final and fundamental approaches to the full knowledge of a question the world has been irreparably, irretrievably and permanently robbed of the certain reply to, and left ever in the most disastrous doubt upon, this most important and necessary matter--namely, _whether real existence can be predicated of matter._

For Anaxagoras of Syracuse, that was tutor to the Tyrant Machion, being in search upon this question for a matter of seventy-two years, four months, three days and a few odd hours and minutes, did, in extreme old age, as he was walking by the sh.o.r.e of the sea, hit, as it were in a flash, upon six of the seven answers, and was able in one moment, after so much delay and vexatious argument for and against with himself, to resolve the problem upon the points of _how, why, when, where, how much_, and _in what_, matter might or might not be real, and was upon the very nick of settling the last little point--namely, _sive an non_ (that is, whether it _were_ real or no)--when, as luck would have it, or rather, as his own beastly appet.i.te and senile greed would have it, he broke off sharp at hearing the dinner-gong or bell, or horn, or whatever it was--for upon these matters the King was indifferent (_de minimis non curat rex_), and so am I--and was poisoned even as he sat at table by the agents of Pyrrhus.

By this accident, by this mere failure upon _one_ of the Seven Answers, it has been since that day never properly decided whether or no this true existence was or was not predicable of matter; and some believing matter to be there have treated it pompously and given it reverence and adored it in a thousand merry ways, but others being confident it was not there have starved and fallen off edges and banged their heads against corners and come plump against high walls; nor can either party convince the other, nor can the doubts of either be laid to rest, nor shall it from now to the Day of Doom be established whether there is a Matter or is none; though many learned men have given up their lives to it, including Professor Britton, who so despaired of an issue that he drowned himself in the Cam only last Wednesday. But what care I for him or any other Don?

So there we are and an answer must be found, but upon my soul I forget to what it hangs, though I know well there was some question propounded at the beginning of this for which I cared a trifle at the time of asking it and you I hope not at all. Let it go the way of all questions, I beg of you, for I am very little inclined to seek and hunt through all the heap that I have been tearing through this last hour with Pegasus curvetting and prancing and flapping his wings to the danger of my seat and of the cities and fields below me.

Come, come, there's enough for one bout, and too much for some. No good ever came of argument and dialectic, for these breed only angry gestures and gusty disputes (_de gustibus non disputandum_) and the ruin of friendships and the very fruitful pullulation of Dictionaries, textbooks and wicked men, not to speak of Intellectuals, Newspapers, Libraries, Debating-clubs, bankruptcies, madness, _Pet.i.tiones elenchi_ and ills innumerable.

I say live and let live; and now I think of it there was something at the beginning and t.i.tle of this that dealt with a warning to ward you off a danger of some kind that terrified me not a little when I sat down to write, and that was, if I remember right, that a friend had told me how he had read in a book that the d.a.m.nable Brute CAPITAL was about to swallow us all up and make slaves of us and that there was no way out of it, seeing that it was fixed, settled and grounded in economics, not to speak of the procession of the Equinox, the Horoscope of Trimegistus, and _Old Moore's Almanack_. Oh! Run, Run! The Rich are upon us! Help! Their hot breath is on our necks! What jaws! What jaws!

Well, what must be must be, and what will be will be, and if the Rich are upon us with great open jaws and having power to enslave all by the very fatal process of unalterable laws and at the bidding of Blind Fate as she is expounded by her prophets who live on milk and newspapers and do woundily talk Jew Socialism all day long; yet is it proved by the same intellectual cert.i.tude and irrefragable method that we shall not be caught before the year 1938 at the earliest and with luck we may run ten years more: why then let us make the best of the time we have, and sail, ride, travel, write, drink, sing and all be friends together; and do you go about doing good to the utmost of your power, as I heartily hope you will, though from your faces I doubt it hugely. A blessing I wish you all.

ON A RICH MAN WHO SUFFERED

One cannot do a greater service now, when a dangerous confusion of thought threatens us with an estrangement of cla.s.ses, than to distinguish in all we write between Capitalism--the result of a blind economic development--and the persons and motives of those who happen to possess the bulk of the means of Production.

Capitalism may or may not have been a Source of Evil to Modern Communities--it may have been a necessary and even a beneficent phase in that struggle upward from the Brute which marks our progress from Gospel Times until the present day--but whether it has been a good or a bad phase in Economic Evolution, it is not Scientific and it is not English to confuse the system with the living human beings attached to it, and to contrast "Rich" and "Poor," insisting on the supposed luxury and callousness of the one or the humiliations and sufferings of the other.

To expose the folly--nay, the wickedness--of that att.i.tude I have but to take some very real and very human case of a rich man--a very rich man--who suffered and suffered deeply merely _as_ a man: one whose suffering wealth did not and could not alleviate.

One very striking example of this human bond I am able to lay before you, because the gentleman in question has, with fine human sympathy, permitted his story to be quoted.

The only stipulation he made with me was first that I should conceal real names and secondly that I should write the whole in as journalistic and popular a method as possible, so that his very legitimate grievance in the matter I am about to describe should be as widely known as possible and also in order to spread as widely as possible the lesson it contains that _the rich also are men_.

To change all names etc., a purely mechanical task, I easily achieved. Whether I have been equally successful in my second object of catching the breezy and happy style of true journalism it is for my readers to judge. I can only a.s.sure them that my intentions are pure.

I have promised my friend to set down the whole matter as it occurred.

"The Press," he said to me, "is the only vehicle left by which one can bring pressure to bear upon public opinion. I hope you can do something for me.... You write, I believe", he added, "for the papers?"

I said I did.

"Well," he answered, "you fellows that write for the newspapers have a great advantage ...!"

At this he sighed deeply, and asked me to come and have lunch with him at his club, which is called "The Ragam.u.f.fins" for fun, and is full of jolly fellows. There I ate boiled mutton and greens, washed down with an excellent gla.s.s, or maybe a gla.s.s and a half, of Belgian wine--a wine called Chateau Bollard.

I noticed in the room Mr. Cantor, Mr. Charles, Sir John Ebbsmith, Mr. May, Mr. Ficks, "Joe" Hesketh, Matthew Fircombe, Lord Boxgrove, old Tommy Lawson, "Bill", Mr. Compton, Mr. Annerley, Jeremy (the trainer), Mr. Mannering, his son, Mr. William Mannering, and his nephew Mr. "Kite" Mannering, Lord Nore, Pilbury, little Jack Bowdon, Baxter ("Horrible" Baxter) Bayney, Mr. Claversgill, the solemn old Duke of Bascourt (a Dane), Ephraim T. Seeber, Algernon Gutt, Feverthorpe (whom that old wit Core used to call "_Feather_thorpe"), and many others with whose names I will not weary the reader, for he would think me too reminiscent and digressive were I to add to the list "c.o.c.ky" Billings, "Fat Harry", Mr. Muntzer, Mr. Eartham, dear, courteous, old-world Squire Howle, and that prime favourite, Lord Mann. "Sambo"

Courthorpe, Ring, the Coffee-cooler, and Harry Sark, with all the Forfarshire lot, also fell under my eye, as did Maxwell, Mr. Gam----

However, such an introduction may prove overlong for the complaint I have to publish. I have said enough to show the position my friend holds. Many of my readers on reading this list will guess at once the true name of the club, and may also come near that of my distinguished friend, but I am bound in honour to disguise it under the veil of a pseudonym or _nom de guerre_; I will call him Mr.

Quail.

Mr. Quail, then, was off to shoot grouse on a moor he had taken in Mull for the season; the house and estate are well known to all of us; I will disguise the moor under the pseudonym or _nom de guerre_ of "Oth.e.l.lo". He was awaited at "Oth.e.l.lo" on the evening of the eleventh; for on the one hand there is an Act most strictly observed that not a grouse may be shot until the dawn of August 12th, and on the other a day pa.s.sed at "Oth.e.l.lo" with any other occupation but that of shooting would be h.e.l.l.

Mr. Quail, therefore, proposed to travel to "Oth.e.l.lo" by way of Glasgow, taking the 9.47 at St. Pancras on the evening of the 10th--last Monday--and engaging a bed on that train.

It is essential, if a full, Christian and sane view is to be had of this relation, that the reader should note the following details:--

Mr. Quail had _engaged_ the bed. He had sent his cheque for it a week before and held the receipt signed "T. Macgregor, Superintendent".

True, there was a notice printed very small on the back of the receipt saying the company would not be responsible in any case of disappointment, overcrowding, accident, delay, robbery, murder, or the Act of G.o.d; but my friend Mr. Quail very properly paid no attention to that rubbish, knowing well enough (he is a J.P.) that a man cannot sign himself out of his common-law rights.

In order to leave ample time for the train, my friend Mr. Quail ordered dinner at eight--a light meal, for his wife had gone to the Engadine some weeks before. At nine precisely he was in his carriage with his coachman on the box to drive his horses, his man Mole also, and Piggy the little dog in with him. He knows it was nine, because he asked the butler what time it was as he left the dining-room, and the butler answered "Five minutes to nine, my Lord"; moreover, the clock in the dining-room, the one on the stairs and his own watch, all corroborated the butler's statement.

He arrived at St. Pancras. "If," as he sarcastically wrote to the company, "your _own clocks_ are to be trusted," at 9.21.

So far so good. He had twenty-six minutes to spare. On his carriage driving up to the station he was annoyed to discover an enormous seething mob through which it was impossible to penetrate, swirling round the booking office and behaving with a total lack of discipline which made the confusion ten thousand times worse than it need have been.

"I wish," said Mr. Quail to me later, with some heat, "I wish I could have put some of those great hulking brutes into the ranks for a few months! Believe me, conscription would work wonders!" Mr.

Quail himself holds a commission in the Yeomanry, and knows what he is talking about. But that is neither here nor there. I only mention it to show what an effect this anarchic mob produced upon a man of Mr. Quail's trained experience.

His man Mole had purchased the tickets in the course of the day; unfortunately, on being asked for them he confessed in some confusion to having mislaid them.

Mr. Quail was too well bred to make a scene. He quietly despatched his man Mole to the booking office with orders to get new tickets while he waited for him at an appointed place near the door. He had not been there five minutes, he had barely seen his man struggle through the press towards the booking office, when a hand was laid upon his shoulder and a policeman told him in an insolent and surly tone to "move out of it." Mr. Quail remonstrated, and the policeman--who, I am a.s.sured, was only a railway servant in disguise--_bodily and physically_ forced him from the doorway.

To this piece of brutality Mr. Quail ascribes all his subsequent misfortunes. Mr. Quail was on the point of giving his card, when he found himself caught in an eddy of common people who bore him off his feet; nor did he regain them, in spite of his struggles, until he was tightly wedged against the wall at the further end of the room.

Mr. Quail glanced at his watch, and found it to be twenty minutes to ten. There were but seven minutes left before his train would start, and his appointment with his man, Mole, was hopelessly missed unless he took the most immediate steps to recover it.

Mr. Quail is a man of resource; he has served in South Africa, and is a director of several companies. He noticed that porters pushing heavy trollies and crying "By your leave" had some chance of forging through the brawling welter of people. He hailed one such; and stretching, as best he could, from his wretched fix, begged him to reach the door and tell his man Mole where he was. At the same time--as the occasion was most urgent (for it was now 9.44)--he held out half a sovereign. The porter took it respectfully enough, but to Mr. Quail's horror the menial had no sooner grasped the coin than he made off in the opposite direction, pushing his trolley indolently before him and crying "By your leave" in a tone that mingled insolence with a coa.r.s.e exultation.

Mr. Quail, now desperate, fought and struggled to be free--there were but two minutes left--and he so far succeeded as to break through the human barrier immediately in front of him. It may be he used some necessary violence in this attempt; at any rate a woman of the most offensive appearance raised piercing shrieks and swore that she was being murdered.

The policeman (to whom I have before alluded) came jostling through the throng, seized Mr. Quail by the collar, and crying "What!

Again?" treated him in a manner which (in the opinion of Mr. Quail's solicitor) would (had Mr. Quail retained his number) have warranted a criminal prosecution.

Meanwhile Mr. Quail's man Mole was anxiously looking for him, first at the refreshment bar, and later at the train itself. Here he was startled to hear the Guard say "Going?" and before he could reply he was (according to his own statement) thrust into the train which immediately departed, and did not stop till Peterborough; there the faithful fellow a.s.sures us he alit, returning home in the early hours of the morning.

Mr. Quail himself was released with a torn coat and collar, his eye-gla.s.ses smashed, his watch-chain broken, and smarting under a warning from the policeman not to be caught doing it again.

He went home in a cab to find every single servant out of the house, junketing at some music-hall or other, and several bottles of wine, with a dozen gla.s.ses, standing ready for them against their return, on his own study table.

The unhappy story need not be pursued. Like every misfortune it bred a crop of others, some so grievous that none would expose them to the public eye, and one consequence remote indeed but clearly traceable to that evening nearly dissolved a union of seventeen years. I do not believe that any one of those who are for ever presenting to us the miseries of the lower cla.s.ses, would have met a disaster of this sort with the dignity and the manliness of my friend, and I am further confident that the recital of his suffering here given will not have been useless in the great debate now engaged as to the function of wealth in our community.