Why we should read Part 18

So at last the sign of the cross was put on Guthrum and

"Far out to the winding river The blood ran down for days, When we put the cross on Guthrum In the parting of the ways."

And in the last book, "The Scouring of the White Horse," we see Alfred at peace again.

"In the days of the rest of Alfred, When all these things were done, And Wess.e.x lay in a patch of peace, Like a dog in a patch of sun--

The King sat in his orchard, Among apples green and red, With the little book in his bosom And the sunshine on his head."

And he gathered the songs of simple men, and gave alms, and "gat good laws of the ancient kings like treasure out of the tombs"; and men came from the ends of the earth and went out to the ends of the earth because of the word of the King.

"And men, seeing such emba.s.sies, Spake with the King and said: 'The steel that sang so sweet a tune On Ashdown and on Ethandune, Why hangs it scabbarded so soon, All heavily like lead?'"

They asked: "Why dwell the Danes in North England and up to the river ride?"

"And Alfred in the orchard, Among apples green and red, With the little book in his bosom, Looked at green leaves and said:

'When all philosophies shall fail, This word alone shall fit; That a sage feels too small for life, And a fool too large for it.

Asia and all Imperial plains Are too little for a fool; But for one man whose eyes can see, The little island of Athelney Is too large a land to rule.

... But I am a common king, And I will make my fences tough From Wantage Town to Plymouth Bluff, Because I am not wise enough To rule so small a thing.'"

He only commands his men to keep the White Horse white. Rumour of the Danes to the eastward, Danes wasting the world about the Thames reaches him, but Alfred only points to the White Horse.

"'Will ye part with the weeds for ever?

Or show daisies to the door?

Or will you b id the bold gra.s.s Go, and return no more?...

And though skies alter and empires melt, This word shall still be true: If we would have the horse of old, Scour ye the horse anew....

But now I wot if ye scour not well Red rust shall grow on G.o.d's great bell And gra.s.s in the streets of G.o.d.'"

He has a vision that the heathen will return.

"'They shall not come with warships, They shall not waste with brands, But books be all their eating, And ink be on their hands....

By this sign you shall know them, The breaking of the sword, And Man no more a free knight, That loves or hates his lord....

When is great talk of trend and tide, And wisdom and destiny, Hail that undying heathen That is sadder than the sea.'"

He sees no more, but rides out doubtfully to his last war on a tall grey horse at dawn.

"And all the while on White Horse Hill The horse lay long and wan, The turf crawled and the fungus crept, And the little sorrel, while all men slept, Unwrought the work of man....

And clover and silent thistle throve, And buds burst silently, With little care for the Thames Valley Or what things there might be."

And the King took London Town.

I have given enough ill.u.s.trations to show the masculine strength and virility of this amazing poem. We read G. K. Chesterton for his wit, for his brilliance, for his delightful paradoxes, for his sanity and wholesomeness, but we read him most of all for his brave creed, for his defence of Christianity and his love for the eternal values of honour, uprightness, courage, loyalty and devotion, for his steadfast adherence to whatsoever things are of good report.

XI

E. M. FORSTER

This is really a chapter about one book, not about a man. It is quite true that Mr Forster has written a number of novels, but he is only remembered by one and that is a decade old. He is a very skilful and careful artist and interested in cla.s.sical myth rather more than he is in us: he is a scholar with a good deal of the poetic in him; when he lets his thought dwell on us poor moderns his satiric vein appears predominant, though he too, like the rest of us, had to let the autobiographical have its way in two novels: _A Room with a View_ and the schoolmaster's book, _The Longer Journey_, give us, if we want to know them, many facts about himself, but wiser people will plump for _Howard's End_ and forget the others--only hoping that he will soon give us something more in that vein.

There was a slight flutter in our dovecotes when we saw the announcement of a novel by him early in 1920, but _The Syren_ is not a novel and is not new. It is a delicious trifle, artistically perfect ... but from a man who can give us real men of the type of Leonard Bast we want no chatter about blue grottoes, however perfect.

Yes, I fully realise that E. M. Forster published _Howard's End_ in 1910, but he has not written a novel since, and, as W. L. George says, "He is still one of the young men, while it is not at all certain that he is not 'the' young man." "Mystic athleticism" is the phrase that Mr George uses as his label for him, and so far as labels ever fit, this will do.

We read _Howard's End_ for its unexpectedness, its elliptic talk, which so exactly hits off the characters he creates, for its manifestation of the Comic Spirit, for pa.s.sages such as the following, which abound:--

"It will be generally admitted that Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is the most sublime noise that has ever penetrated into the ear of man. All sorts and conditions are satisfied by it. Whether you are like Mrs Munt ["I do know when I like a thing and when I don't"] and tap surrept.i.tiously when the tunes come--of course, not so as to disturb the others--or like Helen, who can see heroes and shipwrecks in the music's flood; or like Margaret, who can only see the music; or like Tibby, who is profoundly versed in counterpoint, and holds the full score open on his knee ... or like Fraulein Mosebach's young man, who can remember nothing but Fraulein Mosebach: in any case, the pa.s.sion of your life becomes more vivid, and you are bound to admit that such a noise is cheap at two shillings."

We read _Howard's End_ for the merciless skill which E. M. Forster shows in laying bare the soul of Leonard Bast, the clerk in the insurance office, who reads Ruskin and goes to the Queen's Hall in order to improve himself, who is dragged into the gutter by his loose-living mistress ("she seemed all strings and bell-pulls, ribbons, chains, bead necklaces that c.h.i.n.ked and caught----").... We read _Howard's End_ for the equally merciless sketch of the millionaire husband of the heroine ("a man who ruins a woman for his pleasure, and casts her off to ruin other men. And gives bad financial advice, and then says he is not responsible. These men are you. You can't recognise them, because you cannot connect. I've had enough of your unweeded kindness. I've spoilt you long enough. All your life you have been spoiled.... No one has ever told what you are--muddled, criminally muddled").

Mr E. M. Forster's eyes are pellucidly clear in their vision both of rich and poor. "Only connect," he says. That is the cause of all the folly and cruelty in the world, lack of power to connect. Think of this picture of Leonard Bast. "Hints of robustness survived in him (he came of Lincolnshire yeoman stock), more than a hint of primitive good looks, and Margaret, noting the spine that might have been straight, and the chest that might have broadened, wondered whether it paid to give up the glory of the animal for a tail coat and a couple of ideas. Culture had worked in her own case, but during the last few weeks she had doubted whether it humanised the majority, so wide and so widening is the gulf that stretches between the natural and philosophic man, so many the good chaps who are wrecked in trying to cross it. She knew this type very well--the vague aspirations, the mental dishonesty, the familiarity with the outsides of books."

But he should not have permitted an untimely end even to such a man: it is bad artistry to overweight your dice. When any character in a book of this sort goes to prison or dies (except in child-birth) one cannot help feeling that the author has burked the issue or been too lazy to work out his thesis to a reasonable, logical conclusion. Like Margaret in _Howard's End_, who did not see that to break her husband was her only hope, but did rather what seemed easiest, so E. M. Forster does what seems easiest, and the result is a certain falsity all the more reprehensive because in so many ways this book is head and shoulders above any of its era. Helen's gift of herself to Leonard Bast is absolutely true to life.

"It never occurred to him that Helen was to blame. He forgot the intensity of their talk, the charm that had been lent him by sincerity, the magic of Oniton under darkness and of the whispering river. Helen loved the absolute. Leonard had been ruined absolutely, and had appeared to her as a man apart, isolated from the world.... She and the victim seemed alone in a world of unreality, and she loved him absolutely, perhaps for half an hour."

Notice the last five words--"perhaps for half an hour": that is the secret of E. M. Forster's greatness. He plays the game with the gloves off, he strips bare all the fopperies and artificialities of the world.

All these characters have to learn how entirely different from the formal codes they are brought up to believe are the real codes of existence. Listen to Helen:

"'I want never to see him again, though it sounds appalling. I wanted to give him money and feel finished. Oh, Meg, the little that is known about these things.'"

Listen to Margaret's att.i.tude when she finds out that her husband has been unfaithful.

"Now and then he asked her whether she could possibly forgive him, and she answered: 'I have already forgiven you, Henry.' She chose her words carefully, and so saved him from panic. She played the girl, until he could rebuild his fortress and hide his soul from the world. When the butler came to clear away, Henry was in a very different mood--asked the fellow what he was in such a hurry for, complained of the noise last night in the servants' hall. Margaret looked intently at the butler. He, as a handsome young man, was faintly attractive to her as a woman--an attraction so faint as scarcely to be perceptible, yet the skies would have fallen if she had mentioned it to Henry."

It is into Margaret's mind that E. M. Forster puts the ideas that take pride of place in _Howard's End_.

"Margaret greeted her lord with peculiar tenderness on the morrow.

Mature as he was, she might yet be able to help him to the building of the rainbow bridge that should connect the prose in us with the pa.s.sion.

Without it we are meaningless fragments, half monks, half beasts, unconnected arches that have never joined into a man. With it love is born, and alights on the highest curve, glowing against the grey, sober against the fire. Happy the man who sees from either aspect the glory of these outspread wings. The roads of his soul lie clear, and he and his friends shall find easy-going."

"It was hard-going in the roads of Mr Wilc.o.x's soul. From boyhood he had neglected them. 'I am not a fellow who bothers about my own inside.'

Outwardly he was cheerful, reliable, and brave; but within, all had reverted to chaos, ruled, so far as it was ruled at all, by an incomplete asceticism. Whether as boy, husband, or widower, he had always the sneaking belief that bodily pa.s.sion is bad, a belief that is desirable only when held pa.s.sionately. Religion had confirmed him.... He could not be as the saints and love the Infinite with a seraphic ardour, but he could be a little ashamed of loving a wife.... And it was here that Margaret hoped to help him ... _only connect_! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the pa.s.sion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die."

If we demand of modern novels that they should portray human character exactly as it is and that the author should have a definite standpoint for his philosopher of life, one need quote no further to prove that in _Howard's End_ these two desirable factors are to be found in profusion.

Mr E. M. Forster is a conscious artist of a very high order and our only quarrel with him is that he writes too little.