Without Prejudice Part 24

Anti-Christ he calls himself, and beats the drum and invites you to inspect the greatest philosophy on earth. "Now hold your breath with awe," he has the air of saying, "or if you are not strong enough to hear this fearsome truth, go home to the nursery and read Hegel." And after this fanfaronade, lo! some commonplace that you shall find in a hundred modern poets or philosophers. 'T is like the clown in the circus who works himself up with a mighty pother to mount the bare-backed steed, and then hangs on to the tail. No, no, good Herr Nietzsche, we want our Saints Francis as well as our Napoleons. The one kind is as much in the "order of nature" as the other; and pity and humility, if they are the virtues of "nations in their decline," are preferable to the vices of nations at their zenith. And, good Count Tolsto, a universe of Saints Francis would be an intolerable bore. The cowl does not cover all the virtues, nor the dress-coat all the sins. 'T is a world we live in, not a monastery; and it is amid the clash of mighty opposites that the music of the spheres is beaten out.

"Everything in Venice is delivered up to the Evil One now," writes John Buskin to Father Jacopo of the Armenian monastery; and such has been the immemorial language of prophets. I sometimes suspect the Evil One deserves more grat.i.tude than he gets. Where would be the play without the villain of the piece? No, the devil is not so black as he is painted, nor the angel so white. And hence these incessant swings of the philosophical pendulum as one truth or the other is perceived. The true ethics of the future will give the devil his due, and deduct a discount from the angel.

The Armenian monastery which has posted up Ruskin's letter is paradoxically proud of its a.s.sociation with Lord Byron, who studied Armenian there; and visitors come there in consequence, and buy books that the monks print. So that Satan has his uses, and Scripture can quote the devil for its own purposes. The book I bought was a charming collection of Armenian folk-songs, and it contains one delicious poem whose refrain has haunted me ever since:

ON THE PARTRIDGE.

The sun boats from the mountain's top, Pretty, pretty.

The partridge comes from her nest: She was saluted by the flowers, She flew and came from the mountain's top, Ah! pretty, pretty, Ah! dear little partridge!

Only the highest genius--and what is higher than the folk-genius?--would dare to be so nave:

Ah! pretty, pretty, Ah! dear little partridge!

VENTNOR

I did not get to Ventnor without a struggle. Everybody that I met held up hands of horror. "What! Going to Ventnor? You will be roasted before your time." My friends grieved, my very publishers wrung their hands, my newsvendor took me aside and besought me to live on a high hill. Yet through the whole of August I sat coolly writing on a low terrace. There is a superst.i.tion about Ventnor, and none of the people who talk glibly about its temperature have ever been there. But I think I have discovered the origin of the great Ventnor myth. The place is a winter resort of consumptives; and Mr. Frederick Greenwood, who was the chief charm of Ventnor, told me that you may take coffee on your lawn in November. The town, then, is warm in winter. The popular mind, with its hasty logic, thinks that this is tantamount to saying it is broiling hot in summer. I fancy there is a similar fiction about Bournemouth. But as a rule the British climate pays no heed to guide-books. By the natives, Ventnor, though as beautiful as a little Italian town, seems to be regarded as a good place to go away from, for every other man keeps a coaching establishment (I don't mean a school), and you cannot walk two yards without being accosted by a tout, who resents your walking the next two.

Its regatta is a puerile affair, its own boating crews going off by preference to rival regattas. But in illuminations it comes out far better than Cowes, whose loyal inhabitants throw all the burden of fireworks upon the royal and other yachts anch.o.r.ed in the bay. And besides, Ventnor has a carnival, which I saw in the shop-windows in the shape of comic masks.

Bonchurch, the suburb of Ventnor, which plumes itself upon a very artificial pond, furnished in the best style with sycamores, Scotch firs, elms and swans, is more interesting for containing the old churchyard by the sea which received the bones of John Sterling and inspired the best poem of Philip Bourke Marston:--

Do they hear, through the glad April weather, The green gra.s.ses waving above them?

Do they think there are none left to love them, They have lain for so long there together?

Do they hear the note of the cuckoo, The cry of gulls on the wing, The laughter of winds and waters, The feet of the dancing Spring?

I was married in Ventnor. At least so I gather from the local newspapers, in whose visitors' lists there figures the entry, "Mr. and Mrs.

Zangwill." I do not care to correct it, because, the lady being my mother, it is perfectly accurate and leads to charming misconceptions.

"There, that's he," loudly whispered a young man, nudging his sweetheart, "and there's his wife with him." "That! why, she looks old enough to be his mother," replied the young lady. "Ah!" said her lover, with an air of conscious virtue and a better bargain, "they're awfully mercenary, these literary chaps." The reverse of this happened to a young friend of mine.

He married an old lady who possessed a very large fortune. During the honeymoon his solicitous attentions to her excited the admiration of another old lady, who pa.s.sed her life in a Bath-chair. "Dear me!" she thought: "how delightful in these degenerate days to see a young man so attentive to his mother!" and, dying soon after, left him another large fortune.

SOMEWHERE ELSE

Before I chanced on the great discovery which has made all my holidays real boons, and pleasure trips quite a pleasure, I used to go through all the horrors of preliminary indecision, which are still, alas! the lot of the vast majority. I would travel for weeks in Bradshaw, and end by sticking a pin at random between the leaves as if it were a Bible, vowing to go where destiny pointed. Once the pin stuck at London, and so I had to stick there too, and was defrauded of my holiday. But even when the pin sent me to Putney, or Coventry, I was invariably disappointed. Like the inquisitive and precocious infant of the poem, I was always asking for the address of Peace, but whenever I called I was told that she was not in, while the mocking refrain seemed to ring in my ears: "Not there, not there, my child." And at last I asked angrily of the rocks and caves: "Will no one tell me where Peace may be found? Wherever I go I find she is somewhere else." Then, at last, one nymph's soft heart grew tender and pitiful towards me, and Echo, hardly waiting till I had completed my sentence, answered: "Somewhere Else."

A wild thrill of joy ran through me. At last I had found the solution of the haunting puzzle. Somewhere Else. That was it. Not Scotland, nor Switzerland, nor j.a.pan. None of the common places of travel. But Somewhere Else. Wherever I went, I wished I had gone Somewhere Else.

Then, why not go there at first? What was the good of repining when it was too late? In future, I would make a bee-line for the abode of Peace--not hesitate and shilly-shally, and then go to Bournemouth, or Norway, or Ceylon, only to be sorry I had not gone to Somewhere Else direct. In a flash, all the glories of the discovery crowded upon me--the gain of time, temper, money, everything. "A thousand thanks, sweet Echo,"

I cried. "My obedience to thy advice shall prove that I am not ungrateful." Echo, with cynical candour, shouted "Great fool," but I cannot follow her in her end-of-the-century philosophy. And I have taken her advice. I went Somewhere Else immediately, and since then I have gone there every year regularly. My relatives do not care for it, and suggest all sorts of conventional places, such as Monte Carlo and Southend, but wherever they go, be it the most beautiful spot on earth, I remain faithful to my discovery, and go to Somewhere Else, where Peace never fails to greet me with the special welcome accorded to an annual visitor.

The place grows upon me with every season. Sometimes, I think I should like to stay on and die there. No other spot in the wide universe has half such charm for me, and even when I do die, I don't think I shall go to where all the other happy idlers go. I shall go to Somewhere Else.

For Cromer may be the garden of sleep, but you shall find sleepier gardens and more papaverous poppies--Somewhere Else. The mountain-pines of Switzerland may be tall, and the skies of Italy blue, but there are taller pines and bluer skies--Somewhere Else. The bay of San Francisco may be beautiful, and the landscapes of Provence lovely, and the crags of Norway sublime, but Somewhere Else there are fairer visions and scenes more majestical--

An ampler setter, a diviner air, And fields invested with purpureal gleams.

It never palls upon you--Somewhere Else. Every loved landmark grows dearer to you year by year, and year by year apartments are cheaper--Somewhere Else. The facilities for getting to it are enormous.

All roads lead to it, far more truly than to Rome. There can be no accidents on the journey. How often do we read of people setting forth on their holidays full of life and hope--yea, sometimes even on their honeymoon--and lo! a signalman nods, or a bridge breaks, and they are left mangled on the rails or washed into the river. And to think that they would have escaped if they had only gone to Somewhere Else! Too late the weeping relatives wring their hands and moan the remark. Henceforth, among the ten million pleasure-pilgrims, who will be guided by me, there will be no more tragedies by flood or field. Railway a.s.surance will become a thing of the past, and a fatal blow will be struck at modern hebdomadal journalism. To turn to minor matters, your friends can never utter the irritating "I told you not to go there!" if you have been to Somewhere Else. And you need not label your luggage; that always goes to Somewhere Else of itself. Last advantage of Somewhere Else, you may show your face in it, though you departed last year without paying your bill.

There are no creditors in this blessed haven. Earth's load drops off your shoulders when you go to Somewhere Else.

I give this counsel in a disinterested spirit. I have not made speculative purchases of land, I am not booming a generous jerry-builder.

And yet I cannot help reflecting apprehensively on the consequences of my recommendation. Already I see my sweet retreat the prey of the howling mob; I hear the German band playing on the stone parade, and catch the sad strains of the comic singer. Sacrilegious feet tramp the solitudes, and sandwich papers become common objects of the sea-sh.o.r.e. Shilling yachts will ply where I watched the skimming curlew, and new villas will totter on the edge of the ocean and beguile the innocent billows to be house-breakers. Nay, the place will become the Alsatia of humanity, the refuge for all those men and women people would rather see Somewhere Else, and whose travelling expenses they will perchance defray.

Imagination reels before the horror of such an agglomeration of the unamiable. And the terrible thing about my terrestrial paradise is that there is no escaping from it. Everything has the defects of its qualities, and this is the reverse of the dazzling medal--the drawback which annuls all the advantages of Somewhere Else in the event of its becoming popular. In vain shall I then endeavour to flee from it. Though I projected myself from the giant cannon that sent Jules Verne's hero to the moon, I should inevitably arrive--boomerang-like--at Somewhere Else.

PART III.

AFTER-THOUGHTS: A BUNDLE OF BREVITIES.

[Sidenote: Moonshine]

Certainly the Moon was very charming that soft summer's night, as I watched its full golden orb gliding nonchalantly in the serene, starry heaven, and keeping me company as I strode across the silent gorse.

But--to be indiscreet--I had grown aweary of the Moon, and of the stars also, as of beautiful pictures hung--or should one say, skied?--in a perpetual Academy. _Caelum non animum mutant_ is only tolerably true. A derangement of stars is all the change you get by travelling--everywhere the same golden-headed nails, as Hugo, hard-driven, called them, are sticking in the firmament. This particular moon was hanging, not over a church steeple, like De Musset's moon,

Comme un point sur un i,

but like the big yellow dial of the clock in a church tower. An illuminated clock-face--but blank, featureless, expressionless, useless; in a word, without hands. Now I could not help thinking that if there had really been a Providence it would have put hands to the Moon--a big and a little--and made it the chronometer of the world--nay, of the cosmos--the universal time-piece, to which all eyes, in every place and planet, could be raised for information; by which all clocks could be set--moon time--an infallible monitor and measurer of the flight of the hours; divinely right, not to be argued with; though I warrant there be some would still swear by their watches. This were the true cosmopolitanism, destroying those distressful variations which make your clock vary with your climate, and which throw the shadow of pyrrhonism over truths which should be clear as daylight. For if, when it is five o'clock here, it may be two o'clock there and supper-time yonder, if it is night and day at the same moment, then is black white, and Pilate right--and Herac.l.i.tus,--and the nonconformist conscience a vain thing.

In supporting correct moral principles, the Moon would be of some use, instead of staring at us with an idiot face, signifying nothing. The stars, too, could be better employed than in winking at what goes on here below. Like ladies' gold watches by the side of Big Ben, they could repeat the same great eternal truth--that it was half-past nine, or five minutes to eleven.

Soon as the evening shades prevail The moon takes up the wondrous tale, While all the stars that round her burn, And all the planets in their turn, Confirm the tidings as they roll, And spread the _time_ from pole to pole.

An obvious result of a synchronised universe would be the federation of mankind, Peace on Earth, and all those other beat.i.tudes at present vainly sought by World Fairs, and pig-sticking prophets.

Till we have hands to the Moon I shall not look for the Millennium.

[Sidenote: Capital]

Suddenly the Moon went behind a cloud, as if to demonstrate that even then there would be difficulties. Besides, I remembered it had its quarter-days. Here my thoughts made a transition to money matters, and, after the manner of Richard Carstone in "Bleak House," I fell to reckoning up the sums I had saved of late. It is a calculation I make almost every week nowadays. I have lost nothing by any of the Jerry-Building Societies, nothing by any of the great Bank Failures. By not having any money one saves thousands a year in these unsettled times.

Mr. Hamerton cites with amus.e.m.e.nt the remark of a wealthy Englishman, who could not understand "why men are so imprudent as to allow themselves to sink into money embarra.s.sments." "There is a simple rule that I follow myself," said he, "and that I have always found a great safeguard: it is, _never to let one's balance at the banker's fall below five thousand pounds_." The rich Englishman's rule was quite wrong: the only safeguard is to have no balance at all. High and dry on the Lucretian tower of poverty, you may watch with complacency the struggles of the sinking funds. What a burden capital must be to those anxious to find safe investments at high rates of interest! It looks as if interest will sink to freezing point, and capital will have to flow to other planets if that comical claim for "wages of abstinence" is to be met any longer. Perhaps it will flow to Mars, the home in exile of the old political economy.

Already a beginning has been made by investments in mines which are not upon this earth.

[Sidenote: Credit]

Every day makes clearer the evils of our complex credit system--that Frankenstein creation we have lost control over, that ampulaceous growth of capital, most of which is merely figures in a book, and which only exists in virtue of not being asked for, much as the t.i.t-bits on a restaurant menu are "off" when ordered. The real meaning of National Debts is that every civilised country is bankrupt, and only goes on trading because its creditors give it time. To the uncertainties of the weather, and the chances of cholera, war, and earthquake, we have added an artificial uncertainty worse than any of these--we have invented a series of financial cyclones, which sweep round the globe, devastating all lands, and no more to be predicted--despite theories of sun-spots, cyclones and financial crises--than wrecks at sea; indeed, far less predictable, for I believe with the ex-mayor quoted by Bonamy Price, that finance is a subject which no man can understand in this world, or even in the next. The infinite ramifications, the endless actions and reactions, are beyond the grasp of any one but an impostor. The Professor just mentioned thought he had found the right thread of theory in the labyrinth of "Currency and Banking," and really did make a most sensible a.n.a.lysis of what actually went on in financial operations. Only he left out one great factor--the immense influence on the market of other people's wrong theories. No, if there is a right thread of theory, it must be so tangled as to be worse than useless. My friend the business man tells me that for success in business one requires four things: a large capital, industry, insight, and caution--and then it's a toss-up. I am fain to believe this whole system of modern commerce was devised to please the amateurs of the aleatory.