Without Prejudice Part 27

[Sidenote: The Prop of Letters]

Is it a bright or a black day for an author when he gets so popular that the big advertisers insist on having him in any organ in which they place their advertis.e.m.e.nts? There can be no question but that it will be a black day for letters when the advertiser becomes the arbiter of literature, as this newest development forebodes. Where is this leprosy of advertis.e.m.e.nt to stop? Already it covers almost our whole civilisation. Already the advertiser is a main prop of the press.

A SONG OF ADVERTIs.e.m.e.nTS. (_After_ Whitman.)

Give me Hornihand's Pure Mustard; Give me Apple's Soap, with the negress laving the cherub; Give me Bentley's Brimstone Tablets, and Ploughman's Pills--those of the Little Liver.

(O get me ads., you agent with the frock-coat and the fountain pen, You with the large commissions And the further discount on cash, Get me ads., _camarado_!

Full pages preferred, though little ones not scorning, For I scorn nothing, my brother.) Give me the Alphabetical Snuff; Give me Electric Batteries and False Teeth; also the Tooth-powders; Give me all the Soft Soaps and the Soothing Syrups; Give me all the Cocoas and Cough Lozenges and Corsets; Give me Infants' Food--yea, the diet of babes and sucklings; Give me the Nibs and the Beef Essences, and do not forget the Typewriters.

(Forget nothing, _camarado_, for I, the poet, never forget anything.) Give me of the Fat of your agency, and of the Anti-Fat thereof!

And I will build you magazines, high-cla.s.s and well ill.u.s.trated; Or pictureless _a volonte_, the latter with heavier articles.

Also newspapers, daily and weekly, with posters flamboyant, That shall move the state and its pillars, That shall preach the loftiest morals, elevating the ma.s.ses, By the strength of advertis.e.m.e.nts, By the mighty strength of advertis.e.m.e.nts!

It has been suggested that flypapers should be so sprinkled as to produce an aesthetic design in dead flies, so as to introduce beauty into the homes of the poor. It would be more in harmony with the age to lay out our public gardens with floral injunctions to use B's hair-dye and C's corn-plaster. Brag and display are the road to riches, and the trail of vulgarity is over it all. I take credit to myself for having been among the first to cry in the wilderness; but the critics--bless them!--say it is all empty paradox.

[Sidenote: The Latter-day Poet]

The one exception to the hunger for advertis.e.m.e.nt is the modern bard. He achieves his vogue by limited editions, and takes pains to prevent himself being an influence. He acquires a fact.i.tious fame and an artificial value by printing only a few copies, thus making his paper and print sought after rather than his matter. It is all very well for a book to become rare by the vicissitudes of literary fortune, but this machine-made rarity can only be prized by people who value their possessions merely because other people haven't got them. The old minor poet was frenzied and unbought; the new is calm and "collected." At this rate the greatest poets would be those of whose works only one copy is extant--in MS.

Bend, bend the knee, and bow the head To reverence the great unread, The great unread and much-reviewed, Whose lines are treasured like the lewd, His first editions prizes reckoned Because there never was a second.

Obscurely famous in his rut, Unknown, unpopular, "uncut,"

Where Byron thrilled a continent, To thrill an auction-room content, He struggles through oblivion's bogs, To gain a place in--catalogues!

And falls asleep and joins the dust In simple hope and modest trust That, though Posterity neglect His bones, his books it will collect, And these will grow--O prospect fair!-- From year to year more "scarce" and "rare."

[Sidenote: An Attack of Alliteration]

Have you noticed the Renaissance of alliteration in the new journalism?

The early English Poets made alliteration the chief element of their poetry, and in modern times Swinburne has paid more attention to it (and to rhyme) than to meaning, with the result that there has arisen a school of poets who don't mean anything--and say it. In the olden days, a bride was bonny, and was requested to busk herself in consequence; all of which was intelligible. Nowadays, the poet would call a basilisk bonny rather than miss his alliteration. Is it because the new journalism is so imaginative and emotional that it throws off alliterative phrases as naturally and unconsciously as Whittier confesses he did in writing "The Wreck of Rivermouth"? It is sometimes difficult to believe that providence is not on the side of the evening bills. When Balmaceda died he committed Suicide by Shooting himself in Santiago--of all places in the world. Boulanger, if from a local point of view he died less satisfactorily, was yet careful to employ a Bullet. It is for the sake of the phrase-makers that Burglars good-naturedly prefer Bermondsey, and that Tigers do not escape from their cages to play in Tragedies till the show arrives at Tewkesbury. The Baboon is already so largely alliterative in himself that it was an excess of generosity that made one recently attack an infant under such circ.u.mstances as to allow the report to be headed, "Baby Bitten by a Baboon in a Backyard at Bow." Alliteration has become a mighty factor in politics: it is fast replacing epigram, while its effects on moral character are tremendous. That "hardened criminal,"

Mr. Balfour, might have been a good man instead of a "base brutal bully,"

if his name had only commenced with an X. He is a noteworthy martyr to the mania of the times. I am convinced that the Death of the Duke of Devonshire was accelerated by anxiety to please the sub-editors, and it is a source of real regret to me to reflect that my own death can afford them no supplementary gratification of this nature.

[Sidenote: The Humorous]

To start anything exclusively funny is a serious mistake. This was why poor Henry J. Byron's "Mirth" was so short-lived. It died of laughing. A friend of mine, with a hopeless pa.s.sion for psychological a.n.a.lysis, says that the reason people do not laugh over comic papers is that the element of the unexpected is wanting. This, he claims, is the essence of the comic. You laugh over a humorous remark in the middle of a serious essay, over a witty epigram flashed upon a grave conversation, over the slipping into the gutter of a ponderous gentleman--it is the shock of contrast, the flash of surprise, that tickles. Now this explanation of why people do not laugh over comic papers is obviously wrong, because you are surprised when you see a joke in a comic paper; at the same time, it contains an element of truth. The books which gain a reputation for brilliance are those which are witty at wide intervals; the writer who scintillates steadily stands in his own light.

[Sidenote: The Discount Farce]

Having started your magazine, you will begin humorously enough by affixing a mock price to it. What a strange world of make-believe it is!

We are so habituated to shams that we cannot help shamming even where there is nothing to be gained by it. Why is music published at four shillings when you can buy it for one and four, or at most one and eight?

Why are novels published at thirty-one and six and the magazines at a shilling? "Shilling shockers" are sold at ninepence, which is as comical as selling "tenpenny nails" at sixpence. The same principle rules in other trades. It almost seems as if there is an ineradicable instinct in humanity for getting things below their price, even if at more than their value. Hence the marked popularity of "sales" and "reductions." The idea of getting things cheap reconciles one to getting things one doesn't want. The craze for cheap things leads one into frightful extravagance.

In some shops the weakness of humanity is pandered to without disguise, and every article is ticketed with a little card, from which the first price is carefully ruled out, and even on the second price you get a discount for cash. This same discount for cash is at least intelligible, but business men are painfully familiar with another wonderful deduction.

After you wait months for your money, you get a cheque less "discount on payment." This seems to involve an exasperating Hibernicism. "On payment," forsooth! So long as it remains unpaid, the debt due to you is, say, one hundred pounds. But the moment you really get it, it shrinks to ninety-five. Why not call it ninety-five at the start and be done with it? But, no! men will not give up the subtle pleasure of discounts, ineffably childish though it be. The rather deaf lady who being asked six shillings a yard for stuff replied "Sixteen shillings a yard! I'll give you eleven," and who, when her mistake was pointed out, said "I couldn't think of paying more than four and sixpence" was a genuine type of the population of these islands.

[Sidenote: The Franchise Farce]

One American defense of bribery is as clever as it is cynical. It amounts to this: that universal suffrage is such a peril to the commonweal that having been given prematurely, it must insidiously be nullified in practice, even at the cost of universal corruption; in short, if the old society is to be preserved, universal franchise must be transformed into universal corruption. What an ironic commentary on the const.i.tution that was founded by George Washington, who couldn't tell a lie! The honour of America, it appears, "rooted in dishonour" stands, and "faith unfaithful"

makes its politicians falsely true. When one remembers some of the other gigantic evils of the society thus conserved by corruption, when one thinks of the great immoral capitalists, playing their game regardless of whom they ruin or whom they enrich, when one thinks of the squalid slums of the great cities, one wonders whether the society which these things shadow were not better d.a.m.ned. It were cleaner, at any rate, to abolish universal franchise than to flaunt this farce in the eyes of Europe. If universal suffrage was a mistake, if indeed the gift of the franchise does not develop a man's conscience and education--and certainly bribery is not the way to give him a chance of such development--then why not honestly admit that America has made this mistake, that the ideals of the Pilgrim Fathers were inferior to Tammany Hall's, and that even the negro is not a man and a brother?

Does our American reply that it is impossible now to take back the franchise? But on his own showing the electors merely regard it as an opportunity for extracting "boodle." All that would be impossible, then, is to take away this ancient concession without compensation. The electors must be bought out at the full market-value of their votes, with a few cents and corpse-revivers thrown in for their loss of amus.e.m.e.nt. At every election dollars and drinks for the ex-electors would be circulating freely under the direction of the Treasury. And, _ex hypothesi_, the bulk, or a number of electors sufficient to annul the danger to society, will accept the liquidation, and thus the dishonest will be honestly weeded out of the electorate. But if the cynics were wrong, and there remained among the poorer electorate men sufficiently honest to retain their votes, and sufficiently numerous to swamp the old society--why, then the devil take the old society! The object of government is only the good of the majority, and these men, being the majority, have every right to select their own form of good. If they were mistaken, nature would soon convince them of their mistake, and the next generation would profit by the object-lesson. Demos would go on, a sadder and a wiser man.

The solution of the question is that the people must not only govern: it must be fit to govern. To corrupt it with dollars, to drowse it with drink, is only to put off the inevitable day. It were far wiser to help it to educate itself for its functions. For, if the revolutionary economic ideas that are in the air are false, they will destroy themselves. And if they are true, they have got to be realised, and will get themselves realised. No amount of corruption will save society in the long run. Meantime, either let universal suffrage operate honestly, or let it be suspended or abolished. Let even those States which have enfranchised the black man, and which now, in accordance with the deep Machiavellian principle, brazenly revealed by our American, dishonestly render his vote nugatory by a reliable inaccuracy in the counting, withdraw their spurious Christianity. A double standard of morals subtly infects the whole core of the nation. Corruption cannot be localised; it creeps and spreads through all departments of thought and action. To give with the right hand, and take away with the left in exchange for a few dollars, is a manoeuvre unworthy of a great nation. The transaction is fair; let it be above board, let it be lifted into the plane of ethics.

To found society upon a farce is to lower those ideals by which, as much as by bread, a nation lives.

[Sidenote: The Modern War Farce]

The horrors of war seem to have reached the vanishing point in our latest African campaign. The smallness of the English losses is appalling. I do not see the fun of fighting (_i.e._, of paying taxes) if all the spice and relish is to be taken out of the results. I want more blood for my money--hecatombs of corpses. Two men killed in a whole battle?

Ridiculous! If I cannot have my war at my own doors, and hear the bands and the cannon I have paid for, I must at least have sensational battle-fields--Actiums and Waterloos and Marengos. What is the use of war if it does not even serve to reduce our surplus population? Soldiering was never so healthy an occupation as to-day; one fights only a few days a year at the utmost, and if the pay is poor, so is that of the scavenger and the engine-driver and the miner, and everybody else who does the dirty work of civilisation, and does it, too, without pomp and circ.u.mstance and bra.s.s bands and laureates.

[Sidenote: Fireworks]

If people cannot do without sulphur and noise, there are always fireworks. It is difficult to imagine festivity without them, and yet there must have been a time when rockets did not rise or Catherine wheels go round. You cannot have fireworks without gunpowder, and every school-boy knows that gunpowder was only invented in--I haven't got a dictionary of dates handy. Surely we ought to let off fireworks on Roger Bacon's birthday. "They let off fireworks when he was born," say the French in a slyly witty proverb, which is a circ.u.mlocutory way of saying that a man won't set the Thames on fire. For "he has not invented gunpowder" is the French equivalent for this idiom of ours, and it is obvious to the meanest intellect that a man whose birth was celebrated by fireworks could not have been the inventor of gunpowder. And yet there were fireworks of a kind from the earliest times, from the first appearance of stars in the firmament with their wandering habits and shooting expeditions. And, indeed, did not humanity long regard the heavens as a firework show for its amus.e.m.e.nt, a set piece entirely for its delectation? Mankind has always been fond of playing with fire--ever since Prometheus stole it from heaven and burnt his fingers. I am convinced the ancients only used bonfires for messages so as to enjoy the flare-up on the mountains. Who would not fight when summoned by a tongue of flame?

And the red glare on Skiddaw roused the burghers of Carlisle.

Roman candles were unknown to the Romans, but they enjoyed themselves with torches, and these were the fireworks at wedding fetes. The golden rain in which Jupiter wooed Danae was another sort of hymeneal fireworks.

There were fireworks at the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. The love of fireworks is a natural pa.s.sion. Does not nature amuse herself with fireworks, especially on tropical summer nights? She loves to flash her lightnings (which are not to be put out by the rain), and to crash her thunder (which, as everybody knows, is only the report of the meeting of two electric clouds). And who does not admire her grand pyrotechnic display--twice daily--at sunrise and at sunset, or her celebrated local effect, the Aurora Borealis?

I have loved fireworks from boyhood, and would rather have had dry bread and fireworks than cake with jam. In manhood often I have listened to the long-drawn ecstatic "aw" of the Crystal Palace crowd. I have even written a poem on fireworks. Here it is:--

A dazzling fiery show of sphery rainbows, Whereof each wonder, monarch of a moment, Yields up its glory to the next one's splendour, And sadly sinks into the arms of darkness.

Is it not a true simile of the favour of the fickle crowd? The most brilliant phenomena are forgotten after a moment. Life and Time are full of such fireworks--religions, philosophies, fashions, dynasties. And overhead the sure stars shine on. In literature fireworks rarely last.

They are too clever to live. A humble rushlight lasts longer. "All fireworks are unsound," says Steinitz. He is talking of chess, and chess is very much like life. Whistler has painted fireworks--I mean literally--in his blue and silver nocturne of old Battersea Bridge.

Tennyson has painted them in his "Welcome to Alexandra" and elsewhere.

Flash, ye cities, in rivers of fire!