Anyhow, King Edward VII. was a Victorian gentleman long before he was an Edwardian. So he observed Sunday and the lesser proprieties, without self-consciousness. He was like his mother, with a difference. Both had a sense of royal dignity and of the Proper Thing. His subjects, too, had a sense of the Proper Thing; people always have. But the Proper Thing, revered as ever, gradually changed its face, or rather turned a somersault and alighted on its head.
Well, the Edwardians, like the Elizabethans, the Jacobeans, the Carolines, the Georgians, the Victorians, and the neo-Georgians, were a mixed lot. This attempt to class them, to stigmatise them with adjectives, is unscientific, sentimental, and wildly incorrect. But, because it is rather more interesting than to admit frankly that they were merely a set of individuals, it will always be done.
2
Vive Le Roi
La reine est morte. Vive le roi. King Edward was proclaimed by heralds, by trumpeters, and with the rolling of drums; and God Save the King. Then they buried the late queen with royal pomp, and kings, emperors, archdukes, and crown princes rode with her to the tomb.
King Edward opened Parliament in state. A great king he was for pageantry and for state. He read the Accession Declaration. It was a tactlessly worded declaration in some ways, for it was drawn up in days when Roman Catholicism was not well thought of by the Head of the Church and Defender of the Faith, King Edward did not like reading it, “His Majesty,” wrote the outraged Catholic Press, “would willingly have been relieved from the necessity of branding with contumelious epithets the religious tenets of any of his subjects.” There were protests, not only from Roman Catholics, but from protestants and agnostics, who both, in the main, thought it rude. But some there were who, though they knew it was rude, knew also that it was right to be rude to Roman Catholics. “They are the king’s subjects as much as others, and belong to a distinguished old church,” the protesters declared. “The thing is an antediluvian piece of ill-breeding.”
“Bloody Mary. The Inquisition. No Popery,” was the crude reply. “And are not Roman Catholics always rude to our religion? Why, then, should we not be rude to theirs?”
“Roman Catholics,” replied the more polite and sophisticated, “cannot help being a little rude—if you call it so—to other faiths. They are not to blame. It is an article of their faith that theirs is the only true and good church. There is no such article in other faiths. We are not obliged by our religion to believe them wrong, as they are, unfortunately, obliged to believe us wrong. Obviously, then, we should practise the courtesy forbidden to them. It is more generous and more dignified. Also, they are as good as we are. All religions are doubtless, in the main, inaccurate, and one does not differ appreciably from another. And His Majesty ought to preserve a strict impartiality concerning the many and various faiths of his people. The Declaration is ignorant, unstatemanlike, and obscurantist, and smacks of vulgar seventeenth century Protestantism. It is a worse scandal than the Thirty-nine Articles.”
But “No Popery ”was still the cry of the noisy few, and the scandal remained. Reluctantly protesting his firm intention to give no countenance to the religion of some millions of his subjects, and solemnly in the presence of God professing, testifying, and declaring that he did make this declaration on the plaine and ordinary sense of the words as they were commonly understood by English Protestants, without any evasion, equivocation, or mentall reservation whatsoever, and without any dispensation from the Pope, either already granted or to be sought later, the King opened his khaki-elected Parliament, which proved as ineffective as parliaments always do. It is of no importance which side is in office in Parliament; any study of the subject must convince the earnest student that all parties are about equally stupid. By some fluke, useful Acts may from time to time get passed by any Government that happens to be in power. More often, foolish and injurious Acts get passed. Personality and intelligence in ministers do certainly make some difference; but party, it seems, makes none. The stupid, the inert, the dishonest, and the ill-intentioned flourish like bay trees impartially on both sides of the avenue. Only the very naïf can believe that party matters, in the long run. This first Parliament of the twentieth century proved, perhaps, even more than usually inept, as parliaments elected during war excitement are apt to be. It could deal neither with education, defences, labour, finance, or poisoned beer.
3
Papa’s New Faith
The war scrambled on: a tedious, ineffective guerrilla business. The Concentration Camp trouble began, and over its rights and wrongs England was split.
Mr. Garden hated the thought of these camps, where Boer women and children, driven from their homes, dwelt in discomfort (so said Miss Emily Hobhouse and others), and fell ill and died. They might be, as their defenders maintained, kindly meant, but it was all very disagreeable. In fact, the whole war preyed on papa’s mind and nerves. More and more it seemed to him a hideous defiance of any possible Christian order of society, a thing wholly outside the sphere of God’s scheme for the world. But, then, of course, nearly everything was that, and always
had been. So utterly outside that sphere were most of the world’s happenings that it sometimes seemed to papa as if they could scarcely be happenings, as if they must be evil illusions of our own, outside the great Reality. The more papa brooded over this Reality, the more he became persuaded that it must be absolute and all pervasive, that nothing else really existed. “We make evil by our thought,” said papa. “God knows no evil. . . . God does not know about the war. Nor about the Concentration Camps. . . .”
It will be seen that papa was ripe for the acceptance of a new creed which had recently come across the Atlantic and was becoming fashionable in this country. Christian Science fastened on papa like a mosquito, and bit him hard. It comforted him very much to think that God did not know about the war. He told his grandchildren about this ignorance on the part of the Deity. Imogen pondered it. She had a metaphysical and inquiring mind, and was always interested in God.
“What does God think all those soldiers are doing out in Africa, grandpapa?” she asked, after a considering pause. “Or doesn’t he know they’re soldiers?”
“He knows they are unhappy people following an evil illusion, my child,” her grandpapa told her. “You see, there is no war really—not on God’s plane. There couldn’t be.”
Imogen pondered it again, corrugating her forehead. She dearly liked to understand things.
“Will God know about the peace, when it comes?”
“He will know his children have stopped imagining the evil of war. And he will be very glad.”
“Doesn’t he know about the soldiers who are killed? What does he think they’ve died of?”
“He knows they are slain by their evil imaginings and those of their enemies. You see, God knows his children believe themselves to be at war, and that as long as they go on believing it they will hurt each other and themselves.”
It seemed to Imogen that, in that case, God knew all that was really necessary about the war.
“Are you the only person, besides God, who doesn’t believe in the war, grandpapa?” she presently inquired.
“No, my child. There are others. . . . Perhaps one day, when you are older, you will understand more about it, and try to think all evil and all pain out of existence.”
“P’raps.” Imogen was dubious. She did not quite get the idea. “Of course, I’d like it, grandpapa, because then I shouldn’t get hurt any more.” She rubbed the back of her head, on to which she had fallen that afternoon while roller skating round the square. Her grandfather had told her God didn’t know she had fallen and hurt herself, and, in fact, that she was not really hurt at all. God didn’t know a great deal about roller skates, Imogen concluded, if he didn’t know that people who used them very frequently did fall. But perhaps he didn’t know there were any roller skates; perhaps roller skates were another evil illusion of ours, like the war. Not a bad illusion; one we had better keep, bruises and all.
But perhaps, thought Imogen, who liked to think things out thoroughly, it was really that God didn’t know that the contact of the human head with another hard substance caused pain. After all, people who have never tried don’t know that. Babies don’t. . . .
Imogen began to be afraid she was blaspheming. She put the problem later to her mother, but Vicky was less interested than her youngest daughter in metaphysical problems, and merely said, “Oh, Jennie darling, you needn’t puzzle your head about what grandpapa tells you. Things that suit learned old gentlemen like him don’t always do for little girls like you. Anyhow, don’t ever you get thinking that it won’t hurt you when you tumble on your head, because it always will. You’ll never get rid of that illusion, you may be sure. What you’ve got to learn is not to be so careless, and not to spend all your time climbing and racketing about. So long as you’ll do that, you’ll get tumbles, and they’ll hurt, and don’t you forget it.”
Imogen sighed a little. Her mother was so practical. You asked her for doctrine and she gave you advice. Being married, and particularly being a mother, often makes women like that. They know that doctrine is no use, and cherish the illusion that advice is.
“Papa is very happy in this new no-evil religion of his,” mamma said to Rome. “It suits him very well. Better than theosophy did, I think.”
Papa’s new religion might, from her placid, casual, considering tone, have been a new suit of clothes.
Papa’s daughter-in-law, Amy, screamed with mirth over it. Christian Science seemed to her an excellent joke.
“Oh, you’re not really hurt,” she would say if her daughter Iris came in from hockey with a black eye. “It’s all an illusion! What do you want embrocation for? I’ll tell your grandpapa of you. . . .”
“Christian Science,” Maurice said to her at last, gloomily contemptuous, “is not much more absurd than other religions. Suppose you were to take another for your hourly jokes to-day, just for the sake of a change. It makes no difference which; you don’t begin to understand any of them, and you can, no doubt, get a good laugh out of them all, if you try.”
Amy said, “There you go, as usual! I suppose you’ll be saying you’re a Christian Science crank next. Anyway, I don’t know what you want to speak to me in that way for, just because I like a little fun.”
“I don’t want to speak to you in any way,” replied Maurice.
4
On Education
Stanley, turning forty this year, was sturdier than of old, softer and broader of face, blunt-nosed, chubby, maternal, her deep blue eyes more ardent and intent. Now that her children, who were ten and eight, both went to day schools, she had taken up her old jobs, and was working for Women’s Trades’ Unions, going every day to an office, sitting on committees, speaking on platforms. Phases come and phases go, and particularly with Stanley, who inherited much from her papa. Stanley was in these days a stop-the-war, pacificist Little Englander, anti-militarist, anti-Chamberlain, anti-Concentration Camp. She would shortly be a Fabian, but had not quite got there yet. She was, of course, a suffragist, but suffragists in 1901 were still a very forlorn outpost; they were considered crankish and unpractical dreamers. She also spoke and wrote on Prison Reform, Democratic Education, Divorce Reform, Clean Milk, and Health Food. She was an admirer of Mr. Eustace Miles’s views on food, Mr. G. B. Shaw’s drama and social ethics, Mr. G. K. Chesterton’s romantic Christianity, and no one’s political opinions. She believed in the future of the world, which was to be splendidly managed by the children now growing up, who were to be splendidly educated for that purpose.
“But how improbable,” Rome mildly expostulated, “that they should manage it any better or any worse than every one else has. Your maternal pride carries you away, my dear. Parents can never be clearsighted; often have I observed it. Blessed, as the Bible says somewhere, are the barren and they that have not brought forth, for they are the only people with any chance of looking at the world with clear and detached eyes. And even they haven’t much. . . . But why do you think the present young will do so unusually well with the future?”
“Of course,” Stanley replied, “they won’t do it of themselves. Only so far as they are educated up to it.”
“Well, I can’t see that educational methods are improving noticeably. Obviously, democratic education is not at present to be encouraged by our governing classes. Look at the Cockerton case. . . .”
“It will come,” said Stanley. “This new bill won’t go far, but it will do something. Meanwhile, those parents who have thought it out at all are doing rather better by their children than parents used to do. At least we can tell them the truth.”
“So far as you see it yourselves. Is that, in most cases, saying much?”
“No; very little. But—to take a trivial thing—we can, at least, for instance, tell them the truth about such things as the birth of life. That’s something. Billy and Molly already know as much as they need about that.”
“Well, they don’t actually need very much yet, do they? I’m sure it won’t hurt them to know anything of that sort, but I don’t see exactly how it’s going to help them to manage the world any better. Because, when the time for doing that comes, they’ll know about the birth of life in any case. Boys always seem to pick it up at school, whatever else they don’t learn. However, I admit that I think you bring up Billy and Molly very well.”
“It’s facing facts,” said Stanley, “that I want to teach them. The art of not being afraid of life. They’ve go to do their share in cleaning up the world, and before they can do that they’ve got to face it squarely. One wants to do away with muffling things up, whatever they are. That’s why I tell them everything they ask, so far as I know it, and a lot they don’t. The knowledge doesn’t matter either way, but the atmosphere of daylight does. I want them to feel there are no facts that can’t be talked about.”
“But, my dear, what a social training! Because, you know, there are. Anyhow, in drawing-rooms, and places where they chat.”
“They’ll learn all that soon enough,” Stanley placidly said. “The world is as vulgar as it is mainly because of its prudery. I’m giving my children weapons against that.”
She had given them also a weapon against their cousins, the children of Vicky, who had not been told Facts. Anyhow, Imogen hadn’t. Her sisters were older, and boys, as Rome had said, do seem to pick things up at school. But Imogen at thirteen was still in the ignorance thought by Vicky suitable to her years. So, when she exasperated her cousin Billy by her superior proficiency in climbing, running, gymnastics, and all active games—a proficiency natural to her three years’ seniority, but growing tiresome during a whole afternoon spent in trials of skill—Billy could at least retort, “I know something you don’t. I know how babies come.”
“Don’t care how they come,” Imogen returned, astride on a higher bough of the aspen tree than her cousin could attain to. “They’re no use anyhow, the little fools. Who wants babies?”
Billy, having meditated on this unanswerable question, amended his vaunt. “Well, I know how puppies come, too. So there.”
Imogen was stumped. You can’t say that puppies are no use. She could think of no retort but the ancient one of sex insult.
“Boys are always bothering about stupid things like how babies come. As if it mattered. I’d rather know the displacement and horsepower and knots of all the battleships and first-class cruisers.”
“You don’t.”
“I do.”
“Bet you a bulls-eye you don’t.”
“Done. A pink one. Ask any one you like.”
“Well, what’s the Terrible?”
“14,200 tons; 25,000 horsepower; 22.4 knots. That’s an easy one.”
“The Powerful.”
“Same, of course. No, she only makes 22.1 knots. Stupid to ask me twins.”
Billy considered. He did not like to own it, but he could not remember at the moment any other ships of His Majesty’s fleet.
“Well
, what’s the biggest, anyhow?”
“The Dominion and the King Edward VII. 16,350 tons; 18,000 horsepower; 18.5 knots.”
“I don’t know that any of that’s true.”
“You can look in Brassey and find out, then.”
“I don’t care. Any one can mug up Brassey. Anyhow, girls can’t go into the navy.”
Imogen jogged up and down on the light swinging branch, whistling through her teeth, pretending not to hear.
“And anyhow,” added the taunter below, “you’d be no use on a ship, ‘cause you’d be sick.”
“I wouldn’t.”
“You would”
“I wouldn’t.”
“You would.”
“You’re sick yourself if you smoke a woodbine.”
“So are you. You’re sick if you squash a fly. Girls are. They can’t dissect a rabbit. I can.”
The sex war was in full swing.
Told by an Idiot Page 17
