SOME IMPRESSIONS 
 OF MY ELDERS 
 
 BY 
 ST. JOHN G. ERVINE 
 
 ^$m fnrk 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 1922 
 All Rights Reserved 
 
FBIKIED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 
 
 
 Copyright, 1920 and 1921, 
 Bt north AMERICAN REVIEW CORPORATION 
 
 OOPTRiaHT, 1922, 
 
 By ST. JOHN G. ERVINE 
 
 Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1922 
 
 ©C!.A6rJ0 06 3 
 
 VAIL.BALLOU COMPANy 
 
 SINGHAMTON AND NEW YORK 
 
 NOV -9 '22 
 
TO 
 ELIZABETH CUTTING 
 
 who would not give me any peace until I 
 had overcome my idle habits and written 
 all these impressions of my elders for the 
 North American Review. 
 
CONTENTS 
 THE AUTHOR TO HIS READERS .... 3 
 A. E. (GEORGE WILLIAM RUSSELL) ... 25 
 
 ARNOLD BENNETT 61 
 
 G. K. CHESTERTON 90 
 
 JOHN GALSWORTHY 113 
 
 GEORGE MOORE 161 
 
 BERNARD SHAW .189 
 
 H. G. WELLS 240 
 
 W. B. YEATS 264 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
THE AUTHOR TO HIS 
 READERS 
 
 The matter which appears in the following pages 
 was orginally contributed, in the shape of a series 
 of articles under the general title of "Some Im- 
 pressions of My Elders," to the North American 
 Review at intervals during the years 1920 and 
 1921. The order in which the articles appear 
 in this hook is different from the order in which 
 they appeared in the Review: this order is alpha- 
 betical whereas that was capricious. Some ex- 
 cisions and some additions have been made to them 
 and I hope that I have evaded the danger which 
 besets all those who reprint their journalism in 
 book form, the danger of repetitions. Why I re- 
 print them at all is a point on which I am not able 
 to offer conclusive explanations. I have reached 
 that period of my life when my wish is rather 
 not to write a book than to write one, and I have 
 lost all the cheery conceit which caused me in 
 
 [3] 
 
THE AUTHOR TO HIS READERS 
 
 my youth to feel that anything I wrote ought to 
 be published in a handsome volume. Indeed, 
 when I think of the great quantity of books there 
 already are in this world, it seems to me a sign of 
 hopeless irresponsibility to add to their number. 
 There are so many books that ought to be read, but 
 never can be read because there is not enough time 
 for any of us to do so, that no author can plead 
 justification for printing a book which does not 
 come within the catalogue of those that ought to 
 be read unless he needs the money which, pre- 
 sumably, he will get for it. I cannot urge even 
 that plea, for I have few needs and they are easily 
 satisfied. I have never been afflicted with the 
 mania for owning things, as Walt Whitman calls 
 it, and therefore have no wish to accumulate either 
 goods or money. Were it not for the insistence of 
 some of my friends, I do not suppose I should 
 issue this book to the public at all. We are too 
 prone, we scribblers, to put our casual writings 
 between the covers of a book, when regard for 
 our craft would compel us to reserve that dignity 
 for our greatest efforts; and I have feared for 
 several years now to be one of these offenders, 
 
 [4] 
 
THE AUTHOR TO HIS READERS 
 
 And yet, one likes to have an array of books on a 
 shelf and be able to say, "I wrote those." The pro- 
 fession of writing gives degree and reputation to a 
 man which is often greater than his due, and people 
 of ability will listen respectfully to the opinions of 
 a lesser person than themselves merely be- 
 cause he (or even she) has printed a book. Many 
 clever men and women actually paid good Ameri- 
 can money to hear me talk on odds and ends of 
 subjects, although they probably had views on 
 them that were at least as sound as mine and no 
 doubt a great deal sounder. I am afraid of this 
 tribute to the author. It may make us, a much 
 assorted crowd, esteem ourselves more highly than 
 we are naturally prone to do. The mere fact that 
 a man has contracted a profitable habit of putting 
 words together does not entitle him to more of the 
 world's respect that is due to one who has con- 
 tracted the habit of putting bits of metal together 
 and calling the result a motor-car. I do not know 
 why a man who writes books should regard him- 
 self as a better man than one who makes butter. 
 Far less do I know why the man who makes butter 
 should consent to believe that he is less worthy than 
 the man who makes books. But undoubtedly some 
 
 [5] 
 
THE AUTHOR TO HIS READERS 
 
 such superstition fills the minds of most of us. 
 When a man or woman of ordinary appearance 
 and uninteresting speech comes into our presence, 
 we say "How do you do!" and turn away; but when 
 we are informed that this same person has written 
 a novel, immediately we become interested and 
 turn again to him or her in the expectation that 
 something profoundly illuminating will be said to 
 us. Experience does not cure us of that delusive 
 hope. We do not prick up our ears when a man 
 who owns the largest motor-car factory in the world 
 comes into our presence, and we yawn in the face of 
 a railway director Yet either of these may be 
 far more entertaining company than any author. 
 It is true that the author is presumably more im- 
 aginative than the owner of the factory or the pres- 
 ident of the railroad, and perhaps the instinctive 
 tribute paid by mankind to the author, even when 
 mankind omits to buy his books, is a recognition 
 of the value of imagination to human life. As 
 such I gladly accept it. Nevertheless, I could 
 wish for more discrimination in these tributes. On 
 the whole, I would prefer to see our authors 
 neglected than over-estimated. No one on earth 
 and probably no one in heaven can prevent an 
 
 [6] 
 
THE AUTHOR TO HIS READERS 
 
 author from making books while he has breath in 
 his body and energy in his brain and fingers. 
 Therefore, neglect will not greatly harm him. 
 But too much praise, too much consideration of 
 his views, above all, too much profit from his 
 work, will make a sad mess of an excellent writer. 
 I tell myself sometimes that no author should be 
 praised until he is dead, though he might 
 occasionally be dispraised during his lifetime. 
 We should thus save our authors, though there is 
 no certainty in this, from excess of vanity. Let 
 Shakespeare's reputation grow to legendary pro- 
 portions when he is safely within his grave, but 
 do not, if you desire the best that is in him, let 
 him be often or much praised while he is alive. 
 We have come to a period of time when authors 
 feel that they must write so many books each 
 year. But I would have an author publish a book 
 only when the compulsion to publish it becomes 
 greater than he can resist. Books would not neces- 
 sarily be better, but they would certainly be fewer, 
 and they might be better. 
 
 [7] 
 
THE AUTHOR TO HIS READERS 
 II 
 
 I have written thus far, partly to resolve my own 
 doubts (which, however, are not resolved) but 
 chiefly to excuse myself to those who may buy this 
 book. I beg of them to believe that I have not 
 reprinted these fugitive pieces without deliber- 
 ation on their value. My friends tell me that 
 any impressions of men of quality and genius 
 have value, and undoubtedly Boswell's biography 
 of Dr. Johnson confirms many mediocrities in their 
 intention to accept a man's hospitality for the 
 purpose of earning money by describing his per- 
 sonal habits in a public journal. We would be 
 very grateful for an account of Shakespeare no 
 better than any one of the chapters in this book 
 If an Elizabethan had had a mind like Boswell's 
 and had noted down all that he ever heard 
 Shakespeare say, had pressed him with questions 
 on his work, had noted his personal appearance, 
 his habits of dress, his ways of eating, his 
 eff'ect on women, his likes and dislikes, the thou- 
 sand and one small things which, when summed 
 up, make a man out of a myth, how happy we 
 should all be, how many thousand commentators 
 
 [8] 
 
THE AUTHOR TO HIS READERS 
 
 and emendators and wrathful Baconians and cy- 
 pher maniacs would be put out of employment! 
 One could cry with vexation at the thought that 
 there was no one with sufficient intelligence to keep 
 a diary during those last few mysterious years 
 in Stratford-on-Avon when Shakespeare, though 
 still a young man as ages go, ceased to work at his 
 trade and went in silence to his grave. Such are 
 the considerations which have affected me in my 
 decision to reprint these chapters, though they 
 may add very little to any one's knowledge of the 
 men who are described in them. It is, perhaps, 
 an additional factor in the decision that they 
 record impressions made on the mind of a young 
 man by his elders and betters and expressed at 
 a time when he was ceasing to be young. The 
 generation to which I belong was much impressed 
 by the men whose work and beliefs are sketched 
 in this book. All young men, whatever their class 
 or culture, have heroes. The world, indeed, will 
 end when young men cease to have heroes. 
 Mr. Shaw and Mr. Wells, Mr. Chesterton and Mr. 
 Belloc, Mr. Yeats and Mr. Moore, Mr. Bennett and 
 Mr. Galsworthy and, rather more remotely, "A. 
 E." were heroes worthy of emulation by me and 
 
 [9] 
 
THE AUTHOR TO HIS READERS 
 
 the likes of me. George Meredith and Mr. Hardy 
 were too far up the slopes of Olympus for us to 
 hope ever to touch the hem of their garments, but 
 we were alive in the same world with them and 
 sometimes spoke with people who knew them. 
 Once, even, on a hot Sunday morning I walked 
 for miles in Surrey, stiff with determination to 
 see Meredith and to speak with him, even if I 
 should have to skulk about his house the entire 
 day and run the risk of being arrested for suspi- 
 cious loitering; but my heart failed me when, tired 
 and thirsty, I came* into his neighbourhood. Who 
 was I, I dem'anded of myself, that I should thrust 
 my unimportant person on the notice of a genius? 
 And when I had made that demand of myself, I 
 realised that I could do no other than go away and 
 leave the- old man in peace. And so I went, though 
 now I regret that I did, for a little while after I 
 made my expedition to Box Hill, Meredith died 
 and I had lost for ever my hope of seeing him. 
 Time has been kinder to me over Mr. Hardy whose 
 friendship I have the happiness to enjoy. 
 
 I have described these men as our heroes, but of 
 course the degree of respect we gave to them varied. 
 The feeling we had for Mr. Galsworthy, for ex- 
 
 [10] 
 
THE AUTHOR TO HIS READERS 
 
 ample, was diminislied by the fact that we were 
 afraid he would turn aside and shed a few unac- 
 countable tears. His work, particularly "The Man 
 of Property," "The Country House" and "The Sil- 
 ver Box," had the great appeal which all passion- 
 ately sincere work has, but it left some of us in a 
 state of chilled speculation. We were afraid of 
 the effect Mr. Galsworthy had on our emotions and 
 we resisted him more, perhaps, than we ought to 
 have done because we suspected him of sentimen- 
 tality and were afraid he 'might let our minds 
 down by pressing too hardly on our hearts. His 
 work excited a remote pity in us, but it did not 
 rouse us to wrath or warm our affections. His 
 characters were the creatures of an aloof, impas- 
 sive and immovable Destiny; and it is difficult to 
 feel much interest in automatons. If a man is 
 wronged by another man, I may be stirred to his 
 defence, but if he is thwarted or crushed by some 
 passionless Force which cannot be controlled or 
 persuaded or defeated, I am unlikely to do more 
 than murmur "Poor fellow!" and pass on my way. 
 Spineless men, impotently submitting to Circum- 
 stances, do not stir the blood, and Mr. Galsworthy's 
 characters, though they might excite our pity, killed 
 
 [11] 
 
THE AUTHOR TO HIS READERS 
 
 our hope. Mr. Galsworthy seemed to us to say, 
 "Vain youths, it is idle to make any effort! Things 
 happen and they cannot be helped. You are 
 doomed from the moment of your birth to die 
 frustrated! . . ." He is easily made indignant by 
 suffering, but we could not imagine him sounding 
 a call to fight. We could think of him only in the 
 act of surrender. We asked for a challenge; he 
 counselled submission. He was a Tolstoyan, not 
 of his Free Will, for he had no Free Will, but 
 because he could not help himself. He turned the 
 other cheek because he would not clench his fist. 
 Mr. Hardy did not fill our mouths with dust as 
 Mr. Galsworthy did, for his people, though they, 
 too, were creatures of Destiny, were gallant crea- 
 tures and went to their end with a noble gesture. 
 He left us with the sensation that although we 
 were obliged to submit to a doom determined for 
 us by a Power that understood neither Itself nor 
 us, yet we could put ribbons in our hats. We 
 could die like men and not like rats. When Mr. 
 Hardy celebrated his eighty-first birthday, his 
 younger comrades in the craft of letters presented 
 an address to him from which I quote the follow- 
 ing passages: 
 
 [12] 
 
THE AUTHOR TO HIS READERS 
 
 *'In your novels and poems you have given us a 
 tragic vision of life which is informed by your knowl- 
 edge of character and relieved by the charity of your 
 humour and sweetened by your sympathy with human 
 suffering and endurance. We have learned from you 
 that the proud heart can subdue the hardest fate, even 
 in submitting to it. When Mr. Justice Shallow sought 
 to instruct Sir John Falstaff in the choice of soldiers, 
 the knight said: *Care I for the limbs, the thewes, the 
 stature, bulk and big assemblance of a man? Give me 
 the spirit. Master Shallow.' So would you have 
 answered him, for in all that you have written you have 
 shown the spirit of man, nourished by tradition and sus- 
 tained by pride, persisting through defeat. You have 
 inspired us both by your work and by the manner in 
 which it was done. The craftsman in you calls for our 
 admiration as surely as the artist, and few writers have 
 observed so closely as you have the Host's instruction 
 in the Canterbury Tales: 
 
 Your termes, your colours and your figures, 
 
 Keep them in store, till so be ye indite 
 
 High style, as when that men to kinges write. 
 
 From your first book to your last, you have written 
 in the 'high style, as when that men to kinges write,' 
 and you have crowned a ^eat prose with a noble 
 poetry." 
 
 Those extracts express, I think, some of the 
 quiet quality of courage discoverable in the de- 
 
 [13] 
 
THE AUTHOR TO HIS READERS 
 
 terminism of Mr. Hardy, but absent from the de- 
 terminism of Mr. Galsworthy. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Our attitude towards Mr. Shaw, Mr. Wells, Mr. 
 Chesterton and Mr. Belloc was very different from 
 our attitude towards Mr. Galsworthy. These chal- 
 lenging, fighting, protesting men were concerned 
 less with pity for the victims of life than with 
 anger against or opposition to the oppressors of 
 life. They did not wring their hands; they put 
 up their fists. The Early Twentieth Century Youth 
 listened respectfully to Mr. Galsworthy, but he 
 went out to fight with Mr. Shaw and Mr. Wells 
 and Mr. Chesterton and Mr. Belloc. These four 
 men did not move him in equal measure. Mr. 
 Wells stimulated him with the quick succession of 
 his ideas, but disconcerted him also with the rapid- 
 ity with which he shed one idea for another. 
 While we were willing to challenge everything and 
 make it justify its existence, we were eager also to 
 find firm ground for our feet. We felt that Mr. 
 Wells ought to make up his mind a little more care^ 
 fully before he took the public into his confidence. 
 
 [14] 
 
THE AUTHOR TO HIS READERS 
 
 Mr. Shaw's awful consistency, even when he took 
 to religion, drew us to him more than Mr. Wells's 
 willingness to modify or enlarge his views. Mr. 
 Belloc and Mr. Qiesterton stimulated us in a dif- 
 ferent way from that in which Mr. Shaw and Mr. 
 Wells stimulated us. Mr. Wells sent us out into 
 llie world in search of new and more adequate for- 
 mulae; Mr. Belloc and Mr. Chesterton checked us 
 in headlong flights with words of warning and re- 
 monstrance. They reminded us that man is of the 
 earth, earthy; that man does not live by Good Will 
 alone; that society is composed of a great variety 
 of beings, generous and mean, exalted and debased, 
 hearty and miserable, noble and ignoble, self- 
 sacrificing and self-seeking, kind and cruel; and 
 they reminded us also that unless we took care to 
 remember fhis vital fact of the variety of man, 
 we should lose our way in the deserts ahead of us. 
 They told us that Mr. Wells's "Good Will" was 
 merely Godwin's "Universal Benevolence" all over 
 again, and that Godwin's doctrine had made the 
 way easy for the Utilitarians and the growth 
 of a devitalizing political theory which ex- 
 pressed itself in the brutal industrial system of the 
 first half of the nineteenth century. Mr. Wells 
 
 [15] 
 
THE AUTHOR TO HIS READERS 
 
 sought to convict man of a sense of stupidity and 
 disorganization, but they sought to convict him of a 
 sense of sin. Mr. Wells reminded man of his 
 power to aspire; they reminded him of his lapse 
 from grace. Mr. Wells said, "You can climb!" 
 They said, "You have fallen!" He said, "Think!" 
 They said, "Repent!" The world, in Mr. Wells's 
 opinion, needed Love and Fine Thinking. In the 
 opinion of Mr. Belloc and Mr. Chesterton it needed 
 the love of God and faith in the Catholic Church. 
 There probably was less difference in essentials 
 between Mr. Wells and the Chesterbelloc, as Mr. 
 Shaw nicknamed them, than appeared on the sur- 
 face of things. The Catholic Church in its organ- 
 ized state may move Mr. Wells to admiration, 
 though, in its religious aspect, it probably moves 
 him only to derision. It is a shabby sort of faith, 
 with a tendency to tawdriness which makes it ulti- 
 mately unsuitable to the spiritual needs of a gentle- 
 man, although adequate to the needs of servant- 
 girls and actors. No one who has visited a Cath- 
 olic church or witnessed the ceremonials in Rome 
 can help, if he or she be possessed of any culture 
 at all, feeling that the whole business is second- 
 rate: the effort of an overblown actor-manager to 
 
 [16] 
 
THE AUTHOR TO HIS READERS 
 
 interpret Shakespeare in pretentious terms. The 
 fundamental sanity of Mr. Chesterton has, no 
 doubt, saved him from the folly of secession to 
 Rome,* but his partiality for it and Mr. Belloc's 
 rigid attainment to it, made the young men of my 
 time suspicious of the Ghesterbelloc. Mr. Belloc 
 said, on a public occasion, that he would support 
 the Church in an act of repression if the Church 
 came into serious conflict with an antagonist; and 
 he proved that he meant what he said by applaud- 
 ing the execution of Ferrer, the anti-clerical, in 
 Spain. It was natural, perhaps, that my Orange 
 blood should boil when I heard Mr. Belloc palli- 
 ating the offences of his obsolete church, but my 
 more tolerant friends were as dashed by his be- 
 haviour as I was, and what respect we had for 
 him was considerably diminished by the knowledge 
 that he would always come to heel when some priest 
 snapped fingers at him. Neither he nor Mr. Ches- 
 terton, although their criticism interested and on 
 occasions checked us, ever established dominion 
 over us because of their preoccupation with 
 Catholicism. They might spell the word with a cap- 
 ital C, but we knew very well that Mr. Belloc in 
 his heart spelt it with a small one, and we were 
 
 [17] 
 
THE AUTHOR TO HIS READERS 
 
 not going to deliver ourselves into the hands of 
 men who were priest-ridden, however "jolly" 
 they might be or however well they might write. 
 
 We were not interested in their beer-swilling hab- 
 its which we regarded as queer nastinesses in other- 
 wise reputable persons. Their efforts to make a 
 tenet of religion out of beer-swilling seemed to us 
 to be as ridiculous as would be an effort by a 
 Chinaman to make a tenet of religion out of opium- 
 smoking. 
 
 Mr. Shaw was incontestably the supreme figure 
 among these men of mind who stimulated and in- 
 fluenced the young men and women of the Early 
 Twentieth Century. I doubt whether any one has 
 ever captured or held the fancy of young men as 
 Mr. Shaw captured and held our fancy. Dr. 
 Johnson had an influence as powerful in his time 
 as Mr. Shaw had in ours; but Dr. Johnson's influ- 
 ence was mainly exercised over men of older years 
 than we were, of more established habits than we 
 had; and I doubt very much whether he affected 
 their thoughts and outlook on life so profoundly 
 as Mr. Shaw affected us. He could not persuade 
 the faithful Boswell to accept his view of the Ameri- 
 can colonists, and his pamphlet, "Taxation No 
 
 [18] 
 
THE AUTHOR TO HIS READERS 
 
 Tyranny" displeased his friends as much as it ap- 
 peared to gratify George III and his supporters. 
 Dr. Johnson was a critic and a scholar with very 
 little creative ability; he was too conservative a 
 man to be a man of genius; and he looked back 
 too often for the liking of young men who are al- 
 ways looking forward. His love of tradition and 
 settled order, while it was pleasing to men of an 
 age when comfort and security and familiar things 
 began to attract the mind more than effort and 
 adventure and change, made him unattractive to the 
 stirring minds of young men. Shelley derived 
 from Godwin, not from Johnson. 
 
 There is a passage in Boswell's "Life of Dr. 
 Johnson" in which Dr. Johnson's peculiar views on 
 the respect due to men of rank are set out very 
 clearly. 
 
 "... a discussion took place, whether . . . Lord Cardross 
 did right to refuse to go Secretary of the Embassy to 
 Spain, when Sir James Gray, a man of inferior rank, 
 went Ambassador. Dr. Johnson said, that perhaps in 
 point of interest he did wrong; but in point of dignity 
 he did well. . . . Sir, had he gone Secretary while his 
 inferior was Ambassador, he would have been a traitor 
 to his rank and family." 
 
 [19] 
 
THE AUTHOR TO HIS READERS 
 
 The question, to Dr. Johnson's mind, was not one 
 of merit: Lord Cardross was entitled to "go Am- 
 bassador," not because he was a more skilful dip- 
 lomatist than Sir James Gray, but because he was 
 a lord while Sir James was only a knight! This 
 extraordinary doctrine, which may be held account- 
 able for much in British history, might appeal to 
 elderly men who love rules and regulations and 
 like to have everything neatly set out in books, 
 but it certainly does not appeal to young men who 
 believe in conflicts won by superior qualities; for 
 young men, as Dr. Johnson himself said on one oc- 
 casion, "have more virtue than old men; they have 
 more generous sentiments in every respect." 
 
 Mr. Shaw is incapable of uttering such a re- 
 mark as Dr. Johnson uttered in support of Lord 
 Cardross's inept behaviour. He has, indeed, said 
 and written foolish things and he is capable of 
 making what are called "debating" points and 
 cheap scores and of saying things for the sake of 
 saying them or of annoying the complacent and 
 the smug; but he is incapable of saying anything 
 which supports a belief that one man shall have 
 precedence over another, not because of his merit, 
 but because of his birth. Dr. Johnson's statement 
 
 [20] 
 
THE AUTHOR TO HIS READERS 
 
 was not a casual, fantastic, perverse statement; it 
 was a natural result of his general theory of so- 
 ciety. It is recorded of him that he declined to 
 leave a room until a Bishop had done so on the 
 ground that the Bishop's office gave him a title to 
 precedence over a man of greater mentality! It 
 was not humility that caused Dr. Johnson to be- 
 have thus, for he was an arrogant man, nor was 
 it indifference to such matters, for he was a stickler 
 for respect to himself even when he did not de- 
 serve respect: it was his belief in the providential 
 arrangement of society in settled grades that caused 
 him to behave in this way. The man was entitled 
 to quit the room first, not because he was a good 
 man or a great man, but because he was a bishop! 
 There is probably some convenience in this 
 belief, a simple method of preventing incivility, 
 but it is a small convenience which does not greatly 
 matter to youth. 
 
 I can imagine Mr. Shaw refusing to go out of 
 the room before the Bishop has done so, in sheer 
 humility or indifference, but I cannot imagine him 
 refusing to do so because of his regard for the 
 man's office as distinct from the man himself. 
 And it is, I suppose, his irreverence for office, more 
 
 [21] 
 
THE AUTHOR TO HIS READERS 
 
 than anything else, which draws young men to 
 him. He is no respecter of persons or authorities: 
 he criticizes them all, high or low. His courage, 
 his vitality, his arrogance, his humility, his champ- 
 ionship of persecuted persons, his impulse to help 
 an unpopular cause not, as stupid people imagine, 
 because it is unpopular, but because it seems to 
 him to be a just cause, and his absolute indiffer- 
 ence to vested interests and the power of the ma- 
 jority — these qualities of his drav/ young men to 
 him as a magnet draws a needle. It is significant, 
 I think, that Dr. Johnson had a very strong dis- 
 like of Dean Swift to whom, in many respects, 
 Bernard Shaw bears a close mental resemblance. 
 It is very certain that had Bernard Shaw lived in 
 the eighteenth century, to which, in spirit, he really 
 belongs, he would have supported the Americans 
 as fiercely as Johnson denounced them; and I do 
 not doubt that his would have been the most scath- 
 ing and powerful of the pamphlets written in reply 
 to "Taxation No Tyranny." 
 
 [22] 
 
THE AUTHOR TO HIS READERS 
 
 IV 
 
 These, then, were the men who guided in 
 greater or less degree the opinions of the young 
 men and women of the Early Twentieth Century 
 in the islands of Great Britain and Ireland. "A. 
 E." greatly influenced young Irishmen who re- 
 mained curiously unimpressed either by Mr. 
 Moore or Mr. Yeats. Rumours of his doctrine 
 came to the ears of young Englishman, but they 
 had no personal contact with him as they had with 
 Mr. Shaw and Mr. Wells and Mr. Belloc and 
 Mr. Chesterton. It is not possible to calculate 
 the extent to which these men moulded the minds 
 of my generation, but indisputably it was large. 
 No one who grew from youth to manhood between 
 1900 and 1914 could escape from their influence, 
 even if he were unconscious of it. The greater 
 part of that generation died in the War. The 
 young men who drew their ideas chiefly from Mr. 
 Wells and Mr. Shaw, directly or indirectly, did 
 not live to make their world, and so we can never 
 tell what good or ill would have resulted to man- 
 kind had they succeeded to authority. Their 
 bones are buried in France and Italy, in Pales- 
 
 [23] 
 
THE AUTHOR TO HIS READERS 
 
 line and Turkey, in Russia and East Africa, on 
 the shores of Gallipoli and in the marshes of Sa- 
 lonica, in the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean 
 and the North Sea; and there is nothing to remem- 
 ber them by but broken lands in France and the 
 broken vows of politicians the world over. These 
 young men went out to die in a mood of selfless- 
 ness that has never, perhaps, been equalled or ex- 
 celled in the history of mankind; and when their 
 backs were turned, they were betrayed. We can- 
 not look on them again, but we may find com- 
 fort in our loss by remembering and considering 
 the men who formed the faith they held. 
 
 [24] 
 
"A. E." 
 
 (GEORGE WILLIAM RUSSELL) 
 I 
 
 In all the books on Ireland, considered nationally, 
 socially and economically, that have been written 
 in the past twenty years, two men inevitably are 
 mentioned: Sir Horace Plunkett and "A. E. ," 
 whose lawful name is George William Russell. 
 Men of affairs in most parts of the world have 
 heard of them, and I imagine that very few of the 
 people who go to Ireland with any serious purpose 
 fail to visit them. I saw Sir Horace Plunkett re- 
 ceive an ovation from a large audience in New 
 York which could only have been given to him by 
 people who had some knowledge and appreciation 
 of his work for his country; and I was impressed 
 by the fact that many Americans asked me to tell 
 them something of "A. E." And yet, though the 
 wide world is not ignorant of their worth, it is 
 very likely that they are less generally known in 
 
 [25] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 Ireland than some paltry politician with a gift for 
 street-corner rhetoric. Once, in Dublin, I praised 
 Sir Horace Plunkett to a man from the county of 
 Cavan, who interrupted me to say that no one in 
 his village had ever heard of Sir Horace. He 
 seemed to imagine that the ignorance of his 
 neighbours proved a demerit in the founder of 
 the co-operative movement in Ireland. Your 
 villagers, said I, may never have heard of Sir 
 Horace Plunkett and are probably very familiar 
 with the names of Mr. Charles Chaplin and 
 Miss Mary Pickford, but does that prove that Mr. 
 Chaplin is a greater man than Sir Horace? I 
 am not indifferent to the merits of Mr. Chaplin — 
 I would go a long way to see him in the movies 
 — but I hope I shall never succumb to this modern 
 shoddy democracy which will not believe that a 
 man possesses quality unless his name is printed 
 frequently in the newspapers and is familiarly 
 known to the rabble. It may be that Paudeen, un- 
 fit to do more than "fumble in a greasy till," as Mr. 
 Yeats wrote in his bitter poem, "September, 
 1913," knows little or nothing of Sir Horace 
 Plunkett whose life labours have brought so much 
 of comfort and prosperity to him — but who cares 
 
 [26] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 what Paudeen knows? Let him grub in the soil, 
 as God made him to grub, while men of mind and 
 quality look after his affairs. It is sufficient for 
 the knowledgeable minority that they know of 
 Sir Horace and realize the value of the great 
 work he has done for his country. A false opti- 
 mism bids us to believe that "we needs must love 
 the highest when we see it," but a sense of reality 
 convinces us that the highest has to fight harder 
 for recognition than the lowest, and that the way 
 to the throne of heaven passes through Golgotha, 
 the place of a skull. 
 
 II 
 
 If it be true that Sir Horace Plunkett is less 
 known to his countrymen than some fellow with 
 flashy wits, it is more certain to be true that his 
 great colleague in co-operation, "A. E. ," is still 
 less known to them. It would be difficult for 
 any intelligent person to come into the presence 
 of "A. E." and remain unaware that he is a man 
 of merit. He fills a room immediately and un- 
 mistakably with the power of his personality. A 
 tall, bearded, untidy man, with full lips and bulk- 
 
 [27] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 ily-built body, he draws attention by his deep, 
 grey eyes. When he speaks, other people listen. 
 If you were to meet him in the street, unaware of 
 his identity, and he were to ask you for a match 
 with which to light his pipe, you would do more 
 than civilly comply with his request. You would 
 certainly say to yourself, "That's a remarkable 
 man!" It is said, with what verity I cannot say, 
 that Mr. Bernard Shaw and "A. E." met for the 
 first time in a picture-gallery in Dublin, each igno- 
 rant of the other's identity, and that they began 
 to talk of Art. They impressed each other so 
 greatly that they continued in argument for a long 
 time, and only, when they parted, did they become 
 knov/n to each other. The mountains nod to each 
 other over the heads of the little hills; and men of 
 merit, even when they are not easily recognized by 
 the multitude, are known to each other. One man 
 of merit may, indeed, belittle another man of merit, 
 as Dr. Johnson belittled Fielding, as George 
 Meredith belittled Dickens, as Henry James be- 
 littled Ibsen and Thomas Hardy; but at least 
 they are aware of each other. 
 
 [28] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 III 
 
 Very often have writers told the story of 
 how Sir Horace Plunkett, a tongue-tied, hesitant 
 man with very delicate health, returned to Ireland 
 after a long stay in America, to begin the Go-oper- 
 ative Movement, and found, in a Dublin shop, keep- 
 ing accounts for a tea-merchant, a poet and a 
 painter, a mystic who was also an economist with 
 the capacity, as it afterwards proved, to become 
 the ablest journalist in Ireland. This man of mul- 
 tiple energies was George William Russell, who 
 was born in Lurgan, in the Gounty of Armagh, on 
 April 10, 1867. He is two years younger than 
 Mr. Yeats, eleven years younger than Mr. Shaw, 
 and fifteen years younger than Mr. George Moore. 
 The order of these births is significant. Observe 
 how an aloof artist has been succeeded by a furious 
 economist! Mr. Moore, who began life as a 
 realist after the manner, but not after the style, of 
 Zola, and then turned his back on Zola and sought 
 the company of Turgeniev so that he might pursue 
 apt and beautiful words and delicate and elusive 
 thoughts, was followed by Mr. Shaw, who began 
 life by filling his mind with the ideas of Henry 
 
 [29] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 George and Karl Marx, and then turned his back 
 on both of them in order that he might consort 
 with Mr. Sidney Webb. Mr. Yeats, with his vague 
 poetry and vague mysticism — none the less vague 
 because of the curious care for exactness which 
 causes him to count the nine and fifty swans at 
 Coole and the nine bean rows on Innisfree — fol- 
 lowed Mr. Shaw, and in his turn was followed by 
 "A. E." so closely connected with economics that 
 a wag, when asked what was the meaning of "A. 
 E's." pen-name, replied "agricultural economist." * 
 One cannot, however, leave the matter as simply 
 as that. Mr. Shaw likes to think of himself as an 
 economist, but he is more than an economist; he 
 is John the Baptist pretending to be Karl Marx. 
 "A. E." likes to think of himself as an expert on 
 the price of butter and milk and cows and sheep, 
 but he is more than an expert on these things: he 
 is Blake pretending to be Sir Horace Plunkett. Or 
 
 * Mr. Darrell Figgis, in his book on "A. E.", explains the 
 pen-name thus: "Wanting at one time a new pen-name, he sub- 
 scribed himself as Aeon. His penmanship not at all times being 
 of the legiblest, the printer deciphered the first diphthong and 
 set a query for the rest; whereupon the writer, in his proof-sheets, 
 stroked out the query and stood by the diphthong." Since then, 
 however, Mr. Russell has abandoned the diphthong and prints 
 his pen name as two separate letters. 
 
 [30] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 Walt Whitman pretending to be President Wilson. 
 It has always seemed to me that Sir Horace Plun- 
 kett and "A. E.," colleagues in a great enterprise, 
 are the embodiment of the peculiarly interwoven 
 strands of Irish character, of that queer mingling 
 of the material and the spiritual in the Irish people 
 which at once allures and astounds the Englishman, 
 accustomed to keeping his materialism and his 
 spirituality in separate compartments. Sir Hor- 
 ace has a neat and unexpected wit, but he does 
 not appear to me to have much feeling for poetry 
 or for any other literature or art. He has respect 
 for these things and will talk on them sometimes 
 with singular incisiveness, but his interest in them 
 is an outside interest. If he had to choose between 
 a co-operative creamery and the Heroic Legends 
 of Ireland, I do not doubt for a moment that he 
 would choose the co-operative creamery. "A. E.," 
 on the contrary, would choose the Heroic Legends 
 and would give the good reason for so doing that 
 without the Heroic Legends, the co-operative cream- 
 ery is useless. When "A. E." pleads for the co- 
 operative societies, he does so because he believes 
 that these are part of the means whereby the Irish 
 people will be restored to their ancient stature. 
 
 [31] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 Organize your industry, he said to the farmers, 
 so that you may become what your fathers were, 
 fit company for the Shining Ones, for Lugh and 
 Balor and Manannan, the great and brave and 
 beautiful Pagan gods. Each by himself, Sir Hor- 
 ace or "A. E.," might have failed to make much 
 out of the co-operative movement in Ireland, but 
 both together, each possessed of a different, yet 
 complementary, crusading spirit, could not fail 
 to make a happy issue of it. When Garibaldi 
 appealed for recruits for his Thousand, he offered 
 them wounds and death. When Sir Horace Plun- 
 kett appealed for helpers in the Irish Agricultural 
 Organization Society, he offered them hard and 
 discouraging labour and poor wages. Mankind, 
 which responds to a noble appeal as readily as it 
 responds to a base appeal, offered its best to both 
 of them. Garibaldi got his Thousand, and Sir 
 Horace Plunkett got his colleagues. 
 
 They were diverse in character, and included 
 Nationalists and Unionists, Catholics and Protes- 
 tants, peers and peasants. For the first time in 
 Irish history. Irishmen of all classes were united 
 on a matter which had no relationship with 
 passions! There were no angry emotions astir 
 
 [32] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 when the I. A. 0. S. brought the diverse elements of 
 the Irish entity into accord as there had been when 
 the union of the North and the South was made 
 many years earlier; and consequently the move- 
 ment could not be split, as that Union was, by the 
 collision of one angry emotion with another. In 
 face of every conceivable discouragement and 
 even of active enmity and in spite of the grave 
 unhealth of Sir Horace himself, the movement 
 grew in strength until now it is indestructible.* 
 Chief among the colleagues whom Sir Horace 
 gathered about him was "A. E." Mr. Russell 
 could, without doubt, earn a large income as a 
 journalist if he were to offer his pen to a rich 
 newspaper proprietor — his weekly review, the 
 Irish Homestead, is the most ably-edited and 
 skillfully-written organ in Ireland — and he could 
 probably earn as much as, if not more than, 
 he receives from his Co-operative work if he were 
 
 * I leave that passage unmodified, despite the fact that the 
 Black-and-Tans in the course of their fight with the Sinn Feiners 
 (equally disgraceful to both of them) burnt down many of the 
 creameries. They will be built again. Mr. Lloyd George jeered 
 at Sir Horace Plunkett soon after the Black-and-Tans had per- 
 formed most of their infamous work, but any decent person 
 would infinitely prefer to be Sir Horace with his burnt creameries 
 than Mr. Lloyd George with his burnt principles. 
 
 [33] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 to devote himself exclusively to his mystical and 
 poetical writings; but just as Mazzini felt him- 
 self compelled to sacrifice his heart's desire, the 
 life of a man of letters, in order to devote him- 
 self to a political career which was distasteful to 
 him, so "A. E." felt compelled to hitch his star to 
 Sir Horace Plunkett's wagon, and for many years 
 now he has preached, week after week, the gospel 
 of co-operation to Irish farmers when he would, 
 perhaps, have preferred exclusively to tell stories 
 of the ancient gods and heroes. 
 
 IV 
 
 But the Co-operative Movement did not ab- 
 sorb the whole of his energies. He is as many- 
 sided as William Morris was, almost as many- 
 sided as Leonardo da Vinci. His work on the 
 Irish Homestead would seem to be sufficient to 
 employ all the vitality of a healthy, active man, 
 but "A. E." cannot be contained within the pages 
 of a weekly review, and so, while writing four or 
 five pages every week of the finest journalism to be 
 found in Great Britain or Ireland, he has also pro- 
 duced seven remarkable books and painted many 
 
 [34] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 pictures, engaged in political and economic con- 
 troversy, and sat as a member of the Irish Conven- 
 tion which endeavoured, in 1917, to discover a 
 solution of the Irish Problem. In a strange and, 
 to me, incomprehensible book, called "The Candle 
 of Vision," he has wrought his mysticism to such 
 a pitch of practicality that he is able to offer his 
 readers an alphabet with which to interpret the 
 language of the Gods! It manifests itself in some 
 of his pictures, where strange, luminous and 
 irightly-coloured creatures are seen shining in 
 some ordinary landscape, creatures that seemed 
 to me, when I first saw them, akin to Red Indians. 
 In everything that he writes and does, there is a 
 consciousness of some spiritual presence, not the 
 spiritual presence of the Christian theology, but 
 of the Pagan Legends. One night, in his house 
 in Dublin, I drew^ the attention of a lady to one of 
 his pictures, a dark landscape, in the centre of 
 which a very brilliant and beautiful creature was 
 dancing. "A. E." turned to us and said, "That's 
 the one I saw!" and I remembered the story I 
 had been told earlier in the evening, that he saw 
 fairies, that he actually took penny tram-rides 
 from Dublin to go up into the mountains to see the 
 
 [35] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 fairies! I do not remember what the lady said, 
 but I remember that she looked exceedingly aston- 
 ished, and, indeed, I myself felt some astonish- 
 ment. If Mr. Yeats had said that he had seen 
 a fairy, I should have smiled indulgently and 
 should neither have believed that he had seen one 
 nor that he himself believed that he had seen one. 
 But while I do not believe that "A. E." saw a 
 fairy, otherwise than in his imagination, I am cer- 
 tain that he believes he saw one, not as a creature 
 of the mind, but as one having flesh and blood. 
 He claims no peculiar merit for himself in seeing 
 visions. "There is no personal virtue in me," he 
 writes in "The Candle of Vision," "other than this 
 that I followed a path all may travel but on which 
 few do journey." He tells his readers how they, 
 too, if they have the wish, may see the things which 
 he has seen, and he gives descriptions of some of 
 his visions. People as incredulous as I am can 
 very easily dispose of "A. E.'s" visions as the fan- 
 tasies of a man suffering perhaps from inadequate 
 nourishment — for "A. E." was careless about his 
 meals in those days — just as the visions of St. 
 Theresa and St. Catherine of Sienna may be ex- 
 plained by the feverishness of mind that comes 
 
 [36] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 to people who are starving themselves or are suf- 
 fering from neurosis. Here is an account of one 
 of his visions. You are to understand that it is 
 not a dream such as you and I have when we are 
 asleep, but something seen by a man who is awake 
 at broad of day, something actual, something that 
 you who read this might also see if you were to 
 follow the path on which he has travelled : 
 
 So did I feel one warm summer day lying idly on the 
 hillside, not then thinking of anything but the sunlight, 
 and how sweet it was to drowse there, when, suddenly, I 
 felt a fiery heart throb, and knew it was personal and 
 intimate, and started with every sense dilated and intent, 
 and turned inwards, and I heard first a music as of bells 
 going away, away into that wonderous underland 
 whither, as legend relates, the Danaan gods withdraw; 
 and then the heart of the hills was opened to me, and I 
 knew there was no hill for those who were there, and 
 they were unconscious of the ponderous mountain piled 
 above the palaces of light, and the winds were sparkling 
 and diamond clear, yet full of color as an opal, as they 
 glittered through the valley, and I knew the Golden Age 
 was all about me, and it was we who had been blind to 
 it but that it had never passed away from the world. 
 
 The Golden Age is here, at this moment, and 
 all the noble creatures who filled it with chivalry 
 
 [37] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 and beauty are crowding about us. We have only 
 to open our eyes and we shall see! . . . 
 
 Once, suddenly, I found myself on some remote plain 
 or steppe, and heard unearthly chimes pealing passion- 
 ately from I know not what far steeples. The earth- 
 breath streamed from the furrows to the glowing heavens. 
 Overhead the birds flew round and round crying their 
 incomprehensible cries, as if they were maddened, and 
 knew not where to nestle, and had dreams of some more 
 enraptured rest in a diviner home. 1 could see a plough- 
 man lift himself from his obscure toil and stand with lit 
 eyes as if he too had been fire-smitten and was caught 
 into heaven as I was, and knew for that moment he was 
 a god. 
 
 It is very vague, the disbeliever feels, and there 
 is nothing in it to make one accept it as a vision of 
 a thing actually seen, rather than fancied ; but there 
 can be no doubt of the intensity with which "A. E." 
 believes in the actuality of it. These visions form 
 the foundation of his political and economic faith. 
 He advocates co-operative enterprise because he be- 
 lieves in his visions as actual happenings. In 
 a poem, called "Earth Breath," he says: 
 
 From the cool and dark-lipped furrows breathes a 
 dim delight 
 
 [38] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 Through the woodland's purple plumage to the 
 
 diamond night. 
 Aureoles of joy encircle every blade of grass 
 Where the dew-fed creatures silent and enraptured 
 
 pass. 
 And the restless ploughman pauses, turns, and, 
 
 wondering, 
 Deep beneath his rustic habit finds himself a king. 
 
 This verse is obviously a poetical account of the 
 experience he underwent "on some remote plain 
 or steppe," and the final couplet of it gives the 
 explanation of his belief in democracy. If he had 
 no faith in the god in man, if he were not certain 
 that "the restless ploughma»n . . . deep beneath 
 his rustic habit finds himself a king," he would 
 probably offer his allegiance to autocracy and be- 
 lieve in government by a caste; but since he has 
 seen visions and is convinced that there is a god 
 in man, he cannot be other than a democrat. All 
 his political strivings have been directed towards 
 making this "a society where people will be at 
 harmony in their economic life," as he writes in 
 "The National Being," and "will readily listen to 
 different opinions from their own, will not turn 
 sour faces on those who do not think as they do, 
 but will, by reason and sympathy, comprehend 
 
 [39] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 each other, and come at last, through sympathy 
 and affection, to a balancing of their diversities, 
 as in that multitudinous diversity which is the 
 universe, powers and dominions and elements are 
 balanced, and are guided harmoniously by the 
 Shepherd of the Ages." Whether such a world, 
 balanced in that way, can be rightly described as 
 a democracy is not a matter on which I offer any 
 opinion here, though it seems to me to be a very 
 long way from what the common man considers 
 a democracy to be. 
 
 It is when we come to connect his visions and 
 the beliefs he derives from them with the actual 
 circumstances in which we find ourselves that we 
 begin to be most dubious. "National ideals," he 
 says in "The National Being," "are the possession 
 of a few people only." That is an argument for 
 aristocracy. 
 
 Yet we must spread them in wide commonahy over 
 Ireland if we are to create a civilisation worthy of our 
 hopes and our ages of struggle and sacrifice to attain 
 the power to build. We must spread them in wide com- 
 monalty because it is certain that democracy will prevail 
 in Ireland. The aristocratic classes with traditions of 
 
 [40] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 government, the manufacturing classes with economic 
 experience, will alike be secondary in Ireland to the 
 small farmers and the wage-earners in the towns. We 
 must rely on the ideas common among our people, and 
 on their power to discern among their countrymen the 
 aristocracy of character and intellect. 
 
 With the deletion of the word "Ireland" and 
 the substitution of the word "America," that quota- 
 tion might stand just as effective for the United 
 States as for Ireland. Why is it certain that 
 democracy will prevail in Ireland? Because the 
 small farmers and the wage-earners in the towns 
 will take precedence over the aristocracy and the 
 manufacturing classes! I do not follow that 
 argument. I have seen nothing in England or 
 America or Ireland or France to convince me that 
 if the small farmers and the wage-earners in the 
 towns were authoritative they would be any more 
 democratic than the aristocratic or the manufac- 
 turing classes. I have seen much to make me 
 feel certain that they will use their authority as 
 implacably in their own interests as any aristocrat 
 or manufacturer ever used or ever will use his. 
 Mr. G. K. Chesterton, in his book, "Irish Impres- 
 sions," produces this argument in favour of 
 peasant proprietorship: 
 
 [41] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 It may be that international Israel will launch against 
 us out of the East an insane simplification of the unity of 
 Man, as Islam once launched out of the East an insane 
 simplification of the unity of God. If it be so, it is 
 where property is well distributed that it will be well de- 
 fended. The post of honor will be with those who fight 
 in very truth for their own land. 
 
 It is indisputable that a peasant will fight for 
 his own land, the tiny portion which he owns and 
 cultivates, but will he fight for another man's land 
 when that man is unjustly to be bereft of it? 
 There is nothing meritable in a man who fights for 
 his own goods and lands, nor does it seem to me 
 that a peasant will fight for his potato-patch with 
 any greater determination than a share holder in a 
 railroad will fight for the interest on his capital. 
 There certainly is not anything more noble or 
 chivalrous in the peasant's desire to keep posses- 
 sion of his means of livelihood than there is in that 
 of the Liberty Bondholder. The test of honour 
 is, not what will you do for yourself, but what will 
 you do for other men? The French peasant pro- 
 prietors, the Pennsylvania Dutch, the Irish peasant 
 proprietors may offer a guarantee of stability to 
 society, but the offer may carry with it obstinate 
 
 [42] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 reaction and a gross disregard of the rights of 
 those who are not possessors of land. It will not 
 guarantee the landless man against exploitation in 
 the price of food in times of war and necessity. It 
 offers singularly little hope that "national ideals" 
 will be spread in wide commonalty, if the peasants 
 can help it. "A. E." will urge, perhaps, that 
 while "national ideals are the possession of a few 
 people only," they may be spread in wide common- 
 alty if the "few people" will make the effort to 
 spread them. The soil lies ready for the seed. 
 But what is there in human affairs to justify any 
 man in assuming that the mass of men are likely 
 to be long-suffering in idealism? Is it not a fact 
 of human nature that even when the multitude has 
 been stirred to some act of exaltation, the staying 
 power of the multitude has not been sufficient to 
 maintain the exalted mood long enough to render 
 the reactionaries hopeless? Where are the gen- 
 erous ideals of 1914 now? Has not the war that 
 was to end war made war seem more probable? 
 Is not the world at this moment suffering to the 
 point of distraction because the multitude cannot 
 live up to its own ideals long enough to make them 
 practical? "The gods departed," says "A. E.", 
 
 [43] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 "the half-gods also, hero and saint after that, and 
 we [i. e. the Irish people] have dwindled down to 
 a petty peasant nationality, rural and urban life 
 alike mean in their externals." But he does not 
 despair. "Yet the cavalcade, for all its tattered 
 habiliments, has not lost spiritual dignity." And 
 he hopes "the incorruptible atom" in us will make 
 us great again. Divine optimism, but what is 
 there in peasant society to justify it? 
 
 VI 
 
 And here I make a wide digression to dis- 
 course on nationalism and peasant states. The 
 world conspires to believe that the spirit of nation- 
 ality is a desirable one, filling men with the purest 
 ideals; but we begin to realize now that the spirit 
 of nationality, while it has animated many noble 
 men and brought them to a condition of extraor- 
 dinary selflessness, more often reduces a race to 
 a state of mean brutality and insufferable smug- 
 ness. The self-satisfaction of a Sinn Feiner is as 
 sickening as the ruffianly behaviour of a Black-and- 
 Tan, and the outrages committed by the former 
 are more despicable than the outrages of the lat- 
 
 [44] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 ter, because the Black-and-Tan makes no pretences 
 about himself, whereas the Sinn Feiner covers his 
 blackguardly behaviour with a cloak of virtuous na- 
 tionalism and high ideals. What is there to choose 
 between the Sinn Feiners who seized an old man 
 of seventy and dragged him from a tram-car in 
 Dublin and murdered him in the presence of ter- 
 rorized Irishmen (not one of whom had the com- 
 mon pluck to risk his life in an effort to save him) 
 and the Black-and-Tans who dragged the Mayor 
 of Limerick from his bed and brutally murdered 
 him? What is there to choose between the noble- 
 minded Sinn Feiners who took old Mrs. Lindsay, a 
 woman of more than seventy years, and shot her 
 and her aged servant dead because she had done 
 what any spirited woman would do, warned sol- 
 diers who were on her side, that they were walking 
 into an ambush — what is there to choose between 
 them and the Orangemen who threw bombs into the 
 midst of little Catholic children playing games in 
 Belfast? What is there to choose between the 
 Sinn Feiners who murdered four sick men (one of 
 them dying of pleurisy) in their beds in a Galway 
 hospital and the Orangemen who murdered the Mc- 
 Mahon family in Belfast? Very little. If one 
 
 [45] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 side is more condemnable than the other, it is 
 those who, professing noble motives, practice foul 
 deeds. One may, perhaps, find excuses for the 
 evil acts of men whose minds are inflamed with 
 patriotic emotions which cannot be found for a 
 civilized government committing similar deeds of 
 atrocity. Murder by the former may be less rep- 
 rehensible than murder by the latter, but the dif- 
 ference between them is too slight to be worthy 
 of consideration. Murder remains murder, 
 whether it be done for imperial or national pur- 
 poses, and I confess to feeling more respect for 
 the plain Black-and-Tan, making no bones about 
 his brutality and his murders, than I do for the 
 Sinn Feiner who commits crimes and calls them 
 acts of virtue. "A. E.'s" restless ploughman may 
 pause and turn and wonder, but is more likely 
 to find himself, "deep beneath his rustic habit" a 
 Sinn Fein gunman than "a king." I do not know 
 how "the incorruptible atom" is to be developed 
 in men who have made a virtue of crime and 
 covered up their infamies with hypocrisy; and "A. 
 E." amazingly omits to tell us how it is to be done. 
 We Irish people — and I am as Irish in my ori- 
 gins and emotions as any man — suffer from the sin 
 
 [46] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 which afflicts all subject peoples: the sin of self- 
 pity; and I desire self-government for Ireland, 
 not because I believe that the Irish people can 
 govern themselves better than the English have 
 governed them — I take leave to doubt that when 
 I remember the achievements of the Irish in Amer- 
 ica — but because I can see no hope of the Irish 
 people acquiring a sense of reality until they have 
 freed themselves from the complacency, the smug' 
 ness, the self-satisfaction, the self-pity which are 
 inevitable in subject peoples. When they have dis- 
 covered the truth about themselves, they may be 
 able to govern themselves. And the truth about 
 the Irish people, whether they be Protestant or 
 Catholic, from the North or the South, is that they 
 are a brutal, cruel, greedy, mean and treacherous 
 people who have humbugged the rest of the world 
 into the belief that they are a faithful, generous, 
 high-minded, kindly, noble and tolerant race. We 
 have our virtues, but by our insufferable content- 
 ment with ourselves we have made vices of them. 
 Our literature, particularly our modern literature, 
 plainly reveals the truth about us. Synge, Padraic 
 Colum, Lennox Robinson, Daniel Corkery, James 
 Joyce — all these have shown us an Irish people 
 
 [47] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 completely false to the world's common belief 
 about them. I remember, when Mr. Robinson's 
 bitter comedy, 'The White-Headed Boy," was first 
 performed in London, being asked by an English 
 dramatic critic whether I recognized my country- 
 men in Mr. Robinson's characters. I said "Yes," 
 and he replied in accents of disgust, "But they're 
 horrible people! There isn't one of them for 
 whom any decent person can feel sympathy! . . ." 
 "Exactly," I said. And what our literature is now 
 revealing, our acts and history have long made 
 clear. We are at the culmination of centuries of 
 oppression and cruel treatment. To the natural 
 treachery and brutality of the Celt must be added 
 the treachery and brutality which are provoked by 
 misgovernment. The broad fact about us is that 
 we have been so accustomed, by nature and by 
 circumstances, to occasions of harsh and violent 
 conduct that we find nothing startling in them, 
 provided we can give them a patriotic gloss. Our 
 satisfaction with ourselves is so intense that we 
 imagine our little efforts in literature to be greater 
 than those of the rest of the world. We prate 
 incessantly about the ancient Gaelic literature, but 
 are reluctant to produce the evidence for our boast- 
 
 [48] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 ing. We forget that the Irishmen of distinction in 
 literature, Goldsmith, Sheridan, Wilde, Shaw, 
 Yeats, Moore and Synge, are not Celtic at all, but 
 Anglo-Saxon in origin.* All of them, with the ex- 
 ception of Mr. Moore, are Protestant, and even 
 Mr. Moore became a Protestant. "A. E." him- 
 self is an Ulster Protestant with a Scotch name. 
 The O's and the Macs, who are reputed to be 
 compounded of poetry and noble thoughts have 
 furnished the world with little but soldiers, cattle- 
 drivers, Sinn Fein gunmen and Tammany bosses. 
 We have sponged upon the world, and the world 
 is utterly sick of us. 
 
 Our absorption in ourselves is so complete that 
 we demand consideration for our academic griev- 
 ances which rightly belongs to the ruined races of 
 Europe. Ireland is the only country in the world 
 which made a profit out of the War, yet her be- 
 haviour during it was that of an hysterical woman 
 who should rush into the presence of a man 
 bleeding to death and exclaim, "My God, I've got 
 toothache!" Millions of Russians are dying of dis- 
 
 * Parnell, the greatest political leader the Irish Catholics have 
 ever had, was a Protestant of Anglo-Saxon origin. Like Synge, 
 he belonged to a family which came to Ireland originally from 
 Cheshire in the North of England. 
 
 [49] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 ease and hunger with less complaint than a Sinn 
 Feiner makes about his obsolete language which 
 he cannot speak, will not write and does not wish 
 to learn. Millions of Austrians are without the 
 elementary decencies of life, but they do not whine 
 over their ills as Sinn Feiners whine over ills which 
 they have not got. Snivelling and whining, in- 
 deed, are the most obvious characteristics of the 
 modem Irishman, Catholic or Protestant, added 
 to an impudent demand that his affairs shall be 
 treated as of greater consequence than those of 
 the rest of mankind. 
 
 To crown all, we are allowing ourselves to be 
 dominated by peasant ideals: the little narrow de- 
 mands of men who care only for their own inter- 
 ests and not at all for their neighbours'. We have 
 seen how the curse of nationality together with 
 the curse of peasant principles have helped to ruin 
 Europe. When we are asked to believe in "the 
 incorruptible atom" of the peasant, we look to the 
 Balkan States and see a foulness which spread a 
 plague across a continent. When we are told of 
 "the spiritual dignity" of the peasant community, 
 we look to France and see a nation so corrupted 
 with peasant greed and peasant fright that the 
 
 [50] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 Peace Treaty threatens to be a more potent force 
 for war and bloodshed than all the Kaisers that 
 have ever lived put together. And when we are 
 told that the patriotic peasant "deep beneath his 
 rustic habit finds himself a king" we look to Ire- 
 land and see young men, masked and armed, seiz- 
 ing old, unarmed men and old, unarmed women 
 and sick and dying men and little children, and 
 brutally murdering them. These be your Gods, 
 Israel. These be your high-minded patriots, your 
 selfless peasants, your noble army of idealists! 
 
 If we are to govern ourselves, we can only hope 
 to do so manfully if we begin by humiliating our- 
 selves before God and man. We have made 
 claims on the world's regard which we are not en- 
 titled to make and cannot maintain. If "the in- 
 corruptible atom" is in our national being at all — 
 if we are not a foul and cantankerous race destined 
 by Almighty God to perish utterly from the earth 
 because we are unfit to survive — then for each of 
 us the principal purpose of life must be a pro- 
 longed process of purification. We have sinned, 
 we have sinned, we have sinned, but we have not 
 repented. We have pretended that our sin was a 
 virtue and have demanded admission to the society 
 
 [51] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 of our betters on the plea that we are their equals, 
 if not their superiors, when in fact we are not fit 
 to be in their company at all; and our task now 
 and for a long time must be the bitter one of 
 acknowledging the truth to ourselves and striving 
 to justify our boasting to other men. We have to 
 rid ourselves of vain-glory and self-pity, of cant 
 and humbug, of cruelty and hatred, of backbiting 
 and slander, of false pride, of whining and snivel- 
 ling, of corrupt living and a mean religion. There 
 are evil things in our nature and more evil things 
 in our circumstances which we must somehow sub- 
 due if we are to come to equality with the civilized 
 races of the world, but they will not be subdued un- 
 til we have learned to acknowledge facts and have 
 discovered that hatred is a device of the devil 
 whereby men are destroyed and the world is made 
 a wilderness. We can neither live nor let live 
 until we have filled our hearts with love and char- 
 ity. Nor will there be any hope in our lives 
 until we have abandoned the mean divisions which 
 keep the North Irishman in bitter enmity with the 
 South Irishman. These two are necessary to each 
 other, the first for his stability and judgment and 
 governing ability, the second for his vision and 
 
 [52] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 faith and docility. There are millions of Irish- 
 men or men of Irish origin in the United States, 
 yet no Irish Catholic or man of Irish Catholic ori- 
 gin has risen to Presidency of his country. Three 
 men of Ulster Protestant origin have done this. 
 The Irish Catholic has given corrupt politics to 
 America. He has not given anything else. The 
 Ulster people, the only compact people in Ireland, 
 whose blood has hardly been mingled with other 
 blood in three centuries and more — there is not a 
 drop of English blood in my veins, a claim which 
 cannot easily be maintained by Irishmen south of 
 the Boyne — contemplate the scene in Ireland now 
 with misgiving and astonishment. They, whatever 
 their faults, chose an Irishman for their leader, but 
 the Sinn Feiners could not throw up from among 
 themselves a man to lead them. They chose, first, 
 an Englishman, called Padraic Pearse. They 
 chose second, an American Jew, called De Valera, 
 whose principal adviser is an Englishman, called 
 Erskine Childers, whose domestic urge is his 
 American wife, infatuated with the thought that 
 she is the reincarnation of Joan of Arc. And the 
 Ulstermen, free from dialectical intricacies, listen 
 to the tortured, worn-out sentiments uttered by Mr. 
 
 [53] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 De Valera, not in fear, but in contempt. That 
 long, lean Jew, trained by Jesuits, possessed in 
 double measure of the narrow, uninspired ideal- 
 ism of his race and furnished with the casuistical 
 devotion of his teachers, is an honest man, with 
 cold, humourless, fanatical eyes, whose unrecep- 
 tive mind guards itself against knowledge by bar- 
 riers of bigotry, hatred, obstinacy, disbelief and 
 self-deception. He has the dishonesty that is 
 sometimes found in a very honest man, the dis- 
 honesty one might expect to find in a man trained 
 in a Jesuit school: for there are few acts of unscru- 
 pulousness that he will not commit to achieve the 
 end he devoutly desires. When he was asked on 
 one occasion what his attitude would be to the Ul- 
 ster people if they refused to give allegiance to an 
 Irish Republic, he replied that he would blast 
 Ulster from his path, unaware seemingly that blast- 
 ing is a bad business in which more than one party 
 can participate. I put the question to him myself 
 in the Commodore Hotel in New York at a meeting 
 of the League of Free Nations; and his reply was 
 that he would present the Ulster people with these 
 alternatives: they might remain in Ireland under 
 the Republic or they might go out of Ireland al- 
 
 [54] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 together with compensation for their property. It 
 did not occur to Mr. De Valera that of these al- 
 ternatives, Ulstermen would choose neither. How 
 far he had considered the question of finance in- 
 volved in schemes of compensation, I do not know, 
 although I suspect his mind to be innocent of much 
 financial knowledge; but I wonder how he would 
 raise the money with which to compensate a single 
 firm in Belfast, that of Harland and Wolff, the 
 shipbuilders, if they elected to build their ships 
 in Southampton; and I wonder still more how he 
 would raise the men and the money to carry on 
 those works after Harland and Wolff had taken 
 themselves away! But such suppositions are idle, 
 for Ulstermen will not let themselves be disturbed 
 in their homes by one who is not their country- 
 man. The story of my family in Ulster is typical 
 of the story of hundreds and thousands of families 
 there. All my forefathers, on my mother's side 
 and my father's side, for three hundred years of 
 which we have record and for a longer period of 
 which we have incomplete records, were born and 
 bred and buried in the County of Down, with the 
 exception of my maternal grandfather who, al- 
 though born and bred in Down, died and was bur- 
 
 [55] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 ied in America. And we, so indigenous to the 
 soil as that, are bidden to acknowledge Mr. De 
 Valera for our President or clear out of our homes, 
 although Mr. De Valera is an American citizen, 
 born in New York, whose first act, if he were Presi- 
 dent of the Irish Republic, would have to be one of 
 naturalization! We will see Mr. De Valera 
 damned first. This strange intruder into Irish pol- 
 itics has brought in his trail a terrible procession 
 of young men trained to take life lightly, to listen 
 to no argument but that of the revolver; and the 
 end of that procession is out of sight. It is more 
 easy to train men to take life than it is to train them 
 to preserve it. We cannot say to a man, "Thus far 
 shalt thou kill, but no further!" and those whom 
 we have taught to commit crime in the name of 
 patriotism, may continue to commit crime for per- 
 sonal profit. "And so, to the end of history," as 
 Caesar says in Mr. Shaw's play "murder shall 
 breed murder, always in the name of right and 
 honour and peace, until the gods are tired of blood 
 and create ^ race that can understand." 
 
 [56] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 VII 
 
 Sometimes I say to myself that "A. E." has lived 
 too long and too exclusively in Ireland. He is not 
 free from the mush of sentimentality with which 
 Irishmen regard themselves, this everlasting self- 
 congratulation that Irishmen are not as English- 
 men, this smug preoccupation with their own vir- 
 tues and bland disregard of their vices, this eter- 
 nal denial that they have any demerits. If the 
 Irish people are to recover the dignity and the 
 stature of the gods, they must display god-like 
 qualities or prove that they possess them. It is not 
 sufficient to assert that they possess these qualities, 
 at the same time denying them by nagging con- 
 tinually at their neighbours. I have wished at 
 times that "A. E." could be removed from the 
 atmosphere of adulation which envelopes him in 
 Dublin, and sent, without letters of introduction, 
 on a tour round the world. He has probably trav- 
 elled less than any other educated man in Ireland. 
 He passes from his home in Rathmines, a suburb 
 of Dublin, to the office of the Irish Homestead in 
 Merrion Square, from one centre of adulation to 
 another, with occasional visits to the home of 
 
 [57] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 James Stephens, where he meets the same people 
 that visit him on Sunday nights, or to the Her- 
 metic Society, where he meets them again. He is 
 too fine a spirit to be seriously affected by the pal- 
 try gabble of the third-rate minds he encounters on 
 most occasions in Dublin, and perhaps it hardly 
 matters that he seldom leaves Dublin and hardly 
 ever leaves Ireland; but even so rare a man as 
 "A. E." must suffer contraction within the narrow 
 limits of Dublin. He has resources that few men 
 possess: a quiet mind, a vivid faith and the love 
 and respect of very dissimiliar people. He can 
 turn from the consideration of agricultural prices 
 in the Irish Homestead to the esoteric alphabet 
 with which he speaks to the Gods, or he can go off 
 to the mountains of Donegal and make pictures. 
 When painting no longer delights him, he can 
 spend his nights and days in making poems. He 
 is extravagantly generous to young writers, giving 
 greater praise to them sometimes than they deserve, 
 giving less of criticism than is necessary. There 
 are minor poets in Dublin, authors of thin books 
 of thin verse, who have persuaded themselves, be- 
 cause of "A. E's." praise, that they are more 
 meritable than they are. There are people in Dub- 
 
 [58] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 lin who seem to believe that Ireland has produced 
 a greater literature than England and will de- 
 nounce you as a traitor to your country if you pro- 
 test that she cannot show poets of the stature of 
 Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Shelley, Keats 
 Wordsworth, Browning and Tennyson, with the 
 exception of Mr. Yeats. I am the sort of patriot 
 who would like to see his country raise herself to 
 the level of other countries, but I am not the sort 
 of patriot who will pretend that she is on the 
 level of England and France and Germany when, 
 in fact, she is far below it. "A. E." is not entirely 
 free from blame for this. He could have given 
 Ireland a sense of proportion, had he cared to 
 do so. 
 
 VIII 
 
 I have a picture by "A. E." of an ascending road 
 on the side of a mountain. There is rain in the 
 air, and the road has a lonely, unfrequented look. 
 Yet, though there is no living creature visible in 
 the picture, Life fills it. I feel sometimes when 
 I sit back in my chair and look at "The Mountain 
 Road" that there are divine beings behind the 
 
 [59] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 bushes, that if I could only climb up that road 
 and turn the comer of the mountain, I should come 
 upon the Golden Age. Is it not ungracious to 
 make complaint, even if the complaint be a slight 
 one, of a man who can make the invisible world so 
 powerfully felt as that? And if he persuades me, 
 by nature sceptical, almost to believe in the Shin- 
 ing Ones, how much more strong must his influence 
 be on those who are eager to believe! When the 
 evil temper which possesses Ireland at this moment 
 has subsided, the fine temper of "A. E." will rise 
 again and call Irishmen to a kindlier mood. The 
 little town of Lurgan, in which he was born, is 
 notorious in Ulster for the harshness of its reli- 
 gious dissensions. A base bigotry flourishes there. 
 It is in the nature of things that from a place of 
 great bitterness should have come a man of re- 
 conciliation, bidding Catholic and Protestant to 
 meet, not in Geneva or in Rome, but on the holy 
 hills of Ireland, under the protection of the ancient 
 gods. 
 
 [60] 
 
ARNOLD BENNETT 
 
 One night, some years before the outbreak of the 
 European War, I arrived in the town of Hanley 
 in the County of Stafford in the midlands, of Eng- 
 land to deliver a lecture on some subject, the name 
 of which I do not now remember, although I sus- 
 pect it was connected with the general improve- 
 ment of mankind. I had accepted the invitation 
 to lecture in Hanley, not because I had anything 
 of importance to say to its inhabitants, but be- 
 cause I had lately read "The Old Wives' Tale" by 
 Mr. Arnold Bennett, and was eager to see the place 
 and the people from which that great book had 
 sprung. My recollections of the visit are very 
 vague now, but I remember that my host, a man 
 of serious mind, a little over-weighted, perhaps, 
 by the troubles of the universe, took me for a 
 walk on Sunday morning through some of "the 
 Five Towns," in the course of which he displayed 
 
 [61] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 much knowledge of the topography of Mr. Ben- 
 nett's books without displaying much knowledge 
 of the books themselves. He informed me that 
 the real name of "Trafalgar Road" in "The Old 
 Wives' Tale" is "Waterloo Road" and that the fic- 
 titious name of Hanley is "Hanbridge." He spec- 
 ulated incuriously on the oddness which had 
 caused Mr. Bennett to alter real names in this 
 palpable manner, and ended his discourse with 
 the statement that he seldom read novels (which 
 he persisted in calling "Works of Fiction") being 
 more inclined to the study of serious books. I 
 learned that he read chiefly in the writings of 
 sociologists and political economists and similar 
 serious persons. I suggested to him that he 
 might more profitably read novels than sociolog- 
 ical books if he wished to discover something 
 about human character. He was a polite and 
 kindly man, and he did not abruptly tell me of my 
 folly, but I could see that he considered me to be 
 a fool or, at best, a flippant person, and I am sure 
 that had he not been my host he would not have 
 troubled to attend my lecture that evening. He 
 smiled in the benign way men have when they ab- 
 stain from expressing their frank opinion, as he 
 
 [62] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 listened to me saying that he would find in novels 
 a greater fund of information about human na- 
 ture than he could hope to find in all the works that 
 all the sociologists in the world have written. Men 
 of affairs, I said, spend their lives in writing 
 ponderous volumes on society which are out-of- 
 date as soon as they are published, whereas the 
 novel or the play of a man of genius remains true 
 for ever. Henry Fielding and Adam Smith were 
 contemporaries, but I imagine few will deny that 
 there is more durable stuff, stuff more continuously 
 applicable to human concerns, in "Tom Jones" 
 than there is in "The Wealth of Nations." But my 
 friend would have none of this, and seemed to think 
 that any man who spent time in reading Fielding's 
 novel which might be spent in reading Adam Smith 
 was shamefully misusing his mind. He led me, I 
 remember, through much of the territory which is 
 generically known as "the Five Towns." I saw 
 the Square in which the Baineses lived, and was 
 told that although Mr. Bennett called it "St. Luke's 
 Square" in "The Old Wives' Tale," the local au- 
 thorities preferred to call it after St. John. So 
 great was the influence of the novel upon me that 
 when I peered through the window of the shop in 
 
 [63] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 which, SO I was told, Constance and Sophia Baines 
 were born, I almost expected to see the half -heroic 
 figure of Samuel Povey behind the counter or to 
 meet the cold, un-human glance of that frozen 
 spinster. Miss Marie Insull, who once, and once 
 only, displayed signs of human emotion — on the 
 occasion when Mr. Critchlow brought her into the 
 presence of the widowed Constance to announce 
 his betrothal to her: 
 
 The dog had leisurely strolled forward to inspect the 
 edges of the fiance's trousers. Miss Insull summoned 
 the animal with a noise of the fingers, and then bent 
 down and caressed it. A strange gesture provmg the 
 validity of Charles Critchlow's discovery that in Maria 
 Insul a human being was buried. 
 
 My host led me up stony streets, in which every 
 sort of domestic architecture was visible — for "the 
 Five Towns" are so independent that even in the 
 workmen's houses there is no uniformity of style 
 or harmony of design, a fact which makes, not for 
 a pleasing diversity, but for shapelessness and 
 incoherence — and pointed to places in the ground 
 where, so he said, the earth had opened, owing to 
 underground operations, and swallowed whosoever 
 should happen to be passing over it. There was 
 
 [64] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 a Story of a man who had set forth in the morning 
 to go to his work, but, before he had travelled 
 many yards from his home, was suddenly consumed 
 by the opening earth and was never seen again. I 
 will admit that I trod those streets thereafter with 
 trepidation and considerable care! I had begun 
 to tire of the ugly houses with their insufferable 
 architecture, and of the grime caused by innumer- 
 able chimneys emitting thick, black smoke, when I 
 was led up a steep street at the top of which I was 
 told to halt and gaze about me. I saw the whole 
 of "the Five Towns" and much of the surrounding 
 country spread out like the kingdoms of the world 
 and realized how strangely moving such a scene 
 can be because of its suggestion of human pres- 
 ences. It was not without beauty, in spite of the 
 gloom of an industrial area, but it impressed me 
 most by its air of effort and power and achieve- 
 ment. I became conscious of the activities of men 
 and women, of great labours, of confused strivings 
 out of which some human need is satisfied, and I 
 came away, as I always come away from such 
 sights, immensely impressed by human organiza- 
 tion and very satisfied with great machines. When 
 we had descended from that high street and had 
 
 [65] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 walked elsewhere, I found myself suddenly con- 
 fronting a railway station on which I saw the ro- 
 mantic name of etruria. 
 
 II 
 
 Etruria, the country of the Etruscans in Italy, 
 was, I suppose, a very different place from Etruria, 
 the small town between Hanley and Burslem 
 ("Hanbridge" and "Bursley") vfhere Josiah 
 Wedgwood founded his pottery in the eighteenth 
 century, but the spirit which produced the Etruscan 
 ceramics was not dissimilar from the spirit which 
 produces the famous Wedgwood ware; and I 
 thought to myself as I looked at the romantic name 
 of that grimy-looking town in Staffordshire that I 
 had stumbled on the secret of Mr. Bennett. Un- 
 derneath the plain appearance of the pottery town, 
 there is a spirit which has persisted in the produc- 
 tion of beautiful things for the best part of two 
 centuries, a spirit so much in love with delicate 
 ware that it calls an unsightly town by the name of 
 an ancient and reputedly beautiful one ; and under- 
 neath the hard and fact-ridden style of Mr. Bennett 
 there is an ineradicable desire for romance. I 
 
 [66] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 said of him once that he fights the battles of the 
 romantic with the weapons of the realist, and that 
 description seems to me to be strictly accurate. 
 Mr. Bennett mingles, even in his Christian names, 
 the gritty and the graceful in a way that is sin- 
 gularly characteristic of the people of his district. 
 "Enoch Arnold Bennett" is a combination of names 
 not easily imagined, but it is not more unusual 
 than the combination of Etruria and Staffordshire, 
 of lovely ceramics and "the Five Towns." Mr. 
 Bennett has many times been charged with addic- 
 tion to dusty realism, a dull love of facts. His 
 critics say of him, after reading such a book as 
 "Your United States," that he must have spent his 
 time on the liner in which he went to America in 
 counting the rivets in her plates for the sheer love 
 of counting them, and they conclude that he is 
 a materialist because of his interest in numbers 
 and in things. They even complain of him that he 
 is infatuated with largeness, just as Queen Vic- 
 toria was, and that he imagines a thing to be 
 good when it is merely big. This is undiscerning 
 criticism. It is as if a child were charged with be- 
 ing a disciple of Haeckel because it thinks that ten 
 things are more wonderful than one thing. We 
 
 [67] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 may think that Mr. Bennett is a fact-ridden modern, 
 incapable of romance, because he inordinately ad- 
 mires electricity, but to do so is to announce our- 
 selves as dunderheads for not discovering that his 
 love of electricity is the Romantic's love of the 
 Magic Lamp! How easily most of us are dis- 
 suaded from our faith in romantic things! We 
 are in ecstasies when we hear of St. Francis of 
 Assisi preaching to the fishes and the birds and 
 addressing them as little brothers, but we are 
 horribly shocked and humiliated when Mr. Ber- 
 nard Shaw makes the mad priest in "John Bull's 
 Other Island" speak of a pig as our little brother! 
 There is prettiness in the community of men and 
 birds, even of men and the smaller fish, but pigs — 
 pork! ! We find romance in the spectacle of a 
 man rubbing a dirty lantern with his fingers 
 in order to summon up a serving genie, but can- 
 not perceive the greater romance found by Mr. 
 Bennett in the spectacle of a man pressing a switch 
 and illuminating a room with power drawn by wires 
 from a station many miles away! We are en- 
 chanted with the thought of transport on Magic 
 Carpets, but unmoved by the thought that pres- 
 ently great ships will be guided into New York 
 
 [68] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 Harbour, not by pilots, but by means of wireless 
 telegraphy! Some dullards have exclaimed des- 
 pairingly of Mr. Bennett because of what they 
 called his trivial and commonplace interests as 
 revealed in that enthralling book, "Things That 
 Have Interested Me," failing utterly to discern 
 that it is his interest in these things which is so 
 infallible a sign of his zest for life. Any one can 
 be interested in the Rocky Mountains, but it is 
 only a superbly romantic man who can be absorbed 
 in Tarrytown. There is net anything in the round 
 world, made by God or by man, which does not in- 
 terest Mr. Bennett. Familiarity breeds contempt 
 in most of us, but it does not breed contempt in him. 
 He never gets used to things. Most of us are too 
 dull of mind, too destitute of imagination to feel 
 interest or astonishment unless we are abruptly con- 
 fronted with the unusual or the violent, and our 
 capacity for romantic enjoyment is limited and 
 soon exhausted. We would exclaim with astonish- 
 ment on beholding an eruption of Mount Vesuvius 
 for the first time, but we would exclaim rather less 
 on perceiving the ninety-ninth eruption. Mr. Ben- 
 nett would experience as much excitement on the 
 ninety-ninth occasion as he would on the first, 
 
 [69] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 Nothing less than an earthquake is necessary to stir 
 some of us, but Mr. Bennett can be stirred by the 
 sight of a taxicab. The genesis of "The Old 
 Wives' Tale," as described in the preface to one of 
 the later editions, is a clear illustration of his ro- 
 mantic possession: 
 
 In the autumn of 1903 [he writes], I used to dine 
 frequently in a restaurant in the Rue de Clichy, Paris. 
 Here were, among .others, two waitresses that attracted 
 my attention. One was a beautiful, pale young girl, to 
 whom I never spoke, for she was employed far away 
 from the table I affected. The other, a stout, middle- 
 aged, managing Breton woman, had sole command over 
 my table and me, and gradually she began to assume 
 such a maternal tone towards me that I saw I should 
 be compelled to leave that restaurant. If I was absent 
 for a couple of nights running she would reproach me 
 sharply: "What! you are unfaithful to me?" Once 
 when I complained about some French beans, she in- 
 formed me roundly that "French beans were a subject 
 which I did not understand. ..." 
 
 I break the quotation here to exclaim at the 
 obtuseness of that Breton woman who, in the course 
 of her management of Mr. Bennett, failed to dis- 
 cover that he loves to regard himself as an au- 
 thority on such matters as French beans. There 
 
 [70] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 is a kind of romantic pride which makes some 
 men believe that they know the one place in a 
 city where the best brand of a particular article 
 is to be purchased. Mr. Bennett has that pride. 
 The heaviness of the IBreton's blow to it can be 
 imagined after reading the next sentence in the 
 passage from which I am making the quotation: 
 
 I then decided to be eternally unfaithful to her, and I 
 abandoned the restaurant. A fev/ nights before the final 
 parting an old woman came into the restaurant to dine. 
 She was fat, shapeless, ugly and grotesque. She had a 
 ridiculous voice and ridiculous gestures. It was easy 
 to see that she lived alone, and that in the long lapse of 
 years she had developed the kind of peculiarity which 
 induces guffaws among the thoughtless. She was bur- 
 dened wi'th a lot of small parcels which she kept drop- 
 ping. She chose one seat; and then, not liking it, chose 
 another; and then another. In a few moments she had 
 the whole restaurant laughing at her. That my middle- 
 aged Breton should laugh was indifferent to me, but I 
 was pained to see a coarse grimace of giggling on the 
 pale face of the beautiful young waitress to whom I 
 had never spoken. I reflected, concerning the grotesque 
 diner: This woman was once young, slim, perhaps 
 beautiful; certainly free from these ridiculous manner- 
 isms. Very probably she is unconscious of her singu- 
 larities. Her case is a tragedy. One ought to be able 
 
 [71] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 to make a heartrending novel out of the history of a 
 woman such as she. Every stout, ageing woman is not 
 grotesque — far from it! — but there is an extreme pathos 
 in the mere fact that every stout, ageing woman was once 
 a young girl with the unique charm of youth in her form 
 and movements and in her mind. And the fact that the 
 change from the young girl to the stout, ageing woman 
 is made up of an infinite number of infinitesimal 
 changes, each unperceived by her, only intensifies the 
 pathos. It was at that instant that I was visited by the 
 idea of writing the book which ultimately be^came "The 
 Old Wives' Tale." . . . 
 
 Ill 
 
 In that passage there is revealed much, I think, 
 of Mr. Bennett's character and spirit. He dis- 
 likes the sensation of being managed because he 
 likes the sensation of managing. The Breton 
 woman could have won him to faithful service for 
 ever if she had deferred to him in the matter of 
 French beans, and who knows what tricks of du- 
 plicity she could have played upon him had she 
 stooped to guile? But she wounded him in his 
 pride when she bluntly told him that her judg- 
 ment on beans was sounder than his, and thus 
 lost the custom of the most interesting of her 
 [72] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 diners. The first fact, therefore, that one dis- 
 covers in this passage is that Mr. Bennett has a 
 profound respect for his own opinion: he feels 
 pretty sure of himself. This may be considered 
 to be a sign of conceit, but that consideration is 
 not necessarily true. It could only be a sign of 
 conceit if Mr. Bennett's respect for his own opin- 
 ion were misplaced, and there is nothing in his 
 record to show that it is misplaced. There is, 
 on the contrary, much to show that it is placed 
 with the utmost propriety. He has done many of 
 the things which he said he would do, and has done 
 them exceedingly well. If all of us could have 
 faith in ourselves with as much justification as 
 Mr. Bennett has faith in himself, we would do 
 well to practice our faith with fervour. The second 
 fact about Mr. Bennett which is revealed by this 
 passage is the romantic nature of him, but before 
 I discuss it, I wish to point out a third and minor 
 fact which is something of a flaw in him, not an 
 important flaw, but one which must be remembered 
 by his admirers. It is his occasional tendency to 
 let his romanticism degenerate into sentimentality. 
 Observe how he seems to have romanced about the 
 pale and beautiful waitress to whom he never 
 
 [73] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 spoke, how he assumes that because she is beautiful 
 she must also be generous and sympathetic and 
 kindly, with what dismay he discovers that, just as 
 a man can smile and smile and be a villain, so a 
 woman can be pale and beautiful, and yet be as 
 cruel or lacking in perception as the ruddiest and 
 least lovely of her sex. He declares, indeed, that 
 he quitted the restaurant in the Rue de Clichy be- 
 cause of the insolence of the Breton woman who 
 disputed his authority on beans, but may he not 
 be deceiving himself, may he not in fact have 
 quitted that place because his illusion about the 
 beautiful, pale young waitress was shattered by her 
 coarse grimaces, her unkindly giggles? After all, 
 it is easy enough to live with those who will not 
 accept our estimate of ourselves, but how hard it 
 is to live with lost beliefs. One of the most pain- 
 ful things about shell-shock cases resulting in men- 
 tal derangement is that the patient seems to loathe 
 most those whom he formerly loved most, and here 
 in England many of us knov/ of pitiful women who 
 dare not go to see their unbalanced husbands be- 
 cause the mere sight of them throws the unhappy 
 men into paroxysms of rage and anguish! . . , 
 But it is when we come to consider Mr. 
 [74] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 Bennett's attitude towards the foolish old woman 
 who changed her seat and dropped her parcels so 
 often in the restaurant in the Rue de Clichy that 
 we discover his chief characteristic. If he were 
 the fact-ridden realist that some of his critics 
 pronounce him to be, he could not possibly have 
 perceived in that old woman, "fat, shapeless, ugly 
 and grotesque," the lineaments of a girl, "young, 
 slim, perhaps beautiful; certainly free from these 
 ridiculous mannerisms." A fact-ridden realist 
 might not have joined in the laughter of the 
 Breton woman and the giggling pale waitress, but 
 he would have judged the old woman with harsh 
 contempt, more intolerable even than mocking 
 laughter, and he would have turned away from 
 her in irritation and disgust because of her ineffi- 
 ciency, her clumsiness, her indecision, her displeas- 
 ing exterior. At best, he would have seen her 
 solely as a fat, ugly and grotesque person who 
 had always been incompetent, fat, ugly and gro- 
 tesque. But Mr. Bennett, incorrigibly romantic, 
 regarding her closely and with kindliness, insists 
 that beneath the hulk of her body there is a soul, 
 that the too, too solid flesh once wore "the 
 feature of blown youth," even as Ophelia found 
 
 [75] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 it in Hamlet! She may not be beautiful now, he 
 tells himself, but how beautiful may she not once 
 have been. That is the spirit of romance. It is 
 a certain sign of the romantic in a man that he 
 will not permit himself to be bluffed by appear- 
 ances when appearances are bad, although he may 
 often be bluffed by them when they are good. 
 Mr. Bennett was not deceived by the old woman's 
 looks, but he was terribly deceived by the looks 
 of the pale, young waitress, and it is true of him, 
 I think, that he is very easily deceived by youth, 
 to which he is uncommonly generous. Observe 
 how he shows his willingness to be deceived by 
 youth in the passage which I have quoted. He 
 tells himself that the old woman was once "young, 
 slim, perhaps beautiful," which is likely enough, 
 but he goes on, not romantically, but sentiment- 
 ally, to add, that she was "certainly free from these 
 ridiculous mannerisms." Now, there is no war- 
 rant in human experience for such an assumption. 
 I am prepared to believe that an old woman, "fat, 
 shapeless, ugly and grotesque" was once "slim, 
 perhaps beautiful," but I am not prepared to be- 
 lieve that an indecisive, footling old woman was, 
 in her girlhood, any other than indecisive and 
 
 [76] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 footling. We do not change our natures to that 
 extent as we grow older unless we lose our wits 
 or suffer gravely in health, and the tragedy of old 
 age is that habits and mannerisms which are 
 charming and attractive in youth are merely silly 
 and annoying in age. We are amused by the 
 violent opinions of a clever young man of twenty, 
 inclined even to applaud him for holding them 
 because they are significant of an active and de- 
 veloping mind, but they are less amusing to us and 
 win less applause if they are still being expressed 
 by him when he is thirty. We cease altogether 
 to applaud or be amused when we hear him still 
 at them when he is forty. We no longer describe 
 him as a clever young man, but a damned fool. 
 No one has any right to be a clever young man all 
 his life. The law should forbid any one to be a 
 clever young man after the age of twenty-seven. 
 The world is entitled to demand that its clever 
 young men shall grow up and achieve some sort 
 of sanity and right judgment by the age of thirty, 
 and if they refuse to grow up, then they are not 
 free to complain if the world revises its judg- 
 ment on them and inexorably thrusts them from 
 its regard. Mr. Bennett's old woman dropped 
 
 [77] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 her parcels and changed her seat just as frequently 
 in her youth as she did on that evening when he 
 saw her in the Rue de Glichy, but she was young 
 and perhaps pretty then, and people forgave her 
 for her footling ways because of her youthfulness 
 and in the hope that someday she would acquire 
 steadiness of character and control over her pack- 
 ages. I think I can give a fairly accurate de 
 scription of that old v/oman when she was a girl 
 She was always late for everything, but her de 
 mure ways and a sort of foal-like clumsiness abou 
 her made men willing to wait and be gracious 
 about it. She always remembered at the last 
 moment nineteen different things which she had 
 forgotten to do, which must immediately be done, 
 which inevitably caused greater delay. She could 
 never find her railway ticket when the inspector 
 came round to examine it and frequently held up 
 trains while every one in her carriage hunted high 
 and low for it. She persistently dropped her 
 gloves, her handkerchief smd her vanity-bag or left 
 them behind her wherever she v/ent. She never 
 v/ent out of doors without losing something. She 
 never had any small change, and invariably tend- 
 ered a ten-dollar bill, when buying a ten-cent news- 
 
 [78] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 paper, in the fond belief that the clerk at the news 
 stand or even the boy in the street was certain to 
 have plenty of change and be all too eager to 
 oblige her. She always got on to the wrong train 
 or trolley-car and did not discover her mistake 
 until too late to dismount from it! . . . But 
 she succeeded in putting over that sort of fatuous 
 behaviour on the strength of her youth and pretti- 
 ness; and men, who would go raving mad if they 
 had to live with a middle-aged or elderly woman 
 of such habits, readily excused her imbecilities 
 because the'y were those of youth. 
 
 I wondered often, v/hen I was in America, why 
 I saw so many old or middle-aged husbands v/ith 
 girl-wives. People told me that the cost of living 
 is so high in America that young men cannot afford 
 to marry young girls, but must either marry older 
 and richer women or refrain from marriage until 
 they are middle-aged. Young women, so I was 
 told, must marry the elderly and the bald, the slack 
 and the flabby because, otherwise, they cannot 
 hope for a good time until they are no longer of an 
 age to enjoy it. I do not much esteem young 
 women who refuse the great adventure of marriage 
 with young, poor men in order that they may have 
 
 ,[79] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 a good time with unenthusiastic, tamed and middle- 
 aged men, especially when I remember that a 
 good time in such circumstances means only a 
 fatly comfortable one, being well-fed, well-housed 
 and well-clothed without ever having had the fun 
 of fighting for such comforts. But I am not en- 
 tirely convinced by the arguments which were put 
 to me in explanation of this singular and unnatural 
 conjunction of the young and the middle-aged. 
 There may be truth in the statement that American 
 girls marry elderly men for the comfort they 
 receive, but I doubt whether the elderly men 
 marry for that reason. I am very certain that 
 such marriages are made because the men are 
 romantic and will not believe that the young girFs 
 "charming ways" will not be retained by her when 
 she is no longer young. The plain and undeniable 
 fact is that elderly men marry girls because they 
 cannot believe that a girl who has foolish habits 
 will not cease to have them when she is older. The 
 romantic is a man who is everlastingly hoping for 
 the best, everlastingly striving to obtain the best. 
 A romantic realist is a man who, while striving 
 for the best, knows that he may only obtain the 
 worst. The sentimentalist is a man who removes 
 
 [80] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 himself from the region of reality and refuses to 
 admit that there is a worst, who insists that all is 
 for the best in the best of all possible v/orlds. 
 Mr. Arnold Bennett is a romantic realist, with a 
 slight tendency towards sentimental ism. 
 
 IV 
 
 His romantic realism seems to plunge desper- 
 ately into sentimentalism when he contemplates 
 very old age and death. Dr. Johnson had a strange 
 horror of death, "so much so. Sir," as he said to 
 Boswell, "that the whole of life is but keeping away 
 the thoughts of it." But he achieved quietness 
 of mind when his end came and his last recorded 
 words were of a benignant character. "God bless 
 you, my dear!" he said to Miss Morris, forbidden 
 by his faithful negro servant, Francis, to come 
 nearer to his bed than the outer room. Mr. 
 Bennett seldom, if ever, permits his very old people 
 to die placidly. Their disappointments press 
 hardly upon them, if they are not prevented from 
 remembering them by senility or gross disease. 
 Paralysis claims many of them. Age does not 
 beautify them nor bring peace to them, nor do 
 
 [81] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 they face their end with undiminished heads. He 
 is remarkably consistent in this view of old age 
 and death, and perhaps it is natural that he should 
 regard it so gloomily when one remembers how 
 completely he is enthralled by youth. But his 
 view is an unbalanced one. 
 
 Old age is not always graceless and crabbed 
 and unlovely. Such an old man as Mr. Thomas 
 Hardy has a grace and quietness and courage dis- 
 coverable only in those who have endured many 
 things but have not been conquered by them. Mr. 
 Bennett, however, looks upon age as a calamity 
 which must, indeed, happen to all of us, if we live 
 long enough, but cannot possibly be mitigated. 
 
 He is able to detect the "young, slim, perhaps 
 beautiful" girl in the "fat, shapeless, ugly and 
 grotesque" old woman, but he cannot so easily 
 detect the gracious old man or woman in the boy 
 and girl. I am oppressed sometimes by the 
 thought that if Mr. Bennett had seen the "young, 
 slim, perhaps beautiful" girl, his romantic nature 
 would have let him down, yielding place to his 
 cynicism, and he would have detected the coming 
 wrinkles on her brow, v/ould have seen that her 
 eyes would grow dull, might even have pointed 
 
 [82] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 out her tendency to obesity. "Of course, I 
 should!" Mr. Bennett may retort, "for I am a 
 realist as well as a romantic, and in this case, I 
 should have been right!" And so he would, but 
 the trouble is that, while Mr. Bennett romantically 
 and rightly sees the slim, perhaps beautiful girl 
 in the fat old woman, he always realistically and 
 wrongly sees the fat old woman in the slim young 
 girl! I think that the spirit of "the Five Towns" 
 is entirely responsible for the fact that Mr. Bennett 
 never sees beauty in age. It is a harsh, acquisi- 
 tive spirit, busy principally in the accumulation 
 of material things (despite the fact that it pro- 
 duces lovely pottery) and inclined to measure a 
 man's worth by the amount of his fortune. The 
 leisurely and gracious things of life are not the 
 immediate or even the ultimate concerns of life in 
 "the Potteries," and old age is likely, in such 
 places, to be harsh and acquisitive. When men 
 and women, who have spent their activities en- 
 tirely in money-making, reach the age at which 
 they possess much money but are no longer able 
 to employ themselves in its acquisition, they be- 
 come crabbed, unlovely, mean, for they have no 
 resources. You cannot derive pleasure from 
 
 [83] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 literature or music or painting or any other art 
 when you bring to its consideration only the fag- 
 end of your life. One has seen men who were 
 notorious among their neighbours for their hard 
 work — always engaged in their employment from 
 early morning until late night — seldom, if ever, 
 resting or taking holiday. One has seen these 
 men, after they have retired from business, so 
 helpless without their work to occupy their minds 
 that they steadily declined into a condition of 
 misery which brought about premature death! 
 They lived for one thing, and when that thing was 
 no longer available for them, they perished be- 
 cause they had no other resources and it was too 
 late to acquire any! Mr. Bennett must have seen 
 such men many times during his early years 
 in "the Five Towns" and the pitiful spectacle so 
 impressed his mind that old age has become to him 
 a terrifying thing, a complete debacle of the brain 
 and energies. This life, this youth, is so wonder- 
 ful, so full of romantic possibilties, that age and 
 death seem to him merely obscene interruptions 
 of an enthralling spectacle. 
 
 [84] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 Once only, so far as I can discover, did he make 
 a poem. It was published in The English Review 
 in the brave days when that magazine was edited 
 by Mr. Ford Madox Huefifer, and since it is sing- 
 ularly characteristic, as a poem ought to be, of its 
 author's outlook on life, I quote it here in full. 
 But first I must affirm my belief that The English 
 Review, under the editorship of Mr. Hueffer, was 
 the greatest magazine that this world has ever 
 known. That is a tremendous title to claim for 
 any magazine, but I doubt whether any one, famil- 
 iar with great magazines, will seriously dispute 
 it. The title of Mr. Bennett's poem is "Town and 
 Country." Here it is: 
 
 God made the country, and man made the town. 
 And so — man made the doctor, God the clown; 
 God made the mountain, and the ants their hill, 
 Where grinding servitudes each day fulfil. 
 God doubtless made the flowers, while in the hive 
 Unnatural bees against their passions strive. 
 God made the jackass and the bounding flea; 
 I render thanks to God that man made me. 
 Let those who recognize God's shaping power 
 
 [85] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 Here but not there, in tree but not in tower, 
 
 In lane and field, but not in street and square. 
 
 And in man's work see nothing that is fair — 
 
 Bestir their feeble fancy to the old 
 
 Conception of a "country" made by God; 
 
 Wliere birds perceive the wickedness of strife 
 
 Against the winds, and lead the simple life 
 
 Nestless on God's own twigs; and squirrels, free 
 
 From carking care, exist through February 
 
 On nuts that God has stored. Let them agree 
 
 To leave the fields to God for just a year, 
 
 And then of God's own harvest make good cheer. 
 
 If one were a sentimentalist, one could describe 
 that poem as a sign of a blankly materialistic 
 mind, with a turn for blasphemy, but if one is what 
 one ought to be, a romantic with a sense of reality, 
 it will apr>ear to be a confession of faith in God 
 and man. 
 
 VI 
 
 Mr. Bennett, of all the men of letters with whom 
 I am acquainted, not even excluding Mr. Shaw, 
 is the most generous and kindly to young people. 
 Mr. Wells likes young people, but his interest 
 in them is curiously imDersonal. He likes youth 
 
 [86] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 in a lump, so to speak, rather than youth in the 
 individual, just as he seems to love mankind more 
 than he likes any man. But Mr. Bennett likes 
 you, the youth, personally. He is happier on the 
 whole with young people than he is with their el- 
 ders, and he assiduously seeks their society. He is 
 amused by their extravagances, but not to the ex- 
 tent of sneering at them. He likes youth to be 
 dandiacal, to have an air, to be arrogant, but not 
 to be ill-bred or pretentious or third-rate. In 
 spite of his notable kindness, he can be merciless 
 to humbugs, and stories are told of devastating 
 things said by him to presumptuous persons and 
 fools. The blunt speech of "the Five Towns" 
 is native to his tongue, and he passes judgment 
 without mincing his words. He has a dry sort 
 of wit which is remarkably helped by a slight 
 hesitation in his speech, and his general conver- 
 sation, without being markedly distinguished, is 
 entertaining and agreeable in a way that is very 
 elusive when put upon paper. It is natural, 
 perhaps, that a man who loves youth so much as 
 he does should have a more potent sense of the 
 present and of the future than of the past, and 
 this accounts for the fact that his books and 
 
 [87] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 pictures are chiefly modem. I imagine that he 
 has a greater number of books and pictures by 
 young authors and painters than any other man 
 of his calibre in England. He loves music, but 
 is not "highbrow" about it, and he has a passion 
 for dancing which threatens now to keep him 
 jigging through ballrooms for the rest of his life. 
 He paints quite charming water-colour pictures, 
 and is so fond of the sea that the surest way in 
 which any one can lose his friendship is to accom- 
 pany him for a trip on his yacht and be sea-sick 
 during it! He is a keen man of business, and he 
 is full of contempt for the rather sloppy-minded 
 man of letters who allows himself to be worsted 
 in a bargain. Most men of quality are lonely men, 
 oddly isolated in spirit, and Mr. Bennett is not 
 an exception to the rule, but more than his com- 
 peers, I think, he is a companionable person in 
 a small group, chiefly because of that romantic 
 interest he has in all things, animate and inani- 
 mate. He has a wider knowledge of books than 
 most men of letters. Most men of letters, indeed, 
 are remarkably ignorant of books. And he has 
 the courage, the supreme courage, to do what 
 no other literary man I have ever met has the 
 
 [88] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 courage to do: he keeps a gramophone. He likes 
 the savor of life, and life for him includes the 
 pictures of Corot and the gramophone and French 
 poetry and the novels of George Moore and news- 
 papers and motor-cars and Balzac and Bernard 
 Shaw and the right brand of French beans. How 
 can such a man help being romantic! 
 
 [89] 
 
G. K. CHESTERTON 
 
 There is a legend, much beholden to Shake- 
 speare, that learning and leanness are akin to each 
 other, while dull wits flourish in company with 
 obesity. The curious submission sometimes made 
 by Shakespeare to common prejudices and igno- 
 rance, glorified by the name of legend, caused 
 him too often to forget the obligation of the aristo- 
 crat to think for him.self, and remember only to 
 think with the mob ; and the singular fact about this 
 forgetfulness of his is that when he chose to think 
 with the mob, he nearly always did so when the 
 the mob was in the wrong. He preferred the judg- 
 ment of the street to the judgment of informed 
 minds when he wrote "Richard the Third," and al- 
 lowed himself to malign that excellent and most 
 capable prince and monarch. Richard was one of 
 the ablest of the kings of England, but Shake- 
 speare, forgetting his obligations to his own 
 
 [90] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 genius, portrays him as a pervert with a mania 
 for blood. He yields to the common view in his 
 references to fat men. Falstaff is fat and flighty 
 and a coward, a drunkard, a braggart and a mis- 
 leader of young princes, although the prototype 
 of Sir John was himself a man of known courage. 
 Cassius was deemed to think too much because 
 he had a lean and hungry look. Julius Caesar 
 desired the society of fat men who, presumably, 
 indulged but seldom in thought and never in any 
 that could be called dangerous. Fat men are en- 
 dowed with but one tolerable virtue: that of good 
 nature; and if any fat men ever enters heaven, 
 it will be because of his equable temper and in 
 spite of his corpulence. 
 
 Mr. Chesterton is a fat man. There is a rumour 
 in England that many Americans felt they had 
 been defrauded of their money when they went to 
 hear him lecture lately because he v/as hardly 
 so fat as they had been led to believe! He cer- 
 tainly is not so bulky nov/, because of a serious 
 illness, as he was when I first knew him, but in 
 those days he was undeniably an enormous man. 
 And in himself he is a complete refutation of the 
 legend that fat men are dull men. Dr. Johnson 
 
 [91] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 was another fat man whose large flesh covered a 
 large intellect. Dr. Johnson, indeed, was so able a 
 man that, in spite of an incorrigibly lazy character, 
 which kept him abed of mornings when he ought 
 to have been improving the shining hour, he com- 
 piled a dictionary with little assistance which, so 
 Frenchmen said, would have engaged the labours of 
 forty French scholars for a long time. 
 
 These legends about men of wit and dull men 
 need to be revised. There have been as many fat 
 men of genius as there have been lean men of 
 genius. There have been as many epicurean 
 geniuses as there have been ascetic geniuses. My 
 experience is that men of great mental energy are 
 fonder of their food than many men with torpid 
 minds; and some of the ablest men I know are 
 excessively addicted to the pleasures of the table. 
 Mr. Shaw is a fastidious feeder, with odd likes and 
 dislikes, but no one could say that he is indif- 
 ferent to what he eats. It is, I think, an ironic 
 commentary on the legend that fat men are lack- 
 ing in cleverness, that much the cleverest of those 
 who oppose the opinions of the lean Mr. Shaw is 
 the fat Mr. Chesterton. 
 
 Mr. Chesterton, was sent into the world by an 
 [92] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 All- Just God for the exclusive purpose of saying 
 the opposite to Mr. Shaw. With the most com- 
 plimentary intention I say that Mr. Chesterton's job 
 in the world is, when Mr. Shaw speaks, to reply, 
 "On the contrary! . . ." He has to restore the 
 balance which Mr. Shaw very vigorously disturbs. 
 Mr. Chesterton is considerably younger than Mr. 
 Shaw, much younger than most people, on seeing 
 him, imagine him to be. He was born in London 
 in 1874. His book on Browning was published 
 when he was twenty-nine, and "The Napoleon of 
 Notting Hill" when he was thirty. The bulk of his 
 work, and certainly the best of it, with the excep- 
 tion of the "Short History of England," was pub- 
 lished before he was forty. The bulk, and certainly 
 the best, of Mr. Shaw's work was published after he 
 had passed his fortieth year. A critic comparing 
 the two writers ought to remember that Mr. Shaw's 
 work is mainly that of a mature man, whereas 
 that of Mr. Chesterton is mainly the work of a 
 young man. 
 
 [93] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 II 
 
 Gilbert Keith Chesterton is commonly known as 
 a writer of paradox. He is something of a para- 
 dox himself, for he is half-Scotch, half-French, 
 and wholly English. This paradox is not any 
 more startling than the fact that yellow and blue, 
 when mixed together, become green. England is 
 half-way between Scotland and France! He 
 handles paradox very skilfully, but there are times 
 when he imagines he is making a paradox and is 
 only making a pun ; and there are other times when 
 he is merely making nonsense. He states in a 
 book called "What's Wrong With the World" that 
 "the prime truth of woman, the universal mother" 
 is "that if a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing 
 badly." That is singular paradox! I can under- 
 stand a prime truth which declares that a thing is 
 worth doing, even if it be done badly, but I can- 
 not understand a prime truth which seems to make 
 a merit of bad workmanship. 
 
 Elsewhere in the same book, he says that "sub- 
 mission to a weak man is discipline. Submission 
 to a strong man is servility." The proper com- 
 mentary on that paradox can only be made by a 
 
 [94] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 soldier. I can assure Mr. Chesterton that the dis- 
 cipline of a weak man is the nearest approach to 
 tyranny I know, and it flies to pieces in times of 
 great distress. Your strong man can hold 
 thoroughly frightened men to their manhood with 
 a word and a wave of the hand, but your weak 
 man demoralizes them with the fretful tyranny 
 which he calls strength. The submission of strong 
 men to a weak man may be called discipline, but 
 it would be better named self-assurance. But in 
 the field itself, when authority and strength are 
 needed, that weak man is quietly pushed into the 
 background, and the really strong man, although 
 he may be a private soldier, takes command. 
 One can, of course, pick holes in many of Mr. 
 Chesterton's paradoxes in that manner, but it is 
 profitless to do so. Our work now is to discover 
 what is of value in his doctrine and to describe 
 what is unsound in it. 
 
 Roughly, one may say that Mr. Chesterton 
 stands for the common man against the very clever 
 man. He believes more in the People than he 
 believes in Particular Persons. As he himself 
 would say, he trusts Man more than he trusts any 
 man, a statement which reads better than it sounds. 
 
 [95] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 He believes in tradition, even in legend, which is 
 the wisdom accumulated by Man, not out of his 
 mind so much as out of his experience. He be- 
 lieves in the institution of private property, pro- 
 vided that the property is widely distributed. In 
 other words, he believes in what is called Peasant 
 Proprietorship. He does not believe in Progress 
 as Mr. Wells, for example, believes in it, and he 
 will tell you very emphatically that the common 
 man was happier in the Middle Ages than he is 
 to-day. There are times when it seems to me that 
 Mr. Chesterton's "common man" is as mythical as 
 the "average man" of the newspapers and the 
 "economic man" of the economists; and I am 
 very dubious about the happiness of the poor 
 people of the Middle Ages. It would be foolish to 
 carry one's doctrine too far, but if there is any- 
 thing in this theory of Man deriving wisdom from 
 experience, surely it is reasonable to suppose that 
 human beings, having discovered a means of living 
 which ensures some comfort and security to them, 
 will not easily be deprived of it. Mr. Chesterton 
 asks us to believe that the "common" man per- 
 mitted the rich lord to rob him of his rights almost 
 
 [96] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 in ignorance of the fact that he was being robbed 
 of them. It is just as probable that he was ignor- 
 ant of them because he never had them. 
 
 Mr. Chesterton believes, too, in what he calls 
 "the ancient and universal things" as against what 
 he calls "the modern and specialist things." He 
 has invented a theory which establishes man as the 
 great specialist and woman as the great amateur, 
 and he would keep woman out of the polling-booth, 
 not because the vote is too good for her, but because 
 it is not good enough. He demands that the woman 
 shall stay in the home, not for the Teutonic reason 
 that she is inferior to man and must work in a 
 narrow area, but for the Chestertonic reason that 
 she is capable of more varied work than man and 
 can only find adequate range for her variety in the 
 broad dominions of the home. "Women were not 
 kept at home," he says, "in order to keep them 
 narrow; on the contrary, they were kept home in 
 order to keep them broad." The effort must seem 
 to many persons to have been a singularly unsuc- 
 cessful one, but Mr. Chesterton will have none of 
 this sophistry. "I do not even pause to deny that 
 woman was a servant ; but at least she was a general 
 
 [97] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 servant," he asserts; discovering in her "general- 
 ness" a virtue where others would discover only a 
 certainty of incompetence and muddle. 
 
 If drudgery only means dreadfully hard work, I admit 
 the woman drudges in the home, as a man might drudge 
 at the Cathedral of Amiens or drudge behind a gun at 
 Trafalgar. But if it means that the hard work is more 
 heavy because it is trifling, colorless and of small import 
 to the soul, then, as I say, I give it up ; I do not know 
 what the words mean. To be Queen Elizabeth within a 
 definite area, deciding sales, banquets, labors and holi- 
 days; to be Whiteley within a certain area, providing 
 toys, boots, sheets, cakes and books; to be Aristotle 
 within a certain area, teaching morals, manners, theology 
 and hygiene — I can understand how this might exhaust 
 the mind, but I cannot imagine how it could narrow it. 
 How can it be a large career to tell other people's chil- 
 dren about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell 
 one's own children about the universe? How can it be 
 broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to 
 be everything to someone? No; a woman's function is 
 laborous, but because it is gigantic, not because it is 
 minute. I will pity Mrs. Jones for the hugeness of her 
 task; I v/ill never pity her for its smallness. 
 
 I have quoted that extensive passage because it is 
 a good example of Mr. Chesterton's style and his 
 thought. It is a mixture of soundness and unsound- 
 
 [98] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 ness, in which the two things merge so impercepti- 
 bly that there is difficulty in distinguishing the one 
 from the other. It is not easy to see why the sten- 
 ographer, travelling to an office every morning at 
 the same hour by the same underground railway, 
 and typing more or less the sam.e sort of letter 
 for a specified number of hours before she returns 
 every evening by the same underground railv»^ay to 
 the home from which she set out in the morning, 
 should be more broad-minded that the woman who 
 stays at home performing a variety of jobs; and 
 perhaps Mr. Chesterton is justified in his faith by 
 the fact that the stenographer is most eager to es- 
 cape from the office to the home by the way of 
 marriage. 
 
 Nevertheless, I suspect that the home is not quite 
 the broadening influence Mr. Chesterton declares it 
 to be, and Mr. Chesterton himself provides me with 
 the ground for my suspicion. To be Queen Eliz- 
 abeth v*^ithin a certain area may be enlarging for 
 the mind. To be Whiteley (or Marshal Field, in 
 America) v/ithin a certain area may be enlarging 
 for the mind. To be Aristotle within a certain 
 area may be enlarging for the mind. But to be 
 Queen Elizabeth and Whiteley and Aristotle within 
 
 [99] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 a certain area is paralyzing for the mind. The 
 stenographer who does one thing every day, has 
 time to think of many things: the wife and mother 
 who does many things every day has time to think 
 of nothing. I do not believe that the stenographer, 
 who accepts the responsibilities of marriage and 
 motherhood, regards the drudgery of them as an 
 unparalleled opportunity for exhibiting her versa- 
 tility; and I have observed that the people who are 
 most keen on such "modern and specialist things" 
 as labour-saving devices, are just those women who, 
 in Mr. Chesterton's judgment, should be most re- 
 luctant to accept them. 
 
 Ill 
 
 His praise of the "ancient and universal things" 
 at the expense of the "modern and specialist 
 things" leads him to say that 
 
 If a man found a coil of rope in a desert he could at 
 least think of all the things that can be done with a coil 
 of rope; and some of them might be practical. He 
 could tow a boat or lasso a horse. He could play cat's 
 cradle or pick oakum. He could construct a rope-ladder 
 for an eloping heiress, or cord her boxes for a travelling 
 [100] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 maiden aunt. He could learn to tie a bow, or he could 
 hang himself. Far otherwise with the unfortunate 
 traveller who should find a telephone in the desert. You 
 can telephone with a telephone: you cannot do anything 
 else with it. 
 
 He disparages the hot-water pipe in order to ex- 
 alt the open fire. He argues that "the ancient and 
 universal things" can be turned to many uses, but 
 that the "modern and specialist things" are strictly 
 limited to one purpose. 
 
 There may be much in his argument, though 
 his examples hardly support him, but how much is 
 not apparent. Take the case of the man in the 
 desert who finds a coil of rope, and compare him 
 with the man in the desert who finds a telephone. 
 Mr. Chesterton begs us to observe how happy is 
 the former compared with the latter, but is he one- 
 half so happy? The absorbing passion of a man's 
 life in a desert would be the desire to get out of 
 the desert as quickly as possible. How far would 
 a rope help him to realize his desire? He could 
 not tow a boat or lasso a horse because there would 
 not be any water on which to tow the boat or any 
 horse to lasso. If there were a horse to lasso it 
 would either be wild and unrideable or private 
 [101] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 property. He could play at cat's cradle with the 
 rope if it were not a rope at all — if, that is 
 to say it were twine; and perhaps this would 
 help him to pass away the time before he died 
 of starvation. He could pick oakum if he wished 
 to un-rope the rope and had never been to 
 prison to discover what a loathsome job oakum- 
 picking is. But he could not construct a rope- 
 ladder for an eloping heiress or cord her boxes 
 for his travelling maiden aunt, because the eloping 
 heiress would not be eloping in a desert, and his 
 maiden aunt would hardly be packing her trunk 
 in the Sahara. He might be able to tie a bow. 
 He might even be able to hang himself, though that 
 is doubtful, for trees are not prolific in deserts. 
 But I cannot see what comfort he would derive 
 from either of these accomplishments. 
 
 To sum up, a man in a desert with nothing but 
 a coil of rope between him and civilization would 
 be in as complete a state of isolation as it would 
 be possible for a man to imagine. How different 
 would be the case of the man in a desert with the 
 despised "modern and specialist" telephone! 
 For he, finding a telephone, would instantly be 
 able to communicate with other people and to 
 [102] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 direct them to his rescue. If he were anxious to 
 hang himself, he could more effectively do so in 
 the neighbourhood of a telephone than in the neigh- 
 bourhood of a coil of rope, for where there are 
 telephones there are generally telegraph-poles! 
 
 Even in the case of the open fire and hot-water 
 pipe, as much can be said for the "modem and 
 specialist thing" as can be said for the "ancient 
 and universal thing," and in some instances, more 
 can be said for it. We get a cheerful glow from 
 an open fire that certainly is not to be got from a 
 hot-water pipe; but Mr. Chesterton must have no- 
 ticed on many occasions that whereas one gets 
 tolerably toasted on one side by an open fire, the 
 other side is usually left cold. Thus a man, on 
 a wintry night, sitting before the fire, may be too 
 warm in front, and half-frozen behind. But a 
 hot-water pipe creates an equable temperature in a 
 room and leaves a man warm on all sides. 
 
 IV 
 
 He is a nationalist and therefore opposed to 
 imperialism. His belief in peasant proprietor- 
 ship flows naturally from his belief in national- 
 [103] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 ism. He defends peasant proprietorship in "Irish 
 Impressions" because he believes that a country 
 controlled by peasants will survive long after more 
 majestically-governed nations have declined and 
 fallen: — 
 
 I do not know how far modern Europe really shows a 
 menace of Bolshevism, or how far merely a panic of 
 Capitalism. But I know that if any honest resistance 
 has to be offered to mere robbery, the resistance of Ire- 
 land will be the most honest and probably the most im- 
 portant. ... It is where property is well distributed 
 that it will be well defended. The post of honour will 
 be with those who fight in very truth for their own land. 
 
 Now, here we are on very debateable ground, as 
 debateable as his statement that "honour is a lux- 
 ury for aristocrats, but it is a necessity for hall-por- 
 ters," which is surely an obscure rendering of the 
 entirely commercial statement that "honesty is the 
 best policy." Honour is not honour when a man 
 uses it merely because it is profitable to him, and I 
 cannot see much virtue in him who fights for his 
 land simply because he owns it. Honour is admir- 
 able when it brings not profit but loss to the man 
 who wears it. Virtue is in the man who fights for 
 his country though he does not own an inch of it. 
 [104] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 And here I come to my objection to Mr. Chester- 
 ton's beloved peasant proprietorship, the cause of 
 my dismay at the thought that my own country of 
 Ireland may soon be controlled by small farmers. 
 It is true that a peasant will fight desperately 
 for his own piece of land, but he manifests a 
 sturdy reluctance to fight for another man's land; 
 and I cannot understand why Mr. Chesterton re- 
 gards his determination to hold on to his property 
 as more "honest," or more "honourable" than the 
 determination of a Victory bondholder to get the 
 last cent of interest out of the taxpayers. Peas- 
 ants, no less than other men, in fact more than 
 other men, have itching palms, and it is sheer senti- 
 mentalism to describe as "honest" or "honourable" 
 behaviour in them which is denounced as dishonest 
 and dishonourable in a stockbroker. It is true that 
 Lenin's schemes collapsed completely before the 
 resistance of the Russian peasants, and that his 
 plans for the nationization of everything failed to 
 include the principal thing of all, namely, the land ; 
 but Mr. Chesterton will hardly maintain that the 
 Russian peasants had disinterested motives in 
 offering this resistance to Lenin. He may, in- 
 deed, insist that their motives were entirely inter- 
 [105] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 ested and base his case for the Distributive State, 
 as Mr. Belloc named it, on that very interest. But 
 a nation should be something more than a crowd 
 of peasants digging in the earth for their personal 
 profit, and when Mr. Chesterton commends his 
 peasant proprietors to me, I ask not for the signs 
 of their interested behaviour, but for the signs of 
 their disinterested behaviour. When he tells me 
 that the peasant will fight for his own land, I ask 
 him whether the peasant will fight for his neigh- 
 bour's land? When he tells me that the Irish 
 peasant will resist the attempts of the Bolshevist 
 to communalize his land, I ask him whether the 
 Irish peasant is equally ready to defend the French 
 peasant from Russian aggression? Mr. Chester- 
 ton declares that France had claims on the gati- 
 tude of Ireland. Did the Irish peasant farmer 
 remember those claims on his gratitude? Or did 
 he find it more convenient and profitable to ejac- 
 ulate, "Yah, dirty atheist, go and fight your own 
 battles!" In deriding the idea of empire, Mr. 
 Chesterton says in this book of "Irish Impressions" 
 that "the British combination" is "more lax and 
 liable to schism" than a combination of peasants. 
 I do not believe there is any truth in this state- 
 [106] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 ment, particularly when I remember that "the Brit- 
 ish combination" held together for five years in 
 circumstances that might have been expected to 
 shake it to pieces. Let me give you an example, 
 out of my experience during the War, of the way 
 in which the Imperial idea rallies men to its sup- 
 port to their own loss. While I was being trained 
 to be an officer, I shared a hut with twenty-five 
 other men. Between us, we represented every part 
 of the British Empire. The twenty-six men in that 
 hut included Englishmen, Scotsmen, Welshmen and 
 two Irishmen (one of whom was an Orangeman, 
 and the other, myself, a Home Ruler). In ad- 
 dition to these, there were tv/o Australians, a man 
 from New Zealand, tv/o men from Canada, two 
 from South Africa and a couple of men from 
 South America, one a Spaniard and the other the 
 son of English parents. Many of these men had 
 travelled for thousands of miles at their own ex- 
 pense in order to join the British Army. They 
 were volunteers. I would like to see the com- 
 munity of peasants that would travel ten yards 
 to defend anything but their own personal prop- 
 erty, except under compulsion. 
 
 When I cited this case to Mr. Chesterton some 
 [107] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 time ago, in controversy with him, he replied with 
 characteristic amiability that Serbia was a com- 
 munity of peasants, and that Serbia had fought in 
 the War. When I asked whether Serbia would 
 have fought for Montenegro, he replied that she 
 had done more than that, she had fought for "the 
 wholly invisible bond of all Christendom." But 
 Serbia did nothing of the sort. She fought for 
 herself because she was invaded. That was a per- 
 fectly proper thing to do, but there is no compar- 
 ison between it and the behaviour of men respond- 
 ing at their own cost to the Imperial idea, although 
 many hundreds of miles away from the place of 
 argument and under no compulsion to go to it. 
 
 The truth about a peasant civilization is that it 
 is a mean civilization, in which mean virtues com- 
 pete with mean vices, and the small and local thing 
 is esteemed above the big and worldwide thing. 
 There are many defects in empires, even in one so 
 loosely-bound as the British Empire, but although 
 those who control an empire are often guilty of 
 cruel deeds, there is at least this to be said in their 
 defense, that they honestly believe themselves to be 
 possessed of greater wisdom than those whom they 
 [108] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 oppress, and do desire in their stupid fashion to 
 govern tliem for their good. 
 
 On the whole, freedom may be defined as the 
 right to choose; but that definition must obviously 
 be subject to limitations. There is a sort of wild 
 and woolly democrat who believes in the right of 
 uninstructed persons to choose wrong. It is not 
 a right in which I believe. Mr. Chesterton thinks, 
 not without justification, that the common man can 
 choose in a right manner. If his creed were con- 
 fined to that clause we could accept it with heart- 
 iness, but there are times when he seems to think 
 that the common man chooses aright because he is 
 a common man, and he leaves us with the impres- 
 sion that he can never quite forgive Magna Charta 
 because it was won by peers, and not by peasants. 
 He seems not to realize that if Magna Charta had 
 depended upon peasants, it would never have been 
 won. 
 
 But he helps us to keep a balance. His service 
 to us is that when we are inclined to run frantically 
 [109] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 after the superman, he reminds us of the existence 
 of the common man. If he were not so well- 
 padded with flesh, I should describe him as the 
 skeleton at a feast of supermen, reminding them 
 that even a superman can be a fool. 
 
 There are times indeed, when his faith in the 
 common man undergoes a sea-change, and he ut- 
 ters sentiments that might be spoken by Mr. H. 
 L. Mencken, who camiot abide the common mind. 
 In one of his essays, Mr. Chesterton says, "I cer- 
 tainly would much rather share my apartments with 
 a gentleman who though he was God than with a 
 gentleman who thought he was a grasshopper." 
 So would Nietzsche. But I doubt whether the 
 Early Christians would have approved his prefer- 
 ence. They, who were ready to pronounce all 
 flesh to be grass, would not have found anything in- 
 compatible with their faith in a gentleman 
 who regarded himself as a grasshopper. They 
 would certainly have considered his rival in mis- 
 apprehension to be a blasphemer. And if Mr. 
 Chesterton would fail to find pleasure in the com- 
 pany of a man who believed himself to be that in- 
 teresting but monotonous insect, how much less 
 pleasure would he derive from sharing his apart- 
 [110] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 ments with a man who believed not only himself, 
 but all men, to be worms? 
 
 He is personally the most kindly and agreeable 
 of men, in whom the one virtue commonly as- 
 cribed to fat men, that of good nature, is most 
 highly developed. His anger is almost completely 
 impersonal. His pardon is on the heels of his 
 condemnation. The sins of jealously and hatred 
 are unknown to him, and he seems to be without 
 the power of resenting spiteful things done to him- 
 self. He said to me on one occasion, "Arnold Ben- 
 nett says I'm an imbecile!" in the tone of a man 
 who was not in the least annoyed by the statement, 
 but puzzled by the fact that any man should call 
 another one an offensive name. We are all chil- 
 dren of the one God, in his belief, even if some 
 of us are Jews, and in some mystical manner he 
 contrives, in his anger, to discriminate between the 
 human being and the thing which the human being 
 does. If ever he is moved to slay a sweater or 
 an international financier or a Prohibitionist, he 
 will do so entirely without prejudice to that per- 
 son's right to be called a child of God. It is a 
 tribute to the charm of his character and the equ- 
 ability of his temper that his stoutest admirers are 
 
 [111] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 those who most vigorously combat his opinions, 
 and that most of his friends are men who do not 
 share any of his views, except perhaps the only 
 view that matters, the view that an ill deed must be 
 exposed and a wrong put right. He is Don Quix- 
 ote in the body of Sancho Panza. 
 
 [112] 
 
JOHN GALSWORTHY 
 
 It is sometimes said that an artist never intrudes 
 his personality into his work and that the great 
 writers of the world have kept themselves so closely 
 to themselves that their readers have never been 
 able to discover anything of their faith or partial- 
 ities. This is not only untrue, but is also absurd, 
 for how can any man hope to exclude himself from 
 his creations, since without him the creations would 
 not be? There never was a book of any sort which 
 did not in some fashion reveal the nature of its 
 author to discerning readers, and I will personally 
 undertake to give a fairly accurate account of the 
 general character of any author after an attentive 
 reading of all his writings. There are authors, 
 such as Mr. Bernard Shaw and Mr. H. G. Wells, 
 who do not make any pretence of excluding them- 
 selves from the notice of their readers: they de- 
 liberately force themselves into their books; and 
 the habit has become so much a part of 
 [113] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 their nature that they sometimes do it uncon- 
 sciously. One may say of them, perhaps, that 
 we learn chiefly from their writings what their 
 opinions are, but learn nothing of their 
 characters. But while it is true that we do 
 receive much information about their opinions, it 
 is true also, I think, that they unmistakably reveal 
 themselves, something of the intimate parts of 
 them, to those who closely consider their books. 
 Fielding formally held up the course of his stories 
 in order that he might state his views to his readers, 
 and Dickens and Thackeray followed his example; 
 but all three of them revealed more than their be- 
 liefs to their readers — they revealed them- 
 selves. Mr. Shaw and Mr. Wells are excellent 
 examples of what may be described as the Direct 
 Revealers — writers who nakedly manifest their 
 opinions and, more or less nakedly, their personal- 
 ities in their books. The Indirect Revealers are 
 best exemplified in two poets, Shakespeare and 
 John Millington Synge, and one novelist and dram- 
 atist, Mr. John Galsworthy. We have very little 
 documentary evidence of Shakespeare's existence, 
 and it is impossible, therefore, to write his biog- 
 raphy with the accuracy of detail with which one 
 [114] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 is able to record the events of, say, Roosevelt's 
 career; but there is a clear and unmistakable ac- 
 count of his hopes and fears and beliefs and dis- 
 beliefs, a most faithful portrait of his character, 
 contained in his poems and pla3^s. How can any 
 one fail to discover behind his work the figure of 
 a grave, fastidious, disdainful and distrustful and 
 solitary man whose spiritual solitude was con- 
 cealed under an appearance of gregariousness and 
 cheerful living that made him a good companion 
 on most occasions without being excessively pop- 
 ular. Ben Jonson, despite his quarrelsome char- 
 acter, was probably more deeply loved by his con- 
 temporaries than Shakespeare was, because Shake- 
 speare had more of reserve and spiritual isolation 
 than Ben had, and was less willing to put faith in 
 the virtue of the crowd ; and I imagine that had one 
 interrogated any of Shakespeare's friends, they 
 would have said of him, "Oh, yes, I like William 
 Shakespeare very much! Talks well! He's a 
 good chap, but a little odd . . . queer ... at 
 times. It isn't easy to make friends v/ith him. 
 He always keeps us at our distance — not deliber- 
 ately, of course, but in some vague way. He un- 
 derstands us all right, and he takes part in our 
 [115] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 revels, but he never completely descends to our 
 level. Now, old Ben . . . he's a good, hearty- 
 chap! He is so comradely that we frequently for- 
 get he is Ben Jonson and think of him as just one 
 of ourselves. Shakespeare's friendly enough, but 
 we never forget that he is Shakespeare. Some- 
 times, quite unintentionally, he makes us feel a 
 little common! . . ." 
 
 The best biography of John Synge that I have 
 read — and I have read all of them — is contained 
 in his plays and poems. It is impossible to rise 
 from his books without an impression of intense 
 loneliness and unachievable desires, of a man 
 eager to be the hero of romantic exploits, but 
 totally unable to stand up to life and make him- 
 self a hero because of some spiritual ineffective- 
 ness, some lack of assertion which results in fum- 
 bling and self -distrust; and one goes from the plays 
 and poems to the biographies and is not surprised 
 at reading of his lonely life. How often the word 
 "lonesome" occurs in his writings, and how deeply 
 he insists on the terrors of solitude! Pegeen Mike 
 in the "The Playboy of the Western World" re- 
 proves her father for going "over the sands to 
 Kate Cassidy's wake" and leaving her alone in the 
 shebeen: 
 
 [116] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 If I am a queer daughter, it's a queer father'd be 
 leaving me lonesome these twelve hours of dark, and 
 I piling the turf with the dogs barking, and the calves 
 mooing, and my own teeth rattling with the fear. 
 
 I imagine tliat there is some deep personal feel- 
 ing of Synge's in the speech he puts into the mouth 
 of Christy Mahon in the second act of the same 
 play: 
 
 Christy: And isn't it a poor thing to be starting 
 again, and I a lonesome fellow will be looking out on 
 women and girls the way the needy fallen spirits do be 
 looking for the Lord? 
 
 Pegeen: What call have you to be lonesome when 
 there's poor girls walking Mayo in their thousands now? 
 
 Christy: It's well you know what call I have. It's 
 well you know it's a lonesome thing to be passing small 
 towns with the lights shining sideways when the night 
 is down, or going in strange places with a dog noising 
 before you and a dog noising behind, or drawn to the 
 cities where you'd hear a voice kissing and talking deep 
 love in every shadow of the ditch, and you passing on 
 with an empty, hungry stomach failing from your 
 heart. 
 
 [117] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 Pegeen: I'm thinking you're an odd man, Christy 
 Mahon. The oddest walking fellow I ever set my eyes 
 on to this hour to-day. 
 
 Christy: What would any be but odd men and they 
 living lonesome in the world? 
 
 The scene of all his plays is laid in a lonely 
 place: the last cottage at the head of a long glen 
 in Wicklow; a small and remote island off the 
 west coast of Ireland; a distant hamlet in a moun- 
 tainous district. His people are possessed of a 
 perpetual fear of death and old age, and lead un- 
 eventful lives, having minds which continually 
 crave for the performance of splendid and un- 
 usual deeds. Fev/ men have put their longings 
 and disappointments so boldly and plainly into 
 their work as John Synge put his. I do not sug- 
 gest that an author may be identified with every 
 word and action of his creatures — a manifestly 
 absurd suggestion — but I do suggest that it is pos- 
 sible for an intelligent reader to obtain a very 
 clear and well-defined impression of the character 
 and beliefs of an author from a careful study of 
 the whole body of his work. 
 [118] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 II 
 
 Mr. John Galsworthy is the most sensitive figure 
 in the ranks of modern men of letters, but his 
 sensitiveness is of a peculiar nature, for it is almost 
 totally impersonal. One thinks of Dostoievsky 
 eternally pitying himself in the belief that he was 
 pitying humanity and particularly that part of it 
 which is Russian; or of Maxim Gorki, as shown in 
 his vivid and extraordinary study of Leo Tolstoi,* 
 preoccupied with himself to the extent of imagin- 
 ing that Tolstoi, the aristocrat, related salacious 
 stories in common speech to him, the peasant, be- 
 cause he imagined that Gorki, being of vulgar or- 
 igin, could not appreciate refined conversation: 
 
 I remember my first meeting with him and his talk 
 about "Varienka Oliessova" and "Twenty-six and One." 
 From the ordinary point of view, what he said was a 
 string of indecent words. I was perplexed by it and 
 even offended. I thought that he considered me incapa- 
 ble of understanding any other kind of language. I 
 understand now: it was silly to have felt offended. 
 
 One thinks, too, of Mr. Shaw's lively interest 
 in himself, and of Mr. Wells's eagerness to remold 
 
 * Reminiscences of Leo Nicolayevitch Tolstoi, by Maxim Gorki. 
 
 [119] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 the world nearer to his heart's desire. And re- 
 membering these men, intensely individual and 
 not reluctant to speak of themselves, one is startled 
 to discover how destitute of egotism Mr. Gals- 
 worthy seems to be. It may even be argued that 
 his lack of interest in himself is a sign of inade- 
 quate artistry, that it is impossible for a man of 
 supreme quality to be so utterly unconcerned about 
 himself as Mr. Galsworthy is. He has written 
 more than a dozen novels and at least a dozen 
 plays, but there is not one line in any of them to 
 denote that he takes any interest whatever in John 
 Galsworthy. The most obvious characteristic of 
 his work is an immense and, sometimes, indis- 
 criminating pity, but I imagine that the only crea- 
 ture on whom he has no pity is himself. What- 
 ever of joy and grief he has had in life has been 
 closely retained, and the reticence which was char- 
 acteristic of the English people — I am now using 
 the word "English" in the strict sense — in pre- 
 war times, but is hardly characteristic of them 
 now, is most clearly to be observed in Mr. Gals- 
 worthy. And yet there are few among contem- 
 porary writers who reveal so much of themselves 
 as he does. Neither Mr. Shaw nor Mr. Wells, 
 [120] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 who constantly expose their beliefs to their readers, 
 do in the long run tell so much about their charac- 
 ters as Mr. Galsworthy, who never makes a con- 
 scious revelation of himself and is probably quite 
 unaware that he had made any revelations at all. 
 How often have we observed in our own relation- 
 ships that some garrulous person, constantly en- 
 gaged in egotistical conversation, contrives to con- 
 ceal knowledge of himself from us, while some 
 silent friend, with lips tightly closed, most amaz- 
 ingly gives himself away. One looks at Mr. Gals- 
 worthy's handsome, sensitive face and is immedi- 
 ately aware of tightened lips! . . . But the lips 
 are not tightened because of things done to him, 
 but because of things done to others. 
 
 I remember, more than ten years ago, reading 
 a notice of the first performance of "Justice" in 
 an English Sunday newspaper in which the critic, 
 who must have been terribly drunk when he wrote 
 it, attacked the play, making nine misstatements of 
 fact about it in as many lines. Those were the 
 days when I took the field on the slightest provoca- 
 tion. An insult offered to a man of letters for 
 whom I had respect was an insult offered to me, 
 and I made much trouble for myself by smacking 
 [121] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 faces with great ferocity for offences, not against 
 me, but against my friends and my betters. I 
 wrote a letter to that critic which created some 
 havoc in his sodden brain, and I then posted a 
 copy of it to Mr. Galsworthy. He thanked me 
 very civilly for what I had done, and added that 
 he never replied to criticism of any sort! I was 
 astounded by his statement and a little dashed. 
 My faith in those days was, crudely, two eyes for 
 one tooth! Those who struck at me might expect 
 two blows in return. Like Mrs. Ferguson, in my 
 play, "John Ferguson," I said to myself, "If any- 
 one was to hurt me, I'd do my best to hurt them 
 back and hurt them harder nor they hurt me!" 
 I could not bring myself into line with the meek- 
 ness of Mr. Galsworthy until I discovered in it a 
 form of supreme arrogance! . . . Now that I 
 know him and his work better, I realize that I was 
 wrong in my estimation of him both as excessively 
 meek and excessively arrogant. His rule never 
 to reply to criticism, however unfair, is a sign, not 
 of humility or pride, but of complete indifference 
 to himself. I can believe in him becoming fu- 
 rious with one who belittles a dog, but I cannot be- 
 [122] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 lieve in him displaying any feeling over one who 
 belittles John Galsworthy. 
 
 But when I look at his tightened lips, I feel 
 certain that they are drawn closely together, not 
 to prevent himself from forgetting his indifference 
 to himself, but to prevent him from pouring out 
 his anger at wrong and cruelty suffered by other 
 people. His hatred of injustice possesses him like 
 a fury, so that I expect to find his hands always 
 clenched. There are times, indeed, when he al- 
 lows his feeling for others, human and animal, 
 to destroy his sense of proportion, and he will 
 sometimes imagine that people or beasts are suf- 
 fering a great deal more of pain than they really 
 are, even that they are suffering when in fact they 
 are not suffering at all. This is the complaint most 
 commonly made of him by his critics, that he some- 
 times exaggerates the extent to which people and, 
 particularly, animals suffer. When I was a child, 
 I remember that I often read in sentimental Sun- 
 day-school books of slum children who never 
 smiled and had never seen grass. I suppose 
 that fundamentally I have a sceptical mind, for 
 even then I found myself doubting whether there 
 [123] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 were any children in the world who had never 
 seen grass. Grass is so persistent! ... I knew 
 that a street had only to be free of traffic for a 
 short while and little blades of grass would begin 
 to push up from between the cobbles! ... It 
 might be that slum children never smiled — though 
 I was dubious of that — ^but all of them must have 
 seen some grass sometime. Then I grew up and 
 left Ulster and went to England, and for two or 
 three years I lived on the confines of a slum in 
 South London, where I discovered that my senti- 
 mental authors were sentimental liars, that poor 
 people do not live lives of incessant misery, that 
 they smile and laugh as often as, if not more fre- 
 quently than, rich people, and are fully as happy 
 as any one else. Happiness and unhappiness are 
 conditions of the spirit, and provided a man has 
 sufficient food to eat and a decent shelter and warm 
 clothes, it matters very little whether he be rich 
 or poor. Mr. Galsworthy is not always as sensi- 
 ble of this as he might be. Like many idealists 
 he attaches more importance to material things than 
 many materialists do. He lets himself be too 
 easily persuaded that a thing is wrong because it 
 looks wrong. If he had walked into the Valley of 
 [124] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 Elah on that morning when the fair and ruddy 
 youth, David, encountered Goliath, he v/ould cer^ 
 tainly have run to David's side. What combat 
 could have seemed more unequal than that? 
 David was young and slender and of ordinary stat- 
 ure. He wore no armor and his weapons were a 
 sling and five pebbles casually picked from a brook 
 Goliath was five cubits and a span high, and his 
 huge body was covered with heavy armor. There 
 was a helmet of brass on his head, and there were 
 greaves of brass on his legs, and a target of brass 
 between his shoulders. His weapons were ter- 
 rible: the staff of his spear was like a weaver's 
 beam, and his spear's head weighed six hundred 
 shekels of iron. A man walked in front of him 
 carrying a shield! ... No wonder that Goliath 
 mocked at David and threatened to pick the flesh 
 from his bones and give it to the birds. He prob- 
 ably felt that one breath from his mouth would 
 blow David clean out of the valley. Mr. Gals- 
 worthy, had he been present on that occasion, 
 would have said to himself, "Poor David, young 
 and slight and ill-armed, has no chance whatever 
 against this great hulking, uncircumcized Philis- 
 tine! . . ." The combat certainly was an un- 
 [125] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 equal one, but the advantage lay, not with Goliath, 
 but with David. The giant had the outward show 
 of strength, but David had the Power of God in his 
 right arm, and before that Power Goliath was but 
 a boneless beast. Mr. Galsworthy makes Stephen 
 More in his play "The Mob," revile the crowd in 
 these terms: 
 
 You are the thing that pelts the weak; kicks women; 
 howls down free speech. This to-day, and that to-mor- 
 row. Brain — you have none! Spirit — not the ghost of 
 it! If you're not meanness, there's no such thing. If 
 you're not cowardice, there is no cowardice. 
 
 Neither Stephen More nor Mr. Galsworthy ap- 
 pears to know that these characteristics of the mob 
 are the characteristics of weak things. Strong men 
 do not pelt the weak or kick women, nor do they 
 prevent free speech. It is weak men and timid 
 men and ignorant, frightened men — politicians and 
 officials and guttersnipes and sinners — who do 
 these things, because they have neither the courage 
 nor the strength nor the intelligence to do other- 
 wise. The mob-instinct of unreasoning chivalry, 
 the natural impulse to take the part of "the little 
 'un," constitutes a very serious danger to Mr. Gals- 
 [126] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 worthy's work: he is becoming increasingly par- 
 tisan in his opinions and sympathies, with the result 
 that his sentiment is in danger of degenerating into 
 sentimentalism, and he, so commonly considered 
 impartial, is likely to end in a state of hopeless and 
 wrong-headed bias. He is beginning to believe 
 that a weak man is right because he is weak. He 
 is forgetting the truth enunciated, perhaps exces- 
 sively, by Dr. Stockmann in "An Enemy of the 
 People" that "the strongest man in the world is the 
 man who stands absolutely alone." Or if he has 
 not forgotten it, he is in danger of believing that 
 a minority is always in the right because it is a 
 minority: a belief which is as fallacious as that 
 which Mr. G. K. Chesterton sometimes seems to 
 hold, that a majority is always in the right because 
 it is a majority. The plain and platitudinous 
 truth is that only those are in the right who are in 
 the right, whether they be in a majority or in a 
 minority. Weakness, although it may endow a 
 man with cunning, does not endow him with moral 
 authority. Mr. Galsworthy at times lets his pity 
 for weakness lead him into seeming to regard it as 
 a sign of infallible judgment. 
 [127] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 III 
 
 Mr. Galsworthy can create people and he can 
 write natural dialogue. "The Silver Box" is a 
 testimony of his power to do so. But in his later 
 plays he has not always allowed his creatures to be- 
 have in a creditable fashion, nor has he always 
 written dialogue that exactly fits their tongues. 
 One suspects, too, that he is losing his sense of 
 proportion, that he is not so capable now as he was 
 earlier in his career of distinguishing between 
 things which are important and things which 
 are not. He has developed an interest in trivial 
 questions of sex and has become so absorbed in 
 dilemmas of colliding characters that he has lost 
 sight of the nature of his characters. He has been 
 called a Determinist because he shows his people 
 as the creature of circumstances, but in his later 
 work, particularly in his play "The Fugitive," his 
 Determinism has become wilful: he seems to have 
 made up his mind that his characters shall be- 
 come the victims of circumstances in defiance of 
 facts and the natures with which he has created 
 them. He deliberately ties their hands behind 
 their backs and then exclaims: "These are the vie- 
 [128] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 tims of adverse circumstances!" And indeed they 
 are, but the circumstances have been artifically 
 created by Mr. Galsworthy and not by any force 
 that governs the universe. He is so eager to bring 
 Clare Dedmond, in "The Fugitive," to her death in 
 a restaurant frequented by prostitutes that he to- 
 tally neglects to consider the fact that with the na- 
 ture he gives her she is the last person on earth 
 likely to end that way. 
 
 It is not in ideas that Mr. Galsworthy fails, so 
 far as his later work is concerned — it is in exe- 
 cution. The idea of "The Fugitive" is a notable 
 one. The play, which in its faults is significant of 
 all Mr. Galsworthy's later plays, deals with the 
 tragic failure of a sensitive woman to adjust her 
 life to that of a dull, unimaginative man in whom, 
 although the conventions and traditions of his class 
 have schooled him into a certain decency of form, 
 there is a very large measure of coarseness. The 
 collision is between the finely-perceptive and the 
 totally-imperceptive, and the theme is similar, in 
 one respect, to that of "The Doll's House," and in 
 another to that of "The Shadow of the Glen." But 
 the treatment of it is very inferior to the treatment 
 of it by Ibsen and Synge. Ibsen plainly showed 
 [129] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 how impossible it was for Nora to continue to live 
 with her husband after she had suffered her disil- 
 lusionment. He showed with equal clarity how 
 natural it was that she should marry and love her 
 husband, and yet in the end, turn away from him. 
 Mr. Galsworthy takes Clare Dedmond beyond the 
 stage to which Ibsen took Nora. Ibsen was content 
 to end his play with Nora's exit from her husband's 
 home: he did not follow her from it nor show what 
 became of her thereafter. Mr. Galsworthy is con- 
 cerned less with the act of separation and more 
 with the consequences if it. He is not so interested 
 in her flight from her husband as he is in what 
 happens to her after she has flown from him. He 
 has taken a longer stretch of Clare's life than 
 Ibsen took of Nora's, but he has contrived to make 
 it smaller than Nora's. One derives an extraor- 
 dinary sense of completeness and space from "The 
 Doll's House," but does not derive a similar sense 
 from "The Fugitive." Ibsen gives one a sense of 
 familiarity with his people, but Mr. Galsworthy 
 hardly makes one more familiar with Clare Ded- 
 mond and her husband than a reader of a news- 
 paper is with the principal parties to a divorce 
 suit. 
 
 [130] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 Clare Dedmond, like Nora Burke in Synge's 
 "The Shadow of the Glen," is suffering from 
 starved emotions, but Synge in his one-act play has 
 created the atmosphere of starved emotions far 
 more successfully than Mr. Galsworthy has done in 
 his four acts. The antagonism between Nora and 
 Daniel Burke is instantly understood by the reader, 
 who, however, cannot immediately understand why 
 it is that Clare and George Dedmond do not "get 
 on" together. The reader knows why Nora married 
 Daniel. "And how would I live and I an old 
 woman if I hadn't a bit of a farm with cows on it 
 and sheep on the blackhills?" The sense of deso- 
 lation in this woman's life is so powerfully ex- 
 pressed that the reader of the play does not ask 
 questions. He does not stop to inquire why Nora 
 married her husband: he knows why she married 
 him, and this knowledge is derived, not from the 
 author's assertions, but from the woman's behav- 
 iour. A sense of desolation is not created when 
 the author says that there is desolation, nor is it 
 created when a character says: "I am miserable!" 
 It is created when the speech and behaviour of 
 the characters are such as one hears and sees when 
 people are unhappy. It would be absurd for a 
 [131] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 writer to make a character say: "I have a very 
 kindly disposition," and then show him in the 
 normal hahit of beating his wife, kicking his grand- 
 mother, and ill-treating animals . . . unless he 
 were trying to be funny or were portraying a mad- 
 man. There must be consistency between char- 
 acter and conduct, and the measure of a writer's 
 artistry is the degree to which he succeeds in recon- 
 ciling the one with the other. 
 
 It is when Mr. Galsworthy's later work is tested 
 in this manner that one realizes how lamentably 
 he has failed to create the illusion of life. One 
 goes through the pages of "The Fugitive" making 
 notes of interrogation! One does not ask: "Why 
 did Ibsen's Nora marry her husband?" "Why 
 did Synge's Nora marry her husband?" because 
 one knows the answer to these questions from the 
 beginning of the plays, and it is not necessary to 
 ask them. But why did Clare Dedmond marry 
 her husband? Because she loved him? Because 
 she wished to be married and no one else had asked 
 her? For money? To escape from her parents? 
 It is impossible to say. Most of the faults which 
 I find in Mr. Galsworthy's work are to be found in 
 [132] 
 
 1 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 this play and so I propose to examine it here in de- 
 tail. 
 
 The Story of "The Fugitive" is summarily 
 this: — 
 
 Clare Huntington, the daughter of a poor parson, 
 is married to George Dedmond, a man of wealth 
 and social position. When the play begins these 
 two have reached that point in their marital re- 
 lationship when their unhappiness is plain to their 
 acquaintances. The husband, irritated and puz- 
 zled, is eager to make a compromise which will 
 not involve legal separation and "talk." 
 
 Clare {softly) . I don't give satisfaction. Please give 
 me notice. 
 
 George. Pish ! 
 
 Clare. Five years, and four of them' like this! I'm 
 sure we've served our time. Don't you really think we 
 might get on better together — if I went away. 
 
 George. Fve told you I won't stand a separation for 
 no real reason, and have your name bandied about all 
 over London. I have some primitive sense of honour. 
 
 While travelling abroad the Dedmonds make the 
 
 acquaintance of a journalist named Kenneth 
 
 Malise who is employed on a weekly review. He 
 
 and Clare become very friendly with each other, 
 
 [133] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 but George, who declares that Malise is a bounder, 
 does not share the friendship. Malise knows that 
 Clare is unhappy in her marriage and he incites 
 her to "spread your wings." He does not appear 
 to have thought of what is to become of her when 
 she spreads her wings, nor does he manifest any 
 concern about her ability to remain in flight. His 
 attitude towards her may roughly be said to be: 
 "It doesn't matter what happens to you so long 
 as you run away from your husband!" Clare 
 eventually leaves her husband, and in the second 
 act she goes to Malise's rooms to ask for his ad- 
 vice. She has taken his advice to spread her 
 wings. What is she to do? 
 
 Mr. Malise very clearly does not know what 
 she is to do. While he and she are debating 
 about her future his rooms are invaded by Ded- 
 mond's parents, his solicitor, and, subsequently, 
 by Dedmond himself. They endeavour to per- 
 suade Clare to return to her husband, which she 
 refuses to do, and there is a scene in which George 
 Dedmond, having offered to take Clare back to 
 his home, goes away threatening to divorce her 
 and cite Malise as co-respondent. After this 
 scene Clare, in obedience to her queer sense of 
 [134] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 honour, which impels her to make hateful returns 
 for favours received, offers herself in physical 
 submission to Malise, without, however, being able 
 to conceal the fact that such submission is loath- 
 some to her. It is necessary, in studying this play, 
 to take considerable notice of Clare's attitude 
 towards physical relationships. Sexual submis- 
 sion is repulsive to her, not only in relation to 
 her husband, whom she dislikes, but also in re- 
 lation to Malise, for whom she has so much liking 
 that eventually she falls in love with him. At the 
 moment at which the offer is first made, however, 
 she is not in love with Malise: she offers herself 
 to him because she feels that, having brought 
 trouble upon him, she ought to make reparation 
 for her conduct! 
 
 Clare. If I must bring you harm — let me pay you 
 back. I can't bear it otherwise! Make some use of me, 
 if you don't mind! 
 Malise. My God! 
 
 She puts her face up to be kissed, shutting her 
 eyes. 
 
 Malise. You poor 
 
 He clasps and kisses her; then, drawing back, 
 looks in he? face. She has not moved; her 
 eyes are still closed. But she is shivering; 
 [135] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 her lips are tightly pressed together, her 
 hands twitching. 
 
 Malise {very quietly) , No, no! This is not the house 
 of a "gentleman." 
 
 Clare, (letting her head fall, and almost in a 
 whisper) . I'm sorry — 
 
 Malise. I understand. 
 
 Clare. I don't feel. And without — I can't, can't. 
 
 Malise (bitterly). Quite right. You've had enough 
 of that. 
 
 That speech — "I don't feel. And without — I 
 can't, can't" — is the key-speech of Clare Ded- 
 mond's nature, and, in view of the end of the play, 
 must be remembered. 
 
 Malise, recognizing that Clare cannot happily 
 be his mistress otherwise than in name, will not 
 accept her offer of physical submission merely as 
 a return for what he may have to bear in her be- 
 half, and so she leaves his flat. She obtains em- 
 ployment as a shop-assistant, and is not seen again, 
 by her family or by Malise, for three months. 
 Then, after she has encountered a relative, she bolts 
 in a panic from the shop and returns to Malise's 
 flat. She proposes to do typewriting and asks 
 him to find employment for her. He gives her 
 some of his own MSS. to type, and while they are 
 [136] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 discussing her prospects of employment she re- 
 veals the fact that she now loves him. 
 
 Malise. Can you typewrite where you are? 
 
 Clare. I have to find a new room, anyway. I'm 
 changing — to be safe. {She takes a luggage ticket from 
 her glove). I took my things to Charing Cross — only a 
 bag and one trunk. {Then, with that queer expression 
 on her face which prefaces her desperations.) You 
 don't want me now, I suppose? 
 
 Malise. What? 
 
 Clare, {hardly above a whisper). Because — if you 
 still wanted me — I do — now. 
 
 Malise {staring hard into her face that is quivering 
 and smiling). You mean it? You do? You care? 
 
 Clare. I've thought of you — so much. But only — 
 if you're sure. 
 
 He clasps her, and kisses her closed eyes. 
 
 That love declaration is singularly unconvincing, 
 more so to the reader of the play than to the wit- 
 ness of it. It is not unlikely that Clare's liking 
 for Malise increased during the three months of 
 their separation, particularly as she regarded him 
 as a benefactor to whom she had brought trouble, 
 but it seems to me to be improbable that she would 
 declare her love so casually. Mr, Galsworthy's 
 stage directions make the puzzle more involved. 
 [137] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 If Clare were in love with Malise to the extent of 
 overcoming her hatred of physical contacts, she 
 would hardly have "that queer expression on her 
 face which prefaces her desperations." When 
 a man or woman is desperate he or she is hope- 
 less or almost hopeless, and if Mr. Galsworthy's 
 stage directions are to be taken seriously then 
 they mean that Clare was willing to become the 
 mistress of Malise for much the same reason that 
 a rat will fight in a corner. But if her words mean 
 what they would seem to mean, surely, given her 
 character and remembering what she has endured, 
 her surrender to Malise will not be accompanied 
 by any signs of desperation at all, but in sheer 
 reaction, if nothing else, by every sign of jubila- 
 tion and relief. 
 
 The attitude of Malise towards Clare does not 
 appear to have undergone any change at all; he 
 is not any more in love with her in the third act 
 than he was in the first act, when, indeed, his love 
 had a dubious aspect. There is no warmth in the 
 man, no glow. He is cold, not with the hard, 
 sharp, tingling cold of ice, but with the flabby 
 chill of a dead fish. When George Dedmond in- 
 stitutes divorce proceedings, citing Malise as co- 
 [138] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 respondent, the fellow goes to pieces, and whines 
 and bleats to his charwoman because the pro- 
 prietors of the review on which he is employed 
 propose to dismiss him. They have some scruples 
 against writers who become involved in scandals. 
 The charwoman informs Clare of Malise's misery, 
 and she, knowing that her husband will abandon 
 the suit if she leaves Malise, goes quietly from 
 his flat. Her next appearance is in a restaurant, 
 largely patronized by prostitutes. One does not 
 know what has happened to her in the meantime, 
 but it is plain that she must have suffered acutely, 
 for this delicately bred woman, sensitive to the 
 point of morbidity about sexual relationships, has 
 decided to become a prostitute! We see her en- 
 tering "The Gascony" for the first time when the 
 fourth act begins. A young man, ordinary, 
 decent, and uncommonly lustful, makes overtures 
 to her, treating her with kindliness when he dis- 
 covers that he is her first customer. His kindli- 
 ness helps to reconcile her to her position, and 
 she prepares to leave the restaurant with him. 
 While he is paying the bill two coarse men leer 
 at her, and one of them accosts her, making an 
 appointment for the following evening. As she 
 [139] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 watches his coarse face, inflamed with lust, she 
 realises the horror of the life she is about to lead, 
 and suddenly makes a decision — she takes a bottle 
 of poison from her dress, pours its contents into 
 a wine-glass, and drinks it. She dies while some 
 sportsmen in an adjoining room play "the last 
 notes of an old song 'This Day a Stag Must Die' 
 on a horn." And that is the end of the play. 
 
 It seems to me to be incredible that Clare Ded- 
 mond should have gone to that restaurant to sell 
 herself to any casual purchaser. It seems to me, 
 given her nature, incredible that she should even 
 have thought of such a way of life or that, having 
 thought of it, she should not instantly poison her- 
 self rather than endure it. Mr. Galsworthy insists 
 throughout the play on her exceptional sensitive- 
 ness about sex-relationships. I think that psycho- 
 logically he has over-stated this sensitiveness, but, 
 assuming that he has not done so, is it conceivable 
 that a woman who shivers and twitches her hands 
 when she is kissed by a man whom she likes will 
 consent to put on fine clothes and go to a notorious 
 restaurant and sit at a table while men inspect her? 
 . . . (I leave out of consideration such questions 
 as: "Where did she obtain the fine clothes?" "How 
 [140] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 did she acquire her knowledge of 'The Gas- 
 cony'? ") If she were prepared to endure that 
 last of all defilements, why did she run away from 
 her husband? If she were capable of selling her 
 embraces, why did she shiver and twitch when 
 Malise kissed her? George Dedmond was not a 
 "bad" man. He did not ill-treat her nor was he 
 faithless to her. He insisted, indeed, on sexual 
 submissions, but one has difficulty in believing 
 that her horror of these, "unless I feel," was very 
 strong since she was willing to suffer the casual 
 amours of "The Gascony." There would have 
 been something pitiable in her if, after leaving 
 Malise, she had returned to George. There would 
 have been something tragical in her if, reluctant 
 to return to George, she had killed herself when 
 she found that she could not maintain herself in 
 decency. But there is nothing either pitiable or 
 tragical in the end devised for her by Mr. Gals- 
 worthy. It is an arranged and schemed destiny 
 that overwhelms Clare Dedmond, arranged and 
 schemed not by Circumstance but by Mr. Gals- 
 Y/orthy, and having no relation whatever to the 
 nature of the woman. Mr. Galsworthy wanted 
 to poison her in "The Gascony," and so he thrust 
 [141] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 her into the restaurant in plain disregard of her 
 character and of common facts. 
 
 There is a phrase in the play which is intended 
 to illuminate Clare's nature. "You're too fine," 
 Mrs. Fullarton says to her, "and you're not fine 
 enough to endure things." How can one be too 
 fine to endure a thing and yet not fine enough 
 to endure it? And, having begun to question in 
 that fashion, one goes on again to wonder why she 
 married her husband. "Five years" (of mar- 
 riage), she says to her husband, "and four of them 
 like this!" Here is no case of slow transformation 
 of love into dislike or of instant disillusionment. 
 Clare does not suddenly discover or slowly dis- 
 cover that George is not the sort of man she had 
 imagined him to be, for he remains throughout the 
 play exactly the sort of man he was when she v/as 
 wooed and married by him. He did not become 
 prosaic, unimaginative, and coarse after marriage: 
 he was always like that; and Clare, so sensitive 
 as she was, must have been jarred by him as much 
 before marriage as she was a year after marriage. 
 There is no suggestion in the play that she married 
 for money. Had she done so, surely she would, 
 when we remember the depths to which she was 
 [142] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 subsequently prepared to descend, have borne his 
 dullness and coarseness, not gladly, perhaps, but 
 with fortitude? 
 
 The processes of attraction and repulsion are so 
 complicated that it is difficult to say where one 
 begins and the other ends, but this difficulty is 
 hardly to be experienced in cases where the per- 
 sonalities are so marked and divergent as were 
 the personalities of Clare and George Dedmond. 
 If one were to take a man like Squire Western in 
 "Tom Jones" and marry him to Melisande in "Pel- 
 leas et Melisande," one could prophesy with some 
 certainty what would be the result of such a mar- 
 riage. It would be disastrous. Left to the or- 
 dinary processes of nature, however, such a mar- 
 riage would not take place at all. 
 
 But the difficulty of fathoming Clare's rela- 
 tionships does not end with her husband. It is 
 equally difficult to understand her attitude towards 
 Malise. What attracted her to this extraordi- 
 narily ill-bred man who sneers openly at her rela- 
 tives and friends, mocking and insulting them to 
 her and to their faces? The Dedmonds, parents 
 and son, are dense, but they are decent. They live 
 by rule because they cannot live by any other 
 [143] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 means. It is not their fault that they cannot under- 
 stand Clare's point of view, any more than it is 
 the fault of a blind man that he falls over an 
 obstacle which he cannot see. Malise regards 
 them as malignant people, deliberately imprison- 
 ing an aspiring woman. His vision of them is as 
 narrow as is theirs of him, and, since he has 
 not got their breeding or kindliness, his conduct 
 is caddish where theirs is merely stupid. There 
 is no magnitude or charity in this man. He spends 
 his days and nights in writing petulant screeds in 
 the style of Thomas Carlyle: windy stuff, blowing 
 out of a noisome mind; and when he has induced 
 one helpless, incompetent woman to follow his 
 creed he fails her completely. 
 
 The last sentences of the play show that Mr. 
 Galsworthy had set his mind on Clare's death in 
 disregard of the probabilities. Clare, having 
 swallowed the poison, is lying back in her chair, 
 presumably dead. 
 
 The Young Man has covered his eyes with his hands; 
 Arnaud is crossing himself fervently; the Languid 
 Lord stands gazing with one of the dropped 
 gardenias twisted in his fingers; and the woman 
 bending over Clare, kisses her forehead, 
 [144] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 That is a piece of theatricality. It has no re- 
 lationship to real things. Those people, in life, 
 would not have stood about in sentimental attitudes 
 watching a woman die of poison. The young 
 man would have flown for a doctor; the waiter 
 would have rushed off for an emetic; the languid 
 lord would have lost his languid airs in his desire 
 to get away from the restaurant in fear lest he 
 might be summoned as a witness at the inquest; and 
 the woman would promptly have had hysterics. 
 
 IV 
 
 He seems to be most impressed, in viewing the 
 human scene, by the sense of property which he 
 discovers in mankind. In his best work, the novels 
 of the Forsyte Saga, beginning with "The Man of 
 Property" and ending with "To Let" one finds him 
 attributing this sense to human beings to a degree 
 which is, in my belief, entirely excessive. Soames 
 Forsyte, "the man of property," is portrayed to us 
 as a man who regards all things, human and other- 
 wise, as things to be owned. His wife is a piece 
 of property just as a picture or a dog is. When 
 he obtains a divorce from her and marries a young 
 [145] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 French girl, Annette, he treats the latter as a 
 piece of valuable property useful for the purpose 
 of producing a still more valuable piece of prop- 
 erty; and when Annette bears a daughter to him, 
 he is left exclaiming almost passionately that this 
 child is his, not hers .and his, but his! All the 
 members of the Forsyte family, described with 
 great particularity, are possessed of this sense of 
 property, but it is more highly developed in 
 Soames than in any of them. Even those mem- 
 bers of it, like young Jolyon Forsyte, who break 
 with the family tradition, concentrate on this prop- 
 erty point. They only differ from the rest of the 
 family in being anti-, rather than pro-, property. 
 None of them seems to be indifferent to property. 
 The dominating influence in their lives, either 
 for happiness or for misery, is property. Mr. 
 Galsworthy states of them that as they watched the 
 funeral of Queen Victoria, they felt that they were 
 burying more history for their money than had 
 ever been buried before. One of the Forsyte 
 women loves the statement of Christ that "In My 
 Father's house are many mansions" because it com- 
 forts her sense of property. Most of the conflict 
 in the Galsworthy novels springs from the re- 
 [146] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 actions of the characters to this sense, and it is 
 laboured to the point of attenuation. The tempera- 
 mental differences between Soames and Irene 
 Forsyte in "The Man of Property" are obscurely 
 stated, and still more obscurely stated in the 
 dramatized version of their relationship called 
 "The Fugitive," in which Soames and Irene become 
 George and Clare Dedmond, and Bosinney, the 
 architect-lover, becomes Malise, the journalist- 
 lover. It is true that the differences which break 
 a marriage are sometimes the result of funda- 
 mental things which cannot be described with the 
 clarity of the items in an auctioneer's catalogue; 
 but the business of an artist is to make obscure 
 things plain and understandable, and the success 
 of his work depends upon the way in which he 
 impresses his readers with the vagueness and ob- 
 scurity of these things and yet at the same time 
 makes them realize how substantial they are. 
 Soames and Irene Forsyte may not be able to say 
 why they cannot live together, but Mr. Galswortliy 
 must be able to do so and he must empower his 
 readers to do so, too. A novelist gives a sense of 
 inarticulateness in a character, not by making him 
 so inarticulate that the readers cannot hear or 
 [147] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 understand a word lie is saying, but by making 
 his inarticulateness articulate. The danger into 
 which many writers tumble headlong is that they 
 will spend all their energies on getting the de- 
 tails right and will leave the general effect ob- 
 scure. One sees signs of this in Mr. Galsworthy's 
 work. He is so busy endowing his people with a 
 sense of property that he occasionally omits to en- 
 dow them with a sense of humanity. If one com- 
 pares the Forsyte novels, say, "In Chancery," with 
 Mrs. Edith Wharton's latest book, "The Age of In- 
 nocence," one discovers that in each case, the theme 
 is concerned with the institution of the family, with 
 the tribal instinct which makes the majority of 
 minds seek identity rather than dissimilarity. But 
 in Mrs. Wharton's book, this tribal instinct is hu- 
 manly expressed, whereas in Mr. Galsworthy's it is 
 not. I recognize Mrs. Wharton's people as human 
 beings, but I am sceptical about Mr. Galsworthy's 
 people. Old Mrs. Mingott, in "The Age of Inno* 
 cence," has affinity with old Jolyon Forsyte in "The 
 Man of Property" and "The Indian Summer of a 
 Forsyte." (He is the most human figure in the 
 Saga.) But the rest of the cast in the Forsyte 
 Saga has less relevance to humanity than the rest 
 [148] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 of the cast in "The Age of Innocence," and the rea- 
 son is, I think, that Mr. Galsworthy has allowed his 
 theory to get the better of his people, whereas 
 Mrs. Wharton, whatever her theory may be, has 
 kept her eye very steadfastly on human beings. 
 The Countess Olenska in "The Age of Innocence" 
 has verisimilitude which is absent from the figure 
 of Irene Forsyte in "The Man of Property" or 
 Clare Dedmond in "The Fugitive." We can com- 
 prehend Ellen Olenska, but Irene Forsyte utterly 
 eludes us. 
 
 One entertains oneself with noting how differ- 
 ently an experience of life presents itself to Mr. 
 Galsworthy from the way in which it presents it- 
 self to Mr. Bernard Shaw. Mr. Galsworthy sends 
 Falder, in his play "Justice," to prison and flattens 
 him out. Mr. Shaw sends Margaret Knox and 
 Bobby Gilbert, in "Fannie's First Play," to prison 
 and amazingly enlarges their lives. What utterly 
 depresses Mr. Galsworthy, stimulates and even ex- 
 alts Mr. Shaw. If Mr. Galsworthy tortures us to 
 the point at which we wish to rush out of the theatre 
 [149] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 and raze Wormwood Scrubbs and Pentonville to 
 the ground, Mr. Shaw causes us to feel that each 
 of us might be considerably benefitted by a sojourn 
 there. Mr. Galsworthy sees a goal as a place 
 where thought is destroyed or embittered: Mr. 
 Shaw sees it as a place where thought is provoked 
 and clarified; and between them, a simple-minded 
 person cannot make up his mind whether to sub- 
 scribe to the funds of the Howard League for 
 Penal Reform or to advocate penal servitude for 
 every one in the interests of Higher Thought. Ad- 
 versity, says Mr. Galsworthy, knocks a man down. 
 Adversity, says Mr. Shaw, braces him up. The 
 first statement may fill a man with pity, but the 
 latter is more likely to make a hero of him. 
 
 VI 
 
 I like "The Country House" and "Five Tales" 
 and "To Let" better than anything else that Mr. 
 Galsworthy has written. The human sense is more 
 truly felt in these books than in any others that he 
 has done. There are few figures in modern fic- 
 tion so tender and beautiful as Mrs. Pendyce in 
 "The Country House" and few figures so im- 
 [150] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 mensely impressive and indomitable as the old man 
 in the story called "The Stoic" which is the first of 
 the "Five Tales." The craftsmanship of "To Let" 
 is superb — this novel is, perhaps, the most techni- 
 cally-correct book of our time — but its human 
 value is even greater than its craftsmanship. In a 
 very vivid fashion, Mr. Galsworthy shows the pass- 
 ing of a tradition and an age. He leaves Soames 
 Forsyte in lonely age, but he does not leave him 
 entirely without sympathy; for this muddleheaded 
 man, unable to win or to keep affection on any but 
 commercial terms, contrives in the end to win the 
 pity and almost the love of the reader who has 
 followed his varying fortunes through their stupid 
 career. The frustrate love of Fleur and Jon is 
 certainly one of the tenderest things in modern 
 fiction. Mr. Galsworthy has a love of beauty 
 which permeates everything that he writes and rec- 
 onciles his more critical readers to his dubious 
 characterization. I suppose the truth about his 
 work is that he has not sufficiently disciplined his 
 feelings and, for this reason, allows his sympathies 
 with his suffering people to swamp his judgments. 
 He is, in every act and thought, a chivalrous man, 
 and his instinct is, not to examine the facts of a 
 [151] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 case, but to rush instantly and hotly to the defence 
 of the seemingly defenceless. An artist is never 
 indifferent to the wrongs of men, but his artistry 
 prevents him from making mistakes about the per- 
 sons who are suffering the wrongs. One's fear is 
 that Mr. Galsworthy is inclined to allow his phi- 
 lanthropy to take the place of his artistry. Even 
 in that fine book, "The Country House," he some- 
 times makes a formula or a trick out of some fine, 
 instinctive sentiment. In the fourth chapter of 
 part II, Mr. Pendyce, during a period of stress, 
 treads on a spaniel's foot. 
 
 The spaniel yelped. "D n the dog! Oh, poor 
 
 fellow, John!" said Mr. Pendyce. 
 
 Now, in those words, one has exemplified the acute 
 penetration into people's minds and emotions which 
 is discoverable in Mr. Galsworthy; but he is not 
 content to leave the incident in its simplicity and 
 nature. Before we have reached the end of the 
 chapter, that instinctive utterance by Mr. Pendyce 
 has become a rather threadbare literary trick by 
 Mr. Galsworthy. Mr. Pendyce treads on the dog 
 again two pages later, and Mr. Pendyce repeats 
 
 himself exactly: "D n the dog! Oh, poor 
 
 fellow, John!" And five pages later, he treads on 
 [152] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 the spaniel a third time, and a third time he says, 
 
 "D n the dog! Oh, poor fellow, John!" It is 
 
 obvious, surely, that on the first occasion, Mr. 
 Galsworthy made Mr. Pendyce speak from his 
 heart, but on the second and third occasions he 
 made him speak like a ventriloquist's doll. One 
 can find many similarly inapt things even in this 
 book, where Mr. Galsworthy keeps very close to 
 humanity. Mr. Pendyce ejaculates, on hearing that 
 his son has gone after illicit love, "What on earth 
 made me send George to Eton?" when he himself 
 had been educated at another school. One knows 
 what Mr. Galsworthy is here trying to do, to express 
 the love of tradition and custom which governs the 
 life of such a man as Mr. Pendyce, but he does not 
 achieve the effect by such speeches. The reader 
 feels certain that whatever else Mr. Pendyce may 
 have said on that occasion, he did not say, "What 
 on earth made me send George to Eton?" Too 
 many of his people make impotent gestures, and it 
 is remarkable that these important people are 
 nearly always his most idealistic characters. Such 
 an one is Gregory Vigil in "The Country House" 
 who constantly clutches his forehead and tilts his 
 face towards the sky and generally strikes attitudes 
 [153] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 of despair until one begins to feel that he is the 
 weakest of weaklings. And it is extraordinary to 
 observe what havoc Mr. Galsworthy, ordinarily a 
 very fastidious writer, sometimes makes of the 
 English language. In "The Man of Property" he 
 gives a detailed description of Mrs. Septimus 
 Small in the course of which he states that "an in- 
 numerable pout clung all over" her face, and on 
 the page immediately succeeding the one on which 
 that queer description occurs, he states that Mrs. 
 Small "owned three canaries, the cat Tommy, and 
 half a parrot — in common with her sister Hester. 
 . . ." We may, perhaps, pass "an innumerable 
 pout" as an impressionistic phrase, but it is quite 
 clear that carelessness caused Mr. Galsworthy 
 to say that Mrs. Septimus Small owned "half a 
 parrot — in common with her sister Hester" when 
 what he wished to say was that Hester and she 
 were joint owners of a parrot! He sometimes uses 
 images which are almost ludicrous. In "Saints 
 Progress," we get this curious account of an old 
 woman in tears: 
 
 A little pasty woman with a pinched yellowish face 
 was already sitting there, so still, and seeming to see so 
 little, that Noel wondered of what she could be thinking. 
 
 [154] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 While she watched, the woman's face began puckering, 
 and tears rolled slowly down, trickling from pucker to 
 pucker. . . . 
 
 The italics are mine. 
 
 It is his sincerity and his chivalry and his pity 
 and his sense of beauty, a little too conscious, per- 
 haps, which, much more than his powers of thought, 
 make us read his novels and witness the perform- 
 ance of his plays. These qualities tend to become 
 obsessions in him with the result that his sense of 
 proportion and his verity are disorganized and he 
 is led into sentimentalities, some of which, on first 
 sight, have an impressive appearance which is not 
 maintained after closer scrutiny. In one of his 
 plays, "A Bit o' Love," he makes the chief charac- 
 ter, a young clergyman, end the play with this 
 prayer: 
 
 God, of the moon and the sun; of joy and beauty, of 
 loneliness and sorrow — Give me strength to go on, till 
 I love every living thing. 
 
 That is a prayer which sounds impressive until 
 it is critically considered. It is not possible for 
 a man to love every living thing. There are cer- 
 tain things which he hates with his mind and cer- 
 tain things which he hates with his instincts, and it 
 [155] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 is either very difficult or impossible for him to 
 control those hatreds. The best he can hope for 
 is the power to restrain his hatred from active 
 demonstrations. There are hatreds which he ought 
 to possess, hatreds which Mr. Galsworthy himself 
 possesses in a high degree; hatred of cruel men, 
 hatred of oppressive men, hatred of men who pro- 
 mote discord out of sheer devilish delight; but 
 these hatreds are feeble in comparison with the 
 instinctive hatreds most of us have without under- 
 standing why we have them. To pray for strength 
 to go on until one loves every living thing is, there- 
 fore, to pray for the moon, and exalted desires 
 which are insusceptible of realization become 
 banalites. There are times, in his anger at coarse- 
 ness and cruel insult and lack of pity, when Mr. 
 Galsworthy attributes a degree of ruffianliness to 
 people which is lacking in verity. In "Saint's 
 Progress," he causes "two big loutish boys" to jeer 
 at the old clergyman, Pierson, whose daughter has 
 had a war-baby without being married. The two 
 "loutish boys" shout after him, "Wot price the 
 little barstard?" Now, I simply do not believe 
 that such a thing happened or could have happened 
 in London during the war. Cruelty did not mani- 
 [1561 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 fest itself in just that way, and it is here, I think, 
 that one discovers Mr. Galsworthy's chief dis- 
 ability, the fact that his powers of observation are 
 not so acute as one might reasonably expect them 
 to be. There is an old saying that the looker-on 
 sees most of the game — and there is some truth in 
 it; but it is true also that the looker-on may be 
 totally ignorant of, or misinformed about, the 
 game, whereas those who are engaged in it have a 
 fairly comprehensive notion of what they are do- 
 ing. Mr. Galsworthy gives me the impression of 
 being a looker-on at the game rather than a partic- 
 ipator in it, and although he is sometimes a very 
 impassioned spectator, yet he suffers from the dis- 
 ability of all spectators that they are not clearly 
 instructed in the principles and the prejudices of 
 the contest. He is praying for strength to love 
 every living thing when he should be praying for 
 the power to distinguish between what is lovable 
 and what is detestable, between true things and 
 false things. There are few people who can de- 
 pict the helplessness of dull men so skilfully and 
 movingly as Mr. Galsworthy can. I doubt 
 whether any of his contemporaries could so reveal- 
 ingly describe the state of mind of a man, spiritu- 
 [157] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 ally imperceptive and puzzled by his inability to 
 understand, as Mr. Galsworthy in his novel "In 
 Chancery" has described Soames Forsyte after he 
 has obtained a divorce from his first wife. The 
 dumb animal bewilderment of this man, still in 
 love with Irene but utterly confounded by her com- 
 plete revulsion from him, is done with the most ex- 
 traordinary penetration; and it is scenes such as 
 this, which cause his readers all the more to marvel 
 at his obsessions and their attendant failures. 
 
 One rises from a consideration of his work in 
 the belief that he pities mankind, but does not love 
 it. He is a spectator of our struggles rather than 
 a comrade in them. He stands at the side of the 
 road or perhaps on an eminence a little way off 
 and watches the procession as it goes by. We feel 
 certain that if we are in trouble he will display 
 signs of sorrow for us, but we are equally certain 
 that he will never share our common qualities and 
 faults. Rabelais would have been self-conscious 
 in the presence of Mr. Galsworthy, had they been 
 contemporaries, and Mr. Galsworthy might have 
 despised, would certainly have been uncomfortable 
 with that foul physician who, nevertheless, cor- 
 responded more closely to this various clay we 
 [158] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 call mankind, would have known and understood 
 more certainly the ups and downs of human char- 
 acter, the mixture of coarseness and refinement, of 
 falsity and faith, of chivalry and treachery, of 
 generosity and meanness, of selfishness and unself- 
 ishness, of rare and common, than Mr. Galsworthy 
 is ever likely to do. Mr. Hardy, in a preface to 
 "Tess of the D'Urbervilles" declares that "a novel 
 is an impression, not an argument" and in those 
 eight words has summarized the whole business of 
 story-telling. Mr. Galsworthy can tell a story 
 very skilfully. His technique is remarkable, as 
 any one who has read "To Let" or seen a perform- 
 ance of "Loyalties" can testify; but there are too 
 many occasions when he seems to have let go his 
 hold on reality and to be writing out of dim mem- 
 ories which are growing dimmer. His characters 
 resemble people who are hurriedly seen through a 
 window by one who is ignorant of their identity 
 and anxious, chiefly, to be at home. They are 
 making gestures and their lips move, but the hasty 
 footfarer outside cannot hear what they are saying 
 and he sees only the gestures, incomplete, perhaps, 
 but does not know why they are made; and because 
 he knows so little, he is likely to misunderstand all. 
 [159] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 I imagine that when Mr. Galsworthy goes into a 
 garden, his delight in it is dashed by the thought 
 that somewhere near at hand a thrush is killing a 
 snail! . . . 
 
 [160] 
 
GEORGE MOORE 
 
 I WAS in Dublin on the day when the news of the 
 Battle of Jutland was announced in such abrupt 
 terms that most people imagined the British Fleet 
 had been irretrievably defeated. The affairs of 
 the Abbey Theatre, of which I was then in control, 
 had been brought to a pause because of the military 
 regulations imposed upon the city after the Easter 
 Rising, and Mr. Moore, new from London, asked 
 me to employ some of my leisure in making a 
 reconciliation between Lady Gregory and Mr. 
 Yeats on the one hand and himself on the other. 
 I foolishly consented to see what could be done, 
 chiefly because of the innocent wonder which I de- 
 tected in Mr. Moore at the fact that any one could 
 possibly take offence at anything he might say, 
 however revelatory of private affairs it might be; 
 and I spent some time in the pursuit of peace. 
 Lady Gregory declared that she had no feeling 
 against Mr. Moore because of what he had said 
 [161] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 about her in his trilogy, "Hail and Farewell," but 
 that she could never forgive the insults it contained 
 to Mr. Yeats. Mr. Yeats, endeavouring to think 
 deeply about the Rising, declared that he had for- 
 gotten, if indeed he had ever remembered, the in- 
 sults to himself in the trilogy, but that he could not 
 pardon those offered to Lady Gregory. Moore 
 had broken bread in her house, and then had gone 
 away and made fun of her! Worse than that, he 
 had belittled her work. He had said that her 
 plays were not great plays and that her "Kiltartan" 
 dialect was not the dialect of the people of Ireland, 
 but a tortured, unrhythmic invention of her 
 own! ... I proposed to them that they should 
 pool their pardons and receive him into the fold 
 again, but my proposal was not accepted, and so I 
 set off from Lady Gregory's lodgings in Dublin to 
 tell Mr. Moore, staying in the Sheibourne Hotel, 
 of the failure of my mission. On the way, I en- 
 countered newspaper boys, carrying placards on 
 which was printed the news of the Baltic of Jut- 
 land. When I got to the hotel and was shovm into 
 Mr. Moore's private sitting-room, I found assem- 
 bled there, Mr. Moore, white with anger and dis- 
 may, "A. E.," "John Eglinton" (William Magee) 
 [162] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 and the late W. F. Bailey, a Land Commissioner, 
 a Privy Councillor and a Trustee of the Abbey 
 Theatre, who had the most extensive acquaintance 
 of any man I have ever known. Mr. Moore was 
 seated in the middle of the room, looking very like 
 a portrait of himself, facing his friends, who were 
 huddled together on a sofa in the shadow as if 
 they were three misbehaving schoolboys receiving 
 a severe rebuke from their master. I could not 
 tell Mr. Moore at that moment of the result of my 
 mission, and in the excitement of the subsequent 
 argument I forgot to do so, but I doubt whether he 
 was then in a mood to care whether he was forgiven 
 or not. 
 
 II 
 
 It is several years now since that day when I 
 heard Mr. Moore haranguing Mr. Russell and Mr. 
 Magee and Mr. Bailey on the Battle of Jutland, but 
 my recollection of the occasion is very vivid, partly 
 because I have a good memory for things which 
 interest me (and none at all for things in which I 
 am not interested) but chiefly because it seemed to 
 me that on that day Mr. Moore definitely became 
 [163] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 an old man. His age is not stated in the books of 
 reference, for Mr. Moore is as reticent as an ac- 
 tress on this point, but he is older than Mr. Shaw, 
 who is much older than Mr. Yeats or "A. E." It 
 may seem singular that he, so destitute of reserve 
 in other and more intimate matters, should be se- 
 cretive on this, but I fancy that his failure to pub- 
 lish the number of his years is due less to vanity 
 than to inability to believe that he is as old as they 
 denote. Judged by the rules of arithmetic his age 
 is — so much; but judged by his feelings, it is — 
 much less. Facts are stubborn things, so we are 
 told, demanding acceptance and unquestioned ad- 
 mission, but Mr. Moore declines to accept the fact 
 of time: he ignores it. But on the day on which 
 the news of the Battle of Jutland was made public, 
 the fact of time ceased to be ignorable, and Mr. 
 Moore, for the first moment in his life, yielded to 
 his years. He looked old and he talked as old 
 men talk. There was a note of panic in his voice, 
 of frightened urgency, and he complained bitterly 
 of those who saw importance in a mean brawl in 
 Dublin, but remained indifferent to an event which 
 might result in the destruction of a desirable civili- 
 zation. I doubt whether anything in the world had 
 [164] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 ever until that day been serious to Mr. Moore in 
 the sense that loss and suffering and great grief 
 are serious. I am certain that he never under- 
 stood why people were angry with him because of 
 "Hail and Farewell." The resentment manifested 
 against him by Lady Gregory and Mr. Yeats was 
 to him incomprehensibly petty: the deeper resent- 
 ment of other people, more grievously wounded 
 by his revelations which they declared to be un- 
 true, filled him with astonishment. The spectacle 
 of life was so much of a spectacle to him that he 
 could not conceive of it as anything else to others. 
 He had made himself so completely, not a partic- 
 ipant in affairs, but an observer of them, that he 
 had lost the faculty of personal feeling. His in- 
 terest in acts and motives was so intense that he 
 could not understand any one objecting to his pry- 
 ing into the more entertaining of their private re- 
 lationships. Equally difficult was it for him to un- 
 derstand that they should deeply disrelish the idea 
 of having their affairs, intimate and even secret, 
 used as material for a book by Mr. Moore. Any 
 human experience, he seems to argue, particularly 
 when narrated in his exquisite style, is of value to 
 mankind, and it must have seemed to him that there 
 [165] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 was something, not only absurd, but also disgrace- 
 ful in the objection many people had to the pub- 
 lication of their private concerns. Had he not 
 paid tribute to privacy by omitting names or in- 
 venting others than the proper ones? True, every- 
 one knew who were the persons portrayed, but was 
 that his fault? And since every one knew already 
 of the affairs, what possible harm could there be in 
 his putting them into perfect and publishable 
 prose? The objection raised by some persons that 
 the incidents narrated by him as facts were pure in- 
 ventions was frivolous! What was truth? Mr. 
 Moore, like jesting Pilate, asked the question, but 
 did not wait for a reply: he published as quickly 
 as he could. The three volumes which make up 
 "Hail and Farewell" are remarkable and have 
 much value, but it is necessary to remember that 
 Mr. Moore has not always been careful in them to 
 distinguish between the historian and the novelist, 
 between the recorder and the inventor. There are 
 many dull passages in the trilogy, especially those 
 in which he relates his experiences with his kins- 
 man, Mr. Edward Martyn, a charge which Mr. 
 Moore would not deny, but, on the contrary, 
 proudly admit, for he insists that dullness is a 
 [165] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 prominent feature of all great books. It is only 
 the newspapers and ephemeral books which are in- 
 teresting from beginning to end, he asserts — a state- 
 ment which implies that Mr. Moore has been hap- 
 pier in his newspapers than most people have. 
 In this matter of privacies, Mr. Moore was, and 
 still is, the most complete and consistent of com- 
 munists. He believes in private property, but not 
 in private feelings. One imagines him, in the days 
 before the Battle of Jutland, asking in puzzled 
 fashion, "What do you mean v/hen you say you 
 feel things? What is feeling? Why should it 
 ever be private?'' "This lady is in love with that 
 gentleman who is not her husband! How inter- 
 esting! I shall write a book about their love for 
 each other. They may object! But why? Her 
 husband's feelings! . . . Now, isn't that absurd!" 
 And so on. Miss Susan Mitchell, in a very en- 
 tertaining, but not entirely sympathetic book, en- 
 titled "George Moore," declares that he seceded 
 from the Roman Catholic Church because he ob- 
 jected to the secrecy of the confessional. His sins, 
 he considered, were so absorbingly interesting 
 that they ought to be publicly confessed rather than 
 confided to an undivulging priest. The flaw in 
 [167] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 Miss Mitchell's argument is her assumption that 
 Mr. Moore had any sins to confess! ... 
 
 Ill 
 
 But on this day when the news of the Battle 
 of Jutland was announced, Mr. Moore seemed, for 
 the first time in his life, to realize that men and 
 women do feel and suffer and bear loss; and the 
 discovery instantly aged him. The War which 
 had so teasingly disturbed the amenities of Ebury 
 Street became in a moment something more than 
 an irritating scuffle in the dark — it became an im- 
 mense disaster which might make amenities for- 
 ever impossible. The solidities of life were in 
 process of dissolution. Literary style amazingly 
 mattered less than the power of the commonest gut- 
 tersnipe to kill. Mr. Bernard Shaw, in the preface 
 to "Heartbreak House," exclaims, "Imagine ex- 
 ulting in the death of Beethoven because Bill Sykes 
 dealt him his death blow!" in a rebuke adminis- 
 tered to the people who rejoiced in the news of ap- 
 palling death-rolls among Germans during the War. 
 But on the field itself, Beethoven and Bill Sykes 
 cease to be Beethoven and Bill Sykes and become, 
 [168] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 each, a very frightened man with a rifle and bay- 
 onet and a strong desire to live. In that dreadful 
 encounter, Bill Sykes would not be thinking to 
 himself, "Here comes Beethoven, a great master 
 of music, by whom it will be an honor to be 
 killed!" but " 'Ere comes a bloody 'Un who will 
 kill me unless I kill 'im!" The perception of 
 what was happening in Europe, of the horrible re- 
 duction of Beethovens to the level of Sykeses, of 
 Shakespeares to the level of Prussian drill-ser- 
 geants (for they had to come down to those levels 
 if they were to have any hope of survival) made 
 an old man of Mr. Moore. He threw up his hands 
 and made submission to his years. I listened to 
 him while he talked volubly and bitterly to "A. E." 
 and "John Eglinton" and "Bill" Bailey, as people 
 called him, and marvelled to find him displaying 
 so much emotion over the naval disaster and its 
 probable consequences. He had written a preface 
 for his brother. Colonel Moore's life of their fa- 
 ther, in which he had romantically stated that 
 George Henry Moore, his father, had committed 
 suicide because his heart was broken by the dis- 
 honourable behaviour of politicians. Colonel 
 Moore printed the preface, but denied the state- 
 [169] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 ment about his father, to which, however, George 
 still romantically clings. An English newspaper, 
 The Observer, in its issue for Sunday, April 10, 
 1921, printed the preface which Mr. Moore had 
 written for a new book to be published very soon 
 thereafter. In this preface, he very interestingly 
 described the way in which he was educated, and 
 in the course of it occurred this paragraph: 
 
 He was unhappy in the strife, for he loved his father; 
 his father was always, and still is, the intimate and 
 abiding reality of his life, and the evening that his fa- 
 ther started for Ireland for the last time is quick among 
 his memories. George's father returned from the front 
 door to bid his son good-bye, and in obedience to a sud- 
 den impulse he took a sovereign out of his pocket and 
 put it into the boy's hand, and went away to his death 
 resolute, for he had come to see that his death was the 
 only way to escape from his embarrassments, without 
 injury to his family, and I can imagine him walking 
 about the lake shores bidding them good-bye for ever. 
 
 I suppose that if George Henry Moore were to 
 rise from the grave and deny that he had died by 
 his own hand, his son and heir, George, would mur- 
 mur aggrievedly, "You know, father, you are 
 spoiling a very charming story! . . ." He is still 
 sufficiently insensitive not to understand that lif§ 
 [170] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 is something more than material for the story- 
 teller's art — he may, perhaps have relapsed from 
 the state of understanding to which the Battle of 
 Jutland brought him, — but for that time, at all 
 events until the news of the Battle was amended, 
 George Moore knew what private feelings were, 
 even although he could not keep them to himself. 
 "A. E.," looking woolly and worried, seemed to be 
 completely deprived of his powers of speech by 
 Mr. Moore's angry rhetoric. "John Eglinton," a 
 scholarly essayist and the sanest man in Dublin, 
 having much respect for, but no delusion about, 
 the ancient Gaelic literature of whicfh we hear so 
 much and see so little, remained customarily mum. 
 Mr. Bailey, nervously garrulous as a rule, ut- 
 tered jerky, but inarticulate, sounds to which Mr. 
 Moore paid absolutely no heed. I discreetly sat 
 in a corner and did not make a sound. The words 
 flov/ed steadily from Mr. Moore's lips — hot de- 
 nunciation of the Rising, contemptuous references 
 to Kuno Meyer, rebukes for "A. E." (discovered 
 to have flaws) and a tremendous indictment of 
 German culture, with a proviso in favour of Ger- 
 man music, together with admiring references to 
 France, to French literature and to the French 
 [171] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 Impressionists, particularly Manet. A waiter in^ 
 truded into the room for some purpose and was 
 ordered out again. . . . 
 
 IV 
 
 Of all that Mr. Moore said on that extraordinary 
 occasion, I remember most his sudden outburst into 
 what he called practical politics. He demanded 
 the impeachment of Mr. Asquith, the restoration of 
 the Coronation Oath and the abolition of all dogs! 
 The comic incongruity of those three items in a 
 plan to win the war was apparent neither to him 
 nor his three elderly auditors, or so it seemed, and 
 I deemed it wise to control my laughter. Mr. 
 Moore declared that Mr. Asquith's inertia, of which 
 we were hearing so much then, was certain to bring 
 defeat to the Allies. One of Mr. Asquith's daugh- 
 ters had sat beside Mr. Moore at dinner one night 
 in London and had informed her neighbour that 
 "Father is bored with the War!" whereupon Mr. 
 Moore informed her (or so he said) that her 
 father's boredom might cause the Allies to lose the 
 War. Mr. Asquith was guilty of more serious 
 crimes than that: he had ruined the Irish gentle- 
 [172] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 man and delivered the country over to hobblede- 
 hoys and low minded peasants. Not content with 
 ruining Ireland, no longer fit to be inhabited by 
 gentlemen, fit only to be the country of publicans, 
 pawnbrokers, priests and politicians, Mr. Asquith 
 had tried to make equal ruin in England. He has 
 abolished the Coronation Oath which, until his ad- 
 vent, had always been administered to the kings 
 of England at dieir crowning. In this Oath, they 
 declare their belief that the Mass is an idolatrous 
 ceremony, not to be acknowledged by reasonable 
 persons and likely to be accepted only by vulgar 
 Papists. Mr. Asquith, mindful of the fact that 
 many hundreds of thousands of Catholics are mem- 
 bers of the British Commonwealth of Nations, de- 
 cided that the kings of England should not be hu- 
 miliated and embarrassed at their coronation by 
 the compulsion to insult the faith of many of their 
 subjects; and so he introduced a Bill into Parlia- 
 ment to abolish the Oath, which was, in due time, 
 abolished. Mr. Moore seemed to think that all 
 the evils from which mankind has suff"ered since 
 1914 directly sprang from that political achieve- 
 ment. 
 
 As for dogs, these abominable animals, he said, 
 [173] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 are nuisances at any time, but during a war and 
 period of food shortage, they are a positive men- 
 ace to the country. He begged us to consider (a) 
 the great quantity of food consumed by dogs, (b) 
 the amount of nervous irritability brought about 
 by their incessant yapping, and (c) the extent to 
 which they defile the streets. He threatened us 
 with famine, insanity and, finally, plague! . . . 
 There is an English poet who is also a breeder of 
 bulldogs. Whenever he reads one of Mr. Moore's 
 periodical canine denunciations, he becomes so 
 enraged that only the strongest efforts of his friends 
 prevent him from emptying the contents of his ken- 
 nels on to Mr. Moore's doorstep that they may 
 there do their worst. The ambition of his life is 
 to see one of his bulldogs fasten its teeth firmly in 
 the calf of Mr. Moore's venerable leg. 
 
 • • • 
 
 All that has been written here so far will seem 
 to support the superstition that Mr. Moore is a 
 trifler with life, that he is a man destitute of se- 
 rious purposes; but I am anxious to make plain to 
 my readers that this superstition is a superstition. 
 [174] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 His lack of reticence about his own and other 
 people's affairs and his perverse incursions into 
 what he imagines to be practical politics are ob- 
 viously responsible for the belief that he is what 
 is called "a typical Irishman," that is to say, a 
 man without a sense of responsibility. My ex- 
 perience is that "typical Irishmen" are generally 
 discovered to be Englishmen or Welshmen or New 
 York East Side Jews — the late Padraic Pearse, 
 Mr. Arthur Griffith and Mr. de Valera correspond 
 to those descriptions — but it is undeniable that 
 Mr. Moore, not without deliberation, has helped 
 to maintain the legend that Irishmen are without 
 a sense of responsibility. When, for example, 
 during one of the many Home Rule crises, he sug- 
 gested that the trouble between the two islands of 
 Great Britain and Ireland might easily be settled 
 by intelligent engineers, many persons were of the 
 opinion that a man who could talk such twaddle, 
 as they called it, in a time of much difficulty ought 
 to be imprisoned. The proposal, when the details 
 were disclosed, confirmed pessimists in their pro- 
 found belief that the unsurmountable obstacle to 
 the solution of Irish affairs is the Irish themselves! 
 What Mr. Moore suggested was this: that a thick 
 [175] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 wall should be built across the North Channel be- 
 tween the Giant's Causeway and the Mull of Kin- 
 tyre, and that another thick wall should be buih 
 across St. George's Channel between Carnsore 
 Point and St. David's Head. These operations 
 completed, the engineers should then pump out all 
 the water in the Irish Sea, fill in the resultant gap 
 with earth, and make one island out of two! He 
 seemed not to have considered the case of Liver- 
 pool. What, some one jestingly demanded, would 
 become of that great port when deprived of its 
 "pool"? What also, he might have added, would 
 become of Belfast and Dublin, deprived, the one 
 of its Lough, and the other, of its Bay? Mr. 
 Moore might have retorted that what Ireland lost on 
 Belfast Lough it would more than gain on Galway 
 Bay, but he preferred to remain silent. One 
 could, of course, draw a conclusion, packed with 
 thought and judgment, from Mr. Moore's playful 
 proposal, and I do not doubt that siich was his in- 
 tention; but the average person is either too busy 
 or disinclined to draw such conclusions from any- 
 thing; and so, having glanced casually at the de- 
 tails of Mr. Moore's plan to settle the Irish Ques- 
 tion, he turned impatiently away, convinced (a) 
 [176] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 that Mr. Moore was an incorrigible buffoon, and 
 (b) that the government of Ireland must ever re- 
 main an unsolved problem because of the Irish 
 people's amazing inability to conduct themselves 
 reasonably ! 
 
 But Mr. Moore has a serious purpose in life, 
 and he pursues that serious purpose with inde- 
 fatigable industry. The immediate and unmis- 
 takable fact about him is that he is an artist. 
 There are few writers in English, not even ex- 
 cepting Mr. Conrad, who have so much power over 
 words as is possessed by George Moore, and this 
 power has been achieved, as all power is achieved, 
 by incessant labour and the most pure devotion. 
 He is, in the real sense, a self-made man. The 
 artistry that is undeniably his has been wrought not 
 only in the sweat of his brain, but in face of power- 
 ful obstacles. His position as the heir of a fairly 
 well-to-do landowner in Ireland might have re- 
 sulted in him becoming a minor poet, publishing 
 tiny verses in tiny volumes, or a small author of 
 fragile essays about butterflies and pierrots. He 
 did, in fact, begin his writing career, as most re- 
 putable writers do, by composing poems, but he 
 speedily turned to prose. He actually published 
 [177] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 verses in books entitled "Flowers of Passion" — a 
 name which incongruously suggests Baudelaire and 
 Ella Wheeler Wilcox— and "Pagan Poems," but, 
 SO far as I have been able to discover, no one has 
 ever seen these books or read the poems contained 
 in them. The first was published in 1877 and the 
 second in 1881 and we may conclude that they 
 have been dissolved by the chemicals of time. 
 Miss Mitchell, in the book to which reference has 
 already been made, states that "nobody in Ireland 
 has ever seen any of Mr. Moore's paintings ex- 
 cept 'A. E.' to whom he once shyly showed a head, 
 remarking that it had some 'quality.' 'A. E' re- 
 mained silent." The poems remain under the 
 same kindly condemnation. The favourable for- 
 tune which might have made a minor poet, and 
 nothing but a minor poet, out of Mr. Moore was 
 one of the powerful obstacles to his becoming a 
 master of prose. 
 
 The other was the attempt made by his father 
 to influence his mind. In the preface from which 
 I have already made a brief quotation, he gives an 
 account of his education at the Roman Catholic 
 school of Oscott. George, it seemed, had a reti- 
 cence in his childhood which he remarkably lost in 
 [178] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 maturity: he refused to confess his sins on the 
 singular ground that he had not got any sins to 
 confess. He had not then learned, seemingly, that 
 he who has not got any sins to confess, can 
 easily invent a few. The story of this episode 
 is fully narrated in "Hail and Farewell," 
 but in the new preface Mr. Moore summarizes it 
 and tells how his father was summoned to Oscott 
 by the president of the school "to inquire into his 
 son's lack of belief in priests and their sacra- 
 ments." The upshot of the business was that the 
 boy, "not only the last boy in the class, but in the 
 last class in the school — in a word, the dunce of 
 the school" was removed from Oscott for private 
 instruction at home in Mayo. "George's case is 
 really very alarming," the president wrote to his 
 father, and the letter contained the admission that 
 he did not know whether George would not or could 
 not learn. 
 
 It is exceedingly illuminating to observe how his 
 prose style has grown through a series of very di- 
 verse books into its present condition. One of 
 his most remarkable novels, as it is also one of his 
 earliest, "A Mummers Wife," was clearly written 
 under the influence of Zola, but with such indi- 
 [179] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 vidual quality that Zola might profitably have 
 taken lessons from his pupil. The difference be- 
 tween Emile Zola and George Moore is that while 
 Zola never forgot to be a doctrinaire, Moore never 
 forgot to be an artist. "A Mummer's Wife" was 
 unaccountably banned by the circulating libraries 
 in England, and, such is the conservatism of these 
 remarkable institutions, that I believe the ban is 
 still maintained, although a generation has arisen 
 which regards it as very restrained indeed. The 
 style in which it is written is somewhat arid, and 
 the reader is not carried forward by the flow of 
 the story itself, but is forced along by its weight. 
 A comparison between "A Mummer's Wife," or 
 "Esther Waters," and such later books as "The 
 Lake" or "The Brook Kerith" reveals such a dif- 
 ference in manner that the critic has some difficulty 
 in believing that all four novels came from the 
 mind of the same author. Mr. Wells is a writer 
 with many manners, but the reader can discover a 
 unifying characteristic, unmistakably Wellsian, in 
 all of them. Mr. Shaw, a more consistent author 
 than most men of his quality, has kept so closely 
 to one level that the difference between his earliest, 
 his best and his latest work is merely the difference 
 [180] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 of degree between growing powers, highest powers 
 and declining powers. The style in the novels, 
 "Love Among the Artists," "The Unsocial Social- 
 ist," "The Irrational Knot" and "Cashel Byron's 
 Profession" is the same style, under less control, 
 as the style of "Man and Superman," "John Bull's 
 Other Island," "Heartbreak House" and "Back 
 To Methuselah." But in Mr. Moore's case the 
 style of "A Mummer's Wife" has no obvious re- 
 lationship to that of "The Lake" or "The Brook 
 Kerith." The difference between the earlier books 
 and the later ones is the difference between the flow 
 of a river through a canal and the flow of a river 
 through its natural bed. 
 
 VI 
 
 "A Mummer's Wife" is a powerful story, told 
 in a skilful and impressive fashion, but it leaves 
 the reader less conscious of life than of mechanics. 
 As a piece of construction it is a better novel than 
 "The Brook Kerith," but as a piece of literature 
 it is not. The quality of life is dusty and arranged 
 in the early book, but it is alert and vibrant and 
 natural in the later one. One notable feature 
 [181] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 of "A Mummer's Wife" is the display of knowl- 
 edge by Mr. Moore of things and of places with 
 which one would not expect him to be familiar. 
 His acquaintance with grooms and horse-racing, 
 manifested in "Esther Waters," is understandable 
 in a man who was reared in a country-house where 
 the language of the stable must have been familiar. 
 But how did Mr. Moore obtain his intimacy with 
 the interior of a small draper's and milliner's 
 shop in one of the Five Towns in Staffordshire, 
 together with his knowledge of the details of life 
 lived by a touring theatrical company? Mr. Ar- 
 nold Bennett's knowledge of the Five Towns and 
 the interior of a small shop is explained by the 
 fact that he was born in such circumstances in 
 one of the Five Towns. Mr. Leonard Merrick's 
 intimate knowledge of the life of a travelling 
 theatrical company is explained by the fact 
 that he was once an actor in such a company. 
 But how did Mr. Moore, the son of a prosperous 
 Irish landowner of aristocratic origin, acquire his 
 close intimacy with the details of such life? It 
 is this aspect of the book which reveals the exist- 
 ence in Mr. Moore of a high faculty which was 
 absent from the mind of his first master, Zola, 
 [182] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 the faculty of imagination. Zola made his novels 
 out of things actually witnessed or learned from 
 books, but Mr. Moore made his novels out of his 
 own imagination. Zola could only write about 
 life in a small shop in a small town after he 
 had actually lived in it, but Mr. Moore wrote "A 
 Mummer's Wife," with no more knowledge of 
 Hanley than a person passing through it might pos- 
 sess, and gave his readers an impression of deep 
 intimacy with it. 
 
 This book, notable in itself, had a notable re- 
 sult. It was read by a young writer, named Enoch 
 Arnold Bennett, then engaged in journalism and 
 the production of semi-sensational novels. Ben- 
 nett was a native of "the Five Towns" district, 
 bom in a place called Shelton to the north-east of 
 the town of Hanley which is the scene of "A Mum- 
 mer's Wife." Mr. Bennett himself told me that 
 until he read "A Mummer's Wife" he never 
 thought of writing about "the Five Towns." The 
 Staffordshire people had no literary significance 
 to him until that significance was revealed by "A 
 Mummer's Wife." Mr. Bennett probably exag- 
 gerates the extent of his debt to Mr. Moore. He 
 would, sooner or later, have explored tlie rich mine 
 [183] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 from which he produced the ore of "The Old 
 Wives' Tale" and "Clayhanger" — it is ludicrous 
 to imagine that but for the happy accident of 
 reading "A Mumnier's Wife" he would never have 
 done so — but it is not improbable that Mr. Moore's 
 story brought him to his proper milieu earlier 
 than he might otherwise have reached it. The 
 reader can profitably entertain himself by compar- 
 ing "the Five Towns," the places and the people, 
 of "A Mummer's Wife" with "the Five Towns," 
 places and people of "The Old Wives' Tale" and 
 "Clayhanger." The difference between Mr. 
 Moore's account and Mr. Bennett's is the differ- 
 ence between careful and acute observation by an 
 intelligent stranger, alien in birth and tradition and 
 training, and the knowledge, inherited from his 
 forefathers and acquired in childhood and youth, 
 of a native. Mr. Moore had to "mug up" his 
 subject, as schoolboys say, but Mr. Bennett was 
 born with most of it. The description of Hanley 
 in the first chapter of "The Old Wives' Tale" 
 (where it is named Hanbridge by Mr. Bennett) 
 contrasts remarkably with the description of the 
 same town in "A Mummer's Wife," as does the 
 description of a pottery seen through Mr. Bennett's 
 [184] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 eyes in "Leonora" with that of a pottery seen 
 through Mr. Moore's eyes in the fourth chapter of 
 "A Mummer's Wife." These differences of de- 
 scription are, of course, the result of a difference 
 in temperament between the two men which is per- 
 haps most clearly revealed in the way in which 
 they portray old women in their books and deal 
 with scenes of suffering. An intelligent reader 
 of "A Mummer's Wife" and "The Old Wives' 
 Tale," having made allowance for the fact that 
 the first-named was written by a young man be- 
 ginning his career, and the second by a man ap- 
 proaching middle-age and the apex of his power, 
 could draw up a fairly accurate statement of the 
 character of each of the authors by comparing the 
 figure of old Mrs. Ede in Mr. Moore's novel 
 with that of old Mrs. Baines in Mr. Bennett's. The 
 contrast between the scene of suffering pictured 
 in the first chapter of "A Mummer's Wife" and 
 that in the first chapter of "The Old Wives' Tale" 
 would considerably assist him in making the state- 
 ment. The painful insistence on the details of 
 the asthma which afflicted Mr. Ede is in sharp op- 
 position to the almost jocular fashion in which Mr. 
 Povey's toothache is described. Both books end 
 [185] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 with the death of the principal figures. Kate Ede 
 dies disquietly. One might say that Constance 
 and Sophia Baines also die disquietly. But there 
 is a difference in the disquiet. Constance and 
 Sophia had had their share of disappointment and 
 trouble and had lost their illusions, but at least 
 they had had their fill of life, each as she desired 
 it, and if there had been disappointment, there had 
 also been satisfaction: the illusions were lost, but 
 while they lasted they were agreeable. Kate died 
 before she had had her fill of life, without il- 
 lusions and also, which is worse, without agree- 
 able memories. Youth insists that life is either 
 very gay or very dismal — and "A Mummer's 
 Wife" was written by a young man; but Matur- 
 ity knows that the colours of life are mingled rather 
 than uniform, and that even when the end is a dis- 
 mal one, the journey to it has not been without 
 moments of fragrance and pleasure — and "The 
 Old Wives' Tale" was written by a man in his 
 maturity. The similarities between these two 
 books are as interesting as their differences, and 
 a close study of them leaves the reader at once 
 aware of very dissimilar personalities and with 
 enhanced respect for both of them. 
 [186] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 VII 
 
 It is when we come to such novels as "The Lake" 
 and "The Brook Kerith" that we discover Mr. 
 Moore at his greatest. Zola is forgotten and only 
 the strength of Mr. Moore himself is now dis- 
 played. "The Lake" is among the most beautiful 
 stories of our time, a finely-conceived and finely- 
 wrought book, more complete and unified than 
 "The Brook Kerith," which, in spite of much 
 beauty and scholarship, is marred organically by 
 a dispersal of the interest. The latter novel is in 
 three sections, the first dealing with Joseph of 
 Arimathea, the second with Jesus, and the third 
 with Paul. Each of these sections by itself is 
 well and even superbly done, although in my judg- 
 ment, the first of them is much the best of the 
 three; but the interest which the reader has in 
 any one of the three sections is not felt in the 
 whole book because the three great figures are not 
 grouped together. We begin with Joseph and 
 then, at the point when we are absorbed in him, 
 are hurried on to Jesus, undergoing a similar ex- 
 perience with Him when we are hurried off to 
 Paul. The book is not a closely-knit drama in 
 [187] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 which the characters constantly act and re-act upon 
 each other, but is more akin to three separate 
 plays in which certain figures recur in greater or 
 less positions. Mr. Moore, in short, was uncer- 
 tain whether to make Joseph or Jesus or Paul the 
 hero of his story, and he unwisely compromised 
 by making each of them hero for a portion of it, 
 with the result that each is of supreme impor- 
 tance for a third of the book and of subordinate 
 importance for the remainder of it. "The Brook 
 Kerith" is, nevertheless, a considerable achieve- 
 ment and is in itself sufficient to secure a high 
 place in English letters for its author. 
 
 The legend is that Mr. Moore is a trifler with 
 life, a man without purpose, immensely egotistical, 
 having some of the simplicity of the buffoon. 
 The truth is that he is an audacious, exceedingly 
 adroit and utterly unthwartable artist who bends 
 the visible world to his purpose of discovering 
 and perfecting a formula of words with which to 
 express his vision of the invisible world. He 
 has, indeed, a simplicity of character, but it is 
 not the simplicity of the buffoon: it is the immense 
 and dissolving simplicity of the man of genius. 
 
 [188] 
 
BERNARD SHAW 
 
 There is a kind of shy, embarrassed man of 
 merit who cannot keep or even reach to his proper 
 position in the world without making some sort of 
 pretence about himself. Mr. Bernard Shaw is 
 such a man. He has created his legend with such 
 extraordinary skill that those who know him well 
 have great difficulty in persuading the general 
 public, which has neither the time nor the intelli- 
 gence to understand a man of marked personality, 
 to believe that the legend is a legend, that the re- 
 puted Bernard Shaw is not the real Bernard Shaw. 
 The common notion is that he has an insatiable 
 craving for publicity, is immensely conceited and 
 self-centred, and does not care what folly of 
 thought or conduct he commits if by so doing he 
 draws attention to himself. The truth about him 
 is that he is a shy and nervous man, singularly 
 humble-minded and sincere, very courageous and 
 full of quick, penetrating wisdom, and so generous 
 [189] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 and kindly that he may be said to be willing to 
 do more for his friends than his friends will do 
 for themselves. He is a Don Quixote without il- 
 lusions. When he tilts at windmills, he does so 
 because they are windmills in private ownership, 
 and he wishes them to be driven by electricity and 
 owned by the local authority. In print and on 
 platforms, Mr. Shaw brags and boasts and lays 
 claim to an omniscience that would scandalize most 
 deities, but no one who has the ability to dis- 
 tinguish between sincerity and mere capering is 
 in the least deceived by his platform conceit. He 
 is one of the very few men in the world who can 
 brag in public without being offensive to his audi- 
 tors. He can even insult his audience with- 
 out hurting its feelings. There is a quality 
 of geniality and kindliness in his most violent and 
 denunciatory utterance that reconciles all but the 
 completely fat-headed to a patient submission to 
 his chastisement; and his most perverse statements 
 are so swiftly followed by things profoundly true 
 and sincerely said that those who listen to him are 
 less conscious of his platform tricks than are 
 those who merely read newspaper reports of his 
 speeches. This is largely due to the fact that the 
 [190] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 newspapers print only his flippant and fantastic 
 stuff, and omit his vital matter. I have seen re- 
 porters at one of his meetings sitting with their 
 pencils loosely dangling from their fingers while 
 Mr. Shaw spoke wisely and deeply, and then, 
 when he uttered some trivial or outrageous thing, 
 coming to life and hastily scribbling the jape into 
 their notebooks. 
 
 It is my purpose here to insist that Mr. Shaw is 
 a shy man with a large element of the gawky school 
 boy in him so that he is awkward and embar- 
 rassed when he comes suddenly into the presence 
 of strangers without having been warned that 
 strangers are to be encountered. I have seen him 
 blush like a boy on finding people in a room which 
 he had expected to find unoccupied, and when one 
 meets him casually in the street he is at first non- 
 plussed and without conversation or power to do 
 more than smile amiably. It is not easy to make 
 this shyness of his plain to those who have met 
 him once or twice because he has remarkable 
 powers of recovery and can cover up his initial 
 embarrassment with very great skill; and also be- 
 cause his platform manners are very easy and his 
 general social manners are exceedingly gracious. 
 [191] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 He has made many pretences in his life, but the 
 one pretence that he has never succeeded in main- 
 taining is the pretence that he is a bad-mannered 
 man. There are stories told of him that seem to 
 show him in a graceless, even cruel, character, but 
 these are no more than might be expected from a 
 man of nervous temperament who is being bothered 
 excessively by the demands of people who have 
 no right to make demands on him at all. Against 
 those stories may be set far more stories of acts 
 of exceptional kindliness to those who are in 
 trouble or in need of advice and encouragement. 
 Very few great men have given so generously of 
 their time and strength to helping young men of 
 talent to obtain recognition as Mr. Shaw has done. 
 His awkwardness of manner when taken 
 unawares is very different from that of Mr. 
 Yeats in similar circumstances. Mr. Shaw is shy 
 and awkward with strangers, but Mr. Yeats, who 
 has never been shy in his life, is only awkward. 
 Mr. Shaw, because he is naturally gracious, recov- 
 ers himself more quickly than Mr. Yeats, who has 
 cultivated his graciousness ; and it may be said 
 of them that Mr. Shaw has the manners of a man 
 instinctively gentle, whereas Mr. Yeats has the 
 [192] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 manners of a man who has practised deportment 
 before a cheval glass. 
 
 II 
 
 It is obvious that a man so shy and easily em- 
 barrassed as Mr. Shaw is cannot hope to make 
 a swift impression upon his contemporaries unless 
 he commits an outrage upon his own nature. A 
 world which regards modesty as a sign of incom- 
 petence, if not of actual imbecility, is slow to 
 recognize the real merits of a man unless he lays 
 claim to merits which he has not got. In the long 
 run, the crowd pays tribute to great men, but Mr. 
 Shaw was anxious that tribute should be paid to 
 him immediately. Fame at the age of eighty of- 
 fered few inducements to him, and post humous 
 fame offered no inducements at all. He had some 
 thing to say to a world disinclined to listen to him, 
 and he felt that he could not persuade it to do so 
 unless he first of all performed some unusual plat- 
 form tricks to catch its attention. Something of 
 his principle seemed to be in the mind of a tipster 
 whom I saw on Epsom racecourse before the war 
 began. I was walking in the crowd on the course, 
 [193] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 which the police were not yet clearing, when sud- 
 denly a very well-dressed man in my neighbour- 
 hood seemed to go out of his mind. He whirled 
 violently round, uttered a fierce yell, flung an ex- 
 pensive silk hat into the air and waved his gold- 
 headed cane in a very disturbing fashion. He then 
 began to chant in a manner not unlike the way in 
 which Mr. Vachel Lindsay recites his poem on the 
 Congo! ... By the time he had finished this per- 
 formance, a considerable crowd had collected 
 around him. I was in the forefront of it, and 
 while I was wondering how long it would be before 
 the police arrived to take charge of the demented 
 man, he recovered his sanity and proceeded to sell 
 tips for the two-thirty race. I bought one of them. 
 I put money that was rare and precious on the 
 horse which he commended to my patronage. And 
 the horse lost the race! . . . Mr. Shaw climbed on 
 to platforms and into newspapers, shouting at the 
 top of his voice, "I am better than Shakespeare" 
 in the hope that he might convince the world that 
 he had any merit at all. He performed tricks in 
 public in order to make people believe that he 
 could think in the theatre. He wore comic clothes 
 and refused to shave and conducted a rebellion 
 [194] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 against evening dress and silk hats and boiled 
 shirts. He declined to eat meat, to smoke tobacco 
 or to drink wine. He said that he was an atheist 
 and an immoral writer. He tried to train his 
 eyebrows into the shape which is called Mephisto- 
 phelian. He saw himself in the role of the Fat 
 Boy in "Pickwick Papers" trying to make men's 
 flesh creep, and was disgusted to find that the Fat 
 Boy's most valuable asset, his obesity, had been 
 denied to him and given to Mr. Gilbert Chesterton, 
 who would not make any one's flesh creep for the 
 value of the world ! Finally, he announced that he 
 was a Socialist. His Socialism was not a plat- 
 form trick: it was his serious faith; but it became 
 so associated in the public mind with his platform 
 tricks that he had only to say in public that he was 
 a Socialist and his audience would giggle as if that 
 were the most amusing thing they had ever heard. 
 This habit of performing platform tricks un- 
 doubtedly drew a large crowd to listen to him, and 
 he did not fail to deliver himself of his peculiar 
 faith to that crowd when he had collected it; but 
 there were considerable drawbacks to his method 
 of securing attention. The crowd could never 
 quite rid itself of the belief that he was "one of 
 [195] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 those comic chaps." It admitted that he was a 
 very clever "comic chap," but firmly at the back 
 of the popular mind was the belief that he did not 
 mean one half of what he said and was not entirely 
 sincere about the remaining half. It liked to see 
 him performing in public, and it paid large sums 
 of money to hear him lecture in behalf of causes 
 tliat were abhorrent to it. Duchesses, for example, 
 contributed heavily to the funds of Socialist soci- 
 eties simply for the privilege of hearing him speak, 
 and duchesses do not love Socialist societies. The 
 crowd talked about him to a remarkable extent; 
 it read his books; it attended performances of his 
 plays; it went to hear him lecture . . . but it in- 
 sisted that what was important about him was, 
 not his advocacy of this or that, but his power to 
 excite laughter. When he was most in earnest, the 
 crowd said, "He's so witty!" and left the matter 
 there. That, perhaps, is why "Common Sense and 
 the War" aroused so much wrath in England. 
 The crowd, accustomed to tittering behind its 
 hand or laughing outright at Mr. Shaw's wit, was 
 disconcerted by the serious way in which he dealt 
 with the War in that notorious pamphlet. It was 
 so shocked by what he said that it professed to be 
 [196] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 indignant that any man could cut comic capers at 
 so awful a moment. Mr. Shaw was not cutting 
 any capers, comic or otherwise, but the crowd, 
 trained by him to believe that he was a comedian, 
 could not believe that he was capable of being any- 
 thing else. That pamphlet, ill-timed, perhaps, in 
 some respects, was yet well-timed in this respect, 
 that it reminded the British people of their most 
 priceless privilege, the right of free speech. The 
 whole of the British press collapsed before the 
 Press Censor, and editors were afraid to open their 
 mouths about things which were scandalous. Mr. 
 Shaw restored the freedom of the press. He said 
 what he had to say and he said it with the utmost 
 courage and force, and within a week or two from 
 the date of publication of his pamphlet, the timid 
 editors were rearing up their heads and daring to 
 say "Bo!" to the political geese. 
 
 There were times, perhaps, when he seemed to be 
 yielding to the mob's desire to be tickled, when 
 the one thing apparently that moved him was his 
 delight in making the crowd giggle and guffaw; 
 and now and then his friends felt that he was over- 
 doing the tricks, that he was monotonously inform- 
 ing people that he was "better than Shakespeare," 
 [197] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 a Statement that seemed as idle as if Anatole 
 France were to say that he was "better than" Vic- 
 tor Hugo, when in fact the men are so dissimilar 
 that there is no means of comparing them. But the 
 danger, such as it was, amounted to little, for when 
 all the discount is made that can be made for pos- 
 sible charlatanry in his character, there remains 
 this indisputable fact that he has left a mark on 
 the thought and life not only of the English-speak- 
 ing world, but of the whole of Western civilization, 
 which cannot be eradicated. We may go to the 
 theatre to laugh at Mr. Shaw, but we remain to 
 think with him. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Oddly enough, there was another dramatist, also 
 an Irishman, whose practice was precisely the op- 
 posite of Mr. Shaw's: a shy, nervous man who per- 
 mitted himself to be cheated of a position of au- 
 thority because of his modesty. John Millington 
 Synge was what Mr. Shaw might have been had 
 he allowed his nature to run off to dark corners and 
 hide itself. Synge could not compel himself to 
 climb on to platforms or make extravagant boasts. 
 [198] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 He may have had the desire to make boasts, but 
 he had not the courage to do so. An excellent 
 comrade for an individual on a country road, he 
 was so nervous in the presence of an audience of 
 more than six people that he was in danger of 
 physical sickness, and he may be said to have died 
 of sheer inability to assert himself. Had it not 
 been that Mr. Yeats was by to do Synge's boasting 
 for him, the world might never have heard of that 
 singular man of twisted talent. Mr. Yeats, indeed, 
 boasted so loudly of Synge's gifts that superficial 
 persons began to believe that Synge was the greater 
 man of the two, and I remember on one occasion 
 hearing young women, fresh from Newnham, 
 boldly declaring that Mr. Yeats's chief title to re- 
 memberance would lie in the fact that he had dis- 
 covered Synge! I have never been able to con- 
 vince myself that Synge was a great man of genius; 
 it is not necessary to convince oneself that Mr. 
 Yeats is a great man of genius: the fact is obvious. 
 Synge was a man of peculiar and interesting talent 
 whose work smelt too strongly of the medicine bottle 
 to be of supreme merit. He was the sick man in lit- 
 erature, and he had the sick man's interest in 
 cruelty and harshness and violent temperaments. 
 [199] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 He had the weak man's envy of strength and the 
 weak man's tendency to mistake violence for 
 Strength. His plays are better than Mr. Yeats's 
 plays — "Riders to the Sea" is immeasurably better 
 than "Kathleen ni Houlihan" — but Mr. Yeats is a 
 greater poet than Synge was a dramatist. I am 
 disinclined to believe that Synge was a great dram- 
 atist. He brought a desirable element of bitter- 
 ness and acrid beauty into the sticky mess of self- 
 satisfaction and sentimentalism which is known 
 as Irish Literature, but I feel that he was lack- 
 ing in staying-power. He shot his bolt when he 
 wrote "The Playboy of the Western World," the 
 chief value of which lay in the fact that it ripped 
 up the smugness of the Irish people, than whom 
 there are no other people in the world so pleased 
 with themselves on such slender grounds, and 
 taught them the much-needed lesson that they are 
 very like the rest of God's creatures. Synge por- 
 trayed the Irish people faithfully as he saw them: 
 he put in the element of poetry in the Celtic char- 
 acter, but he also put in the element of cruelty; he 
 put in the wit and generosity, but he also put in 
 the dullness and the greed ; he put in the gallantry, 
 but he also put in the cowardice; he put in the no- 
 [200] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 bility, but he also put in the gross brutality. In 
 other words, he saw at the same time the idealism 
 of Padraic Pearse and Thomas MacDonagh per- 
 meated by the incredible brutality of De Valera's 
 ruffians. He knew the delicate sense of beauty 
 which suffuses the poetry of Mr. Padraic Colum 
 and he smelt the odour of the charnel-house that 
 rises from the work of Mr. James Joyce, and had 
 he been able to keep the two sides of Irish char- 
 acter justly poised, he would have been a great 
 man of genius; but he was not able to keep the 
 balance between them. He tended more and more 
 to see merit in cruelty and harshness, and he turned 
 away from the sensitive and delicate beauty of Mr. 
 Colum to the sewer-revelations of Mr. Joyce, who 
 may fitly be described as Rabelais after a nervous 
 breakdown. People tell me that "Deirdre of the 
 Sorrows," his unfinished play, is the greatest of 
 all the plays that have been written about that un- 
 happy and romantic lady; and perhaps what they 
 say is true, for none of the plays that have been 
 written about her, Mr. Herbert Trench's or "A. 
 E.'s" or Mr. Yeats's, are in the great line, though 
 all of them are interesting. But judged by itself 
 or in relation to plays generally, it does not seem 
 [201] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 to me to be a great drama nor is it so meritable as 
 some of Synge's own plays of earlier origin. It 
 marks to me the limit of his range, and shows 
 signs of drooping energy. Some may say that I 
 am attributing to failing powers what should be 
 attributed to sickness and the imminence of death, 
 but I think I am dealing justly with this odd in- 
 truder into the realm of letters when I say that his 
 talent was a small one and that had he lived for 
 twice as many years as he actually did live, he 
 would not have produced anything of greater note 
 than he had written when he died. 
 
 IV 
 
 Platform tricks saved Mr. Shaw from falling to 
 the Synge level. Contact with rude men and 
 ruder women in public places kept him in familiar 
 alliance with normal things, and so it came about 
 that his genius, though it soared, never soared out 
 of sight. He marched ahead of the crowd, but he 
 never went so far ahead of it that it could not 
 catch up with him. He urged reluctant men and 
 women to follow him along the paths that were 
 obscure and difficult, but he never urged them to 
 [202] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 try a path which he had not himself explored, or 
 was unwilling to explore. Not all of his advice 
 was accepted . . . not all of it was worthy of 
 acceptance . . . but all of it, accepted or re- 
 jected, was listened to. He would have found a 
 readier agreement to take his advice if he had been 
 less logical in his arguments, but his mind governs 
 his life so completely that he cannot make any al- 
 lowances for the wayward character of the aver- 
 age man. He has given himself so completely to 
 his mind that his feelings seem to have atrophied. 
 He is incapable, apparently, of understanding the 
 beauty and fascination of mere irrelevancy. A 
 study of his work reveals no consciousness on his 
 part of natural beauty. He seems not to know 
 that a tree is a lovely thing, that its loveliness is 
 entirely without moral or sociological significance. 
 He would probably agree with Dr. Johnson that one 
 field is very like another field, that water in one 
 part of the world is identical with water in another 
 part of the world . . . and would be just as re- 
 mote from the truth as Dr. Johnson was: for one 
 field is not like another field, and water in one 
 place can be very dissimilar in look from water 
 in some other place. Mr. Shaw would not suffer 
 [203] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 one pang at the destruction of St. Paul's Cathedral 
 if he felt that its destruction made the processes 
 of life more convenient to the ordinary citizen. If 
 he had to choose between Rheims Cathedral and an 
 improved drainage system for France ... a thing 
 which France very badly needs, as any one with a 
 nose can tell ... he would choose the drainage 
 system. The College of Cardinals is less lovely 
 in the eyes of Mr. Shaw than the members of a 
 Borough Council. He would rather possess a good 
 fountain-pen than the first folio of Shakespeare's 
 plays. There was a man in Dublin who singularly 
 resembled him in everything except wit. Fran'cis 
 Sheehy Skeffington, who was wrongly executed in 
 the Easter Rising in Dublin in 1916, had Mr. 
 Shaw's logical faculty without Mr. Shaw's redeem- 
 ing wit. He was a very honest, courageous, and 
 personally attractive man, just as Mr. Shaw is, 
 but he was also a very wrong-headed man and to- 
 tally incapable of any sort of concerted action with 
 other people. Mr. Shaw's wit brings him into 
 more cordial relationship with other human beings 
 than Sheehy Skeffington would ever have achieved. 
 I remember, just before the war began, meeting 
 Skeffington in North Wales. He, too, was insensible 
 [204] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 to natural beauty and was without respect for tra- 
 dition or ancient institutions. I took him one eve- 
 ning to a lake in Anglesey where many reeds grew. 
 I asked him to watch while I clapped my hands, 
 and when I had done so, thousands of starlings 
 flew out of the reeds with a great fluttering of 
 wings, making a tremendous disturbance because 
 they had been roused from their sleep. SkefEng- 
 ton gazed at these birds as if he had never seen a 
 starling before. I judged by the look of astonish- 
 ment in his face that if he could have persuaded 
 himself to believe in magic, he would have re- 
 garded me as a magician. By merely smiting my 
 hands, I had filled the air with fluttering birds! 
 This experience so interested me that I decided to 
 make other experiments with Skeffington, and so, 
 on the following day, I took him to a field outside 
 the village where some very fine druidical remains 
 were to be seen. I led him up to the stones and 
 waited to see what effect they would have upon 
 him. He looked at them for a few moments, and 
 then, quite unmoved by the fact that they had been 
 standing there for more than a thousand years and 
 were all that was left of an ancient religion, he 
 took a piece of paper from his pocket and, mur- 
 [205] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 muring in his high-pitched Ulster voice, "I think 
 I'll do a little propaganda!" thrust it into a crevice 
 of the old altar. The paper had VOTES FOR 
 WOMEN on it! He was totally incapable of un- 
 derstanding why this act of his disgusted me. His 
 mind was indifferent to such things as tradition; 
 he simply could not visualize those stones as any- 
 thing other than a remarkably useful hoarding on 
 which to advertise his latest enthusiasm. I sup- 
 pose that if he thought of the druids at all, he 
 thought contemptuously of them as barbarians to 
 whom had been denied the enlightenment that he 
 enjoyed; and his desperately logical mind, working 
 on the fact that many persons would visit these re- 
 mains, suggested to him that here was an excellent 
 opportunity of thrusting his propaganda upon the 
 attention of people reluctant to give any heed to 
 it! . . . 
 
 I cannot conceive of Mr. Shaw doing just that 
 thing because his wit would save him from it; but 
 I feel that if his wit were taken from him or had 
 been denied to him, he would have behaved ex- 
 actly as Sheehy Skeffington behaved then. It is 
 his superb, spontaneous wit that keeps him in con- 
 tinuous contact with normal men. Synge had no 
 [206] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 wit, and because he had not, was thrust into soli- 
 tude. SkefFington had no wit . . . there never 
 was on earth a man so destitue of a sense of hu- 
 mour as Francis Skeffington . . . and because he 
 had not, he lived a life of intellectual isolation 
 from his fellows in spite of the fact that most 
 people liked him. Skeffington's courage and hon- 
 esty . . . and I have known few men so coura- 
 geous and honest as he was . . . served him partly, 
 but not wholly, as Mr. Shaw's wit serves him. Mr. 
 Shaw has great intellectual courage and is a very 
 honest man, but these qualities, though they win 
 respect in the long run, have an isolating effect on 
 a man in such a world as this, and were it not for 
 his wit, he would be an Ishmael, too. Take the 
 wit from Mr. Shaw and the courage from Sheehy 
 Skeffington, substitute for them a fractious sense of 
 beauty, and the result is . . . John Millington 
 Synge. 
 
 Mr. Chesterton has illustrated the peculiar qual- 
 ity of the English mind by comparing the roads of 
 France with the roads of England; and the com- 
 [207] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 parison might be used to illustrate the difference 
 between the mind of Mr. Shaw and the mind of the 
 average man. Mr. Chesterton, with that startling 
 profundity that is to be discovered in much of his 
 writing that seems at first merely to be conjuring 
 stuff, asserts that the design of English and French 
 roads, the first all winding and irregular, the sec- 
 ond straight as if drawn with the aid of a ruler, 
 shows a fundamental difference between the two 
 races: the English as wayward and casual as their 
 roads, going lazily and easily to their journey's 
 end ; the French as logical and well-defined as their 
 roads, going without any circumlocution to their 
 journey's end. Mr. Shaw's mind goes directly to 
 its goal, and he tries to persuade the rest of man- 
 kind to follow his example. But the rest of man- 
 kind does not wish to go by the most direct route to 
 any goal : it wants to dally on the ways ; it wants to 
 explore all the little bye-paths and hidden corners; 
 it even wants to turn back on its course to examine 
 again some place that it has already seen; and 
 above all, it wants to waste time. When Mr. Shaw 
 contemplates the world engaged in this careless 
 way of living, he bursts into a passion of wit where 
 less gifted men, such as Sheehy Skeffington, would 
 [208] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 burst into anger; and he lashes the world with his 
 tongue. Mankind, because Mr. Shaw is a genius, 
 listens to him, as mankind always has listened to 
 men of genius, in a puzzled fashion, and even spec- 
 ulates on whether it ought not to follow his ad- 
 vice; but it is in the nature of man to be illogical, 
 and so, after a little thought, man goes on being 
 wayward and casual. Even in France, where logic 
 has become an obsession, men are more illogical 
 than Mr. Shaw would have them be; and it is a 
 very curious commentary on his work that in so 
 logical a country as France, his plays make far 
 less stir than in any other country in Europe. I 
 imagine that the French are so cursed with logic 
 that their minds revolt from the extreme reasoning 
 of Mr. Shaw as an overloaded stomach revolts 
 from rich food. Once, in France, when my bat- 
 talion was marching along a road towards a part 
 of the country in which we had been some weeks 
 before, I heard a soldier in my platoon saying to 
 his comrade as we came to familiar places, "Thank 
 God, they've cut down those bloody trees!" and 
 immediately I understood why the French roads 
 bored the British soldier. That inexorable logic, 
 all that neatness, those terribly straight roads with 
 [209] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 the trees growing at regular intervals . . . "dress- 
 ing by the right" as the soldiers said, and looking 
 as if the men who planted them had performed the 
 operation according to some mathematical for- 
 mula ... all these things, inhumanly tidy and 
 well-ordered, nauseated the mind. I have done 
 much walking on English and French roads, and I 
 will wager that boredom will seize the traveller on 
 a French road long before his interest on an English 
 road has been exhausted. And in their unintellec- 
 tual, instinctive, wayward fashion, the English are 
 more right about life than the French are. Mr. 
 Shaw, I imagine, is incapable of understanding 
 the state of mind of my soldier who thanked God 
 that the neatly-arranged trees on the neatly-de- 
 signed French road had been cui; down. To him 
 it would seem right that if trees are to be grown 
 at all, they should be grown according to formula. 
 He sees something stupid and wrong in the Eng- 
 lish method of planting an acorn in any hole that 
 is visible and letting the tree grow as it pleases. 
 
 [210] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 VI 
 
 In the chapter on Mr. Wells, I have printed an 
 account of Mr. Shaw's religious faith which ought 
 properly to be printed here, but since the reader 
 can more easily turn to the next chapter than I 
 can re-write it, I will leave the account where it is 
 and proceed with an account of the latest develop- 
 ments of this faith as set forth in "Heartbreak 
 House" and "Back to Methusaleh." These two 
 plays are notable for a growth of religious con- 
 viction in their author which has brought him to a 
 condition resembling, in the eyes of some, that 
 of John the Baptist and, in the eyes of others (as 
 I heard a clergyman of the Church of Ireland 
 angrily assert) that of a religious fanatic. They 
 are also notable for a weakening of technical skill 
 as a dramatist. Mr. Shaw has set himself so ably 
 to the task of rejecting drama from his plays, that 
 unconsciously he ruins the effect of his lines by an 
 excess of garrulity. No one, reading and particu- 
 larly seeing, "Heartbreak House" and "Back to 
 Methusaleh" can escape from the belief that Mr. 
 Shaw is using more words than are necessary to 
 express his thought. Either he despises us as 
 [211] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 people who are not sufficiently intelligent to un- 
 derstand his meaning unless it is delivered to us 
 in a variety of sentences or he has lost his artistic 
 sense and cannot understand that a fine morning 
 is not any finer for being described somewhat in 
 this fashion: "A fine morning is one on which 
 the sun shines from a blue sky in which occasional 
 white clouds may be seen. This morning is such 
 a morning as that. Therefore, this is a fine morn- 
 ing. What a fine morning!" The whole of that 
 extravagant speech, invented by me, not by Mr. 
 Shaw, is contained in the last four words. The 
 rest is not only excess, but insult, for it implies 
 an ignorance in the person listening to it which is 
 not human. There are many passages in these two 
 plays which are not unlike that invented passage 
 of mine. There is a passage near the beginning 
 of the second act of "Heartbreak House" which 
 seems to me to indicate a real decline in Mr. Shaw's 
 sense of the theatre. Ellie Dunn and Boss Man- 
 gan, to whom she is thinking of getting engaged, 
 are discussing themselves and marriage. He has 
 just described himself in terms which show that 
 he is one of those financial ruffians who are the 
 [212] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 modern equivalent, (not of highwaymen, for they 
 were gay and adventurous fellows,) but of slave- 
 drivers: 
 
 Mangan. . . . Now what do you think of me, Miss 
 Ellie? 
 
 Ellie (dropping her hands) : How strange! that my 
 mother, who knew nothing at all about business, should 
 have been quite right about you! She always said — 
 not before papa, of course, but to us children — that you 
 were just that sort of a man. 
 
 Mangan (sitting up much hurt) : Oh! did she? 
 And yet she'd have let you marry me. 
 
 Ellie; Well, you see, Mr. Mangan, my mother mar- 
 ried a very good man — for whatever you may think of 
 my father as a man of business, he is the soul of good- 
 ness — and she is not at all keen on my doing the same. 
 
 The parenthetical clause in each of Ellie's 
 speeches is unnecessary, and in the second speech, 
 it has the effect of ruining a very good "line." I 
 assert, as a dramatist with some technical skill, 
 that Ellie's second speech, minus the parenthetical 
 clause, will rouse laughter every time it is spoken. 
 I assert, with equal confidence, that this speech, 
 with the parenthetical clause, will not provoke 
 more than a strangled laugh and may not provoke 
 [213] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 any laughter at all. Mr. Shaw is entitled to reject 
 laughter if he thinks it is likely to destroy the 
 thought in his speech, but no one can believe that 
 the parenthetical clause to which I object adds 
 anything to Ellie's thought. It is mere redundance, 
 and redundance is destructive of drama. It is 
 also destructive of thought for a man is more 
 likely to be irritated than to be stimulated by hear- 
 ing a thing repeated to excess. 
 
 I may, perhaps, note another matter of techni- 
 cal interest to the student of the Shavian drama, 
 namely, Mr. Shaw's economy in characters. He 
 has or had a strong sense of the theatre which is 
 almost as strong as that possessed by Mr. Gals- 
 worthy. The difficulty a critic has in estimating 
 Mr. Shaw's sense of the theatre is increased by 
 the wilfulness with which he rejects technique: 
 one is not always able to decide whether the lack 
 of technique in the later plays is the result of in- 
 tention or weakness. Mr. Galsworthy is nearly 
 the cleverest technician now writing for the Eng- 
 lish theatre. He cannot think as clearly as Mr. 
 Shaw can, but he can construct much better. 
 When Mr. Galsworthy treats a theme dramatic in 
 [214] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 itself, such as the theme of "Loyalties," and does 
 not entangle the drama with arguments, he writes 
 an uncommonly good play. "Loyalties" has been 
 called a "crook" play and in a sense it is one, but 
 the difference between it and such a piece as "The 
 Bat" by Mrs. Mary Roberts Rinehart and Mr. 
 Avery Hopwood is the difference between a crook 
 play written in terms of reality and a crook 
 play written in terms of trick. When, however, 
 Mr. Galsworthy treats a theme not dramatic in it- 
 self, such as the theme of "Windows," and en- 
 tangles any drama it has with much argument, 
 the result is something extraordinarily diffuse and 
 nebulous. Mr. Galsworthy leaves you with a sen- 
 sation, not only that you do not know what he 
 means, but also that he does not know what he 
 means. Mr. Shaw, in his later pieces, leaves you 
 with the sensation that he knows only too well what 
 he means, but he will never admit that you are 
 capable of understanding him. His economy in 
 characters is a certain sign of his mysticism. Mr. 
 Yeats told me on one occasion that when Sir Hor- 
 ace Plunkett invited "A. E." to take a prominent 
 position in the organization of co-operative agri- 
 culture in Ireland, Mr. Arthur Balfour commended 
 [215] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 the choice on the ground that a mystic is the most 
 practical of men since he is willing to use any in- 
 strument that will serve his purpose, whereas your 
 plain, blunt business man, destitute of imagination 
 and firm purpose, will quarrel with his tools and 
 end up by botching his job. The mystic, more- 
 over, serves his purpose more than himself, 
 whereas your plain, blunt business man serves 
 only himself. Mr. Shaw's method of working is 
 singularly interesting as a demonstration of the 
 way in which the mystic achieves his purpose. I 
 do not know of any writer who is so thrifty with 
 his means as Mr. Shaw. Shakespeare, compared 
 with him, is a prodigal and a spendthrift. Mr. 
 Shaw, compared with Shakespeare, is a miser, 
 uniquely stingy. But it is not stinginess which 
 has made Mr. Shaw so economical in his char- 
 acters and even in his situations. It is his mys- 
 ticism which makes him extraordinarily indifferent 
 to his means. Any old plot, however disreputable 
 it might be, would serve Shakespeare for draw- 
 ing on to the stage a crowd of dissimilar persons 
 and enriching their lives with his verse; and any 
 old character, however remote from human sem- 
 blance will serve Mr. Shaw as a vent for opinions. 
 [216] 
 
 I 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 Shakespeare primarily v/as interested in people. 
 Mr. Shaw primarily is interested in doctrine. The 
 principal difference between a dramatist who is 
 interested in people and a dramatist who is inter- 
 ested in doctrines, is that the former will delight 
 in the creation of the greatest variety of charac- 
 ters whereas the latter will not trouble to create 
 a new character if an old one will do. I doubt 
 whether there are more than twelve distinct per- 
 sons in the whole of Mr. Shaw's work. When 
 he began his career as a dogmatist, he set himself 
 to writing novels, but found after he had written 
 five, of which only four have been published, that 
 he could not use this instrument so effectively for 
 his purpose as he could use the instrument of the 
 play. And so he turned his attention to the stage. 
 But he did not waste his novels: he dramatised 
 them. He lifted passages from his books and put 
 them into his plays. He took some of the novel- 
 characters and, after he had tidied them and 
 changed their names, forced them from between 
 their covers on to the stage. There is little in 
 the thirty-eight plays he has written which is not 
 to be found, developed or suggested, in his four 
 novels. He has preached one doctrine all his life, 
 [217] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 and has preached it with singular consistency. It 
 is set out in the succeeding chapter to this one. 
 The parsimoniousness with which it has been 
 preached is remarkable. The whole of the first 
 act of "Major Barbara" is almost identically a re- 
 petition of the first act of "You Never Can Tell." 
 Lady Britomart Undershaft, of the first piece, is 
 Mrs. Clandon, of the second, under another name. 
 The situation of two women is nearly the same. 
 They are living apart from their husbands whom 
 they have not seen for a number of years. Lady 
 Britomart and Mrs. Clandon have each two daugh- 
 ters and a son with the haziest or no recollections 
 of their fathers. A meeting between the two 
 parents and their children is arranged, in each 
 case, on a flimsy pretext. Lady Britomart, like 
 Mrs. Clandon, is one of those strong-minded, silly 
 women who flourish, nowadays, more commonly 
 in America than in England. (She is the sort of 
 dense female who belongs to the Lucy Stone Lea- 
 gue and refuses to bear the name of tlie man she 
 has chosen to be her husband although she is will- 
 ing to bear the name of the man whom she did not 
 choose to be her father!) Lady Britomart, like 
 Mrs. Clandon, has abandoned her husband for a 
 [218] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 particularly fatuous cause- Mr. Crampton (fof 
 Mrs. Clandon is really Mrs. Crampton) was de- 
 prived of his wife's society (which was probably 
 no great loss) and that of his children (which 
 probably was) because he very properly spanked 
 his elder daughter when she had been naughty. 
 Lady Britomart left her husband because he de- 
 clined to change the basis of his armaments- 
 factory in the interests of his son. Her excuse for 
 her behaviour was more natural than Mrs. Clan- 
 don's excuse for hers, for we are all susceptible to 
 the attractions of primogeniture; but a more sensi- 
 ble woman might have achieved her purpose in be- 
 ing less headstrong. Barbara Undershaft, her elder 
 daughter, is Gloria Clandon, a little older and less 
 priggish. Sarah Undershaft, her younger daughter, 
 is a chastened and spiritless Dolly Clandon. There 
 is a difference, however, between Stephen Under- 
 shaft and Philip Clandon so remarkable that I can 
 only surmise that Mr. Shaw in transferring the 
 Clandon family into the Undershaft family mislaid 
 Philip and, in searching for him, discovered an- 
 other youth, this Stephen, who was the product of 
 an illicit love affair between Mrs. Clandon and the 
 austere Finch McComas! Adolphus Cusins, the 
 [219] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 Professor of Greek who beats the big drum in the 
 Salvation Army so that he may be near to Barbara, 
 is Valentine, the dentist, dragged out of "You 
 Never Can Tell," after a brief and misguided ca- 
 reer as John Tanner in "Man and Superman." 
 
 It is easy, I think, to trace the life of each one 
 of the twelve Shavian characters in this fashion. 
 Consider, for example, the vivid and very inter- 
 esting career of that brutal ruffian. Bill Walker, 
 in "Major Barbara." Bill began his life in 
 "Widowers' Houses" under the name of Lickcheese 
 and flourished so well as a speculative property- 
 owner that he was able to climb into middle-class 
 society, under the name of Burgess, and marry 
 his daughter Candida to the Reverend James 
 Mavor Morell. His association with the clergy, 
 however, must have had a disastrous effect on him 
 for we find him, in "Captain Brassbound's Con- 
 version," leading an adventurous, but misunder- 
 stood, career under the name of Drinkwater. Re- 
 ligion had peculiar allurements for Drinkwater, 
 understandably enough when one remembers his 
 former association with his son-in-law, the clergy- 
 man, and we are not surprised, therefore, to find 
 him in the Salvation Army's West Ham Shelter, 
 [220] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 now named Bill Walker and looking less than his 
 years. He suffers terribly from the spiritual gar- 
 rulity of Major Barbara. The reader who is fam- 
 iliar with the play will remember that Bill cruelly 
 misused a little Salvation Army lass, called Jenny 
 Hill, who would keep on praying for him and turn- 
 ing the other cheek. He struck her on the mouth 
 and twisted her arm and almost tore her hair out 
 by the roots. She cried with the pain, but she 
 went on praying for him! . . . Then Major Bar- 
 bara twisted Bill's heart for him as cruelly as he 
 had twisted Jenny Hill's arm, by preaching with 
 terrible iteration the doctrine of forgiveness and 
 non-resistance. We know how Bill, at the penul- 
 timate moment, escaped from the penitent form, 
 but few of us realise what happened to him after 
 he had fled, precipitately and full of bitter cyni- 
 cism, from that Salvation Army Shelter in West 
 Ham. Who could have believed, after witnessing 
 his behaviour in the presence of Barbara and 
 snivelling Jenny Hill, that Jenny Hill herself 
 would be the means of his undoing in the wilds 
 of America to which he had hurried under the 
 name of Blanco Posnet? And here we discover a 
 characteristic example of Mr. Shaw's sardonic hu- 
 [221] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 mour. For Bill was nabbed, not by the strong 
 Barbara, not even by the weak, though willing, 
 Jenny, but by Jenny's helpless, croup-stricken 
 child. The lion is caught by the mouse; the strong 
 are brought down by the weak; a little child shall 
 lead them into a trap. God, in Mr. Shaw's re- 
 ligion, is not a just God: he is a God determined 
 to have His own way and entirely indifferent to 
 the desires of His creatures. If man will not help 
 God to fulfil His purpose, then God will destroy 
 man and invent another and more submissive in- 
 strument whereby He may do so. Such is the 
 Shavian gospel. In what respect does it differ 
 from the most devastating and blasting form of 
 Calvinism? When I was a child in Belfast, I 
 was taught that if I persisted in being a wicked 
 boy, I would be roasted for ever in a red-hot 
 hell. Is there any real difference between the 
 Calvinist who tells a child that he will be burned 
 for all eternity and Mr. Shaw who tells it that it 
 will be scrapped for all eternity. There is one 
 difference, in favour of the Calvinist. I was 
 taught to believe in the All-Perfection of God. 
 Even if I persisted in being a wicked child and 
 thus damned myself for ever, my relatives could 
 [222] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 comfort themselves with the reflection that God 
 would fulfil Himself in His own time. Some- 
 where, somewhen, there would be "peace, perfect 
 peace." But Mr. Shaw's God offers no such guar- 
 antee. He cannot assure us, even if we help Him 
 by every means in our power, that He will ever 
 become perfect. He makes inexorable demands 
 upon our service, but cannot offer us any hope 
 that our labour will not be in vain. Serve me 
 without question or be scrapped, says the Shavian 
 God, but he will not assure us that we are not be- 
 ing bilked. And is not the desolation of desol- 
 ations a religious faith in which there is no cer- 
 tainty and very little hope? I prefer the romantic 
 delusions of my Ulster forefathers to the practical 
 religion of Mr. Shaw. I dislike the thought that 
 I may be roasted for ever in a red-hot hell, but 
 I like even less the coal-black nullity with which 
 Mr. Shaw threatens me if I persist in my evil 
 courses. There will at least be colour and excite- 
 ment in Calvin's hell, but there will be nothing 
 whatever in Mr. Shaw's. And I am not sure, 
 after all, that God, Perfect or Imperfect, will not 
 prefer to spend eternity in the company of people 
 like me who decline to accept life on any but their 
 [223] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 own terms, rather than in the society of servile 
 instruments. 
 
 Mr. Shaw's thirty-eight plays are not thirty-eight 
 separate plays but one long, continuous piece, in 
 which his twelve characters, in every conceivable 
 disguise and situation, strive to elude the hand of 
 God but are nabbed by Him in the end. Twist 
 how you may. He'll get you in the end, unless, 
 indeed. He wearies of trying to make use of you, 
 when, inexorably, without a pang, He will cast 
 you on to the scrap-heap where you will perish 
 utterly as your little brothers, the mammoth beasts, 
 perished long ago. 
 
 VH 
 
 Mr. Shaw has some of Shakespeare's careless- 
 ness over details. I have sometimes wondered why 
 Claudius succeeded to his brother's throne when 
 Hamlet was alive to do so. There is an expla- 
 nation of this curious succession in Frazer's "The 
 Golden Bough," but I do not suppose that the facts 
 cited by Sir James Frazer were known to Shake- 
 speare and even if it were, he has not made the 
 matter dramatically clear. Hamlet does not ap- 
 [224] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 pear to resent his uncle's accession to the throne of 
 Denmark. His resentment is roused by the mar- 
 riage of his mother to her brother-in-law. He 
 probably never liked his uncle, but he is willing to 
 live in his castle as his heir. Shakespeare was al- 
 ways ready to sacrifice verisimilitude to dramatic 
 effects. Ophelia, for example, is denied complete 
 Christian burial because the Church authorities 
 suspect her of having committed suicide, although 
 the account of her death clearly establishes that she 
 was accidentally drowned through the breaking of 
 a branch. Hamlet, too, is unaware of Ophelia's 
 death or dementia when he arrives in the grave- 
 yard where she is to be buried, although he has 
 been in the company of Horatio for some time, 
 and Horatio is fully acquainted with the circum- 
 stances of Ophelia's misfortunes and death and 
 knows that there have been passages of love be- 
 tween Hamlet and her. Very little trouble was 
 needed to put these minor matters right, but when 
 a god is creating a universe, he is unlikely to 
 trouble himself greatly about specks of dust. Mr. 
 Shaw shows himself equally indifferent to details 
 when they no longer serve his purpose. He has 
 been charged with spoofing his audience on occa- 
 [225] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 sion, notably in the first act of "Man and Super- 
 man" where he trumps up a case of impending ma- 
 ternity for shocking effects, and then, his purpose 
 achieved, says no more about it for the remainder 
 of the play! He brings the Undershaft family 
 together in the first act of "Major Barbara" in the 
 pretence that they are about to discuss important 
 questions of family finance which are never once 
 discussed during the act! I do not believe that 
 Mr. Shaw had any intention of spoofing his au- 
 dience when he invented these situations. He 
 simply did not bother about the details. He had 
 used the effect for his purpose, and since it was 
 no longer servicable to him, he scrapped it with- 
 out even troubling to clear away the debris — which, 
 presumably, is what His God will do with us when 
 He no longer needs us. Less happens in the first 
 act of "Major Barbara" than in any other first 
 act by Mr. Shaw. It is a protasis from which all 
 mention of plot is deliberately omitted. Bottom, 
 had he been at Mr. Shaw's elbow while the play 
 was being written, might have begged him to "grow 
 to a point," but Bottom would have had lessi 
 success with Mr. Shaw than he had with Quince, 
 [226] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 for Bottom's point was a dramatic one, whereas 
 Mr. Shaw's is doctrinal; and a propounder of 
 doctrine pays little heeds to the laws of stagecraft 
 or anything else. The mystic gets his way be- 
 cause he can neither be frightened nor discon- 
 certed. Death and Tradition have no terrors for 
 him. That is why, in face of the opposition of 
 common sense and practical experience, he always 
 does what he wants to do. 
 
 VIII 
 
 One might profitably compare Mr. Shaw to Cas- 
 sius in "Julius Caesar." Marcus Brutus, in that 
 play, is surely the prototype of all muddlers and 
 gentlemanly idiots. It v/as he who, against the 
 pleas of Cassius, insisted that the life of Mark 
 Anthony should be spared. It was he who, dis- 
 regarding the dissuasions of Cassius, permitted 
 Anthony to speak in the forum. It was he who, 
 over-ruling the arguments of Cassius, ordered the 
 disastrous march to Phillipi. Cassius was the 
 wise man of the two, though his heart was made 
 impotent by his asperities. The resemblance be- 
 [227] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 tween him and Mr. Shaw must not be drawn too 
 closely, but it is sufficient, as stated in Shakes- 
 peare's terms, to be interesting: 
 
 He reads much; 
 He is a great observer, and he looks 
 Quite through the deeds of men. 
 
 Cassius, of course, loved no plays and heard no 
 music and smiled with difficulty; and these disabil- 
 ities prevent him from complete ancestry to Mr. 
 Shaw; but, if, like Cassius, Mr. Shaw sometimes 
 feels that he has lived "to be but mirth and laugh- 
 ter to his Brutus," he can, like Cassius again, com- 
 fort himself with the thought that he was in the 
 right when Brutus was in the wrong, and that he 
 told him so. His Cassius mood is plainest in 
 "Heartbreak House." This play is described as 
 "a Fantasia in the Russian manner on English 
 themes," and was written, presumably, after Mr. 
 Shaw had witnessed performances of plays by 
 Chekhov. That is not to say, however, that there 
 is any resemblance between the work of Mr. Shaw 
 and the Russian dramatist. There isn't. Mr. Shaw 
 is as talkative as Chekhov was reticent. Chekhov's 
 purpose is to make his people say as little as pos- 
 [228] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 sible: Mr. Shaw's purpose is to make his people 
 say a great deal more than is necessary. Chekhov 
 suggests inactivity through dialogue : Mr. Shaw sug- 
 gests argumentativeness. Chekhov writes drama: 
 Mr. Shaw debates. No receptive person can come 
 away from a performance of "The Cherry Or- 
 chard" unimpressed by a vision of life. A mod- 
 erately-intelligent person, having seen this play 
 with eyes of understanding, could write a true 
 summary of the state of Russia in the last hun- 
 dred years. I doubt whether as much can be said 
 of "Heartbreak House," the whole action of which 
 (though action is an inappropriate word to use 
 about it) takes place in the course of an afternoon 
 and evening, inside six or seven hours, in England 
 soon after the outbreak of the War. There is, 
 however, no mention of the War in the play, and 
 the only link between them is the sudden interrup- 
 tion of the conversation in the last act by an air- 
 raid, as a result of which two of the characters are 
 blown to pieces. There is some clumsiness in the 
 use of this device for ending the play, artistically 
 at all events, though that is a consideration which 
 is unlikely to move Mr. Shaw much, but, ethically 
 and socially, it is not clumsy at all, for "Heart- 
 [229] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 break House" is less a play than a parable. The 
 bombs drop as suddenly, and with as little warn- 
 ing, on the gifted conversationalists sitting in the 
 dusky garden as the War burst upon Europe in 
 1914. There we were, all of us, living pleasantly, 
 as Burke begged us to live, and committing our 
 affairs into the hands of men concerning whose 
 abilities to conduct them we had no certificates — 
 and suddenly the ship ran on to the rocks, the train 
 went off the rails, the ceiling fell. "I'm always 
 expecting something," says EUie Dunn in the last 
 act. "I don't know what it is; but life must come 
 to a point some time." And while she and her 
 companions are arguing about the responsibility 
 for the mess in which the world is, bombs drop 
 out of heaven and life comes to a full stop: 
 
 Hector: And this ship that we are all in? This 
 soul's prison we call England? 
 
 Captain Shotover: The captain is in his bunk, drink- 
 ing bottled ditch-water; and the crew is gambling in the 
 forcastle. She will strike and sink and split. Do you 
 think the laws of God will be suspended in favour of 
 England because you were born in it? 
 
 Hector: Well, I don't mean to be drowned like a rat 
 in a trap. I still have the will to live. What am I to 
 do? 
 
 [230] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 Captain Shotover: Do? Nothing simpler. Learn 
 your business as an Englishman. 
 
 Hector: And what may my business as an English- 
 man be, pray? 
 
 Captain Shotover: Navigation. Learn it and live; 
 or leave it and be damned. 
 
 In other words of Mr. Shaw's, if you do not help 
 God to perfect Himself, He will scrap you. This 
 play, in some respects the best that Mr. Shaw has 
 written, is full of mad laughter, of bitter, self- 
 mocking, torturing laughter. I knew a man who 
 burst into shrieks of laughter when he saw a 
 comrade blown into the air by a German shell; 
 but if any one imagines that that man's terrible 
 mirth came from an unkindly heart, he imagines 
 without understanding; for "even in laughter the 
 heart is sorrowful, and the end of that mirth is 
 heaviness." I feel about "Heartbreak House" ex- 
 actly as I felt about my friend who laughed when 
 his comrade was blown up and dismembered: that 
 here is a depth of feeling which cannot be fath- 
 omed. Like Job, Mr. Shaw cries out, "changes 
 and war are against me," but, unlike Job, he finds 
 no comfort in the end. "If men will not learn 
 until their lessons are written in blood, why, blood 
 [231] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 they must have, their own for preference." As for 
 him, he throws up the sponge. Our cuhure is but 
 the plaything of fribbles ; our democracy is merely 
 government of fools by fools. "The question is," 
 said Boswell to Dr. Johnson and Mr. Cambridge, 
 "which is worst, one wild beast or many?" And 
 the answer, in Mr. Shaw's terms, is "Both!" He 
 sees man, according to this play, refusing to help 
 God to perfect Himself, deliberately thwarting 
 God, and he almost sees him already on the scrap- 
 heap. 
 
 In "Back to Methusaleh," he seems to me to 
 have suffered a spiritual set-back, and to be pre- 
 occupied by material considerations. We are no 
 longer concerned with Man's Destiny and God's 
 Purpose, but with matters of mere longevity. "So 
 much to do — so little time in which to do it!" 
 If man could live for three hundred or three thou- 
 sand or thirty thousand years, he would then have 
 time in which to profit by his experience — so Mr. 
 Shaw's argument seems to run. But would he? 
 Do any of us profit by our experience? If we 
 could go back to the beginning of our lives and 
 start again with the knowledge we had acquired in 
 [232] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 the previous existence, we might be able to avoid 
 this or that mistake. But we cannot do that. Each 
 experience is a new one, and the wisdom we have 
 gained from those through which we have passed 
 is of little help to us in dealing with the new one, 
 particularly if it comes upon us, as most of the 
 critical events of life do come upon us, unex- 
 pectedly, without warning. There is not much 
 difference, except physically, between the Mr. 
 Shaw who wrote "Candida" and the Mr. Shaw who 
 wrote "Back to Methusaleh," and I do not believe 
 that he would be much, if any different, at the age 
 of three hundred or thirty thousand from what he 
 now is. Man may develop this or that aspect of 
 himself more than another, but essentially he re- 
 mains the same. It is not length of years that is 
 important to us, but what we do in them. Keats 
 and Shelley were young when they died: Tenn)^- 
 son was old; but the length of their years seems 
 immaterial to their reputation. Mr. Shaw tells us 
 that if we will hard enough, we can achieve 
 longevity, but, apart from the fact that longevity 
 first happens in his play to people who have not 
 willed it, but had it thrust upon them, I am puzzled 
 to understand how Mr. Shaw expects mankind to 
 [233] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 will a State of existence which, portrayed by 
 him, is extraordinarily repellent. I do not wish 
 to be born at the age of seventeen out of an egg 
 so that I may become a He-Ancient and live for 
 thousands of years in a state of inactive ratiocina- 
 tion. And if a life of thought without action 
 does not attract my fancy, how can I be ex- 
 pected to aspire to it? I cannot find anything 
 in the long lives of Mr. Shaw's characters which 
 seems to me likely to excite the desire and 
 hope of mankind. The He-Ancients and the She- 
 Ancients are morose and sterile, ugly and un- 
 sociable, hairless and unhappy, liable to death 
 by discouragement, long, lean and hopeless. 
 I would rather be scrapped! . . . Nor is there 
 any greater virtue in the long-lived than there is 
 in us. In "The Tragedy of an Elderly Gentleman" 
 (the fourth act of "Back to Methusaleh" ) where 
 mankind is divided into two classes, the long-lived 
 and the short-lived, we discover that the long-lived 
 spend their three hundred years of existence in 
 humbugging the short-lived. . . . Man that is bom 
 of woman hath but a short time to live, and is 
 full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down, 
 like a flower: he fleeth as it were a shadow, and 
 [234] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 never continueth in one place; but, in spite of his 
 misery and the shortness of his life, he gets more 
 fun and satisfaction than are likely to be enjoyed 
 by man that is born out of an egg. 
 
 IX 
 
 I remember very vividly the first occasion on 
 which I saw and heard Mr. Shaw. He was lectur- 
 ing on "Some Necessary Repairs to Religion" to 
 a religious organization, now defunct, called 
 "The Guild of St. Mathew." His lecture was ex- 
 traordinarily startling to a young man, fresh from 
 Belfast and still influenced by his fathers' faith, 
 although in revolt against much of it. When the 
 lecture was over, a lady asked him to say what his 
 belief was about the Resurrection, and he replied, 
 that if she would promise not to tell any one, he 
 would say that he did not believe it ever took place. 
 And then came one of those strange lapses from 
 serious argument which are characteristic of him. 
 Another questioner asked him if he believed in the 
 Immaculate Conception. "Of course I do," he 
 said. "I believe that all conceptions are immacu- 
 late!" The questioner was so paralysed by this 
 
 [235] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 reply that she sat down without pointing out to 
 him that the Catholic Church believes in the Im- 
 maculate Conception on the assumption that all 
 conceptions are not immaculate. On many oc- 
 casions, Mr. Shaw has brilliantly dodged the point 
 in that manner; but they are not occasions that 
 need be remembered against him. Ever and al- 
 ways he has given his best and hardest thought to 
 the service of mankind. He has practiced what 
 he preaches, and if we are thrown on the scrap- 
 heap, it will not be because Mr. Shaw has failed 
 to do his uttermost to help God to realise Himself. 
 What a shock it will be to him to find that the 
 scrap-heap is a more likeable place than his God's 
 heaven! 
 
 He is greatly generous to young men. Like 
 most of my contemporaries I have imposed upon 
 his good nature very often. I sent "Jane Clegg" 
 and "John Ferguson" in manuscript to him and 
 asked him if he would read them and tell me what 
 his opinion of them might be. Probably a dozen 
 or more young men were doing exactly the same 
 [236] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 thing with their MSS. He could spend the whole 
 of his time reading other men's plays, if he were 
 to let his good nature go uncontrolled. But he 
 read my plays and wrote long, valuable letters 
 of advice about them to me. I hesitate to mention 
 this fact lest it should cause an avalanche of MSS. 
 to fall upon him, but I am trying to draw his por- 
 trait, and unless I mention his generosity to young 
 men, the portrait will not be a faithful one. I 
 am under personal obligations to him of many 
 sorts, and I do not know of any man who so freely 
 helps his friends and says so little about it. He 
 is now sixty-six years old, but there are no signs 
 of age about him other than the fact that his hair 
 and his beard, once red, have turned white. He 
 still has the mind and eagerness of a young man. 
 His walk is as springy and alert as it was when I 
 first knew him, as I am sure it has always been. 
 When I see him in the street sometimes, tall, lean, 
 very tidy and almost foppish in an unusual way, 
 walking with great assurance and ease, examining 
 now and then his very shapely hands, and gazing 
 about him with that queer, quizzical, kindly look 
 in his pleasant eyes that is so significant of him, 
 I feel that although he is thirty years older than 
 [237] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 I am, according to the official records, he is, in 
 spirit, thirty years younger. He will never be old. 
 If he lives to be a centenarian, he will still be talk- 
 ing like a young man; and perhaps it is his ex- 
 traordinary youth and vitality, as much as his dis- 
 respect for established things, that draws young 
 men inevitably to him. His fearless, challenging 
 spirit attracted all those who were in revolt against 
 stagnant beliefs; and even now, when the multi- 
 tude seems to have caught up with him and his 
 views are less startling than they were a few years 
 ago, he still stimulates the minds of the young 
 and the eager and sends them bounding forward. 
 "You should so live," he once said, "that when you 
 die, God is in your debt!" He bids men and 
 women strive to put more into the common pool 
 than they take out, and he asserts with something 
 like moral fury that any one who is taking more 
 from the common pool than he puts in, is cheating 
 both God and man. There are querulous persons 
 who say that his work will not live. Their fore- 
 fathers probably said that Shakespeare's work 
 would not live, that Cervantes's work would not live, 
 that Fielding's work would not live, that Dickens's 
 work would not live; and no doubt they produced 
 [238] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 sound arguments to support their faith. Who 
 could have believed that "Don Quixote," a mere 
 skit on comtemporary novelettes, would win uni- 
 versal favour, or that "Pickwick Papers," mere 
 verbiage for a set of pictures drawn by a popular 
 artist, would live? Yet these local, topical, and 
 very contemporary things will not perish. Mr. 
 Shaw has indisputably affected the thoughts and 
 lives of thinking men and women on two continents 
 for thirty years. He is a very daring fellow who 
 asks us to believe that this brilliant, original, force- 
 ful mind will not continue to affect the thoughts 
 and lives of thinking men and women for genera- 
 tions to come. 
 
 [239] 
 
H. G. WELLS 
 
 There are men, such as Dr. Johnson, who are 
 mentally active and physically torpid, and there 
 are other men, such as Mr. Jack Johnson, who are 
 very alert physically, but not quite so alert in 
 their minds. It seldom happens that a man com- 
 bines great physical energy with great intellectual 
 energy. Such a man is Mr. Bernard Shaw. So 
 is Mr. H. G. Wells. I imagine that Mr. Wells is 
 more active, both in body and in mind, than Mr. 
 Shaw, despite the fact that the latter is the slender 
 man of the two and that his tongue works more 
 rapidly in conjunction with his brain; for Mr. Shaw 
 feels fatigue sooner than Mr. Wells. I doubt 
 whether Mr. Wells suffers from fatigue at all or to 
 any serious extent. He takes few, if any, holi- 
 days, works for many hours every day, plays 
 games very assiduously, and is unhappy if he has 
 not got some work on hand. He begins to write 
 a new book immediately he has completed its 
 [240] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 precedessor, having no belief, seemingly, in fallow 
 time. When he is not working or playing, he is 
 talking. His conversation has a curious resem- 
 blance in its shape, if I may use that word, to the 
 style of his writing. One listens for the suspended 
 sentence, for the dots with v/hich, in his prose, he 
 breaks a thought so that the reader may himself 
 complete it. Mr. Shaw once told me that he could 
 not work at creative writing for more than two 
 hours every day, and I suspect that he suffers more 
 from physical fatigue than he will admit. Mr. 
 Wetis works for considerably more than two hours 
 every day (and sometimes during the night) though 
 I do not suppose he works for two consecutive 
 hours at any time. If you are a guest in his 
 house, you will see him engaged in some game, 
 tennis or hockey or that wild game of his own in- 
 vention, "barn-ball," or perhaps playing demon 
 patience; and when you are inclined to imagine 
 that he is settling down to a long day of games, 
 you discover that he is no longer with the players, 
 but back in his study working on a manuscript. 
 
 One expects a certain amount of sluggishness 
 in every man, and probably there are days when 
 Mr. Wells's mind and body go to sleep or lie about 
 [241] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 supine, but I do not believe that any one has ever 
 seen him asleep or supine. His mind is so active 
 that one can almost see ideas leaping off his 
 tongue as he talks, and he has a very remarkable 
 capacity for engaging the attention of his auditors 
 without making any perceptible effort to do so. 
 His conversation, unlike that of Mr. Yeats or Mr. 
 George Moore, is unrehearsed conversation. It 
 has not the swift brilliance of Mr. Shaw's talk, 
 and it goes to its point rather jerkily, but it reaches 
 its destination. He is not so easily distracted 
 from his course as Mr. Gilbert Chesterton is, or 
 perhaps I ought to say that he does not take so long 
 to get to his destination. Mr. Chesterton seems to 
 me to be falling with great amiability on his sub- 
 ject, whereas Mr. Wells is eagerly struggling up 
 to it. Mr. Chesterton defers to others with great 
 courtesy, but his mind, I imagine, is already made 
 up. He listens to a controversialist, not because 
 he thinks he is likely to be converted to an oppo- 
 site opinion — he is fairly certain that he will not 
 be converted — but because he has excellent man- 
 ners and an exceptionally kindly character. It 
 is hard to believe that any man of merit is with- 
 out some malice in his nature, some element of 
 [242] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 cattishness, but if there is a man of merit without 
 these things then that man is Mr. Chesterton. If 
 he could bring himself to throttle the creature he 
 most detests, the international financier, the man 
 without a country, he would, I am sure, do so en- 
 tirely without prejudice. Mr. Wells listens, not 
 out of politeness, but in the hope that he will re- 
 ceive information, and this hope of his causes him 
 to listen very patiently even to bad or inexpert 
 talkers. He has the additional merit, rare among 
 men of genius, of being an uncommonly good host, 
 very punctilious about the comfort and pleasure 
 of his guests. He is a sociable man, mingling 
 easily with very various people, gregarious where 
 Mr. Yeats and Mr. Shaw are solitary, and he is 
 instinctively friendly. His hospitality is lavish 
 and with something of the Dickensian tradition in 
 it. He has none of the chilly aloofness of Mr. 
 Yeats nor of the shy constraint of Mr. Shaw nor 
 of the nervous coldness of Mr. Galsworthy. Were 
 it not for a degree of cruelty in his nature, I should 
 say that Mr. Chesterton and he were as near to 
 each other in temperament as any two men of 
 merit can be. It is this strain of cruelty in him 
 which makes him so attractive when he loses his 
 [243] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 temper, for he seems only to be witty when he is 
 about to hit some one very severely on the head. 
 I do not know any man who can lose his temper 
 in print with so much effect and so entertainingly 
 as Mr. Wells can lose his. He is hardly a witty 
 man, as Mr. Shaw and Mr. Yeats and even Mr. 
 Gilbert Chesterton are witty men, but he has a 
 neat, malicious humour which delights him as much 
 as it delights his friends, and is most often dis- 
 played when he is attacking some one. 
 
 II 
 
 If a writer wished to create a character who 
 would most aptly personify the past thirty years 
 of English or of world history, he would have to 
 create a character very like Mr. Wells: a question- 
 ing, variable, demanding person, with some im- 
 patience and testiness of temper, with, at times, a 
 fantastic and wayward manner, but always super- 
 imposed on these superficialities, an eager and un- 
 thwartable desire for a true belief. Mr. Chester- 
 ton said of him once that "you lie awake at night 
 and hear him grow," and fundamentally that is 
 true, in spite of the temptation one has at times to 
 [244] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 believe that one lies awake at night and merely 
 hears him changing his mind. One could, were 
 one silly enough to do so, construct a plausible 
 indictment of Mr. Wells of hurriedly accepting a 
 belief and as hurriedly rejecting it; but to do so 
 would be to charge oneself with a superficial mind. 
 Mr. Wells, in his eagerness to discover a reason- 
 able and sane society in which the spirit of man 
 may grow and develop and achieve, has sometimes 
 accepted a theory too swiftly, but his scientific 
 mind has come, sooner or later, to the rescue of 
 his eager heart and has caused him to reject pro- 
 posals which he had previously found acceptable. 
 In "First and Last Things" he decides against 
 the community of austere aristocrats who won his 
 advocacy in "A Modern Utopia." The self-dis- 
 regard of the Samurai of Japan had pleased him 
 as it must please all who contemplate it, and he 
 imagined a state in which the best men would gov- 
 ern "the average, sensual men," formulating their 
 laws and doctrines from the sanctuary of a sort 
 of monastic establishment in which their fleshly 
 desires would be chastened and perhaps elimi- 
 nated. Mr. Wells, having felt the allure of a se- 
 lect company of selfless aristocrats, devoting them- 
 [245] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 selves to the good government of less gifted nien, 
 soon discovered that good government cannot be 
 administered by men who are remote from the 
 emotions and desires of the governed and so, with 
 characteristic courage, he abandoned his Samurai 
 and boldly marched into the company of the crowd. 
 Can any one find ground for sneering in such be- 
 haviour as that? Are not those who try to find 
 solutions to puzzles more likely to be successful 
 in their efforts because Mr. Wells has offered one 
 solution and then, finding it useless, repudiated it 
 and tried another? 
 
 There was a time when he saw hope for the 
 world in the establishment of a universal language, 
 but I doubt whether he holds to that hope now. 
 A common speech does not keep men at peace any 
 more than a common purpose does, and, in any 
 event, man's incorrigible habit of localizing uni- 
 versal things until they cease to be universal tends 
 in time to make a common speech an impossible 
 possession. The Catholic Church has a common 
 speech in the Latin tongue, but an Italian priest 
 can preach to an English priest in that language 
 and remain incomprehensible. The British and 
 the American people have a common speech, but 
 [246] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 it has become so permeated with local words that 
 very often the two races are unintelligible to each 
 other, apart altogether from the difficulty of accent. 
 Mr. Wells has plunged into a few bog-holes of 
 that sort, but he has always extricated himself from 
 them, and less and less, as he develops, does he in- 
 sist upon uniformity and machinery, and more 
 and more does he insist on diversity and spirit. 
 "Let us be Catholi-cs in this great matter," Mr. 
 Birrell writes on Browning's poetry, "and bum 
 our candles at many shrines. In the pleasant 
 realms of poesy, no liveries are worn, no paths 
 prescribed; you may wander where you will, stop 
 where you like, and worship whom you love. 
 Nothing is demanded of you, save this, that in all 
 your wanderings and worships, you keep two ob- 
 jects steadily in view — two, and two only — truth 
 and beauty." It may fairly be said of Mr. Wells 
 that in all his "wanderings and worships" he has 
 tried to do so. 
 
 Ill 
 
 There is a photograph of Mr. Bernard Shaw 
 and Mr. H. G. Wells, taken by an American 
 [247] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 photographer, Mr. Alvin Langdon Coburn, in 
 which the two men are shown sitting side by side. 
 It is the most illuminating interpretation of their 
 characters that I have ever seen. Mr. Shaw, with 
 something of the look of a prophet, sits beside 
 Mr. Wells who has a smile of disbelief on his 
 face; Mr. Shaw shows a countenance full of faith, 
 while Mr. Wells shows one full of inquiry. Mr. 
 Shaw accepts the pose quite naturally, but Mr. 
 Wells is deprecating. I felt when I saw that 
 photograph in Mr. Wells's study that while Mr. 
 Shaw accepted the status of a great man as his 
 right, Mr. Wells felt uncomfortable about the pose, 
 not because he doubts his right to be regarded as 
 a great man, but because he is reluctant to live 
 on pedestals. "I'm human just as much as you 
 are," he seems to be saying to the photographer, 
 and the smile of deprecation on his face means, 
 if it means anything, that while Mr. Shaw accepts 
 the great man's altitude without a qualm, Mr. 
 Wells feels that die whole thing is humbug. 
 "Shaw is taken in by this Great Man business," 
 the Wells of the photograph says as plainly as if 
 the picture were to take life and utter words, "but 
 don't you imagine I'm deluded by it! . . ." 
 [248] 
 
 i 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 These two men, one Irish, one English, George 
 Bernard Shaw and Herbert George Wells, between 
 them have done more to influence the minds of 
 the young men of my generation than any other 
 two men of their time. Their attitude towards 
 life may, perhaps, be summarized in an account 
 of the way in which they interpret the doctrine 
 of Evolution. Mr. Shaw believes that the Life 
 Force, which ordinary men call God, is an Im 
 perfect Thing seeking to make Itself Perfect 
 How, when you contemplate the miseries and in 
 equalities and cruelties of existence, can you be 
 lieve in an All- Powerful God? he says. You mus 
 believe that these horrible things happen because 
 God cannot prevent them from happening. The 
 blind-alley argument that the Almighty inflicts pain 
 upon us for our good is insupportable when one 
 considers that an earthly father would not subject 
 his child to convulsions or cause a cancer to con- 
 sume its life or endow it with a cruel disposition if 
 such things were within his powers of disposal. If, 
 one reasonably argues, an earthly father is in- 
 capable of such acts, how less likely is God to 
 be capable of them if He be All-Powerful and All- 
 Good? Since these inexplicable cruelties and hor- 
 [249] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 rors occur and recur, surely, argues Mr. Shaw, it 
 is only common sense to assume that they do so in 
 spite of God's good will towards man. Starting 
 from this premise, he goes on to argue that God 
 seeks to obtain that control over material things 
 which He has not yet succeeded in obtaining. He 
 imagines God engaged in a magnificent research, 
 the discovery of a harmonious universe, much in 
 the way in which one imagines a biologist in his 
 laboratory seeking for a preventative of disease. 
 The Life Force uses such instruments for its pur- 
 pose as are to be found lying at hand. When these 
 prove abortive or useless or insufficient, the Life 
 Force invents a new instrument which it uses until 
 that instrument, too, is found to be useless or in- 
 adequate and is scrapped in favour of a new instru- 
 ment. Like all creators, God must express Him- 
 self through His creatures, and the whole of Time 
 has been spent so far in finding a suitable means 
 of expression. In the beginning, God used mam- 
 moth beasts, but finding them unsuitable for His 
 purpose. He scrapped them and invented other 
 creatures until at last He achieved His best instru- 
 ment, Man. God's latest and finest creature differs 
 from all His other creatures in this respect that ho 
 [250] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 is conscious of God's purpose and can help it for- 
 ward or hold it back. God concealed His inten- 
 tion from all the instruments that preceded the ad- 
 vent of Man, but, in the development of His Be- 
 ing, He found that greater advantage would ac- 
 crue to Him if He made His instrument aware of 
 its purpose. So we get the reason of Man. God, 
 before the creation of Man, had depended upon 
 Himself. After the creation of Man, he depended 
 partly upon Himself, partly upon His creature. 
 Man, in short, was the first of God's instruments 
 to huve the power to help God to realize Him- 
 self. To Mr. Shaw, it is an obscuring of God's 
 purpose for Man continually to pray, "God help 
 me!" when it is part of his purpose and duty to 
 affirm, "I will help God!" I have already quoted 
 his dictum that we should so live that when we 
 die, God is in our debt. 
 
 It is obvious, from this belief, that Mr. Shaw 
 does not believe in the inevitable march of man- 
 kind from bad to good and from good to better. 
 We may be marching towards Utopia or the New 
 Jerusalem, or we may be marching back to Chaos. 
 Man, having the choice between helping God and 
 thwarting Him, may so vex the Deity that He will 
 
 [251] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 become impatient with him and throw this instru- 
 ment away as he has thrown away other useless 
 instruments, and seek for a better one. God 
 scrapped the mammoth beasts because they were 
 not adequate for the execution of His design; He 
 may scrap Man for the same reason or because 
 Man, while adequate, wilfully refuses to help. 
 This theory is expressed continually in Mr. Shaw's 
 plays and prefaces, for example, in a speech by 
 Caesar in "Caesar and Cleopatra," where the Em- 
 peror gives expression to a violent antipathy to 
 war. War, in Mr. Shaw's mind, is a plain per- 
 version of God's purpose, and he would probably 
 declare that Man, in the Great War whose end 
 may yet be a bloody battle between the Allies, 
 almost reached the end of God's patience. In five 
 years, the British alone had eight hundred thou- 
 sand of her most valuable men killed, France 
 lost double that number killed, Germany lost 
 more even than France killed. All the potential- 
 ities for good, all the fervour and chivalry and 
 idealism and courage that was in those men, their 
 ability to help God to achieve perfection, has 
 vanished utterly from the world; and there is 
 nothing left of it. Most of them died without 
 [252] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 progeny, and so there is not even the hope that 
 their spirit has passed on to their children and 
 that, at the worst, God's purpose has only been 
 suspended for a generation. They have gone, ir- 
 retrievably gone. Another such war and Western 
 civilization must perish, if, indeed, it has not 
 already begun to decay. In other words, God, 
 sickened by Man's perversity and wilful obstruc- 
 tion, will have scrapped him. . . . 
 
 That is the Shavian doctrine of the Life Force, 
 put plainly and simply. 
 
 Mr. Wells differs very sharply from Mr. Shaw 
 in his doctrine. Mr. Shaw believes that the pro- 
 gress from bad to good is not inevitable: Mr. 
 Wells believes that it is, and he produces the rec- 
 ords of history to support his belief. Mankind, 
 at this moment, he will admit, is in a very bloody 
 mess, but that mess is not so frightful as, say, the 
 mess after the Thirty Years' War. We, who con- 
 template the organized Murder of Youth which be- 
 gan in August, 1914, may fairly feel that mankind 
 has sunk very low in barbarism, but when we sur- 
 vey the whole range of humanity so far as it has 
 been recorded, the depths of 1914, deep though 
 they are, appear to be slightly less dreadful than 
 [253] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 the depths of other days. There is a greater revolt 
 from organized Murder to-day than there was 
 after the Thirty Years' War. There are fewer peo- 
 ple to-day who prate about the glories of war 
 than there were then. (Oddly enough, or per- 
 haps naturally enough, most of the people who 
 still think of war as a jolly adventure live in Amer- 
 ica.) We are a little nearer to a realization of 
 the commandment, "Thou Shalt Not Kill" than we 
 were before 1914. We are learning that there are 
 no qualifications or exceptions to that command- 
 ment. It does not say, "Thou shalt not kill — ex- 
 cept in defence of small nationalities!" It does 
 not say, "Thou shalt not kill — except for the pur- 
 pose of self-determination!" It does not say, 
 "Thou shalt not kill — except for the establishment 
 of a Republic in Ireland!" It does not say, "Thou 
 shalt not kill — except for the purpose of preserving 
 the Empire!" Tersely and without modification, 
 it states that "Thou Shalt Not Kill" in any circum- 
 stances whatever. 
 
 Here is a dilemma from which the Christian can- 
 not easily escape, and the difficulty of doing so, 
 apart from all ordinary considerations of decency, 
 is bringing man sharply face to face with the fun- 
 [254] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 damentals of human existence. In spite of much 
 occasion for pessimism to-day, there is occasion 
 for greater optimism than man ever before has had. 
 There is a social consciousness at work in our 
 minds and hearts that will yet deliver us from the 
 wicked man. How few are the years since the 
 days when men in one part of England made war 
 on men in another part! How unthinkable it is 
 that men in Lancaster should make war to-day in 
 Yorkshire! True, it is less than a century since 
 men in the Northern States of America made war 
 on men in the Southern States. True, it is less 
 than ten years since men in Ulster prepared them- 
 selves to make war on men in the rest of Ireland. 
 True, at this moment, Russian fights Russian, and 
 Sinn Feiner slays Orangeman, and Orangeman 
 slays Sinn Feiner. True, that white man burns 
 black man, tliat Christian persecutes Jew, true all 
 this and worse, yet it remains true that when the 
 records of time are made up and just balances are 
 drawn in the accounts of Mankind, there is seen 
 to be a greater perception of common purpose to- 
 day than there was a century ago. 
 
 His scientific and historic sense keeps Mr. Wells 
 secure in his belief that Man, although he may 
 [255] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 hinder the development of God's purpose, cannot 
 thwart it. Mr. Shaw would perhaps agree with 
 Mr. Wells in his belief that God's Will must uhi- 
 mately find adequate expression, but he would in- 
 sist that that expression may be through another 
 instrument than man. Mr. Wells, however, would 
 not yield to him on this point; he would insist that 
 God's Will must ultimately find adequate expres- 
 sion through man. Man may, indeed be obliter- 
 ated by plague and pestilence or cosmic disaster, 
 but, failing those, man must achieve God's pur- 
 pose. 
 
 ly 
 
 When one brings the Wellsian doctrine down to 
 the details of life, one discovers what I may call 
 a local pessimism in it. The anger which breaks 
 out of his work is directed against the incom- 
 petence and stupidity of man which hold him back 
 from the desirable country towards which he is 
 marching. The greatest optimists — the men who 
 are convinced that man's end is good and seemly — 
 are almost always the most bitter pessimists when 
 they are considering contemporary affairs. The 
 [256] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 visionary loves mankind in the abstract so much 
 that when he contemplates mankind in the concrete 
 he loses his temper. The Utopian, full of his 
 dream of a decent and free civilization in which 
 every man may move easily to his proper station, 
 feels a dreadful depression when he looks upon 
 society as it exists here and now; and there are 
 times when, in spite of his sure and certain hope 
 that life will ultimately find its level, he feels that 
 man, that perverse, wayward, thwarting creature, 
 will never fulfil the promise of his potentialities 
 because he is too closely concerned with some tiny, 
 personal vanity, because he allows wickedness and 
 stupidity to influence him to a greater degree than 
 goodness and fine thought. Who, thinking over 
 the Big Four in Paris, and remembering that mil- 
 lions of young men of all nations died so that the 
 Big Four might meet and make a more enduring 
 peace than this world has yet known, can feel any- 
 thing but anger and humiliation at what thisy did? 
 Clemenceau, the "Tiger" who, having tasted blood, 
 seemed eager to taste more; Lloyd George, who 
 never remembers a friend or forgets an enemy; 
 Orlando, shamelessly extending his itching palm; 
 and Wilson, the man who went to Europe to ask 
 [257] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 for the moon and returned to America, having ac- 
 cepted a match . . . can any of us, contempla- 
 ting those four men, given by God the greatest op- 
 portunity that has ever been offered to men, that 
 may ever be offered to men, help feeling that this 
 world is dead and damned and that the sooner a 
 disgusted God smashes it to pieces, the better will 
 be the universe? Mr. Wells cannot escape, any 
 more than the rest of us, this tendency to despair 
 of human effort, and here and there in his books 
 his local pessimism is expressed ; but his universal 
 optimism remains unimpaired, and one comes 
 away from his writings in the knowledge that he 
 believes that man sooner or later will achieve a 
 high destiny. He whips the stupid and the selfish 
 and the idle, but he will not permit them to per- 
 suade him from his belief that even out of these 
 elements, a finer Man will yet be made. 
 
 There is a cartoon by Mr. Max Beerbohm in 
 which he shows himself being conducted through a 
 gallery where Mr. Wells, Mr. Shaw, Mr. Gals- 
 worthy, Mr. Bennett and many other eminent 
 [258] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 writers are standing on inverted tubs, haranguing 
 the universe. Having listened to the preachers 
 and propagandists, Mr. Beerbohm turns to his 
 guide and says, "But where are the artists?" only 
 to be informed that ''These are the artists!" It 
 has been said that Mr. Shaw would rather be known 
 as a great political economist than as a great dram- 
 atist, that Mr. Arnold Bennett would rather be 
 known as an eminent business man than as an em- 
 inent novelist, that Mr. Galsworthy would prefer to 
 be a reformer than a man of letters, and that Mr. 
 Wells seeks fame as a sociologist and not as an 
 artist. There is enough truth in this statement to 
 give pause to those about whom it is made, but not 
 sufficient to frighten us who admire them. Mr. 
 Wells, for example, can no more elude artistry than 
 he can refrain from thinking. He is extraordina- 
 rily indifferent to literary style, seems almost to de- 
 light in making a clumsy sentence rather than a 
 shapely one, and, so far as one can discover, does 
 not spend a single second on "finding the right 
 word." The idea is his chief concern, and he cares 
 very little for the way in which it is expressed. 
 Nevertheless, he remains an artist, with a gift for 
 apt expressions and a far greater gift for 
 [259] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 selection. In one of his books, he describes the 
 prostitute as "that painted disaster of the street." 
 In "First and Last Things," in describing the ina- 
 bility of the intellect to free itself from bias, he 
 says, "the forceps of the mind is a clumsy instru- 
 ment and crushes the truth a little in seizing it." 
 At the end of "Tono-Bungay" there is an account of 
 a trip down the Thames which is among the great 
 pieces of prose writing. In "The Undying Fire," 
 he gives an account of the purposeless cruelty of 
 Nature and an account of the state of mind of a 
 young German who goes from his remote village to 
 join the Army at the beginning of the war, full of 
 patriotic ardour, offering for this service and for 
 that until at last he becomes a member of the crew 
 of a submarine and his patriotism suffers a sea- 
 change and becomes the desperate courage of a 
 rat in a trap . . . and these two accounts are so 
 vivid that it is impossible for any one to rise from 
 them unaware that they have been written by a man 
 of genius, possessed of artistry. 
 
 He is probably the most prolific writer of his 
 quality in the world, and if I had exact knowledge 
 of the world's greatest authors, I should probably 
 [260] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 say that he is the most varied of them. Consider 
 how very dissimilar his books are in range and 
 interest. Consider that the man who wrote "The 
 Time Machine," wrote also "The History of Mr. 
 Polly" and the "The Undying Fire." How many 
 writers have shown such variety as has been shown 
 by the author of "The War in the Air," "Kipps" 
 (that beautiful and tender book), "Tono-Bungay" 
 and "The Soul of a Bishop." At one moment, 
 Mr. Wells is writing "Bealby" and at the next, he 
 is writing "God, the Invisible King." He turns 
 from "The Wonderful Visit" to "The Outline His- 
 tory of the World," and writes "The Future in 
 America" in the trail of "Love and Mr. Lewisham." 
 ("The Future in America" is perhaps the best 
 book of its kind that has ever been written on the 
 problems that lie before the American people.) 
 Queen Victoria, having been enchanted by "Alice 
 in Wonderland," sent to a book-seller for the re- 
 mainder of "Lewis Carroll's" writings, and was 
 considerably disconcerted when she received 
 "Plane Trigonometry" and "Curiosa Mathemat- 
 ica" by the Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. 
 What that excellent old lady would have thought, 
 [261] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 if having read and liked "The Sea Lady," she had 
 been supplied with "Mankind in the Making" and 
 "The Island of Dr. Moreau" and "Joan and Peter" 
 by the same author, I cannot imagine. Mr. Wells 
 faces life very fairly and squarely, regarding it 
 from all angles of vision. There is only one 
 Truth, but it may be approached by many different 
 paths; and Mr. Wells has attempted most of them. 
 It may seem to some of his readers at times that 
 he is running away from things towards which he 
 formerly ran, but it is more likely that he is merely 
 trying another way of getting to the same point. 
 
 VI 
 
 One remembers men by odd things. I remem- 
 ber Mr. Yeats chiefly as a dark image, obscurely 
 seen, and Mr. Shaw as a shy, erect man with fine, 
 shapely hands, who talks emphatically because 
 otherwise he would not be talking at all. I remem- 
 ber Mr. Galsworthy as one who is biting his lips 
 or clenching his teeth lest he should say too much, 
 and Mr. George Moore as one who is consumed 
 with the fear that he will not say enough. Mr. 
 Wells comes into my mind as an eager, friendly 
 [262] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 man, whose speech, thinly uttered, suggests contin- 
 ual testing. But mostly I remember his fine eyes 
 because it is in them that most of his strength is 
 stored. 
 
 [263] 
 
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS 
 
 I 
 
 I HAVE been acquainted with Mr. Yeats for a 
 longer time than I have with any other man named 
 in this book, but I seem to myself to know very little 
 about him, for he is extraordinarily aloof from life. 
 His aloofness is different from that of Mr. Gals- 
 worthy who is perturbed about mankind. Mr. 
 Yeats is totally unconcerned about problems of 
 any sort. He is more interested in the things men 
 do than in men themselves. He prefers the symbol 
 to the thing symbolized. The harshest condem- 
 nation I ever heard him utter was delivered on 
 "A. E." of whom he said that he had ceased to be 
 a poet in order to become a philanthropist! I met 
 him last in Chicago, and I felt when we parted that 
 I knew no more of him then than I knew when I 
 first met him ten years earlier. Our meeting fol- 
 lowed on the fact that I had sent a one-act play, 
 entitled "The Magnanimous Lover," to him. It 
 seems to me now to be a crudely-contrived, ill-writ- 
 [264] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 ten and violent piece, but when I sent it to Mr. 
 Yeats I thought it was a remarkable work. It was 
 performed after the production of Stanley Hough- 
 ton's "Hindle Wakes" and Mr. Galsworthy's "The 
 Eldest Son," which have similar themes, but was 
 written several years before they were performed. 
 One evening, a few weeks after I had sent the manu- 
 script of "The Magnanimous Lover" to him, I re- 
 ceived a letter from Mr. Yeats, written in that 
 queer, illegible, thick style which is so difficult to 
 read. Many of the words were incomplete: all of 
 them were badly-formed. The contrast between 
 the handwriting of Mr. Shaw and Mr. Yeats is re- 
 markable. Mr. Shaw's is very clear and neat and 
 most beautifully-shaped, as delicate as a spider's 
 web, but Mr. Yeats's writing is obscure, untidy, 
 sprawling and hard to decipher, looking as if it 
 had been done with a blunt pen. Mr. Wells writes 
 in a small, clean, but not very clear hand, a decep- 
 tive fist, for it seems easier to read than it is. 
 There is some oddness in the fact that the hand- 
 writing of the poet should be so coarse and un- 
 gainly, while the handwriting of the dramatist, with 
 so little of poetic emotion in him, is fine and 
 shapely. The letter from Mr. Yeats was to say 
 [265] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 that he liked my play, but could not make a definite 
 decision about it until he had consulted his co-di- 
 rector at the Abbey Theatre, Lady Gregory. It 
 had the formal, distant tone which is characteristic 
 of his speech and writing, but it had a postscript 
 which gave me great pleasure. In this postscript, 
 he said that my play was the only example of "way- 
 ward realism" that he had ever read. I did not 
 quite understand what he meant by the phrase, but 
 it was a compliment from a distinguished man and 
 compliments from distinguished men had never 
 come my way before. I have had many praising 
 letters from him since then about my work, but 
 none that ever raised me to such a state of dizzy de- 
 light as that first letter did. He told me, in an- 
 other postscript, that he found in my "dialogue a 
 quality of temperament, as distinguished from the 
 usual impersonal logic. You have more than con- 
 struction, and it is growing rare to have more." 
 He thought highly of "John Ferguson" — so did 
 Mr. Shaw and "A. E." — and when I was attacked 
 in Dublin because of this play, I comforted myself 
 with the thought that my betters liked what was 
 denounced by my inferiors. Mr. Yeats wrote to 
 [266] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 me that "John Ferguson" was "a fragment of life, 
 fully expounded and without conventionality or 
 confusion. I think it is the best play you have 
 done, though not likely to be the most popular." 
 His criticism is especially valuable when it is ad- 
 verse. I had written a play called "Mrs. Martin's 
 Man" which I now know to have been a dreadful 
 mess of motives. I sent it to Mr. Yeats in the 
 hope that he would permit it to be done at the 
 Abbey. He wrote lengthily to me about it, and 
 when I had read his letter I put my play in the 
 fire, though afterwards I used the theme, purged 
 of the faults he had found in it, for a novel with 
 the same title. "I believe," he wrote, 
 
 "I believe that the play is an error. I am very sorry 
 indeed to say this, for I know what a blow it is to any 
 dramatist to be told that about work which must have 
 taken many weeks. Shaw has driven you off your 
 balance, and instead of giving a vision of life, which is 
 your gift and a most remarkable gift to have, you have 
 begun to be topical, to play with ideas, to construct out- 
 side of life. Shaw has a very unique mind, a mind that 
 is a part of a logical process going on all over Europe 
 but which has found in him alone its efficient expression 
 in English. He has no vision of life. He is a figure of 
 international argument. There is an old saying, "No 
 [267] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 angel can carry two messages. Yjou have the greater 
 gift of seeing life itself. ..." 
 
 I print that extract from his letter, partly as 
 a corrective to my own pride, but chiefly because 
 of its commentary on Mr. Shaw. Later, in this 
 chapter I will make specific reference to Mr. 
 Yeats's relationship to Mr. Shaw's work, but here 
 I may say that, in spite of his sincere regard and 
 admiration for Mr. Shaw, Mr. Yeats seems to be 
 totally incapable of comprehending his work. He 
 is able to communicate with ghosts, but he cannot 
 communicate with Mr. Shaw. He can understand 
 astrologers and necromancers and spiritualists and 
 thimble-riggers of all sorts and conditions, but he 
 cannot understand Mr. Shaw. He told me on one 
 occasion of an experience he had with a medium, 
 a young girl who diff*ered from all other mediums 
 known to him in being a member of the upper class. 
 The spirits, seemingly, prefer to communicate their 
 messages through the lower orders. This girl's 
 family were ashamed of her cataleptic powers and 
 tried to conceal them from their neghbours, but 
 they were persuaded to permit Mr. Yeats to see her 
 in a trance. "While she was in the trance," he 
 said to me, "her fingers closed on her palm. Then 
 [268] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 they opened again, and I saw a small green pebble 
 in the centre of her palm!" That was all! Im- 
 mortal souls had disturbed the harmony of the uni- 
 verse and thrown a young girl of the upper class 
 into a trance in order that they might place a 
 small green pebble in the centre of her palm! 
 And Mr. Yeats saw something wonderful and 
 significant in that performance, but is unable to 
 see anything significant in the work of Mr. Shaw. 
 That to me is a thing so incomprehensible that I 
 have abandoned all attempts to understand it. But 
 all of this is digression and anticipation. Soon 
 after I had received the letter in which he praised 
 my "wayward realism," I heard from Mr. Yeats 
 again. He invited me to call on him on the follow- 
 ing Sunday evening at his rooms in Woburn 
 Buildings, behind the Euston Road, in London; and 
 thither, in a state of some excitement, I repaired. 
 I had no trouble in finding the house, for Mr. 
 Yeats, who, in some ways, is much more precise 
 and clear-minded than people imagine or his hand- 
 writing indicates, had given me very explicit di- 
 rections how to get to it, and had even drawn a 
 rough sketch of the neighbourhood so that I should 
 not fail to find him. Woburn Buildings consists 
 [269] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 of a number of tall houses in a narrow passage off 
 Southampton Row, and running parallel with the 
 Euston Road. It is a dingy, dark place, with an 
 air of furtive poverty about it, and on Sunday 
 nights it is depressing enough to fill a man's mind 
 with plots for drab dramas. I have heard that 
 H. G. Wells thought of the plot of that clever, devil- 
 ish story of his, "The Island of Dr. Moreau," in the 
 Tottenham Court Road on a Bank Holiday when 
 he was in a mood of discontent. I believe that 
 the whole of the "drab drama" was first conceived 
 on Mr. Yeats's doorstep! 
 
 Shops form the ground floor of these houses, 
 little, huckstering shops that just contrive to sup- 
 port their proprietors, and Mr. Yeats's rooms were 
 on the third and fourth floors of a house which had 
 a cobbler's shop on the ground floor. The cob- 
 bler was a pleasant, bearded man, wearing spec- 
 tacles who had some share in the management of 
 his affairs; for when one, unable to obtain admis- 
 sion to the poet's rooms, required information 
 about him, the cobbler invariably supplied it. He 
 could tell whether Mr. Yeats had gone to Ire- 
 land or was merely taking the air, and when he 
 was likely to return, and he would off'er, with great 
 [270] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 courtesy, to take a message from you to be faith- 
 fully delivered to him on his arrival. 
 
 Mr. Yeats has poor and failing sight, and in the 
 dusk of the Sunday evening on which I called on 
 him, he could barely discern me. He stood in 
 the hall, holding the door, looking very tall and 
 dark, and said in that peculiar, tired and plaintive 
 voice of his, "Who is it?" and I answered "St. John 
 Ervine." There is always something conspira- 
 torial about the manner in which he admits you 
 to his rooms. You felt that you want to give the 
 countersign. 
 
 "Oh, yes!" he said, without any interest, and 
 bade me enter. 
 
 In one of his books, he writes that life seems to 
 him to be a preparation for something that never 
 happens ; and the quality of his voice suggests that 
 thwarted desire which is expressed in so much of 
 his work. He is, in poetry, what Mr. Galsworthy 
 is, in fiction: he surrenders to life. I do not 
 know of any one who can speak verse so beautifully 
 and yet so depressingly as he can. The very 
 great beauty that is in all his work does not stir 
 you: it saddens you. There is no sunrise in his 
 writing: there is only sunset. In his lyrics, there 
 [271] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 is the cadence of fatigue and of the lethargy that 
 comes partly from disappointment, partly from 
 loneliness, partly from doubt, and partly from in- 
 ^ertia. "Innisfree," the beauty of which has not 
 been diminished by familiarity, does not sound 
 glad: it sounds tired. The poet's wish to return 
 to the lake island is not due to any pleasurable 
 emotion, but to weariness and exhaustion: he 
 dreams of the island, not as a place in which to 
 work and to achieve, but in which to retire from 
 work and achievement that has not brought with it 
 the gratification for which he hoped; and the final 
 impression left on the mind of the reader is that 
 the poet is too tired and disappointed to do more 
 than wish that he might go to Innisfree. One reads 
 the beautiful poem in the sure and certain belief 
 that Mr. Yeats will not "arise and go now, and go 
 to Innisfree," but that he will remain where 
 he is. There is no impulse or movement in the 
 poem: there is only a passive wish and a plaintive 
 resignation. 
 
 And all that inertia and negation and inactive 
 desire is sounded in his voice. It is very palpable 
 in his manner. 
 
 He warned me not to make a noise as I ascended 
 [272] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 the uncarpeted stairs: the people on the second 
 floor might be disturbed. They were working- 
 people, I understood, and either there was a fret' 
 ful baby asleep or the people retired early because 
 they had to rise early, and he did not wish to 
 break their rest. Yeats can be very harsh and 
 inconsiderate with his associates, but his bearing 
 to poor men and women, in my experience, is very 
 courteous and very considerate. He could not 
 have been more gracious to a duchess — he probably 
 was sometimes less gracious to a duchess — than he 
 was to the middle-aged woman who cooked his 
 meals and kept his rooms clean. I have seen 
 distinguished men being gracious to poor, unlet- 
 tered men, but most of them had an air of . . . 
 not exactly condescension in doing so, but of alter- 
 ing their attitude slightly, of relaxing and unbend- 
 ing, of modifying their style, as it were, and mak- 
 ing it simpler. I did not observe any effort at 
 condescension in his manner towards that plain 
 and simple woman. He spoke to her in the same 
 way that he would speak to "A. E." or to Lady 
 Gregory. I suppose that Queen Victoria was the 
 only woman in the world to whom Yeats ever spoke 
 in a condescending fashion. 
 [273] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 II 
 
 He is a tall man, with dark hanging hair that is 
 now turning grey, and he has a queer way of focus- 
 sing when he looks at you. I do not know what 
 is the defect of sight from which he suffers, but 
 it makes his way of regarding you somewhat dis- 
 turbing. He has a poetic appearance, entirely 
 physical, and owing nothing to any eccentricity of 
 dress ; for, apart from his neck-tie, there is nothing 
 odd about his clothes. It is not easy to talk to 
 him in a familiar fashion, and I imagine that he 
 has difficulty in talking easily on common topics. 
 I soon discovered that he is not comfortable with 
 individuals: he needs an audience to which he can 
 discourse in a pontifical manner. If he is com- 
 pelled to remain in the company of one person for 
 any length of time, he begins to pretend that the 
 individual is a crowd listening to him. His talk is 
 seldom about common-place things: it is either in a 
 high and brilliant style or else it is full of rem- 
 iniscences of dead friends. I do not believe that 
 any one in this world has ever spoken familiarly 
 to him or that any one has ever slapped him on the 
 back and said "Helloa, old chap!" His relatives 
 [274] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 and near friends call him "Willie" but it has al- 
 ways seemed to me that they do so with an effort, 
 that they feel that they ought to call him "Mr. 
 Yeats!" I doubt very much whether he takes any 
 intimate interest in any human being. It may be, 
 of course, that he took less interest in me than he 
 took in any one else for I am not a very interesting 
 person ; but I always felt that when I left his pres- 
 ence, it was immaterial to him whether he ever saw 
 me again or not. I felt that, on my hundredth 
 meeting with him, I should be no nearer intimacy 
 with him than I was on my first meeting. My van- 
 ity has since been soothed by the knowledge that 
 he has given a similar impression regarding them- 
 selves to other people who know him better than I 
 do. I have seen him come suddenly into the pres- 
 ence of a man whom he had known for many years, 
 and greet him awkwardly as if he did not know 
 what to say. He never offers his hand to a friend: 
 he will often stand looking at one without speaking, 
 and then bow and pass on, with perhaps a fumbled 
 "Good evening!" but never with a "How are you?" 
 or "Fm glad to see you!" 
 
 It is, I suppose, the result of some natural clum- 
 siness of manner. He has trained himself to an 
 [275] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 elegance of demeanour, an elaborate courteous- 
 ness, which is very pleasing to a stranger, but he 
 has spent so much time in achieving this elegance 
 that he has forgotten or never learned how to greet 
 a friend. 
 
 He was expecting other people to come to his 
 rooms that Sunday evening. ... I remember he 
 mentioned that Madame Maud Gonne McBride was 
 expected to arrive in London from Paris on her 
 way to Ireland, and might call on her way to 
 Euston Station . . . but no one else came. He 
 talked to me about my play and told me that he 
 liked it very much, but that Lady Gregory did not 
 greatly care for it. "She is a realist herself," he 
 said, "and all realists hate each other. Synge 
 would have disliked your play, and Robinson does 
 not like it, but I do!" (Lennox Robinson, himself 
 a dramatist, was then manager of the Abbey The- 
 atre.) He asked me if I had written any other 
 plays, and I told him that I was half-way through 
 a four-act play, called "Mixed Marriage," and I 
 described the theme of it to him. He urged me 
 to complete this play and bring the MS. to his 
 rooms and read it to him. "The difficulty about 
 'The Magnanimous Lover,' " he said, "is that it 
 [276] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 may provoke some disturbance among the au- 
 dience, and as our patent expires shortly we do 
 not wish to give the authorities any ground for 
 refusing to renew it. They were very angry over 
 our production of Bernard Shaw's 'Blanco Posnet' 
 after the Censor refused to license it in England. 
 We'll leave the production of 'The Magnanimous 
 Lover' until the patent has been renewed. If your 
 new play were ready, we could do it first and 
 create a public for you! ..." 
 
 Mr. Yeats is one of the best advertising agents 
 in the world, and I did not doubt his ability to 
 "create a public" for me, although I thought that 
 Lady Gregory would probably be more skilful 
 even that he could be. When one remembers that 
 she has established a considerable reputation as a 
 dramatist on two continents entirely on the strength 
 of half-a-dozen one-act plays, it is impossible to 
 doubt that she is at least as skilful as he in draw- 
 ing attention to herself. A great amount of their 
 advertising energy has, of course, been expended 
 on the Abbey Theatre and the Irish Literary Ren- 
 aissance, and a great many Irish writers, myself 
 included, have derived advantage, personal and 
 pecuniary, from their activities. It would have 
 [277] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 been better for us, perhaps, if Mr. Yeats had em- 
 ployed his critical ability more freely than his 
 eulogy on our work. There is an immense 
 amount of creative power in Ireland, but it is raw, 
 untutored, tumid stuff, and because the critical fac- 
 ulty in Ireland is almost negligible, this creative 
 power is wasted in violent explosive plays and 
 books or violent, explosive beliefs. 
 
 I have always believed in the interdependence 
 of all men and minds. It seems to me that an ill- 
 conceived, foolish political scheme must in some 
 manner react on every other department of man's 
 life, and that the labourer who is doing his job 
 badly in a remote village is in some measure ad- 
 versely affecting the welfare of his countrymen 
 miles away. Violent, crude plays are inevitable 
 in a land of violent, crude beliefs; and it is, I 
 think, not without significance that some of the most 
 violent, crude plays in the Abbey repertory were 
 written by dramatists who professed the violent, 
 crude beliefs of Sinn Fein. When one thinks of 
 the generosity and courage and nobility of many 
 of the Sinn Feiners, it is hard not to lose faith in 
 human perfectibility when one considers how fool- 
 ish are the political schemes they devise. If men 
 [278] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 SO good and exalted as these men are can produce 
 schemes so stupid and sometimes so cruel, how can 
 we hope for any progress in the world when we 
 remember how many bad men there are? And 
 have we not seen how men of lofty ideals can 
 tumble into cruelty and become brutal ruffians in 
 the name of patriotism? 
 
 Ill 
 
 But there is an explanation of all this crudity 
 and violence in Ireland. For all sorts of reasons, 
 political, social, historical and religious, the criti- 
 cal faculty has rarely been employed and certainly 
 has not been developed. Either you are for a 
 thing or you are against it. Doubt is treated as 
 if it were antagonism. Reluctance to commit one- 
 self to any scheme however fantastic or ill-con- 
 sidered it may be, is treated as treason to the na- 
 tional spirit. A man who asserts his belief in the 
 establishment of an Irish Republic, by force, if 
 necessary, is an Irishman, even though he be a 
 "dago," and any one who is doubtful of the feas- 
 ibility of this proposal is denounced as a West 
 Briton, an anglicised Irishman, even, on occasions, 
 [279] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 as "not Irish at all," although his forbears have 
 lived in Ireland for generations. The state of af- 
 fairs in Ireland is not unlike the state of affairs in 
 Russia, where literary criticism, as a Russian 
 writer has stated, has always tended to be the 
 handmaid of political faction. "Any writer of 
 sufficient talent" says a reviewer in the Times 
 Literary Supplement, "who adopted a liberal at- 
 titude was certain of the appreciation of the in* 
 telligentsia s acknowledged critical leaders, and 
 hence of a wide and enthusiastic audience. But 
 writers whose instinct for the truth led them to 
 doubt the sufficiency of doctrinaire discontent with 
 the established order were debarred from the aids 
 to literary advancement, and had to struggle 
 against the grain of popular, and even academic, 
 valuation." 
 
 It is even worse than that in Ireland, for there, 
 generally speaking, there is hardly any criticism 
 at all, although there is plenty of abuse. In great 
 measure this lack of criticism is due to the fact 
 that all the mind of Ireland has been obsessed by 
 the demand for, or the opposition to, self-govern- 
 ment. There has not been any reality in Irish 
 electoral contests for a great many years. Until 
 [280] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 the growth of Sinn Fein, there seldom were any 
 contests at all. Candidates for parliament were 
 nearly always returned unopposed. Contests, if 
 there were any, were between one Nationalist and 
 another, concerned with matters of detail and not 
 with matters of principle, or, at the most, between 
 a Nationalist and a Unionist, concerned with the 
 advocacy of, or opposition to. Home Rule. Sinn 
 Fein has, indeed, brought a contest to every con- 
 stituency, but even here the contest is concerned 
 with the old obsession, self-government in one form 
 or self-government in another: Home Rule within 
 the British Commonwealth or a Republic outside 
 it. If one considers that this obsession was nearly 
 always expressed in bitter language, it is not dif- 
 ficult to understand how deplorable its effects have 
 been on the general life of the Irish people. It 
 has temporarily incapacitated them from judging 
 any proposition in a sane and dispassionate fash- 
 ion; and so the critical faculty in Ireland has 
 languished until at times one fears that it has de- 
 cayed. 
 
 Mr. Yeats is a great creative artist: he is also 
 a great critic. Had he chosen to do so, he could 
 have had an enormous influence on the minds of 
 [281] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 his countrymen. His pride in his craft, his de- 
 sire for perfect work, his contempt for subterfuges 
 and makeshifts and ill-considered schemes, his 
 knowledge and his skill, all these would have af- 
 fected the faith and achievements of his country- 
 men, imperceptibly, perhaps, but very surely. It 
 is unfortunate that he was not appointed to the 
 Chair of Literature in Trinity College, Dublin. I 
 know that he wished to receive this appointment 
 and was disappointed that he did not receive it. 
 The mind that might have disciplined and devel- 
 oped the imagination of young Irishmen was re- 
 jected by Trinity College, and it has turned to tire- 
 some preoccupation with disembodied beings, to 
 table-turning and ouija-boards and the childish 
 investigation of what is called spiritual phenom- 
 ena, but is, in fact, mere conjurer's stuff. 
 
 IV 
 
 I saw Mr. Yeats many times after that first visit. 
 He told me that he was always at home to his 
 friends on Monday evening, and he invited me to 
 dine with him on the Monday immediately follow- 
 ing the Sunday on which I first met him. No one 
 came on that evening. He talked about acting 
 [282] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 and the theatre, and I said something that pleased 
 him, and he complimented me in his grave, courte- 
 ous manner. "That was well said," he exclaimed, 
 and I flushed with pleasure. The praise of one 
 distinguished man is more than the applause of 
 a multitude of common men. His talk about the 
 theatre, though interesting, was often remote from 
 reality. He was then interested in the more 
 esoteric forms of drama, and was eager to put 
 masks on the actors' faces. He wished to elimin- 
 ate the personality of the player from the play, 
 and had borrowed some foolish notions from Mr. 
 Gordon Craig about lighting and scenery and de- 
 humanised actors. He had a model of the Abbey 
 Theatre in his rooms and was fond of experiment- 
 ing with it. There was some inconsistency in his 
 talk about acting: at one moment he was anxious 
 for anonymous, masked players, "freed" from 
 personality, and at the next moment, he was de- 
 manding that players should act with their entire 
 bodies, not merely with their voices and faces. 
 Hazlitt, advocates anonymity on the stage, and 
 when one considers how excessive is the regard 
 paid to-day to the actor in comparison with that 
 paid to the play, one is tempted to support Haz- 
 [283] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 litt's demand; but I have never understood why 
 one should decline to exploit a personality that is 
 rare. 
 
 There is a school of thinkers which holds that 
 the best theatre is that one in which a player may 
 be the hero of the piece to-night and the "voice 
 off" to-morrow night. This is a ridiculous theory. 
 Even if it were practicable, which it is not, it would 
 be a disgraceful waste of material. The manager 
 who consented to a proposal that Madame Sarah 
 Bernhardt should play the part of the servant with 
 one line to say would be an ass and a wastrel. 
 It is, perhaps, unfair to treat a man's "table-talk" 
 as if it were a serious proposal, and I once got 
 into trouble with Mr. Gordon Craig for doing this; 
 but so much of Mr. Yeats's talk and writing is re- 
 lated to this matter of disembodiment and passion- 
 less action, that it is difficult not to treat it seri- 
 ously. For my part, I have always been unable 
 to understand how it is possible for a human 
 being to behave as if he were not a human being. 
 
 Most of the talking was done by Mr. Yeats, and 
 
 he talked extraordinarily well. He is one of the 
 
 best talkers I have ever listened to, in spite of 
 
 the fact that his conversation tends to become a 
 
 [284] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 monologue. But if you cannot talk well your- 
 self, you are wise to listen to a man who can. He 
 spoke at length about the men who had been his 
 friends when he was a young man : of Oscar Wilde 
 and Aubrey Beardsley and Arthur Symons and 
 Lionel Johnson and Ernest Dowson ; of Henley and 
 Whistler and Mr. Bernard Shaw and of a host of 
 others. He had a puzzled, bewildered admira- 
 tion for "that strange man of genius, Bernard 
 Shaw," but I never felt that he understood Mr. 
 Shaw or was happy with Mr. Shaw's mind. He 
 could not make head or tail of "John Bull's Other 
 Island" when he read it in MS. Mr. Shaw, in a 
 debate with Mr. Belloc, which I had heard a night 
 or two before the meeting with Mr. Yeats, had 
 said "I am a servant," and this statement pleased 
 Mr. Yeats very much. He was moved by the hu- 
 mility of it. Mr. Shaw, however, hardly entered 
 into Mr. Yeats's early life, and most of the talk that 
 evening was about Beardsley and Wilde and Lionel 
 Johnson and Ernest Dowson and the members of 
 the Rhymers' Club. "Most of them," he said, 
 "died of drink or went out of their minds!" 
 
 It was late when I prepared to leave him. He 
 had been saying that a man should always associate 
 [285] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 with his equals and superiors and never with 
 his inferiors, when I recollected that the hour 
 was late and that I might miss the last tram from 
 the Thames Embankment and so have to walk 
 several miles. I was tired, too, and a little de- 
 pressed, for he seemed to be a lonely man and an 
 uneasy man. He had survived all his friends, 
 but had not succeeded in making any intimacy with 
 their successors. I sometimes feel about him that 
 he is a lost man wandering around looking for 
 his period. When I had announced that I was 
 going home, he astonished me by saying that he 
 would walk part of the way with me. He had 
 not had any exercise all day and felt that he needed 
 some air and movement. (He hates open windows 
 and always keeps his tightly closed.) We walked 
 to the Embankment together, saying little, for 
 silence had fallen on him, and walked along it 
 for a short while. I said some banal thing about 
 Waterloo Bridge, but he did not make any answer; 
 and I did not speak again, but contented myself 
 with observing the difference between his walk 
 when he is moving slowly and his walk when he 
 is moving quickly. He is very dignified in his 
 movements when he walks slowly: he holds his 
 [286] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 head erect and carries his hands tightly clenched 
 behind his back; but when he begins to move 
 quickly, the dignity disappears and his walk be- 
 comes a tumbling shuffle. That, I suppose, is be- 
 cause of his poor sight. 
 
 My tram came along, and I said "Good-night" 
 to him, and he answered "Good-night" in a vague 
 fashion. I think he had completely forgotten me. 
 
 He had told me that he was going on the fol- 
 lowing day to Manchester to lecture to some society'' 
 there, and I was sufficiently interested in his opin- 
 ions to get a copy of the "Manchester Guardian" 
 containing a report of what he had said. I was 
 amused to find that his lecture was a repetition 
 of all that he had said to me on the Monday before 
 the day on which he lectured. He had "tried it 
 on the dog," and I was the dog. All his speeches 
 are carefully rehearsed before they are publicly 
 delivered. He told me once that Oscar Wilde 
 rehearsed his conversation in the morning and 
 then, being word-perfect, went forth in the evening 
 to speak it. I imagine that he does that, too, on 
 [287] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 occasions. It is a laudable thing to do in many 
 respects, although it tends to make talk somewhat 
 formal and liable to be scattered by an interrup- 
 tion. When Mr. Yeats rehearses a speech before 
 making it in public, he is paying a great tribute 
 to his audience by declining to offer them scamped 
 or hastily-contrived opinions. Those who listen 
 to him may be deceived into believing that he is 
 speaking spontaneously, but they may be certain 
 that what he says has been carefully considered, 
 that he is speaking of things over which he has 
 pondered and not just "saying the first thing that 
 comes into his head." 
 
 Most men of letters do something of this sort. 
 I have listened to Mr. Moore saying things which 
 I subsequently read in the preface to the revised 
 version of one of his novels; and I remember 
 meeting "A. E." in Nassau Street, Dublin, one 
 evening and being told a great deal about co-opera- 
 tion which I read in his paper, "The Irish Home- 
 stead" on the following morning. 
 
 I saw Mr. Yeats many times after that. I com- 
 pleted the MS. of "Mixed Marriage" and, much 
 embarrassed, read it to him in his rooms. I read 
 it very badly, too, and I am sure I bored him a 
 [288] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 great deal; but he was kind and patient and he 
 made some useful suggestions to me which I did 
 not accept. I had too much conceit, as all young 
 writers have, to be guided by a better man than 
 myself. I know now that I should have done 
 well to take his advice. He warned me against 
 topical things and against politics and urged me 
 to flee journalism as I would flee the devil; and he 
 advised me to read Balzac. He was always ad- 
 vising me to read Balzac, but I never did. 
 
 L. • • 
 
 VI 
 
 My memories of those days when I first knew 
 him begin to be disconnected, and I find myself 
 putting down things which happened after other 
 things which I have still to relate; but I have 
 never found a consecutive narrative very interest- 
 ing, which, perhaps, is why I cannot read Pepys' 
 Diary or Evelyn's Diary. I like to take things 
 out of their turn, to go forward to one thing and 
 then back to an earlier thing. I can only connect 
 one incident or memory with another by taking 
 them out of their order and doing violence to the 
 natural sequence of things. Life is not so inter- 
 [289] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 esting when all the factors between 1 and 100 are 
 in sequence as it is when 26 and 60 are taken out 
 of their place and put into coherence, temporary 
 or permanent, with each other. 
 
 He said to me one evening that a man does not 
 make firm friendships after the age of twenty-five. 
 There is a good deal of truth in that statement, 
 but I doubt whether it is generally true. It is 
 true of him, for his mind turns back continually 
 to the men who were his contemporaries twenty- 
 five years ago, but it was not true of Dr. Johnson, 
 who shed his friends as he grew in stature of mind. 
 And perhaps what Dr. Johnson said to Sir Joshua 
 Reynolds is more generally true than what Mr. 
 Yeats said to me. "If a man does not make new 
 acquaintances as he advances through life, he will 
 soon find himself alone. A man, Sir, should keep 
 his friendship in constant repair." I do not think 
 that anything is so remarkable about Mr. Yeats as 
 his aloofness from the life of these times. He has 
 very little knowledge of contemporary writing. I 
 doubt whether he has read much or even anything 
 by Mr. H. G. Wells or Mr. Arnold Bennett or Mr. 
 John Galsworthy or Mr. Joseph Conrad. He said 
 to me one night that after thirty a man ought to 
 [290] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 read only a few books and read them continually. 
 Some one had said this to him — I have forgotten 
 who said it — and he passed on the advice to me; 
 but he added, after a while, that "perhaps the age 
 of thirty is too young," and suggested that the age 
 should be raised to forty. It seemed very wrong 
 advice to me. 
 
 An active mind will surely keep itself ac- 
 quainted with new books and familiar with old 
 books. I have heard many men, particularly 
 schoolmasters and classical scholars, say with 
 pride that they never read modern books. Such 
 people boast that when a new book is published, 
 they read an old one. They are, in my experience, 
 dull people, sluggardly in mind, and pompous and 
 set in manner. In many cases, particularly if 
 they are schoolmasters, they neither read new 
 books nor old ones. Dr. Johnson and his friends, 
 however, appear to have been familiar with all 
 the current literature of their time : history, fiction, 
 poetry, drama, philosophy and theology; as well 
 as with the ancient writings. They would not have 
 boasted of their ignorance of the work of their 
 contemporaries. In Mr. Yeats's case, however, 
 this unfamiliarity with the work of men writing 
 [291] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 to-day is explainable when one remembers that 
 he cannot read easily because of his sight. When 
 I first knew him, a friend came several times a 
 week to read to him out of a copy of the Kelmscott 
 Press edition to William Morris's "Earthly Para- 
 dise." 
 
 He had, like most young men of his time, been 
 much influenced by William Morris, the only man 
 for whom I ever heard him profess anything like 
 aff'ection, but I remember hearing him say once 
 that he no longer got pleasure from reading or 
 listening to Morris's poetry. 
 
 VII 
 
 One night, I was at his rooms when Mr. G. M. 
 Trevelyan, the historian and biographer of Gari- 
 baldi and John Bright, was present with his wife, 
 a daughter of Mrs. Humphry Ward. Mr. Yeats 
 talked much and well, and I remember his story 
 of a dream he had had. He often told stories of 
 his dreams, but some of them smelt of the mid- 
 night oil. A friend of his, he said, was contem- 
 plating submission to the Catholic Church. He 
 had tried to dissuade her from this, but she went 
 [292] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 away to another country in a state of irresolution. 
 One night, he dreamt that he saw her entering 
 a room full of beautiful people. She walked 
 around the room, looking at these beautiful people 
 who smiled and smiled and smiled, but said noth- 
 ing. "And suddenly, in my dream," he said, 
 "I realized that they were all dead!" "I woke 
 up," he proceeded, "and I said to myself, 'She has 
 joined the Catholic Church,' and she had." Mr. 
 Trevelyan thought that the description of the Catho- 
 lic Church as a room full of beautiful people, all 
 smiling and all dead, was the most apt he had ever 
 heard. He chuckled with contented anti-clerical- 
 ism. Another night, when I was in his rooms, Miss 
 Ellen Terry's son, Mr. Gordon Craig, came to see 
 him; and a model of the Abbey Theatre was 
 brought down from his bedroom to the candle-lit 
 sitting room, where Mr. Craig experimented with 
 lighting effects. Mr. Craig is a man of genius, but 
 he is a very difficult and childish person, whose 
 view of the theatre is nearly as damnable as that 
 of the most vain of the lost tribe of actor-managers 
 or their successors, the shop-keeper syndicates. 
 Scenery and lighting effects were of greater con- 
 sequence to Mr. Craig than the play itself! His 
 [293] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 designs for scenery were very beautiful, indeed, 
 but they were suitable only to romantic and 
 poetical plays. 
 
 I remember that when he had manipulated Mr. 
 Yeats's model theatre to his liking, he stood back 
 from the scene, and said, "What a good thing it 
 would be if we were to take all the seats out of 
 the theatre so that the audience could move about 
 and see my shadows!" Mr. Yeats dryly replied 
 that this was hardly a practical proposal. I was 
 irritated by Mr. Craig's remark which was in keep- 
 ing with his general theory of the theatre. It 
 seemed to me that he would, were he less difficult 
 to work with, be as great a nuisance and danger to 
 drama as any actor-manager in London. Sir 
 Henry Irving and Sir Herbert Tree, turning the 
 attention of the audience away from the play to the 
 player and the scenery, were not any worse than 
 Mr. Craig, anxious to turn the attention of the audi- 
 ence to his shadows. I was glad when this remark- 
 able man was carried off by Mr. Albert Rutherston 
 and Mr. Ernest Rhys to exhibit himself somewhere 
 else. 
 
 Mr. Yeats was bitten with Mr. Craig's theories 
 about lighting and scenery, and a large sum of 
 [294] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 money for so poor a theatre as the Abbey, was 
 spent on some of his "screens" for use in plays 
 like "Deirdre." They were never used for any- 
 thing else. When I went to Dublin to manage the 
 Abbey, I was very anxious that we should employ 
 a competent scene-builder to make some good 
 "sets" for us, but Mr. Yeats said that scenery was 
 of no consequence: the dirty hovel which we always 
 employed to represent an Irish cottage or farm 
 house would do well enough. I thought there was 
 some oddness in this opinion when I remembered 
 that the theatre had been almost bankrupted in 
 order to purchase "screens" for occasional per- 
 formances of his own one-act plays. He would 
 spend hours in rehearsing the lighting of a scene 
 for one of them: this "lime" was too strong and 
 that "lime" was too weak or there was too much 
 colour or there was not enough or the mingling 
 of colours was not sufficiently delicate. One day, 
 when he had worn out the patience of every one 
 in the theatre, with his fussing over the lighting, 
 he suddenly called out to the stage-manager, 
 "That's it! That's it! You've got it right now!" 
 "Ah, sure the damned thing's on fire," the stage- 
 manager answered. 
 
 [295] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 VIII 
 
 I have written already that he is not happy with 
 an individual: he must have an audience; and I 
 remember now something that he said to me which 
 supports my belief. We had been talking about 
 Synge and his habit of listening at key-holes and 
 cracks in the floor in order to hear scraps of con- 
 versation that he might put into his plays. I said 
 I had been told that Synge, though excessively 
 shy and silent in company, was a very companion- 
 able person with an individual. He was a good 
 comrade on a country road, talking easily and 
 naturally, and had the gift of friendliness with 
 plain and simple people. Labourers and country- 
 men would talk to him as easily as they talked to 
 one another, and would confide in him. I won- 
 dered whether there were as many entertaining 
 tales to be heard from working-people in England 
 as were to be heard from working-people in Ire- 
 land. Mr. Yeats thought that perhaps there were. 
 He told me that the woman who cooked his meals 
 and cleaned his rooms had begun to tell some 
 story of a love affair to him, but that he had been 
 too diffident to encourage her to go on with it, 
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SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 He thought that if he had talked to her more than 
 he had, she would have told him many stories of 
 her youth in the country; but all his talk to her had 
 been of food and household things. He is not 
 a man in whom poor men and women confide. 
 His civility to them is magnificent, but it overawes 
 them and makes them as uneasy in one way as 
 it pleases them in another. He is an excellent 
 entertainer in a crowded room, but he is a poor 
 companion on a road. He can talk well to a 
 company of educated men and women, but he is 
 tongue-tied in the presence of those who have little 
 learning. When I survey my acquaintance with 
 Yeats, I find strangely diverse thoughts rising in 
 my mind. I am drawn to him and repelled by 
 him. He stimulates me and depresses me. I am 
 moved by the beauty of his work and distracted 
 by its vagueness. I find in his writing and in 
 his speech, great spiritual loveliness but curiously 
 little humanity, and I have often wondered why 
 it is that while Irishmen, even such as I am, are 
 deeply moved by his little play, "Kathleen ni 
 Houlihan," men of other countries — not only 
 Englishmen — are left unmoved by it, unable, with- 
 out a note in the program, to understand it. I 
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SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 have seen this play performed very many times. 
 I never missed seeing it, when it was done at the 
 Abbey during the time that I was manager there. 
 It moved me as much when I last saw it as it did 
 when I first saw it; and I do not doubt that if I 
 live to be an old man, it will move me as much in 
 my old age as it has moved me in my youth. But 
 it does not move men of other races. That is a 
 singular thing. It denotes, I suppose, that while 
 there is much that is national in Mr. Yeats's work, 
 there is less that is universal. 
 
 One rises from his work, as one comes from his 
 company, with a feeling of chilled respect that 
 may settle into disappointment. It is as if one 
 had been taken into a richly-decorated drawing- 
 room when one had hoped to be taken into a green 
 field. I have read Blake's poems and then I have 
 read his and sought to see the resemblance that 
 I am told is between them, but have not always 
 found it. Blake wrote about things that he felt, 
 but Mr. Yeats writes about things that he thinks; 
 and thought changes and perishes, but feeling is 
 permanent and unchangeable; thought separates 
 and divides men, but feeling brings them together; 
 and it may be that Mr. Yeats's aloofness from 
 [298] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 men is due to the fact that he thinks too much and 
 feels too little. »— — — .--..-.^ 
 
 IX 
 
 I think of him as a very lonely, isolated, aloof 
 man. He is, so far as I am aware, the only Eng- 
 lish-speaking poet who did not write a poem about 
 the War, a fact which is at once significant of the 
 restraint he imposes upon himself and of his iso- 
 lation from the common life of his time. I have 
 never met any one who seems so unaware of 
 temporary affairs as Mr. Yeats, and this unaware- 
 ness is due, not to affectation, but to sheer 
 lack of interest. He probably would not have 
 known of the War at all had not the Germans 
 dropped a bomb near his lodgings off the Euston 
 Road. When Macaulay's New Zealander comes 
 to examine the ruins of London, he will probably 
 see Mr. Yeats, disembodied and unaware that he 
 is disembodied or that London is in ruins, sit- 
 ting on a slab with a planchette. He is younger 
 than Mr. Shaw by ten years, but might be ten 
 years older. His verse and his speech and his 
 manner are all elderly, and his conversation is 
 [299] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 composed chiefly of reminiscences of men who 
 have been dead for many years, so that one imag- 
 ines he has not had a friend since 1890. There 
 is absolutely no suggestion of youth in his writ- 
 ings. In the poem entitled, "To a Child Dancing 
 in the Wind," he says: 
 
 I could have warned you, but you are young, 
 So we speak a different tongue 
 
 and again: 
 
 But I am old and you are young, 
 And I speak a barbarous tongue. 
 
 I do not know what age Mr. Yeats was when 
 he wrote those lines, but they are included in 
 a collection of poems, dated "1912-1914," and 
 at most he could not have been fifty, for he was 
 born in Dublin in 1865. 
 
 The sense of age seems to have oppressed his 
 mind for many years, perhaps for the whole of 
 his creative life. He feels that he has outlived 
 his generation and is lost in a period of time 
 peculiarly alien to him. 
 
 When I was young, 
 I had not given a penny for a song 
 Did nfot the poet sing it with such airs 
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SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 That one believed he had a sword upstafrs: 
 Yet would be now, could I but have my wish, 
 Colder and dumber and deafer than a fish. 
 
 This coldness closing on his heart and congealing 
 all his generous emotions, causes him, at the end 
 of a graceful book, "Reveries Over Childhood and 
 Youth" (in itself, significant of the age-obsession 
 which possesses his mind) to declare that "all life, 
 weighed in the scales of my own life, seems to me 
 a preparation for something that never happens," 
 and leaves his readers wondering why a man 
 who began his life by singing songs with such 
 airs "that one believed he had a sword upstairs" 
 should stumble into dismal prose towards the end 
 of it, pronouncing life to be a cheerless deceit. 
 
 His effect on young men is peculiar. His bril- 
 liant conversation is very attractive to them, but 
 his insensibility to the presence of human beings 
 repels them. "A. E." once told me that Mr. Ar- 
 thur Griffith, the founder of the Sinn Fein move- 
 ment, drew young people to him by the strength 
 of his hatred, but finally repelled them by his 
 complete lack of charity and love. A nature 
 compounded principally or exclusively of hatred 
 must be destructive. No man can construct any- 
 [301] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 thing unless love and charity predominate in his 
 heart. Mr. Griffith, throughout his career, has 
 never been notable for his power to make things. 
 He could not even make his own movement grow, 
 for Sinn Fein became a popular and appealing 
 force only after Padraic Pearce and Thomas Mac- 
 donagh and James Connolly had put a fire into 
 the machinery of it on Easter Monday, 1916. 
 There is something terribly ironical in the fact 
 that James Connolly, to whom Mr. Griffith of- 
 fered every possible opposition in his lifetime, 
 should by his death have helped to put Mr. Grif- 
 fith in a position of authority to which his own in- 
 tellectual and spiritual qualities could never have 
 raised him. Mr. Yeats has something of the un- 
 humanity of Mr. Griffith. His talk is brilliant, in- 
 deed, but it is not comradely talk. It never lapses 
 from high quality to the easy familiarities which 
 humanize all relationships. He is more fastidious 
 about his speech than he is about his friends. It 
 would shock him more to use a bad word than to 
 make a bad friend, because he is more aware of 
 bad words than of bad men; and he would be 
 quicker to forgive a crime than to forgive a vulgar 
 phrase. I have never heard him use a common ex- 
 [302] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 pression. He once repeated an angry speech of 
 William Morris to me with an air almost apologetic 
 for using profane language, not because it was pro- 
 fane but because it was inelegant. He never says 
 "Damn!" or "Blast!" when he is angry. ... He 
 is one of the loneliest men in the world, for he 
 cannot express himself except in a crowd. Dr. 
 Stockman said that the strongest man in the world 
 is the man who stands absolutely alone — a feat 
 which is surely impossible — and this specious state- 
 ment has supported many ineffective egoists in 
 their belief that neurosis is strength and misbehav- 
 iour a sign of individuality. But the penalty of 
 isolation is that the isolated cannot dispense with 
 an amenable crowd. The hermit must have a suc- 
 cession of respectful pilgrims to his cave, each one 
 murmuring, "There is but one God and Thou art 
 His Prophet!" until at last the hermit begins to be- 
 lieve that he is God and God is his prophet. Her- 
 mits have followers, or, perhaps one ought to say, 
 curious visitors, but they have no friends. Why 
 should they have friends? They have not got the 
 social sense nor can they take part in the common 
 labours of mankind. They live in caves and de- 
 sert places because they are not fit to live in houses 
 [303] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 and places that are inhabited. But even the her- 
 mits, wrapped in self-sufficiency, realize that no 
 man is effective without his fellows, and so, though 
 they cannot make friends, they make disciples. 
 This is a truth which all the great lonely men from 
 Adam to Robinson Crusoe have discovered, that a 
 man by himself is ineffective and without interest. 
 Life for Adam remained uneventful until the ar- 
 rival of Eve: the island of Juan Fernandez was 
 livelier after Man Friday came to keep Crusoe 
 company. For fellowship is life, as Morris said, 
 and lack of fellowship is death. 
 
 /"There is no poet, not even Keats or Shelley, who 
 
 i has so much of pure poetry in his work as Mr. 
 
 ' Yeats has in his, and perhaps that is enough; but 
 there is no other poet, not even Mr. Kipling, who 
 
 [has so little understanding of human kind. It is 
 an odd commentary on his relationship to his 
 countrymen that while he was writing the bitter 
 poem, entitled "September, 1913," with the deso- 
 lating refrain: 
 
 Romantic Ireland's dead and gone — 
 It's with O'Leary in the grave. 
 
 Thomas Macdonagh and Padraic Pearse and James 
 [304] 
 
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF MY ELDERS 
 
 Connolly were preparing themselves for a romantic 
 death. 
 
 John Davidson, in a book called "Sentences and 
 Paragraphs," writes of Keats that, "beginning and 
 ending his intemperate period with the too ample 
 verge and room, the trailing fringe and sample-like 
 embroidery of 'Endymion,' he was soon writing 
 the most perfect odes in the language." Mr. Yeats, 
 in spite of some reluctant instructions into enthu- 
 siastic movements, escaped "the intemperate 
 period"; but he did so at the cost of his youth and 
 ardour. Like the Magi in his poem of that name, 
 he, "being by Calvary's turbulence imsatisfied," 
 seeks "to find once more" "the uncontrollable mys- 
 tery on the bestial floor"; but it eludes him, and 
 will always elude him, because he thinks of its hab- 
 itation as "a bestial floor." It can only be found 
 by a poet who, whatever happens, still believes that 
 the earth is a place where God may yet walk in 
 safety. Mr. Yeats is the greatest poet that Ireland 
 has produced, but he has meant very little to the 
 people of Ireland, for he has forgotten the ancient 
 purpose of the bards, to urge men to a higher des- 
 tiny by reminding them of their high origin, and 
 has lived, aloof and disdainful, as far from human 
 kind as he can conveniently get. '^ 
 
 [305] 
 
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