All Things Considered
than the people for whom we write, whereas, in fact, we are generally
even stupider. But this insolence has its Nemesis; and that Nemesis is
well illustrated in this matter of reporting.
For the journalist, having grown accustomed to talking down to the
public, commonly talks too low at last, and becomes merely barbaric and
unintelligible. By his very efforts to be obvious he becomes obscure.
This just punishment may specially be noticed in the case of those
staggering and staring headlines which American journalism introduced
and which some English journalism imitates. I once saw a headline in a
London paper which ran simply thus: “Dobbin’s Little Mary.” This was
intended to be familiar and popular, and therefore, presumably, lucid.
But it was some time before I realised, after reading about half the
printed matter underneath, that it had something to do with the proper
feeding of horses. At first sight, I took it, as the historical leader
of the future will certainly take it, as containing some allusion to
the little daughter who so monopolised the affections of the Major at
the end of “Vanity Fair.” The Americans carry to an even wilder extreme
this darkness by excess of light. You may find a column in an American
paper headed “Poet Brown Off Orange-flowers,” or “Senator Robinson
Shoehorns Hats Now,” and it may be quite a long time before the full
meaning breaks upon you: it has not broken upon me yet.
And something of this intellectual vengeance pursues also those who
adopt the modern method of reporting speeches. They also become
mystical, simply by trying to be vulgar. They also are condemned to be
always trying to write like George R. Sims, and succeeding, in spite of
themselves, in writing like Maeterlinck. That combination of words
which I have quoted from an alleged speech of Mr. Bernard Shaw’s was
written down by the reporter with the idea that he was being
particularly plain and democratic. But, as a matter of fact, if there
is any connection between the two sentences, it must be something as
dark as the deepest roots of Browning, or something as invisible as the
most airy filaments of Meredith. To be simple and to be democratic are
two very honourable and austere achievements; and it is not given to
all the snobs and self-seekers to achieve them. High above even
Maeterlinck or Meredith stand those, like Homer and Milton, whom no one
can misunderstand. And Homer and Milton are not only better poets than
Browning (great as he was), but they would also have been very much
better journalists than the young men on the _Daily Mail_.
As it is, however, this misrepresentation of speeches is only a part of
a vast journalistic misrepresentation of all life as it is. Journalism
is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction. Life is one world, and
life seen in the newspapers another; the public enjoys both, but it is
more or less conscious of the difference. People do not believe, for
instance, that the debates in the House of Commons are as dramatic as
they appear in the daily papers. If they did they would go, not to the
daily paper, but to the House of Commons. The galleries would be
crowded every night as they were in the French Revolution; for instead
of seeing a printed story for a penny they would be seeing an acted
drama for nothing. But the people know in their hearts that journalism
is a conventional art like any other, that it selects, heightens, and
falsifies. Only its Nemesis is the same as that of other arts: if it
loses all care for truth it loses all form likewise. The modern who
paints too cleverly produces a picture of a cow which might be the
earthquake at San Francisco. And the journalist who reports a speech
too cleverly makes it mean nothing at all.
THE WORSHIP OF THE WEALTHY
There has crept, I notice, into our literature and journalism a new way
of flattering the wealthy and the great. In more straightforward times
flattery itself was more straightforward; falsehood itself was more
true. A poor man wishing to please a rich man simply said that he was
the wisest, bravest, tallest, strongest, most benevolent and most
beautiful of mankind; and as even the rich man probably knew that he
wasn’t that, the thing did the less harm. When courtiers sang the
praises of a King they attributed to him things that were entirely
improbable, as that he resembled the sun at noonday, that they had to
shade their eyes when he entered the room, that his people could not
breathe without him, or that he had with his single sword conquered
Europe, Asia, Africa, and America. The safety of this method was its
artificiality; between the King and his public image there was really
no relation. But the moderns have invented a much subtler and more
poisonous kind of eulogy. The modern method is to take the prince or
rich man, to give a credible picture of his type of personality, as
that he is business-like, or a sportsman, or fond of art, or convivial,
or reserved; and then enormously exaggerate the value and importance of
these natural qualities. Those who praise Mr. Carnegie do not say that
he is as wise as Solomon and as brave as Mars; I wish they did. It
would be the next most honest thing to giving their real reason for
praising him, which is simply that he has money. The journalists who
write about Mr. Pierpont Morgan do not say that he is as beautiful as
Apollo; I wish they did. What they do is to take the rich man’s
superficial life and manner, clothes, hobbies, love of cats, dislike of
doctors, or what not; and then with the assistance of this realism make
the man out to be a prophet and a saviour of his kind, whereas he is
merely a private and stupid man who happens to like cats or to dislike
doctors. The old flatterer took for granted that the King was an
ordinary man, and set to work to make him out extraordinary. The newer
and cleverer flatterer takes for granted that he is extraordinary, and
that therefore even ordinary things about him will be of interest.
I have noticed one very amusing way in which this is done. I notice the
method applied to about six of the wealthiest men in England in a book
of interviews published by an able and well-known journalist. The
flatterer contrives to combine strict truth of fact with a vast
atmosphere of awe and mystery by the simple operation of dealing almost
entirely in negatives. Suppose you are writing a sympathetic study of
Mr. Pierpont Morgan. Perhaps there is not much to say about what he
does think, or like, or admire; but you can suggest whole vistas of his
taste and philosophy by talking a great deal about what he does not
think, or like, or admire. You say of him—“But little attracted to the
most recent schools of German philosophy, he stands almost as
resolutely aloof from the tendencies of transcendental Pantheism as
from the narrower ecstasies of Neo-Catholicism.” Or suppose I am called
upon to praise the charwoman who has just come into my house, and who
certainly deserves it much more. I say—“It would be a mistake to class
Mrs. Higgs among the followers of Loisy; her position is in many ways
different; nor is she wholly to be identified with the concrete
Hebraism of Harnack.” It is a splendid method, as it gives the
flatterer an opportunity of talking about something else besides the
subject of the flattery, and it gives the subject of the flattery a
rich, if somewhat bewildered, mental glow, as of one who has somehow
gone through agonies of philosophical choice of which he was previously
unaware. It is a splendid method; but I wish it were applied sometimes
to charwomen rather than only to millionaires.
There is another way of flattering important people which has become
very common, I notice, among writers in the newspapers and elsewhere.
It consists in applying to them the phrases “simple,” or “quiet,” or
“modest,” without any sort of meaning or relation to the person to whom
they are applied. To be simple is the best thing in the world; to be
modest is the next best thing. I am not so sure about being quiet. I am
rather inclined to think that really modest people make a great deal of
noise. It is quite self-evident that really simple people make a great
deal of noise. But simplicity and modesty, at least, are very rare and
royal human virtues, not to be lightly talked about. Few human beings,
and at rare intervals, have really risen into being modest; not one man
in ten or in twenty has by long wars become simple, as an actual old
soldier does by [**Note: Apparent typesetting error here in original.]
long wars become simple. These virtues are not things to fling about as
mere flattery; many prophets and righteous men have desired to see
these things and have not seen them. But in the description of the
births, lives, and deaths of very luxurious men they are used
incessantly and quite without thought. If a journalist has to describe
a great politician or financier (the things are substantially the same)
entering a room or walking down a thoroughfare, he always says, “Mr.
Midas was quietly dressed in a black frock coat, a white waistcoat, and
light grey trousers, with a plain green tie and simple flower in his
button-hole.” As if any one would expect him to have a crimson frock
coat or spangled trousers. As if any one would expect him to have a
burning Catherine wheel in his button-hole.
But this process, which is absurd enough when applied to the ordinary
and external lives of worldly people, becomes perfectly intolerable
when it is applied, as it always is applied, to the one episode which
is serious even in the lives of politicians. I mean their death. When
we have been sufficiently bored with the account of the simple costume
of the millionaire, which is generally about as complicated as any that
he could assume without being simply thought mad; when we have been
told about the modest home of the millionaire, a home which is
generally much too immodest to be called a home at all; when we have
followed him through all these unmeaning eulogies, we are always asked
last of all to admire his quiet funeral. I do not know what else people
think a funeral should be except quiet. Yet again and again, over the
grave of every one of those sad rich men, for whom one should surely
feel, first and last, a speechless pity—over the grave of Beit, over
the grave of Whiteley—this sickening nonsense about modesty and
simplicity has been poured out. I well remember that when Beit was
buried, the papers said that the mourning-coaches contained everybody
of importance, that the floral tributes were sumptuous, splendid,
intoxicating; but, for all that, it was a simple and quiet funeral.
What, in the name of Acheron, did they expect it to be? Did they think
there would be human sacrifice—the immolation of Oriental slaves upon
the tomb? Did they think that long rows of Oriental dancing-girls would
sway hither and thither in an ecstasy of lament? Did they look for the
funeral games of Patroclus? I fear they had no such splendid and pagan
meaning. I fear they were only using the words “quiet” and “modest”
as words to fill up a page—a mere piece of the automatic hypocrisy
which does become too common among those who have to write rapidly and
often. The word “modest” will soon become like the word “honourable,”
which is said to be employed by the Japanese before any word that
occurs in a polite sentence, as “Put honourable umbrella in honourable
umbrella-stand;” or “condescend to clean honourable boots.” We shall
read in the future that the modest King went out in his modest crown,
clad from head to foot in modest gold and attended with his ten
thousand modest earls, their swords modestly drawn. No! if we have to
pay for splendour let us praise it as splendour, not as simplicity.