All Things Considered
all, the champions of Sudbury seem to be more open to the sensible and
humorous view of the book than the champions of Ipswich—at least, those
that appear in this discussion. Even the Sudbury champion, bent on
finding realistic clothes, rebels (to his eternal honour) when Mr.
Percy Fitzgerald tries to show that Bob Sawyer’s famous statement that
he was neither Buff nor Blue, “but a sort of plaid,” must have been
copied from some silly man at Ipswich who said that his politics were
“half and half.” Anybody might have made either of the two jokes. But
it was the whole glory and meaning of Dickens that he confined himself
to making jokes that anybody might have made a little better than
anybody would have made them.
FAIRY TALES
Some solemn and superficial people (for nearly all very superficial
people are solemn) have declared that the fairy-tales are immoral; they
base this upon some accidental circumstances or regrettable incidents
in the war between giants and boys, some cases in which the latter
indulged in unsympathetic deceptions or even in practical jokes. The
objection, however, is not only false, but very much the reverse of the
facts. The fairy-tales are at root not only moral in the sense of being
innocent, but moral in the sense of being didactic, moral in the sense
of being moralising. It is all very well to talk of the freedom of
fairyland, but there was precious little freedom in fairyland by the
best official accounts. Mr. W.B. Yeats and other sensitive modern
souls, feeling that modern life is about as black a slavery as ever
oppressed mankind (they are right enough there), have especially
described elfland as a place of utter ease and abandonment—a place
where the soul can turn every way at will like the wind. Science
denounces the idea of a capricious God; but Mr. Yeats’s school suggests
that in that world every one is a capricious god. Mr. Yeats himself has
said a hundred times in that sad and splendid literary style which
makes him the first of all poets now writing in English (I will not say
of all English poets, for Irishmen are familiar with the practice of
physical assault), he has, I say, called up a hundred times the picture
of the terrible freedom of the fairies, who typify the ultimate anarchy
of art—
“Where nobody grows old or weary or wise,
Where nobody grows old or godly or grave.”
But, after all (it is a shocking thing to say), I doubt whether Mr.
Yeats really knows the real philosophy of the fairies. He is not simple
enough; he is not stupid enough. Though I say it who should not, in
good sound human stupidity I would knock Mr. Yeats out any day. The
fairies like me better than Mr. Yeats; they can take me in more. And I
have my doubts whether this feeling of the free, wild spirits on the
crest of hill or wave is really the central and simple spirit of
folk-lore. I think the poets have made a mistake: because the world of
the fairy-tales is a brighter and more varied world than ours, they
have fancied it less moral; really it is brighter and more varied
because it is more moral. Suppose a man could be born in a modern
prison. It is impossible, of course, because nothing human can happen
in a modern prison, though it could sometimes in an ancient dungeon. A
modern prison is always inhuman, even when it is not inhumane. But
suppose a man were born in a modern prison, and grew accustomed to the
deadly silence and the disgusting indifference; and suppose he were
then suddenly turned loose upon the life and laughter of Fleet Street.
He would, of course, think that the literary men in Fleet Street were a
free and happy race; yet how sadly, how ironically, is this the reverse
of the case! And so again these toiling serfs in Fleet Street, when
they catch a glimpse of the fairies, think the fairies are utterly
free. But fairies are like journalists in this and many other respects.
Fairies and journalists have an apparent gaiety and a delusive beauty.
Fairies and journalists seem to be lovely and lawless; they seem to be
both of them too exquisite to descend to the ugliness of everyday duty.
But it is an illusion created by the sudden sweetness of their
presence. Journalists live under law; and so in fact does fairyland.
If you really read the fairy-tales, you will observe that one idea runs
from one end of them to the other—the idea that peace and happiness can
only exist on some condition. This idea, which is the core of ethics,
is the core of the nursery-tales. The whole happiness of fairyland
hangs upon a thread, upon one thread. Cinderella may have a dress woven
on supernatural looms and blazing with unearthly brilliance; but she
must be back when the clock strikes twelve. The king may invite fairies
to the christening, but he must invite all the fairies or frightful
results will follow. Bluebeard’s wife may open all doors but one. A
promise is broken to a cat, and the whole world goes wrong. A promise
is broken to a yellow dwarf, and the whole world goes wrong. A girl may
be the bride of the God of Love himself if she never tries to see him;
she sees him, and he vanishes away. A girl is given a box on condition
she does not open it; she opens it, and all the evils of this world
rush out at her. A man and woman are put in a garden on condition that
they do not eat one fruit: they eat it, and lose their joy in all the
fruits of the earth.
This great idea, then, is the backbone of all folk-lore—the idea that
all happiness hangs on one thin veto; all positive joy depends on one
negative. Now, it is obvious that there are many philosophical and
religious ideas akin to or symbolised by this; but it is not with them
I wish to deal here. It is surely obvious that all ethics ought to be
taught to this fairy-tale tune; that, if one does the thing forbidden,
one imperils all the things provided. A man who breaks his promise to
his wife ought to be reminded that, even if she is a cat, the case of
the fairy-cat shows that such conduct may be incautious. A burglar just
about to open some one else’s safe should be playfully reminded that he
is in the perilous posture of the beautiful Pandora: he is about to
lift the forbidden lid and loosen evils unknown. The boy eating some
one’s apples in some one’s apple tree should be a reminder that he has
come to a mystical moment of his life, when one apple may rob him of
all others. This is the profound morality of fairy-tales; which, so far
from being lawless, go to the root of all law. Instead of finding (like
common books of ethics) a rationalistic basis for each Commandment,
they find the great mystical basis for all Commandments. We are in this
fairyland on sufferance; it is not for us to quarrel with the
conditions under which we enjoy this wild vision of the world. The
vetoes are indeed extraordinary, but then so are the concessions. The
idea of property, the idea of some one else’s apples, is a rum idea;
but then the idea of there being any apples is a rum idea. It is
strange and weird that I cannot with safety drink ten bottles of
champagne; but then the champagne itself is strange and weird, if you
come to that. If I have drunk of the fairies’ drink it is but just I
should drink by the fairies’ rules. We may not see the direct logical
connection between three beautiful silver spoons and a large ugly
policeman; but then who in fairy tales ever could see the direct
logical connection between three bears and a giant, or between a rose
and a roaring beast? Not only can these fairy-tales be enjoyed because
they are moral, but morality can be enjoyed because it puts us in
fairyland, in a world at once of wonder and of war.
TOM JONES AND MORALITY
The two hundredth anniversary of Henry Fielding is very justly
celebrated, even if, as far as can be discovered, it is only celebrated
by the newspapers. It would be too much to expect that any such merely
chronological incident should induce the people who write about
Fielding to read him; this kind of neglect is only another name for
glory. A great classic means a man whom one can praise without having
read. This is not in itself wholly unjust; it merely implies a certain
respect for the realisation and fixed conclusions of the mass of
mankind. I have never read Pindar (I mean I have never read the Greek
Pindar; Peter Pindar I have read all right), but the mere fact that I
have not read Pindar, I think, ought not to prevent me and certainly
would not prevent me from talking of “the masterpieces of Pindar,” or
of “great poets like Pindar or Æschylus.” The very learned men are
angularly unenlightened on this as on many other subjects; and the
position they take up is really quite unreasonable. If any ordinary
journalist or man of general reading alludes to Villon or to Homer,
they consider it a quite triumphant sneer to say to the man, “You
cannot read mediæval French,” or “You cannot read Homeric Greek.” But
it is not a triumphant sneer—or, indeed, a sneer at all. A man has got
as much right to employ in his speech the established and traditional
facts of human history as he has to employ any other piece of common
human information. And it is as reasonable for a man who knows no
French to assume that Villon was a good poet as it would be for a man
who has no ear for music to assume that Beethoven was a good musician.
Because he himself has no ear for music, that is no reason why he
should assume that the human race has no ear for music. Because I am
ignorant (as I am), it does not follow that I ought to assume that I am
deceived. The man who would not praise Pindar unless he had read him
would be a low, distrustful fellow, the worst kind of sceptic, who
doubts not only God, but man. He would be like a man who could not call
Mount Everest high unless he had climbed it. He would be like a man who
would not admit that the North Pole was cold until he had been there.
But I think there is a limit, and a highly legitimate limit, to this
process. I think a man may praise Pindar without knowing the top of a
Greek letter from the bottom. But I think that if a man is going to
abuse Pindar, if he is going to denounce, refute, and utterly expose
Pindar, if he is going to show Pindar up as the utter ignoramus and
outrageous impostor that he is, then I think it will be just as well
perhaps—I think, at any rate, it would do no harm—if he did know a
little Greek, and even had read a little Pindar. And I think the same
situation would be involved if the critic were concerned to point out
that Pindar was scandalously immoral, pestilently cynical, or low and
beastly in his views of life. When people brought such attacks against
the morality of Pindar, I should regret that they could not read Greek;
and when they bring such attacks against the morality of Fielding, I
regret very much that they cannot read English.
There seems to be an extraordinary idea abroad that Fielding was in
some way an immoral or offensive writer. I have been astounded by the
number of the leading articles, literary articles, and other articles
written about him just now in which there is a curious tone of
apologising for the man. One critic says that after all he couldn’t
help it, because he lived in the eighteenth century; another says that
we must allow for the change of manners and ideas; another says that he
was not altogether without generous and humane feelings; another
suggests that he clung feebly, after all, to a few of the less
important virtues. What on earth does all this mean? Fielding described
Tom Jones as going on in a certain way, in which, most unfortunately, a
very large number of young men do go on. It is unnecessary to say that
Henry Fielding knew that it was an unfortunate way of going on. Even
Tom Jones knew that. He said in so many words that it was a very