And Even Now
day. You shall write this essay for me. Be it never so humble, I shall
give it my best attention and manage to say something nice about it. I
am sorry to see you calming suddenly down. Nothing but a sense of duty
to myself, and to guests in general, makes me resume my pen. I believe
guests to be as numerous, really, as hosts. It may be that even you,
if you examine yourself dispassionately, will find that you are one
of them. In which case, you may yet thank me for some comfort. I think
there are good qualities to be found in guests, and some bad ones in
even the best hosts.
Our deepest instincts, bad or good, are those which we share with the
rest of the animal creation. To offer hospitality, or to accept it,
is but an instinct which man has acquired in the long course of his
self-development. Lions do not ask one another to their lairs, nor do
birds keep open nest. Certain wolves and tigers, it is true, have been
so seduced by man from their natural state that they will deign to
accept man’s hospitality. But when you give a bone to your dog, does he
run out and invite another dog to share it with him?--and does your cat
insist on having a circle of other cats around her saucer of milk? Quite
the contrary. A deep sense of personal property is common to all
these creatures. Thousands of years hence they may have acquired some
willingness to share things with their friends. Or rather, dogs may;
cats, I think, not. Meanwhile, let us not be censorious. Though certain
monkeys assuredly were of finer and more malleable stuff than any wolves
or tigers, it was a very long time indeed before even we began to
be hospitable. The cavemen did not entertain. It may be that now and
again--say, towards the end of the Stone Age--one or another among the
more enlightened of them said to his wife, while she plucked an eagle
that he had snared the day before, ‘That red-haired man who lives in the
next valley seems to be a decent, harmless sort of person. And sometimes
I fancy he is rather lonely. I think I will ask him to dine with us
to-night,’ and, presently going out, met the red-haired man and said to
him, ‘Are you doing anything to-night? If not, won’t you dine with us?
It would be a great pleasure to my wife. Only ourselves. Come just as
you are.’ ‘That is most good of you, but,’ stammered the red-haired
man, ‘as ill-luck will have it, I am engaged to-night. A long-standing,
formal invitation. I wish I could get out of it, but I simply can’t. I
have a morbid conscientiousness about such things.’ Thus we see that the
will to offer hospitality was an earlier growth than the will to accept
it. But we must beware of thinking these two things identical with the
mere will to give and the mere will to receive. It is unlikely that
the red-haired man would have refused a slice of eagle if it had been
offered to him where he stood. And it is still more unlikely that his
friend would have handed it to him. Such is not the way of hosts. The
hospitable instinct is not wholly altruistic. There is pride and egoism
mixed up with it, as I shall show.
Meanwhile, why did the red-haired man babble those excuses? It was
because he scented danger. He was not by nature suspicious, but--what
possible motive, except murder, could this man have for enticing him
to that cave? Acquaintance in the open valley was all very well and
pleasant, but a strange den after dark--no, no! You despise him for
his fears? Yet these were not really so absurd as they may seem. As
man progressed in civilisation, and grew to be definitely gregarious,
hospitality became more a matter of course. But even then it was not
above suspicion. It was not hedged around with those unwritten laws
which make it the safe and eligible thing we know to-day. In the annals
of hospitality there are many pages that make painful reading; many a
great dark blot is there which the Recording Angel may wish, but will
not be able, to wipe out with a tear.
If I were a host, I should ignore those tomes. Being a guest, I
sometimes glance into them, but with more of horror, I assure you,
than of malicious amusement. I carefully avoid those which treat of
hospitality among barbarous races. Things done in the best periods of
the most enlightened peoples are quite bad enough. The Israelites were
the salt of the earth. But can you imagine a deed of colder-blooded
treachery than Jael’s? You would think it must have been held accursed
by even the basest minds. Yet thus sang Deborah and Barak, ‘Blessed
above women shall Jael the wife of Heber the Kenite be, blessed shall
she be among women in the tent.’ And Barak, remember, was a gallant
soldier, and Deborah was a prophetess who ‘judged Israel at that time.’
So much for the ideals of hospitality among the children of Israel.
Of the Homeric Greeks it may be said that they too were the salt of the
earth; and it may be added that in their pungent and antiseptic quality
there was mingled a measure of sweetness, not to be found in the
children of Israel. I do not say outright that Odysseus ought not to
have slain the suitors. That is a debatable point. It is true that they
were guests under his roof. But he had not invited them. Let us give him
the benefit of the doubt. I am thinking of another episode in his
life. By what Circe did, and by his disregard of what she had done, a
searching light is cast on the laxity of Homeric Greek notions as to
what was due to guests. Odysseus was a clever, but not a bad man, and
his standard of general conduct was high enough. Yet, having foiled
Circe in her purpose to turn him into a swine, and having forced her to
restore his comrades to human shape, he did not let pass the barrier of
his teeth any such winged words as ‘Now will I bide no more under thy
roof, Circe, but fare across the sea with my dear comrades, even unto
mine own home, for that which thou didst was an evil thing, and one not
meet to be done unto strangers by the daughter of a god.’ He seems to
have said nothing in particular, to have accepted with alacrity the
invitation that he and his dear comrades should prolong their visit, and
to have prolonged it with them for a whole year, in the course of which
Circe bore him a son, named Telegonus. As Matthew Arnold would have
said, ‘What a set!’
My eye roves, for relief, to those shelves where the later annals are. I
take down a tome at random. Rome in the fifteenth century: civilisation
never was more brilliant than there and then, I imagine; and yet--no,
I replace that tome. I saw enough in it to remind me that the Borgias
selected and laid down rare poisons in their cellars with as much
thought as they gave to their vintage wines. Extraordinary!--but the
Romans do not seem to have thought so. An invitation to dine at the
Palazzo Borghese was accounted the highest social honour. I am aware
that in recent books of Italian history there has been a tendency to
whiten the Borgias’ characters. But I myself hold to the old romantic
black way of looking at the Borgias. I maintain that though you would
often in the fifteenth century have heard the snobbish Roman say, in a
would-be off-hand tone ‘I am dining with the Borgias to-night,’ no Roman
ever was able to say ‘I dined last night with the Borgias.’
To mankind in general Macbeth and Lady Macbeth stand out as the supreme
type of all that a host and hostess should not be. Hence the marked
coolness of Scotsmen towards Shakespeare, hence the untiring efforts
of that proud and sensitive race to set up Burns in his stead. It is a
risky thing to offer sympathy to the proud and sensitive, yet I must say
that I think the Scots have a real grievance. The two actual, historic
Macbeths were no worse than innumerable other couples in other lands
that had not yet fully struggled out of barbarism. It is hard that
Shakespeare happened on the story of that particular pair, and so made
it immortal. But he meant no harm, and, let Scotsmen believe me, did
positive good. Scotch hospitality is proverbial. As much in Scotland as
in America does the English visitor blush when he thinks how perfunctory
and niggard, in comparison, English hospitality is. It was Scotland that
first formalised hospitality, made of it an exacting code of honour,
with the basic principle that the guest must in all circumstances be
respected and at all costs protected. Jacobite history bristles with
examples of the heroic sacrifices made by hosts for their guests,
sacrifices of their own safety and even of their own political
convictions, for fear of infringing, however slightly, that sacred
code of theirs. And what was the origin of all this noble pedantry?
Shakespeare’s ‘Macbeth.’
Perhaps if England were a bleak and rugged country, like Scotland, or a
new country, like America, the foreign visitor would be more overwhelmed
with kindness here than he is. The landscapes of our country-side are so
charming, London abounds in public monuments so redolent of history,
so romantic and engrossing, that we are perhaps too apt to think the
foreign visitor would have neither time nor inclination to sit dawdling
in private dining-rooms. Assuredly there is no lack of hospitable
impulse among the English. In what may be called mutual hospitality they
touch a high level. The French, also the Italians, entertain one another
far less frequently. In England the native guest has a very good time
indeed--though of course he pays for it, in some measure, by acting as
host too, from time to time.
In practice, no, there cannot be any absolute division of mankind into
my two categories, hosts and guests. But psychologically a guest does
not cease to be a guest when he gives a dinner, nor is a host not a host
when he accepts one. The amount of entertaining that a guest need do is
a matter wholly for his own conscience. He will soon find that he does
not receive less hospitality for offering little; and he would not
receive less if he offered none. The amount received by him depends
wholly on the degree of his agreeableness. Pride makes an occasional
host of him; but he does not shine in that capacity. Nor do hosts want
him to assay it. If they accept an invitation from him, they do so only
because they wish not to hurt his feelings. As guests they are fish out
of water.
Circumstances do, of course, react on character. It is conventional for
the rich to give, and for the poor to receive. Riches do tend to foster
in you the instincts of a host, and poverty does create an atmosphere
favourable to the growth of guestish instincts. But strong bents make
their own way. Not all guests are to be found among the needy, nor all
hosts among the affluent. For sixteen years after my education was, by
courtesy, finished--from the age, that is, of twenty-two to the age
of thirty-eight, I lived in London, seeing all sorts of people all the
while; and I came across many a rich man who, like the master of the
shepherd Corin, was ‘of churlish disposition’ and little recked ‘to find
the way to heaven by doing deeds of hospitality.’ On the other hand, I
knew quite poor men who were incorrigibly hospitable.
To such men, all honour. The most I dare claim for myself is that if I
had been rich I should have been better than Corin’s master. Even as it
was, I did my best. But I had no authentic joy in doing it. Without the
spur of pride I might conceivably have not done it at all. There recurs
to me from among memories of my boyhood an episode that is rather
significant. In my school, as in most others, we received now and again
‘hampers’ from home. At the mid-day dinner, in every house, we all ate
together; but at breakfast and supper we ate in four or five separate
‘messes.’ It was customary for the receiver of a hamper to share the
contents with his mess-mates. On one occasion I received, instead of