GROTESQUES
Κυνηδόν
I
The Angel Æthereal, on his official visit to the Earth in 1947, paused between the Bank and the Stock Exchange to smoke a cigarette and scrutinise the passers-by.
“How they swarm,” he said, “and with what seeming energy—in such an atmosphere! Of what can they be made?”
“Of money, sir,” replied his dragoman; “in the past, the present, or the future. Stocks are booming. The barometer of joy stands very high. Nothing like it has been known for thirty years; not, indeed, since the days of the Great Skirmish.”
“There is, then, a connection between joy and money?” remarked the Angel, letting smoke dribble through his chiselled nostrils.
“Such is the common belief; though to prove it might take time. I will, however, endeavour to do this if you desire it, sir.”
“I certainly do,” said the Angel; “for a less joyous-looking crowd I have seldom seen. Between every pair of brows there is a furrow, and no one whistles.”
“You do not understand,” returned his dragoman; “nor indeed is it surprising, for it is not so much the money as the thought that some day you need no longer make it which causes joy.”
“If that day is coming to all,” asked the Angel, “why do they not look joyful?”
“It is not so simple as that, sir. To the majority of these persons that day will never come, and many of them know it—these are called clerks; to some amongst the others, even, it will not come—these will be called bankrupts; to the rest it will come, and they will live at Wimblehurst and other islands of the blessed, when they have become so accustomed to making money that to cease making it will be equivalent to boredom, if not torture, or when they are so old that they can but spend it in trying to modify the disabilities of age.”
“What price joy, then?” said the Angel, raising his eyebrows. “For that, I fancy, is the expression you use?”
“I perceive, sir,” answered his dragoman, “that you have not yet regained your understanding of the human being, and especially of the breed which inhabits this country. Illusion is what we are after. Without our illusions we might just as well be angels or Frenchmen, who pursue at all events to some extent the sordid reality known as ‘le plaisir,’ or enjoyment of life. In pursuit of illusion we go on making money and furrows in our brows, for the process is wearing. I speak, of course, of the bourgeoisie or Patriotic classes; for the practice of the Laborious is different, though their illusions are the same.”
“How?” asked the Angel briefly.
“Why, sir, both hold the illusion that they will one day be joyful through the possession of money; but whereas the Patriotic expect to make it through the labour of the Laborious, the Laborious expect to make it through the labour of the Patriotic.”
“Ha, ha!” said the Angel.
“Angels may laugh,” replied his dragoman, “but it is a matter to make men weep.”
“You know your own business best,” said the Angel, “I suppose.”
“Ah! sir, if we did, how pleasant it would be. It is frequently my fate to study the countenances and figures of the population, and I find the joy which the pursuit of illusion brings them is insufficient to counteract the confined, monotonous, and worried character of their lives.”
“They are certainly very plain,” said the Angel.
“They are,” sighed his dragoman, “and getting plainer every day. Take for instance that one,” and he pointed to a gentleman going up the steps. “Mark how he is built. The top of his grizzled head is narrow, the bottom of it broad. His body is short and thick and square; his legs even thicker, and his feet turn out too much; the general effect is almost pyramidal. Again, take this one,” and he indicated a gentleman coming down the steps, “you could thread his legs and body through a needle’s eye, but his head would defy you. Mark his boiled eyes, his flashing spectacles, and the absence of all hair. Disproportion, sir, has become endemic.”
“Can this not be corrected?” asked the Angel.
“To correct a thing,” answered his dragoman, “you must first be aware of it, and these are not; no more than they are aware that it is disproportionate to spend six days out of every seven in a counting-house or factory. Man, sir, is the creature of habit, and when his habits are bad, man is worse.”
“I have a headache,” said the Angel; “the noise is more deafening than it was when I was here in 1910.”
“Yes, sir; since then we have had the Great Skirmish, an event which furiously intensified money-making. We, like every other people, have ever since been obliged to cultivate the art of getting five out of two-and-two. The progress of civilisation has been considerably speeded-up thereby, and everything but man has benefited; even horses, for they are no longer overloaded and overdriven up Tower Hill or any other.”
“How is that,” asked the Angel, “if the pressure of work is greater?”
“Because they are extinct,” said his dragoman; “entirely superseded by electric and air traction, as you see.”
“You appear to be inimical to money,” the Angel interjected, with a penetrating look. “Tell me, would you really rather own one shilling than five and sixpence?”
“Sir,” replied his dragoman, “you are putting the candidate before the caucus, as the saying is. For money is nothing but the power to purchase what one wants. You should rather be inquiring what I want.”
“Well, what do you?” said the Angel.
“To my thinking,” answered his dragoman, “instead of endeavouring to increase money when we found ourselves so very bankrupt, we should have endeavoured to decrease our wants. The path of real progress, sir, is the simplification of life and desire till we have dispensed even with trousers and wear a single clean garment reaching to the knees; till we are content with exercising our own limbs on the solid earth; the eating of simple food we have grown ourselves; the hearing of our own voices, and tunes on oaten straws; the feel on our faces of the sun and rain and wind; the scent of the fields and woods; the homely roof, and the comely wife unspoiled by heels, pearls, and powder; the domestic animals at play, wild birds singing, and children brought up to colder water than their fathers. It should have been our business to pursue health till we no longer needed the interior of the chemist’s shop, the optician’s store, the hairdresser’s, the corset-maker’s, the thousand-and-one emporiums which patch and prink us, promoting our fancies and disguising the ravages which modern life makes in our figures. Our ambition should have been to need so little that, with our present scientific knowledge, we should have been able to produce it very easily and quickly, and have had abundant leisure and sound nerves and bodies wherewith to enjoy nature, art, and the domestic affections. The tragedy of man, sir, is his senseless and insatiate curiosity and greed, together with his incurable habit of neglecting the present for the sake of a future which will never come.”
“You speak like a book,” said the Angel.
“I wish I did,” retorted his dragoman, “for no book I am able to procure enjoins us to stop this riot, and betake ourselves to the pleasurable simplicity which alone can save us.”
“You would be bored stiff in a week,” said the Angel.
“We should, sir,” replied his dragoman, “because from our schooldays we are brought up to be acquisitive, competitive, and restless. Consider the baby in the perambulator, absorbed in contemplating the heavens and sucking its own thumb. Existence, sir, should be like that.”
“A beautiful metaphor,” said the Angel.
“As it is, we do but skip upon the hearse of life.”
“You would appear to be of those whose motto is: ‘Try never to leave things as you find them,’” observed the Angel.
“Ah, sir!” responded his dragoman, with a sad smile, “the part of a dragoman is rather ever to try and find things where he leaves them.”
“Talking of that,” said the Angel dreamily, “when I was here in 1910, I bought some Marconis for the rise. What are they at now?”
“I cannot tell you,” replied his dragoman in a deprecating voice, “but this I will say: Inventors are not only the benefactors but the curses of mankind, and will be so long as we do not find a way of adapting their discoveries to our very limited digestive powers. The chronic dyspepsia of our civilisation, due to the attempt to swallow every pabulum which ingenuity puts before it, is so violent that I sometimes wonder whether we shall survive until your visit in 1984.”
“Ah!” said the Angel, pricking his ears; “you really think there is a chance?”
“I do indeed,” his dragoman answered gloomily. “Life is now one long telephone call—and what’s it all about? A tour in darkness! A rattling of wheels under a sky of smoke! A never-ending game of poker!”
“Confess,” said the Angel, “that you have eaten something which has not agreed with you?”
“It is so,” answered his dragoman; “I have eaten of modernity, the damnedest dish that was ever set to lips. Look at those fellows,” he went on, “busy as ants from nine o’clock in the morning to seven in the evening. And look at their wives!”
“Ah! yes,” said the Angel cheerily; “let us look at their wives,” and with three strokes of his wings he passed to Oxford Street.
“Look at them!” repeated his dragoman, “busy as ants from ten o’clock in the morning to five in the evening.”
“Plain is not the word for them,” said the Angel sadly. “What are they after, running in and out of these shop-holes?”
“Illusion, sir. The romance of business there, the romance of commerce here. They have got into these habits and, as you know, it is so much easier to get in than to get out. Would you like to see one of their homes?”
“No, no,” said the Angel, starting back and coming into contact with a lady’s hat. “Why do they have them so large?” he asked, with a certain irritation.
“In order that they may have them small next season,” replied his dragoman. “The future, sir; the future! The cycle of beauty and eternal hope, and, incidentally, the good of trade. Grasp that phrase and you will have no need for further inquiry, and probably no inclination.”
“One could get American sweets in here, I guess,” said the Angel, entering.
II
“And where would you wish to go to-day, sir?” asked his dragoman of the Angel, who was moving his head from side to side like a dromedary, in the Haymarket.
“I should like,” the Angel answered, “to go into the country.”
“The country!” returned his dragoman, doubtfully. “You will find very little to see there.”
“Natheless,” said the Angel, spreading his wings.
“These,” gasped his dragoman, after a few breathless minutes, “are the Chilterns—they will serve; any part of the country is now the same. Shall we descend?”
Alighting on what seemed to be a common, he removed the cloud moisture from his brow, and shading his eyes with his hand, stood peering into the distance on every side. “As I thought,” he said; “there has been no movement since I brought the Prime here in 1944; we shall have some difficulty in getting lunch.”
“A wonderfully peaceful spot,” said the Angel.
“True,” said his dragoman. “We might fly sixty miles in any direction and not see a house in repair.”
“Let us!” said the Angel. They flew a hundred and alighted again.
“Same here!” said his dragoman. “This is Leicestershire. Note the rolling landscape of wild pastures.”
“I am getting hungry,” said the Angel. “Let us fly again.”
“I have told you, sir,” remarked his dragoman, while they were flying, “that we shall have the greatest difficulty in finding any inhabited dwelling in the country. Had we not better alight at Blackton or Bradleeds?”
“No,” said the Angel. “I have come for a day in the fresh air.”
“Would bilberries serve?” asked his dragoman; “for I see a man gathering them.”
The Angel closed his wings, and they dropped on to a moor close to an aged man.
“My worthy wight,” said the Angel, “we are hungry. Would you give us some of your bilberries?”
“Wot oh!” ejaculated the ancient party; “never ’eard yer comin’. Been flyin’ by wireless, ’ave yer? Got an observer, I see,” he added, jerking his grizzled chin at the dragoman. “Strike me, it’s the good old dyes o’ the Gryte Skirmish over agyne.”
“Is this,” asked the Angel, whose mouth was already black with bilberries, “the dialect of rural England?”
“I will interrogate him, sir,” said his dragoman, “for in truth I am at a loss to account for the presence of a man in the country.” He took the old person by his last button and led him a little apart. Returning to the Angel, who had finished the bilberries, he whispered:
“It is as I thought. This is the sole survivor of the soldiers settled on the land at the conclusion of the Great Skirmish. He lives on berries and birds who have died a natural death.”
“I fail to understand,” answered the Angel. “Where is all the rural population, where the mansions of the great, the thriving farmer, the contented peasant, the labourer about to have his minimum wage, the Old, the Merrie England of 1910?”
“That,” responded his dragoman somewhat dramatically, extending his hand towards the old man, “that is the rural population, and he a cockney hardened in the Great Skirmish, or he could never have stayed the course.”
“What!” said the Angel; “is no food grown in all this land?”
“Not a cabbage,” replied his dragoman; “not a mustard and cress—outside the towns, that is.”
“I perceive,” said the Angel, “that I have lost touch with much that is of interest. Give me, I pray, a brief sketch of the agricultural movement.”
“Why, sir,” replied his dragoman, “the agricultural movement in this country since the days of the Great Skirmish, when all were talking of resettling the land, may be summed up in two words: ‘Town expansion.’ In order to make this clear to you, however, I must remind you of the political currents of the past thirty years. You will not recollect that during the Great Skirmish, beneath the seeming absence of politics, there were germinating the Parties of the future. A secret but resolute intention was forming in all minds to immolate those who had played any part in politics before and during the important world-tragedy which was then being enacted, especially such as continued to hold portfolios, or persisted in asking questions in the House of Commons, as it was then called. It was not that people held them to be responsible, but nerves required soothing, and there is no anodyne, as you know, sir, equal to human sacrifice. The politician was, as one may say—‘off.’ No sooner, of course, was peace declared than the first real General Election was held, and it was with a certain chagrin that the old Parties found themselves in the soup. The Parties which had been forming beneath the surface swept the country: one called itself the Patriotic, and was called by its opponents the Prussian Party; the other called itself the Laborious, and was called by its opponents the Loafing Party. Their representatives were nearly all new men. In the first flush of peace, with which the human mind ever associates plenty, they came out on such an even keel that no Government could pass anything at all. Since, however, it was imperative to find the interest on a National Debt of £8,000,000,000, a further election was needed. This time, though the word Peace remained, the word Plenty had already vanished; and the Laborious Party, which, having much less to tax, felt that it could tax more freely, found itself in an overwhelming majority. You will be curious to hear, sir, of what elements this Party was composed. Its solid bulk were the returned soldiers, and the other manual workers of the country; but to this main body there was added a rump, of pundits, men of excellent intentions, brains, and principles, such as in old days had been known as Radicals and advanced Liberals. These had joined out of despair, feeling that otherwise their very existence was jeopardised. To this collocation—and to one or two other circumstances, as you will presently see, sir—the doom of the land must be traced. Now, the Laborious Party, apart from its rump, on which it would or could not sit—we shall never know now—had views about the resettlement of the land not far divergent from those held by the Patriotic Party, and they proceeded to put a scheme into operation, which, for perhaps a year, seemed to have a prospect of success. Many returned soldiers were established in favourable localities, and there was even a disposition to place the country on a self-sufficing basis in regard to food. But they had not been in power eighteen months when their rump—which, as I have told you, contained nearly all their principles—had a severe attack of these. ‘Free Trade,’—which, say what you will, follows the line of least resistance and is based on the ‘good of trade’—was, they perceived, endangered, and they began to agitate against bonuses on corn and preferential treatment of a pampered industry. The bonus on corn was in consequence rescinded in 1924, and in lieu thereof the system of small holdings was extended—on paper. At the same time the somewhat stunning taxation which had been placed upon the wealthy began to cause the break-up of landed estates. As the general bankruptcy and exhaustion of Europe became more and more apparent the notion of danger from future war began to seem increasingly remote, and the ‘good of trade’ became again the one object before every British eye. Food from overseas was cheapening once more. The inevitable occurred. Country mansions became a drug in the market, farmers farmed at a loss; small holders went bust daily, and emigrated; agricultural labourers sought the towns. In 1926 the Laborious Party, who had carried the taxation of their opponents to a pitch beyond the power of human endurance, got what the racy call ‘the knock,’ and the four years which followed witnessed the bitterest internecine struggle within the memory of every journalist. In the course of this strife emigration increased and the land emptied rapidly. The final victory of the Laborious Party, in 1930, saw them, still propelled by their rump, committed, among other things, to a pure town policy. They have never been out of power since; the result you see. Food is now entirely brought from overseas, largely by submarine and air service, in tabloid form, and expanded to its original proportions on arrival by an ingenious process discovered by a German. The country is now used only as a subject for sentimental poets, and to fly over, or by lovers on bicycles at week-ends.”
“Mon Dieu!” said the Angel thoughtfully: “To me, indeed, it seems that this must have been a case of: ‘Oh! What a surprise!’”
“You are not mistaken, sir,” replied his dragoman; “people still open their mouths over this consummation. It is pre-eminently an instance of what will happen sometimes when you are not looking, even to the English, who have been most fortunate in this respect. For you must remember that all Parties, even the Pundits, have always declared that rural life and all that, don’t you know? is most necessary, and have ever asserted that they were fostering it to the utmost. But they forgot to remember that our circumstances, traditions, education, and vested interests so favoured town life and the ‘good of trade’ that it required a real and unparliamentary effort not to take that line of least resistance. In fact, we have here a very good example of what I told you the other day was our most striking characteristic—never knowing where we are till after the event. But what with fog and principles, how can you expect we should? Better be a little town blighter with no constitution and high political principles, than your mere healthy country product of a pampered industry. But you have not yet seen the other side of the moon.”
“To what do you refer?” asked the Angel.
“Why, sir, to the glorious expansion of the towns. To this I shall introduce you to-morrow, if such be your pleasure.”
“Is London, then, not a town?” asked the Angel playfully.
“London?” cried his dragoman; “a mere pleasure village. To which real town shall I take you? Liverchester?”
“Anywhere,” said the Angel, “where I can get a good dinner.” So saying, he paid the rural population with a smile and spread his wings.
III
“The night is yet young,” said the Angel Æthereal on leaving the White Heart Hostel at Liverchester, “and I have had perhaps too much to eat. Let us walk and see the town.”
“As you will, sir,” replied his dragoman; “there is no difference between night and day, now that they are using the tides for the provision of electric power.”
The Angel took a note of the fact. “What do they manufacture here?” he asked.
“The entire town,” returned his dragoman, “which now extends from the old Liverpool to the old Manchester (as indeed its name implies), is occupied with expanding the tabloids of food which are landed in its port from the new worlds. This and the town of Brister, reaching from the old Bristol to the old Gloucester, have had the monopoly of food expansion for the United Kingdom since 1940.”
“By what means precisely?” asked the Angel.
“Congenial environment and bacteriology,” responded his dragoman. They walked for some time in silence, flying a little now and then in the dirtier streets, before the Angel spoke again:
“It is curious,” he said, “but I perceive no difference between this town and those I remember on my visit in 1910, save that the streets are better lighted, which is not an unmixed joy, for they are dirty and full of people whose faces do not please me.”
“Ah! sir,” replied his dragoman, “it is too much to expect that the wonderful darkness which prevailed at the time of the Great Skirmish could endure; then, indeed, one could indulge the hope that the houses were all built by Wren, and the people all clean and beautiful. There is no poetry now.”
“No!” said the Angel, sniffing, “but there is atmosphere, and it is not agreeable.”
“Mankind, when herded together, will smell,” answered his dragoman. “You cannot avoid it. What with old clothes, patchouli, petrol, fried fish and the fag, those five essentials of human life, the atmosphere of Turner and Corot are as nothing.”
“But do you not run your towns to please yourselves?” said the Angel.
“Oh, no, sir! The resistance would be dreadful. They run us. You see, they are so very big, and have such prestige. Besides,” he added, “even if we dared, we should not know how. For, though some great and good man once brought us plane-trees, we English are above getting the best out of life and its conditions, and despise light Frenchified taste. Notice the principle which governs this twenty-mile residential stretch. It was intended to be light, but how earnest it has all turned out! You can tell at a glance that these dwellings belong to the species ‘house’ and yet are individual houses, just as a man belongs to the species ‘man,’ and yet, as they say, has a soul of his own. This principle was introduced off the Avenue Road a few years before the Great Skirmish, and is now universal. Any person who lives in a house identical with another house is not known. Has anything heavier and more conscientious ever been seen?”
“Does this principle also apply to the houses of the working-man?” inquired the Angel.
“Hush, sir!” returned his dragoman looking round him nervously; “a dangerous word. The Laborious dwell in palaces built after the design of an architect called Jerry, with communal kitchens and baths.”
“Do they use them?” asked the Angel with some interest.
“Not as yet, indeed,” replied his dragoman; “but I believe they are thinking of it. As you know, sir, it takes time to introduce a custom. Thirty years is but as yesterday.”
“The Japanese wash daily,” mused the Angel.
“Not a Christian nation,” replied his dragoman; “nor have they the dirt to contend with which is conspicuous here. Let us do justice to the discouragement which dogs the ablutions of such as know they will soon be dirty again. It was confidently supposed, at the time of the Great Skirmish, which introduced military discipline and so entirely abolished caste, that the habit of washing would at last become endemic throughout the whole population. Judge how surprised were we of that day when the facts turned out otherwise. Instead of the Laborious washing more, the Patriotic washed less. It may have been the higher price of soap, or merely that human life was not very highly regarded at the time. We cannot tell. But not until military discipline disappeared, and caste was restored, which happened the moment peace returned, did the survivors of the Patriotic begin to wash immoderately again, leaving the Laborious to preserve a level more suited to democracy.”
“Talking of levels,” said the Angel; “is the populace increasing in stature?”
“Oh, no, indeed!” responded his dragoman; “the latest statistics give a diminution of one inch and a half during the past generation.”
“And in longevity?” asked the Angel.
“As to that, babies and old people are now communally treated, and all those diseases which are curable by lymph are well in hand.”
“Do people, then, not die?”
“Oh, yes, sir! About as often as before. There are new complaints which redress the balance.”
“And what are those?”
“A group of diseases called for convenience Scienticitis. Some think they come from the present food system; others from the accumulation of lymphs in the body; others, again, regard them as the result of dwelling on the subject—a kind of hypnotisation by death; a fourth school hold them traceable to town air; while a fifth consider them a mere manifestation of jealousy on the part of Nature. They date, one may say with confidence, from the time of the Great Skirmish, when men’s minds were turned with some anxiety to the question of statistics, and babies were at a premium.”
“Is the population, then, much larger?”
“You mean smaller, sir, do you not? Not perhaps so much smaller as you might expect; but it is still nicely down. You see, the Patriotic Party, including even those Pontificals whose private practice most discouraged all that sort of thing, began at once to urge propagation. But their propaganda was, as one may say, brain-spun; and at once bumped-up—pardon the colloquialism—against the economic situation. The existing babies, it is true, were saved; the trouble was rather that the babies began not to exist. The same, of course, obtained in every European country, with the exception of what was still, in a manner of speaking, Russia; and if that country had but retained its homogeneity, it would soon by sheer numbers have swamped the rest of Europe. Fortunately, perhaps, it did not remain homogeneous. An incurable reluctance to make food for cannon and impose further burdens on selves already weighted to the ground by taxes, developed in the peoples of each Central and Western land; and in the years from 1920 to 1930 the downward curve was so alarming in Great Britain that if the Patriotic Party could only have kept office long enough at a time they would, no doubt, have enforced conception at the point of the bayonet. Luckily or unluckily, according to taste, they did not; and it was left for more natural causes to produce the inevitable reaction which began to set in after 1930, when the population of the United Kingdom had been reduced to some twenty-five millions. About that time commerce revived. The question of the land had been settled by its unconscious abandonment, and people began to see before them again the possibility of supporting families. The ingrained disposition of men and women to own pets, together with ‘the good of trade,’ began once more to have its way; and the population rose rapidly. A renewed joy in life, and the assurance of not having to pay the piper, caused the slums, as they used to be called, to swarm once more, and filled the communal crèches. And had it not been for the fact that any one with physical strength, or love of fresh air, promptly emigrated to the Sister Nations on attaining the age of eighteen we might now, sir, be witnessing an overcrowding equal to that of the times before the Great Skirmish. The movement is receiving an added impetus with the approach of the Greater Skirmish between the Teutons and Mongolians, for it is expected that trade will boom and much wealth accrue to those countries which are privileged to look on with equanimity at this great new drama, as the editors are already calling it.”
“In all this,” said the Angel Æthereal, “I perceive something rather sordid.”
“Sir,” replied his dragoman earnestly, “your remark is characteristic of the sky, where people are not made of flesh and blood; pay, I believe, no taxes; and have no experience of the devastating consequences of war. I recollect so well when I was a young man, before the Great Skirmish began, and even when it had been going on several years, how glibly the leaders of opinion talked of human progress, and how blind they were to the fact that it has a certain connection with environment. You must remember that ever since that large and, as some still think rather tragic, occurrence environment has been very dicky and Utopia not unrelated to thin air. It has been perceived time and again that the leaders of public opinion are not always confirmed by events. The new world, which was so sapiently prophesied by rhetoricians, is now nigh thirty years old, and, for my part, I confess to surprise that it is not worse than it actually is. I am moralising, I fear, however, for these suburban buildings grievously encourage the philosophic habit. Rather let us barge along and see the Laborious at their labours, which are never interrupted now by the mere accident of night.”
The Angel increased his speed till they alighted amid a forest of tall chimneys, whose sirens were singing like a watch of nightingales.
“There is a shift on,” said the dragoman. “Stand here, sir; we shall see them passing in and out.”
The Laborious were not hurrying, and went by uttering the words: “Cheer oh!” “So long!” and “Wot abaht it!”
The Angel contemplated them for a time before he said: “It comes back to me now how they used to talk when they were doing up my flat on my visit in 1910.”
“Give me, I pray, an imitation,” said his dragoman.
The Angel struck the attitude of one painting a door. “William,” he said, rendering those voices of the past, “what money are you obtaining?”
“Not half, Alfred.”
“If that is so, indeed, William, should you not rather leave your tools and obtain better money? I myself am doing this.”
“Not half, Alfred.”
“Round the corner I can obtain more money by working for fewer hours. In my opinion there is no use in working for less money when you can obtain more. How much does Henry obtain?”
“Not half, Alfred.”
“What I am now obtaining is, in my opinion, no use at all.”
“Not half, Alfred.”
Here the Angel paused, and let his hand move for one second in a masterly exhibition of activity.
“It is doubtful, sir,” said his dragoman, “whether you would be permitted to dilute your conversation with so much labour in these days; the rules are very strict.”
“Are there, then, still Trades Unions?” asked the Angel.
“No, indeed,” replied his dragoman; “but there are Committees. That habit which grew up at the time of the Great Skirmish has flourished ever since. Statistics reveal the fact that there are practically no adults in the country between the ages of nineteen and fifty who are not sitting on Committees. At the time of the Great Skirmish all Committees were nominally active; they are now both active and passive. In every industry, enterprise, or walk of life a small active Committee directs; and a large passive Committee, formed of everybody else, resists that direction. And it is safe to say that the Passive Committees are active and the Active Committees passive; in this way no inordinate amount of work is done. Indeed, if the tongue and the electric button had not usurped practically all the functions of the human hand, the State would have some difficulty in getting its boots blacked. But a ha’poth of visualisation is worth three lectures at ten shillings the stall, so enter, sir, and see for yourself.”
Saying this, he pushed open the door.
In a shed, which extended beyond the illimitable range of the Angel’s eye, machinery and tongues were engaged in a contest which filled the ozone with an incomparable hum. Men and women in profusion were leaning against walls or the pillars on which the great roof was supported, assiduously pressing buttons. The scent of expanding food revived the Angel’s appetite.
“I shall require supper,” he said dreamily.
“By all means, sir,” replied his dragoman; “after work—play. It will afford you an opportunity to witness modern pleasures in our great industrial centres. But what a blessing is electric power!” he added. “Consider these lilies of the town, they toil not, neither do they spin——”
“Yet Solomon in all his glory,” chipped in the Angel eagerly, “had not their appearance, you bet.”
“Indeed they are an insouciant crowd,” mused his dragoman; “How tinkling is their laughter! The habit dates from the days of the Great Skirmish, when nothing but laughter would meet the case.”
“Tell me,” said the Angel, “are the English satisfied at last with their industrial conditions, and generally with their mode of life in these expanded towns?”
“Satisfied? Oh dear, no, sir! But you know what it is: They are obliged to wait for each fresh development before they can see what they have to counteract; and, since that great creative force, ‘the good of trade,’ is always a little stronger than the forces of criticism and reform, each development carries them a little further on the road to——”
“Hell! How hungry I am again!” exclaimed the Angel. “Let us sup!”
IV
“Laughter,” said the Angel Æthereal, applying his wineglass to his nose, “has ever distinguished mankind from all other animals with the exception of the dog. And the power of laughing at nothing distinguishes man even from that quadruped.”
“I would go further, sir,” returned his dragoman, “and say that the power of laughing at that which should make him sick distinguishes the Englishman from all other varieties of man except the negro. Kindly observe!” He rose, and taking the Angel by the waist, fox-trotted him among the little tables.
“See!” he said, indicating the other supper-takers with a circular movement of his beard, “they are consumed with laughter. The habit of fox-trotting in the intervals of eating has been known ever since it was introduced by Americans a generation ago, at the beginning of the Great Skirmish, when that important people had as yet nothing else to do; but it still causes laughter in this country. A distressing custom,” he wheezed, as they resumed their seats, “for not only does it disturb the oyster, but it compels one to think lightly of the human species. Not that one requires much compulsion,” he added, “now that music-hall, cinema, and restaurant are conjoined. What a happy idea it was of Berlin’s, and how excellent for business! Kindly glance for a moment—but not more—at the left-hand stage.”
The Angel turned his eyes towards a cinematograph film which was being displayed. He contemplated it for the moment without speaking.
“I do not comprehend,” he said at last, “why the person with the arrested moustaches is hitting so many people with that sack of flour.”
“To cause amusement, sir,” replied his dragoman. “Look at the laughing faces around you.”
“But it is not funny,” said the Angel.
“No, indeed,” returned his dragoman. “Be so good as to carry your eyes now to the stage on the right, but not for long. What do you see?”
“I see a very red-nosed man beating a very white-nosed man about the body.”
“It is a real scream, is it not?”
“No,” said the Angel drily. “Does nothing else ever happen on these stages?”
“Nothing. Stay! Revues happen!”
“What are revues?” asked the Angel.
“Criticisms of life, sir, as it would be seen by persons inebriated on various intoxicants.”
“They should be joyous.”
“They are accounted so,” his dragoman replied; “but for my part, I prefer to criticise life for myself, especially when I am drunk.”
“Are there no plays, no operas?” asked the Angel from behind his glass.
“Not in the old and proper sense of these words. They disappeared towards the end of the Great Skirmish.”
“What food for the mind is there, then?” asked the Angel, adding an oyster to his collection.
“None in public, sir, for it is well recognised, and has been ever since those days, that laughter alone promotes business and removes the thought of death. You cannot recall, as I can, sir, the continual stream which used to issue from theatres, music-halls, and picture-palaces in the days of the Great Skirmish, nor the joviality of the Strand and the more expensive restaurants. I have often thought,” he added with a touch of philosophy, “what a height of civilisation we must have reached to go jesting, as we did, to the Great Unknown.”
“Is that really what the English did at the time of the Great Skirmish?” asked the Angel.
“It is,” replied his dragoman solemnly.
“Then they are a very fine people, and I can put up with much about them which seems to me distressing.”
“Ah! sir, though, being an Englishman, I am sometimes inclined to disparage the English, I am yet convinced that you could not fly a week’s journey and come across another race with such a peculiar nobility, or such an unconquerable soul, if you will forgive my using a word whose meaning is much disputed. May I tempt you with a clam?” he added more lightly. “We now have them from America—in fair preservation, and very nasty they are, in my opinion.”
The Angel took a clam.
“My Lord!” he said, after a moment of deglutition.
“Quite so!” replied his dragoman. “But kindly glance at the right-hand stage again. There is a revue on now. What do you see?”
The Angel made two holes with his forefingers and thumbs and, putting them to his eyes, bent a little forward.
“Tut, tut!” he said; “I see some attractive young females with very few clothes on, walking up and down in front of what seem to me, indeed, to be two grown-up men in collars and jackets as of little boys. What precise criticism of life is this conveying?”
His dragoman answered in reproachful accents:
“Do you not feel, sir, from your own sensations, how marvellously this informs one of the secret passions of mankind? Is there not in it a striking revelation of the natural tendencies of the male population? Remark how the whole audience, including your august self, is leaning forward and looking through their thumb-holes?”
The Angel sat back hurriedly.
“True,” he said, “I was carried away. But that is not the criticism of life which art demands. If it had been, the audience, myself included, would have been sitting back with their lips curled dry, instead of watering.”
“For all that,” replied his dragoman, “it is the best we can give you; anything which induces the detached mood of which you spoke, has been banned from the stage since the days of the Great Skirmish; it is so very bad for business.”
“Pity!” said the Angel, imperceptibly edging forward; “the mission of art is to elevate.”
“It is plain, sir,” said his dragoman, “that you have lost touch with the world as it is. The mission of art—now truly democratic—is to level—in principle up, in practice down. Do not forget, sir, that the English have ever regarded æstheticism as unmanly, and grace as immoral; when to that basic principle you add the principle of serving the taste of the majority, you have perfect conditions for a sure and gradual decrescendo.”
“Does taste, then, no longer exist?” asked the Angel.
“It is not wholly, as yet, extinct, but lingers in the communal kitchens and canteens, as introduced by the Young Men’s Christian Association in the days of the Great Skirmish. While there is appetite there is hope, nor is it wholly discouraging that taste should now centre in the stomach; for is not that the real centre of man’s activity? Who dare affirm that from so universal a foundation the fair structure of æstheticism shall not be rebuilt? The eye, accustomed to the look of dainty dishes and pleasant cookery, may once more demand the architecture of Wren, the sculpture of Rodin, the paintings of—dear me—whom? Why, sir, even before the days of the Great Skirmish, when you were last on earth, we had already begun to put the future of æstheticism on a more real basis, and were converting the concert-halls of London into hotels. Few at the time saw the far-reaching significance of that movement, or realised that æstheticism was to be levelled down to the stomach, in order that it might be levelled up again to the head, on true democratic principles.”
“But what,” said the Angel, with one of his preternatural flashes of acumen, “what if, on the other hand, taste should continue to sink and lose even its present hold on the stomach? If all else has gone, why should not the beauty of the kitchen go?”
“That indeed,” sighed his dragoman, placing his hand on his heart, “is a thought which often gives me a sinking sensation. Two liqueur brandies,” he murmured to the waiter. “But the stout heart refuses to despair. Besides, advertisements show decided traces of æsthetic advance. All the great painters, poets, and fiction writers are working on them; the movement had its origin in the propaganda demanded by the Great Skirmish. You will not recollect the war poetry of that period, the patriotic films, the death cartoons, and other remarkable achievements. We have just as great talents now, though their object has not perhaps the religious singleness of those stirring times. Not a food, corset, or collar which has not its artist working for it! Toothbrushes, nut-crackers, babies’ baths—the whole caboodle of manufacture—are now set to music. Such themes are considered subliminal if not sublime. No, sir, I will not despair; it is only at moments when I have dined poorly that the horizon seems dark. Listen—they have turned on the ‘Kalophone,’ for you must know that all music now is beautifully made by machine—so much easier for every one.”
The Angel raised his head, and into his eyes came the glow associated with celestial strains.
“The tune,” he said, “is familiar to me.”
“Yes, sir,” answered his dragoman, “for it is The Messiah in ragtime. No time is wasted, you notice; all, even pleasure, is intensively cultivated, on the lines of least resistance, thanks to the feverishness engendered in us by the Great Skirmish, when no one knew if he would have another chance, and to the subsequent need for fostering industry. But whether we really enjoy ourselves is perhaps a question to answer which you must examine the English character.”
“That I refuse to do,” said the Angel.
“And you are wise, sir, for it is a puzzler, and many have cracked their heads over it. But have we not been here long enough? We can pursue our researches into the higher realms of art to-morrow.”
A beam from the Angel’s lustrous eyes fell on a lady at the next table. “Yes, perhaps we had better go,” he sighed.
V
“And so it is through the fields of true art that we shall walk this morning?” said the Angel Æthereal.
“Such as they are in this year of Peace 1947,” responded his dragoman, arresting him before a statue; “for the development of this hobby has been peculiar since you were here in 1910, when the childlike and contortionist movement was just beginning to take hold of the British.”
“Whom does this represent?” asked the Angel.
“A celebrated publicist, recently deceased at a great age. You see him unfolded by this work of multiform genius, in every aspect known to art, religion, nature, and the population. From his knees downwards he is clearly devoted to nature, and is portrayed as about to enter his bath. From his waist to his knees he is devoted to religion—mark the complete disappearance of the human aspect. From his neck to his waist he is devoted to public affairs; observe the tweed coat, the watch-chain, and other signs of practical sobriety. But the head is, after all, the crown of the human being, and is devoted to art. This is why you cannot make out that it is a head. Note its pyramidal severity, its cunning little ears, its box-built, water-tightal structure. The hair you note to be in flames. Here we have the touch of beauty—the burning shrub. In the whole you will observe that aversion from natural form and the single point of view, characteristic of all twentieth-century æsthetics. The whole thing is a very great masterpiece of childlike contortionism. To do things as irresponsibly as children and contortionists—what a happy discovery of the line of least resistance in art that was! Mark, by the way, this exquisite touch about the left hand.”
“It appears to be deformed,” said the Angel, going a step nearer.
“Look closer still,” returned his dragoman, “and you will see that it is holding a novel of the great Russian, upside down. Ever since that simple master who so happily blended the childlike with the contortionist became known in this country they have been trying to go him one better, in letters, in painting, in sculpture, and in music, refusing to admit that he was the last cry; and until they have beaten him this movement simply cannot cease; it may therefore go on for ever, for he was the limit. That hand symbolises the whole movement.”
“How?” said the Angel.
“Why, sir, somersault is its mainspring. Did you never observe the great Russian’s method? Prepare your characters to do one thing, and make them very swiftly do the opposite. Thus did that terrific novelist demonstrate his overmastering range of vision and knowledge of the depths of human nature. Since his characters never varied this routine in the course of some eight thousand pages, people have lightly said that he repeated himself. But what of that? Consider what perfect dissociation he thereby attained between character and action; what nebulosity of fact; what a truly childlike and mystic mix-up of all human values hitherto known! And here, sir, at the risk of tickling you, I must whisper.” The dragoman made a trumpet of his hand: “Fiction can only be written by those who have exceptionally little knowledge of ordinary human nature, and great fiction only by such as have none at all.”
“How is that?” said the Angel, somewhat disconcerted.
“Surprise, sir, is the very kernel of all effects in art, and in real life people will act as their characters and temperaments determine that they shall. This dreadful and unmalleable trait would have upset all the great mystic masters from generation to generation if they had only noticed it. But did they? Fortunately not. These greater men naturally put into their books the greater confusion and flux in which their extraordinary selves exist! The nature they portray is not human, but super- or subter-human, which you will. Who would have it otherwise?”
“Not I,” said the Angel. “For I confess to a liking for what is called the ‘tuppence coloured.’ But Russians are not as other men, are they?”
“They are not,” said his dragoman, “but the trouble is, sir, that since the British discovered him, every character in our greater fiction has a Russian soul, though living in Cornwall or the Midlands, in a British body under a Scottish or English name.”
“Very piquant,” said the Angel, turning from the masterpiece before him. “Are there no undraped statues to be seen?”
“In no recognisable form. For, not being educated to the detached contemplation which still prevailed to a limited extent even as late as the days of the Great Skirmish, the populace can no longer be trusted with such works of art; they are liable to rush at them, for embrace, or demolition, as their temperaments may dictate.”
“The Greeks are dead, then,” said the Angel.
“As door-nails, sir. They regarded life as a thing to be enjoyed—a vice you will not have noticed in the British. The Greeks were an outdoor people, who lived in the sun and the fresh air, and had none of the niceness bred by the life of our towns. We have long been renowned for our delicacy about the body; nor has the tendency been decreased by constituting Watch Committees of young persons in every borough. These are now the arbiters of art, and nothing unsuitable to the child of seven passes their censorship.”
“How careful!” said the Angel.
“The result has been wonderful,” remarked his dragoman. “Wonderful!” he repeated, dreamily. “I suppose there is more smouldering sexual desire and disease in this country than in any other.”
“Was that the intention?” asked the Angel.
“Oh! no, sir! That is but the natural effect of so remarkably pure a surface. All is within instead of without. Nature has now wholly disappeared. The process was sped-up by the Great Skirmish. For, since then, we have had little leisure and income to spare on the gratification of anything but laughter; this and the ‘unco guid’ have made our art-surface glare in the eyes of the nations, thin and spotless as if made of tin.”
The Angel raised his eyebrows. “I had hoped for better things,” he said.
“You must not suppose, sir,” pursued his dragoman, “that there is not plenty of the undraped, so long as it is vulgar, as you saw just now upon the stage, for that is good business; the line is only drawn at the danger-point of art, which is always very bad business in this country. Yet even in real life the undraped has to be grotesque to be admitted; the one fatal quality is natural beauty. The laugh, sir, the laugh—even the most hideous and vulgar laugh—is such a disinfectant. I should, however, say in justice to our literary men, that they have not altogether succumbed to the demand for cachinnations. A school, which first drew breath before the Great Skirmish began, has perfected itself, till now we have whole tomes where hardly a sentence would be intelligible to any save the initiate; this enables them to defy the Watch Committees, with other Philistines. We have writers who mysteriously preach the realisation of self by never considering anybody else; of purity through experience of exotic vice; of courage through habitual cowardice; and of kindness through Prussian behaviour. They are generally young. We have others whose fiction consists of autobiography interspersed with philosophic and political fluencies. These may be of any age from eighty odd to the bitter thirties. We have also the copious and chatty novelist; and transcribers of the life of the Laborious, whom the Laborious never read. Above all, we have the great Patriotic school, who put the national motto first, and write purely what is good for trade. In fact, we have every sort, as in the old days.”
“It would appear,” said the Angel, “that the arts have stood somewhat still.”
“Except for a more external purity, and a higher internal corruption,” replied his dragoman.
“Are artists still noted for their jealousies?” asked the Angel.
“They are, sir; for that is inherent in the artistic temperament, which is extremely touchy about fame.”
“And do they still get angry when those gentlemen—the——”
“Critics,” his dragoman suggested. “They get angry, sir; but critics are usually anonymous, and from excellent reasons; for not only are the passions of an angry artist very high, but the knowledge of an angry critic is not infrequently very low, especially of art. It is kinder to save life, where possible.”
“For my part,” said the Angel, “I have little regard for human life, and consider that many persons would be better buried.”
“That may be,” his dragoman retorted with some irritation; “‘errare est humanum.’ But I, for one, would rather be a dead human being any day than a live angel, for I think they are more charitable.”
“Well,” said the Angel genially, “you have the prejudice of your kind. Have you an artist about the place, to show me? I do not recollect any at Madame Tussaud’s.”
“They have taken to declining that honour. We could see one in real life if we went to Cornwall.”
“Why Cornwall?”
“I cannot tell you, sir. There is something in the air which affects their passions.”
“I am hungry, and would rather go to the Savoy,” said the Angel, walking on.
“You are in luck,” whispered his dragoman, when they had seated themselves at a table covered with prawns; “for at the next on your left is our most famous exponent of the mosaic school of novelism.”
“Then here goes!” replied the Angel. And, turning to his neighbour, he asked pleasantly: “How do you do, sir? What is your income?”
The gentleman addressed looked up from his prawn, and replied wearily: “Ask my agent. He may conceivably possess the knowledge you require.”
“Answer me this, at all events,” said the Angel, with more dignity, if possible: “How do you write your books? For it must be wonderful to summon around you every day the creatures of your imagination. Do you wait for afflatus?”
“No,” said the author; “er—no! I—er——” he added weightily, “sit down every morning.”
The Angel rolled his eyes and, turning to his dragoman, said in a well-bred whisper: “He sits down every morning! My Lord, how good for trade!”
VI
“A glass of sherry, dry, and ham sandwich, stale, can be obtained here, sir,” said the dragoman; “and for dessert, the scent of parchment and bananas. We will then attend Court 45, where I shall show you how fundamentally our legal procedure has changed in the generation that has elapsed since the days of the Great Skirmish.”
“Can it really be that the Law has changed? I had thought it immutable,” said the Angel, causing his teeth to meet with difficulty: “What will be the nature of the suit to which we shall listen?”
“I have thought it best, sir, to select a divorce case, lest you should sleep, overcome by the ozone and eloquence in these places.”
“Ah!” said the Angel: “I am ready.”
The Court was crowded, and they took their seats with difficulty, and a lady sitting on the Angel’s left wing.
“The public will frequent this class of case,” whispered his dragoman. “How different when you were here in 1910!”
The Angel collected himself: “Tell me,” he murmured, “which of the grey-haired ones is the judge?”
“He in the bag-wig, sir,” returned his dragoman; “and that little lot is the jury,” he added, indicating twelve gentlemen seated in two rows.
“What is their private life?” asked the Angel.
“No better than it should be, perhaps,” responded his dragoman facetiously; “but no one can tell that from their words and manner, as you will presently see. These are special ones,” he added, “and pay income tax, so that their judgment in matters of morality is of considerable value.”
“They have wise faces,” said the Angel. “Which is the prosecutor?”
“No, no!” his dragoman answered, vividly: “This is a civil case. That is the plaintiff with a little mourning about her eyes and a touch of red about her lips, in the black hat with the aigrette, the pearls, and the fashionably sober clothes.”
“I see her,” said the Angel: “an attractive woman. Will she win?”
“We do not call it winning, sir; for this, as you must know, is a sad matter, and implies the breaking-up of a home. She will most unwillingly receive a decree, at least, I think so,” he added; “though whether it will stand the scrutiny of the King’s Proctor we may wonder a little, from her appearance.”
“King’s Proctor?” said the Angel. “What is that?”
“A celestial Die-hard, sir, paid to join together again those whom man have put asunder.”
“I do not follow,” said the Angel fretfully.
“I perceive,” whispered his dragoman, “that I must make clear to you the spirit which animates our justice in these matters. You know, of course, that the intention of our law is ever to penalise the wrongdoer. It therefore requires the innocent party, like that lady there, to be exceptionally innocent, not only before she secures her divorce, but for six months afterwards.”
“Oh!” said the Angel. “And where is the guilty party?”
“Probably in the south of France,” returned his dragoman, “with the new partner of his affections. They have a place in the sun; this one a place in the Law Courts.”
“Dear me!” said the Angel. “Does she prefer that?”
“There are ladies,” his dragoman replied, “who find it a pleasure to appear, no matter where, so long as people can see them in a pretty hat. But the great majority would rather sink into the earth than do this thing.”
“The face of this one is most agreeable to me; I should not wish her to sink,” said the Angel warmly.
“Agreeable or not,” resumed his dragoman, “they have to bring their hearts for inspection by the public if they wish to become free from the party who has done them wrong. This is necessary, for the penalisation of the wrongdoer.”
“And how will he be penalised?” asked the Angel naïvely.
“By receiving his freedom,” returned his dragoman, “together with the power to enjoy himself with his new partner, in the sun, until in due course, he is able to marry her.”
“This is mysterious to me,” murmured the Angel. “Is not the boot on the wrong leg?”
“Oh! sir, the law would not make a mistake like that. You are bringing a single mind to the consideration of this matter, but that will never do. This lady is a true and much-wronged wife; that is—let us hope so!—to whom our law has given its protection and remedy; but she is also, in its eyes, somewhat reprehensible for desiring to avail herself of that protection and remedy. For, though the law is now purely the affair of the State and has nothing to do with the Appointed, it still secretly believes in the religious maxim: ‘Once married, always married,’ and feels that however much a married person is neglected or ill-treated, she should not desire to be free.”
“She?” said the Angel. “Does a man never desire to be free?”
“Oh, yes! sir, and not infrequently.”
“Does the law, then, not consider him reprehensible in that desire?”
“In theory, perhaps; but there is a subtle distinction. For, sir, as you observe from the countenances before you, the law is administered entirely by males, and males cannot but believe in the divine right of males to have a better time than females; and, though they do not say so, they naturally feel that a husband wronged by a wife is more injured than a wife wronged by a husband.”
“There is much in that,” said the Angel. “But tell me how the oracle is worked—for it may come in handy!”
“You allude, sir, to the necessary procedure? I will make this clear. There are two kinds of cases: what I may call the ‘O.K.’ and what I may call the ‘rig.’ Now in the ‘O.K.’ it is only necessary for the plaintiff, if it be a woman, to receive a black eye from her husband and to pay detectives to find out that he has been too closely in the company of another; if it be a man, he need not receive a black eye from his wife, and has merely to pay the detectives to obtain the same necessary information.”
“Why this difference between the sexes?” asked the Angel.
“Because,” answered his dragoman, “woman is the weaker sex, things are therefore harder for her.”
“But,” said the Angel, “the English have a reputation for chivalry.”
“They have, sir.”
“Well——” began the Angel.
“When these conditions are complied with,” interrupted his dragoman, “a suit for divorce may be brought, which may or may not be defended. Now, the ‘rig,’ which is always brought by the wife, is not so simple, for it must be subdivided into two sections: ‘Ye straight rig’ and ‘Ye crooked rig.’ ‘Ye straight rig’ is where the wife cannot induce her husband to remain with her, and discovering from him that he has been in the close company of another, wishes to be free of him. She therefore tells the Court that she wishes him to come back to her, and the Court will tell him to go back. Whereupon, if he obey, the fat is sometimes in the fire. If, however, he obeys not, which is the more probable, she may, after a short delay, bring a suit, adducing the evidence she has obtained, and receive a decree. This may be the case before you, or, on the other hand, it may not, and will then be what is called ‘Ye crooked rig.’ If that is so, these two persons, having found that they cannot live in conjugal friendliness, have laid their heads together for the last time, and arranged to part; the procedure will now be the same as in ‘Ye straight rig.’ But the wife must take the greatest care to lead the Court to suppose that she really wishes her husband to come back; for, if she does not, it is collusion. The more ardent her desire to part from him, the more care she must take to pretend the opposite! But this sort of case is, after all, the simplest, for both parties are in complete accord in desiring to be free of each other, so neither does anything to retard that end, which is soon obtained.”
“About that evidence?” said the Angel. “What must the man do?”
“He will require to go to an hotel with a lady friend,” replied his dragoman; “once will be enough. And, provided they are called in the morning, there is no real necessity for anything else.”
“H’m!” said the Angel. “This, indeed, seems to me to be all around about the bush. Could there not be some simple method which would not necessitate the perversion of the truth?”
“Ah, no!” responded his dragoman. “You forget what I told you, sir. However unhappy people may be together, our law grudges their separation; it requires them therefore to be immoral, or to lie, or both, before they can part.”
“Curious!” said the Angel.
“You must understand, sir, that when a man says he will take a woman, and a woman says she will take a man, for the rest of their natural existence, they are assumed to know all about each other, though not permitted, of course, by the laws of morality to know anything of real importance. Since it is almost impossible from a modest acquaintanceship to make sure whether they will continue to desire each other’s company after a completed knowledge, they are naturally disposed to go it ‘blind,’ if I may be pardoned the expression, and will take each other for ever on the smallest provocations. For the human being, sir, makes nothing of the words ‘for ever,’ when it sees immediate happiness before it. You can well understand, therefore, how necessary it is to make it very hard for them to get untied again.”
“I should dislike living with a wife if I were tired of her,” said the Angel.
“Sir,” returned his dragoman confidentially, “in that sentiment you would have with you the whole male population. And, I believe, the whole of the female population would feel the same if they were tired of you, as the husband.”
“That!” said the Angel, with a quiet smile.
“Ah! yes, sir; but does not this convince you of the necessity to force people who are tired of each other to go on living together?”
“No,” said the Angel, with appalling frankness.
“Well,” his dragoman replied soberly, “I must admit that some have thought our marriage laws should be in a museum, for they are unique; and, though a source of amusement to the public, and emolument to the profession, they pass the comprehension of men and angels who have not the key of the mystery.”
“What key?” asked the Angel.
“I will give it you, sir,” said his dragoman: “The English have a genius for taking the shadow of a thing for its substance. ‘So long,’ they say, ‘as our marriages, our virtue, our honesty, and happiness seem to be, they are.’ So long, therefore, as we do not dissolve a marriage it remains virtuous, honest and happy, though the parties to it may be unfaithful, untruthful, and in misery. It would be regarded as awful, sir, for marriage to depend on mutual liking. We English cannot bear the thought of defeat. To dissolve an unhappy marriage is to recognise defeat by life, and we would rather that other people lived in wretchedness all their days than admit that members of our race had come up against something too hard to overcome. The English do not care about making the best out of this life in reality so long as they can do it in appearance.”