Edward Caroway was a member of the upper middle class, the class to which, if I may say it without presumption, I myself belong. I wish someone would write a treatise on its rise, decline and fall. It would be interesting. The upper middle class seems to have arisen with the Industrial Revolution which began about the middle of the eighteenth century and lasted to about the middle of the nineteenth. It changed the stable society of England, till then largely agricultural, to modern industrialism. Clever youngsters, with no background and little education, but with all their wits about them, made fortunes so large that eventually, for their political services or for their munificent charities, they were granted peerages and their offspring married into the aristocracy. Lesser youths, beginning with a small shop, became successful tradesmen; others, starting as office boys, in course of time became prosperous businessmen, and sent their sons to good schools. It was said in those days that it took three generations to make a gentleman. By the time they had reached this desirable status they were able, without working, to live comfortably on their incomes and as respected members of their class were accepted as equals by the impoverished landed gentry.
Edward Caroway was an only child and was sent to a public school in the south of England, not one of those schools which give prestige not only to the boy but to his parents, but one which provided a good education. He was very shortsighted and had to wear spectacles, and he had no gift for games, but he was industrious and had a good memory. At eighteen he went up to Oxford with a scholarship. As an intellectual he moved in intellectual circles and enjoyed himself. When he took his degree, not a first as his friends had expected him to do, but a second, he found himself confronted with an uncertain future. Owing to income tax, inheritance taxes and unwise speculations, what the founder of the family fortune had looked upon as affluence was now sorely diminished, so, after due consideration, Edward wisely decided that in order to live in the style to which he was accustomed he must find some profitable occupation. The unfortunate thing was that he had nothing much to offer besides his acquaintance with the classics and his love of literature.
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If he had been born fifty years sooner his course would have been plain. He would have taken Holy Orders. He had a good presence and a resonant voice. After spending fifteen years or so as a curate in pleasant places where there was no tiresome proletariat to be dealt with, he would have been presented to a living in the neighborhood of Canterbury or Oxford. With his agreeable gift for small talk he would have been very popular at the tea parties of the ladies in those centers of culture, and eventually have ended a happy, easy life as, if not an archdeacon, at least a rural dean. But at this period of English history the church was not a profession which allured an intellectual young man of very moderate means, and Edward Caroway set his mind to consider those which a gentleman might reasonably enter. Unhappily they demanded a long training. To be a solicitor you had to be an articled clerk, to be a barrister you had to eat dinners and pass a stiff examination, to be a doctor you had to spend five years as a medical student. There was only one profession which required no training, which you could enter without an examination, which had prestige and enabled you to move in the company of your equals. Edward Caroway decided to become an author.
He got his tutor to give him a letter to the editor of a highbrow weekly. He went to London and saw the editor, who gave him on trial two or three books to review. The trial was satisfactory and he was given more and more books to do. It was work that exactly suited him. He had neither imagination nor humor, slight disadvantages to a man who intends to make the production of literature his profession, but he wrote decent English and was conscientious. He joined a good club and put his name down for the Athenaeum. He was fortunate in that about that time Society began to take an interest in literature. Earlier in the century great ladies had concerned themselves with it only when a scandalous divorce had shut the doors of Mayfair to them; but by the time of which I write they had discovered that a man of letters was an asset at the luncheon table. Edward was a welcome guest. The English have never been great talkers. If you were giving a luncheon party it was very serviceable to have among your guests a man who could be counted on not to let the conversation drop and by enlarging on literary matters give the party a satisfying air of culture. Edward was much sought after. He became widely known.
He was a man of principle and made it a rule never to review the books of his friends, but now and again a noble lady published a volume of reminiscences and wrote to ask him to review it. What was to do do when he had lunched and dined with her, sat in her box at the opera and spent luxurious weekends in her palatial country house? He swallowed his principles. Once at least he had an unpleasant experience. The book he chose in these circumstances to review was a bad one; he managed, however, to write a review that would have satisfied any professional author. But amateurs are very sensitive and the lady wrote him an angry letter in which she accused him of gross ingratitude. The bitterest charge she made was that he had damned her book out of sheer malice.
But notwithstanding such occurrences, vituperative letters from the Sitwells, cold looks from fellow members of the Athenaeum whose books he had slated, Edward's importance in the literary world increased. Publishers quoted his favorable remarks in their advertisements and his name was printed in a review in letters twice as large as the author's. He wrote for papers of vast circulation and was generously paid. Content to read the books of others, he never wrote one himself. It is impossible to reckon the number of books he read. Thousands. He called himself a literary journalist and looked upon himself as a cut above the reporters, the gossip columnists, the interviewers, the crime specialists, the foreign correspondents whose copy filled other columns of the paper for which he wrote. I thought that there perhaps he made a mistake. After all, they dealt with life. Of life as it is lived he knew nothing and, it must be admitted, cared less. Such was Edward Caroway.
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There are authors who seem to go out of their way to antagonize the press. This is foolish. It is a hard life reporters lead, and none too well paid. They must go out in all weathers and too often take long and tiresome journeys. They have their living to earn as do the authors whom they have come to see. Sometimes they are less hard-boiled than they would like to seem. They may in fact be slightly nervous. It is common sense to put them at their ease. Give them a drink, induce them to talk a little about themselves and they will be grateful to you. You may even get an unexpected experience. On one occasion, many years ago, an interviewer came to see me on behalf of a widely read daily paper, and after we had settled down to talk he patted a dispatch case he had brought with him and said, "I've got all the dope about you in this." I had an inspiration. "Have you got my obituary?" I asked. He gave me a startled look and I knew he had. "Let me see it," I said, "and I'll give you the best interview I possibly can." "If it were known I'd given it you, I'd get the sack," he said. "Who's to know?" I answered. "I won't give you away." After a little hesitation he rummaged among the papers in his dispatch case and handed me the obituary. It was in print and so could go into the newspaper at an hour's notice. There were three-quarters of a column, which I thought reasonably adequate. To be written about in the past tense gave me a curious sensation. I felt like a disembodied spirit.2 When I had finished reading it I gave the document back to the journalist. "Are you satisfied with it?" he asked. "On the whole it's correct enough," I replied. "It's a trifle on the cold side. I would have liked the writer to express himself with just a little more warmth." At that we burst out laughing and proceeded with the interview.
Not so long ago another interviewer, after some conversation about my plans, abruptly asked me, "You're an atheist, aren't you?" "I prefer to call myself a rationalist," I answered. "I should have thought," he began. "Don't," I interrupted him, for I guessed what he was about to say. It was that now my life was coming to an end I might have qualms and look with some uncertainty on what after my death might befall me. He was wrong. I believe neither in the existence of God nor in the immortality of the soul. It is generally agreed by rationalists that though it is impossible to prove that God does not exist there are no good reasons to believe that he does. Nor are there good reasons to believe in the immortality of the soul. I for my part cannot understand how people can still believe in a transcendent God and in an afterlife. When one considers the vast extent of the expanding universe, with the millions of galaxies millions of light waves away from us, one can hardly fail to harbor the notion, paradoxical as it may seem, that there is no place for God in it. I look upon Christianity as a dying religion. It may last two or three hundred years longer and I surmise that Catholicism will last longer than Protestantism since it has an appeal to the emotions that the Protestant churches have abandoned. However confirmed a skeptic you are, when you attend Mass, even low Mass, and watch the priest, served by an acolyte, in his heavily embroidered vestments reading, rapidly and inaudibly, the prescribed prayers of the liturgy, you can hardly fail to be impressed; and when, as the acolyte tinkles his bell to herald the elevation and the congregation fall to their knees; when for the faithful the miracle of transubstantiation takes place and the celebrant raises successively the Host and the Chalice for all to worship and adore, unbeliever though you be, you cannot fail to be deeply awed. How bleak is the Protestant service compared with the awe-inspiring celebration of the Mass! But that will not prevent the Catholic faith from sharing the same fate as the Protestant. Christianity is incredible. I ask myself whether these Archbishops and Bishops really believe what they preach. They are presumably men of more than common intelligence or they wouldn't have risen to positions of importance. Do they really believe in the Virgin Birth, the miracles Jesus is claimed to have performed, and the Resurrection?
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Some years ago Bertrand Russell delivered a lecture which he afterwards published as a little book called "Why I Am Not a Christian." I have the greatest admiration for Russell. He is eminent both as a mathematician and as a philosopher. Moreover he writes uncommonly good English. I found "Why I Am Not a Christian" disappointing. I think Russell is not fair to Jesus. "I am concerned," he write, "with Christ as he appears in the Gospels, taking the Gospel narrative as it stands." That is natural enough since the Gospels are the only source from which anyone can learn anything about Jesus and His ministry. The Gospels were not written till some decades after the Crucifixion. It is generally accepted that the first to be written was that of St. Mark. Matthew and Luke, writing later, made abundant use of it. Mark had never known Jesus. He is supposed to have obtained his material in Rome from Peter, whose interpreter he is said to have been. He doubtless used the collection of the sayings of Jesus which is known as Q and which scholars regard as the source of the Synoptic gospels. It is not know whether Q was a written document or a body of oral teaching used in the instruction of converts. The disciples of Jesus were not educated men; they were not even very intelligent. They were apt to squabble among themselves and to be envious of one another. Their merit was that they loved Jesus. It is strange to me that Bertrand Russell with his great intelligence should have accepted their testimony as, if I may so put it, gospel truth. I am inclined to think on the contrary that they were highly unreliable.
Now, every novelist nows that the one thing he may not do is to let the persons of his novel act out of character. How much more necessary is it to avoid this error when the writer is dealing not with fiction, but with what he claims is fact. There is a passage in St. Mark's Gospel in which he relates how Jesus sent forth the disciples two by two. "And he said unto them, In what place soever ye enter into an house, there abide till ye depart from that place. And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear you, when ye depart thence, shake off the dust under your feet for a testimony against them. Verily I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment, than for that city." The threat is shocking. The householder might have had good reason to refuse the hospitality the two disciples demanded. There might have been illness in the house; he might not have had room or money to accommodate them; he might have been a pious Jew satisfied with the faith of his fathers. In any case the punishment does not fit the crime. It loos to me much more like an invention of the missionaries to assure themselves that they could count on board and lodging.
Bertrand Russell in this little book of his disparages Christ's character. He blames Him for what would be grave faults if He were a divine being, omnipotent and omniscient, but which would be merely errors if He was no more than a man. If so, it is no defect in his character that He believed in hellfire. It was the current belief of the time and He could have doubted it as little as He doubted that the earth was flat. He certainly thought that His Second Coming would occur in clouds of glory before the death of the people who were living at that time. He was mistaken, but that surely was no defect of character. Further, Russell is shocked by Christ's "vindictive fury" with those who would not listen to His teaching. That looks to me again as no more than an invention of the evangelists in face of persecution. It is out of character. The beauty of Christ's character very plainly appears in the touching incident which is related by St. Mark. "And they brought young children to Him, that He should touch them: and His disciples rebuked them that brought them. But when Jesus saw it, He was much displeased and said unto them, Suffer the little children to come unto me and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God... And He took them up in His arms, put His hands upon them, and blessed them." Jesus was a more charitable, compassionate and reasonable being than the evangelists knew.
He believed in miracles. The belief in them then was universal. Any man who impressed his fellows by his learning, his conduct, his eloquence, such a man, for instance, as Apollonius of Tyana, was believed to have miraculous powers. To possess them was looked upon as the necessary mark of a divine calling. Men felt that with faith and prayer they had power over nature. The thousands that go to Lourdes every year show that the belief still obtains. It obtains not only in Catholic countries. Sri Ramana Maharshi, the Indian Swarmi of whom I have written in a previous book,3 emphatically denied that he had miraculous powers, but notwithstanding, his devotees ascribed them to him. It looks as though the desire to believe in miracles was instinctive in the human race.
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Jesus was doubtless a faith healer. There have always been such. Not five minutes walk from my house there lived one of repute and he was consulted not only by the ignorant poor, but by a long string of persons, male and female, who came in expensive cars. His success was so great that the medical men of the neighborhood, whose patients he was taking away from them, managed to get him prosecuted for practicing without the necessary qualifications. He was found guilty and, obliged by law to discontinue his activities, sold his house and went away.
Such of the disciples as had remained faithful to Jesus after the Crucifixion went out to preach the new faith, and it may be supposed that they used as the foundation of their message the material which is known as Q. Now, everyone who is used to speak in public knows that there is no better way to enhance the interest of his audience than to tell a story. It would be only natural if the converts were more impressed by stories of Christ's miracles than by His doctrine. The preachers may have well thought to increase the power and glory of Jesus by ascribing to Him the power to perform them. But everyone who tells a story over and over again knows how apt he is to embroider on it to make it more effective and in the end there is little left of the incident that gave occasion to the story. The disciples were orientals, with the oriental's disposition to exaggerate and it is likely enough that during the forty years that elapsed between the Crucifixion and the writing of St. Mark's Gospel the incidents related came to be accepted as facts,
This of course is mere conjecture. It has a certain plausibility in the fact that Jesus was claimed to have performed two miracles which are little to his credit. One is the story of the swine. "Now there was there nigh unto the mountain a great head of swine feeding. And all the devils besought him, saying, 'Send us into the swine that we may enter into them.' And forthwith Jesus gave them leave. And the unclean spirits went out, and entered into the swine: and the herd ran violently down a steep place... and were choked in the sea." It is a horrible story. The other is that of the fig tree. It is told by Mark and repeated by Matthew. "And on the morrow, when they were come from Bethany, He was hungry: and seeing a fig tree afar off having leaves, He came, if haply He might find any thing thereon: and when He came to it, He found nothing but leaves; for the time of figs was not yet." Jesus cursed the fig tree and it withered away. It was a peevish, petulant action which was surely not the character of Jesus. The two stories reek of their untruth.
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A good many years ago a French friend of mine, a Catholic, told me that a distinguished prelate, with whom we were both acquainted, had said of me that the distance between Faith and myself was no thicker than a cigarette paper, un papier de cigarette. His hopes, if they were what his remark suggested, were doomed not to be fulfilled. I am not a Christian. I have read the four gospels over and over again, and always with emotion. They tell the greatest story in the world. Yet I would not tamper with the faith of anybody else. I remember reading William James's "Pragmatism" when it was first published. It made something of a sensation. It was a well written book and easy to understand. There is something repugnant to our sensibilities in the author's contention that our true ideas are those that work. "The true is only the expedient in our way of thinking." As G. E. Moore puts it: "Professor James means to assert not merely that all true ideas are useful, but also that all useful ideas are true." The philosophers in general attacked James's theories tooth and nail and little importance, so far as I know, is now attached to them. But even his most virulent critics have allowed that false ideas may be useful. An example of this, I venture to suggest, is belie in the Christian religion. Ever since the Pleistocene period when human beings began to cover the earth the life of man has been nasty, brutish and short. On the whole it still is. In vast parts of the world men live on the verge of starvation. In those regions which we claim are civilized, with the exception of those who for one reason or another are privileged, men live joyless lives given over to dreary occupations which will earn them enough money to keep alive. Oh, I know that they live longer than they did a hundred years ago and that in some countries the state provides them free of charge with medical attention; I know that in these countries they have succeeded in forcing their employers to grant them a decent remuneration for their labor; I know that they can get a superficial education free of charge; and I know they can buy decent clothes, gramophones, television sets, scooters and bicycles. When they leave school they must go to work for the rest of their lives in mines or factories, as laborers, dustmen, road sweepers, sewer men, as bus conductors, engine drivers, stokers, waiters, postmen and what not. When dining at a smart restaurant and the waiter hands me a succulent dish which he will never taste I often ask myself why he does not hate me and how he can restrain from throwing the contents in my face. In point of fact I did once put the question to a waiter who was serving me. He grinned and nodded. The only relief the great mass of the people have in the deadly monotony of their daily work is during the relatively short period when their sexual instincts are active and they can indulge in squalid lechery. Can they save money? Very little. They age quickly and for the most part, when too old to work, they must make do with a miserable pension. It is surely to the good if, as the prayer book put it, they can learn and labor truly to get their own living and to do their duty in that state of life unto which it shall please God to call them. It is surely to the good if they can believe that they will receive their reward in the life to come.
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I take it that the day will come when Christianity will be as dead as Mithraism which, as we know, for long was its most dangerous rival. So far as one can see, none of the religions now extant can take its place. If men are so constituted that in order to reconcile themselves with the horrors of life they must have a religion, they must devise a new one. If they cannot do that, what is their refuge from despair? Science? It is too specialized for other than experts to deal with it. Philosophy? It is a difficult branch of knowledge and philosophers are apt to claim that it should be left to philosophers. It is a pity if they are right. It was not their attitude in the past. Any person of average intelligence can understand Plato, Aristotle and even Plotinus if he can give them his attention. You may not accept the conclusions of Berkeley and Hume, but such was the lucidity with which they wrote that you cannot fail to grasp their meaning. If for nothing else, you can read them with delight for the elegance of their prose. But of late, philosophers have written, not for readers at large, but for other philosophers. They offer you a series of esoteric pronouncements that only philosophers are competent to handle. When you put to them some question about the conduct of life they tell you that that has to do with ethics and is no concern of theirs. I don't think they should be allowed to get away with that. It is as though the London County Council for reasons which they do not divulge should destroy the bridges over the Thames and when the inhabitants of London asked them how they were to get from one side to the other replied, "That is no business of ours." We all know now that the earth is a planet, and the learned in these matters tell us that it is some four thousand million years old and that at some far distant future, a future measured by aeons, life will perish on it. Long, long before then the language which we speak now will be forgotten and scholars will preen themselves because, as the reward of a laborious youth, they can make sense of the soliloquies of Hamlet. It may be that then nothing will remain on the earth but the remains of some later Parthenon, and it will be seen, though there will be nobody to see it, that the existence of man was no more than a meaningless episode.
The astronomers tell us that more than a million stars in the Milky Way alone possess planets on which, if the same conditions exist as on earth, life must exist and evolution on the same lines take place. The powerful process of natural selection must come into operation. Man has been developed to suit himself to life on earth and it is only reasonable to suppose that similar causes on the planets will have similar effects and that men, or creatures built on the same plan as men, will be as well fitted for existence on other planets as we are for existence on ours. If they make no better job than we have, it is a grim prospect.
This is no place for me to relate the activities of Winston which are now part of the history of England. He rejoined the Conservative party, but the Tories continued to look upon him with suspicion. When the Second World War broke out Chamberlain, the Prime Minister, was forced by public opinion to give Winston his old post at the Admiralty. I don't remember how it was that just then I happened to be in his company. I congratulated Winston. He smiled grimly and said, "He didn't want me. He waited till the last minute in the hope there wouldn't be a war and he didn't want me in his government. He didn't send for me till war was declared." A few months later Chamberlain resigned and Winston, sixty-five years old by then, became Prime Minister. The war was waged and won.
It was decided that a general election should be held in June. My nephew Robin4 was a friend of Mary, Winston's youngest daughter, and they had arranged between them to dine at Downing Street so that after listening to the returns they might celebrate the victory that they were convinced was certain by going to the Four Hundred to dance. They assembled in high spirits. A shock awaited them. From then on the Labor Party won an unexpected number of seats and before long Winston recognized that he was beaten by an overwhelming majority. "Well, I've done my best," he said. "I'll leave my name to history." Robin and Mary Churchill, with the callousness of youth, went to the Four Hundred to dance. I think the world at large was astonished at Churchill's defeat. It looked like gross ingratitude on the part of the British people so to discard the man who by his courage and pertinacity had saved the country.
Nature seldom bestows great gifts on a man without exacting payment in return. He must be grateful if the payment is no more than he can afford. Winston was self-centered. That perhaps is why early on in his political life he made things harder for himself than they need have been. He had little consideration for others. As Prime Minister he had the habit, after his day's work, of going to bed at six o'clock and sleeping soundly till dinnertime. Then, later on, refreshed and eager for work, he would send for his Chiefs of Staff and keep them discussing matters till one or two in the morning regardless of the fact that they had to be on the job bright and early on the following day. He had little patience with stupidity and was apt to think people stupid when they did not agree with him. He was not of a forgiving nature. He told me once how, when he was first at the Admiralty, a naval officer came to ask a favor of him. I forget whether it was a post, a command or a shore job. He had been at Harrow with this man, who had mercilessly bullied him. "He made my life a misery," he said, and then, his eyes gleaming, he added, slurring his s's, as he often did, "I can't tell you what a shatishfaction it gave me to turn him down." I think Winston lacked certain qualities which are common to most men. I doubt he was capable of strong affection.
If I have given the impression that Winston was a cold, unfeeling man, it is a very wrong one. He was on the contrary highly emotional. In 1910, Galsworthy produced a play called "Justice" and invited the Churchills to come and see it. It is a moving play and Clemmie (Mrs. Churchill) was in floods of tears. She was so upset that Winston, then Home Secretary, thought that he should look into the conditions the play so forcibly presented. The result of this was that he brought about reforms in the treatment of prisoners that previous Home Secretaries had neglected. He abolished solitary confinement.
In due course there was another general election and the Conservatives were returned to power. Winston again became Prime Minister. But he was old. seventy-eight, deaf and capable of dealing with affairs of the state only with difficulty. Eventually he resigned. From the on he spent a good deal of time on the Riviera and since I lived there I was able to renew my acquaintance with him. One day he came to lunch with me. The press discovered that he was coming and "Paris-Match," an illustrated weekly with an enormous circulation, rang up from Paris to say that they were sending their best photographer to take pictures of him and me. I told them that I was sure Sir Winston would resent it and refused to let them enter my property. When, while we were waiting for luncheon to be announced, I told Winston what I had done he was not so pleased as I had expected him to be. I venture the suggestion that when you are used to publicity you feel slightly lost without it.
Next time Winston came to lunch with me I let a horde of photographers come and they snapped Winston arriving, Winston getting out of the car, Winston entering my house, and after luncheon at their request Winston and I sat on the terrace while the photographers took photograph after photograph. He bore it with the utmost good will.
Not so very long ago, not having seen Winston for some months, I was asked to dine at Roquebrune one evening with the friends with whom he was staying. When I went into the drawing room I went up to Winston who was slumped down in a big armchair and held out my hand to shake hands with him. He took it in both of his and said, "Oh, my dear, I'm so glad to see you again." He, so undemonstrative as a rule, spoke so warmly that I was touched, and if I hadn't exercised a good deal of self-control I have an idea that a few tears might have trickled down my withered cheeks. For all the kindness with which his hosts treated him, the care they took to keep him happy and amused, the deep affection they felt for him, for a moment he felt lonely. The appearance of a figure, a very unimportant one, from his crowded past, may have brought back to his mind the days when in England's darkest hour he inspired the people of our country with his own courage and determination. So might an aged actor, whose fame has been world-wide, run across an old-time comedian who had been a super in one or other of his productions and feel a nostalgic pang as he remembered the days when he was the idol of the public.
I think it was to celebrate his eightieth birthday that members of the House of Commons subscribed to have his portrait painted by Graham Sutherland, who had gained a substantial reputation owing to a portrait he had painted of me. I have an idea that there are two sorts of portrait painters, the painter who puts his sitter first and himself second, and the painter who puts himself first and the sitter second. Graham Sutherland is the portrait painter who puts himself first. The sittings were in Winston's house. They did not go easily and Sutherland suspected that Winston, a painter himself, when he, Sutherland, had gone home, tampered with the work with touches of his own. When it was finished the portrait was taken down to Sutherland's country cottage and Clemmie and I were asked to lunch to see it. Having lunched, I took her up to the attic in which it was placed and we both saw it for the first time. I liked it and so at the time did she. But Winston, when he saw it, was outraged. His criticism was scathing. At first he refused to have it shown at the ceremony when it was to be presented to him and it was against his will that this was done. When it was finally sent to his house he had it put out of sight. It would not surprise me to learn that he had destroyed it. He could not bear to think that posterity should see him as Sutherland had seen him. I don't know why he should have been so affronted. Perhaps the composition was not very happy. I think that Sutherland would admit that he has always found legs difficult to deal with. But the head is surely a fine piece of work. The massive brow, the heavy jowl, the grim expression to my mind reveal the bulldog determination, the dauntless courage, the driving force which made him the chief architect of victory. I suppose all great men have their weaknesses. His vanity, a weakness one would never have thought him capable of, was deeply wounded by Sutherland's portrait. He could never forgive him and when, a year or two later, he was in my house and catching sight of a picture asked whom it was by and I told him, Sutherland, he turned angrily away and said, "I won't look at it."5
I know that I cut a very poor figure in this long story and if I have written it, it is to rid myself of recollections which too often have given me sleepless nights, for I have learned by experience that a sure way to free myself of haunting memories is to set them down in black and white. It is for that reason that I wrote "Of Human Bondage." I was at the height of my popularity as a dramatist and managers were pestering me for plays. I told them that I would not write another for a while and spent tow years writing my novel. When I had finished, I found myself delivered of pains that had never ceased to harass me.
I have asked myself what exactly it is that keeps an author's prose alive after the generation for which he wrote has passed away. The most unlikely things happen. Who would have thought that out of the immense amount of work that Voltaire produced the only thing that remains is "Candide"? Who would have thought that George Eliot's solid and intelligent novels would be forgotten whereas Mrs. Gaskell's "Cranford" remains a delight? Tastes change owing to accidents that have nothing to do with literature. So, when the empire over which the sun never set was reduced to an uneasy commonwealth of nations the stories of Rudyard Kipling, which once enjoyed so amazing a popularity, now suffer an undeserved neglect.
It may well be that in a few years my own stories will no longer interest and I shall be forgotten, but also it may be that at least some of them will continue to be read with pleasure, in which case there may be readers who will care to know what sort of a very imperfect, tormented creature was the author who wrote them. I made a mistake when I married Syrie. If I had refused to do so, she would probably have made a not too dangerous attempt to commit suicide. She had already done this twice. One occasion I have already mentioned; the other was at Cannes when a French lover had broken with her and she threw herself out of a mezzanine window, but succeeded only in breaking both her wrists. She would have had enough to live on and eventually have married a well-to-do stockbroker, or better still, the manager of a multiple store where with her cleverness, taste and activity, she would have been invaluable. We had nothing in common and by doing what was considered "the right thing," I brought happiness neither to her nor to myself.
When Syrie divorced me I was fifty-five and she was fifty. For the next ten years I lived a very pleasant life. I had become well known in France and my stories and novels were translated and published. Some of my plays were produced with success. Through Gerald Haxton, who lived in Paris, I came to know a number of clever and amusing Frenchmen who would now and then spend a few days with me on the Riviera. I kept open house. H. G. Wells, Arnold Bennett, Desmond MacCarthy, C. M. Joad and Irwin Edman, philosophers both and good company, but now forgotten, came to stay with me. Gerald typed my manuscripts and dealt with my increasing correspondence. We continued to go on journeys. Rudyard Kipling, who had recently spent a winter in the Caribbean, sent me a message to the effect that there were plenty of stories to be got in the islands, not stories he could write, but stories I could. I was confident that he knew what he was talking about so we started off. We spent several weeks in Martinique, in Guadeloupe and in Dominica. There were stories to be written in each of them, but they were not stories I could write either. We went to French Guiana. Through Gerald's French friends I had got permission to stay at Cayenne. It was a horrifying experience. The Governor provided me with a house and two convicts to look after me; they were both murderers, he told me, but I needn't be afraid of them; they were quite harmless. I did, however, take the precaution to lock myself in my bedroom at night. After this, we went again to Malaya and on another occasion to India. I had hesitated to go there because I thought that Kipling had written all the stories with an Indian background that could be written. When at last I went, I found that he had only dealt with one aspect of that vast country and that there was still much that an author could profitably make use of. But alas, it came too late for me. I was growing old and I no longer had the faculty of inventing a story out of a stray remark or a casual encounter.
I had had some inkling that time was taking its toll of me. I had a tennis court in my garden and used to play a great deal. The near-professionals used to like to come over from Monte Carlo to play with me because I gave them a good tea and plenty to drink. One day, I heard one of them say to another, speaking of me, "For a man of his age he doesn't play so badly." I thought that wasn't nearly good enough and so left off playing for good. I had always been fond of dancing and on one occasion I was asked to go to a ball at Nice. I asked a very pretty girl to dance. We waltzed round the room and she looked at me with beautiful eyes, large and lustrous, and tenderly asked me, "Etes vous sur que ça ne vous fatigue pas trop, cher Maître?" I took her back to her seat and never danced again. I was 66.
The Second World War broke out. I flew over to England. I had not been there long when I was asked to go back to France in order to write a series of articles on the war effort of the French. I spent a week with the French fleet, I inspected factories, I drove down to the Charente to see in what conditions the unfortunate people who had been evacuated from Alsace-Lorraine were living. I went here and there and was entertained by generals whose composure terrified me; I went to the Maginot Line where I spent a night in one of the fortresses. The Commander assured me that it was impregnable. Unfortunately he was wrong. My articles were eventually published in a small paper-bound book. It sold a hundred thousand copies.6 When there seemed nothing much that I could do I returned to Cap Ferrat. I was there when Paul Reynaud, speaking over the air, in faltering accents announced that France accepted defeat and that Marshal Pétain was to sign an armistice. I wept. I have described in a short book, "Strictly Personal," how I then escaped from France. I arrived in England. After a while, because I was well liked in America, I was sent there in the hope I might do something to improve Anglo-American relations. I had little success. I lectured in one place and another and wrote articles. On instructions I wrote one for the "Saturday Evening Post" entitled "Why Do You Hate Us?" I received 7,000 more or less vituperative replies. The only one I remember was from a gentleman called Kelly who wrote, "Do you think we shall ever forget the Battle of the Boyne?" The battle of Alamein was fought and won. It did not take me long to realize that to win a battle was the only propaganda worth anything at all. When the United States came into the war my job ended. I retired to South Carolina, where my dear friend and publisher, Nelson Doubleday, built me a bungalow on his estate.
Gerald Haxton had remained in France to look after my house and see that my pictures were placed in safety, and now, with a shipload of other Americans, he arrived in New York. After a short stay with me in South Carolina he got a job in Washington, where his knowledge of languages might be useful, but he fell dangerously ill and was taken to a nursing home in New York. I went up to see him and saw his doctors. They were not encouraging. I decided to stay in New York so that he should not be left alone with nurses and doctors. He bore his long illness with courage and good humor. He had always been a great reader and I was able to provide him with all the books he wanted. At length the doctors decided that to save his life they must operate: this they did and four days later he died. He was 52.
His death was bitter grief to me. We had gone through a great deal together. He had grave faults. He was a heavy drinker and a reckless gambler. He had great merits. He had immense vitality. He was fearless. He was always ready for an adventure and could turn his hand to anything, whether it was to persuade a stubborn care to behave reasonably or in the wilderness to cook a savory dinner. Once, in Sarawak, when we were being rowed down the river, our boat was swamped by the tidal wave which is called "the bore" and we were flung into the water. I was very nearly drowned. Gerald saved my life.7 His gift for getting on friendly terms with all sorts of people had been or inestimable use to me. But for him I should not have got the material for many of the stories I wrote. At least on one occasion he gave me the story ready made. We had gone to Sumatra and were staying at a place which in my story I called Tanah Merah. As usual we were made honorary members of the white man's club. We generally dined there, but late, since at sundown men gathered at the bar and did not stroll into the dining room till nine. One evening I grew tired of waiting for Gerald, who was with a group of fellows drinking at the bar, and sat down to my dinner. I had nearly finished when he staggered in. "I know I'm drunk," he said, "but I've got a damned good story for you." He told it to me and I wrote it. I called it "Footprints in the Jungle." I don't think I can have written it very well; it was a murder story and when it was printed some critics found fault with it because it was very soon obvious who had committed the murder. But I was not trying to write a who-done-it. What interested me was something very different. The woman and her lover had killed her husband, but the crime could never be brought home to them. Though the members of the community, planters, traders, agents, doctors–and their wives–were well aware of the facts, the continued to live on the best of terms with the widow and her lover. They married, and in short, lived happily ever afterwards. I came to know them and found them very agreeable. They were kindly and hospitable. I was pretty sure that they had never been troubled by remorse; it was impossible not to like them, for they were very nice. Human nature is very odd.
After the war came to an end I returned to my house on Cap Ferrat. It was a shambles. There was a semaphore on the top of my hill and the British fleet had been concerned to destroy it. They did what was officially called a near miss and hit my house. I spent three months building it up again and have lived there ever since. I shall write no more stories. I am a very old man. I am growing increasingly deaf. My memory is going so that I cannot remember the word I am looking for. I have lost my power of invention, which is a prerogative of youth, and my creative days are gone for good and all. Undeservedly I have a friend, a friend of thirty years standing, who has been willing to give up his life to ease my loneliness, to care for me in sickness, to protect me from the intruders on my solitude which my increasing fame–or notoriety if you like better–has brought me, to answer the innumerable letters I receive and to enable me to pass my few remaining years in happiness and comfort.8
A year or two ago, being far from well, tried and depressed, I felt the need of a change of scene and decided to go to Venice. Venice is the only place in the world I know which, however often you have been there, when you come to it again shatters you with its beauty as overwhelmingly as when, callow and excitable, you had seen it for the first time.9
I am well know at the Gritti and I was given a friendly welcome. The manager took me up to the rooms looking on the Grand Canal which, when I want them, are reserved for me. When the unpacking was done and I went down to the bar my old friend the barman shook hands with me and without my asking provided me with a dry martini. When I went in to dinner I found on my table a bottle of the wine I habitually drink. The journey had tired me and I went to bed early. Next morning, after breakfast, I did as always I do on my first day in Venice, I walked the short walk to the place where stops the vaporetto, the small steamer that serves the Venetians as a motor bus, and took my ticket to the Academia. I spent some time looking at the pictures I knew so well. It was a comfort to see all those charming Bellinis again. They had reframed Giorgione's "Tempesta." It is an enchanting, a thrilling little picture, but I have never been able to discover in what exactly its magic consists. I gazed at the Carpaccios with interest and admiration, but with modified rapture, and eventually came to the long gallery at the end of one wall of which is the huge painting by Veronese called "The Feast at the House of Levi." It is a sumptuous work. Jesus is seated at the middle of the long table with St. Peter on his right and John, the beloved disciple, on his left. The other disciples are scattered along the table with, presumably, Levi, their host, and such of his friends, publicans and sinners, as he had invited. I was tired. There is an immensely long radiator in the middle of the vast room and for the convenience of the public at each end of this has been placed a wooden chair, a copy of some eighteenth century model. I sat down in that which faced the great picture so that I might look at it at my ease. It was some ten or fifteen yards away and in order to see it better I put on my long-distance spectacles. One say Jesus in profile as he had turned his head in order to listen to what John with animation was saying to him. Then, to my amazement, I saw Jesus turn his head so that I saw him full face and it was as though he were looking at me. I could not believe my eyes. I shut them and bent my head as if to look at my feet. I opened them again after a minute. I cannot remember now whether I again saw Jesus turn his head as though once more to listen to what John was saying or if I saw him just as he was on the point of having turned it. I was so much puzzled by this that I took off my spectacles, rose to my feet and walked towards the picture. I had not taken three steps before I saw it as it had been when I first sat down, with Jesus, his face in profile, listening to John. If I were under oath in a court of law and were asked whether I had seen Jesus turn his head so that I saw him full face, I should have answered "Yes." If then I were asked whether I believed that I had seen Jesus turn his head I should have answered, "No, certainly not." If on that I were asked how I could reconcile the two statements, I could only slightly shrug my shoulders and say, "I suppose it was an optical illusion." After all, as I have said, I was far from well and tired out. I made a note of the date on which I had this strange experience: 20th April, 1958.
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