Joan and Peter: The story of an education

by H. G. Wells

§ 8

In the ’eighties and ’nineties every question had been positive and objective. “People,” you said, “think so and so. Is it right?” That seemed to cover the grounds for discussion in those days. One believed in a superior universal reason to which all decisions must ultimately bow. The new generation was beginning where its predecessors left off, with what had been open questions decided and carried beyond discussion. It was at home now on what had once been battlefields of opinion. The new generation was reading William James and Bergson and Freud and becoming more and more psychological. “People,” it said, “think so and so. Why do they do so?”

So when at last Oswald carried off Peter to Dublin—which he did not do at Easter as he had planned but at Whitsuntide for a mere long week-end—to see at close hand this perplexing Irish Question that seemed drifting steadily and uncontrollably towards bloodshed, he found that while he was asking “who is in the right and who is in the wrong here? Who is most to blame and who should have the upper hand?” Peter was asking with a terrible impartiality, “Why are all these people talking nonsense?” and “Why have they got their minds and affairs into this dangerous mess?” Sir Horace Plunkett, Peter had a certain toleration for; but it was evident he suspected A.E. Peter did not talk very much, but he listened with a bright scepticism to brilliant displays of good talk—he had never heard such good anecdotal talk before—and betrayed rather than expressed his conviction that Nationalism, Larkinism, Sinn Feinism, Ulsterism and Unionism were all insults to the human intelligence, material for the alienist rather than serious propositions.

It wasn’t that he felt himself to be in possession of any conclusive solution, or that he obtruded his disbelief with any sense of superiority. In spite of his extreme youth he did not for a moment assume the attitude of a superior person. Life was evidently troubling him profoundly, and he was realizing that there was no apparent answer to many of his perplexities. But he was at least trying hard to get an answer. What shocked him in the world of Dublin was its manifest disinclination to get any answer to anything. They jeered at people who sought solutions. They liked the fun of disorder; it gave more scope for their irrepressible passion for character study. He began to recognize one particular phrase as the keynote of Dublin’s animation: “Hev ye hurrd the letest?”

On the Sunday afternoon of their stay in Dublin, Powys motored them through the city by way of Donnybrook and so on round the bay to Howth to see the view from Howth Head. Powys drove with a stray guest beside him. Behind, Peter imparted impressions to Oswald.

“I don’t like these high walls,” he said. “I’ve never seen such a lot of high walls.... It’s just as if they all shut themselves in from one another.”

“Fixed Ideas, Peter?”

“They are rather like Fixed Ideas. I suppose high walls are fun to climb over and throw things over. But—it’s uncivilized.”

“Everybody,” grumbled Peter, “is given to fixed ideas, but the Irish have ’em for choice. All this rot about Ireland a Nation and about the Harp, which isn’t properly their symbol, and the dear old Green Flag which isn’t properly their colour!... They can’t believe in that stuff nowadays.... But can they? In our big world? And about being a Black Protestant and pretending Catholics are poison, or the other way round. What are Protestants and Catholics now?... Old dead squabbles.... Dead as Druids.... Keeping up all that bickering stuff, when a child of eight ought to know nowadays that the Christian God started out to be a universal, charitable God.... If Christ came to Dublin the Catholics and Protestants would have a free fight to settle which was to crucify Him....”

“It’s the way with them,” said Oswald. “We’ve got to respect Irish opinion.”

“It doesn’t respect itself. Everywhere else in the world, wherever we have been, there’s been at least something like the germ of an idea of a new life. But here! When you get over here you realize for the first time that England is after all a living country trying to get on to something—compared with this merry-go-round.... It’s exactly like a merry-go-round churning away. It’s the atmosphere of a country fair. An Irishman hasn’t any idea of a future at all, so far as I can see—except that perhaps his grandchildren will tell stories of what a fine fellow he was....”

The automobile halted for a moment at cross roads, and the finger-post was in Erse characters.

“Look at that!” said Peter with genuine exasperation. “And hardly a Dubliner knows fifty words of the language! It’s foolery. If we were Irish I suppose we should smother London with black-letter. We should go on pretending that we, too, were still Catholics and Protestants. The pseudo-Protestants would hang Smithfield with black on account of the martyrs, and the pseudo-Catholics would come and throw the meat about on Fridays. Chesterton and Belloc would love it anyhow.”...

Oswald was not sure of the extent of Peter’s audience. “The susceptibilities of a proud people, Peter,” he whispered, with his eye on the back of their host.

“Bother their susceptibilities. Much they care for our susceptibilities. The worst insult you can offer a grown-up man is to humour him,” said Peter. “What’s the good of pretending to be sympathetic with all this Wearing of the Green. It’s like our White Rose League. Let ’em do it by all means if they want to, but don’t let’s pretend we think it romantic and beautiful and all the rest of it. It’s just posing and dressing up, and it’s a nuisance, Nobby. All Dublin is posing and dressing up and playing at rebellion, and so is all Ulster. The Volunteers of the eighteenth century all over again. It’s like historical charades. And they’ve pointed loaded guns at each other. Only idiots point loaded guns. Why can’t we English get out of it all, and leave them to pose and dress up and then tell anecdotes and anecdotes and anecdotes about it until they are sick of it? If ever they are sick of it. Let them have their Civil War if they want it; let them keep on with Civil Wars for ever; what has it got to do with us?”

“You’re a Home Ruler then,” said Oswald.

“I don’t see that we English do any good here at all. What are we here for anyhow? The Castle’s just another Fixed Idea, something we haven’t the mental vigour to clear away. Nobody does any good here. We’re not giving them new ideas, we’re not unifying them, we’re not letting Ireland out into the world—which is what she wants—we’re not doing anything but just holding on.”

“What’s that?” said Powys suddenly over his shoulder.

“Peter’s declaring for Home Rule,” said Oswald.

“After his glimpse of the slums of Dublin?”

“It’s out of malice. He wants to leave Irishmen to Irishmen.”

“Ulster says No!” said Powys. “Tell him to talk to Ulster,” and resumed a conversation he had interrupted with the man beside him.

At the corner where Nassau Street runs into Grafton Street they were held up for some lengthy minutes by a long procession that was trailing past Trinity College and down Grafton Street. It had several bands, and in the forefront of it went National Volunteers in green uniforms, obviously for the most part old soldiers; they were followed by men with green badges, and then a straggle of Larkinites and various Friendly Societies with their bands and banners, and then by a long dribble of children and then some workgirls, and then a miscellany of people who had apparently fallen in as the procession passed because they had nothing else to do. As a procession it was tedious rather than impressive. The warm afternoon—it was the last day in May—had taken the good feeling out of the walkers. Few talked, still fewer smiled. The common expression was a long-visaged discontent, a gloomy hostile stare at the cars and police cordon, an aimless disagreeableness. They were all being very stern and resolute about they did not quite know what. They meant to show that Dublin could be as stern and resolute as Belfast. Between the parts of the procession were lengthy gaps. It was a sunshiny, dusty afternoon, and the legs of the processionists were dusty to the knees, their brows moist, and their lips dry. There was an unhurried air about them of going nowhere in particular. It was evident that many of their banners were heavy. “What’s it all about?” asked Oswald.

“Lord knows,” said Powys impatiently. “It’s just a demonstration.”

“Is that all? Why don’t we cut across now and get on?”

“There’s more coming. Don’t you hear another band?”

“But the police could hold it up for a minute and let all these tramcars and automobiles across.”

“There’d be a fight,” said Powys. “They daren’t.”...

“And I suppose this sort of thing is going on in the north too?” asked Oswald after a pause.

“Oh! everywhere,” said Powys. “Orange or Green. But they’ve got more guns up north.”

“These people don’t really want Ireland a Nation and all the rest of it,” said Peter.

“Oh?” said Powys, staring at him.

“Well, look at them,” said Peter. “You can see by their faces. They’re just bored to death. I suppose most people are bored to death in Ireland. There’s nothing doing. England just holds them up, I suppose. And it’s an island—rather off the main line. There’s nothing to get people’s minds off these endless, dreary old quarrels. It’s all they have. But they’re bored by it....”

“And that’s why we talk nothing but anecdotes, Peter, eh?” Powys grinned.

“Well, you do talk a lot of anecdote,” said Peter, who hadn’t realized the sharpness of his host’s hearing.

“Oh! we do. I don’t complain of your seeing it. It isn’t your discovery. Have you read or heard the truest words that were ever said of Ireland—by that man Shaw? In John Bull’s Other Island.... That laughing scene about the pig. ’Nowhere else could such a scene cause a burst of happiness among the people.’ That’s the very guts of things here; eh?”

“It’s his best play,” said Oswald, avoiding too complete an assent.

“It gets there,” Powys admitted, “anyhow. The way all them fools come into the shanty and snigger.”...

The last dregs of the procession passed reluctantly out of the way. It faded down Grafton Street into a dust cloud and a confusion of band noises. The policemen prepared to release the congested traffic. Peter leaned out to count the number of trams and automobiles that had been held up. He was still counting when the automobile turned the corner.

They shook Dublin off and spun cheerfully through the sunshine along the coast road to Howth. It was a sparkling bright afternoon, and the road was cheerful with the prim happiness of many couples of Irish lovers. But that afternoon peace was the mask worn by one particular day. If the near future could have cast a phantom they would have seen along this road a few weeks ahead of them the gun-runners of Howth marching to the first foolish bloodshed in Dublin streets....

They saw Howth Castle, made up now by Lutyens to look as it ought to have looked and never had looked in the past. The friend Powys had brought wanted to talk to some of the castle people, and while these two stayed behind Oswald and Peter went on, between high hedges of clipped beech and up a steep, winding path amidst great bushes of rhododendron in full flower to the grey rock and heather of the crest. They stood in the midst of one of the most beautiful views in the world. Northward they looked over Ireland’s Eye at Lambay and the blue Mourne mountains far away; eastward was the lush green of Meath, southward was the long beach of the bay sweeping round by Dublin to Dalkey, backed by more blue mountains that ran out eastward to the Sugar Loaf. Below their feet the pale castle clustered amidst its rich greenery, and to the east, the level blue sea sustained one single sunlit sail. It was rare that the sense of beauty flooded Peter, as so often it flooded Joan, but this time he was transported.

“But this is altogether beautiful,” he said, like one who is taken by surprise.

And then as if to himself: “How beautiful life might be! How splendid life might be!”

Oswald was standing on a ledge below Peter, and with his back to him. He waited through a little interval to see if Peter would say any more. Then he pricked him with “only it isn’t.”

“No,” said Peter, with the sunlight gone out of his voice. “It isn’t.”

He went on talking after a moment’s reflection.

“It’s as if we were hypnotized and couldn’t get away from mean things, beastly suspicions, and stale quarrels. I suppose we are still half apes. I suppose our brains set too easily and rapidly. I suppose it’s easy to quarrel yet and still hard to understand. We take to jealousy and bitterness as ducklings take to water. Think of that stale, dusty procession away there!”

Oswald’s old dream vision of the dark forest came back to his mind. “Is there no way out, Peter?” he said.

“If some great idea would take hold of the world!” said Peter....

“There have been some great ideas,” said Oswald....

“If it would take hold of one’s life,” Peter finished his thought....

“There has been Christianity,” said Oswald.

“Christianity!” Peter pointed at the distant mist that was Dublin. “Sour Protestants,” he said, “and dirty priests setting simple people by the ears.”

“But that isn’t true Christianity.”

“There isn’t true Christianity,” said Peter compactly....

“Well, there’s love of country then,” said Oswald.

“That Dublin corporation is the most patriotic and nationalist in the world. Fierce about it. And it’s got complete control there. It’s green in grain. No English need apply.... From the point of view of administration that town is a muck heap—for patriotic crowings. Look at their dirty, ill-paved streets. Look at their filthy slums! See how they let their blessed nation’s children fester and die!”

“There are bigger ideas than patriotism. There are ideas of empire, the Pax Britannica.”

“Carson smuggling guns.”

“Well, is there nothing? Do you know of nothing?”

Oswald turned on his ward for the reply.

“There’s a sort of idea, I suppose.”

“But what idea?”

“There’s an idea in our minds.”

“But what is it, Peter?”

“Call it Civilization,” Peter tried.

“I believe,” he went on, weighing his words carefully, “as you believe really, in the Republic of Mankind, in universal work for a common end—for freedom, welfare, and beauty. Haven’t you taught me that?”

“Have I taught you that?”

“It seems to me to be the commonsense aim for all humanity. You’re awake to it. You’ve awakened me to it and I believe in it. But most of this world is still deep in its old Fixed Ideas, walking in its sleep. And it won’t wake up. It won’t wake up.... What can we do? We’ve got to a sort of idea, it’s true. But here are these Irish, for example, naturally wittier and quicker than you or I, hypnotized by Orange and Green, by Protestant and Catholic, by all these stale things—drifting towards murder. It’s murder is coming here. You can smell the bloodshed coming on the air—and we can’t do a thing to prevent it. Not a thing. The silliest bloodshed it will be. The silliest bloodshed the world has ever seen. We can’t do a thing to wake them up....

“We’re in it,” said Peter in conclusion. “We can’t even save ourselves.”

“I’ve been wanting to get at your political ideas for a long time,” said Oswald. “You really think, Peter, there might be a big world civilization, a world republic, did you call it?—without a single slum hidden in it anywhere, with the whole of mankind busy and happy, the races living in peace, each according to its aptitudes, a world going on—going on steady and swift to still better things.”

“How can one believe anything else? Don’t you?”

“But how do we get there, Peter?”

“Oh, how do we get there?” echoed Peter. “How do we get there?”

He danced a couple of steps with vexation.

“I don’t know, Nobby,” he cried. “I don’t know. I can’t find the way. I’m making a mess of my life. I’m not getting on with my work. You know I’m not.... Either we’re mad or this world is. Here’s all these people in Ireland letting a solemn humbug of a second-rate lawyer with a heavy chin and a lumpish mind muddle them into a civil war—and that’s reality! That’s life! The solemn League and Covenant—copied out of old history books! That’s being serious! And over there in England, across the sea, muddle and muck and nonsense indescribable. Oh! and we’re in it!”

“But aren’t there big movements afoot, Peter, social reform, the labour movement, the emancipation of women, big changes like that?”

“Only big discontents.”

“But doesn’t discontent make the change?”

“It’s just boredom that’s got them. It isn’t any disposition to make. Labour is bored, women are bored, all Ireland is bored. I suppose Russia is bored and Germany is getting bored. She is boring all the world with her soldiering. How bored they must be in India too—by us! The day bores its way round the earth now—like a mole. Out of sight of the stars. But boring people doesn’t mean making a new world. It just means boring on to decay. It just means one sort of foolish old fixed idea rubbing and sawing against another, until something breaks down.... Oh! I want to get out of all this. I don’t like this world of ours. I want to get into a world awake. I’m young and I’m greedy. I’ve only got one life to live, Nobby.... I want to spend it where something is being made. Made for good and all. Where clever men can do something more than sit overlong at meals and tell spiteful funny stories. Where there’s something better to do than play about with one’s brain and viscera!...”