“Books and the Quiet Life”
George Gissing has always had a peculiarly poignant place in our galaxy of literary favorites, and nowhere have we loved him more than in that little “autobiography” which he called The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft. The portions of that book which have to do specifically with books and reading have been brought together by Mr. Waldo R. Browne and published with Mr. Mosher’s usual incomparable taste.
A good many people have loved books as well as George Gissing did, perhaps, but very few of them have been able to express that love like this:
The exquisite quiet of this room! I have been sitting in utter idleness, watching the sky, viewing the shape of golden sunlight upon the carpet, which changes as the minutes pass, letting my eye wander from one framed print to another, and along the ranks of my beloved books....
I have my home at last. When I place a new volume on my shelves, I say: Stand there whilst I have eyes to see you; and a joyous tremor thrills me....
For one thing, I know every book of mine by its scent, and I have but to put my nose between the pages to be reminded of all sorts of things....
I regard the book with that peculiar affection which results from sacrifice ... in no drawing-room sense of the word. Dozens of my books were purchased with money which ought to have been spent upon what are called the necessities of life. Many a time I have stood before a stall, or a bookseller’s window, torn by conflict of intellectual desire and bodily need. At the very hour of dinner, when my stomach clamored for food, I have been stopped by sight of a volume so long coveted, and marked at so advantageous a price, that I could not let it go; yet to buy it meant pangs of famine. My Heyne’s Tibullus was grasped at such a moment. It lay on the stall of the old book-shop in Goodge Street—a stall where now and then one found an excellent thing among quantities of rubbish. Sixpence was the price—sixpence! At that time I used to eat my mid-day meal (of course, my dinner) at a coffee-shop in Oxford Street, one of the real old coffee-shops, such as now, I suppose, can hardly be found. Sixpence was all I had—yes, all I had in the world; it would purchase a plate of meat and vegetables. But I did not dare to hope that the Tibullus would wait until the morrow, when a certain small sum fell due me. I paced the pavement, fingering the coppers in my pocket, eyeing the stall, two appetites at combat within me. The book was bought and I went home with it, and as I made a dinner of bread and butter I gloated over the pages.
New York Letter
George Soule
Hilaire Belloc is coming to America next fall for a lecturing tour. It is well to take stock of him, so that we shall know what to expect. He is clever, and a Catholic—that tells the whole story. We don’t know exactly how he will say it, but we know what he will say. Through various smiling subtleties and paradoxes he will attack democracy, feminism, socialism, individualistic rebellion of any kind. It is quite possible that he will aim a few careless shots at Montessori, the discussion of sex questions in public, Galsworthy, and Bernard Shaw. He is a masculine, English, Agnes Repplier. He will entertain his cultivated audiences, and give them the impression that he is very modern and daring.
It is curious how the thinking mind immediately discounts the testimony of one who is known to have given his allegiance to an embracing authority of any kind. Whether the authority in question is the Vatican, Karl Marx, Business, Nietzsche, or Theodore Roosevelt, we know the man’s whole mind is likely to be colored with it, and that the evidence is probably of less importance to him than his case. Yet there is always a moral suspicion against the man who refuses to enroll himself under any banner. He seems dead, inhuman, academic. March to the drums, salute the colors, or admit there is no blood in you! It is good that most of mankind does so. The strongest army (not necessarily the largest) will win, and the battle must come for the sake of the victory.
Therefore, let the radicals welcome Mr. Belloc as a good enemy. He stands for a sincere, highly organized, and powerful propaganda which cannot be ignored on the modern battlefield. On account of their worship of authority the Catholics have a solidarity which no other movement can boast. For the same reason they are doomed to an eternal enmity with adventurous souls, those who fight for change of any kind. They seem often to be in accord with advancing thinkers because they condemn present conditions. But closer investigation will always show that instead of pointing to the future they cling to the past. Mgr. Benson, during his recent visit to New York, stated in private conversation that present social conditions are intolerable. He went on to say that an ideal society can be attained only under feudalism, with the church in control.
There will be no more danger from the Catholics than from any other army as long as we know what they are fighting for, and are able to recognize their irregular troops.
But let there be no complacency among the enemies of the church on the ground that it may not be really in the field, or has not artillery when it gets there. Without investigation of any kind, I have heard of two books attacking the church which were suppressed by their publishers at the demand of Catholic authorities. In each case the weapon was a threat to withdraw an extensive text book business from the house in question. Naturally, the parties to the matter have not been anxious to give it publicity. A magazine which published an article displeasing to Catholics received a letter threatening it with black-listing. There appears to be a well organized and efficient church publicity bureau to attend to these and other matters. A proposal was recently made by a Catholic journal that priests in confessional impose as penance the subscription to Catholic papers and the purchase of Catholic books, at the same time warning the people against secular publications. This was discussed with some approval by America, the New York Jesuit weekly, which regretfully admitted, however, that in the end Catholic publications must depend “mainly on their merit.” We are likely to ignore such mediæval methods until we find them obstructing some actual movement of importance. They do obstruct such movements, however, sometimes very annoyingly.
All these methods are but the natural and blameless working of the doctrine of intolerance. And perhaps their greatest danger is that their temporary success will induce the opposing armies to use the same weapon and so shackle themselves. The intolerance of the Puritan was a natural result of his bitter struggle, yet it produced a century of aesthetic darkness. The advanced opponents of the Puritan era are now uttering pronunciamentos and personalities that are Archiepiscopal in their intolerance.
But, you say, intolerance is necessary in the soldier. He must hate his enemy and seek not only to dislodge but to silence his opponent. Well, I will admit that when the soldier is in battle he must shoot to kill. But there is a new kind of soldier developing who is more valuable to man than the old. He joins the army not so much because of the magic of the colors as because of the necessity of the cause and its temporary usefulness in serving the truth behind it. Just as he will not march to war without reason, so he will stop fighting his immediate enemy when his cause is won, and will not go on to bickering and pillage. He is ready to enlist under a new banner at any moment when a new banner represents a more glorious cause than the old. His General is not a god, but a leader. His freedom of choice is always the biggest asset of his strength. Therefore he cannot be intolerant. He is strong, hard, efficient, relentless, but never pompous or slavish. How much time the world has lost eliminating armies of strong men whose fatal fault was excessive, unreasoning loyalty!
That, after all, solves the riddle of my second paragraph. And if the soldier must subordinate his cause to his truth, how much more so the General and the King! The General has very little time to hate his enemy. He must know their strength, study their methods, adopt the best of their ideas, spy out the country, plan a campaign. He orders slaughter not for revenge or hatred, but for success. Therefore it is of supreme importance that his success be worth while.
And the King, the man who selects the cause and fires men to battle. The nearer he comes to an assertion of infallibility the surer is the final defeat of his cause. If he will allow no room for change and growth, change and growth will sweep him aside. We need big men who will not enlist under colors, but are always pushing back the horizon of truth. Distrust the leader who has found the final answer to the riddle. Some day shall we not have a Messiah who shall begin by saying: “Do not found in my name any church, cult, or school. If a man question my message, listen to him closely and learn what truth he has. Always seek the new, the more perfect. Always grow out from the fixed. So shall you begin a race of Kings greater than I.”