But these are remains—the splendid litter of the centuries. The wonderful thing about Tewkesbury is that it is a living whole, a single town of Tudor England left apparently almost untouched—certainly unspoiled. Fifteenth- and sixteenth-century timbered houses, with their upper floors overhanging the pavements, line the three broad compact streets, and between these reverend buildings little doorways admit to multitudinous courts where the poor live. I daresay it oughtn't to be so. I daresay the courts ought to be swept away and the people housed with gardens far afield. But at this moment I am not a social enthusiast, but a lover of the picturesque, and no doubt it is this compact structure of the place that has kept it so perfect a survival of the past. By the gardens and the courts flows Shakespeare's Avon, and just beyond the town it joins the broad flood of the Severn near the Bloody Field where the Wars of the Roses ended—a place of rank grass, left, I was told, untouched since that day of slaughter, nearly half a thousand years ago. "They're afeard o' what they might find," said the old man who directed me. And over all is the great Abbey Church, next to Durham Cathedral perhaps the finest piece of Norman ecclesiastical architecture in England. Thither from the Bloody Field on that day of battle long ago were borne the corpses of the two rivals, and there their bones lie side by side, preaching, for those who care to hear, more potent sermons on the fitful fever of life than ever came from the pulpit.
And this beautiful town is set in a landscape as gracious as "a melody that's sweetly played in tune"—a wide, rich vale, the most fertile part of England. The sun comes up over the Cotswolds in the morning, and sets over the great range of the Malverns in the evening. Between these two sheltering ramparts Tewkesbury lies, dreaming of the Middle Ages. I daresay it has its worries like any other place. But I refuse to be a realist about Tewkesbury. I will indulge my love of romance. I will remember only that as I came away from the "Hop Pole" a vehicle with four jolly-looking fellows inside came up tooting a horn that played old-fashioned airs, and bringing in its train a swarm of boys. And as the boys gathered round the car one of the jolly-looking fellows put his hand in his pocket and drew out a heap of coins that he scattered among them. It was in the true spirit of the place. I fancy Mr. Pickwick did the same thing when he left the "Hop Pole," and I am sure that Falstaff did—in spite of the mustard. I would have done the same thing myself, if I had had the courage and the coppers. The next time I go to Tewkesbury I will fill my pockets with coppers.
ON PEOPLE WITH ONE IDEA
I was travelling down to Devonshire the other day when I met a man in the train with whom I fell into conversation. It was a wonderful day. We had left the fog behind us in London and the countryside glowed, rich and warm, under the sunshine of a cloudless November day. It seemed an occasion on which one could have found a thousand agreeable things to talk about, but I noticed that wherever the conversation with the stranger started it always got round to the taxation of land values. Now I happen to be in favour of the taxation of land values. It is a question about which my mind is as clear as it is about anything in this perplexing world. I am prepared to vote in favour of it in due season and to speak in favour of it when I think any useful purpose can be served. But I confess I got painfully bored by this well-meaning man and that I hailed the opportunity of going to the restaurant car to lunch with secret thanksgiving. I don't think I shall ever be caught tête-à-tête with that missionary of the One Idea again. I have got him on the list of People I Can Do Without.
It is a list made up largely of those who wear a bee in their bonnet. There is no surer prescription for the Complete Bore than the tyranny of an idea. We flee instinctively from the man who is always telling us the same thing, who comes into the circle with one ceaseless theme, to which he hitches the heavens above and the earth beneath, and the waters under the earth. There is that excellent publicist, Vernon Pizzey, for example. You have but to say "Good day" to him in the street, and he will buttonhole you, and, with the abstracted air of one who has seen a vision, will open the flood-gates of Birth Control upon you.
When I first knew him he was the passionate pilgrim of Prohibition. Banish alcohol from the face of the earth, and all the problems of life would be solved, and sorrow and sighing would flee away. He has passed out of that phase. It is no longer the abolition of Drink that lights the fires of fanatical faith in his eyes: it is the Abolition of Children. The New Jerusalem which he will build in England's green and pleasant land will have no children playing in its streets. When he hears of a childless home, a ghost of a smile flits over his features, and when he hears of a family of six he looks as though he has heard of some unmentionable sin. He dreams of a golden age when the propagation of children among the poor will be a punishable offence, and when the people of whom he does not approve will be sterilised by order of the court. His prophet is Dean Inge.
I am not concerned here with the merits of his obsession. I refer to him only as an example of those who are ridden by an idea. An idea may be good or bad, but no idea is good enough to claim one's whole waking thoughts. We like people who have many facets to their minds, who hold strong opinions on a variety of subjects and know how to keep them under control, airing them when they are in season and putting them in cold storage when they are not of season. We like them to think in many quantities, to let their thought range over the whole landscape of things, to have plenty of windows to their mind and to open them in turn to all the winds that blow. We ought not to be the slave of one idea, but the master of legions which we should exercise and discipline and from which we should extract a working philosophy of life. However good the text we ought not always to be preaching a sermon from it. I remember when I was a boy a most excellent man, a lawyer, who, every evening in the week, would take his stand on the plinth of a Sebastopol cannon in front of the Shire Hall that faced down the High Street of the country town in which I lived, and from thence would exhort the passers-by to repentance. No one ever heeded him, no one ever even paused to listen to him, and he lives in my memory a solitary figure weighed down with the wickedness of men, giving his life unselfishly to the delivery of his unregarded message, a man whose very agony had become a town jest.
Life is a multitudinous affair, and we suspect the sanity of a mind which is chained to one idea about it. I remember leaving the House of Commons on that tremendous day, the 3rd of August, 1914, when Sir Edward Grey had just made a speech that announced the most world-shaking event in history. In a few hours we should be involved in the greatest war the world had ever seen. An acquaintance of mine left the House with me, and as we seated ourselves in a cab he turned to me and said, "Did you see that outrageous vivisection case down at Wigan?"—or some such place. I forget what I answered, but I remember the strange feeling that came over me that I was cooped up with Mr. Dick. Here was the old, kindly world we had known for a lifetime plunging down into the gulf of unimaginable things. And beside me, indifferent to all the enormous happening, was Mr. Dick, his mind tortured with the wicked doings down at Wigan, or wherever it was.
There is of course another side to the shield of the man with One Idea. He could make out a good case for himself and I think I could make out a good case for him. The mere fact that his passion is disinterested is alone enough to command respect in a world where disinterested enthusiasm is a rare commodity. He is of the stuff of martyrs. He is prepared to die for his idea, or what is harder, to take the whips and scorns of men who are often, spiritually, not fit to black his boots. It is his uncalculating passion that keeps the flame of ideas burning in a dark world. Without him our moral currency would be sadly depreciated and the quality of the general life would lose its salt and savour. I often admire his singleness of purpose. I sometimes even envy a disinterestedness which leaves me ashamed by comparison. But I do not want to spend a week-end with him and I will not travel down to Devonshire with him if I can find a seat in the luggage-van or standing room in the corridor.