[Original]
ON A GRECIAN PROFILE
I see that the ghouls have descended upon George Meredith, and are desecrating his remains. They have learned from the life of him just published that he did not get on well with his father, or his eldest son, and that he did not attend his first wife's funeral. Above all, he was a snob. He was ashamed of the tailoring business from which he sprang, concealed the fact that he was bom at Portsmouth, and generally turned his Grecian profile to the world and left it to be assumed that his pedigree was wrapped in mystery and magnificence.
I daresay it is all true. Many of us have an indifferent record at home and most of us like to turn our Grecian profiles to the world, if we have Grecian profiles. We are like the girl in Hardy's story who always managed to walk on the right side of her lover, because she fancied that the left side of her face was her strong point. The most distinguished and, I think, the noblest American of our time always turns his profile to the camera—and a beautiful profile it is—for reasons quite obvious and quite pardonable to those who have seen the birth-mark that disfigures the other cheek. I suspect that I do not myself object to being caught unaware in favourable attitudes or pleasing situations that dispose the observer to agreeable impressions. And, indeed, why should I (or you) be ashamed to give-a pleasant thrill to anybody if it is in our power. If we pretend we are above these human frailties, what is the meaning of the pains we take about choosing a hat, or about the cut of a coat, or the colour of a cloth for the new suit? Why do we so seldom find pleasure in a photograph of ourselves—so seldom feel that it does justice to that benignant and Olympian ideal of ourselves which we cherish secretly in our hearts? I should have to admit, if I went into the confession box, that I had never seen a photograph of myself that had satisfied me. And I fancy you would do the same if you were honest. We may pretend to ourselves that it is only abstract beauty or absolute truth that we are concerned about, but we know better. We are thinking of our Grecian profile.
It is no doubt regrettable to find that great men are so often afflicted with little weaknesses. There are some people who delight in pillorying the immortals and shying dead cats and rotten eggs at them.
They enjoy the discovery that no one is better than he should be. It gives them a comfortable feeling to discover that the austere outside of the lord Angelo conceals the libertine. If you praise Caesar they will remind you that after dinner he took emetics; if Brutus, they will say he made an idol of his public virtue. They like to remember that Lamb was not quite the St Charles he is represented to be, but took far too much wine at dinner and dosed beautifully, but alcoholically, afterwards, as you may read in De Quincey. They like to recall that Scott was something of a snob, and put the wine-glass that the Prince Regent had used at dinner in his pocket, sitting down on it afterwards in a moment of happy forgetfulness. In short, they go about like Alcibiades mutilating the statues of Hermes (if he was indeed the culprit), and will leave us nothing in human nature that we can entirely reverence.
I suppose they are right enough on the facts. Considering what multitudinous persons we are it would be a miracle if, when we button up ourselves in the morning we did not button up some individual of unpleasant propensities, whom we pretend we do not know. I have never been interested in my pedigree. I am sure it is a very ancient one, and I leave it at that. But I once made a calculation—based on the elementary fact that I had two parents and they had each two parents, and so on—and came to the conclusion that about the time of the Norman Conquest my ancestors were much more numerous than the population then inhabiting this island. I am aware that this proves rather too much—that it is an example of the fact that you can prove anything by statistics, including the impossible. But the truth remains that I am the temporary embodiment of a very large number of people—of millions of millions of people, if you trace me back to my ancestors who used to sharpen flints some six hundred thousand years ago. It would be singular if in such a crowd there were not some ne'er-do-wells jostling about among the nice, reputable persons who, I flatter myself, constitute my Parliamentary majority. Sometimes I fancy that, in a snap election taken at a moment of public excitement within myself, the ne'er-do-wells get on top. These accidents will happen, and the best I can hope is that the general trend of policy in the multitudinous kingdom that I carry under my hat is in the hands of the decent people.
And that is the best we can expect from anybody—the great as well as the least. If we demand of the supreme man that he shall be a perfect whole we shall have no supreme man—only a plaster saint. Certainly we shall have no great literature. Shakespeare did not sit aloof like a perfect god imagining the world of imperfect creatures that he created. The world was within him and he was only the vehicle of his enormous ancestry and of the tumultuous life that they reproduced in the theatre of his mind. In him was the mirth of a roystering Falstaff of long ago, the calculating devilry of some Warwickshire Iago, the pity of Hubert, the perplexity of some village Hamlet, the swagger of Ancient Pistol, the bucolic simplicity of Cousin Silence, the mingled nobleness and baseness of Macbeth, the agony of Lear, the sweetness of many a maiden who walked by Avon's banks in ancient days and lived again in the Portias and Rosalinds of his mind. All these people dwelt in Shakespeare. They were the ghosts of his ancestors. He was, like the rest of us, not a man, but multitudes of men. He created all these people because he was all these people, contained in a larger measure than any man who ever lived all the attributes, good and bad, of humanity. Each character was a peep into the gallery of his ancestors. Meredith, himself, recognised the ancestral source of creative power. When Lady Butcher asked him to explain his insight into the character of women he replied, “It is the spirit of my mother in me.” It was indeed the spirit of many mothers working in and through him.