“There never was a more interesting State than the Pope’s,” Stuart was told. “It was government by the refined and intellectual class, the aristocracy of mind and birth combined. There was no public opinion, which, as you know, always means vulgar middle-class opinion. There was no Puritan inquisition; Garibaldi and his brigands made it their chief complaint against us that we did not persecute the sinner. Every man could do as he pleased, in short, provided that he did not openly assail the Church. Of course, no Sovereign can tolerate rebellion. For artists and poets, for all men of taste and originality, the Rome of the Popes was an almost perfect home.”
Alistair grew more and more inclined to believe it. More and more he came to feel that he had no quarrel with the Church of Rome. It had never persecuted him. On the contrary, it had treated him with consideration at a time when he had received no consideration from those who owed it to him most.
He would have been glad enough to believe that a restored Papal State would afford him the city of refuge for which he yearned, and if he raised objections the tempters easily swept them away.
“Was not the press muzzled?” he would ask. “Was there not a censorship of books?”
And the answer would be that the democratic press was equally muzzled, only it was muzzled by a golden muzzle. A paper could not be launched, except at a cost only within the means of the very rich. It could not be carried on at all without the revenue derived from the pill-makers and the soap-makers; and the pill-maker would permit nothing to appear in it that might by any possibility offend his bilious customers. The rich man would not tolerate any paper that did not pander to the passionate greed which was fast becoming more than a disease—a veritable possession.
And there was a censorship of books as well, a censorship administered, not by educated men, but by policemen hounded to their work by rabid zealots in whom sexual perversion took the form of prudery. There were commercial censorships and voluntary ones. A tradesman, sitting in his office, held in his hands the fate of half the books brought out in England. The committees of the Free Libraries were more intolerant than any Roman congregation. Were not their shelves choked with the rubbish of evangelical serialists, and barred to the masterpieces of De Maupassant and D’Annunzio? The real censorships of books in every age had been exercised by human stupidity. The Index Expurgatorius of ignorance and spite was vaster than the British Museum Catalogue.
Stuart found himself more than half committed to the cause already. His effort on behalf of Don Juan, slight and unsuccessful as it had been, had brought him a letter of thanks from the Prince, and an invitation to call on him if Lord Alistair should ever find himself in Rome. Des Louvres continued to speak hopefully of the Pretender’s prospects. And in the meanwhile it became more and more clear to Alistair that Don Juan’s cause, and all these romantic causes and whispering conspiracies centred in the one supreme cause and the one secular conspiracy represented by that immemorial figure, crowned with the triple crown of Ra, grasping the keys of Sheol and Amenti, and pursuing in the name of the Crucified One the empire of the Conqueror.
In the same measure that Alistair Stuart was attracted to the camp of these rebels against the established order he was repelled from that rival camp whose red flag was the symbol of an international Jacquerie.
Every poet is at heart an anarchist, but his vocation bids him be a transcendental one, perceiving that sympathy is stronger than violence, and the seed that bursts unseen and silently is a more formidable engine than the bomb. Alistair found in the proletarian propaganda, so far as it had come under his notice, a leaven of envy and hatred of the best. The spirit of Marat’s bloody apostolate lurked under words like brotherhood and humanity. It was not only against the rich and the tyrannical that the red flag waved; it menaced equally knowledge and genius. Archimedes would fare no better at such hands than he had fared at the hands of the soldier of Marcellus. The policy of these helot Tarquins was to strike down the tall flowers of the garden, roses and nettles together.
His three months’ sojourn in Beers Cooperage had taught Alistair that he could not really be the brother of his humble neighbours. He was not nearer to them in spirit than if he were dwelling in Colonsay House. He was too kind-hearted not to wish to befriend them, but he could only do so as he befriended children and animals—without feeling himself as one of them. His common sense, or, what is the same thing, his sense of humour, saved him from trying to elevate them by means of wireless telegraphy and the Andaman Islands. The simple truth was that he no more wanted to change their natures than to change his own. He was that rare thing, an individualist who respected the individuality of others. He was the only person who had ever bestowed money in the Cooperage without asking whether it was to be spent on tea or on beer. In his mother’s opinion he was doing harm to the neighbourhood. Among the beneficiaries a suspicion had begun to germinate that he must have his eye on a seat in the County Council. His favourite manifestation of interest was to call in passing organ-grinders, who played in the Cooperage by the hour together, while the children danced.