Letters to a daughter

by Hubert Bland

A MORAL QUESTION

A MORAL QUESTION

Jan. 15, 19—.

My dear Alexa,—

Your last letter interested and amused me vastly, as I know you intended it should. It is much the best thing in the way of writing you have ever done. I read and re-read and read it yet again after breakfast, and then I carefully, though regretfully, burnt it. One can spare oneself and others a lot of unhappiness by the simple process of burning letters, especially women’s letters, more especially still charming women’s charming letters. Indeed, the more charming the woman and the more charming the letter the more urgently do the flames clamour for their rights of destruction. Had anyone else read this last letter of yours, say, ten years hence, they would have formed an entirely false impression of you, and had even you read it yourself after that lapse of time you would have formed almost as false an impression of yourself. Almost, I say, not quite, for you, I fain hope, would remember the sort of man to whom it was written. And it is the character of the recipient even more than that of the writer which gives the keynote of every letter worth the reading. An intimate letter is the achievement of two personalities—it is a kind of dialogue in which one of the interlocutors is silent, or rather, is heard only by the other. That is why published letters nearly always lack interest; we do not hear that other.

Now, if anyone but your understanding father had read that last letter of yours, they would have thought you “not quite a nice girl” to have repeated little bits of scandal which you have picked up in a house in which you are a welcome guest, and to have criticised so freely your hosts and their friends. They would have liked the letter, mind you—they would have chortled over it in pharisaical glee—I chortle, too, but I chortle not as the Pharisees chortle—but they would not have liked you, for they would have feared and distrusted you, as critics are always distrusted and feared by the stodgy, especially critics of life. They, you see, these hypothetical but now impossible readers of your letter, would not have known me—would not have known, as you do, that I enjoy scandal and appreciate criticism; and would therefore have failed to realise how dutiful a daughter you were in giving me the things I like.

Need I, to a girl of your perceptiveness, attempt to justify the enjoyment of scandal? Surely it is the exceptional, not the ordinary, which should and does interest us. If, for instance, one were to discover a pork butcher, who spent all the daylight hours in butchering pork, witching the midnight with an exquisite performance of Bach’s Chaconne on a Strad, one would be interested in the man, not because he was a pork butcher, but because he was a virtuoso who loved Bach and possessed a Strad. If Dr. Clifford were caught with a guitar serenading a lady’s maid in Gower Street, how one’s interest in the man would spring to life—how much of his windy rhetoric would instantly be forgotten? One side of our heads would condemn him, no doubt, but how the whole of our hearts would warm to the man? Ah, that one touch of nature! Forgive the banal quotation, but I don’t often quote from other people’s works, do I? Well, then, scandal is interesting because it is exceptional. And conduct that is not exceptional is not scandal. No one would call the improprieties of Messalina scandals; they were just the commonplace occurrences of her daily life. Now, these four persons of whose doings you tell me are made interesting to me now by the very fact that I have always held them to be of the properest sect of the proper. Next time I meet Mrs ⸺ (I had better omit the name) I shall look at her from an entirely different point of view. I shall make an effort to talk to the woman, whereas, as you know, last time I took her down to dinner I devoted myself in esurient silence to the entrées. See now, my daughter, what a kindly act you have done her in repeating that little morsel of scandal. For, as you know, when I do try to talk—really to talk—I generally succeed rather well. You have assured the dear and erring lady at least one pleasant dinner party.

But you ask me—or seem to ask me, though you do not put your query in so many words, what ought to be your own attitude to the lady in question—should you continue “to know” her, as the phrase goes, in the future. Of course, you can’t help knowing her just now, for a guest must needs be courteous to fellow guests, or leave the host’s house as quickly as is compatible with politeness. Very well, Alexa, let us go into this matter for a moment. What do we, you and I, know of this lady, “know for certain,” as the phrase goes? We know her to be a kindly if not an obtrusively intelligent person. We know, if you come to think of it, quite a lot of nice, kind things she has done for other people, things she might have left undone and caused no remark, superfluously kind things, that is. We know her to be—for we have seen her in her own home—a devoted and efficient mother—alas that the two terms should not be synonymous—to her little children. Judging by her husband’s conduct to her, he finds her an eminently satisfactory wife. Personally, though I have never heard her say a brilliant or even a clever thing, I have never heard her say an unkind one. As to this other matter of which you tell me, we are not quite sure that it is true, are we? A thing that is neither confessed nor proved is doubtful, and according to the wholesome custom of English law—and English law, broadly speaking, is English common sense—the accused has always the benefit of the doubt. But, you seem to hint, you yourself are “morally certain” that it is true. Moral certainties lead often to immoral judgments, Alexa, and, like moral victories, are always eminently unsatisfying. But let us take it for granted that it is true. What then? It is assuredly nothing that immediately concerns you or your relations with the woman, is it? You do not catch yourself desiring to follow her example in any way, do you? You find no trace of her backslidings in her conversations with you? So far as you can perceive, and you have pretty sharp eyes, my daughter, it does not affect her life or manners in any way whatever. You told me you know, that it came upon you as an overwhelming surprise. You may reply that such a thing “must” in some way affect a woman’s life. I reply that it is not with what must, but with what does perceptibly happen that we in this practical work-a-day world only are concerned. We do well to leave musts to the hereafter.