4. THE CHARITY OF CHARITIES
The begging-letters and circulars are enough to light your fires the whole year, and it is a pity they are not sent to the poor, to whom they would be of more value. Still, not to have the worry of receiving and discriminating among these appeals is another of the many compensations of poverty. There are a thousand varieties of Charity (some beginning at a Home and others going abroad), and the most munificent can support only a few, and perhaps will select the wrong few. And most of these Charities are struggling along painfully, their resources taxed to the utmost by the severe winter and the coal strike; many can scarcely make both ends meet. There is nothing to prevent the weaker dying of want, and our Charities suffering from a heavy mortality. And of course it will be the best and most retiring Charities that will starve to death rather than beg of the first comer, while the brazen Charities will perambulate the streets with strident clamour, rattling full money-boxes.
Do we not therefore need another Charity? Nay, blaspheme not, nor clench thy purse-strings. One other Charity-just one more-is a social necessity. I would call it "The Charity of Charities."'tisa central bureau of beneficence, to which each doubting philanthropist should send such sums as he knows not how to dispense. The bureau should inquire into the circumstances of each Charity, and grant or refuse relief strictly in accordance with its needs or merits. The Charity Organisation Society is another affair altogether. Perhaps people are afraid of pauperising the Charities assisted, but there is no reason why these should not continue to be self-supporting as far as possible. Such as could not manage to exist in this country could be assisted to emigrate, while every help would be given to exiled or persecuted Charities to gain a sphere of activity in this country. Fortunately, there are always large-minded men among us who will receive any Charity, however despised, with open arms! There would be visitation committees to call at the offices of the Charities, to see that they were not pleading poverty when the officials were drawing big salaries; a loan society to help them over bad times, so as not to destroy their self-respect by doles in aid; while a cookery school for accounts and a sanatorium for those that failed to keep their balance might also be annexes of this grand institution.
XIX. INDECENCY ON THE ENGLISH STAGE
[This protest was dated Jan. 1,1891. Things are rather better now.]
I am not a young person. Nothing ever brings a blush to my cheek except the rouge-pencil or the exposure of my stealthy deeds of good I can read the Elizabethan dramatists or Rabelais with equanimity, and the only thing that mars my enjoyment of Juvenal is the occasional obscurity of the Latin. I like the immoral passages in "Mademoiselle de Maupih," even if I do not go so far as Swinburne and call it "the holy book of beauty." Ibsen refreshes me like a tonic, and I even believe in Zola. And yet, if I were State censor of the English stage-which fortunately I am not-I should suppress half of our plays for their indecency. The other half I should suppress for their fatuity. But that is another story.
That vice loses half its evil by losing all its grossness, is a maxim for which the world cannot be too thankful to Burke; for though the point of view be not true, an important aspect of the truth is undoubtedly exhibited. Now, what we get on the English stage is the grossness without the vice-or, to put it more accurately, the vulgarity without the open presentation of the vice. You may mean anything, so long as you say something else. Almost every farcical comedy or comic opera-to leave the music-hall alone-is vitiated by a vein of vulgar indecency which is simply despicable. The aim of the artist is not to conceal art-there is none to conceal-but to conceal his indecencies decently, and yet in the most readily discoverable manner. The successful stage-piece is too often but a symphony in blue. What the English, with their fashion of spoiling French importations, incorrectly term doubles entendres, are almost indispensable items in the fare of some London theatres of good repute. And the references to things sexual are usually as stupid as they are superfluous to the development of the plot or the characters. There is not the shadow of an excuse for their introduction. They are simply silly accretions on the play, quite unimplicated with the spirit of the scene, and losing all meaning in their effort to have two. One can enjoy the sparkle of wit and the rich halo of comedy playing around situations unaffectedly "improper"; even the farces of the Palais Eoyal amuse with the broad foolery of their esprit gaulois; but the English endeavour to make the best of both worlds, the English author who combines the prude and the pimp-for these one can have nothing but contempt. And the measure of one's longing for a sane and virile view and presentation of life will be the measure of one's abhorrence of immorality which has not even the decency to be indecent.
The French dramatist gives us characters living in "a state of sin" (one of the United States not recognised at the Court of St, James's). The English dramatist conveys the plot, conveys the situations which spring out of the "state of sin," but leaves out the basis on which the whole rests. Thus, instead of situations intelligibly indecent, we get situations unintelligibly indecent. Eros, like an Indian conjuror, is left suspended from nothing. As the English playgoer does not ask for intelligible situations, he is satisfied with the residuum. The dramatist's uneasy striving to account for the behaviour of his personages only renders the latent character of the residuum more glaring.
The truth is, that everything depends on treatment and atmosphere. Lord Houghton has treated the difficult theme of a mother's and daughter's love for the same man with tenderness and grace; a foreign writer would lay bare and anatomise with more of scalpel and less of sentiment. The former satisfies our aesthetic instincts; the latter would, in addition, appeal to our intellectual curiosity. To the English dramatist the whole story would be tabu; but if the Continental man had got some striking situations out of it, the Briton's soul would hanker after those situations. So he would make the mother a maiden aunt, and give us the familiar spectacle of the aged spinster languishing for matrimony, as incarnated for the nonce in the person of her niece's lover. Miss Sophie Larkin would play the part, and it would be intended to be a comic one. There is more suggestiveness in the conventional stage figure of the amorous old maid than in all Congreve's comedies. And yet what figure is more certain to please, in the whole gallery of puppets? Scenes and characters of this sort you may have by the dozen; but to build a moral play upon an "immoral" basis is to court damnation. To construct a noble piece of work on the basis of "improper" relations between your chief characters is to show the cloven hoof. Once the initial scheme granted, the rest may be as bracing as an Alpine breeze; but the critics will scent brimstone. But to build an immoral play upon a "moral" basis-that way gladness lies. Critics, who would rage at the delineation of a character remotely resembling a human being's, will pat you on the back with a good-humoured smile, and at most a laughing word of reprobation for your azure audacities. Ladies, who, whether they are married or unmarried, are in England presumed to be agnostics in sexual matters, will roar themselves hoarse over farces whose stories could only be told to the ultramarines. Ibsen may not untie a shoe-latchet in the interest of truth, while English burlesque managers may put an army of girls into tights. One dramatist may steal a horse-laugh by a tawdry vulgarity, while another may not look over an ankle. It is the same with literature. We look askance at "The Kreutzer Sonata," but tolerate the vulgar anecdotal indecencies of the sporting journal. The artist's eye may not see life steadily, and see it whole; but it is licensed to wink and ogle at will from behind its blinker. If the artist's "immorality" is the artistic embodiment of a frank Paganism, or is inspired by an ethical or a scientific purpose, he is a filthy-minded fellow. Seriousness is the unpardonable sin. Coarseness can be condoned, if it is only flippant and frivolous enough. In short, the only excuse for indecency is to have none.