A VANISHING ART.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 19132, 15 October 1927, Page 15

A VANISHING ART.

THE PRACTICE OF POLITICAL ABUSE. (By Winifred Holtby, in the "Ration.") Our Legislature was engaged recently upon the consideration of prohibiting by statute the utterance of expressions of ridicule or contempt during industrial disputes. Our system of parliamentary procedure has limited, during the most acrimonious discussions, the range and detail of the Opposition speeches. The Laws of Libel have rendered almost innocuous the eloquence of our political platforms and the vituperation of our Press. Yet all these tedious precautions do no more than lock the stable door after the horse has gone. The truth iB that we have lost the rich amplitude of imaginative insult which once lent splendour to political antagonism, and we covet 1 the poverty of our invention and the lassitude of our wrath by the thin cloak of legal prohibition. The interruptions which peppered the Government speeches during the first days of the debate on the Trades Union Bill were at best like the "small curses upon great occasions," which Tristram Shahdy's Uncle Toby compared _ to sparrow shot tired against a bastion. "They serve, continued Iny father, to stir the humours but carry off none of the acrimony." Yet true invective like true satire, according to our more learned modern critics, "God be praised, is a pUrge, and a, healthy man takes to it as naturally as a. dog to grass, for the release of his humours"' Such A purge organised interruption may never be. The glee with which Labour papers fastened upon the aitibiguouß substitution for the prohibited Blackleg, "call him a Douglas Hogg," betrays the dreariness of the average sally. It might be thought that the ritual of parliamentary debate stifled the ardours of antagonism, did modern Correspondence glow with the vehemence which once almost set on fire the parchment passing from Guelph.. to Ghibelline. It took Mi Huillafd holies devoted years of industrious labour and indefatigable leimiiiig to edit the letters written by Frederick It. to his papal antagonists, and the yet mote Tortttidable letters Written by the Popes to Frederick. So fertile in opprobrium was the Etnperoi', that rumour circulated of his having scld his soul to the devil, the Father of Curses, and as for Gregory IX., be* ing already invested with the powers of anathema, his mildest wash was that poor ■ Frederick's soul might stink in Hell. In moments of lesS reticence, he damned him after the fashion of the BishOn. EriiUlplius, in_ eating) drinking, sleeping, blood-letting, ana ih the. performance bf Other corporeal activities not to be specified in this journal; he pursued him front Sicily to Naples, from Naples to Gefflrituty) fr&tft Germany to the. Holy Land, and from thehce to Hell with his denunciation, until Dante took all that was left of the once great emperor, Jihd placed him in the Inferno among the fnatics. . , To-day we have nothing at all to equal this. The world of literature offers an decisional echo of the ancient splendour) as in Mr Bellod's letter to the detested Don. who tlared to have a difference of opinion, with Mr Chesterton. But then Mr Belloc rtlay share a little of the rich ecclesiastical tradition of Pope Gregoryt In politics, however, we search in vain for fitte abusei Bed letters may be scarlet in their implication, but their language is as pale as milk. Few" signs of the heavy change are more unfortunate than the deterioration of the politicals song The best eftort, apparently,. of the Pfiinrosie League, is to refrain from omitting, "tiontburiS their ]pbiitlcs, Fitlstfftte then 1 khavislt triebfe." When the present member for SouthWest Bethna.l Green won his seat for the Liberal Party ifi .1952, small boys paraded the streets bearing his portrait, and chanting:— •'Vote, vbte, Vote for Percy Harfis, Knock 6ia Joejf dawn thb starts, In his little top hat and he's very fond of fat . And he won't go vdting hriy febre. "Joey," being a Communist) did not wear a top hat; he also, showed no signs of corpulence, and the constituents of Bethrial Green had no reason to criticise his palate. Probably the song was a nonsensical corruption of some ballad which may once nave shown a sign of .life —more life, at least cme hopes, than those eftd ghosts of s<mg mercilessly disinterred by the Resurrection Men of t*ie "Hands Off Britain Movement)" from the Socialist Sunday Schools, where they well might have l&in buried in decent obscurity. More pitiable travesties could hardly, have been found among a nation which in the seventeenth feentury inspired Butler's spirited pictxire of sectarian fervour : "The oystfer Wbffleri Ibcked-tlieif fish up And trudgbd jjway to cry "No Bishop." The mbuse-trap men laid gavealls by And 'gainst evil counsellors did Cry. BottthSi'ri laid oltl ilbthSs ih the Hirfch And iell to tUrii Sfid pateh the church. And SoitaD fbt Brooms, Old Boots ftnd Shoeß Bawled out to purge the Common flouse," Their bflwlifig provided, it is said, a model .for . Phineas Fletcher, whose bowdierised version speaks Well for the original "Of nay, BefestS; -frorefe, Monsters; woirst of all Incarnate Fiends, English Itaiianate, Of prifeats, 0. noi Masse Priests, prl«lts cannibal, Who make their Maker, chew, grinds, feeds, gtoW fat ' "With fldtli divine, i . . What has the revised Prayer Book inspired comparable to that ? Yet the subject was not dissirbilhr. Did ft single oyster woman leave Scbtts to cfy "Nil Bishop?" A shout or twoitt the Albert Hall and an irreverent injunction to the Primate were the best that our degenerate age could do with A situation which once might have pro- ' ~ ' \ "

vi<fed songs from Winchelsea to Whitby. "Our armies swore terribly in Handera," said tncle Toby. And so did ours, but their excellence was of emphasis rather than of ingenuity, and those who returned have not bequeathed their acquired* characteristics to their sons in tho political battlefield. But of course, even Mr Huxley has not yet assured us that acquired characteristics are hereditary. Yet in Wright's notable collection of "Political Songs and Ballads," we may read what fertility of abuse our fathers enjoyed, though little that he offers us surpasses that song which blossomed from the bitter root of the Hundred Years' War, and was recorded for our edification in 1346: "Francis, foeminea, pharisoa, vigoris idea, Lynxia, viperea. vulpina, lupina, Medea, Elphas in monte pugnaris cum rhinoceronte, Cor gerit in fronte, cor hnbes cilm camclionto. . . . ." The delicious Latin needs no translation. The entire song deserves to be repeated, were it only for the monstrous insult lurking in that apparently harmless "cor." " 'Tis true," as Mr Shandy said, "there was something of hardness irt his manner—and as hi Michael Angelo, a want of grace—but then there is Such a greatness of gusto." Our greatness of gusto has departed, driven away by the two characteristics of our* modern politics, the substitution of economic for religious fanaticism, and the development of the machinery of party governMr Robert Graves, com* menting upon the decline of Swearing and Improper Language, observed that tllis art "probably reached its highWater mark irt the late eighteenth century," and declined after an age of reason which took the sting out of the tail of anathemas. It is t&e same with personal abuse. Whereas once we could pursue a. man from this world to the next with our spleen, to-day we must confine ourselves to one limited life, wherein the evils which We niay wish for him are as nothing to those which might have awaited him in a suitably equipped and moderated Hell, nor are the defamations with which we may insult his Character in any way COM" parable to the magnificent virulence with which we could defile his soul.. But further, we have polluted the pure springs of political hatred by the mechanical necessities Of oul" party system. Being organised, as Lord Balfour once told us, in order that we may quarrel, We find ourselves bidden to love and hate a*t a command, and lose the spontaneous emotion which bred that lyric hate, half, devil and half bird, whose songs once carolled our immortal enmities. We now have no' remedy and little hope ( and when we desire to utter adequate invective, we can only turn with Wan vehemence to the invocation of the poet Heine:— "And thou, sweet Satire, daughter of the great Thetnis and gxiat-fbbted Pail, l<*hd file thy aid. Thou art of thy mother's side sprung from the face of Titans, and thoii dost hate, eVen as I, the eitehiies of thy kindred ( the weakling usurpers o£ Olympus. Lend we thy ttbthSr's sword that I niay slay thefu, the detested broodi and give me the\ reed pipes of thy father that I may pipe them down to death." And then, perhaps, we remember lioW charmingly Mr Baldwin loves his pigs, and how admirably he coinmehds the classics! and we have no heart, even with the companionship of goatfooted Pan, to pipe him, df anybody else indeed, down to death.