THE SIMPLE LIFE

Evening Post, Volume XCII, Issue 55, 2 September 1916, Page 10

THE SIMPLE LIFE

A PLACID REVOLUTIONARY

HOW THE WORLD LOOKS AT

SEVENTY.

Edward Carpenter, the ; author of "Civilization; its Cause and Cure," "Love's Coming of Age," "Towards Democracy," and other social works, shows in his "Days and Dreams" (George Allen and Uuwin) how the world looks to a man of seventy. He describes his work as autobiographical ' notes. They are rather lhore than that: They reveal the soul, of the man. He come of highly respectable middle-class English folk, with a comfortable income, so that in his youth Edward Carpenter did not have.to wrestle with that eter- ■ nal problem that has confronted so many active Socialists from their childhood upward how to be quite certain where the next meal is coming from, also the meals of the morrow. Such experiences have made so many of them bitter, leaving deep seal's upon their characters, sometimes unhealed and sloughing wounds. So much of character depends upon the certainty of three square meals a day and every day. ' Edward Carpenter in his "notes" introduces his "-readers to his family, and, incidentally, to his home and the atmosphere of other English middle-class homes in the 'sixties. That period of English life, on looking backward now, and in a large and increasing company, Carpenter heartily loathed. But he is not quite fair to it. This is no place to defend the English attitude towards social democratic problems of the so-called stodgy 'sixties, the midVictorian days, but a very good defence of them can be made, and will be made no doubt, when an honest stock-taking of the present time is taken. JN, THE BLOOD. Harsh youthful environment, then, did not force Carpenter to becoms what he is—a quiet but thorough-going Social ' Revolutionary. He was born a rebel against the conventions ot his time, but he is quite a placid revolutionary; and one with a graceful and convincing style of expression by both pen and word. In any other walk ot life than that of a Social Reformer he might have made his mark. Possibly he would not only have done well for himself, but might have been of great service to others had he continued in Holy Orders, the career he first adopted, serving under F. D. Maurice.

Edward Carpenter has been successful in carving out his life just as ho wished it to be. He appears, in his autobiography, to be personally of a happy and contented nature, nob indifferent to the sufferings of others, nor blind to their shortcomings; anxious to see the world happier, bett'ei, . and honester with itself; not unwittingly himself being imposed upon at times by those ho sought to befriend, bub taking it all as part of the game. - He long preached and still practises the simple life, is a vegetarian for preference —not that he would compel every other man to a.bstain from fleshly foods. He lives in a retired little homestead _in Derbyshire, and there writes his fascinating, if not generally acceptable, works on social problems that still await solution notwithstanding the Tast antiquity of many of them and the complexities of the new ones, becoming more and more numerous.

His works have brortght him into touch with many notable people, but, having a strong sense of, humour he successfully evades being "worshipped" by his admirers, and rather skilfully convinces those who go to see him tha*t his modest little home, while open house to the sincere, is no shrine for shallowpated pilgrims ito worship at. THE PEOBLEM OF PUBLISHING. Of course there was a time when Carpenter had no vogue. This is most interestingly chronicled in his chapter 'on "The Story of My Books." His "Towards Democracy" had a most troubled birth into the world. Rejected again and a,gain by publishers; copies rescued by stealth from bailiffs in possession, at the printers; caustically reviewed by critics; and placed upon the private index eipurgatorius by majiy private people. It was the public and not the publishers, who popularised, this and many other of Carpenter's worka, including " Love's Coming of Age." At any rate, the pioneering publicity was done by readers and admirers, ntrt by publishers. THREE SCORE AND TEN.

" How the' World Looks a.t Seventy " is the heading to the concluding ciiapter of this most interesting autobiography. It is prophetic in character, but no one now living can say that the prophecies will be fulfilled. In any case, what any man of seventy has to say, providing he can adequately and lucidly express himself, should always command respect, if not whole acceptance. No apology is asked for concluding with this paragraph, so characteristic in ilt* style, from the autobiography oi one who is turned seventy, and has seen, so much of men and things— ;

"It is amazing to see, in .the present war, the high spirits, ithe! courage, the devotion, the loyalty to each other of the combatants in each nation; and these, things would be utterly unintelligible were it not for the fact' that each people (and we need mlake Jio exception) thinks and believes in some obscure way that the cause for which it is fighting is a noble and an;honou**able one. Terrible as war is, aoid terrible the apparent folly of mankind which allows it to continue, still it is to my mind obvious that those engaged r in it could not give their lives, as they so constantly do, not only with conscious devotion to some high purpose, but even with an instinctive and savage joy in the very act of death, if they were not impelled to do so by the insurgence of ft greater life -within—a life within each one more vivid and even more tremendous than that which he throws away. The willing sacrifice of life,'and the ecstacy of it,.would be unintelligible if Death did not indeed mean transformation."*