“HOKUM.”

Evening Star, Issue 18333, 21 July 1923, Page 2

“HOKUM.”

Tins is <1 now word from (ho country of so many now things—America. Wo learn from an American journal that it was first heard in tho chatter of the back stage of tho theatre. It has now passed over the footlights into common usage. We have not heard it in this country as yet. But the thing is here right enough. Hokum in its original sense means “ any action on tho part of producer, playwright, or actor by which ho seeks to cover paucity of thought by an emotional thrill which will make the audience forget either that the play has no intrinsic value or tho actor no ability." It. is thus a kind of near relation to our old friends hocus-pocus and cant. Rut of this more anon. When one conies to think of it this Hokum affair is in a largo way of business. Let us consider for a little. * * ■» a We do not know how prevalent it is among the actors in the theatre, but it is certainly common enough among those who write plays and poems and novels. There is nothing, so dangerous to a writer’s character as success. Once his name gets on tho world’s tongue ho will be deluged with invitations for contribution. Editors and publishers will beset him with pecuniary temptations, and lie will find it difficult to resist. So he will descend to writing when he is not inspired—to write to order-and when he does that ho will soon deteriorate both in thought and style. How many who gave early promise pf greatness have fallen into this trap. Their first books showed insight, culture, care, distinction; but, yielding to the passion to produce, and the baser passion to produce for money, they won popularity, but sank to tho level of Hokum. They gave the public what pleased it, hut with their tongue in their cheek and laughing at its folly. It is pleasant to think of those who chose tho better part. There is .Browning, for instance. He might have won popularity if ho had only lowered his standards. But ho would not. Ho said he never wished to make his alleged obscurity a pose or a puzzle to other people. On the other hand, “ I never intended to offer such literature as should be a substitute for a cigar or a game at dominoes to an idle man.” And so ho had to endure the cold shades of neglect and the gibes of those who had not greatness enough to understand him. But his day has come, and while the sky rocketers who fell to Hokum are forgotten he is now a fixed star in the firmament of literature. Or, to take one illustration among the living: after the publication of ‘ Ships That Pass in tho Night ’ Miss Harradon found herself suddenly famous. Among others who sought her work was Sir Robertson Nicoll. He wrote and asked her to call upon him. Ho wanted her to write six short stories for tho ‘British Weekly.’ She agreed, and tried her hand at the first. Then she says: “I knew once for all that I never could write anything to order, and that even if I made an enemy of an influential editor I must rid myself of this commission.’’ So she went and told the great editor. And she says that ho received her with characteristic kindness, and ; said I was never to force myself, but only to be happy in my work and joyous over my freedom. So she escaped doing homage to tho great god Hokum. And there is that sweet singer who died the other day—Alice Meynell. She might have written any number of volumes had she so chosen, She published a slim little book of poems when she was a girl. Only a few welcomed it, but among these was John Eiiskin. Then there was a long silence. Like Her friend Patmore, “ she would not go til! she was sent. She reverenced so the gift of tho poet that she would not lot it be lowered in dignity.” And she leaves us at last as her legacy only one slight little volume of poems, and takes her place amid tho immortals. We may be thankful that she did not bow the knee in the house of Hokum.

*»{»*■ Thoro is, perhaps, no place where Hokum masquerades so blatantly as in the business world, especially as it reports itself through advertisements. The advertising columns of the newspapers exude Hokum in almost every line. Wc live in an age when publicity has become the bane of life. Every kind of business must make itself vocal if it is to hold its own and make a success. Big establishments have now their publicity secretaries ami assistants as a primary element in their work. They are always being tempted to sell truth for gain, to capitalise publicity without character. No one can read the advertising columns without seeing Hokum at work in them. They use adjectives that belong only to the sublime and awful to describe the simplest things. “ Tremendous crash,” “ astounding reductions,” “ fearful sacrifices,” etc. All that is meant, when you pare it to the quick, is that they arc possibly selling shirts at three halfpence or dress goods at a halfpenny a yard less than their neighbors across the way. This is to debase the moral currency of language and make more slippery the downward descent. You can fool people some of the time, but you can’t do it all the lime. The nemesis of this sort of fooling is that yon have to go on increasing it, or you will be run into a back number by the more unscrupulous. Truth has to have a firm grip of the vitals of its lovers to enable them to withstand the avalanche of its plausible substitutes. It wins out in the end—if you can wait for it and trust it. But that is the trouble. Still it is beginning to be felt that in the long run exaggerations do not pay, even in cash, and still less in character. Hokum may make sales, but in the end it loses customers. “ There are men who can write with such poignant power and ripping energy that their sentences go' straight to the popular mind. When these men prostitute all these gifts, wasting their moral resources in riotous writing, they do

themselves great injury, and they deplete tho intellectual vigor and moral health of tho community of which the,v are a part. Every age must develop a conscience related to its own problems. Every ago must construct for itself a set of ethical sanctions, which will make publicity a definite reflection of character and not a übstiiute for it.” * * ■» » Wc find Hokum also flourishing in the political world. Politicians are greatly given to the practice of it. On the platform, in Parliament, they are constantly using this artifice to win popularity. They talk in language that conceals their own sentiments, but which they know will appeal to tire gallery. There are certain strings and strains that never fail to capture (ho average man and woman. There was a great deal of this sort of thing during tho war. Unpopular truths were sometimes kept in the background. One of the best American friends of Britain during the war and since was Admiral Sims. Yet ho recently made tho statement at Los Angeles that " the Press accounts of the horrible atrocities were nothing but propaganda. The British naval records and our own are filled with reports showing that German U-boat commanders aided in tiro rescue of crews and passenger's of ships they sank.” If the naval records “are filled with reports” like this, very few of them were given publicity. And when wo study tire German military mentality it is a little difficult to credit all that Admiral Sims so confidently asserts. The very prince of Holcumists is tho Kaiser himself. When ho ascended tho throne in 1888 ho addressed tho people extolling tho acts “born of Christian humility,” and vowing to God to “ be a righteous and gentle Prince.” In a year or two afterwards ho is counselling his soldiers that they may have to “shoot down or stab your own relatives and brothers. Them seal your loyalty with your heart’s blood.” In 1905 we find him ostentatiously putting aside dreams of a world Empire. Ho has vowed, he says, he will never strive for it, for these world empires of Alexander, Napoleon, and tho rest “ have swum in blood. The world empire of which I have dreamed shall consist in this: that a newly-created German empire slrall first of all enjoy on all sides Lire most absolute confidence as a great, honorable, and peaceful neighbor; and that ... it filial! not be founded upon acquisitions won by the sword, but upon the mutual trust of the nations who are striving for the same goal.” Beautiful talk, but all Hokum, as 1914 and the years that followed amply prove.

But we had better not blind our own eyes by the dust storms raised by others. The truth is that few of’ us escape tho snare of Hokum, no matter how humble wc may be. Even tho pulpits practise it not seldom. There are preachers not a few who talk to tho gallery. They know what influential .members of their congregation like, and they give them regular diets of the desired pleasure. It often saves them the trouble of serious study. They trot out certain old and well-known phrases which they may call “ the simple Gospel,” whatever that may be, and in sonorous tones they repeat these like the fol diddle dol, fol diddle dido of a song, and everybody goes home content.—everybody except those whom it was their chief business to interest and capture. But the dread “ slug of tho commonplace ” ate up their originality, and as tha older members died out there were no younger ones to take their place, and the end was an empty church and a wondering minister. Hokum again. We said at the beginning that Hokum was a kind of twin brother of Gant. The latter is a word often used without any dear idea of its meaning. Apparently the word is a corrupted form of chant, so that it would mean a sort of whining pretension to goodness in affected words and tone. It, perhaps, might best bo defined as “ a statement which is

; (rue in itself, but is not true for the person who makes it.” When Mr Pecksniff says " Charity, my dear, when you give me my bed candlestick to-night remind me to pray for Mr Antony Chuzzlowit, who has done me an injury,” he was guilty of cant. When 1 Emerson visited England some three-quar-ters of a century ago ho wrote: ‘‘The English people are dreadfully given to cant.” He refers to the exposure of it in the pages of 1 Punch,’ Dickens, Thackeray. " And Nature revenges herself by the heathenism of the lower classes.” He | thinks it is a taint in the Anglo-Saxon blood, this canting business. It is not found among the French. That is questionable. We think it is found more or I less everywhere. There is, perhaps, not so much of it nowadays as when Emerson wrote. But it is sufficiently widespread to cause each of us to beware of the infection. The purveyors of the law ns well as the Gospel are not immune from it. “With a thousand guineas on his brief the great advocate finds no difficulty in regarding a groat Stock Exchange operator as a slandered saint. And Themis is too apt to turn up the whites of Ids eyes when looking straight would bo better.” If we are to believe cur great satirist, Mr Bernard Shaw, wo are all jointly and severally guilty of it. The moral of his ‘Widowers’ Houses’ seems to bo that, as he says, ” the great prostitute classes, . . . dramatists, journal ists, lawyers, doctors, clergymen, and p’atfonli politicians, a.ro doily using their highest faculties to belie their real sentiments, a sin compared to which that of a woman who sells the use of her person for a few hours is too venial to bo worth mentioning.” Mr Shaw has a peculiar aptitude for making oven indifferent people uncomfortable, aud there is sufficient truth in tire foregoing indictment of society to make each of us ask • Is it I? “ Sir,” said I)r Johnson to Boswell, ‘‘ clear your mind of cant,” and, wo would add, of Hokum, its twin brother. For, as Carlyle asks us, “Is not cant tins materia prima of the devil, from which all falsehoods, imbecilities, abominations body themselves forth f”