THE SKETCHER.

Otago Witness, Issue 2669, 10 May 1905, Page 70

THE SKETCHER.

THE ENTENTE CORDIALE.*

(T. P.'s Weekly.) To one like me, who looks to literature as performing its greatest function in making people understand each other, such a book as that before me is extremely welcome. The author is helping to complete the work of the monarch and the diplomats. So long as the peoples of England and France entirely misunderstand 1 each other, even solemn treaties of peace are but pieces of parchment which the stress of national passions or prejudice may at any moment tear to pieces. If the ignorance remains, the racial prejudice lemains; and racial prejudice is one of those unhappy passions of human nature — primordial, persistent, and near the surface as well as near the roots of nations — which are always a peril. But if the litterateur but do his work as well as the politicians have done theirs the time may not be far distant when Frenchmen and Englishmen, wiil really understand each other. The ignorance is not all on one side. We are right to laugh at the very absurd caricatures of English life which appear on the French stage and in the French comic papers; but assuredly they are not more grotesque than the prevalent idea in England as to the general immorality of French life, and especially as to the want of the sanctities of home. Nor is the Englishman, with his long red whiskers, his big teeth, his eternal knickerbockers, a. more grotesque travesty of the truth than the generally accepted idea in England th.at the French are an idle, frivolous, easy-going nation. The real truth is that there is no land in the world where the idea of the family has so strong and universal and sacred hold as in France, and that, also, there is no nation in the world where hard work is more universally the lot, the duty, and even tho delight of the vast preponderance of the population.

The author of this book is none the less fitted for his task because he is frankly Anglophile. To understand your subject you must be in sympathy with your subject. Now and then, perhaps, one feels that this friendly French student of our manners, customs, and national characteristics is too flattering a friend ; but let that pass; it is far better than the blindness of prejudice and ignorance. I wish that we could have a "book on similar lines written bj an Englishman who thoroughly understood and thoroughly loved France and the French. The Vicomte Robert d'Humieres, the author of this book, was largely inspired to write it, it is evident, by his friendship with Mr Rudyard Kipling. Mr Kipling, indeed, is interested sufficiently in the author and the book to give it a very pleasant and eulogistic preface. Mr Kip'rmg'points to more than one passage in the bcok which proves that our author is an accurate and a shrewd observer ; notably to a passage about the attitude of the private soldier to his commanders, on which I shall dwell *or a moment a little later on. One of the passages which strikes Mr Kipling is that in which the author points to the energy o* the English race ; an energy which always strikes the Frenchman. " It may be remembered that th© irresistible necessity for energetic and even violent action is one of the things which was noted; by M. Boutmy — another French observer from whom I quoted at length some months ago.

They have (says the Vicomte. d'Humieres) a significant verb in this country, "to go in for." They do not say "I like tennis ; they say "I go in for tennis." It is the same with photography, entomology, rowing, or Greek verse. They have lw notion of things done lightly, ol "initiations conferred with a smile." All is business, even their sports. And so is flirtation. Upon which Mr Kipling makes this characteristic comment: From the point of view of an inhabitant I am specially delighted with your tributes to the energy of the race, a thing which some of tis, at times to-day, begin to doubt. There exists — I am glad you did not see it — an England which, ruined by excess of comfort, has gone to sleep and, because it snores loudly, believes that it is thinking. 11. A good deal of the book is taken up with Mr Kipling and his works and ideas. Here is an excellent little thumb-nail sketch of the famous novelist which gives as good an idea of his appearance as anything I have read for a long time about him : He does not look more than 30. Nicholson's print makes him seem older than he is. Collier's portrait alone gives the frank, open, and youthful expression of the original. His eyes in particular hold the attention behind the immovable glasses, full of light, sympathy, and gaiety, thirsting to reflect life in all its forms. The chestnut hair is cut straight over the forehead. The thick-set, rather plump figure possesses a singular agility, with none of the somewhat wooden gestures of the average Englishman. Mr Kipling frankly avows to his visitor his litea-ary prejudices. He is no lover, as one could well anticipate, of the mad eroticism of D' Anminzio — to me one of the most terrible and revolting phenomena of contemporary literature. "It must be/ says Mr Kipling, discussing the author, My Oriental leanings, but I don't like a woman outside her house in fiction properly so-called. She is charming in real life, but one has seen a little too much of her in literature. There arc so many other subjects.

* "Through Isle and Empire." By the Vicomte Robert d'Humieres. Translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos. With a pie■fatory letter by Rudyard Kapling. {Wilham Heiuemaan. 65.)

f in. I pass to the French author's remarks on some of our leading characteristics. One passage in particular has struck me — that which deals with what is called English cant. There is one sin above all from which I daily pray bo be delivered in anytling I write, and that is the sin of cant. It is undoubtedly the besetting sin of our social judgments in this country. I agree with our author in thinking that it displayed itself in a crude and nob very agreeable form in the treatment meted out to Byron, to Shelley, to Parnell. In the views taken by the publio of their time of these remarkable men and of their particular acts I do not agree ; few people now, when the passions of the period are past, will profess entire agreement with these views. But while thus stating my opinions I have always thought that to put down what I regard as narrowness of vision, to mere hypocrisy was always a mistake in psychology — to say nothing of a lapse in manners. To me it has always seemed that underneath the harshness, or the narrowness, or the uncharifableness of judgment, there lay not hypocrisy so much as reverence for a great and, on tine whole, noble ideal. The Englishman still regards married life and a houseful of children as the ideal and Ihe only healthy and pure existence foa man and woman ; and anybody who runs counter to that great national ideal of duty is held to violate a law so fundamental, so vital, so supreme, that there is no hesitation in crushing him. He dies that the race and its ideals may live. It is a hard, and often it is an unjust sentence; but it is not the outcome, I believe, of anything like hypocrisy. The Vicomte d'Humieres puts this opinion of mine in somewhat different fashion ; there is no passage in the book which seems to me to show a greater liberality and breadth of vision on the part of a foreigner than his words with regard to this subject : I cannot help thinking the chastity of the English novel proceeds from causes deeper than cant. The Avord hypocrisy siipplies a somewhat curt explanation. As a matter of fact, this people is perhaps the least sensual of all. Love represents to it a distraction which can be dodged by means of work or sport. And then comes this very striking bit of psychology — lie is still discussing the charge of cant : It is an ascetioism stripped not of its cruelty, but of its mysticism and its picturesqueness, an asceticism that has performed the feat of reconcibng itself and its dogmas with affirmed piratical instincts and of installing the Ark of the Covenant and the Cherubim of the Old .Law on board the beaked galleys of the ancestral Vikings. Wherefore cant, ridiculous and futile in its essence and its origin, burdened with every crime since the death of that truculent and genial Elizabethan England, the England of Marlowe, Webster, and Shakespeare, from the murder of Mary Stuart, that bright and passionate figure of the Renascence hated by the Scotch preachers, down to the exile of Byron and Shelley, the ostracism that struck a Swinburne, the gaol that opened to receive a Wilde^ the political ruin of a Pamell convicted of adultery, this cant is to us abominable. It is, moreover, equally ridiculous in its fruits, for in the extreme classes of English society, the highest and the lowest, it does not don a morality superior to that of other nations. But this "hypocrisy," pleads the writer, is the sign of a great respect foi good 1 . Upon the whole, he who boasts of his virtue is better than he who boasts of his vices. IV. On the question of English reserve, the judgment is equally charitable, and, I think, equally sound. He acknowledges that it is rather difficult for a Frenchman at first to> understand how two men may foi 20 years be members of the same club, and ba evem close acquaintances, without knowing whethei they ire married or unmarried, or that two intimate friends should separate for a long period with a prospect of danger ?Ji'd death with a quiet shake of the hand vnd a nodded " Good-bye." But, urges the Vicomte d'Humieres : Whichever we may prefer, we are bound to allow more dignity to this power of self-government thar to the exuberance of the Neapolitan. The latter perhaps adds to the picturesqueness of mankind ; the former certainly adds to its greatness. And, finally, here is his judgment of the race as a whole : Tho race is a fine one, full of vigour and tenacity, and combining both idealism and realism. The most marked characteristics of its men appear ro be stoicism, the practice of truth, a .sense of respect, and hence of duty, generosity. In short, the Englishman presents a good specimen of the physical and moral individual in a society which espouses his wants and exalts his energies to the highest point in order to attain the best possible result. V. I have already made an allusion to the remarkable passage in which the author analyses the psychology of the private soldier. It is one of the passages, it will be remembered, which particularly struck Mr Kipling. The author has his rencontre with Tommy Atkins as he and that obscure hero are going from Shorncliffe to London. And this is what happens : They talk without restraint, and it is all singularly instructive. Names of generals are mentioned in the conversation ; appreciations, judgments, comparisons are made. What a gulf between the psychology of these men and that of a French soldier. Those commanders of whom they speak, generals no longer able to count their reverses, or the human lives uselessly sacrificed to obtain new reverses ; those army leaders who in the opinion of my own country would be for i all time discredited^ despised, rujnedla

done for, are named by their soldiers in tones of respect, admiration, and confidence. And then comes this delightful specimen of the conversation of Tommy Atkins : " Buller, there's a man for you! " " Cheers for old Buller ! " I see once more the heavy, squarejawed face which figures in every shop window, on every wall, on every box of wooden matches, to remind the English of the shambles of Colenso. " And Gat acre ! What do you say to Gatacre?"' I venture to insinuate. " I thought that the men didn't like him, that he More them out. Surely they, used to call him Gutsacher? " "Him? Why, all his men cried when lif*. left. He iised to tire you, if you like, but at least he fed you."They are proud of that one, too, as of the others. They are proud of him on principle, because you must be proud of something when you're an Englishman ; they are proud, first, because they do not understand, and, next, because they understand that they must not understand. A profound' instinct warns them against intelligence, the enemy of action. The comment of Mr Kipling on this passage is very apt, I • think : Above all you have put your finger upon a vital point of our training when you speak of the men who " understand that they must not understand." I think that is at the bottom of many of our successes and oui- failures. It is the first thing which we teach our boys. VI. Do not siippcs© that our author cannot, now and then, point out some of our follies and absurdities. Here, for instance, is a little biting, but, alas ! too true, sketch of Brighton on one of our bank holidays : A great unpacking of counter-jumpers and their girls ; all the back shops of the East End discharging their overflow on a beach crowded with couples sprawling iv attitudes which would shock our modest sergents-de-ville, but which here alarm nobody. Yet we are but two steps from an outdoor sermon marked by the bleating of a portable organ and, on a board, this perplexing question, " What* would Jesus do? " VII. A great deal of the book is taken up with a description of English life in India. Here the sketches are frankly hurried and impressionist, with all the' faults this method of writing must involve. But, again, the observations are shrewd and* penetrating, while necessarily sketchy and' rapid. Here is a little picture of life in Simla, with its fierce activities, its love of intrigue, its characteristic English brevity of speech and opulence of action : It loves pleasure. It does not taste it with the tip of its lips, in. blase fashion, but rushes upon it, swallows it greedily, in great mouthfuls, with a fine frenzy. The Simla season, like the London season, terrifies you with the number of its amusements. Breakfasts, tiffins, teas, dinners, cards to leave on people whom! you have never seen and whose houses you can never find, rides, teSfeis, badminton, official dances, private dances, theatres, suppers, more dances, a feverishi activity that brings chaperons to the grave : — Look at Miss W passing — she is " Dick "to her friends ; you know, one of the W girls, the twins, the daughter of the- jolly colonel of the 22nd D.G.s — hurrying, with the end of her parasol, the runners dragging her absurd) little rickshaw. She hasn't a minute to spare ; she's en her way to rehearse in '" The Yeoman of ihe Guard " : ! "Oh, Captain So-and-So!" It'=? So-and so, that fetching officer of the R.B. " Such a smart regiment, dear " ; it makes as much fuss in the world as our own chasseurs a pied. Without troubling to salute, he says : " You'll kill those jhampanis. Have you a dance left at the Z.s?" " Yes, think so, wait a bit " — she takes out a notebook, which she turns over feverishly. " Only a bam dance ; I'm sure you hate it." "We'll sit it out." " All right, we'll sit it out." " Supper? " " At the Pink Hussars ' " " Hang the Pink Hussars ! " " Poor things ! Come, too." " Not asked." " I'll take you. They told me to bring a. man, if I liked." " All right. Good-bye! " (To ihe jhampanis) : " Feldij pigs!" (To Miss W.) i, " Dig in ! " And Miss W trots away behind her team, her maidenly heart throbbing wlt-I* perturbation at those ardent words. She has for three seasons at Simla aired the promises of an evident marriageableness, and Captain So-and-so is Jirsl cousin ikx an Earl. He, on the other side, brings his polo> pony to a canter and says to himself : " That Dick's a damned good sort.'* He will propose to her to-night, perhaps. It all depends on tba Pink Hussars' supper. VIII. But the tragic possibilities which underlie nil this careless and reckless pursuit o£ pleasure are not forgotten. There is muchi fcod for reflection in the following very, fetriking passage : — Few things can be more curious than! to examine the different effects whichi English ideas and influence produce uponi the minds of these Eastern potentates. The effects are infinitely varied and sometimes perturbing. The Indian princes may be divided into two groups : the Conservatives, hostile to Western ideas 1 , steeped in the old principles ; and the Moderns, better trained,* knowing the price of the favours of the suzerain race, and presenting every shade of moral degradations, while enjoying no real

15m advantage beyond* that of being quite as F much suspected ~ by* their master as the s^jrajabs of -the old school, and more despised. The English have not forgotten -^■-thaVtKe Uaiia Sahib, the -terrible butcher " of the Mutiny, iris the most civilised of -the '-'princes, speaking their language, entertaining them in the European, fashion vith^ all the "refinement of Western urbanity. The same women's fingers whose rings", he had admired, or whose fan. picked, up on some evening of an official entertainment at the Residency in Lucknow, may have written, steeped in, their i>lood, those- words of despair and farewell whioh the rescuers, arriving too late, found inscribed on the walls of the prison at Cawnpore, or have been chopped oif^ in .the presence of the Ntina himself, on fbe'kerb of the tragic well where they struggled, amid what entreaties!' . . . All the East lies revealed in, these con- - trasts. ; And here I must part from my brilliant author.— T. P.