AT THE PEN’S POINT

Southland Times, Issue 19500, 14 March 1925, Page 11

AT THE PEN’S POINT

SNUFFLING.

(By

“The Wasp.”)

If there is one occupation in this world which bringeth joy to the heart of the snufflers it is the banging of brickbats upon other people’s glasshouses. Missiles may be aimed with but little skill and with hardly any force behind them, yet the resultant smash is glorious to hear and the damage done cannot be made good quickly. The snuffler resides in every community, but in some he is rather prolific and in those areas will be found muddied thinking, in those delightful minds which on finding a work of art in a muck pile will* destroy it because of the place in which it was discovered. In these districts one can depend on finding a number of glasshouses unattended because the owners are busily engaged in throwing stones in another street.

The snuffler is the wowser in excelsis. He is the man who would like us all to wear spectacles so that it would no longer be possible for us to see a naked eye. There is a popular Belief that the wowser must be a Prohibitionist, that he must eschew fiery waters and go big licks for the rescue of his thirsty brothers. That is an exploded theory, because we know that the aridity of one’s views on the Liquor Question does not necessarily betray the possession of the wowser or snuffling mind. Noted snufflers have thirsts before which any barman will make a cheerful obeisance and breaths which will set reeling the champion sponge of the English language, a combination which is explained by the fact that snuffling is a state of mind, a posture of what passes for the intellect, while thirst is something belonging to the physical side of man.

One of the favourite hobbies of the snuffler is the issuing of advice to his fellows on the things which they must avoid, and this is usually accompanied by many drum-thumpings and bellows, because the snuffler knows only too well tnat wnile the loud voice may reveal the vacant mind, it will also, in this age of loquacity, assist to conceal the vacancy from the eyes of the mob. The snuffler is one who will lay cleansing hands on a work of Art, who will support all forms of censorship and suppression, and damn all progress, save when he is on what he delights to call the political field. You will see snufflers who appeal to the electors for parliamentary opportunities, glibly declaring that ballots should be cast for measures and not for men, but on another platform they will stand, eyes raised to Heaven and Adam’s apple prominent, shouting that a work of Art cannot be disassociated from the private life of the artist. If the politicians are to be granted this indemnity by the snufflers, why should the Artist, who is an honester fellow withal, be denied it? Why? Because the snufflers make Consistency bend the knee to Expediency, because they seek to say the Right Thing rather than the Honest Thing. Snuffling crops out in all sorts of places and the wide-awake man will note the occurrence wherever it comes to his knowledge, marking the spot with: “There is a Snuffler here, beware!” My latest warning has been posted as a result of some reading in connection with a recent Court case in London, which is rivalling the revues in providing excitement for the idle and the envious. In my reading there flashed accidently for I was in places where I rarely tread—the trail of the snuffler discussing what he called a “nice question” in a nasty way. Some reference to Sir John Cowans caught my eye and I found myself being told:

It is inadmissible to argue that because a man is a good soldier we must concentrate on his military record, and close our nostrils to his private record that recks to high Heaven. Sir John Cowans was a great soldier with a genius for administration, but it is absurd to think that if he had not been there to take up the duties another could not be found.

This is the plea for the Great Mediocrity! The snuffler’s covert attack. Here we have the suggestion that, the genius—Cowans as Quartermaster-General was a modern genius—should be lost to the State because he does indiscreetly what many men of “good-standing” do discreetly, because he is sceptical concerning the Literal Inerrancy of the Bible, or because he refuses to wear red flannel next to his skin. It. is part of the argument, so loved of the Great Mediocrity, that a man who is a Good Father must be a Great General, that one who can recite the texts of Confucius can command a fleet of warships with distinction, or that he who has swallowed Karl Marx’s “Das Kapital” must be a statesman. “It is absurd to think that if he had not been there another could not be found.” I wonder how this snuffle would stand if applied to Nelson, to Pitt, to Marlborough, to Bonaparte, to Luther! But let us see the argument developed, for it proceeds along expected lines:

Another case—an even ♦ worse one—that conies to mind is that of Oscar Wilde, a man of genius, convicted of such an offence as marked him out as a mixture of genius and filth. There are those who argue that his undoubted literary genius excuses his gross sensuality. But against these are others who hold that a man’s literary work cannot be dissociated or divorced from his own personal character. And they place Wilde’s works on their index expurgatorius. Always, not matter how witty or how charming he may be, or how seemingly repentant, as in “De Pfrofundis,” Ahe bestiality of his offending pushes its cloven hoof through and the best that can be wished is that such great errant geniuses be forgotten—their genius and their sins falling alike into a merciful oblivion.

Hurrah lor Mediocrity! Forward, Snufflers because the greater part of the Treasure House of Art is to be looted and burnt in the public squares to the accompaniment of tambourines and snuffling. Shakespeare! You wicked fellow, how can you expect your work to escape ? Byron, Shelley, Keats, Burns, Swinburne, Dawson, Thomson, Goldsmith, Poe, Whitman, Pope, Dryden, Bacon, and others of your kind, into the fire with you—how can your work be tolerated, how can you be reckoned among the great in letters, dare you suggest that your literary work can be disassociated from your personal character, .your private l.fe? Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann, Berlioz, and your mates, away with you —how can your music be beautiful, how can it be tolerated? Horace, Rousseau, Villon, Dante, Cervantes, Racine, Moliere, Voltaire, Balzac, Goethe, Heine, Strindberg, you naughty fellows, do you think you may escape? What use of you to say that you have never asked the world to condone your faults, that you left for posterity not the vices which marred you, but the great achievements which linked your names with immortality? These pleas are of no avail —the Snufflers are in pow'er and the quality of an artist’s work is to be determined by his ability to keep his peccadilloes from the public. In the Great Mediocrity you have no place. You have paid the price of genius, but the wet sniff of the Snuffler is now heard in the land.