Told by an Idiot

11 THE HAPPY LIBERALS 1905 was a year of great happiness, intelligence and virtue for the Liberal party in the state. It was to be their last happy, intelligent or virtuous year for many a long day; indeed, they have not as yet known another, for such a gracious state is only possible to oppositions, and the next time that the Liberals were the Opposition it was too late, for by then oppositions were, like other persons, too tired, war-spoilt, disillusioned and dispirited to practise anything but an unidealistic and unhopeful nagging. But in 1905, with the Tories executing, to the satisfaction of their opponents, the ungracious task of performance, which is, one may roughly say, never a success, the Liberals were very jolly, united, optimistic, and full of energy and plans. What would they not do when they should come, in their turn, into power? What Tory iniquities were there not, for them now to oppose, for them in the rosy future to reverse? What Aunt Sallies did not the governing party erect for them to shy at? Chinese labour, that yellow slavery which was degrading (were that possible) South Africa; the Licensing Act, the Education Act, the Little Loaf, which could be made so pitiable a morsel on posters—against all these they tilted. As to what they would do, once in power, it included the setting of trade again upon its legs, the enriching of the country, the reform of the suffrage, the relief of unemployment, the issue of an Education Bill which should distress no one. Ardent progressives hoped much from this party; they even hoped, without grounds, for the removal of sex disabilities in the laws relating to the suffrage, which unlikely matter was part of the programme drawn up in 1905 by the National Liberal Federation. Life was very glorious to any party, in those Edwardian days, before it got in. Liberals in opposition were democratic idealists, in office makeshift opportunists, backing out and climbing down. Stanley Croft, in 1905, was ardent in Liberal hope. She hoped for everything, even for a vote. This sex disability in the matter of votes oppressed her very seriously. She saw no sense or reason in it, and resented the way the question, whenever it was raised in Parliament, was treated as a joke, like mothers-in-law, or drunkenness, or twins. Were women really a funny topic? Or rather, were they funnier than men? And if so, why? In vain her female sense of humour sought to probe this subject, but no female sense of humour, however acute, has ever done so. Women may and often do regard all humanity as a joke, good or bad, but they can seldom see that they themselves are more of a joke than men, or that the fact of their wanting rights as citizens is more amusing than men wanting similar rights. They can no more see it than they can see that they are touching, or that it is more shocking that women should be killed than that men should, which men see so plainly. Women, in fact, cannot see why they should not be treated like other persons. Stanley could not see it. To her the denial of representation in the governing body of her country on grounds of sex was not so much an injustice as a piece of inexplicable lunacy, as if all persons measuring, say, below five foot eight, had been denied votes. She saw no more to it than that, in spite of all the anti-suffrage speakers whom she heard say very much more. She became embittered on this subject, with a touch of the feminist bitterness that marked many of the early strugglers for votes. She admitted that men were, taking them in the main, considerably the wiser, the more capable and the more intelligent sex; that is to say that, though most people were ignorant fools, there were even more numerous and more ignorant fools among women than among men; but there it was, and there was no reason why the female fools should have less say than the male fools as to which of the other fools represented their interests in Parliament, and what measures were passed affecting their foolish lives. No; on the face of it, it was lunatic and irrational, and no excuse was possible, and that was that. It certainly was, Rome agreed, but then, in a lunatic and irrational world, was any one extra piece of lunacy worth a fuss? Was, in fact, anything worth a fuss? In the answer to these questions, the sisters fundamentally differed, for Stanley believed very many things to be worth a fuss, and made it accordingly. She was busy now making fusses from most mornings to most evenings, sitting on committees for the improvement of the world, even of the Congo, and so forth. She was what is called a useful and public-spirited woman. Rome, on the other hand, grew with the years more and more the dilettante idler. At forty-six she found very few things worth bothering about. She strolled, drove or motored round the town, erect, slim and debonair, increasingly distinguished as grey streaked her fair hair and time chiselled delicate lines in her fine, clear skin. Rome cared neither for the happy Liberals nor for the unhappy Tories; she regarded both parties as equally undistinguished. Fabianism became increasingly the fashion for young intellectuals. Girl and boy undergraduates flung themselves with ardour into this movement, sitting at the feet of Mr. Bernard Shaw and the Sidney Webbs. Stanley was a keen Fabian, and even attended summer schools. They were not attractive, but yet she hoped that somehow good would be the final goal of ill. She was sorry that none of her nephews and nieces joined her in this movement, though several had attained the natural age for it. 12 THE HAPPY YOUNG Maurice’s Roger, who had not intellect and meant to be a novelist, was a gay youth now at Cambridge. His sister Iris had even less intellect and meant to be a wife. Nature had not fitted her for learning, and when she left school she merely came out (as the phrase goes). Parties: these were what Iris liked. Society, not societies. Stanley, aunt-like, thought it a great pity that Maurice’s offspring were thus, and blamed Maurice for leaving them too much to Amy. As to Vicky’s children, Phyllis, who had done quite adequately at Girton, now lived at home and helped her mother with entertaining and drawing-room meetings, and was in politics on the whole a Tory; Nancy, at twenty-one, was at the Slade, learning, so everyone but her teachers believed, to draw and paint; Hugh was at Cambridge, a lad of good intelligence which he devoted to the study of engineering; Tony was still at school; and Imogen was to leave it this summer. Imogen was not for college; she would, it was generally believed by her teachers and relatives, not make much of that. Imogen was quite content; she was, as always, busy writing stories and sunk deep in her own imaginings, which were still of a very puerile sort. Imogen read a great deal, but was not really intelligent; it was as if she had not yet grown up. She knew and cared little about politics or progress. Bernard Shaw was to her merely the most enchanting of playwrights. She was happy, drugged with poetry (her own and that of others), and adventurous dreams. She was a lanky slip of an undeveloped girl, light-footed, active as a cat, but more awkward with her hands than any creature before her; at once a romantic dreamer and a tomboyish child, loving school, her friends, active games, bathing, climbing, reading and writing, animals, W. B. Yeats, Conrad, Kipling, Henry Seton Merriman, Shelley, William Morris, Stevenson, “A Shropshire Lad,” meringues, battleships, marzipan, Irene Vanbrugh, Granville Barker and practically all drama; hating strangers, society, drawing-room meetings, needlework, love stories, people who talked about clothes, sentimentalists, and her Aunt Amy. She was at this time as sexless as any girl or boy may be. She was still, in all her imaginings, her continuous, unwritten stories about herself, a young man. As to Stanley’s children, Irving’s and Una’s, they were still at school. Stanley watched her son and daughter with hope and joy; they were such delightful, exciting creatures, and one day they would take their place in the world and help to upset it and build it up again. They, at least, should certainly join the Fabians when they were old enough. Billy and Molly should not be slack, uninterested or Tory. They should join in the game of life as eagerly as now they joined in treasure hunts, that curious rage of this year which caused young and old to fall to digging up the earth, seeking for discs. 13 THE YEAR The year and the government petered towards their end. In the east the Japanese were beating the Russians, hands down. In the Dogger Bank, the Russians fired on a fishing-fleet from Hull, and there was trouble. In European politics, the Anglo-French entente throve, and Anglo-German rivalry swelled the navies. In Scotland, the Wee Frees split from the U.P.’s, and fought successfully for the lion’s share of the loot. In Wales, Evan Roberts’ odd religious revival swept the country, throwing strong men and women into hysteria and bad men and women into virtue, reforming the sinners and seriously annoying the publicans. In the Congo, rubber was grown and collected amid scenes of distressing cruelty, and reports of the horrid business were published in this country by Mr. Roger Casement and Mr. E. D. Morel. In India, Lord Curzon quarrelled with Lord Kitchener. In Thibet, the British expedition got to Lhassa. In Tangier, the Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany made a speech. In Ireland, Mr. Wyndham resigned. In London, the government apathetically stayed in office, the Tariff Reform campaign raged, treasure discs were dug for, bridge was much played, the Vedrenne-Barker company acted at the Court Theatre, many books were published and pictures painted, and money brightly changed hands. And in the provinces, by-election after by-election was lost to the government, until at last, in November, Mr. Balfour resigned. 14 ROCKETS They stood in the new open space at Aldwych, watching the election results proclaimed by magic lanterns on great screens and flung to the sky in coloured rockets. They had made up a family election party—Maurice, Vicky, Charles, Rome, Stanley and Irving, and many of their young. Stanley had brought Billy and Molly, that they might rejoice in the great Liberal victory and always remember it. She had bought them each, at their request, a little clacker, with which to signal the triumph of right to the world. For to-night was to be a triumph indeed; liberalism was to sweep the country. Though even Stanley did not guess to what extent, or how far the inevitable pendulum had swung. Imogen was entranced by the dark, clear night, the coloured lights, the crowd, the excitement, and little thrills ran up and down her as names and figures and rockets were greeted with cheers and hoots. She cared nothing for the results; to her the thing was a sporting event on which she had no money. Aunt Stanley, she knew, had her shirt on the Liberals. So had Uncle Maurice. But Aunt Rome had nothing either way. Imogen’s own parents were Conservatives. So, on the whole, was Phyllis, and Phyllis’s young man. So was Uncle Irving, who was for Tariff Reform. Probably, on the whole, Liberals were the more right, thought Imogen. But probably no party was particularly right. How excited they all got, anyhow, right or wrong! The Liberals were forging ahead. There was another Manchester division going up on the screen. Three Manchester seats had already been lost to the Tories. “Bet you an even twopence it’s a Lib.” Tony was saying. “Right you are. Oh, it’s Balfour’s....” “Well, he’s lost it. Hand over.” The crowd roared with laughter, distress and joy. Balfour out.... What next? “Very badly managed,” Irving was complaining all the time, to no one in particular. “Shockingly mismanaged. The most comic election I ever saw. There’ll be no Front Bench left.” “And a jolly good thing.” That was Stanley, getting more and more triumphant. “There goes Brodrick....” Imogen felt dazed and happy, and as if she were in a fairy palace, all blue and red lights. Her upstrained face was stiff and cold, her mouth open with joy, so that the cold air flowed in. She wasn’t betting any more, for neither she nor Tony would bet on the Tories now. The Tories were a dead horse. One was sorry for them, but one couldn’t bet on them. Did the poor men who lost their seats mind much? Perhaps some of them were pleased. After all, they had none of them sought or desired office.... Statesmen always said that of themselves; they only wanted to get in because they thought they were the ones who would do most good; always they said that. Divine guidance, they said, had laid this heavy burden on them, though it was a most frightful bore, and though the thing they wanted to do was to live in the country and keep pigs. “If I was in office,” thought Imogen, “I wouldn’t say that. I’d say, I sought and wanted office, and I’m jolly glad I’ve got it, though I expect I’ll be rotten at it. I simply love being in power, and thank you awfully for putting me in, and I hope I’ll stop in for ages.” How shocked everyone would be. That wasn’t the way public men ever talked. Would women, if ever they got into Parliament, like Aunt Stanley wanted them to? Perhaps they would at first, not being used to proper public manners, but they would soon learn that it wasn’t nice to talk like that and would begin on the I-never-wanted-it stunt. More rockets; more blue flares. Lovely. Like a great garden of coloured flowers. Night is a garden gay with flowers.... Hours. Showers. Dowers. Bowers. Cowers.... Their flaring blinds the sleepy hours.... No. The small dim hours are lit, are starred. Better. The rhymes alternately in the middle and end of the lines, all through. That made it chime, like bells beneath the sea.... “Lord, what a bungle!” Irving grunted. “It’s all up now. Nothing can save it now. We may as well go home and get warm. What?” His fine, dark, clear-cut face was beautiful in the coloured flares, as he stared up, a cigar in the corner of his mouth. How interesting people were, thought Imogen, the way they all wanted different things, and in different ways. There was Uncle Maurice now, smiling over his briar, as pleased as anything.... And Billy and Molly, silly little goats, twirling away with their clackers and shouting with Liberal joy because Aunt Stanley told them to.... Anyhow it couldn’t really matter who got in. Not matter, like the night, and the lights, and poetry, and the lovely thrill of it all. Results didn’t matter, only the thing itself. “Brrr!” said Vicky, hunching herself together and hugging her muff. “It’s too cold to watch the wrong side winning any more. Charles, I’m going home to bed. Come along, all of you, or you’ll catch your deaths.” “Oh, mother, mayn’t I stay as long as father does?” “If you like. Very silly of you, Jennie, you’re blue and shivering already. Stanley, aren’t you going to take those noisy and misguided children of yours home? It’s nearly midnight.” “I suppose I must. But what a night for them to remember always.” What a night, thought Imogen, huddling up in her coat with a happy shiver, to remember always. Indeed yes. Ecstasy and gaudy blossoms of the night. The gaudy blossoms of the night.... Sharp swords of light.... Bloss, moss, doss, toss ... toss ought to do.... “There goes Lyttelton. So much for those beastly Chinamen,” cried Maurice. 15 ON PARTIES So much for the beastly Chinamen, and so much for the beastly little loaf and the tax on the People’s Food, so much for class legislation and sectarian education bills. So much, in fact, for Toryism, for the happy Liberals were in, and would be in, growing ever less and less happy, for close on ten years. “Now we’ll show the world,” said Stanley. Maurice cynically grinned at her. “If you mean you think you’re going to get a vote, my dear, you’re off it. This cabinet hasn’t the faintest intention of accommodating you. Not the very faintest. And if ever they did put up a bill, they’d never get it through the Lords. You may send all the deputations you like, but you won’t move them. Woman’s suffrage is merely the House joke.” “We’ll see,” said Stanley, who was of a hopeful colour. “All you can say of Liberals,” said Maurice, who was not, “is that they’re possibly (not certainly) one better than Conservatives. However, I’m not crabbing them. They’ve got their chance, and let’s hope they take it. First they’ve got to undo all the follies the last government perpetrated. Every government ought to begin with that, always. Then they’ve got to concentrate on Home Rule. As you say, we shall see.” “Anyhow,” said Stanley, “we’ve got our chance.... And there’s the Tribune. Penny liberalism at last.” “I give it a year,” said Maurice. “If it takes longer dying, Thomasson is an even more stubborn lunatic than I think him. They’ve started all right; quite a good first number, only how any Liberal paper can publish a polite message from that damned Tsar beats one. I believe my paper is really the only one that insults the Russian government as it ought to be insulted. All the others either make up to the Tsar for his armies or butter him up because of the Hague Conference and his silly prattle about a world peace. It makes one sick. Liberals are as bad as the rest.” It was edifying, during the election days, to learn from various authorities the reasons for the Liberal victory. The Times said it was the effect, long delayed, of the suffrage reform bills; the working classes, at last articulate, had determined to dictate their own policy; no triumph for liberalism, no humiliation for conservatism, but an experiment on the part of Labour. The Morning Post said the victory was due to the misrepresentation of Chinese labour by Liberals, false promises, and the inevitable swing of the pendulum. The Daily Mail said it was the swing of the pendulum, Chinese labour, the over continuance in office of the last government, the Education Act, taxation, unfair food-tax cries, and a liking for antiquated methods of commerce. The Daily News said it was a rebellion against reaction, protection and the Little Loaf. The Tribune said it was a rebellion also against poverty, the direction of companies by Ministers, and the undoing of the great Victorian reforms; it was, in fact, the protest of Right against Force, of the common good against class interest, of the ideal element in political life against merely mechanical efficiency. ( “Mechanical efficiency!” Maurice jeered. “Much there was of that in the last government. As to the ideal element, the Liberal ideal is a large loaf and low taxes. Quite a sound one, but nothing to be smug about.” ) However, the whole press was smug, as always, and so were nearly all statesmen in public speeches; their cynicism they kept for private life. Mr. Asquith, for instance, said that this uprising of the people was due to moral reprobation of the double dealing of the late government; plain dealing was what they wanted. And Mr. Lloyd George, in his best vein, spoke of a fearful reckoning. A tornado, he called it, of righteous indignation with the trifling that had been going on in high places for years with all that was sacred to the national heart. The oppression of Nonconformists at home, the staining of the British flag abroad with slavery, the rivetting of the chains of the drink traffic on the people of this country—against all these had the people risen in wrath. It was a warning to ministers not to trifle with conscience, or to menace liberty in a free land. The people meant to save themselves; the dykes had been opened, and reaction in all its forms would be swept away by the deluge. Mr. Balfour, less excited and more philosophic, observed, at his own defeat at Manchester, that, after all, the Tories had been in office ten years, and would doubtless before long be in office again, and that these oscillations of fortune would and did always occur. He was probably nearer the truth about the elections than most of those who pronounced upon them. It is a safe assertion that no government is popular for long; get rid of it and let’s try another, for anyhow another can’t be sillier, is the voter’s very natural and proper feeling. The sophisticated voter knows that it will almost certainly be as silly, but, after all, it seems only fair to let each side have its innings. Anyhow, and whatever the reasons that brought liberalism into power, there it was. It was expressed by a House which was at present, and before its enthusiasms were whittled away in action, composed largely of political and social theorists, men new to politics and brimming with plans. Mr. H. W. Massingham said it was the ablest Parliament he had ever known, but not the most distinguished.