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voice of the Hooligan."
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THE
* VOICE OF “THE HOOLIGAN”
A Discussion of Kiplingism
By
ROBERT BUCHANAN
AND
SIR WALTER BESANT
office of ſºublication:
Rooms 2128-29-30-31, Park Row Building

f


|
THE VOICE OF “THE HOOLIGAN.”
As the years advance which “bring the philosophic mind,”
or at least the mind which we fondly flatter ourselves is philo-
sophic, in other words, as men of thought and feeling
approach the latter end of their pilgrimage, -there is a ten-
dency among them to under-reckon the advance which the
world has made in the course of their experience, and to dis-
cover in the far-off days of their youth a light which has
almost ceased to shine on earthly things. Laudatores temporis
acti, they look askance at all the results of progress, and
assert, more or less emphatically, that men were wiser and
better when they themselves were young. They forget, of
course, that distance lends enchantment to the view, and that
the very splendor in which the world once appeared came
rather from within than from without; and, forgetting this,
they do scant justice to the achievements of later generations.
A little sober reflection, nevertheless, may convince them that
the world does advance, though perhaps not so surely and satis-
factorily as they would wish to believe; and that, even if
there is some occasional retrogression, inevitable under the
conditions of human development, it is only, after all, tem-
porary, and due to causes which are inherent in our imperfect
human nature. From time to time, however, the momentum
towards a higher and more spiritual ideal seems suspended
altogether, and we appear to be swept centuries back, by a
great back-wave, as it were, in the direction of absolute
barbarism. -
Originally printed in the “Contemporary Review.”
3

4. THE VOICE OF THE HOOLIGAN
Such a back-wave, it appears to me, has been at work dur- -
ing the last few decades, and the accompanying phenomena, in
public life, in religion, in literature, have been extraordinary
enough to fill even a fairly philosophical mind with something
like despair. Closer contemplation and profounder medita-
tion, however, may prove that in all possibility the retrogres-
sion is less real than superficial, that the advance forward of
our civilization has only been hampered, not absolutely and
finally hindered, and that in due time we may become stronger
and wiser through the very lessons hardly learned during the
painful period of delay.
It would be quite beyond the scope of the present article to
point out in detail the divers ways in which modern society,
in England particularly, has drifted little by little, and day
by day, away from those humanitarian traditions which
appeared to open up to men, in the time of my own boyhood,
the prospect of a new heaven and a new earth. At that time,
the influence of the great leaders of modern thought was still
felt, both in politics and in literature; the gospel of humanity,
as expressed in the language of poets like Wordsworth and
Shelley, and in the deeds of men like Wilberforce and Maz-
zini, had purified the very air men breathed; and down lower,
in the humbler spheres of duty and human endeavor, human-
ists like Dickens were translating the results of religious as-
piration into such simple and happy speech as even the lowli- -
est of students could understand. It was a time of immense
activity in all departments, but its chief characteristic, per-
haps, was the almost universal dominance, among educated
men, of the sentiment of philanthropy, of belief in the inherent
perfectibility of human nature, as well as of faith in ideals
which bore at least the semblance of a celestial origin. Not
quite in vain, it seemed, had Owen and Fourier labored, and

THE VOICE OF THE HOOLIGAN 5
Hood sung, and John Leech wielded the pencil, and Dickens
and Thackeray used the pen. The name of Arnold was still
a living force in our English schools, and the name of Maz-
zini was being whispered in every English home. The first
noticeable change came, perhaps, with the criminal crusade
of the Crimean war; and from that hour to this, owing in no
little degree to the rough-and-ready generalizations of popular
science, and the consequent discrediting of all religious sanc-
tions, the enthusiasm of humanity among the masses has
gradually, but surely, died away. Sentiment has at last
become thoroughly out of fashion, and humanitarianism is
left to the care of eccentric and unauthoritative teachers.
Thus, while a few despairing thinkers and dreamers have
been trying vainly to substitute a new Ethos for the old reli-
gious sanctions, the world at large, repudiating the en-
thusiasm of humanity altogether, and exchanging it for the
worship of physical force and commercial success in any and
every form, has turned rapturously towards activities which
need no sanction whatever, or which, at any rate, can be
easily sanctified by the wanton will of the majority. Men
no longer, in the great civic centres at least, ask themselves
whether a particular course of conduct is right or wrong, but
whether it is expedient, profitable, and certain of clamorous
approval. Thanks to the newspaper press, that “mighty
engine,” as Mr. Morley calls it, for “keeping the public in-
telligence on a low level,”—they are fed from day to day
with hasty news and gossip, and with bogus views of affairs,
concocted in the interests of the wealthy classes. Ephemeral
and empirical books of all sorts take the place of serious
literature; so that, while a great work like Mr. Spencer’s
* Curiously enough, the optimistic taste of the day regarded Thackeray, an
essential sentimentalist, as an almost brutal cynic

6 THE VOICE OF THE HOOLIGAN
“Justice ’’ falls still-born from the press, a sophistical de-
fence of the status quo like Mr. Balfour’s “ Foundations of Be- -
lief.” is read by thousands. The aristocracy, impoverished
by its own idleness and luxury, rushes wildly to join the -
middle-class in speculations which necessitate new conquests
of territory and constant acts of aggression. The mob,
promised a merry time by the governing classes, just as the
old Roman mob was deluded by bread and pageants, panem
et circenses, dances merrily to patriotic war-tunes, while that
modern monstrosity and anachronism, the conservative work-
ing man, exchanges his birthright of freedom and free
thought for a pat on the head from any little rump-fed lord
that steps his way and spouts the platitudes of cockney pa-
triotism. The established church, deprived of the conscience
which accompanied honest belief, supports nearly every in-
famy of the moment in the name of the Christianity which it
has long ago shifted quietly overboard." There is an uni-
versal scramble for plunder, for excitement, for amusement,
for speculation, and, above it all, the flag of a Hooligan Im-
perialism is raised, with the proclamation that it is the sole
mission of Anglo-Saxon England, forgetful of the task of keep-
* It is sad to read in this connection the poem contributed to the “Times,”
at the outbreak of the South African struggle, by no less a person than the
Ven. Dr. Alexander, archbishop of Armagh and primate of all Ireland:
They say that “War is Hell,” the “great accursed,”
The sin impossible to be forgiven–
Yet I can look upon it at its worst,
And still find blue in heaven
And, as I note how nobly natures form
Under the war's red rain, I deem it true
That He who made the earthquake and the storm
Perchance made battles too !
God help the church, indeed, if this is the sort of oracle she delivers to
those who rested their faith in God on the message of the Beatitudes.

THE VOICE OF THE HOOLIGAN 7
ing its own drains in order, to expand and extend its bounda-
ries indefinitely, and, again in the name of the Christianity
it has practically abandoned, to conquer and inherit the earth.
It may be replied that this is an exaggerated picture, and
I will admit at once that there is justice in the reply, if it
is granted at the same time that the picture is true so far as
London itself and an enormous majority of Englishmen are
concerned. Only if this is granted, can the present relapse
back to barbarism of our public life, our society, our litera-
ture, be explained. Now that Mr. Gladstone has departed,
we possess no politician, with the single exception of Mr.
Morley (whose sanity and honesty are unquestionable, though
he lacks, unfortunately, the daemonic influence), who demands
for the discussion of public affairs any conscientiots and un-
selfish sanction whatever; we possess, instead, a thousand
pertinacious counsellors, cynics like Lord Salisbury or
trimmers like Lord Rosebery, for whom no one in his heart of
hearts feels the slightest respect. Our fashionable society is
admittedly so rotten, root and branch, that not even the
queen’s commanding influence can impart to it the faintest
suggestion of purity, or even decency. As for our popular
literature, it has been in many of its manifestations long past
praying for; it has run to seed in fiction of the baser sort,
seldom or never, with all its cleverness, touching the quick
of human conscience; but its most extraordinary feature at
this moment is the exaltation to a position of almost unex-
ampled popularity of a writer who in his single person
adumbrates, I think, all that is most deplorable, all that is
most retrograde and savage, in the restless and uninstructed
Hooliganism of the time.
The English public’s first knowledge of Mr. Rudyard Kip-
ling was gathered from certain brief anecdotal stories and

8 THE VOICE OF THE HOOLIGAN
occasional verses which began to be quoted about a decade ago
in England, and which were speedily followed by cheap re-
prints of the originals, sold on every bookstall. They pos-
sessed one not inconsiderable attraction, in so far as they
dealt with a naturally romantic country, looming very far off
to English readers, and doubly interesting as one of our own
great national possessions. We had had many works about
India—works of description and works of fiction; and a pas-
sionate interest in them, and in all that pertained to things
Anglo-Indian, had been awakened by the Mutiny; but few
writers had dealt with the ignobler details of military and
civilian life, with the gossip of the mess-room and the scandal
of the governmental departments. Mr. Kipling’s little
kodak-glimpses, therefore, seemed unusually fresh and new;
nor would it be just to deny them the merits of great liveli-
ness, intimate personal knowledge, and a certain unmistak-
able, though obviously cockney, humor. Although they dealt
almost entirely with the baser aspects of our civilization,
being chiefly devoted to the affairs of idle military men,
savage soldiers, frisky wives and widows, and flippant civil-
ians, they were indubitably bright and clever, and in the
background of them we perceived, faintly but distinctly, the
shadow of the great and wonderful national life of India. At
any rate, whatever their merits were, —and I hold their merits
to be indisputable, -they became rapidly popular, especially
with the newspaper press, which hailed the writer as a new
and quite amazing force in literature. So far as the lazy
public was concerned, they had the one delightful merit of
extreme brevity; he that ran might read them, just as he read
‘‘Tit-bits” and the society newspapers, and then treat them
like the rose in Browning’s poem:
Smell, kiss, wear it, at last throw away

THE VOICE OF THE HOOLIGAN 9
Two factors contributed to their vogue: first, the utter
apathy of general readers, too idle and uninstructed to study
works of any length or demanding any contribution of serious
thought on the reader’s part, and eager for any amusement
which did not remind them of the eternal problems which once
-beset humanity; and, second, the rapid growth in every direc-
tion of the military or militant spirit, of the Primrose
League, of aggression abroad, and indifference at home to all
religious ideals—in a word, of Greater Englandism, or
Imperialism. For a considerable time Mr. Kipling poured
out a rapid succession of these little tales and smoking-room
anecdotes, to the great satisfaction of those who loved to
listen to banalities about the English flag, seasoned with
strong suggestions of social impropriety, as revealed in camps
and barracks and the boudoirs of officers’ mistresses and
wives. The things seemed harmless enough, if not very
elevating or ennobling. Encouraged by his success, the au-
thor attempted longer flights, with very indifferent results;
though in the “Jungle Books,’’ for example, he got near to a
really imaginative presentment of fine material, and, if he
had continued his work in that direction, criticism might have
had little or nothing to say against him. But in an unfortu-
nate moment, encouraged by the journalistic praise lavished
on certain fragments of verse with which he had ornamented
his prose effusions, he elected to challenge criticism as a poet
—as, indeed, the approved and authoritative poet of the
British empire; and the first result of this election, or, as I
prefer to call it, this delusion and hallucination, was the pub-
lication of the volume of poems, partly new and partly re-
printed, called “Barrack-Room Ballads.”
I have said that Mr. Kipling’s estimate of himself as a poet
was a delusion; it was no delusion, however, so far as his

10 THE VOICE OF THE HOOLIGAN
faith in the public was concerned. The book was received
with instantaneous and clamorous approval; and, once again,
let me pause to admit that it contained, here and there,
glimpses of a real verse-making faculty—a faculty which,
had the writer been spiritually and intellectually equipped,
might have led to the production of work entitled to be called -
“ poetry.” On the very first page, however, the note of in-
sincerity was struck, in a dedication addressed to Mr. Wol-
cott Balestier, but recognized at once as having done duty for
quite a different purpose—resembling in this respect the
famous acrostic of Mr. Slum, which, although written to fit the
name of “Warren,” became at a pinch “a positive inspira-
tion for Jarley.” This dedication, with its false feeling and
utterly unsuitable imagery, suggests the remark en passant that
Mr. Kipling’s muse alternates between two extremes—the low-
est cockney vulgarity and the very height of what Americans
call “high-falutin’”—so that, when it is not setting the
teeth on edge with the vocabulary of the London Hooligan, it
is raving in capital letters about the Seraphim and the Pit
and the Maidens Nine and the Planets. -
The “Ballads” thus introduced are twenty-one in number,
of which the majority are descriptive of whatever is basest
and most brutal in the character of the British mercenary.
One deals, naturally enough, with the want of sympathy -
shown in public-houses to Tommie Atkins in time of peace,
as contrasted with the enthusiasm for him in time of war;
another, entitled “Cells,” begins as follows:
I've a head like a concertina: I’ve a tongue like a button-stick:
I’ve a mouth like an old potato, and I’m more than a little sick.
But I’ve had my fun with the Corpºral’s Guard: I've made the
cinders fly,
And I’m here in the Clink for a thundering drink and blacking the
Corpºral’s eye; -

THE VOICE OF THE HOOLIGAN 11
it is, in fact, the glorification of the familiar episode of
“drunk and resisting the guard.” In an equally sublime
spirit is conceived the ballad called “Loot,” beginning:
If you’ve ever stole a pheasant-egg be ind the keeper's back,
If you’ve ever snigged the washin' from a line,
If you’ve ever crammed a gander in your bloomin' 'aversack,
You will understand this little song of mine;
and the verses are indeed, with their brutal violence and their
hideous refrain, only too sadly understandable. Worse still,
in its horrible savagery, is the piece called “Belts,” which is
the apotheosis of the soldier who uses his belt in drunken fury
to assault civilians in the streets, and which has this agree-
able refrain:
But it was: “Belts, belts, belts, an’ that's one for you!”
An' it was “Belts, belts, belts, an’ that's done for you !”
O buckle an' tongue
Was the song that we sung
From Harrison’s down to the Park
If it is suggested that the poems I have quoted are only
incidental bits of local color, interspersed among verses of a
very different character, the reply is that those pieces, al-
though they are certainly the least defensible, are quite in
keeping with the other ballads, scarcely one of which reaches
to the intellectual level of the lowest music-hall effusions.
The best of them is a ballad called “Mandalay,” and de-
scribing the feelings of a soldier who regrets the heroine of
a little amour out in India, and it certainly possesses a real
melody and a certain pathos. But in all the ballads, with
scarcely an exception, the tone is one of absolute vulgarity
and triviality, unredeemed by a touch of human tenderness
and pity. Even the little piece called “Soldier, Soldier,”
which begins quite naturally and tenderly, ends with the

12 THE VOICE OF THE HOOLIGAN
cynical suggestion that the lady who mourns her old love had
better take up at once with the party who brings the news of
his death:
True love new love!
Best take 'im for a new love .
The dead they cannot rise, an' you’d better dry your eyes,
An' you’d best take 'im for your true love.
With such touching sweetness and tender verisimilitude are
these ballads of the barrack filled from end to end. Seriously,
the picture they present is one of unmitigated barbarism.
The Tommie Atkins they introduce is a drunken, swearing,
coarse-minded Hooligan, for whom, nevertheless, our sym-
pathy is eagerly entreated. Yet these pieces were accepted on
their publication, not as a cruel libel on the British soldier,
but as a perfect and splendid representation of the red-coated
• patriot on whom our national security chiefly depended, and
who was spreading abroad in every country the glory of our
imperial flag'
That we might be in no doubt about the sort of thinker who
was claiming our suffrages, Mr. Kipling printed at the end of
his book certain other lyrics not specially devoted to the
military. The best of these, the “Ballad of the Bolivar,”
is put into the mouth of seven drunken sailors “rolling down
the Ratcliffe Road drunk and raising Cain,” and loudly pro-
claiming, with the true brag and bluster so characteristic of
modern British heroism, how “they took the (water-logged)
Bolivar across the Bay.” It seems, by the way, a favorite
condition with Mr. Kipling, when he celebrates acts of manly
daring, that his subjects should be mad drunk, and, at any
rate, as drunken in their language as possible. But this
ballad may pass, that we may turn to the poem “Cleared,”
in which Mr. Kipling spits all the venom of cockney ignorance
on the Irish party, a propos of a certain Commission of which

THE VOICE OF THE HOGLIGAN 13
we have all heard, and, while saying nothing on the subject
of forged letters and cowardly accusations, affirms that Irish
patriots are naturally and distinctively murderers, because in
the name of patriotism murders have now and then been done.
He who loves blood and gore so much, who cannot even follow
the soldier home into our streets without celebrating his
drunken assaults and savageries, has only hate and loathing
for the unhappy nation which has suffered untold wrong, and
which, when all is said and done, has struck back so seldom.
In the poem which follows, “An Imperial Rescript,” he pro-
tests with all his might against any bond of brotherhood
among the sons of toil, pledging the strong to work for and
help the weak. Here, as elsewhere, he is on the side of all
that is ignorant, selfish, base, and brutal in the instincts of
humanity.
Before proceeding further to estimate Mr. Kipling’s contri-
butions to literature, let me glance for a moment at his second
book of verse, “The Seven Seas,” published a year or two
ago. It may be granted at once that it was a distinct advance
on its predecessor, more restrained, less vulgar, and much
more varied; here and there, indeed, as in the opening “Song
of the English,” it struck a note of distinct and absolute
poetry. But, in spite of its unquestionable picturesqueness,
and of a certain swing and lilt in the go-as-you-please
rhythms, it was still characterized by the same indefinable
quality of brutality and latent baseness. Many of the poems,
such as the “Song of the Banjo,” were on the level of the
cleverness to be found in the contributions of the poet of the
“Sporting Times,” known to the occult as the “Pink 'Un.”
The large majority, indeed, were cockney in spirit, in lan-
guage, and in inspiration, and one or two, such as “The La-
dies” and “The Sergeant's Weddin’,” with its refrain:

14 THE yoice OF THE HOOLIGAN
Cheer for the Sergeant's weddin’—
Give 'em one cheer more
Grey gun-'orses in the lando,
And a rogue is married to etc.,
were frankly and brutally indecent. The army appeared
again, in the same ignoble light as before, with the same dis-
regard of all literary luxuries, even of grammar and the aspi.
rate. God, too, loomed largely in these productions, a cock-
ney “Gawd’’ again, chiefly requisitioned for purposes of
blasphemy and furious emphasis. There was no glimpse any-
where of sober and self-respecting human beings—only a wild
carnival of drunken, bragging, boasting Hooligans in red
coats and seamen’s jackets, shrieking to the sound of the banjo
and applauding the English flag.
Faint almost to inaudibility have been the protests awak-
ened by these cockney caricatures in the ranks of the army
itself. Here and there a mild voice has been heard, but no
military man has declared authoritatively that effusions like
those which I have quoted are a libel on the Service, if not on
human nature. Are we to assume, then, that there are no re-
fined gentlemen among our officers, and no honest, self-
respecting human beings among their men? Is the life of a
soldier, abroad as at home, a succession of savage escapades,
bestial amusements, fuddlings, tipplings, and intrigues with
other men's wives, redeemed from time to time by acts of
brute courage and of sang froid in the presence of danger? Is
the spirit of Gordon quite forgotten, in the service over which
he shed the glory of his illustrious name? If this is really
the case, there is surely very little in the Anglo-Saxon mili-
tary prestige which offers us any security for the stormy times
to come. That Englishmen are brave, and capable of brave
deeds, is a truism of which we need no longer to be assured;
but bravery and brave deeds are not national possessions—

THE VOICE OF THE HOOLIGAN 15
they are the prerogative of the militant classes all over the
earth. Englishmen in times past were not merely brave, they
could be noble and magnanimous; their courage was not only
that of the bulldog, but of the patriot, the hero, and even the
philanthropist: they had not yet begun to mingle the idea of
a national Imperialism with the political game of brag. I
am not contending for one moment that the spirit which in-
spired them then has altogether departed; I am sure, on the
contrary, that it is living yet, and living most strongly and
influentially in the heart of the army itself; but, if this is ad-
mitted and believed, it is certain that the Tommie Atkins of
Mr. Rudyard Kipling deserves drumming out of all decent
barracks as a monstrosity and a rogue.
The truth is, however, that these lamentable productions
were concocted, not for sane men or self-respecting soldiers,
not even for those who are merely ignorant and uninstructed,
but for the ‘‘mean whites '' of our eastern civilization, the
idle and loafing men in the street, and for such women, the
well-dressed Doll Tearsheets of our cities, as shriek at their
heels. Mr. Kipling’s very vocabulary is a purely cockney
vocabulary, even his Irishmen speaking a dialect which would
cause amazement in the Emerald Isle, but is familiar enough
in Seven Dials. Turning over the leaves of his poems, one is
transported at once to the region of low drinking-dens and gin-
palaces, of dirty dissipation and drunken brawls; and the
voice we hear is always the voice of the soldier whose God is
a cockney ‘‘ Gawd,” and who is ignorant of the aspirate in
either heaven or hell. Are there no Scotchmen in the ranks,
no Highlanders, no men from Dublin or Tipperary, no Lanca-
shire or Yorkshire men, no Welshmen, and no men of any
kind who speak the Queen's English? It would seem not, if,
the poet of “The Sergeant's Weddin” is to be trusted. Nor

16 THE VOICE OF THE HOOLIGAN
have our mercenaries, from the ranks upwards, any one thing,
except brute courage, to distinguish them from the beasts of
the field. This, at least, appears to be Mr. Kipling’s conten-
tion, and even in the Service itself it seems to be undisputed.
How, then, are we to account for the extraordinary popular-
ity of works so contemptible in spirit and so barbarous in exe-
cution? In the first place, even fairly educated readers were
sick to death of the insincerities and affectations of the pro-
fessional ** Poets,”
failing the advent of a popular singer like Burns, capable of
setting to brisk music the simple joys and sorrows of human-
with one or two familiar exceptions, and,
ity, they turned eagerly to any writer who wrote verse, dog-
gerel even, which seemed thoroughly alive. They were
amused, therefore, by the free-and-easy rattles, the jog-trot a
tunes, which had hitherto been heard only in the music-halls
and read only in the sporting newspapers. In the second
place, the spirit abroad to-day is the spirit of ephemeral
journalism, and whatever accords with that spirit—its vulgar-
ity, its flippancy, and its radical unintelligence—is certain to
attain tremendous vogue. Anything that demands a moment’s
thought or a moment’s severe attention, anything that is not
thoroughly noisy, blatant, cocksure, and self-assertive, is
caviare to that man in the street on whom cheap journalism
depends, and who, it should be said en passant, is often a mem-
ber of smart society. In the third place, Mr. Kipling had
the good, or bad, fortune to come at the very moment when the
wave of false Imperialism was cresting most strongly upward,
and when even the great organs of opinion, organs which, like
the “Times,” subsist entirely on the good or bad passions of
the hour, were in sore need of a writer who could express in
fairly readable numbers the secret yearnings and sympathies
of the baser military and commercial spirit. Mr. Kipling,

THE VOICE OF THE HOOLIGAN 17
in a word, although not a poet at all in the true sense of the
word, is as near an approach to a poet as can be tolerated by
‘the ephemeral and hasty judgment of the day. His very in-
capacity of serious thought or deep feeling is in his favor.
He represents, with more or less accuracy, what the mob is
thinking, and for this very reason he is likely to be forgotten
as swiftly and summarily as he has been applauded, nay, to be
judged and condemned as mean and insignificant on grounds
quite as hasty as those on which he has been hailed as impor-
tant and high-minded. Savage animalism and ignorant vain-
glory being in the ascendant, he is hailed at every street-
corner and crowned by every newspaper. To-morrow, when
the wind changes, and the silly crowd is in another and possi-
bly saner temper, he is certain to fare very differently. The
misfortune is that his effusions have no real poetical quality to
preserve them when their momentary purpose has been served.
Of more than one poet of this generation it has been said that
“he uttered nothing base.” Of Mr. Kipling it may be said,
so far at least as his verses are concerned, that he has scarcely
on any single occasion uttered anything that does not suggest
moral baseness, or hover dangerously near it.
However, that we might not entertain one lingering doubt as
to the nature of the spirit which inspires his easy-going Muse,
Mr. Kipling himself, with a candor for which we cannot be
sufficiently thankful, has recently laid bare, in a prose work,
the inmost springs of his inspiration; in other words, he has
described to us, with fearless and shameless accuracy, in a
record of English boyhood, his ideal of the human character
in adolescence. Now, there is nothing which so clearly and
absolutely represents the nature of a grown man’s intelli-
gence as the manner in which he contemplates, looking back-
ward, the feelings and aspirations of youthful days.

18 THE VOICE OF THE HOOLIGAN
“Heaven lies about us in our infancy,” says the author of
the immortal Ode, and heaven is still with us very often as
we more closely approach to manhood. In Goethe’s reminis-.
cences of his childhood, we discover, faintly developing, all
that was wisest and most beautiful in a soul which was dis-
tinguished, despite many imperfections, by an inherent love
of gentleness and wisdom; the eager intelligence, the vision,
the curiosity, are all there, in every thought and act of an
extraordinary child. When Dickens, in ‘‘David Copper-
field,” described under a thin veil of fiction the joys and
sorrows of his own boyhood and youth, there welled up out of
his great heart a love, a tenderness, a humor which filled the
eyes of all humanity with happy tears. When Thackeray
touched the same chords, as he did more than once, he was no
longer the glorified Jeames of latter-day fiction—he was as
kindly, as tender, and as loving as even his great contempo-
rary. Even George Eliot, with imaginative gifts so far
inferior, reached the height of her artistic achievement when
she went back to the emotions of her early days—when, for
example, she described the personal relations of Tom and
Maggie Tulliver, or when, in the one real poem she ever
wrote, she told in sonnet-sequence of the little “ Brother and
Sister.” It would be cruel, even brutal, to talk of Mr. Rud-
yard Kipling in the same breath as fine artists like these; but
all writers, great or little, must finally be judged by the same
test—that of the truth and beauty, the sanity or the folly, of
their representations of our manifold human nature. Mere
truth is not sufficient for Art; the truth must be there, but it
must be spiritualized and have become beautiful. In “Stalky
& Co.” Mr. Kipling obviously aims at verisimilitude; the
picture he draws is at any rate repulsive and disgusting
enough to be true; yet I trust for England’s sake that it is not

THE VOICE OF THE HOOLIGAN 19
—that it is, like nearly all his writings with which I am
familiar, merely a savage caricature.
Only the spoiled child of an utterly brutalized public could.
possibly have written “Stalky & Co.,” or, having written
it, have dared to publish it. These are strong words, but
they can be justified. The story ran originally through the
pages of a cheap monthly magazine, and contained, I fancy,
in its first form, certain passages which the writer himself
was compelled in pure shame to suppress. Its purpose,
almost openly avowed, is to furnish English readers with an
antidote to what Mr. Kipling styles Ericism, by which label is
meant the kind of “sentiment’’ which was once made famil-
iar to schoolboys by Farrar’s “Eric, or, Little by Little ‘’;
or, to put the matter in other words, the truly ideal schoolboy
is not a little sentimentalist, he is simply a little beast.
The heroes of this deplorable book are three youths, dwelling
in a training school near Westward Ho; one of them, the
Beetle, reads poetry and wears spectacles, the two others,
Stalky and M’Turk, are his bosom companions. This trio are
leagued together for purposes of offence and defence against
their comrades; they join in no honest play or manly sports,
they lounge about, they drink, they smoke, they curse and
swear, not like boys at all, but like hideous little men. -
Owing to their determination to obey their own instincts, and
their diabolic ingenuity in revenging themselves on any one
who meddles with them, they become a terror to the school.
It is quietly suggested, however, that the head master sympa-
thizes with them, especially in their power to inflict pain wan-
tonly and to bear it stoically, which appears to him the
noblest attribute of a human being. It is simply impossible to
show by mere quotations the horrible vileness of the book
describing the lives of these three small fiends in human like-

20 THE VOICE OF THE HOOLIGAN
ness; only a perusal of the whole work would convey to the
reader its truly repulsive character, and to read the pages
through, I fear, would sorely test the stomach of any sensitive
reader. The nature of one of the longest and most important
episodes may be gathered from the statement that the episode
turns on the way in which the three young Hooligans revenge
themselves on a number of their schoolmates who have offended
them, by means of a dead and putrefying cat. And here is a
sample of the dialogue:
In his absence not less than half the school invaded the infected dormitory
to draw their own conclusions. The cat had gained in the last twelve hours,
but a battlefield of the fifth day could not have been so flamboyant as the spies
reported.
“My word, she is doin' herself proud,” said Stalky. “Did you ever smell
anything like it? Ah, and she isn't under White's dormitory at all yet.”
“But she will be. Give her time,” said Beetle. “She’ll twine like a
giddy honeysuckle. What howlin' Lazerites they are No house is justified
in makin' itself a stench in the nostrils of decent --
“High-minded, pure-souled boys. Do you burn with remorse and regret?”
said M*Turk, as they hastened to meet the house coming up from the sea.
how a certain plebeian called “Rabbits-Eggs,” through the
machinations of the trio, wrecked the room of one of the mas-
ters, King:
Another equally charming episode is the one describing 2.
* Moiſ Je! Ich / Ego / " gasped Stalky, “I waited till I couldn't hear
myself think, while you played the drum ! Hid in the coal-locker—and
tweaked Rabbits-Eggs—and Rabbits-Eggs rocked King. Wasn't it beauti-
ful! Did you hear the glass 2"
“Why, he he-he,” shrieked M*Turk, one trembling finger pointed at
Beetle.
“Why, I-I-I was through it all,” Beetle howled; “in his study, being
jawed.” -
“Oh, my soul!” said Stalky, with a yell, disappearing under water.
“The, the glass was nothing. Manders minor's head's cut open. La-
la-lamp upset all over the rug. Blood on the books and papers. The gum !
The gum ! The gum ! The ink! The ink! Oh, Lord!”

THE VOICE OF THE HOOLIGAN 21
Then Stalky leaped out, all pink as he was, and shook Beetle into some sort
of coherence; but his-tale prostrated them afresh.
“I bunked for the boot-cupboard the second I heard King go down stairs.
Beetle tumbled in on top of me. The spare key’s hid behind the loose board.
There isn't a shadow of evidence,” said Stalky. They were all chanting
together. -
“And he turned us out himself—himself—himself!” This from M*Turk.
“He can’t begin to suspect us. Oh, Stalky, it's the loveliest thing we’ve
ever done : **
“Gum Gum ! Dollops of gum !” shouted Beetle, his spectacles
gleaming through a sea of lather. “Ink and blood all mixed. I held the
little beast's head all over the Latin proses for Monday. Golly, how the oil
stunk And Rabbits-Eggs told King to poultice his nose! Did you hit
Rabbits-Eggs, Stalky 2 º'
“Did I jolly well not *. Tweaked him all over. Did you hear him curse 2
Oh, I shall be sick in a minute if I don't stop | *
As I have already said, however, the book cannot be repre-
sented by extracts. The vulgarity, the brutality, the sav-
agery, reeks on every page. It may be noted as a minor
peculiarity that everything, according to our young Hooli-
gans, is “beastly,” or “giddy,” or “blooming'; adjec-
tives of this sort cropping up everywhere in their conversation,
as in that of the savages of the London slums. And the moral
of the book—for, of course, like all such banalities, it pro-
fesses to have a moral—is that out of materials like these is
fashioned the humanity which is to ennoble and preserve our
Anglo-Saxon empire! “India’s full of Stalkies,” says the
Beetle, “ Cheltenham and Haileybury and Marlborough chaps
—that we don’t know anything about, and the surprises will
begin when there is really a big row on!”
Perhaps, after all, I am unjust to Mr. Kipling in forgetting
for the moment to credit him with a poet’s prophetic vision?
For, if ‘‘Stalky & Co.” was written before and not after re-
cent political developments, it certainly furnishes a foretaste
of what has actually happened! The “surprises have begun,”

22 THE VOICE OF THE HOOLIGAN
-
although the “rows’’ have not been very “big” ones, and
the souls of Stalky and his companions have been looming
large in our empire. Studying certain latter-day records,
indeed, listening to the voice of the Hooligan in politics, in
literature, and journalism, is really very like reading “Stalky
& Co.” Some of our battles, even, faithfully reproduce the
“blooming ” and “giddy
not a few of our public affairs there is a “stench '' like that
of “the dead cat.” Yes, there must be Stalkies and M*Turks
and Beetles working busily, after all, and representing the
-- --
orgies of the schoolroom, and in
new spirit which appears to have begun in the time of Mr.
Kipling’s boyhood. But whether they really represent the
true spirit of our civilization, and make for its salvation, is a
question which I will leave my readers to decide.
So much, however, for the voice of the Hooligan, as rever-
berating in current literature. It is needless to say that it
would hardly have been necessary to seriously discuss such
literature, if the object was merely to protest on intellectual
grounds against its popularity; one might as well examine
seriously the current contributions to “Answers” and the
“Sporting Times,”
cal songs in a Drury Lane pantomime. But even a straw may
or hold up to artistic execration the topi-
indicate the direction in which the wind is blowing, and the
vogue of Mr. Kipling, the cheerful acceptance of his banali-
ties by even educated people, is so sure a sign of the times
that it deserves and needs a passing consideration. Behind
that vogue lies, first and foremost, the influence of the news-
paper press, and I cannot do better than quote in this connec-
tion some pregnant words contained in a recent work by a
writer of undoubted insight, Mr. George Gissing. “A wise
autocrat might well prohibit newspapers altogether, don’t you
think?” says one of Mr. Gissing’s characters. “They have

THE VOICE OF THE HOOLIGAN 23
º
done good, I suppose, but they are just as likely to do harm.
When the next great war comes, newspapers will be the chief
cause of it. And for mere profit, that’s the worst! There
are newspaper proprietors in every country who would slaugh-
ter half mankind for the pennies of the half who were left,
without caring the fraction of a penny whether they had
preached war for a truth or a lie.” “But doesn’t a news-
paper,” demands another character, “simply echo the opin-
ions and feelings of the public?” “I’m afraid,” is the
--
reply, “it manufactures opinions and stirs up feeling.
The business-of newspapers in general is to give a show of
importance to what has no real importance at all, to prevent
the world from living quietly, to arouse bitterness, when the
natural man would be quite indifferent. . . . I suppose I
quarrel with them because they have such gigantic power and
don’t make anything like the best use of it.” If this state-
ment is accepted as true, –and few readers who have studied
the recent developments of journalism will be inclined to doubt
it, it will be understood at once how the popularity of Mr.
Kipling has been accelerated by “that mighty engine,” the
newspaper press.
It is no purpose of mine, in the present paper, to touch on
political questions, except so far as they illustrate the moye-
ments of that back-wave toward barbarism on which, as I
have suggested, we are now struggling. I write neither as a
Banjo-Imperialist nor as a Little Englander, but simply as a
citizen of a great nation, who loves his country, and would
gladly see it honored and respected wherever the English
tongue is spoken. It will scarcely be denied, indeed it is
frankly admitted by all parties, that the Hooligan spirit of
patriotism, the fierce and quasi-savage militant spirit as ex-
* “The Crown of Life.” By George Gissing. (Methuen & Co.)

24 THE voice of THE HooliGAN
pressed in many London newspapers and in such literature
as the writings of Mr. Kipling, has measurably lowered the
affection and respect once felt for us among European nations.
Nor will any honest thinker combat the assertion that we have
exhibited lately, in our dealings with other nationalities, a
greed of gain, a vain-glory, a cruelty, and a boastful in-
difference to the rights of others, of which in days when the
old philanthropic spirit was abroad we should simply have
been incapable. But it is not here, in the region of politics
and militarism, that I wish to linger. My chief object in
writing this paper has been to express my sorrow that
Hooliganism, not satisfied with invading our newspapers,
should already threaten to corrupt the pure springs of our
literature. These noisy strains and coarse importations from
the music-hall should not be heard where the fountains of
intellectual light and beauty once played, where Chaucer
and Shakspere once drank inspiration, and where Words-
worth, Hood, and Shelley found messages for the yearning
hearts of men. Anywhere but there; anywhere but in the
speech of those who loved and blessed their fellows. And let
it be remembered that those fountains are not yet dry. Poets
and dreamers are living yet, to resent the pollution. Only
a little while ago the one living novelist who inherits the
great human tradition tore out his very heart, figuratively
speaking, in revolt against the spirit of savagery and cruelty
which is abroad; though, when Thomas Hardy wrote “Jude
the Obscure,” touching therein the very quick of divine pity,
only a coarse laugh from the professional critics greeted his
protest. Elsewhere, too, there are voices, not to be silenced
by the clamor of the crowd; as near as our own shores, where
Herbert Spencer is still dwelling, as far away as South Africa,
where Olive Schreiner has sought and found human love in

THE VOICE OF THE HOOLIGAN 25
the dominion of dreams; and there are others, shrinking away
in shame from the brazen idols of the mart, and praying that
this great empire may yet be warned and saved. To one and
all of these has been brought home the lesson—“Woe to you
when the world speaks well of you!” and they have elected to
let the world speak ill of them, rather than bow down in hom-
age to its calves of gold. For to speak the truth as we see it,
to confront the evil and folly of the hour, is as dangerous to-
day as when Socrates drank his hemlock-cup.
I have left myself no space, I find, to draw a final contrast
between the coarse and soulless patriotism of the hour and
that nobler Imperialism in which all true Englishmen, to
whatever political camp they may belong for the time being,
must still believe. In the federation of Great Britain and
her colonies, and in the slow and sure spread of what is best
and purest in our civilization, there was indeed hope and in-
spiration for our race, and a message of freedom for all the
world. But true Imperialism has nothing in common with the
mere lust of conquest, with the vulgar idea of mere expansion,
or with the increase of the spirit of mercenary militarism; its
object is to diffuse light, not to darken the sunshine; to feed
the toiling millions, not to immolate them; to free man, not
to enslave him; to consecrate, and not to desecrate, the great
temple of humanity. Some of its ways, like the ways of
nature herself, must inevitably be destructive; the weaker
and baser races must sooner or later dissolve away; but the
process of dissolution should be made as gentle and merciful
as possible, not savage, pitiless, and cruel. True Imperial-
ism should be strong, but the strength should be that of jus-
tice, of wisdom, of brotherly love and sympathy; for the
power which is bred of a mere multitude equipped with the
engines of slaughter will in the long run avail nothing against

26 - THE VOICE OF THE HOOLIGAN
the eternal law which determines that the righteous only shall
inherit the earth. We are a people still, though we seem for
the time being to be forgetting the conditions on which we
received our charter, and deep in the heart of England sur-
vives the sentiment of a world-wide nationality, as expressed
in the passionate lines of a modern poet:
Hands across the Sea 1
Feet on British ground !
The Motherhood means Brotherhood the whole world round !
From the parent root,
Sap, and stem, and fruit
Grow the same, or soil or name,
Hands across the Sea 1
There sounds the true Imperial feeling, which will survive,
I think, long after the repulsive school of patriotism which I
have called (for want of a better name) the Hooligan school,
is silent and forgotten. Let me at least hope that it may be
so—that Englishmen, after their present wild orgy of mili-
tant savagery, may become clothed and in their right minds.
There is time to pause yet, although they are already paying
the penalty, in blood, in tears, in shame. Let them take
warning by the fate of France, let them try to remember the
old sanctions and the old enthusiasms; for, if they continue to
forget them, they are in danger of being swept back into the
vortex of barbarism altogether.
Robert BUCHANAN.
º

º
IS IT THE VOICE OF THE HOOLIGAN ?
The most melancholy chapter in the history of literature is
that which relates to the attacks made upon authors by their
contemporaries. Among all the professions, that of letters
is the only one in which its members are permitted to attack,
to deride, to abuse, to misrepresent each other. In every
other intellectual calling the dignity of the fraternity first,
and the self-respect of the individual member next, prohibit
this unworthy and unseemly practice. In the words of
Churchill:
Look through the world—in every other trade,
The same employment's cause of kindness made.
Cobblers with cobblers smoke away the night :
And in the common cause e'en players unite.
Authors alone, with more than common rage,
Unnatural war with broken authors wage.
Suppose, if you can, the same license granted to, and
adopted by, lawyers. Imagine, if you can, the late Lord
Coleridge contributing articles to the magazines in abuse of
the late Sir George Jessel, attacking his law, deriding his
judgments, depreciating his knowledge. We cannot conceive
of such a thing; we know that it would be impossible. Self-
respect and respect for the profession, setting aside other im-
portant considerations, such as the pretension of superior
standing, would make such a thing impossible. Can we,
again, imagine Bishop Wilberforce attacking Archbishop
Sumner on account of alleged heresy, atheism, and immoral-
ity? Can we imagine Sir Frederick Leighton asking for a
27

28 Is IT THE voice of THE HOOLIGAN ?
dozen pages in which to call Millais a humbug in art, an im-
postor, a bungler, a corrupter of the popular taste? Even if
all or any of these charges were well founded, would Leigh-
ton’s be the hand to write them down? We know that it
would not. Self-respect, the dignity of the calling—nay, the
ordinary laws of common courtesy—would impose restraint
and reticence. It is only in literature that the world feels
no astonishment when one more chapter is added to the long
list of venomous attacks by one author upon another.
In the history of the life of letters for the last two hundred
years two points are remarkable, -the respect and affection
lavished upon the individual, and the contempt freely be-
stowed upon the profession. There have been many reasons
for this contempt, the poverty of literary men, their depend-
ence, their lack of dignity; but there has been no cause more
injurious to the reputation of the life of letters than the deri-
sion, the satire, the unrestrained savagery of the attacks
made by the followers of that life one upon the other.
Of late years a better spirit seemed to have sprung up.
The old disease—formerly believed to be an incurable disease
—peculiar to authorship seemed yielding to treatment, the
prescription and administration, namely, of those laws of
courtesy and good breeding which obtain in other professions.
It is happily rare to find a return to the old methods. There
are not many living men or women of letters who at this day
take up the old parable and declare themselves moved by in-
dignation to denounce their contemporaries.
It is, of course, in every profession, galling for one who
has failed to attract the attention of the world, save to a
limited degree, to observe another, whose works he perhaps
honestly believes to be no better than his own, borne upwards
on a wave of popular admiration. In every profession each

IS IT THE VOICE OF THE HOOLIGAN ? 29
man stands by himself; he depends upon his own gifts and
abilities; no one can help him; he is alone; he cannot buy,
nor sell, nor transmit success. All that he achieves is done
by himself. This fact goes far to account for the extraordi-
nary bitterness of professional envy. It means the wounding
of personal vanity. “Even players,” says Churchill, mind-
ful of the proverbial envy and jealousy in that profession.
But these passions, he suggests, are worse—far worse—in the
author than in the actor. The expression of these passions
may bring the same kind of relief as tears in sorrow, or
strong language in wrath.
A truer form of consolation should be the reflection that
popularity is not always a proof of genius; that the commer-
cial value of literature cannot be taken as a measure of its
literary worth; that the two things are, in fact, incommensura-
ble; much good work remains unpopular; much popular work
is not good work. This reflection, which no one can dispute,
should console the most neglected, or even the half neglected.
It is open to every writer to abuse the public for not recogniz-
ing genius, and to assure himself that his own works will be
recognized by that discriminating posterity on whom we lay
such heavy burdens.
Unfortunately there exists a wide-spread confusion of ideas
as to the two values; at first sight it seems absurd that this
confusion should be possible; yet it is not only possible, it is
common; it is found even in literary papers; it is found in the
talk of literary men. The same man will acknowledge that
a work of art cannot be estimated by money, and in the same
breath will ask indignantly if the latest “boom '' in fiction is
worth a hundredth part of the money it has brought the author
and the publisher!
Whatever bitterness may be caused by the success of a con-

30 IS IT THE VOICE OF THE HOOLIGAN ?
temporary, one thing is clearly desirable, -that there should
be some observance of professional etiquette in literature as
in law. It should be simply impossible for any one, of what-
ever standing, in the profession of letters to attack another
writer, and especially one who has attracted the affection—
the passionate affection—of millions, including those of the
highest pretensions to culture, with abuse and rancor worthy
of a fishwife.
It may be objected that this restraint would put a stop to
criticism. Not at all. We cannot have too much criticism.
Literature flourishes best when criticism is at its best. Un-
fortunately, at the present moment, which can show so great a
wealth on the imaginative side,-which can also show so
many admirable writers on every other side,-there are com-
paratively few critics. The critical faculty, always rare, is
at the present moment, when it is so much wanted and when
there are so many organs ready to welcome the true critic,
more rarely found than any other. That it is a distinct fac-
ulty, quite apart from the imaginative or the creative or the
poetical, seems imperfectly understood. The old idea, that, if
a man has written novels and plays and poems, he is therefore
endowed with the critical faculty, ought surely to have been
abandoned long ago. That it has not been abandoned shows
that the true function and the true powers of the critic are not
fully recognized. We do not suppose that every successful
lawyer is fit to become a judge; nor do we pretend that every
divine who preaches well can also administer a diocese as a
bishop. Why, then, should every novelist be considered qual-
ified to pose as a critic? The imaginative idea of literature
is, indeed, opposed to such a theory, as is evident if one con-
siders the natural endowments and the studies necessary to
form a critic.

IS IT THE VOICE OF THE HOOLIGAN ? 31
He is a judge; if he possesses the essential qualities that
make a judge, he must be of a calm and sober temperament;
he must be able to discern things as they are—the man of
imagination is never able to discern things as they are; he
must be able to discern the conditions, the circumstances, the
causes, which have produced the work, of whatever kind, on
which he is to pronounce judgment. In the case of literature
he must be a scholar; the opinion of one who has not gone
through the classical mill is like a house built without founda-
tions. He must also be a student, not only of his own, but
of some other modern literature. You may know him, if you
meet him, by certain signs. He is as critical in everything
as he is in literature; he carries his criticism into the smaller
details of everyday life. He cannot exist without standards
in all things. Again, in his judgments, he never falls into
a rage; he does not simulate indignation; he never conde-
scends to abuse or to call names; he does not exaggerate; he
does not misrepresent; he applies his canons of criticism
without mercy, but without bias and without injustice.
The competence of a critic may be tested and proved by a
very simple method, that of observing how and why he be-
stows his commendation. It is easy for the incompetent
critic to find faults or to invent them; it is easy to simulate
indignation; it is impossible to praise without revealing stand-
ards and without betraying incompetence. There is, for ex-
ample, a certain literary organ whose critical papers I some-
times read in order to observe the timidity and hesitation
with which the reviewer ventures to praise, and the delightful
way in which he betrays his incompetence when he does
praise.
These are very simple rules; if we apply them to the current
criticism of the day, I think it will be found that there is

32 IS IT THE VOICE OF THE HOOLIGAN ?
comparatively little which will stand the tests. There are
other qualifications, but of a less simple kind, especially
those which enable the critic to take a broad view and a com-
parative view, and those which separate him from any narrow
school, or any temporary cenacle.
If, then, a poet or a novelist is not necessarily a critic, -
is presumably less likely to possess the critical faculty than
if he were not a poet, it behooves him to examine himself
very carefully before he ventures to pose as the watch-dog of
literature, lest he betray his incompetence by barking, and
rending the friends, instead of the enemies, of the literary
craft.
Mr. Robert Buchanan has thought fit to attack Mr. Rudyard
Kipling after the ancient manner. I do not suppose that what
he has written will cost the younger poet a single friend; nor
do I suppose that anything I may say on the other side will
advance his reputation. Nor, again, do I pretend, myself, to
be a watch-dog of literature; nor do I profess to be endowed
with the critical faculty. But I think that it may be useful
to set forth briefly some of the reasons why one among the
many millions of Kipling’s readers finds him worthy of the
deepest admiration, and, in so doing, to express the views and
the judgments of a vast following which may not be critical,
yet does not with one consent give its admiration and affec-
tion except for good and sufficient reasons.
Except in one point, that of the actual situation, I am not
concerned to answer Mr. Buchanan. He has his views and
has stated them. Very well, I have mine, and I propose to
state them. They are exactly opposite to those of Mr.
Buchanan. Why that should be the case is a question which
needs no answer in this place.
As regards the situation, then. I read with wondering eyes

IS IT THE VOICE OF THE HOOLIGAN ? 33
that this generation has drifted away from the humanitarian
teaching which forty years ago, or thereabouts, ‘‘ opened up
to men the prospect of a new heaven and a new earth.”
Drifted away? Is the writer serious? Is he blind to the pres-
ent? Why, if there is any characteristic note of the times at
all, it is the new and practical application of that very humani-
tarian teaching of the past. This teaching has sunk deep into
the national heart; it is producing fruits unlooked for, beyond
all expectation. The exercise of practical charity by per-
sonal service which is remarkable everywhere is the natural
result of that teaching and the proof that it has gone home.
In all directions is visible the working of the most real phil-
anthropic endeavor that the world has ever seen, -the nearest
approach to practical Christianity that has appeared, I be-
lieve, since the foundation of the Christian religion. What
else is the meaning of free schools, free libraries, factory
acts, continuation schools, polytechnics? What else is the
meaning of the settlements in which scholars and refined
women give their whole strength with all their thoughts and
all their soul to the help of the people round them? What
else is the meaning of Toynbee Hall, of Mansfield Hall, of
Browning Hall, or of Oxford House? What else is the mean-
ing of the quickened life in the parishes with the flocking
companies of those who work for nothing but the love of
humanity? What else is meant by the long list of associa-
tions for the benefit and help, in every degree, of those who
can be helped? Is it possible to live in such a time as this
and to be so utterly out of touch with all that is attempted, as
to speak of a “drifting away” from the old humanitarian
teaching? This said, I leave Mr. Buchanan, and proceed to
consider those qualities which the world recognizes in Rud-
yard Kipling, assuming that, as an average man, my own
recognitions are those of what we call the world.

34 IS IT THE VOICE OF THE HOOLIGAN ?
The first essential in fiction is reality. The story must be
real; the figures must be real; the dialogue must be real; the
action must spring naturally from the situation. Affectations;
straining after phrase; a style that suggests labor and repeated
correction,-these things destroy the interest: the story must
be told with directness; it must be told with force; it must
be told because the storyteller has to tell it, is constrained
to tell it. We want to be carried out of our own environment;
we are ready to surrender ourselves willingly to the magnetic
force of the storyteller; if he has no magnetic power, we turn
away; if he has, we allow him to play upon us as he pleases;
we are like one who is mesmerized and does what he is told to
do—he really feels the emotions that the storyteller puts into
his mind; he laughs when his master bids him laugh; he
cries when he is told to cry.
These conditions are all found in Kipling’s work, and in
full measure, without any reservations. He has this magnetic
force; he compels us to listen; he tells his story with direct-
ness, force, and simplicity. So real is the story, with such
an air of reality does he present it, that we see it as we see
the moving pictures which the new photography throws upon
the canvas.
It is in writing as in drawing. One man produces his
effects with many strokes and careful elaboration; another pro-
duces the same effect with a single bold stroke or with the
least possible curve or deflection of a line. The effect is pro-
duced in Kipling’s work by the one bold stroke; without ap-
parent effort the right word presents itself; the right phrase
which others seek, and seek in vain, without apparent hesita-
tion takes its place; it belongs to the story.
He also believes his own story; that faith is necessary if
he would make his hearers believe it. And because he be-

IS IT THE VOICE OF THE HOOLIGAN ? 35
º
lieves it he is enabled to tell it simply and directly, without
seeking to add the artificial stimulus of a labored style.
These reasons for the popularity of a writer are elementary.
Yet they have, in this case, to be set forth, as the best answer
to any assailant. Another reason, not so obvious to the ordi-
nary reader, is his enthusiasm for humanity. Probably Kip-
ling never gave it, consciously, so fine a name, -is ignorant, -
perhaps, that this attribute can be found in his work. Yet the
thing is there. Always, in every character, he presents a
man, not an actor, −a man with the passions, emotions, weak-
nesses, and instincts of humanity. It is perhaps one of the
Soldiers Three, or it is the Man who went into the mountains
because he would be a King; or the man who sat in the lonely
lighthouse till he saw streaks; always the real man whom the
reader sees beneath the uniform and behind the drink and the
blackguardism. It is the humanity in the writer which makes
his voice tremulous at times with unspoken pity and silent
sympathy; it is the tremor of his voice which touches the
heart of his audience. And it is this power of touching the
heart which causes men and women of all classes and of every
rank to respond with a greater love for the writer than for any
other writer living among us at the present moment.
Mr. Henry James, who is certainly a critic as well as a nov-
elist, has called attention to Kipling’s power of attracting all
classes. It surprises him that, ‘‘ being so much the sort of fig-
ure that the hardened critic likes to meet, he should also be the
sort of figure that inspires the multitude with confidence; for a
complicated air is, in general, the last thing that does this.”
Exactly; but it is the special note of genius that it should
present men and women who are real to all who read, and so
real that they come with a simple “ air '' to the simple and
uncultivated mind and with a “complicated air” to the

36 IS IT THE VOICE OF THE HOOLIGAN ?
scholar. It is not the “complicated air '' that the multitude
ask or comprehend. For them it is the simple lay, the plain
song. To those who, like Mr. Henry James, are practised
observers and students, who can read between the lines, the
air is as complicated as any study of human nature by Brown-
ing or by Meredith.
Going on with his analysis, Mr. Henry James admirably
illustrates the different effects produced on different minds by
the case of Mulvaney, the great Mulvaney. He says, speaking
for the multitude, that the figure of Mulvaney is “a piece of
portraiture of the largest, vividest kind, growing and grow-
ing on the painter’s hands without ever outgrowing them.”
And, speaking for himself and those like unto himself, he
says: ‘‘ Hasn’t he the tongue of a hoarse siren, and hasn’t he
also mysteries and infinities almost Carlylese?” Not for the
--
multitude; for them he is only ‘‘ a six-foot saturated Irish
private ’’; but so clearly drawn, so strongly drawn, that not
the most simple can fail to understand him after their own
fashion.
Another reason why we who are not critics—the many mil-
lions—delight in Kipling is that he gives us short stories.
Not that we demand, as has been asserted, everything to be in
paragraphs and scraps;–that is quite an unfair interpretation
of the demand for short stories;–it is that the short story
affords endless opportunities of touching life—I again quote
in a thousand different places, taking it up
in innumerable pieces, each a specimen and an illustration.”
--
Henry James–
In the long story we are occupied with one place, one sequence
of events, one set of characters; perhaps we read for the se-
quence of events, perhaps for the study of the character.
Within the space occupied by the long story Kipling’s volume
of short stories gives us twenty situations, twenty scenes,

IS IT THE VOICE OF THE HOOLIGAN ? 37
twenty groups, and twenty sets of characters. Mr. James’s
critical remarks, from which I quote, are written for the vol-
ume called ‘‘ Mine Own People,” which contains, among other
things, the stories called respectively “At the End of the
Passage,” “The Incarnation of Krishna Mulvaney,” “The
Courting of Dinah Shadd,” and “The Man who Was.”
Every one of these stories—characters, situation, and all—is
burned into the memory as deeply as if it had been worked up
to occupy a volume all to itself. And we would rather have
the short story than a long one from our storyteller, because he
gives us picture after picture, play after play, dozens of pic-
tures and of plays, in the time generally occupied by one.
But the man who would become a teller of short stories
must have a wealth of material which few have the opportuni-
ties of collecting. Kipling has had these opportunities; he
knows the world—especially the Anglo-Saxon world—the
world of our empire and the world of the American republic.
He is one of those thrice blessed who have not only received
the gifts of observation and of sympathy, -the gift of story-
telling with the dramatic instinct and the power of selection
and grouping, -but he has obtained the gift of opportunity;
he has lived in lands where there are still adventures and the
adventurous, where there are still tribes who love fighting and
tribes who murder the Englishman, where there are still un-
known mysteries of hills and forests; he has fºund mines of
material diverse and new and marvellous, and he has worked
these mines as they have never been worked before. Henry
James has instanced the figure of Mulvaney as one of the most
remarkable in Kipling’s gallery of portraits. We may, per-
haps, take the Soldiers Three as illustrating the “humanity”
of which we have spoken. He has the coarsest and the rough-
est materials to deal with, –three private soldiers of the lower

38 IS IT THE VOICE OF THE HOOLIGAN ?
type, which is common enough in our army—and in every
other army. The men are foul-mouthed and drunken and
tricky. All this must be faced and set forth with no shrink-
ing or false coloring. This has been done, and yet, such is
the force of reality in fiction, the result is that we see the
real men behind their vices, and that we understand Tommie
Atkins as we never understood him before. Had the drawing
and the coloring been conventional, there would have been
found some, no doubt, to call attention to the artistic treatment
of the soldier and the finish and polish of his language and his
views. They are, however, not in the least conventional,
and for the multitude they are real living men, as living as
themselves.
I believe that I am not alone in giving the highest praise
—at least for “grip ’’—to the story of the Man who would be
King. While that story was told, there was not heard in the
whole of the vast audience a sound, a whisper, a breath. In
dead silence it was received; in dead silence it concluded,—
in dead silence save for the sigh which spoke of a tension
almost too great to be borne. Perhaps that sigh might be
taken for applause. Perhaps the storyteller himself took it
for applause.
Another point. Kipling presents himself with no apologies,
no conventional humility, but with a splendid audacity, a
confidence in himself and his own powers which in itself
commands admiration; he has the gallant bearing of a soldier;
he laughs, knowing that we shall respond; he plunges into his
story, knowing that we shall listen; he lets us understand that
he has come to conquer the world, and that he means to con-
quer it. The most finished actor could not impose his part
upon the theatre more successfully than Kipling imposes his
real nature upon his readers.

IS IT THE VOICE OF THE HOOLIGAN ? 39
These are some of the reasons why we-the many millions
—follow after Kipling and listen when he speaks. Some there
are who think differently; they have not been carried away;
for most of us the reasons above indicated seem sufficient to
account for the phenomenal admiration which is also almost
universal. To the critic—Henry James’s “hardened critic’’
—we may leave the analysis of methods and style and art.
I have spoken of Kipling's audience. But what an audi-
ence it is! The people sit in a theatre of which the front
seats are at the storyteller’s feet and the farthest tiers are
twelve thousand miles away. Never, in the history of litera-
ture, has storyteller, in his own lifetime, faced such an audi-
ence. Scott and Dickens enjoy, if they can still look on, the
posthumous happiness of this unnumbered audience; in their
lifetime the theatre was smaller; the people which even then
seemed so great a crowd were much less in number than those
who come to hear their successor. Other writers speak to-
day to crowded houses, but none to such a house as assem-
bles when Kipling speaks. Saul has followers by the thou-
sand; David, by the hundred thousand: Rudyard Kipling is the
first of storytellers to whom it has been granted to speak,
while he still lives, to the hundred millions of those who read
the Anglo-Saxon tongue. From east and west and north and
south, wherever the Union Jack or the Stars and Stripes may
float, they flock into the vast theatre to listen spellbound to a
single voice, which reaches clear and distinct to the most dis-
tant tier where the white faces look up and listen while the
story is told.
Let us consider him next as the poet, and especially as the
poet of the empire. He is emphatically not a Londoner: he
does not seek inspiration in the smoking-room of a West End

40 IS IT THE VOICE OF THE HOOLIGAN ?
club: he does not observe in Piccadilly: he does not evolve
humanity out of an easy chair with the aid of a cigarette.
He is a son of the empire; he has brought home to the under-
standing of the most parochial of Little Englanders the sense
and knowledge of what the British empire means. What
Seeley taught scholars, Kipling has taught the multitude.
He is the poet of the empire. Not the Jingo rhymer; the
poet with the deepest reverence for those who have built up
the empire, the deepest respect for the empire, the most pro-
found sense of responsibility.
Fair is our lot. Oh! goodly is our heritage
(Humble ye, my people, and be fearful in your mirth !)
For the Lord our God most High,
He hath made the deep as dry,
He hath smote for us a pathway to the ends of all the earth !
Yea, though we sinned—and our rulers went from righteousness—
Deep in all dishonor though we stained our garments' hem.
Oh! be ye not dismayed,
Though we stumbled and we strayed,
We were led by evil counsellors—the Lord shall deal with them :
That is, I suppose, the “Voice of the Hooligan.” Again,
is it the Hooligan who sings of the Last Chantey to the text
** And there was no more sea '.' P
Thus saith the Lord in the vault above the cherubim,
Calling to the angels and the souls in their degree;
Lo! earth has passed away
On the smoke of Judgment Day.
That our word may be established shall we gather up the sea 2
Loud sang the souls of the jolly, jolly mariners,
Plucking at their harps, and they plucked unhandily;
Our thumbs are rough and tarred,
And the tune is somewhat hard–
May we lift a deep sea chantey, such as seamen use at sea º

IS IT THE VOICE OF THE HOOLIGAN ? 41
Sun, wind, and cloud shall fail, not from the face of it,
Singing, ringing spindrift nor the fulmar flying free :
And the ships shall go abroad
To the Glory of the Lord,
Who heard the silly sailor folk and gave them back their sea 1
Again, what kind of poet—“ not a poet at all,” says his
latest critic—is he who could write the following?
Take up the White Man's Burden—
Send forth the best ye breed—
Go, bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need :
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild-
Your new-caught sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child.
Take up the White Man's Burden—
No iron rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper–
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread;
Go, make them with your living,
And mark them with your dead!
It is unnecessary to quote the Recessional Hymn save to re-
mind ourselves of how this poet, alone of poets or preachers,
saw, as in a vision of inspiration, the one thing that needed
to be said. We were drunk with the pageant of power and of
glory. The empire and all it meant was represented in that
long procession of 1897. The people, bewildered with pride,
were ready to shout they knew not what—to go they knew not
whither. And then the poet spoke, and his words rang true.
I know of no poem in history so opportune, that so went home
to all our hearts, –that did its work and delivered its message
with so much force. -

42 IS IT THE VOICE OF THE HOOLIGAN ?
God of our fathers, known of old-
Lord of our far-flung battle line-
Beneath whose awful Hand we hold
Dominion over palm and pine.
Lord God of Hosts—be with us yet—
Lest we forget—lest we forget !
Far called, our navies melt away—
On dune and headland sinks the fire-
Lo! all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre
Judge of the Nations—spare us yet-
Lest we forget—lest we forget !
If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe
Such boastings as the Gentiles use,
Or lesser creeds without the Law–
Lord God of Hosts—be with us yet-
Lest we forget—lest we forget !
One more note, and I have done. Kipling, in verse and in
prose, is one to whom war is an ever-present possibility and an
ever-present certainty. There is a time to speak of war and
a time to speak of peace. At this moment it is well that
some one who has a voice should speak of war. It seems that
in the present stage of civilization, just as in the past, there
falls upon the nations, from time to time, the restlessness
which can only be pacified by war. The French nation, at
this moment, seem to be restless to the highest degree under
this obsession. We ourselves are in the throes of the biggest
war since the Indian Mutiny. Two years ago, the most
pacific country in the world, the great republic of North
America, was seized with this restlessness, which it is still
working off. A time may come when war will not be a neces-
sity—but that time is not yet. For my own part, I entirely
agree with Archbishop Alexander in the words quoted by Mr.
Buchanan:

IS IT THE VOICE OF THE HOOLIGAN ? 43
And as I note how nobly natures form
Under the war's red rain, I deem it true
That He who made the earthquake and the storm
Perchance made battles too.
There are worse evils than war. There are
—the lust of Gold
And love of a Peace that is full of wrongs and shames.
It is a threadbare commonplace to write that there are worse
evils than war, but it must be said over and over again,
especially when the horrors of war are upon us. The poisonous
weeds that grow rank in times of peace corrupt the national
blood; they deaden the sense of honor; they encourage the
ruthless company promoter who trades upon the ignorance of
the helpless; they lower the standards of honor; they enlarge
the slough of indulgence and the unclean life. War does not
kill these things, but it may restore the sense of duty, sacri-
fice, patriotism; it may bring back the nobler ideals; it may
teach the world that there are better gods than the idols they
have fashioned with their own hands; it may seize on the
hearts of the young and preserve their instincts of generosity.
Though many a light shall darken and many shall weep
- For those that are crushed in the clash of jarring claims.
And many a darkness into light shall leap,
And shine in the sudden making of splendid names,
And noble thought be freer under the sun,
And the heart of the people beat with one desire.
This potency of war, these possibilities, this necessity of
war when the cause is just, this ennobling of a people by war,
are present in the mind of Kipling as much as in the mind of

44 Is IT THE voice of THE HooliGAN ?
Tennyson. The time, indeed, has come again when we are
called
To wake to the higher aims
Of a land that has lost for a little the lust of gold.
It is not on the side of those who are ruled and led by
this lust that Kipling stands; nor is it for barbaric conquest
and the subjugation of free peoples that he sings.
I have endeavored to explain and to justify, to a certain ex-
tent, the extraordinary affection with which this writer is re-
garded by millions unnumbered among our own people and
our own kin. As was confessed at the outset, nothing that I
can say can increase that affection. I leave criticism to
those who, being at least scholars, have the right to take upon
themselves the work of criticism; it is for them to discuss
methods and style. It is enough for me and for those unnum-
bered millions to know that here is one who has a message to
deliver which concerns us all; that he has people to present to
us among whom we walk daily, yet have remained hitherto in
ignorance of their ways and thoughts and speech; that he has
taught the people of the empire what the empire means; that
he has shown us below their rough and coarse exterior the
manhood of soldier and sailor, of engine-man and lighthouse-
man and fisher-man. It is enough for us that he speaks as no
other in his generation—these be reasons enough and to spare
why he is loved by old and young in every class and in every
country where his language is the language of the folk.
WALTER BESANT.

THE ETHICS OF CRITICISM.
A Word to SIR WALTER BESANT.
“DogBERRY: You shall also make no noise in the streets; for the Watch to
babble and talk, is most tolerable and not to be endured. . . . If
you meet a thief, you may suspect him, by virtue of your office, to be no
true man; and for such kind of men, the less you make or meddle with
them, why the more is for your honesty 1 °–Much Ado About Nothing.
When I was editorially informed that my article on the
“Voice of the Hooligan ” had “startled the dovecots,” and
that no less a person than Sir Walter Besant was “going to
reply,” I thought I knew the fate in store for me at the hands
of that good old custodian of the city’s peace. Long and
respectfully had I observed the amiable knight, becloaked
like Dogberry of old, and carrying the official staff and lan-
thorn, sallying from the roundhouse of the Literary Watch,
with more or less decrepit followers at his heels; and always,
I observed, had his spiriting been done gently, so that, even
when he ‘‘ ran in '' a Publisher or other ‘‘ Malefactor,” he
had dismissed him speedily, with little more than a repri-
mand. His disposition, I knew, was liberal and kindly: so
much so that he had loudly proclaimed to all young citizens
that there was no occupation easier or more profitable than
his own daily one of bookmaking, the only endowments neces-
sary for its pursuit being a pen, a sheet of paper, and a copy
of the “Author,” published monthly! His own career had
been sunny, and had ended, as all the world knew, in a
knighthood; so it was fitting and natural that he should up-
hold the ways of literature as ways of pleasantness and profit,
and should devote his leisure to patrolling Grub street, and
45

46 THE ETHICS OF CRITICISM
proclaiming “ All's Well,” through the still small watches of
the present intellectual darkness. -
Knowing this much, if not more, of Sir Walter, I rejoiced
to hear that I was to fall into hands so merciful. My treat-
ment would be, I thought, neither fierce nor savage; if I were
seized and taken to durance vile, I should at least not be
beaten black and blue by the baton of a mere policeman;
there would be no handcuff business, and, above all, no false
swearing, when I was brought before the Bench. Yes, I said
to myself, with the good old literary Watchman I shall be all
right, even if he does call on me to “stand ’’ as a Malefactor!
But alas! I had to discover that even the best of us is human
after all! I had forgotten that on a recent occasion (on the
very occasion when he was proclaiming garrulously that litera-
ture was the easiest of all trades) I had offended this good
man deeply." With my denunciation of the literary Hooli-
gan came his opportunity, and—well, he has taken it to the
best of his power. Not content with calling on me to
“stand,” he flatly proclaims me a rogue and a liar! Not
satisfied with disliking my opinions, he affirms that they are
founded on the basest and most selfish of all motives, -those
of envy and disappointed vanity! This is so unlike Sir
Walter, even Sir Walter in a rage, that I scarcely know what
to make of it; and I am forced to the disagreeable conclusion
that he, like so many worthy souls nowadays, has caught the
prevailing epidemic and grown positively homicidal.
But rightly or wrongfully, justly or unjustly, here I stand
“charged,” with Sir Walter Besant (Lord love him!) bearing
angry witness again me. I have disturbed the town’s peace;
I have wantonly assaulted a good young genius of Christian
* “The Profession of Literature, an Open Letter to Sir Walter Besant,”
published in the "Sunday Special.”

THE ETHICS OF CRITICISM 47
disposition; and for the rest I bear a bad character, as a per-
son of very doubtful literary morals. Have I anything to
say in my defence? Marry, yes, a good deal, if that wor-
shipful magistrate, the public, will listen, and if the dear
old Watchman will only be quiet, even when I accuse him
(as I am reluctantly compelled to do) of malice and false
swearing.
First, however, let me examine his contention that Literary
People disgrace themselves and their profession whenever
they say severe and unsympathetic things about each other.
This, from a Literary Person who calmly imputes the basest
and meanest of motives to his opponent, and who taunts him
from the witness-box with want of trade-success and the most
despicable of trade-vanity, is rather a rich contention to
begin with ! But letus try to ascertain what it means, or
rather let me try to make this not too sapient guardian of
literary morals see what I mean. From the point of view of
Sir Walter Besant, Literature is a little ring of amiable and
worthy gentlemen, whose mission it is to make an honorable
subsistence by writing works for the market, and to extend to
each other, under all circumstances, the polite courtesies of
their trade union. Their duty is to support each other, praise
each other, in every way be loyal and kindly to each other.
Members of the medical and legal professions, it is contended,
never denounce each other. We cannot imagine “the late Lord
Coleridge contributing articles to the magazines in abuse of
the late Sir George Jessel” (this, by-the-by, is a little necro-
logically mixed, but such is deponent’s way), or “Bishop
Wilberforce attacking Archbishop Sumner for alleged heresy,
atheism, or immorality,” or “Sir Frederick Leighton asking
for a dozen pages in which to call Millais a humbug in art,
an impostor, a corrupter of the popular taste.” “Even if

48 THE ETHICS OF CRITICISM
-
these charges were proved,” says the witness, “would Leigh-
ton’s be the hand to write them down? No; self-respect, dig-
nity for the calling’’ (please note this phrase) “would im-
pose restraint and reticence. It is only in literature that the
world feels no astonishment when one more chapter is added
to the long list of venomous attacks by one author upon
another.’’
Now, what Sir Walter means is perfectly clear, although
the language in which he expresses himself is somewhat diffi-
cult to construe. His references, however, are unfortunate,
since they chiefly concern individuals less noteworthy for can-
dor and originality than for prosperous trimming and social
finesse. One can hardly conceive Bishop Wilberforce belong-
ing to any ethical forlorn hope, or Sir Frederick Leighton
sounding the note of any intellectual revolt. All the men
whom Sir Walter names as incapable of personal discourtesy
were, I fancy, quite as incapable of personal originality or
heroism; at any rate, if the truth had to be told concerning
either art or religion, one would hardly have selected the
speaker from among the magnates of the English church or the
president and council of the Royal Academy! A clique is a
clique, whether it is concerned with the practical business of
organized episcopacy, or the equally practical business of
selling pictures, or the quite as practical business of producing
books for the market; and, whenever a new thing has to be
uttered to the world, it is seldom or never voiced by those who
have interests vested in the high officialism of any prosperous
trade union.
But, putting aside Sir Walter’s assumption that personal
attacks and accusations are altogether confined to literature,
and that our doctors, lawyers, and artists are quite angelically
incapable of expressing their honest opinion of each other,

THE ETHICS OF CRITICISM 49
º
what follows? That the ethics of literature is lower and baser
than that of medicine, or the bar, or pictorial art, and that
men of letters, men who use the pen, are less generous, less
dignified, less amiable, than the followers of those other pro-
fessions? By no means. Literature, although itself only a
very small part of life, is a much broader and larger part of
life than either medicine, the bar, or art; indeed, it includes
all these branches of human activity, of only one of which, the
last, can we say that it is something more than a mere profes-
sion. The pursuit of medicine is very indirectly concerned
with the question of ethics, while the profession of the law is
to a large extent absolutely opposed to the highest ethical
sanctions. Of literature alone can it be said that its very
breath and being, its essential fons et origo, is ethical; that
without ethics, without ethical truth and beauty, literature
would be non-existent. A man absolutely without heart or
kindly sympathy may be a great physician. A man utterly
devoid of common humanity may be, and often has been, a
great lawyer. A man of very inferior literary and moral
sense may be, and occasionally has been, a great painter.
But no man who is devoid of prescience and wisdom, of com-
manding insight and humanity, can ever be a great author.
However much this last assertion may be traversed and
confuted, illustrations being at hand of very strong and power-
ful and prosperous writers in whom the highest moral qualities
seem more or less deficient, it will be found that all writers
who have achieved permanent immortality have done so by
virtue of their ethical greatness. Even Rabelais, with whom
our good Sir Walter consorted during his literary youth, has
been justified to posterity by the clean part of him, that
which startled the church and scared the cowls, —not by that
which has turned so many stomachs, and, I honestly admit,

50 THE ETHICS OF CRITICISM
turns mine. If we glance at random over the line of noble
names, from Socrates to Shakespeare, from Virgil to Dante,
from Aristophanes to Fielding and Dickens, from Chaucer to
Milton, from Milton to Wordsworth, from Shelley to Walt
Whitman, we shall discover that our poets and thinkers are
great exactly in proportion to the wisdom and beauty of their
message to the world; and that, whenever a writer has proved
a traitor to progress and to humanity, whenever he has shouted
with the crowd and has represented the vileness and not the
purity of his generation, he has been doomed to more or less
rapid oblivion, as practically a criminal against his kind.
This being admitted,—and I think few individuals except
members of the old-fashioned literary Watch will seriously
dispute it, -is it not a matter of some importance that we
should attempt to discover such traitors to truth and to hu-
manity, when, from one cause or another, they are really
devitalizing the very air we breather Even accepting Sir
Walter’s delectable conception of literature as a Pickwick
Club of amiable and prosperous shopkeepers, dutifully admir-
ing and praising each other’s wares, ought there not to be a
limit to friendly nepotism, and an end occasionally to the
compounding of moral felonies against mankind? Is it not
now more than ever notorious that the evils of the literary pro-
fession, the evils which still break many hearts and drive
many honest aspirants to the workhouse and the grave, are due
to the system of log-rolling and personal collusion, expressing
itself through the endless tricks of the trade? And then, to
come to the crucial moral question, if a baker sells poisoned
bread, is no other baker in the town to say so?
According to Sir Walter, literature is the only profession
the members of which denounce wrong-doing in each other.
If this were so, how proud and unique would be the position of

THE ETHICS OF CRITICISM 51
literature! Unfortunately, it is not so. Members of the
medical profession may hesitate to denounce individual quack-
ery, although they punish in the severest manner the slightest
breach of professional etiquette; but it would be better for
the world, a thousand times better, if in this profession and in
all the others, including literature, there were less etiquette
and more honesty, more truth-speaking on the part of individ-
uals and less trimming and lying to conciliate trades and
cliques. In the medical profession, for example, there is, I
believe, a professional etiquette which forbids one practi.
tioner, on being called in to a patient who is dying through
the ignorance and malpractice of another practitioner, appris-
ing those concerned of such ignorance and malpractice! An
etiquette of the same sort, according to Sir Walter, forbids a
man of letters avowing his detestation of a Hooliganism
which, he believes, is not merely causing the death of one sick
individual, but is sowing the whole world broadcast with
butchered and martyred men.
Here at last we come to the very core of the moral question,
and reach the real inwardness of my criticism. According to
Sir Walter Besant, a man of letters has no right to say a word
against any Jack Cade of his own craft who rushes from street
to street with a howling mob at his heels, and is indirectly or
directly concerned in fanning the evil passions of semi-barba-
rous crowds. To our knight, who vaunts literature as a roar-
ing trade, the question is merely one of professional etiquette,
and of personal vanity, envy, and uncharitableness on the
part of a craftsman! “Self-respect, the dignity of the call-
ing, nay, the ordinary laws of common courtesy,” should, Sir
Walter thinks, prevent one author from expressing his bad
opinion of another, especially when that other is generally
admired. The expression of any such bad opinion can only

52 THE ETHICS OF CRITICISM
be inspired by one sentiment, that of professional jealousy
or trade malice. So that, when Byron exposes in a master-
piece the shameful sycophancy and wicked servility of the
laureate Southey, or when Shelley bewails in burning numbers
the fault and backslidings of hireling poets, or when Brown-
ing says of a contemporary:
Just for a handful of silver he left us,
Just for a ribbon to stick on his coat,
the motive is always the same one–envy of the other’s dirty
gains! The truth must not be spoken, even if the doctor is a
murderous quack, the lawyer a lying rogue, the literary man
a public nuisance! Foul and evil teaching must not be ex-
posed, even when it is poisoning the very wells!
I do not propose to examine in detail Sir Walter’s vindica-
tion of Mr. Rudyard Kipling. So enthusiastic is it that it
actually makes the good knight drop into poetry, and talk in
mixed metaphors about ‘‘the hundred millions who read the
Anglo-Saxon tongue and flock into the vast theatre to listen
spell-bound to a single voice,”—that of him whom I have
christened Hooligan. Sir Walter’s literary tastes do not in-
terest me; his moral predilections are my chief concern. Let
me now inquire, a little more closely, into these.
says Sir Walter, gloat-
is one to whom war is an ever-present possibility and
--
‘‘ Kipling, in prose and in verse,
ingly,
an ever-present certainty! There is a time to speak of peace
--
and a time to speak of war! At this moment it is well that
some one who has a voice should speak of war!” And so on,
and so on. The vein is "Ercles vein, a tyrant’s vein, a blood-
thirsty vein, wonderful on the lips of so mild and home-bred a
citizen! Sir Walter is frank enough, indeed, to avow that he
likes bloodshed, that there are ‘‘ worse evils than war,’’ and

THE ETHICS OF CRITICISM 53
he is not afraid to echo, at this hour of the day, the mad
platitudes which drove Englishmen into homicidal frenzy
forty years ago. There are worse things than war, quotha P
Worse things even than war beginning and ending in the lust
for gold, and the ardor of freebooters to grab the solid earth?
Well, since Sir Walter Besant has chosen to express his .
honest admiration of fire, famine, and slaughter, and to cite
chapter and verse from a great poet in support of his case and
that of a church which is now crying havoc to the war-
wolves, let me show the hopelessness of any agreement between
us by frankly answering him to this effect—that I take my
stand on the belief that there is no worse evil than war, and
that all the talk of its power to purify a nation or an indi-
vidual is the veriest and foulest cant. Two blacks never yet
made a white, nor any two wrongs a right, and, disguise the
truth under what phrases we may, war is simply murder with
another name. That is my belief, and, if that belief is
false, every word which I have written concerning Mr. Kipling
is false as well.
Under one condition only is the slaying of our fellow-men
justifiable, or at least pardonable—the condition of righteous
self-defence. Our good Sir Walter, so full of anxiety for his
fellow-craftsmen, so shocked and shamed when one of those
craftsmen protests against homicidal mania and Jingo-patriot-
ism in another, can contemplate with serenity the bloody holo-
caust of suffering martyred thousands; snugly seated in his
office-chair, reeling out literature at so much per thousand
words, can assure his readers that the processes of plunder and
slaughter are glorious and ultimately purifying; can glibly
quote from a poem of which Tennyson lived long enough to be
ashamed, but which is still among the few blots on a noble
reputation; can talk of the “potency of war,” “the ennobling

54 THE ETHICS OF CRITICISM
of a people by war ’’; nay, can utter the usual banalities about
‘‘ noble aims,’’ in connection with a crusade baser even, if
that is possible, than the mad Crimean crusade which once
deluged Europe with innocent blood!
Even so, it seems to me, might Robert Shallow, Esquire,
have defended the civic bloodshed of his own generation; and
certainly Robert Shallow, Esquire, could not have darkened
counsel more thoroughly than Sir Walter Besant, Knight. I
pass again over his enthusiasm for Mr. Rudyard Kipling,
whom he further justifies on the score of a legion of omnivo-
rous readers. Even so Ponson de Terrail might be justified
by any one of the millions who honestly admire him, and
even so might Xavier de Montepin be exalted by a reader of
“Le Petit Journal,” on the basis of the “largest circulation
in the world’’. Sir Walter’s taste in books does not concern
me; let it go. I pass over also the sleepy arguments by which
he seeks to establish the idea that literature is a mere business
of success and non-success, sale and non-sale, conditioned and
inspired by some more or less nepotic Author’s Club. In all
this his ideas are amiable, if ideas they may be termed.
But, when, with the finger of blood on every door, and the cry
of the Hooligan in every street, and the mad cry of Cain in
the market-place, and the shadow of death passing from land
to land, this shallowest of literary knights non-combatant
assures me that there “are worse things than war,” I answer
him again from the bottom of my heart that there is only one
thing worse—that thing being the cultivated stupidity, the
hopeless senseless folly and obtusity, against which even the
very gods still strive in vain.
I regret to have to speak so roundly to such a harmless soul,
essentially kindly perhaps, and only erring from sheer lack of
imagination; but, in answering his somewhat rambling charges

THE ETHICS OF CRITICISM 55
against me, I chiefly desire to make my own cause clear. I
must explain, therefore, despite the strong prejudice which
the statement will awaken, that I am unable to conjure up any
more enthusiasm for war itself than for its leading expositors
and poets, and that even the glory of men who die bravely
upon the battle-field leaves me comparatively cold. A soldier
to my mind is not necessarily a hero; he enters the game of
killing other people at the risk of being killed himself, and,
if he loses, he pays the forfeit; if he were not killed, he
would be killing, and I personally see nothing heroic in that.
Nor am I, in the new sense of the word, a patriot. Although
I love my country, and, if necessary, would die in its defence,
I would not stir one foot to help my countrymen in any cause
which I believed to be cowardly, treacherous, and merely
homicidal. To follow the ravings of a howling political
majority, excited to frenzy by ignorant leaders and their at-
tendant nigger minstrels, is not, to my thinking, patriotism.
These things I state roundly, leaving Sir Walter Besant to
make the most of them, in his estimate of my moral baseness.
Sir Walter, true to his character of old-fashioned Watch-
man, carries from the night-time into the daytime his sleepy
cry of “All’s Well.” He is highly indignant with me,
therefore, because I have said that, militarism being rampant,
humanitarianism is out of fashion, -a statement which I am
glad to say has since been endorsed by no less a person than
Mr. Frederick Harrison. “ There never was a time in the
history of Christianity,” says Sir Walter, when philanthropy,
practical Christianity, was so much in fashion; and to support
his statement he runs glibly off his tongue the shibboleths—
free schools, free libraries, factory acts, continuation schools,
polytechnics, adding to these, as if they were not enough,
In his address as president of the English Positivist Society.

56 THE ETHICS OF CRITICISM
Toynbee Hall, Mansfield Hall, and Oxford House! Even so,
it seems to me, and with like relevance, would the inimitable
Mr. Gradgrind have discoursed to his hearers on the beauties
of a mathematical philanthropy. Is there no difference, then,
between human sympathy and the teachings of the board
schools, between love and loving charity and the opening of
picture galleries and museums on Sundays? The workhouse is
a beneficent institution, but somehow or other the poor have
always regarded it askance! The board school does incal-
culable good, but its ministrations seldom or never, I fear,
recall the beatitudes Not for one instant would I seek to
depreciate any one of these or similar benefactions, or detract
one hair’s breadth from the honor of such men and women as
are working bravely to enlighten and to help their fellows;
but what answer is it to me, when I quote the Poet of the Poor,
and cry:
Alas for the rarity
Of Christian charity
Under the sun
to be assured, by optimists like Sir Walter, that the scheme of
the Charity Organization Society works out on the whole quite
admirably! Bread may often become very bitter in the giv-
ing, and much of the bread of British philanthropy has, I fear,
a somewhat Gradgrindian, not to say Besantian, savor!
Indeed, indeed, good Sir Walter Besant, Knight, this cry of
** All's Well’’ sounds feeble almost to fatuousness at this
epoch of plunder and bloodshed, of Jameson raids and Char-
tered shares, of city train-bands rushing to assist in the spolia-
tion of Naboth’s Vineyard. Philanthropy, quothar Chris-
tianity, it faith? I have but to open my “Daily Alarmist,”
and my eye falls upon the following:

THE ETHICS OF CRITICISM 57
THE BOY WHO SHOT THREE BOERS 1
ENGLISH Boys AND GIRLs send HIM A CHRISTMAS PRESENT.
Trumpeter Shurlock, who with his own hand shot three Boers at Elands
Laagte, has stirred a practical responsive chord in the hearts of patriotic boys
and girls at Benhall School, Saxmundham, Suffolk.
We have received from Mr. John Chambers, the schoolmaster, a watch and
chain, subscribed for by the children, and accompanied by a letter intended
for the trumpeter of the 5th Lancers. Here is the letter which Trumpeter
Shurlock's youthful admirers are sending him :
"DEAR TRUMPETER SHURLock,-our schoolmaster reads us the war news
every morning, and what we liked best was to hear about you, and how you shot
the three Boers, and we thought we should like to send you a Christmas
present.
“We thought at first we would send you a plum pudding, and then a flannel
shirt, but we got too much money for that. So, as some kind friends helped
us, we got enough to send you a watch and chain, which we hope you will
accept.
"If ever you come to Suffolk, we hope you will call and see us, so that we
may give you a cheer.
* Please let us know if you get it and if you like it.
“Hoping you will come safe home and be able to show it to your mother.
We are pleased you are our young countryman, and we hope if any of us are
ever soldiers, we will do our duty like you.
“Wishing you all good luck, we remain,
“Your young English Friends,
“GERTIE RACKHAM,
“FRANK CHAMBERs,
“(For the Children of Benhall School).”
So that the beneficent homicide of youthful England is not
confined to “Stalky & Co.” and other creations of the
egregious Mr. Kipling, but runs red in our very streets and
lanes, and infects our very errand boys and urchins at play!
The Boy who killed three Boers! How dear must he be to the
heart of the Knight who dotes on War, and Bloodshed, and
Mr. Kipling! Doubtless, too, this boy has partaken of the

58 THE ETHICS OF CRITICISM.
Christianity of the school board, and may even have strolled
in his regimentals through the very educational People’s
Palace!
I am very sorry for Sir Walter Besant. He has always had
a place in my heart with the other knights of fame—the good
souls who mean so well, yet who are always on the side of the
loaves and fishes and the big battalions. I am quite sure that
he hates cruelty and wrong-doing just as much as I do, and is
incapable of a brutal thought or deed. But the mischief is
that his very amiability leads him astray. I blame him not
for loving and defending his fellow-craftsmen; for kindling
with indignation when he witnesses what he considers “a
venomous attack ’’ on a noble reputation. I am quite sure,
indeed, that he would defend even the malefactor Buchanan,
if he thought him subjected to cruel and cowardly maltreat-
ment. But alas! although he is kindly, he is not wise. He
fails to see that far higher issues than those of mere writing
and selling books underlie the question of morality in litera-
ture—that literature, indeed, although but a part of life, only.
fulfils its functions when it is the noblest and the purest part of
it. The question of Mr. Kipling’s genius, of my base mo-
tives, my misappreciation, really does not count in the dis-
cussion. What counts is the carnage to which every weather-
cock of a scribbler is pointing, and the brutality which is ex-
pressing itself daily and hourly, not only in mere words, but
in deeds which have made the name of England execrated all
over the civilized globe. Sir Walter Besant avers that I have
no right to speak of these things, because they concern the
prestige and the pocket of one who, with a publisher on each
side of him (like the bishop on each side of Richard in the
play), lately cried aloud for and obtained the sympathy of two
continents. I say that I have every right to speak of these

THE ETHICS OF CRITICISM 59
things, because they concern the honor and the prosperity,
nay, the very existence, of those two continents, and the hap-
piness of every humane and peace-loving citizen who dwells
therein.
ROBERT BUCHANAN.