Part 15

Endowments—there is the secret of stagnation. It is an unhappy truth that man tends to become a parasite on his own institutions. Humanity is a Frankenstein that is ridden by its own creations. Its Churches, with their cast-iron creeds and their golden treasure-heaps, are the prisons of the soul of the future. The legal decision in the great Free Church fight serves as what Bacon calls an “ostensive instance” of this elemental truth, bringing out as it does that the legal interpretation of a Church involves, not the elasticity so glibly vaunted by the _Church Quarterly_ reviewer, but absolute inelasticity. A tiny minority of ministers is able, for a time at least, to hold millions of money and hundreds of buildings, because the vast majority has elected, in a spirit of brotherly love, to join another body from which it is separated by a microscopic point. There can, at this rate, never be development in a Church. The faintest divergence from old tradition may justify the hard-shell orthodox in claiming all the funds and regarding the innovators as deserters of their posts and properties. All Church funds are indissolubly connected with the doctrines to which they were first tacked on, and changes in doctrine involve forfeiture of the belongings in favour of those who have had the fidelity or the shrewdness to cling to the original dogma. How much change is necessary to alter a creed is a delicate problem, known in logic as of the Soros order. For every day brings it subtle increments or decrements, and a dogma of imperishable adamant has not yet appeared in human history. Every dogma has its day. The life of a normally constituted truth is, according to Ibsen, twenty years at the outside, and aged truths are apt to be shockingly thin. Thus the danger which threatens all Churches—the danger of having to buy their ministers—is raised to infinity if the money is thus to be tied up by the dead hand of the past. A premium is placed upon infidelity and mustiness. There is no Church or religious body in the world which is not weighted with pecuniary substance, from Rome to the Order we have been considering, founded for the preachment of Absolute Poverty. The continuity of policy which the _Church Quarterly_ applauds becomes a mere continuity of property, if progress is to be thus penalised. Nor are the Dissenting bodies immune from this pecuniary peril. A Calvinist chapel in Doncaster that was gravitating to the New Theology has found itself closed _pro tem._ under its trust deed of 1802.

The remedy for this clogging of spiritual life is clear. It was always obvious, but when Property is in danger one begins to consider things seriously.

Every Church and sect must be wound up after three generations. The time-limit needs elucidation.

The first generation of a Church or a heresy—the terms are synonymous, for every Church starts as a heresy—is full to the brim of vitality, fire, revolt, sincerity, spirituality, self-sacrifice. It is a generation in love, a generation exalted and enkindled by the new truth, a generation that will count life and lucre equally base beside the spreading of the new fire. The second generation has witnessed this fervour of its fathers, it has been nourished in the warmth of the doctrine, its education is imprinted with the true fiery stamp. It is still near the Holy Ghost. In the third generation the waves radiated from the primal fire have cooled in their passage through time; the original momentum tends to be exhausted. Now is the period of the smug Pharisees profiting by the martyrdoms of their ancestors, babbling rhetorically—between two pleasures—of their fidelity to the faith of their fathers. If the third generation of a Church can get through with fair spiritual success, it is often only because of a revival of persecution. But the third generation is absolutely the limit of the spiritual stirring. In the fourth generation you shall ever find the young people sly sceptics or sullen rebels, and the Vicar of Bray coming in for high preferment. Here, then, is the limitation dictated by human nature. The life of a Church should be wound up by the State. The birth of a heresy must be free to all, and should be registered like the birth of a child. It would expose its adherents to no disadvantages, either religious or political. But after three generations it must be wound up.

Of course, it should be perfectly open for the Church to reconstitute itself immediately, but it should do this under a new name. If it started again afresh, the compulsory winding-up would have acted as a species of persecution and thoroughly revitalised the content of the

## particular _credo_. The third generation would have strained every sinew

to realise their faith and bring it home to the young and fourth generation. The latter, ere re-establishing the Church, would have rediscovered its truth, and thereby given it fresh momentum to carry it through another three generations. This simple system would allow children to continue the faith of their fathers from conviction instead of compulsion, and, by terminating the right to property, would save posterity from the asphyxiation of benefactions.

The life of a generation is computed by biological statisticians at thirty-three years. Three generations would thus make ninety-nine years. A century brings such changes in thought and things that the excerpts from the _Times_ of a hundred years ago read like the journalism of another planet.

The bequests by which eleven old gentlewomen of a certain parish, that has been swept away, receive groats of an abolished currency, on a day that has disappeared from the calendar, to perpetuate the memory of a benevolent megalomaniac, would, on a similar principle, be limited to the natural run of a century. It is enough to be allowed a dead finger in the pie of proximate posterity; “a century not out” must never be written over any human will or institution.

If this time-limit seems a trifle harsh, apply it, dear reader, not to your own creed, but to something esoteric, like the doctrine of the Dalai Lamas of Tibet, which has for so many centuries paralysed a priest-ridden Asiatic population. Do you think this theory of reincarnation deserved a longer run than three generations?

THE GAY DOGES: OR THE FAILURE OF SOCIETY AND THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF SOCIALISM

“Dieses Prunkschiff ist ein rechtes Inventariënstück, woran man sehen kann, was die Venetianer waren, und sich zu sein dünkten.”

GOETHE: _Italiänische Reise_.

I

But if Absolute Poverty is less worshipful than St. Francis imagined, Magnificence as an ideal will, I fear, always be found to connote defective moral sympathies, as of the Pharaohs building their treasure-cities on the labour of lashed slaves. For how in our world of sorrow and mystery can magnanimity and magnificence meet? What great soul could find expression in gilt, or even in gold? ’Tis a reflection on the character of the Doges of Venice that everywhere in their palace is a sense of over-gilded ceilings. Even when the Masters have made a firmament of frescoes, the massive flamboyant framing weighs like a torrid haze on a weary land. Art is overlaid and obliterated by gold. What wonder Religion too is soon asphyxiated in these flaming halls of Council—the Doge ceases to kneel to the Madonna, he stands before _Venice Enthroned between Mars and Neptune_. It is Juno who from a ceiling-fresco pours gold on Venice, and in the heavy gilded picture of Zelotti, the Magnificent Ten could behold _Venice Seated on the World_. What sly satirist was it who—over the choir of St. Mark’s—crucified Christ on a cross of gold?

In “The Merchant of Venice,” ’tis the Duke of Morocco who chooses the golden casket; I feel sure ’twas Bassanio, the Venetian. Not that I do not hate the leaden casket more. Portia should have gone with a field of buttercups in June.

Of all expressions of human greatness, metallic sheen is the most banal. I have never recovered from the shock of learning that the Greeks gilded their temples, and though I can now with even a spice of zest imagine them shining afar from their headlands in a golden glory, I would have preferred to keep my vision of austere columns and noble pediments; and I am grateful to Time, that truer artist, for having refined away that assertive aureola.

On the water, indeed—which is beneath one’s feet, and not sagging on one’s head—metallic sheen may exhilarate, subtilising and softening itself, as it does, in its own wavering reflections, and I find the Doge’s gilded galley more endurable than his _lacunar aureum_. It may be because Shakespeare (or rather Plutarch) has reconciled me to Cleopatra’s barge by those magnificent burnished lines. The Lord Mayor of London, too, had anciently his gilded barge, and if you will look at an eighteenth-century picture in the Guildhall by a pair of forgotten painters, representing the Lord of Cockaigne sailing in state on the Thames on the ninth of November, on the way to be sworn at Westminster, you will see how easily London, with her old boatmen and barges, and water-gates and water-parties, singing as in Pepys, might have paralleled the water-pomp of Venice, and how completely we have now thrown away the gorgeous possibilities of our proud water-way, lining it with warehouses in lieu of stately mansions, and cutting out of our lives all that shimmering vitality of ever-moving water. Man does not live by bread alone, and “Give us this day our daily water” were no unfitting prayer in our arid city. The Henley Week is our one approach to the colour of a Venetian _festa_. Yet what a Grand Canal the Thames might have been! I vow that at a distance I should take that old Guildhall picture, with its gay old costumes, its pageant of gilded galleys, each flying a brave array of rich-dyed flags and manned with rowers in white, its spires and turrets, and the noble dome of St. Paul’s swelling into sunny spaces of air and cloud, all suffused in a golden mellowness, to represent the Doge of Venice going to a “solemn rite” at the _Salute_. Alas! the Lord Mayor has now only a gilded coach, and the Doge of Venice has vanished away, and only fragments of galleys in the Arsenal and a model of the last of the Bucentaurs remain to tell the tale of his marine glories, and his marriage to the Adriatic on Ascension Day.

One mast of the _Bucentoro_—the very mast that upbore the flag of the winged lion and the proud inscription, _In hoc signo vinces_—survives in tragic recumbency, while a morsel of frieze shows in gold, on a basis of dark wood, delicious angels playing trumpet and harp at the prow. The relics of other galleys, pranked with figures about half life-size, enable us to gather what exuberance of fancy and grotesquerie went to grace the _Bucentoro_ which Napoleon burnt, while the fact that he extracted the gold of 80,000 Napoleons from its ashes shows with what prodigality the Republic blazoned its sense of itself.

But the marvellous model reconstructed by Ferdinand of Austria in 1837 at a cost of 152,000 francs, reveals, if it be exact, that seamy side which is always the obverse of Magnificence. At first the eye is taken up with its opulence of decoration, as it seems to take the water with its proud keel, and its great all-topping flag of the lion and the cross. For its upper deck is of mosaic, over-hinged by a huge lid, red velvet without and gold relief within, and from the water-line rise winged figures, and over the arch through which pass the many-flashing oars of red and gold is a frieze of flying horses, the rape of Europa, Centaurs, and what not; and above this are winged figures flying towards a gold sky, and gold figures on a balcony, which is supported at the prow by winged lions and a pair of mermen, and at the bowsprit couches the winged lion with two little angels playing behind him; and on the hull is a naiad pouring out her urn, and a merman blowing his trumpet, and the protrusive heads of alligators; and lest you should think Venice meant nothing but gold and fantasy and the pride of life, behold dominant over these Justice with her sword and her scales, and Peace with her dove and her olive-branch.

But below, hidden away behind and beneath the gilding, at the unseen end of the red and gold oars

“Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke,”

sat one hundred and seventy-eight galley-slaves, chained four to an oar; and here in this fuscous interior the benches are no longer of plush, but of rough deal; here is no play of Fancy—here in the hard seats we touch Reality. But not herein lies the supreme sordidness of the _Bucentoro_—the crowning touch is given by the oars, which, at the very point where they disappear over the rowlocks under the gay arches, turn from their red and gold into a plain dirty white, like shirt-cuffs that give on soiled sleeves. ’Tis the very magnificence of meanness! The horny-handed wretches, to the rhythm of whose tired muscles this golden vessel moved along in its music and sunshine, to whose caged gloom no glimpse came of the flags and the purple, the angels and the naiads, could not even be conceded the coloured end of an oar. But could there be an apter symbol of civilisation, ancient, mediæval, or modern, than this gilded oar, whose gaudiness fades as it passes from the bravery of the outer spectacle to the grimness of the inner labour? Upon such sweating slaves rested all the glitter and pageantry of the ancient world—not only Babylon and Carthage, but even the spiritual and artistic greatness of Greece. _In hoc signo vinces_—in the sign of slavery; in the sign of the lion and the cross—the lion for yourself and the cross for the people. And in every land of to-day the same State-Galley glides along in bannered pomp, parading its decorative images of Peace and Justice, and the radiant creations of its Art, while below are the hard bare benches and the labouring, groaning serfs. The serfs are below, even in another sense, for it is their unsightly hands that have built up every square inch of this splendour. Beatrice d’Este went to see a galley a-building, her velvet cap and her embroidered vest stuck full of jewels; complacently recording the ejaculations of admiration for her diamonds and rubies, while the Venetian women, and even children, were toiling at making the sails and the ropes. Yes, the social order too must be gazetted bankrupt. It has, indeed, never been solvent. It has never paid its real creditors, the slaves of the uncoloured oar.

Nor does our civilisation hold much hope of a change for the fairer. Despite prophets and poets, despite Socialists, dry-as-dust or dithyrambic, despite philanthropists and preachers, the revel on the top-deck amid the velvet and the mosaics grows ever wilder, the flutes ever more Dionysiac, the fantasies on prow and poop ever more grotesquely golden. America, shorn of monarchy and feudalism and rank, and all that the friends of man screamed against, divides with Russia the hegemony of hotels and outdoes the worst extravagances and debaucheries of the Renaissance. Where in the Cinquecento a few despots and “humanists” wallowed in lust and luxury, we have now ten thousand private tyrants and loose-livers, restrained hardly by the penal law. The deeds of the Cenci or the Baglioni must be done in a glass-house in the fierce light that beats upon local greatness. The ruffians of the Renaissance had no such free field for vagaries and vices as the vagrom son of a millionaire enjoys in this modern world, where property in growing fluid has become dissolved from duty; where in every pleasure-city palaces invite and women allure and slaves grovel; where every port swarms with white-winged yachts to bear his indolent irresponsibility to glamorous shores; where in a million halls of light his world-strewn flunkeys proffer unseasonable food cooked by unsurpassable artists, and rare champagnes, oscillated for months in a strange daily ritual by troops of underground elves.

They tell us that this New Year’s Eve in New York alone some three million pounds were spent in suppers in the flaring restaurants, where between eleven and twelve o’clock only champagne could be served. Such is the New Era ushered in by the New World—the Era of Champagne. For this the Red Indian was uprooted and the wilderness tamed. For this Washington lived and Lincoln died. By the flood of champagne all standards of life and letters are swept away, save the one standard of financial success, save the ability to dine in that wonderful culinary cathedral where in a dim irreligious light as of a submarine world of faery, to a melting liturgical music, a fashionable congregation follows with absorbing zeal the lengthy order of service. What an Agapemone!

And this epidemic of vulgarity, spreading to our own country, has made the England of 1802, which Wordsworth denounced for “glittering like a brook,” the England where “plain living and high thinking” were no more, appear like an island of pristine simplicity. Even the old families surrender to the new standard and—in the plaint of Dante—“_non heroico more, sed plebeo sequuntur superbiam_.”

What is to be done? What is to be done about it all? We writing men, to whom the highest British manhood is still Wordsworth in that country cottage where visitors must pay for anything beyond bread and cheese, we to whom the greatest American personality is still Walt Whitman in his Camden shanty, must at least preserve our divine gift of laughter, our one poor power of laughing at these vulgarians, whom even the occasional smuggling of an Old Master out of Italy cannot redeem from barbarism.

The purple pomp of kings, blatant though it be in comparison with true grandeur, is at least the expression of a public dignity: it is an official costume like the judge’s wig and gown. But because greatness must accept office at the hands of its otherwise helpless inferiors, and office must be suitably apparelled, a certain confusion has been established between splendour and greatness, as though because greatness means splendour, splendour must mean greatness. Of this confusion those are promptest to take advantage to whom the high road to consideration is closed. Private pomp is a confession of personal pettiness. The little soul must needs inflate itself by a great house-shell, and protract itself by a long retinue of servants. ’Tis almost too pathetic a meekness, this humility of the Magnificent Ones.

Cannot I breathe into you—O Magnificent Ones—a little proper pride? Ye buy the Past, watching one another in jealous competition; will no one buy the Future? Why not buy with your millions an earth renewed and regenerated, a solvent social order? Why not build a true civilisation on this malarious marsh, that shall rise like the spires and domes of Venice from her swamps? Surely that were a dream worthy of Magnificence! Come, let us build together a State-Galley where the oars shall be red and gold from blade to handle, and every man shall take his turn at them, and the fantasies of Art shall adorn the hull of Righteousness, and Justice and Peace shall no longer be ironic images carved for the complacency of the top-deck. So shall there dawn an Ascension Day on which the Doge shall go out with banners and music, not to marry the sea with a ring, but to celebrate the nuptials of Earth with Heaven.

Private pomp is surely a questionable thing. Mediæval life centred round the Cathedral, the Castle, the Palace. And the masses touched the life at each and all. The Cathedral gave them their religion, their laws came from the Palace, their protection from the Castle. Dominating a feudal population, the towers of law and war uplifted and unified the people. The lowliest were of this greatness. To-day palaces flaunt themselves, divorced from moral meaning, magnificence without significance. The world, as I said, is full of private autocrats, without duties or dangers: an unhappy consequence of the fall of feudalism, ere a system as human was ready to replace it. And to-day the Cathedral is our one feudal relic, reconciling magnificence with morality: the light streaming through the rose-window haloes the grey head of the market-woman, and her prayer equals that of the Magnificent One himself. It is significant that no villa—whoever the architect—can attain the poetic quality of the simplest village church. The palace of Moses is nowhere mentioned, but we read many minute instructions concerning the Tabernacle and the Temple. In truth, art treasures are essentially public: the furniture of cathedrals, libraries, law-courts, market-places, and parks. The owners of collections do indeed often allow the public to visit them at inconvenient times, but that anybody should have exclusive rights is an absurdity. If Art were a form of property like any other, the owner could destroy it, and the righteous indignation of the world at the destruction of a Botticelli or a Velasquez would mark the boundaries of private property. Land comes under the same canon. Nothing, perhaps, should be owned which might not be destroyed at will.

In literature and music—which are more spirits than bodies, and which can be multiplied without loss—monopolies are unnecessary. If I write a book against Socialism, the world will applaud, and communistically possess itself thereof after a brief term. And this legal limitation of copyright which forcibly wrests epics, operas, and novels from the heirs might be extended to pictures and statues.

II

But if the galley of old Venice stimulates my Socialism, the cinematograph of modern Venice torpifies it again. For be it known that in Venice there are scores of halls and theatres devoted to delectable visions at prices to suit the poorest, and open to _ragazzi_ for a couple of _soldi_. And in every city of Italy the fever rages; one performance follows on the heels of another, and the wretched manipulator of the magic lantern must subsist on sandwiches while the theatre is clearing and re-filling. Every unlet dancing-hall or decayed rink or bankrupt building has blossomed out into a hall of enchantment where even the words of the play are sometimes given by the cunning juxtaposition of gramophones. In this way I heard _Amletto, or the Prince of Denmark_, its too, too solid flesh melted into a meat extract. But the most wonderful spectacle of all was soundless, save for the flowing music. For twenty _centesimi_ the Teatro S. Marco passed before my eyes an exquisite vision of _Le Ore_—the hours in ten “_Quadri animati_,” from the shiver of light that precedes the dawn to the last falling of night. In the Sala d’Aurora of the Castle of Ferrara, Dosso Dossi has depicted _Tramonto_, _Notte_, _L’Aurora_ and _Mezzogiorno_, but not more poetically than the modern stage-manager who arranged these living pictures. As I watched these allegorical groupings of nymphs and fauns by their stream in the glade, I felt that the old pagan religion still lingered in the souls that could conceive and enjoy this nature-poetry.

And as I sat here, amid Venetian washerwomen and street boys, it was further borne in upon me that no State Bureau would ever have begotten this marvel for the joy and uplifting of the people, and that in the present imperfection of human nature individual initiative under the spur of gold or hunger could alone work these miracles of Socialism. “_La propriété c’est la vol_,” said Proudhon, but “_vol_” in his sense implies a bullish acceptance of the very conception he is combating. Let us translate it by “flight.” Property is the impulse of the aeroplane.