Delphi Collected Works of Ouida

by Ouida

  If she were told that she is a more barbaric creature than the squaw of the poor Indian trapper who poisoned the parrakeets, she would be equally astonished and offended.

  Let us now look at her next-door neighbour; he is a very wealthy person and seldom refuses a subscription, thinks private charity pernicious and pauperising, attends his church regularly, and votes in the House of Commons in favour of pigeon-shooting and spurious sports. If anyone asks him if he ‘likes animals’ he answers cheerily, ‘Oh, dear me, yes. Poor creatures, why not?’ But it does not disturb him that the horse in the hansom cab, which he has called to take him to the City, has weals all over its loins, and a bit that fills its mouth with blood and foam; nor does he notice the over-driven and half-starved condition of a herd of cattle being taken from Cannon Street to Smithfield, but only curses them heartily for blocking the traffic.

  He eats a capon, drives behind a gelding, warms himself at a hearth of which the coal has been procured by untold sufferings of man and beast, has his fish crimped, and his lobsters scalded to death, in his kitchens, relishes the green fat cut from a living turtle, reads with approbation his head keeper’s account of the last pair of owls on his estate having been successfully trapped, writes to that worthy to turn down two thousand more young pheasants for the autumn shooting, orders his agent to have his young cattle on his home-farm dishorned, and buys as a present for his daughters a card case made from the shell of a tortoise which was roasted alive, turned on its back on the fire to give the ruddy glow to its shell. Why not? His favourite preacher and his popular scientist alike assure him that all the subject races are properly sacrificed to man. It is obviously wholly impossible to convince such a person that he is cruel: he merely studies his own convenience, and he has divine and scientific authority for considering that he is perfectly right in doing so. He is quite comfortable, both for time and for eternity. It were easier to change the burglar of the slums, the brigand of the hills, than to change this self-complacent and pachydermatous householder who represents nine-tenths of the ruling classes.

  Let us not mistake; he is not personally a cruel man; he would not himself hurt anything, except in sport which he thinks is legitimate, and in science which he is told is praiseworthy; he is amiable, good-natured, perhaps benevolent, but he is wrapped up in habits, customs, facts, egotisms, tyrannies which all seem to him to be good, indeed to be essential. His horse is a thing to him like his mail phaeton; his dog is a dummy, like his umbrella stand; his cattle are wealth-producing stores, like his timber or wheat; he uses them all as he requires, as he uses his hats and gloves. He sees no more unkindness in doing away with any of them than in discarding his old boots, and he passes the most atrocious laws and by-laws for animal torment as cheerfully as he signs a cheque payable to self.

  His ears are wadded by prejudice, his eyes are blinded by formula, his character is steeped in egotism; you might as well try, I repeat, to touch the heart of the Sicilian brigand or the London crib-cracker as to alter his views and opinions; you would speak to him in a language which is as unintelligible to his world as Etruscan to the philologist.

  The majority of his friends, like himself, lead their short, bustling, bumptious, and frequently wholly useless lives, purblind always and entirely deaf where anything except their own interests is concerned. They think but very rarely of anything except themselves, and the competitions, ambitions, or jealousies which occupy them. But in their pastimes cruelty is to them acceptable; it is an outlet for the barbarian who sleeps in them, heavily drugged but not dead; the sight of blood titillates agreeably their own slow circulation.

  Between them, and the cad who breaks the back of the bagged rabbit, there is no difference except in the degree of power to indulge the slaughter-lust.

  Alas! it were easier ‘to quarry the granite rock with razors’ than to touch the feelings of such as this man, or this woman, where their vanities, or their mere sheep-like love of doing as others do, are in question. Princesses wear osprey tufts and lophophorus wings, and so society wears them too, and cares not a straw by what violence and wickedness they are procured; as the ladies, who attend their State concerts, sleep none the worse when in their country houses because the rabbit screams in the steel gins, and the hawk struggles in the pole trap, in the woods about their ancestral houses, and have no less appetite for luncheon amongst the bracken or the heather because shot and bleeding creatures lie half dead in the game bags around, or because the stag often is stretched in his dead majesty before their eyes. Why, then, should they care because in far distant lands little feathered creatures, lovely as flowers, innocent as the dew and the honey they feed on, are killed by the thousands and tens of thousands because a vulgar and depraved taste demands their tender bodies?

  What does it matter to them that, through their demands, the bird of paradise has become so rare that, unless stringent measures be taken at once, it will be soon totally extinct, and the golden glory of its plumes will gleam no more in tropical sunlight? What does it matter to them that the herons in all their various kinds, the osprey, the egret, the crane, the ibis, are scarcely seen now in the southern and middle States of America, and, when seen, are no longer together in confident colonies, as of yore, but nesting singly and in fear? ‘Practically all our heronries are deserted. The birds have been slaughtered for their plumes,’ writes a physician dwelling in the Delaware valley. ‘What were common birds in their season half a century ago are now rarely seen. The struggle for existence has been a violent one and the herons have been worsted. Scarcely a word of protest has been heard, and none that has been effectual.’ Women of the world know this, or at least have been told it fifty times; but it makes no impression on them. They will wear osprey-aigrettes as long as any are left in commerce, and they think a humming-bird looks so pretty in their hair. What else matters?

  That their example is copied by the women of the middle classes with swallows and warblers, and by the servant girl and factory girl with dyed sparrows and finches, makes no impression on them; if the fact be noticed to them they say that the common people always will be ridiculous, and stop their carriage in Bond Street to buy fire-screens made of owls, or an electric lamp hung in the beak of a stuffed flamingo.

  Why should they care, indeed! — they who walk with the guns, even if they do not do more and secure a warm corner for their own shot; they who bring up their young sons to regard the cowardly and brutal sport of battue-shooting as the supreme pleasure and privilege of youth, and see unmoved their beautiful autumnal woods turned into slaughter-places?

  One cannot but reflect how different might the world have been if women had been different in mind and temper; if, instead of their smiling, self-complacent tittering approbation of brutality, they had shown scorn for and abhorrence of brutality. They clamour for electoral rights and leave all this vast field of influence unoccupied and untilled! They do little or nothing to soften the hearts or refine the feelings of the men who love them, or to bring up their children in any sympathy with animal life. Sport has become fashionable with them in the last twenty years, and the crack shot in the coverts of Chantilly this winter was a woman. Sporting clothes, breeches and gaiters, are now a recognised part of the fashionable woman’s toilet.

  I would not affirm (anomaly as it appears) that the pursuit of sport cannot co-exist with a love of animals, for I have known many sporting men and hunting men who were in a sense sincerely devoted to some animals. But sport inevitably creates deadness of feeling. No one could take pleasure in it who was sensitive to suffering; and therefore its pursuit by women is much more to be regretted than its pursuit by men, because women pursue much more violently and recklessly what they pursue at all; and it is impossible for the sportswoman logically and effectively to exercise any influence on her young children which could incline them to mercy — such an influence as Lamartine’s mother had on him to the day of his death.

  There are two periods in the life of a woman when she is almost omnipote
nt for good or ill. These are when men are in love with her; and, again, when her children are young enough to be left entirely to her and to those whom she selects to control them. How many women in ten thousand use this unlimited power which they then possess to breathe the quality of mercy into the souls of those who for the time are as wax in their hands? They will crowd into the Speaker’s Box to applaud debates which concern them in no way. They will impertinently force their second-hand opinions on Jack and Jill in the village or in the City alleys. They will go on to platforms and sing comic songs, or repeat temperance platitudes, and think they are a great moral force in the improvement of the masses. This they will do, because it amuses them and makes them of importance. But alter their own lives, abandon their own favourite cruelties, risk the sneer of society, or lead their little children to the love of nature and the tenderness of pity; these they will never do. Mercy is not in them, nor humility, nor sympathy.

  Can written words do anything to touch the hearts of those who read? I fear not.

  On how many do written words, even dipped in the heart’s blood and burning with the soul’s fire, produce any lasting effect? Is not the most eloquent voice doomed to cry without echo in the wilderness? And what wilderness is there so barren as the desert of human indifference and of human egotism?

  Pity is only awakened in those who are already pitiful. We cannot sow mustard seed on granite. The whole tendency of the age is towards cynicism, indifference, self-engrossment. The small children sneer much more often than they smile.

  From Plutarch to Voltaire, from Celsus to Sir Arthur Helps, the finest and most earnest pleading against cruelty has been made by the finest and most logical minds. But the world has not listened; the majority of men and women are neither just nor generous, neither fine nor logical. In a few generations more, there will probably be no room at all allowed for animals on the earth: no need of them, no toleration of them. An immense agony will have then ceased, but with it there will also have passed away the last smile of the world’s youth. For in the future the human race will have no tenderness for those of its own kind who are feeble or aged, and will consign to lethal chambers all those who weary it, obstruct it, or importune it: since the quality of mercy will day by day be more derided, and less regarded, as one of the moral attributes of mankind.

  XII. THE DECADENCE OF LATIN RACES

  I have read with the attention due to the author’s name the essay of Professor Sergi on the decadence of the Latin nations. It seems to me, when reflecting on it, that the esteemed author gives to every slight change, the much-used, and much-abused, name of progress; and considers mere change as an indisputable betterment. He also considers that the Latin races cannot exist under modern conditions unless they form themselves on the models and follow the examples of non-Latin races; if, that is to say, they do not imitate what is foreign and alien to them. It is clear that he does not for a moment doubt that the non-Latin are infinitely superior to the Latin peoples, and he rebukes the latter for remaining immovable, although, somewhat oddly, he excepts France from his censure on account of her great commerce, and only includes in his ban his own country and Spain.

  With Spain I do not occupy myself, as I am not sufficiently well acquainted with her to do so; indeed, Professor Sergi himself says very little about her; but of Italy I cannot consider that his condemnation is merited. If she do merit it, why does she do so?

  Both questions are interesting. Professor Sergi, like too many writers of the present time, assumes as an indisputable fact that the mere innovation, the mere alteration of a thing, is of necessity improvement, advancement, amelioration; and this being his rooted conviction, he considers Great Britain and the United States the models and ideals of modern life. For this reason he would force Italy to abandon entirely her traditions, her instincts, and her natural genius, and substitute for them an exact and servile imitation of these two foreign peoples who have tastes in common with her. Unfortunately he does not inform us to what point he carries this desire, and if the immense changes he advises are to be dynastic and political, or merely social and intellectual. He prints in capital letters his chief advice to the Latin nations to move on new lines; but he does not explain whether he means to move to a new Constitution, to a new Representation, to a new theory and practice of Government; and he does not even say whether he thinks or does not think that the Church is the greatest enemy of national progress in Latin nations. It would be interesting to know in what proportions he holds the two antagonistic forces of Church and State to be guilty of opposing progress; that each is an obstacle to the higher forms of progress there can be no question in the mind of any dispassionate thinker. But he is careful not to commit himself to this view. Since he gives us so little information on this head, and limits himself to the counsel, somewhat meagre in its expression, to move on new lines, we may endeavour to find out for ourselves how far his advice goes: if Italy do actually merit his contempt for her inertia, and if the non-Latin races deserve or do not deserve the admiration with which he pronounces on their superiority.

  That the Italian nation is immovable is not true: for good or evil it moves as its great son Gallileo said of the earth. The fault, the peril, lie the other way. It is to be feared that the Italian people run the risk of losing their finest instincts, and their most gracious characteristics, through the exaggerated and obsequious imitation of foreign peoples, and by a too ready adoration of new things merely because they are new. They are the ideals of many a modern Italian. Guglielmo Ferrero has dedicated many hundreds of pages to the celebration of their perfections. I believe that such worship is chiefly founded on illusion, for it is as easy to cherish illusions about a steam mill as about a mediæval saint.

  Let us look at the actual situation of Great Britain, setting aside her imperialist swagger, and regarding only facts. The English themselves admit that if a European naval coalition succeeded in preventing grain reaching their shores from America and the colonies, the nation in a fortnight would want bread. Is that an ideal or a safe position? If, in a sea-war, the British fleet would be successful is wholly uncertain, since no one can say how the metal battleships would behave in any distress; the manœuvres have not shed much light upon this question, and many of the marine monsters, as regards their utility in active warfare, are still unknown quantities. Equally uncertain is what would be the conduct of the Indian population were Great Britain vanquished in any great war, for the majority of the peoples of Hindostan most unwillingly endure through coercion the yoke of the British rule.

  In Ireland there is a racial hatred which nothing can extinguish, and only demands a favourable occasion to show itself. Canada may any day embroil England with the United States; and so may the West Indies, and the Nebraskan and Nicaraguan questions; and so may Newfoundland with France, and East or West Africa with Germany. In every part of the globe Great Britain has on her hands conquests, colonies, intrigues, enemies, open questions, and concealed questions, of every kind. Her greed is great, and her entanglements are innumerable. There are many weak points in her fortifications. To meet her obligations she is obliged to use legions of Asiatics, or Africans, or employ as mercenaries men from her distant colonies, or send the soldiers of one vanquished nation to help vanquish another. Thus did Imperial Rome, and so went to her undoing. Doubtless Great Britain is rich, powerful, strong, proud, and vain. So was Rome; so was Spain. It is possible, even probable, that at some, perhaps not distant day, Great Britain also will give way under the enormous weight of her self-sought responsibilities, and the still more ponderous weight of her many enemies.

  Internally, also, England is not what she used to be. The old nobility is elbowed out of prominent place by a new aristocracy which has been created entirely on a money basis. Every ministry, when going out of office, creates a new batch of titled rich men, lifted into the Lords in return for political or financial service. Wealth is now the dominant factor of English social life; and a commerce, wholly unscrupulous, is
the sole scope of the tawdry and noisy empire of which Joseph Chamberlain is the standard-bearer.

  What is there in all this to admire or to imitate?

  Again we have seen that in the United States, since they abandoned their wise policy of non-intervention in external affairs, the national life resembles the English, is vain, boastful, hypocritical, cruel, and bellicose. The thirst of gain devours the nation. There is no other land in which the contrast between rich and poor is so sharp and terrible; none in which millions are thrown away with more frightful indifference and conceited display. Lynch law in all its horror reigns over many provinces, and unblushing corruption mounts into the highest places and poisons all the sources of national life. Guglielmo Ferrero stands stupefied before their innumerable newspaper offices, which he says use up every day as much paper as would go round the circumference of the earth! But he forgets, or ignores, that the literary quality of those journals is usually of the poorest and vulgarest kind, and that the chief part of their columns is filled by advertisements. He is also transfixed with rapture before the colossal houses which Americans call sky-scrapers, and sees the revelation of a stupendous genius in their passion for what is big, costly, eccentric; nor does he hesitate to compare it with the Florentine and Venetian genius!

  Actually there was never on earth two more different kinds of creation than these; never one more absolutely soulless, and one more nobly penetrated by the soul. The genius of the Italian masters was lofty, generous, at once humble and sublime, never interested, always consecrated to Art and Country; the skill of the American constructors has no other scope than that of getting money, of making the world stare, of producing the huge, the gross, the extravagant, the enormous, and labours for only one God, the venal Mercury of the market-place. In these new cities, so vehemently extolled, with their towering constructions which hide the smoke-obscured clouds, and their network of electric wires, of railways in the air, and trams running across each other, there is not the faintest spark of that divine light which is called Liberty. Americans boast of their freedom, but it only exists in words; it has no abiding place outside a boisterous rhetoric. The old Puritanism still exists in religious bigotry and persecution; office is bought and sold; justice is a matter of money; private life suffers from conventionalities and social tyrannies innumerable; political and municipal elections are the work of a Caucus. A man cannot drink, or stir, or do aught without his neighbour knowing and judging what he does; even marriage is to be made a matter for doctors to allow or disallow; the whole press is but a gigantic Paul Pry, a vast Holy Office where the persecution by the pen ends in the execution by the revolver.