[37]
«"И неужели ни один человек в городе не поможет ему, ни констебли, ни закон?"
«"О, он квакер, закон не помогает квакерам".
«Такова была правда — суровая, изматывающая правда — в те дни. Свобода, справедливость были пустыми словами для нонконформистов всех мастей; и все, что они знали о славной конституции английского права, заключалось в том, что его железная рука была обращена против них». — «Джон Галифакс», гл. VIII.
[38] This excellent lady went on a visit to an old friend, who found her appearance so miserable that she took the liberty of clothing her from head to foot. The saint was aware that she had been clothed, but neither pleased nor offended. She only laughed, and I believe her secret satisfaction in the matter was that she could give the old clothes to some beggar. I hope, but feel by no means sure, that she did not give away the new ones, which were a surprising improvement to her appearance.
[39]
“Her faith through form is pure as thine,
Her hands are quicker unto good.”
In Memoriam.
[40] A Civil Funeral.
Вряд ли кто-либо, имеющий хоть малейшие претензии на ранг или положение, если только он не является каким-нибудь республиканским чиновником, рискнул бы присутствовать на гражданских похоронах в провинциальном французском городе. Дама, которая знает, какой интерес я проявляю к этим вопросам, написала мне письмо в марте 1886 года, из которого я привожу следующую выдержку:—
«Под моими окнами только что проехала похоронная процессия "Свободомыслия", этот заголовок был вышит серебряными буквами со всех сторон катафалка, который очень красив с его серебряной бахромой. На гробу лежал очень большой венок из красных бессмертников, и все присутствующие носили такие же в петлицах. Процессия двигалась очень медленно, очень тихо. Сколько злых слов было сказано, пока проходила процессия! У нас еще нет права на независимость. Потребуется много лет, прежде чем мы обретем свободу воли, не подвергаясь клевете».
Оскорбления, адресованные похоронной процессии, чрезвычайно показательны для Франции, где обычно проявляется столь большое внешнее уважение к умершим.
[41] For Mr. Arnold the Trinity was “the fairy tale of the Three Supernatural Men.”
[42] This is a religion entirely without dogma, and Christian only in the sense that it would cultivate a Christian spirit.
[43] I have even known a sincere and severe Catholic who told me that no one who disobeyed habitually the moral law, whatever his beliefs, could be a Catholic. Giving drunkenness as an example, he said that there had never been such a person as a Catholic drunkard, because by the mere fact of being a drunkard a man proved that he was not a Catholic.
[44] Mr. Mivart.
То, сколько интеллектуальной свободы сейчас пользуются в рамках римской церкви, можно увидеть в весьма интересной статье г-на Миварта «Католическая церковь и библейская критика», опубликованной в «The Nineteenth Century» за июль 1887 года. Г-н Миварт не считает вероятным, что хотя бы одна строка Библии была написана Моисеем, в то время как «в высшей степени маловероятно, что Авраам, Исаак или Иаков когда-либо действительно существовали, и ни один отрывок из истории любого из них не имеет ни малейшей исторической ценности в старом смысле». Книга Ионы — это притча, книга Даниила совершенно не заслуживает доверия и немногим более чем нагромождение вымысла. Что касается Потопа, г-н Миварт говорит: «Я хорошо помню, как обедал в доме священника (примерно в 1870 году), когда один из присутствующих, покойный эрудированный г-н Ричард Симпсон из Клэпхэма (глубоко набожный католик и еженедельный причастник), высказал некоторые обычные научные взгляды на предмет Потопа. Пораженный слушатель с тревогой спросил: "Но разве тогда рассказ в Библии о Потопе не истинен?" На что г-н Симпсон ответил: "Истинен! Конечно, он истинен. Было местное наводнение, и некоторые из жреческой касты спаслись на плоскодонке вместе со своими петухами и курами"».
[45] “L’Angleterre est instruite, élevée, gouvernée par ses clergymen.”—Philippe Daryl.
[46] An essential difference between France and England. “No one,” says Professor Dicey, “can maintain that the law of England recognises anything like that natural right to the free communication of thoughts and opinions which was proclaimed in France nearly a hundred years ago to be one of the most valuable rights of man.”—The Law of the Constitution, first edition, pp. 257, 258.
[47] Law about Associations not Obsolete.
Обычный закон об ассоциациях был объявлен некоторыми английскими газетами «устаревшим» и возрожденным только для преследований. Он был настолько мало устаревшим, что неуклонно применялся к светским ассоциациям. Одно время я был почетным членом французского клуба, ограниченного восемнадцатью участниками, чтобы не требовалось «разрешение»; и я был вице-президентом другого клуба, не ограниченного по численности, так что нам приходилось отправлять наши уставы на утверждение префекту, и всякий раз, когда в них вносилось малейшее изменение, их приходилось снова представлять той же власти. Это была очень простая формальность, стоившая три су за почтовую марку. Если бы мы действовали как неавторизованные религиозные ордена, которые отказались подчиниться этому не очень страшному проявлению тирании, мы были бы распущены, как и они, и выдворены из нашего клубного дома, как они были выдворены из своих учреждений.
[48] Author of L’Irréligion de l’Avenir, Esquisse d’une Morale sans Obligation ni Sanction, Les Problèmes de l’Esthétique Contemporaine, La Morale d’Epicure et ses Rapports avec les Doctrines Contemporaines, etc. Guyau died in 1888 at the age of thirty-three.
[49] The reverend father is speaking of Her Majesty’s visit to the Grande Chartreuse, which she was able to make by taking advantage of an ancient rule made before the Church could foresee the monstrous anomaly of an heretical king or queen. By that rule, which still remains in force, a bishop or a reigning sovereign can visit a house of cloistered monks or nuns. The Archbishop of Canterbury could, however, scarcely get into a nunnery, as the Rev. Father du Lac informs us that the ancient English sees were erased by Pius IX. from the list of the bishoprics of Christendom.
[50] In the number for 23d July 1887.
[51] A Natural History Society was founded in Autun (a small old town in Burgundy) two or three years ago. It now includes more than four hundred members. Their principal pleasure is to take long walks in the neighbourhood for geological and botanical purposes. They have meetings, lectures, and a museum. Anything more moral or more healthy it is impossible to imagine.
[52] There have been years in the memory of living men when anybody who would take two barrels to a wine-grower might carry away one of them full of wine (the wine being worth less than the wood); and when for the payment of one sou a man might drink wine as if it were water.
[53] An interesting example of English improvidence came to my knowledge recently. A professional man of great talent, who had been eminently successful, died, leaving a widow and a large family of children. At the time of his death the children were all married. The widow was left without a penny, and was anxious to find a situation, because the married children all living up to the extreme limit of their incomes, as their father had done, were unable to subscribe an annuity. In France they would probably all have had savings, and, with the national love of the mother and sense of filial duty, would have cheerfully hastened to provide for her old age.
[54] This is rather too favourable to the English of that day, as they certainly did not take warm baths so frequently as French people do now. They had not the conveniences. Few private houses had a bath-room and few towns had public baths.
[55] Especially in combination with the beautiful colour of the waxed walnut furniture and the red hangings of the beds.
[56] What follows is sketched from life.
[57] Plays were performed on Sunday at the court of Queen Elizabeth.
[58] Dancing, archery, leaping, May-games, and morris dances, were expressly permitted by James I. on Sunday in his Book of Sports. He forbade brutal sports only.
[59] The idea that governs the action of the Church of Rome with regard to the observation of Sunday in countries where she is free to do what she thinks best, appears to be simply the protection of toilers from their own drudgery on one day of the week. She herself keeps the day as a festival, and requires the attendance of the laity at one mass, which may be short and early.
[60] I made inquiry afterwards to ascertain what the parish priest thought of these proceedings, and discovered that he made a distinction. He did not approve of dancing on the public dancing-floors in the village, especially at night, because it sometimes led to wrong, but he was not opposed in any way to Sunday dancing in private houses.
[61] The distinction between sacred and profane music is fictitious, merely depending on the title that a musician chooses to give to his composition. The distinction between serious and light music is real, whatever the title. This is so well understood in the Church of Rome that the priests allow any music to be performed in their churches which is the expression of a serious or sublime idea.
[62] M. de St. Victor managed the estates belonging to the Countess de Talleyrand, and he lived at her old château of Montjeu, one of the most romantically situated places in France, in the midst of a large well-wooded park upon the hills.
[63] The passage is very well known, but I may quote it for the convenience of some readers:—
«И как возможно, чтобы человек, у которого ничего нет, который наг, бездомен, без очага, убог, без раба, без города, мог вести жизнь, которая течет легко? Смотри, Бог послал тебе человека, чтобы показать, что это возможно. Посмотри на меня, который без города, без дома, без имущества, без раба; я сплю на земле; у меня нет жены, нет детей, нет претория, а только земля и небеса, да один бедный плащ. И чего я хочу? Разве я не без печали? Разве я не без страха? Разве я не свободен? Когда кто-нибудь из вас видел, чтобы я не достиг цели своего желания? Или когда-либо впадал в то, чего я хотел бы избежать? Винил ли я когда-нибудь Бога или человека? Обвинял ли я когда-нибудь кого-нибудь? Видел ли кто-нибудь из вас меня с печальным лицом? И как я встречаюсь с теми, кого вы боитесь и кем восхищаетесь? Разве я не обращаюсь с ними как с рабами? Кто, видя меня, не думает, что видит своего царя и господина?» — Эпиктет, перевод Лонга, книга III, гл. XXII.
[64] A friend of mine knows an impoverished French Marquis, the head of an old family, who lives like a peasant in a bare old house that is never repaired. He and his sister consume one bottle of common wine between them each week, and they are served by one old faithful female domestic. Their ruin was caused by lavish uncalculating generosity, by what Herbert Spencer would call the culpable excess of altruism.
[65] It is very significant that as the spirit of luxury has increased in France, the width and costliness of picture-frames have increased along with it.
[66] This reminds me of a French proverb often quoted by an old naval officer whom I knew. Rien n’est bien fait qui n’est pas fait habituellement.
[67] I am myself old enough to remember how, when I was a boy, two gentlemen of good family quarrelled over their port wine after dinner, and one of them shouted to the other, “I’ll pull your nose, sir, I’ll pull your nose!” Some highly polished young reviewer of the present day will say that I had fallen into low company, but those gentlemen of a past time were quite as good as he is likely to be with all his polish, and it is probable that the aristocratic spirit was far more genuine in them than it is in anybody now.
[68] For example, in the French neighbourhood best known to me it is contrary to peasant decorum for a farmer and his wife to walk to church together. He must go first with his male companions, and she must follow with the women. It is also contrary to decorum for a man to be seen giving his arm to his wife, under any circumstances.
[69] I have heard of two cases that ended fatally, simply in consequence of obedience to English decorum.
[70] A French gentleman wanted to let me a country house, and said, with an air of conscious superiority, “It would be quiet and convenient for the prosecution of your—your industry.”
[71] As a system of recruiting party adherents, it has the great advantage of catching rather rich and influential people, especially landowners. Very poor families would gain nothing by the “de,” and, in fact, they drop it when it is theirs by right.
[72] This is stated simply as a fact and not in depreciation. There is not a more respectable class in France than the peasantry.
[73] He also takes precedence of the bishop. An intimate friend of mine was appointed to a prefecture. On his arrival the archbishop sent to say that he would receive him at his palace. This was an attempt to put the prefect in an inferior position, so he answered that it was not further from the palace to the prefecture than from the prefecture to the palace. The archbishop then came.
[74] George du Maurier attributes this happiness in the wealth of others to what he calls “The British Passion for inequality,” illustrated by him in Punch. An Englishman is walking with a Frenchman in Hyde Park, and gives utterance to that passion in these words:—
«Крепкий британец. Все это очень хорошо — воротить нос от своих собственных нищих графов и баронов, месье! Но вы не можете придраться к нашей знати! Возьмите такого человека, как наш герцог Бейсуотерский, например! Да он мог бы скупать ваших иностранных герцогов и принцев дюжинами! А что касается нас с вами, то он смотрел бы на нас как на грязь под своими ногами! Вот это — настоящий дворянин! Это такой дворянин, которым я, как англичанин, чувствую, что имею право гордиться!»
[75] The want of money, in these days, very frequently induces a French nobleman to marry an heiress in the middle classes. This is the most powerful cause of infractions of French exclusiveness.
[76] The essential difference between the scientific and the religious views is that the one sees a special Providential commission, where the other only perceives an undesigned accumulation of natural force.
[77] There is more English poetry of the same order, for example the following, also quoted from Mr. Gerald Massey—
“Oh! this world might be lighted
With Eden’s first smile—
Angel-haunted—unblighted,
With Freedom for Toil:
But they wring out our blood
For their banquet of gold!
They annul laws of God,
Soul and body are sold!
Hark now! hall and palace,
Ring out, dome and rafter!
Ay, laugh on, ye callous!
In Hell there’ll be laughter.”
[78] “Well, before I’d put on stockings no better washed than those!”
[79] “Paid for, is it? It would not have been if thou hadst had to earn the money.”
[80] Just before returning the proof-sheet of this chapter I heard one French peasant describing his landlord to another in these terms:—
«Месье ле Конт — один из лучших арендодателей в этой округе. Он досконально разбирается в сельском хозяйстве, он следит за всем в поместье, но никогда не давит на своих арендаторов, никогда не требует с них арендную плату. Напротив, он всегда готов помочь арендатору в любых разумных расходах».
Упомянутый арендодатель — богатый дворянин, живущий на своей земле, и отнюдь не рассматриваемый с «самой дикой враждебностью», хотя он случайно оказался французом. Я видел его замок и поместье, прекрасную собственность, красиво расположенную.
[81] Probably her chief reason, unexpressed, was that to have been asked in marriage for her good looks would have implied a deficiency of dowry, or, at least, left room for the supposition that there had not been dowry enough, of itself, to attract an offer of marriage.
[82] I was permitted to read a letter from the young lady’s father, in which he said, “The offer was quite beyond anything that my daughter could have hoped for, but after full consideration she decided to decline it, and I think she acted wisely, as money is not everything in this world.” The girl was left entirely free, as if she had been in England.
[83] A girl with £200 a year will expect, in marriage, a household expenditure of £800 a year. I proposed this theoretical proportion to a French gentleman of much experience, and he said that the estimate was moderate.
[84] Of course I mean with reference to aristocratic rank. A duke who has talent of his own is likely to recognise it in others.
[85] An Artist in Goodness.
Публика знает кое-что об актах общественной благотворительности мадам Бусико (хотя они были настолько многочисленны, что невозможно запомнить такой список), но я узнал из нескольких различных частных источников, насколько вдумчивой была ее доброта к отдельным людям. Благодаря долгой практике она стала настоящим художником в добре, развив свой талант в этом направлении так, как другой мог бы научиться рисовать или петь. В ее благотворительности была изобретательность, которая делала ее такой же оригинальной, как поэзия, и такой же прекрасной в своей оригинальности.
[86] In any case a French officer cannot marry without an authorisation emanating from the Ministry of War. A military friend told me that the following mishap occurred to an officer in his regiment who thought he would like to marry a certain girl in a certain town. He applied for permission, which was refused. The regiment was sent elsewhere, and the sensitive officer was smitten a second time, so he applied for permission again. It came in the form of an authorisation to marry not the second, but the first young lady. The officer did so, and discovered, when too late, that she was one of those governing women who order about their husbands like children, so he has leisure to deplore the decision of the authorities.
[87] French carelessness in correcting is especially lamentable in school-books. I have before me a French school edition of Childe Harold, abounding in gross typographic blunders that must be most puzzling to French boys. M. Taine’s Histoire de la Littérature Anglaise is very faulty in this respect.