News from Nowhere; Or, An Epoch of Rest<br />Being Some Chapters from a Utopian Romance by William Morris (best reads txt) 📗

into them were matters of property quarrels: and I think, dear guest,” said he, smiling, “that though you do come from another planet, you can see from the mere outside look of our world that quarrels about private property could not go on amongst us in our days.”

Indeed, my drive from Hammersmith to Bloomsbury, and all the quiet happy life I had seen so many hints of; even apart from my shopping, would have been enough to tell me that “the sacred rights of property,” as we used to think of them, were now no more.  So I sat silent while the old man took up the thread of the discourse again, and said:

“Well, then, property quarrels being no longer possible, what remains in these matters that a court of law could deal with?  Fancy a court for enforcing a contract of passion or sentiment!  If such a thing were needed as a reductio ad absurdum of the enforcement of contract, such a folly would do that for us.”

He was silent again a little, and then said: “You must understand once for all that we have changed these matters; or rather, that our way of looking at them has changed, as we have changed within the last two hundred years.  We do not deceive ourselves, indeed, or believe that we can get rid of all the trouble that besets the dealings between the sexes.  We know that we must face the unhappiness that comes of man and woman confusing the relations between natural passion, and sentiment, and the friendship which, when things go well, softens the awakening from passing illusions: but we are not so mad as to pile up degradation on that unhappiness by engaging in sordid squabbles about livelihood and position, and the power of tyrannising over the children who have been the results of love or lust.”

Again he paused awhile, and again went on: “Calf love, mistaken for a heroism that shall be lifelong, yet early waning into disappointment; the inexplicable desire that comes on a man of riper years to be the all-in-all to some one woman, whose ordinary human kindness and human beauty he has idealised into superhuman perfection, and made the one object of his desire; or lastly the reasonable longing of a strong and thoughtful man to become the most intimate friend of some beautiful and wise woman, the very type of the beauty and glory of the world which we love so well,—as we exult in all the pleasure and exaltation of spirit which goes with these things, so we set ourselves to bear the sorrow which not unseldom goes with them also; remembering those lines of the ancient poet (I quote roughly from memory one of the many translations of the nineteenth century):

‘For this the Gods have fashioned man’s grief and evil day
That still for man hereafter might be the tale and the lay.’

Well, well, ’tis little likely anyhow that all tales shall be lacking, or all sorrow cured.”

He was silent for some time, and I would not interrupt him.  At last he began again: “But you must know that we of these generations are strong and healthy of body, and live easily; we pass our lives in reasonable strife with nature, exercising not one side of ourselves only, but all sides, taking the keenest pleasure in all the life of the world.  So it is a point of honour with us not to be self-centred; not to suppose that the world must cease because one man is sorry; therefore we should think it foolish, or if you will, criminal, to exaggerate these matters of sentiment and sensibility: we are no more inclined to eke out our sentimental sorrows than to cherish our bodily pains; and we recognise that there are other pleasures besides love-making.  You must remember, also, that we are long-lived, and that therefore beauty both in man and woman is not so fleeting as it was in the days when we were burdened so heavily by self-inflicted diseases.  So we shake off these griefs in a way which perhaps the sentimentalists of other times would think contemptible and unheroic, but which we think necessary and manlike.  As on the other hand, therefore, we have ceased to be commercial in our love-matters, so also we have ceased to be artificially foolish.  The folly which comes by nature, the unwisdom of the immature man, or the older man caught in a trap, we must put up with that, nor are we much ashamed of it; but to be conventionally sensitive or sentimental—my friend, I am old and perhaps disappointed, but at least I think we have cast off some of the follies of the older world.”

He paused, as if for some words of mine; but I held my peace: then he went on: “At least, if we suffer from the tyranny and fickleness of nature or our own want of experience, we neither grimace about it, nor lie.  If there must be sundering betwixt those who meant never to sunder, so it must be: but there need be no pretext of unity when the reality of it is gone: nor do we drive those who well know that they are incapable of it to profess an undying sentiment which they cannot really feel: thus it is that as that monstrosity of venal lust is no longer possible, so also it is no longer needed.  Don’t misunderstand me.  You did not seemed shocked when I told you that there were no law-courts to enforce contracts of sentiment or passion; but so curiously are men made, that perhaps you will be shocked when I tell you that there is no code of public opinion which takes the place of such courts, and which might be as tyrannical and unreasonable as they were.  I do not say that people don’t judge their neighbours’ conduct, sometimes, doubtless, unfairly.  But I do say that there is no unvarying conventional set of rules by which people are judged; no bed of Procrustes to stretch or cramp their minds and lives; no hypocritical excommunication which people are forced to pronounce, either by unconsidered habit, or by the unexpressed threat of the lesser interdict if they are lax in their hypocrisy.  Are you shocked now?”

“N-o—no,” said I, with some hesitation.  “It is all so different.”

“At any rate,” said he, “one thing I think I can answer for: whatever sentiment there is, it is real—and general; it is not confined to people very specially refined.  I am also pretty sure, as I hinted to you just now, that there is not by a great way as much suffering involved in these matters either to men or to women as there used to be.  But excuse me for being so prolix on this question!  You know you asked to be treated like a being from another planet.”

“Indeed I thank you very much,” said I.  “Now may I ask you about the position of women in your society?”

He laughed very heartily for a man of his years, and said: “It is not without reason that I have got a reputation as a careful student of history.  I believe I really do understand ‘the Emancipation of Women movement’ of the nineteenth century.  I doubt if any other man now alive does.”

“Well?” said I, a little bit nettled by his merriment.

“Well,” said he, “of course you will see that all that is a dead controversy now.  The men have no longer any opportunity of tyrannising over the women, or the women over the men; both of which things took place in those old times.  The women do what they can do best, and what they like best, and the men are neither jealous of it or injured by it.  This is such a commonplace that I am almost ashamed to state it.”

I said, “O; and legislation? do they take any part in that?”

Hammond smiled and said: “I think you may wait for an answer to that question till we get on to the subject of legislation.  There may be novelties to you in that subject also.”

“Very well,” I said; “but about this woman question?  I saw at the Guest House that the women were waiting on the men: that seems a little like reaction doesn’t it?”

“Does it?” said the old man; “perhaps you think housekeeping an unimportant occupation, not deserving of respect.  I believe that was the opinion of the ‘advanced’ women of the nineteenth century, and their male backers.  If it is yours, I recommend to your notice an old Norwegian folk-lore tale called How the Man minded the House, or some such title; the result of which minding was that, after various tribulations, the man and the family cow balanced each other at the end of a rope, the man hanging halfway up the chimney, the cow dangling from the roof, which, after the fashion of the country, was of turf and sloping down low to the ground.  Hard on the cow, I think.  Of course no such mishap could happen to such a superior person as yourself,” he added, chuckling.

I sat somewhat uneasy under this dry gibe.  Indeed, his manner of treating this latter part of the question seemed to me a little disrespectful.

“Come, now, my friend,” quoth he, “don’t you know that it is a great pleasure to a clever woman to manage a house skilfully, and to do it so that all the house-mates about her look pleased, and are grateful to her?  And then, you know, everybody likes to be ordered about by a pretty woman: why, it is one of the pleasantest forms of flirtation.  You are not so old that you cannot remember that.  Why, I remember it well.”

And the old fellow chuckled again, and at last fairly burst out laughing.

“Excuse me,” said he, after a while; “I am not laughing at anything you could be thinking of; but at that silly nineteenth-century fashion, current amongst rich so-called cultivated people, of ignoring all the steps by which their daily dinner was reached, as matters too low for their lofty intelligence.  Useless idiots!  Come, now, I am a ‘literary man,’ as we queer animals used to be called, yet I am a pretty good cook myself.”

“So am I,” said I.

“Well, then,” said he, “I really think you can understand me better than you would seem to do, judging by your words and your silence.”

Said I: “Perhaps that is so; but people putting in practice commonly this sense of interest in the ordinary occupations of life rather startles me.  I will ask you a question or two presently about that.  But I want to return to the position of women amongst you.  You have studied the ‘emancipation of women’ business of the nineteenth century: don’t you remember that some of the ‘superior’ women wanted to emancipate the more intelligent part of their sex from the bearing of children?”

The old man grew quite serious again.  Said he: “I do remember about that strange piece of baseless folly, the result, like all other follies of the period, of the hideous class tyranny which then obtained.  What do we think of it now? you would say.  My friend, that is a question easy to answer.  How could it possibly be but that maternity should be highly honoured amongst us?  Surely it is a matter of course that the natural and necessary pains which the mother must go through form a bond of union between man and woman, an extra stimulus to love and affection between them, and that this is universally recognised.  For the rest, remember that all the artificial burdens of motherhood are now done away with.  A mother has no longer any mere sordid anxieties for the future of her children.  They may indeed turn out better or worse; they may disappoint her highest hopes; such anxieties as these are a part of the mingled pleasure and pain which goes to make up the life of mankind.  But at least she is spared the fear (it was most commonly the certainty) that artificial disabilities would make her children something less than men and women: she knows that they will live and act according to the measure of their own faculties.  In times past, it is clear that the ‘Society’ of the day helped its Judaic god, and the ‘Man of Science’ of the time, in visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children.  How to reverse this process, how to take the sting out of heredity, has for long been one of the most constant cares of the thoughtful men amongst us.  So that, you see, the ordinarily healthy woman (and almost all our women are both healthy and at least comely), respected as a child-bearer and rearer of children, desired as a woman, loved as a companion, unanxious for the future of her children, has far more instinct for maternity than the poor drudge and mother of drudges of past days could ever have had; or than her sister of the upper classes, brought up in affected ignorance of natural facts, reared in an atmosphere of mingled prudery and prurience.”

“You speak warmly,” I said, “but