On (Essays Collection). Hilaire Belloc
of it there was something at the beginning and title of this that dealt with a warning to ward you off a danger of some kind that terrified me not a little when I sat down to write, and that was, if I remember right, that a friend had told me how he had read in a book that the damnable Brute CAPITAL was about to swallow us all up and make slaves of us and that there was no way out of it, seeing that it was fixed, settled and grounded in economics, not to speak of the procession of the Equinox, the Horoscope of Trimegistus, and Old Moore's Almanack. Oh! Run, Run! The Rich are upon us! Help! Their hot breath is on our necks! What jaws! What jaws!
Well, what must be must be, and what will be will be, and if the Rich are upon us with great open jaws and having power to enslave all by the very fatal process of unalterable laws and at the bidding of Blind Fate as she is expounded by her prophets who live on milk and newspapers and do woundily talk Jew Socialism all day long; yet is it proved by the same intellectual certitude and irrefragable method that we shall not be caught before the year 1938 at the earliest and with luck we may run ten years more: why then let us make the best of the time we have, and sail, ride, travel, write, drink, sing and all be friends together; and do you go about doing good to the utmost of your power, as I heartily hope you will, though from your faces I doubt it hugely. A blessing I wish you all.
ON A RICH MAN WHO SUFFERED
One cannot do a greater service now, when a dangerous confusion of thought threatens us with an estrangement of classes, than to distinguish in all we write between Capitalism—the result of a blind economic development—and the persons and motives of those who happen to possess the bulk of the means of Production.
Capitalism may or may not have been a Source of Evil to Modern Communities—it may have been a necessary and even a beneficent phase in that struggle upward from the Brute which marks our progress from Gospel Times until the present day—but whether it has been a good or a bad phase in Economic Evolution, it is not Scientific and it is not English to confuse the system with the living human beings attached to it, and to contrast "Rich" and "Poor," insisting on the supposed luxury and callousness of the one or the humiliations and sufferings of the other.
To expose the folly—nay, the wickedness—of that attitude I have but to take some very real and very human case of a rich man—a very rich man—who suffered and suffered deeply merely as a man: one whose suffering wealth did not and could not alleviate.
One very striking example of this human bond I am able to lay before you, because the gentleman in question has, with fine human sympathy, permitted his story to be quoted.
The only stipulation he made with me was first that I should conceal real names and secondly that I should write the whole in as journalistic and popular a method as possible, so that his very legitimate grievance in the matter I am about to describe should be as widely known as possible and also in order to spread as widely as possible the lesson it contains that the rich also are men.
To change all names etc., a purely mechanical task, I easily achieved. Whether I have been equally successful in my second object of catching the breezy and happy style of true journalism it is for my readers to judge. I can only assure them that my intentions are pure.
* * * * *
I have promised my friend to set down the whole matter as it occurred.
"The Press," he said to me, "is the only vehicle left by which one can bring pressure to bear upon public opinion. I hope you can do something for me. … You write, I believe", he added, "for the papers?"
I said I did.
"Well," he answered, "you fellows that write for the newspapers have a great advantage … !"
At this he sighed deeply, and asked me to come and have lunch with him at his club, which is called "The Ragamuffins" for fun, and is full of jolly fellows. There I ate boiled mutton and greens, washed down with an excellent glass, or maybe a glass and a half, of Belgian wine—a wine called Chateau Bollard.
I noticed in the room Mr. Cantor, Mr. Charles, Sir John Ebbsmith, Mr. May, Mr. Ficks, "Joe" Hesketh, Matthew Fircombe, Lord Boxgrove, old Tommy Lawson, "Bill", Mr. Compton, Mr. Annerley, Jeremy (the trainer), Mr. Mannering, his son, Mr. William Mannering, and his nephew Mr. "Kite" Mannering, Lord Nore, Pilbury, little Jack Bowdon, Baxter ("Horrible" Baxter) Bayney, Mr. Claversgill, the solemn old Duke of Bascourt (a Dane), Ephraim T. Seeber, Algernon Gutt, Feverthorpe (whom that old wit Core used to call "_Feather_thorpe"), and many others with whose names I will not weary the reader, for he would think me too reminiscent and digressive were I to add to the list "Cocky" Billings, "Fat Harry", Mr. Muntzer, Mr. Eartham, dear, courteous, old-world Squire Howle, and that prime favourite, Lord Mann. "Sambo" Courthorpe, Ring, the Coffee-cooler, and Harry Sark, with all the Forfarshire lot, also fell under my eye, as did Maxwell, Mr. Gam——
However, such an introduction may prove overlong for the complaint I have to publish. I have said enough to show the position my friend holds. Many of my readers on reading this list will guess at once the true name of the club, and may also come near that of my distinguished friend, but I am bound in honour to disguise it under the veil of a pseudonym or nom de guerre; I will call him Mr. Quail.
Mr. Quail, then, was off to shoot grouse on a moor he had taken in Mull for the season; the house and estate are well known to all of us; I will disguise the moor under the pseudonym or nom de guerre of "Othello". He was awaited at "Othello" on the evening of the eleventh; for on the one hand there is an Act most strictly observed that not a grouse may be shot until the dawn of August 12th, and on the other a day passed at "Othello" with any other occupation but that of shooting would be hell.
Mr. Quail, therefore, proposed to travel to "Othello" by way of Glasgow, taking the 9.47 at St. Pancras on the evening of the 10th—last Monday—and engaging a bed on that train.
It is essential, if a full, Christian and sane view is to be had of this relation, that the reader should note the following details:—
Mr. Quail had engaged the bed. He had sent his cheque for it a week before and held the receipt signed "T. Macgregor, Superintendent".
True, there was a notice printed very small on the back of the receipt saying the company would not be responsible in any case of disappointment, overcrowding, accident, delay, robbery, murder, or the Act of God; but my friend Mr. Quail very properly paid no attention to that rubbish, knowing well enough (he is a J.P.) that a man cannot sign himself out of his common-law rights.
In order to leave ample time for the train, my friend Mr. Quail ordered dinner at eight—a light meal, for his wife had gone to the Engadine some weeks before. At nine precisely he was in his carriage with his coachman on the box to drive his horses, his man Mole also, and Piggy the little dog in with him. He knows it was nine, because he asked the butler what time it was as he left the dining-room, and the butler answered "Five minutes to nine, my Lord"; moreover, the clock in the dining-room, the one on the stairs and his own watch, all corroborated the butler's statement.
He arrived at St. Pancras. "If," as he sarcastically wrote to the company, "your own clocks are to be trusted," at 9.21.
So far so good. He had twenty-six minutes to spare. On his carriage driving up to the station he was annoyed to discover an enormous seething mob through which it was impossible to penetrate, swirling round the booking office and behaving with a total lack of discipline which made the confusion ten thousand times worse than it need have been.
"I wish," said Mr. Quail to me later, with some heat, "I wish I could have put some of those great hulking brutes into the ranks for a few months! Believe me, conscription would work wonders!" Mr. Quail himself holds a commission in the Yeomanry, and knows what he is talking about. But that is neither here nor there. I only mention it to show what an effect this anarchic mob produced upon a man of Mr. Quail's trained experience.
His man Mole had purchased the tickets in the course of the day; unfortunately, on being asked for them he confessed